This Was Seen over at ZeroHedge

This appears to be Mitt Romney's list of major contributors

To me, it seems a piddling price to pay for a Head of State

Crufty

 

It is a pretty good word from old computer geeks such as yours truly.

It is also a pretty good way to describe most peoples lives.  A great deal of your operating system or current program is stuff that you have left over from the past that doesn’t really serve any purpose, it is just there because you cannot, for the life of you, figure out how to get rid of it.   Another apt description of what all this cruft leaves you with is “dependency hell”.

I am thinking about doing a major re-think of my current lifestyle.  My landlord’s daughter is currently knocked up and will probably be demanding my current living arrangement for her new family, and I can’t fault my landlord for kicking me out for this reason.  The boys are now well into high school years, so the needs that this house filled may no longer be all that important.

I think that for the next while, I will do some source code analysis of my life to see what needs to be purged.

Accounting Quirks?

I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone believes anything that comes out of Washington DC.

Consider for a moment this article.

They are telling us that we will be holding our budget deficit under a trillion.

Yet Obama is asking for, and the congress will approve a 1.2 trillion dollar debt ceiling increase that is supposed to tide us over until after the election.

How does that hang together?

The core of the matter is we are broke and getting broker.  We will be trailing the rest of the world down the path of budget slashes and huge "austerities" any year now.  Just has to be that way.

There is a vocal minority out there that feels that taxing the rich will solve the problems.  Hell, even if we took all the rich folks money and killed them (read here proscriptions) there wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt.  Though it would amuse me.

There is another vocal minority that says just kick all the freeloaders (read here, fellow citizens) off the dole and let them starve and you will pay off the debt.  Naw..that dog won't hunt either.

We have been living large for too long.  All of us, even the poor folk have been steps above the norm of the world for so long that we now consider it our due.  It ain't

The recalibration is going to get messy, and lots of folks are going to be pretty pissed when their cherished American Dream goes up in smoke.

SOPA

Just a minute this morning, I am running a bit behind.

SOPA is likely to pass, as the rich fucks think that it is in their best interests.

That being said, I think that us bloggers had better think about how we put together our posts.  I usually try to stick on a pretty picture on the top of each post that I find appealing and applicable.  I just troll the net and paste it up there.

Well, no more.  From here on in, it is just my own lame thoughts.  The SOPA is a pretty serious piece of work, it isn't there to stop online piracy, it is there to give the powers that be a convenient reason to shut down inconvenient people.

I think that links will be OK.  But be careful about the fluffy stuff on your blog.  It would be damn hard for them to shut you down for your thoughts.  It would be quite easy to shut you down for a vanity.

Nicely Done

When one of the big boys of Blogoland come out with something like this, maybe, just maybe there will begin a heightened discussion of the issue.

There are just too damn many of us.  I would suggest that this is the root problem.  You are starting to see it here in the good ol' USA.  When you traven to China, your eyes go wide open.  When you go to India the fact screams at you.

The farm lobby has been filling our eyes and ears and mouths with the "miracle" of their productivity increases,  but in truth, all they have been doing is a relentless centralization of methodology and distribution of crops grown essentially by seeing how much in the way of fossil fuel inputs can be forced upon the land.

The peaking of oil, the increase in use by China and the developing countries, the exportland phenomenon and other such niceties point to a remarkably changed future.  Access to food will become a serious issue.  In the heavily overpopulated counties, famine will again become a familiar visitor.  In the developed world, there will probably be a serious effort at restructuring the incredibly inefficient food systems that currently feed us.

I really don't see famine happening here in the US.  What I do see is a breakup of the processed food industry that sucks so much of the food and energy that we need for elsewhere.  I think that I will be taking a look at the energy input into that bag of Fritos that we all so dearly love. 

I will probably write some more on this later.  Work calls.  Gotta get out the door and earn my nickels.

To be continued.......

Try this on for size

Why do I do it to myself?

Spent a little bit of time yesterday watching the playoffs and the politics.

What it truly sad is that the coverage for both is pretty damn similar.  Hell, if you wanted to take the time, you could probably draw parallels between the NFL teams and the candidates.

Packers are Obama, sitting champions, good solid team, just waiting to be knocked off. 

Patriots are Romney,  unlikeable corporate scum who also look to be the most likely challenger.

Broncos are the darlings of the christer-right wing nutbag squad that backs Ron Paul.

The press is identical in the time and style of presenting both sports.

I need a drink.

Funny Lookin' Bacon

There is a store over on Fourth Plain (one of the main drags here in Vantucky) called Grocery Outlet, or as the ex refers to it, the used grocery store.

Anyway, they have a great deal on bacon...a three pound ends and pieces vacuum bag for around $5.  Nice.

The gist of the matter is that the kids who come over to stay the night with my brats are always surprised when they get the aforementioned "funny looking bacon on their plates.  They are a little leery at first, but then they start to see that they can have twice as much of the funny looking stuff as they get of the aesthetically pleasing bacon strips that is on tap at their house.

One of the mothers apparently intimated to her son that "she would be damned if she would shop where poor folk shopped for their poor folk food".

More for me

Just the way I am feeling lately.

Just the way I am feeling lately.

I'm certain that there is something out there that I could dump bile upon, but the idea just doesn't strike me as useful.  The world seems to be a a stream of consciousness thing for the moment.  Describing it would be like re-writing "Finnegans Wake".

I can't seem to sort out the streams that are merging in the world.  There is something happening that is the sum of the parts that are out there, but the parts are hopelessly con-fused into a whole which is both dangerous and unpredictable.

I would say to prep, but for what?   The self-centered nihilism of a spoiled society denied its toys?  Naw.

So I will try to teach my children well.  It may come to naught, but at least they might be able to make out the shape of the world that they will live in.

Not Much to say

But this is an interesting site to browse. Food for thought http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

Home Run By Rachel

Trusting When You Have To

So:  I am noting a trend over at Russell's (N=2) where there are pictures of academics writing articles that he reviews.  The trend is not been heavily researched by your humble correspondent, but I do remember a hot blonde and now a hot brunette from Ivy League colleges with come hither looks....do keep it up old man.

But, hotness aside (if such a thing can be done), the studies show that when you are threatened, or when you need them, people are more likely to trust government.

Duh....You had to do a study on this one?

Look, the idea that humans innately trust each other is one of the oddest ideas ever to surface.  We are our own predators.  There is no other species left to do the job.  While predators might trust other members of their own pack, they definitely don't trust other packs.  If the pack or an individual is threatened, the threatened individual sure as hell better trust the pack, it is the only thing left.

The reversion to this trusting behavior in a society is a anachronism to the days when oaths of fealty were the hot item.   Folks are re-acquainting themselves to the fact that they are easy prey.  The only way that they are going to get through is to bind themselves to a social group.  You can damn well be sure that when you have to do such a thing, your big, not all that useful brain will come up with an excellent rationalization for doing so.

Piss Poor Palantir Prognostications

This is my crystal ball.  I can only see into the future about as far as the end of my nose.  But, like the "crystal ball" in the above picture, I can see reflections of myself and what makes me nervous.

1.)
The game that is still afoot in the Middle East, something is going to be happening there soon, and it isn't going to be us leaving Afghanistan.  Iran is a master at the rope-a-dope and I would say that we are pretty gassed right now.  Israel is getting twitchy.  We are heading into an election year where idiocy abounds.  None of these conditions lends itself to a rational resolution.

2.)
I think that the idea of "to big to fail" will prove itself false.   The most likely suspect is Bank of America, but there is so much grand larceny and theft going on that there are no banks in the big five that is immune to a Dodd-Frank liquidation.  Which will probably end up meaning that on of the other big boys will hoover up what limited assets are available and get going on doubling down on their losing bets.

3.)
I don't think the Euro will go down this year.   There is a whole bunch of stuff running and we will have to wait for the middle act to get done before we start the final act.  The little dickhead Sarkozy will have to run and I see him going down.  Hollande will take a while to begin the process of pissing off the Germans.  I see the next big move at the extreme end of 2012.

4.)
I see another year of muddling through by hook or crook here in the good old USA.   The politicians have every desire to keep things together.  You don't burn down the stage where you are performing your theatre of the absurd.  So we will continue spending money, we won't bother to tax people, we will go deeper into the hole, and we won't make any decisions.

I do see a remote possibility of a third party candidate a la Ross Perot.

5.)
I have no earthly clue who is going to be our next President.  The Republicans are trying their level best to find the oddest person in America to be their candidate.  The Democrats are always stupid.

6.)
Dow will bottom out around 8300.

7.)
Raiders will finally get 11 wins.

8.)
The financial community will become even more blatantly larcenous.

9.)
A bank holiday in the US or Europe this year??  Most likely suspect is the UK.

10.)
I think that the suppression of the #occupy movement when it tries to restart in the spring will be huge and obvious.  The cops have not been sitting on their hands, they will have infiltrated and will be prepared.  I would steer clear from things for a while.
_______________

Other than that folks, I got nothin'.  I am not even certain about these.  The world is a big-bad puzzle right now.  I just don't know.