Monday, November 30, 2009
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/11/wic...ides.html#more
Wickedness Abides
by James Howard Kunstler
on November 30, 2009 7:12 AM
"While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money." -- The NYT, Vikas Bajaj and Graham Bowley, reporting.
Apart from the stark self-contradiction in this quote from The New York Times, you have to love the fatuous 'it's all good' self-assurance where global banking is concerned. No problemo y'all! A mere overdraft incident, a cash-flow hiccup... and yet "the main fear" [among whom?] is that investors [where and in what? Like, everywhere?] could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money [WTF?]. Gosh, well, as long as they don't flee the New York Stock Exchange, the Hang Seng, the FTSE.... And, hey, do you suppose anybody bought any credit default swap "insurance" on the deals that financed scores and scores of super-giant condominium skyscrapers and hotels amounting to the greatest spec construction folly in the history of the world?
Snapshots of the stupid ****ing work-in-progress have been circulating around the Internet for five years, the disbelief was so monumental. I confess, when I first saw the Palm Island I was impressed at what a superb air-strike target it presented. And then, when the real estate assemblage of artificial islands arranged like a map-of-the-world came along, I could only imagine the megalomanical glee rising in the throat of a jet bomber pilot (nationality unspecified) as he closed in on it.
Whom the gods would punish, they first make completely crazy. That includes us, here in the USA, by the way, but pound-for-pound Dubai is the current champeen. The monstrosity they built in their waterless convection-oven of a city-state makes Las Vegas look like a mere strip mall in comparison. Throw in a few other affronts to nature, such as an indoor ski "mountain," a beach cooled by an under-the-sand refrigerated pipe network, golf courses that have to be hosed down with acre-feet of desalinated sea-water, and forget about "the gods" -- one begins to see the monotheistic hand of "Old Scratch" himself working the levers of the construction cranes out there.
Frankly, I have no idea whether the Dubai fiasco will send seismic ripples thundering through a global banking establishment that is already crippled in more ways than you can count. But it does remind those in thrall to the dazzlement of "green shoots" that debt comes a'creeping, and runs so far, deep, and wide through the broken system of mutual assurances constituting international finance, that Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in central banks 'round the world could drop helicopter loads of paper cash on every rooftop, intersection, parking lot, field, forest, and camel raceway and never make a dent in the fatal web of false obligations we have woven for ourselves.
But you do wonder what was going through their minds as this ridiculous organism took shape on the horn of the Persian Gulf, just as one wonders at loathsome aspirations that Las Vegas presents in our own so-called culture -- essentially a wickedness that exceeds the wildest fantasies of the most demented clergymen, be they closeted sado-masochistic Southern Baptist teleministers, Vatican-approved child molesters, or mullahs dispatching suicide bombers to the marketplaces frequented by housewives and their children.
Lately, the much-repeated aphorism has circulated around the Web that civilizations build their most extreme monuments at the very moment of collapse. If this is true -- and it is hard to argue with the historical record -- then it's time to organize a new Third Party for the 2012 election with Jared Diamond and Cormac McCarthy heading the national ticket (and Roland Emmerich for EPA chief). By then, if we don't stop lying to ourselves about the destruction we have induced, every other suit-and-tie wearing authority figure in America, from the county clerk to Barack Obama, will take on the aura of the archetypal Evil Clown from a Stephen King yarn. Imagine living in a country where absolutely nobody in a leadership position is credible. This is the kind of country we're becoming and it will not keep running that way for long.
The markets will begin digesting the Dubai news in earnest today, making for a holiday season of possibly momentous thrills-and-chills. The big debate going into Thanksgiving was whether the dollar would continue its downward trajectory, leading to some kind of currency failure, hyper-inflation, take your pick... or turn briskly around as investors bailed out of risk vehicles for the conventional safe-haven paper parking lot of US Treasuries. This debate between the inflationists and deflationists has defied resolution all year. Personally, I side with the deflationistas these days, though I believe our ultimate destination, in a year or so, is destruction of the dollar.
In keeping with the wickedness theme, isn't it interesting that our society now vests all its hopes and wishes for thriving -- indeed survival! -- on a yearly ceremony we have come to call Black Friday. I was raised in a religion-free household, but I confess the signs are just everywhere that we've taken some turn to the Dark Side. I'm a little surprised that "consumers" were not caught on video wringing the necks of chickens in the WalMart parking lots the other day in the hopes of winning supernatural favor for that race down the aisle to the flat-screen TV loss leaders. The cinemas are full of blood-sucking teenagers. Grown men swarm in the unemployment offices wearing sideways hats and butt-crack trousers. Why not just tattoo a message on your forehead that says: "Moron For Hire"?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Cadillac Ranch...
"The Cadillac Ranch, located along the tatters of historic Route 66, was built in 1974, brainchild of Stanley Marsh 3, the helium millionaire who owns the dusty wheat field where it stands. Marsh and The Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, assembled used Cadillacs representing the "Golden Age" of American Automobiles (1949 through 1963). The ten graffiti-covered cars are half-buried, nose-down, facing west "at the same angle as the Cheops' pyramids."
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/11/cou...sion.html#more
Courting Convulsion
by James Howard Kunstler
How infantile is American society? Last night's CBS "Business Update" (in the midst of its "60 Minutes" program) featured three items: 1.) The New Moon teen vampire movie led the weekend box-office receipts; 2.) Cadbury shares hit an all-time high; 3.) Michael Jackson's rhinestone-studded white glove sold at auction for $350,000. Some in-house CBS-News producer is responsible for this ****ing nonsense. How does he or she keep her job? Is there no adult supervision at the network?
Meanwhile, over at The New York Times this morning, Paul "Nobel Prize" Krugman writes:
"Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts; the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence."
Disclosure: I'm not one of the economists that Mr. Krugman talks to (nor am I an economist). But it's sure interesting to know that the ones palavering with Mr. Krugman imagine that that the US can possibly return to an economy based on the fraudulent securitization of reckless debt. Does Mr. Krugman think that the production housing industry can resume paving over the nether exurbs with half-million-dollar houses (to be bought with no money down loans by the sheet-rockers working inside them)? Does he think all those people receiving cancellation notices from their credit car issuers are in a position to flash their plastic at the Gallerias this Friday? Or ever will be again? Is he perhaps misusing the term "recovery?" After all, that is generally taken to mean resuming a prior state, which is, in turn, presumed to be a healthy prior state. Is that what the economy of the past decade was? And, incidentally, what exactly is a "consumer?" And why, at the highest levels of journalism in this land, do we refer to citizens that way? As if the American people have no other purpose except to buy things? Or is that that the only way an "economist" can imagine them?
I'm sorry to burden the reader with so many questions, but the idiots running the mainstream news media in this land are not doing it and somebody has to.
If a "recovery" is not in the cards, then what exactly is going on out there?
What's going on in the US economy is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a different economy. The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive. The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behavior, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.
The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy. The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible. Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.
We are seeing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of American life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviors of the pre peak oil era. They are all unwilling to face reality, and are all engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.
If we don't attend to the transformation of American life by downscaling our activities and changing the way they are carried out, and re-localizing them, we will see our society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and well-being.
At the moment, banking is disintegrating. It's happening because the end of regular, predictable, cyclical, industrial growth means the end of our ability to generate credit without limits, and in fact we passed this point by stealth some time ago leaving the banks in "Wile E. Coyote" suspension above an abyss, where they have lately been joined by government at all levels and the indebted citizens of the land. The profound nausea spreading through the offices of America is the somatic recognition of exactly where we are in all this: off the cliff.
It's important to remind readers that so-called "capitalism" is not to blame. Capitalism is not an ideology. It refers to a set of laws governing the disposition of surplus wealth. There is going to be surplus wealth somewhere in the years ahead, even if our living standards fall substantially, even under the strictures of peak oil. All the communist experiments of the 20th century produced some kind of surplus wealth. All of them were subject to the phenomenon of compound interest. What matters in the disposition of capital are the rules created for accumulating and deploying it. In the USA the past two decades, we ignored the rules, repealed some of the critical laws, and failed to enforce the existing ones so that, when faced by the historic circumstances of peak oil, we allowed fraud and swindling to run wild - just at the moment when we should have taken the most care. That is why our money system ran off the rails.
We're now seeing worldwide a kind of race between the assertion of peak oil and the failures of capital management as to which will provoke a widespread convulsion first. They are obviously related and whichever gets us in the most trouble fastest, our destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live. Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalism," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making things we need in the US, probably much more regionally. "Globalism" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge in.
At the moment, going into Thanksgiving 2009, America's leadership has dedicated itself to worst action it could take under the circumstances: a campaign to sustain the unsustainable. This is what's embodied in the foolish term "recovery." The way we try to explain things to ourselves matters, if we don't want to be crushed by history. Go back to the top of this blog and look at the things we pay attention to. Aren't you ashamed?
Friday, November 20, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
29th Annual Dickens of a Christmas...Home for the Holidays
Date: 11/27/2009 TO 11/29/2009
Time: 8:00 AM
Description:
Downtown McKinney’s premier festival, the 29th annual Dickens of a Christmas…Home for the Holidays is right around the corner. An old fashioned Christmas festival with horse drawn carriages, strolling carolers, pictures with Santa Claus, the Christmas tree lighting and activities for all ages. Seasonal music, food and children’s activities provided by local organizations will take center stage during the event. Patrons are encouraged to spend the weekend enjoying all the activities and taking advantage of the many great shops, restaurants, and entertainment. The perfect start to the holiday season -Dickens of a Christmas…Home for the Holidays is our opportunity to give back to the community. The event will be held for (3) days (November 27, 28 and 29, 2009). This festive event will launch on Friday, November 27 with an “Earlier than the Bird” shopping extravaganza followed by festive activities throughout the day leading up to a message from our Mayor, the lighting of the tree and candlelight shopping until 8:00 p.m. Periodically, during the month of December, the shops in downtown McKinney will stay open for extended hours so that customers have a chance to finish all of that holiday shopping in one place with over 100 boutiques, art galleries, bookstores, apparel, gifts and exquisite antiques. Consumers can find the unique and special things that they won’t find anywhere else in downtown McKinney. This magical event is free to the public and parking and free shuttle service will be provided. McKinney Main Street and supporting sponsors will support the local economy by providing festive and interactive activities throughout the busiest shopping weekend of the year, which will in turn promote the heritage of our wonderful city. For more information please visit McKinney Main Street at www.downtownmckinney.com or call 972.547.2660.
Directions:
From HWY 75: Exit 40-A go east of 75 1.2 mile and you will be in Historic Downtown McKinney
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Outside, the sky was bleak and the snow was drifting. But inside the meeting hall in Toronto's financial district, the mood was warm, as it usually is when Warren Buffett is in the house – even on those occasions when he's spreading a message of fear.
It was February, 2008. The U.S. economy had slipped into a funk and the markets were rattled, but the world's second-wealthiest man said little to indicate he had a clue about the panic and the chaos that would arrive in months ahead. He didn't see it coming.
But what he did predict that day was major stress on the U.S. dollar. As long as American shoppers and businesses buy far more from abroad than they sell, said the Oracle, there's really only one direction for the greenback to go. “Force-feeding a couple of billion a day to the rest of the world is inconsistent with a stable dollar.”
Here we are, nearly two years later, having gone to financial hell and back – and we're right where Mr. Buffett said we'd be. The buck is sinking, and fast: 6 per cent against the euro so far this year, 14 per cent against the Canadian dollar, 26 per cent against the Brazilian real.
In America, many people think a weak dollar is a good thing because it helps exporters and ought to result in a lower U.S. trade deficit. It's the less-Wal-Mart, more-Boeing strategy for returning the country to prosperity and economic health. And even China hinted this week that it might play along (at least a bit) by letting the yuan rise (at least a bit).
No doubt that would please American congressmen in hard-hit manufacturing states, who have long complained that the Chinese policy of suppressing its currency has come at great cost to blue-collar workers in their districts. But have they thought about the other half of the equation? Because there's a second part to Mr. Buffett's long-held views of U.S. currency and trade policy.
He isn't one of those Chinaphobes who dislikes the U.S. trade deficit for its own sake. Rather, it's the consequences of that deficit: Americans are trading their wealth in return for someone else's goods. In the first nine months of 2009, the United States spent $275-billion (U.S.) more on imported products than they received from exports. Repeat that year after year, decade after decade, and eventually somebody winds up with a whole pile of claims against you. That somebody is China, with its Everest-sized pile of dollar bills and other foreign currencies totalling more than $2-trillion.
China, helpfully, has sent those many of those dollars back to help the U.S. government keep the lights on. But buying the low-yielding T-bills of a high-deficit country with a depreciating currency does not make a wonderful investment. Sooner or later, China and other foreign holders of U.S. dollars will demand something with a little more upside, no?
That may come in the form of higher interest rates that squelch growth. Or it may come through trading some of their U.S. dollars for ownership of some prime American companies. China has tried this before: A state oil company tried to take over Unocal in 2005, then abandoned it because of a wall of political opposition.
But the U.S. has less moral authority with which to block such a move now, especially if China starts to play nice(r) with its currency. And heaven knows that, after the crash, there are a lot of investors who'd happily take the takeover premium and run. The list of big-name U.S. companies whose shareholders have earned nothing over the past 10 years is a long one.
As Mr. Buffett put it that day two winters ago: “The truth is we're selling America to the rest of the world. It's just a question of [in] what form we sell it to them.” It's also a question of when. As the dollar sinks, the era of the foreign acquirer seems to get closer.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1363074/
It was February, 2008. The U.S. economy had slipped into a funk and the markets were rattled, but the world's second-wealthiest man said little to indicate he had a clue about the panic and the chaos that would arrive in months ahead. He didn't see it coming.
But what he did predict that day was major stress on the U.S. dollar. As long as American shoppers and businesses buy far more from abroad than they sell, said the Oracle, there's really only one direction for the greenback to go. “Force-feeding a couple of billion a day to the rest of the world is inconsistent with a stable dollar.”
Here we are, nearly two years later, having gone to financial hell and back – and we're right where Mr. Buffett said we'd be. The buck is sinking, and fast: 6 per cent against the euro so far this year, 14 per cent against the Canadian dollar, 26 per cent against the Brazilian real.
In America, many people think a weak dollar is a good thing because it helps exporters and ought to result in a lower U.S. trade deficit. It's the less-Wal-Mart, more-Boeing strategy for returning the country to prosperity and economic health. And even China hinted this week that it might play along (at least a bit) by letting the yuan rise (at least a bit).
No doubt that would please American congressmen in hard-hit manufacturing states, who have long complained that the Chinese policy of suppressing its currency has come at great cost to blue-collar workers in their districts. But have they thought about the other half of the equation? Because there's a second part to Mr. Buffett's long-held views of U.S. currency and trade policy.
He isn't one of those Chinaphobes who dislikes the U.S. trade deficit for its own sake. Rather, it's the consequences of that deficit: Americans are trading their wealth in return for someone else's goods. In the first nine months of 2009, the United States spent $275-billion (U.S.) more on imported products than they received from exports. Repeat that year after year, decade after decade, and eventually somebody winds up with a whole pile of claims against you. That somebody is China, with its Everest-sized pile of dollar bills and other foreign currencies totalling more than $2-trillion.
China, helpfully, has sent those many of those dollars back to help the U.S. government keep the lights on. But buying the low-yielding T-bills of a high-deficit country with a depreciating currency does not make a wonderful investment. Sooner or later, China and other foreign holders of U.S. dollars will demand something with a little more upside, no?
That may come in the form of higher interest rates that squelch growth. Or it may come through trading some of their U.S. dollars for ownership of some prime American companies. China has tried this before: A state oil company tried to take over Unocal in 2005, then abandoned it because of a wall of political opposition.
But the U.S. has less moral authority with which to block such a move now, especially if China starts to play nice(r) with its currency. And heaven knows that, after the crash, there are a lot of investors who'd happily take the takeover premium and run. The list of big-name U.S. companies whose shareholders have earned nothing over the past 10 years is a long one.
As Mr. Buffett put it that day two winters ago: “The truth is we're selling America to the rest of the world. It's just a question of [in] what form we sell it to them.” It's also a question of when. As the dollar sinks, the era of the foreign acquirer seems to get closer.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1363074/
Monday, November 09, 2009
Tropical Storm Ida
Statement as of 9:00 am CST on November 09, 2009
the last reconnaissance data that supported hurricane intensity were
obtained around 07z...and the satellite presentation of Ida has
been steadily deteriorating during the morning. Most of the deep
convection has been sheared off well to the northeast of the center
and will be moving onshore shortly...leaving only a small area of
convection near the center. A Quikscat pass around 12z showed
winds of 50-55 kt in the core...and assuming that the instrument
did not quite resolve the maximum wind speed...the advisory
intensity will be set to 60 kt. Another aircraft will be in the
cyclone around 18z.With Ida moving through an environment of cooler waters and
increasing shear...continued weakening is expected. The global
models do not show much in the way of baroclinic re-intensification
prior to landfall...so the hurricane warnings and watches are being
discontinued...leaving only tropical storm warnings in place. The
official forecast is still above the icon consensus.The last aircraft center fix showed the 700 mb- and surface centers
decoupling...and since then the surface center has been difficult
to locate in satellite imagery. The initial motion is estimated at
340/15. The forecast philosophy is unchanged. Ida is expected to
move generally northward today ahead of a mid- to upper-level
trough moving eastward across the northern Gulf of Mexico...and
then turn eastward as it becomes embedded within this mid-latitude
system.The track of the surface center of Ida is losing significance in
terms of the effects of this storm. Strong winds cover a large
area of the Gulf of Mexico and the associated rains are moving well
ahead of the center. This should continue to be the case as Ida
weakens and begins to lose tropical characteristics.
Forecast positions and Max winds
initial 09/1500z 26.5n 88.3w 60 kt
12hr VT 10/0000z 28.6n 88.7w 55 kt
24hr VT 10/1200z 30.4n 88.2w 50 kt...inland
36hr VT 11/0000z 31.2n 86.6w 40 kt...extratropical
48hr VT 11/1200z 30.5n 84.5w 30 kt...extratropical
72hr VT 12/1200z...dissipated
$$
forecaster Franklin
Dreams Die Hard
In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times. In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in years ahead, whether it was a government, a state university, a national chain retail company, or a giant midwestern farm. It is characteristic of the compressive contraction our society faces that giant hypercomplex systems will wobble and fail. We should expect this.
It's tragic that the avatar of hopefulness himself, Barack Obama, stepped into his role at exactly the moment when this set of conditions was getting traction. It is sure to get worse, and there are going to be a lot of disappointed people out there who will be suffering terrible losses and real pain in daily life. Societies don't do well when the public falls into the broad despair that is the opposite of hope. That's when the long knives and the tribal animosities come out and things get smashed.
Within the context of conventional party politics - the kind that has been baseline "normal" in the USA for a long time - we see this playing out in two factions that are increasingly out-of-touch with reality. The Obama government has made itself hostage to a toxic form of pretense and lying. In order to sustain the wish for "hope" - if not hope itself - the President and his White House advisors along with his cabinet appointments, are pretending that the historical forces of compressive contraction are not underway.
They're flat-out lying about the employment figures issued in the government's name. They're willfully ignoring the comprehensive bankruptcy gripping government at all levels. They refuse to bring the law to bear against "the malefactors of great wealth." They appear to not understand the epochal energy scarcity problem the whole world faces, or its implications for industrial economies. Most of all, they persist in promoting the lie that this economy can return to the prior state of reckless debt accumulation (a.k.a "consumerism") that has made us so ridiculous and unhealthy.
They're flat-out lying about the employment figures issued in the government's name. They're willfully ignoring the comprehensive bankruptcy gripping government at all levels. They refuse to bring the law to bear against "the malefactors of great wealth." They appear to not understand the epochal energy scarcity problem the whole world faces, or its implications for industrial economies. Most of all, they persist in promoting the lie that this economy can return to the prior state of reckless debt accumulation (a.k.a "consumerism") that has made us so ridiculous and unhealthy.
The trouble with self-delusion, either in a person or a society, is that reality doesn't care what anybody believes, or what story they put out. Reality doesn't "spin." Reality does not have a self-image problem. Reality does not yield its workings to self-esteem management. These days, Americans don't like reality very much because it won't let them push it around. Reality is an implacable force and the only question for human beings in the face of it is: what will you do? In other words, it's not really possible to manage reality, but you can certainly choose to manage your affairs within reality. We won't do that because it's too difficult. This harsh situation leaves the public increasingly with little more than bad feelings of discouragement and persecution. It's astonishing that all the smart people around the president don't get this.
Reality unfolds emergently, and this ought to interest us. For instance, I have maintained for many years that we are approaching the twilight of the automobile age - and the implications of this for daily life in the USA are pretty large. For a long time, I had assumed that this change of circumstances would proceed from our problems with the oil supply. But reality is sly. It has thrown two new plot twists into the story lately. America's romance with cars may not founder just on the fuel supply question. It now appears that our problems with capital are so severe that far fewer people will be able to borrow money from banks to buy cars at the rate, and in the way, that the system has been organized to depend on. Our problems with capital are also depriving us of the ability to pay to fix the hypercomplex system of county roads, interstate highways, and even city streets that make motoring possible. What will we do?
For now, a cashless government gives out cash-for-clunkers, which is basically a self-esteem building program designed to make the government feel better about itself because it is ostensibly taking 11-miles-per-gallon cars off the road and replacing them with 27-miles-per-gallon cars, thus forestalling scary problems with climate change. It's dumb of course, but the failure of leadership is comprehensive. Even the elite environmentalists at the Aspen Institute are preoccupied with finding new "green" ways to keep all the cars running. They put zero effort into the idea of walkable communities, or restoring the railroad system, which will be the reality-based remedies for the car-dependency problem.
The Republican right wing is, if anything, even more childishly delusional. For Glen Beck and Sarah Palin it comes down to "drill, baby, drill." They know nothing about the geology of oil - they don't even believe that the earth is more than six-thousand years old, meaning they don't believe in geology, period - but they are inflamed with the faith of eight-year-old children that we must have a lot more oil in the ground because this is America and God loves us more than people in other parts of the planet so it must be there. As their disappointment mounts, their childish ideas will turn cruel and sadistic. They'll seek to punish anybody who believes that the earth is more than six thousand years old. The catch is, If they get into power in the election cycles ahead, they'll be impotent and ineffectual even at persecuting their enemies.
In the meantime, American life will just wind down, no matter what we believe. It won't wind down to a complete stop. Its near-term destination is to lower levels of complexity and scale than what we've been used to for a long time. People will be able to drive fewer cars fewer miles. The roads will get worse. They'll be worse in some places than others. There will be fewer jobs to go to and fewer things sold. People who live in communities scaled to the energy and capital realities of the years ahead are liable to be more comfortable. We're surely going to have trouble with money. Households will drown in debt and lose all their savings. Money could be scarce or worthless. Credit will be scarcer.
Both factions of American political life indulge in the fiction of control. History is reality's big brother. It is taking us someplace that we don't want to go, so it will probably have to drag us there kicking and screaming. For starters, both reality and history will probably take us out to some woodshed of the national soul and beat the crap out of us. That could be a salutary thing, since the crap consists of all the lies we tell ourselves. Once we're rid of all that, we may rediscover a few things left inside our collective identity that are worth regarding with real self-respect.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
BULLETIN
HURRICANE IDA ADVISORY NUMBER 18
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL112009
900 AM CST SUN NOV 08 2009
...CENTER OF IDA MOVING INTO THE YUCATAN CHANNEL...HURRICANE WATCH
ISSUED FOR PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN GULF COAST...
AT 900 AM CST...1500 UTC...A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FROM GRAND
ISLE LOUISIANA TO THE MISSISSIPPI/ALABAMA BORDER. THIS WATCH DOES
NOT INCLUDE THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT
HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY
WITHIN 36 HOURS.
A HURRICANE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA OF
MEXICO FROM PLAYA DEL CARMEN TO CABO CATOCHE. A HURRICANE WARNING
MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE
WARNING AREA WITHIN 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND
PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION IN THE WARNING AREA.
A HURRICANE WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA OF
MEXICO FROM TULUM TO PLAYA DEL CARMEN. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT
HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA.
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA
OF MEXICO FROM PUNTA ALLEN NORTHWARD TO PLAYA DEL CARMEN AND FROM
CABO CATOCHE WESTWARD TO SAN FELIPE. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING
MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE
WARNING AREA WITHIN 24 HOURS.
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE CUBAN PROVINCE OF
PINAR DEL RIO.
A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE ISLE OF YOUTH.
INTERESTS ELSEWHERE ALONG THE NORTHERN COAST OF THE GULF OF MEXICO
SHOULD MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF IDA. ADDITIONAL TROPICAL CYCLONE
WATCHES OR WARNINGS MAY BE REQUIRED LATER TODAY.
FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA IN THE UNITED
STATES...INCLUDING POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE
MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
FORECAST OFFICE. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA
OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED
BY YOUR NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE.
AT 900 AM CST...1500 UTC...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE IDA WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 21.2 NORTH...LONGITUDE 86.0 WEST OR ABOUT 75 MILES...
120 KM...NORTHEAST OF COZUMEL MEXICO AND ABOUT 80 MILES...125 KM...
WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE WESTERN TIP OF CUBA.
IDA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 10 MPH...17 KM/HR. A TURN
TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHWEST AND AN INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED ARE
EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS...WITH A TURN TOWARD THE NORTH
LIKELY BY TUESDAY. ON THE FORECAST TRACK....THE CENTER OF IDA
SHOULD MOVE THROUGH THE YUCATAN CHANNEL INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO
TODAY...AND BE NEAR THE NORTHERN GULF COAST BY TUESDAY.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 90 MPH...150 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. IDA IS A CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE.
SOME STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST TODAY...WITH GRADUAL WEAKENING
EXPECTED ON MONDAY. IDA IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN LOSING TROPICAL
CHARACTERISTICS ON TUESDAY AS IT NEARS THE GULF COAST...BUT IT
COULD REACH THE COAST AS A TROPICAL CYCLONE.
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 15 MILES...30 KM...FROM
THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO
140 MILES...220 KM.
ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 983 MB...29.03 INCHES.
IDA IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES
OVER PORTIONS OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA AND WESTERN CUBA...WITH
POSSIBLE ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 10 INCHES.
A STORM SURGE COULD RAISE WATER LEVELS BY AS MUCH AS 3 TO 4 FEET
ABOVE GROUND LEVEL ALONG THE COAST OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA. NEAR
THE COAST...THE SURGE WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY LARGE AND DESTRUCTIVE
WAVES.
...SUMMARY OF 900 AM CST INFORMATION...
LOCATION...21.2N 86.0W
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...90 MPH
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NORTHWEST OR 325 DEGREES AT 10 MPH
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...983 MB
AN INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE
CENTER AT 1200 PM CST FOLLOWED BY THE NEXT COMPLETE ADVISORY AT 300
PM CST.
HURRICANE IDA ADVISORY NUMBER 18
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL112009
900 AM CST SUN NOV 08 2009
...CENTER OF IDA MOVING INTO THE YUCATAN CHANNEL...HURRICANE WATCH
ISSUED FOR PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN GULF COAST...
AT 900 AM CST...1500 UTC...A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FROM GRAND
ISLE LOUISIANA TO THE MISSISSIPPI/ALABAMA BORDER. THIS WATCH DOES
NOT INCLUDE THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT
HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY
WITHIN 36 HOURS.
A HURRICANE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA OF
MEXICO FROM PLAYA DEL CARMEN TO CABO CATOCHE. A HURRICANE WARNING
MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE
WARNING AREA WITHIN 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND
PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION IN THE WARNING AREA.
A HURRICANE WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA OF
MEXICO FROM TULUM TO PLAYA DEL CARMEN. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT
HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA.
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE YUCATAN PENINSULA
OF MEXICO FROM PUNTA ALLEN NORTHWARD TO PLAYA DEL CARMEN AND FROM
CABO CATOCHE WESTWARD TO SAN FELIPE. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING
MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE
WARNING AREA WITHIN 24 HOURS.
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE CUBAN PROVINCE OF
PINAR DEL RIO.
A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE ISLE OF YOUTH.
INTERESTS ELSEWHERE ALONG THE NORTHERN COAST OF THE GULF OF MEXICO
SHOULD MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF IDA. ADDITIONAL TROPICAL CYCLONE
WATCHES OR WARNINGS MAY BE REQUIRED LATER TODAY.
FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA IN THE UNITED
STATES...INCLUDING POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE
MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
FORECAST OFFICE. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA
OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED
BY YOUR NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE.
AT 900 AM CST...1500 UTC...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE IDA WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 21.2 NORTH...LONGITUDE 86.0 WEST OR ABOUT 75 MILES...
120 KM...NORTHEAST OF COZUMEL MEXICO AND ABOUT 80 MILES...125 KM...
WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE WESTERN TIP OF CUBA.
IDA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 10 MPH...17 KM/HR. A TURN
TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHWEST AND AN INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED ARE
EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS...WITH A TURN TOWARD THE NORTH
LIKELY BY TUESDAY. ON THE FORECAST TRACK....THE CENTER OF IDA
SHOULD MOVE THROUGH THE YUCATAN CHANNEL INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO
TODAY...AND BE NEAR THE NORTHERN GULF COAST BY TUESDAY.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 90 MPH...150 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. IDA IS A CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE.
SOME STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST TODAY...WITH GRADUAL WEAKENING
EXPECTED ON MONDAY. IDA IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN LOSING TROPICAL
CHARACTERISTICS ON TUESDAY AS IT NEARS THE GULF COAST...BUT IT
COULD REACH THE COAST AS A TROPICAL CYCLONE.
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 15 MILES...30 KM...FROM
THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO
140 MILES...220 KM.
ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 983 MB...29.03 INCHES.
IDA IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES
OVER PORTIONS OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA AND WESTERN CUBA...WITH
POSSIBLE ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 10 INCHES.
A STORM SURGE COULD RAISE WATER LEVELS BY AS MUCH AS 3 TO 4 FEET
ABOVE GROUND LEVEL ALONG THE COAST OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA. NEAR
THE COAST...THE SURGE WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY LARGE AND DESTRUCTIVE
WAVES.
...SUMMARY OF 900 AM CST INFORMATION...
LOCATION...21.2N 86.0W
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...90 MPH
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NORTHWEST OR 325 DEGREES AT 10 MPH
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...983 MB
AN INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE
CENTER AT 1200 PM CST FOLLOWED BY THE NEXT COMPLETE ADVISORY AT 300
PM CST.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Self-jiving Nation
The scene in the White House these days must be a sort of Opera Bouffe, in which an earnest and rather grave young man moves from one roomful of lesser officials to another in which all agree to pretend that they have prevented the nation from falling into something they call "the abyss." At the end of Act I, a young deputy FDIC commissioner in the Little Mary Sunshine mold gets down on one knee, belts out a show-stopper about the glories of a bright and shining "tomorrow," and the audience goes out for intermission to discover that the city has been burning down around the theater all night.
Out in America-the-Real, Halloween time in this year of 2009 has an interesting "Day of the Locust" flavor. There's more than a whiff of smoke in the air, along with an odor of dead carp wafting out of all the the offices and institutions we depend on to define reality. Like the Hollywood of Nathaniel West's dark 1939 novel, America today seems poised in the gate of some harsh judgment. When the historians look back at this era - especially at the time between January 20th and the holiday season of 2009 - won't they marvel at how well-understood our predicament actually was, by so many parties to it, and the gulf between that comprehension and the story we told ourselves: that we were "recovering."
Like a lot of other observer-interlocutors, I'd like to know what folks imagine we are recovering to. To a renewed orgy of credit-card spending? To yet another round of suburban expansion, with the boys in the yellow hard-hats driving stakes out in the sagebrush for another new thousand-unit pop-up "community?" For a next generation of super-cars built to look like medieval war wagons? That's the "hope" that our officials seem to pretend to offer. It's completely inconsistent with any reality-based trend-lines, by the way.
Perhaps it's time to redefine "hope" in the greater social sense of the word. To me, hope is not synonymous with "wishes fulfilled." In fact, hope should not be about wishing at all. Hope should be based on confidence that the individual or group is reliably competent enough to meet the challenges that circumstances present. Hope is justified when people demonstrate to themselves that they can behave ably and bravely. Hope is not really possible in the face of patent untruthfulness. It is derived from a clear-eyed and courageous view of what is really going on. I don't think that defines any of the behavior in the United States these days. We've become a self-jiving nation intent on playing shell games, running Ponzi schemes, and working Polish blanket tricks on ourselves.
It begins to look now as if the Obama team is determined to run this creaking vessel right over the falls. We could have bravely faced the structural perversities in banking the past year, but we decided not to. So far only a tiny minority of the public - unfortunately the "tea-bagging" race-baiters - have been the only ones to squawk. I look around at my fellow baby-boomer ex-hippie, ex-political radical age-cohorts and I see a sad-ass claque of passive, played-out, defeated dreamers too depressed to form a coherent thought about what's really going on... lost in sentimental fantasies about "world peace," or free heart-transplants-for-everybody as they, the boomers themselves, lurch toward the graveyard.
Obama was not a boomer, not one of "us," so I had expectations that he'd rise above the fog of wishful thinking. But he begins to look more like Millard Fillmore and less like an earlier president from Illinois who got elected on the eve of a terrible national political convulsion. I think about Lincoln a lot these days, about how circumstances shoved him to act when Southern secessionists fired on Fort Sumter barely a month after the new president took the oath of office (which was done in March back then). There was no spinning the news on it, no wiggling away from reality: an organized insurrection led by rogue U.S. military officers fired on their fellow officers... and that was that. The issue, as the saying goes, was joined.
If you think we have been in a crisis of finance and economy for the past year or so, consider that we have also been sunk in a comprehensive crisis of leadership. Nobody in authority is willing to face the truth, state the truth, and offer a reality-based idea about how to meet the truth, This is a leadership failure not just in politics and government, but also in business, in the university faculties, in the editorial and production offices of the news media, and even among a barely-breathing clergy.
Americans look around and see nobody standing up for their interests. Their greatest interest is a vision of a fruitful society that they can help build and be a part of beyond the current wreckage of revolving-debt consumerism. It will have to be a vision based on fewer resources and on new arrangements for daily living. It will have to recognize losses frankly, and enable us to let go of things whose time is over, whether that is Happy Motoring, college-for-everybody, vast industries devoted to vanished leisure, or procedures geared to getting something-for-nothing.
For now, I still see the inflection point as coming by the holiday season, when the masters-of-the-universe on Wall Street will have to publicly post their Christmas bonuses (and as publicly held corporations, they will have to). It is also well within the realm of possibility that a Black Swan the size of Rodan the Flying Reptile will swoop through the stock markets to breath fire on the computer terminals and melt the glorious rally of 09 away. In the meantime, I wonder about that man in the White House, and those ever more comical meetings he attends every day. He must emerge from them spinning like a nine dollar gyroscope. Nobody wants to imagine what happens to him when the spinning stops.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Marching Towards Zombieland
by James Howard Kunstler
When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow. This is now essentially the situation for the Goldman Sachs company, which last week announced third-quarter earnings of over $3 billion largely derived from converting zero percent loans from taxpayers into zero risk profits off of anything paying more than zero percent in interest, revenue, or dividends.
The "people" across this big country may not have a clue how any of this is done, and there may be much to fault them on from the care-and-feeding of their own bodies to the content of their dreams, but you can't argue with the fact that they are heavily armed to an extreme. And although it may be hard to measure with precision, one might venture to state that they are increasingly pi$$ed off. How else explain popular entertainments like "Zombieland?"
The political part of what has to date appeared to be an economic problem is resolving into a crisis of authority and legitimacy. When those in charge of a nation's livelihood prove to be comprehensively false and dishonest, the economic automatically turns political. Nobody believes the bankers anymore, of course, and nobody believes the interlocutors of the bankers - the Federal Reserve chairman, the Secretary of the Treasury, the heads of the SEC and a dozen other regulatory bodies - and increasingly the charming figure in the White House cannot be believed on these issues of the nation's livelihood.
The questions lately revolve around whether the nation is destroying itself by inflation or deflation - by the willful destruction of the value of our currency to evade the repayment of debt, or by the hapless destruction of households, companies, and governments by default and bankruptcy. It's a fire-or-ice debate. Either way the nation is going down as a viable enterprise. The fiction that we can return to a Crate-and-Barrel credit card orgy has sustained the false of heart and mind for some months now, but even that pleasant reverie will come to an end as the foreclosures mount. Only remember, men living in their cars who have lost nearly everything else will still have guns.
All these tensions beat a path into the holiday season when emotions run high, when blessings are counted and sorrows taste most bitter. So the big question now floating above the sheer data of Goldman Sachs profit announcement is: what kind of year-end bonuses will they dare to pay their executives and minions, and how will the "people" react? It seems to me that conditions are ripening for a bloodbath. The kind of heinous acts that we have feared emanating from foreign "evildoers" since the awful stunt of 9/11/01 are now most likely to come from among our own "people" - a few pounds of Semtex in the lobby of Goldman Sachs's New York headquarters... a few men with market-grade small arms converted to full-automatic outside on the Wall Street sidewalk one evening at holiday time when the suits are leaving work for the day.... It won't take much.
President Obama had better strike first. He's about the only figure left in the whole termite mound who has a shred of even potential credibility left because he still has the power to act. He can instruct the people who work for the executive branch to "claw back" any and all ill-gotten bank bonuses; he can direct the Justice Department to investigate everything from the uses of federal bailouts to grand-scale accounting fraud; he can fire people in high places who have failed to act and lost legitimacy. If he doesn't do these things soon than he's finished, too. In the wake of such a failure things will get fractal fast.
The sense that Wall Street has pulled off a coup d'etat and taken over the machinery of the United States is the most powerful meme out there now, and its power is growing in magnitude every day among all classes of Americans. I can't say how much it reflects reality. Even if it is a result of sheer happenstance - the tragic evolution of an industrial economy into a financial finagling economy - the citizens will still experience it as a stealing of their future. Whatever else one might say about American culture, it is keenly attuned to a sense of heroes and villains. We take great pride in our ability to blow away the bad guys. And life imitates art, as Oscar Wilde observed. If a zombie virus is on the loose in America, the first infections showed up in the zombie banks, among the zombie bankers. Watch out, Lloyd Blankfein! Woody is on his way....
by James Howard Kunstler
When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow. This is now essentially the situation for the Goldman Sachs company, which last week announced third-quarter earnings of over $3 billion largely derived from converting zero percent loans from taxpayers into zero risk profits off of anything paying more than zero percent in interest, revenue, or dividends.
The "people" across this big country may not have a clue how any of this is done, and there may be much to fault them on from the care-and-feeding of their own bodies to the content of their dreams, but you can't argue with the fact that they are heavily armed to an extreme. And although it may be hard to measure with precision, one might venture to state that they are increasingly pi$$ed off. How else explain popular entertainments like "Zombieland?"
The political part of what has to date appeared to be an economic problem is resolving into a crisis of authority and legitimacy. When those in charge of a nation's livelihood prove to be comprehensively false and dishonest, the economic automatically turns political. Nobody believes the bankers anymore, of course, and nobody believes the interlocutors of the bankers - the Federal Reserve chairman, the Secretary of the Treasury, the heads of the SEC and a dozen other regulatory bodies - and increasingly the charming figure in the White House cannot be believed on these issues of the nation's livelihood.
The questions lately revolve around whether the nation is destroying itself by inflation or deflation - by the willful destruction of the value of our currency to evade the repayment of debt, or by the hapless destruction of households, companies, and governments by default and bankruptcy. It's a fire-or-ice debate. Either way the nation is going down as a viable enterprise. The fiction that we can return to a Crate-and-Barrel credit card orgy has sustained the false of heart and mind for some months now, but even that pleasant reverie will come to an end as the foreclosures mount. Only remember, men living in their cars who have lost nearly everything else will still have guns.
All these tensions beat a path into the holiday season when emotions run high, when blessings are counted and sorrows taste most bitter. So the big question now floating above the sheer data of Goldman Sachs profit announcement is: what kind of year-end bonuses will they dare to pay their executives and minions, and how will the "people" react? It seems to me that conditions are ripening for a bloodbath. The kind of heinous acts that we have feared emanating from foreign "evildoers" since the awful stunt of 9/11/01 are now most likely to come from among our own "people" - a few pounds of Semtex in the lobby of Goldman Sachs's New York headquarters... a few men with market-grade small arms converted to full-automatic outside on the Wall Street sidewalk one evening at holiday time when the suits are leaving work for the day.... It won't take much.
President Obama had better strike first. He's about the only figure left in the whole termite mound who has a shred of even potential credibility left because he still has the power to act. He can instruct the people who work for the executive branch to "claw back" any and all ill-gotten bank bonuses; he can direct the Justice Department to investigate everything from the uses of federal bailouts to grand-scale accounting fraud; he can fire people in high places who have failed to act and lost legitimacy. If he doesn't do these things soon than he's finished, too. In the wake of such a failure things will get fractal fast.
The sense that Wall Street has pulled off a coup d'etat and taken over the machinery of the United States is the most powerful meme out there now, and its power is growing in magnitude every day among all classes of Americans. I can't say how much it reflects reality. Even if it is a result of sheer happenstance - the tragic evolution of an industrial economy into a financial finagling economy - the citizens will still experience it as a stealing of their future. Whatever else one might say about American culture, it is keenly attuned to a sense of heroes and villains. We take great pride in our ability to blow away the bad guys. And life imitates art, as Oscar Wilde observed. If a zombie virus is on the loose in America, the first infections showed up in the zombie banks, among the zombie bankers. Watch out, Lloyd Blankfein! Woody is on his way....
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/ramintork/khamenei-coma-rumor-could-be-true
Khamenei in Coma, a rumor that could be true?
by ramintork
14-Oct-2009
Rumor has it that yesterday afternoon at 2.15PM local time, Khamenei collapsed and was taken to his special clinic. No one except his son and the doctors have since been allowed to get near him.
So far this has not been confirmed by any reliable News agencies, or the IRI state News agencies.
If true and if he dies then one could expect a three day chinese whispers game similar to Khomeini's death announcement being played by the authorities. The security forces would be deployed, but this time with the added fear of an uprising from Rafsanjani, Karubi. Mousavi camp.
Rumors of Khamenei's ill health have been circulating for a while and it is possible that given his ill health the Billions of dollars that ended up in Turkey was a measure to have funds outside the country ready for his family or the conservatives to have the resources to fight back or perhaps settle somewhere else if the current turmoil proved too much.
The Blog which seemed to have triggered off this News seemed to be this:-
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledee...to-be-in-coma/
Khamenei in Coma, a rumor that could be true?
by ramintork
14-Oct-2009
Rumor has it that yesterday afternoon at 2.15PM local time, Khamenei collapsed and was taken to his special clinic. No one except his son and the doctors have since been allowed to get near him.
So far this has not been confirmed by any reliable News agencies, or the IRI state News agencies.
If true and if he dies then one could expect a three day chinese whispers game similar to Khomeini's death announcement being played by the authorities. The security forces would be deployed, but this time with the added fear of an uprising from Rafsanjani, Karubi. Mousavi camp.
Rumors of Khamenei's ill health have been circulating for a while and it is possible that given his ill health the Billions of dollars that ended up in Turkey was a measure to have funds outside the country ready for his family or the conservatives to have the resources to fight back or perhaps settle somewhere else if the current turmoil proved too much.
The Blog which seemed to have triggered off this News seemed to be this:-
http://pajamasmedia.com/michaelledee...to-be-in-coma/
Monday, October 12, 2009
Booby Prize
by James Howard Kunstler
on October 12, 2009 5:36 AM
When that phone call came around six a.m. last week telling President Obama he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I had to think he turned to Michelle and said, "Honey, our life together has just gotten more surreal." I was hoping that he would politely refuse it, perhaps making a statement later that morning along the lines: "...since circumstances have placed me in the unfortunate position of prosecuting two wars at the present time, I cannot accept...." It would have introduced a refreshing note of truthfulness among friend and foe alike.
Much of the chatter on the Web about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially regarding causes and justifications, I regard as childish and silly. I especially follow the political podcasts issued by Slate and The New Yorker Magazine. They are garrulous without being especially astute. They seem to think we're in Afghanistan, for instance, in order to stabilize a central government, presumably a democratically-elected one. I don't think the Pentagon or the State Department give a rat's ass about the Afghan state or how its hard-bitten denizens scratch a living out of the tortured landscape there. Our motive there since the initial whacking of the Taliban government in 2001 has been to use it as the eastern geographic wedge against Iran, with Iraq as the western wedge, making a nice sandwich of Iran between two garrisons of US Wonder Bread. Hold that thought for a moment while I digress.
The debate about Iraq has been equally dumb for the past six years. The Left still thinks it was about the contingent "lies" employed around the "weapons of mass destruction" issue. Their indignation is pegged to their own swallowing of these "lies" at the critical moment of voting to support military action -- that is, they are pissed off at themselves, especially for making people in a foreign land feel bad. I always believed there was a larger motive for invading Iraq: the strategic need to kick the ass of an Arab nation as an answer to the 9/11 attacks -- regardless of whether Iraq instigated 9/ll or not. My view is not a popular one, to put it mildly, especially among my fellow Democrats, but I think it is closer to the truth.
Why poor Iraq? Because Iraq as a geographical entity was best situated as a US Middle East police station between Iran and Saudi Arabia and because Iraq's leader at the time, Mr. Saddam Hussein, was addicted to mischief-making in the region. Finally, because Saddam Hussein was ethnically Arab and the Arab world needed to get the message that knocking down skyscrapers full of American citizens was not okay (again, whether Saddam had any part in 9/11 or not). And, no, the invasion of Afghanistan was not enough because the Afghani people were not ethnically Arabs, so whatever we did there in 2001 did not really count except as a desperate prophylactic measure.) In summary: Iraq was therefore the best candidate for an ass-kicking in the Middle East. I will get to the consequences shortly.
Before I go a step further, I must anticipate the angry mail that will pour in from the 9/ll conspiracy sector -- the people who believe Dick Cheney or GW Bush or both (along with thousands of CIA and Pentagon worker bees) directed the attacks, or secretly placed explosive charges to bring down the buildings, or fired a missile at the Pentagon.... I regard the true believers of this ****ing nonsense as hopelessly brain-damaged -- and warn that I will delete your tiresome rehearsals of these scenarios, so don't bother trying to "correct" me.
Many are no doubt wondering what could possibly be of "strategic" value about kicking anybody's a$$ geopolitically. Let me put it this way: there are varieties of discourse between the different peoples of this planet that occur on a plane above the conventional understanding of diplomatic push-and-pull, especially where acts of war are concerned. These varieties of discourse are not recognized by the current dominant American mentality, which is of the therapeutic type, based on the idea that the behavior of individuals and groups can be modified and even improved if they feel better (especially about themselves). I blame my own generation, the Boomers, for establishing this wishful ethos as the basis for all the policy of our time, foreign, domestic, municipal, classroom, household.... The Millennials, when they out-grow their adolescent angst, will not be so foolish, I guarantee you. And my fellow Boomers will feel it personally as the Millennials cut the funding for their bedpan service.
The strategic value was in sending a message to Radical Islam: the dogs of war are now loose... any further major shenanigans will be opposed violently. Whatever else might be said about the beef between the Radical Islam and the USA, there have been no further acts of war here on the scale of 9/11. Perhaps our adversaries are content that we have committed suicide by securitized debt and they are enjoying the spectacle of watching the American economy slide down history's cloaca maxima. Personally, I think if another violent aggression had been staged by "terrorists" on the 9/11 scale soon after that, our response would have had to be the turning of some Islamic capital cities into ashtrays -- but I venture into the realm of the hypothetically unutterable.
I would argue that to some degree the Iraq War has been a more successful project than many think, if only temporarily and partially. For one thing, it has mostly taken the form of a hazardous occupation, that is, a kind of ugly post-war, rather than a high-attrition "hot" war as normally understood, even by Vietnam standards. But it has been successful in a way that few well-intentioned foreign policy kibitzers would probably grant: it has allowed the USA to operate a police station in the Middle East for a decade. Why is this necessary or desirable? Because the world depends on a reliable oil supply out of the Middle East and would descend into chaos if that supply was interrupted. This is apart, even, from the USA's desperate need for the 10 percent of our oil that we get from the region. Have we prevented chaos in the Middle East or only provoked it? That will be an interesting question for the next generation of PhD candidates. Maybe postponing it for a decade was the best we might have hoped for under the circumstances, though we did nothing at home to make use of that lull. You might say the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has prevented Iran from assuming hegemonic domination of the Persian Gulf. If you are one of the kibitzers I cite above, and you are enjoying the ride in your Toyota Prius and the heat in your house, the regular re-supply of your local supermarket, and maybe even the electric juice to your broker's Bloomberg terminal, then you'd better include these amenities in your ruminations over the ongoing geopolitical calculus.
The combination of extreme resource dependency and religious fanaticism is a fatal equation for the Middle East. They are angry, crazy and often savage people who own something we can't live without, and we are overfed buffoons, often savage ourselves, who think we can make them like us -- whether they like it or not. Again, personally, I don't believe the status quo will persist a whole lot longer. The US economy is radically de-complexifying (i.e. crashing). Part of this will be expressed in the bankruptcy of US military capacity -- at least where supporting troops-on-the-ground in foreign lands is concerned, and probably overseas bases, too. The US could get in trouble with other sources of foreign oil (think: Mexico) before anything chokes off the Middle East. But in one way or another, the US will soon become both capital-and-energy-resource-challenged to an extreme, perhaps to the extreme where we can't feed ourselves. Our problems in running the nation as it has been set up to run -- as a colossal demolition derby with sideshows of bargain shopping and infotainment -- are insurmountable if one accepts the majority view that it is "non-negotiable."
Our only hope, really, is a conscious campaign to manage our own process of de-complexifying, before the universe manages it for us, whether we like it or not. One tragic part of this -- among many and for many parties -- is that we did not use the last decade of relative world stability to get that process underway here. Even President Barack Obama is complicit in this failure. For instance, instead of cash-for clunkers, he could have gotten the trains running on time between New York and Chicago. I wonder, is there a prize for leaders who can get their nation's priorities straight.
by James Howard Kunstler
on October 12, 2009 5:36 AM
When that phone call came around six a.m. last week telling President Obama he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I had to think he turned to Michelle and said, "Honey, our life together has just gotten more surreal." I was hoping that he would politely refuse it, perhaps making a statement later that morning along the lines: "...since circumstances have placed me in the unfortunate position of prosecuting two wars at the present time, I cannot accept...." It would have introduced a refreshing note of truthfulness among friend and foe alike.
Much of the chatter on the Web about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially regarding causes and justifications, I regard as childish and silly. I especially follow the political podcasts issued by Slate and The New Yorker Magazine. They are garrulous without being especially astute. They seem to think we're in Afghanistan, for instance, in order to stabilize a central government, presumably a democratically-elected one. I don't think the Pentagon or the State Department give a rat's ass about the Afghan state or how its hard-bitten denizens scratch a living out of the tortured landscape there. Our motive there since the initial whacking of the Taliban government in 2001 has been to use it as the eastern geographic wedge against Iran, with Iraq as the western wedge, making a nice sandwich of Iran between two garrisons of US Wonder Bread. Hold that thought for a moment while I digress.
The debate about Iraq has been equally dumb for the past six years. The Left still thinks it was about the contingent "lies" employed around the "weapons of mass destruction" issue. Their indignation is pegged to their own swallowing of these "lies" at the critical moment of voting to support military action -- that is, they are pissed off at themselves, especially for making people in a foreign land feel bad. I always believed there was a larger motive for invading Iraq: the strategic need to kick the ass of an Arab nation as an answer to the 9/11 attacks -- regardless of whether Iraq instigated 9/ll or not. My view is not a popular one, to put it mildly, especially among my fellow Democrats, but I think it is closer to the truth.
Why poor Iraq? Because Iraq as a geographical entity was best situated as a US Middle East police station between Iran and Saudi Arabia and because Iraq's leader at the time, Mr. Saddam Hussein, was addicted to mischief-making in the region. Finally, because Saddam Hussein was ethnically Arab and the Arab world needed to get the message that knocking down skyscrapers full of American citizens was not okay (again, whether Saddam had any part in 9/11 or not). And, no, the invasion of Afghanistan was not enough because the Afghani people were not ethnically Arabs, so whatever we did there in 2001 did not really count except as a desperate prophylactic measure.) In summary: Iraq was therefore the best candidate for an ass-kicking in the Middle East. I will get to the consequences shortly.
Before I go a step further, I must anticipate the angry mail that will pour in from the 9/ll conspiracy sector -- the people who believe Dick Cheney or GW Bush or both (along with thousands of CIA and Pentagon worker bees) directed the attacks, or secretly placed explosive charges to bring down the buildings, or fired a missile at the Pentagon.... I regard the true believers of this ****ing nonsense as hopelessly brain-damaged -- and warn that I will delete your tiresome rehearsals of these scenarios, so don't bother trying to "correct" me.
Many are no doubt wondering what could possibly be of "strategic" value about kicking anybody's a$$ geopolitically. Let me put it this way: there are varieties of discourse between the different peoples of this planet that occur on a plane above the conventional understanding of diplomatic push-and-pull, especially where acts of war are concerned. These varieties of discourse are not recognized by the current dominant American mentality, which is of the therapeutic type, based on the idea that the behavior of individuals and groups can be modified and even improved if they feel better (especially about themselves). I blame my own generation, the Boomers, for establishing this wishful ethos as the basis for all the policy of our time, foreign, domestic, municipal, classroom, household.... The Millennials, when they out-grow their adolescent angst, will not be so foolish, I guarantee you. And my fellow Boomers will feel it personally as the Millennials cut the funding for their bedpan service.
The strategic value was in sending a message to Radical Islam: the dogs of war are now loose... any further major shenanigans will be opposed violently. Whatever else might be said about the beef between the Radical Islam and the USA, there have been no further acts of war here on the scale of 9/11. Perhaps our adversaries are content that we have committed suicide by securitized debt and they are enjoying the spectacle of watching the American economy slide down history's cloaca maxima. Personally, I think if another violent aggression had been staged by "terrorists" on the 9/11 scale soon after that, our response would have had to be the turning of some Islamic capital cities into ashtrays -- but I venture into the realm of the hypothetically unutterable.
I would argue that to some degree the Iraq War has been a more successful project than many think, if only temporarily and partially. For one thing, it has mostly taken the form of a hazardous occupation, that is, a kind of ugly post-war, rather than a high-attrition "hot" war as normally understood, even by Vietnam standards. But it has been successful in a way that few well-intentioned foreign policy kibitzers would probably grant: it has allowed the USA to operate a police station in the Middle East for a decade. Why is this necessary or desirable? Because the world depends on a reliable oil supply out of the Middle East and would descend into chaos if that supply was interrupted. This is apart, even, from the USA's desperate need for the 10 percent of our oil that we get from the region. Have we prevented chaos in the Middle East or only provoked it? That will be an interesting question for the next generation of PhD candidates. Maybe postponing it for a decade was the best we might have hoped for under the circumstances, though we did nothing at home to make use of that lull. You might say the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has prevented Iran from assuming hegemonic domination of the Persian Gulf. If you are one of the kibitzers I cite above, and you are enjoying the ride in your Toyota Prius and the heat in your house, the regular re-supply of your local supermarket, and maybe even the electric juice to your broker's Bloomberg terminal, then you'd better include these amenities in your ruminations over the ongoing geopolitical calculus.
The combination of extreme resource dependency and religious fanaticism is a fatal equation for the Middle East. They are angry, crazy and often savage people who own something we can't live without, and we are overfed buffoons, often savage ourselves, who think we can make them like us -- whether they like it or not. Again, personally, I don't believe the status quo will persist a whole lot longer. The US economy is radically de-complexifying (i.e. crashing). Part of this will be expressed in the bankruptcy of US military capacity -- at least where supporting troops-on-the-ground in foreign lands is concerned, and probably overseas bases, too. The US could get in trouble with other sources of foreign oil (think: Mexico) before anything chokes off the Middle East. But in one way or another, the US will soon become both capital-and-energy-resource-challenged to an extreme, perhaps to the extreme where we can't feed ourselves. Our problems in running the nation as it has been set up to run -- as a colossal demolition derby with sideshows of bargain shopping and infotainment -- are insurmountable if one accepts the majority view that it is "non-negotiable."
Our only hope, really, is a conscious campaign to manage our own process of de-complexifying, before the universe manages it for us, whether we like it or not. One tragic part of this -- among many and for many parties -- is that we did not use the last decade of relative world stability to get that process underway here. Even President Barack Obama is complicit in this failure. For instance, instead of cash-for clunkers, he could have gotten the trains running on time between New York and Chicago. I wonder, is there a prize for leaders who can get their nation's priorities straight.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Friday, October 02, 2009
IESI Going Green: First for North Texas in McKinney
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Congressman Sam Johnson, State Representative Ken Paxton and McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller on hand this morning for opening
McKinney Courier-Gazette
On Friday, IESI, a North Texas based leader in the U.S. solid waste industry, will unveil its new 28,000 square foot Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in McKinney. Upon the U.S. Green Building Council’s approval, this facility will be the first privately funded single-stream LEED certified Material Recycling Facility in North America.
The grand opening of the first North Texas LEED certified recycling facility will be at 9:30 a.m. Friday at 2138 Country Lane in McKinney.
To inaugurate the innovative new facility, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Congressman Sam Johnson, State Representative Ken Paxton and McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller will participate in opening ceremonies. In addition to brief remarks, area school children will assist company executives in sealing a recyclable time capsule and company CEO Mickey Flood will christen the facility with a giant truck delivering the first load of recyclables.
IESI, a leader in the U.S. solid waste industry, just unveiled its new Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in McKinney. Upon the U.S. Green Building Council’s approval, this facility will be the first privately funded single-stream LEED certified Material Recycling Facility in North America.
“This is an exciting day for not only our company and residents of North Texas, but for anyone who cares about making a difference in reducing our environmental impact,” said Mickey Flood, IESI president & CEO. “We have essentially succeeded in making recycling even greener by processing the collected materials in a state-of-the-art environmentally conscious facility. We are not just talking about being green, we are showing our dedication to the environment with our actions and investment.”
The 28,000 square foot facility will annually process more than 144 million pounds of non-hazardous materials including glass, plastic, paper, aluminum, tin and cardboard. The facility itself incorporates sustainable features such as certified wood, building materials containing recycled content, low-emitting materials, water-conserving fixtures and features to reduce the heat-island effect.
Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2000, and regulated by the Green Building Certification Institute, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of green commercial structures.
“With the public becoming even more committed to recycling, it became apparent that we needed to expand our facilities,” said John Gustafson, IESI vice president, Texas Region. “We decided it was important to do it right and make the investment to build a LEED certified facility. Our new Material Recovery Facility more than triples our capacity. It will process collected recycled materials from residential and commercial customers across North Texas.”
The IESI McKinney MRF also houses a second-floor community room and observation deck overlooking the recycling operations area. Here, IESI invites area schools, scouting groups, after- school programs, chambers of commerce and other organizations to tour the MRF and learn about the importance of recycling. The education room also contains a time capsule filled with items individuals and businesses currently recycle.
IESI is a full service solid waste management company founded in Justin, Texas in 1995 with just two trucks, two drivers and one and a half routes. IESI now employees more than 2,700 associates and operates a fleet of more than 1,200 routed vehicles. IESI is a subsidiary of IESI-BFC Ltd., one of North America's largest full-service waste management companies, providing non-hazardous solid waste collection and landfill disposal services for commercial, industrial, municipal and residential customers in five provinces and ten U.S. states.
To find out more about IESI-BFC Ltd., visit www.iesi-bfc.com.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Brooke was in the studio over the weekend...fun times!
On another note, we have been offered a wonderful opportunity to use some curb space to sell our work over the Octoberfest celebrations here in McKinney, so come by and see us in front of Laura Moore's Fine Art Gallery on Saturday...and bring your pocketbooks too! Prints will be priced to move!
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