Here Comes the Sun

Reuters/Jim Young photo credit


freeacre

I have recovered from my flash of temper over the stupid Santorum/Limbaugh tirades condemning the inclusion of contraceptive medication in the government's health care insurance coverage plan. What a pant load.

Another annoyance is the seemingly endless intrusion of "celebrity news" that assaults us at almost every turn. The right hand columns of so many digital pages are filled with vulgar and mindless headlines about Miley Siruses underpants or JaLo's nipples or some one-named "personality's" fashion faux pas, or some other bone-head titillation or other. Like the torturous blaring of rock 'n roll to prisoners, I suppose its intent is to distract the public and divert our attention from anything that is real. It also continually sabotages any accompanying story that covers any thoughtful articles about women or feminine issues, reducing us over and over to a version of tits and ass. So much for the Women's Movement and "sexual revolution." Bimbos in the Military. Bimbos in Business. Bimbos in the News. We've come a long way, Baby! Yeah, right.

But, I digress. March 2 has come and gone. I have to admit that I have been more than a little anxious during this period of predictive disaster. Clif High wrote that we have only 26 days to live and that some huge event would happen that we have never seen TV anchors talk about before. Something Big that releases emotions which don't go away. Maybe nuclear war. Maybe a Kill Shot from the Sun that kills millions and leaves the rest without electricity for the foreseeable future - something on that order. To be fair, the time period in question still has five days to go. http://thecelestialconvergence.blogspot.com/2012/02/pole-shift-magnetic-pole-reversal.html.

Meanwhile, the stock market finally rose to 13,000, the President's birth certificate continues to be an issue, the cretin Limbaugh is in hot water, and the circle-jerk Republican primaries stagger on. But, what about those super cells that unleashed multiple tornadoes on the 2nd and 3rd of March- with more on the way? See: http://global.christianpost.com/news/tornado-watch-authorities-pinpoint-very-large-supercell-causing-destruction-70760/. Or take a look at the current earthquake activity map: http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/. Or, the active volcanoes: http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/usgs/index.cfm?content=worldmap.
As noted by Jerry Lee Lewis, "There's a whole lot of shakin' going on."

This heightened activity of super storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes might, in fact, be consequences of the increased solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The increased activity of the Sun might be due to Patrick Geryl's theory that as the Sun spins, the difference in the winding up of tension between the smaller polar regions and larger equatorial areas, creates a torque of energy that is periodically released. This massive energy bombardment heats the core of the earth, destabilizing the magnetic poles and possibly even the continents, This would lead to sudden massive changes to the weather, volcanoes going off, earthquakes, floods, etc. Major world-wide catastrophes. See Geryl's work: http://www.halfpasthuman.com/RadioSpecial.html.

Or, perhaps the changes in the Sun's activity are due to the approach of Nibiru, Planet X, or Sirius, with whom our Sun may be in a bi-nary relationship. Our astro-archeoloist friend, Ed, came over last night. He was telling us about the shafts in the Great Pyramid which point to differing points in the sky. One points continuously to Sirius. The rest change according to the procession of the Equinoxes. As the eons go by, the whole thing becomes a time piece which points to a time when the Earth and Sirius come close to each other again. That would probably include visits from long-lost "gods" and demi-gods - alien beings from Orion's Belt upon which most of the most ancient stone artifacts were constructed to represent.

I guess it is some form of cold comfort to realize that no matter how much of a clusterfuck is created by the politicians and financiers if the world, the Earth and our Solar System are more than capable of slapping down whatever plans they have with one (or several) natural disasters. So, stay tuned. Hopefully, answers to our questions are coming soon. Keep the car filled with gas is case you need to make a run for it. We were, I think, privileged to be born into this amazing tumultuous period of time. We might want to cultivate a sense of grace and gratitude to go with it.

The Ultimate Disaster?

murph fixing the electrical line to the well pump. Keeps on keepin' on...


by murph

We have seen comments and observed that the MSN has completely dropped the Japan story. It flat out isn’t there any more. Why?

On Carolyn Bakers site there is an article at this address that is worth reading; http://carolynbaker.net/2011/05/12/new-the-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-in-perspective-by-dr-helen-caldicott/

The article by Dr. Helen Caldicott has some lacking in my opinion, but never the less is an important article. She does not talk about the specific types of radiation particles and their half-life that she says are blanketing most of the world, including the US.

Admittedly, I have no adequate means check out her assertions. Her credentials are impressive (that I’ve checked) and for the life of me, I cannot fathom an agenda in putting out this kind of information, other than maybe making money talking doom and gloom. So, assuming that her information is credible and mostly true, we really are doomed as a species, if not right now, at least within 20 years or so, the amount of time for all humans and most other life to die of cancers from radiation exposure.

She also reported on the affects of radiation from the use of depleted uranium in war munitions. According to her report, in the areas of heavy usage of depleted uranium, doctors are telling women not to get pregnant, that the increase in drastically deformed babies is astounding, like 80%.

So, if Caldicott is correct in her assessment, we are doomed. The lucky ones will die of old age or some accident before we start seeing this come into focus.

This brings up the argument again, why would the PTB poison even them selves if this were all true? Again, I have to repeat my thinking on this. If true, the PTB doesn’t believe it is a threat to them, or they have some kind of protection we don’t know about, or they flat out don’t give a damn.

A very small percentage of folks on this planet have the means of living in a radiation proof 100-year shelter. And even if you did, what would you emerge to after the supplies run out? Land poisoned so badly that you dare not eat what is growing, including animals from the ocean.

She asserts that in the US and in Europe that if it rains, don’t eat out of your garden. So just where do you get your food that is safe? I guess the hydroponic garden in your 600 yr radiation proof shelter. That’s something to look forward to, particularly if you have a few billion dollars to buy your way into one or build your own. Although, after having to live underground for long enough for it to be safe to come out, after multiple generations have grown up in that environment, I’m not so sure that what would be left would also be worth saving.

It appears to me that we can take this information a couple of ways. We shrug our shoulders and just keep on trucking for as long as we can and stock up on gentle poisons for when it becomes obvious that we can’t continue. Or, we deny that as a reality. Or we go on a rampage. All three of those alternatives contain sub categories of course. Maybe we all should just pray to god or gods for deliverance. Although I haven’t seen much response from gods these days for all that is besetting mankind.

I rather suspect that Caldicott is, at the least, partially right, and that’s the reason we don’t get any news about it. Mankind has created a stew of radioactivity that rather dramatically affects living things, even if it is delayed by 20 years. Although, it hasn’t taken 20 years for the effects to show up in the use of depleted uranium in war according to Caldicott.

The bill COICA 2.0 in congress right now will effectively shut down all ability to find out the truth about much of anything from the Internet. MSM in print or TV sure doesn’t seem inclined to tell us much of anything. In a way, I can understand that. If Caldicott is correct, and that information was put out for general consumption, what would be the consequences? Like you, I have several scenarios running through my mind and none of them very pleasant.

Those of us that were around in the 1950’s will recall the nuclear war fears, and all the back yard fallout shelters and often hysteria that accompanied the times around that subject. Satan personified in the form of the Soviet empire was a continual threat, and all the issues surrounding that concept were foremost in our minds. McCarthy and his minions come to mind right off, and the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin wall, etc. I was just a young kid back then, but I recall the war drills and fairly constant references to the Russkies threat. Now, it appears that we have some new threats to worry about. Terrorists are around every corner, suitcase nuclear bombs, plagues, poisoning of the environment gone viral, a crazy acting sun, space objects hitting the earth or at least coming close by and causing havoc. Now we have the radiation threat that is man made and no amount of money, ingenuity, military build up or political double speak and international posturing is going to do a damned thing about it. If this is indeed of the seriousness the Caldicott indicates, every single person on this planet will eventually be affected to a greater or lesser extent. My father, years ago, (a biology teacher) insisted that mankind was going to poison itself to extinction from human made waste. He wasn’t thinking of a worldwide radiation problem, but it appears that radiation could be the ultimate threat to human survival and that surely can be classified as human made waste product.

Harry Bellefonte years ago did a comedy routine that lasted some 20 min or so where he was giving an archeology report by a extraterrestrial archeologist on the planet earth after all the humans had killed themselves off. It is an obscure recording and I might just have a copy of it somewhere in my archives. It sure rang true with me. I ought to search around and see if I can find it.

Sure would be interesting to see what off-planet archeologists would find in 1-2 thousand years on this planet and what their conclusions would be. Humans as a species have shown themselves incredibly stupid (despite the brilliant ones among us) and do not appear to want to change that. The conclusions and consequences we see before us were neither necessary nor inevitable. We may have come to the point where nothing will stop any of it from happening. One more cosmic experiment turned to shit.

Of final mention that is not a disaster pending, in the sense of radiation or the sun going mad, but that of our MSM handling of the coming elections. I am talking about it in all its forms. Generally, the only TV we watch is the news in the evening while we eat supper. Of course, most evenings it is really bad for the digestion. The TV coverage of candidates is probably the most influential part of elections and who gets elected. We have not heard one word on the TV about Ron Paul running. Now whether you like him or hate him, he is running as a Republican and we haven’t heard one word on the news that recognizes that fact. My conspiracy meter is pegging out on this. Tell me people out in digital land, have you seen or heard anything about Ron Paul running as a Republican? I hear all kinds of stuff about candidates that I have never heard of, and way too much about Palin and Romney and Newt and the rest of the dumbrepug crowd.

For those of you that want to do further research, here are a few more tidbits. Scientists are getting data that the core of the earth is changing, affecting the surface; Or how about the spectrum being emitted by the sun is changing; Or Cliffs projections into 2013 show absolutely no data at all, ie, no humans left to get data from, or at the least, no internet activity at all; Or George Ure’s charts and graphs showing a correlation between sunspots and earthquakes; Or the testing of some municipal water supplies in Texas showing increases in radio nucleotides in the water supply and the lowering of the water standards to afford non compliance by the water works. The list keeps expanding every day it seems.

One last little tidbit if anyone thinks we aren’t living in a fascist state. In Missouri a family has been fined for selling $4000 worth of young rabbits on the market in one year. They have been fined $90,000 for selling over $500 in a year of the rabbits and not filling out the paper work and for not having been inspected. If they don’t pay the fine soon, the added charges go up to $1.3 million. Also, google “companies that no longer accept cash” and make a list of all you can find. It will blow your mind; at least it did for me. If that isn’t enough, do some digging around for states are having the police on a traffic stop asking how much cash you have with you. If it is over a few hundred dollars, they can confiscate it, your car and luggage and toss you in jail for suspicion of drug trafficking.

A year or two ago Freeacre and I commented that it seemed like bad news was coming in on a daily basis. Now it seems like it has accelerated considerably. If I discount half of it as rumor or exaggerated or just flat out not true, the other 50% is alarming indeed. When that other 50% is verified over and over by other sources, you can’t help but repeat the mantra; “We are so doomed”.



... need more pie. This one has a gluten-free crust.

Notes from the Doom-o-sphere

Back to dry land again, with a great picture fr om Hot Springs Wizard.

by freeacre

There are three concepts that stick out more than anything else for me this week:

1 . George Ure's writing that we are on a disastrous course economically because the wages of the workers can only increase linearly, while our debt to our financiers increases exponentially due to compound interest. Here's an excerpt from last week's Urban Survival:

“...the old right/left/socialist/fascist politics is being hauled out to get you to choose up sides and become a partisan in a rigged game. Wrong battle. Way off base.

Fact: The creation of money out of thin air in problem #1. It waters down the honest money, pure and simple, all the fancy formulas and secret spells of central banksters aside.

Problem #2 is when financial products invent "Interest on Interest".

Problem #3 (which also guarantees a nonlinear bad ending, in case you don't see where this is going) is when financial product are evolved which promise "Interest on Interest on Interest."

Think Warren Buffett is smart? (as well as Charlie Munger, of course...). Did they buy derivatives for Berkshire? Nope. Bought a railroad. There's a huge clue there about how to preserve wealth over time, maybe?

Historical Fact: No way in hell can any economy survive compounding on interest, but compounding wages paid to working people....the two lines over time - as my friend Ehor and I worked out in early 2001 when we described the Debtberg.

2. My own observation that while the government regulators and bureaucrats whom we citizens appeal to in our “public process” civil actions continue to get paid whether anything gets “processed” or not. Therefore, they can afford to stall and drag the whole thing out until the original citizens who initiated the proceedings are either broke, sick, or dead. Then they start the whole process all over again, and nobody remembers what the hell went on with the last group.

3. Responsibility. The American Indian perspective that one should be responsible in their decision-making to the well-being of the future generations. Right now, the imperative is to be profitable, not responsible, in the short-term and to hell with the long term. Listen to the message from Indigenous Nat, part 2, a video on the right side of the page at http://whiteknightsreport.blogspot.com/.

All these problems are compounded because we are unable to have a national dialogue due to the mass media being corporately controlled. It would not due to disrupt their revenue stream by changing the financial paradigm. So, that won't happen. In fact, they are beefing up their “weapons of media destruction” with the software that has been ordered to create legions of false network identities to give the impression that a consensus is established when that is not the case, and other really sophisticated propaganda techniques featured last week on cryptogon.com and also on Max Kaiser Report http://maxkeiser.com/ (interview with Glenn Greenwald). Jaw dropping.

So, we are on the equivalent of a runaway train to economic, political, and social disaster. We can't get the assistance of our government representatives because they have made an art form out of ignoring, diverting, stalling, or in other ways, refusing to allow our objections to be persuasive. And, we can't get any real consensus of opinion going to empower the citizenry because our messages get all distorted, denied, filtered, re-interpreted, or disappeared. It all becomes part of the background babble that keeps us fighting each other rather than those who are profiting from this mess.

It puts me in mind of a memorable rant that one of Joe Bageant's readers posted back in 2008 called Declaration of Defeat, by Scott in Appalacia. It read,

DECLARATION OF DEFEAT

“I (your name goes here), having CONCLUDED, based on the undeniable reality that all American problems invariably become exponentially clusterfucked and are always forcefully contagious, and that the American dream is a tiresome, unrewarding bad trip, not worth the efforts or the casualties. Understanding that participation is complicity, resistance is futile. Having consumed all the mind-numbing propaganda that I can bare. Being duly aware that, I, by having neglected to contribute to the coffers of the winning campaigns can expect no favors and no mercy. Having zero interest in the present electoral outcomes, even for their circus-like entertainment value.

We understand that descent into total class war and social chaos is inevitable, unstoppable, and evolutionarily necessary. We fully expect to eventually be enslaved, incarcerated, tortured, shot in the cross-fire, blown-up by CIA terrorists, euthanised, or simply left behind when Jesus, or Sun Myung Moon, finally comes.

With no fond memories or illusions of any real loss whatsoever. With all patriotic tendencies as thoroughly deceased as the countless Iraqi victims of the spreading of "freedom and democracy". With the foundations of my trust for authority as wobbly as WTC Building 7. With all community affectations rendered ineffective and foreclosed. With not even a hint of a faith-based initiative. With no demand for a raise in wages. No care for a tax break. With no pleas for food stamp allotment increases or cost of living adjustments. Having no part to play in the stimulus program. With no expectations of receiving medical assistance from any of the greedy, incompetent, indifferent, upper-class medical professionals in this sanctimonious society of hustlers and pickle vendors. With no hopes of a secure, comfortable, contented, or full life. With no care for how my body is disposed of when I am relieved of the need for it. Not giving a shit who inherits my earthly belongings, if any shall somehow remain in my possession at the time of my demise or abduction.

Having no desire to profit from such an aggressively militant, murderous, deceptive, oligarchical, purified, religiously confused, environmentally rapacious culture. With no inclination to consume slave made wares, to eat toxic or genetically modified corporate American food or to interact socially with a generally lost and misguided society of hopelessly hypnotized consumer slaves or their xenophobic sycophantic superiors -- preferring to be alone unto myself.

Knowing full well that I may be trampled in the cardboard box that I may be living in when the banks finally fail, the grocery trucks run out of gas, the plug gets pulled from the hologram, the shit hits the fan,and the urban masses stampedes towards the countryside in search of the farmers' chickens or things to steal to trade for a rat-meat sandwich or a new tattoo, do hereby OPT OUT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM, goodbye and good riddance.”

---

I think that mrs.p's observation that these times seem to really be the End of Days and look a lot like the Hindu concept of the Kali Yuga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga ). Or the Biblical Apocalypse, or the end of the Mayan Calendar, or whatever your favorite reference is. This is it. Personally I'm waiting for the Sun and its binary star, Nibiru, to put an end to our problems and allow us and our dear Mother, the Planet, to start over. Meanwhile we can eat pie and popcorn and talk amongst ourselves.

Just Who Is the Crazy One?

Still some good stuff left over from Christmas.... homemade cannoli!

... and Brie is starting out right with new tennis balls for Christmas. Can't really see it, but there is one in her mouth.


By Murph

Finally the Christmas season is over. Now that my computer is back up and working right again, I can get back to the doomer reading and speculation.

Every once in a while I run into someone who wildly explains that I am crazy to believe or look seriously at some issue. Had an acquaintance not too long ago that declared, in a loud voice for all in the immediate area, that peak oil was a bunch of garbage, intimating of course that I had to be crazy to even consider it. It was pointed out to me that the huge reserves that have been found in the last few years would keep the U.S. running for the next 500 years or so, completely forgetting that domestic oil production is sold on the open market for whatever the market will pay. The most usual thing that is put in my face is the Baakan oil reserves in the U.S. The last time that was used, I asked what their source of information on that reserve was. I was told to just Google Baakan reserves and I would get all the info I needed. So, one more time I decided to see what the information was. The very first entry from Google was a forum where some guy wrote in wildly exclaiming that there was no shortage of oil in the U.S. because of the shale oil in the Baakan reserves, would feed the U.S. oil habit for the next 200 years. Then I found a bunch of states, mostly from the Oil Drum web site, but verified it from some other sites also. It seems that the recent USGS study, if they are to be believed, say that the recoverable oil from that site is 3.4 to 4.3 billion barrels. Frankly, that doesn’t even qualify as a super site. In fact, all the larger discoveries in the last 10 years have been in that range, or somewhat larger, but not a super site.

Some stats for your information; The U.S. has been using from 18-25 million barrels per day for the last 5 years. The 18 million barrels is from the last year stats. That works out to 6.8 BILLION barrels per year. Current U.S. oil production is around 5 million barrels per day. This means that the Baakan reserves if pulled out right now, would last the U.S. about 300 days at last years usage. Long way from 200 years plentiful and cheap supply. In fact, the total world oil production is around 3 billion barrels per year, Considering that they are trying to extract oil from more and more expensive and hard to maintain regions (like deep sea and shale and sands) it sure doesn’t appear that our usage is sustainable for much longer. Hmmm. And oil is now over $90/barrel and gas is over $3.00 per gallon.

So who is the crazy one here?

A very good friend of mine once suggested that one way of defining a crazy or insane person is that their brain processes information different than most of us. Of course, the popular idea is that a crazy person is not dealing with reality, not including just what in hell reality really is and if it even can be identified. When I read through history it often touches on the insane among the population. Interestingly, the insane can be right just enough to make a mockery of the “not dealing with reality’ crowd. Of course those really primitive people often revered the “crazy ones” among them for having communication with god or gods. But of course, we can’t take them primitive folks seriously now can we. We know better now, and you would have to be crazy to look at that seriously. By our present paradigm on the subject, the Old Testament prophets were flat out crazy, talking to god and such schizophrenic behavior.

Freeacre wants me to include my/our predictions for the next year and beyond. I’ve never offered something like this before but here goes.

Employment; won’t get better; in fact I predict unemployment is going to keep going up. I expect it to exceed 1930 levels of 20% in the next year. Only so much government hiring will take place and I figure we have just about reached the limit at this time. Lower level manufacturing jobs are not going to be coming back anywhere in the near future. College degrees, that used to insure high paying jobs, are going to be shown as having less of an impact on individual lives compared to our past. More and more hi tech jobs are going to be shipped somewhere else and the demand for degrees will go way down in this country. The few stats on this show it is already happening.

U.S. and world finances; they are going to get worse too. Dollar will eventually be devalued. Our business as usual paradigm is going to take some serious hits. What will result is pure speculation. The un-capitalized hedge funds are going to have to be absorbed one way or another. See next entry.

Government; it will become less and less important to individual lives and just plain become irrelevant, even if very dangerous. At every level of government, and particularly at state and local levels, look for some pretty shitty and unique ways they are going to try and skim even more money out of your pocket as the financial situation worsens, in the form of increased fees and more tickets etc. I don’t know how much longer we can expect government to take any action that maintains the safety nets and entitlements that are in place. If the government prints the money for distribution for these entitlements, we can expect run-away inflation which would just negate the value of the entitlements anyway. I do not expect the PTB to back off of the business as usual paradigm in the next year, they are going to defend it savagely down to the bitter end.

Education: going to continue to degrade, graduating even more really uninformed stupid people. Colleges and Universities will begin shutting down because lack of students, cost are out of reach except for the wealthy and jobs are scarce anyway. Plus we can expect next year big defaults on student loans. There will be a continuation of degrees being just another name for job training, having not much or nothing to do with being educated. Consequence will be an even more rapid decrease in logical thinking among the general population, and the inability to see consequences of actions taken and belief systems upheld.

Politics; it is already apparent that political parties have no relevance to the general population, but only to the elite power struggles. I expect that to become even more evident and the consequence to the general population is going to be even more negative. I also expect that the political infighting will become increasingly savage, disappearing or plain old assassinations of opponents more common, and excuse me on this, but more nut cases like Palin coming on line.

Food, shelter, and water; are going to become more expensive to obtain or maintain. Water is already becoming a problem and I expect food to be an even bigger problem than it already is this next year, expect a tightening of all kinds of silly shit, like the making illegal to collect rain water for your home. While housing purchases are much lower than in 2006, maintenance costs are going up with inflation. Some necessities for life are going to become out of reach for a lot of people, even more than it already is.

Travel; I expect travel to become ever more difficult and/or odious for most people, ie, the air travel screening. I expect to see more restrictions and stops on the roads, making travel even by auto more odious. Expect to see air travel screening applied to most bus and rail services also. Better learn to stay at home to have a life.

Standard of living; will be going down for most of the population. Get used to it now and avoid the rush.

Religion; is going to also become more radicalized and have less relevance to most people. Conflicts between sects and believers and unbelievers will increase. I expect some of these conflicts to become savage and violent.

Medical and health care; I expect higher prices and decreasing services except for the wealthy despite the new health care bill. Big up tick in non allopathic medicine I expect, more natural and herbal remedies, more practitioners of Chinese and related medicine. I also expect more incurable (probably genetically engineered) diseases coming at us. Less people will be kept artificially alive. I don’t expect a big surge in death rates, not this year anyway and in this country. The rest of the world is open to speculation.

Weather; I expect more violent and unusual weather world wide. Exact causes are being debated, as well as the nature of what to expect.

From freeacre:

I would add a couple of predictions:

The internet will be more regulated and under surveillance for "domestic terrorists." Anyone not supporting the corporate paradigm, including the resource wars, will be suspect. We may decide that keeping a blogsite is too dangerous for us and as a vehicle for our tribe.

If it looks like the sheeple are becoming restless in any big way, we may see an outbreak of war or some space based disclosures, such as alien bases on the moon or Mars, space battles, alien DNA in our genetic code, and whatnot.

I think that the consequences of the contamination of the Gulf of Mexico and the seafood from that area will be awful. The sicknesses that people are experiencing will become obvious even to the lamestream media.

It may be confirmed that the Gulf Stream has been interrupted and that is contributing to the unusually cold weather in Europe. We may not have much of a summer this year, and have to start building greenhouses in a big way. We should stock up on seeds that can be sprouted in that case.

Wilder and wilder speculations on "The End of the Mayan Calendar" and associated doom scenarios will be featured on cable TV and other popular sites. The magnetic pole keeps moving towards Moscow, and more and more near-miss asteroids may head our way, since our solar system actually is entering the galactic center.

Scalar weaponry and military uses of "new energy" might be rolled out as Peak Oil production can not be denied much longer. The Pentagon has already acknowledged it, so it's only a matter of time.

Fear and loathing are going to be fostered by all these fear tactics, and snitches and squid minions will be on the prowl. Our challenge will be to keep cool and try to remind people of the fact that the American Dream has been based on freedom, inclusion, justice, fair play, tolerance, and helping one's neighbors.

How’s that for doomer predictions? Lol

On the more optimistic front, I expect a whole lot more self reliance coming up next year, probably more communal living is in the works just for self preservation. I expect to see a turning away from the religiously organized con jobs that have been prolific for so many years. Probably a turning to more internal spiritual concerns by many. Not that I expect it to do much good in the immediate future to alleviate social distress and the physical demands of continuing on in this life but may allow people to exit graciously. I also see a good possibility of some of the older social organizations come back to life as our society gets mired down in all of the shit that is being heaped upon them. More groups will be formed for self protection and survival.

Overall, I am not optimistic about the near future but some good things may come out of it yet. For you and yours, we wish you all the very best. The more we cultivate our own lifestyles, the happier we will be.

Rough Week

Sky Collapses On The Passamari
by Rockpicker

Winter sky drapes the land, like a canopy
dropped by unseen hands upon a cage.
Farm ground blurs between houses
at an imprecise place, over the creek,
beyond my neighbors' spruce. Past
what we can see spreads
the topography of an uncertain age.
Fence posts pitch and lose themselves
in fog, like stick men heading off
to evening chores, or the dutiful poor
marched off to kill the poor in forgettable wars.
What I took for granted and thought I knew
when sunbeams slanted through
transparent pain, seems now
untenable and untrue. Still, rockslides
and dying forests loom, like deficits
we must assume in this obscuring air.
The looted vault gapes it's open mouth.
Herefords steaming under willows birth
their calves. The little town rubs
its knees beside a flame and tunes
its set for a prompted reassurance.
I kick the empty streets in muffled gloom.
I bounce solid hopeful notes off walls
of unsold homes. Kept birds balance
in dim rooms, each night, a new deception.
With sky this low it can't be clear,
the honest and naive are always tools.
On the Passamari, the dog star fluxes, red
to green, whether occluded or seen.

by freeacre

It’s been a rough week. I thought I’d begin with Rockpicker’s latest exquisite poem, which captures so beautifully, the “muffled gloom” that is so apparent. It’s like he has a way of looking at things as if through a mental kaleidoscope and is able share a glimpse of things from his eyes. The Passamari, by the way, is the Shoshone word for the Ruby River in Montana. I looked it up.

With Murph so sick with some hellspawn virus, I could have won a gold medal if there was an Olympic category for racing back and forth rinsing and returning barf buckets. But, we were not alone in having life get in the way of our blog posting. Charles Hugh Smith was late due to the death of his friend’s mother. And, Nina, lost her dog to a mountain lion, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies. But, although personal tragedies and difficulties may have put off folding the laundry, vacuuming the house, or scouring the tub, as well as delaying postings on the web, it’s nothing compared to the dysfunction of the government.

The ruthless partisanship between the Republicans and Democrats seems to be eclipsed only by the corrupting influence of lobbyists and the arrogance of Wall St. and the central banks. Barely noticed between the entertaining coverage of the Olympics is the inability of the government to govern. The Republican overseers seem to be totally indifferent to the suffering of the tax-paying masses, despite their lip service to the “Tea Partiers.” They vote as one against anything and everything, even extensions of unemployment insurance just to spite the Dems. So what if the people starve, live in tent cities, college grads and young families move back in with their parents, careers are destroyed, 401Ks are lost, half of the children are qualifying for food stamps? They continue to boviate their litany of never-ending trademark campaign messages of disinformation, character assassination and misdirection as if the election never happened. The worse everything gets, the better for them. On to the next election and it’s millions of dollars … let’s focus on Sarah Palin and Glen Beck, shall we? How about joining in and working to reduce the deficit that you are continually complaining about? Ahhh….. no. I didn’t think so.

And, then there are the Democrats. This disappointing collection of numbnuts still mouth the words of their idealistic intentions to help people with health care, jobs, education, peace, etc. etc. But, they are still unable to deliver a single thing, having been bought off or intimidated by the same K Street swine that rule the Republicans. Sweet Mother of God! They remind me of the despicable Muscular Dystrophy campaigns with Jerry Lewis. Ever since I can remember, Jerry Lewis has been hauling out some poor crippled kid and begging for money to make him walk again. And, year after year, people send in their money – and forty years later, muscular dystrophy is worse and audits find that the majority of the money is siphoned off the top. What a frigging rip.

It’s gotten so bad that even the senators are bailing. Republicans and Democrats are refusing to even run next time, pretty much admitting that they’d rather pound salt than serve in the houses of corruption and ineptitude that the U.S. Congress has become. Three thousand more banks are on the brink of failure, according to Elizabeth Warren, one of the very few courageous voices in the government. The L.A. Times is predicting four million new foreclosures this year. That will, of course, drive the prices of homes down even further, putting even more mortgages “underwater.” The next bubble of commercial real estate is beginning to burst, the billions of toxic derivatives have yet to be dealt with, and now China is dumping our Treasuries. Many of our states are on the brink of bankruptcy. Oh, yeah, and the European Union is looking about as attractive as a bouquet of elbows. Despite the delusional rally of the stock market this week, I’d say this is the year that the wheels come off the financial cart.

But, then, it’s only money, right? Well, no, it’s debt servitude, ill health, homelessness, desperation, lost lives. But, in the end, if it wipes out the globalism that has relentlessly driven the working class into the ground by having us all conform to the lowest common peasant denominator, it might get their boots off our backs. Whose boots? The scum-sucking rich bastard financial criminal overlords, that’s whose.

But, it will take more than the collapse of the digital money house of cards to remove the misanthropic stranglehold on the productive class. The rich bastard parasites (RBP’s) are backed up by the intelligence services, the military, and FEMA. When the television programming and the commercials no longer are enough to funnel the populace into the feed lots, then they’ll call out the goon squads.

But, you know what? I have a strong feeling that’s when they are going to lose. What’s going to happen when we all start painting ourselves blue?