[EnergyUnlimited]

Anyway, the real idiot is the one which is going to get to power after 2008 election.
That poor soul will be blamed for all unfolding evil...

[Laughs_Last]

The problem is that most of the USA is caught in a propaganda-self-belief-feedback-loop-death-spiral. All our national leaders are blind following the blind, where blind=idiot. The great thing is that the politicians are faithfully representing their constituents. In a democracy we get the government we collectively deserve, on the balance we've all been very naughty.

[gg3]

Swans is an interesting site, and some of the articles (I read a few) have some insightful points of analysis, but dammit the Marxist/leftie rhetoric really leaves me cold. Imperialist this, and elites that, and class warfare the other thing... bleh. Yeah my biases are showing, so shoot me:-)

Consequences of having an idiot for a president:

Way back in 2000, people were clucking about how their daughters would come back from slumber parties with telltale stains on their blue dresses and a tendency for their jaws to get stuck when they form an "O" with their mouths, and say, "But Mom... the President did it!"

Now their son comes home with the smell of gasoline on his T-shirt and the car loaded with vaguely sooty consumer goodies while smoke pours into the air from the department store downtown... and lies to the cops about where he was... and shows up in court with a sudden chronic loss of memory... or simply refuses to show up in court in the first place... and says "But Dad...!"

One thing the Swans articles were right about was that the Establishment probably expected Bush II to be a replay of Bush I, in other words a competent guy who would manage effectively and would turn to experts where needed. And hoo-boy were they in for a surprise.

See, if you try to build a better idiot-proof thing, you just end up breeding better idiots.

[Keith_McClary]

If you're going to have a sociopathic megalomaniac president it's probably better that he's an idiot.

[NEOPO]

I guess I should not be surprised yet I did have some hope in a few of you thus I suppose I am simply disappointed...

Pure propaganda as lil' bush and co. are doing EXACTLY as directed and the only idiot's I spy are the one's who would choose to believe otherwise...

"In a democracy"

Enjoy the illusion of choice my sheeple as soon enough it shall be dispelled...

[HorneyGeekBoi]

Why is everyone assuming bush is an idiot? As opposed, to him knowing exactly what he is doing, and doing it for a reason...

[TheDude]

My money's on Cheney actually running the show. Don't know why anyone would confuse a demonstrably incompetent shlomo like Dubya with an ex-spook with 8 years in the White House like the old man, unless they had great faith in his rather pro-active cabinet to keep things cool.

Wonder what they'd have done sans 9/11? Yeah, I know, staged it anyway.

Link above not working, try this one.

[Laughs_Last]

Why is everyone assuming bush is an idiot? As opposed, to him knowing exactly what he is doing, and doing it for a reason...

It isn't mutually exclusive. He can know exactly what he is doing and for what reason, and still be an idiot. Please refer to the Darwin Awards.

[roccman]

As a result of my values and life experiences, I chose conservative personal finances. Due to my preference for security and prudence, I forgo the opportunity for larger gains and windfalls in exchange for the lower risk and security. It used to be that I could live with this trade-off. However, the last decade (and last few years in particular) have made this choice increasingly difficult. Not only have risky investments been deliberately supported by government policy, but less risky paths have been infected by overspill from the risk-taking activities; worse yet, my very own government is treating me as a sucker. I mean openly, which is kind of new.

The increasing role of federal intervention in stimulating certain segments of the economy and bailing out risk-takers has made it increasingly clear that the choice to be a conservative investor was not only foolish, but is being deliberately singled out for punishment by our own government. The flogging of the prudent investor has moved from sublime to ridiculous, as government officials blatantly enter a mode of panicked bailout of preferred gamblers and spreading misinformation about the situation.

....
....

Dramatic? Perhaps. But I would argue that we are witnessing a very dramatic episode in US economic history. The "end of consequences" and the era of overt elite market socialism? I don’t know yet what I will tell my kids. Something along the lines of: go ahead and be reckless; someone will save your butt – so long as that butt is aligned with the chosen elite butts.

“Never bet against the house”. I get that now.

Thanks,
Minyan Malcolm

Buyouts, Bifurcation, Bailouts and Bankruptcy

[kadoomsoon]

It won't work to take risks. it will just drive you out of business.
You see, they only step in to save their elite relatives.

It is an exponential way to take over the rest of the residually honest banks...

[Cid_Yama]

One of the most chilling things I’ve ever read was a description of the dual crisis that farmers and the urban poor faced during the Great Depression. During the period, the ability of the poor to pay for food dropped like a stone. At the same time, farmers couldn’t afford to transport food to markets. While there was more than enough food produced in the US during the whole of the Depression millions went hungry, and a surprisingly large number actually starved. Consider this testimony given by Oscar Ameringer before Congress in 1932.

“During the last three months I have visited…some 20 states….In the state of Washington I was told that the forest fires raging in that region all summer and fall were caused by unemployed timber workers and bankrupt farmers in an endeavor to earn a few honest dollars as firefighters. The last thing I saw on the night I left Seattle was numbers of women searching for scraps of food in the refuse piles of the principal markets of that city. A number of Montana citizens told me of thousands of bushels of wheat left in the fields uncut on account of its low price that hardly paid for the harvesting. In Oregon I saw thousands of bushels of apples rotting in the orchards because of the cost of transporting them to market. …At the same time there are millions of children who, on account of the poverty of their parents, will not eat one apple this winter.

While I was in Oregon, the Portland Oregonian bemoaned the fact that thousands of ewes were killed by sheep raisers because they did not bring enough in the market to pay the freight on them. And while Oregon sheep raisers fed mutton to the buzzards, I saw men picking for meat scraps in the garbage cans of New York and Chicago. I talked to one man in a restaurant in Chicago. He told me of his experience in raising sheep. He said he had killed 3,000 sheep this fall and thrown them down the canyon, because ti cost $1.10 to ship a sheep to market and then he would get less than a dollar for it. He said he could not afford to feed the sheep and he would not let them starve, so he just cut their throats and threw them in the canyon.

The roads of the West and Southwest teem with hungry hitchhikers. The camp fires of the homeless are seen along every railroad track. I saw men, women and children walking voer the hard roads. Most of them were tenant farmers who had lost their land and been foreclosed. Between Clarksville and Russellville, Ark., I picked up a family. The woman was hugging a dead chicken under her ragged coat. When I asked her where she had procured the fowl, first she told me she had found it dead in the road, and then added in grim humor, ‘They promised me a chicken in every pot, and now I got mine.’

In Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas I saw untold bales of cotton rotting in the fields because the cotton pickers could not keep body and soul together on 35 cents for picking 100lbs. The farmers cooperatives who loaned the money to make the crop require $5 a bale in payment. That means 70 cents a day for a picker who can pick 200lbs, and that doesn’t provide enough pork and beans to keep the picker alive in the field, so that there is fine staple cotton rotting down there by the hundreds and thousands of tons.

AS a result of this appalling overproduction on one side and the staggering underconsumption on the other side, 70 percent of the farmers of Oklahoma were unable to pay the interests on their mortgages. Last week one of the largest and oldest mortgage companies in that state went into the hands of the reciever. In that and other states we have now the interesting spectacle of farmers losing their farms by foreclosure and mortgage companies losing thier recouped holdings by tax sales that could never meet the value of the land.

The farmers are being pauperized by the poverty of the industrial population and the industrial population is being pauperized by the poverty of the farmers. Neither has the money to buy the product of the other.” (David Shannon, _The Great Depression_ 26-28)

One of my greatest fears is that the story is about to be repeated. Right now, farmers are struggling to get credit just like all small business owners. The wheat crop is being planted right now - and next year’s food depends on this year’s credit. High energy and fertilizer prices have already eaten up much of farmer’s profit for this year - the point at which it is no longer feasible for farmers to grow our food is not so very far away, nor is it really so alien to imagine that again we might see the failure of the linkage between city and country, the poor digging in the garbage, the farmer unable to plant, unable to keep their land, or throwing food out to rot.

link

[Serial_Worrier]

Let 'em starve, don't we need to encourage die-off anyways?

[vision-master]

Let 'em starve, don't we need to encourage die-off anyways?

But we have AK's with 1,000 rounds of ammo this time around.

[anador]

the same thing could happen this time around also.

We have a food production system that is dependent on Just-In-Time handling of fragile produce, grains, and meat. Harvest and processing equipment (even the field and farm layout) depend on high-tech automated equipment including infield packing sorting boxing and refrigeration. What happens of a part manufacturer goes bust for lack of credit?

Likewise the distribution of food is increasingly dependent on JIT product flows rather than warehouse storage. Walmart has no inventory nor does our food system.

Most food is heavily packaged and processed. The equipment to do this depends on an entire dispersed infrastructure of part manufacturers and credit. That gizmo inside some fancy plastic wrapper/boxer/humidifier/CO injector was invented in Chicago, patented in New York, built in South Korea, assembled in China and shipped to the final manufacturer in France or somewhere.

It's probably impossible to get a potato from the field to the dinner plate anymore without a team of pHd's and engineers all along the way.

Its a shame the technology of "jute potato sack" has fallen so woefully into obsolescence that its makings are forgotten and its methods will ne'er be re-introduced.

[sparky]

.
The food distributions networks used now are very efficient
high energy , long transport , refrigerated ,just in time have decreased the cost and wastage
a return to small scale distribution would see the retail price jump
ever seen the price difference between big outlet and corner shop

It seems to me a rise in the price of energy would see an increase in human labor
pauperised by their raising bills ,
the test of this pauperisation is simple ,
is the share their household food budget rise
as simple as that ,

[Cid_Yama]

Its a shame the technology of "jute potato sack" has fallen so woefully into obsolescence that its makings are forgotten and its methods will ne'er be re-introduced.

Yes, Burlap was all the fashion back then.

[Pretorian]

Its a shame the technology of "jute potato sack" has fallen so woefully into obsolescence that its makings are forgotten and its methods will ne'er be re-introduced.

Yes, Burlap was all the fashion back then.

these people do not appear to be hungry, or unhappy for that matter. Who spoiled the modern poor mind me asking? They have everything , living on the large compared with 99.99% of humans that had ever lived and still complaining on everything. Not enough of this! Not enough of that.

[vision-master]

'Dirt Poor' means living on a dirt floor.

Anyone know what 'I don't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out' means.