Bad American

The New York Times reports that the San Francisco Chronicle is losing $1 million every week.

Imagine that.

How long can this hemorrhaging in print media go on?

Recently an old co-worker from The Cleveland Press came into my bookstore (who now works for the PD) and we renewed an old acquaintance and talked about the shitty state of the business.

She agreed with me that print seemed to be on its deathbed and said the PD hadn’t hired anyone in. . . quite awhile. Not that she needed to fear that I was buttonholing her for a job - far from it. If offered a staff reporter job at the PD next to a GS-5 paper shuffler job with the Feds the choice would be ridiculously easy and surprising noting my personal history.

In any case, she seemed genuinely worried about the state of the business and articles like this one, talking about the plummeting ad revenue across the board.

What I found interesting was this:

Since the fall, when Media General, the owner of a major newspaper chain in the South, set its 2008 budget, “We have pulled our thinking down twice with respect to revenue,” said Marshall N. Morton, the chief executive.

Over the next few years, he predicted, “There’s got to be some assimilation,” with some major American newspapers going out of business or merging. At the corporate level, he said, “I would guess that rather than bankruptcies, you’d see combinations.”

Remember the Widget (the World Journal Tribune)? I remember the guy whose job it was to evict people from their Flint, Michigan apartments in the movie Roger and Me. He said when a poor man meets a poor woman and makes a house together, well, two poor people don’t make it together any better than one.

I can’t imagine that combining newspapers that are both hemorrhaging ad revenue is going to create a situation any financially better together than they were apart. Many of the newspapers that have folded in recent years, take The Cincinnati Post for instance, had joint operating agreements with the ‘competing’ morning daily and it wasn’t nearly enough to save them in the end.

This former co-worker said the biggest problem was that the future of news may be online but that traditional newspapers can’t make enough money online. Well, who does?

My biggest problem which I told her, as a newsie, was opening newspaper’s pages up to unattributed commentary which is cheapening public discourse. She agreed and said the matter was being discussed at the PD. I remain unconvinced that the PD will do the right thing. They’re not alone. I sense such desperation among print management that they’d try guest editorial page editors as a gimmick.

Imagine that - win a drawing and you get to choose the day’s columnists for the page and write your own lead editorial. Hey, can’t do any worse than Kevin O’Brien and might do appreciably better.

Or maybe revisit Wide Open Blog.

Nahhh.

My point to her is and remains that fossilized newspaper management has no one but themselves to blame for most of their financial difficulties. If it isn’t hamfisted and embarrassing attempts at appearing ‘relevant’ or ‘hip,’ it’s a slavish editorial obedience to Corporate America. Why should people be exposed to the same Corporate bullshit in print that they get bombarded with on radio and television? And when the average Clevelander (or working class suburbanite) opens up the PD, they see news and ‘lifestyle features’ more relevant to people in Pepper Pike.

The PD doesn’t lead like the Press used to. It’s merely a corporate status quo broadsheet that the vast majority of people read for entertainment tips, sports stories, comics or classifieds.

The PD offered me weekends for two months for $14 so I took it. I can still bulldoze the Sunday PD in about 30 minutes or less. That’s how much interesting reading I find in the Sunday PD. Even though I really can’t stand the New York Times that much either, I can usually kill a full hour with the Times National Sunday edition.

I see no hope for corporate print but they’re digging their own grave. They just won’t admit it. Ever.

“It’s going a lot worse than anybody predicted, and if we have double-digit ad declines for two years, some newspapers will be in real financial jeopardy,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at the Benchmark Company. Even with less severe losses, “You’re going to see structural changes: papers could drop a day or two per week, they could outsource printing.”

And that will only speed their demise. Think of it in the same way that charging $15 for the first bag carried on the airplane is hastening the demise of the American airline industry. And more people need airline travel a lot more than they need the morning rag.

And will enough people read online only newspapers to make them any more financially feasible than print editions? They sure as hell won’t pay for them online so put that out of your capitalistic minds.

Seems like an insoluble problem.

AP writers: Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control

Wow, even the mainstream is noticing:

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet’s weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation’s capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

And it ends with this ominous note:

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Now back in the late 1960s there was a similar unraveling going on. People displayed little signs - “plan ahead” with the e-a-d part falling off the line downward.

A lot of it had to do with a more slipshod attitude toward things with American car manufacturers leading the way. There was also problems with teething troubles in new computer technology.

But we didn’t have the problems with the basic supply of oil and food that we have now. And although we had the first signposts of environmental degradation, we didn’t do enough to ensure that we wouldn’t run into the problems we are running into today. Capitalism uber alles and now the generations that followed the 60s are now having to deal with the mess.

Yes we had the air pollution problem - and we went to unleaded fuel and put scrubbers on some smokestacks. But it wasn’t enough.

Yes we were warned about overpopulation, food and the Malthusian mathematics - but the cheap price of oil made it seem like we could cheat nature and science.

We were warned about the fragility of the environment and the animal species of the world - and we had Earth Day and greenwashed the whole movement so Corporate America could make money.

M. King Hubbert warned us about oil depletion. And we laughed at him.

Now we pay. And pay dearly.

Once again proof positive that the Bush administration and conservatives in general, don’t give a flying fuck about the American people - only the capitalists:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease….The Agriculture Department tests less than 1% of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too. (whoa - I thought competition was a hallmark of American capitalism! What are the big meat companies afraid of? - ed.) A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal — effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out….Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.”

You can read more about the Bush administration is strongarming the South Korean government to accept US beef from Mike Whitney in ICH.

But when you’re lying to right wing Americans you can get away with it. They’ll believe anything.

Media Matters

On the June 17 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that “drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.” In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s May 2008 Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

In all three ANWR resource cases, ANWR crude oil production begins in 2018 and grows during most of the projection period before production begins to decline. In the mean oil resource case, ANWR oil production peaks at 780,000 barrels per day in 2027. The low- resource-case production peaks at 510,000 barrels per day in 2028, while the high- resource-case production peaks at 1,450,000 barrels per day in 2028. Cumulative oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR from 2018 through 2030 amounts to 2.6 billion barrels in the mean resource case, 1.9 billion barrels in the low resource case, and 4.3 billion barrels in the high resource case.

From the June 17 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Like I told you yesterday, gas is up 35 percent. Electricity is up 30 percent. Natural gas, which most Americans use to heat their home, will hit a record high next month, up 43 percent from last year. Oh, boy. What happens when we hit November and December?

Even with all of that, domestic drilling is still stalled by Congress. It’s like these people don’t even — they don’t even live on the same planet. And this is really too bad, since drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day.

OK kiddies let’s do the math about how ANWR will save us.

Currently, the United States uses 20.6 million barrels of oil every day.

Which comes out to about 7,519,000,000 barrels of oil every year. That’s 7.5 billion barrels. And the total best case scenario from ANWR gets us 4.3 billion barrels TOTAL and then it’s ALL GONE.

So.

That means ALL of the oil in ANWR in the best case scenario can meet ALL of our oil needs in the USA for approximately 7 1/2 MONTHS. That’s all folks. And that doesn’t take into account how our consumption might continue to increase by the time that oil comes online. It may only give us the equivalent of 4 months of US consumption.

Now think of what we get for that oil. The quite possible destruction of ANWR.

So go ahead idiot Americans and let the oil companies take their last orgy of profits by drilling ANWR, drilling off shore - go ahead DRILL THE WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY and you STILL won’t get enough oil to make this country “energy self-sufficient.” EVER.

But that’s OK. Flail about in our usual fashion. Beats changing our “non-negotiable lifestyle.” Beats conservation, collective action and serious investment in alternative forms of energy, public transportation, etc. etc.

In the end, we’ll get exactly what we deserve. History and science have a way of making sure of that.

In the meantime just listen to lying jackasses like Glenn Beck. America is full of them.

Say, have you noticed lately that the food you get from your local restaurants and fast food chains is, um, getting smaller or disappearing altogether? But you’re still paying the same amount for it or more?

You’re not alone.

These people have noticed it as well on AOL’s message boards.

And AOL has featured a panorama of the latest ‘tricks of the trade’ to give you less for more.

This is nothing new from a grocery store perspective. For many years people have noticed the Incredible Shrinking Box of Cereal as prices go up or stay the same. Consumer Reports has covered this in depth for quite awhile. But now the movement toward less for more is accelerating quickly thanks to the George W. Bush Economic Miracle and people can’t help but notice.

For instance, last night I went to the local Dairy Queen for a large cone. Let me tell you, the ‘large cone’ has morphed into what was a medium cone. Believe me, as a Dairy Queen connoisseur with the waistline to prove it, I can spot this sort of portion chicanery a mile away. And the last time I got a large chocolate cone was just a few weeks ago.

Some of the people on AOL have taken note of the Amazing Disappearing Breadsticks at Chili’s. I noticed this as well the last time I was there about a month ago.

It seems as though restaurants have two options here from what I can see. They can either raise their prices to keep current portion and quality standards (and try to educate the customers about why) or they can pull these kind of fast moves that may ultimately backfire on them.

Many of the AOL posters are writing that if restaurants would come clean and explain why they have to charge more, they would gladly pay it to get the portions and quality that they’re used to.

But I think I know why too many restaurants will go the way of the trickery.

In my experience in food service and retail one of the big bugaboos in marketing was to never have to try to educate or explain anything to the American consumer. They come to stores to shop and restaurants to eat, not to be educated. And since the conventional wisdom is that you can fool some of the people some of the time, it becomes easier and, perhaps ultimately, more profitable in the short term to resort to trickery.

The other problem here is that no one in a particular market segment wants to be the one trying to educate the customer while the competition is cheating them. The conventional wisdom is that the American consumer will always trade quality for price (hence their love of Wal-Mart) and will desert restaurants who raise prices regardless of the value given in exchange. In short, people don’t see it: all they see is price.

So it seems that this is the game that will be played. What is most disturbing about all of this are the stories about recycled food being served as fresh in many of these restaurants. This means old meat and fish are chemically gussied up and presented as new. In some cases, managers are rummaging through the garbage for unused creamers and such to re-use.

My worry is that there will be more cases of food poisoning because of this.

And many of the writers on AOL are also saying that they are cutting back their restaurant visits due to the economy and avoiding certain chains because of these business practices.

I’m feeling the same way. No one really needs to eat out if they have a working kitchen. Increasingly, as things continue going south with our economy, eating out, even fast food, will be seen as luxury spending.

Expect not only airlines to continue to go bankrupt but, in the near future, restaurant chains as well. And many of them are, right now, contributing to their own demise through shorting their customers.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

This confirms much of what I have long thought about the suckers people who buy individual health insurance policies:

Most of the 18 million people around the country who buy their own health insurance coverage can be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions and have little recourse with state regulators if their insurer won’t pay for needed services, says a study released Thursday.

“The individual health insurance market is still the wild, wild West for America’s health care consumers,” said Ron Pollack, who heads Families USA, the nonprofit health care consumers’ group that conducted the survey.

“It is a market with many abuses and with far too few state-level consumer protections.”

If you read the stories from people on this site - Ripoff Report, (check out Mega insurance for starters) you’ll get a sense of what a hustle these policies can be and are for many, many people. You pay the premiums for a long time and maybe it will help you pay for some minor treatment and procedures but get something major and you’re cut off without recourse.

If you want to hear from the horse’s mouth how these companies will find anything as a reason to cut you off, just watch Michael Moore’s film “Sicko.”

I was paying for a policy that had a $10,000 deducible just in case something serious happened to me. After some research it appears that it was at least an even money bet that if something did happen, I’d be denied anyway. And who do you complain to? Capitalism always protects it’s own against the consumer, especially in the health insurance racket.

So why pay premiums when you’ll get screwed anyway?

Doesn’t do much for the small entrepreneurs we make a lot of noise about supporting, does it?

Why anyone can make oodles of money by starting their own small business! You could be the next Bill Gates!

So if you’re without health insurance, what’s life insurance anyway?

$512 for 12 months? Yeah, right.

So the woman at my State Farm office (not my agent but an office assistant), was telling me about her husband dying at Cleveland Clinic and how much she’s glad she had his life insurance to look forward to.

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that (a) the story is true and (b) she’ll use the money to pay for the funeral expenses (funerals are a classic American ripoff but that’s a subject for another day) and the gargantuan medical bills that she wouldn’t have to worry about if we lived in a civilized country with single payer national health care insurance.

So life in America becomes being beholden to an interlocking series of official scams whether it’s for-profit health insurance or life insurance or medical care providers. Not to mention all the other scams that are cleverly designed to separate you from as much of your money as possible. Conservatives love to talk about the ‘right to life’ but once you’re born, your ass belongs to capitalism baby!

What a sap I was to buy off on the whole ‘American dream.’ Yeah, start your own small business. Run lean and mean! get involved in your community. Give people a good product at a fair price. Donate to local causes.

Get screwed anyway. Of course, a lot of the reason is the wonderful George W. Bush Economic Miracle.

It reminds me of a now politically incorrect comedy routine that George Carlin used to do. He would say “we’re all Nixon’s n*****s now” Well, unless you’re part of George W. Bush’s “haves” and “have mores” base, we’re all Bush’s n*****s now.

Indeed.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I love my book store. I love my customers. I love it when I find the books people are looking for. I love parents helping their kids discover the love of reading in my store. I love talking about books and authors. I love not having to answer to anyone but myself.

But I also would love not to have to worry about one hospitalization costing me everything. And I would love being able to make enough money to have even a modest living - to be able to afford the rent, health insurance, life insurance; the basic accoutrements of a decent life. But that dream is now receding into memory for most of us.

I told my mother this morning after my life insurance passed into history that if I should die before her, just to remember the words “direct cremation.” That’s when they ship your carcass directly to the funeral home and they incinerate you on receipt. I told her they could put my ashes in a empty Folgers can (yeah, like The Big Lebowski) and you can either throw my ashes in Lake Erie or use them as a butt can when smoking friends come to call. I couldn’t care less.

As for medical care, I have plenty of aspirin, band aids and, if I should get a very bad diagnosis, I always have my .38. I wouldn’t want to burden my family with crushing medical bills nor do I want the medical establishment getting my bookstore AND my kid’s college fund. And no, I’m not saying that for effect or to make some dramatic political point. It’s stark reality in Bush’s America - and I’m not the only one. Should the time come, from what I’ve seen of the future in this county, I’m more than ready. I’ll be damned if anyone is going to do a fund raiser for my cancer surgery. As if.

Until I started this business, I had no idea how many people in my (supposedly) prosperous little town struggle everyday to make ends meet for themselves and their families. Many of these people have no health insurance and many of them are greatly in debt. And no, they don’t live in the lap of luxury either.

It breaks my heart to see so many hard working people walking the same tight wire that I am. I’m single now and my kids are older and fairly much on their own so it’s not the same as many of the people who have younger kids.

And with the higher gas and food prices, things are getting worse.

So here I am 10 years after I swore I’d never go back - trying to get a cubicle job with the Federal Government where I can rediscover the lost joys of a decent income and affordable health and life insurance and paid annual and sick leave. Where else can a 45 year old man with my history get that kind of deal? The private sector? ‘Scuse me while I laugh ruefully.

But in the meantime, I’m one of those sole proprietors with my own small business. Living the American Dream.

And scared shitless.

Now read this from Lynette at Big Ass Belle. Incredible that we both moved these posts on the same day.

London Daily Mail

Sometimes my frustrations spill out into family matters. I have tried, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, to inform people I care about of how perilous our grasp on civilization is in light of possible disruptions of fuel, food and electricity.

Last night I played the little played trump card with two family members who continued to pooh pooh everything I say (and it’s generally women who do this, sorry). I said, “imagine a world where people are killing their neighbors for what’s in their kitchen.”

They refused, of course, to consider such a possibility.

Well. no less a media outlet than the Daily Mail has done so using Lord Cameron’s expression “nine meals from anarchy,” that is, three days without fuel and, therefore, food deliveries.

Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.

The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.

If the trucks stopped moving, we’d start to worry and we’d head out to the shops, cking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We’d be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.

What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn’t stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?

There might be 11 million gardeners in Britain, but your delicious summer peas won’t go far when your kids are hungry and the baked beans have run out.

It was Lord Cameron’s estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos.

So ask yourself, in a nation as well-armed as America, how long would such a breakdown of law and order happen here under similar circumstances?

This scenario is actually possible if the asshole in the White House attacks Iran. Regardless of how effective the Iranians may be in closing the Straits of Hormuz, all they have to do is try and Lloyd’s of London and other insurers will pull the insurance from all the tankers.

And then the ‘fun’ begins. That’s when American find out what the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is really for - not your gas tanks but for the forces of martial law that would be needed to control a desperate population in the event of an emergency.

So we’re the breadbasket of the world? Yes so the farmers will eat. But how will we service a city the size of Chicago if we don’t have the fuel to get the grains from the silos to the processors and then to the market? And at a cost that people in the city can afford?

More good news - Lowest Food Supplies in 50-100 Years

Look, you can say I’m crazy, I no longer care. One has to put this in front of the people for their consideration somehow. Again, if the British media have the guts to talk about this, why shouldn’t we?

My greatest worry about Americans is that if and when this sort of emergency occurs, the vast majority of people will be completely unprepared for it - not just physically but just as important, psychologically.

Right now coal and oil industries are running wall to wall propaganda PSAs on news channels to get Americans to turn the rest of Alaska and West Virginia into giant coal and oilfield so we don’t, in the words of one of the most egregious PSA’a “say goodbye to the American lifestyle that we all know and love.”

What they don’t tell you is where the so-called facts and figures come from and that the cost of that extraction will make every barrel of oil, ton of coal, and cubic yard of natural gas an eventual energy loser. But those industries will make a small fortune riding into the twilight of our ‘non-negotiable way of life.’

But there are naive and foolish Americans who believe that if we drill the entire Alaska National Wildlife Refuge we’ll be ‘energy self-sufficient.’ It’s nonsense to any geologist that has studied the issue. But that won’t stop an increasingly desperate, cold and hungry population from demanding that their government ‘do something.’

Right now, the overture is turning into the first act of the play as, on this Sunday morning, the average price of gas now goes above $4 a gallon. And, as a corollary, the price of everything that uses oil to get to market (which is pretty much everything) goes up as well. The ripple effect of all the other things made or derived from oil - mass agriculture, plastics, computer parts, etc., also rises.

From the Daily Mail article:

At its most basic, the reasons for this food inflation are twofold: increasing demand (particularly in the emerging economies of India and China) and spiralling production costs.

The former had been predicted for years, but the latter is more unexpected.

Conventional wisdom had it that in an age of mechanisation, the cost of producing the food that we eat would decrease as technology found new ways of improving yields and minimising labour costs. But there was a problem that hadn’t been factored in. Production methods are now such that 95 per cent of all the food we eat in the world today is oil-dependent.

The ‘black gold’ is embedded in our complex global food systems, in its fertilisers, the mechanisation necessary for its production, its transportation and its packaging.

For example, to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires the equivalent of six barrels of oil - enough to drive a car from New York to LA.

Unbelievable? One analysis of the fodder pellets which are fed to the vast majority of beef cows to supplement their grazing found that they were made up of ingredients that had originated in six different countries. Think of the fuel required to transport that lot around the world.

Now factor in the the diesel used by the farm vehicles, the carbon footprint of chemical fertilisers used by most nonorganic beef farms and the energy required to transport a cow to the abattoir and process it. The total oil requirement soon adds up.

Picture an anaconda snake squeezing the American economy. At what point does the system give way? $5 a gallon, $6? At some point, knowing that wages will NOT rise to keep up with the now rapidly rising costs of everything, our society begins to break down. What happens when it takes more for someone to drive to their minimum wage job than what they earn that day?

IF that job is still there, not strangled by the rising costs of goods and raw materials?

Is anyone wondering where all this will lead?

Nine meals from anarchy.

Meanwhile on this Sunday morning, Howie Kurtz on CNN is going on in a serious vein, about the misreporting on Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy.

American life is madness. But the fun hasn’t even started yet.

Let me make a prediction you will see in your lifetime. Perhaps next year.

This prediction is based on THIS story and the following stories:

At some point, a dwindling number of gas stations will be protected by guards armed with submachine pistols. All cars will have to stop at a distance from the station to be searched for weapons. You will pay for whatever gas you want through electronic debit or cash at the checkpoint. Then you will proceed to the pump and pump your own fuel under the watchful eye of guards.

and/or

You will have a gas ration card and sticker on your car not unlike the World War Two “A” cards. Guards at gas stations will carefully log the number of gallons you buy and cross check your card against their database.

Since most Americans read nothing outside of their own controlled media, here’s a well written run down of just what we face that our glorious President, Congress and media haven’t told us about.

London Independent

I won’t except it here - just read it. You NEED to READ this.

And remember, all the bad stuff accelerates at incredible speed if the Warmonger in Chief attacks Iran as many predict will happen by the end of the year or next January. Or some other kind of terrorist attack is launched during the transition.

Now, I have run out of any hope for the future of the world. Notice that most of the Western nations we spit on publicly as effeminate cheese-eating surrender monkeys are doing their best to encourage and require (by law) conservation and conversion measures.

Not so in our land of the “non-negotiable lifestyle.”

And for that, we are well and truly fucked and deservedly so.

And we can spend the time on the downward spiral not leading, but blaming the Chinese and the Indians for being the REAL CAUSE of the end of industrial society. That might make the Rush Limbaughs and Lou Dobbs feel better for a few months but the bottom line is, in the end, we will be left psychologically unprepared and economically undefended against what will hit us.

At that point, I guess the entire Bush Crime Family takes off for their ranch in Paraguay. The rest of us will be contending with a society tearing itself to pieces. There will be blood, oh yes, there will be blood.

Look, nothing is going to happen on the political front. Even the sainted Obama isn’t talking about any of this because he knows that to tell the American people the truth would doom his chances of winning. And the corporate boys are content to ride the economic collapse wave all the way down where they will either flee to their private islands or their armed compounds (like the Walton family has built).

The liars are leading the blind to oblivion.

So my advice to all of you is simply this: go out and blow the ranch on having a good time. Want to take a great dream vacation in your life? Take it now. Right now. Just drop everything, max up the cards and go. Seriously. We’re all going to be poor and scraping by to some degree in the future anyway so you might as well enjoy yourself now. The memories of this last great time may be all you have to keep you warm someday.

Read the article again: the writing is on the wall and there will be not be any movieland deus ex machina to stop it.

OK, if it helps, pretend some doctor told you you have inoperable cancer and have a year to live. The self-help gurus always told you you should live your life like that. Well, now you can! And with good reason.

If you feel like living beyond Armageddon, go ahead and get the basement filled with non-perishables. Buy some gas cans and, right NOW, store a few tankfuls of gas in the garage. Yes, get all the nifty guns and ammo you want now. Charge them - no one a few years ago is going to pay those balances anyway. And no one will be able to collect on them either.

Where we’re going as a nation a sterling credit record is not going to matter. Neither will all that ugly looking fiat currency you’re stuffing in your wallet or purse.

You might, just might, want to look at all the stuff you’re selling on Ebay and think about what you might get for locally in barter. Just saying.

Want it? Want it bad? Get it now. Enjoy it now, especially if no one will buy it from you later. Hell, it may even give the US economy one more dead cat bounce and make the boys on Wall Street happy enough until the end of the year.

Everything is simply going to get more expensive in the near and long term future, starting now. And in the case of things like gasoline and heating oil, they may go out of sight instantly, in the event of an attack against Iran.

And, by the way, do you think your employer is going to raise your pay to cover the sharp rising costs of living?

(rolling on the floor laughing)

As as the Independent article points out - most of your durable goods, food and medicines owe their existence to oil. As oil soars, so do all of them.

(As an aside, with so many millions of Americans brain chemistry now totally dependent on SSRI type anti-depressants, what happens when the shit hits the fan and they can’t get their drugs anymore? There won’t be nearly enough police to contain the carnage.)

Survivalism

Now that brings up another issue covered last Saturday by the Associated Press: Survivalism.

Yes, I’ve mentioned food, weapons and all of that. And the people the AP interviewed are serious about what they’re doing and preparing for.

But consider what they believe is going to happen:

“There’s going to be things that happen when people can’t get things that they need for themselves and their families,” said Lynn-Marie, who believes cities could see a rise in violence as early as 2012.

Lynn-Marie asked to be identified by her first name to protect her homestead in rural western Idaho. Many of these survivalists declined to speak to The Associated Press for similar reasons.

snip

Determined to guard themselves from potentially harsh times ahead, Lynn-Marie and her husband have already planted an orchard of about 40 trees and built a greenhouse on their 7 1/2 acres. They have built their own irrigation system. They’ve begun to raise chickens and pigs, and they’ve learned to slaughter them.

The couple have gotten rid of their TV and instead have been reading dusty old books published in their grandparents’ era, books that explain the simpler lifestyle they are trying to revive. Lynn-Marie has been teaching herself how to make soap. Her husband, concerned about one day being unable to get medications, has been training to become an herbalist.

By 2012, they expect to power their property with solar panels, and produce their own meat, milk and vegetables. When things start to fall apart, they expect their children and grandchildren will come back home and help them work the land. She envisions a day when the family may have to decide whether to turn needy people away from their door. (with what, a few kind words or an AK-47? - ed.)

“People will be unprepared,” she said. “And we can imagine marauding hordes.”

So can Peter Laskowski. Living in a woodsy area outside of Montpelier, Vt., the 57-year-old retiree has become the local constable and a deputy sheriff for his county, as well as an emergency medical technician.

“I decided there was nothing like getting the training myself to deal with insurrections, if that’s a possibility,” said the former executive recruiter.

Which brings up the next question: not so much how many American could conceivably live like that but how many would want to? Slaughtering chickens and pigs? Yechhh!!! Tending a garden by hand? No HBO? Why live?

They had a solution for this in Soylent Green.

So look, you’ve got maybe 6-8 months in the event of an attack on Iran to live it up. Without an attack, 2-3 years tops before other things happen I don’t have the time or patience to talk about here.

Now get out there and enjoy life!

Today’s Contemporary Americana!

Fox 8 Cleveland

Gotta love the graphic:

Business at the ZLB Plasma Service on Cleveland’s near west side is booming. The company pays as much as $40 per visit for a donors first four visits, less after that.  Each person donating plasma can do that no more than two times a week.

“If you are out of money and you need gas you can come here and get a little change.” said Willie Tyson of Cleveland, who also says the stipend he gets from his donation does not go very far. “I mean it takes all of it at $4.50 a gallon almost.”

This is nothing new in the Land of the Free. When I worked at a book store in Cedar Rapids, despite the gold plated health insurance, co-workers were regulars at the local plasma clinic. You can’t pay rent with health insurance.

Now people are selling their blood plasma to pay for gasoline. Hmmm, there’s some kind of weird symbolism at work here, wouldn’t you say?

And yes, I’ve thought of it too.

George W. Bush’s ‘have mores’ don’t have to think about it, of course.

And again, I find it interesting in this country that it’s OK to sell your precious bodily fluids but you better not let ‘law enforcement’ find you selling OTHER precious bodily fluids (through sex) on the open market, i.e. prostitution.

See capitalism forces the ‘losers’ to do desperate things in desperate times and always has. Check out Zinn and any other honest history of this country - prostitution was rampant in Victorian America - land of the 12 hour factory/sweatshop. Again, you were free - to starve.

Now filling your tank may not seem too critical at this juncture, except that people do need to get to work and to the market. And consider that because of the price of gas, everything else, especially food, is going up as well. The media isn’t reporting the full extent of the growing desperation out there. Blood for plasma is just the start. Wait until winter comes and the shock of natural gas price spikes hit the elderly on fixed incomes.

A hard rain’s gonna fall in America. And this is just the overture.