Thursday, September 27, 2007

Analyzing Globalist Propaganda

This is a truly fine example of a very dangerous type of propaganda. It tries to present a balanced view of consumerism and the globalism that drives it, but doesnt even attempt to address the real hidden costs of it, nor the gross unsustainability of it.

Take the walmart propaganda for example.

bargain hunters who throng Wal-Mart save at least $100 billion a year. Some studies put the savings closer to $200 billion. That comes to more than $600 per family -- no small change for the typical Wal-Mart shopper with an average family income of $35,000 in 2005.


We do NOT save money at walmart. Walmart is nothing more than an elaborate scheme to transfer wealth from the middle class to whoever owns their stock or happens to be in upper management anywhere in their supply chain. Like many others, Reich says Walmart saves people $100 billion. Baloney. The use of such rediculously rigged numbers is a clear sign of propaganda. It's like when the neocons talk about the iraq war costing only a few hundred billion. Yeah well if you do the math you realize that it has costed us over 30 billion dollars for every single dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil. So take your pick. How much did the iraq war increase the price of a barrel of oil?? 5 dollars? ching. 10 dollars? cha-ching. 20 dollars?? Do you really even want to know? Now the same applies to walmart. How much has their "new paradigm of globalization" caused the price of oil to increase? Even just 3 dollars a barrel wipes out any imagined savings. You're a fool if you think it's any less than that. Nothing is local anymore. Everything is globalized. From a paper plate to a ping pong ball, it seems like everything is wrapped in petro-plastic and shipped around the world. And Walmart is at the center of all of it. It's costing us, bigtime, and those costs are gonna keep going up until they no longer can be ignored by phoney damage-control hacks like Reich who love to ignore the elephants in the room.

And it's not just oil either. Look how many jobs walmart alone has killed. I'm talking about good jobs. Jobs that add value to property. Jobs that create other jobs. Jobs that dont contribute toward this awful homogenization of our culture. (The value of that cannot even be calculated.) Jobs that create export value. Every time a good job is killed and replaced with a "walmart job", it eats into these imagined "savings" people think they're getting at walmart. I refuse to believe that people are so selfish that they'd willfully steal money from their own neighbors. Yet that's what we're doing. That's the whole basis for this twisted form of globalization. It can only end two ways. Either we wise up and stop doing it, or we keep doing it till everyone has nothing and we end up as slaves. We're not saving any money. Those that think they're profiting from this... you're not nearly as much as you think you are. And worst of all it is totally wrecking our culture and creating a spiritual void so large that we might become so soulless as to not even care about being slaves. For what? Just to make the rich richer. That's just wonderful.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Look at Clinton before criticizing republicans

She will most likely win, and yet do you think she will do anything about the Federal Reserve, which has deliberately devalued our dollar to the point where it is now worth less than the canadian dollar?? Ha. Did she and her huband reform health care the last time they lied their way into office? Hell no. Will she stop the iraq war? Hell no. Will she bomb iran? Probably. Will she do anything to overturn NAFTA? No. Hillary wont do anything good, we have history to teach us that. She wont be able to reap the benefits of cheap oil and a huge tech boom like her husband did. Her presidency will have many democrats longing for the Bush days...

Yet despite the almost prophetic certainty of this outcome, dems will still flock to vote for her! In other words, the democratic party is controlled just like the republican party.

They're both picking their "quarterback" based on his/her chances of winning! Well this isnt football. The goal is not to win. You remember what they used to teach... "its how you play the game" and all that bla bla bla... what happened to that, anyway?

Both parties are heavily financed by groups of people who benefit from having a system where people just want to "feel good" about their candidate's chances of winning. Regardless of what their candidate actually stands for or what they will do when they get in office. The media supports that same paradigm.

The most important thing for any activist to do right now is to put a stop to that paradigm. That's why Ron Paul has to win. He wont have the power or the support to piss off democrats the way Bush has done. The democrats will likely have a veto proof majority in 2009... So he wont be able to make things worse. (Even if that was possible.) Ron Paul will simply try to stop bad bills from becoming law. Both the bad republican bills, and the bad democratics bills. He'll force the congress to write constitutional laws. And by congress writing the laws, I mean congress, NOT the lobbyists! Even if it shuts the damn government down. And I can tell all this just by looking at his record. I dont need a million dollars in advertisements to tell me this. He is Dr No.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Do you have what it takes to be the next Greenspan?

Ever play monopoly? Ever been the banker? Ever bailed out a player who was about to go bankrupt? Yeah I bet you have. If so, then you have what it takes to be the next Fed chairman! It's good to bail out people right? Yeah but if you keep bailing out player A, then player A is going to win. And that's a fact! Obviously. So that means players B, C, and D lose! Unless you bail them out too. But see, the Fed never bails out the middle class players. Only wall street. This is what it was designed to do.

Where No Gene Has Gone Before

You think you know what genetic engineering is? Is it about getting rid of that "fat" gene? That alzheimer's gene? That "stupidity" gene? There's plenty of debate about that aspect of genetic engineering. But what about genetic engineering as it relates to eugenics? Population control? Social engineering? Here the waters get considerably muddier.

What is beginning to happen in these modern times is totally different from all of human history. It is no longer about survival of the fittest on the individual level. It is becoming more about survival of the fittest on a group level. Class warfare is going to become tightly integrated into classical darwinian evolutionary processes.

The class that is rapidly gaining financial control over the world will have the ability to decide who reproduces and who does not. For optimal profits, the goal is to engineer a docile slave "sub race", and keep its population at or around 0.2~1.0 billion. There would be about 10 of these slaves for every 1 master. (We wont call the masters "masters" and we wont call the slaves "slaves", but that wont change what they will be.) Aberrant personality traits will be screened and eliminated.

I imagine the first question the social architects will ask is: would you live as a slave if it was your only choice? I'm sure they could find a billion people who would say yes! Those who say "no way" would be the first to go. Then they will eliminate creative thinking, intellect, critical thinking, leadership qualities, bravery, assertiveness, etc until all that's left is pathetic husks of people. The perfect slave. Most of the technology to do this exists right now. It just takes generations. They want to do it in weeks! What is missing is the technology to clean those traits out of the DNA itself, so they will not have to wait. But what they really need is a "catalyzing event", like a collapse of the petro-dollar. Most likely, a severe and prolonged energy crisis. War with Iran and an OPEC embargo would do the trick. Why do you think they want war with Iran so badly? Because they are ready to move forward. The chess pieces are all in place. If there is a breakdown, they will be quick to usher in their new utopia... a utopia where you have no rights except to be a slave. You will be presented with a choice. You can either live in camp or a converted slum and await "processing". Or you can take your chances out in the wilderness with millions of others, fighting over whatever crops people can manage to grow without petro-based fertilizers. Not to mention peace. Crops like peace! They dont like being burned. You might be able to eek out a living. At least until the New and Improved Fox News calls you a traitor for cutting down that tree for firewood. Then you'll be fighting your starving countrymen AND the delusional foreign-born robot-like soldiers they will have hunting you down. And yes, on the news you will most likely be called Al Qaeda! Just for chopping down a freakin tree.

Can you picture Fox viewers feeling all sorts of rage and anger over that poor tree that got chopped down by the evil Al Qaeda? Can you picture Hannity and O'Reilly both devoting a 5 minute segment to that story? Do you have any doubt whatsoever that their viewers wouldn't cheer when the (foreign-born, IQ of 73) "National Guard" troops show up to try to dispatch the Al Qaeda? We are so close to this.... so many people are ready to believe all of it... any damn lie they are told, no matter how unbelievable it may seem. Some will believe it. Enough will believe it.

So, accept that kind of life, as an expatriated champion of the "Old Republic" and face the new tyranny. Or... pass through the refugee camps and get screened to live as a slave in relative luxury... Luxury except for the lack of freedom! (And no I'm not gonna mention what will happen if you dont pass the screening. That's what the CEOs make the big bucks for.. to make those sorts of "tough decisions"!)

People will find a way to rationalize anything in order to survive. Cannibalism, rape, torture, slavery, sacrificial rituals, bootlicking, ANYTHING. I wish it wouldn't come down to it, but when people choose to be naive about how powerful the "dark side of the force" can be, it just becomes inevitable.

I'm not saying it WILL happen, I'm just saying that IF there is a breakdown in civilazation, do you honestly believe that what rises forth will be in any way utopian?? Not a chance. Too few people have too much wealth, and they had to shut off too much of their humanity to attain it. Just imagine what they'd be willing to believe, just to hold onto what they have. Most of them already believe in lie after lie after lie. Do I have to go down the list of lies you have to believe just to be in a position of wealth and power?

DU doesnt exist? check
No more than 32,000 iraqi civilians dead? check
Bush tax cuts narrow the inequality gap? check
We can keep on using more and more oil? check
We can replace oil with ethanol? check
We can replace oil with hydrogen? check
We can do whatever we want around the world and not incite hatred? check
Vaccines contain no mercury? check
Mercury is good for you. check
Media has a liberal bias? check
Hillary will pull the troops out of Iraq? check (Question for the controlled opposition)
Bombing Iran will make us safe? check
Bill is looking out for you? check

There is no reason to trust in their morality, because there is no reason to trust anything they say. They will act according to some principled notion of "the greater good", and they will not ask too many questions about who exactly is excluded from "the greater good". You can count on that. It's happened many times throughout history. Only now has the technology become available to allow the most evil and wicked people to actually alter the course of human evolution. Only now do they have the ability to isolate genes and find correlations with physical and mental traits. Only now do they have the technology to do realtime personality screening and integrate the results into a global database. Only now do they have the technology compare the personality data with the genome data. This is all becoming possible right now! And there is huge profit motive in using it. So it will happen. There is virtually no stopping this from happening, if you rely solely on altruism and the "goodness" of all people to prevent this from happening... Some people are just evil, and they have the strongest lust for power. And worst of all they don't see themselves as evil, only superior. They like to play god. It is just a basic law of nature that says they will eventually achieve their goals if their opposition's lust for freedom ever wanes. Like Howard Zinn says, you cant be neutral on a moving train. Most of us haven't woken up to that fact yet, and the train is moving pretty damn fast.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Walter Molony should be a Fox News anchor

Record Drop in Pending Home Sales

The National Association of Realtors' pending home sales index, which measures contracts to buy existing homes, fell 12.2 percent to a reading of 89.9.

It is the second lowest reading on record for the 7-year-old index, trailing only the 89.8 reading in September 2001. Economists had been looking for only about a 2 percent decline in the latest reading.

"There are bad reports and then there are truly awful ones. This is clearly the latter," said Mike Larson, real estate analyst for independent research firm Weiss Research. "Even I'm shocked by a 12 percent decline."


Yeah I'd say it's pretty grim. But what does Malony have to say?

But Realtors' spokesman Walter Molony said the large drop isn't a surprise, given that the problems in the mortgage markets seen in July and August were the biggest disruption to the home buying market since Sept. 11, 2001.


Oh my god what masterful use of spin! That's like saying "it's not a surprise you're bleeding" to someone who's just been shot. It's total gobbledegook. I mean, come on. Only when we're hit with a huge terrorist attack do well sell as few homes as we did in July? That's bad, any way you spin it.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The Absurdity of the Carbon Tax Debate

I took a kneejerk reaction against a carbon tax because I'm about 100% sure that the funds would not be used wisely. The Kyoto accords were grossly unfair to industrialized nations and curiously they gave China a free pass to pollute to their hearts content. That right there was enough to make me believe the goal of Kyoto was to tear down the industrialized nations and further promote outsourcing. Why in blazes someone would want to support that is beyond me. Even if you're a die hard tree hugger, I hate to break it to ya but all the trees are gonna get chopped down and burned as firewood when no one can afford to heat their homes thanks to all this outsourcing. Why liberal ideologues cannot see that I do not know... but because of this limited thinking I place much of the blame for what's happened during these Bush years squarely onto their shoulders. God how I wish people on both sides could think realistically! It's not a perfect world and anyone who sets out on their quest believing they can make it so, is only dooming themselves and those who follow to failure.

So after the precedent set by Kyoto, one could probably understand why I never really gave much serious thought to supporting a carbon tax. Except to say that if the money was used to fund alternative energy it would not be so bad. However, I have been watching our savings rate decline for years... I watched in horror as it dipped into the negative. And watched in further horror as certain people tried to pass that off as a good thing! And those same people questioned my sanity for saying it is not a good thing! It is NOT a good thing! My solution has always been a tax on consumption. A national sales tax would be a good consumption tax because you would not be taxed on the money you saved, thus promoting the saving of money!

Now when I look at a carbon tax, I am beginning to see some merits to it. Because everything we do basically creates carbon emissions. Everything we produce, and, more importantly, everything we consume. Even the manufacturing of a solar panel produces quite a bit of carbon dioxide! So a tax on carbon emissions is in essence a tax on consumption, as much as it is a tax on production. So it makes sense.

But even though it would curb consumption and promote saving and investing, I still cannot support a carbon tax simply for the following reason: global oil production is peaking, and thus "our little problem" of carbon emissions is going to solve itself in the most natural of ways! So I am not at all concerned about carbon emissions. I do not see them increasing any more than 30% above where they are now. And even that will not last long. Whatever damage has been done has, for the most part, already been done.

I do think we need to start setting some money aside for the people in mountain watersheds like the Himalayas, because our tomfoolery has been melting the icecaps and flooding the regions with more water than nature would normally allow, thus resulting in unsunstainable population booms. (This is my biggest agreement with the global warming community, but sadly even they do not really recognize it for the problem that it is. Haven't we learned anything from the green revolution? Did that end world hunger? Are there more or less people starving than there were 50 years ago?)

When those people, mainly in India, figure out what happened, they're likely to be slightly pissed off at Joe in his Hummer, and perhaps rightly so. So it would be wise to start investing in a solution. But again I do not see a carbon tax as the best way to go about doing that. If the hummer is causing most of the global warming then the solution can be had at the gas pump... by encouraging Joe to think about not wasting so much damn gas!

The future lies in efficiency -- making better use of what we've got. If a carbon tax can somehow promote efficiency then it is probably a good idea, or at least an ok idea. But it seems to me that a simple gasoline tax would do the same job much better. Without a doubt Europe is much more efficient with energy than the US. And there is nothing to indicate that Europeans are living less happy lives because of it! So why is there so much political force behind a carbon tax, and not a stiff gasoline tax? If I had to guess I would say it is because the dominant political forces at work in the US are controlled by, to use a biblical term, Satan himself. Through his proxy, the luciferian mainstream media. ha ha ha. It's a polemic, I am aware of that, but have you a better explanation? All you have to do is look at the history of taxation. People hate taxes, and in this day and age they are pretty much political suicide. But if that's what we really need.... if a "realistic" gas tax helps to solve our problem in the long run then that is what must be done. It does not matter if it is political suicide or not. Just get in line at the noose and hopefully by the time it is your turn, the corpses will be stacked so high that they will break your fall and save your neck. That's the philosophy I wish more politicians would hold. They might be hated in the short term, but people can see reason, if given a choice. Right now there is none. There is just irrationality on both sides. And that is why both sides suffer from such horrible approval ratings. Really, what is there to approve? Only the media believes that political butt kissing attracts people in the long run. And despite all their Orwellian and Rovian attempts to manipulate public opinion, they will never make a duck look like anything other than a duck.

I dont get why they even call it a carbon tax. Why not call it a "I am a coward tax?" Call it a "I want to scare you with horror stories about global warming so I can get the support I need to fix a problem that aint got a damn thing to do with our real problems." And if you think it does, then you better wake up. Cause you wont be giving a damn about global warming when you're sitting in line at the gas pump like your daddy was back in 1973 and 1979. You know it, I know it, and they know it. And everyone who has invested even an ounce of curiosity into the subject knows that we've consumed far far more oil than we've discovered since the 70s. So you do the math on that one. Oil production isnt going up. Once you subtract the amount of oil it costs to produce a barrel of oil, global oil production is not rising. It's not falling either, not yet, because of all the tricks they use to maintain production. Such as pumping massive amounts of seawater into the wells. Such as burning massive amounts of natural gas to generate nitrogen to pump into the wells! (Oh the wonders of technology, how it will solve all our problems!) And do you know how much natural gas is being used to convert oil shale and tar sands into something useful? You think the rise in natural gas prices has nothing to do with oil? Ask yourself how many other prices have risen in response to the scarcity of oil. Before the world admits there is a problem, the true cost of oil production will be spread across to every corner of the economy. That's the beauty of the commodities market! Especially a commodity in such rediculously high demand.

It's beautiful from an economist's point of view for sure, but to an average person it should be quite disturbing. Because it masks the problem until it reaches a point where it becomes too late to solve it. When a market functions correctly, the price of a commodity will reflect ALL of the hidden costs of that commodity. Those costs will not be hidden in strange places, such as in our trillion dollar Iraq war! (Oh whaddaya know, look what I found! Few billion here, few trillion there...) And if you keep looking you'll keep finding the hidden costs of a barrel of oil. Just tucked away, swept under the rug. That's not capitalism. I really don't know what the hell it is, to be honest. I wouldn't doubt it if there isn't even a term for it yet. But what should be of greatest concern is the fact that our escapades in Iraq have themselves consumed a Great Deal of oil. And since the war is about oil, in one way or another, then that cost must also be rolled back into the production of oil. Hey, if it costs us 100 barrels of oil to run a pump to pull 1000 barrels out of the ground, then how is it any different when it costs us a few thousand or million barrels of oil to run our machines to protect "our" (potential) oil? This is actually evidence that we passed our true peak a long long time ago, especially if the wars keep escalating and consuming more and more oil! But that is a slippery slope, so I wont rely upon it for anything other than an anecdote. Needless to say, most of the oil we waste is, well, wasted. This is just one small facet of what a real peak oil debate would and should entail.

It's kind of ironic that the only visible non-technological solution lies buried in the sands of Iraq. Only with about 8 million barrels a day of dirt cheap light sweet crude from Iraq, will the current depletion rates be fully compensated. And even that says nothing about our petro-dependent economic growth rate, growth which MUST be sustained to keep the curent economic system from imploding. Even to this day, I still wonder if the Bushies were really smart or really stupid for going in there! What if the looming energy crisis was so severe that they felt they had to go in there even knowing full well it would most likely result in a quagmire? Someone needs to ask that question! As partially logical beings we must accept that people do stupid things most often because they simply have no other choice! But the real point is there are much bigger problems to face than global warming. Face them now, or wait 2 or 3 years and face them with Hillary. God knows she'll still be in Iraq. That is a given, no matter what, if what I say about peak oil is true. She will place that oil above the lives of Iraqis. How will she get away with that? With a carbon tax? lol. No, that's what the terrists are for. That's why we're over there spending hundreds of billions on the biggest terrorist training camp the world has ever seen. Hey that's just a fact. It's just a matter of policy. Hillary, like Bush before her, needs those terrorists to keep us afraid, long enough for peak oil to set in. Then fewer and fewer people will care about what's right and what's wrong. And we'll get our precious oil, our desert blood. And the Iraqis who fight will get mass graves. And somehow, all this will happen without 50 nuclear warheads going off. Yeah, only in a neocon dream. Their dreams have a way of coming true...

But my point is only this: what I'm saying about peak oil production can be backed up by much stronger evidence than carbon emissions and their effect on global climate systems. Much much stronger evidence. It's been predicted for over 40 years now, predicted with amazing accuracy by Hubbert. Despite all the attacks and all the nitpicking, he is being proven correct. That's what they said... they said "prove it". Well it is being proven, you most stubborn of the stubborn! We're fighting wars over oil right now. The scale of it just keeps growing and growing. We used to fight billion dollar wars over oil. Now it's trillion dollar wars. We're seeing the costs of living skyrocketing already, because of oil. And yet there is 100 times more debate about some stupid carbon tax to combat some stupid phantom problem that, at the rate we're going, is going to begin solving itself all by itself. Nature dont need no help from us. We might be able to tear down entire rainforests and replace them with walmarts, but such behavior is totally unsustainable. And thus in the strictest sense, it is not really a problem for the earth. It's a problem for us, yes, but it aint got a damn thing to do with carbon dioxide. War, famine, disease, what does that have to do with carbon dioxide?

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Labor Day State of DisUnion Address

Here's another one of these twilight zone news stories making the rounds this weekend:

Mexico's trucks get OK to roll in U.S. next week

Current rules require freight from Mexico to be transferred to U.S. trucks and drivers in the U.S. Under a one-year U.S. pilot program, Mexican trucking companies could move shipments around the U.S. themselves, saving time and money. The program was supposed to start as soon as Thursday.



Saving time and money? Sure. And as an added bonus, it gives American truckers something to really celebrate over the holiday weekend. Stories like this make me into a true believer, because only God himself could be this ironic.

What is really odd is how even the scared to death, al-queda-is-gonna-get-you types aren't up in arms about this.

The U.S. Transportation Department said in a Thursday court filing that Mexican trucks will be pre-screened and inspected for safety before being allowed to travel in the U.S.

Yeah and if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Minnesota to sell you. Really cheap.

In other news I am surprised to learn that Ron Paul got 17% of the straw poll vote in Texas. It's not much, but it was a very exclusive poll. I think that the boots on the ground had a major impact on convincing some of the delegates to vote for Ron Paul. But with only 1/6 of the vote I'm not sure what to make of it.

As a Texan, you'd think even a chimp could do better than 1/6. (And I think a chimp did do better, 8 years ago, if ya know what I mean!)



But then again, the republican party would not be in the predicament it is in today if it did not have some pretty big self-imposed restrictions on logic and reason! Ron Paul is like "bad medicine" to many people. Like, deep in their gut they know Ron Paul is probably right, but they're still in the denial stage. So his job is made doubly difficult by that. Same goes for all his brave and foolhardy supporters! And all we have to look forward to is that stage that comes after denial, which aint no easier to deal with. But hey, who needs it, right. It's like the truckers... Who needs a job as a trucker? Let's just outsource those jobs too.