Politics and personal responsibility

Saturday, August 1, 2009

I've long recognized the two-party, one-ideology basis of American politics, and I was calling Barack Obama a neoconservative long before it was popular to recognize him as the Teflon President 2.0. But even I can hardly believe this tidbit from a guy I thought was pretty damned smart: From the I-cannot-believe-this-is-happening camp, Obama is appointing a Monsanto man as food safety czar. Welcome to Farmageddon, land of the free.

Truth and lies

Monday, July 20, 2009

25 Comments

Clinton's Secretary of Labor Robert Reich presents the economic news in particularly stark terms. In his recent piece in Salon, he asks the question, "When will the recovery begin?" His one-word answer is dead on: "Never."

Media alert

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

17 Comments

The industrial economy is slipping through our fingers like mercury from a broken thermometer. Facing a rapid terminal decline in crude oil -- the lifeblood of western civilization -- there is nothing you, me, or President Obama can do to save the industrial economy. But as we near the end of the industrial economy, complete with the collapse of our fuel-, food- and water-delivery systems, individuals can make arrangements to thrive in the post-carbon era.

Capitulation draws near

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

25 Comments

I never cease to be amazed by the number of people, on this blog and elsewhere, who believe the supply of oil is infinite, and the similar number who believe we'll innovate, conserve, or organize our way out of our oil addiction. I use "believe" intentionally, because there's no evidence of any thinking going on. If there were is evidence to support the notion we'll get through the year without capitulation of the Dow, please bring it forward, and soon.

Reset

Thursday, February 12, 2009

38 Comments

We've known this was coming for a long time. Every empire is built on a foundation of sand debt. The Ponzi scheme works for a while but, at some point, the debt we've passed along to future generations must be paid. The alternative is default, which can happen with extreme rapidity. The latter option is increasingly attractive because the current U.S. debt of $10.5 trillion far exceeds the value of all the currency in the world combined with all the gold ever mined from planet Earth. This seems like a problem to me.

Business Party II slithers by Business Party I

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

39 Comments

Damn the torpedoes. It's full steam ahead for the idea of economic growth, even though Obama surely knows the days of economic growth are behind us.

Limits to growth

Thursday, January 29, 2009

16 Comments

We're due for a massive correction with respect to our hallucinatory economy and our bloated population. Because we've run out of inexpensive energy, we've reached the end of economic growth. We might be at the end of global population growth, too. If not today or tomorrow, the day is fast upon us. Within a few years, the global human population will shrink by eighty percent or so. When it does, the alleviation of oppression will be profound, with respect to the rest of the world.

Three peas in a pod: Osama bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh, and me

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

15 Comments

For the first time in my memory, we have a major media figure pining for the failure of a president, and therefore the country. And, also for the first time in my memory, I agree with Rush. The economic collapse of this country promises a renaissance for non-human species and non-industrial cultures.

Change we can believe in

Sunday, November 30, 2008

12 Comments

All the wishful thinking in the country can't resurrect a long-dead corpse. By the time president-elect Obama takes the oath of office, he'll have all the power of a quadriplegic EMT without a medical kit, much less a resuscitation device. And he'll be staring at a patient with a DNR order, courtesy of a lethal combination of inevitable geology and abysmal policy.

Do the media get it, or not?

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

6 Comments

It seems neither the Fed nor the Treasury Department cannot stop sunshine with an umbrella, much less interrupt the relentless tsunami of dire economic news.

Guy McPherson's blog

Tag Archive | "recession"