August's End

The End of August

. . . . ."The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" - Would those of you who attempt to co-opt or quote the words of a man who was a far greater light than any of you can ever hope to be do some things please?
(1) Quote it correctly and in full, the word "watered" isn't in there, anywhere
(2) Take the time to actually read Jefferson's works and understand his intent behind the sentence and catch the phrasing. He was talking about self-sacrifice and being willing to give a full measure of yourself.

. . . . .Because, truly, the current crop of wingnuts carrying that as their catchphrase right now, have been weighed and measured, and truly found wanting.

. . . . .There exists somewhere, beyond our imagining, a place. We dreamed it once, into existence, and somehow, we've lost that dream. It is not gone, like all things with value and worth, we've merely neglected it and now must work for it again now, to reattain it.

. . . .The playlist is simply Irish bands. Yes, of course, Van and U2 are there. But there have been, and are many others from the place of my ancestors; bands you may not have heard of, but good bands, good musicians, all with that Irish sound. Horslips, The Waterboys, The Pogues, The Boomtown Rats, and a nod to a couple of transplant bands, Flogging Molly and The Dropkick Murphys. It's an Irish thing, gotta do it every so often.

. . . . .Rave on Tommy Gavin, rave on.

. . . . .I'm just gonna go out on a limb here; but do people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck realize that the mere fact that they're allowed onto radio and TV every day with their outlandish tin-foil hat conspiracy theories about death panels, FEMA camps and a secret army and allowed to talk about them, and are not given the least bit of attention by the government that they theorize constantly as supposedly plotting against them, is the first, foremost and logical proof that they're full of shit? I'm just asking. I'm just wondering if they can make that connection, that's all. I'm desperately hoping you all already put that logical equation together for yourselves.

. . . .And speaking of Beck, now that a total of 46 advertisers have pulled their advertising from his show, that boy has turned the fever swamp crazy up to about 14 on a 10 scale. We really are talking full-bore bull-goose loony here, I mean it.

. . . . .Now, as for the other half of the lunatic fringe version of Abbot and Costello, Rush Hindenburg, err, I mean Limbaugh. Rush has been in type of sweaty, gassy, necrophiliac delirium since Ted Kennedy's death, and on Friday was in an orgasmic state describing some of the scenes. Now, I've maintained all along, as someone who is 28 years clean and sober, and heading fast for 29, that Rush isn't sober. Reading his transcripts reinforces that for me, regardless of my distaste and disgust for his traitorous mumblings every day. Friday, he provided proof positive, in an obvious "slip" of the tongue, that despite his raptorous ramblings about going through treatment and getting clean that no indeed, he's not sober:

LIMBAUGH: And I had -- I played a game yesterday afternoon. I watched a replay of this whole thing, and I said, "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna take a drink in honor of Ted Kennedy of the caravan going to the library there to lie in repose, I'm gonna take a drink for every black person I see on the parade route." And I was sober at the end of the parade. They forgot to stack the deck with any black people, but there were a lot of union thugs out there. I mean, what a -- no better way to honor Ted Kennedy, take a drink for every black person you see on the caravan route.

. . . .Now, yes, there was the all day, every day, racist cracker slant on things in there, but more important, his admission to drinking. So, for those of you who read me to see if you can find anything in here that isn't factual, and try to provide some refutation, here's your "proof" and your "truth". My question for you, after that, is simple. If he's lied to you about being sober, which is the ground zero, the foundation for any sober person, what else has your esteemed Republican leader been lying to you about?

. . . .Now that Freakonomics, by the brilliant economist Steven D. Levitt, has been reissued in an expanded paperback version, (and the book really is brilliant, and different), it may be time to revisit the postulates that Levitt put forth in the 1st edition, and in light of the entirety of the media and societal circus surrounding the health care reform debate, examine them again, and see if they're still holding true:
- Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life
- The conventional wisdom is often wrong
- Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes
- "Experts" use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda
- Knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, makes a complicated world much less so.

. . . .Yes, without having to explain or expand any of the above points, since they're all staring us in the face every day, I'd say he's still pounding the proverbial nail right on the head.

. . . . .Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times, on Saturday. "Our existing health system knocks off more people than an army of 'death panels' could, working 24/7.":

Long-term care constitutes a difficult and expensive challenge in any health system. But the American patchwork, full of cracks through which people fall, has a special problem with medical expenses of all kinds bankrupting couples.

A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills.

The existing system doesn’t just break up families, it also costs lives. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That’s one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour.

In short, it’s a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of “death panels” could — even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters.

So, for those of you inclined to believe the worst about President Obama, think it through. Suppose he is indeed a secret, foreign-born Muslim agent who is scheming to undermine American family values while killing off as many grandmothers as possible.

If all that were true, why on earth would he be trying so hard to reform our health care system? We already know how to prod families into divorce and take a life unnecessarily every 30 minutes — all we need to do is reject reform and stick with exactly what we have.

. . . . .Now, in a unique twist that could only come from the fringe movement that loosely identifies itself as the Republican Party, the entire imaginary science-fiction scenario that they continue to foster around "death panels" does have a grain of truth in it, but that grain of truth, it turns out, is turning around to bite them in the butt. Jacob Weiserg, in his column in this week's Newsweek did some investigation and it turns out that the GOP, with the leadership of Sen. Graessley, one of the foremost fosterers of the outrageous lies, in truth, through a twist in legislation on a bill he sponsored some time ago, have put a financial incentive in the system to "pull the plug on Grandma", specifically in the year 2010.

The republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley's words, "pull the plug on Grandma." According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Sarah Palin has raised the specter of "death panels." Such fears are understandable. It's not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make an early exit. After all, that's been the Republican policy for years.

It was Grassley himself who devised the "Throw Mama From the Train" provision of the GOP's 2001 tax cut. The estate-tax revision he championed will reduce the estate tax to zero next year. But when it expires at year's end, the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley's exploding tax break has an entirely foreseeable, if unintended, consequence: it incentivizes ailing, elderly rich people to end their lives—paging Dr. Kevorkian—before midnight on Dec. 31, 2010. It also gives their children an incentive to sign DNR orders and switch off respirators in time for the deadline. This would be a great plot for a P. D. James novel if it weren't an actual piece of legislation.

. . . .Irony. Ah, I love it. It can have such a delicious twist sometimes.

. . . And it's gotten truly ridiculous when an insurance company exec, on Friday, in the New York Times admitted that they rationed care.

“I believe we’re getting the pushback because we are standing up for what we believe in,” said Cheryl Tidwell, 45, Humana’s director of commercial sales training. “We believe there’s a better way to control costs by controlling utilization and getting people involved in their health care.”

Some workers said that unlike other contributors to the country’s health care problems — the doctors who overprescribe, the hospitals that fail to control infection, the consumers who do not take care of themselves — insurance companies are faceless, impersonal and distant.

They do not save lives. They just pay the bills. When they have reason to interact with patients, it is usually because something has gone wrong. “You’re not having a good day when you’re talking to us, unfortunately,” Mr. Shireman said.

. . . .David Sirota, political columnist comments:

Now, I know we're supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don't ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do - but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that's just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to "control utilization" - that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are "controlled" (read: prevented) from getting it.

Sure, we're all against excessive testing - and there are good ways to deal with those inefficiencies. But that's not what the insurance industry is talking about. It is talking about its practice of rationing care - and now that reality is right there in black and white for all to see.

. . . .Bill Moyers, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday (should be required viewing for everyone). Bill is one of the most reasoned, intelligent people around, and in a very, very long conversation with Bill, had quite a bit to say about health care reform that can be summed up in one phrase; "we're all in the same boat".

. . . .Now, on the same night, earlier in the evening, Bill Moyer's Journal ran a new documentary, by Maggie Mahar, whose province in reporting is strictly health care, filmed it and was driven by her book "Money-Driven Medicine", Mahar speaks:

What I learned, during those years, is that in our health care system, profits often trump patients. A great many people are selling and selling hard. By law, for-profit corporations are supposed to put their shareholders' interests first: this means that they must strive to maximize profits. And this goes a long way toward explaining why U.S. healthcare is so expensive.

. . . .The whole video, which I urge you to watch, can be seen here, at Bill Moyer's Journal.

. . . .I hope and I pray that everyone is now starting to see that fact, that this really is about the existing structure, and the health insurers, against us, and anything else is just a smoke screen being put up by one of their puppets.

. . . .Joe Klein, in this week's Time, on the Republican nihilist jihad that they've turned the health care reform debate into:

It is a very different story among Republicans. To be sure, there are honorable conservatives, trying to do the right thing. There is a legitimate, if wildly improbable, fear that Obama's plan will start a process that will end with a health-care system entirely controlled by the government. There are conservatives — Senator Lamar Alexander, Representative Mike Pence, among many others — who make their arguments based on facts. But they have been overwhelmed by nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal. The philosophically supple party that existed as recently as George H.W. Bush's presidency has been obliterated. The party's putative intellectuals — people like the Weekly Standard's William Kristol — are prosaic tacticians who make precious few substantive arguments but oppose health-care reform mostly because passage would help Barack Obama's political prospects. In 1993, when the Clintons tried health-care reform, the Republican John Chafee offered a creative (in fact, superior) alternative — which Kristol quashed with his famous "Don't Help Clinton" fax to the troops. There is no Republican health-care alternative in 2009. The same people who rail against a government takeover of health care tried to enforce a government takeover of Terri Schiavo's end-of-life decisions. And when Palin floated the "death panel" canard, the number of prominent Republicans who rose up to call her out could be counted on one hand.
An argument can be made that this is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower tiptoed around Joe McCarthy. Obama reminded an audience in Colorado that opponents of Social Security in the 1930s "said that everybody was going to have to wear dog tags and that this was a plot for the government to keep track of everybody ... These struggles have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear." True enough. There was McCarthyism in the 1950s, the John Birch Society in the 1960s. But there was a difference in those times: the crazies were a faction — often a powerful faction — of the Republican Party, but they didn't run it. The neofascist Father Coughlin had a huge radio audience in the 1930s, but he didn't have the power to control and silence the elected leaders of the party that Limbaugh — who, if not the party's leader, is certainly the most powerful Republican extant — does now. Until recently, the Republican Party contained a strong moderate wing. It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?
This may tell us something about the actual state of play on health care: the nutters are a tiny minority; the Republicans are curling themselves into a tight, white, extremist bubble — but there may be enough of them raising dust to render creative public policy impossible. Some righteous anger seems called for, but that's not Obama's style. He will have to come up with something, though — and he will have to do it without the tiniest scintilla of help from the Republican Party.

. . . . Entire article here.

. . . . .Absolutely required reading is The Death of Conservatism by Sam Tenenhaus, a history of how the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party have completely abandoned the principles they were built on, and become a party that has a foundational structure that is nothing more than religious/political dogmatic ideology, dominated by "religious kooks", a phrase taken from Barry Goldwater, who warned of this exact thing back in the '60's. From a review of the new book by Lee Siegel:

The explicit argument first. For Tanenhaus, the conservatives have abandoned their core values of respect for tradition and sensitivity to the necessity of change—of pragmatic, principled adaptability—for a rigid absolutism that expresses itself in a politics of destruction and mechanical negativity.

The party that once stood for governmental ballast and probity in the '50s, and for governmental order and responsibility in the late '60s—as the liberals’ well-intentioned war and their well-intentioned welfare state came crashing down on society—now identified government itself with the forces of evil.

An interesting consequence followed. Since political power can only operate through government, the conservatives had chosen to exert their power more directly, around politics, as it were, by means of cultural confrontation, personal attack, and reflexive stonewalling. This is why conservatives seem most politically organized when out of power, and why when they attain political power, they immediately begin to act like apolitical outlaws.

It’s also why their preferred battleground has been the arena of culture, not politics. As Tanenhaus observes in his book, ever since Buckley equated America’s “ruling class” with “the opinion-makers” (the media, mostly), conservatives have set their sights on liberal dominance of culture. The New Left’s desire to take power by making “the long march through institutions” (i.e. universities) has now become the right wing’s desire to acquire power by making a long march through the media.

. . . .The implosion of that same Republican Party has begun. On Sunday, Dick Cheney appeared on Fox News Sunday, and said that the torture investigation that is starting up "offends the hell out of me" and claims that it is politically motivated. Thank the Creator for John McCain, who along with Orrin Hatch, is about one of only 2 Republicans left that I have even a shred of respect for. McCain was on Face The Nation later in the day, and went right after Cheney. Now, let's get something straight right from the get-go. Cheney is a coward who never wore a uniform, found his way out of it, never faced combat or death and whose only experience pulling a trigger was to shoot his best friend in the face with a shotgun while bird hunting. McCain's record is exemplary, a combat pilot, who faced death every day, and spent 5 years being held prisoner and tortured, his experiences make him the only subject matter expert in a singularly one-sided debate. McCain's reponse to Cheney's assertions around torture? The the torture didn't work, wasn't effective, violated international law and the Geneva Convention, and most importantly, helped recruit new members of Al-Quaeda.
. . . .And on Sunday, on State of the Union on CNN, Senator Orrin Hatch, leading Republican from Utah stated that Vicki Kennedy would be a "great" replacement for her deceased husband in the Senate.

. . . . .Saturday, August 29th, marked the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans. That place is more than just my jumping off point for work, and I am humbled, always, by the undefeated spirit of it's people, and their love for their hometown, and what they've done to rebuild their city, and their region. Do me a favor please? The next time you're vacation down there, quit asking if there are still Hurricane Katrina "tours", and go yourself down to the lower 9th Ward, where the destruction is still quite evident, and people are still living in FEMA trailers, then roll your sleeves up there, or where you live, and ask yourself what you can do to help.

. . . .Sometimes people wonder how long a generation lasts. It should be pretty obvious from this summer that a generation is 40 years. This summer marked the 40th anniversaries of Woodstock, Kent State and the Moonwalk back in '69. The summer of '09 is marked by the deaths of so many, Ted Kennedy's being most prominent, and in my own personal life, the deaths of more people, friends, who were close to me, than any year in recent memory.

. . . . I realize that all of the economic/financial/credit front sometimes seems like homework, or a college MacroEcon 101 course, but you all are very smart people, and like me, understand that everything else, absolutely everything, health care reform, climate challenges, education; absolutely all of it is meaningless without a solvent economy and a robust financial and credit system, and they're all in trouble. It's important to take a look at what's going on, what's coming, and what we can do about it.

. . . . .Time to check in with all of my buddies on the economic/financial front who saw it coming, and no one wanted to listen to them. Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, who is another of my favorite cynics (along with Roubini, Krugman, Stiglitz, Levitt and Zandi) on why there isn't really a recovery going on, and how dangerous things are right now, in the Financial Times over the weekend:

The core of the problem, the unavoidable truth, is that our economic system is laden with debt, about triple the amount relative to gross domestic product that we had in the 1980s. This does not sit well with globalisation. Our view is that government policies worldwide are causing more instability rather than curing the trouble in the system. The only solution is the immediate, forcible and systematic conversion of debt to equity. There is no other option.

Relying on standard models to build policies makes us all fragile and overconfident. Asking the economics establishment for guidance (particularly after its failure to see the risk in the economy) is akin to asking to be led by the blind – instead we need to rebuild the world to make it resistant to the economist’s mystifications.

Invoking the pre-internet Great Depression as guidance for current events is irresponsible: errors in fiscal policy will be magnified by this kind of thinking. Monetary policy has always been dangerous. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, tried playing with the business cycle to iron out bubbles, but it eventually got completely out of control. Bubbles and fads are part of cultural life. We need to do the opposite to what Mr Greenspan did: make the economy’s structure more robust to bubbles.

The only solution is to transform debt into equity across all sectors, in an organised and systematic way. Instead of sending hate mail to near-insolvent homeowners, banks should reach out to borrowers and offer lower interest payments in exchange for equity. Instead of debt becoming “binary” – in default or not – it could take smoothly-varying prices and banks would not need to wait for foreclosures to take action. Banks would turn from “hopers”, hiding risks from themselves, into agents more engaged in economic activity. Hidden risks become visible; hopers become doers.

It is sad to see that those who failed to spot the problem (or helped to cause it) are now in charge of the remedy. Just as the impending crisis was obvious to those of us who specialise in complexity and extreme deviations, the solution is plain to see. We need an aggressive, systematic debt-for-equity conversion. We cannot afford to wait a day.

. . . . . .Roubini, in Forbes, on stopping the cycle of spend-and-borrow:

In the last few months the world economy has been saved from a near-depression. That feat has been achieved by a range of extraordinary government stimulus measures: In the U.S. and in China, and to a lesser extent in Europe, Japan and other countries, governments have pumped liquidity, slashed policy rates, cut taxes, primed demand and ring-fenced and back-stopped the financial system. All of this has worked, but at a cost. Governments have been spending and borrowing like never before. The question now is: how do they stop?

This is not a simple problem. Restore normality too soon and the risk is that a weak recovery will double dip into a second and deeper recession. Restore it too late and inflation will already be ingrained.

. . . . .Krugman, in yesterday's New York Times on debt:

So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many commentators, that’s a terrifying number, requiring drastic action — in particular, of course, canceling efforts to boost the economy and calling off health care reform.

The truth is more complicated and less frightening. Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it’s not catastrophic.

The only real reason for concern is political. The United States can deal with its debts if politicians of both parties are, in the end, willing to show at least a bit of maturity. Need I say more?

So is there anything to worry about? Yes, but the dangers are political, not economic.

As I’ve said, those 10-year projections aren’t as bad as you may have heard. Over the really long term, however, the U.S. government will have big problems unless it makes some major changes. In particular, it has to rein in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending.

That shouldn’t be hard in the context of overall health care reform. After all, America spends far more on health care than other advanced countries, without better results, so we should be able to make our system more cost-efficient.

But that won’t happen, of course, if even the most modest attempts to improve the system are successfully demagogued — by conservatives! — as efforts to “pull the plug on grandma.”

So don’t fret about this year’s deficit; we actually need to run up federal debt right now and need to keep doing it until the economy is on a solid path to recovery. And the extra debt should be manageable. If we face a potential problem, it’s not because the economy can’t handle the extra debt. Instead, it’s the politics, stupid.

. . . . .Now, the next thing that will knock us down and take this economy under? Commercial real-estate. The country is reeling from the subprime crisis and the incredible amount of residential foreclosures, it would only logically follow that commercial would be next. From the Wall Street Journal:

Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat.

Their efforts could be undermined by a surge in foreclosures of commercial property carrying mortgages that were packaged and sold by Wall Street as bonds. Similar mortgage-backed securities created out of home loans played a big role in undoing that sector and triggering the global economic recession. Now the $700 billion of commercial-mortgage-backed securities outstanding are being tested for the first time by a massive downturn, and the outcome so far hasn't been pretty.

. . . . .Which brings us to a couple of things. I do have a tendency to rail on about the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, Goldman-Sachs & JP Morgan Chase. Texas Representative Ron Paul has asked for some time, and introduced a resolution to audit the Fed and make it transparent right now, just exactly how much money it has, and where any monies owed or due are coming from. Now, House Finance Committee Chair, Rep. Barney Frank has joined in, and promised passage of a Fed audit resolution by Fall. Ryan Grim reports here.

. . . .As well as the obvious reasons, one more credit market indicator that Summers, Geithner and Bernanke are taking the kid gloves approach to Wall Street. Bloomberg reports that Wall Street's leverage practices are rising at their fastest pace since 2007, the very same action that led to September of 2008's debacle:

Banks are increasing lending to buyers of high-yield company loans and mortgage bonds at what may be the fastest pace since the credit-market debacle began in 2007.

Credit Suisse Group AG and Scotia Capital, a unit of Canada’s third-largest bank, said they’re offering credit to investors who want to purchase loans. SunTrust Banks Inc., which left the business last year, is “reaching out to clients” to provide financing, said Michael McCoy, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based bank. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are doing the same for loans and mortgage-backed securities, said people familiar with the situation.

The increase suggests money is being used for riskier home- loan, corporate and asset-backed securities because it excludes Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage bonds guaranteed by Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia or Ginnie Mae in Washington. Broader data on loans for investments isn’t available.

The increase over that 14-week stretch is the biggest since the period that ended April 2007, three months before two Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds failed because of leveraged investments. The world’s largest financial institutions have taken $1.6 trillion in writedowns and losses since the start of 2007, helping to trigger the worst financial calamity since the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

. . . .While here on Main Street, in your own home, things just keep getting a little worse, day by day. Reuters reports that millions of people have had their credit card limits cut, and millions more are facing it as the deadline for new consumer protection actions comes onto the horizon. It's the biggest industry shake-up in 20 years.

Millions of Americans have already seen their credit card limits shrink, and millions more face the same fate as lenders prepare for tougher U.S. consumer protection rules.

Since the financial crisis deepened a year ago, credit card companies have been closing millions of inactive accounts, cutting credit limits and raising interest rates to cushion themselves from record loan losses.

This is just the beginning of the biggest shake-up in the credit card industry in at least 20 years, analysts said.

. . . . .Now, what this entire financial mess means on another close to home front is that farmers are facing their lowest crop prices in years. Farm incomes are down 38% this year, and farmers are barely hanging on. The Wall Street Journal reports in:

"The Agriculture Department said it expects net farm income -- a widely followed measure of profitability -- to drop to $54 billion in 2009, down $33.2 billion from last year's estimated net farm income of $87.2 billion, which was nearly a record high. The drop in farm prices is likely to lead to a slower increase in food costs for American consumers, economists say."
"Gene Gourley, who raises 60,000 hogs every year on his farm in Webster City, Iowa, is losing as much as $30 on each hog he sells. He said Thursday that he is rethinking plans to buy a trailer for hauling feed to his livestock. 'With hogs losing so much money, you're basically burning up anything you could have saved," said Mr. Gourley. "You just don't have the equity to go buy new upgrades.'"

. . . . .Bloomberg reports in on the same:

"'I haven't talked to a dairy farmer who isn't losing money,' said Jim Goodman, an organic-milk producer who farms 500 acres about 70 miles northwest of Madison, Wisconsin.

Farms with at least 1,000 cows are losing $30,000 to $40,000 a month, Goodman said. Revenue from dairy products may fall 34 percent this year to $23 billion, while the value of meat animals will drop 11 percent, according to the USDA. "

. . . . .What this means for all of us here at home is kind of a "perfect storm". As jobs are lost, and incomes are reduced, there is less household money available for food, higher prices mean that we'll all be buying the cheaper food, and farmers will be making less money. As farmers make less money, more will go out of the farming business, leaving it to the agribusiness megacorporations, which can then act as a cartel, fixing prices. . . .can anyone say oil? Sound familiar? Because it's what's coming.

. . . . .Now, there is another challenge facing farmers which will affect all of us. That's arable land and available water.

. . . . . .Know the quickest way to make either a conservative or a liberal's eyes glaze over and have them begin repeating canned talking points from the experts and pundits on their respective sides? Say the words "global warming", "global cooling", or "climate change".

. . . . .Here's what I know, and where I come from
- I deal only in data and fact, measurables
- When those facts are presented, I'm not stupid enough to fool myself and think that I know either (a) a cause or (b) an answer. I know that we've been on this planet for only an eyeblink in the expanse of time, and can have no knowledge whatsoever of what planetary or "long" cycles may exist, or what they entail. In terms of answers, I don't think we have any yet, (and as a side note, cap-and-trade is simply lunacy. The idea of making carbon emissions a tradeable commodity makes about as much sense as developing heretofore unknown forms of credit derivatives and trading them for profit, oh yeah, that's right, we already tried that. Didn't work out so well.)

. . . .So anyhow, here are the facts, the data, as they come up, (and this is another section that we'll start to add in this walkabout, this column, about the Grand Unified Field Theory of Everything)
- The Department of Defense and the Department of Defense (two pretty reliable sources) are taking it seriously, and running scenarios and making plans:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.
But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest.

“The sense that climate change poses security and geopolitical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office,” said Peter Ogden, chief of staff to Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate negotiator.

Although military and intelligence planners have been aware of the challenge posed by climate changes for some years, the Obama administration has made it a central policy focus.

A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.

Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.

. . . . . .Another report zeros in on the rural Midwestern states, home to many farmers:

rural Midwestern states will face the greatest consequences of climate change. The three that will face the steepest rise in temperature -- Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa -- are farm states whose soil will be significantly less productive as temperatures rise more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit there by 2100.

The rise by by 2050 -- only 41 years from now -- is also projected to be substantial. (Click here for an interactive map of the analysis.)

. . . . .NASA reports that this July 2009 is the second hottest on record globally, going back over a hundred years.

. . . . .And anyone at all who has lived through this Summer of '09 with it's record temps in the South and the West and it's lack of rain, contrasted with the wet, soaked summer that wasn't in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes has your own mirror to look into and know that something, somehow is changing. As of this morning, it's not an exaggeration to say that California, and Los Angeles are burning. 71 square miles in the Angeles National Forest, 2 firefighters dead, and entire cities like Pasadena and Glendale under mandatory evacuation orders.

. . . .And this one, another study that looks at what summers will be like in the next 40 years, based on mathematical models of current trends:

The findings are startling, as the study found that even a modest amount of global warming would have a large effect on weather extremes, including extreme heat events. In a sobering set of tables, the group projected that Chicago and New York could experience more extreme heat in August 40 years from now than Atlanta experiences today. The real threat of these heat waves isn’t higher power bills and sweaty armpits; it’s the cascading set of health impacts they would inflict upon the vulnerable populations of American cities.

Extreme weather events can wreak havoc upon unprepared populations, such as the Chicago heat wave of 1995 and the 2003 European heat wave, which killed an estimated 40,000 people. These heat waves have proven especially deadly to vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and persons with respiratory illness. Health officials have found themselves besieged in unanticipated extreme weather events, as infants and the elderly succumb to extreme heat or from air pollution exacerbated by high temperatures.

. . . .Now, getting back to arable, farmable land in the United States and what farmers face, and consequently we face, this study, done at Cornell University, presents some pretty grim facts:

• At the present growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population will double to more than half a billion people within the next 60 years. It is estimated that approximately one acre of land is lost due to urbanization and highway construction alone for every person added to the U.S. population.
• This means that only 0.6 acres of farmland would be available to grow food for each American in 2050, as opposed to the 1.8 acres per capita available today. At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards. Food prices are projected to increase 3 to 5-fold within this period.
• If present population growth, domestic food consumption and topsoil loss trends continue, the U.S. will most likely cease to be a food exporter by approximately 2025 because food grown in the U.S. will be needed for domestic purposes.
• Since food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually, the loss of this income source would result in an even greater increase in America's trade deficit.
• Considering that America is the world's largest food exporter, the future survival of millions of people around the world may also come into question if food exports from the U.S. were to cease.

. . . . Now, in reference to point 2, there are some solid geographical facts that we have to face. It took 10,000 years to put the topsoil in place in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and other farming states. There is, at best, a good inch of it left. In the high-minded debates that everyone wants to engage in, topsoil, dirt is not a topic that anyone wants to talk about, but got news kiddies, dirt is where it all starts, and where it will all end.

. . . .Water is the other thing that no one ever wants to talk about in every high-minded conceptual debate about what's happening, but there's one more fact about water that everyone needs to bear in mind. Only 1% of the world's water supply is drinking water.

. . . .The rule of 3's. 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. It's lights out.

. . . .Water and dirt, where it all began, and where'll it'll end, because we're not keeping our eye on the ball.

. . . .Finally today, Barbara V. sent this along, entirely appropriate, on the day Ted Kennedy was buried. It's a message Grandpa Fools Crow, that yes, is entirely appropriate for Ted, but also Barbara, for you, and for the vast number of friends that I have across this Nation; good people, all of you, who have a voice, and aren't afraid to use it, and to stand up:

There are certain prayers or actions we can take that will call the Powers. The Powers can only work through the people. The Powers are always waiting to express themselves through people that are ready. Every person born is born with a purpose. They have a song to sing. They have a mission to accomplish. Every true purpose will always be about serving the Creator and helping others. When we let the Powers know that we are ready to serve the people, the Powers get excited because they can now do things to help the people and make things better for them. The decision is powerful because it turns an idea into action.
Great Spirit, the greatest joy or feeling that I have ever experienced is when you are using me to help the people, the feeling of giving, the feeling of being your channel. Today, let me have that feeling of giving. Use me as You will.

. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.