Jay Toups

Enjoy what could well be our last few months of culturally reinforced American insularity and relative plenitude. But at least put this bit of news in your pipe and smoke it in the meantime.  Talk about it with family and friends. Or start digging up your backyard to grow some veggies.

I’m a happy guy despite how it may appear, but I am concerned about our economic situation. And I’m sure you probably are as well. If you aren’t concerned yet, you will be, even if you are a filthy rich redneck living off the grid at the end of your private road.

I think Americans across the board are about to experience a whole new world of hardship and economic pain that is incomprehensible to most of us at this juncture. I really hope not, but I’m not going betting against this out of control economic freight train.

“Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle silly video moments, fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.”

Link to Truthdig article.

So what’s the big problem? The rest of the world’s leading nations are actively dumping the dollar as reserve currency. What does this mean? How about the end of the American way of life. The end of American hegemony. The end of rampant militarization.  And possibly much, much worse.

When we elected Barack Obama, I was hopeful until I realized (again) that the problems which ail our country are fatal flaws that no politician can possibly fix. We are beyond broke. But of course, Obama’s good at fixing small problems with a single swat.

We are to put it mildly, screwed. Don’t say you didn’t know or believe the worst was still in front of you, read the article and get ready for the next economic crapstorm.

Hide me as a friend if you don’t like the topic. Or thank me later after you acknowledge that nobody you know is really talking about what’s going to happen next in this country. It’s called denial.

Or don’t thank me at all. But at least try to remove as much of yourself from the tracks as you can or you might get squashed flat like a Lincoln cent or smushed like the fly in the vid.

Everything Americans think they know, they learned from a televised morality play. It’s all theater. You root for some good guy and boo some bad guy. You pick your own, but you dance to the tune of the men running the show. It’s mind control, pure and simple, and if there is an American immune to it, then he is probably living in a snow cave somewhere in Alaska.

- Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988), prospector, self-educated philosopher and horse trader

Source: Joe Bageant

We are supposedly a God-fearing country. You may or may not be a God-fearing person. But there’s something even more fearful going on right before our very eyes: the crumbling of America’s economic foundation.

The United States economy is in freefall across all sectors. Banking. Finance. Insurance. Housing. Commercial Real Estate. Automobiles. Auto Parts. Retail. Fast Food. We are sliding into a bottomless chasm of long-term debt from which we may never recover. America and its people are being led off an economic cliff by horribly stupid politicians, anachronistic budget policies, and a preoccupied, mostly clueless electorate.

Americans saw $1.3 trillion of wealth vaporize in the first quarter of 2009 alone, as the stock market and home values continued to decline, according to the flow of funds report by the Federal Reserve released Thursday.

I believe America needs to do an about face and invest in peace for any real positive change to occur in our country’s direction. I don’t believe we should invest heavily in the tools of war and expect our desperate economic and environmental situations to improve.

Why do we insist on digging America’s hole deeper? Is this the real American Way? Why will we burn through more than 600 billion dollars on military expenditures in 2009? Look at the difference between the USA and its nearest-spending military and economic “rival” China. That 522 billion dollar differential could solve a lot of problems in this country. And to keep us all safe, we’d still be at parity with China’s military budget.

Another way to look at this militarized rape of the country’s budget?

Add the figures for the next 9 countries and you get 476.4 billion. That’s right, America spends more on planes, guns, bullets, grunts and combat boots than the entire rest of the world combined.

This is not the kind of momentum America needs or can afford. We need to secure our borders here at home and invest in domestic programs that result in greater economic security. We need to stop the bleeding and start healing our national psychosis. We can claim there are bad guys out to get America, but the baddest, most dangerous guys are the folks in Washington selling us all up the river without a paddle.

President Obama, are you listening? You better listen, that’s why we elected you and not that other guy.

Top 10 military spenders in 2008 ($bn)

1. USA 607
2. China 84.9
3. France 65.7
4. UK 65.3
5. Russia 58.6
6. Germany 46.8
7. Japan 46.3
8. Italy 40.6
9. Saudi Arabia 38.2
10. India 30

These are conservative estimates, putting America’s military expenditures at about 36 percent of our annual budget. Some watchdog organizations peg US military spending at 54 percent of the US Budget for 2009. That’s 1.449 trillion dollars!

At what point will the straw break the camel’s back, President Obama? Congress? The middle class can only take so much. Will you raise my taxes to pay the interest on the national debt? I hear my share will soon be $155,000.

Send me a bill. I dare you.

Source:  Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri)

Devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the beachfront towns of south Mississippi are now facing unprecedented environmental threats by developers. Most recently, they’ve begun knocking down formerly “protected” trees to make room for their ambitious condo and commercial building projects. It appears the local city governments are powerless and the money people are moving in to stay in Biloxi and Gulfport. What a shame.

Link to article in the Sun-Herald.

Earth’s Human Population (in billions)

1800: 1.0
1900: 1.7
2000: 6.1
2100: a range of possible scenarios:

a) with one-child families: 1.4
b) with two-child families: 8.7
c) at year 2001 growth rate: 22.2

Note: 1 billion = 1,000 million = 1,000,000,000

In 2001, the growth rate (birth rate minus death rate) of the world population was 1.3 percent per year. If this rate of growth remains constant into the future, there will be 22.2 billion people on Earth in the year 2100. Just in time for the oceans to rise and wipe out hundreds of the world’s largest cities.

Thanks to http://www.rprogress.org/newprojects/ecolFoot/faq/index.shtml for the information. Original data derived from: UN Population Division, http://esa.un.org/unpp, “World Population Prospects” (World population database, 2000) and Population Resources Bureau, http://www.prb.org.