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"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 28 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Repost - Six Decades Of What Could Only Be Described As 'Anti-Americanism' - The Whats And Whys Of 'Where Did I Go Wrong?' [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 5:48 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Around this time of year, some brave souls venture to put their reputations at risk by attempting to predict what the next year will bring. Some do so with uncanny accuracy, others — not so much. Being a serious author who hardly ever makes jokes, I generally sit out this annual bout of frivolity, but, noting that a new decade is about to burst upon us, I thought it reasonably safe to paint a picture of how I see the next decade. (In the unlikely case that my predictions turn out to be completely wrong, I would think that they will have been very thoroughly forgotten by the time 2020 rolls around.) And so, without further ado, here are my predictions for what it will be like in The United States of America during the second decade of the XXI century.The decade will be marked by many instances of autophagy, in business, government, and in the higher echelons of society, as players at all levels find that they are unable to control their appetites or alter their behavior in any meaningful way, even in the face of radically altered circumstances, and are thus compelled to consume themselves into oblivion, as so many disemboweled yet still ravenous sharks endlessly gorging themselves on their own billowing entrails.
Governments will find that they are unable to restrain themselves from printing ever more money in an endless wave of uncontrolled emission. At the same time, rising taxes, commodity prices, and costs of all kinds, coupled with a rising overall level of uncertainty and disruption, will curtail economic activity to a point where little of that money will still circulate. Inflationists and deflationists will endlessly debate whether this should be called inflation or deflation, unconsciously emulating the big-endians and little-endians of Jonathan Swifts Gulliver's Travels, who endlessly debated the proper end from which to eat a soft-boiled egg...
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 24 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: It's Christmas Eve And Your Covered In Guilt Bubbbie? The Cabale News Service Solution To Last Minute Christmas Shopping (Ht/t John Lundberg)... Shop Drunk [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 13:08 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Cop Pulls Gun During Snowball Fight
Around 2.30PM on Saturday, December 19, during a historic snowstorm, residents at the intersection of 14th and U Streets NW started throwing snowballs at passing Hummers.
One of the cars pelted was driven by a plainclothes police officer identified only as Det. Baylor. Baylor got out of his car and brandished his gun at the crowd.
Reason.tv's Dan Hayes was on the scene, capturing the tense confrontation between police and citizens who chanted "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"
Approximately 5 minutes; harsh language throughout.
"Then he gets on his off duty radio demanding an emergency assist. Officer's responding to this idiot call could have hurt themselves thinking an officer is in trouble..."H/t to Alternet, with a pertinent question... "Could it Have Been 'Roid Rage'?"
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 23 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Willing To Sacrifice Any Future Progress Because They Don't Believe There WILL Be A Future - The Republicans, Evangelical Christianity And Apocalyptic Politics [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 9:52 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 22 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: 'Give Socks' - Dwelling On The Essence Of 'Christmas Past' [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 14:01 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
The Sunday Times (online.uk)As a news hound it nice to know one needs to peruse foreign newspapers to find out how desperate the state of health care is in one's own country
December 20, 2009
Deep South calls in Iran to cure its health blues
In ground-breaking project, one of America’s poorest communities is turning to the Middle East to try to resolve its crisis
AS Marie Pryor shuffles along a Mississippi roadside collecting discarded drink cans to sell for a few cents, her breath comes in short puffs caused by a congenital heart defect. The same condition caused her granddaughter’s death earlier this year.
The last place on earth she would look for help is Iran, a country widely regarded in America as the enemy. The US and Iran have not had diplomatic relations for 30 years and the two governments trade daily insults over Iran’s nuclear programme. Last week Tehran charged three American hikers with espionage after they apparently strayed across the border.
But with Congress acrimoniously debating the reform of healthcare, it is to Iran that one of America’s poorest communities is turning to try to resolve its own health crisis...[In Full]
"The FBI money-laundering and corruption dragnet in New Jersey yesterday garnered 44 perps including a couple of Rabbis who were peddling black market human kidneys at $160,000 each. See: "'Breathtakingly stupid' defines the 44 caught in the N.J. corruption sting" (Source: NJ.com, July 23, 2009)Also see this currently breaking story for more on the Israeli global medical assistance plan: "Israel admits to organ harvesting" (Source: Canoe.ca, December 20, 2009)
Re Eurostar Back On Track Starting Tuesday (online, Dec. 21): An old British Rail explanation for winter train delays was that they received the "wrong kind of snow." I await the official explanation for a series of breakdowns that stranded 2,000 passengers aboard five trains inside the Channel Tunnel. Was it too dark or warm and humid inside? Did someone forget to shake the snow off his boots before tracking inside? [In Full]According to the Wall Street Journal, service was scheduled to return to 2/3 capacity today, but no solid evidence of that has been reported so far, and this: "Currently all service is suspended on the Channel Tunnel with hopes to be back up and running within days." was reported at 2pm Pacific Standard Time Tuesday @ BlackBook.
Poor people who are desperate (the headline says "for cash" although that IS NOT mentioned by the good priest... Freudian headline writing by an overworked underpaid newswriter?) have been advised to go forth and shoplift from major stores - by an Anglican priest.
The Rev Tim Jones said in his Sunday sermon that stealing from successful shops was preferable to burglary, robbery or prostitution.
He told parishioners it would not break the eighth commandment 'thou shalt not steal' because it 'is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve'.
But his advice was roundly condemned by police and the local Tory MP.
Father Jones, 42, was discussing Mary and the birth of Jesus when he went on to the subject of how poor and vulnerable people cope in the run-up to Christmas. [In Full]
Blue Christmas
By James Howard Kunstler
December 21, 2009
As the end-credits rolled for James Cameron's new movie, Avatar, the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show -- but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march.
More to the point, the depiction of our national character through the whole course of the film was of a thuggish, cruel, cynical, stupid, detestable, and totally corrupt people bent on the complete destruction of nature. Nice.
And the final irony was that Cameron had used theatrical technology of the latest and greatest kind to depict America's broader techno-grandiosity -- as the army's brute robotic warriors fell to the spears and arrows of the simple blue space aliens.
Altogether, it was a weird moment in entertainment history, and perhaps in the American experience per se. No doubt audiences overseas will go wild with delight, too, but perhaps with a clearer notion of what they are clapping for than the enthralled masses of zombie Americans.
The infatuation with technology, and the disgusting cockiness that goes with it (so well-captured in Avatar), is but one facet of the psychosis gripping the nation -- and by that I mean the profound detachment from reality.
We have no idea what is happening to us and, naturally, no idea of what we are going to do.
I sat in a bar Friday evening with a financial reporter from a national newspaper, trying to explain the peak oil situation and what it implied for our economy.
He had never heard it before. The relationship between energy resources and massive debt was new to him. (It also came up in conversation that he could not tell me what the Monroe Doctrine was about, despite a history degree from Yale.)
There you have a nice snapshot of the mainstream media in this land...
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 21 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: From Disappointment To Disinclination To Abhorrence - Tis The Season Again... The Season Of 'Obverse Christianity' [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 18:12 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Health care overhaul or no, rural Texas (and many other rural areas of America) will still lack doctors
Dianna Hunt
(McClatchy) Fort Worth Star-Telegram
December 21, 2009
"Despite efforts to increase the number of physicians in rural and other underserved areas, shortages persist. Twenty-two counties, mostly in West Texas and the Panhandle, were without a doctor as of October, and more than two dozen counties listed one physician, according to a Star-Telegram analysis of state licensing records." [In Full]
PakAlert Press annoys me sometimes because Razer doesn't "Do" apocalyptic thinking, but it's a valuable source of little known information, and this well-detailed article (sourced from Marketskeptics) is a harbinger of higher food prices to come."All someone needs to do to know the world is headed is for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA is saying.
Meanwhile many Americans continue to be under-or-unemployed, or working at McDonalds just to keep a roof over their heads and try to live on food bank food.... Food banks BTW that are experiencing a MASSIVE influx new 'customers' even as the US Agricultural-Industrial Complex can no longer produce enough food to provide the surplus those 'banks' require.
Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.
On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it -- you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!
As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.
Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us -- and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way.
But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at.
So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people...
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 18 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Plan For Legalization Of Marijuana In California Part Three - How To "Harvest, Cure, And Distribute" The End Results Of A Win For Legal Marijuana On The California Ballot [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 14:30 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
"Because Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, her husband, Zardari, ended up as president and became a chief beneficiary of the amnesty. In the 1990s he had become known as Mr. Ten Percent because he allegedly took a cut of contracts with foreign firms.
Musharraf's National Reconciliation Order was what in the US would be called an 'executive order,' a sort of presidential law-making of which the Pakistani Supreme Court is now increasingly critical. And so the Supreme Court struck down the amnesty as unconstitutional.
The reinstatement of the corruption cases in turn caused the Supreme Court to declare over 200 important political figures flight risks and to forbid them to leave the country. One of these was Minister of the Interior Rehman Malik, who was detained at Karachi yesterday on his way to Beijing." [In Full]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 17 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Health Care Reform Sitrep - A Change In Tactics May Be Necessary Now That The Republicans, With Help From Some Democrats, Have Decided To 'Over-Kill Bill' [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 14:42 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
At the global warming summit in Copenhagen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US is willing to contribute to a $100 billion a year fund to help poorer countries mitigate the effect of climate change. But a strong agreement still looks unlikely. [In Full]
"...a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the public generally fearful that a revamped system would bring higher costs while worsening the quality of their care." [In Full]
Washington Post
December 16, 2009
Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan, congressional agency says
By Walter Pincus
"Contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States."
The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service." [In Full]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." December 16 2009 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Plan For Legalization Of Marijuana In California Part Two - Setting It Up To Be Controlled By Counties And Municipalities Is BRILLIANT But It Will Take More... YOU... Changing Your Local Governments [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 10:37 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Cap & Trade: A Critical Look at Carbon Trading
Will the expansion of carbon emissions trading help stop global warming or just create a new market for Wall Street to make billions? We air excerpts of Annie Leonard’s The Story of Cap and Trade and speak with Larry Lohmann and Frank Ackerman. [In Full]
Iran tests new long-range missile
Iran successfully tested an upgraded surface-to-surface missile this morning, which it claims has a longer range and greater maneuverability than its existing Shahab model. If true, the new Sejil would be capable of hitting targets in Europe and U.S. bases in the Gulf. [In Full]