Kunstler Takes on Krugman

March 10, 2008
Going Going....

The feigned cluelessness in Paul Krugman's Sunday New York Times column ("The Face-Slap Theory") about the meltdown in finance is a good index of the cringing mendacity now emanating from those in service to the centers of power. I doubt an editor, or the publisher, Mr. Sulzberger, had to whisper in his ear to soft-pedal the situation. I don't even believe anything like his job depends on it. Krugman's glossing-over the truth is just social cowardice. He doesn't want to be called out dissing fellow members of his club.

Krugman avers to the Federal Reserve's two previous big efforts since August to bail out the insolvent banks, insurers, and hedge funds with cheap loans as "slaps in the faces" of these wobbling corporations -- "yo, wake the fuck up!" -- as if narcolepsy was their only problem. (Try that with a wino on the sidewalk outside the Port Authority bus terminal and see if he immediately signs up for rehab and a high school equivalency program.) Krugman calls the club's latest plan -- for the Fed to just suck up their impaired and worthless collateral in exchange for more cheap loans -- as a "third slap," saying, with all the panache of a midwestern Rotary Club secretary, that "the third time could be the charm." Had the monkeys already flown out of his butt as he wrote that, I wonder.

The line in Krugman's column I love best, though is this one: "Last month another market you’ve never heard of, the $300 billion market for auction-rate securities (don’t ask), suffered the equivalent of a bank run." His presumes that his readers go along with his pretense of innocence. We've never heard of the municipal bond market and it's too complicated to explain so "don't ask." Is he writing for the "newspaper of record" or Highlights For Children? Maybe it would be a good thing if readers of The New York Times asked what the fuck was going on in these markets so they could yank their depreciating dollars out and deploy them elsewhere or convert them into something of value.

Well it was a bad week on the money scene in what is sure to be a worsening year. Paul Krugman and his fellow club members can pretend that the hallucinated finance economy is not really flying to pieces. After all, he / they are trying to avert panic. But, as noted previously in this space, the only thing we have to fear is not fear itself. We have to fear the consequences of actions by a banking leadership that has shown the grossest irresponsibility (and an American public that has been conditioned to expect a steady diet of getting something for nothing). The US faces a pretty stark choice right now: it can let the losers take their losses -- both the big institutions who created and traded in fraudulent securities, and all the "little guys" who borrowed too much money trying to get rich quick, or trying to live like the millionaires they see on TV. We can let them go down, and suffer the consequences of their bad choices (and maybe prosecute some of the culpable bankers and corporate executives), OR, in an effort to let these losers off the hook we can wreck the whole machinery of capital by making our medium-of-exchange worthless.

The people in charge -- both in and out of government -- can't face the losses, so for now they've apparently decided to wreck the currency. The dollar has lost two percent of its value against the Euro just in recent weeks, as cheap loans from the Fed pour into the black hole on Wall Street (never to be seen again). Other soft-pedalers in the media claim that the financial markets have "already priced in" yet another expected .75-point interest rate drop by the Fed this week, but I'm confident that such a move will only accelerate the dollar's vanishing act.

I'll admit, it's hard to believe what's going on in the American finance sector. But incredulity in the face of a rare catastrophe isn't the same as pretending that it's not happening. A whole flock of black swans is flying in front of the sun. Don't expect to work on your tan this month.

Kunstler Speaks on The Tragedy of Suburbia

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/121

I found the link at 2blowhards.com.

William F. Buckley est Mort

Here.

28 February update: Selected commentary on Bill Buckley's legacy:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/westley/westley26.html

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2008/02/given-the-melli.html

http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2008/02/talk-radio-mourns-passing-of-william-f.html

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/02/bill-buckley-was-a-good-man.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019662.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019644.html

The CIA agent, founder of the modern conservative movement, enforcer of warfare-state discipline on the right, brilliant writer and editor, transoceanic sailor, harpsichordist, TV star, charming aristocrat, founder of National Review and Young Americans for Freedom, enabler of neoconservatism, expeller of heretics from Birchers to Rothbardians, and thoroughly bad ideological influence in general, is dead at 82.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=291671

http://leagueofthesouth.net/rebellion/index.php/site/buckley_bush_not_a_true_conservative/

29 February update: James Wolcott links to Dennis Perrin, who doesn't hesitate to speak ill of the dead.

Rich Lowry's retrospective on Buckley, originally from a 2004 issue of National Review.

Lew Rockwell and company have many posts on Buckley, diverging greatly from the standard line that Buckley was the saviour of modern conservatism. Below, a choice example:

Buckley's Tainted Coup
Posted by Lew Rockwell at February 29, 2008 10:44 AM
Writes Kevin Griffin: "William F. Buckley, Jr., was a favorite among 'liberals' (albeit, not classical liberals) because he purged the conservative movement of their nemeses: the Original Rightists. Buckley was the prototypical Big-Government conservative, i.e., the Cold War Democrats' Republican. His 'New Right' movement has since been augmented by the statist force of the neoconservatives. Thus, behold the end result of Buckley's tainted coup: John Sidney McCain III."

And a McCainite praises Buckley:
When he founded National Review more than 50 years ago (and to me, it does seem like only yesterday), conservatism looked like a dead philosophy. Prior to World War II, the dominant Republican philosophy on foreign policy was isolationism. In fiscal affairs, Republicans -- well, most of them -- were in favor of a balanced budget, something that was unlikely during World War II and in the subsequent Cold War.

Buckley's conservatism contained a strong element of traditional Roman Catholicism, although with a deep suspicion of Rooseveltian governmental intervention in people's affairs. Most of all, Buckley was opposed to collectivism, the dominant viewpoint underlying Communism, which appeared at the time to be the main competitor for mankind's hearts and minds.

1 March update: Cockburn weighs in.

17 March update: Grant Jones's Dougout posts Edward Cline's good-riddance.

The Nutty CEO

Kunstler's latest Grunt takes on overly optimistic claims that airplanes can run on palm-oil derived biofuel. I've heard of the coconut wireless, and coconut radio, but coconut airplanes?

February 25, 2008

Blowing More Green Smoke Up Our Own Ass

Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson announced the beginning of "green" air travel with great fanfare over the weekend by flying a big Airbus jet plane on a combination of coconut and palm oil derived fuel. Now the public is supposed to rest assured that the airline industry has been "saved" by "new technology." It's possible that Branson actually believes this bullshit -- since, contrary to conventional belief, you don't have to be especially intelligent to succeed in business. But the public is sure to be disappointed as reality asserts itself and they discover that the stunt doesn't scale world-wide. That is, sure, you can demonstrate that "a" jet plane can fly on bio-fuel. But can you run the entire global airline fleet on coconut and palm oil, or even a fraction of it? Of course not -- unless you cut down the entire Amazon rain forest and replant it with oil tree crops. Not to mention that the CO2 emissions spraying out of bio-fuel jets at 38,000 feet is not materially different from regular jet fuel exhaust. This is just another tragic attempt to persuade ourselves that we don't have to change our behavior.

===
This Guardian article is also skeptical:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/25/biofuels.theairlineindustry?gusrc=rss&feed=media

Peak Oil Apocalypse

From a British nationalist perspective. The scenario laid out is in ways much bleaker than Kunstler's predictions. But there are opportunities to survive and even prosper in a post-oil age.

The Long Emergency in South Africa

February 4, 2008:
I got a letter from a lady in South Africa:
"I am watching South Africa with an eye on what, when and how the global trends contributing to your Long Emergency will start taking effect. But the government here, together with some outside influences of the stock market, have plunged South Africa into the Premature Long Emergency. It has only been a couple of weeks, but the country is in dire straits. . . ."
...
http://www.kunstler.com/Grunt_SouthAfrica.html

SOUTH AFRICA IN THE PREMATURE LONG EMERGENCY

February 4, 2008

It began with a few potholes in the roads, the odd interruption to the water supply in the suburbs, a couple of days with strike action preventing the delivery of municipal services – no garbage collection, protest action disrupting the mining industry and picketing & toy toying at shopping malls…It continued over the next couple of years, largely with disregard for the disruptions, a little irritation to daily commercial and home life by the lack of service provision in food, gas, water and power. In recent months, at the receivables end of the supply chain, there was a little aggravation at the delays, the lack of service, the shortage of a few consumer luxuries in the retail shops…, ‘but hey, what the hell, this is a great country, we cannot fault the lifestyle, the weather…’. For a couple of months, perhaps a year back or so, there seemed little or no reason to change our way of life, our lifestyles…a little further down the road and the disruptions become more frequent, we learn to cope, learn to accept the rising cost of living, gas supply shortages in the Winter of 2007, the intermittent water disruptions, the odd power outage and the potholes. Potholes may well be the singular measure of the calamity we are in or about to face. We accept the transitions in South Africa, but it is all very well passing over these problems in the name of development, infrastructure development, greater housing plans and urbanization as a promised deliverable by the ANC government, together with the balancing of the wealth quotient. Access to finance and the shift of the material wealth are an indication of the success of the plans for economic growth in the New South Africa. So, there have been interesting times, a few PDI’s (previously disadvantaged individuals), through black economic empowerment, becoming significantly enriched through commerce and business and, dare I say, politics. But the cracks that are now evident are tell tails signs, not only of the effectivity of the New South Africa and an explanation of the path traveled to this point in time, but more of what is promised for the future. And the future may be more a by product of global issues than issues unique and unfortunate to South Africa.

So what do we have at hand, what are the reactions and what are the consequences??? South Africa has been flung full tilt into a Premature Long Emergency. In the up market suburbs, not least to say generally all over the urban landscape, there is not a 1km (1/2 mile) strip of tarred road that is not full of potholes (hugh gapping holes, across which vehicles cannot drive), the roadside curbs are disintegrating, the road maintenance programmes over the last 10 years have failed to maintain the roads in a serviceable and passable state. The nation is gripped in a crisis of rolling power outages caused by the incompetence of highly paid government ministers and their charges. The news of the weekend is that the nation is in dire straits with the supply of clean, drinkable water to households and business alike. We are faced with unusual weather patterns, floods at the moment, high rain fall for the Summer, the expectation of an early, long cold Winter.

THE POWER EMERGENCY

The rolling power outages are resulting in about a 25% national power outage per month. The ramifications of this can be related directly to an income loss of the same amount, retail supplies are being interrupted and from a security point of view it is dangerous to shop in malls. The Electricity Supply Commission – ESKOM are indicating a forced reduction on power usage by 10%, further, the mines have been told not to work on Fridays. There are revenue and cost implications here that extend beyond the obvious monthly figures. What of the power saving measures that may in turn lead to greater problems, the mines are unable to pump excess ground water from the shafts, the maintenance programmes are due to suffer. And what of the safety indications, miners are protesting the possibility of being caught under ground or in lift shafts as the random power cuts hit the service grids. It is not only that ESKOM have not maintained or expanded their operations in the last 15 years, but the next big whammy is that there is no coal to keep the power stations running…at most times, there is a couple of months supply of coal onsite for electricity operations, today there is hardly a few days supply. Incidentally the reason given for this catastrophe is that the trucks delivering the coal have been unable to get to the power stations as the road infrastructure has deteriorated- potholes again. In the Afrikaans language: ‘slaggate’ – a direct translation to ‘slaughter holes’. As this is written, we wait for the next couple of days to see the effect of the ‘coal emergency’.

THE WATER EMERGENCY

At some point the effect of the power emergency on water and sanitation supply should be considered and this would be part of the roll out of unexpected events resultant of the collapse of the power supply, but the water board have usurped the power supply with homegrown problems of their own…

So here we have it, 43% of the dams have safety problems and are in danger of collapsing. Further to this, the ground water in Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg, has radioactive contamination from mining operations. Now, as a matter of interest, Johannesburg is one of the few cities in the world that is built on a hill and water has to be pumped up into the city!!!

THE FROG IN THE POT

And what of the peoples reaction? Complacency does not even come close, the nation is either brain dead or ignorant, or just plain ‘frog in a pot’ of water with the temperature rising. The first reaction to the power emergency took the form of a rush for candles, refilling of gas bottles and the purchasing of generators (if you could get them). Then the complacency set it, business learnt to sit through power outages, retail shops were forced to close their doors for a few hours a day. There was and is a shortage of food supplies, food went bad in the fridges and had to been thrown away. It was kind of charming in a strange kind of way, to eat dinner by candle light and forgo the ‘soapies’ on TV. Traffic lights were out over a large number of suburbs and delays in getting to business meetings became the norm. The schools are unable to teach a full day’s lesson. The internet service providers and the mobile phone companies’ frequently have service delays or are just plain ‘off line’. The battery runs out on your laptop and that’s the days productive work is over until the power is back on…Patients in ICU or undergoing operations, as the power grid went down, were at risk of and did, die.

As we head into February, it will be interesting to see the economic figures; theoretically the revenue generation for the period should be down by at least 25% or something similar to the power outage percentages. Notwithstanding that the stock market took a bend downwards and followed the USA crash and the antics of the Societé General rogue trader. (Well done on the foresight, James). The South African property market is following suit, as well. And just as we were wondering how the effect, implications and opinions of an emergency would pan out into daily life, what the tell tail signs would be… it happened, all of this is the short space of about 2-3 weeks, the realization dawns that it has begun, the country is experiencing and living through the beginning of the Long Emergency, rather unexpectedly and certainly too prematurely. I proffer that the events in South Africa, tragic as they are, as they play themselves out, will give a good indication of the events that the USA and other countries will realize in the years to come as The Long Emergency’ comes to pass.[Ha! Just as I finish this, guess what… the power is out, the battery life in my laptop is about 5 mins, so at 11am, I cannot be productive for the rest of the day… the networks are down, so this cannot be mailed for the moment.]
Home

==
17 February update: More on South Africa's electricity shortage: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/01/journal-south-a.html

Ron Paul Scales Back Campaign

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/124885.html

Ron's message in full:

February 08, 2008
Message from Ron

Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you. Millions of Americans -- and friends in many other countries -- have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties. How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.
Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties -- just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.
Sincerely,
Ron

Lookalikes: Barack Obama and Aubrey Graham

For a long time I've noticed how much Barack Obama looks like Aubrey Graham ("Jimmy Brooks" in Degrassi: The Next Generation). And now I've finally gotten around to posting photos of the two so you can decide for yourself how similar they look.

13 February update: The New York Times erred in comparing Barack with Lenny Kravitz, thus inviting this sarcastic post from--Carrot Top?

R.I.P. James Capozzola

While looking through this blog's list of political links, I clicked on The Rittenhouse Review. The last post was in July 2007. Googling James Capozzola's name in hopes of finding what he's been up to lately, I found out that he had died. I offer my very belated condolences to any friends or family of his who may read this. And I recommend that you check out The Rittenhouse Review, whose link I will leave in the Politics section of the list of links.

Localism: Now Trendy, Soon to be Necessary

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_localism.html

This Will Not Come to Pass

3 February update: This is a link to Green Greenwald's article in The American Conservative.

Giuliani is also a hothead, as this "oral history of Giuliani's temper," published in the February issue of GQ, makes abundantly clear.

Print Not Yet Dead

http://clarkstooksbury.blogspot.com/2008/01/book-notes.html

I'll post soon about a lecture I attended Friday about the challenge of preserving digital information.

Hilary for President!

Defining the Early, Mid, and Late Segments of a Decade

Early: Years ending in 0 through 4

Mid: Years ending in 5 and 6

Late: Years ending in 7 through 9
---------
How would I define the early, mid and late segments of a century or even a millennium?

Century:
Early: years ending in 0 and/or 1 through 49 (so, early Nineteenth Century: 1800/1801 through 1849)
Mid: 50 through 69
Late: 70 through 99

Millennium:
Early: years 0 and/or 1 through 499
Mid: years 500 through 699
Late: 700 through 999
-------
In any case, we are ensconced in the late aughts. More later.

Preparing to Downscale

I've added a few links to and bolded key points of this excerpt from Kunstler's latest column.

January 14, 2008
Disarray

The dark tunnel that the US economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole last week, sucking in lives, fortunes, and prospects behind a Potemkin facade of orderly retreat put up by anyone in authority with a story to tell or an interest to protect -- Fed chairman Bernanke, CNBC, The New York Times, the Bank of America.... Events are now moving ahead of anything that personalities can do to control them.

The "housing bubble" implosion is broadly misunderstood. It's not just the collapse of a market for a particular kind of commodity, it's the end of the suburban pattern itself, the way of life it represents, and the entire economy connected with it. It's the crack up of the system that America has invested most of its wealth in since 1950. It's perhaps most tragic that the mis-investments only accelerated as the system reached its end, but it seems to be nature's way that waves crest just before they break.

This wave is breaking into a sea-wall of disbelief. Nobody gets it. The psychological investment in what we think of as American reality is too great. The mainstream media doesn't get it, and they can't report it coherently. None of the candidates for president has begun to articulate an understanding of what we face: the suburban living arrangement is an experiment that has entered failure mode. ...

A reader sent me a passle of recent clippings last week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It contained one story after another about the perceived need to build more highways in order to maintain "economic growth" (and incidentally about the "foolishness" of public transit). I understood that to mean the need to keep the suburban development system going, since that has been the real main source of the Sunbelt's prosperity the past 60-odd years. They cannot imagine an economy that is based on anything besides new subdivisions, freeway extensions, new car sales, and Nascar spectacles. The Sunbelt, therefore, will be ground-zero for all the disappointment emanating from this cultural disaster, and probably also ground-zero for the political mischief that will ensue from lost fortunes and crushed hopes. From time-to-time, I feel it's necessary to remind readers what we can actually do in the face of this long emergency. Voters and candidates in the primary season have been hollering about "change" but I'm afraid the dirty secret of this campaign is that the American public doesn't want to change its behavior at all. What it really wants is someone to promise them they can keep on doing what they're used to doing: buying more stuff they can't afford, eating more shitty food that will kill them, and driving more miles than circumstances will allow. Here's what we better start doing. Stop all highway-building altogether. Instead, direct public money into repairing railroad rights-of-way. Put together public-private partnerships for running passenger rail between American cities and towns in between. If Amtrak is unacceptable, get rid of it and set up a new management system. At the same time, begin planning comprehensive regional light-rail and streetcar operations. End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers, using the existing regional networks of organic farming associations to target the aid. (This includes ending subsidies for the ethanol program.) Begin planning and construction of waterfront and harbor facilities for commerce: piers, warehouses, ship-and-boatyards, and accommodations for sailors. This is especially important along the Ohio-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes. In cities and towns, change regulations that mandate the accommodation of cars. Direct all new development to the finest grain, scaled to walkability. This essentially means making the individual building lot the basic increment of redevelopment, not multi-acre "projects." Get rid of any parking requirements for property development. Institute "locational taxation" based on proximity to the center of town and not on the size, character, or putative value of the building itself. Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories. Begin planning for district or neighborhood heating installations and solar, wind, and hydro-electric generation wherever possible on a small-scale network basis.

We'd better begin a public debate about whether it is feasible or desirable to construct any new nuclear power plants. If there are good reasons to go forward with nuclear, and a consensus about the risks and benefits, we need to establish it quickly. There may be no other way to keep the lights on in America after 2020. We need to prepare for the end of the global economic relations that have characterized the final blow-off of the cheap energy era. The world is about to become wider again as nations get desperate over energy resources. This desperation is certain to generate conflict. We'll have to make things in this country again, or we won't have the most rudimentary household products. We'd better prepare psychologically to downscale all institutions, including government, schools and colleges, corporations, and hospitals. All the centralizing tendencies and gigantification of the past half-century will have to be reversed. Government will be starved for revenue and impotent at the higher scale. The centralized high schools all over the nation will prove to be our most frustrating mis-investment. We will probably have to replace them with some form of home-schooling that is allowed to aggregate into neighborhood units. A lot of colleges, public and private, will fail as higher ed ceases to be a "consumer" activity. Corporations scaled to operate globally are not going to make it. This includes probably all national chain "big box" operations. It will have to be replaced by small local and regional business. We'll have to reopen many of the small town hospitals that were shuttered in recent years, and open many new local clinic-style health-care operations as part of the greater reform of American medicine.

Take a time-out from legal immigration and get serious about enforcing the laws about illegal immigration. Stop lying to ourselves and stop using semantic ruses like calling illegal immigrants "undocumented." Prepare psychologically for the destruction of a lot of fictitious "wealth" -- and allow instruments and institutions based on fictitious wealth to fail, instead of attempting to keep them propped up on credit life-support. Like any other thing in our national life, finance has to return to a scale that is consistent with our circumstances -- i.e., what reality will allow. That process is underway, anyway, whether the public is prepared for it or not. We will soon hear the sound of banks crashing all over the place. Get out of their way, if you can. Prepare psychologically for a sociopolitical climate of anger, grievance, and resentment. A lot of individual citizens will find themselves short of resources in the years ahead. They will be very ticked off and seek to scapegoat and punish others. ...

Tough Times

http://recessiontimes.blogspot.com/

http://wikicollapse.com

Another Press Blog

Craig Smith covers Santa Barbara the way Hunter Bishop covers Puna.

A New Name for The New Republic

At this point the publishers of The New Republic should retitle their magazine The Neo Republic because it's the flagship of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals.

Southern Style: A Continuing Project

At this point I'm just collecting links and posting excerpts from articles, but I plan to tie all these into a cohesive narrative of Southern fashion, both modern and traditional.

Historical Southern Fashion

General Links

http://carolshouse.com/WordPress/?p=4

http://www.divacolourstudio.com/SouthernFashion.html

http://www.tranism.com/weblog/archives/2006/08/the_southern_fa.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_Southern_United_States

Seersucker

From the Wikipedia article on seersucker:

Seersucker was first used in the United States by the working class but was later adopted by the upper classes. The material was considered a mainstay of the summer wardrobe of Southern gentlemen, who favored the light fabric in the high heat and humidity of the American South.
Seersucker is still widely worn in the South between Easter weekend and Labor Day, where it is often accompanied by a bow tie. It is widely considered a fashion faux pas to wear seersucker at the wrong time of the year, although in warmer climates this rule is often ignored.

(A Wikipedia update: Seersucker is still widely worn in the South between Easter weekend and Labor Day, where it is often accompanied by a bow tie. Easter can come too early to wear seersucker since Confederate Memorial Day (The 4th Monday in April) is considered the actual appropriate time for this style of dress. It is widely considered a fashion faux pas to wear seersucker at the wrong time of the year.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2007/6/13/suckers-for-seersucker.html
Article on a Mississippi senator's re-introduction of seersucker. Washington is part of the South, and seersucker was common until the widespread use of air conditioning.

An article from the U.S. Senate website on Seersucker Thursday.

http://men.style.com/gq/fashion/styleguy/suitsandblazers/555

http://www.dailyyonder.com/seeing-seersucker-atticus-lester-and-danville

17 June 2009 update: I just received the 8 June issue of New York magazine, which features an article about and photo (by Tabitha Soren!) of Michael Lewis in a blue-and-white seersucker suit, yellow tie, white bucks, and white socks. Naturally, he's from New Orleans, one of a few Southern preppy men who've gone North and found success in the media elite. Jon Meacham is another, and also C. Shelby Coffee III, former editor of The Los Angeles Times.

31 December 2009 update: I found this by chance a few days ago: http://www.gastrochic.com/2009/fashion/wasps-what-they-really-wear/
Note: "Southern preps in particular love bright colors, whereas their northern counterparts tend to stick to navy."



Southern Designers and Labels

Billy Reid

Dixie Outfitters

Haspel

Patrick Kelly

Ruff Hewn (co-founded in 1981 by Ernest Lee Marchman with his son Dennis)

The South is Sexy

SouthernProper.com

Southern Preppies

http://dpnation.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/southern-prep/

Books and Films Which Address Southern Style, In Whole or In Part

Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena, by Julia Reed

A review from the 9 May 2004 issue of The New York Times.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E6DE173DF93AA35756C0A9629C8B63

Huckabee: A List of Links in Progress

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071222/news_lz1e22novak.html

The Iowa Aftermath: Biden, Dodd, Gravel Out

From Politics1.com:

In response to weak finishes, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel all ended their White House campaigns on Thursday evening. With the contest moving to New Hampshire and South Carolina -- states Obama is now likely to win -- Clinton will make her real stand against Obama in Florida and the 22-state national primary on February 5. Also look for the Clinton campaign to quickly go negative on Obama.

Update: I found this blog by chance just now. Penned by an Iowan, it has a local perspective on the recent Iowa caucuses.

Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

James Howard "Janus" Kunstler reviews 2007 and forecasts 2008 as only he can:

Dec 31, 2007
Forecast 2008

For the tiny fraction of people who actually pay attention to real events -- those, for instance, who know the difference between Narnia and Kandahar -- the final hours of 2007 leading into the fog-shrouded abyss of 2008 must induce great racking shudders of nausea. Has there ever been a society so exquisitely rigged for implosion? The whole listing, creaking, reeking edifice stands like one of those obsolete Las Vegas pleasure palaces awaiting a mere pulse of electrons to ignite a thousand explosive charges perfectly placed to blow away the structural supports.

...On the ground out in the heartland, in the anxiety-drenched, over-valued beige subdivisions of California and the ennui-saturated pastel McHousing tracts of Florida (not to mention the pathetic vinyl outlands of Cleveland and Detroit) a mighty keening welled forth as mortgage rates adjusted upward, and loans stopped "performing," and "for sale" signs failed to turn up buyers, and sheriff's deputies showed up with the rolls of yellow foreclosure tape, and actual ownership of the re-poed collateral entered a legal twilight zone somewhere north of the Florida State Teacher's Pension Fund and south of the Norwegian Municipal Councils' investment portfolios. What a mighty goddam mess was left out there by the boyz at the Wall Street genius desks, who engineered a magical system for eliminating risk from the capital markets -- only to see it leak back in from a million holes and seams and collapse the greatest bubble ever blown.

In the background, the US dollar sank to record lows against the euro and the pound sterling, the price of oil jumped 56 percent across the year just grazing the $100-a-barrel mark, drought punished the American southeast and Australia's grain belt, floods ravaged Texas and England, the polar ice shrank dramatically, but the US escaped any major hurricane action for a second year in a row. Except for the murder of Mrs. Bhutto just a few days ago, the international scene was supernaturally quiet. Even Iraq fell into a torpor, variously attributed to utter exhaustion among the warring factions or to the US troop "surge" under general Petreus. Iran got a surprise clean bill-of-health on its nuclear bomb-making activity from America's own investigators, to the consternation of Mr. Bush & Co. The non-human denizens of Planet Earth didn't have such a good year. Honeybees, Yangtze river dolphins, and house sparrows took big hits, and Al Gore went up another suit size (as well as winning part of the Nobel Prize for his Powerpoint show). Which brings us finally to the heart of the matter: what's coming down the pike starting tomorrow, January 1, 2008?

Down and Dirty I shudder to imagine how things will play out now as we turn the corner into 2008. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my little walnut brain can't imagine any scenario in which the US economy doesn't end up on a gurney in history's emergency room. It's not necessary to rehash the particulars of the Greenspan bubble-blowing disaster. The outcome is what concerns us. The web cables have been blazing for months with arguments as to what form the workout will take. There's little disagreement about the fundamentals at the housing end of things.

The housing market is in a death spiral. Eventually, the median price of a house will have to fall back to the median income, and it has a very long way to go, perhaps 50 percent. Until that happens, houses will be generally unsellable. At the same time, of course, an anxious finance sector will be offering fewer mortgages and on much more rigorous terms, so there will be far fewer qualified buyers even for distress sales. And the median income itself may soon not be what it has been. The whole equation has changed. As the painful re-pricing process plays out, many owners/sellers will be upside-down and under water in what they owe on the mortgage in relation to the value of the house they occupy. Quite a few may have lost jobs and incomes along the way. Most of these unfortunates would be better off just mailing in the keys and walking away. But in so far as these awful liabilities are peoples' homes, full of all their stuff and their childrens' stuff, not to mention being the repository of all their previously-imagined wealth, as well as their hopes and dreams, walking away is psychologically more easily said than done.

Surely in this election year, schemes will be advanced to bail out these poor suckers. But the beneficiaries of such a putative bail out would be far outnumbered by the home-owners still making mortgage payments, plus property taxes jacked up during the recent orgy by greedy public officials, and I don't think this majority would stand for the unfairness of seeing their neighbors simply let off the hook on their obligations. Perhaps the one thing that congress could do is change the insane law that treats foreclosures like some kind of bizzaro capital gain and piles additional huge tax demands on people who can no longer afford to buy their kids a frozen burrito. The issue of what to do about the dispossessed will be so politically red-hot that it could upset the election process --but I get a bit ahead of myself.

One thing the public doesn't get about the housing debacle is that it is not just the low point in a regular cycle -- it is the end of the suburban phase of US history. We won't be building anymore of it, and those employed in its development will have to find something else to do. Now, unfortunately the whole point of the housing bubble was not really to put X-million people in so many vinyl and chipboard boxes, but rather to ramp up a suburban sprawl-building industry as a replacement for America's dwindling manufacturing economy. This stratagem ran into the implacable force of Peak Oil, which not only puts the schnitz on America's whole Happy Motoring / suburban nexus, but implies a pervasive trend for contraction in everything from the daily distances we can travel to the the very core idea of regular economic growth per se -- at least in the way we have understood it through the age of industrial capital.

But to return to my point, something like 40 percent of all new jobs after the year 2000 were created in the final burst of suburban expansion -- everything from the excavators to the framers to the sheet-rockers, and then the providers of granite countertops, the sellers of appliances and furnishings, and cars to service the far-out new subdivisions, and so on. This is the end, therefore, not only of the production "home-builders," but perhaps everything from Crate and Barrel to WalMart, too, eventually. By the way, the housing collapse was only one phase of a more generalized real estate debacle, because the commercial side of the business has also begun a nauseating slide into non-performance and equity destruction. In other words, we built way too many strip malls, power centers, and office parks. God knows what will happen to the owners of these white elephants, or the mortgage and lien holders of these things -- but as one wag remarked to me some years ago as we both gazed upon a forlorn abandoned strip mall outside of Tulsa, "...we don't need that many evangelical roller rinks...."

What happens out there on the housing market scene will certainly redound in banking and finance and whatever still constitutes the US economy generally. The fears and uncertainties surrounding all credit-backed tradable securities derive first from the millions of troubled home mortgages dangling slowly in the wind. These fears and uncertainties will multiply as defaults commence in commercial real estate, and desperate individuals next enter a wave of credit card default, all of it, too, securitized and sprinkled all over the world. None of this stuff has yet been priced into the public disclosures of the many troubled banks and bank-like companies holding it. Nor does anyone really know how this is affecting the hedge funds, and their staggering leveraged positions in things that are looking more and more like quicksand. I can't imagine that quite a few major banks will not collapse in the first half of 2008. It is hard to escape the conclusion that many hedge funds will also blow up, given the unsoundness of their counter-parties' positions, not to mention the frailty of the bond reinsurers. But the death of more than a few hedge funds could easily unwind the entire global finance system -- meaning a period of destructive chaos followed by a set of severely different institutional arrangements, with untold loss of imagined capital wealth along the way and big changes in everyday life. The world has never really been in a situation like this before and it is impossible to say what it might lead to. But there is no doubt that the American public has enjoyed an artificially high standard of living in relation to the value of what we actually produce -- fried chicken, hair extensions, and the Flaver Flav Show [Flavor of Love, actually--P.Z.] -- so the conclusion is pretty self-evident.

Others have said (and I concur) that 2008 will be the year that the issue of Peak Oil not only takes stage in the forefront of American politics, but pushes global warming aside as the most immediate threat to the "modern" way-of-life. There is every reason to believe that the world has arrived at its all-time oil production peak -- and some statisticians would even pin-point the exact moment as July 2006. Since then a few new and crucial story-lines have emerged to allow us to understand what is happening out there on the world oil scene.

One story-line is that only "demand destruction" among the world's poorest nations has kept the oil markets functioning "normally" among the OECD nations and the rising Asian players. Even so, oil priced in US dollars more than doubled in 2007. It remains to be seen whether demand destruction in a wobbling US economy -- with the suburban builders crippled -- will keep oil prices from jumping into the uncharted territory beyond $100-a-barrel. But two other forces are in operation now. One is the growing oil export problem, soon to be a crisis. It now appears that exports, in nations with surplus oil to sell, are going down at an even steeper rate than production declines. Why? They are using more of their own oil. The population is growing robustly. The Saudi Arabians are building the world’s largest aluminum smelter and many chemical factories. This takes a lot of oil. Russia, another big exporter, saw its car sales jump by 50 percent in 2007. Mexico is depleting so rapidly, and using so much more of its own oil, that it might be out of the export game altogether in three years. That will be bad news for the US, since Mexico is tied with Saudi Arabia as America's number two leading source of oil imports. Remember, the US now imports close to three-quarters of all the oil we use.

The second new factor on the Peak oil scene is "oil nationalism." It is prompting countries like Norway and Russia to husband more of their own resources as the awareness hits that they are past peak and might want to keep their own motors humming further into the future. Oil surplus nations are also trending more toward selling their oil on the basis of long-term contracts with favored customers rather than just auctioning the stuff off on the futures market. This makes oil a much more important element in geopolitical power politics. Note that the US may not enjoy "favored customer" standing among many of these nations.

Matt Simmons, the leading investment banker to the oil industry, predicted at a major conference in October that the US is much closer to encountering a problem with chronic spot shortages of oil (and gasoline, of course) than the public realizes, and Simmons says that this supply problem will be extremely disruptive in every imaginable way -- economically, politically, and socially. Most of the commentators I take seriously see the price of oil oscillating in 2008 between $80 and $160-a-barrel. Simmons says Americans will keep sucking up the price increases, but they will probably freak out over spot shortages. I have no idea how presidential election politics will play out in 2008. It must be obvious that so many nasty pitfalls lie out there in the months ahead that something's got to shake up the current scripted mummery among the contenders. The current batch of candidates will soon find their story-lines and pre-cooked messages out-of-date as the nation faces crises in finance and energy (at least). Given the uneventful geopolitical scene of the past 18 months (since the Hezbollah-Israel War and up to the murder of Mrs. Bhutto in Pakistan), odds are that the US will have more rather than less trouble from the rest of the world in 2008-- especially if our own financial recklessness trips up the global economy. Back in the early days of George W. Bush, even before 9/11, I used to joke with my friends that Bill Clinton would return as the Emperor Bill the First. [Hattie might not like the following.--P.Z.] The joke doesn't seem so funny anymore with Hillary off and running. I never liked the way she muscled her way into a US senate seat -- sending the message, in essence, that there was not one genuine New York resident qualified for the job. But there is so much more about her I dislike now, starting with her presumption of dynastic entitlement to the annoyingly phony way she nods her head (like one of those old "drinky-bird" toys) to put across the idea that she is a fabulous "listener." I write this a few days before the Iowa caucuses and then the New Hampshire primary. New York's Mayor Bloomberg is suddenly making noises again about entering the race as an independent. That might lead to a situation as fractured as the one in 1860 that saw a multi-party scuffle send Lincoln into office (or the election of 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt made a credible run on the independent Bull Moose line). At the moment, I'd like to see both John Edwards and Barack Obama roll on. The mere thought of a president Huckabee gives me the chilblains, and the rest of the Republican pack I would not want to have as my county supervisor. [Too bad he doesn't make an exception for Ron Paul, whose advocacy of withdrwal of American forces worldwide must seem to him prudent.--P.Z.] In any case, whoever ends up in the oval office will preside over one king-hell of a clusterfuck. In the immortal words of TV's erstwhile "Mr. T," I pity da fool who gets elected into this mess. There will be a whole continent full of bankrupt, re-poed, and idle former WalMart shoppers, many of them with half of their skin tattooed and many of that bunch all revved up to "roll heavy and gun up" against the folks who screwed them.

Which leads me to my penultimate observation of the moment: 2008 will be the year that celebrity wealth goes into hiding. [Cf. Paul Fussell's observation that "Showing off used to be the main satisfaction of being very rich in America. Now the rich must skulk and hide. It's a pity."--P.Z.] A land full of people crying into their foreclosure notices will take a dim view of the Donald Trumps and P. Diddys luxuriating out there and may come looking for scalps -- though in the case of Mr. Trump they'll be sorry they woke up the wolverine that lives on his head. Basically, though, I'm not kidding. Conspicuous displays of wealth will be so "out" that Mr. Diddy might take to club-hopping in a 1999 Mazda. Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton may have to double-up living in a minuteman missile silo to keep the angry mobs of fans-turned-vengeful-berserkers away.

Okay, my final comment. After being chastised endlessly about mis-calling the DOW in 2006 (I said 4000), I have learned my lesson about making numerical predictions for the stock markets. So let's just say there is no fucking way that the DOW, the NASDAQ, and the S & P will not end the year 2008 absolutely on their asses. The charade of permanent prosperity based on getting something for nothing is over. That sound you hear out there is reality knocking on the door. It has been standing out in the cold for a long time and it is not happy with us.

Harper's: How Relevant is It?

http://mediamythbusters.com/blog/?p=219

Many comments appended to the above post ponder the relevancy of Harper's. I've subscribed to Harper's on and off through the years. The Readings section is always excellent as are some of the essays and Lapham's columns. It's way overpriced at $6.95 per copy, so one is better off subscribing. All can agree most people have never heard of, let alone read, Harper's. This entry on Harper's from Namebase, though somewhat out-of-date, is still acute:

Harper's was founded in 1850, and in the late 1980s had a circulation of 182,000. It is designed for political liberals who claim some cultural assets, whose inherited wealth can afford the occasional indignation over corruption in high places. Editor Lewis H. Lapham seems to lack focus; he knows America is going to hell, but literate hand-wringing is preferred over investigative reporting. Publisher and president John R. MacArthur actually has some journalism experience... One might take MacArthur at his word but for the fact that unlikely magazines such as Vanity Fair and New Yorker are beginning to publish important investigative pieces, while Harper's just wimps along. ...

on 29 Dec 2007 at 7:57 am1Lou Minatti
I appreciate your hard work and research on this, Bob. But who the hell reads Harper’s?

on 29 Dec 2007 at 8:15 am2XReader
But who the hell reads Harper’s? I read Harper’s for years. When the Harper’s Foundation ended up as the mainstay for the magazine, the articles went towards the left, and my reading of Harper’s diminished.
...
on 29 Dec 2007 at 8:45 am6WAL
“I appreciate your hard work and research on this, Bob. But who the hell reads Harper’s?”
Second that,
I appreciate it also, but nobody’s read Harper’s since 1900. I genuinely wasn’t sure until pretty recently if the magazine even still existed or not.
...
on 29 Dec 2007 at 1:31 pm11Trevor
Harper’s is the premier socio-political journal in the country and it outsells “The Weekly Standard” and “National Review” combined 10-1. Unlike the fat boys with asthma talking tough neocons- it presents a virile unabridged mirror on the real events as they occur. It’s a magazine favored by Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, Harold Pinter, Stephen Hawking, Philip Roth, Admiral William Fallon head of Centcom and innumerable other international movers and shakers. Of course, Hugh Hewitt reads “The Weekly Standard” and John Podhoretz “The National Review” so I guess it’s even.

on 29 Dec 2007 at 1:46 pm12Mike
Trevor is correct, as are the other posters. Harper’s took a dive to the Left and never looked back. As a magazine that looks to promote it’s “narrative”, more ethical lapses were bound to emerge. Nevertheless, it is still well-read by the intellectual Left. But it is seen as more credible still than Mothoer [sic] Jones or American Prospect.

on 29 Dec 2007 at 2:06 pm13WAL
Harper’s is the premier socio-political journal in the country and it outsells “The Weekly Standard” and “National Review” combined 10-1.
It has a current circulation of 210,000. National Review’s circulation is about 160,000 and has varied between 140 and 200,000 in the past few years. The weekly Standard has a circulation of about 80,000 - so that’s pretty much a statistic you just made up.
More importantly, whatever its circulation is - when’s the last time anybody, on the right or left, ever uttered the sentence “did you see the article in Harper’s?”
I’ll answer that - 1900.
It’s cool to be able to cite a big name, but the author’s you’re listing are well past their prime (Thomas Pynch is what? 70?) and the other two, while being great men, were never known for their engaging writing ability. These men may have been heroes to you at some point, but there came a time when guys who were popular in the ’60s kept doing the same damn thing over and over again and became boring as hell. (I like Tom Wolfe, but even I’ll admit he’s lagged in recent years - you expect me to get excited about John Updike?). For some reason Harper’s insists on publishing those people. Too bad.
Because of its age and it’s former prominence, I’m sure it can still get libraries and other institutions to subscribe to it and inflate those numbers, but - this isn’t even a leftwing vs. conservative thing - I can’t think of anybody on the left or the right who’s ever given a damn within the past couple decades what they publish, because they don’t read it.

on 29 Dec 2007 at 2:08 pm14Thomass
I guess the corollary to who reads Harpers is why don’t people read Harpers. It’s because it is a leftwing partisan rag. A step up over The Nation which is a step up over Mother Jones…. Ergo, I doubt they’ll move on this. Their credibility was never a issue (to them or their readers). Only people who agree with them (regardless) buy their mag anyway… they don’t really care if its made up.
I’d add, the New Republic is better than any of them… and you saw how long it took to get them to move on a retraction… I’m betting Harpers will totally ignore you.

======
Of course, I'll probably update this post soon.

26 March 2008 update: I just found this column by Canadian journalist Heather Mallick, who takes the magazine and its editor to task for a lack of women writers and for a general lack of humour. This is Gawker's reply.

A Penny Retrieved is a Penny Earned

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2007/12/14/see-a-penny-pick-it-up.aspx

From Kalapana to Kansas: Aloha, Grant Jones

Grant Jones, a.k.a. the Kalapana Pundit, announces he and his wife will move to Kansas in early January. I wish them well. Upon their move to the mainland, I'll move the Dougout from the Hawaii politics section to the general politics section in the list of links.
--
In one of his recent posts, Grant mentions a new Hawaii political site, boldly titled Zero Shibai.

Tancredo the Frado Out! Cynthia McKinney In!

LewRockwell.com says Good riddance to Tancredo, who had the nerve to badmouth Ron Paul. More on Tancredo's resignation at Politics1.com, which also notes Cynthia McKinney's announced candidacy as a Green. Her candidacy was a much-discussed possibility for months and now that it's official, voters have an alternative to Clinton and Obama.

Frado explained.

Post #200: Madonna to be Inducted

into the Rock n'Roll Hall of Fame.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20071214-9999-1c14hall.html

Local Playwright Lisa Matsumoto

[Links provided by me.--P.Z.]

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Dec/14/br/br4351672089.html

Updated at 3:47 p.m., Friday, December 14, 2007
Hawaii playwright seriously injured in H-1 crash
Advertiser Staff

Lisa Matsumoto was involved in a head-on crash on the H-1 today. Officials said the vehicle may have been driving in the wrong direction. [Courtesy photo]

Noted local playwright Lisa Matsumoto, 43, is in critical condition following a head-on crash in the west-bound lanes of the H-1 Freeway early today, authorities confirmed.
Matsumoto was driving a green Toyota Camry in the wrong direction and collided with a black Toyota Corolla being driven by a 35-year-old woman, who was also injured in the 3:32 a.m. crash.

The younger woman, who swerved to the right to avoid Matsumoto's vehicle, was taken to The Queen's Medical Center in serious condition with head and leg injuries.

It took more than an hour for Honolulu firefighters to free the woman from the wreckage.
A 21-year-old man whose car crashed while trying to avoid the collision was treated at the scene and did not have to be taken to the hospital, said Bryan Cheplic, spokesman for the city Emergency Services Department.

Police blocked off all lanes of H-1 west at the Houghtailing off-ramp while police traffic investigators examined the crash scene.
====
When Lisa's play Once Upon One Time debuted on the Big Island. http://media.bigisland.org/press-releases/106/lisa-matsumotos-once-upon-one-time-makes-its-big-island-debut

The Ron Paul Blimp

http://www.ronpaulblimp.com/

Stacy Higa Wanted to put the Naughty On

http://hunterbishop.com/journal/2007/12/4/higa-arakai-named-in-eeoc-complaint.html

8 December Update: Hunter corrected the misspelling of Arakaki's name in the post's title and URL, here below:
http://hunterbishop.com/journal/2007/12/4/higa-arakaki-named-in-eeoc-complaint.html

RonPaulChocolate.com

http://ronpaulchocolate.com/

We Can't Win if Either Of These Wins

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11272007.html

A Reason for Giving Thanks

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21905429/

Kunstler.com: New and Improved!

If you haven't gone to Kunstler.com recently, you should, if only to check out the great revamp of his website. Below is an excerpt from his latest column:

...The appeal of this program is obvious in the consumer-democracy of recent times. The stupendous aggregate wealth ginned up at the climax of the cheap energy fiesta made everyone an aristocrat. As Tom Wolfe has pointed out, the average American roofer or insurance adjuster of these times has enjoyed a more comfortable life than Louis XIV. They certainly bathe more regularly, in sumptuous vinyl tubs, with motor-drive water jets, and possess refrigerated larders of delicacies from thousands of miles away (not to mention access to colonoscopies and periodontics).

This luxurious life is a fragile thing, though. The fragility is actually expressed in the houses themselves, which are uniformly constructed from materials that would not seem to have a glorious destiny: wood-chips, glue, and vinyl. Anyone who visits the Palatine Hill in Rome must be impressed by the way stone blocks and masonry walls melt away over time. Imagine what would happen to a box made of chip-board over fir studs after a few decades of poor maintenance. You can even state categorically that the vinyl cladding was not designed to be maintained, only replaced. And in as much as vinyl siding is made from petroleum byproducts, one can easily foresee future replacement problems. ...

Why Are They So Afraid of Ron Paul?

asks Justin Raimondo.

The Cave Dwellers

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/2912

The Long Emergency in Hawaii

As much as I find Kunstler relevant and fascinating, his point of view is that of a mainlander. He doesn't say how Hawaii, or other island places, would fare during the Long Emergency, except to say we'll be even more isolated than now. But Juan Wilson predicts in detail what will happen on Kauai (and, by extension, the other islands) over the next few decades as oil becomes scarce.

http://homepage.mac.com/juanwilson/islandbreath/%20Year%202007/03-past&future/Kauai2007-2050/Kauai2007-2050.htm

The Ron Paul Phenomenon

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/06/paul/index.html

An excerpt:

Regardless of one's ideology, there is simply no denying certain attributes of Paul's campaign which are highly laudable. There have been few serious campaigns that are more substantive -- just purely focused on analyzing and solving the most vital political issues. There have been few candidates who more steadfastly avoid superficial gimmicks, cynical stunts, and manipulative tactics. There have been few candidates who espouse a more coherent, thoughtful, consistent ideology of politics, grounded in genuine convictions and crystal clear political values. Here is what Jon Stewart said to Paul on The Daily Show:

You appear to have consistent principled integrity. Americans don't usually go for that.

There is never a doubt that Paul actually believes what he is saying, nor is there any doubt that what he believes is the by-product of critical and rational thought grounded in genuine political passion.

Perhaps most importantly, Paul is the only serious candidate aggressively challenging America's addiction to ruling the world through superior military force and acting as an empire -- not by contesting specific policies (such as the Iraq War) but by calling into question the unexamined root premises of these policies, the ideology that is defining our role in the world. By itself, the ability of Paul's campaign to compel a desperately needed debate over the devastation which America's imperial rule wreaks on every level -- economic, moral, security, liberty -- makes his success worth applauding.

Oil Crash Movie

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/04/energy.fossilfuels

Possible Huckabee Scandals

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=18863

Update: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501547_pf.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17324246/matt_taibbi_on_mike_huckabee_our_favorite_rightwing_nut_job

The Long Emergency: Year One

Kunstler's column today is an especially good one. He speculates how countries around the world, particularly Japan and the nations of Europe, will endure the Long Emergency as they compete with America for diminishing supplies of oil. (All emphases and links mine.)

October 29, 2007
Assumptions

When historians glance back at 2007 through the haze of their coal-fired stoves, they will mark this year as the onset of the Long Emergency – or whatever they choose to call the unraveling of industrial economies and the complex systems that constituted them. And if they retain any sense of humor– which is very likely since, as wise Sam Beckett once averred, nothing is funnier than unhappiness– they will chuckle at the assumptions that drove the doings and mental operations of those in charge back then (i.e. now).

The price of oil is up 53 percent over a year ago, creeping up now toward the mid-$90-range. The news media is still AWOL on the subject. (The New York Times has nothing about it on today’s front page.) The dollar is losing a penny a week against the Euro. In essence, the American standard of living is dropping like a sash weight. So far, a stunned public is stumbling into impoverishment drunk on Britney Spears video clips. If they ever do sober up, and get to a “…hey, wait a minute…” moment when they recognize the gulf between reality and the story told by leaders in government, business, education, and the media, it is liable to be a very ugly moment in US history.

One of the stupidest assumptions made by the educated salient of adults these days is that we are guaranteed a smooth transition between the cancerous hypertrophy of our current economic environment and the harsher conditions that we are barreling toward. The university profs and the tech sector worker bees are still absolutely confident that some hypothetical “they” will “come up with” magical rescue remedies for running the Happy Motoring system without gasoline. My main message to lecture audiences these days is “…quit putting all your mental energy into propping up car dependency and turn your attention to other tasks such as walkable communities and reviving passenger rail….” Inevitably, someone will then get up and propose that the transition to all-electric cars is nearly upon us, and we should stop worrying. As I said, these are the educated denizens of the colleges. Imagine what the nascar morons believe – that the ghost of Davey Crockett will leave a jug of liquefied “dark matter” under everyone’s Christmas tree this year or next, guaranteed to keep the engines ringing until Elvis ushers in the Rapture.

The educated folks – that is, the ones subject to the grandiose story-lines of techno-triumphalism taught in the universities – are sure that we’ll either invent or organize our way out of the current predicament. A society that put men on the moon in 1969, the story goes, will ramp up another “Apollo Project” to keep things going here. One wonders, of course, what they mean by keeping things going. Even if it were hypothetically possible to keep all the cars running forever, would it be good thing to make suburban-sprawl-building the basis of our economy – because that’s the direct consequence of perpetually cheap energy. Has anyone noticed that the housing bubble and subsequent implosion is following the peak oil line exactly?

It’s a bit harder to discern what the assumptions really are among leaders in the finance sector, since so much of their activity the past ten years has veered into sheer fraud. The story line that everyone is putting out – from the Fed chairman Bernanke to the CEOs of the Big Fundz – is that American finance is a python that has swallowed a few too many pigs, but if we jigger around interest rates a little bit more, and allow some more money to be lent out cheaply, the python will eventually digest the pigs and go slithering happily on its way along the jungle trail with a burp and a fart. From this vantage, one sees a rather different story: more like a gang of human grifters sweating through their Prada suits as it becomes increasingly impossible to conceal massive losses incurred through overt reckless misbehavior. My own guess is that a lot of these boyz will be in line for criminal prosecution before too long. The political assumptions one hears are the most astoundingly naïve and ridiculous, especially the ones that involve other countries and our relations with them. NY Times followers no doubt believe, along with Tom Friedman, that the global economy is now a permanent fixture of the human condition, and that soon it will transform itself into a colossal engine of “green” (i.e. benign) commerce. Friedman and his followers tend to forget the second law of thermodynamics when spinning their fantasies of a world that can harmlessly manufacture and market an endless number of plastic salad shooters from one side of the planet to the other without incurring any losses to the health of said planet.

My own assumptions are somewhat different. I think we’re likely to see a lot of nations scrambling for survival, initially manifesting in a contest for the world’s dwindling supply of oil (and oil-like substances). For instance, when viewing the globe, few people consider that Japan currently imports 95 percent of its fossil fuel. Japan has been a “good boy” among nations since its episode of “acting out” in the mid-20th century and has enjoyed a long industrial prosperity since then. But what happens when there is not enough oil in the world to be allocated rationally by markets among the powerful nations? Will Japan just roll over and die? Will they shutter the Toyota factories and happily turn to placid tea ceremonies. I think Japan will freak out, and it’s hard to predict exactly who will feel its wrath and how.

Similarly, Europe. Americans view Europe as a kind of theme park full of elderly café layabouts swaddled in cashmere as they enjoy demitasse cups in the outdoor cafes of their comfortable art-filled cities (some of them not long ago rebuilt from rubble). Europe has let America do its dirty work for it in the Middle East for the past decade while enjoying tanker-loads of oil coming up through the Suez Canal. Europe has only had to make a few lame gestures in defense of its oil supplies. But the North Sea oil fields, which for twenty years have hedged the leverage of OPEC, are crapping out at a very steep rate. Sooner or later Europe will freak out over oil, and geo-political flat-earthers will be shocked to see that all the nations of café layabouts can mobilize potent military forces. God knows whose side who will be on, exactly, when that happens, and where America will stand – if its own military is not so exhausted that it can even stand up.

Personally, I think the world will be growing a lot larger again, and less flat, and that eventually America will find itself isolated once again between two oceans – though incursions by desperate foreign armies in one way or another, is not out of the question as the great struggle for resource survival gets underway. In time, however, I think the current Great Nations of the world will lose their ability to project power in the ways we’ve been conditioned to think about it. In the meantime, our own nation has become a society incapable of thinking, and the failure at all levels of rank, education, and privilege is impressive. If you listen to the people running for president – many of them overt clowns – you’d think that that all the comfortable furnishings of everyday life can continue with a few tweaks of the dials. They are cowards and it is possible that they perfectly represent a whole nation of cowards who deserve cowardly leadership. The danger, of course, is that when a non-cowardly leader finally does step forward in a desperate America, he will not shrink from pushing around a feckless people, or doing their thinking for them.

Who Would the World Elect.com

http://www.whowouldtheworldelect.com/

How Green is Ron Paul?

Grist.org interview with Ron Paul.

http://grist.org/feature/2007/10/16/paul/index.html?source=daily

Charles Djou. Remember That Name!

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=254111441

The White Flannel Film and Similar Genres

In 1996, Andrea Shaw wrote Seen That, Now What?: The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Video You Really Want to Watch, a movie guide arranged by genre, mood, and theme, and occasionally by actor and director.

There are eleven main groupings: Action, Comedy, Drama, Documentaries, Foreign Films, Horror, Kids, Musicals, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Thrillers, and Westerns. Each is further subdivided into more specific genres, such as "white flannel," which is highlighted on the back of the book, and almost synonymous with "Merchant-Ivory film". ("White flannel" derives from the white flannel trousers men would wear to teas, garden parties, and so on. See Emily Post: "If some semi-formal occasion comes up, such as a country tea, the time-worn conservative blue coat with white flannel trousers is perennially good.") As Shaw writes, "As in other costume dramas, the period details are celebrations of all that was brilliant and luxurious, with the camera sweeping over British, Indian, or African countryscapes and exquisite turn-of-the-century interiors. But all this lush upholstery doesn't cover up the intelligent, thoughtful stories--usually based on Lawrence, Forster, and Waugh novels--played by stellar British actors" (pp. 218-219). On page 255, Shaw adds, "Messrs. Merchant and Ivory and company continue to crank out these handsome literate films of pre-World War II Britain and her subjects that combine photogenic nostalgia for a gracious way of life now gone, and an often humorous examination of its foibles." Wikipedia describes the typical "Merchant-Ivory film" as "a period piece set in the early 20th century, usually in Edwardian England, featuring lavish sets and top British actors portraying genteel characters who suffer from disillusion and tragic entanglements."



Of course, settings range from the late Victorian era to the late 1930s, and from Africa (Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes) to Boston (The Bostonians). (Remember, as Wikipedia says, " [i]n all art forms, genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.") James Ivory was the quintessential white flannel director and his comedy of manners A Room With a View (1986) the quintessential white flannel/Merchant-Ivory film.

Similar to white flannel are certain Japanese costume dramas which share its time frame, such as Kon Ichikawa's Makioka Sisters (1983), in which four sisters in Osaka witness the slow decline of their family's fortune. Shaw also notes French versions of Merchant-Ivory: "Marcel Pagnol's novels and memoirs that take place in southern France are often the basis for these nostalgic stories..." (p. 313). Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1987) and Yves Robert's My Father's Glory (1991) are prime specimens of the genre. Each had a sequel, Manon of the Spring (1987) and My Mother's Castle (1991), respectively.

Hawaii's film industry is far from mature, but as it grows, I would like to see adaptations of what I call the kama`aina style genre: lush, elegiac stories of Hawaii's haole and Hawaiian elites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. John Dominis Holt is the quintessential author here. (Not only do I intend to read his works but also the article by Sheldon Hershinow, titled, "John Dominis Holt: Hawaiian-American Traditionalist" [MELUS, 7:2, Summer, 1980, pp. 61-72].) To get an idea of what a kama`aina style movie would look like, I recommend Picture Bride.

Secessionists Meet

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_re_us/secessionist_movement_1

Selling Out?

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is trying to update its look, but may alienate its core readership in the process.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,507549,00.html

On nineteenth-century newspaper layout design:
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/xml_docs/valley_news/html/about/papers.html

From Planes to Trains

October 1, 2007

Two Clues for the Clueless

The first clue came during a routine NPR news broadcast on Friday, which had presidential candidate Mitt Romney retailing the shopworn idea that our nation "is dependent on foreign oil." We've heard this a million times, of course, and we accept it without thinking. But if you venture forward mentally one baby step, you will quickly come to see that, no, this dependence on foreign oil is not itself the problem. The problem is that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land.

...The second clue for the clueless came over the weekend when President Bush declared that the chaos reigning in America's airports had reached such an intolerable level that the federal government might have to step in and whip the airlines into shape by regulating routes and apportioning flights. Again, the inability of the public and its leaders to extend a thought one inch beyond the horizon of a given problem is really striking. It's as if the entire nation had suffered a lobotomy -- and perhaps we have, through the agency of excessive TV-watching. Has it occurred to anybody that if we could run choo-choo trains between cities a few hundred miles apart -- say from Cleveland to Columbus Ohio -- we could decongest the airports overnight? That, by so doing, Americans could travel much more pleasurably and affordably between the places they travel to most often? It certainly hasn't occurred to anybody running for president, or any of the editors-in-chief in the news media, or even any executive in what remains of the the railroad industry. But I'll try to boil it down to a digestible sound byte for them: the best way to relieve the current agony of air travel is to get the passenger trains running again. Let the airlines do what they do best: really long-range trips. Let trains do the rest. We will consume less foreign oil. The jobs now hemorrhaging out of the US auto industry could move into the passenger rail and rolling stock sectors. Everybody will be much happier. ...

---
Rail could also be revived in Hawaii, which had many railways in the early twentieth century. Here is a description of the Hilo Railroad. Though Kunstler doesn't mention them, airships should also be used in cargo and personal transport.

More on airships here. An excellent account of airships being used for passenger travel is this book, The Golden Age of the Passenger Airships: Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg, by Harold G. Dick with Douglas H. Robinson (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) .

Reed's Island

I have always wondered about the origin of the name of Reed's Island. A 26-acre peninsula in the Wailuku River, Reed's Island is also one of Hilo's old-money neighborhoods. In an article about a bed-and-breakfast there, Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi writes that Reed's Island was "named after entrepreneur William Reed, who purchased it from King Kamehameha IV in 1861. Sculpted by the Wailuku River, it was a playground of Hawaiian monarchs and originally was known as Koloiki (little crawling)."

I'd like to research further the history of this place.

Nosferatu vs. Tweety, 2008

But if I were putting money on this thing, I'd bet on Giuliani. God help us, a Rudy-Hillary race

--Rod Dreher, Beliefnet.com

Gator Darth Vaders Who Taser

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts223.html

The Disinformation Society

September 10, 2007--The Disinformation Society

... American culture has become self-dis-informing.

As my friend Peter Golden (blogger at Boardside) puts it so well: "When people lie, they know they are doing something wrong. But when they just make things up, there's no consciousness of right or wrong at work. It seems morally okay to live in a fantasy world -- and this is much more pernicious to the public discourse than lying."

My friends, who are mostly ex-hippie, yuppie progressives, have been locked in prayer to exorcise the evil spirit of George W. Bush for six years, but they fail to recognize a more comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector of American life, and especially in the ones where a lot ex-hippies-now-yuppies run things. Our political leadership may be deplorable, but so is our leadership in business, education, the arts, and especially the media.

The poster child for this is The New York Times. In their reporting on the world oil situation, they have consistently and uncritically swallowed the public relations handouts of Daniel Yergin's Cambridge Energy Research Group (CERA), a wholly-owned PR shop serving the oil industry. Laziness doesn't even explain this. It's bad editorial leadership. It's a failure to ask the important questions.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary22.html

Kunstler's blog is an important supplement to his website, mainly for readers' comments.

Spinner the Skinhead

http://kbowser.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/degrassi-new-season-7-promo-johnny-dimarco/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBrl85gUrjM

Mama RV: Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month

My comments in brackets.



Welcome back to the Real World! [Not Road Rules?] Look how excited Little Skippy is to attend the birth of Mama RV's new baby! (We wonder who Mama RV had sex with, though.) [One of the Transformers?] Here you have the supreme fantasy of Nascar Moron Nation: a dream of mobility within mobility. The smiling, clueless adults in the background have no idea how short the horizon is for running this stupid hardware. Nor can they see their own sad destiny: to be machine-gunned on their way to the Grand Canyon in a Tucson convenience store by a meth-crazed unemployed sheet-rocker.

Happy Labor Day!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day

Stacy Higa's Website

http://www.stacyhiga.com/

Kunstler's Latest Prophecy

There will be so many assets up for sale across the USA in the months and years ahead that the very sun in the heavens will take on a K-Mart blue-light-special glow. Houses with miles of granite countertops, Maybach automobiles, cabin cruisers that burn thirty gallons of diesel an hour, and much much more. There will be so much slightly used (or barely "pre-owned") stuff for sale that manufacturing another unit of anything (or importing it) will seem like a sick joke. Alas, there may be very few buyers, at least here among the current natives of North America. And so you get "new pricing," and a deadly downward spiral.

Of course, all that creates a problem for the masses of human beings who theoretically support themselves by working to produce new things of value to be bought and sold . But let them watch Nascar! Let's take whatever little remains of our tax revenues (or bonding ability) and build a dozen more speedway ovals around the country, and tweak the stock car engines so those suckers can run on ethanol, and shower the fans with Little Debbie snack cakes as they count the laps. ...Believe me, the public will be so deliriously entranced by the spectacle, they won't notice anything else going on in the background of our nation.

This is how America enters the Long Emergency -- in a Nascar rapture...I apologize for what has been a rather excessive spewage of mixed metaphors this week, but the extreme abnormality of events has just got me going. The bottom line, though, is simple and straightforward: things may appear normal for the moment, but we are heading into a shit-storm as sure as Sam Walton's descendents contracted to buy all the three-ringed loose-leaf binders made west of the international date line. America, you're about to go back to school the hard way.

Back in School

Eight years after I graduated with a baccalaureate in English I'm enrolled in two classes at the local community college. Both are held Mondays and Wednesdays. One is in the mid-morning, the other in the late afternoon.

In other matters, welcome back, Hattie.