*Transcendental *Logic

I bet you didn’t see this coming: The Food Issue (NY Times)

Excerpt:

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food.

Since [Nixon's administration], federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

…It’s an excellent, BIG article on all the issues impacted by and connected to food production, including health care reform, climate change, and economic inequality. 

Expect more on the topic from me, as starting next year I’ll be a bona fide gardener, growing hopefully more than enough for my household in what used to be my lawn — what will soon be my massive permaculture garden.  (See How to Make A Forest Garden and Food Not Lawns if you want more background on what that means.)

I’m becoming quite convinced that this kind of gardening is going to be a HUGE metric for successful living in any kind of non-dystopian future; and that by doing it now, we’re not only offering our support to the environment and to smaller, simpler living; but literally, making a revolutionary statement about the future of our society.  Read the article and you’ll start to understand why, in addition to spades and gloves and trowels, I’m buying myself a black armband to garden in. 

Peak Oil News >> Forums >> Economics & Finance >> What an economic collapse looks like WILL SCARE YOU SILLY, but may also provide what you consider useful advice.  My family and I have been arguing about his gun recommendations for a week now.  ;)

Sweden did something similar to what the U.S. is attempting, after a housing bubble burst and threatened their economy.  It worked.  Then again, there are significant differences:  Sweden is a lot smaller, and their problem was actual mortgages, not tricky, poorly-documented “mortgage securities”.  Plus, probably most significantly, the Swedish “bailout” included a hefty smackdown on banks themselves; it was far from “no strings attached” like our government wants it. 

So from where I sit, nothing is certain (other than that the little guys who had nothing to do with it will end up taking the burn for this mess — that, you can pretty much count on).  Oh, and that Weird Al’s new song is awesome.  That’s totally a given.  ;)

America the Banana Republic: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Now ask yourself another question. Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? Has anybody even offered to resign? Have you heard anybody in authority apologize, as in: “So very sorry about your savings and pensions and homes and college funds, and I feel personally rotten about it”? Have you even heard the question being posed? O.K., then, has anybody been fired? Any regulator, any supervisor, any runaway would-be golden-parachute artist? Anyone responsible for smugly putting the word “derivative” like a virus into the system? To ask the question is to answer it. The most you can say is that some people have had to take a slightly early retirement, but a retirement very much sweetened by the wherewithal on which to retire. That doesn’t quite count. These are the rules that apply in Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea or Venezuela, where the political big boys mimic what is said about our hedge funds and investment banks: the stupid mantra about being “too big to fail.”

According to the Global Mammal Assessment, one in four mammal species on Earth faces extinction.

Anybody else thinking there’s a huuuuuuge “oops” in our future?

Real vs. Speculative:

“The real economy need not suffer in the downfall of the speculative
economy. If anything, the real economy has been repressed by the
speculative economy. Real farmers have been crushed by Big Agra, real
druggists have been crushed by Wal-Mart and real transportation
alternatives have been crushed by Big Oil and Big Auto.

The opportunity here, while the big boys are down, is to rebuild the genuine, local commercial infrastructure…“

From.  And thanks to.