Best part:  GOP is actually arguing that unlike Cut, Cap and Balance this new plan doesn’t also include requiring a 2/3rds majority to ever raise taxes.

This, they say, is “compromise”.

And yes, even I am thinking we’re going to be in the middle of a crashing stock market and a partial government shutdown pretty soon.

Thanks, mar. I didn’t want to be the one that had to break it to everybody.

Japan has survived worse because they are a highly-disciplined society with a cultural aversion to riots and home invasions. America, alas, is still the Wild West.

It’s too late to plant this year, so I’ll likely put up a post later on looting, scavenging, non-lethal self-defense and living without electricity, so we can all make it to next Spring.

Ummm ... may I, as a citizen of the North Woods, make a point about “indoor gardens”? Because up thisaway, indoor gardens are frowned upon, particularly by law enforcement, code enforcement and landlord enforcement.

We do, however, have a lot of guns in the community, I mean a LOT. So maybe we’ll just form a posse of roving banditos and make periodic raids into Mendocinoland, or Trinitystan to get our staples. Of course, we’ll also have to kidnap the women and the the youngins to ensure the future of our Clan of the Bear Cave status.

Tribal social organization and raids won’t save you. This is going to be all about self-selecting, opportunistically-affiliated cell groups and systempunkt.

“Tactical” food? Is that some military-ish sounding marketing gimmick to sell to the gun fondlers?

Where do you plan to find the gasoline to power the roto-tiller?

And by “tactical” I mean you can probably use this bacon like a Japanese throwing star.

Where do you plan to find the gasoline to power the roto-tiller?

Methanol can be easily distilled from corn and agave, although you’ll probably drink so much you’ll forget you own a roto-tiller.

Are raccoons edible? There’s lots of ‘em around here.

Oh, well, Tactical Bacon is just funny. And it’s bacon. Which is good.

As opposed to a google search which brings up not only canned bacon but lots of websites involving guns and military personnel and the unstated promise that Joe the Resentful White Fucker can be a badass too from his Secure Bunker (aka the basement).

No, it’s the real deal. And it’s “tactical.”

  At 18.00 for a 9oz can , that better be some damn good bacon.

I am manically reading my SM Stirling “Dies the Fire” series to get pointers on fighting off cannibals and starting my own wiccan clan. Also, I love the idea of tactical bacon.  I can’t decide whether I should add the word “tactical” to everything, or the word “bacon” but I think there’s an important synergy there.

I’ve actually come around to thinking this is just a case of Obama and that darn “Chill the Fuck Out, I’ve got This” poster.  I’m actually calmer today than I was yesterday.  I think he’s going to pull this out and emerge stronger and I’m hopeful that the party as a whole will sweep at the next election.  I’m really sure that the tea party will be as long gone as a stale fart by that time.

aimai

At 18.00 for a 9oz can , that better be some damn good bacon.

You’ll think it was the best 18 bucks you ever spent, when you’re eating dandelions and time-sharing your kidneys with sick people for butter money.

I’m really sure that the tea party will be as long gone as a stale fart by that time.

This really is necessary, whatever else happens. The Reagan Revolution was ugly and stinky enough before the participants were cornered and lashing out and the metaphorical rabies so far advanced. No meaningful - let alone beneficial - governing can get done while this kind of faction has any influence at all.

You’ll think it was the best 18 bucks you ever spent, when you’re eating dandelions and time-sharing your kidneys with sick people for butter money.

  Yeah , but for 18 bucks , I can buy a couple of pounds of bacon , cook it up ,vac seal it , and shove it in an old paint.  I don’t know if it will last ten years , but if things are fucked up for that long , and conventional food stuffs are in short supply, I can survive for years by hunting free range Tea Bagger. They’re dumber and slower than other game , and this part of Florida is filthy with them. I hear they taste like chicken.

Fortunately I made sure to get the last edition of Joy of Cooking that has recipes for roadkill-type critters.

Go from squirrel on the grille to squirrel on the grill!

Fortunately I made sure to get the last edition of Joy of Cooking that has recipes for roadkill-type critters.

Good news: I have the foxfire books. 
Bad news: they’re on my computer, which if those books are needed, won’t have power.

You’ll think it was the best 18 bucks you ever spent, when you’re eating dandelions and time-sharing your kidneys with sick people for butter money.

Believe it or not but when I was at Fresh Market last weekend they were selling Dandilion greens for $2.99 a bunch.  They were no doubt purchased by the kind of people who pay a yard care firm a thousand dollars a month to have them eradicated from their manicured front lawns.  Me I just go out there and pick ‘em.

well I brew beer, so I guess it’s off to the store for 500 pounds of barley and a couple of rolls of razor wire…

and a costume from the Road Warrior, the guys wearing white….

So I’m not prepared for anything. I can’t do indoor or outside gardening, I’ve got no skills to help me survive the end of civilization, I don’t even own a bike so I can ride to safer areas. I’m freakin’ doomed.

Dammit, I can’t take this. I’m going to floss with a shotgun so I don’t have to deal with slowly starving to death in the coming apocalypse.

Now if only I owned a shotgun…

I don’t know if I’d be so cocky about the Bohner proposal being DOA.  Harry Reid hasn’t really been able to stiffen his spine for ... well… has he ever?  When the media starts up, Reid will bend over.  And Obama will stay true to his style - do what he said he wouldn’t.

I give the Dems about as much credit as the Repubs.  The damn media keeps separating them as if they were two different species, but they are more like two very similar trees.  We are beginning to see the forest for the trees.  That’s one forest, not two.

@Ronbo — Doesn’t sound like politics is going to be a very rewarding hobby for you.

When the media starts up, Reid will bend over.

When the media starts up with what? They’re calling the Tea Party Republicans hostage-takers, terrorists and suicide-bombers. I don’t think Harry’s feeling a lot of hate at this point.

Unfortunately, my family is likely to end up among the unemployed and homeless. My son’s SSI has already been butchered because he should, apparently, be able to live on $600/month and his child support is taken out of the dollar for dollar, and my husband is already extremely under-employed.

I’m waiting for everything to fall apart. My animals will have to be given over to the Humane Society(where they’re all too old to be adopted, so we know how that will end), my oldest and her daughter have a place to go, the remaining 5 of us are in a car.

And, no,  I don’t think I’m kidding.

So, it just might be ME robbing your tomatoes. :P

The damn media keeps separating them as if they were two different species, but they are more like two very similar trees.

Why, it seems like only yesterday Bush was repealing DOMA, passing healthcare reform, and recommending that rich taxpayers contribute a bigger slice of the revenue.

tired.

@domynoe — Not that it helps, but I’m right there with you. What clients I have left are likely to hunker down if this gets ugly. I don’t mind starving to death myself; it’s the letting my cats down part that would break my heart.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed this doesn’t get worse than it already is, for all our sakes.

Stay frosty. Mitch McConnell is trying to filibuster the Reid bill, and it looks like Harry Reid is ready to punch him.

Strange, please - can I just move in with you? I don’t eat much, and I can cook, although I am Black, so there might be some explaining to your relatives that needs to happen.

Take your time. I will be under the bed.

@pwc — No family left, so no problem.

Besides, they were always cool with me living with Blacks. It was me they found inexplicable.

Let’s take a look at the situation, square in the tail:

The parallels between the rapid growth of US government bureaucracy and the Soviet bureaucracy is straight forward.  As more and more of US economy was controlled by a narrow group of decision makers allocating government resources, the more sluggish the entire economy became (most of this was due to massive growth and mis-allocation in entitlements and defense).  Further, the ability of government bureaucracies to extend their decision making to remaining majority of the economy through regulatory action, is also a form of centralization.  However, even with all of this government growth, it’s is still not enough to account for the level of misallocation we are seeing. 

There’s is something else at work.

The answer is that an extreme concentration of wealth at the center of our market economy has led to a form of central planning.  The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy.  As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces.  A few thousand extremely wealthy people making decisions on the allocation of our collective wealth.  The result was inevitable:  gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy.

To see what this extreme wealth concentration looks like as a distribution, we don’t have to look further than income distribution in the US (classic power law).  The liquid wealth of those on the extreme left of the curve completely outweighs the 99.5% of the population to the right (the distribution is FAR more skewed than most people even imagine—Republican or Democrat).  This graph would also be a good way to demonstrate how decision making in a bureaucratic dictatorship in a country like the Soviet Union looked like before it collapsed.

Well, I’d rarely argue with John Robb, although in this case, I might suggest he substitute “concentrated decision-making” for “central planning,” since fewer and fewer people may be impacting larger and larger tranches of wealth, but “planning” suggests a level of conscious coordination I’m not sure is actually in play.

but “planning” suggests a level of conscious coordination I’m not sure is actually in play

You got that right.  This entire thing is being fueled by ignoramus teepees with no understanding of economics, finance or politics.  And, dog help us, they actually have power.  I wasn’t kidding when I said we’re doomed.  Unless somehow, someway a knight gallups to our rescue or a deus x machina comes down and sweeps the teepees screaming to a cliff and drops them off.  Otherwise I’m just out in the garden tending my tomatoes . . .

@PWC: The Rumproast Hobo Contingency Survival Camp is in its planning stages, but all are welcome: admission is a can of beans, a flask of Four Roses, and a catnip mouse.

Strange’s establishment is filling up fast, but there’s still space in the yard for a cardboard edifice, I believe.

Strange, I would argue the fact that corporate profits are up while unemployment hasn’t come down suggests “Mission Accomplished”.

If you’d like to grow a “victory garden” in your basement or on the hill behind yer spread I can tell you how to do it. I can tell you how to harvest and transport your survival patch at 2am including armed sentry points and decoy vehicles too but I can’t tell you who to trust. You’re on your own there. Ya know about the black helicopters? They’re real. I’ve seen em. Been there. Take my word for it.

*

Are you making fun of our paranoia, farmer? ‘Cause Glenn Beck says the people who mock your end-times survival plans are the ones who’ve already sold out to the Martians.