Shortshanks channels William Wallace:
1. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom
2. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer
3. we will act boldly in freedom‘s cause.
4. the advance of freedom is the great story of our time.
5. the demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require their freedom
6. No one can deny the success of freedom
7. We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it
8. in the cause of freedom
9. the hopeful alternative of political freedom
10. your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom
11. the spread of freedom and hope in troubled
12. America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.
13. lead this world toward freedom.
14. America is a great force for freedom
15. We will lead freedom’s advance
Sheehan wears a tee-shirt:
Sheehan, who was invited to attend the speech by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D- Calif., was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. The charge was later changed to unlawful conduct, Schneider said. Both charges are misdemeanors.

Posted by: DM | Feb 1 2006 5:46 utc | 4

I half assed watched the speech, and like DM posted, the freedom this and freedom that repetition, the standing ovations again and again, and that weird smirk over and over (what exactly does it mean? happy? proud? triumphunt? vindictive? who knows?), all of which left me tired — not sleepy tired, more like “blank” tired. Sort of like turning on the TV and staring at some sit-com that you’ve never seen before, you dont know the characters, what they’re doing or why, and a laugh tract that goes off every ten seconds, and you wonder why, its not funny, or even mildly amusing. So you feel “blank”. Which in itself is a particularally frusturating kind of “blank” in that you are cut off both physically and mentally from the participation in, of the communial spirit, the social contract, and the full dimension of social consciousness itself, which we are all compelled by nature to desire as our own self awarness. It was (is) a profound denial to bear witness and remain cut-off still to the massive and delusional construction portrayed so as normal business as usual– all in the face of as it is, the equivilant such potential for disaster. As the president, and no doubt the new governor of virginia make undeniable is the willpower across the political spectrum to doggidly maintain this severely constricted and constrained state of perpetual mental constipation fabricated and compacted into some tangible satisfactory substitute for actual reality. Eventually, Antifa (post on the other thread) is probably right about the american people, that they will at some point end up in the streets. With the full realization that the american political system is a pin point pyramid that from the top transmits the same bland message of unwitting conformity to the illusion of our reality. So be that it may when we return to the real physical world from the televised one, we do so before we are all pushing around our stuff in shopping carts.

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 1 2006 9:07 utc | 6

At the Prezinint’s morning briefing yesterday, some NASA public relations work was mentioned.
NASA has started recruiting astronauts from Latin American countries to go up in the Space Shuttle, and spend time on the International Space Station.
Bush asked if they’d found anyone.
“Yes, sir. In fact, they’re sending a Brazilian on the very next flight.”
Bush looked perplexed, and asked, “Will it actually hold that many?”

Posted by: Antifa | Feb 1 2006 10:35 utc | 8

Shortshanks.
Very good, DM.
Be nice if he would throw Rove and McClellan into the moat and take a flying leap after them .

Posted by: Groucho | Feb 1 2006 13:12 utc | 10

sorry for my booboos.
that should be Exxon records record profits, not Enron…it’s hard for me to tell the difference between one Texas oil-related co and another these days…they should all be called BushCo, maybe?

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 1 2006 14:21 utc | 12

It’s a funny old world.
It strikes me that the nation best positioned for dealing with the future is Cuba.
All those years of persecution by the good ‘ol USA have given them bone.
I suspect they will thrive.

Posted by: John | Feb 1 2006 14:44 utc | 14

my favorite quote:

He grimly warned Iran not to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions, calling it “a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people.”

Glad we don’t have that here…

Posted by: correlator | Feb 1 2006 17:17 utc | 16

My wife and I drove across Canada a few years back. (east to west). When we hit crows nest pass it was quite surprising. We started going down, and continued going down for 8 hours. The rise was so gradual that we did not realise just how high we were. With the economy it is not the rise that is gradual, it is the drop.
The big one (crash) has been predicted for decades and decades. My father was apparently at one time predicting it before I was born. Don’t count on it yet. Looking at things north of the border there has been a slow long economic slide. My first job netted me 7.75/hr unskilled)in 1978 (I think). If I were to go out on the job market today I can get $9.00 (semi skilled). It is not just how much purchasing power the minimum wage has lost, but how many people at the lower ends of the economic scale are not tracking the same percentage rise as the minimum wage. The situation is worse than the rate of rise of the minimum wage would indicate. Canada has tracked the US economic situation relatively closely. I would be very surprised if the same was not true in the US. Things are not going along just tickety-boo just now as we head for a cliff. Instead we are going down and have been going down for a long slow collapse. Too slow to really notice. There may very well be no cliff at all – just a very gradual decent into extreme poverty.

Posted by: ed | Feb 1 2006 17:41 utc | 18

Fauxreal: Should I buy liquor for barter? –or consider things that rich ppl like to hold?
I suggest strongly, as Lisa mentioned, that if you are going to stockpile anything, that you get some means to keep it — such as a firearm and a good supply of ammo (and learn to use it properly). You don’t think that home invasion robberies, where people know you have something highly in demand or even just food, are going to go down or police protection is going to get better under the circumstances, do you? This will be a time when the weak are raped and pillaged, in one form or the other — or both. This has unfortunately always been the way of ‘civilization.’ Getting it is one thing, keeping it is another.

Posted by: Ensley | Feb 1 2006 18:38 utc | 20

Re survival in bad times – several suggestions.
1. One could probably save on the cost of meals by having vegetarian meals from time to time. Or, pretend you are an illegal Mexican immigrant for one day of the week, and live and eat that way.
2. The Mormons believe in saving food and money for one year, have books of advice for sale, and are very helpful in telling other people details of their methods.
3. An interesting book to read on what could happen, in the very worst case scenario, is S.M. Stirling’s SF book of alternate history, “Dies the Fire.” Author has a degree in history, and has kept on learning.
Borrow it from the library.
I view Stirling’s book with very mixed emotions, since it is viscerally vivid and well thought-out. However, I don’t accept his idea that electricity, gunpowder, and engines all suddenly fail to operate.
Nevertheless, given that premise, the rest of the book proceeds with grim logic. There are particularly good descriptions of what people grow, how they stay healthy (or not) and what they trade.
Finally, I agree that the US is sliding downhill. IMHO, this will continue, but it will be imperceptible to the vast majority of Americans. Nobody in the world wants the the US to crash suddenly, except some really grouchy Muslims.
Re Canada sliding downhill, it has to, if the US does. But IMHO as somebody living here, I think the degree of slide is much, much less. Our education system continues to be quite good, the fundies are much less powerful, health care is run much more cheaply, the governments aren’t nearly as corrupt, and there has been a healthy federal budget surplus for the last dozen years.

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 1 2006 19:50 utc | 22

Hi Owl. But what do you make of Harper? Is he the camel’s nose in the Canadian tent, or just a passing blip?
meanwhile…
What to do about plumbing in the event of complete meltdown: humanure thermophilic composting and/or redworm humanure composting. Read The Humanure Handbook plus anything on vermicomposting. I have done the latter for 18 months as an exercise and it worked great. You do need enough outdoor space for the compost pile. One pile about 3 feet across and 3 to 4 feet high will do one adult for over a year, and I think this could be improved on. I was generous with the carbonaceous materials.
Practise various skills, find out what is hard and what is easy, what you like and what you hate — and try to imagine realistically what might be in demand. I don’t think there will be such a thriving economy for seamstresses and tailors, for example, since many of the fossil-based plastic clothing we have today will last damn near forever. I have tee shirts over 10 years old that are still quite functional because of a percentage of poly in the cotton blend. I thnk there will be a huge surplus of mass produced clothing as people who have consumed and collected way too much of it try to yardsale their way out of poverty. So fantasies of earning your daily rice and beans with your crochet hook, knitting needles, or singer featherweight are probably just that — fantasy. Bricoleurs (Mr and Ms Fixits), bike mechanics, amateur plumbers and so on will probably be able to barter skills for food and material goods. Carpenters, roof repairers, glaziers, stonemasons, probably good prospects. Might be a good time to buy or build a bike rickshaw or a good bike trailer if you are fit enough to earn a few bucks hauling stuff for people 🙂
Bread making, canning, food preserving generally, growing medicinal and cooking herbs, keeping bees or small livestock (chickens, rabbits, potbelly pigs) probably have some potential as cottage industry. I think the best crystal ball for this kind of stuff is to look at any market town in a poor third world country, or the rural hinterland of a developing nation, and see what people are doing to scrape by. Grandma spending all day to take half a dozen sweet melons to the market to exchange for a few coins that she can then exchange for a small sack of rice, that kind of thing.
…
Speaking of yardsales, what becomes of Ebay when transport prices skyrocket? Does it collapse back into regional and local online markets like Craigslist?
Are we all a bunch of “End is Nigh” millennialists whimpering in unfounded panic? No idea. But it’s hard to see a really decorous, comfy soft landing from where I sit. Dark Age Ahead [as Jane Jacobs suggests] or just Hard Times, or some kind of massive die-off? Or just business as usual, getting a little meaner, a little dirtier, a little sicker and poorer and uglier with every passing year until, as Stephenson or Gibson once wrote, “every place in the end becomes India”. [I write this not as a slur on India in particular, but with a sense that the process of biotic bankruptcy and overpopulation, and the loss of freedom and immiseration of the majority that these entail, are in some way inevitable end states of the human process, and that the “younger nations” of Euroland and the US will in the end look like post-Imperial China, post-Rajput India, etc. — whoever it was should perhaps have written that all places in the end become Rapa Nui.]

Posted by: DeAnander | Feb 1 2006 23:53 utc | 24

DeAnander, IMO it is too early to say anything about Harper.
Harper would like to be friendly with the US, but Bush & the US ambassador have an amazingly fine record of turning friends into seriously annoyed folks. A few days ago, Harper bared his teeth at the US statement that Canada should not be sending ice-breaker ships into the far north, and that the whole north area is not Canadian territory.
At his worst, Harper cannot be compared to a Republican. Besides, he has a minority government. That means, he can do nothing without a consensus – with the Liberals (extreme social democrats by US standards), New Democrats (even more extreme social democrats with a Marxist touch), Bloc Quebecois (ditto – very socially progressive).
With 124 seats, Harper has to scratch up 31 votes from the other parties to pass any laws.
Finally, the average Canadians have quite different attitudes from average Americans. Studies show that the differences have been widening since the 1950’s. A possible reason is that Canadians are more concentrated in big cities.
To be sure, there are Christian fundies, as well as a small Mormon offshoot where leaders have a dozen wives, but these are distinct minorities.

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 2 2006 0:45 utc | 26

Harper could play paddycake with his minority until such time as an election is called and then gain a majority – barring some unexpected event of some kind requiring martial law, in the meantime.

The entire blockade in Calgary (for the G8 in 2003) was a test for bill C-42, which was then in the house and didn’t pass. It has resurfaced several more times under C-55, C-17 and now C-7. It would give ministers extra-legislative powers (under governor-in-council provisions known as order-in-council) to essentially declare martial law. They could order the military to seize control of an area and detain people without due process, all under the guise of national security.

With stuff like this (and more) percolating through parliament under the Fibs, how different will it be having a guy with his head firmly up Chimpoleon’s ass as PM?

Posted by: gmac | Feb 2 2006 1:27 utc | 28

Good grief deanander. For 18 months you composted your own sewage?
I don’t think I’d want to be a neighbor, but that’s bloody impressive.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 2 2006 2:32 utc | 30

Thanks for the Keen book Debunking Economics. A very tough slog, but very impressive someone could put all of that together.
Also, I’d encourage everyone to read billmon’s suggested books. The Emmanuel Todd and John Gray books are interesting, mostly conservative/reactionary shakedowns of imperialism and globalism.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 2 2006 2:37 utc | 32

Bernhard, don’t know what the phrase “waiting line for medicine” exactly refers to esp in regards to AIDS medicine; however, yes there are increasing problems with prescription drugs in US at least for elderly since Medicare Part D drug plan kicked in. My husband is former radiologist, so we get Physicians for National Health Care Plan mailings (part of why he’s an ex – few radiologists in US are pro-single payer) and Dr Oliver Fein was outraged that one of his patients had to go to hospital because the patient could not get necessary prescriptions, or rather couldn’t afford them. I also see this in reports I do at local hospital – I’m a med transcriptionist. Health care in US sucks – and that’s in the past 30 years or less – almost totally driven by insurance industry now, as it was not within my 50+-years’ memory (let alone my husband’s surgeon father’s time).

Posted by: francoise | Feb 2 2006 2:46 utc | 34

Anna Missed, I am strongly tempted to make a tee shirt that has a sketch of Julia Child (a gorgeous Buff Orpington) on the front with the word “TERRORIST” underneath.
Honestly, these govt people are more absurd/dangerous every day. Good discussion re NAIS via an online radio program airing these past couple weeks can be found here.

Posted by: Lisa B-K | Feb 2 2006 3:18 utc | 36

I read Emmanuel Todd’s book a couple of years ago. I’d call him a moderate, myself. I respect him for his forecast of the end of the USSR when Wolfie, etc. were overestimating the “evil empire” and saying the CIA was totally wrong b/c they downplayed the ability of the USSR to threaten the U.S. (sound familiar?) …that’s when Bush Sr. 86’d the neocons, if I remember what I’ve read (that part is not from Todd.)
Todd says that Chomsky gives too much power to the ability of the US to control all, and the right wing…the guy who wrote about the end of history, maybe? also placed too much faith in US power.
Instead, Todd looks at the US the way he looked at the USSR. I’ve mentioned this here…but a while ago, I suppose. He also believes that the middle east is going thru a crisis of modernism, and that their prospects for an easier time of this can be predicted by looking at the levels of education for men, then women…this results in falling birth rates and more autonomy for females, and…voila…a world that Bill O’Reilly hates.
So, it’s education, not war, that would seem to be the greatest way to bring stability and less reactionary movements to the middle east, if the rest of the world’s history is any example.
and, thus, by looking at Todd’s demographic evidence, fundamentalist religion is not the opiate of the ppl, it is the wmd.
but it’s been a while since I read it, so if Billmon still exists, maybe he can clarify and apply his skills in economics and more to give his thoughts on Todd’s book.
Some are arguing that the US is sinking into a dark age. That’s the book Gore Vidal mentioned in this link.
The book is by Morris Berman and is called Dark Ages America: The Final Stage of Empire.
“We retain the rhetoric of liberal democracy, but freedom of choice really means Wendy’s vs. Burger King.”—Morris Berman
here’s one guy’s opinion. he recommends The Collapse of Complex Societies, instead. (this amazon link lets you read a bit of it, too.)
As far as slide vs. crash…
well, I’m hooked in to community here. I garden. I have canning equipment and a handcrank ice cream maker (but not enough rock salt) , and I weirdly save candle wax because one of these days I’m gonna make some candles, and know ppl who grow chickens in the city and I started trying to save my own seeds this year, and I can walk or bike to the places I really need to get to (including a place to get horse manure) and my kids take the bus to school, but I have enough books at my place about specific subjects that I could teach them…not that they or I could stand that… I cannot sew, but I can bake, but so can lots of professionals where I live. I don’t think my area would be subject to a housing bubble pop, but lots of bldg is going on here, which has had the effect of making some places more affordable b/c they’re staying empty longer as rentals. (this is University town economics.)
I’ve been planting edible landscaping for a while…fruits mostly. I know the uses of lots of plants before pharmas…not just for medicine, but things that are ornamental now that used to be considered edible.
In the big scheme of things, a place like the one where I live is usually considered a place that would fare better than others, but who knows. In any event, it’s not simply about me when I think of these things.
Once upon a time, when I lived in the big city, I was mugged and I found out that my adrenalin reaction was to fight, kick, and all that, till I had a chance to think. So I think I would survive, or die trying. I worry about my disabled son, esp. when he’s older and all that. I don’t live near any of my family so that his cousins could watch his back. That’s an issue for me no matter what, tho.
Last year I wanted to get rain barrels, and looked at them, but…
I’ve seen composting toilets online, De, much easier to deal with, I’d think.
It does seem so ridiculous and outrageous to even think about these sorts of things…not composting toilets…doesn’t New Mexico use them in their park system?
Funny tho, that Bush speaking makes me think like a survivalist…

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 2 2006 3:41 utc | 38

todd is a bit of a misogynist (“castrating females”), is an apoogist for american postwar empire of the 1940s-50s. he also is attracted to fukiyama’s strange universalism of american led democratization. but, he seems right about the future of u.s. empire.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 2 2006 3:59 utc | 40

Slothrop- I guess I missed the part about castrating females. where was that?
I do remember he talked about male anxiety related to female independence, but I don’t see that as misogyny. I see that as looking at history and seeing that men fear losing power over females…they might have to start getting pec implants and liposuction if they can’t control a female via finances.
Didn’t Engels say that male subjugation of women was the first example of class warfare?
I suppose Todd has the pov of someone who benefited from the Marshall Plan, as far as postwar America…that was one of the finer moments in “interference” as far as I’m concerned…butter not guns…Truman, for all his faults, was adamant that NO war profiteering should come from implementing the Marshall Plan.
Thanks for remembering Fukiyama. As far as democratization…that was the idea behind the French Revolution as well, when they saw that the other monarchs wouldn’t tolerate a Republic…
But I know we have differences of opinion, and you have a vastly different frame of reference than I do…isolationism vs…what…is always an issue for any nation. what we’re doing is wrong, no matter what, with the war profiteering and taking away autonomy and trying to install puppets and, simply invading Iraq itself was a horrible mistake that is leading to civil war, as was predicted by the reality-based experts.
I’m not thrilled with Hamas in Palestine, either, even when they were elected by democratic processes. I can’t be as optimistic as b about them being forced to moderate their rhetoric and action. I also understand their anger…but don’t see that it will make anything any better.
overall, if America becomes part of a larger balance of power, maybe that would be one of the best ways to reach some sort of peace without destroying us all.

Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 2 2006 4:38 utc | 42

Lisa,
We got mostly bantam silkies, then some polish, cochin, and a frizzle — all free range(in the yard 3/4 acre). Not hungry enough to eat them, so we just eat their eggs & let them hatch & raise their own chicks. Maybe its time for a chicken thread? (just kidding b.)

Posted by: anna missed | Feb 2 2006 9:06 utc | 44

anna m – What a rich, disturbing explanation of “blank” at the top of the thread! For me, a cathartic read.
SOTU started shortly after 4pm (afternoon) here, and I fell asleep @ 15-20 min. Later I attributed this reaction to escapist response to extreme cognitive dissonance and overload. Intolerable to be heard as sense. Too destructive to be dismissed as pure nonsense. Too forked to be readily parsed. Kremlinology not my strength.
Your description is so much better. Thanks for breaking it down with insight.

Posted by: small coke | Feb 4 2006 22:56 utc | 46