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American Pastime & Breadline
My father will be 90 years old in September. His thoughts are still clear, however his mobility has become poor, and around Thanksgiving he fell a few times. He ended up in the hospital, was moved to a nursing facility for rehab, and has been there since. He will likely spend the rest of his days there. We started to clean out the family homestead over the past weekend, and it wasn’t fun.
The bright spot is that I still talk to him every day. He can tell me every play of the game last night, how Victorino is the spark plug, Charlie looks like a chump chewing his Big League, and how Howard strikes out way too much to have a $125 million dollar deal. One thing he can’t understand.. with so many people out of work, $8 beers, and $4 hot dogs, is how the stadium is packed every night.
My pops was born in 1921 and was a boy during the depression. At almost 90 he’s keen to the fact that current affairs are a mess. He sends me newspaper clippings when he comes across something that strikes him. This week he sent a piece written by Michelle Malkin of the Sun Gazette, a local central Pennsy newspaper, about AmeriCorps.
Americorps
AmeriCorps was sold as an alternative to big government, a program to “renew the ethic of civic responsibility and the spirit of community throughout the United States.” With support from both sides, the program has morphed into an all-purpose slush fund. Instead of reining in the nanny state, Washington has turned taxpayer-subsidized helping hands into a band of handout helpers. Good-bye AmeriCorps. Wud up Food-Stamp Legion?
Across the Web, the feds are recruiting AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) workers to apply for jobs as publicists for the welfare state. Their mission: Sign up as many people to the federal food stamp rolls as possible. The record breaking 12 million plus that have been added since el presidente took office isn’t enough. Total recipients are now over 44 million.
Here’s a job ad from Boston:
AMERICORPS VISTA: FOOD STAMP COORDINATOR (INTERNSHIP)
Through this project the Elderly Commission will be able to provide information, assistance and support to senior citizens of Boston in applying for food stamps. Develop a full knowledge of the Food Stamp program and application process. Assist seniors in senior housing and community centers to fill out Food Stamp applications; assist seniors with gathering necessary proofs together for applications; follow up with the Department of Transitional Assistance to ensure seniors receive awarded benefits. Recruit volunteers to be trained on the application of the Food Stamp program.
In New York, Philadelphia, a total of 30 sites all across the country, AmeriCorps and the Department of Agriculture are funding the National Anti-Hunger and Opportunity Corps to “increase access to food stamps.” AmeriCorps workers are themselves being encouraged to sign up for food stamp benefits, giving new meaning to “hands-on”, more like “hands- out” experience.
Austerity, fiscal responsibility.. love it. After vowing to eliminate funding for the $6 billion AmeriCorps social justice army, politicos retreated, and will shrink AmeriCorps budget by 6.7 percent.
Can you smell QE X?
And just for kicks, yet another look at a trillion clams, with accolades to the folks at CNBC:
This stack of dinero in $1 bills would measure 67,866 miles, stretching approximately 2.72 times around the Earth’s equator. If denominated in $100 bills, $1 trillion would be enough to fill 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools, with a total volume of 398,000 cubic feet. For comparison, there is only about $625 billion worth of $100 bills currently in circulation, according to the US Treasury bulletin, which would fill about 2.8 Olympic swimming pools.
~MV
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Anyone notice how Walgreen stores are springing up on main intersections? Then they offer free flu shots, at least around here. Since when does corporate offer anything for free?? Nano chips anyone??
"$1 trillion would be enough to fill 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools, with a total volume of 398,000 cubic feet. For comparison, there is only about $625 billion worth of $100 bills currently in circulation, according to the US Treasury bulletin, which would fill about 2.8 Olympic swimming pools."
US M0 Money supply is less than $1 trillion, and that includes US currency held within the banks or overseas.
Residents of US cities are slaves to both the government and the banks. Without their continued access to and use of ATM and SNAP cards society cannot function.
Bees are buzzing in the Hudson Valley.
Moreover, I heard that years ago there were none in the HV and other insects did the pollinating.
CPL you are nothing more than the leftovers from the COLD WAR! No cars, no wealth no family. Lets Dispute your thoughts.
P.S. Mr. Victory ( if thats ur name). You may want to repost this in multiple places and perhaps again next week when people aren't out getting hammered for the weekend. This is deadly serious.
Can't wait for the responses from the DoGASSeS at Media Matters.
Fool.
Guess what? The bread bowl will be empty everywhere this summer. Food stamps are only useful if they can buy food. I'm in a breadbasket and NOTHING is happening. Only way I'll get fed this year is by my own volition. Crack and Meth will feed a mind until the body screams for food. Usually too late. If you are working in areas like that. Run, run with your wife and children. Faith won't fix it.
Start thinking about how you can pack and move if you are in a large population area.
DoGSoRoS.
It's unfortunate it has taken this long to hit zerohedge because I was all over this in 2008. This is how they are trying to steal the 2012 election.
The strategy is to lure unemployed just-out-of-high-school juveniles to essentially work for free to recruit dependents and voters. Your local Bulletin or Weekly is where the recruiting is successful because they are already indoctrinated pathetic fools.
DoGSoRoS loves young pathetic fools. Preferably male for some reason.
The fact that your father nailed this shows how clearly dangerous these people are and why the antidote must be present to stifle their effects. AOL's mission to turn us into Greece by infiltrating PATCH is another example of DoGSoRoS sticking his ass in our faces.
Kiss the USA goodbye. Operation Exodus. How odd that one of the most patriotic Americans is a little Filipino girl named Michelle.
guru meditation mode. sigh...triples
guru meditation mode. sigh...triples
If it make anyone feel any better, looking at the seed in the ground from Sunday (three weks late), those breadlines will thin. I'm not planting this year.
Not spending 40k to seed a 100 acres lot for nothing but big grass. Otherwie my own crops are doing fine from the incubator I started in March and the second refresh of seedlings in May.
Not sure what anyone else is going to do to feed those troops overseas. I'm not planting...had an offer for corn feed for livestock, but 40k to return 45k per 100 acres.. Fuck that. Land is follow this year. Weeds are taking it. I'll look back in two years and see what's going on between hay mows which makes more money.
So those adopting an idea of deflation is awesome. Couldn't care less. Russia is in for a world of hurt this summer, Canada gets hit with piss poor starter season, Russia gets the wind of destruction regardless of the president. 200 years in the Almanac, 200 years true. Moscow is getting hit hard with their cousin to the east saying it will.
I wonder if anyone is listening.
If it makes anyone else happy, the Chinese and Indian brokers are all looking like they swallowed three pounds of death because no food will be produced for them. Last I looked they were busying themselves fighting outside the local pub, arguing with each other. Doesn't matter, the 350 million tonnes of food produce here is going to be cut in half or less. Strawberry season is nonexistent btw.
No bees. No bees, no strawberries. Bees pollenate strawberries by touching the flower of the plant...lots of plants...just no bees. I'm going to guess no strawberries..no apples. Pears...giddyup. Enjoy your year left.
CPL-try this
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40824563/Alternative-Pollinators-Native-Bees
Retard. Modern farming practices involve hiring beekeepers to bring around fifty hives to an area to force pollenation on a field...FOR CORN...FOR WHEAT. I pay some very nice people around 2k to truck their hives out in around three weeks to pollenate my crops so I am fast to market.
I've missed the window to grow. I takes around 14-20 weeks to make a crop of anything. 14 if you use the mutants Monsanto offers, 20 if heirloom (aka natural). The Monstanto crops aren't going in this year. Either. Frost will hit first before spawning cycle on the plant.
Game over. Again. unless you are growing it yourself as a hobby, that super market is going to be bare as a baby's ass the day it's born. No clue what the livestock guys are going to do, be prepared for cheap everything meat sales in August/Sept then nothing in Oct. Meat doesn't last that long.
So honestly, who gives a shit about the breadlines. If they aren't making their own food. Guess what is going to happen in around a month with complete crop failures world wide?
Not going to spell it out. Everyone is going to be living it.
If people missed it. We need bees to pollenate corn. to make sure it turns into corn. I know nobody gives a shit, but manually pollenating 70 billion corn stalks is a big deal.
I hear you.
I'm not a farmer but my apple tree out back is in full bloom and no bees - it is usually covered when it blooms like this - colony collapse disorder from cell phones, Varroa mites, or something.
Have you looked into conservation easements? Uncle Sammy pays you for not planting.
In the valley we hire the pollenators. Professional behive operatiors. They drive up in an 18 wheeler, drop the load and open the doors on what looks like a large horse wagon. We have nothing. The pros have no bees. All dead over the winter. No strawberries, no corn, no apples.
Asked the bee keeper about it, he said this.
Have you seen a bumblebee yet?
nope.
We're done here.
That's it folks good talking to you literally. Mother nature officially from the the Ottawa valley says FUCK YOU. So, I hope everyone ignores the idea of how idiot sticks wrecking something so pretend and made in barbie's dream home.
I hope all of you stuff the vents near Denver of the underground homes advertised to me six months ago to myself. I will be helping you if need be to kill the underground dewellers in their roost if need be. Rats are a horrible problem. I'm getting really annoying with this situation and desire a HUGE earthquake while those fuckers in their 45 million dollar cots are underground...I think mother earth needs to pay a surprise to them all.
Here in NYC where I have a big garden there are no honeybees, but plenty of bumblebees and the black carpenter bees. Also lots of other pollinating insects which appeared to take up the slack. More than enough to make viable seed for the next year (I harvest my own seed).
In upstate NY, friend of mine has scads of wild bees on his property.
So, sorry to hear about your neck of the woods, but perhaps you need to look into getting your own hive (and not renting them out to pollinate crops which are engineered to make pesticide - yea, that's got to be good for bees, GMO pesticide-laced pollen
...)
I'm with you on that Lowpro. I wouldn't knowingly buy a GMO product. We use our seed from the last year's crop also.
what type of tomatoe seeds do you have?
I have yellow cherry tomatoes, they are spicy with sour and do not go red (tried to make it "normal"...stews, and sauces, salsa of course.... willing to swap 200 cured seeds for 200 cured seeds. I have an ass load of beefsteak and regular vine nonsense. I'm looking for the "ripe" green tomatoe if anyone has the seed.
another thing I'm looking to swap is specifically spaghetti squash. Fucking AWESOME. Can't find the seeds anywhere here. The "fruit" shipment at the store has been irradiatted for longetivity therefore the seeds are a moot point. I might have a type of sqush to swap, but i'm not sure. I do have long Zucinni seed to swap though.
I don't know where you live but I have strawberries in my garden. The neighbor has bee hives and they seem to be doing fine. Oh.... and earthquakes don't do damage underground. The wave is a surface phenomenon. Maybe it'll collapse their exit passage though.
We have wasps...lots of wasps. bees, nothing. I have a full garden of perenials that "should be" blooming. But nothing. Ottawa tulip festival was interesting. Instead of bees, they have students moving around tilling.
How big are the strawberries btw? Thumb or toe? Necks green or gray on them?
Sorry to call you out on it. Strawberries are bitches to keep alive. Only thing less annoying are roses...i have strawberries and rasberries and blueberries in mine. Berries are fickles bitches, nothign to do with the hose. It's all about the temperature on the eastern seaboard...I know in DC the sun shines on TV and in Moscow it's like cuba all the time.
What colour are the necks on your strawberries. You pick them, what colour are they? Be specific on it please. I haven't had a June local strawberry yet, I usually make my jam around the 21st of May. I can promise you that you haven't had a strawberry either.
I'm in the Oregon coastal range. You are right I haven't been able to eat the strawberries yet. Green necks still immature, big toe sized, but really just gettin' started here. We had a very cool and wet spring so I'm not to worried. We had a cooling cycle like this in the '70's. I did notice something strange though. I have thousands of little white flowers in my back yard. Kinda look like miniture daiseys. Anyway they are getting red tips this year.... never seen them do that before. Pretty :)
for me:
strawberries:green (one ripe, hah)
blueberries: tons, but just starting out green
raspberries: nothing yet but a couple flowers. pathetic, don't know why.
cherries: nearly all dropped/gone after initial fruit, annoying, gonna get barely anything.
figs: bizarrely well this year for a young tree.
apples: just a couple so far.
i'm not on much land, and most of the trees are farely young still. just my overview.
Those are called dead's. In the Ottawa valley we harvest on a good year around 500 tonnes of strawberries a day in the three weeks they harvest. we are seeing the same thing. Green, red tip and that means the bee's haven't pollenated them. Exactly the same thing on this side of the world.
No bees, no strawberries. No strawberries = no corn = no apples = no pears.
we are all in deep shit, unless bitter fruit is people's flavor. That's all that is coming. QUick question. Crab apples grow EVErYWHERE. Are there still flowers on the tree. If yes. We're fucked. If no, we're in business.
Crab apple tree down the road. No flowers.... Crab apples are actually the only native apple to North America, or so I hear.
Also the strawberries are not red on the tip. The tips are green still and mostly white body.
here's another way to tell if the fruit has fallen.
Are their crows. They eat the guts out of roadkill and eat fruit that is edible. If they are hanging around the crab apple tree or the strawberry patch, then you're good. If they aren't. Guess what, bad news, food is bad and not fit for other omnivores.
Green strawberries is bad news in oregon. means it'll be a bad grape crop. Which translates into a bad year for wine. And then the yeasts that are needed to make beer that are harvested from grape fields. sigh...
Crows ?? Hahahahaha there are so many damn crows. I live in a very rural area. They are a great early warning system. They let you know if anyone is around. Sucks when you are hunting though. We really were only able to get the garden in last weekend. It has been so wet you couldn't till the soil. Did all our starts a couple months ago. So we won't know how well the crops are for several weeks. The growing season goes well into september and sometimes early october. I think we'll be fine :)
In the SF Bay Area it sure seems like there are a LOT more crows around this year. They seem to have displaced the turkey vulture and hawks that seem to be seen a lot less frequently. Fewer doves as well, which may explain the lack of predator birds. I wonder if the milder summers we are experiencing have something to do with the shift in bird populations.
There are always lots of crows. They are smart and use what is given. I suggest if you end up with one for a pet you keep it outside. They wreck everything shiny unless you teach them how to watch TV. ...weird I know. Ralph is my parents watchdog along with Chole the loyal, fat, slobbery Labrador/collie/monster she is.
Ralph answers the door with "i need a wrench", not sure why, my theory is because he's dumb as a bag of hammers. Oh yeah, shits himself, fly's over to mum. Then Chole sits there waiting for someone to walk in to eat them...or lick them to death. (Yes crows and dogs speak algonquin, english and french here, lol). Sometimes when the indian guy gives you a pet name, it's not flattering, that's to both boys and girls.
Are they after the berries?
The mischief maker (crow) is always around, but is he stealing from your berry patch? If yes, then things are good. If he's stealing your green shoots, ...well then you need to find a recipe for crow.
I'm rural as well, well since birth. Transplanted to city air, then to suburban air, did very very well, then escaped (aka ran away, I like having neighbours I know). I like my land and I get the feeling you are understanding when it's weird.
Strangest thing out here is watching Coyote's literally run into a truck, like they've given up. Seen in twice. You look at them timing the traffic on the highway, wait for the truck and run under the tire. Anyone that owns a dog knows the look of intention, back is up, ears or up and they are looking at somebody. Enough to make a man vomit all over them selve on how useless and cowardly they are to stick up for themselves.
Maybe I'm reading to much into it. Anycase...no...no acorns = not normal if this is the time of th year for that. In Ontario it's July timeframe. None last year or the year before. As mentioned tasty snack, like eating them, the fact you mentioned it...getting worried a little more.
Hmmmm well I'm sure I'll notice this year if it happens again (the acorns). Not to many coyotes.... lots of fox though. They're to skittish to run themselves into trucks. Had a fox den out back for awhile. Trapper took 'em though. Wasn't to happy about it. They pretty much kept to themselves and weren't a nuisance to the chickens or anything. Lots of quail and other wild varmits for them.
I love the foxes. Man they are pretty beasts. we have a mum fox around a click away right now and she's showing her babies how to hunt. So I've been leaving a chicken outside the coop for her to find.
Wife wants to adopt the babies, not going to happen...however. They are very fast on removing an old rooster while the dogs go batshit inside the house. I can report in on that. And the old lady (aka. my beautiful babe) missed her opportunity to fire off a sim card. The coyote's, my dad in law say's they are sick of it and killing themselves as needed in the quickest way possible. I'm irish, my old man (in-law, whatever that means) is native, he's elder and has a better grasp of the crap going on than me. he only been watching it longer sober for...shit, how long does an Irish man drink?...oh yeah...forever until he's dead. Then his friends drink for him.
Only other wierd place i can say Indian's and Cowboy's talk is the Pacific northwest (some of the coolest history ever written), otherwise Ottawa valley is an area, you throw a rock, a man falls out of tree, he just might be an elder of one of the tribes. All are better farmers than a dutchman, and you listen with your ears and not with your mouth.
" and you listen with your ears and not with your mouth."
That's awesome...! To many these days do the opposite.
As in it hasn't flowered, or flowered then the flowers fell off?
It's easy to tell. The tree would have looked like a pink mess for three weeks then little dime sized buds on it. If you did not see this, start growing turnips and gourds. I would say potatoes, but they need bees to pollenate them too. They grow flowers on top of those stalks to make the tubers we all love so much.
Just so you know, I'm not a commercial farmer. I grow for myself and family. The tree did have flowers, now it doesn't. I have a shit load of Blackberries on my property, but we don't see them til late july and august. Something really wierd happened last fall. I normally have a million acorns fall in my yard every fall. Last year not one single acorn.... Is that normal ??
We get the same thing here. i have a tonne of Oak on my property as well, no squirrels even if the cat is trying to keep down the population. I haven't seen an acorn in two years. I like them as snacks. Again nothing in two years. So no, it's not normal. It should be all over the lawn and annoying you, as kids, as again, we put them in the oven and ate them. "chestnuts roasting over an open fire...." Oak trees are VERY giving to the point of annoyance...again...no bees, no pollenation...no flower cycle completion. The wind only does so much, bees are very handy. They do what they do all by themselves.
Another thign i haven't seen in a while is edible mushrooms either. used to get the big puff balls on the lawn. Make mushroom steak out of them because them weight around ten pounds a piece, but I haven't seen anything. Even chicken of the woods. that mushroom that grown on the side of furs and is yellowish, omg it's delicious. Haven't seen anything yet. Nothing but toad stools and mental rocket launchers(magic mushrooms). Now i'm getting a little worried. i'm buying an air pump this week and swaping flower spores with neighbours. I have an acre of plants I need to germinate, since the bees aren't steping up or are dead, I'll have the figure this out myself.
LOL yeah f**king acorns are annoying as hell. I don't know if ours are edible.... The poison oak seems to be thriving ! Our dogs usually get a tonne of ticks in the spring. This year we have been blessed with very few of them. I heard the shroom crop was pretty bleek this year.
LOL yeah f**king acorns are annoying as hell. I don't know if ours are edible.... The poison oak seems to be thriving ! Our dogs usually get a tonne of ticks in the spring. This year we have been blessed with very few of them. I heard the shroom crop was pretty bleek this year.
I could pick around four pounds of wet magic variety just walking in the woods. Probably sxty pound of the variety that would kill a human in under thrity seconds. The edible, delicious kind....I haven't seen anything. Seriously. The puff ball mushrooms, Size of a rugby ball, delicious...nothing as of yet. Again two years ago...freezer would be full of them.
Acorns I'm not too worried about though. With a month late start, the local bee keepers saying their in no service, it translates into no crop. I grow seed btw. This means no crop next year, I sell 127 tonnes of seed, for corn. Weather and conditions right now though, throwing money down a hole. The other guys not growing, they sell food for the NOW, it will be tight.
So remember to shut your mouth that you have food btw and get the half cow NOW...or full, depending on how big the family is.
Again...run, shut up and play poor/broke.
those are shrums baby you smoke them better than strawberries
oooohhh..... don't do the shrums no more. Had one trip that'll last me a lifetime and it was the last one :P
No bunker here, and the elites in their bunkers need to be rooted out like the rats that they are.
We've phuked up and big time, no "economic activity" without food and water, eh?
The corporate farms will be busy, and maybe TPTB wll confiscate farmland to grow food to route to the cities, but more likely they will let the masses riot and starve and kill each other to lessen the burden on SS, Medicare, Food Stamps, FEMA, EBT, and the National Guard (?)
Those poor kids that will be sent out to quell the masses.
Good Lord...
Primary bunker I've been marketted to for three years is in Denver.
http://www.terravivos.com/home.htm
3 million a head...I'll take my chances above ground. If it goes bad, I'm going to poison ttheir well and take every ounce of flesh from an one under that hole and make wolf food. Then make boat, float to cornwall and make wolf food from the euro's for good measure.
No interest in letting the blue bloods live a nickle more than anyone else. If we all die so do they.
CPL, please post more about what you're seeing out there on the farming front, if/when you can. Thanks.
Other than watching the governments of the world run out of food and selling their surplus. Nothing else is happening. The valley produced 34% less than last year, we know that because we sell to Chinese and Indian buyers, not North American. The governmet released food "surpluses" otherwise known as "reserves" in Canada. In the US it was done three years ago.
A little bit of truth would be good. But it would kill the fast food industry over night and force food prices to triple of what they are right now.
Remember, everything is just fine. hedge funds are awesome to invest into the future...sigh....
and that is why Grantham's prediction of 10billion people won't come true, at some point we'll just overload Mother earth and starvation will ensue.
And at that point, this financial system that's based on growth will collapse.
10 billion...we're at probably 7.3 right now. we getting pretty close.
It's not a peak oil we worry about. Peak humanity is the thing. once one goes. the other falls off the cliff.
It is hard to argue against, and cut, programs like Americorps after the bailing out of the banks and corporations.
All part of the plan probably, as I see Bankers and Politicians and corporations living high off the hog and the responsible family being punished.
absolutely agree, had we let the banksters etc take it in the shorts for their own stupidity, we would all have been far better off.
We are burning down and it's increasing exponentially. I see Hyperstagflation being the future for america with the ending of entitlement programs or the severe curtailing of them.