from James Kunstler

What I wonder is how long the American public will remain in its Kardashian trance. At this torpid moment no one believes that any theoretical political cohort in this land - tea-partiers, swindled youth, professional lefties (or what's left of them), or the fugitive thinking centrists (wherever they are) - might bestir themselves to bust up a nominating convention or march on one of many debauched institutions in the nation's capital, from the SEC to the wax museum formally known as the Department of Justice. I think differently, though. I think this grim interval of crisis consolidation is drawing to a close and, like the buds swelling on every tree in New England, events will soon burst into astounding efflorescence.

KUNSTLER (Click)

Reading

What I've recently read:

What I'm reading now.

Latest little history quiz

What's happening here?

some recent snapshots

Dress-up night on the cruise we took to Nassau.

==================

This is my grandson, Wyatt. I think he's going to turn into a perfect Irishman.

=========

Bill has sent this terrific picture of his grandson posing with the motorcycle Bill is still not too old to ride. Let's hope Christian is still too young to ride it.

The earphones are a good idea. :)

In our fair city, of late, there have been bodies lying all over the place. At least one was a cop. Although he survived the shootout, his opponent did not.

Bodies are found many mornings, just lying about.

We are just the embodiment of the blessings of the Second Amendment as currently interpreted, and my! -- Don't we feel safe?

Pig Farming

HOSTESS - an American nutrition icon - is trying to slide out from under its labor contracts and its pension obligations to its workers. This is becoming a familiar American story, isn't it? (Once G.M. gets to do it, everyone should be able to, right?) A company neglects to provide the pension program it promised years ago and now finds the time has come to make good --- and it can't.

I suspect that saving 125 million as HOSTESS hopes to do in cutting pension obligations/contributions at this point, will mean excellent bonuses for the management class, which is to say, the pigs sitting around the table with the neighborhood farmers on Animal Farm.

Most of this pension business was a self-inflicted wound by the management of these corporations. It began a generation or two ago when the responsibility to develop an adequate program was shirked. I believe the business class refers to this as "kicking the can down the road."

Someone's cans should be kicked. I think I know which ones, and they aren't wearing the workers' caps in the HOSTESS factories.

ACELA

(The ACELA fast train Boston-Washington)

There was talk this morning at the Philo Group discussion coffee klatch to the effect that railroads are a thing of the past because they cannot possibly pay their own way. The idea of fast trains or "bullet trains" merely means more expensive outlays of public money into a business that can never turn a profit.

Someone remarked that the Boston-Washington rail link makes a profit.

I make this point: airlines cannot make a profit either, and we prop them up with public moneys. The highway system cannot make a profit, and we prop that up with public moneys.