If the Shoe Doesn’t Hit, You Must Acquit

FSM be with him.

It is time for a brigade of Baked’s hot mercenary former IDF soldiers to help liberate this freedom footwear flinger.

The trial thus far, the testimony, is an inspiration: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/19/iraq.shoe.thrower/index.html

I started a joke, which started the whole world crying,
but I didn’t see that the joke was on me, oh no.

I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing,
oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.

Hey, TJ, lookie here, a serious article, a very serious article, which sets forth very real policy suggestions for how to fend off cannibal anarchy, its really quite amazing, here is the opening to the serious discussion of how to ensure people have access to food after a complete cessation of commerce:

“Right now the Washington economic stimulus team is putting on their Scuba gear and diving down to the engine room to try to invent a way to get a diesel engine to run on seawater. They spoke of change, but in reality they are terrified of change and want to cling with all their might to the status quo. But this game will soon be over, and they don’t have any idea what to do next.

So, what is there for them to do? Forget “growth,” forget “jobs,” forget “financial stability.” What should their realistic new objectives be? Well, here they are: food, shelter, transportation, and security. Their task is to find a way to provide all of these necessities on an emergency basis, in absence of a functioning economy, with commerce at a standstill, with little or no access to imports, and to make them available to a population that is largely penniless. If successful, society will remain largely intact, and will be able to begin a slow and painful process of cultural transition, and eventually develop a new economy, a gradually de-industrializing economy, at a much lower level of resource expenditure, characterized by a quite a lot of austerity and even poverty, but in conditions that are safe, decent, and dignified. If unsuccessful, society will be gradually destroyed in a series of convulsions that will leave a defunct nation composed of many wretched little fiefdoms. Given its largely depleted resource base, a dysfunctional, collapsing infrastructure, and its history of unresolved social conflicts, the territory of the Former United States will undergo a process of steady degeneration punctuated by natural and man-made cataclysms.”

Much more. Its surprisingly hopeful, in a way, even if the fundamental premise is “how to survive the complete collapse of society.”

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_16876.cfm

So sorry, rptrcub, but DEVELOPING HARD: Bibi and Avi Lieberman in Knesset tie-up. And so the IDF will have its hands full of something other than grateful women and swooning gheys.

Netanyah-nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-hu as Prime Minister. Precisely what the world needed right about now. Oy.

@chicago bureau: Bibi used to be Bebe, and boy howdie, the idea that he controls nukes is to me as scary as the idea of the Taliban controlling Pakistan’s nukes.

@redmanlaw: “BiBi,” Not “BeeGee.”

@Prommie: It could be far worse. The Geez could have won, then died 30 days after taking the oath after crapping himself to death, thus leaving The-Woman-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named in charge of our nuckyular weapons.

Talibunny + Bibi = Armageddon by March 1, if not earlier.

@chicago bureau:
you said it all in 2 letters. OY.

from the jerusalem post:
“Out of the two candidates, one is bad and the other is horrible – we just don’t know which is which,” quipped UAL MK Ahmed Tibi upon his arrival at Beit Hanassi. “We’ll just have to let Bibi (Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu) lead the country with his fascist partners.”

@redmanlaw: Finally, a musical reference I get.
@Prommie: Good god, man, where do you find this stuff?

Hey, the guy studied the collapse of the Soviet Union, which apparently was nearly bad enough to have just what he described, a penniless populace in danger of losing access to food and shelter and, well, almost cannibal anarchy. I found his hopefulness comforting.

What he might not appreciate is the savage, law of the jungle, “fuck you, I got mine,” kill or be killed mindset of the average US of A Christian (though he does mention unresolved social conflicts). I think the Soviets were more used to the idea of cooperation and suchwhat.

Still, grow gardens, everyone, and put your cash in staple commmodities, I’d say grain and bullets. Even if you don’t have guns, it will pay to have bullets, I bet.

@Prommie:
The slaughter of some Russian nationals and various wars between ex-Sov states say otherwise. Lots of pretty scary shit went un/underreported in the “end of history” era.

@ManchuCandidate: Happy happy news:

“Policymakers Project High Unemployment Through 2011, Vow Aggressive Action
It could take years for the nation to fully bounce back from the recession, according to new projections by leaders of the Federal Reserve, who indicated that even once the economy starts expanding again, it will be an “unusually gradual and prolonged” recovery. The unemployment rate will remain elevated through at least 2011, according to the policymakers’ official forecast, released yesterday, and the economy this year could shrink by 1.3 percent. That would mark the sharpest contraction in 27 years. The bleak outlook suggested a deep sense of gloom among the top policymakers at the central bank and offered insight into why they have moved aggressively to bolster the financial system and soften the recession’s blow. Fed leaders agreed that unemployment would remain high for the next three years, “even absent further economic shocks,” according to the minutes of the Fed’s late January policymaking meeting. “A few [members] indicated that more than five to six years would be needed for the economy to converge to a longer-run path” of growth. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke appears not to be among that highly pessimistic group. After a speech yesterday, he told reporters that although the unemployment rate is “very likely” to rise from its current 7.6 percent level to “above 8,” government action can contain the damage. “If we can take strong and aggressive action, including the Fed’s actions, to try to improve credit markets, I think we can break the back of this thing and that we will begin to see improvements in 2009,” Bernanke said. But he warned, “If we fail to take adequate actions, the situation would continue to deteriorate.”
Source: The Washington Post ”

Gee, 5 or 6 years of high unemployment and no economic growth, isn’t that a depression?

Should we start looking for an Ark again?

bibi must be drooling over this tidbit, also from the jerusalem post:

“Iran has built an unmanned surveillance aircraft with a range of more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers), long enough to reach Israel, a top Iranian defense official said in remarks published Wednesday.”

ARK time!

@Prommie:
I’m thinking that. But I’m thinking more farming commune.

Bibi? Is this another joke from Yahweh?

@baked: Remember Colin Powell at the UN showing old films of an Iraqi experiment where they rigged an old Dassault Mirage to fly under remote control, and suggested it was headed for New York to anthrax-ize us all?

We don’t need any new wars now, we are gonna need all the people there are, for food, soon.

Our GOP: “A democracy could not exist because Mohammed already made the perfect law. The Quran is perfect just the way it is, that’s why it is only written in Islamic.”

— Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), quoted by the Daily Nebraskan, obviously not knowing the Quran is written in Arabic.

– politicalwire.com

Meanwhile, Black Eagle has landed in Ottawa for the day. And all this talk about jailing the Shoe Thrower and Bibi makes me want to liven the mood.

And thus: screw the IDF. Please send hot female Mountie to CB for his birthday, so that he may give her a Musical Ride. Kthx.

@ManchuCandidate:

My family has some land in Northern Cali, how about that?

@redmanlaw: “…written in Islamic.”

Oh, you crazy Languages of the World!

@Prommie:

Dmitry Orlov has been predicting the collapse of the US for awhile now.

Here’s his US/USSR comparison in handy dandy Powerpoint form:

http://ipower.ning.com/profiles/blogs/2057690:BlogPost:300758

@Prommie: There’s no way out. We’re a year away from cannibal anarchy and the outbreak of regional civil wars. Plant potatoes and onions now and take on as much armament as possible. When the US is unable to pay its military, they’ll be stranded in hellholes all over the world and starving to death on their bases in the states, armed and likely completely riddled with hyperviolent neonazis. Then, when the food starts running really low, the ethnic and religious civil wars will ignite, if there are any survivors after the military goes rogue.

@FlyingChainSaw:

Heh heh. Prommie’s Dmitry Orlov article is right up your alley:

And so we will have former soldiers, former police, and former prisoners: a big happy family, with a few bad apples and some violent tendencies. The end result will be a country awash with various categories of armed men, most of them unemployed, and many of them borderline psychotic. The police in the United States are a troubled group. Many of them lose all touch with people who are not “on the force” and most of them develop an us-versus-them mentality. The soldiers returning from a tour of duty often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The paroled prisoners suffer from a variety of psychological ailments as well. All of them will sooner or later realize that their problems are not medical but rather political. This will make it impossible for society to continue to exercise control over them. All of them will be making good use of their weapons training and other professional skills to acquire whatever they need to survive. And the really important point to remember is that they will do these things whether or not anyone thinks it legal for them to do be doing them.

…suppose you have a great new invention that you want to make and distribute, a new agricultural implement. It’s a sort of flail studded with sharp blades. It has a hundred and one uses and is highly cost-effective, and reasonably safe provided you don’t lose your head while using it, although people have taken to calling the “flying guillotine.” You think that this is an acceptable risk, but you are concerned about the issues of consumer safety and liability insurance and possibly even criminal liability. Once again, it is very helpful to have a large number of influential, physically impressive, mildly psychotic friends who, whenever some legal matter comes up, can just can go and see the lawyers, have a friendly chat, demonstrate the proper use of the flying guillotine, and generally do whatever they have to do to settle the matter amicably, without any money changing hands, and without signing any legal documents.