- Our politicians should be so partisan! (H/T MJR)
- Another reason to have a dog. Or at least let the kidlets play in the dirt.
- Sweet dog-and-his-boy story via MamaLiberty.
- Oy. Now the security state is worried about drone hijackings. Me, I figure some of my friends could make better uses of drones than the gummint ever will.
- Bacon or bagel for breakfast? Well, if you don’t count the nitrates …
- Wendy McElroy has a new book out. Sounds like a must-read.
- Small-scale farming. Not just cool and trendy — but creating a new profit model?
- Considering relocating offshore? Panama just made it easier for citizens of certain countries, including the U.S.
- When I first saw the headline that the fedgov had indicted five men for the murder of Brian Terry and was offering $1 million for their apprehension, I expected a story about ATF agents and their bosses being rounded up. But — sigh, nope. Look, people, you already know who illegally supplied the murderers with their weapons. In fact, you moved your chief suspects to Washington, DC, to keep them right in your own neighborhood. Sure, rounding up the murderers is good. But aren’t you big on prosecuting all the conspirators? Just go get ’em. Forget all this theater about bazillion dollar rewards for fugitives. (And NOTE to the media: Will you fercryinoutloud quit using the word “botched”? There was no botching involved. The gunwalking scheme worked exactly as the ATF and DoJ planned — except for the small matter of getting caught at it.)
Small scale farming is a back to the future kind of thing. This country, and much of the world, was built on small scale farming. It provided the vast majority of our foodstuffs until the great dustbowl years of the depression. Cheap fuel, cheap machinery and cheap labor is what made the huge corporate farms succesful, as well as being able to foreclose on small family farms. With the first three going away and most of the foreclosable farm lands gone the corporate farms may no longer be the ideal means of production.
Small scale farming, especially in the suburban/rural interfaces can also make use of what would be considered marginal land for farming. The use of hugelculture and other organic farming techniques will also help the land by putting stuff into the soil instead of just extracting from the soil. Hopefully these small localized farmers will keep an eye on the political weather and remember to organize along the lines of the old Farmers Grange system of decades past. When big government/corporations decide to shut down the competetion, they must stand shoulder-to-shoulder to resist.
I agree with the pets-n- dirt theory-it gives your immune system something to do. I’ve always had pets(almost a zoo in high school), stayed out a lot as a child-and very seldom got sick(no allergies, ear infections, or other ‘normal” childhood things).
There are urban minifarms here in town, making use of otherwise abandoned plots of land. Despite the fact most of them are in the scuzzier parts of town, vandalism is rare. Some cities are really anal about land use(permits, fees, the usual waste of money), and small micro-to-mini urban farms may not be allowed..without filling out a zillion forms and paying the fees that go along with it.
Too bad Wendy’s book is not available in e-reader format. Rats.
John Robb of Global Guerrillas fame has a nice little blog on “Resilient communities”, which I believe Claire has already mentioned here. The future is undoubtedly going to be about local ag if we want to eat.
As for Drones, not to denigrate our serving military, but historically no European Army has trouble fighting Arabs. We always kick their ass… but we never win. However, fighting Arabs, who are not all that sophisticated (Yes, I know, the multicult will soon be hunting me down for even asserting something so obvious… but thoughtlessly Politically Incorrect!). This leads European Armies into learning the wrong lessons, the latest ones being that Drones are the end all. This ignores the fact that we’ve killed the Al Qaeda number two several dozen times (does anybody else wonder how come we always get the number two but never the big guy?) without changing anything. All our technological advantages appear devastating to untrained eye, but it ignores the fact that most of what we’re using against illiterate tribesman (this would include a wide array of Harvard educated Saudis) who don’t even have electricity, isn’t even cutting edge. In fact a dirty little secret is that Radio shack can provide all that’s needed to interrupt the video feed, and as the Iranians demonstrated last year, land/crash one.
The whole thing with the Fast & Furious scheme now going out and looking for the fugitives and putting insanely high bounties on their heads is yet another misdirection in this whole case. The current tyrant in the White House and his cronies over in the DOJ realized they risk losing the PR battle if Republicans can turn this into a miscarriage of justice for Brian Terry’s family so this is designed to “make it look like they are doing something” to get justice for the family instead of just covering their collective backsides, which IS all they are doing, but realize they must continue to delude the dimwits that vote who aren’t paying that much attention to the whole thing.
18 USC 241 Conspiracy Against Rights.
We KNOW Eric Holder was involved; what we don’t know is HOW involved he was. Regardless he *IS* involved and that makes him a conspirator.
Why is he not facing these charges? Oh yeah… I forgot. Being the top man in the DOJ there’s not anyone around to charge him. Convenient that..
I’m not sure I believe the “dirt + animals = fewer allergies” thing. I was always outside, in the dirt, playing with animals, and my allergies were horrible as a child. I have grown out of a lot of them over the years, and maybe my exposure helped… maybe.
Claire, you may already know about this one, but there is a monster Greenwald “article” on the surveillance society that just begs to be shared. (I certainly couldn’t resist.) Perhaps for your next tab-clearing exercise?
There used to be quite a bit of violence in the history of Congress.
Check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12freeman.html
The only question now is: Is non-violence in today’s Congress progress? Something to consider.
Kevin, that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing it.