Instapundit thinks we may be seeing the merger of economic panic and the mainstreaming of survivalism.
I think the lefty-artsy university types should be buying bottles of champagne and celebrating, because the crisis -- if it really is at the panic-y, food-stockpiling level -- will drastically cut back consumption, fighting huge, intractable problems that they dreamed of solving through regulation: global warming, mass obesity, crass materialism, suburban sprawl...
What does it take to make these people happy? They're addicted to gloom! Even vast economic collapse won't satisfy them.
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Like my morose mother-in-law, they're only happy when they're sad.
I'm conservative, and my family has been building a store of canned goods and bottled water for the last 3 months, both in a rented storage facility and in our garage. Enough to cover ourselves and a few other families. No bomb shelter yet, just a hedge against the economy if necessary.
Just sayin'.
New York State has cut the SUNY budget by about 15%. 20% of New York state taxes come from Wall St.
There's going to be a meltdown, and one of the first places cut will be the arts, which is last on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
I hope there will not be major cuts at universities in terms of personnel, but it may be coming.
I have no idea what artistic types will do if there's a Mad Max world coming of dog eat dog: the pure capitalism that is seemingly driven by the ACORN-pushed bad loans on the left side, and the corporate bailouts with CEOs grabbing millions and millions for the golden parachute drop.
The middle classes will take a beating in the process.
As for me, I'm still in denial mode. But I did buy 30 jars of peanut butter the other day. It has lots of protein, and calories, in a relatively small package.
If you're going to stockpile, what should you stockpile?
lol. Welcome to my world. I started really stockpiling several years ago when I realized that natural disasters, not to mention political disasters, would leave us stranded in fly over country.
It never hurts to be prepared. I increased the booze stockpile just recently too. Might as well enjoy ourselves while we are at it. :-)
Is Reynolds angling for a bogus-trend writing gig with the NYT Style section?
Glenn Reynolds is an unforgivable douchebag who is wrong about everything.
Glenn Reynolds thinks the fundamentals of the economy are strong and that Bush is doing a Huckofa job.
Yes, what will it take to satisfy this two dimensional stereotype I have decided to perpetuate?
I keep remembering--with some comfort, I might add--that it's the lefties who deprecate the 2nd Amendment. If it comes to dog-eat-dog, they're going to be the first into the pot.
Maybe vegan-meat will demand a premium at the butchers...
I think at some point, Universities will cut -- but many employees are on grant money from various agencies, and is would make no sense to cut their positions.
At the UW at least, janitorial services are already bare bones. But I think an entire layer of bureaucracy could be shaved out to no ill effect, however. The same is probably true of just about any organization.
"The Road" comes first.
"Outer Dark" shall follow. Then "Blood Meridian" will be upon us.
MadisonMan, I agree. I used to work at a college in Miami that desperately needed that sort of cleaning. On the other hand, now I work for a telecom company that could use some thining of the bureacracy as well.
What does it take to make these people happy? They're addicted to gloom
Bam. Right there. What she said. Up another notch.
There's a couple hundred acres of soybeans within a hundred yards of me. I wonder how you convert them into meatless burgers.
I hope Harvard's endowment is okay.
The media need a crisis, by the way. Any fix is going to need a celebrity death to distract them.
MM said...At the UW at least, janitorial services are already bare bones. But I think an entire layer of bureaucracy could be shaved out to no ill effect, however. The same is probably true of just about any organization.
As I understand it, MM, over the past 20 years, if one considers the University staff in three buckets, (teaching, administration, service functions) that the admisntrative types have grown dramaticly, the teaching faulty is relatively flat and the services have shrunk. And within the teaching ranks of course, the catalog reflects growth in those politicized courses and stagnation in the core course classes.
I bet that Universities will first lead off with the classic Crat budget defense. Cut classes required for graduation (e.g. lower division breadth stuff and those once a year upper division required prerequistes, and leave all the deputy assistant Dean's of GLBT support services in place.)
In tough times, administrative organizations lay off helpers but keep enforcers.
rhardin: There's a couple hundred acres of soybeans within a hundred yards of me. I wonder how you convert them into meatless burgers.
By buying them from the farmer what owns them. Where I live it is a felony to take unharvested produce from a field. In some areas that will just get you shot (at). If times were bad, I'd suspect a lot more of the latter than the former.
The "effete elite" stockpiling food without buying and learning how to use weapons is pretty typical half-thinking IMHO.
-XC
PS - Not stockpiling food, have plenty of bang sticks already. Just saying.
We West Village Bobos are not averse to stockpiling...we just have no room to put it!
And eating less meat and more veggies makes certain, uh, things easier to do as you get older.
Wow, some real hate from the "family values" left. Well played, my stereotypical BHO-bots.
I haven't started stockpiling food yet (although I ought to, just in case of natural disasters). I have, however, made sure I had shells for my shotgun; I expect rioting if Obama loses. :)
Why are you looking at him?
I can look where I want to.
No you cant. If you look at him again I'll shoot you.
The boy was sitting with both hands on top of his head and looking out between his forearms.
I'll bet that boy is hungry. Why don't you all just come on to the truck? Get something to eat. Aint no need to be such a hard-ass.
You dont have anything to eat.
Lots of people here talking about eating soybeans. They are not the only things people would eat in hard times.
"In tough times, administrative organizations lay off helpers but keep enforcers."
Exactly, and the rest of us will have to bribe our way to survival. We will all have a poster of Dear Leader on our walls. Welcome to the third world!
With the big financial meeting tomrorow, hitting the ATM today seems like a safe hedge.
In my book on camp cooking, author Scott Cookman points out that a basic necessity for every pioneer wagon going west was a barrel of corn whiskey.
Whiskey stores energy.
It also acted as liquid money. The farther west you went from the Mississippi the more your keg of whiskey increased in value.
So forget the powdered milk. Stick with whiskey.
Tales of survival after an apocalypse are among my favorites. So I have always toyed with stockpiling. Problem is, all the food that stockpiles easily are none of the foods I eat, ever! So it can't be rotated into the regular pantry before it goes bad. I was just cleaning out a food closet and found a sealed jar of dried pinto beans that must be 12 years old.
Mormons, who are masters of this stuff, have some interesting lists. Just follow the links. Hmmm. Looks like those 12 year old beans are still okay.
Eggs last a long time if uncracked and refrigerated. They no longer work as ``fresh eggs'' is all. They're great for hard boiling.
I buy a couple months' worth when they're on sale.
My rooster(s) seem to survive okay if not eaten by anything, and if they were (some of them) hens would probably supply food indefinitely, making them out of who knows what the hell they're eating out there. Grass, I think.
It's a dog-eat-dog world and we are all wearing milk-bone underwear.
Remember Lara and Dr. Zhivago surviving on potatoes?
My grandfather, who got a degree here just after WWI, always said in the 1940s that UW was a great institution because they let people go in the depression. And guess who was let go? The deadwood. In contrast, Iowa State, where he ended up, didn't do that. And they were mediocre.
Trimming of tenured faculty is not always a bad idea in the long run.
Alms for an ex-leper?
I have a small set of emergency supplies in case of a natural disaster or other similar event that might disrupt normal services for a time, but I have thought about buying more stuff. It isn’t so much out of fear as it is out of a desire to make myself as comfortable as possible should something bad happen.
Honestly though, I think it is probably wise for everyone to make at least a small kit. I could help out a few of my neighbors with what I have now, but not many.
Hmmm, if natural disasters are not enough motivation for some to get emergencies supplies then how about a zombie outbreak! Many of the supplies are the same - zombie outbreaks require more ammunition is all.
Henry makes a dang good point about whiskey. I think I will add that to my list of items to get!
[lefties should be celebrating because] the crisis -- if it really is at the panic-y, food-stockpiling level -- will drastically cut back consumption.
I don't think anyone would celebrate catastrophe for any reason. Wasting away in her last illness, my mother hardly rejoiced that she was finally losing those stubborn 25 pounds.
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