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Sherlock Holmes
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Joined: 10 Sep 2006
Posts: 205
Location: Sunny Southampton
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 Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: Everything seemingly is spinning out of control |
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| Quote: | | I thought this was straight from the front page of prison planet -(Buy your storable food now - Armageddon days are here etc...). In fact it was the Associated Press and on the front page of Yahoo.... |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080622/ap_on_re_us/out_of_control
By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 40 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.
An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.
"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."
Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.
Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.
Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.
But there's always sports, right?
The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.
Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating.
Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.
It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.
Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.
American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.
"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."
Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.
This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.
Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.
Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.
Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted. |
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fish5133
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Joined: 13 Sep 2006
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Location: One breath from Glory
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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Jehovahs Witnesses started to store lots of foodstuffs back in the 70s following another failed prophecy of the imminent Armageddon. Always good to have a box of pot noodles in just in case!
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"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12 |
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Mark Gobell
On Gardening Leave
Joined: 24 Jul 2006
Posts: 4529
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| Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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Well not quite everything but certainly a lot of fundamental stuff is being spun . . .
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The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan. |
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blackcat
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Joined: 07 May 2006
Posts: 2376
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: |
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http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=764962
| Quote: | Food relief line grows long, tense
Frustration rises, officials caught off-guard as thousands turn out for flood assistance
By ANNYSA JOHNSON, LINDA SPICE and GREG J. BOROWSKI
Posted: June 23, 2008
The chaos that erupted outside Milwaukee County's main welfare office Monday over disaster-related food aid had more to do with a weak economy and crushing poverty in parts of this community than the devastating floods that swept through the state earlier this month, local government and food relief officials said.
Many of the thousands of applicants thought they would receive vouchers immediately, and frustration mounted when some learned that was not the case.
About 3,000 people turned out for the assistance beginning at 3 a.m. Monday, creating a line that stretched several blocks around the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. At least one woman said she was trampled when a crowd rushed the doors as they opened around 7:30 a.m., and dozens of Milwaukee police officers and sheriff's deputies were called to quell the scene.
"The food crisis in Milwaukee and throughout the United States is worse than many of us have realized," said Milwaukee Common Council President Willie Hines, who with other elected officials called on the community to support local food pantries.
"We expect long lines for free food in Third World countries," Hines said. "We don't expect a line of 2,500 people waiting for food vouchers" in Milwaukee. No one was seriously injured, and there were no arrests Monday, but those in line described the scene as chaotic. Many thought they would receive vouchers immediately, and frustration mounted when some learned that was not the case.
"They just went crazy down there, just totally crazy," said Charline Britt of Milwaukee, who said she was trampled when about 200 people surged forward as the doors opened.
"They kicked me in my back, stepped over my shoes," said Britt, who'd come to the center about 4:30 a.m. because her basement flooded in the recent rains.
"I fainted when I got through the door."
Last week, Gov. Jim Doyle announced that seven Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee, had become eligible for disaster FoodShare benefits, a federally funded program that offers a month's worth of food stamps to residents who incur damage in a declared disaster and fall below an income threshold. For example, a family of four earning $2,295 this month could get a food voucher worth up to $542. Aid is provided within about seven days, according to the county.
Federal rules do not require applicants to provide proof of either flood damage or income, according to state Department of Health and Family Services Secretary Karen Timberlake. However, residents can be prosecuted for falsifying an application.
Timberlake announced late Monday that 15 additional counties, including Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee and Dane, have qualified for the aid.
Milwaukee County Health and Human Services Director Corey Hoze said his agency processed more than 2,000 applications between Thursday and Friday without incident but was unprepared for the crush of people Monday morning.
"I don't think anybody anticipated this kind of volume," said Hoze, who called in additional staff to try to speed the process.
"I think with last week's announcement, and Juneteenth Day, it just spread tremendously fast by word of mouth," he said. "We have just been inundated."
It didn't take long Monday for state and local officials to begin pointing fingers as they struggled to understand how the Milwaukee situation devolved.
County Supervisor Elizabeth Coggs suggested it might have gone more smoothly had Milwaukee County been given more time to prepare. But the seven-day limit on applications forced the state to work quickly, Timberlake said.
Hoze said the crowd might have been mitigated had his department stuck to its original plan to dispatch its mobile unit into affected communities to process applications. It switched gears, he said, setting up at the main food stamp application process, after the governor's office issued a fact sheet listing the Coggs Center address.
Doyle's spokesman rejected the notion that its announcement might have been a factor.
"I don't want to get to the point where we're pointing fingers and placing blame," said Hoze, noting that the state and county have both beefed up staffing to speed the process the rest of the week.
Don Walker and Alex Lundy of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report. |
Video HERE
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"The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell. |
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paul wright
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Joined: 26 Sep 2005
Posts: 2650
Location: Sunny Bradford, Northern Lights
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:25 am Post subject: |
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The perps, having almost successfully wrested control of the ionosphere ,are certainly able to aid and abet the natural consequences of the upturn in solar and hence global vibration, at least enabling them to direct meteorological and tectonic events to suit the agenda. They aint quite got under control the entire teleology, which is where our ace comes in.
If people could stop irresistably blotting the copybook with their own absurd led-by-the-nose obsessions.
Could I suggest Mark, blackbear et al take a little time out and read some Len Horowitz, Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, Death in the Air, - immerse yourselves in the real plans, instead of forcibly contributing to the death of the Truth movement, according to their (ie PTB's) planning and on their agenda.
Thanks to Hazel McKinley for this http://www.vimeo.com/1188888
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Last edited by paul wright on Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:33 am; edited 1 time in total |
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John White
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Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 3187
Location: Here to help!
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:43 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted |
^^^^
The articles point made well
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Free your Self and Free the World |
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