Middle Class Vanishing?

Tags

Economics, midde class, Political

Martin Hutchinson  writes in “The disappearing middle class” that the US middle class is getting smaller due to globalization reducing well paying manufacturing jobs and mass immigration depressing wages for low skilled and unskilled workers. He expects this to be a major issue in the 2008 elections. Worth reading.

End of Water

Tags

Peak Oil, water

Dave Pollard has an interesting post on the end of water. He asks what happens when we run out of something needed for life. Interesting read, especially for us in the southwest.

“Long War” = Societal Decay

Tags

conflict, Political, war

William Lind (note: this link is to an archive of writings all on a single web page, search for #239. The entire archive is worth reading if you want to understand 4th generation conflict) points out in “On War #239” that long wars cause a society to decay. Here are a few points he makes. Much of this is not politically correct so it is likely actually correct.

• Sun Tzu said it succinctly: “There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.” Acceptance by any Presidential candidate of a “long war” or “persistent conflict” is an admission of grand strategic imbecility. Which, just possibly, ought not be the highest qualification for public office, all appearances notwithstanding.
• The “Long War” is a term for the conflict that began in 1914 with the First World War and concluded in 1990 with the end of the Cold War. The Long War embraces the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the War in Vietnam and the Cold War.
• In 1914, America was a republic with a small federal government, a self-reliant citizenry, growing industry, an expanding middle class, an uplifting culture and exemplary morals. By 1990 and the end of that long war, we had become a tawdry and increasingly resented world empire with a vast, endlessly intrusive federal government, a population of willingly manipulated consumers, shrinking industry, a vanishing middle class, a debauched culture and morals that would shame a self-respecting stoat.
• Where will another long war leave us? We need not speculate at random. The Newspeak “Patriot Act,” a plunging dollar, $2 trillion for one lost war and the devil knows how much for a second, a flood of Third World immigrants and cultural Marxism rampant in the highest places all point to the answer. What’s left of America won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit, or however you say that in Spanish.
• A long war, or “persistent conflict,” is not inevitable. It is ours only if we choose it. There are alternatives. A defensive, rather than an offensive, grand strategy is one. Closing our borders and minding our own goddam business is another. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, wherever can stew in their own heathen juice.

IDPA Match in Prescott, AZ Sunday 11/11/2007

Tags

Competitive Shooting, IDPA, prescott, prescott az, Shooting, shooting match

We are having an IDPA match this Sunday (11/11/2007) at the Yavapai Recreation League in Prescott, AZ. Click the link for details. Nonmembers welcome, the match fee is $15. And for those in the Phoenix area suffering through record breaking heat for November, note that it is 20 degrees cooler in Prescott!

Along with the normal IDPA scenario match we will have a BUG match and 3 stages of “IDPA Carbine” shooting. These are optional events.

Stuck in Phoenix this week :-(

Tags

heat, home, hot weather, phoenix, travel

I am in Phoenix this week. My employer sent me and some of my colleagues to a training class. It’s over 90 degrees, it’s early November. Yuck. All the buildings are sealed up with the air conditioners roaring away. There is something very unnatural about living like this. A friend calls it a “fishbowl”. I call it a cage. Not too different I guess.

I’m looking forward to getting home to Prescott. I am a homebody and I am really uncomfortable being away from home. I have heard that there are people who like to travel. No way can I understand that.