Today in Collapse-obsessed foamer blogs

Everyone has heard the dictum "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." It means that when crime strikes you personally, you supposedly forget all your liberal pieties about race, gun ownership, non-violence and so on, and instead go out and buy a gun and start voting for Nixon.

How about this one: a real conservative is someone who goes through a natural disaster and, instead of forming compassion for others and realizing we all have to depend on each other in an emergency, comes away with a resolution to hoard, arm himself, and fortify his compound.

During a major disaster, food will quickly disappear. Living for over 3 decades on the Gulf Coast, I can tell you with absolute certainty that whenever disaster strikes (usually an approaching hurricane, for those folks), food and provisions at the store sell completely out in a matter of a few hours. People panic, and within hours, you cannot find food, bottled water, ice, generators, batteries, candles, etc. ... Furthermore, almost all disasters include a complete loss of electricity. The water supply is compromised. Bottled water becomes more valuable than bank accounts. Dehydration becomes a very real and present danger. I remember witnessing a man offer an ice vendor $100 for an extra bag of ice during Hurricane Ivan. My wife and I went 2 weeks (14 days) without electricity in the aftermath of that hurricane. Believe me, I got a taste of just how precious bottled water, ice, batteries, generators, fuel, etc., can become.

-- Far-right preacher-politician Chuck Baldwin

Okay, sure, preparedness. Good idea for everyone. But it's telling that the writer doesn't mention how he helped that man who wanted ice so badly, or his neighbors who were also suffering without electricity or water.

It's also telling that he doesn't mention how the National Guard was there within 48 hours to secure the area and then coordinate either evacuation or helping the survivors, including with water. Because for far-right conservatives, the government can never be seen in a positive role, it can only stand in your way (at least) or oppress and imprison you (more likely according to this worldview).

No, in Baldwin's world, there's only you and the free market against the elements and the devil. He probably wishes he was the ice vendor who anticipated there would be desperate people waving Franklins after a hurricane. (As for the man who offered $100 for ice, I have the feeling he needed it to keep his insulin cool, not his gin and tonic.)

Then in my favorite collapsitarian blog, the always-excitable Mac Slavo quotes someone predicting violence, death, dead cops, disaster in NYC.

According to the insider, the Obama White House and partisan organizations that support the President are now actively promoting chaos in New York and other cities as a form of punishment and intimidation against those on Wall Street (and elsewhere) who have spoken out against the administration. The chaos, he says, will lead to elevated levels of anger and the real possibility of nationwide violence and riots...

ZuccottiPark should have been cleared last week. ... Now if there is a move by law enforcement against the protesters, the dangers will be greatly increased than just a week ago. The violence will be much-much worse. Police will be harmed. Citizens will be harmed. Businesses harmed. ... I don't wish to be overly dramatic here -- but violence. Injury. Perhaps death. Most certainly destruction of property. It's getting dangerous. I can sense it. It's palpable. And you feel it too, don’t you? Something terrible is coming just around the turn. So for now, I'm getting out.

Oh well, it's a good thing he doesn't want to be overly dramatic. I guess if he were overly dramatic he would break out the exclamation marks. Then I'd really be terrified.

All supposedly because Obama somehow "promoted" this by not breaking the heads of protesters. I don't know if Occupy Wall Street is making the 1% afraid, but it's certainly successful in exciting the foamers.

Dear Matt Taibbi, don't be such a one-noter

The reality, of course, is that people like Rush, Romney and Obama are all becoming cognizant of the deep frustrations that exist across the political spectrum and are growing desperate to prevent the powder keg from blowing completely – hence the intense effort to describe OWS as a top-down manipulation.

-- Matt Taibbi, writing in his Rolling Stone blog today

Yeah, but. How can anyone who mentions how far-right foamers are responding to the Occupy protests, and especially who uses words and phrases like "the deep frustrations that exist across the political spectrum" and "desperate" and "powder keg," fail to mention last year's Tea Party protests? That's last year, when the same words were used to describe those people?

What's different this year is the concept of "the 99%." It's inclusive of those Tea Party idiots for the most part, isn't it? I mean, not including the Koch brothers and whoever else funded the whole Tea Party thing to begin with -- you can't deny that there really were a lot of pissed-off people who felt disenfranchised. And now this year we have a whole additional bunch of people who feel disenfranchised.

If these groups really were likely to unite, that truly would be the far-right's worst nightmare, as they have been working to divide the country into warring camps since the days of Nixon -- and succeeding beautifully. However, until the two groups -- who don't resemble each other and probably think the other group literally and figuratively stinks -- actually develop a common cause other than "chanting" and "funny signs," I don't see much real threat to Limbaugh, the Kochs, etc.

Things I continue to miss

I hate crowds and I'm too old for such things, but in addition to Litquake, another huge event in San Francisco I missed this weekend was the Treasure Island Music Festival. I don't even know how all those people got to Treasure Island.

This is why I was eager to help my friend Catherine with her solo show in the Fringe Festival last month -- because I get out and participate in the life of the city less and less.

Haven't participated in the #OccupySF protests either, but then, neither are many others. Hasn't quite caught fire here the way it has in other cities. Added the next day: Here's a video from Sunday night's dust-up, shot by the notorious Josh Wolf, giving me a good reason not to go -- I couldn't stand listening to that strident white girl in dreadlocks.

(I'm exactly of the age such styles are supposed to annoy, but I didn't like the style 15 years ago when it started and I was only 40. White people in dreadlocks -- really??)