A very interesting video about our future energy concerns and solutions.

I FINALLY got the new Hen house in place and open for business,the hens I bought last spring are finally laying good and they needed a place to do their business.
I'm looking forward to many over easy Breakfast plates with a little deer sausage on the side.

A catastrophe and a shitty economy = A real Drag

I came across a link to this article that's easy to understand and explains the fix we are in today,Top that with a catastrophe and we are really SCREWED!

The swan song of stagflation – Gas prices up over 100 percent from 2005 and incomes are stagnant. Ignoring a $16 trillion debt headline and repackaging food to hide stagnant incomes.

Posted by mybudget360

If you look around your daily life you realize that your purchasing power is losing value. For a few decades now the middle class in the United States has demonstrably shrunken like clever food packaging. Over the last forty years we have lost 10 percent of our middle class. Most have fallen into the lower income bracket and now with a record 46.5 million Americans on food stamps, you have to wonder what kind of new economy we are entering into. Since household incomes have gone stagnant for well over a decade, any increase in price on one item will definitely impact the cost of other goods. In the end the purchasing power of Americans is falling. Did you notice that in the last few days our federal government debt went over $16 trillion? The media ignored this milestone assuming the public just doesn’t pay attention to headlines with the word trillion in it.

A rise here and a clever package there

As many of you know American household incomes have gone stagnant for over a decade. When the cost of something goes up and disposable income goes sideways, many will need to make the choice to substitute goods or companies will get creative. In a certain degree we are dealing with a modern stagflation. Take a look at this:

smaller packaging


The top contains about 15 percent fewer crackers. So it isn’t necessarily that people are not buying these items anymore but are shifting their preferences. Without a doubt some categories like health insurance and college tuition have gone into a bubble like price rise while incomes stagger along. The cost of fueling up in our car addicted nation? Take a look at what has occurred since 2005:


gas prices

Gas prices are up over 100 percent in this short time frame. That household making $50,000 per year in 2005 is still making $50,000 in 2012 but is seeing a larger chunk of their disposable income being sucked into fueling their automobiles.

But stagnant wages means less money for other items and some other items have seen prices cuts like Folgers Coffee for example and Procter & Gamble Company rolled back $400 million in price increases made in the last year. These are simply examples of companies responding to the current marketplace. You also have places like Family Dollar that have done exceptionally well catering to the now massive 46 million customers that receive monthly food assistance. Is this really the definition of success?

Paying more for less

Probably in no other category is the destruction of purchasing power being seen than in higher education. There is no doubt higher education is in a bubble:

“(BusinessWeek) If student loans are good debt, how do you account for the reaction of Christina Mills, 30, of Minneapolis, when she found out her payment on college and law school loans would be $1,400 a month? “I just went into the car and started sobbing,” says Mills, who works for a nonprofit.”

A couple of points. First, when you come out with massive loans by default you are unable to afford your education especially when your initial income can’t even service the monthly minimum payment. The question then becomes, where does this money come from? Since the government and banks are tied at the hip, similar to what occurred in the housing bubble, loans are being made without the thought of how these borrowers are going to pay the money back. The banking industry doesn’t care since this money is federally backed. This is the same formula used in the housing market. What happened to prices there?

“Then there’s Michael DiPietro, 25, of Brooklyn, who accumulated about $100,000 in debt while getting a bachelor’s degree in fashion, sculpture, and performance, and spent the next two years waiting tables. He has since landed a fundraising job in the arts but still has no idea how he will pay back all that money. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an obsolete idea that a college education is like your golden ticket,” DiPietro says. “It’s an idea that an older generation holds on to.”

How is it even possible to get $100,000 in loans for a fashion, sculpture, and performance degree? It is possible because banks, schools, and the government are all part of this giant machine that is essentially allowing young Americans to go into massive debt for degrees that have little merit in the economy. This is no free market but a crony based system that extracts rents from the working and middle class and makes the CEO/Presidents of these schools wealthy while banks skim cash paying out million dollar bonuses and the government (that is the public) serves as the sucker when things go bust.

“So maybe the real problem is that credentialism has trumped learning. That drives people to get degrees simply to displace others who don’t have degrees, says Richard Vedder, who directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. He notes that the U.S. has more than 100,000 janitors with college degrees and 16,000 degree-holding parking lot attendants”

So we continue down this path of inflating our way out of the massive debt we now find ourselves in. The markets are now back to levels last seen in 2007 yet we now have 46 million people on food stamps and our overall workforce participation rate looks dismal:

employment ratio



Do you hear that sound? It is the Federal Reserve gearing up to go into QE3 to inflate our way out of this mess and help their banking buddies. Don’t be confused this political season with the massive number of millionaires in Congress. They work for big money and all you need to do is examine the data to find out what is really going on.

Happy Labor day

Well the last week's been a Bitch but I survived.Mostly dealing with the heat and humidity,and of course the Elite that live in the high rise condo I work at.They think that we are there servants not employees.I have probably made some enemies this week but thats too bad.I'm known for telling it like it is,and boy did I show my ass this last week.But enough of that, The building is up and running,I'm sitting in the a/c and watching the clock tick down so I can get out of here.No damage to speak of at the house,The ol lady working her ass off getting the yard straight, the rabbits are back in their area, chickens are cluckin,power is on and everything is pretty much back to normal.Yes it pays to be prepared, we lost no food because we had foresight,As I look around me I see a lot of people with their hand out ,but they always have their hand out so nothings changed there.The ones who prepared are doing fine with no help from fema. Hell most have more money than me because they are always getting handouts. They go to get mre's 5 times in different cars because they are greedy and then bitch that they taste like shit. They are putting in claims for lost food that they didn't loose that they bought with food stamps in the first place .They know how to work the system,and they work it hard,that's one reason we don't have any government money now,that and what the politicians can get away with. One day uncle sugar won't be there and then we will see what's up.
Anyway hope everyone has a good labor day and I don't have to do too much labor.

Hurricane Issac experence and preperation

This is why I stress being prepared,If you don't have a backup plan,plan on doing without the essentials of life.Katrina taught me some valuable lessons,that being prepared for anything or something will bite you in the ass.The red areas are the ones without power,But my house isn't dark and we ate baby back ribs for Dinner,get my drift.........And I have enough stash to keep this up for weeks.Good luck to the sheeple.

Under Hurricane watch

It's showtime and I'm glad I only had to grab a few essentials from the store.The Madness has begun.Gas lines at the pumps,a couple of deuce bags fist fighting for cutting inline,run on the grocery store and the storm isn't even in the gulf good yet.Just have to dig some fuel out of storage,take down my solar setup,and stow away the animals and I'm set.Good thing too because my Employer want's me on sight for the storm,little do they know if it looks like it's gonna be a 3 I'm so fukin outta of there all they will see is a smoke trail. Well gotta make a quick stop at my Grandson's B day party and i think I'll work in the shed after the sun goes down to finish my preps, good luck to all, see ya on the other side of the storm.....

Are you prepared for life without power?

I came across this article and they have some good suggestions, read it It could make a big difference in your life,,,,,I know I've lived it....

U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis
Two major blackouts last week left hundreds of millions of Indians in the dark. PM contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds says despite its advanced grid, the U.S. needs major improvements in infrastructure and preparedness to be ready for a major power loss.
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Last week, India suffered two huge blackouts. Tuesday’s cut power to 370 million people; another one on Wednesday blacked out 670 million people, making it the worst blackout in the history of humanity.

Talking about this with a colleague, I said, "Don’t worry. That can’t happen here." "Why not?" she asked. "Because we don’t have 670 million people," I replied.

This wasn’t the comfort she was looking for.

The specific causes of India’s blackouts aren’t likely to be a problem in the United States. India’s electrical grid was brought down in part by state governments drawing more power from the grid than they were supposed to; American power grids are better managed. And while India’s grid has been strained by rapid economic growth, America currently faces no such problem.

But don’t get too comfortable. America’s grid has its own problems, and not enough is being done to address them. And, ironically, because American electric supplies have generally been pretty reliable, we’re in some ways worse-equipped to handle a major power outage than India is. That’s also something we should probably be doing something about, both at the national level and as individuals.

Modern civilization is astoundingly dependent on electricity. If the power goes out for very long, pretty much everything stops: water (you need pumps), gasoline (most gas stations don’t have backup generators to pump the gas), traffic (no stoplights), sewage (pumps again), and, eventually, even things like natural gas supplies (more pumps) and cellphone service (cell towers usually have backup power, but for most it’s only short-term). Stop the electricity for a day and it’s inconvenient; stop it for a few days and people die; stop it for a week or more over a big area and civilization itself is in peril.

The more advanced state of the U.S. grid is a mixed blessing. The ability to "wheel" power over long distances means that local problems can be ameliorated by power from elsewhere. But it also means that a failure in one area can, under the wrong circumstances, bring down service over wide areas. Modern smart-grid technologies currently being designed and deployed can make the power net nimbler and able to adapt more quickly to changes in loads. On the other hand, all that computerization makes the system more vulnerable to software bugs, viruses, cyber attacks, or even electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) damage from a solar storm or a nuclear attack.

Even worse: Americans aren’t as prepared for power outages as Indians are. In India—or Nigeria, where I have family—no one is surprised when the power goes out. As a result, everyone has a backup plan. Blackouts are so common that dealing with them isn’t really a backup plan at all—just part of the plan.

Here, that’s not the case. Most critical operations do have backup generators, and so do some not-so-critical ones (The law school where I teach has a gigantic Caterpillar diesel generator, even though an interruption in law teaching probably wouldn’t threaten the well-being of the community.) But coverage is surprisingly spotty. Some cellular carriers equip their cells with backup generators, but others don’t—and the industry successfully fought to kill an FCC requirement for backup power. Most gas stations don’t have backup generators, which means that in an extended power outage, the gas in your car’s tank (or in the cans for your gas-powered generator at home) is all the gas you’re going to have. So when extended blackouts hit, things are worse in the U.S., as people discovered recently when millions in the Washington, D.C., area were without power for days.

That means two things: First, we have to do what we can to harden our infrastructure to make the threat of blackouts less likely. Second, we should be prepared for the worst.

On the infrastructure-hardening front, approaches range from the obvious, like burying power lines likely to be brought down by storms and making sure there’s enough generating capacity to meet peak loads, to the less obvious, like ensuring that there are adequate stocks of important components (like transformers) to do disaster recovery. Keeping those stocks is hard, because the parts are expensive and nowadays often imported from overseas. Earlier this year, for example, power industry and Homeland Security engineers practiced bringing in and installing three "recovery transformers" in a test to see how quickly they could replace the big transformers found at power substations in an emergency.

The experiment was troubling: Although engineers have the technical skills to do the job, the transformers often have a two-year order horizon. The substation transformers are so big that they have to be shipped by rail, and to make things worse, rail no longer serves many areas where existing substations are found. So the U.S. is having to pursue alternative means: The "recovery" transformers split the task of one unit into three smaller ones that are easier to move. They’re also developing transformers that work in multiple applications, to reduce the number of different models that will have to be kept in stock.

Right now, if more than a few transformers were knocked out at once, the affected areas could be left without service for months or even years. These current efforts will reduce the time to recovery, but only if the U.S. begins maintaining sufficient stockpiles. That’s only the beginning: Other issues involve securing power-control and other utility hardware against hackers (current security is often embarrassingly poor) and the physical security of control centers and key components against sabotage or accident. Addressing these issues is important, because a major grid-down incident lasting weeks or months wouldn’t just be an inconvenience. It would be a catastrophe.

Stopping the power from going out should be our first priority, but it’s also smart to prepare for a "soft landing" when blackouts do happen. Here there should be two priorities: first, systems that fail gracefully rather than catastrophically; second, long-term backup power for critical systems.

Fortunately, failing gracefully is usually comparatively cheap. Battery backups for traffic lights may keep them going for only a few hours, but those few hours let people get home and off the roads where immediate failure might produce gridlock. Backups for mass-transit systems let people get off the train at a station instead of being stuck somewhere underground. Even a few hours of battery backup for cellphone service lets people respond to the outage and make plans with their loved ones and co-workers. (For families and businesses, having some sort of plan in advance is even better, of course).

For critical systems, the backup power needs to be robust and long-lasting. I’m talking about hospitals, phone/Internet providers, power plants (which need their own backup power to do the repairs), other utility companies, police, public-health facilities, and more. Many facilities with emergency generators rely on natural gas for power. That’s fine as long as the gas is working, but the gas company needs power to run its distribution systems. Many other generators have diesel or propane tanks, but those are often intended only for short-term use, with supplies adequate for only a few days. For the more important systems, we need to be thinking about longer time horizons and about ways to refuel them if they’re needed for even longer. You want the water and sewage systems to keep working even if the lights are out.

Where do people get food if the grocery stores don’t have power? For outages of a few days, this is a nuisance; for longer ones, it becomes a serious problem. Communities should have plans set up in advance.

So should individuals. At the low end of individual preparation, inexpensive solar/hand-crank radios provide information and usually will power an LED light and charge a cellphone. Stepping up, auto inverters or small generators can provide useful backup power for a few days. If you’re really serious, you can always put in a whole-house backup generator and power it from a buried propane or diesel tank that will last for days or weeks, though that becomes pretty pricey. Likewise, you want to be prepared to get by for a while if it’s hard to get food, water, vital medications, or other supplies.

Defense against blackouts and other dropouts in crucial infrastructure is best done in layers. On some of these, we can learn from India; on others, we will have to think for ourselves. Better that we do so sooner than later.

Read more: U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis - Popular Mechanics