This guy can't believe Palin's nerve.

This guy can't believe Palin's nerve.

Right now — today, October 5th, 2008 — the world is deciding to quit believing in a brighter future and start hoarding white rice and gasoline. The Dow Jones is down 700 points at the time of this writing, and European shares had their biggest one day drop ever.

If you want to see how bad it can be, check out this web lecture by Chris Martenson. If we contract to pre-bubble levels, we’re looking at Dow 6,000 — and the way things are going today that might not be too far off.

But another Great Depression would be cake compared to the deflation of the population bubble that has been growing for 100 years due to the advent of mechanized farming. (Population bubble? Yes, the 3.5 billion people the world has added since the 1950s is the effect of super production of food made possible by petroleum based agriculture.) When the gas runs out for tractors we are all going to be in a world of hurt. (See more here, here, and here.)

So why is it that Sarah Palin decided to stir up divisive racial, religious, and political hatreds over the weekend? Probably because a full scale panic will be the nail in the coffin of her presidential ambitions. Her unctious, evil political enablers, including the vile Bill Kristol, are happy that she’s decided to “take off the gloves” and play the race baiting, commie baiting, hate baiting cards that are all she has left in her hand.

Fortunately, those are the only cards that are left in any movement conservative’s hand. Their shiny, happy moment of the Reagan era, “morning in America” has finally passed. The excesses created by Reagan — who was the architect of the idea that the government could just print money and we would all have a house in the ‘burbs, a big ole’ car, and ten Ivy League bound kids — are just now winding out and winding down. The nostalgic western frontier of the conservative imagination is closed forever. A new American ethic will have to replace it, or we will be replaced by the Chinese.