Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Forecast 2015 — Life in the Breakdown Lane

By -

Note from Tim: about a week ago, everyone’s favorite Sloper BDI encouraged me to read an entry on his Stealthflation blog, which I did. The article, by James Howard Kunstler, was so indecently rich, I felt like a starving man who had just been handed five superbly-crafted cheesecakes. There is so much rich goodness in it, it’s almost impossible to believe. I’m leaving this post up all day. Please read it. It is superb, and I thank BDI for getting permission from Mr. Kunstler to republish it here on Slope:

Submitted by James Howard Kunstler – KlusterFuckNation

“Don’t look back — something might be gaining on you,” Satchel Paige famously warned. For connoisseurs of civilizational collapse, 2014 was merely annoying, a continued pile-up of over-investments in complexity with mounting diminishing returns, metastasizing fragility, and no satisfying resolution. So we enter 2015 with greater tensions than ever before and therefore the likelihood that the inevitable breakdown will release more destructive energy and be that much harder to recover from.

I don’t know how anyone can trust the statistical bullshit emanating from our government reporting agencies, or the legacy news organizations that report them. Yet the meme has remained firmly fixed in the popular imagination: the US economy has recovered! GDP grows 5 percent in Q3! Manufacturing renaissance! Energy independence! Cleanest shirt in the laundry basket! Best-looking house in a bad neighborhood…!

¡No hay problema!

(more…)

Bullet Doddged

By -

The Tim of years ago would probably never have believed that he supported and applauded anything that Democrats were doing, but………he is. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I am living my political life backwards. The old saying, “If you’re young and conservative, you have no heart, and if you’re old and liberal, you have no brain” speaks to the normal, assumed political path of American citizens: you start off a hippie-dippie left-winger and, through the years, become a curmudgeonly radical-right conservative.

I’m doing it precisely the opposite way: as a teenager, I had a terrifyingly laissez-faire, dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself attitude. I was a hard-core libertarian (and, deep down, probably still am) and saw all Democrats as welfare-loving, tax-and-spending, union-worshipping socialists.

(more…)

Quayle Quotes

By -

Just for the hell of it………a political blast from the past – – favorite Dan Quayle quotes:

  • “Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.”
  • “One word probably sums up the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is ‘to be prepared.'”
  • “Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.”
  • “I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”
  • “We are going to have the best-educated American people in the world.”
  • “People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.”
  • “For NASA, space is still a high priority.”
  • Shortly after Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, which included a manned landing on Mars, Quayle was asked his thoughts on sending humans to Mars. In his response he made a series of scientifically erroneous statements: “Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth]….Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”
  • “You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.” (In a speech to American Samoans, April 1989)

(more…)