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It wasn’t until more than a week after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in 2005 that the full extent of the damage was recognized and so it will go with the hot mess where Houston used to be. Mostly, it is inconceivable that the business activity which made Houston the nation’s fourth largest city and, according to Chris Martenson, equal to the 10th largest economy in the world, will ever return to what it was before August 26, 2017.

The major activity there has been the refining and distribution of oil products, and no activity is more central to the functioning of the US economy. So the public and our currently clueless leaders across the political spectrum, plus a legacy news media lost in the carnival of race and gender freak shows, is about to discover the dynamic relationship between energy and an industrial economy.

The pivot in this relationship is banking, which enables the conversion of oil’s raw power into everything else that goes on in a so-called advanced economy. The popular assumption is that federal disaster relief can compensate for all losses. That assumption may go out the window with the Houston flood of 2017. And no amount of federal aid can compensate for the hours, days, and weeks that will tick by as businesses struggle to return to something like their former level of normal operation.

Many businesses will never recover, especially the smaller ones that support the big one — the little tool and die shops, the construction outfits, the trucking and shipping concerns, the riggers and pipefitters, the cement companies, and so on. All of that activity existed in highly rationalized chains of on-time production and service and nothing will be on-time in Houston for a long time to come. The arguments over insurance coverage have not even begun, and then there is the question of how businesses in this perpetual flood zone will renew their insurance. Or how might they relocate to higher ground? And how do they pay for that? And where is higher ground in this vast, swampy lowland?

The public has been conditioned by frequent natural disasters to think that nobody has to eat the losses, so that in effect loss doesn’t exist, just as the nation’s central bank has engineered the belief that risk no longer exists in the management of capital. We sure had a nice demonstration of the latter, with the Dow inching over the 22,000 hashmark in overnight futures trading today. The exertions of the Federal Reserve in propping up the stock markets will have to go pedal-to-metal now to make up for the hole in economic activity that Houston represents.

Meanwhile congress is left to dither over two conjoined financial emergencies at once: authorizing emergency aid to Houston, and resolving the debt ceiling problem. The fault lines are already visible in the ill-feeling left over from Texas’s congressional delegation voting against aid for Hurricane Sandy’s rip through New York and New Jersey. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for one, has reinvented his political philosophy overnight to accommodate federal aid for natural disasters, something he was not keen on before September 26.

I’d assume that these politicians have some normal human sympathies — yes, really — but that these emotions won’t stand in the way of their agenda for mutual self-destruction. Even if they manage to cobble together some kind of emergency aid package for Houston, the process will coincide with the Treasury running out of supposedly “actual” money — that is, money which can be accounted for by some method besides check-kiting. Another assumption du jour is probably the idea that accounting no longer matters, that bankruptcy no longer means anything. Pretty soon, those logical fallacies will manifest in an accelerated falling value of the US dollar.

Somewhere in this reverberating hot mess stands a character named President Trump. He acted out the customary disaster visitation ceremony last week, but I predict that the as-yet-revealed after-effects of Hurricane Harvey will put him in deeper and stinkier hot water than George W. Bush splashed through with Katrina.

Meanwhile, what’s that monster called Irma doing out there in the Atlantic?


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353 Responses to “A Hot Mess”

  1. messianicdruid September 1, 2017 at 9:41 am #

    JHK says, Get ready ’cause here it comes’.

    • messianicdruid September 1, 2017 at 9:44 am #

      The End is Here.

      Sign on poster at Goodbye Babylon Rally:

      “Hooray for OUR SIDE.” from Buffaloe to Springfield

      • daveed September 1, 2017 at 6:39 pm #

        “Paranoia strikes deep”.

    • swmnguy September 1, 2017 at 11:23 am #

      Indeed. Houston may turn out to be the trigger event. We knew there would be one, we just didn’t know what it would be. If the loss of Houston sets off the next leg down in the ongoing collapse of our Finance system, there’s going to be trouble.

      There’s a reason Wilbur Ross is Secretary of Commerce. The only “commerce” he’s ever been noted for is bankruptcy and liquidations. Hmm. Then there are all the Goldman Sachs guys in the White House, outnumbered only by Generals. Hmm again.

      Looks like Arpaio and David Clarke will be available to run the camps.

      “Antifa” will be the stalking horse for what’s been in the works for a long, long time. To think, now we’ve got Americans claiming to love the Constitution, defending Nazis and the Klan and demanding a State Violence bloodbath; just as the wheels come visibly and undeniably off the finance economy.

      Interesting. Instead of a Reichstag fire, we’ve got a Houston drowning?

      • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 12:17 pm #

        You could say the exact same thing about Trump. He is the “Bankruptcy King.”

      • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:36 pm #

        Nazis and Klansmen? Since those words mean whatever you want them to mean, what do you want them to mean? Or to put it another way, what do they mean to you? You know that they have nothing to with the dictionary or objective history at this point, right? So it’s on you – do you accept the burden? I’ll help you start: do you believe that all the people who want the statues to stay up are Klan? Why? And do you also accept that that’s what the Left believes or pretends to believe. Are you comfortable with that? And the Antifa believe that all these people deserve injury or death. Where do you stand on that and them?

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 1:13 pm #

          WTF? Are you off your meds?

          • benr September 1, 2017 at 1:22 pm #

            Actually it’s a fair series of questions.
            I live in California have never been in the clan or a white power group.
            I was a Democrat until I joined the Navy.
            The DNC left me and then I noticed all the corruption and race politics the DNC has resorted to.
            Middle of the road conservative and I want the statues to stay up.
            It’s History and you should never rewrite history to make people feel better.
            You should actually get your noes out of CNN and MSNBC and ALT left news sites and look at other news sources even some you think are crazy.

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 1:29 pm #

            Actually reparations would be fair. We stole an entire race’s productive capacity for 300 or so years. You put a number on that, adjust for inflation, and pay them. Statues are about as far from fair as fair gets. And I do listen to the Fox and Fiends occasionally for shits and giggles. Sorry I can’t take them seriously. It’s just a freak show, and now with Trump on top, it’s a reality freak show.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 3:24 pm #

            So you admit that the Unite the Right rally in Cville to protest the statues coming down was full of all kind of people, White Nationalists as well as regular Conservatives?

            Not what the media said in other words? And that Trump was right about it and they were wrong? Not that I accept his pov per se but it’s closer to the Truth than the Liars of CNN.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 3:25 pm #

            Their productive capacity? As measured by what – African standards? We made them be productive.

          • elysianfield September 1, 2017 at 7:15 pm #

            “We stole an entire race’s productive capacity for 300 or so years….”

            Wolfie,
            Sorry, but I am going to have to call “Bullshit” on that statement. If what you opined be the case, than the last 70 years should have seen vast improvements in their lot, when their “productive capacity” has been given free reign. Did we steal the productive capacity of Liberia? It must be a Goddamned paradise by now…just like the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. That they got a raw deal is not questioned…The Chinese and Koreans got a raw deal also…should we give them money?

            They took my father at a young age, put him behind barbed wire, and sent him, indentured, into the killing fields of Europe…maybe I should receive reparations?

            Like the Coach used to say in High School…Injured? spit on it and run a lap….

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 7:33 pm #

            There is only one race that was enslaved for 300 years. Blacks. All the others you mention were walks in the park. If anybody deserves reparations, it’s blacks. Not the Jews. Not the Chinese. Not the Koreans. Not the Vietnamese. Just blacks.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:28 pm #

            They are natural slaves and thrive under it. They are extorting us for handouts now and not giving anything back. It’s wrong. We’ll take care of them but only if they submit to our rule. You want to reverse the hierarchy. And that’s utterly perverse. But such is your pleasure, little man.

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:04 pm #

            What you meant to say is that Nazi’s are natural slave masters and love subjagating another race, especially if that race has larger penises.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 9:19 am #

            elysianfield: You assume parity that wasn’t present. FDR’s New Deal allowed for widely shared prosperity from the 1930s up to the 1970s. But the New Deal was a Democratic program, and the Dixiecrats at that time held the white-supremacist portfolio that now votes solidly Republican. So it was always understood that the benefits would be widely shared among whites, but not blacks — particularly federal programs to help them own homes, build equity and accumulate wealth.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

            African-Americans, confined to increasingly impoverished areas, who did try to purchase homes were subjected to lending practices that siphoned off economic gains. Those who lived in desirable areas were targeted by predatory developers who bought out desperate low-end homeowners on the cheap, and then gentrified (read: ‘colonized’) their neighbourhoods with high-end development, again denying the economic gains to the original inhabitants.

            History is path-dependent. You have to understand how we got here to understand where we are.

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 3:48 pm #

          You sure did, with lynchings, bullwhip beatings, bible readings. Now I will stipulate that housing and healthcare costs should come out of the reparations. But let’s just do some simple back of the envelope numbers. 10,000,000 slaves. 300 years. Let us assume a laborer today makes $30,000 a year. That’s 90 trillion dollars. there are 37 million blacks in America today. That’s $2,500,000 for every black man, woman and child alive in America today.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 5:54 pm #

            Being brought here was the best thing that ever happened to them. They flourished like the palm tree, quadrupling again and again. And how have they repaid us? By ruining every major city in America. We rebuilt them to the tune of several Marshall Plans – and they ruined them again. Add to that the endless Welfare payments, costs of their crime, and raising their bastards. And of course the 600,00 White lives spent freeing them, for which we have never been thanked.

            Face it Sea, they owe us. But I’d still be willing to give them a free trip back to Africa on our dime. We could build it up as a paradise free from the dreaded toubob or White Man. And of course be extremely accommodating to their childish demands as to ticketing, times, and seating. But once their locked in and the plane is taxing, that all ends. Then it’s “How to serve Man” time.

            For the ones who don’t want to go back? They get their own Nation in the Deep South. All we’ll ask is cameras and a live feed…..

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 7:31 pm #

            And that’s not even counting any their progeny.

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 7:58 pm #

            Quadrupling again and again would mean their population would be 160,000,000. It’s not.

    • ejhr September 2, 2017 at 5:46 am #

      There was a report I saw that The Fed banks were checking local banks to see how much cash was in their vaults. For handouts have to be in cash, not electronic money.

      It means someone understands that the fed can send out all the money the emergency needs without having to bill for it. They can reimburse the bank cash stocks the same way. It’s called a net credit operation. The money is created by the spending itself, no borrowing or taxes are used. The cash though has to actually be printed or minted.

      It means that the federal government can pick up the entire tab for the reparations etc. After all who blinked when $29Trillion was spent in 2008-10 on floundering banks? Nobody, and nobody needs to blink this time too.

  2. Graycenphil September 1, 2017 at 9:43 am #

    So hurricane Harvey will be the undoing of Houston, and then the USA? But just in case that doesn’t happen, we’re hoping for Irma?

    Houston will recover, and the refineries will resume producing fuel. It will take some time, and there will be some bickering along the way, but it’s not the beginning of the end. Even President Trump is looking pretty good. So far.

    • chipshot September 1, 2017 at 10:09 am #

      Suppose you’re all in w Pence’s bravado about rebuilding bigger and better than ever?

      • DA September 1, 2017 at 10:19 am #

        Oh yes, brace yourself for that barrage. We’re about to be subjected to mass quantities of American exceptionalism declarations.

        • Beryl of Oyl September 1, 2017 at 10:24 am #

          Good.

      • Graycenphil September 1, 2017 at 11:37 am #

        Houston will rebuild, and yes it will be better. No doubt about that.

        • Graycenphil September 1, 2017 at 11:39 am #

          America is quite exceptional, but many other counries are too. Canada, no doubt would recover from this as would England and Germany and Japan etc.

          It’s just a hurricane folks, not the end of hte world. It will be okay.

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 12:26 pm #

            It’s the third hundred year flood in the last three years.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:39 pm #

            Yes, the Allies were in awe of the German people who began to clear the rubble and rebuild for the second time. They said to themselves, “Never again. This time we have to hobble them inwardly and then destroy from within.” And so they did.

          • daveed September 1, 2017 at 6:48 pm #

            In the words of Madeline Kahn (Mrs. Munchnik in “Mixed Nuts”………..”You could see the bright side of a Plague!”

          • Majella September 3, 2017 at 9:28 pm #

            Yes – as well, the fake financial systems means that the rebuild will be GREAT for GDP figures!

  3. Walter B September 1, 2017 at 9:49 am #

    The financial implications of this disaster will be staggering and I seriously believe that the America afterwards is going to be far different than the America before. And then there was Irma and who can even guess what else will show up to kick US again while we are still down. When these events happen anymore I cannot stop myself from thinking back to the speech that Ronald Regan gave before the UN where he pondered how united the planet might be if under attack by aliens. It sure helps us take our minds off all of the theater that appears to be playing out in the ME, NK, and Eastern Europe. It may sound like hooey, but if you look back upon history, the facts would indicate that while any and all governments eventually have little or no control over other countries or other governments, they certainly maintain almost total control over their own populations. There are many ways to achieve this and it is critical that it be done, especially when the dogs get hungry.

    • Elrond Hubbard September 1, 2017 at 10:04 am #

      Looming Gas Shortage: “Imports Can’t Make Up For This”

      http://oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/Looming-Gas-Shortage-Imports-Cant-Make-Up-For-This.html

      “The East Coast will start feeling the effects of Hurricane Harvey as the gasoline supplied from the Gulf Coast starts to dry up. One of the most important pipelines that ships refined products to the Eastern Seaboard shut down on Thursday, which means that the U.S. Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast could see supply disruptions and price increases.

      “The Colonial Pipeline carries gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from several refineries in Houston, Port Arthur and Lake Charles, along the Texas and Louisiana Coast, up through the U.S. Southeast to Washington DC, Baltimore, and New Jersey.

      “The pipeline had been operational through the worst of the Hurricane, easing fears about supply disruptions. But the outages at the nation’s top refineries along the Gulf Coast have forced the Colonial Pipeline company to announce on Wednesday that it was shutting down Line 2, which carries diesel and jet fuel due to ‘supply constraints.’ And on Thursday, the company shuttered Line 1, the pipeline that carries gasoline. The pipeline company said that operations would only resume when it can ‘ensure that its facilities are safe to operate and refiners in Lake Charles and points east have the ability to move product to Colonial.’

      “It is hard to overstate the critical role that the Colonial Pipeline plays. It carries 2.5 million barrels of refined products per day, or as the FT notes, ‘roughly one in every eight barrels of fuel consumed in the country.’ More importantly, it is one of the only suppliers for major cities on the eastern seaboard, including New York, Washington DC and Atlanta.”

      • Ron Anselmo September 1, 2017 at 11:07 am #

        Here’s a sobering thought. Irma comes in to either scrape the eastern seaboard, or auger in somewhere on the US East Coast, and people may have no choice but to “shelter in place”, because
        evacuation will be hampered, to non-existent, by lack of gasoline.

        • Graycenphil September 1, 2017 at 11:44 am #

          Houston Has some refineries, and some important oil pipelines. But hey aren’t the only ones. We’ll pay a little more for gas, but we aren’t going to run out. Our houses won’t freeze either this winter from lack of heating oil.

          Houston will come back on line, prices will come back down, and we’ll all be okay. That’s how it works. We’ll deal with Irma too.

          • Ron Anselmo September 1, 2017 at 12:48 pm #

            Appreciate your optimism. Optimists hope something good happens, while pessimists hope something bad doesn’t happen. The operative word being hope – the last appendage of denial. Sometimes you have to be a realist.

          • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 9:07 pm #

            I am a member of two local CERT Teams. We prepare and drill for disasters such as this current manifestation. One of the first things that our training reminds us of is that in every situation where disaster strikes the one most prominent thing that the victims always spout out is that “We never thought it could happen here”. The second is that it is always said that things will always get back to normal. Both are pathetic lines of BS and even the “getting back to normal” usually does not happen to a lot and it takes years to recover for the rest.

            The frequency of such disasters is increasing simply because as our systems and our society increases in size and complexity, so do the possibilities for problems and even catastrophic failure. Even our Federal government through FEMA and even NASA warns us all to prepare. It is not doom saying , it is only wisdom. Things are changing, you can deny it, but that will not change the fact that change is rapidly occurring. Darwin’s theory was not that fish turn into men, but was that survival is achieved not by the smartest or the strongest, but by those that were most able to adapt to change. Adapt, survive. Or not. The choice is yours. Be well.

          • Graycenphil September 1, 2017 at 10:41 pm #

            I am most definitely an optimist, and it has served me well. But I am also a realist, and realistically it is pretty obvious that we will survive this hurricane, Houston will rebuild, the temporary oil shortages will end and we’ll all be fine.

            There is not doubt that things are changing. Things have always been changing, and that’s not likely to stop. For the most part change is good, but not everything and not for everybody. Overall we are better and will continue to improve.

            Y2K didn’t destroy us, peak oil didn’t (and won’t) and hurricane Harvey (or Irma) certainly won’t either.

          • Walter B September 2, 2017 at 5:45 am #

            Well it would be foolish and pointless to be insulting optimists for optimism is a good thing in the big picture. We engineers tend to take issue with the optimists (I do not understand how one can be an optimist and a realist at the same time however) since optimism tends to lead to the “everything is ok, nothing to worry about” mentality. In order to solve problem we must first identify the fact that there are problems to be solved. As our host has made a living pointing out, everything is NOT ok and is degrading over time. Without planning for long range alternative systems, reliance on what is in operation currently going on forever will lead to disaster. Perhaps you are a realist with an upbeat, can do, get the job done attitude. Now THAT is the kind of problem solvers that we can never have enough of.

          • Graycenphil September 2, 2017 at 7:43 am #

            I agree with almost everything you say Walter. Except I think our host (and I really enjooy his fiction as well as these columns) has somehow made a career out of predicting disaster that pretty much never happens.

            I think the result of that, and this may even be his point, is that life as we know it is not about to end. It may look like it from one persepective, we can always find reasons why it should be, but we will always solve the problem.

      • zekesdad September 1, 2017 at 3:08 pm #

        Elrond;
        I agree it’s a serious situation, but let’s get a grip. There are work-arounds. Tankers theoretically could ship some of the refined products to the Northeast from places besides Houston. As stated in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal, the U.S. has gone from being the world’s biggest importer of refined products in 2005 (after hurricane Katrina) to being the world’s biggest exporter of those products in 2017. Those exports could be diverted from other countries to the U.S. There are refineries elsewhere around the country, notably in New Jersey just across the river from New York City. Last week I paid $2.39 per gallon for regular gasoline. That tells me at least up until then there were ample supplies of fuel. Don’t forget that all 5,500 miles of the Colonial Pipeline are not out of commission, only the first few miles. It will get fixed in short order. I do agree that having 30% of our countries downstream energy infrastructure concentrated in one storm-prone area is not good policy.

        • Elrond Hubbard September 1, 2017 at 3:49 pm #

          No doubt all true. Not sure if it was in that article or elsewhere, but I read that what has been taken offline represents about 8% of the refining capacity in the U.S., which doesn’t sound like so much. And there might not be significant consequences over the long term from this event in particular.

          But there are systemic issues and nonlinearities to consider. The system’s high efficiency means it has low resilience, i.e. there is a relative lack of uncommitted resources that can be brought to bear. Tight coupling means a failure in one part of the system immediately ramifies elsewhere; there’s no slack that would allow time to respond if other dominoes start to fall. If I actually knew what was going to happen, I could be out there speculating in the futures market and making a down payment on a bunker in a converted missile silo to wait out the troubles. All I can really say is, it’s good to be informed.

    • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 11:01 am #

      If we were attacked by aliens, how could ‘we’ fight back?

      • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 11:26 am #

        I don’t think we would be attacked by aliens (or demons) for these entities would be far more intelligent than humans who are not that smart anyway. Deception is much more productive and has little to no backlash. Plus we have the sellouts at the top that would not give a damn about any of us anyway. However, if you wanted an enemy to unite the masses who better than the weather. When the weather turns deadly people rise up, accept all casualties, work together and are completely distracted from any and all other problems aren’t they? Evil weather cannot be attacked, it cannot be fought against it can only be dealt with afterwards. It is the perfect control mechanism for unruly populations. Such a shame that it cannot be controlled….

      • draupnir September 1, 2017 at 11:31 am #

        Actually, I’ve read rumors that, since the aliens have been disobliging, a hologram version of an invasion has been prepared to shock and awe the populace into submission should things get out of hand.

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 11:37 am #

          Project Blue Beam.

        • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 12:55 pm #

          Who needs aliens when there is Climate Change and evil bad weather destruction? Do you recall Wooly Willy?

          http://www.childofthe1980s.com/2007/10/05/wooly-willy/

          With this in mind remember that there are better elements than iron to utilize when creating the Bad Guy is the goal.

    • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:42 pm #

      The replacement for Rush said Irm is a cat four and packing a buck ten. I hate people who abbreviate like this, but I love Irma.

    • michael September 1, 2017 at 3:51 pm #

      It’s literally nothing by comparison to Tsunami+Fukushima and not much happened to the economy of Japan despite a full shutdown of all
      nuclear power plants.

      Nothing short of Yellowstone will have the effect that many here seem to long for.

  4. seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 9:51 am #

    JHK’s point is well taken. I think Harvey will shave 1% off of growth, from 3% down to 2%. If Irma hits a major population center it will be 0. I am here in Houston and have not gone to work in a week. Ditto that for the other 4 million or so Houstonians.

    • DA September 1, 2017 at 10:04 am #

      That’s a damn big city to just abandon. What’s your opinion on the rebuilding prospects? Another Detroit possibly? I never could imagine how anyone would willingly subject themselves to that kind of day in and day out heat and humidity, but it takes all kinds I guess. My guess is that as refrigerated air becomes more and more a luxury as energy and housing prices continue to rise relative to incomes, the mass migration of Americans to the sun belt will dramatically reverse. Not that the northern tier can accommodate them all either. Interesting times ahead for sure.

      • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:11 am #

        Well for America it is a disaster a decade. Katrina was 160 billion if I remember correctly, triple the not even close second place. I predict Harvey will take second place at 100 billion. Everyone thinks the coastal cities will be overwhelmed by rising seas, but look all over the world. There is flooding everywhere. And let me tell you it is miserable.

        • DA September 1, 2017 at 10:17 am #

          I can’t even imagine. I’m sure all the good residents of Sugarland will do just fine though. On the plus side, might be some great deals on mansions in the aftermath, provided you don’t mind sharing them with swamp critters and mold.

        • Bruce E September 1, 2017 at 4:14 pm #

          No way Harvey is less than Katrina when it comes to a dollar value and its effect on the economy. The extent of the damage may be less in physical terms, but what was there to destroy before the flooding was worth a lot more and involved a lot more people in the affected area, not to mention productive businesses like petrochemical industry instead of things like tourism.

          I’m not saying there’s definitely no recovery (there might or might not be), just predicting a final tally well north of $160B (1% GDP). Maybe even double that.

          They key, as JHK says, will be what the banks/Fed does (or does not do) in the next several months to prop up the stock markets. I may be wrong about this, but I would not be shorting bonds right now…

          • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 4:52 pm #

            Maybe. It’s 150,000 homes vs 800,000 for Katrina.New Orleans has significant petroleum infrastructure. Ever seen Norco? It’s a city onto itself.

  5. Dumbedup September 1, 2017 at 9:57 am #

    “Somewhere in this reverberating hot mess stands a character named President Trump. He acted out the customary disaster visitation ceremony last week, but I predict that the as-yet-revealed after-effects of Hurricane Harvey will put him in deeper and stinkier hot water than George W. Bush splashed through with Katrina.”

    *************

    Trump says he saw the devastation in Houston first hand. In fact, he was on the ground in Corpus Christi not Houston. The White House says he was “briefed” by officials who saw the devastation in Houston “first hand.” Somehow, in Trump’s alternative reality, that is the same as seeing it first hand. It must be some sort of Vulcan “mind meld.”

    For a fellow who constantly bemoans “fake news” he seems to be adept at sponsoring his own.

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    • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:01 am #

      Even 500 years ago Nostradamus could see this idiot was nuts:
      “The false trumpet concealing madness will cause Byzantium to change its laws. From Egypt there will go forth a man who wants the edict withdrawn, changing money and standards.”

    • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:53 pm #

      You don’t bring a President into a mess like that. C’mon. Also it would strain already strained resources on the ground to keep him safe. He did a flyover and met with important people – and promised to help. Exactly as he should have.

      You’re just parroting the Democrat controlled press.

      • Bruce E September 1, 2017 at 4:17 pm #

        Nobody is criticizing the fact that he didn’t go into a mess like that. They are criticizing the claim that he saw these things “first hand.”

        Because words mean things. At least they used to.

        • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:24 pm #

          He saw them in the fly over and talked to victims. What do you want? Think Obama would have gone swimming in the muck?

          • Ishabaka September 1, 2017 at 9:38 pm #

            Personally I was heartened to see how Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the Obamas, and the Clintons rushed to East Texas to offer aid.

            Some interesting facts are that the areas of Houston flooded voted overwhelmingly for Hillary, and are almost 50% minority. They are now being portrayed in the media as ignorant rednecks and Nazi White supremacists.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 8:53 am #

            Ishabaka: Why not show us a picture of Richard Spencer handing out blankets, so we can all be impressed?

            And what media outlet is busy portraying flood victims that way? I’ve seen nothing but sympathy. Link, please.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 10:27 am #

            Update: I saw the Charlie Hebdo cover. Ugh, those guys really are committed to what they do. 🙁

    • michael September 1, 2017 at 7:11 pm #

      This will be a lithmus test for America: harvey is an opportunity to make Trump look bad if you subvert relief efforts. If this path is chosen we will know that America has netered a new pahse of moral degradation, possibly terminal.

      Let us watch carefully what happens.

  6. venuspluto67 September 1, 2017 at 10:02 am #

    Here is CNN telling us about Hurricane Irma. It’s way out in the ocean, and it’s already a Category 3. And there’s two months left yet in this year’s hurricane season.

    I think I may lay off commenting for a while because it really does seem as though we are at the point where whatever is going to happen will simply happen, and so indulging drama over any of it will probably only contribute further to the peculiar madness of our age.

    Happy Labor Day, all! 🙂

  7. wm5135 September 1, 2017 at 10:10 am #

    seawolf – how much new residential construction was being produced prior to the storm? Might be able to get an idea of how much will just be abandoned as those with no work are forced to seek greener pastures.

    • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:15 am #

      The problem in my area is the Barker and Addicks Reservoirs. When they were first built back in the 40’s, there was nothing but cows out there. No there are thousands of homes all around them. From what I am gathering Houston is the most flood prone city in America, even worse than New Orleans, which has pumps. I cannot believe that Houston does not have a pipeline to the Gulf. We rely on drainage.

      • Beryl of Oyl September 1, 2017 at 10:30 am #

        I was wondering about that, when I heard about people losing their homes due to opening the damns. Were homes built where they should not have been, during one of the real estate ‘bubbles’?

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:41 am #

          Hwy 529 is pretty much the path west for Houston. Eventually it will get to Bellville. Land out that way has already been speculated to the moon. The two reservoirs both overflowed. It was balanced by opening the spillway to the Buffalo Bayou, which drains through downtown Houston en route to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a real balancing act. When wide open they drain 8,000 gallons a second per reservoir. It’s been open like that for days and the reservoir still has not dropped a single foot.

      • elysianfield September 1, 2017 at 12:01 pm #

        Wolfie,
        What is your situation…”feet wet”?

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 12:20 pm #

          No I’m dry. One street over got a foot of water. The back of my subdivision flooded completely by the Addicks Reservoir overflow. It was a madhouse Monday-Wednesday with people coming with boats and jet skis trying to get the people out. Now the police won’t let anybody in who doesn’t live there.

      • SteveO September 1, 2017 at 12:36 pm #

        The MSM is saying they don’t zoning regulations in that area. Is that true?

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 1:11 pm #

          The 3 reasons given Houston floods are 1) It’s flat 2) Aging infrastructure 3) Lack of zoning and regulations. Developers pretty much run things.

          • SteveO September 1, 2017 at 3:34 pm #

            Thanks, it’s good to have confirmation from someone in the area.

      • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:54 pm #

        That would pollute the ocean. Have you no shame?

  8. pequiste September 1, 2017 at 10:10 am #

    I think JHK forgot to include the “steaming” descriptor for this Harvey-induced hot mess.

    This catastrophe might well be the first domino in a revised “domino theory.” which does not predict the takeover of adjoining countries in S.E. Asia and Eastern European geographical areas by the forces of the Hammer and Sickle hordes at its locus; but instead the collapse of American Petro-Dollar Capitalism, begun by the triumph of the waters over the fluid – oil – that pumps through the industrial heart of the “system.”

  9. chipshot September 1, 2017 at 10:13 am #

    Irma could cause epic destruction, with Jose on deck.

    Humanity is going to first go broke, then starve.

    • DA September 1, 2017 at 10:22 am #

      I’m sure murder and mayhem will play their parts in that scenario as well.

      • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 11:09 am #

        There are police at every entrance to my subdivision. I have to show proof of residence to get it.

        • thwack September 1, 2017 at 11:38 am #

          In addition, EVERYBODY is armed in Houston.

          If you are a thug intent on robbery, burglary, looting…

          Go ahead and make their day.

          “stop or you’re dead!

          stop, stop!

          You’re dead!”

          blam blam!

          — Joe Horne

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:58 pm #

            Men like Joe Horne built this country. A man is not different from his possessions. To steal them is to steal his life. That was the old understanding.

            If a thief is caught and imprisoned, the state is satisfied, but what about the injured party? Where is his justice?

          • DA September 1, 2017 at 8:16 pm #

            Trouble is, if EVERYBODY is armed, that cuts both ways. Funny how no one ever considers that.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:52 pm #

            As long as good people are the majority in a viable culture, it works out. Obviously that’s not always the case – and virtually never in Africa, or only to a marginal degree as in Central America.

  10. Gonga Din September 1, 2017 at 10:13 am #

    How much influence has the Houston economy had on the US current preoccupation with all things MENA. Could the hurricane be Biblical in the original context?

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    • messianicdruid September 1, 2017 at 12:48 pm #

      Depends on if we see it repeated:

      mena mena terkel upharsin

      • messianicdruid September 1, 2017 at 12:53 pm #

        H [ harvey ] plus I [ irma ] = HI!

  11. Beryl of Oyl September 1, 2017 at 10:22 am #

    Interesting side effect from this natural disaster – we are seeing, slightly, a return to the old ways, in that people called “reporters” are going to the Houston area and telling us about what we can see happening.
    Of course, they are still devoting plenty of time in critiquing Donald Trump’s every word and perceived thought. That isn’t really reporting the news, because the news is a major city has been hit by a hurricane.
    Notice when we see actual reporting, we see a very different picture of what America and Americans are like.
    We are pretty good people.
    I did happen to switch over to CBS last night, and they were taking time too do a rundown of various minor local stories, carefully curated to portray America as a racist cruel uncaring country.
    That’s not what I see in Houston.
    Now why would the MSM, and their minions in the Democratic Party, want to divide the races like that?

    • Beryl of Oyl September 1, 2017 at 10:23 am #

      ‘to’ do. Sorry.

    • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 12:59 pm #

      Blacks are attacking the Cajun Navy that came in to help people of all races.

      • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 1:17 pm #

        I saw one of them torpedo a flatboat. He surfaced minutes later to view the burning, sinking wreckage and they congregated on the deck of their miniature submarine and played “It’s Raining Men” at insane decibel levels.

  12. seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 10:27 am #

    Anyone who has seen Texas City know how vulnerable it is. It was built on the coast for convenience. But that cuts both ways. Access to the sea means the sea has access to you. You have to marvel really as to how this happened. It’s like Fukishima. You build a nuclear power plant on an earthquake prone area right next to the sea. Boy someone didn’t think that one through. And remember Texas City was built after the Great Storm of 1900, which killed over 6,000 people and still ranks as the biggest disaster in American history.

  13. noel bodie September 1, 2017 at 10:39 am #

    Federal money to bail out texans who have consistently sent climate change deniers to congress? Who have in their arrogance decided zoning is a lefty thang? Ok, how about the Kochs, scaifes,Olin’s, Exxons,heritage,Cato and all the rest of the right wing wackos who have spent MILLIONS to deceive us on climate science? Where is their contrribution to this disaster? I want the southern deniers to stand in the senate and house and admit climat change is happening, man made, and caused by burning fossil fuels. You want my money? I WANT MY POUND OF FLESH

    • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 10:59 am #

      And the Media version of ‘scientists’ are Nye and Neal Tyson
      Degrasse.
      Neither of them are real scientists.

      climate change–Noel, nature is ever in flux.

      • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 12:06 pm #

        If I remember reading correctly, Neal Tyson Degrasse got an MA & a PHD from Columbia University. Of course I guess it could be fake news.

        • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 12:27 pm #

          He’s an astrophysicist isn’t he?

          • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 3:06 pm #

            Supposedly, however it could just be more misinformation spread by the drive by media.

        • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 6:07 pm #

          He was groomed by Carl Sagan.
          Not sure if he is published in any real Scientific Journals.

          • daveed September 1, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

            Yeah, we’re not sure if he is published in any real Scientific Journals. And we’re too flippin’ lazy to look it up, ’cause we might find out he’s legit. It’s easier to assume that it’s all fake news.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 9:01 am #

            At your service.

            “The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over eight million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned articles are available in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and Portable Document Format (PDF) for older articles. It was developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and is managed by the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.” — Wikipedia

        • michael September 1, 2017 at 7:28 pm #

          A PhD all by itself does not mean anything. It’s a start but for many it’s the end of the road. If you don’t keep up significant intellectual effort afterwards the degree is really an embarassement.

          Here in Europe many don’t do anything once graduated. I suspect some of my collegues of not buying any technical books in their area of “expertise”.

          • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:36 pm #

            A PhD is like everything else these days. A potentially meaningless credential, often as not aspired to simply for the credential itself. Credentials are what makes the world go ’round these days.

            What do rich fools have that the rest of us don’t? Two things: credentials, and connections to other credentialed rich fools like themselves. Actual expertise has not one damn thing to do with it, and in fact, can often be a detriment.

        • michael September 1, 2017 at 7:34 pm #

          My favorite is the guy with the butterfly tie who shows up regularly
          to debunk deviant views and then lectures the audience on what the “scientific method” is.

          Unfortunately I cannot recall his name.

          Whenever you hear someone talk about the “scientific method”
          he is probably a fraud or a well meaning, naive individual.

          It would be nice if there were such a thing as the “scientific method” to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, but unfortunately
          there is no one single method that will do this for you.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 9:25 am #

            His name is Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”).

            And the scientific method is real. It works. And it’s pretty much the reason why you don’t have shit all over you right now.

          • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 12:19 pm #

            “Whenever you hear someone talk about the “scientific method””

            Michael,
            Google “Empirical Method”….

          • michael September 3, 2017 at 3:16 pm #

            If it were as simple as described in your sources nearly every one could be a scientist rather than fancy himself being one.

      • chipshot September 1, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

        “nature is ever in flux.”

        Not to the degree and scale of the change in CO2 levels (in the atmosphere and oceans) and warming over the past 50-100 yrs.

        Total bullshit as an explanation for climate change, malthuss.

        • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 6:09 pm #

          Hey, bullshit person. ‘Climate Change’ is an oxymoron.

          I cannot say when the next Ice Age will start, only that it is inevitable.
          Cheers.

          • chipshot September 1, 2017 at 10:07 pm #

            Fine, let’s go w climate chaos. Or climate disruption.

  14. BackRowHeckler September 1, 2017 at 11:01 am #

    Our local news said everything should be back to normal in about a week. Two weeks at most.

    brh

    • Beryl of Oyl September 1, 2017 at 11:27 am #

      Consider yourself lucky. My local news said there was an unidentified wild animal in a residential neighborhood,which could be dangerous. The picture they showed of this wild animal, was clearly a housecat.
      I didn’t understand the expression, “the stupid, it burns” before that, but I do now.

    • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 6:09 pm #

      where?
      The NEW normal or the old?

    • ozone September 1, 2017 at 7:53 pm #

      Two weeks! (…we’ll get started just as soon as the check clears.)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70xGgWIw5tU

  15. Bro Jobe September 1, 2017 at 11:33 am #

    My one visit to Houston, where I admit I ate well and bought some cool boots, was tinged by the realization that “this screwed up place is doomed.”

    They just paved over everything and the water had nowhere to go. Most US metro areas are like that, but nothing rivals what I saw in Houston. The Enron building was still there, then, too, another great symbol of US short-sightedness.

    Meanwhile, Irma? We are overdue for another hit in the Mid-Atlantic States. The last one featured me loading every firearm and sitting near an oil lamp while, on a major thoroughfare nearby, bikers raced at 100mph an fired guns. We hear a few full-auto bursts that second night, before the cops resumed control.

    Just wait until the year, in the not-too-distant future, when a warming Atlantic spawns five direct hits on the Gulf or East Coasts.

    New Orleans should have been the canary in the coal mine. Instead, we just keep killing the poor birds.

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    • thwack September 1, 2017 at 11:44 am #

      They just paved over everything and the water had nowhere to go.

      ******************

      Yeah, and its very flat too.

      In addition the zoning regs are kinda weak. You can have a church next to a school, next to an aluminum smelting company…

      But I suspect they have to do this to get people to move there because nobody would pay a lot of money to live in Houston. Its really too hot and humid, even for black people.

      Just sayin

      • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 11:47 am #

        What I don’t understand is why Trump doesn’t just send Jared Kushner down to Houston to clear up the mess.

    • thwack September 1, 2017 at 11:46 am #

      The last one featured me loading every firearm and sitting near an oil lamp while, on a major thoroughfare nearby, bikers raced at 100mph an fired guns. We hear a few full-auto bursts that second night, before the cops resumed control.

      *****************

      LOL

      where do you live?

      Mogadishu?

      or

      Baltimore?

    • BackRowHeckler September 2, 2017 at 10:15 am #

      Sounds like Florida: a swamp paved over and concreted in.

  16. Elrond Hubbard September 1, 2017 at 12:04 pm #

    ‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah nurse as cop roughs her up for not taking illegal blood sample for him
    The detective didn’t have a warrant and the patient couldn’t give consent so he was barred by the nurse from collecting blood samples. Then, he snapped

    http://nationalpost.com/news/world/this-is-crazy-sobs-utah-nurse-as-cop-roughs-her-up-for-not-taking-illegal-blood-sample-for-him

    “By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.

    “The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent. Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples – not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.

    “Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused.

    “Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear. ‘Sir,’ said the supervisor, ‘you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.’

    “Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed ‘help me’ and ‘you’re assaulting me’ as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.”

    • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 12:08 pm #

      I hate cops.

      • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 12:23 pm #

        I despise them. I remember once my father was driving the family home drunk. A police car pulled him over. After a few questions he escorted us home. Police just seemed nicer back then. Today they are out of control.

      • elysianfield September 1, 2017 at 1:09 pm #

        “I hate cops.”

        C’mon Cap,

        Some, many, most… all? Or the concept of giving another imperfect human being authority over others?

        Blanket statements are difficult to defend.

        I have, myself, hated some cops…women…blacks. Lawyers? Most. Predators…all.

        • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 3:14 pm #

          I understand that cops are necessary to protect us from the bad guys. Even so, that does not excuse their behavior when interacting with the average person. I have been well treated by SOME cops, however they are in the minority. Most of them are pricks. I equate cops with rabies shots. They are necessary, but that doesn’t make them any more pleasant.

          • DA September 1, 2017 at 8:13 pm #

            It’s all part of their “take charge and be in command of the situation” training, which of course has its place in some or even many situations, but obviously not all. The good cops are wise enough to know the difference and disciplined enough to exercise common sense and restraint; the poor ones are little more than street thugs with a badge, or worse, scared little dipshits who hide behind a badge and a gun. We have sufficient psychological diagnostic tools to separate the wheat from the chaff, but given the piss-poor compensation rates and shitty working conditions for many, most police departments are forced to admit many of the dregs into their ranks, who then pollute the entire force if they’re not actively identified and immediately corrected or eliminated.

    • cbeard September 3, 2017 at 9:41 am #

      Chivalry is surely dead. I saw several several male orderlies, doctors and such witnessing this travesty who should have physically stopped this out of control lawman who was assaulting their co worker.

  17. wm5135 September 1, 2017 at 12:12 pm #

    “everything should be back to normal in about a week”

    A blessing or a curse?

    A cracker from birth, take my word, things will not be back to normal when Santa files his flight plan.

    Our host hit the nail on the head – “The arguments over insurance coverage have not even begun”. “No personal lubricant for you”, is a trademark of insurers when it comes to water damage.

    • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 1:19 pm #

      Indeed, the American public has been programmed to not do much thinking, but any of us that ever had friends or associates that were Insurance Adjusters, why we know what happens next and it is ugly and evil. Collect premiums + deny coverage = maximum profit. After all, corporations are people too, right?

      • DA September 1, 2017 at 8:06 pm #

        Oh, but all those profits are going to “trickle down” again, don’t ya know?

        • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 9:17 pm #

          Oh indeed they will. Just like Richard Chamberlain in Shogun getting trickled on. At least it is warm for a while, eh?

  18. gisjoe September 1, 2017 at 12:41 pm #

    FYI/editing, I think you meant August 26, at the end of the 6th paragraph.

  19. JohnAZ September 1, 2017 at 12:55 pm #

    Sea wolf, your disdain for the cops is understandable with the distortions put on us by the MSM. I think you are right about cops from the past being different. Cops used to be from the areas they worked in and developed relationships with their neighborhoods. I remember from Ferguson that the cops were like mercenaries, from outside their patrol areas. Empathy for the citizenry is not as present with cops that are from the “outside”. Add that to the militarization of police by excess Federal military equipment, and the police become an occupying force. Freedom loving Americans chafe at occupying forces.

    However, what is the alternative? No go areas in Europe and here both deteriorate quickly when the cops back away and the law of the jungle prevails. Maybe an insistence that police must be from the areas they patrol.

    • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 1:05 pm #

      In many cities, they can’t afford to live in the city of their birth. Or their families were driven out by Black or Hispanic enrichment. This adds to their resentment in both cases. But obviously they’re still better than minority cops – at least for us.

      • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 6:02 pm #

        Taki Mag, ‘Tale of Two Sisters’.

    • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 1:23 pm #

      I agree with everything you say. Fundamentally I think that the older institutions get, the more conservative they get, and the more conservative they get, the meaner and more racist they get. I think it’s systemic. That goes for everything from police departments to nations. Having locals cuts both ways i.e. settling old scores. Bill Maher went so far as to question the training cops get; that there is some deficiency, especially when it comes to defusing situations. There are far too many citizens dying from minor confrontations. I am a college educated white male, and I can tell you I hate interacting with police. The tiniest little thing could set them off and you’re dead.

      • BackRowHeckler September 2, 2017 at 10:13 am #

        I think there’s some deficiency in Bill Maher’s brain.

        brh

  20. messianicdruid September 1, 2017 at 1:03 pm #

    Remember Rita? Will we get to Margaret this year? margaret~rita~margaret~rita~margaret~rita~margarita

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  21. FincaInTheMountains September 1, 2017 at 1:30 pm #

    The disintegration of the US political system – a look back

    I will say at once that if you want to know that the United States will plunge into chaos and the abomination of desolation in six months, you should turn to such Russian authors as Prokhanov or Dugin, I personally do not know anything about it.

    I in the early 90’s had the opportunity to get acquainted with the magnificent mechanism of American politics, at a time when it underwent significant transformations that radically changed the bipartisan system of the United States.

    The fact is that American politics apart from written laws is determined by a whole complex of gentlemen’s agreements, without which it can not function, and before this process began it was understood that in addition to the so-called (and generally non-translatable into Russian) “issues”, each party has its philosophy and people joining this party somehow had to stick to this philosophy.

    Each party consisted of so-called registered voters and establishment (management). In fact, there were also activists and the system was quite complex. But most importantly, it is that the mass basis of the party consisted of registered voters, somehow reminding me of the first settlers in wagons with rifles in their hands.

    The descendants of these men with rifles who put their trust in gentlemen from the establishment in the primaries, after which, naturally, gentlemen from the establishment were not supposed to run from party to party, and defectors were treated in a new place as traitors and did not command any trust.

    This system allowed the American political machine to remain flexible and combine local government with the development by both the ruling and opposition parties of the national agenda.

    And the difference in the party philosophy of a Democratic Party is not so easy to explain, but perhaps the most important feature was, perhaps, the attitude towards the size of the federal state apparatus and, accordingly, the extent to which the Feds interferes in local government, including the governments of each state.

    During the Cold War, the main item on such a national agenda remained the relationship with the USSR, the disappearance of which caused a gradual replacement of political philosophy with so-called “issues” – secondary problems, for example, attitudes toward homosexuals and abortions, that is, questions related to religion in one way or another.

    Position on these issues of Republicans was determined by the fact that the majority of registered Republicans were members of the Anglican Church, or its clones (Methodists, Episcopalians, Evangelists, etc.), which in Russia are not quite adequately considered Protestants. In fact, Anglicans from the point of view of religious philosophy and theology are much closer to Orthodoxy than to German Lutherans and Baptists, who since Peter I formed in Russia the notion of Protestantism.

    It is especially important to understand that Reagan’s famous badge of “Evil Empire” was crossed out by the State Department at that time from its message to the British Parliament, but all the same he uttered it at the meeting of US evangelists in Florida.

    After Russia turned out to be the legal successor to the USSR, the reasons for this term for the Anglicans lost its meaning, but it nevertheless did not disappear from American politics, but was picked up by the Democrats who remembered that it was originally articulated by the French occultist Eliphas Levi and, by virtue of this, changing the meaning to its opposite.

    This alone has dealt a powerful ideological blow to the American political system, but the Clintonite group, connected with banks and information technology, and already headed by Hillary, and not Bill, began to break into power. And the first thing this group did was throw out all the gentlemen’s agreements and launch a spoiler – Ross Perot, who managed to take 19% of the vote from George Bush Sr. – into the political space of the United States.

    Response measures of the Republicans did not wait long and now the Donkey acquired a trunk, and the bearers of the Republican ideology became prominent figures of the Democratic Party. And vice versa.

    For example, the Republican candidate in past presidential elections, McCain is an absolute Democrat, spiritually close to Hillary Clinton, and US President Barack Obama is a political heir, a close friend, and rumored to be a relative of George W. Bush. What is easy to see from the attitude of these politicians to the litmus test of US policy – a strong Orthodox Russia and its personification in the US, Vladimir Putin.

    I am blamed sometime of putting too much importance on Hillary Clinton. So this is also blamed on the US president.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-obsessed-hillary-clinton-president-133653981.html

    He seems, like I to believe, that it is Bastinda who is still giving orders to the flying monkeys – the US Deep Sate – and while she is not isolated from them, the world will stand on the edge of the most terrible catastrophe in its entire history.

  22. thwack September 1, 2017 at 1:46 pm #

    Store owner gets drop on thugs:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9fnhArLf2Y

  23. Mike Patrick September 1, 2017 at 2:30 pm #

    Just how does Kunstler know that most small industries “will never come back”?
    Houston is recovering rather quickly thank you very much.

    He needs to trade in his crustal ball for a more up-to-date one.

    Houston would be the 28th largest economy in the world. The US cannot live without it!

    • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 3:16 pm #

      It’s hard to get a good read from a “crustal” ball.

      • DA September 1, 2017 at 8:03 pm #

        That’s what you get when you haven’t used them in a while, correct? Crustal balls.

        • Walter B September 1, 2017 at 9:18 pm #

          Damn your impudence! But I must admit, that was well played, bravo!

    • The Articulate Infant September 2, 2017 at 3:34 am #

      Yeah, so you keep telling us Mikey thank you very much. I expected to see another one of your comments here today, saying just that thank you very much.

  24. volodya September 1, 2017 at 3:19 pm #

    Yeah, accounting no longer matters and no longer means anything.

    Delusion rules: IT companies that make zero money, that have no prospect of ever doing so, that still command stupendous share prices. And this from the people that proclaim to everyone how “educated” they are. Can you say irrational exuberance? Can you say just plain irrational? Can you say totally fucking insane?

    Outside the bastions of fantastical dream-spinning like Silicon Valley, things look more and more like Cuba and Greece. Uber, which ought to be seen for what it is, a colossal loss-maker and harbinger of societal and economic collapse, is lauded as what? Ground-breaking? Maybe it is. But for all the wrong reasons. If that company isn’t internet-based despair for people scratching for money then what the hell is it?

    Same with air-bnb. It’s for those out of work, out of luck, over their heads and totally and completely fucked. Better get those rooms let-out or wave good-bye to the house cause you gonna be missin’ mortgage payments baby.

    And if the more desperate territories start to look more Cuban and Greek, if the less decayed parts try to maintain a façade by room-letting and taxi driving, Washington smells more and more Brazilian, carrion-bird politicians shitting all over the picked-clean carcass of a formerly robust economic organism.

    Given all this, they start to make the numbers say things they’re not saying. Or they pretend to not understand what they mean. Or they ignore them altogether. Losses? Get out the party hats.

    • capt spaulding September 1, 2017 at 3:26 pm #

      It’s hard to disagree with you, Volodya. I think you see things the way they are and not the propaganda put out by the Oligarchs. Good on you.

      • volodya September 1, 2017 at 3:37 pm #

        Thanks Captain. Ride-sharing? Fuck me.

    • malthuss September 1, 2017 at 6:01 pm #

      Taki Mag, ‘Tale of Two Sisters’.

  25. Joseph September 1, 2017 at 3:36 pm #

    ……
    my baby
    my flowerpot
    my ceiling
    my bank account

    this is just a tickler
    a feather
    and they can’t bear it
    ……..

    Here are two short clips that register close to 5 or 10 on the Saffir–Simpson/Richter scale of misanthropy.

    Bukowski’s “Earthquake” and Carlin’s “Excess: Fires & Floods, Coast-to-Coast Emergency”

    Pathos and Catharsis.

    Bukowski’s “Earthquake” starts at 1min in the clip below:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkvejIj0HdQ

    Carlin’s “Excess: Fires & Floods, Coast-to-Coast Emergency”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHHqy3cNMuk

    ———
    You start to get it when Carlin’s gravelly voice keeps repeating:
    “raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and ……..”

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  26. bob September 1, 2017 at 4:22 pm #

    Anderson up in a helicopter with the rescuing heroes, it all makes for exciting entertainment. The politician flies in to praise the Texan spirit the great American spirit of overcoming adversity .Indeed God bless America. Not a mention of climate change, we are in a battle against Mother Nature. We will win and rebuild better than ever with God and our Americanism we will never let reality stand in our way.God bless America.

    • DA September 1, 2017 at 8:02 pm #

      We Americans really love our exceptionalism myth. We’re special!

      • ZrCrypDiK September 2, 2017 at 2:05 am #

        Non-Negotiable!!!

        “All of that activity existed in highly rationalized chains of on-time production”

        Friggin con-bon Kunstler!!! (‘we’ stopped using con-bons in about ’95)

    • The Articulate Infant September 2, 2017 at 3:37 am #

      Indeed Bob, as big Mikey P put it: Houston would be the 28th largest economy in the world. The US cannot live without it!

  27. tucsonspur September 1, 2017 at 4:29 pm #

    Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, defends illegals and says that they will be protected during this time of tragedy. Well, okay.

    It’s too bad they weren’t washed out to sea. But then, the Left has them walking on water.

    Antifa would have had something substantial to protest if they were rounded up, detained and deported. Trump could have parted the waters and sent them back. But he didn’t. Yeah, yeah, I know, politics and resources.

    Illegals in Oiltown:

    https://patch.com/texas/houstonheights/houstons-undocumented-immigrant-population-tops-575-000-pew-research

    Oil and illegals, apparently they do mix.

    • ZrCrypDiK September 2, 2017 at 2:10 am #

      “It’s too bad they weren’t washed out to sea..”

      WoW, you’re just kinda one of those evil PHUx, huh…

    • The Articulate Infant September 2, 2017 at 3:41 am #

      Indeed they do tusconspur, indeed they do. Ask Mikey P, he and his mestizo neighbours all get on just swell, thank you very much.

      • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 2:22 pm #

        LOOKY HOW ‘Janet’ twisted your words.
        Down thread.

  28. DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 7:14 pm #

    Ya gotta love Kunstler. Every economic burp, every foreign currency crisis, every political cluterfuck, every blip in the ethersphere, every social upheaval involving One Of Them Dark-Skinned People, signifies for JHK that The End is Nigh. He’s been predicting the incipient End Of Life As We Know It pretty much every week now for the last eight years.

    And yet, week after week, he is wrong. It would be fun to catalog his litany of failed predictions of what was CLEARLY going to melt down within one month, three months, six months tops — but never has. But who would bother to read that catalog? His mindless disciples would display the same reaction that climate deniers display when you show them real climate data — if it doesn’t fit their worldview paradigm, they’ll ignore it. And the racist freaks that JHK sets free to rant on this comment page every time he cluelessly disses the legitimate gripes of Black Lives Matter just make me want to disconnect from the internet and take a shower.

    We live in a world with many, many problems. But when has that ever NOT been the case? I will point to some ‘trivial’ past examples like two world wars, mass genocide in places like Cambodia and Rwanda, the Greek credit crisis, NYC nearly declaring bankruptcy in the 70’s, assassinations of JFK and MLK and RFK and Malcolm X all occurring in a five-year span … and yet we soldier on.

    I used to admire JHK’s insights on our unsustainable auto-centric culture. That, and our plant’s unsustainable population growth, and our unsustainable greenhouse gas production, are all real crises that demand real solutions, and I’m not optimistic about the outcomes.

    But JHK’s weekly rants that The World is About to End are tiresome and ultimately counter-productive. The world ain’t about to expand in the short term, but the long term looks decidedly grim. Let’s focus on the latter, not JHK’s perpetually disproven obsessions with the former.

    • elysianfield September 1, 2017 at 7:40 pm #

      “cluelessly disses the legitimate gripes of Black Lives Matter just make me want to disconnect from the internet and take a shower.”

      Gonzo,
      Your comment gave me pause…can you give us five or six examples of legitimate gripes of the BLM? Or even a couple of those which are especially legitimate? Key issues that we can all agree upon?

      • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 8:15 pm #

        I get to enjoy a lot of white privileges. Which makes me no different from most of my white friends, except that I recognize & admit how much easier white privilege has made my life, which is t always the case among my peers. To get to where I am today, I wouldn’t have traded places with a black man in America for any amount of money. I doubt I would have gotten all the breaks I got.

        But frankly, as a white dude, I don’t feel I’m the best one to give you the answer. Why don’t you ask someone who is active in BLM, not me? To me it seems quite obvious BLM has a lot of embedded racism to wake white America up to, but I’m not the best one to make their case. They are. Because they are living it.

        • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:20 pm #

          And the Chinese enjoy Chinese privilege in China. The Japanese, Japanese privilege in Japan. The Saudis, Saudi privilege. The Indians, Indian privilege and so forth. Now along comes you and your ilk who want to deny Whites the right to have their own nations. And to make them second class citizens in their former lands. That’s all this pernicious doctrine amounts to.

          • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 9:20 pm #

            Um, my ancestors were immigrants to this country. And most blacks were forced, unwilling immigrants. So, since when is the United States inherently a ‘white’ nation? If anything, it’s an American Indian nation. Maybe that was your point. Are you American Indian?

          • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 9:23 pm #

            And what, exactly, did I say that makes whites “second-class citizens”? That seems a bizarre, non-sequiter comment.

          • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 9:27 pm #

            And to what “pernicious doctrine” do you refer? The one that acknowledges that we have a lot of racism to deal with in this country? I don’t know anyone who disputes that.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 11:30 pm #

            You deny the White Race its selfhood, its being in and for itself. Thus even if you defend White individual rights, it is an impoverished thing without having a culture of their own and a nation that supports it and values them, basically the joy of being a People. And of course, if you support affirmative action, you don’t believe in individual equality for Whites either.

            Black studies is all about how wonderful Blacks are. Hispanic studies how wonderful Hispanics are. White studies? How Terrible Whites are. Surely you see that this blatant racism against Whites. Or do you believe only Whites can be racist? That’s just vicious yet it is the Establishment’s viewpoint now. So congratulations?

            We conquered the Indians. There couldn’t have been a United States without the conquest. There was no united American Indian nation. America is a White creation and thus we are the Native Americans.

          • thwack September 2, 2017 at 11:42 am #

            And the Chinese enjoy Chinese privilege in China. The Japanese, Japanese privilege in Japan. The Saudis, Saudi privilege. The Indians, Indian privilege and so forth.

            *****************

            Here you see Janos setting up a false equivalence. “White” is NOT a nationality; and neither is “black.”

            In addition, this word “privilege” is a trick designed to strip the agency out of the practice of racism, because after all, who gives white people “white privilege?”

            If Im at the park feeding the pigeons and I see some man raping 10 year old boys… and I just sit there and let it continue… am I exercising my “adult privilege?”

            If the ship is sinking and I muscle you and your family out of the lifeboat and take your place…

            Is that “muscle privilege?”

            Is it my fault I lift 3 days a weak?

            Is it my fault I got good genetics…?

            Another experiment I done is to ask white people, “WHEN did YOU find out YOU were a white PERSON?

            After you deflect all their stalling and misdirection, answers in the 3rd person…

            They always end up telling you a story about how they saw/witnessed/learned… about some nonwhite people being mistreated, and realized it wasn’t going to, and would not happen to them.

            Its the equal and opposite way that a non white person learns they are non white.

        • thwack September 1, 2017 at 9:29 pm #

          To get to where I am today, I wouldn’t have traded places with a black man in America for any amount of money.

          ************************

          DrGonzo, what about right now?

          You can keep your IQ and all your life experiences…

          But from this point you continue in the body of a black man, one you get to pick out of a fashion magazine, or a movie star…

          How much money would you need to be given?

          You can even pick one younger than you?

          • The Articulate Infant September 2, 2017 at 4:03 am #

            This Doc is a quack Thwack. He is full of more faeces than a water closet. Notice he never answered your question. He likes to play ‘me guilty white man’. I bet he would never have sex with a black woman either. But since Gonz won’t answer your question, I will. Dennis Rodman. You read right Thwack, Dennis Rodman. People like to play with Dennis Rodman, Dennis Rodman likes to play with people.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 10:30 am #

            I used to play this game. Would I consider it if I could be Djimon Hounsou, or Idris Elba? Still, probably not.

          • thwack September 2, 2017 at 11:45 am #

            I bet he would never have sex with a black woman either.

            ***********

            alright, lets not go crazy now…

          • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 7:27 pm #

            Thwack,
            Duane Johnson…uh, he’s still considered black, yes? I would even give you back the $500 and case of 40’s….

            Oh yeah…Doo-Wayne….

        • michael September 2, 2017 at 3:08 am #

          “I wouldn’t have traded places with a black man in America”

          Certainly not. But how about a black woman?

        • BackRowHeckler September 2, 2017 at 10:09 am #

          Hey Dr Gonzo with all that White Guilt how do you live with yourself?

          Best to atone for your sins and end it all right now. It reminds me about the arrests and repression in Russia in the 30s and 40s; first you had to debase yourself and admit your sins, most of them imaginary. Only then would they kill you.

          brh

          • thwack September 2, 2017 at 11:49 am #

            Its interesting to see all these white people come out and attack another white person for being honest?

            All he did was tell the truth?

            If Im not angry at him, why should you be upset with him?

      • thwack September 1, 2017 at 8:28 pm #

        May I chime in?

        *chime*

        One constructive thing BLM has done is demonstrate the level of secrecy and concealment the state allows the police to engage in when they kill a citizen.

        I think its different for each police department; but when a police officer kills a citizen, they often have several days to do God knows what, before they hafta explain what happened?

        And in some cases like the Somali cop who killed the white woman in Minnesota, he still ain’t talkin?

        WTF?

        If you or I kill someone, can we do the same thing and still remain outside a jail cell?

        I suspect the reason some white people support BLM is for the same reason people support laws against animal cruelty?

        Even though we eat animals, we feel uncomfortable when a person tortures them because of what it tells us about the psyche of the torturer.

        If you kill enough blacks, I suspect at some point it would get boring and you would need to move up the food chain for better quality victims?

        Just sayin

        • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 9:25 pm #

          Nicely stated, Thwack.

        • DrGonzo September 2, 2017 at 12:38 am #

          But that Janos guy and his ‘White America’ tirades creeps me out.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 1:33 am #

            “Creeps me out” – chick talk. You don’t like to think, mistaking feeling for thinking. And virtue display feels soooo goood….

            So what if you sell out your people? The feels are too good to resist. And they have to be sacrificed to get the feels.

          • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 2:21 pm #

            JHK started to write his opus, TLE, about 15 or more years ago.
            8 years of doom? more like 15-20.
            And I LOVE him.

      • daveed September 1, 2017 at 10:11 pm #

        How about being aggrieved that a traffic stop for a faulty tail light can turn into a death sentence, for starters?

        • Elrond Hubbard September 2, 2017 at 10:39 am #

          And this has been the case all along, something every African-American knows in their bones: an encounter with a police officer (much less a hot-headed neighbourhood vigilante with murder in his heart) is a life-threatening circumstance. It’s only now that camera phones and Internet access are ubiquitous that the truth long known is no longer deniable.

          The reason why “White Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter” are not fitting rejoinders is because “Black Lives Matter” is NOT a racist appeal or special pleading. It’s a demand to be treated with the due respect long denied. It’s their birthright as Americans not to live in fear of the uniforms who are supposed to guard them while they sleep.

          • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

            “It’s a demand to be treated with the due respect….”

            Due respect begins and ends at…”Excuse me sir…” Continued respect then requires to be earned. Done this a thousand times….

            I am tired of explaining this…you throw up one outrageous incident per week, among tens of Millions of police/black contacts a day, and impugn Law Enforcement…your problems are of scale. This promotes a general feeling of victimization among blacks, and ill considered responses from that demographic provides for a real feed-back loop…”Why you stopping me? Just because I’m Black! I know my rights! Attica! Attica!…”

            “You stopping me just because I’m Black!” I have heard, I swear, at least 100 times…where’s the “respect”?

            Respect, like trust is to be earned…not given.

          • Elrond Hubbard September 3, 2017 at 10:03 am #

            “Respect, like trust is to be earned… not given.”

            I couldn’t agree more. The thing is, it works both ways. Have you ever tried to gain someone’s trust? Was blaming them for not trusting you a helpful strategy?

            Members of my family (on my mother’s side) are cops, and they’re good men. But I wouldn’t hesitate to tell them what I’ll say now: meaning well in your heart isn’t good enough. The police have to meet a higher standard and meet it every time. Nothing less will do, because we entrust police with the power to deprive people of their freedom and to commit violence, up to and including use of deadly force. A hundred thousand respectful interactions with the public can be undone by a single outrage, if the trust isn’t there.

            I forget who once observed that there are two kinds of police forces. One kind protects the public, and the other kind protects against the public. What does this look like to you?

            http://time.com/4917956/trump-police-military-gear/

            When the police have a habit of considering them suspects until proven otherwise while they’re just trying to live their lives, people tend to notice and remember. Especially when that rule is applied on one side of the colour line but not the other.

          • elysianfield September 3, 2017 at 11:11 am #

            Elrond,
            Concerning armored-up police…. I believe that the current trend is due to prescient people in Washington who can see a dystopian future, by whatever means occurring, in the US…the police will need to be armored-up so that a modicum of order can be established/maintained. We do not need military-style law enforcement now, but might in the future.

            The best time to plat a fruit tree is…20 years ago.

  29. janet September 1, 2017 at 7:26 pm #

    “Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, defends illegals and says that they will be protected during this time of tragedy. Well, okay.” –tucsospur

    Trump has finally come around. At his press conference today Trump said he loves “illegals” … he said: I love Dreamers. I love everybody.

    I was surprised to hear Trump agreeing with me. I look forward to his decision tomorrow to save the Dreamers, keeping Obama’s promise to them. It’s the right thing to do.

    I’m also glad to see Mexico is helping out in Texas. Things are improving.

    Congress will not fund the wall. Common sense and Christian values are returning. Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, without qualifying his statement by race or ethnicity.

  30. daveed September 1, 2017 at 7:28 pm #

    Sounds like Paradise. But real inner peace can only be attained via
    Men or Women Grasping at Life’s Incandescence aka MOWGLI.
    MOWGLI helps you down life’s troubled Road.

    “Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind
    On the road to Shambala
    Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
    On the road to Shambala”

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    • Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:17 pm #

      Then lay down your arms and welcome the Arabs back to the land of Palestine. And pack your bags, they want their homes back and you’re occupying them. This is the Teaching of Shambala, where the Will of God is known.

      • daveed September 1, 2017 at 9:46 pm #

        Alms not arms, Sir. Welcome back, Brothers, to your Homeland. Maybe, somehow, we can make amends for this 70-year old travesty. I have placed figs and pomegranates on your pillow, just the way you used to do.

  31. seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 7:37 pm #

    The wall is a stupid idea put forth by a stupid man and sold to a stupid public. Now that “Elephant Girl” Sara Huckabee Sanders has the mic, she has to sell the lies and double speak and innuendo.

  32. janet September 1, 2017 at 8:01 pm #

    More good news: Trump can pardon at federal level but the ex-sheriff still has to face the judge at the state level where Trump cannot pardon.

    This morning, Judge Bolton ordered that ex-sheriff Arpaio file a memo and scheduled a hearing for October 4th where Arpaio’s legal team must publicly argue why a man who was so racist he was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to end his discriminatory racial profiling policies deserves to have his conviction thrown out.

    The state of Arizona will have their own chance to argue why Arpaio’s conviction should not be vacated, allowing them to publicly, and in great detail, list the full extent of the heinous crimes and misdeeds of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which include running what he refers to as a concentration camp, torturing his inmates, forcing a woman to give birth in shackles, and refusing to investigate sex crimes against Latina children.

    • DrGonzo September 1, 2017 at 8:18 pm #

      Poor Drumpf is getting frustrated that there are LIMITS to the reach of his authoritarianism. Life is so UNFAIR to snowflake Donald.

      • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 8:52 pm #

        And most blacks were forced, unwilling immigrants.

        So, since when is the United States inherently a ‘white’ nation?
        Since before 1965, nimrod.

        More africans have moved to USA since (((1965)))
        then were here in 1865.
        So, in a way, you are wrong.

    • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 12:50 pm #

      “why a man who was so racist he was convicted of criminal contempt”

      Janet,
      Criminal contempt has nothing to do with racism…it has to do with refusal of a court order. If Jesus Christ had a bench warrant, and refused to respond after his ascension to Heaven, he would be guilty of contempt…criminal contempt.

      “Criminal Contempt” involves pissing off a lawyer who has gained a position of authority.

    • elysianfield September 3, 2017 at 11:13 am #

      Janet,
      Yes, but intransigent states may suffer a loss of federal funding to law enforcement.

  33. Janos Skorenzy September 1, 2017 at 8:47 pm #

    Remember how much compassion people had for Charlie Hebdo? Feast your eyes on this:

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/people-outraged-over-charlie-hebdo-184457736.html

    They’re mocking the people of Texas. They remain what they always have been – a nest of atheists and communists.

    • seawolf77 September 1, 2017 at 9:58 pm #

      When Katrina hit God drowned all the queers. This is about as original as a ham sandwich.

    • daveed September 1, 2017 at 10:05 pm #

      “They remain what they always have been – a nest of atheists and communists.”

      Wait, we’re talking about the Russians, right?
      Communists under every bed etc?

      “Oh, Daveed, you’re so behind the times! Have a nice nap, Mr. Van Winkle? The Russians are our pals now. Yeah, I know….they were reviled by conservatives back in the day….but, they love ’em now. But not the Democrats! Anything having to do with Moscow is Bad News with that crowd!”

      Well, this is a fine kettle of fish! Certainly confusing. I’m going to take a little rest now. When I wake up, could you just tell me who to hate, please?

      • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 1:24 am #

        (((Russians)))! Read Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together.

        • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:26 pm #

          What’s your point?

    • pequiste September 2, 2017 at 6:36 am #

      And I thought the cartoon referred to a very delayed French fantasy concerning Wehrmacht operations at the Meuse river in May 1940.

      Remember too that those people made Jerry Lewis a Commandeur of the Legion d’honneur.

      Great alimentation, wonderful wine, legendary art and architecture not withstanding; for Les Francais, not funny is funny.

    • DA September 2, 2017 at 10:17 am #

      Relax Janos. They mock everybody. It’s called satire, and it doesn’t work unless it cuts deep. I thought it was pretty funny, although the Nazi references are just hopelessly stupid at this point. And let’s remember, Houston and TX are the homes of the climate deniers. Bet that changes soon enough. As soon as their hands go out for federal assistance anyway.

      • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 1:31 pm #

        Do they mock themselves? Do they still mock the Muslims or where they cured of that? And how would they have liked it if the world mocked them after the slaughter? Should we have done that – just to be evenhanded?

        In my experience, mockers can’t stand the tables being turned. It’s just a joke? No, it isn’t.

        • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 2:16 pm #

          Let CH mock the many muslims of Texas.

        • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:21 pm #

          EASY big fella! You REALLY need to relax a bit on this us vs them mentality you have.

          • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 3:55 pm #

            They mock everybody.
            Gays
            trannies
            muslims
            allah?????

            They mock everybody. or do they?

          • DA September 3, 2017 at 7:12 pm #

            Fair point. They do have a liberal bias, I’ll admit. But even so, man up and deal with it. They’re just liberal French numb-nuts preening on the internet. They’re no big deal unless you make them one.

        • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 7:36 pm #

          Janos,
          I agree that Charlie H lack perspective. The day after the CH attack, I opined that, while no one could countenance the killings, most should have seen them coming. Fuck with a rattlesnake, sooner or later you will be bitten. I considered CH’s cartoons nothing more than an internet…”Hey guys, watch THIS!” event.

          DUH-OOH!

          No sympathy but for the innocent bystanders.

  34. Pucker September 1, 2017 at 10:18 pm #

    World War I is interesting. It appears that the Europeans before the war lived a very peaceful, almost idyllic life, except for the high investment in the ruling oligarchies toy armies. Then, within a few months, it was an orgy of death with men being gassed in fecal trenches and women slaving in arms factories. People scratch their heads over why it happened, but I suspect that the ruling oligarchies were a bit Nuts? All that they care about is their jobs and their egos. The political parties just want to get into power to get their sinecures. Sound Familiar?

    • thwack September 2, 2017 at 6:28 pm #

      1900 was the high water mark of white supremacy.

      The white man was at the top of his game having colonized most of the nations on the planet.

      So what did they do?

      They turned their technology and weapons on each other and cut themselves to pieces.

      Just sayin

      • elysianfield September 3, 2017 at 11:16 am #

        “1900 was the high water mark of white supremacy.”

        Thwack,
        And yet you still bitch and moan….

      • Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 9:10 pm #

        You’re right. It was madness, a madness that continues. The inability of man to enjoy good times and fortune without becoming soft, corrupt, and/or crazy shows against that we are a fallen species. In this at least, all men are brothers and Whites are no better.

  35. Pucker September 1, 2017 at 10:23 pm #

    NASA says “Don’t worry”, but it’s planning to drill into the volcano to relieve pressure.

    “Poking a hole in a highly pressurized balloon seemed like a good idea at the time.”

    http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/641802/yellowstone-supervolcano-eruption-nasa-drilling-plan-explosion

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  36. Pucker September 1, 2017 at 10:37 pm #

    The objective is to crash, right?

    That’s why they pack the race track with so many cars and make the drivers fight for money and prestige, right?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm7eyT19DVc

    • Pucker September 1, 2017 at 10:39 pm #

      Population Overshoot….

      • Pucker September 1, 2017 at 10:54 pm #

        The objective is NOT for everyone to get across the finish line safely and in one piece. Right? It’s not a successful game unless your bloke wins and everyone else perishes in flames, right?

        • Pucker September 1, 2017 at 11:40 pm #

          If you were an Oligarch, then you’d pay your Driver to win, and you’d pay competing drivers to crash? You might even sacrifice your driver if you struck a deal with a buddy Oligarch?

  37. Pucker September 1, 2017 at 11:16 pm #

    We may be entertainment for the gods who are bored with themselves?

    • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 4:25 am #

      Human Beings are the only animal that is truly entertaining. We’re pets for the gods.

      • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:12 pm #

        So, do you buy into the central premise of The Gods of Eden then? I view it as plausible, but I don’t think the author made anywhere near an airtight case, even allowing for the fact that a truly airtight case would be extremely unlikely to ever emerge. Loved the discussion of religions and their secret societies though. It was well worth the read for that alone! I think the masses are completely unaware (MUCH to our detriment!) of the ubiquity and power of secret societies in world history.

  38. MrTibbs September 2, 2017 at 12:25 am #

    FINAL REVOLUTION.
    “There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the FINAL REVOLUTION.”
    – Aldous Huxley, March 20, 1962.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WaUkZXKA30

    “I foresee the time when we shall have the means and therefore, inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behaviour and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain.”
    – Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era.” 1970.
    http://www.takeoverworld.info/Zbigniew_Brzezinski__Between_Two_Ages.pdf

    “Human antidepressants are building up in the brains of bass, walleye and several other fish common to the Great Lakes region.”
    – Charlotte Hsu, PHYS.ORG, August 31, 2017.
    https://phys.org/news/2017-08-antidepressants-fish-brains-great-lakes.html

    In the old republic, globalist technocrats enjoy manipulating the human thought genome, with the express intent of the suppression of Liberty, Ingenuity, Rugged Individualism, Independent Thought, Abundance, and Free Will.

    “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
    – George Carlin, 2005.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0

    -T
    They Call Me Mr. Tibbs.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0hytuh6GIk

  39. MrTibbs September 2, 2017 at 12:30 am #

    Good to have you back, Galt.

    Your timing is serendipitous.

    -T

  40. FincaInTheMountains September 2, 2017 at 5:24 am #

    They told me that the road I took
    would lead me to the Sea of Death;
    and from halfway along I turned back.
    And ever since, all the paths I have roamed
    were entangled, and crooked, and godforsaken

    Yosano Akiko, Cowardice (Sea of Death)

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  41. Happy In The Negev September 2, 2017 at 5:45 am #

    @James Howard Kunstler It seems there is a typo in this sentence: “Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for one, has reinvented his political philosophy overnight to accommodate federal aid for natural disasters, something he was not keen on before September 26.” I’m confused by your reference to “September 26.” Did you mean “August 26?”

    • sprawlcapital September 2, 2017 at 5:12 pm #

      Thank you, Hap. I noticed that too.

  42. FincaInTheMountains September 2, 2017 at 5:59 am #

    Cultural catastrophe: Aristotle and Shakespeare against the Dulles plan
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles%27_Plan

    Not only has the cinematography degraded, but also the viewing public.

    Allan Dulles in the cemetery in Baltimore claps his hands so loud that the Lincoln killers have asked to be reburied to another cemetery in another city – they say it is too noisy down there, but probably are just envious.

    • DA September 2, 2017 at 9:52 am #

      Looks like the Dulles Plan backfired and infected the US instead.

      • seawolf77 September 2, 2017 at 2:57 pm #

        Exactly. Sounds like the 1960’s to the tee, and for sure Allen Dulles had a hand in that, especially with regard to LSD.

        • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:14 pm #

          60’s? Hell, sounds like today!

  43. FincaInTheMountains September 2, 2017 at 6:41 am #

    US security services to search Russian consulate in San Francisco on Saturday – Moscow

    https://www.rt.com/news/401770-searches-russian-consulate-sf/

    The Witch wants to say “WOW!” while watching nuclear explosions in Washington and Moscow…

    • DA September 2, 2017 at 9:54 am #

      Don’t know about Moscow, but I think we’d have a new worldwide holiday declared if DC were to be nuked (we’d probably want two or three just to make sure). No questions asked.

  44. Petro September 2, 2017 at 9:29 am #

    I’d have to agree with much of what Dr. Gonzo writes above, in his post from Sept. 1 at 7:14 PM, and which begins “Ya gotta love Kunstler…”

    These screeds have grown repetitive and tiresome (almost a series of familiar catch phrases), and the social commentary is oversimplified, without much depth or nuance. More like the complaining of a grumpy and aggrieved Uncle who goes on and on about the same sh*t which is always bugging him. I keep JHK’s books on my shelf, which are brilliant, and which I recommend and have bought for others to read.

    And the hateful, ignorant, unhelpful stuff JHK tolerates in the comment section—they reflect very poorly on him.

    I quit making a monthly (modest) contribution via Patreon a while ago. I wonder how many other readers have done the same?

    • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 2:12 pm #

      “I quit making a monthly (modest) contribution via Patreon a while ago. I wonder how many other readers have done the same?”

      Petro,
      Your call to arms? We salute your bravery and political correctness…your virtue signaling….

    • Sean Coleman September 2, 2017 at 6:23 pm #

      Petro: “These screeds have grown repetitive and tiresome”

      Who else is saying the same things as him?

      “…the social commentary is oversimplified, without much depth or nuance”

      Can you give an example or two of this?

      “And the hateful, ignorant, unhelpful stuff JHK tolerates in the comment section”

      Do you mean the likes of Janet? Remember JHK checked her email address a few weeks ago and found that it was a fake. (Sorry, Janet, I couldn’t resist.)

      So what is the real reason you dislike him?

  45. janet September 2, 2017 at 11:03 am #

    I agree with gonzo and petro. This has become a refuge for misogynists, racists, and anti-semites. I am also suspending patreon contributions.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
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    • thwack September 2, 2017 at 12:03 pm #

      If its so bad, why don’t you leave?

      Talk to your “handlers” and see if you can get your old position back at Starbucks; makin lattes, and fruity ass drinks…?

      You wanna play patty cakes?

      Stay in patrol; THIS is investigations, we’re professional anglers, we go after the big fish. I thought you were man enough to handle this?

      I guess I was wrong?

      To protect the sheep, you gotta kill the wolf; and it takes a wolf to kill a wolf,

      Understand?

      • malthuss September 2, 2017 at 2:17 pm #

        A black timber wolf? Alpha bitch? leader of the pack?

      • pequiste September 2, 2017 at 7:39 pm #

        And other times while guarding the flock, it takes a keen eye, a.30-06 bolt action with a smooth trigger pull, good breath control, and maybe the assistance some fine optics to dispatch the wolf. Doesn’t hurt to have a German Shepherd comrade assisting in the operation either.

        (I just cannot imagine that the porte-parole for Satan would be so touchy.)

        • thwack September 2, 2017 at 8:12 pm #

          Doesn’t hurt to have a German Shepherd comrade assisting in the operation either.

          **************

          as long as its EAST German.

          Just sayin.

    • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 12:31 pm #

      Add me to the list. Except I never donated in the first place for the very same reasons. But I understand JHK’s viewpoint. He’s a writer and suppression of free speech is an anathema to him. It’s just that I don’t want to pay to read constant anti-Semitic, anti-women, anti Black, etc. rants. Freedom of speech is a two-way street – I have the freedom to not listen. I just don’t want to read that type of material a lot; not paying a stipend is my way of exercising that freedom.

      I do enjoy reading JHK’s and others’ comments when they display clear, rational thinking.

      • capt spaulding September 2, 2017 at 1:08 pm #

        Well bean, I’m not sure what to say. I don’t pay the patreon website because I agree with everything that appears here, however I feel that if I’m gonna continue to read JHK,s column, and then comment on things, then it sort of behooves me to contribute. I scroll over much of the comments on here, but the truth is, if you are going to read here and comment without paying, you are being a bit of a hypocrite. You want to feel good about yourself by not supporting a website where Fascists post, but you still want to read the column and the posts. It costs JHK money to maintain this place & it needs to be supported. It’s kinda like not paying for your coffee because you don’t like it’s taste, but continuing to drink it anyway.

        • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 8:23 pm #

          Capn, you don’t read constant posts castigating your tribe, it takes up a lot of my energy, since I really don’t tolerate irrational, and hateful, deceitful conversation targeted towards me or those for whom I care.

          I don’t consider myself a hypocrite. Someone has to set the record straight. I don’t contribute in order to feel good about myself, but just the opposite: to not feel bad. Unless you have experienced much hateful, physical and emotional abuse as I have, you cannot possibly understand how I feel about this. I’m not whining, complaining, making excuses or trying to make anyone feel guilty, I’m just honestly responding to your comment.

          I began reading this blog and its comment section 8 or 9 years ago because JHK’s thoughts on the future kind of dovetail with mine, except I’m not so anxious about returning to a simpler way of life as he is. I’m more optimistic about the near future and I am definitely a techie as he is not. When I started reading CFN there was no Patreon, but by the time Jim participated in it, I was already hooked.

          BTW, you capn, are one of those whose comments I like to read. Just sayin’.

      • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 1:39 pm #

        My thinking is rational. As are my prejudices – without which we are nothing as Edmund Burke said. To be for all equally is to be for none, equally.

        There can be no story without villains. Thus we keep it interesting and that helps keep the lights on here. In our book, you are the villain, just as from the Chinese pov, Americans are upside down. Realizing that was one of my first Eureka moments, the first of many.

        There is no equality as you understand it or pretend to believe. It exists at the level of Plato’s Ideals. He didn’t believe in it anymore than I do at this level, thus his myth of the metals. It is an indispensable abstraction in mathematics, law, and spirituality of course.

        • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:06 pm #

          I think you make a lot of good points Janos, although you have more than your fair share of stinkers too. But your viewpoints are valuable nonetheless, if only to express the alternate point of view, which is rapidly becoming extinct in the 24/7 politically correct “Amerika uber alles” today. And you make your points pretty well for the most part too. Kudos to Jimbo for “tolerating” you.

          I contrast this with Naked Capitalism for instance (among many others), supposedly “a progressive voice of dissent against rabid financial criminalization,” [my words, actually it’s better termed a cauldron of pseudo-intellectual academic masturbation] which has shut down comments altogether in the aftermath of Charlottesville. I’ve since read all of the offending comments (the one’s they didn’t delete anyway), and they were weak tea indeed compared to what was said almost everyday here. Once again, KUDOS TO JIM for allowing an open and honest discussion of events without needlessly childish censorship. I mean for crying out loud, if we can’t at least honestly discuss current events without pulling our punches, then what in the fuck is the internet good for anyway?

          • Sean Coleman September 2, 2017 at 6:30 pm #

            I haven’t read Naked Capitalism in years (is that the one with Tyler Durdon?) but the adjective ‘progressive’ might be a clue as to what you can expect.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 7:18 pm #

            You never answered my querry about Banana Gate. Do you respect minorities who get triggered by banana peels in trees? Is this a new racist symbol – like milk? What next? Lynching bananas? Or electrocuting them a la Donovan?

          • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 7:52 pm #

            Janos,
            Bananas, Brazil Nuts, Watermelons…Monkeys.

            Ten year old Granddaughter heard me opine once that…”Hard Times, they say, will make a monkey eat red peppers”…an old blues rift. She repeated it in her elementary school class…and was sent to the principle to explain what the sentence meant…parents were called.

            What the sentence means, is that a monkey, during times of privation, will eat other than that which is it’s preference, and humans, by extension, will do what is required to survive, however distasteful.

            ‘Course, it REALLY means make black people eat red peppers, and then kill them….

            Damn, they almost got me….

          • Sean Coleman September 3, 2017 at 9:04 am #

            Elysianfield

            My mother (now 101) tells me that her own mother’s phrase for it was “You’ll follow the crow for it yet.”

          • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:28 pm #

            @ Sean Coleman:

            No, you’re thinking of Zero Hedge, which truly is an alternative site with some fairly marginal posters. Naked Capitalism is a fairly mainstream site, which positions itself as the “thinking person’s voice of protest.” [Again, my words.]

        • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 8:31 pm #

          But you are basing your prejudices on irrational premises. Therefore everything that follows is in fact irrational. You are seeing the world as if through a lens with certain wavelengths blocked out.

          There are many interesting stories without villains. To think otherwise is to have an inaccurate picture of life. But inaccuracy is

          • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 8:36 pm #

            Your modus operandi, isn’t it?

            Equality may be an ideal (i don’t think that’s true), but if it is, then consider a life without ideals is not really living; it is sterile and wasteful.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 9:18 pm #

            Conflict then. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. But the best stories involve villains and evil. Typically even in this story, a bad guy has taken the girl or she has fallen under his spell.

            You are denying that Jews see us like this? Projecting all of your animus onto us – the old story, eh? The Scape Goat.

      • Billy Hill September 2, 2017 at 9:37 pm #

        “I do enjoy reading JHK’s and others’ comments when they display clear, rational thinking.”

        That’s really courageous. In other words, when they agree with you.

        I suggest you find an echo chamber full of smiley faces and disengage. Also — do not volunteer for the HOA.

        • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 11:15 pm #

          Since when does clear, rational thinking have to do with my agreeing to what was said? It’s the reasoning that’s important to me, not the agreement. Billy, I’m sorry to say your comment is very Janos-like: making giant leaps of deduction that are incorrect.

          From one Billy to another.

          • Billy Hill September 3, 2017 at 10:17 am #

            “Clear, Rational Thinking.” What a concept.

            To a great extent such applies in the natural sciences, and most definitely in mathematics.

            2+2=4. Clear. Rational. We can all agree. (Well, most of us… I understand that present pedagogical techniques suggest that there may be other solutions to 2+2 that we must appreciate.)

            There are no human sciences. To paraphrase Ortega — all there is, is history. Clear, rational thinking in the scientific sense does not apply to the realm of human action. Speaking very broadly here. In the human barnyard we seek affirmation. We can be persuaded by eloquence. The “magic words” so to speak. But generally we cluster in echo chambers and claim our noise is better — more rational, cogent, correct — than the noise of the “other” that lives across the river. (I originally wrote “tribe” for “other” but I sense that you would interpret that in a way I did not intend — which might have proved my point.)

    • elysianfield September 2, 2017 at 2:18 pm #

      “I am also suspending patreon contributions.”

      Janet,
      You’ve repeatedly suspended reality, reason, personal observation…but probably not your input in the future?

      • DA September 2, 2017 at 2:23 pm #

        Good point. If you don’t like the programming, why not just change the station?

    • Billy Hill September 2, 2017 at 9:27 pm #

      Extortionist!

      The only honest discussion about race in the USA and you want to censor it.

      Imagine no Janos and everyone posting Janet smiley faces. Yes, smiley faces as far as the eye can see. Smiley faces on billboards, subways, smiley faces on CNN in the airports… nothing but smiley faces everywhere you turn. Janet janet, Janet Dr Gonzo Dr Gonzo Dr Gonzo. You have won. now what?

  46. seawolf77 September 2, 2017 at 3:01 pm #

    I think everyone is a little too hoity toity lately. Yes there are racists, misogynists, and creeps here, as there are everywhere. So what? You’re going to junk it for that? C’mon man! Lighten up.

    • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:12 pm #

      Agreed. As long as everyone is arguing on good faith (and it appears that they, to me at least, are for the most part), then true inclusiveness (as opposed to the current politically correct variety) is a good thing.

  47. My Point of View September 2, 2017 at 6:29 pm #

    Sorry Jim, but “the tool and die shops, the construction outfits, the trucking and shipping concerns, the riggers and pipefitters, the cement companies, and so on” will be back in business asap. A few marginal concerns, ones with aging owners, may throw in the towel and retire, but if there’s money to be made Americans will rise to the challenge. We always do. That’s the way we roll.

    Though I don’t expect it, there ought to be a national discussion of why the Federal Government is mostly the one selling flood insurance and why do we allow people to build in flood zones. There ought to be another discussion about why Houston zoning laws aren’t for shit. We never have these discussions. On sticky issues we stick our heads up our ass and kick the can down the road. That’s the way we roll.

    • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 9:21 pm #

      Under conditions of resource depletion, unemployment, and rapid technogical and social change, things don’t “Bounce Back”; they go awry. They go “A-Trump, A-Trump, A-Trump, Bang!”

  48. Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 7:16 pm #

    http://forward.com/fast-forward/379100/welcome-to-hatreon-where-neo-nazis-go-to-crowdfund/

    This little article forgets to mention that patreon has denied us service. I’m sure he didn’t mean to forget this all important fact. He’s a Journalist, a very important, noble, and busy man.

    • thwack September 2, 2017 at 8:16 pm #

      Nawh Janos,

      you guys need an entirely new business model for donations.

      (Im not gonna tell you what it is; after all, with your high WHITE IQ you should be able to figure it out?

      Right?

      • Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 9:20 pm #

        I can see the huge beads of sweat rolling down your forehead and your bulging red eyes. Oh Caliban, you emblem of evil!

  49. Janos Skorenzy September 2, 2017 at 8:38 pm #

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/nearly-400-die-myanmar-army-steps-crackdown-rohingya-051711633.html

    Burma is crushing the Jihadis and cleansing the nation of the Rohingya disease. There will be no Jihad once the Muslims are gone. It’s so simple.

  50. Pucker September 2, 2017 at 9:13 pm #

    Is it “Racist” to broach the topic of “Population Control”, particularly in places like South Chicago that are literal war zones and most people are dysfunctional and not mentally fit to work or lead meaningful lives? Rather than pay women to have kids and push men out of the home, pay them to do the opposite? Of course, this might erode the Democrats voter strategy?

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    • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:23 pm #

      Your point is a good one and it’s certainly not racist, but the thing is, paying or not paying mothers with kids will likely have very little impact on the number of kids, but a lot of impact for the long term outcomes of the kids themselves. Better to consider population control in general (TRULY, the third rail of any politics!), but of course no rational person that I know of would ever consider that!

  51. FincaInTheMountains September 2, 2017 at 9:22 pm #

    Russian Federation Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova: this is some kind of hell, stupid, illegal, meaningless

    I’m looking at footage of the FBI’s searches, and I understand that this is some kind of hell, stupid, illegal, meaningless.
    Why?! Show all the power of American intelligence? We’ve seen everything. Even an FBI officer who’s ashamed of everything.

    Going to pick locks and break doors? We’re polite. We’ll open it ourselves.

    https://www.facebook.com/maria.zakharova.167

    Hillary Clinton, US Deep State, acting as an agent of Fourth Reich and Saudi Arabia, provoking a nuclear conflict between Russia and US.

    Hillary’s election campaign was financed by Germany and Saudi Arabia, and the American people rejected her – they must die for that.

    WOW!

    • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 11:32 pm #

      Maybe you are right, but I would like to see proof that Russia and SA financed Hillary’s campaign. The only reliable proof, I think, would be from a list of campaign donors, from an authorized US website that has access to all the donations. Otherwise, your statement is either just your opinion or somebody else’s. For the record, I am most definitely not a Hillary supporter.

  52. Pucker September 2, 2017 at 9:35 pm #

    We know what the genocidal dispositions are among the Oligarchy and among white people generally. What are the genocidal proclivities among the elite black “Talented Tenth” and black people generally?

    • Billy Hill September 2, 2017 at 9:45 pm #

      Janos has written that blacks hate whites more than they love themselves. That’s really all there is to it.

      • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 9:59 pm #

        Chris Rock refers to black people with “The N-Word”. Oprah seems to be a big believer in slavery, albeit a color-blind variety of slavery.

      • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 10:54 pm #

        The Smithsonian African American History Museum in Washington DC is in the shape of an upside down black pyramid. In other words, the black man’s position in society is dependent upon the black man being at the bottom. Go figure….

        • Billy Hill September 3, 2017 at 10:32 am #

          Back in the day when I trudged the halls of academe Winthrop Jordan’s White Over Black was required reading. The signal memory I have of the argument is that “racism” so to speak is embedded in our language. Just today over at ZH is an article on the Indian monetary experiment and there you see it in stark relief:
          “was demonitisation a scheme designed to turn black money into white?”

          I suspect that the opposite is true in Africa, to the detriment of the Boer.

        • malthuss September 3, 2017 at 6:11 pm #

          https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-41097857

  53. Pucker September 2, 2017 at 9:57 pm #

    They seem to have a firm belief in the power of money and the power of killing the whistle blower. They also seem to have a firm belief that the public at large won’t notice.

  54. Pucker September 2, 2017 at 10:04 pm #

    What exactly do people do on the golf course anyway?

    • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 10:28 pm #

      Isn’t golf one of those games wherein you always let the Boss win and then, since no one really exerted themselves, everyone goes back to the clubhouse for a few highballs before fucking their brains out?

      • Pucker September 2, 2017 at 10:39 pm #

        Golf is a kind of social ritual that reinforces the Boss’s need for hierarchy and the subordinates are rewarded with highballs and blow jobs?

        • tucsonspur September 3, 2017 at 11:38 am #

          And they have those stupid sayings like, “bury my balls next to the old bag”. Oh how cute! What a thigh slapper! Please stop me, I’m rolling with laughter!

    • beantownbill. September 2, 2017 at 11:38 pm #

      Get terribly frustrated trying to put a small, ball in a slightly larger hole (that sounds sexual, doesn’t it?); or make deals; or get drunk or high; or goof off with the boys while catching some rays.

      • Pucker September 3, 2017 at 12:14 am #

        Goldfinger only played with a Slazenger 7 golf ball. Goldfinger’s personal assistant was Miss Pussy Galore.

    • elysianfield September 3, 2017 at 11:28 am #

      “What exactly do people do on the golf course anyway”

      Puck.

      Someone once opined that golf was “a good walk spoiled”…Twain, I believe.

  55. Pucker September 2, 2017 at 11:56 pm #

    What is Lex Luther (Vladimir Putin) up to?

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  56. Q. Shtik September 3, 2017 at 12:11 am #

    I cancelled my Patreon donation in protest of our host’s permissiveness toward poor grammar, spelling and usage while threatening banning for those who point out such errors. I’m OK, however, with racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, etc., etc. 😉

    • jim e September 3, 2017 at 12:32 am #

      I will promise to do better. The “threatening” part is his way. How are you on YahsuYah? Yeshua? Yashua? Tell me what is truth. I bet you prefer Jesus.

  57. FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 5:47 am #

    Close Call – the Situation with the Russian Consulate in San Francisco

    Yesterday the situation with the Russian consulate in San Francisco was very bad.

    I still do not want to tell those assumptions that the visitors of one of the forums similar to chess section in Washington Square have expressed. The softest assumption suggested that Russian FM Lavrov reminded consular officers that they were all liable for military duty and ordered no one to enter the territory of the consulate. Use force if necessary – this will give Russia space for maneuver with response measures.

    But some fakir was drunk and a couple of hours ago the State Department angrily rejected the assumption that the US authorities were ready to use force:

    The State Department denies that the United States threatened to break the doors of Russian diplomatic facility
    https://ria.ru/world/20170903/1501643120.html

    He also said that the United States fully complies with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, article 22 of which says the following:

    1. The premises of the mission are inviolable. The authorities of the receiving state can not enter these premises except with the consent of the head of the mission.

    2. The receiving State has a special duty to take all appropriate measures to protect the premises of the mission from any intrusion or damage and to prevent any breach of the peace of mind or insult to its dignity.

    3. The premises of the representative office, their furnishings and other property in them, as well as the means of transportation of the mission, shall enjoy immunity from search, requisition, seizure and enforcement actions.

    By the way, this definition also applies to Russian diplomatic property in the states of New York and Maryland, whether confiscated, or “closed” in January 2017, and what happened according to this statement was “bypass” and “inspection” with the consent of Russian representatives.

    This painting in oil was presented in RIA Novosti, and next to it, literally at a distance of 20 minutes, quite by accident was another oil painting on which the Korean dictator joyfully informs Urbi et Orbi that he in response to a widely publicized visit to North Korea by South Korean and American tourists is going to send to a tourist trip to America a Kuzma’s Mother – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuzma%27s_mother , who is pregnant from Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov:

    North Korea declared the creation of a hydrogen warhead
    https://ria.ru/world/20170903/1501643219.html

    Thus, apparently yesterday, a remarkable American director in the style of “porn-noir” Hillary Clinton, also known as the agent “Deep Throat,” persuaded her friends on television to air the amateur performance of the “War of the Worlds” by Wells, but then the Siberian Fisherman called the State Department and invited Secretary of State Tillerson and Minister Mattis to taste the ears from the pike he had fished, claiming that it was prepared by the aforementioned Hillary Clinton.

    http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1409675.1501942762!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_1200/vladimir-putin-siberia-russia.jpg

    Unfortunately, something went wrong and the aforementioned officials got a bad case of diarrhea from this fish soup, and in order to prevent dehydration of their organisms, they decided to back up to the bathroom where they rapidly changed from the costumes of the “War of the Worlds” staged by Hillary Clinton, into white and fluffy bunnies, who made a “detour” and “inspection” of the carrot field in the solemn performance on the Day of Knowledge at the First Physics and Mathematics school named after Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich in the city of Arzamas-16.

    • FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 6:42 am #

      Congress, after enacting the law on sanctions, drove itself into a corner and now, after a crisis with the consulate in San Francisco, Trump, apparently, just washed his hands, giving legislators the opportunity to also taste the fish soup cooked under the leadership of Hillary Clinton.

      By virtue of this law, with the Vienna Convention and 755 unemployed American diplomats expelled from Russia will have to deal the US legislature, and they themselves have written out the full indulgence to the executive branch of power.

    • FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 7:08 am #

      Red missiles are flying away
      You do not expect them to return
      Although feel a little sorry for America
      But the best is certainly ahead

      • DA September 3, 2017 at 7:02 pm #

        No need to feel sorry for us. We’ve made our bed/bet, and continue to double down on it everyday.

  58. ozone September 3, 2017 at 11:03 am #

    I suggest that those who believe in the purity and correct political stances of the Red Cross and their own preferred sky-god[s] continue to do so. Yes, believe more harderer, if you please. Don’t remove yourself from flood plains and continue with the refining of deadly chemicals in these “convenient” locations. Soldier on by paving the place over with concrete and asphalt to facilitate a titanic herd of automobiles and automotive dependency. Rebuild! Hope! Pray! These are the only reasonable responses to our looming predicaments and will mitigate them handily. (Okay, [almost] enough snotty sarcasm.)

    Seriously though, our regional NPR station’s president, micro-manager and ideologically-rigid blowhard of the first order, shut down regular scheduling to have a 50 grand fundraising day for the Red Cross. (This guy also believes everything he reads in the New York Times and is a *raging* Russophobe… not that there’s anything wrong with that… well, maybe there is.)

    Let’s just have a little look into what has happened to the massive amount of funds for Harvey Flood Relief that Le Croix-Rouge has raked in, shall we? (…Along with a few other instances that reek of dead fish.)

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-02/red-cross-admits-it-doesnt-know-how-hurricane-harvey-donation-money-spent

  59. tucsonspur September 3, 2017 at 11:27 am #

    Kim Jong Un go bang.
    President Trump go….”dang”!

    Fire and Fury no scare Kim,
    He just say of Trump,
    “Fuck him”.

    Kim say nukes reach America,
    Everyone go hysterica.
    Nukes falling from the sky,
    People screaming, “I’m going to fry”!

    Kim have fun. Kim go boom.
    Sends up big mushroom.
    No more need for tomb,
    Just sweep up ashes
    With the broom.

    • ozone September 3, 2017 at 11:59 am #

      The Untied Statues of America has never attacked any nation armed with nuk-u-lar weapons. What makes anyone think that’s going to change now? (If anyone was going to do it, it surely would have happened during the George & Dick Show of the distant past; they actually had the military at their beck and call.)

      Besides, you’ve wasted a perfectly droll little poem by being wildly off-topic. Couldn’t wait til tomorrow or the day after?

      • tucsonspur September 3, 2017 at 4:16 pm #

        Tomorrow is always the busiest day of the week. A sense of pique is in the air. C’mon O, be fair.

        Off what topic, yours? Others can still respond to your post and go with your thoughts.

        Some here will appreciate the levity amidst the doom and gloom.

        • Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 9:03 pm #

          He’s really running his mouth today – his words for the First Amendment.

  60. ozone September 3, 2017 at 11:47 am #

    Ah, yet another example of that alternative definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

    “As Hurricane Harvey Approaches, Trump Appoints Deputy Chief of Staff Who Failed to Prepare for Katrina”

    Go ahead with the Goggle (or is it Google?), and take a peek into the highly successful career of Kirstjen Nielsen.

    “Over a decade ago [during the reign of Bush the Lesser], Nielsen held the title of senior director for preparedness and response at the White House Security Council.”

    Ohhhh, that Katrina thing.

    Go. Search. Be amazed.

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    • nsa September 3, 2017 at 1:43 pm #

      At least spell it correctly. It’s Joogle, owner of JooTube……censors of all wisdom not PC.

    • pequiste September 3, 2017 at 4:27 pm #

      Who we all need at FEMA after Harvey and for the coming Irma, and the remainder of this Hurricane season for that matter is a new “Brownie:”

      http://www.hark.com/clips/ccgkzjpjgn-brownie-youre-doing-a-heck-of-a-job

      How about “Skeletor” himself – Michael Chertoff? (I wonder how and why he ever got the gig?)

      Entrusting the security and safety of the nation to the same ass- klownz who royally fucked things up before, and from the get-go, I might add, is simply, well, brilliant.

      • Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 9:04 pm #

        He looks like traditional depictions of Lucifer.

  61. RIB September 3, 2017 at 4:35 pm #

    It’s rain falling, not the sky folks. Y’all doth protest too much , me thinks.

  62. FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 5:03 pm #

    Checkmate to the American politics

    After watching Sunday’s political programs, I came to the conclusion that American journalists are happy about Hurricane Harvey – the description of the destruction gives them the opportunity to say nothing about the really important events of the week.

    One test by North Korea of a thermonuclear device is worth a lot!

    The smallest thermonuclear bomb is about 100 bombs blown in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they interview politicians against the backdrop of a mountain of debris and think that this gives them a chance to hide their confusion and fear.

    Meanwhile, the North Korean missile flying over the island of Hokkaido rose to a height of 550 km, which means that it can fly to any point in the US and simply no missile defense system will get it.

    And it fell on a command from the flight control center, and anyone can take a map and make sure that it was flying along an arc providing the shortest distance between the launch site and the city of Seattle, where the Boeing factories are located.

    And more detailed information on the flight suggests that in the initial part of the flight, it performed maneuvers simulating evasion of THAAD anti-missiles, and that was the main goal of the tests.

    Moreover, if this is so, then in combination with the test of a thermonuclear device, this flight is a checkmate of all North Korean policy of the West, but not of Donald Trump.

    What do you think the interviewers asked their victims against the backdrop of the mountain of debris left by Hurricane Harvey? That’s right, about how bad President Trump is! And he essentially refused to comment on the tests of North Korea’s missiles and bombs and suggested that they address the members of the Congress and the US Senate, which deprived him of the right to conduct the foreign policy.

    The only thing he said was that Kim Jong-un only understands one thing, and now the entire journalistic corps of the United States is wondering what kind of thing this is, that Kim Jong-un understands.

    Listen, when I arrived in the US 29 years ago Trump was bankrupt and from every steam iron sounded a song about his inevitable final collapse.

    And now he is not only a billionaire who has increased his fortune 10-fold, but also the US President!

    • tucsonspur September 3, 2017 at 5:29 pm #

      Right, Melania in high heels, he didn’t go early enough, he should have given more, etc. Serving up the usual course.

      Finca, I’m laughing about the steam irons sounding a song. Why steam irons?

      • FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 5:46 pm #

        Literal translation into English a popular Russian slang expression, meaning “from every possible source”.

      • FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 5:55 pm #

        US can’t solve the N. Korean problem without getting Russia involved, and it can’t get Russia involved on its side by breaking the doors of Russia’s diplomatic missions.

        Get rid of Hillary, pronto!

        • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:49 pm #

          Three things:

          1. Hillary’s an admittedly pathological symptom, not a cause. The problem runs MUCH deeper than her and hers’, although she is indeed a malignant force and should be excised post haste!

          2. For better or worse, I doubt fences can ever be mended with Putin or Russia now, nor does anyone in power in the west now appear inclined to ever consider it. The die is cast, there’s no going back now.

          3. I think there’s more going on with the North Korea “problem” than meets the eye. As in, I think this is yet another CIA covert op set up for nefarious purposes. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t doubt that the little fat numb-nut in charge over there is on the CIA payroll himself. It no doubt has to do with creating a stir on both the Russian and Chinese borders which the US can “legitimately” claim to have an “interest,” but beyond that I can’t say.

          • FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 7:05 pm #

            1. Again, the question of role of an Individual in History.

            I have already said many times that Hillary Clinton is the head of the Party of War, possessing outstanding qualities for this: intelligence, will, cunning, obviously hypnotic abilities(Nixon case), sadism, pathological lying and of course adorable smile.

            At the same time, if the “role of the individual in history” is simplified to primitive, then the very existence of the Party of War is completely objective, but the above personal qualities of its head are a subjective factor.

            2. Never say never, stranger things have happened.

            3. There is no doubt that the special services of US, Russia and China are heavily involved, the question is who is going to get an upper hand in this intricate game?

            CIA seems behaving a little strange lately – a bad case of schizophrenia?

          • DA September 3, 2017 at 7:25 pm #

            1. “Queen Hillary” is old and will soon be either irrelevant or dead in any case. Her sole claim to fame has always been her marriage to Bill, who is also old and will soon be irrelevant or dead. Their legacy will die with them, as Webb Hubbel’s ignorant spawn is definitely not up to the task.

            2. Putin may well make nice with the US for strategic reasons if it behooves him, but the days of implicit trust are certainly over until the current round of western “leaders” are long dead and forgotten.

            3.What’s truly going on in North Korea does indeed remain an impenetrable mystery at this point. But the timing and the sheer weirdness of all of it definitely has the CIA’s tell-tale fingerprints all over it. I smell the reek of false-flag in the air once again!

  63. pequiste September 3, 2017 at 6:35 pm #

    Certainly a hot mess right here:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4848026/Man-ran-flames-Burning-Man-festival-died.html

    Why would the folks at “Burning Man” in the Nevada desert actually want to stop a person from becoming a real human sacrifice to the god of the festival?

    Moloch is quite disappointed, to say the least.

    • DA September 3, 2017 at 6:56 pm #

      LOL! I’m guessing he watched too much of HBO’s Game of Thrones and foolishly imagined himself to be the “Mother of Dragon’s?” Perhaps he is in whatever reality he finds himself inhabiting today? Daenerys my Queen! Why have thou forsaken me! I wonder how much grease he made after his ritual sacrifice? Bet the alcohol burned hot for a few brief seconds anyway.

      • Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 8:58 pm #

        The story of Daenerys is the story of every woman writ large:

        Hot at 20.
        A Hot Mess at 28.
        And just a Mess by 35.

        • DA September 3, 2017 at 9:44 pm #

          I kind of noticed that too. Daenarys has been slipping of late. No doubt why she’s been shacking up with Jon Snow lately, of all people! Like the way she rides that dragon though. No doubt those spikes add a little bit of tactile enhancement to the ride.

          • Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 10:50 pm #

            Real ladies ride side saddle. If not, they may cease to be virgins or at the very least, get an orgasm from a horse.

  64. FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 7:22 pm #

    The Siberian Fisherman in a gladiator’s uniform:

    https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/3731/1793/original.jpg?w=800&h

    • DA September 3, 2017 at 7:27 pm #

      LOL! I would LOVE to see a triumphant Vlad guest spot in the final season of Game of Thrones!

  65. DA September 3, 2017 at 7:47 pm #

    A Sunday night NPR mini-concert dedicated to Janos by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoPoI1IwcTw

    Regardless of what you think about his politics and/or ethnicity, he’s a pretty fair performer.

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  66. MrTibbs September 3, 2017 at 8:07 pm #

    WILL I SEE YOU, IN SEPTEMBER??

    https://newsline.com/congress-till-end-september-meet-budget-deadline/

    In the old republic, globalist operated Congress enjoys the hard labor of 12 working days to pass a multi-trillion dollar budget appropriations bill, else the Treasury faces a September 29 fiscal shutdown.

    …….Hope the payloads to be released have been prepaid.

    Another Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, by NETWORK globalist design.

    And like the patriots before, the melting pot shall resume the restoration of the Constitutional Republic from the point of interruption.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sXAreNhCR8

    -T
    They Call Me Mr. Tibbs.

    • pequiste September 3, 2017 at 8:26 pm #

      You dare to require a musical response to this post Mr. Tibbs:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy0kNX5xrnE

      “There is danger in the summer moon above…”

      Hurricanes, Best Korea nukes, debt-ceilings…..how much fun can we pack into one month?

      • onehunglo September 3, 2017 at 10:17 pm #

        ah, pequiste, you shrewd observer American culture…..

        onehunglo is as well….

        while you one frankie valli make nice performance, the happenings deliver best version smash hit summer of ’66:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDKIs0v120s

        many aspect of you contemporary culture lost when politicians sold out to globalists…..

        youtube preserve much for historical preservation.

        that ok.

        let not you heart be troubled.

        may God be with you.

        -onehunglo

        • pequiste September 4, 2017 at 7:33 am #

          I completely agree onehunglo; the Happenings cover is tops.

  67. DA September 3, 2017 at 8:15 pm #

    More good stuff from a life-long hero of mine and fellow R&R HoF member, Jackson Browne. A man who has been singing about the excesses of US empire since the days of Ronnie Raygun in the 1980’s, back when all the current insanity first got started in earnest. He’s older and wiser now, and yes, not a little bit richer too. Even so…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11HHue911Tg

  68. Janos Skorenzy September 3, 2017 at 9:01 pm #

    They will send one hurricane after another at us just as the Bugs kept throwing asteroids at us. They must be routed out.

  69. Q. Shtik September 3, 2017 at 9:15 pm #

    I don’t know ’bout all y’all but at this point I’m fed up to my eyeballs with:

    1. Diana
    2. Prince
    and
    3. Jerry Lewis

    • pequiste September 3, 2017 at 9:29 pm #

      You forgot Jon-Benet!

  70. Q. Shtik September 3, 2017 at 9:19 pm #

    At the moment I’m watching Texas A&M against UCLA and I’m wondering what ever became of ‘Johnny Football?’

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    • Q. Shtik September 3, 2017 at 9:21 pm #

      Have I drifted too far off topic?

    • DA September 3, 2017 at 9:39 pm #

      Johnny Football became Johnny Nightclub, and the rest, as they say, is…

  71. FincaInTheMountains September 3, 2017 at 9:30 pm #

    What’s truly going on in North Korea does indeed remain an impenetrable mystery at this point. == DA

    Trump is now fighting with another power and in this war N. Korea to him, in any case, is not an enemy.

    • DA September 3, 2017 at 9:45 pm #

      We’re agreed.

  72. Billy Hill September 3, 2017 at 10:20 pm #

    Walter Becker gone at 67.

    The music lives.

  73. BackRowHeckler September 3, 2017 at 11:19 pm #

    Hey Q ‘Johnny Football’ right now is trying to get straight; once he does he’ll embark on a career lecturing college and NFL players on the perils of strong drink, big money, fast women and early fame.

    Guy in town here bought a bought a Dodge Charger Hellcat, 707 bhp, 8 gear tranny, top speed 210 mph, 0 to 60 in about 5 seconds … I don’t know what the gas mileage is, probably not too good. I saw him hauling ass up route 10, headed north, on Friday. He was catching rubber as we used to say in the first 5 gears. 707 horsepower, think about that! You can feel the thing coming at you from about a mile away. He had it painted a wild orange; you’d think it was 1967, we had money to burn, and fuel was plentiful.

    brh

    • elysianfield September 4, 2017 at 12:14 am #

      BRH
      Yes, he is living large…I expect he could get laid by cruising that fine Dodge around any number of Junior High Schools in the area.

    • pequiste September 4, 2017 at 7:25 am #

      “8 gear tranny…”

      Sounds like the perfect Pride Parade entry or a machine that shall one day make one hell of a fine hot mess with a semi-tractor trailer (passing on the crest of a single lane road,) or at a highway/freeway bridge abutment racing with a ‘Vette or Porsche.

  74. FincaInTheMountains September 4, 2017 at 6:49 am #

    The way speaker of Russian Foreign Ministry on RTR describes Russian consulate in San Francisco incident makes thermonuclear test by North Korea insignificant.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/moscow-demands-us-reverse-decision-to-close-russian-diplomatic-facilities-2017-9

  75. amb September 4, 2017 at 9:56 am #

    An article of pessimism and fatalism. Focusing on the negative. No hope in humanity. Doesn’t help a soul or do anything to improve conditions.

    And a man that is stuck in the gold standard, which puts him about 80 years out of present time. Hello! We went off the gold standard in 1934 domestically, and in 1971 internationally. We don’t dig our money out of the ground any more, we don’t operate on a fixed currency.

    Please attempt to take notice that the world and its financial systems have changed.

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