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The Democratic Party has steered itself into an exquisitely neurotic predicament at a peculiar moment of history. Senator Bernie Sanders set the tone for the shift to full-throated socialism, and the primary election win of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a New York congressional district seems to have ratified it. She promised voters free college tuition, single-payer health care, and free housing. Ah, to live in such a utopia!
One can actually understand why New Yorkers especially would fall for that agenda of promises. When I was a child there in the 1950s and 60s, New York was a mostly middle-class city. City College of New York, with a really distinguished faculty, was free. That’s right, stone free. Much of that middle-class was educated there, including most of my high school teachers. In the 1950s and 60s, it cost a few hundred dollars to have a baby in the hospital, and less than that to receive three stitches in the ER. Back then, New York real estate was mostly rental housing and not subject to the deformations of wandering global capital.
You can’t overstate how fortunate this country was after the Second World War. The mid-twentieth century was the apex of American industrial wealth. We produced real goods and lived in extraordinary comfort. Now, of course that has all turned around, the industry is mostly bygone, the magnificent energy supply is getting sketchy, and all that’s left is a false-front financialized economy based on swindling and accounting fraud. Medicine and health care have become unabashed rackets, and good luck finding a place to live for less than half of your monthly income.
Things have changed, as Bob Dylan once noted in song, and the times they are a ‘changing once again. This is probably the worst time in recent history to go full-bore socialist. Look, it’s as simple as this: the 20th century saw the greatest rise of global GDP ever. The prospect of that is what drove the various socialisms of the period — the belief that there would be evermore material wealth and that a lot of it had to be fairly redistributed to the workers who brought it into being. You can debate the finer socio-ethical points of that — and indeed that’s what much of politics consisted of throughout the industrialized world — but the stunning bonanza of wealth compelled it.
That is the world we are moving out of right now, despite the fantasies of Elon Musk and the many techno pied pipers like him. GDP growth has stalled, the implacable trend is toward contraction, and the wizards of financial hocus-pocus are running out of tricks for pretending that they create anything of value. In short: there’s no there there. All that’s left are IOUs for loans that will never be paid back — and that kind of loan (especially in the form of a bond) doesn’t have any value.
So, the Democratic Party has embarked on a crusade to redistribute the wealth of the nation at the exact moment when the “wealth” is turning out to be gone. Good luck with that.
A perhaps more high-toned and fine-tuned version of this program is the new scheme called “universal basic income” (UBI). A Silicon Valley zillionaire named Andrew Yang has launched a 2020 presidential bid based on this UBI. You can listen to his pitch in this excellent discussion with Sam Harris here. Yang is obviously sincere. He proposes to give every citizen around $1,000 a month whether they have a job or not. You can mount any number of arguments about how this might incentivize behavior for better or worse, but if something like that were ramped up, I assure you it could only be done with a debased currency on track toward oblivion. The wealth is no longer there and the representation of it in “money” will be obviously false.
Don’t get too worked-up, either, over the Big Story that robots will soon be doing all the jobs lately done by humans in America. That fantasy of the next economy is actually already dead-on-arrival due to the energy predicament that virtually no one in the public arena is paying any attention to. The century-long oil bonanza is winding down again. The oil companies know it. They’re not spending any money on exploration, meaning they won’t replace the energy we’re currently burning up with new supply. To make matters more interesting, the alt-energy industries will not survive the demise of oil. You have no idea how this dilemma will shove the life our nation into something like a new medieval age. And don’t be surprised if it comes complete with a new feudalism — which is just a way of describing a deeply local economy, if you can make one at all.
The Democratic Party’s return to socialist nostrums could not happen at a less propitious moment. It’s one thing to spend other people’s money during an age of steadily rising GDP, and another thing when GDP is collapsing. It might even prove to be a winning strategy in a few elections. But that depends on how delusional the voters remain.
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Jim,
UBI is usually mentioned in tandem with the coming prospect of armies of robots putting everyone out of work. Who will buy their crap?
Over here in sunny Switzerland, the trains are still on time, the children go off to school unescorted and the barbarians are kept away from the gates. Of course the forces that are array against a country actually caring a whit about its people are approaching – it feels like this place will hold out another 20 years or so to something resembling a good life.
“It’s one thing to spend other people’s money during an age of steadily rising GDP, and another thing when GDP is collapsing. ”
Didn’t you just finish saying how most of the money was scammed by racketeers using financial shenanigans?
Oil is still cheap. Resources still plentiful and waiting for plunder. This has just become another bullshit propaganda site.
Hey Marcus– This is a serious discussion of serious proposals. “Propaganda” is an immoderate way to describe it, and rather in bad faith, too. — JHK
Jim, I see no serious proposals, just doomsayer negativity not based on evidence. You kick down on visionaries like Elon Musk constantly. You’ve become more divorced from reality (the evidence thing again), during the same period the world has seen the greatest increase in technologies, efficiencies, and production.
The evidence is that Tesla, or a similar company may just succeed, oil has been cheap for the last 10years, the US increased its production in oil in the same period that US use is down based significantly on more efficient transport and technology.
And the US taxes are the lowest in 100 years, and we have the wealthiest society ever. Robotics will further the increase in productivity at a greater clip because of the further integration of computers and machines. Look at the history of a company like Crown Cork for instance to get an idea of the benefits of automation: https://www.crowncork.com/about-crown/history-and-timeline
So you consider discussions centered around conservation as propaganda? How about building sustainable and more efficient infrastructure and cities? That’s propaganda too? Please do not tell me that you are one of those consume everything to the maximum because the party will never end and technologies will allow us all to sit at home and consume and fornicate endlessly. Now THAT is what I would call propaganda, and pretty destructive propaganda as well for it undermines human thought and productivity, two great assets that have allowed us to get where we are today. Wait a minute. maybe that was not so good after all, eh?
He’s a pie-eyed cornucopian. And I’m guessing probably on the right side of the wealth divide, or at least perceives that he is.
Walter, I don’t see much talk about conservation around here, more like a bag of old fart bigots bitching about brown people violating their lawns.
Conservation v innovation? I’d rather drive 100 miles per day in a car that gets 40 mpg than 40 miles in a car that gets 15 mpg. That’s real production and conservation.
Canada has timber and water galore. California has the best valley in the world for growing vegetables. Get the timber and water down where it can do the most good. This is easy except when you put constraints on your mind.
So yeah most of the tripe and petty bitching on this site is propaganda, perpetrated by calcified curmudgeons void of imagination and inspiration.
I’ve wasted 15 years on doomer porn and can tell you that I never felt so good as when I finally said “fuck it all.” But I think you’ve built a straw man here Walter. Marcus is merely pointing out that he feels JHK is too one-sided. A thought probably shared by many who enjoy reading this sight.
Perhaps you are right Calico, but I have to admit that when I see these happy-happy types make claims like America being the “wealthiest” society around when we are actually the most indebted people in the world well it certainly strikes a wrong cord in my mind. Even the pioneers who are leading the way into robotics and AI are willing to admit that they may very well be fabricating the very tool for our destruction, yet they proceed onwards nonetheless. Perhaps I am the one who is wrong and I should spend more time partying, consuming and rabble rousing instead of trying to look ahead and work towards making things more sustainable, who knows. I know that the guys sitting on piles of cash and assets are not worrying about tomorrow so why should I, right?
Now you are getting it. 🙂 If you can’t make it better and it causes you to stress out and lose sleep, stop caring. You’ll feel better, and start working on those things close to home that you can effect. Go to the gym, eat better, get laid. And have a great day.
Worth repeating, from The Mandibles:
They have different obsessions, of course: we’re about to run out of water, or run out of food, or run out of energy. The economy’s on the brink of disaster and their 401Ks will turn into pumpkins. But in truth they’re afraid of dying. And because when you die, the world dies too, at least for you, they assume the world will die for everybody. It’s a failure of imagination, in a way – an inability to conceive of the universe without you in it. That’s why old people get apocalyptic: they’re facing apocalypse, and that part, the private apocalypse, is real. So the closer their personal oblivion gets, the more certain geriatrics project impending doom on their surroundings. Also, there’s almost a spitefulness, sometimes, I swear, for some of those bilious Chicken Littles, imminent Armageddon isn’t a fear but a fantasy.. Like they want the entire planet to implode into a giant black hole. Because if they can’t have their martinis on the porch anymore then nobody else should get to sip one, either. They want to take everything else with them- down to the olives and the toothpicks. But actually everything’s fine. Life, and civilization, and the United States, are all going to go on and on, and that’s really what they can’t stand.
Walter B, regarding your remark about America being the wealthiest society around versus the most indebted: both these things can be true at the same time. There’s a quote attributed to Philip K. Dick: “Reality is that which, when you cease believing in it, doesn’t go away.” By that standard, wealth is real, whereas debt is just an accounting device — a useful fiction, which should be dispensed with when it stops being useful and becomes a device for mass oppression (see Greece for an example).
Yes, debts ought to be paid. Yes, a mass debt refusal / jubilee / bankruptcy would be painful and some people would say it was against the rules (especially creditors). But a renunciation of obligations, even ones honestly entered into (i.e. a distinct minority of the debts that exist today in our society) is preferable to mass peonage and driving society to the breaking point. In my view, at least. Of all the problems facing us today, I see debt as the most tractable — people just need to get their priorities straight.
Suggested reading for anyone who’s interested: Michael Hudson and Mark Blyth.
If you are sincere regarding Tesla, I suggest you place 50% of all your investable assets in Tesla, and the other half in bitcoin.
See you in the soup line at year’s end.
Marcus, do you really believe: “And the US taxes are the lowest in 100 years”?
Oh would that it were so!
Scratch may be right about Marcus being a cornicopian in an arrested state of development. That is giving Marcus the benefit of doubt but there is another explanation Marcus could be a foil for a troll who just wants to change the subject.
A turn for the worse. Lets see,
Minimum basic income is a dumb idea. But so is taking away health benefits. Free money may not be a right but how about free health care?
There is a bigger turn for the worse to write about!
Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin is canceling dental and vision benefits for 500,000 of people on Medicaid in Kentucky. following a judge blocking the state’s Medicaid work requirements. Bevin wanted work requirements to require enrollees to qualify for benefits by taking classes or getting a job. A judge blocked him and now Bevin cancels dental and vision benefits altogether. With questionable legal authority.
What happened is that our hard working president wanted to
require Medicaid Recipients to work, or I’ll presume croak.
“
A federal judge has put a stop to a measure in Kentucky that was set to take effect Sunday. Beginning July 1st, able-bodied Medicaid recipients would have been hit with work requirements.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg thwarted that plan, ruling that the Trump White House failed to consider whether such an imposition violated the whole idea of Medicaid.
U.S. District Court ruled that the Trump administration did not adequately consider the coverage losses that would result from approving the work requirements, and that omission runs counter to furthering the program’s goal of providing health insurance.
So now we learn that shitT can glitter like gold.
A minimum basic income may be comical but taking away medical care by imposing work requirements is nothing less than unforgivable. This being the new normal some will be just fine with kicking our poor to the curb and not giving them health care. In another time and place such people would be interested in human skin lampshades. Other people are appalled and find what is going on now to be beyond the pale of human decency.
Matt Bevin
The net worth of Matt Bevin is around $10 million. I’m sure there was a drop of sweat for every dollar of that and nobody got exploited. Unless heaven forbid he is a blue blood that inherited the oldest Bell Company in America and got a little bit of a head start. A story that spun properly can make him into a hero for sure.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The net worth of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is apparently unpublished.
Ocasio-Cortez represent the Bronx and Queens and about 50% of people living there are immigrants. She is telling them what they want to hear. Ocasio-Cortez says she’d abolish the INS if she could.
Would she or would she come to her senses if the possibility became anything less than totally remote? We don’t know. She represents the district and is a seasoned politician though she is only 28 years old. She is a former organizer for Bernie Sanders and a onetime staffer for Ted Kennedy. She knows what to say to get votes. She is a politician.
I’m not seeing cause for panic here. If she is smart and competent that’s great, she can keep getting the garbage collected and the streetlights on. But if she can’t do stuff like that then somebody else should get the job.
With Trump and people like Matt Bevin in charge I’ll suggest some socialism might be a very good thing to talk about. It might also be a good idea to talk about if it is important to be ones brother’s keeper or not. I want to know what you think about that.
Because if it is not important to you I don’t think you should get any dental or vision benefits. Especially if your name is Matt Bevin or Donald Trump.
At $48 an hour it would take more than a hundred years to earn $10,000,000. No vacations or time off at all. Forty hours a week. Seems to me somebody thinks he should get medical benefits because he was born a special flower but others not so special should suffer. I think if Matt need any medical care at all he should have to leave the country to get it.
Same for Trump. Is it a constitutional requirement that a doctor be no more than a heartbeat away from our great golden tub of lard should he keel over? If it is I want to see it.
Regardless of it being there or not Trump should have to work harder to get any dental or vision care. He has not been pulling his weight and needs to take some of his own medicine. Trump has not been fulfilling his work requirements.
As Gail Tverberg from https://ourfiniteworld.com has pointed it out in MANY of her writings, the reason gas prices are so low and demand is down is because prices can stay high enough for the average consumer. Every time prices begin to inch higher than $85 a barrel, the economy slows down.
And Steve St. Angelo from the https://srsroccoreport has also written on many occasions, oil producers need at minimum $100 a barrel to pull it out of the ground and stay in business. The only reason they are not bankrupt is because of the Federal Reserves QE, program and near zero interest rates.
As Chris Martensen from Peak Prosperity recently said, the shale industry LOST $240 billion dollars producing lower grade oil vs Texas Crude. I’m not being a doom and gloomer but a realist. The MATH and arithmetic are not adding up and we are having lots of red warning signs going off in the background.
As for Elon Musk, I have no issues with the man but it can’t be denied that he got to where he is with Gov’t grants and loans. When the money dries up one day and it will, look out.
Marcus,
Thank you. I feel…better now. Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better….
If you could, I should like to hear a “serious proposal” from you regarding our 20+ TRILLION dollar debt.
The US national debt is 110% of GDP (Japan 250%), 25% is inter-government (mostly held by the Social Security Trust Fund), another 25% is held by American investors (e.g. pension funds, banks, individuals) and 12% by the Federal Reserve. Do the math: a total of 62% of the debt is owned directly by American holders. This leaves 32% owned by foreigners, but even there how much is owned by Americans through in tax havens?
How is the government is managing its finances? It is doing very well: government spending is at 34% of GDP, near a 50 year low.
US debt is not a threat to the economy.
Hope this helps with your irrational fears.
And the debt, as enormous and growing as it is, is almost trivial compared to the unfunded liabilities.
This Ponzi scheme will end like all Ponzi schemes – and then things will get serious.
” Do the math: a total of 62% of the debt is owned directly by American holders. This leaves 32% owned by foreigners, but even there… “.
“Hope this helps with your irrational fears.”
Marcus,
It certainly does! It is comforting to know that when the Government either debases the currency, or defaults on it’s obligations, that it will be primarily US citizens that get screwed.
The day that the dollar loses reserve-currency status, we should again have this conversation regarding how the debt is not a threat to the economy.
SDR900 = 1 ounce of Gold = Global Monetary Reset
[ the huge asteroid has landed in the ocean, the waves are !ncoming ]
Anyone idiot enough to worship the clown prince of crony capitalism (or someone like him) is as divorced from reality as it gets. Of course, this manifests itself in all kinds of magical thinking: Ignoring why oil production has increased (going into unrepayable debt to finance fracking wells that have steep depletion curves), ignoring the fact that the US is still an overall importer of petroleum, ignoring that $3 gas is no bargain if you are making minimum wage, ignoring that oil is still “bargain” because of our increasingly tenuous hold on currency reserve status.I’ll leave it to other commentators to address the rest of your BS.
Cooperation between the two spheres (public and private) is the way any Society that can get rich does get rich. The question is which is the senior partner in the dance. Obviously if the Private dominates, they’ll attempt to screw everyone and then fantasize about how virtuous they are.
So since you go with Robots taking people’s jobs, I assume you’re all for UBI as well? Or is your vision of the Good Society a Calcutta of bodies dying on the streets? Or do you go with Margaret Thatcher that Society as such doesn’t exist?
@marcus1
Where does population growth fit in to your optimistic outlook? What if I don’t want to live on the 99th floor of my block?
Do you really believe infinite growth is possible? Is that because Telsa is going to colonize Mars?
Exscotticus, you must lead a very boring life. Concerning yourself with issues you have no control over.
A small contribution you can make: you know what stops population growth? Wealth. Make the world a wealthier and therefore healthier place.
@marcus1
>>> Exscotticus, you must lead a very boring life.
And yet here we both are, at the same forum, doing the same thing. So what does that say about your so-called life?
>>> you know what stops population growth? Wealth. Make the world a wealthier and therefore healthier place.
And you know what stops hunger? Food. Just make more food and we’ll feed the hungry.
And you know what stops homelessness? Homes. Just make more homes and we’ll house the homeless.
Any more pearls of wisdom?
Marcus, you must be especially blessed. From where I’m sitting it looks like poverty is wide-spread and increasing. People have to consolidate households to make ends meet. Everybody does seem to be working, but few have full-time jobs and the work available doesn’t pay the bills, so two jobs each has become the norm, with many people working 60 plus hours a week for peanuts. Basically, we seem to be slipping back to the social norms for the working class of 10 hour days, 6 days a week, reminiscent of the 19th century in this country. Roads aren’t being cared for,properties are falling into decay and dissolution, shopping is disappearing. The local mall is turning into a place of nail salons and tattoo parlors and no longer attract a classy clientèle. They’ll manage to hold on for a while, but pretty soon it will close down because those kinds of businesses can’t pay the rent the mall needs to stay in business, and the big department stores are dying. Every time I shop the groceries are more expensive, and taxes haven’t decreased, state and local cities and counties are always crying poor mouth and raising the sales tax, the income tax, the vehicle tax, the gas tax, the tax on everything, Buddy, it’s hard times. You guys can go on and party like it’s 1999, but it wouldn’t take much to light the tinder around here, and then, perhaps the torches and scythes and ropes come out and the peasants are pounding on your door in the middle of the night with demands you can’t meet.
“And yet here we both are, at the same forum, doing the same thing. So what does that say about your so-called life?”
That is some shit poor logic you be feeding on son. Every day you and Bill Gate both take dumps. Does that mean your life is the equal of his?
Rationality, what we also clumsily call “reality” is a small tip of existence but an essential one for human relations. This is my complaint to Jim and most of the posters on this site, this careless dismissal of rationality. Facts are the building blocks of rational arguments.
Ergo, important to know yer fuckin facts: in 1944 the top 1% Federal income earners were taxed at a rate of 94% and didn’t dip below 90% until after 1960. http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/OnlyObvious/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNzkxNTE5Mw==/?ref=
Average Federal income taxes for families has also dropped:
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-income-taxes-on-middle-income-families-remain-near-historic-lows
Yes there are changes happening on “Main Street”, and mostly due to increased efficiencies. The US still has the largest, most diverse economy in the world. The next largest (or close to equal) GDP country has 3 times the population.
We have our warts just like every other country, but for perspective take a trip south of the border to see how the other 80% of the world’s infrastructure looks. Funny thing about human nature, I find Mexicans overall to be as happy or more happy than “Americans.” But that’s not very scientific and another story.
The “old” people who become apocalyptic do it because they are more keenly aware of how it was then and how it is now.
The new generation who think they are experiencing the good life via their smart phones and social networking have been anesthetized practically since their first days out of the womb.
They have no conception of what a shabby substitution has been made for the things we took for granted in our formative years.
<> aka plutocratique scotus/wh/congress; money that will never return to the citizens.
and
<> aka incredible debt, top to bottom, which portend No Money for many.
Thus, no return to yesteryear as wished for, and as described often and so well by J H K above.
Keep edjumacatin, sir.
“Oil is cheap….taxes are the lowest they’ve been in 100 years….”
Calling this blog and its accompanying contributors propaganda is definitely extreme, but I do not take umbrage to it as strongly as our honored host. I freely admit there is a lot of doom and gloom here, but I would like to think that most on this site take it with at least a modicum of the proverbial grain of salt.
That being said, I’ve been ruminating on the notion that if the price of gasoline were to include the incalculable human suffering, the lives lost/taken, the destruction wrought to wrest it not only from the ground, but from the place of origin to the place of use, none of us would be able to afford it.
With regard to taxes, prior to 1913 there was no Federal income tax. And when instituted, the Federal income tax rate was initially a simple calculation; 1% of annual income.
Off topic but important. Ron Unz (www.unz.com) has had his lead article in the American Pravda series disappear. It was available at 6AM this morning and now is nowhere to be found. The gist of the piece was the untimely deaths of a score of highly placed Americans and it hinted that the black hand of the Deep state or others, may have been at work. Anyone with additional info, please post.
Jim: Please excuse.
I’m seeing it.
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-our-deadly-world-of-post-war-politics/
Paranoia is a real and valuable state of consciousness. They may be playing games with your computer. Don’t I know it…
It’s not just Socialists who propose UBI. Libertarian Charles Murray made the point that the USA spent over 1.5 Trillion dollars, including the salaries of povertycrats, and still had poverty. He also proposed a UBI in, Of all places, the Wall Street Journal.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586
Worth a read.
So, if we spend even more,then poverty will be eliminated? If only we could throw more money at the problem… then everything will work out according to socialist dogma.
What is poverty? Having just enough to live on, but being able to be comfortable or Oh Calcutta and dying on the streets? If you refuse to make a distinction, then you are operating in bad faith.
I mean let’s face it, Libertarianism corrupts both the mind and heart just as Communism does.
Chris Hedges. Also worth a read: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-coming-collapse/
The UBI scheme would at first be stimulative, but then it would in all likelihood cause a sharp uptick in inflation, putting people right back where they started after a few years. On a related topic, those who mouth pieties about growth have a hard time accepting that “we” are the growth. Then the next question becomes, who is “we?” We individualists in the West think that we can solve this problem one individual at a time through personal responsibility. That’s the convenient answer, but that’s all it is: convenient. There are other answers that aren’t so convenient for our “modern” consciences. This is why we are having these discussions about national sovereignty & border security right now.
OOPS!
Skip the previous panic post. All is well. Scary times, be these.
Wow Jim, free everything and an extra $1,000.00 a month to boot? Paradise lost is once again found, eh? I suppose that when there are enough dimwitted idiots clamoring for more bold faced lies from sellout scumbags anything is possible. I suppose I can accept that lying dirt bags have always been around and have always prospered at the expense of the chronically stupid, but how so many in what is supposed to be an “educated” society can actually beg to be lied to and screwed hard is still beyond my abilities to accept much less comprehend.
How can anybody, except perhaps for those living in tents on LA sidewalks get all happy and dizzy over $1,000.00 a month? That paltry amount would hardly keep them in Colt 45 Malt Liquor or “legal” weed for the month much les pay any rent or mandated “health care”. If the poverty level income is $30k or something like that, even if the sellouts could somehow print up enough cash to dole out that much, wouldn’t they be in actuality, telling the masses that they were guaranteeing them all the right to live in poverty? Why do they not understand this? Oh that’s right, they don’t know about mathematics, much less finances. Wow, why not save the money and just put us out of our misery?
From bizarre to absurd, what could be next other than destruction?
Nixon first proposed it and called it a guaranteed income. It might work if the various and sundry welfare state programs were eliminated at the same time. It would put the responsibility of income allocation all on the recipient and, if mispent, would force unpleasant consequences to be borne only by the one responsible. This could force a change of values skewed toward discipline and work. Or not!
Question is, why would anyone in their right mind believe in “discipline and hard work,” when all the evidence points to grift as the major, and possibly only, pathway to get ahead The very notion is quaint and laughable.
A discussion on what can be afforded on $1000 a month is secondary , where the hell the capital to base this disbursement on is going to come from. This is so ludicrous that even us dummies can figure that this makes Mission Impossible look easy. Reminds me of crypto currencies, money from nowhere, created by whim of the moment with no substantiation. George McGovern ran on a similar proposal and the polity at the time just laughed at the stupidity of the proposal. It is incredible that the Progressives can get away with this.
Good point on robotics, Jim. The decline of the supply of oil will make robotics very difficult as plastics are a large portion of the structure of mega electronics.
Sidebar: My family owns mineral rights to a tract in Texas. A fracking company has been paying royalties for about five years. The well’s output has followed the downward curve JHK has espoused and is very close to shutting down . Five years! Interesting though, there are two shale layers, one at 5000 ft. And another at 10000 ft. So when the shallower well runs out, drill deeper. This is in progress now. Needless to say, the capital outlay for number two will be signifantly more than number one. I believe deeply that cost is no object with oil, we will keep drilling regardless of cost. Why? Because we have no alternative! Until things really start running out. Then the fit will hit the Shan. One big deficit of a reactive rather than proactive government is when crises near, nothing is done. It still galls me that with all the different needs for oil such as plastics and fertilizer, we continue to burn it up in cars. I feel like the world is a suicide with the gun pointing at its head, drawing back the hammer.
That paltry amount would hardly keep them in Colt 45 Malt Liquor –are you making fun of afro americans?
No I had a few of them myself. I am saying that the homeless have been known to prefer this particular brew. Do not overuse the race card, sometimes it is best to leave it at home.
The only place I ever saw a billboard advertising colt 45 was when driving through a black neighborhood.
At SBPDL.com, someone mentioned a Black man with a lot of
C 45 at a store and mentioned, ‘must be that time of the month’ [check cashin’ time].
I am wary of Costco, right after the first and 15th each month.
Sad that everybody wants a bigger slice of the pie just as the pie starts shrinking. Human beings crave bull crap. If we don’t get sufficient narratives to avoid the depressing ugliness of a reality we aren’t equipped to comprehend, then, we invent our own.
The late Joseph Campbell used to talk about the disappointments inherent when one’s ladder is against the wrong wall.
In this case, it’s an entire culture.
No truer words!
Crabs in a bucket.
And the bucket’s getting deeper.
Or the crabs dumber and nastier.
“That fantasy of the next economy is actually already dead-on-arrival due to the energy predicament that virtually no one in the public arena is paying any attention to. The century-long oil bonanza is winding down again. The oil companies know it.”
Jim, one person who keeps talking about our energy predicament is Steve St. Angelo of the https://srsroccoreport.com/the-energy-cliff-approaches-world-oil-gas-discoveries-continue-to-decline/ and in his latest piece he put up a chart that should be worrying to everyone https://d3hxt1wz4sk0za.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Global-Conventional-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-768×533.png?x65756
The oil discovery numbers keep trending down and as Steve St. Angelo noted that in 2016, global oil consumption was 25.1 billion barrels of oil while “ONLY” 2.4 billion barrels of oil were discovered. So we are in essence only finding 10% of the oil we need to keep industrial civilization humming. So global oil consumption keeps going UP and oil discoveries keep going DOWN. And that was 2016, he doesn’t have the figures for 2017 as of yet.
Do you really care if your gas, plastic or fertilizer is from “conventional” oil?
You all are not drawing the right conclusions. Oil companies are reducing investments and running existing assets down. Thus their costs are low, they are now cash cows and will remain so as the price oil climbs (no new supplies, no alternatives).
When the prove of oil is high enough, investments will recommence.
Meanwhile they pay a dividend.
Use the next recession and fall in the price of oil as well as oil stocks
to buy into this theme. You will be rewarded.
As long as the EROEI holds up. How many barrels of oil does it take to produce a barrel of kerogen? …one of the many distillates we add to total oil production to make-believe we’re keeping pace. If it takes a barrel to produce a barrel or even the 15-20 barrels necessary to maintain industrial civilization, the price could be $500 fiatscos per barrel and the net energy input would be zero.
The poor are as entitled to a share of any imaginary wealth as the rich
The main reason the rich are left to look after it is the poor would spend it and stoke inflation
… if this wealth is all imaginary that would blow it open
If US has enough wealth to stoke ponzi shale oil schemes it can afford healthcare
Just leglislate. Cap the profits
It appears NYC new socialist wasn’t from the Bronx as she claims but from Yorktown Heights a wealthy suburb in Westchester county.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-29/girl-bronx-ocasio-cortez-called-out-fact-check-actually-grew-wealthy-enclave
No surprise. Obama went to a private school and his grand mom was in banking.
Yorktown Heights is a middle to upper middle class NYC suburb in Westchester County, but nothing close to wealthy communities such as Scarsdale and Bronxville. Her father was an architect who died in 2008. Cortez is not old money, not even close.
I’m a 70’s kid who grew up in the Bronx in public housing and had a job which happened to be in Westchester, super nice area, back then. I saw that and it motivated me to leave NYC when I turned 20.
Reminds me of the 1969 movie “Goodbye Columbus”. Poor Jewish librarian from the Bronx meets country club “princess” from an upscale part of Westchester County.
It appears NYC new socialist wasn’t from the Bronx as she claims – Rod
============
I heard this Cortez chick being interviewed yesterday and I wondered ‘where is the thick and revolting Bronx accent?’ Well, Yorktown Heights explains it.
Same here, she didn’t sound like some NY barrio chick with a heavy bro accent.
She’s not claiming to be part American Indian or a Vietnam war hero is she? The best liars make the best politicians because we love being lied to.
You got a mouse in your pocket?
she didn’t sound like some NY barrio chick with a heavy bro accent. – Rod
==========
The extent of my familiarity with the Bronx is quite slim. First of all, why do they say “the” Bronx? Why hasn’t the NYTimes declared, as they did with “the” Ukraine and “the” Crimea, that the “the” is not necessary and in fact grammatically incorrect? Secondly, is Bronx the plural of Bronk? I digress.
Last October I spotted a Craigslist ad for a Suzuki Burgman motor scooter. The seller was 50 miles away in the Bronx. I drove over with my wife and within 20 mins had a hand-shake deal on the bike.
After much searching I pulled down Ralph’s (short for Raffaele) one way street where the houses were jammed in like sardines. The bike was propped at the curb on its kickstand and Ralph stood on a small concrete porch a half dozen steps above ground level awaiting my arrival. He wore shorts and a pair of dark red slippers of a suede or velvet material. The top of the instep had some sort of imitation gold filigree. Tony Soprano wore similar slippers as he strolled down his driveway in a robe to retrieve his morning newspaper. To be thusly shod in the comfort of one’s home is de rigueur among Italian crime figures.
Ralph had leftover remnants of what was probably a bad complexion in his teen years. As well, two small glops of a whitish yellowish goop – one in the corner of an eye and the other in a corner of his mouth, caught my eye, and not in a good way.
Ralph claimed to manage the operations of a nearby restaurant but I envisioned him as a lower level “soldier” in the crew of the perpetually smoking, Johnny “Sack” Sacrimoni of Sopranos fame. I, again, digress.
Between Ralph’s appalling Bronx accent and my own Jersey accent it was surprising we were able to verbally communicate well enough to consummate the deal.
What about the BIG shooting in New Jersey? 25 shot?
Out of curiosity, I Googled Ocasio-Cortez (I hate double last names, I think they’re pretentious) and I found that she was born in the Bronx, lived in the Parkchester Apartments, mother moved to Yorktown Heights when she was 5 to get her in better public schools. She never went to Brown, or any other Ivy League school, went to Boston Univ. After graduation, she moved back to the Bronx & lived in her old Apt. Not that I really give a shit about any of it, but gosh, there’s so much fake news out there, a guy’s gotta be careful.
You write beautifully Q. Shtik.
I am a big Soprano’s fan. When I lived in Middletown, NJ as a kid, there was an estate across the street owned by a mafioso (last name Nero) who owned the water company. Our family lived in a typical suburban home, but the Nero’s home was once the country abode of a member of the Carnegie family.
The Nero’s were very nice to the neighborhood kids. They bought lots of my Girl Scout cookies and gave the best treats out on Halloween. They also let us ice skate on their ponds.
Jen in San Jose
A thought provoking post, as always.
Please accept for the sake of this discussion that a purely capitalist system would mean the privatization of every enterprise that is now in public ownership or control. Here is a list of some of the things that would be privatized:
Airports
Streets, roads, and highways
Municipal sewer systems
The military
The postal service
Municipal waterworks
Electric power and gas utilities
Public libraries
Public lands, including parks, preserves, and wilderness areas
State universities
Public K-12 schools
So, as I see it, socialism in the US is already here, to a very great extent. Adding a form of socialized medicine, such as Medicare For All, would not break the bank; it potentially could get our bloated medical rackets under control. (Note I said “potentially”–with bad management it could be just another racket.)
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics gave socialism a bad name, particularly here in America. In places like the UK, on the other hand, the Labor Party has historically called themselves the socialists and, at times, been the governing party.
Police and fire departments would also be privatized. Only those making payments to profit-making corporations for police and fire fighting service would get those services, under pure capitalism.
Sprawl,
Every item you listed is partially privatized already and/or in the gunsights of total privatization, keeping in mind that municipalities and states up to their ears in unpayable private debt for any particular project(s) (sewer and water systems come immediately to mind) are essentially privatized as well.
Scare-mongering. Privatizing police & fire-fighting to protect only those funding the services ain’t gonna happen. That’s bat-ship crazy libertarian talk. Only libertarians believe a system like that could work & thankfully they’re in a distinct minority.
Re: Libertarianism
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year olds life; The Lord of the Rings, and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable hero’s, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves Orcs.”
Source: Anonymous.
True. And calling “Atlas Shrugged” a ‘novel’ is being generous.
My take on Atlas Shrugged: third-rate science fiction.
JHK, I have often wondered why the FedGov didn’t just allow under-65 people to pay a fee and be covered by Medicare? Yes, that programwill go bankrupt eventually, but for now it might be cheaper than Obamacare for all.
If you make my U.B.I. well, say, hmmm: $10,000.00 worth in CHF (Swiss Franc) or SDR (Special Drawing Rights) per month with direct deposit in a nice safe and sunny jurisdiction (hopefully with a nice beach); O.K. sure. Sign me up.
I suspect that 99% of the CFN and the rest of everyone would sign up for the Gravy Train too. A big fat allowance that would permit living “high on the hog” (even Kosher-keeping Jews and Halal-observant Muslims would enjoy such a generous portion of the good Lord’s bounty.)
Throw in some universal health care and now you’re talking.
How about lots of entertainment and sports also gratis from the government. Great stuff indeed!
I guess the only problem with all of this fine and fancy thinking is that the taxes for all of this gracious living are going to be minimum $11,000.00 worth of CHF or SDR or Pesos, Zloty or Renminbi per month — and to make up the rest of that you will have to work your ass off, cajole, embezzle, steal (or get a good government job.)
Someone has got to pay and that someone is YOU.
Now go back to your TeeVee and cheer that in this country a person who dribbles and hurls a large orange sphere through an iron ring 10ft from the floor will get paid 145 million dollars for four years “work.”
And don’t forget that The Bankster (who you don’t know) has already received his socialized pay in the form of, what Tom Wolfe in “Bonfire of the Vanities,” called “golden crumbs.” And he has a 35-meter German-built yacht parked behind his beach house somewhere in French Polynesia to prove it.
WIshing all the CFN a safe (and insane) Fourth of July.
How about a 20-hour workweek and Earned Income Match instead of Earned Income Credit? Eliminates the thorny moral issue and incentivises advancement. Works best with Universal Medicare and could be funded with a Net Worth Tax and/or tax on high frequency trading. https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/unfunded-promises
How about dividing all the “public lands “ held by state and federal goobermints among the citizens according to family size and the land’s productivity? Almost 40% of the US is held by them.
http://propertyrightsresearch.org/2004/articles6/state_by_state_government_land_o.htm
Why don’t we all have a reservation? It kinda works for the former stewards.
All wealth comes from the land. Cut out the middle-man dispersing checks – allot him place. He can lease it to someone with gumption for his UBI, or do the work himself. KISS
“America is a country that has about 11.77 acres per person. The total is nearly 651 million acres of land.”
There is a reason for legalized pot, ballooning addictions, cheap liquor, electronic dumb phone feelies, ballooning personal debts, dubious post-secondary education buy-in, and scapegoating immigrants. If the population is dumbed down, inebriated, consumed with trivial communications (also addictive), high % jailed, fighting addictions, and angry at others for supposedly destroying their way of life, the real culprits can continue pillaging.
Move along. Get back on the hamster wheel. We don’t need no stinkin’ socialism. No one tells me what health care I can have….(ooops none). Number 1, number 1, number 1. USA, USA, USA. MAGA. Honest.
It’s working, obviously.
Exactly. It appears the first die off of this currently slow collapse is already underway in the form of drug and alcohol deaths and suicides. It may not be as spectacular, and therefore as news worthy as a nasty flu outbreak, but all are on the rise. Add in the huge amount of numbing out through electronic gadgetry and we are well on the way to this whole “economic system” being absolute meaningless anyway.
Post collapse may see socialism in the form of tribalism, the longest running model in our history. Or, capitalism in the form of serfdom and Mad Max styled war lords. Whichever way things go, it sure seems highly unlikely that things settle down into the glorious free markets espoused by current libertarians and anarcho-capitalists once governments disappear.
The funny thing is that you correctly characterize these people and their supporters as ignorant, selfish and unaware whilst being incapable of seeing you are the opposite side of the same coin. Austin Powers might have said that bullshit is like farts: everyone likes their own brand, don’t they?
Very provocative post this morning Jim, but I’m not sure that I follow with the idea that some sort of social redistribution scheme is in order, totally disingenuous and opportunistic Democrat proposals aside. If the winnings all go to the rich in times of plenty, but we can’t even be bothered to minimally set things right (redistribute the stolen income) when times turn lean (for the working class anyway, times are never lean for the investor class!), then when exactly do we plan to “level the playing field,” to borrow a worn out phrase? Because if 24/7 grift is all there is, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the gen pop finally figures that out and adopts whatever similar schemes (aka, “the American Hustle”) that are within their capabilities. Which is more or less where we’re at right now.
But of course you’re right about all the rest. Wealth contraction (with population contraction right on its heels) is now permanently on the menu for 99.9% of the world’s people. Welcome to “The New American Century,” albeit certainly not the one anyone had in mind when they first coined that most apropos of titles. Schemes to further monetize our misery by giving away free money are nothing more than a placebo economic salve. Might just as well spit on the wound yourself for all the good it will do. The economic pie has already been divvied up and spoken for, and it ain’t never coming back (through legal means, anyway) to those who missed their chance.
\B> He proposes to give every citizen around $1,000 a month
Keep on printing it and t\’they’ will keep spending it.
How many new Americans move to USA each year?
Do they qualify as well?
Obama had a section of the government website, ‘Benes for new Merikans.’
When does the USA hit the wall? Ala USSR, Venezuela, etc?
oops
He proposes to give every citizen around $1,000 a month
What a cornucopenian idea!!!
JK,
there is plenty of wealth left. There are tremendous amounts of energy – yet to be consumed.
These facts do not contradict your views of current civilization – but our still unspent bounty of dense energy supplies – throws a pretty large monkey wrench into your attempts to forecast just when the pain and mischief begins.
I want to remind you of one of mine long forgotten rants. The CF Nation post is probably at least ten years old.
The post went on at length to describe what one might see just before the TSHF. There was one phrase in the rant that brings home my point.
DISCRETIONARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION
As long as the lights are on at Yankee Stadium – and as long as the cars are circling the pits at Daytona – don’t worry – be happy.
Too bad most of those “dense” energy supplies sit under land owned by our “enemies”
Another good read: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/07/keynesian-economics-is-artifact-of.html
about that cheap, abundant energy.
One cannot have a discussion about socialism without getting a handle on what socialism really entails as a day-to-day government project, i.e. the application of economic planning for the allocation of the means of production as a substitute for capital markets, and whether or not such an arrangement would be superior to capitalism in terms of efficiency and productivity.
The “socialist calculation debate” is the episode in the history of economic thought that largely demonstrates the infeasibility of socialism, despite what some 28 year old woman happens to believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_calculation_debate
What do you think is happening right now. Unbridled foolish speculation is encouraged, if not demanded, by government policies, heavily subsidized to keep the party going, and then “backstopped” by public money after the party finally winds down, and the resulting public deficits and debt then used as a justification to cut the social safety net for the poor. This is little more than crony socialism for the greedy, rich, and well connected, and bupkus for everyone else. If we were to enforce truth in advertising laws, capitalism would have to be relabeled “Crony Coruptionism,” although the old school “Mafia” actually works much better.
So we already have socialism? Do you get a UBI that isn’t a Social Security check?
I take your remark about “Crony Corruptionism” to really be a remark about how wealth is deployed in the USA, and how networks of power preserve, maintain and enhance that wealth. I agree that such things exist. Of course under socialism as actually practice in the Soviet Union, such things existed as well. Perhaps they are endemic to the human experience.
See the following for a substantive review of networks of power in the US. It’s the single best site on the internet I am aware of for this issue.
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu
The real question of questions is, is the current state of “capitalism” in the west an inevitable long term outcome of any nascent capitalist state, as capitalism first congeals, then coalesces into what is essentially a malignant socioeconomic tumor, seeking to feed its own interests at the expense of all others, until it finally and inevitably kills its host? Many economic thinkers (as opposed to western economists, who are nothing more than errand boys for the rich) would say so, and I would agree.
Thanks for the link. I’ll take a look.
Anything created by humans will eventually be corrupted by them. Circle of life baby.
Good one. An Aristocracy of Pull. Or just Crony Communism as in Ma Chalmer’s soybean cult.
Biggest Law of them all: the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Neither political party wants to admit that.
Whats the one about numbers increasing exponentially?
America has a deep irrational hatred of socialists and the FBI was created to wipe them out. Any resurgence of socialism, and one Seattle City Council member and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, counts as no resurgence, will be wiped out just like the first time.
UBI would all wind up going to our rentier class. Those who ‘have’ already will get more. That UBI money would go through a poor pocket first is a minor detail. Under a UBI plan rent would not be half income, it would quickly become two-thirds income with the difference coming from mailbox money. All somebody has to do is look at a map of rents around American military bases and they will see that rent takes most of what an enlisted man with a family gets paid. Raise his income and rents around the bases will go up in lockstep.
If the idea of UBI were to become popular lobbyists from large property holding companies would be buying politicians lobster dinners to make it happen so UBI can bump up their apartment rents. There is not much to worry about though. The green-eyed monster will prevent UBI from getting any serious traction in America and most Americans do not believe in equality. At all.
In America a mocialist movement would be far more popular. A mocialist is ‘all about me’. I earned mine so now you get off your fat ass and get yours, that’s America. Doing what we can to take care of our poor, that’s not America.
But this is all silly, we are going to crash and burn and when we do the clues which only a few of us have anyway, will all be drowned out by the sucking sound of contraction as it spreads misery and ignorance across the land.
There were idiots, most under 40, who thought D-Trump would wake people up and they would suddenly start developing a social conscience. They were wrong, people instead rationalized their belief systems so they don’t see Trump as being so bad now. The brain experiences cognitive dissonance and it starts to change its beliefs system to be consistent a new reality. The reality of Trump gaming the system to make the rich richer is being accepted just fine.
America is having a fire sale which is spawning a new ‘Age of Innocence’ where the nation divides into those who have and those who don’t have shit. America, being the land of me me me, more for me won’t ever embrace socialism in any significant numbers. America has always been fine with inequality. Being poor is a sin in America and it can be a fatal sin. It can be the wages of sin but if it actually is or is not does not matter. That is what it is called in America and if there is one thing left over from the death of mainstream religion in America it is a deep and abiding hatred for our poor. We hide them, and if we can’t hide them we lock them up one way or another.
The brain experiences cognitive dissonance and it starts to change its beliefs system to be consistent witha new reality.
How we rationalize unwanted changes to the status quo that we once resisted.
For those of you who think I bark up the wrong tree.
Fear of socialists is a deeply rational position. The 20th century historical evidence of the incompetence, fecklessness, duplicity and plain unbridled evil on the grandest scale ever attempted, all in the name of socialism, are what makes the great unwashed masses reject socialism.
Despite the litany of work published in the name of political psychology, the masses do not reject socialism out of hand, but rather quite rationally.
Cognitively dissonant or otherwise compliant, they will be its unwilling or unwitting victims.
Bullshit, people in America don’t know or understand socialism and everything they have learned about it comes from tainted sources. You just laid down a load of crap you can’t back up.
Socialism can exist under capitalism if it is a well regulated capitalism. In fact that is what both Lenin and Trotsky wanted but Stalin came along and wiped out all his opposition and gave fodder to the ignorant who then re-codified socialism as Stalins aberrations.
But I won’t be arguing with you. I have to go to work to pay my taxes so my government has the funds to fight socialism and keep people like you here to spew the shit. In other words I have to do my ‘socialist duty’ as you define it.
“great unwashed masses reject socialism”
A bit of a contradiction there. Unwashed masses implies ignorance. If ignorance rejects socialism I’m fine with that.
1. “Bullshit, people in America don’t know or understand socialism and everything they have learned about it comes from tainted sources. You just laid down a load of crap you can’t back up.”
RESPONSE: But of course you “know” what socialism is. So tell us what it is.
2. “Socialism can exist under capitalism if it is a well regulated capitalism. In fact that is what both Lenin and Trotsky wanted but Stalin came along and wiped out all his opposition and gave fodder to the ignorant who then re-codified socialism as Stalins aberrations.”
RESPONSE: Evidence? Sources? Or just your unsubstantiated opinion?
3. ” I have to go to work to pay my taxes so my government has the funds to fight socialism and keep people like you here to spew the shit. In other words I have to do my ‘socialist duty’ as you define it.”
RESPONSE: Unnecessary ad hominem from you. Besides, socialist economies have/had workers who work every day. In fact, according to Marx, man is “homo faber”, he is made to work.
4. “great unwashed masses reject socialism” A bit of a contradiction there. Unwashed masses implies ignorance. If ignorance rejects socialism I’m fine with that.”
RESPONSE: Unwashed here means not within society’s elite. But certainly you believe that the masses don’t lack feeling, thoughts, ideas and the ability to make decisions for themselves?
Otherwise, why would you be advocating socialism to begin with?
After I tell you I don’t have time for this and am going to work you make a list expecting me to answer it.
I will not abide this disrespect. I do have the time to answer your nonsense now, as it is a day later. But you can take your bullshit questions and put them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Did you really think I’d let you be the boss of me with this nonsense. You don’t have to answer that shabbatroll, I don’t care what your answer is.
K Dog, I don’t really care if you reply since your previous remarks are demonstrably wrong.
Have a wonderful Fourth of July and keep on posting.
Your bark is true, K-Pup! You’ve been getting off the leash and chasing some rabbits, I see. Good for you!
Only a fool or a charlatan would say that Lenin & Trotsky wanted a “well regulated capitalism.”
Perhaps a fool that read it in Trotsky own words. It is in “The Revolution Betrayed” I read it last month and I’d get the damn page number but I’m at work and only giving this a peek so I can go home on time. I just had to see what assholes came back with because I knew it would happen.
Only a fool would attempt to entirely eliminate markets, they are needed for price discovery. Trotsky and Lenin, not being fools, knew that. I not being a fool know that. JHK not being a fool knew that. You apparently being a fool do not know that.
Tit for tat and tit for Tate.
Thank You Scratch
JHK not being a fool knows that.
I though K-dog already went to work. what gives?
They were both of them reckless, cold-blooded & ruthless murderers. Saying & doing are two different things. What Trotsky wrote in his apologium matters little to what he did. When one runs roughshod over the existing order of society, it’s not so easy to put the genie back in the bottle. And so they got Stalin. And fools are surprised?
Wait, I’ll answer that.
Of course not, they being fools.
What gives is I put in 8 hours over the weekend. I’m salary and I set my own hours is what gives. Now I’m at lunch.
As for them being fools. How many sucessfull revolutions have you led? Have you ever done anything notable in your life? I doubt it, but do tell if I’m wrong. But you can’t do that can you. You have to be anonymous and hide.
As per usual, your reading comprehension sucks. I wasn’t talking about THEM being the fools. No, I was referring to all of their idol worshippers.
Like someone who comes to a sign that says, “Road closed. Do not continue. This road is washed out up ahead! Dangerous bridge! Not safe for travel! Go back, fool!” They read the sign and turn to their passengers & say, “Looks like we came the right way! Everybody buckled in?
Forward, Soviet!”
Ocasio-Cortez is a National Socialist of the nascent Hispanic Nation. Very bad news for us White Non-Hispanics. What a delightful way to be categorized, eh? Says it all.
The more diverse a Country becomes, the less people desire to share. Race is so so important in so so many ways….
I like “the deformations of wandering global capital” very much. I think Wm Grieder wrote a book devoted to the subject some years ago. I dislike “incentivize.” The word used to be “motivate.” Wandering global capital hasn’t forced us to substitute a neologism. I don’t know if cheap or free college education was a freak of post-war American prosperity in a time of cheap and plentiful energy but I’m pretty sure contemporary health care is, as you say, a racket: healthcare doesn’t have to .
Oops! must’ve hit the wrong button before I was finished. Healthcare doesn’t have to be a ripoff just because the time of postwar prosperity and cheap energy are over. That’s a failure of something we could fix.
But won’t. To many are feeding from the trough and they will resist any change.
And as long as you want life to be “fair” you won’t stop agitating for your free stuff. Sounds more like jealousy than a rational philosophy. But it’s always the other guy that’s ignorant, isn’t it?
You must be reffering to someone else. I was expessing a prediction not an opinion. My comment was not about me at all so your inference is baseless. Fact is this dog is doing well. Very well.
Is the other guy always ignorant? I don’t know. Why don’t you answer that.
History repeats.
“Girl From The Bronx” Ocasio-Cortez Called Out In Fact Check; Actually Grew Up In Wealthy Enclave
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-29/girl-bronx-ocasio-cortez-called-out-fact-check-actually-grew-wealthy-enclave
Michael Moore, standing on the steps of the NY stock exchange on Wall Street during the Occupy days in 2008 said something intelligent. I’m paraphrasing — Where did the money go? he asked. Money doesn’t disappear, isn’t destroyed. Where did it go? Indeed! If I lose my savings on some foolish scheme, or dissipate it like a drunken sailor, somebody else gets to enjoy it.
We are ruled by those enjoying our profligacy. I’m not talking about Washington. They, like us, funnel the money up to the true rulers. We like to believe that it is through poor management that we have arrived at the current state of affairs. We are not, willy nilly, stumbling from one recession to another. Cooler heads prevail, and they have plans. We, i.e. the world, has been moving for a number of decades toward globalization and it is all, but a fait accompli at this point. The 50’s with a chicken in every pot was an anomaly and is not how power sustains itself.
This post is depressing, Jim Kuntsler’s post is depressing, but all to the good. The blinders are coming off.
Actually, you’re fundamentally misinformed. Money does disappear in the modern debt money era. It can disappear overnight in this era.
Debt money is being both created and destroyed all the time. It is loaned into existence. This is basic Money & Finance 101. Sometimes more is being created than destroyed. Sometimes more is being destroyed than created, through default & non-payment.
In an earlier commodity-money era (gold & silver, copper ingots, cowrie shells, beaver skins, etc.), it could only be created through labor. Not anymore. The Red Shield changed all that.
You certainly have a firm grasp on the textbook definition of debt money. An Introduction to Money and Banking by Colin D. Campbell was my bible in graduate school (1983). Took me a long, long time to fully realize how incompatible the textbook version is with observable reality.
Human beings eventually corrupt any arrangement, no matter how well-intentioned or well thought out. In this case, I refer you to Article One Section 8 of the US Constitution. What we have in reality is it’s complete usurpation by bankers. So what if money can be destroyed. Is it actually money or is it counterfeiting by the Fed (private banks). They can print at will and give it to themselves, having 1st claim on production… ahead of you, who I assume, works for a living.
If/when we have a crash, they are perfectly positioned to pick up what’s left for pennies on the dollar. I suppose then, UBI will really look appealing to the masses. Getting just enough to exist and nothing else is a great way to maintain control.
Not disagreeing with you that through debt money the populace is massively used & abused. But last I checked, you can still pay your taxes with it. (As long as it hasn’t disappeared into John Exter’s inverted pyramid, that is.)
>>> (As long as it hasn’t disappeared into John Exter’s inverted pyramid, that is.)
And it’s these unexpected bons mots that keep me reading. Amazing how the pyramid has managed to survive. You’d think the left would denounce it as cultural appropriation or some damn thing.
Is Colin a vegan, author of a vegan book?
Money can literally disappear by the reverse process by which it appears from nothing.
When a bank makes a loan it credits an account with the amount of the loan without subtracting that money from anywhere else literally lending it into existence from the vacuum.
When the loan is paid back likewise that same amount disappears into the vacuum again.
Correct.
Get real, guys! The reason we are in the present trouble is because those theories promulgated by the pedants are taken seriously. Money does not disappear. it may take a vacation, it’s physical essence may deteriorate and need replacement, it may transmogrify into other tangible or intangible commodities but money does not disappear. As it was, so shall it be!
Is a termite eaten chair still a chair – if it won’t take any weight at all? In other words, it looks like a chair but won’t function as one? That is money created out of thin aire.
Calling your creation, Money, does not make it so. Money has immutable laws, 5 cows as bridal dowry is money, Fed manipulation is not.
Yes, with their fake entries in a ledger or on a screen, they get Real Assets – like the 5 cows. It’s like if you could buy a Monopoly Game, and have the fake money all be real money.
In the old days, a bank or money house would lend actual money in a trading venture. If the ship sank or pirates took it, they lost real money too. Now, with the advent of fake money, they typically lose nothing no matter how badly the business flounders. Since they never lose, they will end up with everything in the end. Even if on occasion a loan isn’t paid back, they’ve lost nothing since the money was simply loaned into existence to begin with.
This money is not real, Janos. At some point along the line people get screwed with the fake money, ask Madoff’s former clients. Those people bought stuff with their Madoff money until . . . boom, it all went away.
I spent my entire 32 year “edumacation” career teaching in the Bronx portion of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s new district. It surprises me not at all that she beat out the “blanco” she was running against. Although to be fair , it seems as if the voter turnout was laughably low. In my lifetime, I saw the population of the Bronx turn almost entirely non-white, with the vast majority of current residents some form of recent hispanic arrival. ( primarily Dominican). The “free shit army” that is attracted to the socialist message has been in place in NYC for some time now. The only surprise is that it took so long.
Several objections to UBI are immediately apparent:
1. UBI implies a rise in the price level within a national economy (inflation) since all incomes would rise by the same amount (say $1,000/month).
2. Could a person alienate, i.e. sell, their right to a UBI? Note that a UBI is merely what in finance is called a “perpetuity.” For instance, if each person receives $12,000 per year, you need only divide that amount by the prevailing rate of interest on money to arrive at the present value of the stream of future $12,000 payments.
Currently bankrate.com shows CD rates on $10,000 to be as high as 3%. Thus, $12,000/3% = $400,000.
How many people would sell that $12,000 per year for 400K and forfeit the right to receive any future payments? My guess is many people would. And some portion of them would waste it, lose it or have it stolen.
Sell one’s birthright for a ‘mess of pottage’? Many with a high time preference would sell for much less than $400,000. Again, the natural hierarchy restores itself.
Agree.
UBI is a birthright? Where have you been all my life?
Land, air and water are birthrights.
All wealth comes from the land.
When the land is allotted, it can never be sold. Only leased for a maximum of six years, which could provide a workable UBI.
Of course some will go for the quick fix. They will suffer, and learn. Others will prosper.
Several objections to UBI are immediately apparent: – shab
=============
Please tell me where I can get 3% on a $10K CD. You sure you didn’t mean .03%?
Pure Point Financial. See bankrate.com CD rates. No doubt, as usual, “terms apply.”
Before the ink has dried on a $1000/mo UBI law the poor will be screaming it’s not enough…will need 2 grand minimum.
Obviously it would take a lot of legislation to keep it viable – rent and food price controls.
2. Could a person alienate, i.e. sell, their right to a UBI?”
Shaba,
Can they do so with Social Security payments?
Socialists are brain-dead morons. Can’t even see the unworkability and failure of that economic/government concept despite the fact that the proof is spread throughout recent and past history. They are a cancer in our society and a major threat to our economy. Collectivism violates every aspect of human behavior, productivity, growth, innovation, stability, wealth, etc. Illogical and unworkable ideologies, and their assertion and growth, is what makes for a chaotic world. One step forward… two steps back. Ugh.
As capitalism continues to implode before our very eyes daily…
Totally incorrect and unfair to say. This hasn’t been Capitalism my friend. Rarely has it ever been. Always been government interference and some form of Collectivism interfering and diluting the operation. If we really had free market capitalism, with government minding its own business and focusing on its duties of enforcement of rule of law, infrastructure, defense, etc. We’d see an evolving and improving civilization on all counts.
You’re correct, my apologies. As “what passes for capitalism” continues to implode…
Well said (eventually) People are too hung up on “ISMS”, preferring their own brand of bullshit, which it all is.
This sounds no-true-Scotsman-ish to me.
The fact is that those with wealth who risk their capital have always had an advantage over those who would sell their labor when it comes to splitting the spoils of increased productivity. There has never been, nor will their ever be, a truly free market where those negotiations get worked out where labor doesn’t get at least a little bit screwed and where capital doesn’t wind up with more than their “fair” share (scare quotes intended, and I think important).
Where socialism and collectivism have been marginally successful at tipping that negotiation back towards labor, you see the would-be capitalists at fully-throttled-on fighting mode, pretending that these ism’s somehow make the market less “free” than what it was when they were making money hand over fist, longing for the good ole days when you could pay almost nothing and pretend it wasn’t, functionally-speaking at least, enslavement of the working poor.
“We’d see an evolving and improving civilization on all counts.”
amb,
Your statement of Government’s duties do not include provisions for a social safety net. Who will provide for the unfortunate? Churches? Human compassion? (snort!)
And God must love the poor, as he made so many of them.
I am afraid your “evolving” and “improved civilization” would be short-lived. A Dickensian Utopia….
I never heard one of these people talk about the “good old days” when you had to belong to a Church and contribute one tenth of your income. Only scumbags didn’t do that. And that money was a bare minimum for the truly hopeless. You had to take care of your own elderly and sick. Amb is typical: completely divorced from any historical understanding or indeed, any understanding of the human condition.
When you can’t argue against the merits of socialism, smear those who advocate it. Btw, plenty of proof throughout recent history it can work.
Any success of capitalism in the US is magnified by 1) fossil fuels (the use of which is completely unsustainable) 2) debt.
All this talk on this site as to what will happen, whether a UBI makes any sense or not, whether the oil will run out… Interesting, to be sure, and a lot of the posts are quite articulate. I consider myself as a bystander to all this discussion. For the most part (there are a few exceptions to this) most of the posts have a common thread, sometimes directly stated, sometimes implied. Which is that an inflection point is coming. A paradigm shift. Perhaps a bit of allegory is in order here – a giant fog is descending upon is, while it is here very little will be easily discernible, but when it eventually lifts, the landscape will be very, very different indeed. Most of us sense this innately. One speculative characteristic of this new landscape is that there will be far fewer of us.
Making predictions is a dicey matter. Those who do never have a grasp on all of the dynamics and influences involved; as well as new things soon to come, black swans, etc. There is too much happening and interconnecting on a global basis for anyone to be accurate in their predictions or forecasts. Foolish to even try. Best one can do is see the trends that are currently in motion and deal with them accordingly, never knowing what will come next.
It seems to me all the nervous chattering re what can be done about the current condition of the US and indeed, all of humanity is pretty much a useless exercise by a group of individuals more or less aware of the reality of the situation. The article and the commentary resemble the tendency of a condemned man to talk about almost anything with the notion that as long as he can keep talking, he can avoid dying, even as the noose is applied and the bottom of the scaffold drops.
My sincere recommendation is to fully accept that western civilization and perhaps all of humankind is standing on a scaffold, and all appeals are exhausted. The tendency to chatter is a form of whistling past the graveyard, and I admit joining in the chorus for the sake of maintaining sanity, but we all could put less effort into otherwise useless wordiness and more into growing vegetables in our backyard gardens. It won’t save us, but it might help us to die with more grace, ala Socrates.
Your analogy and recommendation are cogent.
Well said. Please say some more.
If he says more, he will have failed the test – unlike Galadriel who remained Galadriel, content to diminish and pass on into the West.
“growing vegetables in our backyard gardens. It won’t save us, but it might help us to die with more grace, ala Socrates.”
Darrell,
Why not kill two birds with one stone and grow belladonna?
Currently, our deck garden is producing, and we have been harvesting green bunch onions, daikon radishes, carrots turnips, zucchini squash, yellow squash, sweet peas (by the pound) and strawberries. Melons, red onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins and snap beans are a-coming.
Orchard is looking good, also.
Why not kill two birds with one stone and grow belladonna?
–QUOTE OF THE YEAR.
— https://youtu.be/oRZJGXH7wzg
A turn for the worst, for Democrats. ?New social movement urges Millennial Democrats to #WalkAway from their party.
Who says the millenials don’t get it? Good for them!
In the 1950’s and into the 1960’s, US companies and their foreign branch plants could sell just about anything they could make, as Europe and Japan were still recovering from WWII. The Eisenhower years, which weren’t so great for some American families, especially blacks, are not coming back. The world has moved on.
In 1968, or there abouts, the UAW went on strike against GM and after a long walkout, GM caved and settled the strike giving the union pretty much what it wanted. In those days, it was still fairly easy for the car companies to pass on higher labor costs to the car buying public as imports were still quite limited. Not any more. For many affluent and not so affluent buyers, foreign name plates set the standard even if they are built in the US assembly plants. Lexus has replaced Lincoln and Cadillac.
In 2016, Trump received support from both staunch anti-semites (the type whose posts appear on zerohedge or who marched at Charlottesville) as well as Jewish billionaires whose #1 issue is US support for Israel. So it is not so surprising that many younger votes were attracted to Ms. Cortez’ platform. Politics makes strange bedfellows. The US continues to spend large amounts of money it really doesn’t have on being policeman of the world.
America’s future does not look very bright to me, but at my age, it doesn’t much matter. I can see most of my life in the rear view mirror and I am in better health than Bill or Hillary.
I remember the 1960’s well. In spite of both parents working, the government considered my family to be below the poverty line. Our lives were far from extravagant but somehow a family of 8 had a modest suburban home, 2 cars and 15 acres for camping right next to the Manistee National forest. God, I miss being poor.
” God, I miss being poor.”
loco,
Well said.
I miss the 1960s.
“I miss the 1960s.”
Tate,
More specifically, we miss our youth.
Well, yeah, I didn’t want to say it quite that way.
Wow. Where do I begin today…. let’s start south of the border…
Mexico just elected a president, aka AMOL, who ran on a platform Bernie Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez would love…. social change, increased pensions for the elderly, educational grants for youth and additional support for farmers….
In the USA, the top 3 billionaires own more wealth than 160 MILLION of our fellow citizens. That staggering, stunning, obscene wealth. Unfair wealth. Revolution inducing wealth. AMOL “got” it. Mexican voters “got” it. We’re next. Sanders, Cortez, et al, argue for a chump change redistribution of wealth as the extreme wealthy are grinding Americans into the polluted dirt beneath our feet.
Sanders and Cortez are not raging lunatics, their voices are actually a cry for help to keep half of the country from drowning in a poverty deliberately induced by a 40-year effort to destroy unions with their “right to work” pig in a poke. The billionaires have won. Now it’s time to REALLY take back our country and MAGA for ALL of us.
So, back to those free educations. What have free educations in NYC and California given us? It’s given us two states that lead the way at enabling people, and OUR nation, to achieve success and create wealth for large swaths of the population. The California economy is the 8th largest in the WORLD and it wasn’t done by mining coal. What have the old confederate states given us … hate, racism, ignorance, poverty, diabetics and losers sucking at the federal teat while screaming hatred for that very same government. Those free educations in NYC and CA are one form of goose that laid golden eggs for NYC and CA … and GOP ignoramuses hate them for their success. (Note, I voted GOP for many years, starting in 1968 with Nixon, but 1992 was the last time.)
Enemies who want to destroy us are happily at work demanding an end to the very educational enablers of our success. WHO really owns and feeds all those websites and blogs blowing Ayn Rand smoke up our skirts and decry the very programs that made us a success? Hint: Facebook removed 750 MILLION bogus postings that probably came from Russia and other detractors of our nation. Don’t buy into anti-government hype.
AMOL in Mexico wants to help pensioners. Here in the USA, Paul Ryan salivates as the thought of raping our pensioners. Ryan wants to take Social Security dollars AWAY from people to please the billionaire Koch brothers who own his crooked ass. Ryan will start crippling Medicare too for his masters. We paid into those programs all our lives, it’s OUR money, yet the GOP wants to take it and ship it upstairs to the wealthy. Gimme a damned break. All of this is to pay for grossly unneeded tax cuts for the same billionaires who own him and the GOP. The legacy of Scalia and Citizens United. Irony: It isn’t the Mexicans who want to rape us, it’s our own GOP congress. Ooops.
The people who voted this crowd into office are the very STUPID people that a good education would serve the most, but they’ve been played by the oldest political game in the book — the divide and conquer scheme using racism…. ” I’ll build a wall to keep “THOSE” people out. They’re rapists.” Well, lock up the white wimmen folk. Works every time on low info voters, especially rural types….proud of their ignorance….death of our country…. as they sit in their filthy ramshackle hovels and polish their guns and look at pretty pictures in their bibles.
Denying good educations to our own people is a death knell.
Vote GOP at your own risk.
AMLO, not AMOL. Apologies to readers.
“… as they sit in their filthy ramshackle hovels and polish their guns and look at pretty pictures in their bibles.” — MPOV
Do you enjoy viewing the world as a cartoon?
I view the world as a tragedy … gross ignorance reinforced by religion, fear tactics and lies endlessly spewed by a phalanx of professional paid liars like Sarah Hunchback Sanders and the alt right blowhards.
The real wealth redistribution is between the big corporations and small family businesses. This is where the problem lies and here it must be addressed. Either the mega corporations are dismantled, their political and market share monopolies ended, or the country ceases to function as a democratic body. It’s that simple. The solution is not socialism, but rather to end fascism.
Are you Hillary’s speechwriter or just another triggered snowflake?
They should have served her but poisoned her food, right?
You should look at Garden and Gun or Southern Living for a little perspective on the region. Some of us have even been known to wear shoes.
The GOP successfully attracted millions of voters with their appeals to stop gay marriage and abortions. Never mind that the expensive health care system was failing millions of near poor Americans and that the national debt was was approaching record levels as a percentage of GNP. If the near minimum wage clerks at Walmart are happy with their Bush tax cuts, they can keep their Bush tax cuts, but they aren’t the ones benefiting from the tax cut on dividend income.
Our Language, our Border, our Culture, our RACE. The Hispanics share none of these. They are the alien in social body, that which must be expelled.
SBPDL
History of the Conquest of Mexico by William Prescott (p. 450), we learn what white people encountered when they came upon the Aztec people. “Hell”:
On descending to the court, the Spaniards took a leisurely survey of the other edifices in the inclosure. The area was protected by a smooth stone pavement, so polished, indeed, that it was with difficulty the horses could keep their legs. There were several other teocallis, built generally on the model of the great one, though of much inferior size, dedicated to the different Aztec deities. On their summits were the altars crowned with perpetual flames, which, with those on the numerous temples in other quarters of the capital, shed a brilliant illumination over its streets, through the long nights.
Looks like those Conquistadors were right about the demonic Aztecs
Among the teocallis in the inclosure was one consecrated to Quetzalcoatl, circular in its form, and having an entrance in imitation of a dragon’s mouth, bristling with sharp fangs and dropping with blood. As the Spaniards cast a furtive glance into the throat of this horrible monster, they saw collected there implements of sacrifice and other abominations of fearful import. Their bold hearts shuddered at the spectacle, and they designated the place not inaptly as the “Hell.”
One other structure may be noticed as characteristic of the brutish nature of their religion. This was a pyramidal mound or tumulus, having a complicated framework of timber on its broad summit. On this was strung an immense number of human skulls, which belonged to the victims, mostly prisoners of war, who had perished on the accursed stone of sacrifice. One of the soldiers had the patience to count the number of these ghastly trophies, and reported it to be one hundred and thirty-six thousand! Belief might well be staggered, did not the Old World present a worthy counterpart in the pyramidal Golgothas which commemorated the triumphs of Tamerlane.
It turns out “hell” was exactly what these white men found. [Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital, Science Magazine, June 21, 2018]:
The priest quickly sliced into the captive’s torso and removed his still-beating heart. That sacrifice, one among thousands performed in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan, would feed the gods and ensure the continued existence of the world.
Death, however, was just the start of the victim’s role in the sacrificial ritual, key to the spiritual world of the Mexica people in the 14th to the 16th centuries.
Priests carried the body to another ritual space, where they laid it face-up. Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today’s surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space between two vertebrae in the neck, expertly decapitating the body. Using their sharp blades, the priests deftly cut away the skin and muscles of the face, reducing it to a skull. Then, they carved large holes in both sides of the skull and slipped it onto a thick wooden post that held other skulls prepared in precisely the same way. The skulls were bound for Tenochtitlan’s tzompantli, an enormous rack of skulls built in front of the Templo Mayor—a pyramid with two temples on top. One was dedicated to the war god, Huitzilopochtli, and the other to the rain god, Tlaloc.
Eventually, after months or years in the sun and rain, a skull would begin to fall to pieces, losing teeth and perhaps even its jaw. The priests would remove it to be fashioned into a mask and placed in an offering, or use mortar to add it to two towers of skulls that flanked the tzompantli.For the Aztecs—the larger cultural group to which the Mexica belonged—those skulls were the seeds that would ensure the continued existence of humanity. They were a sign of life and regeneration, like the first flowers of spring.
But the Spanish conquistadors who marched into Tenochtitlan in 1519 saw them differently. For them, the skulls—and the entire practice of human sacrifice—evinced the Mexica’s barbarism and justified laying waste to the city in 1521. The Spanish tore down the Templo Mayor and the tzompantli in front of it, paved over the ruins, and built what would become Mexico City. And the great rack and towers of skulls passed into the realm of historical mystery.
Some conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture. As the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder whether the tzompantli had ever existed.
Archaeologists at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) here can now say with certainty that it did. Beginning in 2015, they discovered and excavated the remains of the skull rack and one of the towers underneath a colonial period house on the street that runs behind Mexico City’s cathedral. (The other tower, they suspect, lies under the cathedral’s back courtyard.)
Relax everybody. Our government is doing it’s best to make Oligarch Foi Gras, by force feeding the already wealthy with more money than even they can stand. I guess the govt. is counting on them to shop at Pennys and whatever stores still exist (they’re dying like flies). I don’t expect much good to come from all of this, particularly for what used to be the middle class. The Great Reckoning is gonna sweep all before it, with no oil to help it recover like all the other times. Luckily, the Oligarchs have prepared for it, so they will become the new nobility, as the rest of us return to living our own miserable existence. I grew up poor, so I already have some expertise in the area. Better learn how to doff your cap when the Lord of the manor rides by.
I’ll use a MAGA cap to fling poo on them.
An appropriate container indeed.
If you wear it, it’s already holding about ten pounds of crap.
Good one, Ancianoloco, I tip my hat to you, oops, did I say that?
My response to today’s post, FWIW: it’s not “too late” for a turn to socialism, it’s about time for it.
JHK is quite right about the likely return of feudalism. In fact, it’s more than likely: it’s what we have, right now. ‘Financialization of the economy’ is just a way of describing how, over the past four to five decades, the rules have been rigged to redistribute the wealth of the world to those who already have it — to the point where eight men — eight men! — have as much wealth as half the population of the planet. Today’s extractive oligarchs will indeed be dubbing themselves tomorrow’s dukes and earls if we allow it.
Of course, that describes the activities of paper wealth. Once all the scams that currently allow those eight men to claim such preposterous numbers run their course, the game is over and the real winners will be revealed. What’s left will be the actual, tangible productive assets, including whatever energy sources remain. Wasn’t it Warren Buffett who said that it’s when the tide goes out that you see who’s been swimming naked? His company, Berkshire Hathaway, now owns enormous quantities of such assets. He/his investors, and their heirs, stand to be the true inheritors the world once the tide of notional money rolls back — they, and anyone else who ends up owning anything of real value.
Now, here’s the thing: there is absolutely no reason why the vast majority of people should accept this outcome. We can resist it if we want, and I think we should. You can call that socialism, or you can call it a Happy Meal; I don’t care. The name doesn’t matter, only the fact: the alternative to fatalism is resistance. We can accept the return or feudalism, or not accept it; personally, I vote not. But JHK’s insistence that it’s too late isn’t the truth, it’s just an expression of his own resignation: an endless future of the same economic brutality that has robbed millions of their choices and their pride, and has already driven the U.S.A. to the brink.
I agree with you. (It appears that you are a Scientologist. A much misunderstood and maligned movement. And not a religion in the sense that most understand. They do a lot of good works on a global basis.)
No, I think your cult is pretty well understood. Your beliefs make a 2000 year-old zombie carpenter sound plausible.Small wonder you both cling to such idiocies. Enjoy your happy meal and your next audit.
My screen name is a joke. Get a grip, you two.
I’m just guessing that Elrond Hubbard is a Scientologist. May not be. The name he’s using could easily be based on sarcasm. I don’t “cling” to anything my friend. Don’t want any involvement in your vehement and ill-informed opinions either.
(Note: I actually did some research on Scientology and met some Scientologists. With the ones I met I witnessed that they WERE in fact doing good humanitarian work in different areas. It’s documented on Scientology.TV too and thus can’t be refuted. I’m considering taking some courses there and studying the philosophy now.)
Perfect example of your being ill-informed… I learned that Scientology is not a religion in the sense of practice or worship but a religion in the sense of philosophy and the search for wisdom. It is “pan-denominational” open to people of all religions, nationalities and races. The DIRECT OPPOSITE of a cult. Might want to do some homework on a subject before you start opining derogatorily about it.
Was just making a comment to Elrond. No one asked for your negative, vitriolic, disrespectful opinion.
Scientology linked to masons? NASA? J Parsons? satanists?
” a Scientologist. A much misunderstood and maligned movement”
amb,
You suggest that Scientology is misunderstood and maligned now…just wait until it IS understood….
“They do a lot of good works on a global basis”
Ahhh…..
Take the time (as I did) and watch Scientology.TV and see the documented evidence of their humanitarian work in literacy, drug abuse, morality, mental health and much more. Hard to denigrate the Scientologists after seeing this. There may be some baddies but there are also some goodies. If you do the research, there is no way that you will maintain your response of “Ahhh…”. Unless of course you are a uninformed, biased individual. Whoever has a workable solution is ok in my book. Anyone doing any kind of good work in this world should be supported.
“Unless of course you are a uninformed, biased individual. ”
Amb,
Who among us is fully informed and unbiased?
Several very negative books written by former members and a documentary, also not complementary, I have devoured.
Left me with a bad taste in my mouth….
“To make matters more interesting, the alt-energy industries will not survive the demise of oil. You have no idea how this dilemma will shove the life [of] our nation into something like a new medieval age. And don’t be surprised if it comes complete with a new feudalism — which is just a way of describing a deeply local economy, if you can make one at all.” — JHK
“It was a Chicago writer, Finley Peter Dunne, who coined the expression, ‘All politics is local.’ In recent years, it might be said of Chicago, ‘All local politics is racial.’”
Those words were written in 1990:
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/25/us/chicago-journal-seeking-new-harmony-but-finding-a-racial-rift.html
And that might not just be said of Chicago. With the recent primary win of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th Congressional district, one can safely surmise that the racial divide will only widen & become more entrenched. Joe Crowley’s hapless lament “I can’t help that I was born white,” will not resonate except in mockery.
To return to Kunstler’s comment, if we are headed for a new feudalism, where the economy is deeply local, does that not suggest that politics as well — which has always been local according to the old adage — will be increasingly riven by ethnic & racial division, as well as class division? Is this a bad thing? Most folks would certainly say so, and I don’t disagree, but things are what they are. It’s called reality.
“Joe Crowley’s hapless lament “I can’t help that I was born white,” will not resonate except in mockery.”
And rightly so. (If you think that comment was “hapless”, rather than slyly calculated, I fear for your powers of observation and deduction.) The self-named, “king of Queens” actual residence is in VIRGINIA. Why don’t you tell me how someone can reasonably be expected to represent a population he doesn’t even live among? …And please don’t try that “whataboutism” shit with me; that goes for *all* those useless, lying, power and money-grubbing, gum-flapping assholes. Wake the fuck up. The only one that can remove your blinders is you. (I don’t foresee that happening any time soon; my only prediction for today.)
And she would point out that Indians used to live where your house is now. You’re living on stolen land, sport. Remember, radical Hispanics identify with the so called native americans. So what ya gonna do? Gonna leave gracefully? Or wait until President Pocahontas orders you to go back to Europe?
Oh so you’re suggesting that he didn’t actually represent his nominal constituents? Why that’s to suggest that our democracy itself is a sham. It’s to suggest that the rain don’t fall on Las Vegas. That the Big Rock Candy Mountain was Burl Ives’ sentimental pipe dream, that Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy is invalid in the yankees’ fabled City on a Hill.
Er, can I rephrase that?
LOL!
Tate,
Now that right there is damn funny!
Good one.
@Hubbtard
>>> the rules have been rigged to redistribute the wealth of the world to those who already have it
So go after the rigged rules; no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
>>> You can call that socialism, or you can call it a Happy Meal; I don’t care.
Well so far I call it antitrust and perhaps an estate/death tax. We already have those. The former is rarely used. Maybe that’s the problem.
But that’s a bit different than Big-S Socialism.
The Royal Bank of Canada seems pretty big by your standards. Want to break that up and redistribute its wealth as well?
For someone who once accused me of making ad hominem statements, Ex, you seem to lean pretty hard on that epithet. Anyway, there may not actually be that much difference in our positions when it comes to antitrust and the estate tax. Antitrust enforcement in the USA is in a sorry state nowadays, thanks largely to Ronald Reagan; much could be accomplished simply by restoring the legal interpretations that were in place when he arrived in office, and enforcing them. But there is far more that needs to be done, including addressing the role of money in politics and the rampant corruption it engenders, and rolling back looting-enabling legislation like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and restoring Glass-Steagall.
The thing is, though, a lot of these measures only existed in the first place to ameliorate problems that are systemic to begin with. The way to actually fix them is to change the system — and to find a way to do that which is compatible with freedom. Markets are too useful to dispense with — at least in lots of cases they are — but when you make them the basis of absolutely everything, they turn into a cancer and transform everything into more of themselves, to the benefit of ever fewer people.
Health care is one case where markets simply don’t function as advertised. The reason is pretty simple: demand is effectively unlimited (people will pay absolutely anything to live a little longer, or to help their children survive) and therefore there are never any downward pressures on costs — only upward. Single-payer health care is an excellent example of a non-market system that fulfills a real need and provides far, far better results at lower cost than the bloated, gonzo consequences of treating health care as a consumer good. More ideas like this, please.
@Hubbtard,
If my affectionate appellation is causing you this much grief, then you really need to attend some kind of snowflake detox program. If you can’t handle a portmanteau, how the heck are you going to handle Trump visiting Canada on a state visit? 🙂
Markets are too useful to dispense with — at least in lots of cases they are — but when you make them the basis of absolutely everything…
Markets are compatible with freedom. Planned economies are not. The only places where we munge the two are government-sanctioned monopolies like utilities. I understand and agree that we shouldn’t let all things be dictated by market forces. Some things we can’t afford to lose no matter what (food, water, power, etc.), and so we limit the degree to which market forces can wreak havoc.
But listening to you liberals, it really sounds like you want to treat markets the way the Chinese treat them: useful instruments to fill state coffers, and not what they are: a free people engaged in commerce—a right. Why is it that
Health care is one case where markets simply don’t function as advertised.
I agree but you got the reasons all wrong. It’s got nothing to do with unlimited demand; it has everything to do with antimarket forces. A quick story: I needed tetanus shot as it had been over ten years. I shopped around looking for the cheapest price. NO ONE ADVERTISES ANY HEALTH CARE COSTS so I called and was told, “Oh! That’s maybe $15 tops.” I could NEVER GET A STRAIGHT ANSWER. $175 later I got my shot. What happened to $15? That didn’t include the five-second $125 doctor interview (literally: “When was the last time you got your shot?”) and the $35 technician who actually administered the shot. I argued against having to see a doctor to get a simple shot. “Oh! You can’t just get a shot without seeing a doctor first!” Really? Then explain why tens of millions of Americans get flu shots—no doctor required.
Point is: it’s a FUCKING RACKET. JHK has written extensively about it right here in this forum. If supermarkets worked like USA healthcare, there’d be no prices on any groceries. You’d bring your shopping cart up to a nutritional specialist, pay him $125, and then find out how much your groceries cost after they ring it all up.
How about a law that requires all healthcare providers to prominently advertise the costs of basic procedures? Not talking about open-ended surgery. Talking about basic common procedures. That would be a great start.
“…there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” H. L. Mencken
I think a lot of the desperation of the times is because people have bought the “we all live together or die together” meme. As long as “we” avoid an all-out nuclear launch by the major powers we are probably just looking at a wide-scale die-off like the 14th century in Europe. Survivable with preparation – and luck.
If so, life (and evolution) will go on, with all the lies, thievery, murder, and blood that has always meant.
Hope whoever’s left will have the courtesy to keep functional America’s 23 Fukashima- style nuclear reactors and their cooling pools.
The idea of using Socialistic features in capitalist economy is not new.
The original ideology of the project came from the Roosevelt attempt to save capitalism from itself by introducing elements of socialism into it.
This ideology consisted in the fact that when development comes to a standstill, it is necessary, following Rousseau’s ideas, to renew the social contract and the Roosevelt attempt to do this, called the “New Deal”, was a link in a series of such attempts to combat destructive and even hateful development tendencies of capitalism by methods of state regulation of the economy and financing of various infrastructure projects.
The beginning of this chain was laid down by the “Equilateral Treaty” of Theodore Roosevelt, and the end seems to have come just recently, when Alan Greenspan hooked the Johnson’s “Great Society” on the needle of creative financial instruments.
Then there was New Deal of his nephew Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the “Fair deal” of Harry Truman, which nullified the achievements of both Roosevelts, laying the foundations of Clintonism.
President Trump even created something like a think tank, which examined foreign policy issues in the context of the common tasks facing Trump as the President of the United States.
The main one turned out to be the exhaustion of the Keynesian development model, which “saved capitalism from itself” for 63 years with the help of the consumer lending system. But the mortgage crisis of 2008 broke out, and the party of globalists, simultaneously a party of war, decided to sacrifice America in the struggle for the global economy, just as Trotsky was going to sacrifice Russia in the struggle for the world revolution.
Trump is going to save the US economy first, by sacrificing, if necessary, the global economy. And in order to avoid official bankruptcy in the process of this rescue, he needs Russia’s cooperation as a US creditor and ally in the fight against global terrorism.
The global terrorism de facto is not only an undesirable product of globalization, but also a punitive tool in the hands of global elites in their quest for more globalization.
If you really believe everything you just said, I think Elrond Hubbard, up in the thread, would like to talk to you about Dianetics
loco
Yes,
Someone needs an audit…good and hard….
We had TR’s Square Deal, followed by FDR’s New Deal, birthing Truman’s Fair Deal, and today we have The Art of the Deal.
LBJ should have called his vision the Great Deal but he would have been in competition with TV’s Let’s Make a Deal, and besides, The Great Society had gravitas.
The problem in a nutshell with industrial capitalism is that it tends to monopoly as the big fish eat the little fish one way or another. Heck, these days the start-up business model is to grow and then sell out to the big fish. In time the government steps in and regulates — saves capitalism from itself as the saying went during the FDR years — and then the regulators are captured by the industries they would regulate. So we end up with faux fascism, government-by-agency, and squadrons of botoxed octogenarian members of the House and Senate looking after their own power interests.
Not the best deal, not the worst deal (I fail to see beggars starving in the street, flies buzzing about the lifeless bodies, but then again I have not been to San Francisco recently). To paraphrase Tom Cruise in Collateral: I Ching, Darwin… Deal with it.
Man, both genius and idiot, will continue to bungle along, expressing both sides of the coin, creating successes and creating failures. All he has to do is be 51% or greater in his genius than his idiocy and the game will continue.
All the fun and prosperity in the USA ends with the demise of the petrodollar and with it the dollar as the world’s.main reserve currency. Fiat curriences, like the dollar, have a shelf life of about 40 years, as evidenced by history. Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971, 47 years ago, so time is running out. Either a global monetary reset or a world war is on the horizon. We live like kings compared to the rest of the world not because we work harder or are smarter but because of Bretton Woods, the petrodollar and being the world’sbiggest bully with the biggest military.
No mention, whenever socialism for the common man is decried as a threat to America’s ideals, of fascism or corporate socialism which rules the USA. Wall street and transnationals don’t believe in capitalism for they are always feeding at the public trough and trying to inhibit competition. Socialistic principals like healthcare for all, a livable wage, free college, safe working conditions, etc. are just bones the fascists throw to keep us off their scent.
For some intersting reading, the following Anthony Sutton books tell the truth about the true nature of our system:
WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER
WALL STREET AND FDR
BTW, Silicon Valley relies heavily on immigrants to fill all their open engineering and programming positions. Oops! Wine country vineyards and Central Valley farms also rely on immigrants. Without them it would be hard to sit around and sound brillant at the next backyard barbeque or get-together.
“Either a global monetary reset or a world war is on the horizon.”
SDR900 = 1 ounce of gold = GlobalMonetaryReset
[ it is finished ]
” I view the world as a tragedy … gross ignorance reinforced by religion, ”
What religion would that be ?
The dominant ethic , on either the left or the right , the past hundred years , has been , ” You get your reward in the next life ” ?
that suggestion would make a cat laugh.
” What have the old confederate states given us … hate, racism, ignorance, poverty, diabetics and losers sucking at the federal teat while screaming hatred for that very same government ”
what the old Confederates gave you is your only direct experience of being on the receiving end of total war.
But your half-assed pseudo – religion pretty blatantly ignores those implications.
Roughly the majority of posters here , including Mr. Koestler himself , roughly 90% of their commentary, is bemoaning the outcomes of empire ,
But rarely , or never , acknowledge that they are the outcomes of empire.
When the AI/Robotic workforce comes, and it is coming, there will be less need for oil. No need for workers from factory schlubs to office-park stiffs rolling in and out every day.
One robotic unit will replace multiple people. One AI entity will replace a multitude, exponential, and their energy needs, 24/7, will be a small fraction of a fraction of what the average human consumes in a work week.
People will have even less need to leave their homes. Personally owned vehicles will be a relic. They will be cost prohibitive.
Petroleum fueled vehicles will be in museums.
No need for UPS or USPS with drone delivery via floating distribution centers.
AI/Robotics will free up energy, capital, and workers -people.
There is nothing more scary than humans with too much free time on their hands. This is true.
“There is nothing more scary than humans with too much free time on their hands. This is true.”
Avatar,
From your lips to God’s ear. Humans require adversity to excel.
Commuting to work is just one of many uses for petroleum. Got a plan for how to replace it’s use in almost everything else we need/do, including the making of robots and drones?
Miniscule percentage.
Easily, and unneededly, supplied via any offsets to daily unhappy motoring.
“Commuting to work is just one of many uses for petroleum. Got a plan for how to replace it…”
Chip,
Hence the thrust of our Host’s premise.
For those (including JHK) bashing “full throated socialism” and “the spending of other people’s money”, please explain how the current system of capitalism which enables much the top 1% to make more in unearned income (money made off of money) than earned income (money made from working) is a good thing, leading to even better things.
Does anyone think there might be a connection between the rich getting vastly richer (mostly via unearned income) and stagnant (or falling) wages and shrinking benefits? Anyone consider that most unearned income has to come from somewhere, such as the efforts of working people? And that the more workers’ pay and benefits are suppressed, the more unearned income (like stock dividends) rises?
Connect a few dots and you may conclude the biggest takers, the class of citizens most guilty of entitlement mentality, is the richest 1% (especially the top .1%).
I connected the dots some time ago. As federal income tax rates declined since JFK, the prestige and economic power of the USA declined in parallel.
We largely paid for the Korean War, Cold War, Space Race, Interstate Highway System and Vietnam with just minor amounts of red ink. That was true economic power. As tax rates went down the impotence of our federal government increased.
Now our infrastructure rots out from under us and our government is run by billionaires who were not elected to a damned thing.
Grover Norquist and his anti-tax crap have done to us what all the Soviet dictators could only dream of, using our own people against us with unending propaganda campaigns to convince fools that our own government is not our friend.
Can’t make this stuff up.
I saved a few thousand $ for a home. It was desirable by many, I sold it for a profit years later. I bought more homes. I rented one. It was desirable, and wanted by many. I rented it for even more $. I bought another home. In a few years, it was desired by many, and I sold it for even more $.
I bought a business. It grew. I sold it for more $.
I keep making more $ off the initial few thousand $ I worked and saved.
Beyond the “labor” of research and calculation and signing a few forms and documents, there was little work. Very little.
My money does the work.
Smarter not harder.
But then, some are not, and thus they work.
And thus the rentier class justifies its idle existence. Good work… err, non-work if you can find it.
Chipshot would rather one work the furnace at the steel factory.
That’s progress all right.
Avatar: “Chipshot would rather one work the furnace at the steel factory. ”
An absurd assumption to draw based on my comments.
Gotta think you’re capable of more thoughtful thinking than that.
Usury has always been against God’s Law.
You all wouldn’t listen, maybe you will after the dust settles.
“The Democratic Party’s return to socialist nostrums…”
The dead and bankrupt DNC is being turned in that direction. Hijacked, just as the GOP was/is.
These are rather encouraging developments. The Donklephant is dying.
That is until they get a sniff, a taste of the cream.. and then they’ll be on-board.
They’re always so fast out of the gate, and the crowd, startled, gets behind them, exuberant pumped-up fools full of emotion, but it’s a race of attrition and by the end, everyone has gone home. Resigned.
You can input what you want into this system, but doggone it, the system is going to pump out what it is built to pump out.
Politicians
Here’s a gal after my own heart:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/02/huntress-shoots-black-giraffe-stands-her-ground-amid-social-media-backlash/
She took the trophy of her dreams, a black giraffe bull. She’s a meat hunter too… bagged over 4,000 lbs of prime giraffe cuts. There’s even more game animals than ever before, thanks to the conservation efforts of hunters, whose hunting fees go to pay for the conservation programs that make it all possible.
I’m not one of these bitter haters who would envy her success at fulfilling her dreams. I would even invite her over for a cook-out where we could barbecue some of those wonderful giraffe steaks.
Click-bait.
Where is the sport and dignity in slaying a giant endangered herbivore?
She does not love giraffes.
She loves to kill. An animal a 1/2 world away that has been surviving here for 18 years.
If she, and the other “hunters” (shooters) truly and genuinely cared about the animals. they would simply donate, view the animals, work on the preserve, perhaps feed them.
But murder them? It’s egomaniacal insanity.
Well she had all that idle time on her hands! What’s a poor… err, rich girl to do?
Volunteer for Poacher patrol
At a zoo, the zoo keepers killed a healthy giraffe.
If I recall, children were watching.
It is the heavy involvement of ego, I agree. Not being a hunter myself, having given it up long ago, I still have to admire the blind perversity and bull-headed doggedness of it, misguided though it be. And it does raise conservation fees.
If one is hungry and must hunt to eat; no problem. Hiking and attacked by a pissed off momma bear? Kill it good or life may imitate art a la “The Revenant.”
Killing a rare animal for the “thrill of the hunt?” What thrill? Using a high powered rifle at a safe distance with expensive optics and a hunting guide in a controlled killing field? Not sporting. Nope, none.
No sport in it at all – just killing for the fun of it. Worst of all it shows bad taste. Particularly today with the list of endangered creatures grown much too long and ominous.
Quite the reflection of a particular pathology endemic to those who can afford such entertainments. “Egomaniacal insanity” say Avatar. Maybe. Or perhaps an insidious sociopathy like our politicians have?
Looking for the thrill of the chase? Love the great outdoors? Want to kill something really bad?
All the poor woman had to do for some kicks was go after some feral hog anywhere across the country. No threat of extinction as the animal is a nuisance with a burgeoning population. Plus a 400-pound boar charging full-bore at one is plenty sporty – a huge adrenaline rush for sure. Use a handgun for some close range action – even sportier! And should the great hunter woman want the ultimate in killing thrills she should opt for safaris in Somalia, Syria,(dare I even mention it:) Shitholistan or, if international travel is an issue: the Chicago “hood.”
Bipedal game in such places are extremely plentiful and so is ammo. The danger factor is what probably would dissuade this brave woman from engaging in such actual blood-sport.
(Although I think it might prove practical training for the TEOTWAWKI scenario that many here at the CFN, believe is just over the horizon.)
‘Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport, or lust, or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.’
who said that?
Zaius?
Cornelius, reading from the 29th scroll, sixth verse.
I have mixed feelings on this. I get your POV. But if there are too many giraffes for the land to sustain, such that some must be culled, then isn’t this preferable to the alternatives?
You can do nothing and let giraffes starve to death. You can introduce lions and let them handle it. You can have park rangers euthenize them at park expense. Or you can let an experienced hunter pay a huge fee for the right to make the kill, a fee which supports the remaining herd.
Personally, I’d rather be shot to death than eaten alive by lions.
Maybe she should be made to eat nothing but that giraffe meat for the next ten years. And also give some of it away in cookouts in Harlem and Time Square.
Hitler would have been against this. He liked animals. Why not hunt humans instead? Ever read the Dangerous Game?
Ted Nugent has a program where even quadrapalegics can kill using breath controlled bows or guns (can’t remember). How awesome is that?
Well, we all know the appeal of Nugent within the mouth breathing community
That’s awesome, man. When I get to be cruise ship bait, I’d like to give that a whirl instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujxdYxhNqyQ
“Here’s a gal after my own heart:”
Yes. We’ve been made to understand just what you “value”.
And a further benefit is it keeps the locals employed in the Safari trade. They stay put instead of kiting off to Paris & Florence & Stockholm to gather as a brooding threat at train stations and plot their assorted villainies.
Tate, ‘nother good one. ;-D
https://freesound.org/people/jobro/sounds/112159/
(click the play button)
Thank you. I’ll be here through Thursday. Try the prime rib, folks, it’s a real bargain.
In 2017 the US Federal government borrowed $1 Trillion. We can’t afford Social Security and Medicare right now. Anyone proposing additional entitlements is a con-artist trying to boost their visibility and career.
Over half that $1 trillion can be attributed to military spending.
We can’t afford that far more than we can’t afford SS and Medicare.
Including Medicare for all
It is impossible to rationally justify spending $780 billion on war, bombs, and numerous other weapons of mass destruction / killing.
If we insist on spending $780 B, do so in a way that solves global problems and helps people around the world. The planet would be a better place, and we’d have a lot more allies (and more important, fewer enemies).
How hard could it be to accomplish that w $780,000,000,000?
The USA spends less than 5% of it’s GDP on defense. Medicare alone is something like 20%.
>>> in a way that solves global problems and helps people around the world
And this is why I don’t vote for liberals. How about we not decimate our military? How about American tax dollars go to support Americans?
Allies who only like you when you’re paying them are about as reliable as friends who do the same.
Decimate our military? We could cut spending in half and still have a larger budget than any other country. By far.
I’m all for using tax money to support Americans. Never said anything to indicate the contrary.
You seemed to overlook “If we insist on spending” x amount, point being this country. and the rest of the world, would likely be better off if whatever amount we spend on destroying countries was instead spent helping them.
GDP by itself doesn’t reflect how much we can afford to spend on x, y and z.
>>> Decimate our military?
Yes that’s correct. We’ve seen what happens when we cut our military budget without cutting our military as well. We end up with a feckless military that looks great on paper but can’t accomplish any military goals. To be blunt: we end up with Europe’s military.
Meanwhile, we only have about 1.5 million active personnel. That’s not huge given a population of 400+ million. Also keep in mind that our military has to defend Canada as well. Actually, our military pretty much has to defend the entire free world, as it already has twice in the largest conflicts in human history.
1.5 million is all that stands between us and the abyss.
Reservists? Drafting civilians? We’ve got roughly half the USA population that’s so terrified of firearms that they want to end 2A right now. We’ve got trained active service personnel slamming capital ships into each other, and you think a reservist is going to shore up our numbers during a crisis?
China is actively trying to turn an entire sea into their own personal pond. Who is going to stop them? Who, other than the USA, can stand up to them? If Russia and China decide to ally against the USA, what then? Still want to slash our budget in half?
A nation that is hostile toward its own defense, toward the very patriots who afford us the luxury of exercising 1A on forums like these, is unlikely to survive as a nation for long.
Don’t suppose you watch Fox regularly?
Don’t suppose you watch Rachel Maddow regularly?
I’ll take that as a yes (you do watch Fox regularly).
Can’t stand Maddow (or MSNBC). Haven’t watched either
since they ignored Bernie in the primary.
Also detest CNN, NYT, WaPo, and all other mainstream media.
Anyone who relies on Fox for news doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
@chipshot
And I take it you have no plans to address my points and will keep deflecting.
Political Bullshitter Test
When a Republican proposes a tax cut without an equal spending cut he is bullshitting.
When a Democrat proposes a new program without a commensurate tax increase she is bullshitting.
We live in a math based world which makes spotting con-artists relatively straightforward.
And…any preacher with more than two suits is a con artist…. Lenny Bruce
I heard that a central tenet of Zoroastrianism is Honesty to self and Others. Unfortunately, my book on Zoroastrianism doesn’t focus on this and the author spends an an inordinant amount of time trying to refute the argument that Zoroastrianism is just another Dualistic Eastern Religion. What we need now in the US is a Beverly Hillybillies “Heaping Help’n” of Honesty.
Pucker,
Needed – yes. Wanted – no.
Put some catfish in that thar see-ment pond!
” …the energy predicament that virtually no one in the public arena is paying any attention to.”
Spot-on correct. My academic background is Geological Sciences. I have been aware of the coming global depletion of the petroleum resource since the mid-1970s. When I have attempted to alert my representatives in congress and the county I live in about the coming oil crises the responses does not make me believe these leaders, and their staff, are aware of the finite nature of petroleum, or _any_ ideas about how the nation will transition to a world without adequate petroleum.
Hi Jim,
I agree with your present concern about the SJW liberal types, and the Democrats fighting to shut down free speech/thought.
However, recently I feel that you’ve been over-inflating the SJW’s as a source of our contemporary troubles. I think it’s important to remember that it is the industrial structure of our society, in large part implemented and “sold” by the corporations, that is the primary cause of our predicament. It is the corporate sector that controls and funds both political parties, it is the corporate sector which controls the vast majority of the news media; the news media as a result focus on SJW politics to replace “real/substantive” politics of who wields power, since the “journalists” who work within the news organizations can’t alienate their “managers”.
The main threat to “Us” is unchecked corporate tyranny which increasingly is corrupting the government to do its bidding. Placing too much focus on the SJW’s, in my opinion, misses the much larger elephant in the room and can inadvertently give support to certain right wing types who, to any civilized person, are also our enemies.
Anyways, I do understand why the SJW’s bother so much. They banished you from speaking in universities with their hysterical anti-intellectualism, and I can imagine how that would piss me off, especially If I was deriving a part of my lively-hood from speaking in universities.
…And we should remember that the young woman who pulled the rug out from under “the king of Queens” (and preordained Squeaker of the Hose) took no money from the corporate sector. At present, she’s only beholden to the common rabble that backed her; we’ll just have to wait and see if she can be lured into the spider’s web by the scent of money and the enticing electricity of power.
The era of white slave master, er, party boss in the Democratic Party is over.
The gig is up.
Yes, the black slave master, or rather plantation overseer, will step into the breech, a sample:
Large individual contributions & PAC contributions 2017-2018:
Sen Cory Booker D-NJ 82%
Sen Kamala Harris D-CA 70%
Rep Elijah Cummings D-MD 92%
Rep Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX 98%
Rep Bobby Rush D-IL 98%
Rep Maxine Waters D-Ca 85%
Rep Al Green D-TX 98%
Rep Hakeem Jeffries D-NY 99%
Rep Marcia Fudge D-NY 100%
Rep Alcee Hastings D-FL 95%
Rep Karen Bass D-CA 92%
Rep Hank Johnson D-GA 100%
Rep Barbara Lee D-CA 75%
Rep Gregory Meeks D-NY 99%
Bonnie Watson Coleman 89%
Source: Opensource.org
what are they voting for, as pay back?
The corporations & big money donors don’t care what they do to razzle-dazzle the gibs, Malty.
Just like Obama, right? Buying stuff at dollar stores just to survive?
She took no money from nobody? But since she’s dirt poor (according to you), where did her campaign money come from?
who is she? maxine?
No, I was responding to Ozone’s projection of ultimate virtue onto the young Ocasio-Cortez, their new non-White savior. Foolish hope springs eternal in the Lib Left breast.
>>> The main threat to “Us” is unchecked corporate tyranny
Examples?
Show me a powerful corporation, and I’ll show you a lot of satisfied customers. Don’t corporations create jobs? Don’t they provide tax revenue? It’s hardly tyranny. Do you use Amazon? Google? Facebook? Walmart? No one is forcing you to. Alternatives exist.
Meanwhile, millions of SJWs want open borders, Big S Socialism, and laws governing every aspect of your life. THAT is tyranny.
“Corporations” and the “.01%” are almost synonymous. So anyway,
The .01% are powerful from the corporations .
the .01% are the ones who buy our elections,
they are the ones who make the decisions to invade countries in futile wars while draining the US treasury of billions of dollars so that tax payer money can be transferred to the coffers of lockheed martin,
they are the ones who control the news media,
They are the orchestrators of 2008, they are the ones who got their government welfare by bailouts,
They are the ones who corrupted elected officials to pay (sometimes 0% like GE) little to no taxes through loopholes, even though corporations use our public roads and policing power and legal system to be able to exist and make money.
They are the ones who got all the income gains post 2008 even though they (CEOs, hedge fund managers) were the guys who lobbied deregulation of the financial market so they could sell shitty mortages and loans on people ,
They are the ones who reduced the future of our country to being a shopping mall for about 10% of the people who can afford, and hell for the 90% of people who’s wages have been gradually whittled down to make the CEO’s and large stockholders richer. almost 50% of people in the US are poor, like really poor and yet the 60 richest people on the planet have literally half of the worlds wealth which is indescribable.
In all, The corporate class of people, likes gates, kochs, murdochs are the only class of people with real politics power in the country, and what you see in recent times is the plutocracy, since it’s now won enough governmental power, transitioning towards turning the US society/government into a kind of corporate tyranny where the only freedom you have left is to buy shit (kinda like singapore), that is if your one of the “lucky” few technocrats (the class of people below them who manage the rest of the rabble) who could afford to do so.
And personally, I want to be more then just a guy who lives only to buy shit and lives without any meaning. I want to live in a society where we can actually direct our fate and future for the better and not be holed up in isolated houses only to drive to the mall and buy shit. Man does not live by bread alone.
Above the billionaires are the Trillionaires, Pope and Rothschilds…The Royals….and perhaps others.
Get in the way of the Queen and you are Diana-ed.
“…and hell for the 90% of people who’s wages have been gradually whittled down to make the CEO’s and large stockholders richer.”
How did the wages get whittled down? This seems to be the part poor folks fail to comprehend. And no surprise – money itself is a concept that is complicated with the purpose of separating it from the one you are explaining it to. Minimum wages for maximum input.
We must fix the money. In 1964 the minimum wage was a dollar and a quarter [ $1.25 ]. The same five coins can be sold today for about twenty- five bucks [ $25.00 ]. You get paper called money.
>>> the .01% are the ones who buy our elections
Really? Tell me which corporation owns Trump. Don’t be coy; I want to know exactly which corporations purchased Trump’s victory. Tell me which CEOs are calling Trump on the phone every day and working Trump over like a sock puppet. Because I think we both know that’s not even remotely happening.
Congressmen can accept dark money all day long, but at the end of the day, if they don’t vote in the interests of their constituents, they will get voted out of office. Accepting campaign contributions and serving your constituency are not mutually exclusive.
>>> they are the ones who make the decisions to invade countries
We have taped conversations of Presidents, their letters, their memoirs, the works, detailing every aspect of their decisions to go to war. Sorry, dude, no CEOs were present.
Remind me again which CEOs commanded Bush to go to war on 9/11? Or do you believe the CEOs flew the planes into the WTC?
>>> they are the ones who control the news media,
They do, and look what has happened as a result. Because of the obvious liberal fake news bias, most conservatives no longer follow mainstream news or even take it seriously. That’s a loss of “eyeballs” and revenue. Meanwhile, smaller more independent news outlets are flourishing.
>>> They are the ones who reduced the future of our country to being a shopping mall
Really? Corporations are forcing Americans to spend money? Did you spend any money this week? Which CEO made you do that?
It’s very simple: no customers; no corporation. And who are those customers? People like you and me.
It’s not that I don’t agree with your sentiment that corporations need to be closely watched and regulated, it’s just that I don’t agree that they’re “The main threat”. Corporations are not ideological; they’re creatures of commerce. And in that regard they can’t be self-destructive for very long, or else they won’t exist for very long.
SJWs, on the other hand, face no immediate consequences from undermining the very things that afford them the freedom to burn the American flag and demand socialism.
Why Russians need to know about Trump’s victorious march across the USA
Imagine if I asked you: “I have two news, one good, another bad. What do you want to know first? “And you said: ” Bad!”
And then I will say that when dealing with such an opponent as Hillary Clinton, no one can talk about the victorious march – she has many times proved her ability to get out of completely hopeless situations and rush into the attack with satanic fury.
Nevertheless, Trump’s triumphant march across the United States takes place, periodically spilling across the US state border, and I hope that, having started with the bad news, I will not smooth it down with my description, which is absolutely necessary for understanding what is happening in Moscow and the surrounding area.
Indeed, the Western media repeatedly reminded their readers that the Russian elite is in the West’s back pocket and it will come time when they depose Putin by a click of fingers, but I will allow myself to recall that not the West, which has already disintegrated before our eyes, but specifically Hillary, who commanded the White House, when, according to Trump, American “boys” sat in all the ministries of the Russian Federation and distributed to “their” people the property of the USSR.
And I will begin a description of Trump’s triumphant march describing Trump’s position on April 9, 2018, when all his undeniable achievements in foreign policy and on the economic front (and it is undoubtedly a front of military operations) were erased by the New York Police raid on the office and apartment of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who was handcuffed with his wife and child and tortured, by keeping him and his family for several hours in cuffs.
By these actions, the so-called “New York Prosecutors” declared war not only on Trump, but also on the very powerful American Bar Association, and now if these “prosecutors” do not go to jail for a long time together with the judge who issued the search warrant, no one can trust his lawyer.
That is, it is all about the fundamentals of American democracy, and I understand that it does not concern those who consider American democracy a fixed wrestling match, but those who doubt it, I urge to think about what will happen to us all when Hillary will establish regime of personal dictatorship in the nuclear superpower.
That is what the original Mueller – Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Third Reich Gestapo – said about the countries where they will start shouting “Heil!” in someone’s personal address. “Heil Clinton!”, and even “Heil Rodham!”.
From the correspondence of the Deputy Director of the FBI Strzok, published by the DOJ Inspector General, clearly sympathetic to Trump, we learn that during the 2016 election campaign, to shout “Heil Clinton!” was ready the entire top of the FBI and more than half of the so-called intelligence community of the United States, and shouting “Clinton Kaput” was ready only the Director of Military Intelligence General Flynn.
What happened to him is well known, despite Trump’s victory largely thanks to military intelligence.
And among the trials of General Flynn, taking his son’s hostage takes prominent place, and this somehow brings to mind that US President Donald Trump late on Friday, April 13, 2018, that is, four days after arrest of his personal lawyer, announcing the order to bomb Syria, also looked like a man whose close relatives were taken hostage.
And that’s how before that, Barack Obama looked like, declaring at a meeting with Baltic Gauleiters about the readiness to bomb Damascus, if Assad ordered to use chemical weapons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CocM1-9W3g
He clearly knew that after this statement the use of chemical weapons was inevitable.
The Inspector General of the US Department of Justice, handing over to the congressmen a box, or rather a truck with documents exposing the anti-state mutiny of Hillary Clinton and the director of the FBI Comey, put on top the folder with conclusions that sounded like this: “No evidence of anti-Trump impartiality of special prosecutor Mueller”, and this suggests that he also has children.
Everything is simple to primitive: the inspector general sympathizes with Trump and also sees his victorious march, but he really has children, and for concealing the facts, the President can bring him to justice, but for conclusions can not.
And I claimed yesterday that “first I need to watch Sunday’s political programs, because this week there was such events that an attempt to silence them would mean a panic in the ranks of the Clinton SS.” Vladimir Putin after watching the American Sunday political programs came to the conclusion that Timakov and Budberg must leave Dmitry Medvedev, and the 6th Tank Regiment of the Russian Army should bear the honorary name of the “Guards of Lvov”, the 68th Tank Regiment – “Guards of Zhitomir-Berlin”, and the 163 Tank Regiment – “Guards of Nezhinsky.”
And this is his answer to the Black Project in Russia, according to which his talks with Trump should take place against the backdrop of mass protests in Moscow.
Komraden Finc;
Watched the Russia/Spain match last night…have several observations;
Spain was a much better team, better technical ball control and passing, yet lost to Russia due to a foul that was converted to a PT by a Russian player. I did not understand the foul…saw it from several angles but…? Maybe you can explain the foul?
“Soccer is a Weenie-sport”~ Bastrop(Texas) HS Football coach
I do not understand the game.
American football reduces to X’s and O’s on a chalkboard. This mentality, along with the “always be hustling” ethic, is why the USA team never fails to disappoint.
Football to the rest of the planet is exactly that — a ball game played (primarily) with the feet. It is improvisational rather than formal patterns memorized and executed from the chalkboard. The improvisation occurs within a framework which has definite structure but the best play involves creativity and imagination — the overlapping defender becoming an attacker on the wing to cite a simple well-known example. The formation morphs as opportunity presents itself.
I recall watching team USA against Brazil some years ago and was struck by the fact that the USA players were always running about like angry bees and the Brazilians just sort of stood around, running in quick bursts when necessary, and then seemingly out of boredom, scoring a goal or two. Lionel Messi would probably be cut by a college coach for not running hard enough.
The Spain-Russia penalty was a handball in the penalty area (large box at either end of the field). This is not an easy call for a referee as determination of intention enters the calculus. Closest analogy to American football is pass interference, I guess. You should Google it. It’s in the FIFA rules but as with all sport it boils down to what the referee says.
Billy,
Thanks for the short course. Regarding the handball thing, I thought that the deciding factor was hand-to-ball, rather than ball-to-hand. I just don’t understand the nuances….
E — hand-to-ball usually signifies intention and if it prevents a goal from scoring it can earn one a red card. That one is easy. But sometimes one reflexively protects oneself from a driven ball and the referee may not call it (for example the “wall” on a direct kick). Ball-to-hand is more complicated. If you spread your arms out from your side to take up more space then should the ball strike your hand/arm you are likely to be penalized. If your hand is placed in an “unnatural” position you are likely to be penalized. How to judge all this is left up to the referee, and invariably one side will vociferously object to the ruling.
I didn’t see the Spain-Russia game but it sounds like textbook bunkering by Russia, textbook possession without taking chances by Spain, and Fortune smiling on the home team. With Russia playing in effect 11 defenders, generating numerical supremacy in the area of the ball is difficult. These types of matches can be very tedious. There should be a law about imaginative play — or the lack thereof — and if invoked by the referee go straight to PK’s and be done with it.
Billy,
Thank you…I think I more understand the foul now.
By jove old boy, I think you’re hinting at some behind the scenes maneuvering here that hints at… dare I say the words… a conspiracy theory (or two). I knew you’d come around eventually!
By the way, I love your epic tale language. Very colorful!
Wanna talk some socialist trash suckin’ at the trough of governmental largesse? (Who’s the precious petal that says there’s no capital for misery fixin’?)
Talk to yer raperesentative about that 20% of the budget that the military is feeding into its gargantuan maw.
But hey, Johnny Jingo sez you gots yer freedom, yer democracy… and that eeeeville socialism stuff is kept confined to burnin’ blue hell – right where it belongs!
And the military system is the biggest socialist program of all, with the contractor trough leading them all. The transparently naked graft at the top is truly breathtaking to behold!
Ol’ Scratch,
Das’right; and that’s why we have the rockets-red-glare fireworky shows on and around duh 4th; it invokes patriotic fervor in the lumpy lumpen lumps. (Ooooo, that blowed up *real* guud!) A consummation devoutly to be wished… by beribboned, strutting baboons and their grateful suppliers. (My oh my, there’s miles of piles of this mythical “capital”!)
Don’t fergit t’ vote… it’s impohdent.
All three of us have the blood of old Atlantis running in our veins, thus our agony at the filth and folly, and inborn knowledge of the coming retributitive Fall. But neither of you handle it as well as me with Ozone falling into rage and you into detached cynicism. Perhaps your Atlantean blood isn’t as pure as mine….
In any case, Hail Atlantis!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcUlQAfJuXE
” And…any preacher with more than two suits is a con artist…. Lenny Bruce ”
Said the guy who lived in Hollywood Hills , median income one hundred thousand +
Said the guy who could afford recreational narcotic use.
Said the guy who , I would bet , had no objection to to things like residuals , which pay you for work you did ten years ago , twenty years ago , fifty years ago , and even pay you after you have quit breathing.
the average Westerner today is a monarchist without the skepticism.
“Why did I change my name? Because Leonard Alfred Schneider sounded ‘Too Hollywood’….”~ said Lenny Bruce
Mexico lost. Long live Angleterre, birthplace of Shakespeare.
By the way, if you want to see the phrase, “macrame celebrations of the vulva” in a sentence, be sure and check out July’s “Eyesore of the Month!”
The first picture with the building holding that somewhat soothing curve isn’t too bad. Kind of run of the mill modern.
The second picture really captures the dismal nature of this structure. Shipping containers splashed with Street Art would be considerably more pleasant.
This morose mass of modernity matched with such celebratory macrames! Priceless!
The solution to the mercantile morass is to simply accelerate disaster and warfare capitalism. The Federal Reserve encouraged WW 2 by funding the Nazi economy. The subsequent rebuilding of Europe kept US industry in gear for decades. Throw in the Korean and Vietnam war, the cold war, fake terrorists and American bases in 100 countries more or less and a few Operation Gladios and you’re in business. In 2017 the hurricane trifecta and surreal wildfires were realized. Once again the subsequent rebuilding jump started local economies. Those catastrophes were brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood deep state weather warfare folks working for you. Keep up the good work.
This has been and will continue to be what passes as “a plan” here in the US. Honestly, at this point what other options are there? We’re gonna ride this baby down to its inevitable conclusion in the same manner as Maj Kong in Dr Strangelove.
A turn for the better….
Mention “The Road to Ruin” or “The Death of Money”, both by James Rickards, and what comes to mind? Of course. Las Vegas.
This place sucks up energy faster than dollars from your pocket. But look here:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/off-site-solar-array-begins-powering-wynn-casinos-on-las-vegas-strip/
Could it be that Lake Meade’s level and Hoover’s output are approaching danger zones with inevitable catastrophe on the horizon?
This is interesting:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g45963-i10-k2093071-MGM_Grand_electric_bill-Las_Vegas_Nevada.html
And this:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/caesars-to-pay-44-million-to-leave-nevada-power/
Remember back around 2000 when Enron and “the smartest guys in the room” ‘gamed’ California? Made hundreds of millions in profits just between May and August, almost four times what they made in all of 1999.
It went far beyond just paying an electric bill. Energy itself became financialized, with both supply and prices manipulated. There was ‘megawatt laundering’, sending energy out of state and then bringing it back in to force higher prices.
Solarizing much of Las Vegas would be a turn for the better. Solarizing with extremely limited, if any, financializing.
But a recent visit there told me again that the city itself was such a monument to self indulgence and in the most unlikely of places, with the colossal local environmental conflict also representing that of the world at large and ultimately bringing the turn for the Worst and the battles of St. George and Baker.
Seems the discussion always turns to redistrubution. JK Galbraith made an observation concerning the historical path of any group with an advantage. The subject of the first sentence without the first syllable must not be used in polite society.
100th Avatar
But then, some are not, and thus they work.
Ticks do pretty well.
please elucidate
Parasites.
How is it parasitic?
What labor was unrewarded in my example?
Besides, ticks labor. They are quite literally up to their necks in it and are risking their heads.
What everyone forgets is that ingenuity and creativity and ideas drive human society.
Not labor.
A trite example, and there are many many more, but Steve Jobs couldn’t make an iPhone, but he knew others could. Others without the idea.
Their are leaders and followers in society and all throughout the animal kingdom.
Question your place in it, and what you’re doing to change it.
Making money from having money is always and everywhere parasitic at its core. To some degree, the bottom feeders are excused for doing it, since it’s literally the only game in town these days. Perhaps the better question to ask, its what does it say about western culture that we have allowed it to evolve into such an abomination? The simple answer is greed and avarice. And pseudo-religious protestations on some people’s parts not withstanding, a basic fear and hatred of those not part of one’s narrowly defined “tribe;” which considering our current atomized and narcissistic state, comes down to the individual alone. Hey, they don’t call it “divide and conquer” for nothing. Together, for good or for ill, we built this society together; but as we’re seeing unfold as we speak, individually, we will all go down utterly alone.
What everyone forgets is that ingenuity and creativity and ideas drive human society.
Not labor.
That’s the myth. It’s also completely wrong.
?
You can applaud the type-setter and orchestra all you want.
I’ll reserve my appreciation for Twain and Bach
To wit: more evidence that the US Empire is rapidly going the direction of the Soviet Empire before it. Forget economic statistics, they’re all contrived bullshit anyway. The suicide rate is the leading indicator of a nation’s psychological health.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831843-300-the-fading-american-dream-may-be-behind-rise-in-us-suicides/
The question is, who gets the remuneration, not the applause. Any worker worth his salt good give shit less about the applause. They just want a fair shake when it comes to compensation. But that’s OK, because very soon all that “creativity” will have nowhere to go, as the production element will be long gone – robotics notwithstanding. But the coming consolidation will be – and is already – coming for the creatives too. In the end, it’s just about consolidation of gains at the top.
With a vast oversupply of unskilled laborers, with an enormous segment of society as a net-drain on productivity, with the rise of machines imminent, it sure seems the wants, not the haves, are in line for a long overdue culling.
The expendables have found their rhythm in the lining of trenches throughout history.
Now let the conductors play.
It’s better for all of us.
Like Obama, Warren and the Catholic Church (both Trad and Novus Ordo) say, You didn’t build that. Not all by yourself you didn’t. Not without our tax dollars and labor and roads (either physical or digital) to get your product to where it’s going.
As St Paul said, You have nothing you have not received. He meant from God of course, ultimately. Unfortunately, Obama, Warren, et al deify the State. But their analysis is true as far as the economy is concerned. But yeah, they would hobble creative people and drive them out a la “Atlas Shrugged” – one of the few uncontested valid points in her Opus.
“Together, for good or for ill, we built this society together; but as we’re seeing unfold as we speak, individually, we will all go down utterly alone.”
I wonder what the Amish would say to your prognosis.
Well, since we don’t have any jobs for the middle class, it’s just as well that we’re getting rid of those pesky unions. They hardly exist down south, and look at how well those folks are doing. Don’t tell me you can’t live on possum & greens, you just ain’t hungry enough. Don’t know what’s good for ya, that’s all.
There are plenty of jobs for the middle class.
What everyone continuously fails to see is that there are too many people able to do those jobs.
There are over 10,000 universities in India alone.
Pumping out educated programmers and physicians and engineers and accountants..
And there are millions of visas waiting, thanks to considerable donations to lobbyists working with congress and dept. of state to make sure the companies you love and cannot stop patronizing (Disney, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, CapitalOne, Comcast, KaiserPermanente, Cigna , etc.)
So close the borders and kick out those foreign IT and Engineers already here. Why don’t you ever say that since you see the problem?
Your Libertarianism is a mind forged shackle.
The US wasn’t the only country to have it good after WW2. Prosperity was widespread across the western world ie Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, France, even the UK, to name some. Even Argentina, before they fucked it all up.
But what afflicts the US afflicts much of the west. Trump, Brexit, nationalist parties all over Europe all come from the same place, the decline of economic prospects for ordinary people.
In the US, as in these other places, the oligarchy that runs things and its administrative clerisy, disdain the average citizen, they claim that discontent comes from unworthy places, from xenophobia and racism, and the inability or unwillingness to keep up. Just read the NY Times or Atlantic if you don’t believe me. The claim is that interests of people in the broad interior of the US don’t count, that these interests are illegitimate. And the same goes for the millions of people in Europe that have been just as systematically screwed.
The folks that run things are running out of time.
The folks that run things are running out of time.
Not really. Chemtrails, depopulation, a big war.
Mexico just elected a President who said he will invade America via human waves demanding welfare attacking our borders enmass.
/ Kalergi plan.Von Coudenhove./ Alinsky.
Currency debasement is what the Fed does. It boggles the mind, it’s job is supposed to be regulating, but what they’re actually doing is counterfeiting, yeah, with Washington’s legislative imprimatur. But if what they’re doing is conjuring trillions of dollars out of nothing to give to banks and government, then you’re counterfeiting no matter all the august looking and sounding documents and buildings and people that say otherwise or that give it a different name ie quantitative easing. Or TARP. If they’re conjuring money to save the bacon of a handful of people that fucked up the world economy and financial system then they’re counterfeiting pure and simple.
The thing is this, if they’re counterfeiting anyway then go full bore, why does the dough go to just a certain select few? Why not let everyone wet their beak? At least then the money goes to people that buy goods and services instead of abstruse financial instruments that the creators of which don’t even understand and which are more likely to cause another financial crackup than add to the general well-being.
Rumor is some banks are forced to take the money.
I heard that too.
Rumor is some banks are forced to take the money
Rumor has it that the present US Administration no longer guarantees the principle of “Privatizing profits and socializing losses” and as a matter of fact could reverse that policy in the opposite direction.
Finca,
I’m certain you’re being facetious here, because if’n you ain’t, you done lost your ever-lovin’ mind! 😉
Chemtrails, depopulation, a big war
Big war, really? With whom, may me ask?
Putin renames military units after European cities
Russian President Vladimir Putin named 11 military units after places in the Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Germany and Romania.
Putin signed a series of decrees published Monday, naming recently created military units after units that operated during World War II.
The regiments were named after Ukrainian cities such as Lviv, Zhytomyr and Nizhyn, while some were named after cities in Belarus suchas Vitebsk, Kobrin and Slonim.
Other units were renamed after Warsaw, Berlin and Romania’s Transylvania region.
Russian dictator Josef Stalin named the 93rd Tank Brigade after Zhytomyr in 1944 for its role in World War II, but it was renamed in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The decrees stated the names were intended to “preserve glorious military and historic traditions, and to nurture loyalty to the fatherland and military duty among the military personnel.”
The decision to rename the military units after geographic locations may be seen as a preemptive move after Russia’s seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Relations between the two countries have since been strained.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/07/02/Putin-renames-military-units-after-Ukrainian-cities/9181530562168/
A gentle reminder to those who forgot the lessons of the WWII.
The profound lessons of WWII have already been consigned to the dustbin of history and the incinerator of political correctness.
When will the Paris Metro be forced to rename the Stalingrad station to something a little more Sharia compliant? Al Aqsa perhaps? Helping to make new residents feel right at home.
Same for the Berlin U-Bahn and the London Tube. Ensuring that the lessons of the last 15 centuries are forgotten.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin named 11 military units after places in the Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Germany and Romania.”
Komraden Finc!
As did the Germans…they called it the “GrossDeutschland”….
A gentle reminder….
Comrade Elysian,
No Generalplan West could be attributed to Soviet Russia, which could not be said about Generalplan Ost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Recalling the Faithful 2014, or the Sly Plan of Putin
Now it became finally clear that Putin is doing everything calmly and consistently, in accordance with a pre-designed plan. And he does not particularly hide anything and speaks about everything as is, of course, within the boundaries of quite obvious limitations.
And our anxiety and neuroses are the result of inability to separate the major events from the tactical ripples on the water of that River, which is the History of Mankind. Let me remind you once again of the most important events of that faithful year.
Crimea almost bloodlessly returns to Russia. Obama’s US is ready to reconcile with this if Russia stops at this and does not “reunite” with the Southeast of Ukraine. But Strelkov pulls the trigger of the war in Donbass, and Putin, seeing the training of Ukro Nazis for the genocide of Russians in Ukraine, asks the Federation Council for permission to use the army outside of Russia. Such an open challenge to the new world order that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, evidently, due to the influence on domestic political games in the US, provokes Obama’s personal dislike of Putin, and this dislike has a very negative effect on subsequent events.
On the other hand, the fear of Russia’s interference forces the Ukro Nazis to refrain for some time from the genocide of the South-East, which task is to liberate the oil and gas deposits from the local population.
This, in turn, provokes the Putin-is-Hitler syndrome in the West, especially from those who want to replace Gazprom’s products with shale gas from Ukrainian South-East.
And at the actualization of virtual reality, in which the United States and England defeated Hitler without the help of the totalitarian USSR led by blood-thirsty Stalin, Putin is presented with such an ultimatum that he, returning to Moscow, frantically begins to conduct exercises in the preparation to nuclear war and is forced to expose himself not in the most favorable light, asking Federation Council to withdraw its permission to use the Army to protect the population of Donbass from the genocide of Ukro Nazis.
What, in fact, gave rise to the whole genre of “Putin-traitor” in Runet (Russian Internet).
All this time, Obama’s sanctions against Russia are just like a slap on the wrist, and in the American television, commentators strictly negatively answer the questions of anxious viewers about the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.
In addition, in the Russian TV the population is vigorously brainwashed with the idea that Europeans are sanctioning Russia only because of the pressure on them from the US, which set themselves the goal of cutting off Europe from the supply of cheap oil and gas, which should make their products uncompetitive.
But at the World Championship in Brazil, Putin may be beginning to suspect that Germany and Angela Merkel personally have an initiative in developing and implementing the Generalplan Ost 2.0.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Three days later, there is a catastrophe with the Malaysian “Boeing” and Mrs. Chancellor, who just nodded in Brazil after every word of Putin, without waiting the results of the investigation, blames the accident on the anti-Nazi militia of Donbass. And then she imposes sanctions that really hurt Russia on foreign currency incomes, and the European bureaucracy starts to openly manipulate the courts to impose very sensitive financial sanctions on Russia (the Yukos case).
Putin in response, gritting his teeth, continues to prepare for a nuclear war, conducting the appropriate exercises and pretending to be Gorbachev in every way to gain time for a few dozen more ICBMs, dozens of the newest fighters and bombers.
At the same time, he introduces retaliatory sanctions against the European Union, intended to reduce import costs, and uses the opportunity to provide support to a domestic producer banned by the WTO rules, for which Russia entered this wonderful organization.
That is, in the best traditions of judo uses weight and momentum of the enemy in order to smash him against the wall.
At this time in the United States, the final stage of the mid-term 2014 election campaign begins, during which it became clear that for the past two years all of the highest positions in the administration of the US president were occupied by Obama’s personal enemies, and the election campaign was clearly organized in such a way as to show that Obama lost the confidence of his voters, which led him to the White House, and with him now you can do “whatever you want”.
In reality, the results of the election turned out to be somewhat different.
And now, reflecting on the strengthening of the military power of Russia will do the congressmen, and not at all those who brewed this mess, by finally adopting laws according to which Obama do not have to ask for the approval of the Congress, if his party’s establishment demands from him to equip the Ukro Nazis with the means to destroy sub-humans who dare living on the shale gas deposits.
The United States on the eve of the Catholic Christmas are beginning to probe the possibility of disabling the Russian banking system from the international payment system SWIFT, and somebody through the mouth of the general director VTB voices a warning that such an action will lead at least to a break in diplomatic relations and to war – at least cold. In addition, the union of ODESSA (NSDAP) and Saudi Arabia is finally emerging, no longer hiding, and trying to repeat the trick with the prices of oil, which allegedly undermined the economy of the USSR, but in fact was a smokescreen for Gorbachev’s traitorous conspiracy.
The ruble begins to fall, but due to the absence of Gorbachev, this does not cause the appearance of crowds of dissatisfied people, as in 1990-1991, and quite the contrary, stimulates demand for the purchase of cars and refrigerators.
I wonder if Andrew Yang is running a scam? I think that under the election rules that the candidate gets to keep left over money raised during his/her campaign? Bernie Sanders made out like a bandit. I think that Ben Carson also did quite well? https://www.yang2020.com/
In his interview re: UBI, Andrew Yang uses the word “dystopia” at least 4 times.
Pucker,
If you think the prospect of a guaranteed (fo’ *free*) income could ever fly in this country, I don’t think you’ve studied the American psyche in much depth. (That goes for the new queen of Queens as well. Just wait until she gets in with those rabid hyenas in D.C., the place where dreams go to die and be eaten by corporate ghouls.) The Theater of Cruelty must play out the season. The revue has been paid for in advance as well as the actors. Astute witnesses will be leaving the performance a bit before the final curtain, keeping their heads down and their powder dry, because weird shit cometh and the venue is sure to be raided by the Gestapolice following the thunderous applause…
As JHK warns, events are very much in charge. For one small example, burn your fingers on this one:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49765.htm
Those who have chosen the Triple G as their savior might want to avoid reading this one if they’d like to retain babe-in-the-woods rose-tinted status and outlook.
…And yes, Mr. Yang be runnin’ a scam on a wave of general panic.
Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796. If he is too remote a figure for your limited ken to feel in sympathy with, pretend it is I, Janos, speaking to you across a table in a coffee shop, or in a Hojo cubicle, or on the next barstool over. The Address is a veritable Constitution for the Common Man, and a refresher for scholars who have lost themselves in verbiage, or if I may say it, educated beyond their abilities or human experience (an often underestimated factor).
Friends and Citizens:
The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.
I beg you, at the same time, to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.
The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon the idea.
I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire.
The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.
In looking forward to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.
Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.
Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.
The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Towards the preservation of your government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it – It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.
How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself, the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least believed myself to be guided by them.
In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation of the twenty-second of April, I793, is the index of my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice, and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it.
After deliberate examination, with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take, and was bound in duty and interest to take, a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness.
The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers, has been virtually admitted by all.
The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.
The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.
Man, it took forever to scroll past this one.
Scroll past the Father of our Country? You dare much, Spaulding.
“the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.”
See, that’s where we went wrong. Putting a top spin on that phrase, “recommending it to”.
Aye, harrying Mexico with knife and gun as Emerson (or was it Thoreau) said, to teach them to elect better men as if they ever could. We should have built a Wall.
At least we didn’t annex them. Our Nation would have devolved all the faster if we had. Stupid Conquistadores didn’t bother to bring their own women – instead each had a harem of native women. Thus Latin America was largely still born, destined for eternal mediocrity and ethnic conflict, though hidden at first by under the rubric of class conflict. It’s all coming out in the open now. Ditto Brazil of course, worse cuz they have lots of Blacks too.
Attributed to JFK: I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day.
According to Seymour Hersh in his “Dark Side of Camelot”, several time Secret Servant agents were sent to a photography studio to have pictures framed – pictures of President Kennedy in sexual poses with various women. The photos were of the highest quality, as if taken by a professional. The Agents made sure no copies of the prints were made.
Undoubtedly, John Kennedy at some point in his life was a member of that sect that I call the Western Black Project, but he repented later in his life and died a martyr’s death.
I hope everyone understands that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Alexander Pushkin, John F. Kennedy, Ioan Petru Culianu, and closer to our time, Stanley Kubrick, David Carradine and Boris Berezovsky were all members of religious sects, such as Stanley Kubrick painted in the movies “Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioan_Petru_Culianu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky_(businessman)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carradine
And all of them are united by a shameful execution connected with treason, not a political but religious treason.
Mozart’s funeral in the common grave, vile letters to Pushkin about his wife, a similar story with Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, Culianu’s death on the crapper were all payment for believing in God and splitting with the sect.
But Kubrick, apparently, bought himself the freedom by agreeing to participate in the project Apollo 11, but this did not save him after the release of the movie “Eyes Wide Shut”.
I can mention a few more names of our very famous and almost brilliant contemporaries, who by all accounts fall into this category, but I do not want to upset their admirers – I, for one, was very upset when I realized this about Pushkin and Culianu, although I read enough vile verses of the first and the esoteric writings of the second.
Meanwhile, now I understand that in fact it means that these people died for Christ, that in fact they are holy martyrs.
And this is it important. Very important.
FincaInTheMountains
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Apropos to nothing in particular………….
Hey Finc,
I had never run into the word Finca until the advent of your screen name here at CFN but this morning I came across Finca twice within the first few pages of “A Moveable Feast,” a posthumously published work by Ernest Hemingway.
Within the first paragraph of the Introduction (written by Sean Hemingway, Ernest’s grandson) the words “the Finca in Cuba” appear. A Finca, being merely a farm, why does it deserve to be capitalized?
Holy Martyr David Carradine was a goof, just like you. And this is important. Very important. From your article, Arrests and Prosecutions:
By his own account, in the late 1950s, while living in San Francisco, Carradine was arrested for assaulting a police officer. He pled guilty to a lesser charge of disturbing the peace.[12] While in the Army, he faced court-martial, on more than one occasion, for shoplifting.[12][62] After he became an established actor and had changed his name to David, he was arrested in 1967 for possession of marijuana.[63]
At the height of his popularity in Kung Fu, in 1974 Carradine was arrested again,[64][65] this time for attempted burglary and malicious mischief. While under the influence of peyote, Carradine began wandering nude around his Laurel Canyon neighborhood. He broke into a neighbor’s home, smashing a window and cutting his arm. He then bled all over the homeowner’s piano.[12] At some time during this incident he accosted two young women, allegedly assaulting one while asking if she was a witch.[12][66][67] The police literally followed a trail of blood to his home.[68] The burglary charges were dropped when nothing was found to be missing. Carradine pleaded no contest to the mischief charge and was given probation.[69] He was never charged with assault, but the young woman sued him for $1.1 million[66] and was awarded $20,000.[67]
In 1980, while in South Africa filming Safari 3000 (also known as Rally), which co-starred Stockard Channing, Carradine was arrested for possession of marijuana.[70] He was convicted and given a suspended sentence.[71] He claimed that he was framed, in this case, by the apartheid government, as he had been seen dancing with Tina Turner.[12]
During the 1980s, Carradine was arrested at least twice for driving under the influence of alcohol, once in 1984[72] and again in 1989. In the second case, Carradine pleaded no contest.[73] Of this incident, the Los Angeles Times reported: “legal experts say Carradine was handed a harsher-than-average sentence, even for a second-time offender: three years’ summary probation, 48 hours in jail, 100 hours of community service, 30 days’ work picking up trash for the California Department of Transportation, attendance at a drunk driving awareness meeting and completion of an alcohol rehabilitation program.”[74]
In 1994, while in Toronto filming Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Carradine was arrested for kicking in a door at SkyDome while attending a Rolling Stones concert. When asked his reasoning, Carradine claimed he was worried about getting swarmed by people who recognized him, and so entered the building as quickly as possible.[75]
David Carradine starred in the “Kill Bill”, and I know for sure that in the last monologue his impromptu went beyond the script and Tarantino director’s plan, striking the latter to the core.
David Carradine explains the essence of the Black Project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWTJIBGNId0
The fact is that the connection of greatness and goodness is a reflection of the Manichaean concept of genetic belonging to good and greatness by virtue of birth, and not because of the phenotype of individual development, of which the experience of spiritual life is a part.
According to this concept, of which the notorious Weismannism-Morganism was the peak, it is impossible to become good and great, you must be born that way, and the main sign of such greatness and such goodness is the right to kill with impunity.
That’s the main theme of Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” – just watch the last scene in which David Carradine explains to Uma Thurman that the ability to kill is the duty to kill, because people are not only divided into two biologically different species, but also created by different gods, and Uma Thurman, trying to become a working bee, was still a killer-bee – she simply betrayed her biological species and was punished for this betrayal.
“The fact is that the connection of greatness and goodness is a reflection of the Manichaean concept of genetic belonging to good and greatness by virtue of birth, and not because of the phenotype of individual development, of which the experience of spiritual life is a part.
According to this concept, of which the notorious Weismannism-Morganism was the peak, it is impossible to become good and great, you must be born that way, and the main sign of such greatness and such goodness is the right to kill with impunity. ”
Or,
He died while jerking off with a noose around his neck….
So you’re saying that he was coming and going at the same time.
Yes, I could easily see Carradine as being like that. Say he found you hanging upside down in your cashed car in a ditch on a remote highway. Just by his Face, I could see him stopping and watching the situation, perhaps talking to you in your dire straits, promising to get help, and then not getting help, but rather feeling really cool and powerful about NOT helping.
He simply did not have the face of a Saint or one on the path thereto. And Lucifer was the first rebel….
Interesting indeed, but did you know that although he is best known today for telling diabetics to “check your blood sugar and check it often,” Wilford Brimley was one of the best no-nonsense tough guys in the movies. Back in the day, no one played gruff and plainspoken as well as Wilford Brimley. Whether he was playing a senior citizen in Cocoon, a U.S. attorney in Absence of Malice, or a stern father figure in countless movies and TV shows, Wilford Brimley was the epitome of an honest, upright, no bullshit authority figure. It has been a while since Brimley appeared onscreen but anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s can remember hearing his distinctive voice and fearing that, somehow, Wilford Brimley knew everything that he had ever done wrong.
Wilford Brimley played many roles but, for me, he will always be Postmaster General Henry Adkins in The Junk Mail episode of Seinfeld. In this episode, Kramer announces that he is no longer going to accept any more junk mail and dares to suggest that we might not need a postal service at all. Who better to set Kramer straight than the U.S. Postmaster General, Henry Adkins? Even if it means having to put off his golf game, Henry is not going to let anyone make a joke out of the U.S. Postal Service.
As Henry himself explains, “I’m a postmaster but I’m also a general and it’s the job of a general to, by God, gets things DONE!”
But Lysander Spooner said we didn’t even need a government postal service. And he proved it by deeds, not empty words. He was probably right on that score. Lysander Spooner was what has come to be known as an ‘American original.’ He was a wild card in the play of constitutional legal theory, i.e., unpredictable. How improbable is America, and can it continue to exist in its present form?
https://astrocycles.net/astro-insights/horoscope-analysis-by-hassan-jaffer/horoscope-of-the-united-states-of-america/
America, born under the sign Cancer, shows many negative aspects of this sign. Underneath the soft and caring exterior, is the dark side of the Moon aspect, ruthless and pitiless. We’re bombing them for their own good, type thing. And of course, we’re headed for Matriarchy it seems, but that of “career women” and trannies. Perhaps padded shoulders will return but this time exaggerated to football size to make the new funny looking women feel more comfortable.
Perhaps padded shoulders will return but this time exaggerated to football size to make the new funny looking women feel more comfortable.
And then there’s Michelle Obama.
BREAKING: CONGRESS DEMANDS THE ARREST OF HILLARY CLINTON AND APPOINTMENT OF SECOND SPECIAL COUNSEL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvyE2JeJj0
Food for thought!
Europe was a feudal state during the Middle Ages. It progressed to a monarchical model during the Renaissance but still was central government oriented. During the Age of Enlightenment, some countries progressed toward a more representative government form. It took violent rebellion. The US was one of them. One big difference though. Europe has been unable to break away from the concept that the people are to serve the government, that the government solves all social problems. Liberty is restrained by a government that is served by its people. The US founders said NO. The purpose of government is to serve the people and paramount to this is the unrestricted liberty of the people. With liberty goes responsibility towards each other. The Progressive movement in the US is a direct threat to our liberty. Their bent towards European style socialism affects every person in this country. The more that is handed out as freebies from the central government decreases the freedom that each of us has to pursue our happiness as we want. Dependency is a characteristic of slavery. We did that once, let us not do it again. Remember that the Deep State is loaded with people who want to steal your power for themselves. Their methodology is simple, give lots of phony freebies. We need to stop the movement towards socialism.
Happy Fourth of July as we celebrate the collective genius of our Founders 242 years ago.
Our Culture was attenuated by our obsession with industry, “prosperity”, gadgets, and the werk that all these lead to. So in the end there was no recourse left but to Government, all community and extended family being destroyed by the exigencies that the above imply. Endless moving, endless inflation, poverty, homelessness, unemployment and so forth.
“” One big difference though. Europe has been unable to break away from the concept that the people are to serve the government,”
What a bizarre idea, JohnAZ. But then I suppose you are an American and looking from a very long way away, both geographically and ideologically.
“With liberty goes responsibility towards each other.”
Hmmm… Does that mean that the half million or so Americans who are bankrupted each year by medical bills can count on their neighbours to take them in? If so, then you have my admiration. And I must have imagined all those tents.
GA
Europe has always been more socialistic than America. Obama’s crew always stated that they wanted the US to be more like Europe. My point still stands, when one gives more power to a central authority, one loses liberty. The difference during the 1800’s led to the huge immigration movements from Europe to America, the promise of liberty.
You are right on your other comment! When free men and women forget their responsibility to each other, society will collapse from within. When the substance of the wealth of a country no longer supports its population, or is prevented from happening by a lousy government, then opportunity declines. The result, tent cities and bankruptcies. No government program ever has prevented poverty, ever. Socialism sucks it’s own populace dry, that is why it does not work.
” Socialism sucks it’s own populace dry, that is why it does not work.”
What pertains in Europe is not socialism, though, JohnAZ, it’s capitalism with a slightly better welfare net than in the US. On the whole, that is – ‘Europe’ is a whole lot of nations with different views on these matters. France, of which I have some experience, has a much different view of and expectations from its centralised government that does Switzerland, for example, or even the UK.
Mostly what people get riled about in the US seems to be the idea of ‘socialised’ healthcare. So the UK spends about 9.7% of its GDP on the healthcare of its population while the US spends over 17% and the outcomes in the US are shockingly bad for that money, in terms of national yardsticks. That’s mostly because a whole lot of that 17% doesn’t go on healthcare – it goes on the parasitic bureaucracy that is supposed to be the thing you avoid by not being ‘socialised’, but is actually the price you pay for ‘choice’.
So your government allows you the ‘freedom’ to be shafted by private enterprise because it believes nothing is more important than your right to personally choose who shafts you. Within the limitations that Exscottisus pointed out regarding the fudging of much actual information. So, the worst of all worlds, really.
In the UK we reserve that choice for housing.
It’s been a while since ‘socialism’ came anywhere near the UK housing sector – what is currently worshipped (well, at this stage, tolerated might be the better word) is the right of the rentier to earn wealth from his wealth without working for it. Swings and roundabouts… You’d be hard put to it to find much socialism in the UK these days. Although local authorities still do have a statutory duty to house people living within their boundaries, but that just means a lot of taxpayer money is diverted in housing benefit to private landlords who can basically charge what they want. So taxpayer largesse for the already wealthy…
..a duty to house *homeless* people, I meant, sorry…
Their bent towards European style socialism
I’d say they bend towards National Socialism and planning to bend over in this direction the United States of America.
We have very little to celebrate on this 242nd anniversary of America’s declaration of Independence. Will there still be a U.S.A. by its Sestercentennial anniversary in 8 years, on July 4, 2026? I have serious doubts, and if there still is a union as we have known her, one may reasonably ask, of what good is this thing?
“Why are you so pessimistic, Tate?”
“Well, I’ll tell ya, stranger.
Remember, we had a total solar eclipse that passed over the U.S. mainland in 2017, traveling from northwest to southeast. Then, in the year 2024, there will another total solar eclipse passing from southwest to northeast, crossing the path of the former eclipse somewhere in Missouri or Illinois, I believe. That is, within the span of about seven years, two total solar eclipses will have passed across the continental U.S., forming a rough saltire between them. This is an unpropitious omen.
The fact is, the U.S. has become a clamorous bazaar, an opportunity field for swindlers, & nothing more. If a nation is understood as merely a common tariff-free market, a place held together only by the opportunity to buy & sell, to trade, with no common bonds among its so-called ‘citizens’ beyond some nebulous abstract ‘propositions’ that no one any longer understands or respects (‘muh democracy’) then what can possibly hold it together when deeper divisions manifest?
The U.S. has always had these tendencies of the crass & the cutthroat but the suicidal march to a more ‘diverse citizenry’ who never shared or were intended to share in the blessings imagined by its founders, has only engendered a worsening despair of ever reclaiming the somewhat happy arrangements — perhaps mythical — of post-war America. There no longer exists a commonality of feeling between the members of our so-called ‘society’ — if one indeed ever existed. Each person is an island, cut off from his or her fellows, an unspoken strife of each against all. Only in the nuclear family & the fundamentalist churches have some found a measure of relief. The public spaces are an unrelenting battlefield to be trod with extreme caution.
Seriously, how can a nation exist wherein so many of its inhabitants (I won’t use the term ‘people’) have nothing in common & where a large segment of its population alien to its founding stock wants to tear down its exterior borders & let anyone in who wants to come here? There are those who seriously propose that anyone who wants to come here badly enough is an ‘American,’ just by virtue of that desire. The founders of this country didn’t think like this, if the term “Posterity,” found in the Preamble to the Constitution, has any meaning. The myths of our founding bruited so loudly today, ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ ‘nation of immigrants,’ ‘a shining city on a Hill,’ ‘the exceptional nation,’ ’Novus Ordo Seclorum,’ ‘sweet land of liberty’ & an assortment of other catchphrases, cannot obscure the reality any longer that we are not one nation, but several distinct ones contending for supremacy within the same borders.
Tate. Well said!
This is a frustration to me. The globalists, who are behind the attempted dissolution, use the repudiation of what holds us together as a country, the US Constitution. What holds this country together is allegiance to an ideal, that the law is bigger than any group, or faction, that the law is the supreme element of society, As long as the populace believes that, America will continue. So what the anarchists of the Left need to do to tear the country apart is undermine the respect for the supremacy of the Constitution. Which is exactly what they are doing, financed by the globalist elite. What we are witnessing is an attempted overthrow of the US from the inside, from several distinct factions contending for supremacy within the same borders. The next step is deciding which faction will lead next, this is historically where America as a whole comes to its senses and runs the bums outa town. Watch November 2018 to see who wins.
John,
Thanks for the compliment but I’m not sure I earned it after reading your comment. The Constitution is going to offer weak defenses against the ills that beleager us if Senorita Sotomayor & her contingent ever gain the upper hand. And it was only because of the stupid complacency of the Clintonoids in 2016 that the Sotomayor wing is not now in charge. We can’t always count on these reprieves when our borders are being continuously overrun by “new” Democrats oops I mean Americans who will ultimately determine who is on that court which ultimately determines what that Constitution says. If you think the Constitution is what binds us together, then my friend, I admire your innocence.
What I said is that the Constitution is the only thing that does hold this country together. Nothing else does. If the Constitution ceased to have effect tomorrow, this country would dissipate overnight. And the really bad news is that the people trying to tear it apart, the ones you mentioned among many others, do not have a single clue about what they want things to become. Can you imagine this country flying apart into all the factions that want a piece of the action?
Yes, I believe my statement, no Constitution. No USA.
Read the Farewell Address again. Why should someone obey the Law if they can get away with not do so? Ultimately, only if they feel there is one Court that cannot be cheated and one Judge from whom one cannot be hidden. Yes, most will only be good if they believe in Divine Justice, a God of vengeance and wrath.
Or perhaps like Balding you prefer to “scroll on by”. I await you in the place where there is no Darkness….
In the continuation of this post:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/hidden-figures/#comment-358520
The spirit of Victory Day – May 9 – is hovering over America.
Tomorrow, I will write about how Devin Nunes covered with his body the embrasure of the machine gun behind the latch of which Hillary Clinton lurked, about the role of Trey Gowdy in the new Operation Bagration, and also that the most important event confirming the theory of World Colored Projects was that Queen Elizabeth II days ago signed the final version of Brexit and sent her grandson William to Jerusalem to the grave of his grandmother – the righteous woman of the world, but first I have to watch Sunday’s political broadcasts, because this week there were such events that an attempt to silence them would mean panic in the ranks of the Clinton’s SS.
Meanwhile, in the previous post I mentioned that it would not work with Hillary behind his back, and that on April 9, 2018, Trump was virtually destroyed after his tremendous victories on the economic front.
You can not imagine what impression the arrest of Trump’s personal attorney made on American lawyers! I even allowed myself to gloat a little, reminding a couple of my friends about how they supported Hillary Clinton two years ago. They were especially impressed by the fact that they arrested not only the lawyer himself, but his wife and child, and kept them in handcuffs for 5 hours, which is considered torture in the US.
The next step in this direction is the appearance of prosecutors in the White House and after the presentation of a piece of paper from some court, shooting the President on the spot.
Three days later, on April 12, then CIA Director Mike Pompeo, at a congressional hearing confirming his appointment as Secretary of State, officially and almost proudly confirming his readiness to continue to act in the same spirit, said that more than 200 Russians were killed in mid-February in Syria by the US Army, which was there on unknown grounds except for the agreement with Russia to destroy ISIS, and to kill these Russian soldiers, a large army group was involved and latest US weapons that are not available to the group that fights against ISIS, and it is generally not part of the competence of the commander of US forces in Iraq.
And Pompeo passed these hearings and was appointed Secretary of State precisely because of these words, and the congress, having voted his appointment, essentially declared war on Russia.
Well I suppose I’m exaggerating, although in my opinion these hearings in any case are an excuse for breaking diplomatic relations at a minimum, and generally speaking casus belli in chemically pure form. But the day before yesterday, the American press finally began to talk about what actually happened then, in particular, that Russia had suffered a terrible insult at that time because she knew that all these casus belli had occurred against the will of the US president, who would soon regain his presidential powers.
And yesterday the congressmen who voted then for the war came to Moscow …. not understanding these circumstances and the significance of the voting in which they took part? And why Trump sent them, that the Russians would marvel at the idiocy of those with whom he is forced to answer for the provocations of Hillary?!
What an improvement in relations – let’s be friends, but do not interfere with our spitting in your face?! Or they came to ask for forgiveness? I can not think up other explanations for their visit, since immediately after the head of the US delegation, Senator Shelby expresses hope for a new day in Russian-American relations, he begins to demand that Russia stop interfering in the American elections.
And to make his position even more stupid, the Senate Intelligence Commission, which he headed for a very long time, passes a resolution a few hours after that, explaining that Russia has helped Trump become president.
And as if in response to this, 19 congressmen put to the vote a resolution demanding the appointment of a second special prosecutor to investigate the attempts of the top officials of the Department of Justice to commit a coup d’état and the immediate arrest of Hillary Clinton, who directs the conspiracy of the deep state against Trump.
And my Yahoo news feed is filled with articles about the first resolution, the headlines of which indicate that the Senate Commission thus simply showed a finger to the head of the House of Representatives Commission, Devin Nunes, who claims something directly opposite, and it will not have any other consequences, except for discrediting its signatories.
But there is not a single mention of the second resolution calling for the arrest of Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she was put to the vote by congressmen who last week were summoned to the carpet the FBI director and deputy Attorney General, Rosenstein, supervising Mueller’s investigation, and during interrogation on elevated tones caught them on refusal to provide documents that expose Comey and Mueller as conspirators and bribe-takers, guilty of insulting the congress, sabotaging the investigation and perjury under oath.
And last Friday they forced the congress to pass a resolution confirming these accusations and obliging the leadership of the Department of Justice within seven days (that is, not later than this Friday) to provide the missing documents under threat of conviction for contempt of Congress and impeachment.
This what the American TV channels on Sunday failed to mention, not only exposing their inability to be the media, but also the horror that, unlike don Juan, was experienced by the Clintonoids who command them, after hearing the heavy steps of the Commander.
And all this happened as a result of Trump’s very triumphal march, about which I write, and which began with him not even on his knees, but lying flat on the ground, position which Trump had to assume after the arrest of his lawyer and the fire in the house where his family was.
In any case, it was precisely in this position that he gave orders to bomb Syria, but after this order, rumors began spreading that an explosion occurred on helicopter carrier “Tripoli” and panic began to spread at American forums because everyone decided that Russia had fulfilled its promise and in response to the bombing of Syria began to sink the 6th US Navy Fleet.
And then the war in the TV stopped and the Minister of Defense appeared pale as death, who managed to pale even more in response to the question of the US losses, and although it is still unknown what happened then, the Defense Secretary turned out to be the head of the Party of Peace, and Trump clearly cheered up, realizing that now the Army knows – the American weapon got hopelessly obsolete before he became president.
I will return to this when I finally describe the changed military-strategic balance, but here is enough of a final conclusion based on the behavior of the American media and the top command of the United States on that fateful night when it turned out that the military-technical advantage is not on their side.
Even Conservative Catholics are beginning to get it. A few of them even know about the Kalergi Plan and are tying to tell the rest.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bishop-mass-migration-part-of-plan-to-water-down-europes-christian-identity
After these events, Trump cheered up and remembered that a few days before the bombing of Syria, he was declared Messiah in Israel, ala Cyrus the Great, and after Netanyahu came to celebrate Victory Day in Moscow and, wearing a St. George ribbon, laid a wreath to the Eternal Flame, this title clearly acquired special significance, and Trump, forgetting about lying down and even kneeling, began to openly troll the seemingly all-powerful Clintonoids with statements about his right to pardon himself no matter what they would found at his lawyer or he told them under torture.
And Trump’s chief lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was Mayor of New York during 911 and famous throughout the United States for his courage and intelligence during the crisis, said the President’s has a right not to be interrogated by the Mueller Commission even after receiving the subpoena, first because the president is preparing meeting with Kim Jong-un to prevent a nuclear war, and then because the Mueller Commission is biased and the Department of Justice has committed a crime by introducing at least one spy into Trump’s election campaign. It became clear that with the first argument he could delay the case before the congressional elections in early November and the midterm elections in the United States became a point of application of geostrategic and geohistorical forces.
During this period in the beginning of June, the greatest interest is caused by the behavior of Trey Gowdy, who unleashed the servergate on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, failed to withdraw her from the election, but rather contributed to her loss. He, having the highest access to confidential matters, read as the head of the committee the case of the aforementioned FBI spy in Trump’s election campaign and stated that these actions of the FBI counterintelligence were justified and absolutely legal.
The press clung to him with a death grip and raised his fame to the skies, as he was the only expert who spoke in defense of the FBI whose freedom from party bias aroused the confidence of the general public. With him, quite lamely argued another fighter for the honor of Trump, the head of the congressional commission for intelligence Devin Nunes, but it became clear when on June 14 the Inspector General of the Department of Justice published the first batch of documents exposing high-ranking FBI employees in the defense of Hillary Clinton and in conspiracy against President Trump and Trey Gowdy, having read the report, said that he was terribly disappointed in the leadership of the FBI and in the Mueller Commission, as the same people hid the evidence of Hillary Clinton’s guilt and fabricated evidence of the fault of Donald Trump, which led to the investigation of his ties with … I do not even know with whom, probably with Russian intelligence.
This is a distinctive feature of Clinton manipulations – at some point the meanings of words disappear and they can be used only in that language and in the formulation in which Mrs. Bastinda formulated this garbage.
And then all the authority that Trey Gowdy created in late May and early June turned against the conspirators, and when the director of the FBI and Deputy Justice Secretary Rosenstein appeared on the carpet in the Congress for explanations, the voice of Trey Gowdy merged with the voice of Devin Nunes and they proved to be the soloists of the powerful chorus of congressional votes, which they really fried with their questions and finally demanded yesterday to arrest Bastinda, and the leadership of the DOJ to bring to justice.
The scandal over the children of illegal immigrants was imposed on these events, which the frontiersmen were taking away from their parents, as the law prohibits keeping children in custody for more than 3 weeks, and it is necessary either to release parents with children or to violate the law.
And Bastinda exposed her main reserve – the US Attorney General in the Trump Administration Jeff Sessions, who refused to oversee the investigation of Mueller and passed that oversight in the hands of Rosenstein, and so the pro-Trump press had long accused him of betrayal.
The most interesting thing is that when announcing the policy of separating children, he overdid and enlisted the Bible to justify this fanaticism, which provoked his church to declare him a heretic.
This fact drew the attention of the press and the whole clever plan of Hillary to attribute this disgrace to Trump collapsed on Sessions’ head.
Happy 4th of July, all. Here is a picture of Captain America punching Hitler in the face.
https://i.redd.it/ifand25tfy711.jpg
You’re welcome.
Otto Skorzeny is not happy with you.
I ot to be but Elrond is who and what the Jews have made him. Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” is a mind worm that has destroyed millions of idealistic young Whites, making them into deadly enemies of their own Race and Civilization.
And the King of Swindle is President.
So who now offers the most reasonable and viable solution for reigning in the control that business has over our government?
Progressive Democrats (Sander’s wing)?
or
Neo-Conservatives (McConnell/Ryan wing)?
Andrew Yang’s Campaign Slogan: “Let’s Put Humanity First”.
They’re already starting to think in terms of it as a choice between Humans and Machines?
Pregnant on the campaign slogan is the idea that once they give the Humans a potato in the form of a Universal Basic Income then the door is open to replace human labor with robots? Yang is pitching not to the people, but rather to Silicon Valley? UBI is a Trojan Horse?
UBI is a Trojan Horse?
You nailed it, Pucker.
Love, love, love this as a Trojan Horse!
Seriously, with UBI, people will have more spare time with the kids.
Be more involved?
And then they’ll be like, “F*** this noise!”
Seriously, best way to introduce population control, am I right?
Color this Awessssssooooome!
You are UBU Roi. Ubu the King and the Fool in one. And you didn’t build that.
I did not write about well known rout of NATO and G7, which took place approximate at the same time and was connected with the fact that the Fourth Reich intervened in the civil war in the US on the side of Hillary Clinton.
I will write about it when I try to understand the circumstances of the Helsinki summit that is inevitably coming on us, but for now the question arises: what kind of miraculous power made Trump rise from his knees and trample the cleverest Hillary’s plan and achieve outstanding success in the economy and foreign policy, despite support of Bastinda by the Fourth Reich and the overwhelming superiority of the Witch in the administrative resources?
The alliance of Russia, the USA and Israel has become stronger and has become almost an official policy in the Greater Middle East.
In any case, it is openly discussed in the American press, but the most important is that it was Israel’s support for Trump’s that became the decisive factor in the civil war in the US and through Trump’s victorious march in the United States will be a decisive factor in the struggle of the World Projects that is now unfolding in Russia around the World Cup and pension reform.
And I’m afraid that my anti-Semitic co-bloggers are awaited by terrible torments when it turns out that in the civil war in the US, not Trump rescues Israel, but Israel saves Trump, and Jews in Russian politics play quite the different role that they are attributed by anti-Semites.
Yeah too bad Israel supports ISIS. That really gets in the way of the narrative.
And Jews are the heroes of Christianity too, right?
too bad Israel supports ISIS
“Israel” also attempts to prosecute Netanyahu.
Have you learned nothing from my theory of Colored Projects?
Reports are that wounded ISIS combatants are put together again in Israeli hospitals.
Talk about a hall of mirrors.
Komraden Finc!
It has now become apparent that you have missed your calling…Engineering had its run, but now a better path to recognition…you must write the novel.
You seem to have a handle on various plot-lines that need to be expanded. Regular pot boilers your specialty. There will be the hero and villain, existential issues, basic good vs. bad dichotomy.
Your posts here on CFN provide much grist for your mill. Flesh out the villains…you know, massive boardrooms with white cats being stroked on expansive and well dressed laps while nefarious plots are discussed. Anyone can be the arch-villain…be they Palestinian, Clintonoid, Israeli (a crowd favorite), or German…especially the Germans.
I would further recommend, for sake of sales volume, that there be lots of graphic sexual content, as well as explosions…lots of explosions And car chases.
…and make it one of those 900 page tomes…Real Russian value for our money.
Don’t you like the current genre – the political history of arts in real time?
Would you miss me if I take a two-year sabbatical to write a novel?
Why would it take you two years? You write a novel here twice a week.
Komerad Finc,
Of course we would miss you…but think of your place in History…Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Finc….
https://www.amren.com/news/2018/07/new-algorithm-uses-brain-scans-to-tell-how-smart-you-are/
Let’s summarize: Also they can detect schizophrenia, tumors, and yes, psychopathology. Why not? The first two are not controversial at all btw. I hope you know that. Schizophrenia is a physical disease of the brain that has terrible consequences for the person and personality. Perhaps psychopathology is the same? Or is it a disease of the soul that leaves traces in the brain? The higher often leaves traces in the lower.
You are right: No scientific study of Shakespeare, a chemical analysis of the pages and type, can determine its meaning. That kind of knowledge is non-scientific but very real. Likewise of course, the brain waves. But once we know what waves are associated with what states of emotion, (a linkage of the eye of sense (science) and the eye of mind (interpretation), we may be able to infer Much about the thoughts. On a more mundane level, people readers – like women and cops – are masters of rapid inductive logic, summing people up by what they wear, how they hold themselves, linking it to what they are doing and where they are and when, etc.
Always remember anent epistemology or the study of knowledge, what Aristotle said: Do not demand of a subject more precision than it can afford by its very nature.
We’re not going to get mathematical precision about these subjects in other words. But that does not mean nothing can be known.
Y’all forgot about the other Trojan horse. More insidious than UBI.
Transgender movement.
First blur the line between sexes.
Then blur the line between what is human.
The left’s agenda is, quite sincerely, dehumanizing.
I waited all day yesterday, and no giant saucer over the white house. What gives?
“Donald Trump’s recent unhinged attacks on Harley-Davidson distill his larger assault on American democracy. The damage that Trump and the GOP leaders have done to the country’s global standing cannot be repaired.”—J. Bradford Delong
There’s a lot of deformations, a 21 trillion dollar national debt, a trillion dollar a year federal deficit, a six hundred billion dollar trade deficit, the chief of them being the mental deformation that blindly assumes that this is workable and can keep going. Which of course it can’t. You can only wonder about the splatter patterns when it hits the fan.
But it’s not just economic. It’s political and it’s not just all about American politics.
In the sixth and early seventh centuries when the East Roman Empire was slugging it out with the Persians over turf in the middle east and its environs, guess what took shape? Islam, with Mohammed and his supporters forming a new polity.
I think it’s fair to say that nobody at the time saw it coming.
From the perspective of Germans in the year 1900, nobody would have predicted the rise of an unnoticed 10 year old Austrian boy to lead something called the National Socialists. Who saw THAT coming? Did any one foresee the removal of the Russian ruling family and the rise of the Bolsheviks?
So I wonder what it is nowadays that’s right under everybody’s nose that everybody’s missing?
Who saw THAT coming?
I guess the same people who now see National Socialism coming back again with a vengeance.
And apparently, the Second World War was not the first incarnation of it, we should clearly see it in Western Europe thousand years ago in the Fourth Crusade, culturological consequences of which we still are unable to overcome.
History sometimes seems to rhyme, but sometimes it’s like it’s written in blank verse, or even free verse sometimes.
Volodya.
‘…right under everybody’s nose…’
But willful denial staves it off.
Against the stalwart traditionalists, I would respectfully suggest that if one extrapolates along a trajectory that began around the beginning of the 20th Century, considering all the unforeseen (if not unimaginable or incomprehensible) novelties that have been revealed to us since then, up to and including contemporary cosmic & subatomic theory (about which I shall say nothing, as I plead ‘‘…lo que sabe el burro de telegrafía’) the sky is truly the limit: disclosure of an alien presence, with its evident violation of sacred physical rules, acceptance of the reality of paranormal experience along the lines of what the late John Mack and Rupert Sheldrake propose (out-of-bounds stuff resisted mightily by the fundamentalist-scientific establishment) and awareness of parallel realities, into which we may dip and swim.
Take a tab of acid and tell me I’m wrong.
Looking at this photo essay one cannot help but think of JHK’s lament of the death of small town America.
Slide # 8 immediately reminded me of one of his critiques of oppressive edifices.
https://www.wired.com/story/small-town-america-photography/
You see economic ruin in other countries too. Brexit didn’t come out of nowhere or, as globalist oligarchs and their lackeys would have it, out of xenophobia or Islamophobia.
Remember the story of the Slovak truck drivers driving for Ikea carrying Ikea products in western Europe for a few hundred Euros a month and living for months at a time out of their trucks? Their counterparts in Denmark earn 2,000. This is globalization, using the labor of impoverished countries thus impoverishing the labor of “rich” countries.
Anyone remember Rob Ford? His election came out of wide areas of Toronto that had previously enjoyed middle class prosperity but were increasingly impoverished.
And, don’t look now, but Ford Nation, as it’s called, took another kick at the can. Rob’s brother Doug, was just elected to be the leader of the province of Ontario, one of those formerly industrialized places like Pennsylvania.
If Ford Nation and its alleged attitudinal shortcomings are seen as a problem by supposedly enlightened people, well, the problem is getting worse. Toronto has a population of 3 million, Ontario has a population of 13 million.
Publications like the NY Times and its readers can endlessly repeat “racism, sexism, xenophobia” all they like. But reality is made up of a matrix of facts and facts are extremely stubborn things. Especially pocketbook facts. And these pocketbook facts that got Trump elected you see not just in the US.
It’s the great hypocrisy of the left: protecting blue collar/labor and the poor.
They’re undermining them.
If it’s not lax immigration control/employer sanctions, its the extremely generous allotment of visas to seasonal workers H2 and “special skill” H1-Bs (and their spouses), the extensions of temporary protected status (TPS) that allows illegal immigrants in limbo the ability to work (cheap labor), and broad, bogus, and numerous asylum grants.
So not only are the working poor deprived jobs, they are deprived the ability to work at a rate/wage that is not competing with desperate migrants.
It doesn’t end there.
Do they move into Cynthia Nixon’s neighborhood? Amber Herd’s?
Do the immigrant kids go to their children’s school?
Use their hospital or medical offices?
No, of course not. They live and work with the poor and put competition on their limited resources (schools, police, welfare, medical).
Maybe the better paid H1-Bs, mostly Indians (their lobby is enormous) move into decent middle-class neighborhoods and take their jobs.
Only in the US can people from a global population of a few billion regard themselves as minority.
Don’t hate the player, hate your game.. the one you keep voting in.
You’re being rational in this post – as Krugman often is. But at any moment you’ll start raving about how all things are moving and shifting, and borders are just imaginary lines in the sand, etc.
Yes, we earnestly hope that when White America breaks free, at least parts of White Canada can join us to make a new Super Nation.
I do not think that it will happen.I think the powerful will depopulate us, while living in Argentina or where ever.
On a very separate note, I was reading Peter Townsends book.
Yuk.
He has been interested in Sufism [and NOT living it] since the 1960s.
I was thinking, where is the ‘word’ Meher Baba was to speak? And when?
MB passed in 68? or 69, predicting his passing days before.
And now, its a dystopia we are in. Chemtrails, GMOs, Fluoride.
None of that is by accident.
The Mahdi may well be alive now in the mountainous Land on the Iran/Afghan border. Have hope that you will not die before He reveals himself!
Eric Clapton is not only a Rock God but a good man. In his famous racist speech he said much truth. This is just a small sample:
Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back.
Eric’s extremely sorry for his racism now – blames it on being off his face on drugs.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/eric-clapton-apologizes-for-racist-past-i-sabotaged-everything
Oops.
Janos,
“I used to be all fucked-up on drugs…and then I found Jesus.
“Now I’m all fucked-up on Jesus….” ~ Tommy Chong
I’m glad you are on a first name basis with “Eric”, Alba. At least no can say, “She knows no man”.
Eric seems to have been on first-name terms with Enoch, which I don’t think Enoch would have approved of, somehow.
More to the point, is Mr Clapton still a good man?
You said he was good or implied as much. Perhaps you’re taking it back. In vino veritas, right? The drug, whatever it was, brought out his truth.
Tut tut, Janos, telling me what I think or ‘imply’ again.
I have no view whatsoever on Mr Clapton. You said he was a good man because of his racist exclamations of some time ago. I’m merely telling you he recanted and excused himself for behaviour he later claimed to find reprehensible.
I have no interest in whether that makes him good or bad, a reformed character or a cynical opportunist. Apart from the tragedy with his little boy, for which he had my heartfelt sympathy at the time, I know nothing whatever about him.
“Brexit didn’t come out of nowhere or, as globalist oligarchs and their lackeys would have it, out of xenophobia or Islamophobia.”
What’s the connection between Brexit and Islamophobia?
The connection is the EU’s insistence that its members lap up all the Muslim filth that comes their way.
This has been another in the series Simple Answers to Really Easy Questions.
You are misinformed. But that’s why I asked the question. Because I knew you were misinformed and there would be someone…
I love it when someone who thinks they’re really clever turns out to be really, truly ignorant…
https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-cant-be-forced-accept-more-refugees/
Simple Answers to Really Easy Questions by Complete Simpletons. Thanks. I kind of thought the bright ones would inform themselves before diving in, because it was so obvious, so yeah…
So that brings us back to the point that Islamophobia had no connection with Brexit except for bellends who didn’t know any better.
Bellends among the voters, that is. I mean, I wouldn’t presume…
And to save you embarrassing yourself any further, I’ll just point out in advance what you should know already. That the UK isn’t in Schengen so doesn’t have open borders within the EU.
Sooooooo…any immigrants OR refugees from outside the EU who are in the UK were let in by the Home Office from outside the EU and therefore have nothing whatever to do with the EU or its ‘insistence’ on anything whatsoever.
The vast majority of the UK’s refugee aid was manifested in camps in situ. But why would you know that with the ‘news’ sources you use?
And you know what is the best way to avoid having lots of foreign people heading to your country as first choice? Yes, got it in one. It’s NOT taking over a massive portion of the world, taking every colonial advantage you can over it, taking its stuff, teaching its people your language and calling yourself the mother country.
Because a whole lot of them are going to want to go home to mamma. Who genuinely does owe them something, because she wouldn’t be where she is without what she took. And mamma was happy to take, take, take when it suited her.
And she’s still happy to clean up any post-colonial dirty money through her capital city. She doesn’t mind about that kind of ‘filth’ at all, however black or brown the country it came from or how it was filtered from its people.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/10/uk-block-dirty-money-flowing-city-london
She’s open for business when it comes to interest from loans to those people too, after they’ve been fleeced already.
This has been another in the series More Thoughtful Answers to Simpletons’ Questions.
“…any immigrants OR refugees from outside the EU who are in the UK were let in by the Home Office from outside the EU and therefore have nothing whatever to do with the EU or its ‘insistence’ on anything whatsoever.”
But facts don’t ever get in the way of scum like this:
https://www.newstatesman.com/2016/06/nigel-farage-s-anti-eu-poster-depicting-migrants-resembles-nazi-propaganda
Turns out there IS a connection between Brexit and UK immigration.
http://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/8916/how-will-brexit-affect-migrants-and-refugeesg
Guess Full Fact is chook fulla BM – just like you. Whoo wooda thunk it?
From your article:
“For example, the UK does not participate in the border-check free Schengen area. This fact kept the number of asylum seekers arriving in Britain relatively low. That will not change.”
Like I said.
Like many people you confuse EU migration with non-EU migration. Non-EU migration has ALWAYS AND FOREVER been entirely under the control of the UK government.
If people voted for Brexit because they were concerned about non-EU migration, they were barking entirely up the wrong tree.
Trump consistently and confidently conducts his strategic economic line for the return of the pre-Bretton Woods economic model with balanced trade among the world’s economic leaders.
With the liquidation of USD as the ONLY world currency.
And here he really needs Putin (in this new model), since it is necessary to create a system of regional currencies that “covers” the entire world.
It is for this reason that Trump will share with Putin spheres of influence: it used to be these areas that created profits, now they generate losses.
And therefore, it is necessary to share responsibility with those who are ready to take it. There are very few such players, by the way, because the liberal political school breeds people completely irresponsible.
https://www.amren.com/news/2018/07/supreme-court-says-foreign-nationals-have-no-due-process-rights-here/
The idea that every illegal has the right to lawyers and years of litigation and appeals is simply fatuous – and beyond that, just another Cloward-Piven initiative to overwhelm the system. I’d go the other way: anybody caught trying to sneak in is permanently barred from legal immigration. Second attempt: prison and work on the chain gang building the Wall. Guarded by White Men with dark sunglasses carrying scoped rifles.
Any guard injured by Mexican prisoners or getting skin cancer by being out in the desert sun, should have the right to sue the Mexican Government for medical expenses and damages.
“Guarded by White Men with dark sunglasses carrying scoped rifles.
Janos,
Complete the picture…white men wearing mirror sunglasses ala “Cool Hand Luke”.
Or set on six foot five of a Texas ranger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6wUaXMvbT8&frags=pl%2Cwn
Thank you Janos for posting Washington’s Farewell Address. I wonder how he would think about that nasty librul idea of making the government small enough to drown in a bath tub. Do you think he would find the counsel of men who declare the government to be the enemy of freedom sound?
I feel reasonably confident, on this day following the celebration of our Delcaration of Independence, that no solution to the problems that confront our nation will be found as long as everyone seeks a personal advantage and not a solution. Hard to find something when you are not looking for it.
Tomorrow is a new day
And now the good news!
In England, a revolutionary situation has been formed, just like in Russia – I hope everyone understands that the Natalie-Tours bankruptcy was originally conceived as an informational support for pension reform in Russia?
https://rusletter.com/articles/problems_of_the_tour_operator_natalie_tours_caught_travelers_in_spain_turkey_and_thailand
And in good old England, instead of retirees they use English football fans, who, even without a revolutionary situation, are notorious for their intelligence and ingenuity aimed at all sorts of hooliganism.
In particular, they are now quite ready to lynch Theresa May, who, with her stupid Novichok insistence, brought the whole story to a catastrophe, when most English fans will watch the semi-final of the World Cup on TV, in which England will take part for the first time in 28 years.
This was predicted by the Japanese octopus, which has never been mistaken for the past 6 years, and when this prediction became known to the Black Project in England, several MI6 agents were sent to Japan, an outstanding oracle was bought for taxpayer money and ritually killed by spirit-cooking in the boiling water while still alive, and then devoured by the Satanists at a special session of the British Parliament, which was convened and led personally by Theresa May.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/sports/japans-oracle-octopus-boiled-and-butchered/articleshow/64857793.cms
And now if England and Russia both come to the semi-final it all will turn from a revolutionary situation into 10 days that shook the world!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_That_Shook_the_World
🙂
Over 200 Black Female Leaders Sign Letter to Schumer & Pelosi Criticizing the Pair’s “Attack” on Maxine Waters
Dear Minority Leader Schumer and Minority Leader Pelosi:
We, the undersigned, write to express our full support for Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who has recently been unjustly attacked by Republicans and Democratic Party leadership for speaking truth to power in challenging the Trump Administration to do the right thing by ending a “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy. Families seeking asylum from violence in their home countries are held in detention centers at the Mexican border and even worse, this inhumane immigration policy has separated over 2,000 children from their families.
Further, we write to share our profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump Administration and others in the GOP. That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being “uncivil” and “un-American.” In doing so, we believe this mischaracterizes her call to action for peaceful democratic assembly and the exercise of her constitutional rights to free speech in support of defenseless immigrant children and their families.
As one of the longest serving African American women, and the longest tenured woman of color, in Congress, Representative Waters has dedicated nearly 30 years of her life to federal public service. Prior to that, she was a member of the California State Assembly for 14 years, and has made it her life’s work to stand as a fearless advocate for women and unwavering champion for children, people of color and the poor. [Maxine Waters has grifted the taxpayers for 44 years.]
Millennials of every race and creed revere Congresswoman Waters, whom they affectionately refer to as “Auntie Maxine.” She has been a foremost catalyst in encouraging a new generation to embrace the Democratic Party as the party that shares their values and speaks to the issues they care about most. Not supporting Congresswoman Waters hurts the party and threatens to erode an opportunity to continue to grow the Democratic Party with young leaders and voters. [She’ll even ‘catalyze’ you, White chile. Good & hard.]
For Black women, who are the most loyal base of the Democratic Party and the Progressive Movement, Congresswoman Waters is our shero. At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, Maxine Waters stands bold and unafraid, serving as a beacon of light and hope, her singular voice, speaking powerfully and urging the nation to the moral high ground of justice. She continues the phenomenal legacy of leadership of Black women who paved the way for all women to break glass ceilings… [Yes, that ‘singular’ voice of hers is going to be nagging you until you’re a historical mention, White chile.]
Much hangs in the balance this fall, with all 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats up for grabs. Disparaging or failing to support Congresswoman Waters is an affront to her and Black women across the country and telegraphs a message that the Democratic Party can ill afford: that it does not respect Black women’s leadership and political power and discounts the impact of Black women and millennial voters. [You cannot criticize Black people. Ever. Under any circumstances. Blacks are empowered to occupy a higher plane of privilege than other ethnicities. It says so in the Constitution.]
We call on the Democratic Party leadership to step up and publicly support Congresswoman Waters, who has been receiving death threats for speaking truthfully and boldly in support of immigrant families and challenging the Trump Administration to end their inhumane and immoral policy that has yet to reunite over 2,000 children with their parents and continues to lock up refugees seeking asylum in the United States of America. We further believe Congresswoman Waters is owed an apology for your public comments insinuating she is “uncivil” and “un- American” for challenging the Trump Administration. [You can French-kiss her between her withered old butt cheeks whenever it’s convenient. Be so good as to call first & make an appointment.]
As women whose ancestors have lived through the incivility of slavery, segregation, and all other forms of discrimination, racism, and sexism, as people who have historically been told to “wait” for justice, for freedom, for our turn, we consider it an insult to characterize Ms. Waters’ call for the exercise of our constitutional rights as uncivil and un-American. We call on leaders of all persuasion [sic] to practice the art of civil discourse. [Step to it, Whitey.]
We believe you can make this right.?We expect, and she deserves, your support. Sincerely,
Black Women Leaders and Allies
As of July 3, 2018
3 page list of names
…And the GOP response;
“You can’t fix stupid….”
Extremely low IQ individual(s).
Just keep in mind that Mussolini was hung upside down at a gas station by the same people who voted for him.
St Peter was crucified upside down.
Yeah, but nobody voted for him.
I suspect that there may be a lot of misinformation about Trump? I heard that Trump’s family members and friends are enriching themselves? There’s a lot of propaganda about how the economy is turning around, but I don’t know if it is true? It looks like we’re on the cusp of robots and automation eating up about another 44% of the workforce according to Andrew Yang.
“The U.S. labor force participation rate is now at only 62.9 percent, a rate below that of nearly all other industrialized economies and about the same as that of El Salvador and the Ukraine. Some of this is driven by an aging population, which presents its own set of problems, but much of it is driven by automation and a lower demand for labor.”
Andrew Yang
The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future
I use a tinfoil blanket at home just like the Mexican and Thai kids. I’m always in a survival situation and they’re a great asset. Getting a high quality one that has lasted for years is the best 12 or 15 bucks I ever spent.
Why do you use it?
what about G5 and its dangers? I went to a talk about how ‘many civilizations have been destroyed by G5 type [alien?] technology.
I’m all ears since I don’t know what G5 is – so tell me. I use it to stay warm.
Also, since I have your ear: I bought a package of Japanese Nori Seaweed and then noticed that it had been declared possibly cancerous by the State of California. Any idea what that’s about?
Trump now is fond of declaring: “Black unemployment is now at its lowest lever, ever!”
Really?
The unemployment numbers are meaningless because they don’t include people who have dropped out of the labor force. According to Andrew Yang, 25% of Millennial males live at home and play video games all day because video games give them an illusion of success and accomplishment.
Make that 15% of Millennial males….
Alex Jones: “Trump is turning everything around, and we’re all going to enjoy Life Extension and all travel into Outer Space.”
Really?!
I’ve got much better chance of fucking Maxine Waters than I do of getting Life Extension and traveling into Outer Space.
I get what you’re saying about how the monetization of another expensive government program will cause a lot of inflation, but it’s just not true.
At this point, we could throw money out of a helicopter and it STILL wouldn’t create inflation. Global competition does that
I think I’ve finally found a way to express what I’ve been trying to say about taxes, inflation and the economy.
Let’s call the total amount of all taxes in an economy (local, national or global), “T.”
Let’s call the total amount of inflation, expressed in monetary units (example, dollars) as “I.”
Finally, let’s call the total of the two totals, “TEL,” or “total economic loss.”
Whether government actually returns an equivalent amount of services for the amount of taxes taken and whether or not the inflation is good or bad for a particular economy is beside the point. I’m just trying to theoretically quantify, or put a name on, the total amount taken from an economy between the two sources of “loss.”
So, let’s write the equation now as “T + I = TEL.”
To state that running an economy without taxes would be detrimental to an economy would be to state that we would have a greater “TEL” if we took “T” out of the equation.
My question is….
Can you REALLY say that?
Let’s say taxes are $50 billion and inflation is 5% in a $1 trillion economy.
If taxes are eliminated and a government spends by just printing the money, why wouldn’t inflation simply increase to 10%? We started with an inflation rate of 5% (assuming s $1 trillion economy) and now we’re printing $50 billion. This makes for a total economic loss of $100 billion, which is all being lost through inflation.
You haven’t changed the amount being lost. That’s still $100 billion. All that you’re really doing is changing the WAY it is lost.
Put that way, taxes are chiefly a means of ensuring economic justice.
I’m perfectly willing to listen to anyone who can show me how it is that eliminating taxes and letting the government monetize all of it’s spending would result in a bigger TEL, but to me, taxes are purely political.
More division from the masters. Jimmy’s irony is as deleterious as anything on Alternet. He creates an opposite world where the press is said to be an enemy of the sitting actor Trump even though they elected him and are responsible for his popularity.
Bernie “Lockheed Martin” Sanders is a socialist because the roar of the F-35’s engines are full throated over the homeless veterans begging at stop lights across the entire country. Thus Jim is entirely correct at least half of the time:
The military is given trillions that the masters steal from us to “protect” us. Plenty of oil n’ gas to go around here. Remember when Reagan attacked Grenada? He was pre-senile foaming at the lips about the commies. Who gave a flying fuck about that? Most of the slaves in fact.
Only liars and scum get elected to any office. The voters all delude themselves into they elected the right hero this time.
Pushing division among the lower classes to benefit the rich is the task of propaganda, imagine you’re getting
Conservatives and liberals want a big army to protect them from “terrorists” and “commies” and other BS only frightened children fear. Voter = War Loving Moron, both liberal and conservative. Zero difference. All war loving morons with zero respect for human life. So long as the slaves hate and fear each other, they won’t rise up. The poor in America never will rise up because they know the cops would massacre them and because the rich and middle class have beaten them down like curs.
Nothing more fun than messing around in small boats down on Long Island Sound, rowing around, fishing for flounders, cooling off with a quick swim in the still relatively cold water, and of course iced Narragansetts (“Hi neighbor, have a ‘gansett”) close at hand. Here’s the thing tho: lots of marinas around here with hundreds of boats, yachts and cabin cruisers tied up, bobbing around in the harbors, not one in 10 actually getting underway and headed out to sea. The various captains seem to content to remain dockside, fishing off the side and drinking (beer mostly). I’ve always wondered, why is the price of gasoline about double at the marina than it is at the local gas station? That could be the reason why they stay tied up at the dock most of the time.
brh
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day
Teach him to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day
(from a birthday card)