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It’s Nancy Pelosi’s smile that gets me…oh, and not in a good way. It’s a smile that is actually the opposite of what a smile is supposed to do: signal good will and good faith. Nancy’s smile is full of malice and bad faith, like the smiles on representations of Shiva-the-Destroyer and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god who demanded thousands of human hearts to eat, lest he bring on the end of the world.

It’s not exactly the end of the world in Washington D.C., but as the old saying goes: you can see it from there! It’s out on the edge of town like one of those sinister, broken-down circuses from the Ray Bradbury story-bag, with its ragtag cast of motheaten lions, crippled acrobats, a crooked wagon full of heartbroken freaks, and a shadowy ringmaster on a mission from the heart of darkness.

The new Democratic majority congress has convened in the spirit of a religious movement devoted to a single apocalyptic objective: toppling the Golden Golem of Greatness who rules in the House of White Privilege. They’re all revved up for inquisition, looking to apply as many thumbscrews, cattle prods, electrodes, waterboards, and bamboo splinters as necessary in pursuit of rectifying the heresy of the 2016 election.

The simpleton California congressman Brad Sherman (D-30th dist.) couldn’t contain his glee, like a seven-year-old boy about to pull the wings off a fly. As soon as the Democratic majority was sworn in, he filed his articles of impeachment to impress his Wokester San Fernando Valley constituents out for deplorable blood. That was even a bit too much for Madam Speaker who reminded Sherman that some scintilla of a predicate crime was required — but surely would be available when Special Counsel Robert Mueller hurls down his tablets of accusation from on high.

As for their quarry, the Golden Golem, a.k.a. D.J. Trump, I’m not convinced that he is a mere hapless yegg waiting to be sliced, diced, and skewered. He’s POTUS, after all, and has access to quite a bit of information and expertise. He’ll shortly have a new Attorney General on board, William Barr, who might just ask the question that has been hanging in the air like a pulsating zeppelin for two years, viz: has Mr. Mueller even paid a casual glance at the shenanigans going on all around him in the Department of Justice and the FBI lo these many many months of prosecuting Trump factotums on rinky-dink process charges? And might all that monkey business in politicizing the agencies, and scheming to undo Mr. Trump even turn up as a footnote in that holy grail of the Mueller report awaited so eagerly by the inquisitionists?

It would be just and logical if Mr. Mueller had paid attention to the misconduct of the highest officials in the DOJ and FBI beginning in the winter of 2016, since there is an evidence trail as broad as the DC Beltway right out there in the public record. Maybe Mr. Mueller will surprise many of us and actually include the already-documented misdeeds of his protégé Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Ms. Page, Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Mrs. Ohr, Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Ms. Lynch, Ms. Yates, and sundry servants of the Obamas and Clintons, involved in the government-sponsored coup attempt. They will eventually have to answer to somebody. I believe that somebody will be Mr. Barr, who will finally have the authority to ignite a counter-inquisition.

It’s important to set these matters aright, if you want to keep the constitution. Under the narcoleptic Jeff Sessions, the institutional rot turned into a possibly fatal gangrene. Did certain parties want to send patsies like George Papadopoulos to prison for a couple weeks, or break, defame, and bankrupt General Flynn under a recklessly malicious prosecution — because that was all that they had to show for two years of looking under every rock and rotten log between the Potomac River and the Kremlin? Has Mr. Mueller even noticed the established fact that Hillary Clinton supplied the inquisition with its founding, false documentary evidence?

So, let the circus begin on Capital Hill. Let them kick out the jams, as we used to say back in Woodstock era. Let Nancy Pelosi finish the work that the Democratic Party started with the election of 2016 — its own destruction as a viable political force. Let all the darkness and malice be wrung out of it so the country can return to its senses and start paying attention to things that really matter, backed by institutions that people of good faith can believe in.


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434 Responses to “And the Circus Came to Town”

  1. DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 10:19 am #

    Ah, something new in the air:

    New Democratic congresswoman says “impeach the motherfucker” in video: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who just began her first term, has generated headlines after a video showed her using an expletive as she pledged to impeach President Donald Trump.

    “We’re gonna go in there, we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker,” says Tlaib

    Have to love it…

    • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 10:27 am #

      Yes, Ms. Tlaib is quite a lovely role model for Muslim women everywhere. They should protect their daughters’ genitalia from amputation with such zeal!

      • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 10:53 am #

        That’s cold.

        It’s nice to know, however, that even Muslims, the Mormons of the Abrahamic Faiths, can be corrupted by our corrosive culture.

        • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 11:30 am #

          So perceptive Doctor! If there’s anything wrong with them, our culture did it. Maybe they should seek purity where they live, instead of migrating in hordes into the West.

        • Martymcfly January 4, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

          Actually, Mormons are the Mormons of the Abrahamic faiths. Mormonism is an Abrahamic religion.

          • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

            They need to stone Mitt Romney in Temple Square. I’ll bet they still have the laws on their books!

          • 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 5:15 pm #

            Actually, it’s ponzi scheme started by a broke New York racketeer.

      • Anon1970 January 4, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

        Once upon a time, Ms. Tlaib’s Congressional District and nearby neighborhoods was heavily Polish especially on the Dearborn side and heavily black on the Detroit side. The 1965 changes to the immigration law, which Jewish Congressman Emanuel Cellar had spent four decades trying to get through Congress gradually changed the demographic makeup of the country. By the first half of the 1970’s, there was already a heavy Muslim presence on the east side of Dearborn. Many of them probably worked at various Ford Motor plants in the area. In those days, Dearborn housing was de facto off limits to blacks, if not de juri and the town was considered to be a very safe place to live in. I wonder what Congressman Cellar would think of his handiwork if, like Fruma Sarah in “Fiddler on the Roof”, he could come back from the other world.

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

          I’m sure he would be very happy.

          One understands where cEllar came from: early in his ongressional career there was the horrow of Jews fleeing for their lives being turned away from the USA. Never again!

          Except that, by 1965, the State of Israel was there to take in Jews who would not again lack a homeland. Like most older politicians, and old generals, he fought and won the last war.

        • John Joslin January 5, 2019 at 5:49 pm #

          Just to clarify, Ms. Tlaib was just elected as a rep. for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. That district shows approx. between 4% to 5% voters who identify as Arab-American.

          Her last gig was a term-limited 6-year stint in Michigan’s Legislature from the 6th House District. Let’s see… that district boasts all of 2% of Arab-American voters.

          So , yeah, the country has changed a lot since the 60’s & 70’s .

          ( Historical note : The FoMoCo ‘Rouge’ complex employed many Arab-Americans way before the 1970’s…try the 1930’s ! )

      • daveed January 7, 2019 at 9:28 am #

        …..and the roaming hands of the President of the United States, as well.

    • teddyboy46 January 4, 2019 at 10:42 am #

      and Dem,Libs call it courageous. These clowns are going to put on quite a show.

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 11:06 am #

        Yet more evidence, as if it were needed of how the horrendous Trump has lowered everything down to his level.

        Good for her! These slobs need a good shaking up.

        • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 11:17 am #

          Horrendous? How many brown people has Trump targeted compared to W? Obama, the Nobel Peace laureate?

          Look at what people DO, not what they SAY.

          Check the numbers yourself:
          https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war

          Over 1200 killed by Obama in Pakistan in his first two years in office. 110-121 killed in Pakistan in the first two years of W’s second term. 16-25 killed over the first two years of Trump. So W was 7 times worse than Trump on this metric, and Obama, the Nobel Peace laureate, was 11 times worse than W.

          Find me something Trump has DONE more horrendous than those two war criminals.

          • Elrond Hubbard January 4, 2019 at 2:03 pm #

            Doc, Doc. This blog is a swamp of seething resentments and recriminations, not a place for reasoned debate.

            A principled argument, based on material facts, is as out of place here as a ballerina at a meth lab. The longer she hangs around, the more she risks an addiction, an infection, or an explosion.

          • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 2:08 pm #

            The sanctimonious, virtue signalling Elrond drops in just long enough to leave his stink bomb.

          • Anon1970 January 4, 2019 at 2:26 pm #

            W. spent more time targeting gays, especially gays who wanted to marry each other, even Christian ones whose families had lived in the country since its founding. He made no distinction. Trump has spent more time targeting brown people. I guess neither of them knew or know what to do with the major sources of crime in the country’s cities, namely, black people. Contrary to what the liberal media might have you believe, police commit very few of the murders in the nation’s central cities. See heyjackass.com for data on Chicago.

            In the meantime, the state of government finances (Federal, state and local) continues to deteriorate. Unfunded retirement benefits (including Medicare) are a big source of the growing financial cancer, along with the desire of many in both parties to continue to keep up the US role as policeman of the world, a role which we cannot afford.

          • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm #

            Are you a stunted schoolboy used to arguing in the gymnasium? How many brown greasespots have various presidents left? Do you even hear yourself?

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:50 pm #

            Haha, I love this post!!!

          • wolfbay January 4, 2019 at 5:41 pm #

            At least Obama used highly accurate drone strikes. When he was commander in chief he managed a direct hit on the Doctors Without Borders hospital and incinerated all the volunteer doctors. Could you imagine if Trump had done this.As much as I despise Republicans the Democrats get high marks for unmatched hipocracy.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 9:29 am #

            Anon1970, it’s a little hard to believe that Trump has spent more time “targeting” Brown people than Obama or W, given the lower number of drone strikes. We do seem to be good at killing overseas; addressing crime, budgets, infrastructure here, less so. Your point Is well taken.

            DEFCON1, I asked for the person who used the word horrendous about Trump because he’s a foul-mouthed, plain-spoken outer-boroughs BS artist, especially compared to Obama who was not that sort of talker, to tell me whether Trump’s ACTIONS were more horrendous. I think blowing people up and collaterally damaging people who aren’t terrorists is pretty horrible, if not horrendous. YMMV.

            Wolf bay, that sense you have is the spirit of a new third party perhaps being born. Two wings of the same bird of prey.

            Thanks for the support, Elrond.

          • Elrond Hubbard January 5, 2019 at 12:16 pm #

            ‘Virtue signalling’, *sigh*. Mistaking commentary from the principled left for the kind of Rockefeller-Republican centrism, mixed with identity politics, that passes for the eeevil ‘Left’ in right-wing propaganda word. It must a be that ends in ‘y’.

        • lbs January 4, 2019 at 11:44 am #

          Your point that Trump has led Democrats to behave like deranged assholes- I wasn’t sure if that was serious or satire.

      • NoLongerHuman January 4, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

        Yeah and Mitch McConnell always gives me the warm fuzzies.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2r0lxndnsE

        This all a sham show of a bunch of assholes in both parties. They are playing you all.

        The Tea party and the Occupy Wall Street were recent groups that had a chance to step outside the two party paradigm. Bernie Sanders and Trump actually appealed to these groups. NPR, The Atlantic and even Forbes said that their supporters had some common views.

        Read that as an Epic Threat to the Deep State corruption system that all of the whoring politicians on both sides are the ugly face of.

        You are being taken.

        Why would the democratic congress re-elect Nancy Pelosi as speaker?

        Because she makes half of the countries blood boil.

        That is American Democracy.
        You Hate the other party.
        You believe the parties are different

        They Win

        • NoLongerHuman January 4, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

          Why would McConnell crush the most energetic movement to come to the Republican Party in decades

          https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/emperor-mitch-mcconnell-pledges-crush-tea-party-rebellion/358995/

          Because they want to reign in deficits? Which destroy America

          Think about what they are protecting?

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:49 pm #

          You are correct about that. Both parties do not have the countries’ best interest at heart.

        • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 10:59 pm #

          The ONLY reason they re-elected Pelosi as Speaker of the House is because she holds the PURSE STRINGS to their re-election campaigns.

          It’s all about $$ and POWER.

          Especially if you vote against her, like Cortez, Gabbard and Khanna (three members out of the 90 plus “Democrat Progressive Caucus”) did.

          Watch their names. If they continue to be a stone in Pelosi’s shoe she will make sure they are all primaried next Fall.

          Guaranteed.

    • gonetohell January 4, 2019 at 7:53 pm #

      To JHK: Who cares how they rid the country of narcissistic, corrupt and egomaniacal Trump, so long as it’s done. For anyone that will rely, at least partly, on social security to survive in retirement, and on medicare for decent health care, this jackwad must be brought down. For anyone that doesn’t want environmental protections rolled back to the 1950’s, along with resurgent investment in the coal industry, this toad must be removed. You can blather on all you wish about a witch hunt, but we do in fact have witches to be burned. Let’s get to it!

      • Nightowl January 5, 2019 at 1:23 pm #

        Quite a few of us care.

        Trump seems to have broken no laws, while your McResisters are responsible for the some of the greatest crimes in US history.

    • Elrond Hubbard January 6, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

      Rep. Tlaib’s sentiment is growing ever more widespread, it seems:

      Former PM Kim Campbell calls Trump expletive on Twitter

      https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/former-pm-kim-campbell-calls-trump-expletive-on-twitter-1.4241998

      Former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell used the same expletive to describe U.S. President Donald Trump as a newly elected Democratic congresswoman who is now under fire for her comments.

      Campbell, Canada’s first female prime minister, tweeted just before 10 a.m. on Saturday: “He really IS a mother——!” Campbell attached a video of Trump reiterating his call for a border wall, despite zero support from House Democrats to support the marquee plan.

      Campbell’s sharply-worded tweet comes one day after video surfaced of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Detroit, telling supporters at an event on Thursday that Democrats were going to “Impeach the mother——.”

      Actually, it wasn’t Rep. Tlaib who started this particular ball rolling; credit for that goes to popular sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, of Santorum fame. Wanna contribute to the cause as well? Get your T-shirt now!

  2. messianicdruid January 4, 2019 at 10:21 am #

    An observation : the three rows of pictures of 2020 dem candidates shows H-Clinton missing *while* the previous week she came in on the third row.

    A question to any Utah CFNers : does the Mormon have the mandate of the “prophet” ?

  3. BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 10:31 am #

    Jim, the amount of mischief these circus clowns can commit seems incaculable. Just take a look at Congresswoman Ocassio-Ortiz new Green Bill of Rights. For starters, the elimination of all coal, gas and oil by 2025! After that comes a long list of historical grievances to be corrected. The depth of ignorance displayed here is astonishing.

    Vrh

    • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 10:38 am #

      you cant fix stupid.

      keep reporting on the nuts in yr nutmeg state.

    • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 11:09 am #

      They’re secular versions of the ghost dance for non-Indians. The buffalo, they aren’t returning.

    • Elrond Hubbard January 4, 2019 at 2:07 pm #

      BRH, all fossil fuels will be exhausted soon enough anyway. The sooner we get off them, the more control we have over the process and the better our prospects coming out the other side. Not all of us are actually jonesing for the apocalypse.

      • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 2:24 pm #

        There are as of yet no replacement for fossil fuels, and i doubt there will ever be

        Brh

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 9:37 am #

          Negawatts!

          Think about your shower. Natural gas that was millions of years in the making is used to turn 50 degree tap water into 95 degree shower water. That warm water hits your body for 1/2 a second, then goes down the drain and all the heat is lost forever. If your shower was a closed cycle, with excellent filtration to remove, well, you know, you could take a 1-hour shower with only 5 gallons of water used.

          The technology exists to do this today. The problem is that we won’t use it because fossil fuels are too cheap, so there’s no payoff. Good government policy would heavily tax fossil fuels and rebate taxes for energy-efficiency improvements, so we could deal with declining energy inputs in a gradual manner.

          I’m not looking forward to cold showers.

        • Nightowl January 5, 2019 at 1:25 pm #

          Actually, MIT has a bacteria that produces a gasoline like biofuel that could very well replace the fossil fuels currently in use.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 1:56 pm #

            If we had only as many people as we had in 1965, about 195,000,000, we would have a massive surplus of oil. We are about back to the level of per-capita oil consumption of that year:
            http://www.realitybase.org/journal/2010/12/13/the-history-of-us-per-capita-petroleum-consumption-will-surp.html

            Call it 20/bbl per person per year. Since there are 120MM more people in the USA now, that’s 2.4 billion more arrests we need to find and burn every year than we did in 1965 with the approximately same consumption per person.

      • outOfTheMoney January 4, 2019 at 3:25 pm #

        That isn’t accurate, unless you’re overgeneralizing and specifically mean that petroleum is in its terminal-depletion phase. That is true enough.

        But the world has enough available coal to last a couple of centuries at least, setting aside the potentially disastrous environmental consequences of doing so. The Fischer-Tropsch process can be (and has been) used to convert coal into liquid hydrocarbons such as gasoline, but the necessary plants are very expensive and vulnerable to downward oil-price shocks. For this reason, no one wants to invest in such plants without governmental protection (read: subsidies) in the event of low oil prices.

        As JHK points out, there’s no “Goldilocks zone” in the oil markets: low prices bankrupt producers while high prices ruin everyone else, with no “sweet spot” in between.

        A question for Mr. Kunstler: is the title of today’s essay meant merely as a colloquial expression, or is it perhaps a nod to Bert Jansch (“And the red-eyed tiger flicks his tail / He circles ‘round to no avail”) or Los Lobos (“But when the lights are turning ’round / And wheels are rolling on the ground / The day I’ll burn this whole place down / When the circus comes to town”)?

        The Phish cover of the Los Lobos tune may be better known, but I prefer the original version.

        • Elrond Hubbard January 5, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

          True, outOfTheMoney, I spoke off the cuff. But even a timescale of centuries for coal isn’t very interesting when the real stakes are the long-term survival of humanity. That, and the fate of Earth’s natural living environment, whose value is inestimable.

          • Coal is so much cheaper per BTU than other sources. There is no economic, civil path toward mitigating its exploitation.

            For this reason, I don’t see its use declining. The only thing that will stop it is force. Unpleasant as it is.

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:48 pm #

        You are right Elrond. Not many people are jonesing for the apocalypse. The apocalypse is jonesing for us though.

        • Elrond Hubbard January 5, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

          Thank you, SoftStarLight.

          ‘Jonesing for the apocalypse’ is one way of expressing what I see in a lot of the commentary around here. Leaving aside specific battles over this or that, it’s one of the main sources of conflict between me and others, including JHK (the Jones family patriarch, if you will): mandatory pessimism, the way so many commenters insist on the worst possibilities as the only possibilities.

          Nathan Robinson puts it pretty well:

          Why Hopelessness Is Conservative
          Those who defend the established order want you to believe that you’re stupid and can’t change anything.

          https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/why-hopelessness-is-conservative

          “Pessimism is a kind of surrender to existing circumstance. You don’t think things are going to get better, and you become resigned to a bleak future. Generally the pessimist has very limited confidence that human beings can do much to alter their existing condition.”

          This attitude pervades the right nowadays. Peddling it has been the foundation of Jordan Peterson’s recent good fortune, for example. That’s why he tells his followers to straighten their postures, clean their rooms, etc.: because trying to do anything about the wider world is pointless and wrong. I reject this attitude completely. We need to account for all possibilities, including the good ones, and each take our share of responsibility for the actual outcomes.

  4. malthuss January 4, 2019 at 10:42 am #

    DJIA up 560 points in a few minutes.

  5. chipshot January 4, 2019 at 10:43 am #

    That is a phony and evil smile.

    Second paragraph is vintage JHK.
    Makes me think you binged on Sci-Fi channel’s New Years Twilight Zone Marathon.

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  6. beantownbill. January 4, 2019 at 10:46 am #

    Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  7. teddyboy46 January 4, 2019 at 10:48 am #

    Very cool I love JHKs use of the english language. I have been sitting with my dying aunt all week and she loves CNN and MSNBC so I have been watching it all week. I noticed something , that when they come back from commercial all the so called experts are looking off camera like they are waiting for the producer to signal they are on air. I also noticed the host does not call on the experts randomly. there is a very strict order on which they are called and they deliver their lines like they are auditioning for a part in a movie. i do not think they believe anything they are saying . They are in it to be on TV and make good money.

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 3:50 pm #

      It is all completely staged and scripted. Faux news but great acting, at least sometimes.

    • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 11:07 pm #

      They are repeaters and not reporters.

  8. TiredOfTheTreadmill January 4, 2019 at 10:51 am #

    Reminds me of the Republican majority that arrived in DC with the sole purpose of destroying Obama and anything he had done or might do. This is where the Gingrich revolution has taken us: the politics of destruction. Shit politics for a shit culture. Seems appropriate.

    • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 10:54 am #

      destroying Obama, good move.

      • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 4, 2019 at 11:00 am #

        Same for Trump, Bush, Clinton. It’s all become a joke.

    • TinySolar January 4, 2019 at 11:10 am #

      Tired,

      Amen to that! I think Karl Rove played a role also.

    • ozone January 4, 2019 at 11:33 am #

      Tiredguy,
      What is it about this spectacle of destruction that is so fascinating for the human psyche? (I happen to think it’s the exercise of power that makes it so evilly delicious.) At any rate, “Shit politics for a shit culture”, seems about right to me, and a thinly veiled version of this is assiduously dispersed by an army of trolls and “pundits” every stinking day.

      Maintaining power and influence (leading to kingly wealth) is the business of the entrenched status quo, so creepy circus it shall be, with untold heaps of corpses burnt in its ovens. (Can’t leave out the MICC now, can we?)

      Just an example of the mendacious game played by one of the parties: The GOP will now scream, cry and rend their garments in woe over government debt, a thing that they have been “workin’ hard” to escalate to new and mind-boggling heights every time they get their hands on the purse strings. Mark my words. Works on the rubes every time.

      Shit politics for a shit culture, indeed. The conundrum then becomes: Shall we try a dangerous boarding to mitigate the speed of the runaway train or let it wreck at the end of the line and then begin the trudge through the ashes in search of “other arrangements” [tm, JHK]? …And in which direction does a people without critical thinking skills trudge — especially with no ‘device’ or ‘social media’ to guide them? What is a constitution to those who haven’t the wherewithal or motivation to understand it? (Witness the POTUS and his cadre of grasping cronies.)

      • Tate January 4, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

        In what way hasn’t the POTUS understood the constitution?

        As opposed to the constitutional scholars who want to dissolve the borders of this country?

        • ozone January 4, 2019 at 5:59 pm #

          Sooo, you’re assuming that The Donald has *read* the constitution? Whataboutism notwithstanding, that’s kind of a slim possibility.
          Do NOT make the mistake of thinking I worshiped at the altar of The Cult of Obama. Just another tool of the Money Masters, IMHO.

          • Tate January 5, 2019 at 1:43 pm #

            I wouldn’t know for certain but I think he probably has read it at one time or another & understands it about as well as most who have occupied the office, including the last incumbent.

            Don’t fret, Trump will pass, probably sooner rather than later, but he won’t be the worst if current trends continue.

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 1:31 pm #

      I don’t know TOTT, I cannot recall any of the sellouts in DC doing anything but kissing Barry’s half-white ass while he was in office, especially John Boener who gave Barry what he needed to get ObamaMiscare passed.

      • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 4, 2019 at 8:18 pm #

        We will see. Dems are throwing out lots of tough talk, like the Repubs did. But, the Dems have a really impressive track record of being good lap dogs and gimps. Their true nature likelywill come to the forefont. We shall see. My guess is the main concern in DC will be ensuring that their wealthy benefactors are not negatively touched or inconvenienced in any way as the economy melts down. All else will be theater. That’s where my bets lie.

        • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 8:31 pm #

          Well feel free to bet the entire roll on it because that is exactly what is going to happen. They don’t even pretend to give a shit about anybody besides themselves anymore.

        • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 11:09 pm #

          We are all about to witness major shootings in the feet by the Democrats.

          Bring. It. On.

      • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 4, 2019 at 8:27 pm #

        Also, as much as the man in the street conservatives hated Obama, he was a good old fashioned Republican president. Upwardly moving wealth, increasedthe Pentagons’ budget, lots of killing in other countries. Take out the gay marriage stuff and Obamacare and what’s an old fashioned, sane Republican to complain about?

        • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 11:16 pm #

          Exactly.

          “Obamacare” was straight out of Romney’s Massachusetts playbook and The Heritage Foundation!

          Ordered by Big Pharma and the Insurance Conglomerates.

          Obama personally killed “The Public Option” because the Insurance Conglomerates couldn’t stand the competition.

          Most average Americans who are currently suffering under Obamacare will not realize that the Democrats under Nancy Pelosi with her “PayGo” bullshit will NEVER be able to see a “Medicare for All” healthcare system (even though it has worked VERY well for seniors for decades!) because she has her head completely up the asses of Big Pharma and the Insurance Conglomerates (as do ALL the Democrats and Republicans!)

          Hopefully by Election Day 2020 the American people will see the Democrats for what they are: A totally corrupt and morally bankrupt political party that does not deserve ONE vote!

          (And don’t get me started on the Republicans!).

          • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 5, 2019 at 9:01 am #

            I concur. If Obama had been a white Republican, Obamacare would have been the second coming of Jesus. But alas, he wasn’t, so they have to hate it and make a big show about killing.

  9. FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 10:52 am #

    Swarm of Witches came Town to Haunt Good Christian Folks

    https://www.dailywire.com/sites/default/files/styles/open_graph/public/uploads/2019/01/talib.jpg

    • FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 10:55 am #

      This one is casting a spell for your wife to leave you.

  10. ccm989 January 4, 2019 at 10:55 am #

    First let me say I really enjoyed “The Fall of the Ancients” — rarely does a revenge story satisfy. But this one was wonderful. So thank you for that, Mr. Kunsler!

    However, I do smell, what is it, a whiff of desperation in the air? Why that evil old lady Pelosi is now in charge of the House. O no! What will she do? End the government shut down! Remind us that MEXICO should pay for the wall — which any intelligent person realizes is a complete BOONDOGGLE — or investigate Mr. I Can Pardon Myself?

    Let the fun begin! Happy New Year!

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    • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 11:38 am #

      The apple does not fall far from the tree.

      “Nancy Pelosi’s father Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. allegedly was a “constant companion” of notorious mobster Benjamin “Benny Trotta” Magliano and other underworld figures during his political years in Baltimore, MD. D’Alesandro was a Congressman for five terms from 1938 to 1947, and Baltimore mayor for three terms from 1947 to 1959.”

      bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_of_ours/2015/07/…

    • cbeard January 4, 2019 at 11:49 am #

      Taxing Mexican remittances would go a long way in paying for the wall.

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

        Exactly, but Congress would never allow that. They are not interested in anything that would actually keep the country safe and secure. They profit from the open borders situation.

        • 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

          The world is moving to open borders. Borders produce inequality, resentment, and war.

          The only people unsafe are those that can’t compete… with everyone.

          Being white in America can’t write checks forever.

          • romanmanner January 4, 2019 at 6:12 pm #

            Yes, the world certainly is. I moved from a blue state to a red state to finish school and remain competitive. I was a GOP supporter at the time; but a few years under their governance has erased all of that from me.

            I completely agree with your comments on competition. The sad lot around my abode that are the descendants of factory workers are now pill-popping booze hounds that cry about tradition and some nebulous sense that they’re still important.

            They consistently vote against their interests, refuse to adapt to the new economic reality (or truly cannot), and then soundly refuse any gov’t help in the form of retraining. They are the same lot that complains about ‘welfare’ and ‘illegals’ taking what they think is ‘theirs’ but have both hands out for dubious disability claims.

            Last summer I drove cross country to work for a summer for a possible employer. At every stop along the way I saw fat, sick, ignorant, disheveled denizens of the great U S of A. They make me feel embarrassed to be a citizen of this shit hole.

            I’m done with it; with the red states, the GOP, even the broader American experiment. I’m almost done with this place, and then I’m headed back my blue state home. I won’t miss this place.

            If I’m not clear by this point: fuck the rabble that won’t compete; they deserve to be replaced by those who can.

          • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 7:52 pm #

            Thank you, Gordon Gecko.

          • 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 10:09 pm #

            Agreed.
            I contemplated these feelings for some time.
            The contempt felt for obese white trash vaping away in camo ball caps while driving lifted pick-ups comes from one of two places:

            1) The familiarity generates feelings of vulnerability: this could easily be me. We’re not that different.

            2) Latent racism: this shouldn’t happen to my kindred, my demographic, my “people”. We’re better than that, right?

            Both feelings are rather empowering learning moments.
            Because both are wrong, and both are cover for the deeper feeling.

            We allowed this happen to one another, to ourselves.
            Because deep down, we loathe our way, the hateful, ugly, wasteful, and toxic world that we created.
            The one swallowing us, too.

          • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:16 am #

            The world is not moving to open borders. Silly and spoiled first world countries are moving to open borders for money, profit, and political correctness as displayed here. Disliking people who do not take care of themselves or their own is one thing. That behavior does need attention and correction. But a callous if you cannot compete then be replaced attitude is a fine example of the cruelty of unfettered captalism and shameless individualism.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 9:48 am #

            Roman,

            They cannot compete at the game you’re succeeding at. What if the end of fossil fuels completely alters the game, and removes the energy subsidy for the oversized managerial overclass? That’s happening now.

            Those depressed fat slobs, to paraphrase you, got hit by this first. They won’t be the last. I shudder to think of the future of all the “machers” who make their living “managing” other people, rather than producing. Hope that’s not you.

          • 100th Avatar January 5, 2019 at 11:19 am #

            Good point Doc. There are a lot of pasty country people feeling overconfident these days because they can stalk and dress a large herbivore, or are totally comfortable eating small varmints.

            Just as there are those designer-eyeglass-wearing, loft-living “managerial class” believing that a cleansing of debts or a technological miracle will save them and their Roth IRAs.

            Yet, as always, wits are the ultimate weapon with man, and the slobs will lose, again, in due time.

            I am being rather presumptuous. They are those you speak of “producing”? Right?

            The only thing they are producing these days are spent Juuls, venison jerky, empty brass casings, and future clean coal harvesters.

            Because, no matter how vigorously one stirs the soup, certain elements settle and certain elements rise to the top.

            That’s just nature. Takes so much to change… Jeanette Walls and all.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 2:07 pm #

            By producing, I mean those people creating things of value decided by real customers. In academics, this is the people who do the teaching, who write the interesting books, and who actually do the research. In auto manufacturing, this is the people building the cars and designing them, engineers.

            I don’t discount actual coordination of these efforts as production. What percentage of management work is this? Recall Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy.

            In academics, we have the situation where more of the workers (and WAY more of the dollars) in the University of California system are administrators. In automaking, recall that GM went into the 2008 crisis only making money in GMAC because the management spent so much time and effort on itself, and on lobbying, and destroyed what was a great US corporation.

            After the end of fossil fueled cornucopia, there’s going to be a lot less excess wealth to float millions of dollars in wealth to all those Associate Deans, and all those CEOs who ran companies into the ground but made out like bandits. There will still be a need for teachers, professors even, and mechanics.

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

      She won’t do anything but serve her corporate and globalist masters period.

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 1:33 pm #

      There is one way that any of these sellout scum can torpedo the idea of building The Wall and that would be to tell the president, “How about instead of building that Wall Mr. Trump, why don’t we simply enforce our existing immigration policy”? I guess adhering to the law is something that has gone the way of the DoDo bird, eh?

      • S M Tenneshaw January 4, 2019 at 2:12 pm #

        And while we’re at it, we could enforce antitrust law as well.

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:46 pm #

          Please do! Let’s start with social media companies and work our way through the system. Google first!!!

  11. messianicdruid January 4, 2019 at 10:57 am #

    Tucker Carlson as Rod Serling!

    Theme Song, the next Old Hippy song, “He turned 65 last Friday, in his mind the past was disappearing, seems very strange when he, thinks about his what’s nearing, and peacefully bends @ knee.”

  12. chipshot January 4, 2019 at 10:57 am #

    How did this blog attract so many right wingers?

    One telltale sign of right wingers is they consider Dems
    the same as liberals. (the current DNC is more right of center than left).

    Another is the bashing of AOC and now Rashida Tlaib,
    two representatives that actually want to represent the
    majority of people (as opposed to corporations and the 1%).

    At least the right wingers here are willing to expand their horizons beyond Fox and Limbaugh, however I doubt they’re open to
    changing their views.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 10:59 am #

      Liberals?

      They are over there!

      https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/sasha_portland/16992771/51391/51391_600.jpg

    • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 11:02 am #

      Not a fan of bashing AOC. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be sopolitical as to post the video of her dancing and think tha it would make people hate her. She looked girly and joyous. We could use that, much more so than myrmidons of murder like Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

        Yes, let’s check back in with you on that once your utilities have been shut off due to “New Green Deal” regulations. AOC is nothing more than another privileged elite craving power and wealth. She is not and never was a person who had to struggle for anything. She is a joke.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

          I bet she had a pony as a little girl – which is fine but she’s pretending to be a barrio brown girl. Can she ever speak Spanish I wonder?

          I knew a guy once who made a huge deal about his Mexican heritage but couldn’t speak it. He embarrassed himself on one occasion when asked to read something in Spanish and was stumbling with it. I forget the names, but there’s been a vocalist and actor or two who have started taking lessons in order to become more “authentic”.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

            Well she grew up in Yorktown Heights, NY. A high income small town in Westchester County. Maybe she did have a pony! Suffice it to say I am sure she was not just stuck with My Little Pony. Either way she lacks authenticity but that doesn’t stop sheeple from believing she is some sort of divine incarnation that is going to save the earth.

          • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

            Nice rack tho

          • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

            AOC is a privileged little snowflake in a Che Guevara T-shirt who’s never done a day’s real work in her life. She can’t imagine why anyone would, when Government can just hand out everything we need.

            I hope she pesters Pelosi until the old witch strokes out.

          • draupnir January 4, 2019 at 9:02 pm #

            Oh, I don,t know about that. I think Pelosi would just smile that smile of hers and cut off her head and she won’t even know she’s bleeding.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 9:56 am #

            Hmuller, she was working as a bartendress (there’s a triggering word) and was too broke to afford much. She’s not someone who married money (Pelosi) or power (Clinton). She struck gold and got herself a serious pay raise by taking out Crowley.

            She is a socialist, but that makes her a real threat to the system of crony capitalism in DC, where the connected have gathered in all the wealth of the nation. Between having DC fat cats and poor folks out in the boondocks get the money, what’s your preference? I’m sure we’d both prefer that the money not be centrally and unaccountably gathered in DC, but that’s not the situation we have now. AOC’s version is better than the
            Republicrat one we have now.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:06 am #

            SSL, Yorktown Heights isn’t in the same category as Scarsdale, Rye, Harrison, Bronxville as wealthy enclaves. The median price of a home in the county is about 700k; the median in Yorktown Heights is 456k, more than 30% lower.

            She becomes a representative of a particular sort: lower to middle middle class girl from the suburbs who spent too much to get a degree from an overpriced university and an inability to earn enough to replicate the lifestyle of her parents. She probably at least got scholarship money so not much in the way of student loans.

            There are a LOT of young people like her whose future prospects are much dimmer because the Baby Boomers have eaten out the seed corn of society, lain waste to our social capital, and completely broken our politics so we cannot change things. They’re pissed off and depressed, whether white, black, or Hispanic, but they’re going to start squeezing out the useless career politicians like Crowley one by one.

            We can dream of Pelosi getting primaried. It’s coming.

          • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 10:40 am #

            Dr Tom,

            I am totally opposed to the Washington-Wall Street kleptocracy of globalist pedophiles who have ruled us so long and so arrogantly. But neither do I want to go the way of Venezuela. The Cabal uses both crony capitalism and socialism to enslave the masses.

            What I want is an awakening of the human mind and spirit which goes beyond squabbling over material things. There are so many layers of delusion, from the material to the metaphysical, whereby the Archons keep us in ignorance and at each others throats.

          • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

            Dr Tom

            AOC’s net worth is estimated at $200,000.00

            https://how-rich.com/5195/how-rich-is-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/

            Now take a look at average millenials net worth (not good).

            https://thecollegeinvestor.com/14611/average-net-worth-millennials/

            AOC is doing better than most. Good for her! But, she isn’t representative of the average. We know we will never achieve the standard of living of our grandparents or even our parents. Decreased standards of living have been baked in for a while now. Clearly, taking on too much debt is a widespread problem but everything is very expensive too.

        • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 11:25 pm #

          If Cortez can’t manage to get re-elected next November she will never see that $180k yearly pension so coveted by other members of Congress. (Members must be re-elected just ONCE to get their pension).

          I guarantee you that if she continues to be a stone in Pelosi’s shoe she will be primaried next year. I’ll betcha Nancy is already looking for a replacement. And when she finds one ALL the $$ will go to that replacement and Cortez will become a distant jive dancing memory.

          Cortez is skating on thin ice with Pelosi…..

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:21 am #

            Pelosi is part of a corrupt elite that has led us to this moment. Obamacare, the full work guarantee for bureaucrats, should be called Pelosicare. Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of the DC elite are the 1st and 2nd estates who are skating on thin ice.

            Btw, I did not know how large the pension was. They ought to make it conditional on NEVER working in lobbying after you retired or get unelected. Might drain some of the malincentives.

          • Elrond Hubbard January 6, 2019 at 2:46 pm #

            DrTom, it would also be very helpful if journalists accurately identified retired bureaucrats, generals, and former members of Congress that appear on their programs as lobbyists, instead of continuing to address them according to the offices they formerly held.

            The executive and legislative branches are not a gentry, and the USA does not confer titles of nobility. The so-called fourth estate should act accordingly.

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:17 am #

          How much money do you think it would cost for me to eliminate the need for fossil energy utilities? I couldn’t easily replace my excellent water supply, and wouldn’t care to need to replace the internet service, but right now I pay hundreds per month for gas and electric (mostly for the cost of maintaining gas and electric lines to my house; my supply cost for electricity, the actual electrons, is about 1/3rd the total cost.)

          My guess is about 50k for the massive number of solar panels, the solar hot water heater, and the backup woodstove that serves as a source of heat. At 4% interest, that costs me 2k a year. With a mortgage at 6%, I could pay $300 a month over 30 years to pay off the system, depreciation obviously not included.

          The downsides would be that, when the sun didn’t shine for days, I’d probably have to cut back on electricity-using. That would suck, to be sure. I’d still be better off than my 19th century forebears, of course.

          See my comments elsewhere about struggling. She wasn’t elite, but middle class, at least in a NY context. In my county, she would be lower middle class.

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

      It’s amazing you believe that they are interested in representing anyone. They are interested in implementing a Marxist agenda to punish the America they hate so much. The Democrats and Republicans are no different. Republicans are not right-wingers.

      • chipshot January 4, 2019 at 12:15 pm #

        “They are interested in implementing a Marxist agenda to punish the America they hate so much.”

        Where do you come up w such crap? Rush??

        “Republicans are not right-wingers.”

        Who is, then?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

          You DON’T think they hate America? Look inside yourself and I bet you’ll find the same hate.

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:31 pm #

          It is very simple. I see for myself and discuss this with other people who are seeing the same things. The country we love has been dismantled by Marxists in both parties. Look around you and continue doing more research.

        • ozone January 4, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

          chipshot,
          Whoa! Tag-teamed; and by the same person no less!
          The pit grows deeper, darker and more mendacious with each passing trope.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 1:41 pm #

            Fuji and Tanaka! Or to put it more poetically: We are Twin Souls, Flames from the same Cosmic Fire.

            You are Clip are the mere lukewarm ashes of a fire that has gone out in comparison.

          • chipshot January 4, 2019 at 1:48 pm #

            ozone,

            You think SoftStar and Skorenzy are one and the same?

            Don’t sense that, but if they are not paid trolls, I find it sad and disturbing that people actually think that way.

            BTW, if anyone could point out some of the problems of Marxism I’d appreciate it. Guess I’m a bit clueless in that regard.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

            Spoken by the reclusive hermit who lives in a wilderness and could care less about what happens to society anyway. You know some people. You try all kinds of ways to be nice and all you get is constant abuse. Oh well, I hope you have an amazing weekend ozone and that all is going well with you.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 2:12 pm #

            Chipshot, you might want to start by researching the mind-boggling death toll brought on by Marxism in Soviet Russia and China in the 20th century. That would at least be a fair starting point. I am assuming you would be good with living in China today?

        • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

          RINOs..Paul Ryan aka Eddie Munster

  13. DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 10:59 am #

    Let all the darkness and malice be wrung out of it so the country can return to its senses

    A pox on all their houses.

    We have local Democratic and republican politicians who are nowhere near so ridiculous as the DC (or Albany, for that matter) variety. They seem to know that the people who pay the taxes, and who will suffer from their grandstanding, are also likely to throw them out if they don’t deliver. Also, they have to live in the districts that their policies affect.

    Not so the DC crowd, who can inflict ruin on the nation while their own bubble grows wealthier, with 10 of the 11 highest-income counties surrounding them. I think an 8-month shutdown would do a lot to drain that swamp.

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 1:38 pm #

      That’s right Doc, and these mindless, soulless idiots in DC are actually helping us all to get together at the local level and work together to throw out the corrupt self-servers regardless of party affiliation. It is truly amazing and invigorating..

      • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:32 am #

        Thanks for doing your part, Walter.

        I can recommend John Michael Greer’s Decline and Fall where he talks about revivifying local democratic institutions. His claim is that fossil fuels have built the unaccountable centralized welfare state and displaced local systems of support.

        He has suggestions in there for re-creating accountable local organs of government. You probably know them, but if so, the book at least helps remind you that you aren’t crazy,a dnthis really is the way of the future.

    • abbybwood January 4, 2019 at 11:32 pm #

      I am with Trump on this one:

      Keep the government shut down (it’s actually just 10% of non-essential services) until Congress caves and finances the wall/fence/privet hedge/moat or whatever!

      Americans who are tired of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS coming here committing crimes and who are OBVIOUSLY not interested in being “law-abiding” United States citizens should be calling their members of Congress three times a day to DEMAND that ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION be stopped!

      It matters NOT whether they are Democrats or Republicans!

      The LEGAL AMERICAN CITIZENS need to FLOOD their members of Congress with phone calls, emails and faxes to DEMAND that the wall/fence/privet hedge/moat or whatever get funded!

      Enough is a freakin’ nough!!!

      • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:29 am #

        Aren’t you also tired of paying welfare for the children and relatives of legal immigrants? We have enough poor people; we don’t need to pay for Medicare for immigrant parents, Medicaid for immigrant children, and SNAP for all.

        As a poster last week noted, the Wall pays for itself:
        https://nypost.com/2018/03/10/cutting-welfare-to-illegal-aliens-would-pay-for-trumps-wall/

        • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 12:58 pm #

          I wish a complete moratorium on immigration altogether would be put in place. We have a lot of work to do to get our own country in order before we can truly help others.

  14. JustSaying January 4, 2019 at 10:59 am #

    The botox has seeped into her brain. Same with Mitt.

  15. Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 10:59 am #

    Whether the GGG stays or goes (and I believe it will be the latter), I can’t envision “institutions of good faith” returning to a federal government near you anytime soon. That ship has long since sailed.

    As to the ways and means of Trump’s removal, I doubt any of that matters either. The law is extremely “malleable” in the hands of a determined consensus of skilled practitioners with malice in their hearts, so the ends – legal or otherwise – always justify the means in such matters. The key things for both legacy parties at this point is to not let Trump derail another election in 2020 as they know he’s perfectly capable of doing, so I’m quite sure that Pelosi et al will follow through with their threats this time, while Trump boldly declares it a personal win anyway, as he walks triumphantly off the stage into what should be a very controversial and interesting history.

    But rest assured, whatever it is they come up with to remove him, no jail time will be involved, as that would besmirch their precious office and set a somber precedent for the future criminals who come after him. Make no mistake about it, no one capable of being elected to that office and actually serving his/her term is without actual criminal acts in their past, as it’s part and parcel of the job at that level – an initiation rite if you will. It also ensures that the boys pulling the strings have something to hold over their heads in the future to ensure that they’ll faithfully stay in the lanes prescribed for them, as Trump is no doubt realizing now.

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    • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 11:06 am #

      The same corruption held in the late Roman Empire, where the rulers now based in Ravenna or Milan had no problem letting the city of Rome be sacked, rather than ice up their privileges.

      There’s simply no way to hold DC accountable, not when 750,000 people are “represented” by one Congresscritter.

      So watching the collapse of centralized authority suggests we can at least see some recovery of decentralized power. The better the circus proceeds and delegitimzes them, the freer we become,

      • Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 11:19 am #

        Agreed. After the dust finally settles again, Trump’s ouster will prove to be no big deal at all, as the political hype machine will quickly shift gears into 2020 mode, and the train will roll relentlessly on. Whoever emerges in charge in the interim will be merely a ceremonial placeholder. The rest of us will be best advised to ignore it all.

        • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

          Trump’s ouster ????

      • PeteAtomic January 5, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

        that’s a very insightful and wise post there, Tom.

        In the face of decentralization I’d expect an urge by local politicians for higher taxes on the state level, as one expedient in declining federal government funding. Another outcome would most likely be states and locales disregarding/bypassing federal laws and regulations.

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 2:15 pm #

          The Federal
          Government pays about 1/6thof the money spent on Higher Education in the USA, but controls basically ALL the money stream because of strings attached to the money. Meanwhile, administration costs about 1/6th of the money spent in higher education.

          Much of that administration is required to maintain compliance with Federal rules. 1/2? I don’t know. The point being, my bet is that the end of Federal Funding might not be so bad at the local level because of the lessened costs that could go along with lessened Federal dollars.

    • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 11:12 am #

      Utter nonsense. Try to dig up some dirt on James Earl Carter.

      • DrTomSchmidt January 4, 2019 at 11:24 am #

        Carter and Reagan (and maybe Ford) were our least-scummy Presidents going back to Eisenhower. My guess is the Watergate upheaval helped bring to DC some outsiders who weren’t beholden to DC corruption. Fortunately, GHWB of the CIA and Skull and Bones helped turn that situation around, so each subsequent president has become more arrogant, ignorant, and dismissive of the outside-the-swamp crew.

        Trump is the culmination of this process, and maybe the reform after he goes will bring us another Carter, or Ford, or Reagan.

      • Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 11:38 am #

        Carter was a dedicated and loyal MICC supporter (as a Dem no less), in a time when the MICC desperately needed all the support it could get. He was in many ways the ideal placeholder candidate in the wake of Watergate and the R’s perceived period of time out; a centrist/slightly right Dem in a period when the left actually had real teeth, and an easily vilified character once in office who surrounded himself with some extremely questionable cabinet choices. Admittedly, he is without a doubt the most scandal free president of the last 70 years, but he is also pretty much universally reviled as the worst. That probably says more about Carter than anything else. The criminals were so completely repulsed by him that he was utterly unable to get anything done.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

          Yes, a good man and an utter fool who really believes in things like “racism” and how it’s really the Original Sin.

          Kuchinic (sp?) is another one: wanted to create a Department of Peace. Saw Muslimas campaigning for him – they know a weakling and a sucker when they see him. But yes, a pure soul.

          We need someone good like these guys with the political instincts and realism of a Trump.

          Soul come to this realm to learn the lower energy and sublimate it into the Kundalini. By acting like they’re in the spiritual world already, they are denying the purpose of their incarnation – and putting everyone else at risk.

          • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

            Whats MICC?

          • Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 3:31 pm #

            Military Industrial Congressional Complex. Ike’s original formulation. He wisely took it out of his 1961 farewell address to Congress, likely due to a very real fear of being shot as soon as he uttered the phrase. Not to be deterred, they got to JFK a few years later for heeding Ike’s advice anyway.

          • Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

            Carter was a Southern Dem who came of age at the height of Jim Crow, so the South’s recent racial history hung heavy over him heavily, even though there’s no evidence that he partook in any of that.

            But yes, Carter was totally lacking in realism, which makes me think his candidacy was likely pushed by the powerful interests of the day as a counterpoint to openly corrupt but effective leadership. He was pro-military and anti-Russia, so there was no risk there, but the rest of his somewhat “quirky” policy ideas guaranteed that he’d be one and done and an easy target in 1980, which was already being penciled in for Reagan and his counter movement in force.

            I view ’76-’80 as a semi-official period of political mourning and penance for the US (we’ll let the poor bastards stew for four years in economic purgatory before sticking it to them in earnest again!), with the firm realization that there would be a strong counter swing in 1980, which of course we saw in spades. The Reagan revolution is still very much with us today, although it’s several orders of magnitude more diversified and powerful now, having long since crossed party lines first with the Clintons and then more completely still with Obama.

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 11:59 am #

      Demographics are destiny. The older generations’ faith that things will go on in the same ways with some semblance of today is most likely not correct. So many voices are not being heard. Many are outright censored. But, when people feel like there is no hope, watch out. And there is no hope in the current system or anything that would resemble such.

    • Bill7 January 4, 2019 at 4:44 pm #

      Interesting to read your take on Trump’s being removed, Scratch.
      So far I’ve thought that he has served the Donor/Ruling class well
      enough that he’d be allowed to stay, but I have heard recent rumblings
      about the ‘Reps’ wanting him out, clearing the way for Pence (dear god!) 2020. Maybe I need to pay closer attention, but it’s all so
      damn ugly.

  16. patrickd January 4, 2019 at 11:02 am #

    “Let all the darkness and malice be wrung out of it so the country can return to its senses and start paying attention to things that really matter, backed by institutions that people of good faith can believe in.”

    Dream on!

    This nation of murderers, thieves, and grifters cannot exist without a world of victims, and that world is waking up, isolating the US terror state, going on with its own pursuit of life and happiness. The resistance to US terrorism is growing worldwide, dedollarization is accelerating, and the end of the US is coming.

    Yesterday the US murdered eleven members of a Syrian family. The end of the US global reign of terror will be the answer to many prayers of many people.

    I don’t share Jim’s hopes that justice will happen. These politicians are elite grifters, regardless of what they say.

    • Epicur January 4, 2019 at 11:26 am #

      ” ‘Let all the darkness and malice be wrung out of it so the country can return to its senses and start paying attention to things that really matter, backed by institutions that people of good faith can believe in.’

      Dream on!”

      You beat me to that one, but I disagree that the US is going to vanish. The Republic is already gone, but there will always be a central power here – the real estate is just too valuable. The impotent Roman Senate continued to meet for centuries after Augustus came to power. Barring a major nuclear exchange it will be the same for US.

      The ongoing struggle for the reins of power has little to do with the people or the ghost of the Republic. Soon they will not matter at all.

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 11:55 am #

        I don’t believe the full country will remain intact. It is going to breakdown along ethnic boundaries which will consolidate into regional powers after a whole lot of violence. Nothing can stop it now. What happened in Yugoslavia is the future of America.

        • Epicur January 4, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

          “Nothing can stop it now.”

          Probably, but the violence of which you speak will have to be of an order that will reduce the population. Unless the population is reduced the mass of the people are dependent on the interconnected system continuing to function and that dependence is the glue that will hold us together.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

            Yes you are correct about our interdependence on one another. I am not sure what that level of conflict will be or what damage will ultimately be done but I think it will bring us to smaller societies.

  17. revilo January 4, 2019 at 11:14 am #

    Great 1st paragraph. So true, so funny. Should have devoted the entire article to her homely visage.

    • capt spaulding January 4, 2019 at 12:01 pm #

      The word around D.C. is that she gives good wrinkle.

      • S M Tenneshaw January 4, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

        Yep, the ol’ cougar still has a few tricks (get it?) up her, uh, sleeve.

  18. FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 11:20 am #

    “Demons” of Dostoevsky for 12 critical years postponed the disaster in Russia. Will anyone write the “Witches” now?

    The fact that Hillary credited herself during the election with several million fraudulent votes now few people doubt. According to internal data of the Trump campaign, she was supported by no more than 15 percent of the electorate.

    But the worst thing is that 15 percent apparently REALLY support her, and to a large extent she is supported by many so-called American intellectuals – humanitarian professors, really good artists, musicians, writers and the best representatives of the second oldest profession (no, not the prostitution, silly, journalism!), that is, those in the USSR we used to call “people of good will”.

    It is these 15 percent, especially the intellectuals who are fit to be called “the people of the new Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will)”, who call themselves the political elite, and it was they who provided the seed, without which Killari could not attribute these millions to herself.

    Well, Killary, I think, we will leave in the very near future, and these people of the new “Narodnaya Volya” will remain and now Clinton-zombies in an animal roar have surpassed their inspirer.

    In particular, ABC has such a program “The View”, the brightest person of which is the brilliant Whoopi Goldberg. So yesterday, on this program, five so-called women in a “patriotic” frenzy, compared with which the state of the head of the commission to investigate Senator McCarthy’s anti-American activities was the peak of tolerance and intelligence, demanded that the election results be canceled on the grounds that Trump does not believe American “intelligence community”, which claims that he was brought to power by Vladimir Putin hackers. Moreover, they strongly hinted that Trump himself is an agent of the Russian president, who in their view is something like Sauron of the Lord of the Rings, and the Russians are real Orcs. At the mention of Putin and Russia, they were so shaken that I had no doubt that if they had a red button with the words “Overload” in front of them at that moment, they would have rushed to press it like crazy.

    Although why “like crazy”? This is no longer just insanity; there is already a need in a rite of exorcism. By the way, Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” in English is called “Obsessed”.

    The most unpleasant thing is that American intellectuals are in constant contact with the so-called Russian intellectuals, although in fact they are psychologically the most rabid bourgeois who see their intelligence in throwing shit into previous Russian history and culture, Russia that dared to do without them and even called herself great without them.

  19. TinySolar January 4, 2019 at 11:24 am #

    James, you read a lot more into Pelosi’s first day on the job than I do.

    First Day is really just a ceremony.

    But if the new alleged “Evil Grinning Overlord” does manage to purge Trump, well, I’m cool with that!

    • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 11:35 am #

      If she doesn’t do it, then Trump’s masters will. They will suffer this outrageous fool just so long, but when it begins to affect the 40 year + program of strip-mining the middle class to engorge the wealthy, then he will be removed by whatever means…

      • Tate January 4, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

        So he’s thwarting that process of strip-mining the middle class, but you’re unhappy with that?!

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 11:53 am #

      So you are ready for President Pence?

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

        Pence would be an asterisk president – the ultimate placeholder until the Augean Stables that Trump left behind can be cleaned.

        Trump is an obvious simpleton and the perfect narcissist – Pence has a religious agenda but he could never get any traction.

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

          I am over the Right/Left paradigm. Everyone has an agenda. Determining which agenda is best is the key.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:44 pm #

            Bravo. The High Middle. The Apex of the Triangle instead of the Eye in Pyramid. The Third Way above Capitalism and Socialism, including but superseding them. Love not Hate.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:54 pm #

            I saw your last post on the previous thread. It all made sense to me. I think I am finally over the fear of embracing the idea. Being that it is such a big no-no it isn’t an easy leap to take.

        • Nightowl January 5, 2019 at 1:40 pm #

          A simpleton who survived at the apex of the NYC real estate market; created a multi-billion dollar, global company; developed a hit TV show; and ran for President, won, survived for over 2 years in the face of the entire US MSM calling him “Hitler”, got the two Koreas to come together (a Nobel peace prize-worthy achievement), and is now withdrawing US troops in full defiance of the warmongering Neocon deep state who have run the country for the past two decades.

          “What a simpleton” said the anon poster on the message board of an Internet blog.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:42 pm #

      You remind me of Tiny Tim singing Tiptoe thru the Tulips. What a man!

  20. Beryl of Oyl January 4, 2019 at 11:35 am #

    Has anyone else noticed that for quite a long time now, no matter who Americans vote for, we get Nancy Pelosi running things?
    How many of you have ever voted for this woman?
    Her district is littered with human feces, while she sits on high, behind a wall (I thought walls are immoral?) wealthier than we mere morals can ever dream of becoming.
    Where is the fresh blood in the Democratic Party? How is it none of them realize that Nancy is the avatar of the ‘inequality’ they claim to abhor?
    If that lifted and botoxed visage is what they present to the world, how horrifying are the true powers behind her?

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    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 11:52 am #

      I am convinced she is an amoral individual. The only thing that drives her is the accumulation of wealth and power. I believe she is amused by the suffering of her fellow Americans. She makes it very clear how much she hates Americans, especially Whites.

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

        She was my Congressperson when I lived in San Francisco. Had coffee with her many times. A great lady. She will bring the horrid Trump to task – it will be her signal achievement.

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

          Yes, often times sociopaths are very convincing and nice people when they need to be. All part of the game.

        • Tate January 4, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

          What was she slipping in her coffee?

        • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 2:15 pm #

          Did she apply her make-up with a spatula in those days?

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:44 pm #

            I thought I heard she was using a type of spackle for her foundation but I probably just dreamed it or something.

    • pequiste January 4, 2019 at 11:52 am #

      Really great questions, Beryl.

      And the Evil Fuckers are most terrible and horrifying.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

      The rabid poodle. The proof that Gays are a threat to all this is good and decent.

    • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 10:53 am #

      “Nancy Pelosi, tear down this wall!” Worked for Reagan.

      • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

        Would that be the wall of her multi-millionaire, gated, secure neighborhood? The elite are entitled to walls, guns, security of all kinds. We the deplorable unwashed are entitled to gun confiscation (for our own good, of course).

        You want to know what I utterly despise about all the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world? They are like Bill Clinton, raping a woman and believing she should feel honored and grateful for his attention.

      • KesaAnna January 6, 2019 at 12:49 am #

        As a sort -of citizen of the former East Germany ( I was born and raised there , but my family is American )

        30 YEARS LATER I think Reagan’s ” Tear down this wall ! ”

        is more than a bit hilarious.

        Though I’m sure most Americans wouldn’t get why I’m laughing.

  21. SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 11:45 am #

    Our current system is nothing more than a patient on life support. It’s days are done and we are living in a dream-like state between the death of one world and the birth of another. There is always blood with birth and so it shall be again. A fact of life that isn’t pleasant, but is certain. After all, no matter how much we convince ourselves it isn’t so, life is war. And in such a greedy and completely untrustworthy system, coupled with a balkanized population comprised of hostile factions, we will never reach any consensus on a path forward. The successful societies of the future will be smaller and homogenous. Complex and multicultural societies, like ours, are all in the process of death as we type.

    • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      I let a smile be my umbrella.

      Also, I go out and buy a lot of shit I don’t need. That always makes it better.

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

        I do like to smile 🙂 but feel blue when these serious topics are discussed. Now that stuff you don’t need you can send to me ;-).

        • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 3:05 pm #

          Every year I make a big pile in the street and set it all on fire.

          Then I buy lots and lots of new shit.

          It’s my contribution – it gives me a warm feeling to know I might have helped some needy CEO buy yet another monogrammed shirt.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 3:18 pm #

            LOL really now? And what is law enforcements’ reaction to that big fire in the street? Don’t tell me they join you in the fun!

  22. Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 11:45 am #

    Trouble is, TRUTH often runs into a round to the head, after which it doesn’t do too much standing anymore.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:46 pm #

      Trump must be given an impenetrable suit of armor – or become an invulnerable and immortal cyborg.

  23. pequiste January 4, 2019 at 11:49 am #

    Defcon loves that Tlaib pronounced her inflexible mission to “impeach the motherfucker”, and it’s CHipshot’s considered opinion that …”AOC and now Rashida Tlaib, two representatives that actually want to represent the majority of people (as opposed to corporations and the 1%).”

    Did you people indulge in too much Fentanyl over the holidays?

    These persons have one master each. Occasional-Cortex wishes to reconstitute Aztlan under the Hammer and Sickle brand, and Tlaib, with her Muslima ally from Somalia, wants the institution of Dar Al Islam on the North American continent and to liberate Palestine.

    As for the big D.C. circus; isn’t it there because Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey went out of business?

    • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 12:27 pm #

      Ringling Brothers finally met their match when the Trump mob lumbered into town.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:51 pm #

      Yeah they are so focused on getting Trump, they don’t even bother to think about what comes after that – and how they have diametrically differing constituents and goals. Communism is fine while you’re bleeding the Whites, but what happens after He dies? Still want to support those Browns if you’re Black or those Blacks if you’re Brown? Or those old White, Brown, and Black Christians if you’re Muslim?

      I think not.

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

      Now pequiste, we must remember that Al Capone, murdering, thieving gangster bully that he was, had far more friends than Elliot Ness ever had. This is how things work in a corrupt system, the more vile and evil you are, they more friends you collect. We are not judged as much by who we call our friends as who we consider to be our foes. I would be proud to consider Nancy the Geriatric as a foe if I operated in the circles that she haunts, but fortunately I do not have to.

  24. EvelynV January 4, 2019 at 11:53 am #

    How many of you anit-Pelosi’s are truly familiar with her and how she handles herself?

    She is impressively smart and supremely self-confident. Not a trace of the characteristics of the ignoramus stinking up the Oval office when he isn’t upstairs on his bed gorging on faux flattery six hours a day. Why does Melania wear a respirator on her rare visits to that place of stagnancy you ask?

    Here is a utopian possibility for the what could come next.

    Trump removed from office for crimes committed now and before slithering through the cracks in our imperfect system. Pence sharing an Agnew like departure as well. Clearly he’s a part of the criminal enterprise if for no other reason than failure to refuse performing his duty to not allow without protest the criminality going on under his nose.

    Viola! President Nancy Pelosi takes the helm and the possibility of Making America Good Again arises!

    Anything less will remain the nightmare it has already become.

    • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

      What about Pelosi’s criminal enterprise?

      • hmuller January 4, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

        Pelosi is a crook and the spawn of crooks. I would lock her in a tiny cage in Gitmo and feed her dogfood (cheapest brand). Anyone defending the Bayside Bride of Frankenstein has their head up their ass.

    • elysianfield January 4, 2019 at 7:08 pm #

      “How many of you anit-Pelosi’s are truly familiar with her and how she fondles herself?”

      Evelyn,
      I have heard that Pelosi and a small consortium of friends have bought up much of the rice producing fields in north-central California and are diverting water resources to their benefit. Sells the rice to China?

      It’s good to be the king….

      • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 3:01 am #

        You’ve heard that huh? If you hang out the kind of places you no doubt hang out I bet you hear all kinds of things nobody else hears.

        I’ll bet you have shit in your ears too.

        • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 10:11 am #

          EvelynV, someone unkind may conclude you have shit for brains and prove it every time you write your garbage. Pelosi’s politician father was part of organized crime and she’s benefited from all sorts of sweet heart deals, inside tips, etc.

          Just google “Nancy Pelosi corruption” and you might learn something. But of course you won’t, because you don’t care about the truth. That’s clear from your comments.

        • elysianfield January 5, 2019 at 11:59 am #

          Evelyn,
          Shit in my ears? Yes! And thank you for the observation…I have since cleaned them and now everything is …better.

          Friend of mine’s family originally owned much of the land in question…And he is currently a farmer…And he has held political office…
          But I am passing on your observation to him, in the event that he, too, has shit in his ears.

          • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

            Responding to you comes under the heading of never wrestle with a pig but just so you know –

            I did google what you asked BEFORE yesterday after reading what shit for a hearing-aid posted. Other than a website or two that caters to the kind of idiots who are gullible enough to believe Elvis’s corpse was smuggled onto Apollo 13 and shipped off into space there was nothing credible to be found.

            Nothing illegal that even comes close to the corruption you are witnessing almost daily out of the Trump menagerie.

          • elysianfield January 5, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

            “Elvis’s corpse was smuggled onto Apollo 13”

            Evelyn,

            I knew it!

          • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

            EvelynV, don’t be absurd. Elvis is alive and well and living with a community of Bigfoots on Mt Shasta. (They prefer the plural ‘bigfoots’ to ‘bigfeet’, don’t ask me why.)

            But that’s no crazier than the Evelyn alternate universe where Trump is an ignoramus, AOC is a brilliant young mind, and mafia debutante Nancy Pelosi is a paragon of integrity. Enjoy your universe.

    • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 11:01 am #

      Ignoramus, defined: an ignorant or stupid person.
      Ignorant: uninstructed, untutored, untaught. Ignorant, illiterate, unlettered, uneducated mean lacking in knowledge or in training.

      Kindly stop debasing our common language and undermining our ability to communicate.

      • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 1:30 pm #

        Yah?

        Trump is an ignorant and stupid person occupying the WH. Where do you think I went wrong in the usage? Are you referring to his lies about being in the WH during the shutdown when he in fact wasn’t?

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 2:32 pm #

          Lies don’t have anything to do with ignorance or stupidity. You might read about theories that lying increases intelligence; the idea is prominent in Sapiens, by Harari, a book I otherwise detested.

          Trump graduated from Wharton at Penn Before the great enrollment increase. According to this crimethinking site:
          http://www.unz.com/anepigone/average-iq-of-college-graduates-by/
          The average IQ of a 1960s college graduate was 112. So, not stupid.

          As to uninstructed, untutored, untaught: I refer you back to that college degree, obtained at a time when only 10% of the population had them.

          Got any links, or are you just going to stamp your little feet and insist on your own definitions of words?

          • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 4:03 pm #

            You are starting to come off as a bit stupid yourself.

            Do you see anything in you posted drivel that says all those things are mutually exclusive.

            Trump is clearly ignorant about so much of history and everything else in the universe it goes without questioning if you take the trouble to explore his past utterances on a wide range of subjects.

            He’s seems to be remarkably stupid in that he has made one blunder after another in his pathetic attempts to accomplish anything he has set out to do as President.

            The fact he is a chronic and habitual liar underscores his stupidity in thinking that lying incessantly accomplishes anything positive on his own behalf.

            What he is good at is serving as a magnet for other stupid and ignorant people. Take your own case for example.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 5:26 pm #

            Stamp, stamp, stamp!

            I guess you don’t want to dialogue, learn, or even challenge definitions I looked up on the internet. Since you won’t take instruction and remain untaught, I’m going to have to go with the word defined above:

            Ignorant.

            Run along, wee one, and come back when you’ve learned dialectic.

          • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 8:09 pm #

            Take heart, Dr Tom. Evelyn is a hate filled potty mouth, easily mistaken for a Tourette’s sufferer.

            She can see all the warts on politicians of the opposing ideology and none on her “hero’s”. This lack of perspective and factual objectivity gives her opinions all the value of a bratty 5 year old’s. She is certainly no debater, not one to organize thoughts and evidence.

            Among all the contributors to this forum, I vote her most likely to own a pink vagina costume and engage in public primal screaming against Trump and white males in general.

  25. BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 11:55 am #

    Human feces in the streets of San Francisco

    Not to mention typhus, and discarded hep a, b, and c and aids tainted IV needles lying about.

    There’s a new polio/meningoccal virus loose, never before seen here, killing and paralyzing American children, brought in by illegals from the fetid jungles of Central America.

    I doubt if Pelosi ever leaves her walled in estate to walk the filthy streets of San Francisco, or the bloodsoaked streets of Oakland.

    Brh

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    • FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 11:59 am #

      Moonlighting a little for Pravda, aren’t you? Paid by the post or by the word?

    • Ishabaka January 4, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

      The meningococcus is a bacterium, not a virus.

      • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

        Really. There us no viral meningitis?

        Brh

        • FincaInTheMountains January 4, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

          Apparently, there is. Check yourself up.

        • Ishabaka January 4, 2019 at 3:03 pm #

          There is viral, bacterial, fungal, protozoal, and aseptic meningitis. The meningococcus is a bacterium.

          • hmuller January 6, 2019 at 10:56 am #

            Viruses are definitely involved in at least some forms of meningitis. Here’s what wikipedia says:

            “Viral meningitis, also known as aseptic meningitis, is a type of meningitis due to a viral infection. It results in inflammation of the meninges (the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord). Symptoms commonly include headache, fever, sensitivity to light and neck stiffness.[1]

            Viruses are the most common cause of aseptic meningitis.[2] Most cases of viral meningitis are caused by enteroviruses (common stomach viruses).[3][4][5] However, other viruses can also cause viral meningitis”

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

          • hmuller January 6, 2019 at 11:02 am #

            And this on bacterial meningitis:

            What Causes Meningococcal Meningitis?

            Bacteria and viruses are the two main causes of meningitis. The bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, also called meningococcus, causes meningococcal meningitis. In children and teens, meningococcus is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis. In adults, it is the second most common cause.

            Meningococcal bacteria may cause infection in a part of the body — the skin, gastrointestinal tract, or respiratory tract, for instance. For unknown reasons, the bacteria may then spread through the bloodstream to the nervous system. When it gets there, it causes meningococcal meningitis. Bacteria can also enter the nervous system directly after severe head trauma, surgery, or infection.

            https://www.webmd.com/children/meningococcal-meningitis-symptoms-causes-treatments-and-vaccines#1

    • revilo January 4, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

      Adam Carolla has been brilliantly documenting the fall of California for over a decade. Victor Davis Hanson as well. Both are lifelong residents and have witnessed it firsthand.

  26. Ishabaka January 4, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

    We’ve got a “diverse” new congresscritter the media has crowned a “cute dancer” (although she may not know the three branches of American government), so it’s all good now!

    • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

      She has a great body. If this doesn’t work out, she has a career in stripping to fall back on.

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

        Washington D.C. turns to Pottersville. You can’t begin to make this shit up.

        Meanwhile, the engines begin to groan. The Gizmo can soldier on for a short while longer but soon attention must be paid.

      • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 3:14 am #

        Something else too. Some you never see on the face on any republican politicians – Joy! That wholesome glow that comes from knowing one is on a noble path.

        Compare hers to the scrunched up ugliness of so many republican pig faces.

        That fucked up right wing jackass who thought he had something damaging in a video of a happy girl dancing – how braindead can right wingers get? I wonder how he figured her old video was so much more awful than old nude photos of Trumps trophy wife.

        • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 10:17 am #

          So Republicans have pig faces? And presumably Democrats don’t. I propose we do a random survey of pig faced Wal-Mart shoppers to check for ideological and party correlations.

          Then we put your beauty merits to the test – dancing or posing with your poison pen – your choice.

  27. Luhrenloup January 4, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

    Ball is in your court, Donnie! Let the games begin.

    Now for the real challenge of your life

    • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 1:37 pm #

      Trump will be alright; he has nothing to lose and I doubt these flea bitten rodents biting at his toes concern him in the least. The only question is, are these fleas carrying black plague?

      Brh

      • Luhrenloup January 4, 2019 at 4:20 pm #

        Never, never underestimate Donald J. Trump. What the man has survived thus far would eliminate all of the elected officials in Washington if they were subjected to the attacks he’s endured.

      • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 3:05 am #

        If you are talking about prestige, honor, or respect – you’re damn right Trump has nothing to lose.

        • Luhrenloup January 5, 2019 at 4:14 pm #

          If you’re looking for prestige, honor, or respect, Evelyn you’re not going to find it among politicians.

  28. K-Dog January 4, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

    Three kinds:

    * Reward smile. When you’re communicating positive feedback through your smile, your lips get pulled directly upwards, you form little dimples at the sides of your mouth, and your eyebrows lift.

    * Affiliative smile. A smile that communicates friendship and liking involves pressing your lips together while also making those little dimples at the side of your mouth.

    * Dominance smile. Your upper lip is raised, your cheeks get pushed upwards, you wrinkle your nose, the indentation between your nose and mouth deepens like a sneer, and you raise your upper lids.

    “It’s Nancy Pelosi’s smile that gets me…oh, and not in a good way. It’s a smile that is actually the opposite of what a smile is supposed to do: signal good will and good faith. Nancy’s smile is full of malice and bad faith, like the smiles on representations of Shiva-the-Destroyer and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god who demanded thousands of human hearts to eat, lest he bring on the end of the world.

    Survey sez, behind door number three:

    Huitzilopochtli !

    • K-Dog January 4, 2019 at 12:14 pm #

      Huitzilopelosi ?

      • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

        It works!

    • EvelynV January 4, 2019 at 12:35 pm #

      Whichever one it is, it’s the one that makes Trump run for the toilet whenever he thinks about it.

      That poor incoherent bastard. He almost makes me feel pity for him.

      Almost but not quite – maybe later.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

        You sound just like Stormy! Another one of your heroes no doubt….

        • EvelynV January 4, 2019 at 2:08 pm #

          Heroins? Some who would deliberately allow that slimy creature inside her? Hardly.

          • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 2:14 pm #

            Heroin? Ah, that explains a lot, thank you.

  29. malthuss January 4, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

    DJIA up 750 points in 3 hours. amazing.

    • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 1:22 pm #

      Someone remembered to put the muzzle on the Chief.

    • Ol' Scratch January 4, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

      Parlor tricks resulting from programmed trading.

      • PeteAtomic January 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm #

        algorithms that are in arguments with each other, lol

    • malthuss January 4, 2019 at 3:58 pm #

      up 800, then settles at 770.

  30. Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 12:57 pm #

    The Aztec Priests were terrified that Quetzlcoatl would return and punish them for perverting His religion of Love. After all, offering your own heart up to the Sun (their symbol for God), is not the same thing as cutting someone else’s heart out with an obsidian blade and holding it up in grisly triumph.

    Thus when Cortez appeared, they feared the worst. And their fears were fully justified and realized. Perhaps Cortez, a devout Christian Gentleman, really was Quetzlcoatl come again in different guise, a warrior this time instead of a Teacher.

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    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

      Never trust a Spaniard unless he has been hung upside down on a gibbet and bled out.

      • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 2:08 pm #

        Did Sir Walter Raliegh say that Walt? Because he actually did that to a bunch of Spanish soldiers in Suriname in 1599.

        Making them talk, reveal the location of El Dorado, City of Gold.

        Brh

        • 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 5:12 pm #

          The English were nothing but pirates.
          A legacy of theft.
          Still are. What London is built on.

  31. DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

    Trump remarked in a meeting about the shutdown that it could go on for ‘years’

    The man is an intergalactic load.

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

      It has and does go on for years friend, where have you been? And even when they are getting paid, what exactly is it that they accomplish?

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 2:59 pm #

        Oh God, not that ‘Everyone in the government is a slacker’ clap-trap.

        • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 3:22 pm #

          If you had ever worked for profit making industries and also in the government as I have, you would know that the government scum at the top is totally worthless and self serving and those in the levels below them are severely handcuffed in their abilities to accomplish anything productive. The only exceptions being invading other nations or murdering those who threaten their existence. Most are well intentioned, but actions DO speak louder than words, at least as far as I have been told.

          • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 3:44 pm #

            Horseshit.

          • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm #

            Better go to DEFCON5 if reality is something you cannot handle.

          • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 4:04 pm #

            Better Google the DEFCON levels, there dum-dum.

          • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 4:31 pm #

            Sorry Dipstick but DEFCON5 is where all of the simpletons belong, it is the “everything is wonderful, nothing to worry about, idiot level”. Sorry I had to explain that, I underestimated your comprehension abilities.

          • DEFCON1 January 5, 2019 at 2:10 am #

            I knew you would turn that around, fuckwad. You are even dumber than your fat-assed hero. An impressive accomplishment.

          • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 5:43 am #

            If you knew it, why did you do it anyway? I would be happy to work with you to improve your abilities to avoid such mistakes in the future if you like.

  32. Walter B January 4, 2019 at 2:09 pm #

    “It’s not exactly the end of the world in Washington D.C., but as the old saying goes: you can see it from there! It’s out on the edge of town like one of those sinister, broken-down circuses from the Ray Bradbury story-bag, with its ragtag cast of motheaten lions, crippled acrobats, a crooked wagon full of heartbroken freaks, and a shadowy ringmaster on a mission from the heart of darkness.”

    You are starting to piss me off there James. When are you going to write something that I can totally disagree with you on and attack you for saying? People are going to start thinking that I like you or something. Exceeding well composed once again my friend. Every searing, scathing adjective ripped from the holes that used to house the hearts of those soulless bags of trash in DC was, once again, perfectly chosen and applied. I hope that somehow they are made aware of these feelings and that these words cut into their minds as the cat-o-nine tails that they all deserve would rip through the flesh on their backs if ever justice were to be finally metered out to them. Ah to sleep, perchance to dream…..

    • DEFCON1 January 5, 2019 at 2:11 am #

      More babbling bullshit from you.

      • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 5:40 am #

        Glad I have your blessing.

        • K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 2:59 am #

          Just type any old thing that comes into your head.
          —Ray Bradbury

  33. sophia January 4, 2019 at 2:35 pm #

    Here’s a particularly clear speech by Ray McGovern on this Russia nonsense, and the neat thing is he loathes Trump.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngIKjpucQh8

    • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

      Pretty damning stuff for Hillary and her retarded friends like Jim Comey. Thank you.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 2:59 am #

      Nice presentation.

      But!

      Ray is definitely a Company man – not even saying 50% of what he knows.

      Besides, when I hear that Israel prefers to see Al-Qaida or ISIS in power in Syria instead of Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by “the main enemy of Israel Iran”, I’m wondering what percentage of Jews in Germany voted for Hitler in 1933.

      • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 5:40 am #

        The Syrian acceptance of the Christian Jews may be tolerated the mainstream Jewish communities in Israel but the Zionists who rule there and their Vatican cohorts want these people eliminated for obvious reasons. You should check out Stephen Ben Noon on INL, he does a great job of this and reports often on the situation in Israel and the ME:

        https://israelinewslive.org/

  34. Soloview January 4, 2019 at 2:59 pm #

    The Dems might yet achieve respectability. They only have to find a way to clone Tulsi Gabbard.

  35. PeteAtomic January 4, 2019 at 4:01 pm #

    Jerry Brown was on government radio earlier this afternoon, in a long, rambling, and often contradictory and incoherent interview. In one breath he’d argue for ‘greater cooperation and dialogue’ between countries, and then in the next breath, mutter disdain for global economic inequality. He did make one good point though, near the end of his talk. The US needs an executive like Eisenhower. I’d have to agree. Unfortunately, the last of the people like Ike are all decrepit in their rest home wheelchairs now.

    Do people actually believe some parasite of the body politic like a Booker or a Harris could actually be a serious executive?? Why not simply put the corporate board of, I don’t know, Google, or Amazon as the executive branch of the nation. It essentially serves the same purpose.

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    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:14 pm #

      I understand what you mean. That is why I can’t help but think now we just need something new altogether. We are not going to be able to fix something so broken. Sometimes you just have to throw garbage out.

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 4:21 pm #

        Maybe the Sun will cooperate. A 24-hour long gigantic flare-of-the-Gods that magnetically wipes out all the stored digital memory and renders useless the power grid for 10 years. No more ownership – we all start over.

        It would be worth it just to watch the (formerly) rich completely melt down without their money – like the Wicked Witch of the West.

        • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:26 pm #

          If that happens I doubt anyone will care about paper anymore. They will be wondering where the carrots and peas are!

    • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 10:27 am #

      Pete,

      How about Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for President. His slogan: “Money Can’t Buy Me Good Looks, But It Will Buy Your Vote”.

      Then he sends everyone a $50 Amazon gift card. Sound like a strategy?

  36. SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

    We are Twin Souls, Flames from the same Cosmic Fire.

    Isn’t it beautiful :-)? I like it.

  37. Reality Check 1 January 4, 2019 at 4:22 pm #

    Flynn is not a simple patsey ambushed by “malicious prosecution.” He’s a damn career Army officer and intelligence asset. He knew f-ing well he needed to DISCLOSE to the FBI agents his contact with the foreign officials who paid the crooked grifter cash.

    You idiots just don’t seem to get it.

    • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:38 pm #

      Yawn and an eye-roll. That man was treated so badly after everything he did for the country. Shame on them all! Meanwhile, true traitors like Hillary and Obama walk free with no cares in the world.

    • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 7:05 pm #

      Reality Check 1,

      On the topic of idiots who just don’t get it. Have you ever heard of the Clinton foundation, pay to play, Uranium One. Over 100 foreign governments and corporations had business before Hillary’s State Department which was favorably resolved after they made donations to the Clinton Foundation – a charity that never bothered to fill out the paperwork required of charities.

      Your remark is the first I’ve heard of Flynn getting any money from the Russians. Do you have a source, a link?

      I read earlier Flynn lobbied for Turkey, but Turkey isn’t Russia, which I presume you know.

  38. SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 4:32 pm #

    The President said again today that he could simply call a national emergency to build the Wall. With thousands upon thousands of criminals and terrorists being apprehended at the border the real question is why anyone would want the border open? If I were President I would not only build the wall (300 feet tall/300 feet thick), I would also make it a point to go after every business and person who profited from the open border. I would probably do a lot of dictator stuff so I am sure most people would not want me to be President lol.

    • Tate January 4, 2019 at 5:13 pm #

      SoftStarLight for Presidential Dictator!

      It would be a twofer: first woman president, first dictator president.

      • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:36 am #

        Yay I got my first vote :-)!!!

    • cbeard January 6, 2019 at 10:57 am #

      Maybe a benevolent dictator is what we need. Make me king of the world and I’ll straighten it all out with absolute power. Obey my commands and we’ll have a kumbaya, tra la la, happy go lucky world when I’m through. Initially some won’t like it, hell a lot of people won’t like it. All would be treated fairly and some would receive justice. I really should delete this before I post it. Nah, I’ve got a thick skin. So here goes submit comment.

      • SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 5:36 pm #

        If the economy and government collapse the way Mr. K and others here say then I bet there will be dictators and warlords and all. It is part of human nature and happens now and has been throughout the past. After being a seemingly free and open society for so long it will be difficult to go back to that way of life. The flip side is that it may help us get through the scariest changes to come.

  39. Pucker January 4, 2019 at 4:47 pm #

    “Giambattista Vico (1668–1674) was the first to extend this notion of cycles to the entire course of human history, arguing that there were three stages: Anarchy and savagery. Order and civilisation. Decay and a new anarchic barbarism. The novelty in Vico was to suggest that the underlying mechanism of this recurrent cycle was human nature itself. When humans face anarchy and savagery, they feel the necessity of behaving in useful ways to protect themselves. They achieve this by creating order, which leads to civilised behaviour. But once they achieve comfort through civilisation they start to amuse themselves, growing dissolute in luxury and incapable of sustaining the discipline and seriousness required to sustain a civilisation.“

    Ricardo Duchesne
    Faustian Man in a Multicultural Age

    • Pucker January 4, 2019 at 5:03 pm #

      Legalize Weed and then mentally check out….

    • elysianfield January 4, 2019 at 7:16 pm #

      Puck,
      …Works for me….

      • elysianfield January 4, 2019 at 7:17 pm #

        Puck,
        Not the weed thing, but rather the stages of human conduct.

  40. 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 4:56 pm #

    Circus?
    One freshman politician called the president an M-F’er
    Another called for a tax rate between 70-90%.

    I didn’t land in no banana republic. The banana republic landed on us.

    First goes civility, next civilization.

    We get what we deserve. A place not worth caring about.

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    • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 9:10 pm #

      Banana Republic sitting down at the border in Tijuana, eager to join their comprades who’ve already made it in and recreated the conditions they escaped from inside the cities of Nortos Americanos.

      Brh

      • 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 9:54 pm #

        Mexico is part of North America

        But let me tell you ta non-geographical difference.

        In Mexico, graft exists at all levels. Everyone participates.
        La mordida. A way of life.

        In the US, we prefer the illusion. Graft doesn’t exist, or is at least not allowed amongst the unannointed. We don’t like the common folk participating in these things, and we don’t consider what the elite do as bribery or graft. No, we call it favors and cronyism. Lobbying.

        We are too Anglo, and too cultured for that.

        Stupid gringos.

        • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:33 am #

          Nope! No illusions here. There is too much corruption in US politics. Ordinary people have limited ways and means to combat such things. To me it seems harsh to say oh well we just deserve what we get. That is unfair. And the fact that life isn’t fair doesn’t matter. It’s still a sweeping assumption in my opinion.

        • DrTomSchmidt January 5, 2019 at 11:14 am #

          I’d much prefer to pay the bribe to the policeman for the ticket, without the courts adding surcharges and the insurance company increasing rates (for nonsense like speeding 65 in a 55 zone, that is. Malum prohibitum sorta stuff. Malem in se not so much). Mexico is simply more efficient than we are.

          • 100th Avatar January 5, 2019 at 11:37 am #

            Indeed. And another important thing to remember is who designed this state: lawyers.
            Who rules this country: lawyers.
            The absurdly vaunted and much trusted “rule of law” comes with an immense price. The cut.

            Following on your example: the court fees, the attorney fees (especially for those irksome out-of-state-speed traps.)

            This system is designed for a particular class to rule. Judges and courts. Always in the headlines.

            Yet the fools have been conditioned to venerate the “rule of law”; the new order.

            Quien es mas tonto?

          • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

            I am all for eliminating the intermediaries, bureaucrats, and lawyers, but how is a bribery system more efficient? Isn’t it completely subjective and unpredictable? Also, seems like it’s just as subject to discriminatory behavior as any “rule of law” system.

          • KesaAnna January 6, 2019 at 12:53 am #

            Finally , someone around here who understands how the legal system works !

            ( At least two others here understand perfectly well how it works. But they are the type who wouldn’t ask for water if they were thirsty. so not much help there. )

        • “In Mexico, graft exists at all levels. Everyone participates.
          La mordida. A way of life.

          In the US, we prefer the illusion. Graft doesn’t exist, or is at least not allowed amongst the unannointed.”

          I think you are taking liberties to make a point. Yet there remains a distinction, and therefore hope, and therefore a reason to build the wall, a reason to invest in a pan-american project in this hemisphere, a reason to cultivate rationality and therefore, morality.

          • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

            A reason to build the wall? Are you really serious? I thought you were vehemently against any type of barrier at all?

  41. 100th Avatar January 4, 2019 at 5:09 pm #

    “It’s important to set these matters aright, if you want to keep the constitution. Under the narcoleptic Jeff Sessions, the institutional rot turned into a possibly fatal gangrene.”

    Jefferson Sessions will be remembered as a slow half-wit, partially on account of his dotage and partially on account of his deep Alabammy southernerness. Totally ineffectual. A caricature of Foghorn Leghorn, public servant.

    A physical manifestation of lumbering slow to react conservative. Mammoth, meet spear.
    This is how republics die.

    • capt spaulding January 4, 2019 at 5:41 pm #

      Pretty much the whole of Wash DC has become completely lacking in civility. The first time I recall was when that politician shouted “liar” at Obama during his address to congress. That was the first crack in the dam that I noticed, but it continued, and now we’re down to “motherfucker”, somehow I’m not surprised. Eventually, it will devolve to Bowie knives, stripped to the waist. Now that I think of it, it’s not a bad idea, that way we’re not limited to just voting them out.

      • elysianfield January 4, 2019 at 7:21 pm #

        ” Eventually, it will devolve to Bowie knives, stripped to the waist. ”

        Captain,
        For your watching pleasure;

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XR9zYx4TLk

        • capt spaulding January 5, 2019 at 10:07 am #

          Thanks elysian, I thought the best part was when they were holding the sash between their teeth. Then they couldn’t say anything.

      • draupnir January 4, 2019 at 9:40 pm #

        Cage match on pay per view? I think this has potential.

        • capt spaulding January 5, 2019 at 10:08 am #

          I’d pay to watch, and cheer for both of them to lose.

    • EvelynV January 5, 2019 at 2:57 am #

      BFD – Every single half-wit the bull-goose half-wit chose to populate his cabinet and staffs will be remembered the same way. What’s one more half-wit stooge in a sea of half-wit stooges.

      • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 6:56 am #

        Oh yeah! What Trump should have done is appoint Maoists like Van Jones to his cabinet.

        Brh

  42. capt spaulding January 4, 2019 at 7:56 pm #

    Thanks elysian, much appreciated. I thought holding the sash between their teeth was a nice touch too, since it involved both of them keeping their mouths shut. Another thing congress could benefit from.

  43. Mike Roberts January 4, 2019 at 8:47 pm #

    so the country can return to its senses and start paying attention to things that really matter, backed by institutions that people of good faith can believe in

    Oh boy, JHK, you are the eternal optimist! BTW, to “return” to its senses, it would have had to have been there at some point in the past. If it was, I’ll bet the country was unrecognisable at that time.

  44. KesaAnna January 5, 2019 at 1:03 am #

    ” First goes civility, next civilization. ”

    I would say first goes family and religious authority.

    I would say that after that it becomes pretty damn difficult to even define what civility is.

    Next weeks scientific study , with its cooked up numbers , is gonna tell you that you have been an asshole for 2,000 years , or for 50,000.

    — And the scientific study the week after that is going to tell you something entirely different , except it will still argue that you are stupid.

    If you think that parents and priests suck …… well, that’s understandable.

    But i rather think you gotta be really fucking weird to think that social workers and lawyers are gonna be an improvement.

    Bitch about Washington D.C . ?

    Why ?

    Washington D.C. is full of lawyers and social workers. You should be happy as hell.

    Right ??

  45. KL Cooke January 5, 2019 at 2:01 am #

    I’ve always seen the same thing in Nancy’s smile. It’s like the Jolly Roger. It gives me the creeps.

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  46. FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 5:37 am #

    Regarding the arrest of Paul Whelan in Moscow on spying charges

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/world/europe/us-russia-spying-paul-whelan.html

    United States under the influence of Clinton crime family have a rich history of arbitrary detention of Russian citizens.

    Probably, the most notorious case was an arrest of Pavel P. Borodin, the Secretary of State of the Union of Russia and Belarus in January of 2001. Secretary of State came to the United States to participate in the inauguration of President George W. Bush under his invitation.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/world/russian-official-detained-in-new-york.html

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

    • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 5:48 am #

      Pavel Borodin ended up in Central Booking, where at that time I also happened to cool my heels for drinking alcohol from unconcealed bottle at Fort Tryon Park.

      And I remember how American inmates rejoiced at his humiliation when he was led along the corridor and someone whispered the latest news to us.

      Even they felt pride in their country, humiliating their most dangerous enemy!

      Even my sour face and a couple of vigorous expressions with the letter F created serious problems for me, especially with black inmates.

      • elysianfield January 5, 2019 at 12:27 pm #

        “Even my sour face and a couple of vigorous expressions with the letter F created serious problems for me, especially with black inmates.”

        Komaraden Finc!

        Vigorous expressions? What your brother Zek’s hungered for was the word! A spirited discussion of Dialectical Materialism with the black inmates would have precluded any issues of racial animus.

        Open container in the park leading to an arrest? Why no citation? Perhaps your “vigorous expressions” were offered at the wrong place, and at the wrong time….

  47. Pucker January 5, 2019 at 6:17 am #

    Apparently, one of Trump’s most inspiring books is Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power”. This book glorifies fraud, deceit and manipulation. The book looks to the “Con Man” as the Paragon of virtue. The premier Con Man, it seems, that we should look to for moral instruction is some asshole named “Yellow Kid”:

    “Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil (July 1, 1875 – February 26, 1976)[1][not in citation given] was one of the best known American con men of his era. Weil’s biographer, W. T. Brannon, wrote of Weil’s “uncanny knowledge of human nature”.[2][page needed] During the course of his career, Weil is reputed to have stolen more than $8 million.”

    It seems that “The 48 Laws of Power” is banned in prison and an innate caught with the book can get years in solitary confinement. It’s weird that a bloke can get literally tortured in America for just reading a book.

    “The 48 Laws of Power” is one of Trump’s favorite books. Trump may be a big “Con Man”? This hubbub about building “The Wall” may be a big “Smokescreen” while we get our pockets picked again? The book “The 48 Laws of Power” inculcates the importance of the “Smokescream” as an instrument of power. Maybe real objective behind building “The Wall” is ensuring access to cheap docile illegal Latin American labor and voter manipulation?

    Robert Greene
    The 48 Laws of Power

  48. Pucker January 5, 2019 at 6:50 am #

    Maybe Trump, the real estate developer, just wants to get some big government contract to build some crappy Wall? Maybe also throw in some government contracts to build illegal alien detention center hotels?

    “Once you have lulled your suckers’ attention with the familiar, they will not notice the deception being perpetrated behind their backs. This derives from a simple truth: people can only focus on one thing at a time. It is really too difficult for them to imagine that the bland and harmless person they are dealing with is simultaneously setting up something else. The grayer and more uniform the smoke in your smoke screen, the better it conceals your intentions. In the decoy and red herring devices discussed in Part I, you actively distract people; in the smoke screen, you lull your victims, drawing them into your web. Because it is so hypnotic, this is often the best way of concealing your intentions.“

    The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

  49. BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 6:59 am #

    We have a new governor in the Nutmeg State, Ned Lamont, grandson of the ‘Bolshevik Billionaire’ Corlis Lamont, JPMorgan partner and personal acqaintance of VLenin. Its a strange amalgamation of democrats who run this state, starting with a multi millionaIre hedge fund honcho who is the gov chief of staff, to the black woman who heads up the budget office who previously ran the city of Hartford into near bankruptcy (saved by a state bailout) Democrats hold every important office in the state — with their unbeatable coalition of public sector unions and welfare recipients, headed up by billionaires and multimillionaires from Fairfield county. With these people in charge you can imagine what the business climate is, and what our cities look like.

    Brh

    • malthuss January 5, 2019 at 10:46 am #

      You are so smart.

      What happened to the British or Scottish Gal that hated you so.
      Green Alba.

      • BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

        Hey malth my wife and her sisters say i am pretty stupid, for example why don’t i know how to speak Spanish yet, I should have learned Spanish by now, etc. But if I learned Spanish then they would just talk about me in Basque, which is impossible to learn, so why bother?

        Brh

  50. Cavepainter January 5, 2019 at 7:21 am #

    Oh boy, I can’t wait to live under the flourishing bureaucracies and regulatory agencies that’ll be necessary to administer the Democrats’ proposed wages for motherhood and universal healthcare.

    Just imagine in the first case; management bureaucracies for regular performance reviews (say, simi-annual) to be sure that the parenting meets “standards”. Then, would there be “incentives” for raising performance, or would the raising of the children be more directly taken over by the state?

    In the latter case, standards again? Would all be mandated to regularly pass treadmill tests and keep body fat at “recommended” levels? Failing to stay within recommended ranges would “prescriptions” be issued for attending “camps”, along with enforced government menus?

    Or, how about taxing those who are rigorous in health maintenance, something like the government enforced programs aimed at off-setting “white man privilege”?

    Ah, the jobs created in multiplying government bureaucracies. I can’t wait!

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    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      If family, neighborhood and community networks were as strong and vibrant as they used to be alot of welfare and healthcare would be taken care of by people helping one another. That would also mean that healthcare would have to return to the Hippocratic oath and not be a racket anymore. But our hyper-individualistic and balkanized society has erased family and community ties in many areas of the country. So government and bureaucracy has stepped in to fill the void. It probably won’t go back to the older way of doing things until everything crashes.

  51. Cavepainter January 5, 2019 at 7:40 am #

    OK, so much for a wall. Instead, why hasn’t our nation treated Mexico’s encouragement and facilitation of the illegal influx as an act of aggression, and on that basis sued for damages? Encroachment of borders has always been considered “invasion” justifying declaration of war. If we’d remained a nation intent on preserving our sovereignty we by now would have already declared war on Mexico. Rather than build a wall threaten to declare a free-fire zone five miles into Mexico beyond our boarder, coupled with demand it be cleared of civilian population in three months, or otherwise a bombing campaign to be commenced against Mexican government installations.

    • elysianfield January 5, 2019 at 12:13 pm #

      “Rather than build a wall threaten to declare a free-fire zone five miles into Mexico beyond our boarder, coupled with demand it be cleared of civilian population in three months, or otherwise a bombing campaign to be commenced against Mexican government installations.”

      Cave,
      A ridiculously harsh demand…who among us do you expect to accept this crime against humanity?

      A three mile free-fire zone would be entirely adequate….

    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:30 pm #

      You’re right! Mexico has culpability in this crisis and should be held accountable.

  52. BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 9:01 am #

    Mexico is a pile of rubble already CP, which is where the severed heads and thousands of dead bodies are buried, victims of the cartels.

    Brh

    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

      And they have imported their cartel ways and have set up shop in our country.

  53. volodya January 5, 2019 at 11:15 am #

    If anyone thought that a defining characteristic of Anglo-Saxon civilization was due process in the administration of justice, well, this Mueller affair puts the lie to it. This is about money and ruling class privilege and the exercise of power and its preservation. It’s right under our noses, and if we’re too blind to see it on our own, willfully or otherwise, then JHK and many others have been pointing it out.

    And so the existence of Mueller in his office is just the due process fig-leaf because if this isn’t really all “due process” in the digging up of whatever shit they can find and, barring that, making shit up, then tell me what it is. I know what the trolls will say because they’re required to say it. It’s in their employment contract. But, by-and-large, your eyes do not deceive and if another defining characteristic of our civilization is observation and trust in your ocular apparatus, then you can trust your eyes here too.

    We’re not talking about the persecution of some poor shlep selling smokes on the street as lamentable as that was. I guess we’re so far down the drain that we have to point out that another defining value of our civilization is that the life of the ordinary worker or the homeless lunatic or the curbside tobacco vendor is ever bit as valuable, or invaluable, as that of the oligarch. And so I hate to say it because as discreditable as the death of Eric Garner was, the consequences of what’s happening now are far greater because we’re talking about the man in the Oval Office and respect for election outcomes and therefore the legal bones of the entire country.

    In a larger sense this is decline and fall pure and simple (or maybe not so simple), just because there’s just so much crap pointing in that direction. No matter what the professorial class tells us you can mourn its passing because there was a lot of worthy stuff produced.

    Those towering intellects behind this current debacle are evidently too stupid to see it. Decline and fall may be the culling of the no longer fit from the evolutionary tree in a biological sense, but also from a civilizational perspective. And, when you look at the impressive catalog of idiocies coming from the academy, allegedly our best and brightest, maybe it really is time to call it a day.

    But not everything that gets destroyed in a civilizational fall deserves to be. The Archdruid pointed out that only about 30 seconds worth of music still exists from the vast corpus produced during 1,000 years of the Roman republic and empire. Imagine the masterpieces buried in the sands of time. THAT’S the loss or, at least, one example.

    And what about us? Our campus betters would have us say good riddance to all of it, it was all the product of racists and homophobes and misogynists. Yeah well, fuck them, what do they know.

    Imagine masterworks like this being lost:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPdk5GaIDjo

    You want to weep.

    • BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 11:57 am #

      But we have the complete texts of Roman writers like Juvenal, Horace and Livy, which is pretty amazing considering the muzzies burned down the library in Alexandria the first chance they got, which contained just about all the world’s books up to that time (8th century)

      Brh

      • volodya January 5, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

        True, some of it survived, but I’ll bet just a small percentage. Perishable media after all. And a fair bit of chaos post-collapse.

    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

      Eventually everything gets wiped away with time, including barbarians and aristocrats. The only possibility of holding onto the future requires the will to fight for it and investing in children.

      • volodya January 5, 2019 at 2:05 pm #

        EXACTLY.

      • volodya January 5, 2019 at 2:43 pm #

        The Romans are gone, so is the Greece of Aristotle and Plato. But we’re here and we preserved some of what they accomplished. We can hope that some of the best of what we’ve got gets passed on to the civilization that takes our place.

        • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 2:52 pm #

          Moscow is the Third Rome.

      • Short children. Never a good investment.

        • SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 6:41 pm #

          Wow, how discriminatory of you! I am deeply offended ;-)!

  54. FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 11:17 am #

    Funeral of George Bush as Woland’s Spring Ball of the Full Moon 2.0

    I hope that I have convinced you, my dear ClusterFuckers, that the funeral of George Bush Sr. was a very big event, which in some sense has already predetermined the development of events in the 21st century, just like the ball in Spaso House in 1935, described in the Bulgakov’s brilliant novel, predetermined events in the 20th century from the transformation of Hitler’s dictatorship into a Nazi state to the collapse of the USSR and the coming to power of Putin. And like a ball at Spaso House, Bush’s funeral had another dimension that makes my imagination draw pictures with color and smell and hurts my back muscles and my body needs sleep to recover.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#The_Spring_Festival_Ball_at_Spaso_House

    Poor, poor Mikhail Afanasyevich, I imagine how hard it was for him!

    And since I have already decided not to write a novel about this, I hope that I will be able to describe the funeral of George Bush Sr. in our three-dimensional world. And we must begin by saying that immediately after the death of the 41st President of the United States, a real orgy of demands began in the press not to invite President Trump to President Bush’s state funeral even before it became known that it would be a state event.

    And it must be said that this campaign could well have succeeded, since it was supported by many prominent Republicans and such “friends” of the Bush as Dick Cheney and Mit Romney, and with it the Bastinda’s global plan to create a united front of the West to confront Trump, if George H. W. Bush did not leave the relevant orders, obviously anticipating his own death and the struggle that will unfold around his funeral.

    This fact alone suggests the unnaturalness of his death and other dimensions that opened at his funeral, especially since pro-Clinton CNN clearly keeps something silent about the 41st President of the United States, who conducts his own funeral from the Better World in order to change the outcome of his life in this one, ruined by Hillary Clinton in 1992.

    Indeed, he was the head of the United States in 1991, when largely thanks to the efforts of Ronald Reagan, the USSR collapsed, and if Hillary Clinton succeeded in creating a united front of the West against Trump and Putin, then statements by George Bush Sr. that, would he remained the president of the United States in 1992, he would not allow NATO expansion and barbarous plunder of Russia in the 90s, would remain an ordinary blah blah.

    And so it turns out that even though I promised not to talk about other dimensions here, it is simply impossible not to talk about them completely when it comes to events that can lead to the final solution of the “human question”. Therefore, purely for myself for memory and in order to throw off this load, I want to leave here a few facts:

    All these events took place at the National Cathedral in Washington, which construction begun in 1907 by US President Theodore Roosevelt, and finished in 1990 by George H.W. Bush. But in 2011, two weeks before the opening of the World Political Forum in the city of Yaroslavl, in the state of Virginia an earthquake occurred, which caused considerable damage to this Cathedral, even the threat of its collapse.

    And the day before the opening of the aforementioned World Political Forum in Yaroslavl, an article about which in Russian for some reason is absent from Wikipedia, Dmitry Medvedev met with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had flown to this forum, where they discussed, without any doubt, the exclusion of Vladimir Putin from 2012 presidential election in Russia.

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

    Unfortunately (?), The Yaroslavl airport was overcrowded due to the forum and the plane on which Zbigniew Brzezinski arrived was parked at the start of the runway.

    Therefore, the next day, on September 7, 2011, the Yak-42M aircraft with the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team on board did not have enough space for a takeoff: the catastrophe that took place put an end not only to Brzezinski and Medvedev talks, but also to the second term of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia, and had actually finished the project “New World Order”, about which is written on a dollar bill, nicknamed “the green banner of Islam” in Russia.

    This project was developed in 1917 (or rather, it acquired the present form, including the unconditional demand to transfer Crimea to Ukraine) by an organization called “The Inquiry”, an article about which is also for some reason not available in Russian.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inquiry

    But even if it were, it would hardly be possible for me to write in it that the organization “The Inquiry”, now the Council on Foreign Relations, was created by Woodrow Wilson, the only US president buried in the aforementioned National Cathedral (only two American presidents are buried in Christian churches in general), his all-powerful adviser, Colonel House and Harold Pratt, whose father lent the seed capital to David Rockefeller, created the world’s first oil company and founded the Pratt Institute.

    And since I’m probably one of very few persons who read the notes of this organization (minutes of incorporation), written before it got its name, which may still be in the public domain on the library shelves of this institute, I want to inform you that the widely known statement of this organization about the need to provide Russia with access to the World Ocean does not mean the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles promised to her by the Entente treaty. It was about Archangelsk, since Vladivostok would have to be given to Japan, Murmansk to Norway, and Petersburg to Finland.

    After this funeral and PBS interview with the closest friend of 41 US President James Baker, which I described in the previous post, a lot became clear, in particular, that the current situation is really New War of Roses, and I will definitely write about it in the next post.

    In the meantime, I never cease to be surprised at how correctly I guessed all this 10 years ago, but I foresaw from a purely secular and I would even say a scientific point of view, calling the objective reality given to us in sensations “the collapse of the US political system”.

    And since I am not only the chronicler of the New War of Roses, but also the adept of the Political History of Arts, in this post I can not fail to mention that it was George Bush Sr. as head of the national committee of the Republican Party to a large extent contributed to the fact that the competition for the main tympanum of the National Cathedral was won by an unknown stone cutter Frederick Hart, who is one of my favorite artists in the United States and does not have any artistic education.

    This tympanum called Ex Nihilo (Creation from Nothing) was later used in the film Devil’s Advocate, based on some facts from Hillary Clinton’s biography, including the fact that the first case of the protagonist, who is not only the devil’s advocate, but devil’s son, whose intention is to bring the antichrist into this world, reproduces her first case as a lawyer, and the list of protagonist’s favorite books in the script coincides with the list of her favorite books, which she published during the election campaign.

    https://cs9.pikabu.ru/post_img/2017/02/21/9/1487685799162541169.jpg

    And I learned about this in 1988 from the copyright infringement case of Frederick Hart by the film company Warner Brothers, who used a copy of the main tympanum of the National Cathedral created by him as an image of hell in the house of the devil.

    He forced the film company to re-shoot this film and received huge compensation for half a million copies of this film already sold, and after a year and a half he died of lung cancer. And in 2004, Hart was posthumously awarded the National Medal of Arts, the United States Government, the 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush, whom American liberals declared stupid cowboy from Texas, therefore signed a completely unprecedented proclamation marking the merits of the deceased before the American art and revealing him as the initiator of this award.

    P.S. It is curious that the Pratt’s estate in Brooklyn is located on Clinton Hill, and the street on which the Pratt Institute stands is called Clinton Street and around it is full of huge stone buildings, on which it is written that they are Masonic lodges

    • ozone January 5, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

      Splat!

  55. beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 11:55 am #

    Simple solutions to intractable problems. We don’t need a wall. Just legalize all drugs – poof, drug cartels are out of business in 2 minutes. Then eliminate all entitlements to illegal immigrants – that takes away the incentive for sneaking over the border, and leaves only those legitimately seeking emigration or sanctuary. Execute illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes; convict through military tribunals as those illegals should be considered invaders. Work out the details. We’ve gone too soft. Americans are extremely blessed to live in a country under a constitution that recognizes individual rights for its citizens.

    Yeah, bad people have screwed everything up for personal gain, but as long as the constitution exists, at least we still have a legal basis for
    how we ought to conduct ourselves.

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    • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 12:31 pm #

      Just legalize all drugs

      You outta your mind.

      • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

        Finca, think about it. Many drugs are illegal, yet people manage to get their hands on them anyway – the government saying they’re illegal is no deterrent and never has been. People have been taking drugs for at least 5,000 years. I agree that taking many of these drugs is crazy; I wouldn’t do it.

        However, it is a fundamental right that an individual adult has control of their own body. Just because we know taking fentanyl is very bad and stupid doesn’t give us the right to determine what goes into someone else’s body. This is obvious, so the so-called war on drugs is really about money.

        • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 3:52 pm #

          yet people manage to get their hands on them anyway

          That’s because first thing you think is of yourself, and you should think of your kids.

          Fuck your fundamental rights,

          • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 4:41 pm #

            To me, It feels like you don’t understand drug addiction. I know people who did everything in their power to prevent their kid’s addiction, but still lost them to drugs. It just doesn’t work the way you’d like to think it does.

          • hmuller January 5, 2019 at 7:46 pm #

            Hey beantown,

            It sounds like you and Fin are having the old argument of 1) allowing maximum individual freedom, or 2) build an ideal society by strictly controlling people.

            In my opinion #2 has led to hundreds of millions of humans killed or imprisoned for not matching The Ruling Authorities’ paradigm of the ideal society.

            How about this principle: an adult who is not hurting others, should be free to do what he wants, especially when it comes to sovereignty over his own body.

            But what if he wants to be an addict and has children? Obviously the state can remove the children for their own safety and welfare. Isn’t that the solution now?

            At one time people went to jail for long stretches for having a little marijuana. Now some states allow and tax it. And the more you buy, the happier the tax revenue collector. What happened to the public morality of a drug free society?

            Having a moral adultery-free society is a legitimate public policy. Why not catch and jail adulterers like those who seek out prostitutes? Well, it’s a long discussion with many facets.

            Bottom line: I would be very skeptical of measures to beat people with a stick to make them more righteous and moral.

    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 1:45 pm #

      Over one billion people legitimately want to immigrate to the US for sanctuary and better economic circumstances. Can you blame them? Without real barriers there is no way to stop the flood. The constitution should be our basis for everything but we live in a post-constitutional condition.

      • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 4:01 pm #

        I don’t disagree with you, but look at the entire picture. So you put a wall across the Mexican border. What about Canada? That’s around 3,000 miles long, and as far as I know, Canada’s relatively liberal, so it ought to be easy for many people to sneak across the border should that be the primary way to gain entrance to the US. Then, what about getting in through our coastlines? Ultimately, we’d be all fenced in with a strong military presence patrolling our coastlines and borders. Do you want to live in Fortress America?

        • Tate January 5, 2019 at 9:37 pm #

          The Canadian border doesn’t attract that many border jumpers. Same with invaders along the coastlines. It happens but not on the scale of those coming across the southern border.

          The southern border is where the major breaches are. If there’s a hole in the levee, you don’t fix the breach by piling sandbags somewhere else. If we start to have a problem with Canada, we can address the problem at that time. Walls have been proven to work for Israel, beantownbill, why don’t you think they will work for the U.S.?

          • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 11:28 pm #

            Because Israel is a small country, it’s easier to lock it down to outsiders. Millions of people want to get into our country and we have at least 6,000 miles of coastline plus 4,500 miles of borderland. If I wanted to get into America and the southern border was walled off, I could try to sneak in via boat or through Canada by land. A wall would be much less effective than Israel’s because of our vastly bigger borders. Also, middle easterners don’t want to become Israeli residents, they want to destroy or conquer it.

          • K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 3:03 am #

            The Canadian border doesn’t attract that many border jumpers. Same with invaders along the coastlines.

            It could be they are coming over but nobody notices. How would you know?

          • Tate January 6, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

            beantownbill,
            It’s a fallacy that because the U.S. has a larger border to protect than Israel, that the U.S. cannot build a wall. It also has a much larger tax base to fund the building of its wall. But even if the task was on a monumental scale much larger still, it would be worth the expense.

            It is not a lack of resources, but a lack of will which prevents this country from building a wall.
            The country is split down the middle on this issue largely because we have so many new unassimilated “Americans” who back further infiltration & swelling of their ranks. But you know all this.

            And I don’t agree that all of those entering this country illegally are merely seeking economic opportunity, or that all of those entering Israel are not.

            BTW, to carry your argument to its logical extreme, If I wanted to go to the moon, I could also ‘try’ to go there, but that doesn’t mean I would have the resources to accomplish my goal.

        • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 12:48 am #

          Bill it might come down to army and marine units patrolling both borders if things get bad enough.

          You mention Israel’s border wall and i understand it has been very effective in keeping out terrorists and people bent on murdering Israeli citizens with vest bombs and Kalasnakov rifles

          Brh.

        • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 11:57 am #

          ” Do you want to live in Fortress America”

          Bill,
          Considering the obvious alternatives…yes.

        • SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

          I don’t necessarily want to live in a Fortress America at all. However, I don’t see what other choice we have if we want to keep some semblance of our civilization going. Otherwise we will continue to have millions of people pouring into the country each year legally and illegally. The rate of growth is taxing aging infrastructure and the natural environment. And so it goes….

    • darrell dullnig January 5, 2019 at 2:44 pm #

      Oh, Bill!

      Yes, the world may be indeed going to Hell. One of the few consolations we have is that no matter how many bad people crop up in order to do more bad things, we will always have you to hold up as a shining example. It’s not your fault, after all; you were just born too good for the rest of mankind. It must be tormenting, doing your level best to always do the right thing while forced to wade around up to your neck in evil.
      Such good ideas, too. “Work out the details”

      Brilliant.

      • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 4:43 pm #

        Not accurate! I just was made to be better than you.

        • darrell dullnig January 5, 2019 at 4:56 pm #

          Ah, sorry, Bill. Being better than me will not get you that ticket to Heaven. All you have to do is pull hard enough on those bootstraps, and a swat team at the pearly gates will not be enough to keep you out.

    • 100th Avatar January 5, 2019 at 8:40 pm #

      I’m all for the people eager and willing to abuse substances from alcohol, to spray paint, to fentanyl, to meth to have easy access.

      First, many of these substances do a rather fine job of eliminating the most careless and reckless users. Society will not miss this cohort.

      The police will eliminate the next strata, because a criminal nexus will always exist regardless of legality, because abuse will always bring unlawful behavior.

      The next group will become vegetables, and when drugs are legal, insurance companies will have the right to deny coverage and/or make cost prohibitive premiums. Uncared for vegetables rot. That’s a good thing with these vegetables.

      This will mean that drugs will ultimately become a luxury good. Let them eat cake.

    • These are the kinds of things bubbling in Mitt Romney’s self-deportation laboratory.

      Never underestimate the Wizard of Bain Capital.

  56. BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 12:34 pm #

    Howdy Bill, hope you are doing well.

    Hey I finally got a copy of this book you might be interested in “Tommy Gun Winter, Jewish Gangsters, a Preachers Daughter, and the Trial that Shocked 1930s Boston”

    I’ll just say this wasn’t the Boston of the Brahmins , Beacon Hill, Cotton Mather or John Winthrop. Your hometown was one tough place in the 1930s, with different ethnic groups fighting it out on the streets, yes, sometimes with tommy guns, the pre emininent weapon of the day.

    Brh

    • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 4:11 pm #

      Thanks, Marlin, I’ll look that up. I’ll be in Connecticut next week for a few days recreation. You know where. Also thanks for clueing me in about the knife fights at Foxwoods. Maybe I should bring a gun. My theory is to never bring a knife to a knife fight, bring firepower. I can tell you from my martial arts days that it is extremely difficult to defend yourself against a knife, unlike in the movies. We used to train with rubber knives, and every time I got killed.

      I’m doing well, I hope you are, too.

  57. deetrump January 5, 2019 at 12:59 pm #

    Didn’t Portugal legalize all drugs to successfully remove profit motive and eliminate cartels? Also saved the taxpayers a ton of money that was being spent for three hots and a cot for nonviolent drug offenders in prisons.

    • SoftStarLight January 5, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

      No Janet, they didn’t legalize all drugs. Rather, they decriminalized possession of drugs to a small degree. Drugs, drug-dealing and trafficking are all still illegal. And they still have a problem.

      https://www.narconon.org/blog/did-portugal-really-legalize-all-drugs.html

      I find it interesting that globalism brought the crisis on.

      • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 3:03 pm #

        Well posted SSL, that was an excellent article and it reflects a lot of the work and concerns that are going on throughout New Jersey right now in response for the imminent “legalization” of Mary Jane here. Legalizing or decriminalizing does not solve any problems, it only creates more problems and far greater expense for government in order to deal with, administer and enforce the additional laws, rules and ordinances. The prisons will still be populated with drug dealers because the black market does not only not go away, it becomes larger once people realize that it will now be a lot more expensive to buy government approved and taxed products. Insurance rates also skyrocket in response.

        I bear those that want or need drugs of ANY kind no ill will. I understand that American NEED drugs of all kinds for many assorted reasons. While turning on the TV’s at work this morning, I was greeted with a news special on the subject that quoted statistics claiming that 1 in 6 Americans are currently prescribed psychiatric drugs to help them deal with their anxiety, depression, anger and other assorted mental issues. The only issue I will always have is involving the government in the process as they are so damned greedy and incompetent that it is only asking for trouble inviting them to the party.

        • volodya January 5, 2019 at 3:11 pm #

          IOW the road to Hell is paved with ……

        • beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 4:36 pm #

          Walter, you can’t partially legalize drugs. I know getting the government involved is scary, but low cost government pharmacies with price limits would eliminate drug dealers. Why would someone pay drug dealer rates when they could go to a fed drugstore at 1/10th the cosI?

          I don’t know, but don’t you think the money saved with lowered incarceration and police expenses would lower government costs? Sure, there’d be some problems, but a lot less than what we’re experiencing now. Do you know anybody who goes to a bootlegger to buy alcohol instead of at a liquor store? Alcohol is legal and look at all the problems we have with drunk drivers,and alcoholism costs. Addiction is just a fact of life that is independent of laws.

          • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 6:24 pm #

            If you are talking about medical pharmaceuticals btb, well the government already subsidizes the manufacturers heavily and they pay their tributes in donations back to the politicians so that they can get the laws like Obamacare passed. In the end we, the taxpayers pay for it all anyway.

            As far as the legal weed sales goes, the growers, manufacturers and distributors have been approaching our local governments for over a year now, heavily touted by the state government politicos who have been in the bag from day one for their cuts. The state is going to tax the sale at 25% and the municipalities will tack on an additional 5%, that is already written into the legislation. By the time everybody in the food chain is taken care of, people who used to pay $125 for an eight will be paying closer to $300. Sure they will tout the “legality” of their product and also the increased potency (between 18% to 30% THC content) but the prosecutors in our country at least is certain that the demand for cheaper illegal weed will surely rise.

            https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/19/car-crashes-up-states-legal-marijuana-studies-show/1693567002/

            It may seem simple for those citizens that will soon be able to buy and enjoy, but they are going to pay big time and those of us that are involved with the administration of the laws, can see the train in the tunnel.

            People are going to pay a lot more in many, many ways. Fortunately for us in New Jersey the new state motto is “Shut Up & Pay”! Oh well, nothing matters and anything goes, right?

        • BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 4:38 pm #

          Legalized marijuana is coming to Ct pretty soon too; sure there’ll be problems but the state is looking at the revenue it might generate and God knows they need every penny they can get their mitts on in order to keep the welfare state going as long as possible, and pay out generous pensions to retired union employees — as much as $324,000 per year — sinecure for loyal party apperatchiks.

          Brh

          • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 6:29 pm #

            Funny, but that is the number they started with here too. It has been downgraded down to $150M, but the costs for the system that is being set up to deal with this issue is estimated at close to $400M. Yup, they didn’t tell you that part did they? The governments do not need more income Bill. They need to spend less accomplished by less graft and smaller government. Unfortunately that will never, ever happen. Eventually they will have to seize all of our properties to keep this machine rolling and I am certain that one day they will. Fortunately for them, nobody cares.

          • K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 3:06 am #

            Would you you guys say the welfare state is being:

            Kept up by smoke.

          • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 6:56 am #

            No K-Dog it is not and that is easily proven by those of us that do mathematics. The annual state budget for New Jersey in 2016 was $60 Billion dollars. Using the highest, pie in the sky estimate of $300 million in weed taxation, and not including a single penny in added expense in administration costs, the “income” represents only .005% of the budget. So I really do not get it, not from a money standpoint because it is a lose-lose for everyone. When you consider the added costs of administrating the whole shebang, it is actually a net loss. But I am a buzz kill so why listen to me anyway?

          • malthuss January 6, 2019 at 11:38 am #

            weed makes folks lazy.
            whats gained in taxes will be off set in other ways, shall I say.

          • Tate January 6, 2019 at 12:16 pm #

            The arguments are always the same for the vice trades. It will generate jobs & revenue for the state. We just keep digging that hole deeper & deeper. Prostitution & sex-slavery will be next.

          • K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

            $60000000000 / $300000000 = .5% not .005%.

            Sorry you did not get the joke.

        • EvelynV January 6, 2019 at 4:38 am #

          Walter B, you are an opinionated old fool with your head up your ass when it comes to the topic of decriminalizing drugs. In states where MJ has been legalized the price has plummeted and there is no more street market for it because it has become so cheap to buy legally.

          Jezzzuss!! Old fools like you who sit in their own stink all day pontificating about things you apparently have no real world experience in are relics that will soon be gone from the landscape.

          • Walter is a national treasure.

            He will be hired by the Parks dept. to scare kids at the museum of natural history

          • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 5:06 am #

            How can you make such an uneducated and unsubstantiated statement as to my experience in these matters you idiot? I have never stated any public details about my experience in these matters and only a fool like you would come out and put on the Internet, “I love illegal drugs and do them all the time and so should everybody”, which is what you are saying whether you realize it or not. Yup, everyone should do whatever they want whenever they want regardless of the effect because assholes like Walt B will find a way to pay for it all and clean up the mess I made somehow. Those days are running short fool. When we are no longer around to clean up after you, you will have to wallow in your own mess, but then you probably don’t care, do you?

          • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 12:13 pm #

            ” In states where MJ has been legalized the price has plummeted and there is no more street market for it because it has become so cheap to buy legally.”

            Evelyn
            Yes, In Ore-Gun, that is the case…you should hear those clever bastards whining…when illegal, they were selling a pound of weed for $1000+…now less than $300 when they can get it. I understand that this is approaching the cost of production.

            Of course, in this state, it is (State) legal to grow three plants for personal consumption.

            On another note, Evelyn, have you noticed how your posts are becoming less civil? Everyone, it seems is an old fool, a shit-head, or some other pejorative. You might consider that opinions that do not coincide with yours are not necessarily stupid…or wrong, for that matter.

  58. volodya January 5, 2019 at 3:01 pm #

    Nancy’s smile is full of malice and bad faith, like the smiles on representations of Shiva-the-Destroyer and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god who demanded thousands of human hearts to eat, lest he bring on the end of the world. – jhk

    So consumed are they with temporal power that you can picture the slithering, hissing Shumer and the tongue-flicking Pelosi in commiseration with these two loathsome deities, having sold their immortal souls for the mere prospect and possibility. But the temporal world is nothing more than a shifting surface sitting as it is on a jittery quantum realm of probability fields and nothing more. And, in the end, fire and earth consume all. Is it worth the price?

    Does anyone know what lies beneath those mounds of sand and stones in the middle-east? How many contain the dust of men who sold their own essences to sit on a throne? And how many are even remembered? Not one in a hundred I’ll bet, maybe one in a thousand.

  59. FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 3:01 pm #

    American politicians reiterated that Ukraine was turning into an unmanageable challenge for the United States and the European Union.

    It is well known that international financial institutions are undertaking serious efforts in order to stabilize that Ukraine economy and are pouring billions of US dollars into it.

    However, dizzying corruption and unproductive expenditures for the war in Donbass make the efforts of the international community seem wasteful.

    Instead of the expected growth of internal GDP, the recent years have seen its steady decline, as educated Ukrainians are fleeing their own country – even to seek economic refuge in other third-world unstable economies.

    https://intpolicydigest.org/2019/01/04/the-only-way-out-for-ukraine-is-national-reconciliation-not-political-persecution/

    How’s that everything the West touches turns to shit?

    • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 3:10 pm #

      Because our system and those who operate in it are shit Finc and shit in equals shit out! There is a reason that those who infiltrate these countries ply them with US dollars and that is so that they can take their cuts upfront and accept the ongoing payments down the road, without the added expense of conversion. American businessmen, politicians, and bureaucrats of all types are thieving, greedy scum. Now that they have absolutely nobody reeling them in anymore, they will surely suck the life out of the system and pretty soon I would imagine. Do not worry, it will be self correcting. .

      • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 3:38 pm #

        Do not worry, it will be self correcting

        Tell that to the people of Donetsk who died of artillery shelling of residential districts.

        • Walter B January 5, 2019 at 4:18 pm #

          No, I meant that the American system will be self correcting once it collapses my friend. Not interfering on Russian soil by foreign entities was a lesson that I was able to learn from Napoleon and Hitler. I would not make that mistake myself, but than, I am not a corrupt, greedy idiot like those who inhabit our government.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 3:40 pm #

      Yeah, right, keep you healthy for paying reparations for the Cold War, for Chechnya, Donbass…

      • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 6:37 pm #

        I’m sure you still could fight it to the last illegal mexican who managed to make it through yet to be walled off Southern border.

  60. tucsonspur January 5, 2019 at 3:25 pm #

    Really? Happy New Year? What’s really so new and what’s really so happy about it? I guess we did complete another journey around the sun and did put up new calendars. But it Was wonderful to see those young, beaming, hopeful, smiling faces on New Year’s eve in Times Square, and to hear Sinatra’s “New York, New York” again.

    Nancy Pelosi might just become Nancy Sardonicus, showing those pearly frights. Right now, her smile is captured somewhere in the middle of the grin and grimace gauge. A nervous, painful smile.

    My Uncle Sam stopped by, broke, wobbly, teetering this way and that, looking frightfully hungover. The wear and tear of many a new year, each one bringing more and more diversity and less and less security had wrinkled his face like a raisin. When he left, I knew that he could be mugged by any one of millions and millions of illegal immigrants in the streets and alleys of America. I felt powerless, giving him just a few bucks, wishing him the best of a happy New Year, sending him off with his soiled and tattered clothes.

    It’s the same Old stuff with the New Dems. Cortez, Sinema (God help Arizona), and the rabid, repugnant Rashida:

    http://fortune.com/2019/01/04/tlaib-trump-impeachment/

    Something New is definitely needed this New Year. Something like a cultural revolution, martial law or emergency powers. The rats, the rot, and the ruin have already set in. It’s time for redemption and reincarnation. It’s time for the Eagle to flare its rectrices, to soar and recover what’s right.

    Too drastic you say, too extreme? Drastic and extreme measures are the only answer. Otherwise we lose. We need steel, spine, strength, stewardship and solidarity. We need a truly New Year.

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    • FincaInTheMountains January 5, 2019 at 3:44 pm #

      While you’re at it, don’t forget to change the college programs, especially the “English 101” – I am sure that would be a part of any negotiations on nuclear disarmament and strategic forces limitations.

    • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 12:17 pm #

      Tucson,
      …Sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it….

      • tucsonspur January 6, 2019 at 6:16 pm #

        “I am the son of peasants and I know what is happening in the villages. That is why I wanted to take revenge, and I regret nothing”. Gavrilo Princip

  61. deetrump January 5, 2019 at 8:00 pm #

    Rashida for President 2024

    • BackRowHeckler January 5, 2019 at 10:18 pm #

      Of what? The Muslim Brotherhood?

  62. beantownbill. January 5, 2019 at 11:44 pm #

    @hmuller’s 7:46pm reply to my post:

    Nobody wants to be an addict, they become one. Many,many children are emotionally abused by non-addict parents. I personally know plenty. Being emotionally abused doesn’t leave physical marks, so authorities aren’t aware. A case in point were 2 brothers, one of whom committed suicide and the other became a highly neurotic individual who couldn’t have a meaningful relationship with a woman.

    The point is, government can’t take away children and make their lives happy, except occasionally. It is sad but true.

  63. KesaAnna January 6, 2019 at 1:28 am #

    ” How about this principle: an adult who is not hurting others, should be free to do what he wants, especially when it comes to sovereignty over his own body. ”

    Here’s the fundamental problem with , ” Not hurting others ” ;

    It is called the butterfly effect.

    If you have not heard of it , it is the idea that virtually everything you do — or even don’t do — ultimately impacts third parties who don’t get a vote , and does so as often negatively as positively.

    Other ways of putting this notion ;

    In engineering or in law , with every problem you solve , you create two more problems.

    The next three paraphrase J H Kunstler , whether he likes it or not ;

    ” unintended consequences ”

    ” diminishing returns ”

    ” Just because you can measure something or understand it , does not necessarily mean you can control it. ”

    Perhaps it will eventually occur to people that this endless striving for ( Mickey Mouse ) justice is THE reason why you end up ….

    — worrying about who is reading your innocuous email , and what they might twist that trivia into.

    — why you second -guess giving a member of the opposite sex a second glance.

    — why you are afraid to tell your own child , ” Don’t touch that hot stove ! ”

    — why the most trivial issues become issues to kill people over.

  64. KesaAnna January 6, 2019 at 2:25 am #

    We already know that ” legalizing ” or “decriminalizing ” drugs will not substantially lower anyone’s costs , or put would -be Grand Inquisitors on any kind of leash .

    How do we already know this ?

    Consider tobacco.

    After you grow a crop of tobacco , sell it to a middleman , roll it into cigarettes in a factory , transport it to a local vendor , and everyone makes a nice , fat , profit ,

    a pack of cigarettes should cost ……..about 50 cents a pack.

    Even given the depredations of capitalist greed , your cigarette habit should cost less than your Clusterfuck Nation habit.

    That is how we already know that legalization is not going to save any money , or make any money.

    As for ” decriminalization ” , granted , you aren’t sending cigarette smokers to prison.

    — No , you just ludicrously treat them like child molesters.

    So we can reasonably guess already what ” decriminalization ” is going to look like.

    One funny thing about all of this is that in the GENUINE good old days , there were more taverns and saloons in this country than there are Starbucks Coffee shops now.

    There were ashtrays and spittoons in hospitals.

    And mom could buy cocaine over the counter for moodiness or tired blood .

    Of course in those days we didn’t have whole battalions of police , single ordinances that ran to 500 pages , and the NSA monitoring your tastes in porn. ( or lack thereof. That can be spun into a deviation too , by the way. )

    The good old days commonly referred to on this site , like the common culture thing , is part and parcel of that transient and chimerical happy motoring era —

    oops.

    • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 4:55 am #

      Bless you KesaAnna, for seeing it and saying it the way it is. Completely a separate issue from any right or wrong argument of the stuff, realizing that as we humans continue to overcomplicate everything we do, it does not make our lives any better, simply more complicated, more expensive and more stressful for all of those out there, whether they are involved with the activity in question of not. It is absolutely no wonder that Americans continue to be the most drugged, drunk, and distracted humans on the planet. We have created a series of systems that are seriously not conducive to human happiness or well being. I hope that all of you who read this blog can realize that and avoid the pitfalls that we all face every damned day.

      • Here is the basis for some hope; the Champion of Strauss and Howe need only reverse obvious wrongs, and pick low-hanging policy fruit.

        The only thing they have to avoid is saying something stupid on Twitter or impregnating the maid

        • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 7:00 am #

          I’ll leave humping the maid to you Little Dicky. It’s not my style.

      • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 9:06 am #

        There are countries where drug abuse and alcoholism is worse than here, Walt. Russia, along with central American sinkholes like Honduras and Guatemala come to mind.

        Brh

        • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 4:11 pm #

          True enough, but wouldn’t it be nice if we stopped playing catch up? I understand that having more inebriated people wandering about brings the potential to fleece them financially in many ways, but when their fun costs the rest of us large outlays of cash in the form or increased taxation, well I simply have to warn all and perhaps complain over the willingness of them to make me pay.

  65. Pucker January 6, 2019 at 5:36 am #

    And the Circus Came to Town….

    One can see a lot of Trump in this book, which Trump lauds: “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. Greene uses the case study method to illustrate his “Laws”, and he refers to famous Con Men like “Yellow Kid” and PT Barnum.

    “LAW 6 COURT ATTENTION AT ALL COST JUDGMENT Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses. PART I: SURROUND YOUR NAME WITH THE SENSATIONAL AND SCANDALOUS

    Draw attention to yourself by creating an unforgettable, even controversial image. Court scandal. Do anything to make yourself seem larger than life and shine more brightly than those around you. Make no distinction between kinds of attention—notoriety of any sort will bring you power. Better to be slandered and attacked than ignored. OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW P.T. Barnum, America’s premier nineteenth-century showman, started his career as an assistant to the owner of a circus, Aaron Turner.”

    Robert Greene
    The 48 Laws of Power

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  66. Pucker January 6, 2019 at 6:06 am #

    The Muslims cover up their women in the Burka so that they won’t get raped, right? What kind of a culture is that?!

    • Pucker January 6, 2019 at 6:08 am #

      Hillary and The Clinton Foundation take big bucks from the Saudi’s….

      • FincaInTheMountains January 6, 2019 at 8:43 am #

        Yeah, and the water is wet.

        Any more news?

    • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 12:21 pm #

      “What kind of a culture is that?!”

      Puck,
      Why be judgmental? Seems to work for them.

  67. Pucker January 6, 2019 at 6:17 am #

    Pull GI Joe’s string….

    GI Joe: “Are you alone?”

    Pull it again….

    GI Joe: “What time does your husband come home from work?”

    • Pucker January 6, 2019 at 8:05 am #

      When I was growing up, perhaps because of all of the moral ambiguity surrounding US involvement in the Vietnam War, the archetypal “G.I. Joe” was non-ideological and basically just an “Ass Kicker”. I recall a plastic GI Joe “Action Figure” with a big scar on his face and possessing something called a “Kung Fu Grip” used to purportedly dominate his opponents. I think that if young American teenagers let their fantasies “Run Wild”, GI Joe would have been engaged in pornographic, violent rape scenes either during counter-insurgency “OPs” against “Charlie”, or while on shore leave? Things would really go awry if a GI Joe happened up an unaccompanied “Barbie Doll”.

  68. Pucker January 6, 2019 at 6:35 am #

    Is there a reliable App that can accurately determine when a woman is ovulating?

    Is there an App that can determine if your wife or daughter is screwing around?

    Call it the “Digital Burka”….

    Feminism, to a certain extent, is predicated on the Right to Privacy since it is ultimately about a woman’s sexual freedom and the Right to Fuck, right?

  69. FincaInTheMountains January 6, 2019 at 8:39 am #

    Hypersonic Weapons are No Game-Changer

    Hypersonic weapon systems are coming. That is a fact. But these new weapons will not change the fundamentals of strategy, the long-term logic of defense planning or military capability development.

    https://news.yahoo.com/hypersonic-weapons-no-game-changer-150000322.html

    Well, when you can, you develop similar, or better weapons, when you can’t, you publish stupid articles like the above.

    From top reply to the article on Yahoo News by someone called George:


    Mr Raitasalo you tell much biggie porkies.You are a blatant liar and should not be allowed to go online with lies like that.
    Russia now has the capability of pressing a button in Moscow and 4 minutes later london gets blown off the map.
    Now if you refuse to acknowledge the strength of that advantage then you deserve to be taken out and shot. If it was not such a big deal, then why is the US in a panic to follow suite with 4 different companies working around the clock under high security and desperate to catch up on Russia..
    Why do you come out with nonsense like that when everybody knows that the Russians have just pushed the US out of Syria because the US is afraid to poke the bear any further having killed 100s of Russian troops and been given the final warning from Mr Putin the man who does not bluff.

    • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

      Da

      • FincaInTheMountains January 6, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

        Splat?

  70. BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 9:15 am #

    The more we talk the less we give
    That’s the modern way to live
    And someone said live fast die young
    But the time always runs faster son.

    Diseases come diseases go
    Welcome to the final show
    Lets shake hands with plastic gloves
    And watch out for the last white doves

    And believe me baby every generation
    Got its own disease
    And I’ve got mIne
    Will you help me please

    Every generation got its own disease
    I got mIne
    Will you help me please

    — Fury in the Slaughterhouse

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    • ozone January 6, 2019 at 10:44 am #

      M.,
      Great band! I had never heard of them. (Similar to the case of the original singer of “The Power of Love”, whose fame was originated in Germany.) Somebody tried to compare them to U2, but I feel they’re somewhat off the mark; I find the writing from these guys deeper and more poetic and the musicianship more varied.
      Thank you.

  71. ozone January 6, 2019 at 9:50 am #

    Walter B.,
    I realize that the legalized (tested, packaged and consistent) weed discussion is a drive into the ditch of off-topic concerns, AND that it’s never a good idea to try solving a problem by giving politicos more monies to waste, BUT, just for your own personal edification, I give you the weed bid’nez done correctly. (Whew… deep breath.)

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/netacare-lt/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/06024355/Northampton-QuickView.pdf

    I hope that pdf file comes through okay. If it doesn’t, let me know and I’ll just post the opening link to the store.

    ***I think we can agree that this is all quite high-tech (except for the plant itself), and probably can’t be sustained in an atmosphere of energy drawdown, but it’s an interesting thought experiment for the present times. I surmise that in future, it will have less “moralistic” views attached to it, except by religious and ideological crazies whose bent is total control over others. — A way to relax and take a different glimpse of the world without the well-known and documented dangers of the “demon alcohol”.

    (Everything in moderation folks… low and slow is the way to go.)

    • beantownbill. January 6, 2019 at 10:40 am #

      The first part looks like an ad for Celestial Season tea. Who woulda thunk the weed culture evolving like this? What happened to the days when you bought loose weed in a plastic ziplock type bag and rolled your own? I guess technology fills all niches.

      I realize the whole drug legalization discussion is technically a distraction from real issues, but getting people to talk about the stupidity of government laws is a gateway (!) onto the road of rational thought, where real solutions to real problems dwell.

      • ozone January 6, 2019 at 10:59 am #

        Bill,
        I agree that it’s a little surprising, but when we give it a thunk or two, we can see that this was well-planned by knowledgeable folks with a solid business plan. Since NETA’s original iteration was the medical market, *consistency* was/is all-important. Once that was achieved, the expansion into the recreational market was an easy one (except for the amazing demand to be supplied), and the replicable consistency is *very* desirable to the customer; once the effects are known, there’s no need to guess what the street purveyor might be giving out.

        Intelligent approach to a demand that’s much larger than most will admit.

        • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 11:31 am #

          It does seem to be working out ok up there in e hampton, Oz. A lot of planning must’ve gone into the rollout (no pun intended). Only problem ive heard is traffic jams all the sudden in that little town on US10

          Brh

          • ozone January 6, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

            M.,
            Yep. As far as the traffic problems, I didn’t witness that. Me and a friend of mine went up there a couple weeks ago (Sunday) just to check it out. Didn’t see any problems. The police had put up the sawhorses to keep folks from parking on the street near the store, which I thought quite reasonable from a public safety standpoint. (We parked right across the street in an auto repair lot since it was closed.) To wit: There were so many people on the sidewalks curling around the shop, I believe it would have been a bit more of a risk to pedestrians to have cars pulling in and out in that area. All in all, pleasant, civil and patient folks waiting in the rain to get in. (I had thought that maybe we could get a peek inside, but it would have been a couple hours wait, and my friend had appointments to keep so we mosey’d on back. A pleasant ride in light traffic.)

            Another couple thoughtful features: Medical customers received preferential treatment via a separate line… a much shorter one, understandably. 😉
            And, orders can be placed and pre-paid on-line via registration. Bagged and waiting for pickup, a la CVS.

            This is clearly not an operation conceived of and run by dummies.

      • Walter B January 6, 2019 at 4:08 pm #

        “I realize the whole drug legalization discussion is technically a distraction from real issues, but getting people to talk about the stupidity of government laws is a gateway (!) onto the road of rational thought, where real solutions to real problems dwell.”

        That’s the tick btb, thank you. It is always a please hearing from those who can see the problems through the bullshit.

    • K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

      ‘High’ prices.

  72. JohnAZ January 6, 2019 at 11:43 am #

    All this talk about Weed. I have not seen one discussion about the health dangers of smoking the stuff.

    The liberals had a great time destroying the tobacco industry for poisoning the GI generation with their product. Rightfully so! A large part of our medical problem is dealing with the results of environmental poisoning of which smoking was a large part forty years ago.

    So today, where is the indignation about smoking weed? The effects of the stuff is totally unknown, just like tobacco seventy years ago. Emphysema and cancer together should scare the hell out of the medical industry in the future.

    Why hasn’t Weed been put under FDS analysis and control? Easy! Because the Drug Lords in our government do not want the bad news put on the street that the new alcohol is as dangerous as tobacco, or air pollution, or other forms of environmental poisoning.

    A darker possibility exists. The addiction levels of the country have gone up considerably over the past thirty years as the importance of The Common Man has shrunk. Keep those drugs flowing into the country at minimum cost to keep this populace sedated. What a deal! Give the people all the money you can from the government, universal Imcome, disability, etc. Then addict the heck out of them with drugs that are cheap enough to be available. This is where the nation is heading and is the basis for a lot of the opinionating I read on this blog.

    BTW, gambling is another huge addiction mill in the US. Like drugs, who are the primary money makers from gambling, who is pushing it.

    THE GOVERNMENT!

    At all levels.

    So to all you government hating MJ smokers, know that you are being played by the assholes in government who are only interested in your obedience, submission and most importantly your money.

    Let us see. Who are the advocates for open borders and MJ legalization? The Deep State! Who is trying to stop Chinese fentanyl and build a barrier to illicit material entering the country. Remember that in 2020.

    Unless the druggies outnumber the non druggies. If so, it is too late.

    • ozone January 6, 2019 at 12:18 pm #

      JohnAZ,
      With an alarmist viewpoint such as that, it’s no surprise to me that ignorance and fleecing will continue unabated and the practice of science will eventually fade into the mist. (Just the use of the phrase ‘medical industry’ is telling in the extreme.)

      NON-study of this plant is for governmental and bureaucratic control alright, but I tend to think it’s for the exact opposite reasons than you’re waving the red shirt about.

    • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 12:51 pm #

      John,
      Posted below is a most concise argument for the legalization of Marijuana…it is short (a bit over a minute), and cannot be amplified upon nor argued otherwise;

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

  73. 100th Avatar January 6, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

    “Trail of Tears”?

    The name given to Pocahontas Warren’s campaign.

    • 100th Avatar January 6, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

      Someone asked her if she was related to Earl Warren.

      She said yes as many in her family have high-court speech tones.

      • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 2:16 pm #

        Living around here and being a former member of UCC, I recognize the type: patrician academic, blue blood yankee, never did a days work in her life but dresses down i.e. blue collar clothes, roots that go back to 1630s Boston or maybe even Plymouth but still might call herself ‘child of immigrants’, claims to be down with the struggle with black and hispanic people but lives about as far away from them as possible. In short a goddam phony and poseur, a pretender who would be putty in the hands of Putin, young kim or Ji. You don’t want her anywhere near the White House.

        Brh

  74. SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

    I dunno, I think alcohol is a very dangerous drug if abused and it is legal. It would appear that marijuana is safer than alcohol.

    https://drugabuse.com/marijuana-vs-alcohol/

    This should be a consideration when it comes to discussions of legalization. Especially given what is already legal.

    • Tate January 6, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

      Hey, I have an idea. How about if we allowed unlimited home-brewing & distillation of liquor; then unlimited growing of cannabis? Maybe even some limited sale of these from the home? But put the lid on turning them into big business propositions?

      Oh, I forgot. This is America.

      • SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

        I know, exactly! It always is about profit and mass production. People have found ways of getting intoxicated since the beginning of time. So society does need to find a reasonable way to manage it. And encourage moderation. Imagine that!

    • cbeard January 7, 2019 at 8:58 am #

      It certainly should be a consideration. Alcohol poisoning can kill you quickly. It is IMPOSSIBLE to overdose on cannabis/marijuana. To O.D. by smoking it is said to require smoking 120,000 joints at once or in short order. Using the CBD/THC oil would eliminate the dangers of smoking it by ingestion or vaping. The more I learn about cannabis, it seems to be a miracle drug. At least until big pharma gets on the wagon. They will devise something out of it that will be unhealthy with horrendous side effects.

  75. K-Dog January 6, 2019 at 2:09 pm #

    elle jaxsun Jul 2018

    coping

    the mist from my dope
    coping mechanism
    tickles my nose and my lips

    the corners of my mouth
    pulled upward as my eyes
    turn to slits

    i sink into the couch

    cuddle my dog

    ahhh, i ******* love this

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  76. The New York Times reported this morning that various immigration policy advocates such as Center for Immigration Studies and FAIR are advocating the President step back from literal (steel/concrete) Wall policy and move to mandatory E-verify and taxation of remittances, and the barrier issue to more amorphous solutions such as the Barrier Fence, which a fair amount of Democrats signed on to in past years including Hill-Dog and Schumer, aka the techno-fence as remarked upon by former Chief of Staff Ex-Gen. John (“Southern Command”) Kelly.

    Not that this line of conventional political reasoning (the art of the
    possible) will necessarily gain traction in a white house digging trenches to go the distance in a war of all-out attrition against the Dem blockers.

  77. Tate January 6, 2019 at 3:38 pm #

    Of course it would be much more effective to implement a hard-line policy consisting of a border barrier combined with adequate funding for high-tech deterrence measures & border security personnel, for ICE, for e-verify, for an end to chain migration & birthright citizenship, & the visa lottery. Have I left anything out? The point is that it shouldn’t be in dispute that these measures combined would be vastly more effective than a Wall by itself.

    Tragically, a necessarily narrow focus on a Wall is necessary because that’s what most of Trump’s base expects. And Trump’s base consists of the average man or woman, just as the Dems’ base consists of the same. That is to say, decisions are made based on what the average 100 IQ person thinks is good.

    And how dull is the average 100 IQ individual? The question answers itself. Voting should be severely restricted based on ability. That’s the only way to get better decisions made at the top in a republic. Or, if that’s out of the question, then let’s just cut to the chase, & have a dictator.

    • beantownbill. January 6, 2019 at 4:51 pm #

      What would go a long way toward resolving issues revolving around governance is the imposition of term limits. Like that would ever happen, though.

      I’m not against restricting voting, but what criteria would determine who gets to vote? My only suggestion, to start, is to only have property owners eligible. What else? And don’t say IQ because wisdom isn’t related to intelligence.

      • Tate January 6, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

        But I have to say it: wisdom is related to intelligence. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s true of course that we grow in wisdom as we get older. But an intelligent young man will grow into a wiser old man than his less intelligent counterpart, even though the latter may have more acquaintance with the school of hard knocks.

        • elysianfield January 6, 2019 at 7:56 pm #

          ” But an intelligent young man will grow into a wiser old man than his less intelligent counterpart, ”

          Tate,
          …Not necessarily so….

  78. deetrump January 6, 2019 at 4:38 pm #

    Mr. Trump has the power to declare a national emergency, close the borders (north and south), build a big beautiful concrete wall, make Mexico pay for the wall, and stop the caravan invaders.

    Why is Mr. Trump negotiating with his enemies instead of acting to declare a national emergency? Could it be he does not believe his own hype? Now metal, aluminum, fencing, steel slats, instead the concrete 20 foot wall he promised? Now $5.6 Billion out of our pockets instead of Mexico paying for it as he promised? Weak.

  79. BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 4:45 pm #

    Uh oh, trouble in Houston. Last week a little 7 year old girl was shot, and the shooter was identified by the mother and aunt as a blue eyed white man. The little girl was black. The whole civil rights, BLM, hate crime and media apparatus immediately sprung into action as you can well imagine. A hate crime had been committed, and PBS, Wapo, NYT etc, the same suspects who stirred up racial hatred and violence in Ferguson, Mo a few years ago, were on it. This evil white man must be hunted down and justice must be served.

    Well you have to give the Houston police dept credit because today they arrested two gang bangers, black, which totally surprised everybody. It may have been a case of mistaken identity, or it might have been a hit, as the little girls father has 14 previous felony arrests.

    To be honest with you the media seems to be more than disappointed the killers turned out to be black, not white. Now they’ll have to wait till the next incident to come up with new narrative in order to stir up some racial hatred and violence.

    Brh

    • Tate January 6, 2019 at 5:25 pm #

      Well, the Hunt for the Great White Killer has to move on. The little girl’s mother just knew that the shooter was an evil racist white man & that he acted out of his evil racist white malice to indiscriminately murder her little girl. The Hoax of Black Victimization continues.

      • beantownbill. January 6, 2019 at 5:42 pm #

        Yeah, but nobody’s lamenting the fact that an innocent little girl got killed as collateral damage (probably collateral).

        • BackRowHeckler January 6, 2019 at 6:10 pm #

          No, her murder is being lamented, Bill. It does look like collateral damage, thugs being reckless with guns, shooting into a moving automobile. What happens in these American cities on a daily basis is beyond belief. I just read an article of what its like in public schools in New Jersey … lets just say the level of chaos, violence and mayhem is monumental.

          Brh

    • SoftStarLight January 6, 2019 at 6:58 pm #

      Black on black violence is almost just taken for granted. Notice that BLM doesn’t have much to say about it. In fact, I am pretty sure they believe it is mythology. But it’s actually pretty bad.

      https://www.dailywire.com/news/7441/7-statistics-you-need-know-about-black-black-crime-aaron-bandler

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