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Between a Rock and a Squishy Place

     The rock is reality. The squishy place is the illusion that pervasive racketeering is an okay replacement for an economy. The essence of racketeering is the use of dishonest schemes to get money, often (but not always) employing coercion to make it work. Some rackets can function on the sheer cluelessness of the victim(s).

     Is it fair to suppose that money management is at the heart of the sort of advanced, complex economy that developed early in the 20th century? I think so. Money is the lifeblood of trade and of investment in productive activities that support trade. Of course, in order for money to have meaning, to function in such transactional relations, the people must be convinced that it legitimately represents its face value. Otherwise, money must be labeled “money” — that is, a medium of exchange suspected of false value. An economy that uses “money” — especially an economy of rackets — is an economy in a lot of trouble, and that is where ours is in December 2013.

     The trouble reached escape velocity in the fall of 2008 when a particular brand of racket among the Wall Street kit-bag of rackets got badly out-of-hand, namely the business of selling securitized bundled mortgages and their “innovative” derivative “products” to dupes unaware that they were booby-trapped for failure which would, perversely, hugely reward the seller of such trash paper. These were, in the immortal words of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), the “really shitty deal[s]” propagated by the likes of the Goldman Sachs crypto-bank — so-called collateralized debt obligations — pawned off on credulous pension fund managers and other “marks” around the world greedy for “yield.”

     It turned out that all the large banks trafficking in such booby-trapped contracts ended up choking on them when “the music stopped” — that is, when the derivative “swaps” payoffs at the heart of this particular racket began to fail, sending up a general alarm that all such “products” were primed to blow up the entire “banking” system. By the way, the quotation marks I so liberally resort to are necessary to denote that in such a matrix of rackets things are not what they appear to be but only what they pretend to be.

     The failure of Bear Stearns followed by the implosion of Lehman Brothers and the near-death experience of AIG alerted “civilians” outside Wall Street that the banks were linked in a web of fraud and insolvency and had to be “rescued” in order for the rest of America to keep its “way of life” going. The rescue remedy proved to be several new layers of fraud that have now matured into institutionalized rackets. The best known are the Siamese twins of “Quantitative Easing” and zero interest rate policy (ZIRP). The lesser-known racket was the 2009 rule change by the Financial Accounting Standards Board that allowed banks to make up whatever numbers they felt like in reporting the value of their holdings (“assets”).

      Hence, these dishonest, regularized operations can be labeled a hostage racket with coercion at their core. The coercion comes in the form of the threat that any let-up in the stream of QE “money” enjoyed by the banks in the form of carry-trade “loans” and “primary dealer” premium cream-offs will send the economy back to the stone age. Overlooked in this equation is the ongoing destruction of ordinary citizens (a.k.a. the “middle class”) who have already lost their grip on the emblematic “way of life” Wall Street is working so tirelessly to defend. Politicians are, of course, deeply implicated and indeed directly involved in all these rackets, since these hired handmaidens make and execute the laws protecting Wall Street’s looting operations.

     The catch to all this, lately, lies in the cognitive dissonance between the symptomatic euphoria of record stock market indexes versus the conviction of a few hardcore skeptical observers that the rackets are now so reckless and impudent as to be beyond any hope of control and on a trajectory to bring about hardships orders of magnitude above anything imagined in 2008.

     So-called “health care” is also a hostage racket, since sick people are hardly in a position to bargain for anything, but it is only a sub-system of the larger matrix of rackets that have made this such an unusually dishonest society. My guess is that ObamaCare is sure to make it worse, and pretty quickly too, since the rules for ObamaCare were written by the hireling lobbyists of the industries that benefit from the racketeering.

     The big mystery in all this remains: where are the people with some institutional power who might stand up and denounce all this perfidy? What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens that the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.

      By the way, one reason for the vulgar orgy of “consumerism” that, in recent years, has turned the Thanksgiving holiday into a sort of grotesque sporting event, is to mount a crude demonstration that our “money” is a viable medium of exchange. The dumbest people in the land are induced to swarm through the merchandise warehouse stores and fight to exchange their “money” for hard goods offered at false “bargains.” I wonder how much of it is a dress rehearsal for what happens in a hyper-inflation?

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

269 Responses to “Between a Rock and a Squishy Place”

  1. Widok December 2, 2013 at 9:59 am #

    An economy that uses “money” — especially an economy of rackets — is an economy in a lot of trouble, and that is where ours is in December 2013.

    I don’t know. So long as the “victims”, although I’d say “Marks” is a better word, remain clueless then the illusion that all is well in the garden can perpetuate. There’s no indication that this rampant and epidemic “cluelessness ” is abating.

    • Htruth December 2, 2013 at 2:13 pm #

      Black Thursday is just a practice run for Hunger Games. Most folks in America are too involved with themselves to realize what is coming: http://youtu.be/mTQzLv_SgiU

  2. Neon Vincent December 2, 2013 at 10:02 am #

    “By the way, one reason for the vulgar orgy of “consumerism” that, in recent years, has turned the Thanksgiving holiday into a sort of grotesque sporting event, is to mount a crude demonstration that our “money” is a viable medium of exchange.”

    This makes me glad that I didn’t leave step foot off the property between Wednesday afternoon and Sunday night. Year after year, I look at the Black Friday (and now Gray Thursday) sale spectacle, which people on Facebook point out looks like a zombie invasion, with horror, and year after year, I stay away.

    Just the same, the hordes of zombie shoppers have now become, not only a demonstration that our money is still worth something, but a barometer of the health of our consumer economy. This year, there were more shoppers, but less money spent. Welcome to the combination of bargain hunting and wage deflation. Those aren’t the only things threatening the consumer economy, even from a business as usual perspective. KPBS lists a whole lot of issues that could erode spending power well short of the entire rickety edifice of our economy collapsing.

    http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/11/kpbs-on-retail-desperation.html

  3. Arn Varnold December 2, 2013 at 10:11 am #

    “What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens that the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Now that’s a good question. I don’t know the answer.
    But it may be fear, intimidation, and the relentless pursuit and prosecution of whistle blowers. That combined with a totalitarian posture, taking away income, jobs, and social supports, which creates an atmosphere of fear.
    It’s a sad view to see once fierce citizens cowed by their government…

    • olehombre December 2, 2013 at 11:50 am #

      Oh the woes of complexity!
      Would that all the architects of banking and political manipulation were coagulated below the mason/dixon line, then we would know WHAT TO DO!
      May I inquire, what do folks recommend that Joe Smith from Peoria plan to do about his current predicament?
      Not so easy, perhaps, to construct a viable tactic.

    • K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 11:56 am #

      Now that’s a good question. I don’t know the answer.

      I do.

      Television and the death of black and white.

      • Arn Varnold December 2, 2013 at 10:10 pm #

        That’s a start, for sure. I for one, chucked my T.V. back in ’94.
        Black and white requires an educated, functional brain; that would seem a missing attribute of late.

    • mdhaller December 2, 2013 at 1:23 pm #

      “What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens?”

      I know the answer…”Brainwashing!”

      The mass media: Television, movies, newspapers, radio, etc. are all owned by the same people who own the major international corporations and the government (the big bankers). People are constantly being taught from birth that resistance is futile, being submissive equals being a good citizen, hiding your head in the sand or taking a “happy” pill is the safest solution to all your problems, ignorance is power. If people do not believe there is a matrix, they will never realize there is a means to escape its influence.

      People older than fifty were raised in a society with only three channels on television and thousands of family owned newspapers, but the young people today don’t have a chance unless they escape from mass media and spend much of their time online reading blogs by old people who remind them that “freedom” isn’t just a word.

      • johnc December 2, 2013 at 2:14 pm #

        Thanks for the comment. Couldn’t agree more.

      • sauerkraut December 2, 2013 at 3:03 pm #

        Absolutely right, MD. But even back then, there was a surprising coincidence of opinion, for a so-called free press.

  4. Nicholas December 2, 2013 at 10:22 am #

    Every so often I sit down and put the pieces together as if it was a jigsaw puzzle. The last picture that emerged is not pretty. It looks more like the one I was born into in the middle of Europe – Great Depression, Nazism, and World War II. The socio-econo-environmental super storm that is on the horizon and blowing our way is dark. There are ways to prepare to avoid collapse and even reconstruct America, but the window of opportunity for that is narrow and the probabilities are not good. Still I am an incurable optimist. May be you can help. http://www.holigent.org/Holigent.org/Rethink_GD_2.0.html

    • toktomi December 2, 2013 at 12:03 pm #

      Oops! Too late.

      ~toktomi~

  5. Smoky Joe December 2, 2013 at 10:28 am #

    Black Friday disgusted me as it crept into “Gray Thursday.” We are nation of blinded consumers. I did buy groceries from a local market on Saturday, which was “Small Business Saturday,” as every day should be.

    On the other hand, I’m a hypocrite of a sort, since it’s a great time to bargain for a decent used car. I’m into that racket up to my neck, treating it as a game. It seems that dealers are nervous, and will make deals now, as if they fear the market will again freeze up.

    Or maybe I’m just good at haggling.

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  6. ozone December 2, 2013 at 10:29 am #

    Jim,
    Great news on the completion of the next tome! (My neighbor is an author, so I get a first-hand peek at how much actual work goes into the final accomplishment… um… LOTS.)

  7. ozone December 2, 2013 at 10:53 am #

    ” The catch to all this [lying, pretending and racketeering], lately, lies in the cognitive dissonance between the symptomatic euphoria of record stock market indexes versus the conviction of a few hardcore skeptical observers that the rackets are now so reckless and impudent as to be beyond any hope of control and on a trajectory to bring about hardships orders of magnitude above anything imagined in 2008.” -JHK

    I agree, it’s all eminently foreseeable and firmly in the realm of the tragic and THOUGHTLESS.
    (These days I kinda vacillate between hilarity and disgust… and that’s from “healthy” doses of easily discernable decline and fall, not pretending.)

  8. Q. Shtik December 2, 2013 at 11:00 am #

    “This makes me glad that I didn’t leave step foot off the property between Wednesday afternoon and Sunday night.” – Neon V
    ==========

    Congratulations on that^. But I’ll go you one better. I haven’t shopped that 4 day span of time in my entire life. In fact, I rarely shop at ANY time.

    When I look at the video clips on the news of the crazed shoppers who left hearth and home at 6pm before the turkey had even cooled and those that rose before the crack of dawn Friday to queue up for the mad rush into WalGet I wonder what the driving force is in them that isn’t in me.

    • hineshammer December 2, 2013 at 11:12 am #

      Stupidity. Vapidity. Materialism. Lack of individualism. They, not you.

    • goat1001 December 2, 2013 at 11:16 am #

      “Friday to queue up for the mad rush into WalGet I wonder what the driving force is in them that isn’t in me.”

      That driving force is GREED and SELFISHNESS. A product of the ’60s ME Generation…

  9. simon.dc3 December 2, 2013 at 11:11 am #

    Congrats on finishing your third volume of World Made By Hand, looking forward to its publishing.

    And looking forward to resumption of KunstlerCast, great interviews, great chats.

  10. High and Dry in New Mexico December 2, 2013 at 11:13 am #

    Personally, I go back and forth with the whole pending financial collapse. Part of me thinks it is an easier problem to solve compared to global warming or resource depletion since our bank system is not based in reality. On the other hand, there are many people who will cling to this financial system even when it has been discovered futile by the majority. Historically, people with extreme power rarely if ever give it up voluntarily, it is usually taken from them by force. As for how this will turn out I really have no clue.

    Jim, congrats on the WMH 3 being completed, looking forward to it!

    All the best and may you not be trampled by crazed shoppers this holiday season.

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    • K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 11:50 am #

      As for how this will turn out I really have no clue.

      “Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. For you have shed human blood; you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.”

      It doesn’t look good. A tossing of the bones could mean taken from them by force.

      “Many, even the greater part, of Israel will fall or be carried away.”

      Once Christmas meant more than being trampled by crazed shoppers. That be the source of my quotification.

      Happy Holidays

      • Janos Skorenzy December 2, 2013 at 1:57 pm #

        Jehovah told them to do that and then he condemns them for it? As Alan Bloom said, He is the ultimate “character”. Also easy to see why some saw Him as the Demiurge and not the most high God.

  11. charlie foxtrot December 2, 2013 at 11:19 am #

    kyoo, it isn’t a ‘driving force’ within; it is the television everyone is addicted to that tells ’em it is expected of everybody…a dim or nonexistent intellect is easily directed by a perception of “everyone is doing it”…

    • charlie foxtrot December 2, 2013 at 11:22 am #

      …which, now that I think about it, accounts for a hell of a lot more than walmert…

  12. K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 11:29 am #

    You go to the grocery store to get a bag of dog treats and essential victuals. You get what you can ‘on sale’. You pull out a pawful of coupons and its the kind of high end deli where you’re discouraged from loading your own bags and they ask you for your membership card to prove your pure-bred status. The total without savings comes to $123.58 but because you know how to sit and shake hands you only have to pay $73.36. You leave with a smile, with puffs of steaming breath and tongues hanging out you load up the family gondola. You feel special and clever.

    SCAMZILLA they’ve done it again. And when it takes a wheelbarrow of bank notes to buy that bag of groceries you will feel special that you’ll only need half a wheelbarrow of the new special linen paper because your special and smart. But you’ll look at the happy dog who packs the bag and wish you had something to do. For a moment not feeling so special.

    And $73.36 still gets a really big bag and you get to pick between paper and plastic you’re so special. Special because you still have $73.36. Until you don’t.

  13. Widok December 2, 2013 at 11:35 am #

    a dim or nonexistent intellect is easily directed by a perception of “everyone is doing it”…

    This is an interesting statement that can be turned on the purveyor of it. Translated, that means you have a dim or nonexistent intellect if you believe everyone is doing it. I bet if the statistics are revealed, no where near a majority is doing it. In fact, I’d guess a significant minority are doing it. Let’s say 20%. The media hypes it as “everyone” and the majority who stay home believe it because of their lack of intellect.

    • Hands4u December 2, 2013 at 1:41 pm #

      90% of the news we see on the “Xobanidog” is 10% of what has actually been reported and the other 90% is considered
      non-sensational, or not essential to strong ratings.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 2, 2013 at 2:01 pm #

      Commonsense: it’s not only what everyone else is doing, it’s what we are supposed to do. It is our Duty. When asked how we could help after 9/11, Bush said shop.

      We live in a Plutocracy and that means an Oligarchy (rule by the few) and it could even be Totalitarian. What it can’t be Fascism since Fascists believe in Tradition, History and all things that pertain to the Nation State. These Aristo-Cats don’t.

  14. George December 2, 2013 at 11:37 am #

    Regarding Obama-Care, most of the fuss so far has been addressed at either some immoral socialism inherent to the program or (more recently) the problems with the Internet web portal. Neither of these problems is as vexing as all the fuss would lead us to believe.

    The overarching issue has to do with the collection of vast amounts of personal information. Once applicants establish an account, they are then allowed to shop for insurance. Because the prices quoted are seldom affordable, the applicants are prompted to apply for subsidies. Until that point the collection of personal information is quite limited but once an applicant seeks subsides, it seems that every detail is asked for.

    Shortly after 9/11, Congress got buffaloed into passing the Patriot Act, an act which nipped at and compromised our so-called Constitutional rights and civil liberties. Only after passage did this become common knowledge, enough so that a subsequent attempt to further this with passage of a second Patriot Act failed.

    And then there was Obama Care. Might I suggest that by applying for insurance subsidies under Obama Care, applicants are voluntarily giving up most of the rights that that second Patriot Act would have taken? Is Obama Care, in addition to the alleged benefits to health care delivery, really not much more than a way to track those who are being marginalized and displaced by the “reality rock”?

    http://www.thesisa.org

  15. BackRowHeckler December 2, 2013 at 11:56 am #

    The Mortgage Rackets??? Jim that’s so yesterday! Its ancient history! You might as well be talking about the Great South Seas Tulip Swindle of the 18th century. What’s happening now, right today, is that Amazon has come up with a scheme to deliver packages RIGHT TO YOUR DOORSTEP using HELICOPTER DRONES. Thousands of these drones will fill the sky, delivering IPods, laptops, books (maybe one of your books) … you name it, … electric driven and GPS navigated … thousands will fill the skies!!!

    –BRH

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    • Hands4u December 2, 2013 at 1:11 pm #

      Sounds like the “elves” have taken over Christmas!

    • Janos Skorenzy December 2, 2013 at 2:04 pm #

      I saw that too. I’m not so sure – imagine the liability involved when these things hit people or people allow themselves to get hit. Also people in rural areas will shoot them out of the sky and take the goodies. People in ghettoes too.

      • BackRowHeckler December 2, 2013 at 5:32 pm #

        Ya Vlad, it should be pretty easy to bring one of these Helo Drones down with a shotgun. Probably need a Turkey Load. As for the choke, I’d say Full.

        -BRH

  16. Hands4u December 2, 2013 at 12:01 pm #

    the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.
    ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

    The only way that staff on hosital psych units could deal with “subduing” a patient that was losing control of themself and creating an atmosphere of fear and anxiety for others was to place them in a locked “rubber-room” and then often laugh and joke either about the incident as a whole or something the patient might say etc… (hopefully this would occur out of earshot of the other patients). I say this as I feel it relates to creating an atmosphere that is in-humane as a whole; by making something we all know to be uncomfortable and unforgiving into something bearable. Turning tragedy to comedy- Ah yes the Greeks.

  17. Q. Shtik December 2, 2013 at 12:02 pm #

    “So-called “health care” is also a hostage racket, since sick people are hardly in a position to bargain for anything,” – JHK
    =========

    Tales From Rose Mountain

    Sonja, my mother-in-law, is currently residing in the “sub-acute” section of the above named Nursing Home and Rehab center. She’s been there one week today. Before that she was in the hospital for five days. She had been booted from another rehab center after 8-9 weeks there during which she had made little or even negative progress and we had her at home for a couple of weeks existing mainly in our dining room which we converted into a bedroom. In the middle of a cold night on her last day at home she went into a crisis – I’ll spare you a vivid description – we called 911 and she was taken by a small army of rescue squad people to a nearby hospital.

    My wife went with her in the ambulance and endured the next 10 hours of her mother’s screaming in severe pain as the doctors seemingly took their sweet time diagnosing the problem. They dosed her with morphine but it didn’t work. My wife called a nurse friend who was on vacation in Florida. “Did they check for UTI?” (Urinary Tract Infection). My wife turned to the doctor and asked “could it be UTI?” Long story short, it was UTI.

    Since one dose of morphine did nothing they gave her a second dose and on top of it a powerful sleeping pill – Aderall, I think. After a few moments she went from screaming writhing pain to coffin-like motionless repose. The only difference, at a viewing the mouth would not be left hanging open. My wife believes the male nurse who administered the drugs feared he may have killed her.

    After five days getting reasonable control, not to say ‘cure’, of the UTI she was shipped to Rose Mountain. More on this facility later and how it relates to the so-called “healthcare hostage racket”…I have to resume the exhausting leaf raking/bagging chore on my property begun yesterday.

  18. BackRowHeckler December 2, 2013 at 12:06 pm #

    Also, Jim, that ‘hard money’ these poor people were spending on ‘Black Friday’, buying up all that Electronic Chinese Junk, knick-knacks, GooGaws etc., fighting for it in bright flourescent aisles like wild animals over a piece of raw meat, isn’t that hard. No, most of these people are broke, and it is being charged up on near maxed out Credit Cards that will take years to repay, if ever.

    BRH

  19. volodya December 2, 2013 at 1:08 pm #

    Well, the rot goes deeper than you think Mr Kunstler. Want to know the latest? According various accounts, luminaries like Larry Summers and Paul Krugman are calling for negative interest rates.

    Imagine, you paying your bank 3% per year to warehouse your savings. You want to talk institutionalized theft? This would be looting on a grand scale.

    Want to hear another good one? Putting an expiry date on money. Like pizza coupons. You think you have savings? Not so fast.

    If I tried for a million years I couldn’t think of a better scheme to make rich bankers richer. Imagine people’s desperation as their savings dwindle. Imagine asset bubbles and busts as people try to salvage their finances. Imagine the Goldmans of this sorry assed world playing this for their own enrichment. Imagine a putz like you against the likes of them and the Fed working hand-in-glove to rip you off.

    I just read an especially goofy tract by Krugman wherein he talked about stagnation and the lack of inflation and the necessity of negative rates. I guess it never occurred to the likes of Nobel Prize winners that this stagnation might have something to do with offshoring and the destruction of the middle class. No thought as to how to rebuild America’s industries. No thought that this might re-build the middle class and re-build demand.

    Nope, what we have to do, now that people’s incomes have been taken away, is to take away their savings.

    It’s over. Kiss your ass good-bye

    • Janos Skorenzy December 2, 2013 at 2:07 pm #

      I hadn’t heard. But it figures. We are a conquered people. Conquered without a shot.

      • volodya December 2, 2013 at 2:39 pm #

        Google “negative interest rates”. It’s all over the place. A hot topic. There’s nothing so stupid in the world of economics and monetary policy that it doesn’t have a fair chance of actually being implemented. A good policy if you’re rich and therefore into equity markets. A bad policy if you’re middle or lower income and trying to put away money for retirement. Take from the poor and give to the rich has been the m.o. for more than a generation. Goes under various guises. “Trickle down” economics being one.

        Yes, conquered without a shot. Amazing isn’t it. The American people are, in the face of short, fat, bald bankers and their lawyers, as helpless as can be. As Morpheus said, “fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.”

    • BackRowHeckler December 2, 2013 at 5:44 pm #

      Krugman and Larry Summers … now there’s a pair!!

  20. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 2, 2013 at 1:16 pm #

    More often than active senilicide, a practice of passive manslaughter was used. The ‘victim’ might be taken to the wilderness and abandoned, or the whole village might pick up and move while during the night as they slept. This allowed the abandoned person to find their way back to their group, thus proving their continued productivity….though more often than not, they were unable to return. If the group was unexpectedly restored to prosperity, they often returned for their abandoned family members and took them back in since they were again able to accommodate them.

    Senilicide and abandonment were far less common though, than assisted suicide. During times of famine, an elderly or infirmed member of the group might ask a family member to kill them, as death by unassisted suicide was believed to lead to a less pleasant afterlife than death by even voluntary homicide (even voluntary homicide). Assisted suicide was not reserved just for the elderly; in fact it was acceptable for all aged members of a group to ask to be killed for any number of reasons, including pain, depression, or grief. And in the Eskimo culture, the person asked to assist was bound to comply with such requests, without expressing any misgivings.

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    • Janos Skorenzy December 2, 2013 at 2:09 pm #

      Yes, we get the morality we can afford to some extent. Remember Timothy? Trapped in a mine when pass caved in, the only ones left were Joe, and Me, and Tim.

      • volodya December 2, 2013 at 3:00 pm #

        As the boomers get old and as the economy goes further and further into decline there’s going to be real pressure from the younger generation to do what’s necessary to move the oldsters along.

        So, yes, you get the morality you can afford, and for the time being, while our institutions of higher “learning” can afford it, new and evolving “standards” will have the justifications of medical “ethicists” ensconced in the academy.

        You watch, euthanasia will come up soon. Confiscating savings will be small beer compared to this. Of course, there will be blizzards of learned papers on the subject, much public discussion, thickets of legislation, but in the end it will be the needle for you gramps. Off you go, there’s a good fellow, bye bye, say hi to Grandma.

        Of course all the consents will have to be obtained, all the necessary papers signed, all the guidelines observed, with the acquiescence of the immediate family especially if the old codger is incommunicado. Or appears to be.

        And then later, as the economy degenerates and as times become more and more trying, maybe if the papers aren’t all quite signed.

  21. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 2, 2013 at 1:26 pm #

    About Black Friday. This from the Washington Post. Personally, I don’t pay attention to the MSM, so I don’t subject myself to the perceptual manipulation.

    Black Friday is here, and if you happen to derive pleasure from streaming around big box stores or mega malls as part of a teeming horde, well, who am I to judge another person’s sources of enjoyment.

    Let’s just not pretend that it means anything.

    When television news crews and newspaper writers go to cover the holiday crowds, they try to give the festivities some great economic import. Standard aspects of the genre include noting that holiday sales can account for about a third of retailers’ annual sales; cite authoritative-sounding projections from the National Retail Federation about what this year’s sales will be, and perhaps even note that consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy (conveniently leaving out that most of that spending has nothing to do with gift-giving or holiday cheer).

    In fact, sales over Thanksgiving weekend tell us virtually nothing about retail sales for the full holiday season—let alone anything meaningful about the economy as a whole. Paul Dales of Capital Economics analyzed the relationship between retail sales during the week of Thanksgiving against the overall change in retail sales for November through January. As the chart shows, the relationship is a very weak one, with dots all over the grid. But if there is any conclusion to draw at all, the relationship is actually negative! (That’s why the line is sloping downward).

    In other words, strong sales results around Black Friday actually predict slightly weaker holiday sales overall. (Shhh. Don’t tell the people who lined up at Target last night that they aren’t actually bellweathers for the U.S. economy).

    So if the whole thing is economically irrelevant, why does the media (this newspaper included) make such a big deal out of Black Friday, Black Thursday, Cyber Monday, or whatever other new terms of art the retail industry marketeers have come up with lately? It is a case study in the interaction of parties with skewed incentives.

    Retailers know that a typical family spends whatever it will spend on holiday gift-giving, and that whether that spending comes on Nov. 23 or Dec. 23 doesn’t make that much difference in the aggregate. But retailers aren’t a monolith; they are all chasing market share from the others. And the minute one retailer discovers that opening at midnight on Thanksgiving will attract a mob of people, cash in hand, others are reluctant to cede those sales to the guy down the block. Thus, an opening-time arms race that resulted in this year’s prevalence of stores opening at 8:00p.m. on Thanksgiving.

    For the media, it is a ready-made story. It takes place at a time that there is little other news, and it is known in advance, so editors and TV news directors can plan in advance for coverage. And there’s no doubt that video of people stampeding through the doors of a Wal-Mart in hot pursuit of a new Wii makes for great television. That is even putting aside more cynical possibilities, such as that media depend on retail advertising and thus have a vested interest in creating a sense of hype and anticipation around an orgy of consumerism.

    And what, then, of the people themselves, the consumers who line up with breathless anticipation and make the whole thing possible. From an economists’ perspective, this is a case in which the retailers are using a rationing mechanism other than price to allocate scarce goods: They price a limited number of TVs and other products at a below-market price, and then ration those goods based on who is willing to stand in line the longest. Essentially, the buyers receiving the discounts are “paying” the store by standing in line for hours upon end, creating the sense of anticipation that in turn attracts the TV cameras and, the retailers hope, eventually a broader group of consumers who will pay the actual market price.

    “I think they want to bring the people here and make them tired,” a man named Saeed Yazdi told my colleagues Abha Bhattarai and Steven Overly Thursday night outside the Best Buy in Columbia Heights. “It’s veiled punishment.” Well yes, Saeed, precisely.

    The retailers maintain market share, the media gets a story people enjoy watching, and people like Yazdi get a discount that would otherwise be unavailable. As long as everyone is happy, it seems rather harmless. Just don’t pretend that something bigger is at stake.

    • Neon Vincent December 2, 2013 at 2:57 pm #

      Here’s the link to the article at WaPo’s Wonkblog where that was originally posted. It has the extra added value of including the graph to which the author refers, as well as a photo of Black Friday shoppers.

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/29/black-friday-is-a-bunch-of-meaningless-hype-in-one-chart-2/

      • K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 3:28 pm #

        Those smiling faces and contemplation of that chart tell me that the more poor one is the happier they will be if they think they can get something for nothing. Sort of makes sense but pleasure through poverty? A specious and squishy facade. A semblance of hard reality with the shelf life of a Black Friday big screen at 50% off. A terminal tryst.

        What the religion of consumerism lacks is an afterlife where everyone has a platinum credit card with never ending zeros and bills that never come due. Maybe that’s why the jolly old man never gets older. Having no afterlife myth you just have to pretend you’ll live forever.

        Ho Ho Ho!

        • ozone December 2, 2013 at 3:57 pm #

          “The media and corporate advertisements have turned the American population into a “Slave” state of mind. Many people in the United States are accumulating debt at levels never seen in its 237 years of its existence. It is a lesson to the world in what NOT to do. An economy that is consumer based with credit is a disaster in the making because that debt only becomes unmanageable in the long run, especially when the people have no means to repay its debt obligations. An economy based on consumerism leads to moral decay. When people become ingrained in consumption disregarding the debt they inherit, they become immune to the realities around them. When the situation becomes intense with a coming dollar collapse and a possible war in the Middle East, reality will sink in. Then when the necessities such as food and shelter become scarce the people will begin to panic and lose control over their own lives. Who knows what people in America will be capable of, but then again as you saw what happened on Black Friday, it is a reminder of how people react when products they don’t really need are on sale. Imagine how they will react in times of economic despair.” -Silent Crow News

          A big, WOOF! to the Silent Crow.

          • Arn Varnold December 3, 2013 at 12:02 am #

            Nice. Agree 100%. See hat is before your eyes, unfiltered by words.

          • Arn Varnold December 3, 2013 at 12:03 am #

            Argh, “…see what”…, not hat.

  22. K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 3:00 pm #

    I wonder how much of it is a dress rehearsal for what happens in a hyper-inflation?

    Shiver me bones lets hope not. In 1923 the German exchange rate was 4,200,000,000,000 Marks to 1 US dollar. Bank notes so worthless they would burn longer and hotter than the amount of firewood you could buy with them.

    Bad news for them but worse for us. A debit card with $4,200,000,000,000 dollars on it won’t burn any longer or hotter than an debit card with nothing on it. And it will stink just as bad.

    Short haired dogs beware.

  23. 99 cent nation December 2, 2013 at 3:27 pm #

    “Racket” good word. I think it was Smedley Butler that said as Marine Corps Commandant that he was just a hit man for the racketeers of this country. Not sure those were his exact words but close. So this has been going on for a long time. Me, I just want to see it all go into the toilet now not next year or whenever. The damn thing keeps just plugging along on one cylinder and all the wall street criminals just keep feeding us piles and piles of crap and we seem to be enjoying eating all of it.

    • K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 3:34 pm #

      I’m not a fan of coprophagia myself. Some other dogs eat poop but it’s the equivalent of human mental illness and plugging along on only one cylinder. I’m too well adjusted and my brothers and sisters embarrass me when chew crap.

  24. Carl Grimes December 2, 2013 at 5:07 pm #

    The state I live in, Illinois, owes biilions, the state legislature keeps saying that they’re going to do something about it, but they don’t. I sometimes wonder if the federal government is a much bigger version of Detroit, where they go on pretending they aren’t broke, they borrow, run through creative accounting, (fraud), nickel and dime creditors. Eventually the jig is up, I guess. But the cities and states can’t create money on a computer like the Federal Reserve can and then loan it to the U.S. government. Most people are invested in keeping this corrupt and bankrupt system going another month, and I think that’s a big part of why the public won’t accept where we’re at.

    • Greg Knepp December 2, 2013 at 7:58 pm #

      Carl, Nicole Foss has some interesting and informative stuff to say about state and municipal governments, and the dire financial conditions of same.
      You can find her most recent offering on today’s theautomaticearth.com. It’s well worth the read. There’s a good deal in her article about the problems in Illinois and specifically Chicago.

      Foss is boss!

  25. Karah December 2, 2013 at 7:11 pm #

    “Is it fair to suppose that money management is at the heart of the sort of advanced, complex economy that developed early in the 20th century?”

    If one is talking about banks and exchanges, yes, it’s fair to say the 20th century got off to a rollicking start. Wages have always been in the form of money for most people post CIVIL WAR. However, what people use their money for has changed drastically. Their concerns have shifted from just the basic necessities to various forms of entertainment (see the earlier post about television channels).

    If one isn’t working for wages then he’s working for room and board. For the medical industry, room and board is considered very expensive because you have to run a 4 star 24/7 hotel on top of a clinic. Every midnight hospitals count heads and they don’t have enough beds. Most of the truly chronically ill people are homeless, they’re exposed to the elements and more susceptible to diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and pneumonia. I suppose most of the people who can afford to pay their own room and board in hospitals are not that THAT dangerously ill and are used to making demands on staff and complaining about pain and discomfort.
    Pain is different from being ILL.
    People need to understand the difference so they can GO HOME early and free up the beds for someone else.
    There are clinics specifically designed to deal with chronic pain and none of them have overnight stays.

    So, the value of things is dependent on how much someone is willing to pay them. People are buying “security” that is being revealed to not be so secure.

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  26. Looongerbeard December 2, 2013 at 7:55 pm #

    Behold, the ultimate ideal American Consumer:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik-RYOy7nME

  27. sevenmmm December 2, 2013 at 8:09 pm #

    Yiiaack! Hate to follow THAT video post.

    Is there a business model in America that is not a racket?

  28. Q. Shtik December 2, 2013 at 8:44 pm #

    Monday Night Football about to begin….the Saints vs the SeaHOCKS.

  29. the camels bell December 2, 2013 at 9:31 pm #

    What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens…

    A lion leading an army of sheep will defeat a sheep leading an army of lions.

    –Alexander the Great and others

  30. progress4what December 2, 2013 at 10:40 pm #

    “The big mystery in all this remains: where are the people with some institutional power who might stand up and denounce all this perfidy?.”
    ….jhk…..

    That is the question, indeed.

    And thanks for another week’s work, Mr. Kunstler.

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  31. progress4what December 2, 2013 at 10:48 pm #

    “A key element that needs to be taken in consideration in the 2013 International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) is the key statement that the oil industry capital expenditure has risen by nearly 180% since 2000 but with the global oil supply (adjusted for energy content) rising only by 14%.”

    Trouble is coming, worldwide.

    Will we in the US make matters worse for ourselves and the rest of humanity by allowing immigration to continue to increase our population?

    most likely we will. It’s what Obama and the National Chamber of
    Commerce shills are lobbying for, with intensity.

  32. Q. Shtik December 2, 2013 at 10:58 pm #

    “and on top of it a powerful sleeping pill – Aderall,” – Q.
    ==========

    Wrong, my wife says it was Xanax. Adderall is like speed and would have had the opposite effect.

    Tales From Rose Mountain (continued)

    We arrived for our visit yesterday at the 5pm dinner hour. “Mom” and 3 others were already at a table with their food trays in front of them. The overall nursing home scene would be disconcerting to the extreme if I hadn’t experienced it a dozen or two times already in the past couple of months. Several “people” were asleep, slumped in positions as though they had been shot. Others awake and howling out God only knows what.

    More than half the ancient inhabitants are Chinese. RM specializes in care for the Chinese and has an entire wing with Chinese speaking staff attending to their needs. But throughout the facility the really nasty jobs, of course, like taking folks to the John and wiping shitty asses falls to a nondescript group of “persons of color” none of whom resemble Beyoncé or Ophra. Mom was placed in the Chinese wing until a bed opens up in the non-Chinese wing. Bed openings occur frequently for obvious reasons.

    At the table with Mom were Ann, Maria and Franz. This gender breakdown appeared to be typical of these homes, 75% women, 25% men. No one was playing with a “full deck” but Franz, age 92, came closest. He emigrated to the US from Germany at age 30. He was a POW (of US troops) in North Africa. A thick wallet of old photos supported his many well practiced stories. “In this picture here is my daughter and my wife (we got divorced later) and my girl friend, my next door neighbor who was an angel like Mother Theresa and she was Japanese.”

    I said “your girlfriend?”

    He said with a straight face “I am very religious and the Bible says to love your neighbor…….so I did.”

    Franz has been at RM since August recovering from a beating believed to have been inflicted by teenagers. Trauma to his head left him with damage to his right ear and eye and near total loss of memory which he has since recovered almost entirely…so he tells me.

    Ann is 82, looks 102, has no teeth and has been at RM for 5 years. This scares the shit out of me since I am 73.

    I have no detail on Maria. She is half blind and half deaf so she really couldn’t participate in the conversation as much as my wife and I tried to play the role of facilitators.

    Of the 4 at this table 3 had trays of American food while Mom, for reasons unknown, had Chinese food whose main element was an off-white blivett-like ball between the size of a baseball and a softball that had within it some form of meat, probably pork, but I winked at my wife and said “dog?” She was furious over this Chinese food fuck up and had American food brought to the table, a disk of over processed breaded chicken, severely over-cooked string beans and a glob of mashed potatoes. It made no difference since Mom has no appetite for anything and her cheek is beginning to sink into the space of her missing denture.

    For all these people the tab is being picked up by Medicare or Medicaid. With tens of thousands of such facilities in the US one can only wonder where the money comes from and where it will come from when the Boomers hit the system.

    • K-Dog December 3, 2013 at 12:34 am #

      I winked at my wife and said “dog?”

      Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

  33. K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 10:58 pm #

    What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens that the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.

    “Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.

    • K-Dog December 2, 2013 at 11:32 pm #

      Also in the essay:

      “Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own?”

  34. liquid lennny December 2, 2013 at 11:11 pm #

    You know that image of the “Half-ton Killer” made me think and some would say that’s always a dangerous thing.

    What I see in that image is profoundly sad for a human lifeform but also represents lots of calories and calories = energy.

    Back in the 18th and 19th century, before the development of the current fossil fuel oil industry, whales where hunted extensively for their blubber, which when boiled down to provide fuel which was used to light household oil lamps and as industrial lubrication products.

    Seems to me the 21st century land-based version of these calorimetric repositories (of which there is a plentiful stock in this country) may be our answer to the impending “peak oil” crisis. Now if we toss in some baby boomers for kindling soon enough the energy situation is “problem-solved” to say the least.

    As an additional benefit, multiple health-care problems due to diabetes and aging simply go away, they do not exist and that equals; another “problem-solved”.

    So word of advice to all, you might want to pass on that plate of holiday treats this year if you don’t want to end up as lamp oil.

    Finally, Jim, September 2014 for the next WMBH. Who you got printing your next book? The Atlantic. They must be using that Gutenberg printing press in the Smithsonian basement again…

    If you don’t get volume 3 of WMBH printed sooner it probably will not be categorized as Fiction but will be mistaken as someone’s diary.

    Is it too early to pre-order?

    • K-Dog December 3, 2013 at 12:47 am #

      Calorimetric repositories, no way. The math does not work and if there are more than 100 half ton humans in the country I’ll lift my leg and pee on my paw. See: Cannibals Die Fast

  35. progress4what December 2, 2013 at 11:17 pm #

    “a disk of over processed breaded chicken, severely over-cooked string beans and a glob of mashed potatoes. It made no difference since Mom has no appetite for anything and her cheek is beginning to sink into the space of her missing denture.”
    ….q….

    Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the crappy food would kill my desire to live within a month, that along with the loss of freedom implied by the crappy food – if and when I’m ever forced to go into one of those places.

    My own mom was 85 when she had her first (and only) heart attack. The only time she’d ever been in the hospital before that was to have me.

    So – she’s on a cardiac floor, and DAMN, did the food suck!

    Low sodium, of course – but why does one of the better hospital “franchises?” in metro Atlanta have to serve food that is essentially inedible.

    And anyway, what’s with suddenly forcing “low sodium” on a bunch of weak and overmedicated heart patients – patients who need sustenance far more than they need a radical dietary change.

    By the second day, I was going down to the employee cafeteria and sneaking some food back in for her to have that was fit to eat.

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  36. Q. Shtik December 3, 2013 at 12:10 am #

    This appeared in yesterday’s NY Times:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/opinion/sunday/on-dying-after-your-time.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

    The last two sentences sum it up: We are not….obliged to help the old become indefinitely older. Indeed, our duty may be just the reverse: to let death have its day.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 3, 2013 at 2:08 am #

      Palin was right: Obamacare has death panels. And they will be enabled by rational people like you. But if it starts, where will it end?

      • Lord Blaby of Lawson December 3, 2013 at 6:54 am #

        Fascism, in your own words, is sincerely interested in maintaining tradition, and tradition requires dying with dignity. Allowing The Matrix to exploit the end-of-life process for profit replete with tubes and wires just like the movie is not very traditional. Washington and Jefferson, from the grave, can’t stand to look. In their best Don Corleone impression when he went to view Santino’s body at the morgue, they say “look what they’ve done to my Republic.”

  37. beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 1:05 am #

    Q, your stories of the travails of your mother-in-law are very important, as well as hair-raising. You were right wondering what will happen when the boomers hit the nursing home age. I think a very large demographic probably will be abandoned, even more than in the past 40 years or so. Honestly, getting old is a scary enough proposition to me without having to wonder how I’ll be treated or where I’ll end up.

    I just got a feeling that if there is to be a mass die-off due to overpopulation, that people over 60 will bear the brunt of the casualties. It just will be the 21st century’s version of nature taking its course like she always has.

    The only remedy I can foresee to minimize personal damage to me and my wife is to try our best to remain as healthy as we can and be physically fit, even at our age. This requires some effort, such as eating property, maintaining a weight based on our body types, regular cardio exercise, flexibility exercising and maintaining muscle mass. And of course, maybe the most important factor, maintaining a cheerful attitude about life in general. Even then, good luck is necessary, too. Oh, yeah, one last thing: an adequate long-term care policy to insure we can afford to live in a decent care facility, like assisted living, and not being stuck in a living hell in a nursing home.

    • beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 1:16 am #

      Oops, correction. Eating properly, not property. Them houses can be bad fer your digestion. And they tend to stick between your teeth.
      Which, unfortunately reminds me of an old, bad joke: what happens when you cross an elephant with peanut butter? Ans. – you either get an elephant that sticks to the roof of your mouth, or peanut butter that never forgets. I know, I know. Groan, groan.

      • beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 1:22 am #

        Ok, I’m punch- drunk tired and I’m going to bed now. But before I do, I’ll leave you with the other part of the above joke: what do you get when you cross a hooker with an elephant? Ans. – either a prostitute that never forgets or an elephant that goes down for peanuts ( Groan squared).

  38. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 3, 2013 at 6:48 am #

    We are not….obliged to help the old become indefinitely older. Indeed, our duty may be just the reverse: to let death have its day.

    It’s irrelevant. All that takes a back seat to profit. What you describe as enabling an extended end-of-life process is about profit, and as we all know, when it comes to profit all other considerations pale in comparison and are merely superficially placated. This article about the pacemaker gravy train from the NYT underscores this observation. Extending unproductive life is a bubble, and Bubbles R Us.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

    • ozone December 3, 2013 at 9:54 am #

      …Since it seems that the ‘Kevorkian option’ is not going to be legislatively allowed for the majority of us (mostly for the purpose of squeezing out whatever notional wealth is left to the ill and elderly), there’s more uses than “home defense” for handguns, and there might be a compelling reason not to turn in those many leftover prescription opiate tablets to the police (for destruction — or ‘redistribution’ by these trusted servants of the public).
      “But handguns are so expensive!”, says you. More expensive than all you and your children have? Vanishingly cheap in comparison.

      Don’t forget, “health care” is now a big chunk of this pretend economy, expressed in GDP, insurance ‘industry’ apportionment and employment [beyond Wal-Shart]. Seeing a lot of ads for a “career” in the “health care” field lately? I know I have.

    • Hands4u December 3, 2013 at 12:44 pm #

      After working for a hospital health benefits program for its employees with funding for 5 years; after 3.5 years the hospital administration decided that it was a much better idea that it’s employees not be to healthy even though the hoispital nmight save money in the long run they would lose money because they don’t service and make money from healthy people. They make money from those who are sick, and the sicker they are the more thay can charge.

  39. kevin325 December 3, 2013 at 9:29 am #

    As JHK has been predicting, Japan is on the verge of moving to a post growth future.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/opinion/kato-japan-in-a-post-growth-age.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

  40. Arn Varnold December 3, 2013 at 9:40 am #

    @ Beantownbill
    The only remedy I can foresee to minimize personal damage to me and my wife is to try our best to remain as healthy as we can and be physically fit, even at our age. This requires some effort, such as eating property, maintaining a weight based on our body types, regular cardio exercise, flexibility exercising and maintaining muscle mass. And of course, maybe the most important factor, maintaining a cheerful attitude about life in general.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    There you go; I think you have the formula.
    I’m following a similar lifestyle; meat (chicken, pork, and fish[no beef for decades]) only once or less per week on average.
    Nuts, fruit, grains, herbs, beans, and a wide variety of vegetables (seasonal) are what we eat. Here it’s easy because in the tropics there are a huge variety of choices.
    But in the states you can eat seasonally and do extremely well all the same. The natural flow…

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    • beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 11:01 am #

      @Arn

      My wife and I are vegetarians. We were Vegans for years, but lately we missed cheese and eggs – chocolate – so we made a decision to go down a level to vegetarianism. After eating breakfast we’re going to our local gym to work out.

      Seems to me you got the diet down ok, but please don’t forget the exercising, very important.

  41. BackRowHeckler December 3, 2013 at 10:22 am #

    About those ‘Negative Interest Rates’ suggested by Larry Summers and Krugman …

    This morning I heard Americans have about $10 Trillion stashed away in Banks inside the US, but small banks are disappearing, swallowed up by the Big Boys, are there are now the fewest banks since 1934.

    3% of $10 Trillion is quite a bit of Swag. Who will get it? Do Krugman and Summers get a cut, indirectly?

    –BRH

    • ozone December 3, 2013 at 10:46 am #

      Yes, they certainly do get a cut: They get to remain “employed” “experts” in the “science” of “economics”, and also probably get to remain in the public eye and thereby charge exorbitant fees to be lecturers and advisers to various law-givers, corporatists and select “educational” facilities that further their magical arts to be foisted on the next crop of rubes and willing dupes (who just happen to be sniffing about for THEIR cut).

      • beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 11:05 am #

        The rubes and dupes you mention are going after whom? Us, that’s who. Kinda reminds me of the picture of the big fish eating the littler fish, eating the still smaller fish, and so forth, don’t it?

    • K-Dog December 3, 2013 at 3:00 pm #

      ? ‘Negative Interest Rates’ = Bank Robbery ?

  42. ozone December 3, 2013 at 11:02 am #

    White House spokesperson, Mr. Carney (and a very slick roustabout is he), just referred to american citizens wishing to sign up to the ACA as “consumers”. Somebody tell these flakey assholes that they might want to engage their brains before opening their mealy mouths.
    ….Or is it a deliberate reinforcement of the term to get the citizenry (oh, excuse me, CONSUMERS) used to thinking of themselves in that specific way?

    “We are very mindful of making sure that consumers who want coverage starting in January are able to get it,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. (AP)

    Comedy and Tragedy all rolled into one.
    Keep your eyes open and have fun wherever you find it fellow citizens.

    • beantownbill. December 3, 2013 at 11:17 am #

      Seems like the world has always been a moiety of producers and consumers. That’s the way capitalism works, only the so-called producers, now approaching their end-game of stealing all the consumers’ financial resources, have created a 3rd grouping : serfs.

      Apparently, sucking out the last vestiges of the masses’ assets requires a complete consumerization of every aspect of our existence.

  43. ozone December 3, 2013 at 12:12 pm #

    Sorry for taking up too much space, but it’s an ill wind a-soughin’ through the quiet season.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/

    Just start at the top with the judicially-approved bankruptcy of Detroit (and all that entails; for one, waving goodbye to pension obligations) and work your way down through the reports of an approaching shit-blizzard…

  44. progress4what December 3, 2013 at 12:25 pm #

    “…Since it seems that the ‘Kevorkian option’ is not going to be legislatively allowed for the majority of us (mostly for the purpose of squeezing out whatever notional wealth is left to the ill and elderly), there’s more uses than “home defense” for handguns,” …O3…

    Well – I think suicide is a bad choice, as long as there is, *something? (defining that *something is complicated, though)

    But, I think the ability to load a handgun, aim it at a vital area, and pull the trigger on oneself – proves that that suicidal person still had something to offer.

    Didn’t Kavorkian rig up “suicide devices,” where someone who could barely twitch a finger could activate the device.

    That would be the equivalent of placing a handgun in a vice, aiming it carefully at the patients head, adjusting the trigger pull to a tiny fraction, tying a string from the person’s finger to that trigger, and waiting for them to twitch. It’s going to be hard to cover up all of that evidence, and avoid that murder charge – in most jurisdictions.

    I don’t know about all of this. I do see where some might find this slope to have a slippery possibility, though.

    Didn’t RippedThunder (aka stelmosfire) say something about him and his buddies agreeing to give each other the “pillow treatment,” if they ever found themselves to be terminal and hopeless?

    That seems like a better idea, maybe.

    And good luck with the finger, st elmo!

    • Hands4u December 3, 2013 at 1:39 pm #

      You can always look into the Hemlock Society. I would rather go the way my stepgrandfather went. After after a morning out in the garden and lunch with grandma; he would take a chair from the dining area and place it in the middle of the living room, sit down with a cigar, a shot of gin or small glass of sherry and play his ukulele and sing for about 10-15 minutes put out his cigar and take a nap for about an hour. He was 86, grandma said he looked so peaceful.

    • ozone December 3, 2013 at 7:21 pm #

      Yes, I remember that posting by RT about the pillow promise, and under the narrowly defined circumstances, that would be a ‘desirable’ outcome and ‘solution’.
      I do take your point about so many different variables creating many avenues of contribution to living, but one path of decline I’ve seen too much of is the acute agony of a slow death from cancers. There is no glory, lesson of will or character-building to be gained from suffering unto death. Thank goodness for sensible doctors with access to excessive amounts of opiates to help the hopeless slip away in peace. If there’s no access to that……?

      (Everything comes with its’ pack of mitigating circumstances, no?)

  45. progress4what December 3, 2013 at 12:54 pm #

    Part of the problem is that our elderly are cut off from younger people.

    And part of the problem is that “progress” has rendered valueless – most of the skills of the elderly.

    For example, as long as I could prop myself up somewhere, and point and talk – then I could direct a couple of younger folks on the procedure for cutting up a deer, or dressing a hog. (I could also show them how to adjust a carburetor, but who has carburetors any more? haha!)

    My m-i-l was up to our house with a big crowd for Thanksgiving. After the crowd went home, she insisted on sorting through the (holiday use only) silverware and separating it for storage. Thus she proves to herself, and the rest of us) that she is still contributing. (Despite being on a walker because of a bum hip replacement, being nearly unable to drive, etc, etc.)

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  46. Q. Shtik December 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm #

    “This requires some effort, such as eating property,” – Arn quoting Bean
    ===========

    I agree entirely. You cannot imagine the effort. It took me decades but I finally consumed the lower 40.

  47. Q. Shtik December 3, 2013 at 7:16 pm #

    “Palin was right: Obamacare has death panels. And they will be enabled by rational people like you. But if it starts, where will it end?” – Janos
    ===========

    I don’t know if Obamacare “has death panels” but if it doesn’t it should. Better yet is to give it a better name. Do you remember several days ago I linked a NY Times article in which the author laid out a plan for what he called “life panels?” They would be composed firstly of a key family member or members, medical people, etc. The purpose would be to determine if quality of life had irretrievably sunk to zero or less and then to take the resulting common sense action.

    Yes, I can see how such panels might be abused but I can also see how they might be a blessing.

  48. Q. Shtik December 3, 2013 at 7:43 pm #

    Oh goody, the planet will be flooded with even more people. See article excerpt below:

    On November 15, 2013 the Chinese government announced, after the Third Plenum policy meetings in Beijing, that it would allow married couples to have two children if at least one spouse is an only child. Therefore is can be assumed that millions of couples in China meet the criteria to have a second child because of the previous one child per family rule.

  49. charlie foxtrot December 3, 2013 at 9:21 pm #

    when my grandma passed, we were told by the responding officers that all of the pills, including the high caliber morphines, were ours to deal with however we wanted to dispose of them…when asked, the cop said he couldn’t accept them by law, so we just flushed them…

  50. nsa December 3, 2013 at 9:58 pm #

    The basic Kevorkian Death Kit consisted of a robust head sized clear plastic bag and a rather sturdy one way tie wrap for the neck……..could be a popular item on Amazon qualifying for free shipping.

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  51. K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 1:09 am #

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LHuZdmWaBUQ

    All this talk about signing the big paycheck when the Squishy Place is about the U.S. economy not having a ‘real’ paycheck at all. And since “the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.” I shall introduce some levity. You decide if it’s funny.

    • San Jose December 4, 2013 at 1:42 am #

      Q,

      I’m sorry for the travails your mother-in-law is going through. Today I went (in my role as a deacon) and gave respite care to man whose 91-year-old wife is dying. He needed to get out of the house for an afternoon. His wife is very sweet, I’ve known her for 27 years through church. She has dementia and bad lungs. There is a DNR notice on the fridge that was put into place in March of 2012. My job was to keep her company and make sure she stayed safe. Her short term memory is shot and although she could recount her days as a registered nurse, she would wake up from little cat naps and wonder who I was and tell me her mom would be home pretty soon.

      Deep sigh,
      Jen

    • Neon Vincent December 4, 2013 at 7:38 am #

      K-Dog, thanks for introducing me and the rest of the readers here to Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. You were a good dog to do that. My verdict is that he’s funny, but the subject isn’t. Well, that’s par for the course around here.

      Since Reverend Billy’s schtick is being submerged in rising sea levels because of global warming, it reminds me that I’m showing my students another film this week about that very subject, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It joins “The End of Suburbia” and “Food, Inc.” among the documentaries they watch for credit.

      crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/04/showing-inconvenient-truth-to-my.html

      • Neon Vincent December 4, 2013 at 7:40 am #

        Sorry, the link was b0rked. Here it is, correctly formatted.
        http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/04/showing-inconvenient-truth-to-my.html

      • BackRowHeckler December 4, 2013 at 8:42 am #

        I understand Al ‘Jazeera’ Gore made $500 million off that film, enough to buy 2 Yachts and fly around the world to various conferences and to pick up ass kissing awards in his own leased 747.

        • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 3:37 pm #

          He is under deep cover so he can infiltrate the 1%. Agent provacateurs know about deep cover.

          Half a billion off one film are you serious? That’s more than the Lion King did at $422,783,777. I notice you put “I understand” in front of your dribble so you’re not really lying sort of. V-e-r-y C-l-e-v-e-r !

          😉

        • lsjogren December 5, 2013 at 8:50 am #

          While global warming is a bona fide issue, Al Gore and his ilk use it as a tool for swindling money, closely analogous to the banking frauds.

        • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 3:30 pm #

          That one above I posted as a raw link hoping it would be embedded like that fat lady in the older comments this week was. Bride of Jabba the Hut she is. I did not watch it, Star Wars I’ve seen.

          To bad it is just a link. Rev Billy Talent complements CFN well and it is ‘Tis the Season’ After all!!

          The ending priceless.

          “Go out there and just join the animals…… ”

          But you will have to watch it to appreciate that statement.

          • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 4:31 pm #

            OOOOppppppppsss

            Collapsealujah brothers and sisters!

            It should be Billy Talen

            And for *Christ’s* sake! Click on that Billy Talen link and sign his petition.

            Reverend Billy Talen and the music director of the Stop Shopping Choir, Nehemiah Luckett, were arrested minutes later on a subway platform. The two were charged with riot in the second degree, menacing in the third degree, unlawful assembly, and two counts of disorderly conduct. The DA’s office requested one year in prison for “this criminal stunt.”

            A free art performance at a Chase Bank Branch becomes a criminal stunt. Chase should have thanked him for the publicity. America is loosing its sense of humour. I have to call it sense of humour since the Bill of Rights has become a funny relic of a forgotten past!

            It’s happening everywhere brothers and sisters!

            15 Black Friday protesters arrested at Bellevue Walmart

            A serious lack of holiday cheer is upon us.

            Sign that Petition!!!

          • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 4:33 pm #

            And that Walmart is only five miles from my Doghouse!!!!

          • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 4:35 pm #

            Collapsealujah

          • Janos Skorenzy December 4, 2013 at 11:46 pm #

            Your politics are right out of the 2nd Billy Jack movie.

  52. MikeMoskos December 4, 2013 at 4:05 am #

    A good use of your time is to learn to garden and compost with worms.

    It will seem like a huge waste of time unless you go all out, with the intent to preserve much of what you grow. 1-2 tomato plants will ensure you don’t have a tomato when you want it, but 20-40 will fill the pantry with tomato sauce for the year (and you won’t have to pay 5+% sales tax to get the pre-fabbed jars of sauce, nor payroll taxes on your earnings to buy them).

    An economist during the 1st Depression, dismayed that his wife continued to “waste” her time canning, did an analysis and discovered that even though his wife was putting in a lot of time, it was still cheaper than buying the cheapest of canned food available–those small cans only seem cheap.

  53. BackRowHeckler December 4, 2013 at 8:35 am #

    There’s still plenty of money out there. Yesterday the Yankees signed center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury to a $153 million contract. And here in Connecticut, the ‘board of regents’, a gaggle of political hacks, scumbags, minority grievance mongers, and candidate fund raisers overseeing the state college system, just got 6% raises on top of their $450,000 per year salaries for their do nothing, no show jobs. They meet a few times a year, don’t do sh-t, don’t teach any classes … every time they meet tuition at State U goes up a little bit. I don’t know, maybe all this swag is imaginary, a result of $85 million per month QE.

    You all talk about the 1%. I think there’s a different, more important dynamic: you’re either an insider or an outsider. The insiders are the politicos, local, state and federal, and all the parasites grafted to them, including the public sector unions. That’s where the big money is, the lavish benefits, the generous pensions. The outsiders are everybody else struggling in the collapsed and dystopic cities and towns, nevertheless having the life sucked out of them to pay for the insiders. That about sizes it up.

    –BRH

    • sauerkraut December 4, 2013 at 12:34 pm #

      OK, we get it. You hate unions. Why? Because they’re not getting screwed?

      Because you’d rather be divided and conquered? Like, you know, outsiders?

      • BackRowHeckler December 4, 2013 at 1:35 pm #

        I dont hate unions. I was in one for 28 years, a public sector union, an insider. I was in on the scam.

        BRH

        • sauerkraut December 4, 2013 at 3:18 pm #

          I stand corrected. But why do you think it was a scam?

          • Karah December 5, 2013 at 12:56 am #

            Unions started out with a noble cause: to balance the power between the workers and the owners. A union leader could be equal to the CEO of the company and negotiate wages and working conditions. Union dues help support the union leaders so they could hire lawyers and take care of the ousted.
            Unions are only supposed to materialize in times of crisis and then disappear into the wallpaper.
            Because unions do not dissolve after >>>successful<<< negotiations and most of the dues go to pay the union leaders salary…it's become a scam. There's a conflict of interest when the people who are negotiating at the table are no longer directly involved in the day to day operations of a company. Basically, unions sole purpose has become the protection of pensions; people no longer in the workforce. They lobby congress to protect their industries EVEN WHEN THE INDUSTRIES ARE NO LONGER VIABLE. Everyone knows the saying; this isn't your daddy's company anymore. The world has changed and companies and workers have to change with it. The rise of the union, like everything else in our peak industrial economy, falls with the end of cheap energy.

  54. Warren December 4, 2013 at 9:48 am #

    Nothing shows how the dollar is dieing that the fact that in about 5 years the value of one Bitcoin has gone from .6 cent to over $1000.00.

    • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 4:11 pm #

      Are Bitcoins Becoming Europe’s New Safe Haven Currency?

      Interesting article as the dollar races to the bottom with other currencies. A safe haven until generators stop turning, the power goes off, and Bitcoins get lost in the ‘cloud’.

      • Karah December 5, 2013 at 1:03 am #

        Bitcoin is an experiment that shows how fickle people can be. People have to buy into Bitcoin for it to work and eventually bitcoin will plateau in order to prevent a crash. We have a ways to go before that plateau; however, there are other ways for that particular market to crash (i.e. the power goes out).

  55. Q. Shtik December 4, 2013 at 10:35 am #

    “a result of $85 million per month QE.” – BRH
    ==========

    make that BILLION

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    • BackRowHeckler December 4, 2013 at 11:01 am #

      Phew!! $85 billion!

      I got audited a few years ago; had to go to New Haven for the rectal examination. My accountant came with me and did the talking and everything turned out alright. But my God, the mob of people there also being audited, most of them obviously poor (i.e., non Government worker), some leaving with tears in their eyes, the looks of anguish and fear on their faces …

      Is this where they’re getting the $85 Billion per month? To fatten up the Wall Street Grifters even more. Because what else is keeping the market over 16000?

      –BRH

  56. Q. Shtik December 4, 2013 at 11:19 am #

    “I’m sorry for the travails your mother-in-law is going through.” – SJ Mom
    ===========

    Thanks for commiserating Jen. I can totally relate to the dementia anecdote.

  57. squid December 4, 2013 at 12:51 pm #

    Jim why not tell it like it is? AIG was saved to save Goldman Sachs. Goldman had purchased credit default swaps from AIG which AIG could not pay. Thus AIG was bailed and unbelievably Goldman recieved 100 cents on the dollar. Thus a true and bonafide bail out of Goldman. Just like today the $85B is a direct bank end around bail out. The big banks sell all their junk to the fed and now can perpetuate the scandle until another implosion occurs. Coming our way in the very near future. Once the dollar looses its world reserve currency status hyper inflation will begin with a vengence unseen ever in this country. America welcome to the third world with a third world currency the dollar(peso).

    • beantownbill. December 4, 2013 at 1:32 pm #

      IF the dollar stops being the world’s reserve currency, it would be replaced with a basket of currencies, of which the dollar would be one. The dollar wouldn’t die, it would be effectively devalued, in effect. We’d still be able to sell our Treasury obligations on the open market, but at a higher rare. Anyway, the fed now buys more Treasuries than any other organization. Higher rates would collapse the stock market, real estate would go down in value to offset higher mortgage payments, and people wouldn’t borrow as much because it would get too costly. Since 70% of the American economy is based on consumerism and purchases of everything would go down, I’d look at a deflationary depression to occur first. If the fed increases QE to try to inject more money into the economy – which would be a very stupid thing to do, and therefore more than likely – then and only then could hyperinflation occur.

  58. beantownbill. December 4, 2013 at 1:06 pm #

    @Marlin:

    I think you’re exactly right, it’s about insiders and outsiders. To be an insider, you have to play along to get along. Many wealthy people won’t play along and are thus outsiders. Many non-wealthy persons do play along and get benefits for it: chauffeurs for high-level state and federal pols, licensing board members, union officials and many others along the sidelines as the game goes on.

    I was reading about the Greater Boston casino proposals. As you know, Massachusetts is losing a lot of money to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. That is intolerable to state officials, so a law was passed to give out 3 casino licenses. When I first heard about it several years ago, I laughed because I knew the whole process would be a political graft nightmare. So it comes down to which insider can get the most money from everyone involved in the license granting process.

    • BackRowHeckler December 4, 2013 at 1:41 pm #

      You know Bill I was wondering what your opinion was on those proposed casinos in Mass. I know you said you’re a gambler, so it would be convenient for you, plus you’d keep your money in state. I mean beside that. Also, why are those towns voting down the casinos? Sooner or later a town will vote yes.

      –BRH

      • Janos Skorenzy December 4, 2013 at 11:49 pm #

        Some of the Wampanoags (sp?) voted against them several years ago. The ones on Cape Cod I believe. They don’t like the effect it has on people. The ones on Marthas Vineyard might still be interested.

  59. rube-i-con December 4, 2013 at 1:19 pm #

    Once the dollar looses its world reserve currency status hyper inflation will begin with a vengence unseen ever in this country. America welcome to the third world with a third world currency the dollar(peso).

    keep waiting. ‘when the dollar loses its world reserve currency status’.

    can’t happen. think about it, they’ll just pay people billions to keep using it. it’s a nice club if you’re in it, all the swag, hookahs, blow and bling you’d ever want, for free.

    all you gotta do is screw your entire country.

    peace peaceniks

    • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 3:45 pm #

      “All the swag, hookahs, blow and bling you’d ever want, for free. All you gotta do is screw your entire country.”

      I bet that gave ‘Cyber Monday’ special meaning this week at Fort Mead.

      How’s the weather out there.

    • K-Dog December 4, 2013 at 3:59 pm #

      Seriously I’m not into swag an blow. But with a few extra dollars I’d get this:

      Passive House Revolution.

      I’ve been a good dog this year. Hint Hint.

  60. Carl Grimes December 4, 2013 at 7:45 pm #

    When they get done cheerleading for ‘energy independencer’, the news media generally finds the time to whoop it up for another war. The military ‘experts’ that Foz puts on look like watered down versions of Dr Strangelove to me. They act like civilization will end if the U.S. has any defense cuts. They spend more than the next ten countries put together but it’s never enough for these war mongors. Sometimes I wonder if these creeps are really this crazy and stupid, or they are people that the powers that be pay to go on t.v. and spout this crap.

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  61. beantownbill. December 4, 2013 at 8:02 pm #

    @Marlin:

    The towns that voted down a casino are NIMBYs (not in my back yard). They have an active group of anti-casino, vocal and active residents.

    The most logical location for a Greater Boston casino is in the East Boston neighborhood, where the horse racing track, Suffolk Downs is located. It is real easy to get to, and is almost next door to Logan Airport, which is a 5 minute cab ride away, thus attracting out-of-state gamblers as well. But the Eastie residents voted the casino down for their neighborhood because they didn’t want the extra traffic, gamblers in their area, and are afraid of increased crime.

    The developers, Suffolk Downs and their gambling industry partners, Mohegan Sun (of your state), then pulled a cool end-around. The city of Revere (named after an 18th century silversmith who once took a middle-of-the-night horseback ride) runs adjacent to the Suffolk Downs property. Part of the Suffolk Downs lot extends into the city of Revere, so the developers approached the city to build the casino there.

    Revere leaped at the chance. The only difference to the gambling public would be where they enter the property. So East Boston residents screwed themselves. They get all the negatives they were concerned about, but none of the benefits, which would consist of very large payments for community improvements. Needless to say, the Easties are furious.

    In the meantime, the state gambling commission – or whatever it’s called – has to approve this latest proposal, so the whole process is still developing.

    A Revere casino is both very good and very bad for me. It’s good because it’s around a 20 minute drive (around 15 miles), and it’s bad because I can go there easily whenever I feel like it, even when I shouldn’t go. Foxwoods, on the other hand is around a 90 mile drive and about a 100 minute trip. Let me tell you, it is a real bad trip back at 3 am after losing a lot of money, which keeps me from going as often as I might, otherwise.

    In a bleak economy, Massachusetts will make out well with gambling. It is estimated Mass. residents spend about half a billion dollars annually at the Connecticut casinos. That will now come back home to be wasted, er, I mean, spent.

    Gambling is an activity that JHK should put in the same category as NASCAR and Walmart shopping. I shouldn’t talk badly about it because I am a frequent visitor to such establishments. But at least I have an excuse: Hello, my name is Bill and I’m an addict.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 12:01 am #

      All of Life is a Gamble – at least viewed outwardly. You may be trying to communicate with the Gods this way – or to reconstruct or relive your whole life in a moment’s toss of the dice.

      The Chinese are huge gamblers since they are Atheists and also Order freaks. It’s a way of breaking out for them.

  62. rube-i-con December 4, 2013 at 10:20 pm #

    America welcome to the third world with a third world currency the dollar(peso).

    bud , the third world is way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond the worst you ever seen in the US. the US ain`t gonna turn into any squalid third-world dogpatch anytime soon. like in the next 1,000 years.

    this is typical overblown rhetoric by those who believe that the “system’s going down!” AIN’T HAPPENING. if everyone accepted pesos, mexico’d be BLOODY RICH. get the picture? everyone ACCEPTS DOLLARS

    you wanna value the country you`re living in? head down to mexico, south america, central america, where `dirt poor` is a LITERAL fact of life. with open sewers, sweltering, deadening heat, and oxen and chickens wandering around. and people just sitting around barefoot, for GENERATIONS. going nowhere 4EVER.

    get a GOOD LOOK AT THAT…then tell me america’s gonna be a 3rd-worlder. is not happening, friend.

    thank god it ain’t. for all its shittiness. thank GOD it ain’t.

    • charlie foxtrot December 4, 2013 at 10:40 pm #

      I would respectfully point out that all of those conditions you list are available here, in every city of America…just because you have access to the comforts we have come to associate with civilization does not mean anything to the vets under bridges and kids in “shelters”…I would submit that as long as ONE family (like, well, mine) can be foreclosed upon and set on the street, let alone hundreds of thousands and counting, then FUCK you; this be a third world country…I was lucky enough to bounce on to a couch; but that doesn’t make things feel warm and fuzzy

      • Janos Skorenzy December 4, 2013 at 11:56 pm #

        Yes Thoreau pointed out that contradiction long ago: the poor people in town suffered from the cold far more than the primitive Indians did. They have fur coats, well insulated Long Houses, and roaring fires. The poor White were living in uninsulated shacks and were inadequately clothed.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 4, 2013 at 11:53 pm #

      And if the Fall comes, they will do better than us since they are used to living close to “the dirt”. Brazil North will be much less pleasant than Brazil South – colder, much.

  63. rube-i-con December 4, 2013 at 10:21 pm #

    PEACE PEACENIKS

  64. Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 12:17 am #

    Jack Hunter, the famed “Southern Avenger” has become a lick spittle race traitor – all to help the Rand Paul’s possible Presidential Campaign. In payment he gets to head Paul’s demented outreach to the Blacks of Detroit.

    http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/12/waking-up-from-the-american-dreamthe-last-word-on-jack-hunter/#comments

  65. Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 12:29 am #

    The Mantra

    October 6th, 2011 H.Avenger

    Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

    The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.

    Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

    What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

    How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

    And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

    But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

    They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.

    Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.

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  66. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 5, 2013 at 6:57 am #

    Janos brought up the 2016 presidential election, so it would make for interesting conjecture to prognosticate who will be the next C-I-C, as if it matters. Also, JHK has surmised that any day now that charismatic fascist leader will arise and assemble the dispossessed and raging White hordes in a cleansing, dystopian bloodbath. Will that happen in 2016, or will it be 2020? How about 2024? 2028? Any time in between? Any guesses about who, what and when?

    Of note is Scott Walker running for President in 2016. Yes, the public service union buster. He’s a Koch man and he’s gotten the job done. He can be counted on and as we all know, that goes a long way in politics. Being a reliable soldier who graciously takes his/her marching orders with no resistance is a commodity to the real power behind the thrones. Of course, for name/brand recognition, there’s always Jeb Bush. For the Democrats, as is tradition, the VP will make a bid, just as Al Gore did, after a two-term Democrat stint. Joe Biden for president? I don’t see it. Hillary? Give me a break. There is no Democrat who can compete with the brand vacuum created by Team Obama, so it opens the door for a more conservative candidate, even if the Republican Party is fragmented and fractured. Will a Uniter rise from the scattered ashes of the Republican Party and take the Office of the Executive in 2016? Does it even matter at this point? Is the trajectory set, regardless, and electoral politics merely crappy theater? Is crappy theater better than no theater so we might as well watch because it’s something?

    • BackRowHeckler December 5, 2013 at 9:52 am #

      How about Elizabeth Warren? She might make a viable candidate.

      Only thing is we’ll have to investigate her claims of Nipmunk, Wampanoag (or is it Cherokee) ancestry.

      Some of my in laws have, in the past, used their Castillian Spanish ancestry to scam Affirmative Action benefits. They claimed to be ‘Latino’, picked up some points, and went to the head of the line.

      –BRH

    • K-Dog December 5, 2013 at 5:20 pm #

      A charismatic fascist leader by 2016?

      A year of mild hyperinflation with a year of higher unemployment would do the trick. Then a Bloody Sunday would light the flame. We have plenty of Georgy Gapons and plenty of those who will defend the autocracy of the modern Tsars with blood. All that is missing is discontent to set the wheels turning. Then the computer terminals at Ft Mead won’t be able to suppress the dissent and discontent when it becomes exponential. They are finite in number. Then the plug will have to be pulled for which there will be an equal and opposite reaction. And so on it shall go until the strong man stands up and begins the next nightmare.

      “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Al Bartlett

      The only thing that can save us is a new political party taking over the existing machinery of government while there is still time as both existing major parties are inadequate to the task and ignorant and deluded concerning the true facts of life.

      Earthalujah

  67. rube-i-con December 5, 2013 at 9:37 am #

    Will a Uniter rise from the scattered ashes of the Republican Party and take the Office of the Executive in 2016? Does it even matter at this point?

    why do you waste your time with politics?

    just deux it (your own life)

    down here in brazil, in my neighborhood, we now know who has been breaking in everywhere. we will take care of it ourselves.

    peace peaceniks

  68. BackRowHeckler December 5, 2013 at 11:19 am #

    Because if there’s a better Grift in the USA than Affirmative Action, officially sanctioned discrimination and the law of the land for almost 50 years, I want in. The only thing I can think of that beats it is Social Security Disability payments, which go out to over 10 million people now. Ten Million!!! More than the population of Greece!

  69. beantownbill. December 5, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

    @Janos

    Ah, the philosophy of gambling. I have long realized that there is much more to gambling than seeking of pleasure. The whole concept of gambling is based on probability. In casino gambling, the casino has set up win payoffs that are less than the probability of winning. Therefore it is impossible to win in the long run. Yet, knowing this, why do people gamble?

    For me, although I am an atheist, I think there is some hidden part of me that wishes God exists. It’s not a conscious feeling that I’ll admit to, but it’s probably there somewhere in my brain. So what I may be doing is seeing if God really loves me. If he does, he will supersede the laws of the universe and let me win a big jackpot. Logically, this makes no sense, but emotionally this is just seeking approval. BTW, this is a very hard thing for me to talk about because it goes totally against how I believe the universe works.

    See what I mean about gambling is more than it seems?

    • Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 1:12 pm #

      Agnosticism is better. They doubt everything. Atheists forget to doubt doubt. Pascal dealt with men of your type. Pascal’s Wager might appeal to you: act as if God did exist. You have nothing to lose and much to gain. Nothing to lose except your self image and what is that? Anything real compared to the possible Source of All Being?

    • BackRowHeckler December 5, 2013 at 3:49 pm #

      Bill,

      A friend and co worker of mine won the state lottery about a decade ago, 2 million dollars. Never too stable to begin with, it ended up ruining his life. The money is gone; what is left is a huge tax bill to the IRS which he cannot pay.

      A whole bunch of events occurred between then and now, hair-raising ones. The main problem stemmed from him thinking this serendipitous occasion meant he had some special power and winning was not just sh-t luck. So most of the cash got blown at Foxwoods.

      — BRH

  70. beantownbill. December 5, 2013 at 12:26 pm #

    @ Marlin,

    Elizabeth Warren announced yesterday (?) that she is not running for president in 2016.

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  71. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 5, 2013 at 1:33 pm #

    Yes, Affirmative Action is an obvious scam that was always ripe for abuse. So too are the absurd handicap accommodations, and more specifically the handicap parking. The majority of the people who occupy these spaces are not physically handicapped unless being a fat, fucking, lazy, unkempt slob is a handicap. Some days, I want to confront these selfish cretins who take these spaces and tell them to get down on their hands and knees and crawl into the establishment they are patronizing because that’s what a real handicap person did in the old days. Oh, and I want them to squeal like the little (or big) piggies they are as they’re crawling across the parking lot. Or they can park a little further and walk like we evolved to do. The choice is theirs, and I’ve no doubt some would still choose the former given only those two options.

    My son, who is in the 6th grade by the way, received a two day in school suspension several weeks prior for bringing a laser keyfob to school. He got the thing at a birthday party as part of a party favor package and brought it to school without us knowing. As you might imagine, it was quite the novelty in the cafeteria, but I will say he was smart enough not to point the beam at anyone. However, he let another kid grab it from him and when this kid, a Black troublemaker, did this, my son advised him that he was responsible if he got caught shining the beam on people. The kid was undeterred and shined it on everyone and everything. The Vice-Principal witnessed it and made a beeline for the kid at which point this kid ducks behind some other kids and makes his way to my son where he promptly tosses my son the laser keyfob. The Vice-Principal, let’s call him Lamar Jones, tracks this kid down and interrogates him and the kid tries to blame it on my son by telling the Vice-Principal, a Black man, that it was my son’s laser keyfob. So, the VP takes both my son and this kid to the office and interrogates them further and issues his punishment. I think a two day in school suspension was rather harsh. My son is a model student. He’s in gifted classes across the board and he never causes trouble. He made a poor judgment bringing the laser to school and also allowing this discreditable kid to use it, but his actions weren’t malicious in intent meaning it’s not the same as a violent act where someone makes a conscious choice to slug someone, or not, yet he gets a similar sentence. What kind of message does that send to an otherwise “good” kid? The wrong one.

    My wife and I were disappointed in the “sentence” our son received so I decided to issue a complaint with first the Principle and then it was escalated to the Assistant-Superintendent. Both, who were Black by the way, informed me they don’t overturn decisions and had the VP call me to clarify his decision-making process. To put it bluntly, the VP was an idiot. Seriously, he must have an IQ of about 90, and that’s being generous. It was merely a courtesy call but of interest was him taking exception to me not calling him Doctor. I called him Lamar and when I did he said, very lightly, “that’s Doctor” to which I said “excuse me” to which he said, not as lightly this time, “it’s Doctor Lamar Jones” to which I said “are you demanding I refer to you as Doctor?” to which he said “it’s a gesture of respect” to which I said “I disagree, I don’t refer to people by titles, I refer to them by their first names and they are free to refer to me by my first name, so for purposes of this conversation you’re Lamar and I’m Baby (Baby Blaby is the full name). This really threw him for a loop and he couldn’t respond intelligently or coherently, so after this, he rambled on about his decision which I picked apart but it was like talking to a granite wall. In fact, it would have been more productive talking to the wall.

    What do you do? Homeschool? Move to Finland? Watch the System destroy your child’s potential? Laugh? Cry? Do nothing more than groan as you watch your children get absorbed? I don’t have any answers. Do you?

    • Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 2:57 pm #

      Blacks are clowns who are trying to be Whites. And that’s the best of them. Whites have committed suicide by allowing so many Non Whites into America and then giving them preference over Whites.

      No one can be us but us. We need a Nation of our own.

      • Looongerbeard December 6, 2013 at 9:17 am #

        Please, spare us the racist nonsense!!

  72. progress4what December 5, 2013 at 3:04 pm #

    “What do you do? Homeschool? Move to Finland? Watch the System destroy your child’s potential?”
    ….lord blaby…

    You should have told Lamar to refer to you as “Lord.” That might have made him think a little.

    I understand the Brits don’t use the term “Doctor,” as much as do we Yanks. (I know this from reading the “All Creatures” series by James Herriot – so my information may be out of date.) So, I wonder if the Brits have enough real persons of nobility – that they don’t have to make up honorary salutations. Just a theory.

    As far as moving to Finland, they probably have their own problems; although they are not as far along the slide to madness as we are in the States.

    And I was going to tell you to check to make sure that was a REAL laser pointer, ’cause those things were 10 or 20 bucks not that long ago, which seemed like too much money for a party favor. But I just checked, and they are all over the internet for $3.00.

    Bet your kid won’t take another laser pointer to school, anyway.

    I’ve been wanting to get my wife a .38 revolver with a laser sight system. But now – I’ll have to make her promise not to take it to school with her, because lasers are illegal there.

    OK – that last paragraph was a JOKE, for all of you NSA/FBI types who monitor this webspace. Humor’s not illegal yet, right?

    And does it really matter if you run out of ammo – as long as the batteries are not dead in your handgun?

  73. Q. Shtik December 5, 2013 at 5:18 pm #

    Headline

    Nelson Mandela, 95, died peacefully at his home in Johannesburg SA.
    ==========

    Why is it people who die at home are always said to have died “peacefully”? Why not in raging pain, kicking and screaming, saying they’re scared shitless and that they don’t want to die?

  74. K-Dog December 5, 2013 at 5:25 pm #

    Tis now the season of the week for the phony racism to distract.

  75. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 5, 2013 at 7:17 pm #

    Mandela should be proud of his accomplishments. A new form of self-administered Apartheid. Where are all the people now who took such a moral stand against the old Apartheid? Feeling good about themselves, no doubt, or they’ve moved on to greener activist pastures they’ll soon abandon once they turn them to mud.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDwMmkWJqok

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    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 12:18 am #

      “Mandela should be proud of his accomplishments.”

      Don’t you think it is a bit over the top to blame the rampant poverty induced crime in South Africa on one man? I do.

      The crime of Apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

      You said “A new form of self-administered Apartheid.” but by the definition you are incorrect. Poverty the root of the current problem was caused by the Apartheid which Mandela opposed and not by Mandela.

      BTW – I watched the entire documentary and notable in it is the vast majority of people in the documentary want peace for themselves and everyone else.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 1:47 pm #

        As the author of “The Imitation of Christ” said, “Men love Peace but not the things that make for Peace.” Thomas A Kempis

  76. progress4what December 5, 2013 at 7:55 pm #

    “Tis now the season of the week for the phony racism to distract.”.
    ….K9….

    Why do you call this “phony,” k9?

    Looks like the real thing to me.

    And again, if you’ve got ideas to save the Planet or to save humanity, you need to throw them out there, ASAP.

    If they are good ideas, a little racist chatter won’t stop them.

    • K-Dog December 5, 2013 at 11:12 pm #

      My last comment before that which you quoted.

      “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Al Bartlett

      The only thing that can save us is a new political party taking over the existing machinery of government while there is still time as both existing major parties are inadequate to the task and ignorant and deluded concerning the true facts of life.

      I throw plenty ideas out there mudslinger and there is no such thing as ‘a little racist chatter’ a little hate is like being a little bit pregnant it is or it isn’t. And telling me to throw my ideas out there. Your not the boss of me. I’m not your dog.

      The phony racism to distract and drive away.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 11:54 pm #

        Wanting the White Race to survive is “hatred”? Do you think Mandela wanted the Black Race to survive? Was that hatred too or does that just apply to the White Race?

        Real Badness or of Fake Real Badness which equals Real Goodness?

        • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 12:03 am #

          I’m getting sick of your black ass. Ran your posts through a speech analyser. Definite Bantu in your background.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 12:52 am #

            In other words, Stop Making Sense.

    • K-Dog December 5, 2013 at 11:16 pm #

      A typo ended the above unexpectedly:

      My last comment before that which you quoted.

      “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Al Bartlett

      The only thing that can save us is a new political party taking over the existing machinery of government while there is still time as both existing major parties are inadequate to the task and ignorant and deluded concerning the true facts of life.

      I throw plenty ideas out there mudslinger and there is no such thing as ‘a little racist chatter’ a little hate is like being a little bit pregnant it is or it isn’t. And telling me to throw my ideas out there. Your not the boss of me. I’m not your dog.

      The phony racism to distract and drive away. Why else is it here. No other reason.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 5, 2013 at 11:51 pm #

      Wanting the White Race to survive is “racism” – or witchcraft. Same thing, right?

      • K-Dog December 5, 2013 at 11:59 pm #

        What are you Janos, a high yellow or as dark as beef jerky? Must be one or the other because if you were white you would not be permitted to post your sanctioned bullshit here.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 12:53 am #

          Whites don’t have free speech any more? Good work Madiba.

          • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 3:16 am #

            If one is not racist one knows that saints and sinners come in all colors. But regardless of your color you come from the dark side. Remember I am one who was able to peek behind the curtain and know what’s going on Captain.

            And I note you did not deny it.

            I always thought those shirts were snazzy. 🙂

          • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 3:26 am #

            If you find ‘Captain’ insulting perhaps you find this more appropriate though I doubt a real Lieutenant Colonel would be spending time in the pit. If I’m wrong about that we have serious problems.

            “Otto Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he was chosen as the field commander to carry out the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny was also the leader of Operation Greif, in which German soldiers were to infiltrate through enemy lines, using their opponents’ language, uniforms, and customs. At the end of the war, Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement and the ODESSA network where he would serve as Spanish coordinator.

  77. progress4what December 5, 2013 at 8:11 pm #

    “Why is it people who die at home are always said to have died “peacefully”?” ….q of the shtik….

    I don’t know, q.

    Maybe because of the miracles of chemistry?

    Or – because people who are dying at home don’t want to make too much of a fuss, because then they’d be carried off to die in a hospital?

    ===================

    And I don’t mean to make light.

    Dying is a serious business.

    I had a dear family member die of metastatic cancer. That’s a very rough way to go. And she was in severe pain. And she had to KNOW she was dying, because she’d planned her funeral, and met with the hospice people who would be taking care of her.

    And yet, she refused morphine for many extra weeks of extreme pain.

    Why?

    Because, in her own words she didn’t want to “get addicted.”

    Yet, she knew she was going to die.

    The human mind is a powerful thing.

  78. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 7:01 am #

    This says it all. I’ll say it again. Where are all those activists now who opposed Apartheid? Was rhetoric like this publicly pronounced during Apartheid? I doubt it was this flagrant and blatant. I doubt Apartheid called for the genocide of Blacks by burning their houses and then raping and torturing them. But this goes on with nary a peep from the moralists. Janos has a valid point.

    http://heavenawaits.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/africa-apartheid.jpg

    If Mandela gets the accolades for the fall of Apartheid, which he has of course, then he also gets the blame for its aftermath. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear or see his name in a positive light any longer. If he gets the accolades, he also gets the blame. Or else, it’s a double standard.

    Poverty is made the scapegoat, but what is poverty? How does it come about? How do you break out of it? How do you end it? Why hasn’t that happened? Is it the fault of White people still? How long can this excuse hold? A century? Several centuries? Millennia? Forever?

    In a world of diminishing resources, this inculcated hatred will not end well for those in the minority engendering it. There Will Be Blood. That movie was more prescient than intended. When the Black Gold runs dry, scores will be settled. It’s the way of things.

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 11:56 am #

      On 15 March 2010, Malema was convicted of hate speech by the Equality Court, fined R50 000 and ordered to apologise unconditionally

      On 12 September 2011, Malema was found guilty of hate speech.

      You are scouring for fringe elements. One look at the Mail & Guardian and one would think a national hero has died.

      Mail & Guardian

      The paper is full of things like this:

      “To people of all colour and creed; from all walks of life, across the globe; president Mandela was truly a gift to humanity. He was an embodiment of the best of humanity; a living expression of reconciliation, forgiveness, peace, inclusiveness, wisdom and represented the ultimate example of steward leadership.

  79. BackRowHeckler December 6, 2013 at 8:10 am #

    I think the Boers are in trouble. According to some the only thing keeping them alive this long was the enduring presence of Mandela. Now that he is gone the world might be looking at another Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), or worse. Who will help them? Obama? Holder? Maybe Australia and New Zealand. Also, Israel was a great ally of pre 1992 SAfrica. The 2 Govts. developed nuclear weapons together. Perhaps the Israelis will rescue them.

    What about Bono (Paul Hewson)? Is the song “One Boer, One Bullet” still in his repertoire? That’s quite a song there, Paul. You might see it in action.

    –BRH

  80. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 8:28 am #

    You knew Saint Mandela’s death would stir the hornet’s nest, and so it has. This blog post is receiving a flurry of debate in the comment section. Interesting to follow.

    http://thebackbencher.co.uk/3-things-you-didnt-want-to-know-about-nelson-mandela/

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    • Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 8:36 am #

      From the article at that link:

      Two of the ANC’s biggest donors, in the 1990s, were Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and President Suharto of Indonesia . Not only did Mandela refrain from criticising their lamentable human rights records but he interceded diplomatically on their behalf, and awarded them South Africa ‘s highest honour. Suharto was awarded a state visit, a 21-gun salute, and The Order of Good Hope (gold class).

      Perhaps the accusations about Mandela implicitly approving a genocidal strategy are not unfounded and ludicrous. Suharto was many sordid things, but first and foremost he was a genocidal maniac. Just ask the East Timorese. Mandela didn’t think of them when he celebrated Suharto’s visit. Very telling. Instead, he embraced and rewarded genocide. The conclusion can be drawn that he did so because he tacitly approves of genocide. Otherwise, how could he not denounce it everywhere and anywhere including in his own backyard?

      • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 1:53 pm #

        To this day Mugabe gets a standing ovation from the South African ANC. Of course, unity is the key to power. It’s all about the Unity of Race. Sure Mandela and Tutu aren’t as bad as many, but they aren’t going to break with those either. I seriously doubt they care much what happens to Whites as a whole. Mandela called Whites who fled South Africa “cowards”. What an amazing smear from a man who did so little to protect them.

  81. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 9:33 am #

    Coming to America? Maybe. It’s still Apartheid, just another shade of lipstick on the pig. Good job, Mandela. May you rot in hell, but since there isn’t one (a hell), may you just rot.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5jJSjpztmA

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 12:33 pm #

      And your point is what?

  82. K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 12:32 pm #

    Lord Lawson of Blaby

    Founding Chairman Global Warming Policy Foundation

    Author “An Appeal” to Reason: a cool look at global warming”

    “In 2005 Lord Lawson played an influential part in shaping a report on The Economics of Climate Change by the Lords economic affairs committee. It stood out as a measured but often critical appraisal both of the science behind orthodox global warming theory and of the political response to it.”

    I take it Lord Blaby of Lawson that Guy McPhearson is not someone you’d sip tea with.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 1:59 pm #

      Famed naturalist David Attenborough got in hot water recently for saying Black Africans need to stop having so many kids. Naturalist have to walk a tightrope by pretending to love Black Africans even as the destroy what the Naturalists really love, namely the wonderful animals of Africa.

      As for Black Africans, they like having lots of kids, unprotected sex, and then taking all their problems to every White Country on Earth and creating Africa there, hopefully with White Women.

      • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 3:06 pm #

        Mr. Black Man help me out!

        I’m scratching my ear with my paw looking for anything David Attenborough said recently regarding Black Africans and can’t find a damn thing at all. Post a link or I’m going to just have to assume you are full of shit.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 4:57 pm #

          http://www.amren.com/news/2013/09/attenborough-criticises-food-aid/

          All over the internet we are piping up even as you people try to have a pity party for Madiba. The tide is beginning to turn. The Man repeatedly refused to renounce violence yet the rubes are comparing him to Gandhi – who fought against the Blacks in South Africa in the British Army. There is no excuse for this kind of ignorance when knowledge is just a click away….

          Since you don’t have hands, you can be excused I guess.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 5:01 pm #

      That’s nuthin. You should read about Sir Shovel Cloudesley of the Scilly Islands.

  83. Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 2:01 pm #

    Kdog; sentimental and suicidal idealism unrooted in either Kin or Nation.

    Janos: commonsense cubed, with a love for his People and Nation.

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 2:33 pm #

      If you only love white people you do not love our nation.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 4:47 pm #

        America is a country, a political jurisdiction, not a Nation. A Nation is an extended Family, a People with shared genes and culture. Japan or Iceland are classic examples.

  84. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 2:21 pm #

    I think they should read this at Mandela’s funeral. It’s part of his record and legacy, afterall, or are only positive outcomes to be attached to the Mandela narrative?

    http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/South_Africa_2013-10-xx_SA,_where_corruption_is_normal.pdf

    Part of that ever-morphing narrative now is that Obama’s presidency would never have been possible if not for Mandela’s accomplishments. In fact, Mandela was so fond of Obama, he had a photo of himself and Obama, taken during his visit to the U.S. in 2005 while Obama was still an unknown junior Senator, front and center in his office. How curious. Obama was slated for the presidency even then. No doubt, both Mandela and Obama work for the same outfit. And even though Mandela is now deceased, he will continue to work for that outfit as every last ounce of gold is extracted from the cache that is Mandela, dead or alive.

    Maybe they reported him dying in peace as a juxtaposition to the fate of the brutally murdered White South African farmers who are being systematically genocided as the world jeers that they deserve it.

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 2:32 pm #

      Obama was slated for the presidency earlier than that. If you agree with that then we have a single point of agreement.

    • Lord Blaby of Lawson December 6, 2013 at 2:35 pm #

      From that link and of special note. Coming to America? Maybe. We’ll see. It sure seems like the plan at this rate.

      What angers the white farmers even more is that the
      government won’t even let them defend themselves. Beginning in 2003, the government began disbanding the rural commando units used to protect the remote farming communities that did not have police protection. The government said the commandos were
      unconstitutional and promised special police units to replace them. In 2008, the last commando unit was disbanded. To this day, the special police forces still haven’t arrived.Then in 2010, the government passed gun control laws mandating that all guns be re-registered. In the process of registration, more than half the applicants were turned down and their weapons were seized. Thus, white farmers were forced to relinquish their last line of defense against mobs of criminal gangs roaming the countryside. The criminals, of course, weren’t silly enough to register their machine guns.

  85. BackRowHeckler December 6, 2013 at 2:32 pm #

    In SA, a farm family of 6 was wiped out just last night, a mother, father, 4 children. Maybe Oprah and Obama can pay their respects when they make the Holy Pilgrimage next week.

    i was reading some of the copy on Mandela. This is what it must have been like in he East when Comrade Stalin went toes up in ’53, and Chairman Mao in ’76. You’d Jesus Christ Himself has passed.

    –BRH

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    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 3:10 pm #

      And your link to this breaking news is where?

  86. Q. Shtik December 6, 2013 at 4:32 pm #

    Re Mandela:

    It has taken me a life time to realize no one deserves to be idolized. At bottom we are all quite ordinary.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 4:59 pm #

      The path towards becoming extraordinary is often to accept that one is completely ordinary – thus becoming what the Zen Buddhists call “the True Man of No Title”.

  87. Looongerbeard December 6, 2013 at 5:24 pm #

    JHK, I’ve appreciated your site for years. Are you able to block out some of this racist crap, like that of this Sanos Skorenzy character?

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 7:58 pm #

      He has tried. Note the space between the names. One trick is upon being banned is to come back as the same name with two or more spaces instead of one. That gets past the banning but winds up looking the same on screen. He has posted using other names which have been banned, most notably Vlad Kranz.

      But then if Janos Skorenzy is a honeypot for these guys, Whatcha going to do?

      Not many dogs willing to fight that free speech battle. I only know of one!

      Also pay attention to those friendly with him. He is not alone and part of a much larger organized effort. JHK tries to clean it up a bit but really he has better things to do than obsess with his blog. And I won’t be around so much to fight the battle if I get back to work full time which will hopefully be soon.

      I contend the racist crap is here to prevent political discussion concerning the issues JHK brings up. Discussion of JHK’s issues definitely brings one outside the sanctioned brain dead political spectrum of normal red/blue republican/democratic right/left political pablum. Talking about reweaving the social fabric of how things are done in America is a threat to ‘National Security’ don’t cha know.

      Bottom line though is if enough responsible and thoughtful dogs were to exercise their rights and post in spite of Janos and exercise a few intellectual brain cells they could not be stopped. As it is right now it’s ‘Mission Accomplished’.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 11:14 pm #

        Where’s Ozone? Crying himself to sleep as he clutches his Madiba doll?

        Admit it: last night you and your girlfriend were weeping about Madiba. Ozone called and asked if he could come over. You felt uncomfortable and gently said “Sorry pal” but in a non blue collar way. You intended some serious comforting and Zone would only get in the way with his earnest New England Anarchism and his ridiculous doll!

      • Looongerbeard December 7, 2013 at 7:42 am #

        K-Dog, Thanks for your thoughtful insight on this matter. I guess honest thinking people just have to motor on, and try to ignore the racist BS.

        For me, racism is particularly nonsensical. Such a waste of time and brain power. In addition to being actually hurtful and disrespectful to so many people.

        Like we don’t have some real issues to discuss here?

        • Arn Varnold December 7, 2013 at 9:01 am #

          @ Looongerbeard

          I had given up on this blog for exactly the points you make. The racist screed here is thick and supported by the mainstream here.
          I agree, it’s nonsensical, but it’s worse than that; it’s hateful and that makes it decisive.
          Precisely what divides the society extant.
          This will not end well…

          • Arn Varnold December 7, 2013 at 9:05 am #

            Oh fuck, shit, piss, spell-check is shit!
            DEVISIVE! Damnit!

        • K-Dog December 7, 2013 at 9:52 am #

          There are those who consider it harmful to discuss the ‘real issues’. Big coal doesn’t want a coherent energy policy. Big oil doesn’t want a coherent energy policy. Alternative energy cuts into their profits. We have become a democracy of corporate executives and our government kisses their ass. The democracy of corporate executives wants no regulation and our military wants the military industrial complex to prosper without accountability restraint or pause. Wall street does not want a prosperous no growth economy because the way they earn (or if you prefer steal) their money would be taken away. In a no growth economy everyone becomes middle class and any gradiation in social structure becomes, heaven forbid, based on merit. The Peoples Republic of China is a totalitarian state where if the things I’ve heard are correct is rampant with human rights violations. But everything we buy now comes from there and 28 million Americans are unemployed as a result. But business for the multinationals has never been better and they want open borders so ‘the best and the brightest‘ and those ‘willing to work hard‘ can come to America and ‘live the ‘American dream‘. We need to innovate don’t cha know and apparently all the college graduates living in their parents basements don’t know how to innovate. We live in an inverted totalitarian state and we passed from the great nation we once were to a grotesque caricature of a free state not with a bang but a whimper.

          Racism is particularly nonsensical. Nonsensical and hurtful and the most embarrassing of human irrationality.

          Thank you for complementing me on my thoughtful insight. I wish that is all it were. Unfortunately I’ve been presented with hard evidence to know that is exactly what is going on. Most dogs would be intimidated into silence, that was the plan, but that did not work out for me. And being directly fucked with has really pissed me off.

          But sadly it seems nobody cares and as we slide into the extreme totalitarianism of China nobody notices as they cheerfully text away and trample over each other to be first for the next sale in the big race to the bottom.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 11:07 pm #

      What do you mean racist? Is wanting the White Race to survive racist? But doing and saying the same things is Ok for Blacks, right?

      Remember, towards the end of The Long Emergency, Mr Kunstler spends a few pages on American Blacks. He doesn’t think much of their behavior and says it will not be tolerated during the long emergency.

  88. rube-i-con December 6, 2013 at 6:38 pm #

    let janos speak. he speaks truth that is uncomfortable. he wouldn’t deny a black man to live honourably among his own kind.

    even thieves and robbers have a code of conduct?

    peace peaceniks

    • K-Dog December 6, 2013 at 8:01 pm #

      And you’d be one of the organized effort. How is life on the ‘Department of Defense Network’ these days Asoka?

    • Janos Skorenzy December 6, 2013 at 11:10 pm #

      Thank you. And the uncomfortable truth for you is that technology takes jobs. That’s a big reason why it’s profitable. The use of robots is exploding. Switzerland alone is thinking about this issue and plans to vote on offering people free money – proving itself the most advanced Nation on Earth.

      • K-Dog December 7, 2013 at 10:05 am #

        You are making no sense and throwing mud at the wall. For a brief shining moment I shall enjoy my victory before the full force of the pit is unleashed on me. And Janos I don’t think you are Asoka, but nice try. Your speech patterns are different and you have different personalities, different tells. Good move to confabulate and try to make it look like a lone wolf is behind the perennial fuckification of Clusterfuck Nation. Good move but not good enough. The dog has a good sense of smell.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 7, 2013 at 2:17 pm #

          You were wrong about David Attenborough. You’re wrong about Madiba too. You refuse to care about the Whites who have been killed by Blacks in South Africa or here in America.

          Huh? When did I ever say I was Asoka? That’s what you do to anyone you don’t like. Glad you are showing signs of recovery though…

  89. BackRowHeckler December 7, 2013 at 9:17 am #

    Well, while we’re fighting over scraps out here, and in New England many worry where they’re going to come up with the cash this winter to pay for heating oil, which is still over $3.50 a gallon, (average tank 250 gallons) the Seattle Mariners have signed 2nd baseman Robinson Cano to a QUARTER BILLION DOLLAR contract. Cano is pretty good, maybe not quite on par with Cleveland Indian Robby Alomar from about a decade ago. Certainly he is no Rogers Hornsby. But I say to JHK, there still seems to be plenty of money around for stupid sh-t like this and a thousand other things I see and hear every day. Also I read yesterday in the WSJ there’s a glut of oil on the Gulf Coast nobody knows quite what to do with right now. Maybe I’m blind to some things, but it just seems lack of capital for investment, as well as lack of energy (nat gas and petroleum) is much of a problem right now.

    Meanwhile, adulation and praise, but no criticism, for Mandela goes on unabated. I can’t listen to it anymore. It seems he was Jesus, St Francis, Abraham Lincoln, Solomon and Ghandi all rolled up in one. Nobody like him has ever walked the earth.

    –BRH

    • K-Dog December 7, 2013 at 10:07 am #

      Back row eh? So Asoka sits in front of you. Can you throw an eraser and hit him on the back of the head for me!

    • K-Dog December 7, 2013 at 10:09 am #

      Is the cafeteria food good?

      • K-Dog December 7, 2013 at 10:09 am #

        Or should I say ‘mess hall’.

  90. Q. Shtik December 7, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

    “DEVISIVE! Damnit!” – Arn
    =========

    According to my thick Random House dictionary it’s DIVISIVE, Arn.

    Also, regarding your sentence “Precisely what divides the society extant” why do you feel the word extant adds anything to the meaning…or for that matter use of the word the? Why not simply Precisely what divides society?

    Now don’t go getting all pissed off. Consider it your Saturday morning lesson.

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    • Janos Skorenzy December 7, 2013 at 2:19 pm #

      He just can’t get anything right. He actually believes Racism is a real issue as defined by the State run media or is it the Media run state? Gullibility thy name is Arn.

  91. Q. Shtik December 7, 2013 at 12:44 pm #

    Almost forgot………..

    HAPPY PEARL HARBOR DAY!

    It’s been 72 years. How quickly we forget.

  92. Janos Skorenzy December 7, 2013 at 3:18 pm #

    http://clashdaily.com/2013/12/busted-lesbian-accused-anti-gay-note-hoax-refunds-thousands-dollars-zealous-supporters/

    What can I add to that? The Title speaks for itself. Another Homo scam just like the Mathew Shepherd case. These people really do fit into this society very well. Maybe that’s why there are so many of them – because it produces them?

    • BackRowHeckler December 7, 2013 at 5:32 pm #

      Where they all coming from? I thought it was about 2-3% of the population. Our Governors staff, the whole goddam staff, are queers, and proud of it! Yes, the whole Mathew Shepard case was a scam. There’s a book out now exposing it. And remember when AIDS was the new ‘Bubonic Plague’, destined to wipe out the human race? Turns out the only people coming down with it were IV drug users and promiscuous homosexuals. My theory is this is what all these Zombie shows are all about.

      –BRH

  93. Arn Varnold December 7, 2013 at 10:43 pm #

    @ Q. Shtik
    According to my thick Random House dictionary it’s DIVISIVE, Arn.

    Also, regarding your sentence “Precisely what divides the society extant” why do you feel the word extant adds anything to the meaning…or for that matter use of the word the? Why not simply Precisely what divides society?

    Now don’t go getting all pissed off. Consider it your Saturday morning lesson.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Gods be good, you’re such a pedant. Who, in fact, gives a shit?
    You’ve mistaken me for some who cares.

  94. BleatToTheBeat December 8, 2013 at 1:50 am #

    HAPPY SATURDAY!

    I mean…

    HAPPY PEARL HARBOR DAY!

    What kind of ancient, quadraplegic, amnesiac veteran gets “HAPPY” on the anniverseray of Pearl Harbor Day?

    I used to work with a guy who was there when it happened. Any sudden loud noise in the factory made him re-live it all over again. Poor fucker. Some people I worked with in said factory would deliberately make loud noises behind him just to watch him freak out.

    Funny…huh?

    But let us celebrate this Saturday along side of our Queers In The Government.

    As if being queer in this government makes a goddamn bit of difference for any factory working Pearl Harbor vets.

    Maybe the civillians should start wearing uniforms.

    And let’s let Elton design them.

    ….hmmmm

    Yes, my BFF floats in the bottom of a glass.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26wEWSUUsUc

  95. BleatToTheBeat December 8, 2013 at 2:16 am #

    And the winner of the 2013 Joseph McCarthy Humanitarian Award is…

    TED KRUSE!!

    Let’s give him a big hand!

    (Where have I heard this shit before?)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrppNNVVExU

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    • Looongerbeard December 8, 2013 at 5:51 am #

      Nice video!

      Reminds me of our (failed) effort to vote Alice Cooper in as the speaker of our high school commencement, 1974.

  96. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 8, 2013 at 10:46 am #

    Since South Africa will be in the news for a couple of weeks longer, it’s still a relevant topic. Pursuant to that, maybe some of us should consider this as our next vacation destination. It looks like a blast. Yes, even the rich can experience what it’s like to be a slum dog sans the murder by any and all means including a necklace (burning tire around the neck). What a great idea, don’t you think? Pretty soon someone will will develop a vacation where rich people can hunt down humans and kill them, or rich people can choose their own subject to interrogate and torture. There are so many ways to extract and spend wealth. Who gives a shit about passé notions of productivity. We shouldn’t let such anchors keep the ship of creativity from sailing. And we haven’t.

    http://www.emoya.co.za/p23/accommodation/shanty-town-for-a-unique-accommodation-experience-in-bloemfontein.html

  97. Q. Shtik December 8, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

    “You’ve mistaken me for some[ ] who cares.” – Arn
    ===========

    [one]

    You care enough to respond angrily.

  98. Janos Skorenzy December 8, 2013 at 4:57 pm #

    http://gma.yahoo.com/judge-orders-colorado-bakery-cater-same-sex-weddings-014129549–abc-news-topstories.html

    Soon Priests and Pastors will be arrested for teaching the gospel position of Homosexuality. As Cardinal George of Chicago said, I will die in bed. My successor will die in a jail cell. And his successor will die in the public square.

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  99. K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 4:57 pm #

    I tried to post an old Robert Reich video (2005) but without the success that music videos seem to have on the blog a little while ago. Roberts video remains highly relevant. The truth has a funny way of doing that.

    The video suggests that outrage over growing inequality may have reached a point where reform may happen and reunite us as a single nation as it should be.

    But sadly now in 2014 I can’t agree. Media is too highly manipulated for the public to really understand what is going on in America. Endless repetition of sound bites has made fools of all. Further smartphones and other forms of technology have driven up barriers to communications between different groups while enhancing communication within groups, exacerbating differences. Technology has isolated everyone into small circles of friends.

    America badly needs a new populism but it shall not be. A pervasive failure to act and be aware of what is happening in America is now upon us. The failure to develop the awareness needed to end the economy of pervasive racketeering will continue unabated. Too many elites benefit from the Wall Street kit-bag of rackets and they have too much power to allow for any reform.

    Blue states now represent the political positions once held by red states and red states represent a new fascism of ignorance and privilege.

    What has made us such a culture of cowards and cravens that the best we can do is produce a couple of comedians who speak truth to power in the form of jokes. Most of this is not that funny.

    Money and power has done it and it’s not funny. The middle class and poor have lost all influence because years of explosive wealth and growth of the class of mega rich has allowed their selfishness, greed and insane denial of reality to dominate all political activity and thought. The result has suppressed every progressive impulse.

    It suits the suits to deny reality and ignore those who are not so well off. Once education intelligence and drive allowed for some social mobility and some concern. No more, now being well connected is what matters far more and pervasive selfishness is the religion of the land.

    What is interesting in Robert Reich’s video is near the end he appeals to the Democratic Party to find the voice of reason, a new progressivism such as what prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. But the election of 2008 killed that hope when we got a blue president with a scarlet heart and who is red under the skin.

    • K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 4:59 pm #

      Forgot an apostrophe.

      Roberts video remains highly relevant.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 8, 2013 at 7:11 pm #

      Is he the dwarf from Labor? The most radical program for redistribution in American History was by the Kingfish Huey Long. But he wasn’t a Marxist so his socialism isn’t Kosher or International enough.

    • chuckyzfr1 February 16, 2014 at 11:26 am #

      A great reply to a great post. I’m in the unusual position of having direct exposure to both ends of the socio-economic scale, and it constantly amazes me that the current system continues to chug along seemingly unchanged despite the massive shakedowns since ’08….

  100. Janos Skorenzy December 8, 2013 at 5:05 pm #

    http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/12/nelson-mandela-another-false-god/#comment-42507

    Good comment by one who knows. Black Rule in South Africa is largely dominance by the Xhosa Tribe. Apparently they were the first Blacks in and absorbed many of the Bushmen – which is why Mandela looked like he did.

  101. BackRowHeckler December 8, 2013 at 5:09 pm #

    Oh Ya, I fully expect sometime soon the Bible to be banned in the US as a document ‘espousing hate’ because it doesn’t back up 100% ‘Gay Marriage’. That’s about the time they’ll be passing out copies of the Koran and requiring you to read it, or else!

    Check out events today in the Central African Republic. Tens of thousands of desperate people are lining up at the airport desperate to get out. French troops are rushing in. There’s a Rwanda type genocide brewing up, predictably, Muslims from the north slaughtering Christians from the south. I’m wondering why the major networks, focused on Africa right now, are not covering it. It’s not far from SAfrica really. Maybe Oprah and Obama can drop in on there way to funeral and smooth things out.

    –BRH

    • Janos Skorenzy December 8, 2013 at 7:09 pm #

      Time for another crusade perhaps. But not in the Middle East because that’s what Israel wants. Attack Islam in Black Africa. For a thousand years Islam has been attacking Blacks. Why don’t the Liberals care about that? Why do I suddenly care about Blacks?

  102. BackRowHeckler December 8, 2013 at 5:28 pm #

    Wait a minute. No worries. The UN is considering taking a vote to form a committee to look into atrocities and mass murder in CAR. A report should be issued within 2 years.

    –BRH

  103. Lord Blaby of Lawson December 8, 2013 at 6:09 pm #

    It’s difficult to watch this whitewash on the history channel. There’s nothing about life on the streets, and farms, of South Africa now. It’s all blood and gore from life in South Africa under Apartheid (an Apartheid that’s never ended but rather reversed), the implication being that now things are just fine and dandy because it’s democratic violence. See, violence is justified if it’s democratic.

    F. W. de Klerk should be given credit, not for what the hypocritical moralist activists believe he did, but because he destroyed South Africa’s nuclear capability. Can you imagine fully-functional nuclear capability in the hands of the corrupt and violent ANC leadership? F. W. de Klerk prevented a future nuclear holocaust, but the activists won’t laud him for that.

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  104. rube-i-con December 8, 2013 at 7:18 pm #

    i like it how any dissent here whatsoever always brings out the weakass lie that somehow everyone is asoka, or theres a coordinated effort to be racist.

    bloody weak….”janos, you’re asoka, welles, you’re asoka, welles, you changed ur name to rube-i-con”

    if someone wants to be what you think is racist, let them. better to talk things out than gun ’em out.

    péace peaceniks

    • K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 8:26 pm #

      “always brings out the weakass lie”

      Not always, only from me. Because in the old days I could see where trolls like you were coming from. The Department of Defence Network if anyone wants to know. And you did say way back then you could make my life difficult if I continued commenting about time stamps and who was who. You certainly did that for a while but of course now knowing that such harassment is ineffective against me bringing public attention to yourself would be foolish because that’s what any further harassment of me will bring, public attention.

      To clarify your dissemblation. I contend that Janos and Asoka are different; that you are Asoka which you admitted to about a month or so ago. Both you and Vlad slip at times and give yourself away. Each in your own ways. I won’t be saying how. Truth has never been something you cared about but you should really keep track of what you’ve admitted to in the past so your lies don’t contradict yourself later and bust your own ass.

      Never said anything about Wells being Asoka at all though I always thought so. You just did it for me, thanks. Both claimed to be living in South America. Anybody else claiming that these days? I never pointed out that Wells always closed with the same insulting ‘peace peaceniks’ as you do. Why point out the obvious. But since you just admitted that Wells and Asoka are one in the same, why not. I knew it to be true but Wells pre-dated my investigation of the time stamps and at that time I was not sure who the dogs pooping in CFN were and wasn’t saying anything about what was going on then. But now I know.

      I have a hard time believing anybody living in a South American Country where Spanish or Portuguese is the national tongue would be spending 24 / 7 trolling at CFN. I don’t think I’m alone in that supposition though I can see the advantage of claiming that as a location because you wouldn’t be running into serious time zone contradiction issues like somebody else here does.

      The trouble with lies is that they are all weakass because it takes an enormous effort to keep them contradiction free. The more lies the greater the chance of making a mistake and giving yourself away. Truth does not have that problem.

      And if someone wants to be what I think is racist I think they should be banned. The trouble with that is that banned trolls have an uncanny ability to come back here.

      Why you bothered to bait me like this is something I’m not going to bother spending time wondering about. I only stopped in to see if anyone had anything intelligent to say about the last comment I made. You boys should really be confining yourselves to strict surveillance and staying away from government interference with the democratic process. What’s little there is left of it.

      I think it is now 29 degrees F where you are. Your high today was 31 degrees and your low tonight will be 28. Have a nice evening.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 8, 2013 at 9:57 pm #

        If I’m not Asoka (though you’ve called me that several times), who am I? Am I everyman? Am I you in the dead of the night when you can’t sleep and know that Blacks are in fact less than Whites?

        It was 2 below F last night. It’s 9 right now. Global Warming is really kicking in.

        • K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 11:25 pm #

          It is 24 degrees where you are. Colder than on the east coast.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 9, 2013 at 12:15 am #

            No it isn’t. You obviously don’t know where I am. You used to but it must have gotten pushed out by some new mania borne theory. You are highly unstable.

  105. rube-i-con December 8, 2013 at 8:53 pm #

    as janos knows, you make yourself out to be much more important than is the case.

    it’s very telling that you and your cohorts in imaginings simply fabricate all kinds of webs of intrigue and then draw absurd ‘conclusions’ from them.

    the truth is so much simpler.

    this is so laffable. i like your reasoning: you can’t live in a country that speakes another language and comment here because, you know, you would have to be an operative to do that. hahaha. plus, there are the dreaded time zone contradictions. haha, all caps.

    janos, our cover has been blown.

    now that welles and asoka are known to be one and the same, oh my GOSH….

    peace peaceniks

    • K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 11:22 pm #

      I don’t have cohorts. You do.

  106. rube-i-con December 8, 2013 at 8:57 pm #

    And if someone wants to be what I think is racist I think they should be banned

    yep, that really squares with your love of ‘democracy’ you try to tout in your post, HAHA, it just gets better and better.

    you know, i don’t like what you SAY, so i think i’ll BAN you. because we need to ensure democracy rules the day.

    peace peaceniks

    • K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 11:21 pm #

      Racism is not democracy. Rascism is hate ignorance and the denial of another’s rights. The opposite of democracy. K-Dogs never been banned here. You and Janos both have.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 9, 2013 at 12:13 am #

        Teacher’s pet thinks that makes him morally superior. Brown noser!

        I have asked you endlessly to discuss racism. You ignored me but now blurt out some grade school dogma. Shame.

      • Looongerbeard December 9, 2013 at 5:43 am #

        Amen to that!

        I can’t even bring myself to dialog with the racist fools.

        Probably better to ignore them, although I know that’s difficult when they persist. Like disgusting flies to a rotten carcass , eager to launch their maggot offspring!

  107. K-Dog December 8, 2013 at 11:32 pm #

    I won’t be responding to Vlad or Asoka any more tonight. It is unfortunate that nobody cares to respond to my 4:57 comment in which I came up with an answer to JHK’s question that he posed (perhaps rhetorically) in his article this week. I will be looking forward to his next post and what the normal people have to say about it tomorrow before they disappear. Normal people being people who are not paid to be here.

    • Looongerbeard December 9, 2013 at 5:49 am #

      I thought you made some good points in the 4:57 post. It made me want to see the R.Reich video that you referred to. Can you at least put the url up for that?

      Good plan to ignore the racist troll fools!

  108. rube-i-con December 9, 2013 at 6:58 am #

    Racism is not democracy. Rascism is hate ignorance and the denial of another’s rights. The opposite of democracy.

    despite my timezone & other difficulties, such as the fact that people in this country speak portuguese, i’ll state the following:

    one of the most important rights in the bill of rights, you know, democracy, as you like to say, is the right to free speech. specifically, i believe there are quotes by some founding fathers or supreme court justices to the effect that that right is meant more to ensure that what you don’t like to hear gets a hearing anyway. before you ban it and burn the books.

    we’ve seen your kind in nazi germany and now in the US, the people who take huckleberry finn and rip out whole sections cuz it doesn’t fit your sissy ass ideal of acceptable speech. while the ‘other side’, so to speak, engages in it as part of their mongrelized culture. you cheer the downfall of a great culture and civilization.

    you’ve been well indoctrinated not to allow certain thoughts in your own head. i congratulate your mental masters.

    peace peaceniks

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  109. progress4what December 11, 2013 at 6:32 pm #

    OK – If you follow the news at all, you have to have seen this.

    I first saw it yesterday on Mashable, and read some of the very first comments. Several comments said, “This is obviously PhotoShopped and Mashable sucks and I will never visit Mashable again.”

    At any rate, and regardless of your politics – you need to find some humor in here, somewhere or another!

    http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/12/analysis-michelle-obama-really-not-fond-denmarks-gucci-helle/355980/

  110. progress4what December 11, 2013 at 6:51 pm #

    And I should clarify by saying that I first saw the -story- on Mashable, not the particular series of photos with the hilarious commentary – that The Wire ran subsequently, and to which I linked.

    One thing that this should COMPLETELY put to rest is the idea that our :POTUS is a raging gay, and that Michelle is his beard.

    Because, I’ll tell you people, Pres. Obama’s interactions with Ms. Helle are definitely those of a heterosexual – perhaps even a Tailhound or an Horn-dog.*

    And believe me, I know tailhounds and horndogs, having been one for more than 4 decades so far. Just ask my wife.

    *That’s a nod to you, K-dog – and intended as something of a compliment, or at least intended as a gesture of good humor.

  111. progress4what December 11, 2013 at 6:54 pm #

    oops – dropped an accidental colon in there

    POTUS was intended, the colon in front made it :POTUS

    No disrespect was intended.

    And a simple mistake does not make me an enemy of the State.

    Except among the paranoid. the :paranoid? :Paranoid??

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