JHK’s Three-Act Play
I n just about any realm of activity this nation does not know how to act. We don’t know what to do about our mounting crises of economy. We don’t know what to do about our relations with other nations in a strained global economy. We don’t know what to do about our own culture and its traditions, the useful and the outworn. We surely don’t know what to do about relations between men and women. And we’re baffled to the point of paralysis about our relations with the planetary ecosystem.
To allay these vexations, we just coast along on the momentum generated by the engines in place — the turbo-industrial flow of products to customers without the means to buy things; the gigantic infrastructures of transport subject to remorseless decay; the dishonest operations of central banks undermining all the world’s pricing and cost structures; the political ideologies based on fallacies such as growth without limits; the cultural transgressions of thought-policing and institutional ass-covering.
This is a society in deep danger that doesn’t want to know it. The nostrum of an expanding GDP is just statistical legerdemain performed to satisfy stupid news editors, gull loose money into reckless positions, and bamboozle the voters. If we knew how to act we would bend every effort to prepare for the end of mass motoring, but instead we indulge in fairy tales about the “shale oil miracle” because it offers the comforting false promise that we can drive to WalMart forever (in self-driving cars!). Has it occurred to anyone that we no longer have the capital to repair the vast network of roads, streets, highways, and bridges that all these cars are supposed to run on? Or that the capital will not be there for the installment loans Americans are accustomed to buy their cars with?
The global economy is withering quickly because it was just a manifestation of late-stage cheap oil. Now we’re in early-stage of expensive oil and a lot of things that seemed to work wonderfully well before, don’t work so well now. The conveyer belt of cheap manufactured goods from China to the WalMarts and Target stores doesn’t work so well when the American customers lose their incomes, and have to spend their government stipends on gasoline because they were born into a world where driving everywhere for everything is mandatory, and because central bank meddling adds to the horrendous inflation of food prices.
Now there’s great fanfare over a “manufacturing renaissance” in the United States, based on the idea that the work will be done by robots. What kind of foolish Popular Mechanics porn fantasy is this? If human beings have only a minor administrative role in this set-up, what do two hundred million American adults do for a livelihood? And who exactly are the intended customers of these products? You can be sure that the people of China, Brazil, and Korea will have enough factories of their own, making every product imaginable. Are they going to buy our stuff now? Are they going to completely roboticize their own factories and impoverish millions of their own factory workers?
The lack of thought behind this dynamic is staggering, especially because it doesn’t account for the obvious political consequence — which is to say the potential for uprising, revolution, civic disorder, cruelty, mayhem, and death, along with the kind of experiments in psychopathic governance that the 20th century was a laboratory for. Desperate populations turn to maniacs. You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.
What preoccupies the USA now, in June of 2014? According to the current cover story Time Magazine, the triumph of “transgender.” Isn’t it wonderful to celebrate sexual confusion as the latest and greatest achievement of this culture? No wonder the Russians think we’re out of our minds and want to dissociate from the West. I’ve got news for the editors of Time Magazine: the raptures of sexual confusion are not going to carry American civilization forward into the heart of this new century.
In fact, just the opposite. We don’t need confusion of any kind. We need clarity and an appreciation of boundaries in every conceivable sphere of action and thought. We don’t need more crybabies, or excuses, or wishful thinking, or the majestic ass-covering that colors the main stream of our national life.
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No wonder the Russians think we’re out of our minds and want to dissociate from the West.
The Russians have no place to talk. Does anyone seriously think Russia will be able to make good on that thirty year gas deal with China? Not a chance. Outside of the ritzy districts of Moscow and St. Petersburg, you can see the True Russia, and it’s not a pretty picture. Yeah, the Americans and The West are out of their minds, but who isn’t these days? Everyone is. Civilization is insane. It always was. Comparing societies within the construct of Civilization is like comparing horse shit to bullshit.
Krokodil Tears — Crimea River
You are right this planet is one big insane asylum.
Wrong! I travel to Russia and Ukraine once a year on business. There are obviously many problems there, social and economic, but confusion about their place in the world and the nature of their relationships is not among them. They have awareness of how they relate to each other that has been long forgotten in USA and they want no part in the confusion that reigns here. They may be poor, but they by and large, have dignity and integrity in social life. You can see it in their appearance – thin, firm, good skin and hair. As soon as you arrive back in an American airport one immediately notices the difference – fat, bad skin and hair, sloppy dress, silly gestures, nonsensical speech. One can speculate endlessly on the strength of a nation’s finance, military, education (by the way, the literacy rate in slavic countries is almost 100%), but at the end of the day, the character of the people will always win out.
I’m not sure the Ukranians are that enlightened. I was corresponding with a contact in Lviv last week. I asked him if there was any concern about gas supplies this coming winter.
-“We will buy our gas from Europe” he replied.
-“But… Europe gets their gas from Russia!?” I said.
-“We all will do without their gas”.
Oookayyy… lemme know how that works out…
I’m interested in what his tune will be in September.
Thanks for that, Sprezzatura.
“In just about any realm of activity this nation does not know how to act. We don’t know what to do about our mounting crises of economy. We don’t know what to do about our relations with other nations in a strained global economy. We don’t know what to do about our own culture and its traditions, the useful and the outworn. We surely don’t know what to do about relations between men and women. And we’re baffled to the point of paralysis about our relations with the planetary ecosystem.”
I’ve been reading a fellow who calls himself “Fabius Maximus” lately. One of the points he’s been making is that Americans won’t defend America anymore because they don’t like what it has become and don’t see themselves in it anymore. This reminds me of the point you’ve made about suburbia is that you don’t think Americans will defend a place they don’t care about. I called his attention to that similarity in a post he wrote about gender roles. He responded skeptically. Too bad, he should take you more seriously.
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2014/05/27/castle-beckett-nathan-fillion-domestic-violence-68384/
As for “our relations with the planetary ecosystem,” I stumbled across more bad news to add to the converging catastrophes of the 21st Century. In the short run, California’s drought may cost the state’s agriculture sector $1.7 billion and cause more than 14,500 workers to lose their jobs. In the long run, as if the West Antarctic ice sheet breaking up isn’t bad enough, Greenland’s melting will be worse than previously forecast. Good thing you’re way upstate.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/06/greenland-melt-and-drought-from.html
Funny you should mention the disassociation from America. I feel it all the time now and doubt I would rise up to defend any of this culture except my own abode and the one inside it that I love. And my friends and family. That’s about it!
A bit more context to Neon’s reply. I believe we are all on the same page here, but apply very different frames or contexts to what’s happening.
Which might be why find collective action so difficult. The posts he cites were an attempt to better understand this problem, and find common ground (which, guessing, I might have stumbled upon).
Trivia note: I think the key points to my reply to Neon’s comment on the FM website (one of a series of insightful comments) was “I have read little of Kunstler” and “I will take a closer look”.
My, what a pleasant surprise! Glad to see you here and even more glad to read you offering your perspective on our exchange. Also “one of a series of insightful comments”–thank you for the compliment!
Neon,
My observation was well deserved. In a sea of trolls & tribesmen (robotically supporting their truths), the few rational commenters stand out.
I say that after reading (& replying to most of) 36,000 comments.
Also, the comments here are quite good!
Although I agree with most of your point, JHK, I don’t believe that
1)This is all out ignorance. They know exactly what they’re doing and as long as they aren’t interested in national sovereignty it works for them.
2) That this isn’t a deliberate game plan to use globalism as a way of distributing wealth to the top in lieu of peak everything. And of course follow the Neocon/Bignew doctrine of US unipolar power in military and finance.
This benefits global corporate monopolies and banks.
Cultural confusion is being used to undermine the public in their ability to find agreement and a way forward. If everyone is fighting the Kultcha wars, they aren’t addressing Plutocracy and the G’Ubers get everything they want scott-free.
There is capital, but not for the modern nation state which is being smashed around the world for domination of the few. The money is hidden from tax-collectors and then used for their own projects that help themselves in a world of dwindling resources.
Now they’ve got resource rich Africa to syphon till the day is done and the way the gallop through that, I don’t give it many years.
These G’Ubers are delusional though when it comes to
1) replacing workers with robots and thinking that the economy can work and there are no consequences for them as they refuse to pay taxes–using their crazy political and economic theories.
2) Going into space and wrecking more planets for resources–extending imperialism in space. It’s not gonna happen —
They are stuck like the rest of us on a planet they are killing.
I’ve noticed that even as JHK bemoans conspiracy theories and ladles insults on Alex Jones, his own prognostications grow ever closer to InfoWars’ assessment. At this point, it hardly matters if the events unfolding around us were conceived 30 years ago at Bilderberg, or if they’re the ad-hoc reactions of the Chamber of Commerce and State Department to the situation on the ground. The sad fact is that all the darker predictions have come true…mass surveillance, resource depletion exacerbated by greed, poisons in the food, and openly-genocidal ambitions by “the elite” towards the rest of us (here articulated as the desire to get rid of us all in favor of robots).
But even as those on the left (Mike Whitney, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky) converge with those in center (Kunstler, Paul Craig Roberts, Gerald Celente) and those on the far-right (Alex Jones, Michael Snyder) in rough agreement on the problems we face, we still can’t have a national conversation about these issues.
You said it. Hating people from the Right or from the South is an essential part of the Left and Center’s self image. Yet the Birch Society and now Alex Jones were on to the Truth long before the Left or Center. This is unbearable to them. So they desperately try to pretend that Jones is unimportant – even as more sensible people like Paul Craig Roberts are routinely guests on the show. As Alex says, Infowars and Drudge are the new mainstream media.
Conspiracy theories come in all shapes and sizes – hopefully, the ones about Reptile Aliens controlling the world aren’t true. But it’s strange to see “conspiracy theory” vilified as a class, as if you aren’t allowed to suspect that your government is corrupt and pose speculations about what the true agenda is. The truth is that human beings engage in conspiracies all the time – we only have to look at our workplaces, condominium associations, schools, and churches to see people making political alliances and plotting scams to get more power and status in their respective little ponds. And we’re supposed to believe the federal government is above this – rather than excelling at it like no other? Of course, if we had a real media that asked real questions and did real investigations, we could sort through these matters better than we do – as it is, we can’t believe anything we hear, so speculations grow unchecked. We can reasonably surmise, at bare minimum, that those with power have plans to ensure their own dominance and survival as the economy collapses, and this includes massive paramilitary force deployed on our own soil under the guise of “police,” the strict control of information, and total surveillance of the population. If they haven’t made those preparations, they’re stupid – but at this point, we know they have, so it isn’t even a “theory” anymore.
cheesewhiz got me thinking about those who perceive conspiracies against themselves personally. i do not trust theories that put a particular private citizen in the crosshairs of the corrupt. noone is that important in the private sector, i do not care how many books they sell or podcasts they stream.
three recent news threads bare this out starting with the vet. admin. of benefits manipulating wait times. they did it to everyone for a very simple clerical reason, not a personal attack on vets. the ass covering to which jhk generally refers.
second is the monica lewinsky association with what people expect to be a family of two, not just one, former presidents of usa. her face needs to be banned from the airwaves. that story has absolutely nothing to do with the governance of the nation. two adults conspiring to have heterosexual sex in or around the oval office is not our concern nor should it be used by the policy debators, because it wasnt the first or last time that happened with anybody in that club. another example of how we do not know how to act and are confused about what our leaders stand for – definitely not morality, they defend a secular constitution and law.
the hollyweird shooting by the Rodgers kid. another face that hoped to get attention, not by his work, by killing his friends and neighbors. i was hoping he would not get much airplay, i was wrong. he is in people mag! his face is everywhere and he got what he wanted in the end by having a very well lit youtube video. it was so conceited and stupid noone believed he was actually going to follow through with what he perceived as a conspiracy against his ethnicity and social standing. again, someone who is obviously going through an identity crisis, ignored by his family who think throwing money at the problem will make it go away, and is labelled autistic as an excuse for the fact he had no moral compass or character. if a guy is not confused about his gender and what he should be doing, he is frustrated because he can not live up to hollyweirds pornographic expectations of a healthy sex life.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories; I believe in greed and incompetence. I’ve listened to Alex Jones and he’s right about half the time. At least his percentage is better than Rush Limbaugh, who twists everything.
I was also looking at JHK’s previous articles on the long slide, and he is right. This country faces terrible problems but a large percentage of Americans are just too stupid to comprehend what’s happening (or attribute it to Agenda 21 and the Bilderbergs). I’ve become somewhat of a prepper; or at least prepared for various emergencies, be it climate change or a police state. I suggest you do the same.
Not sure why I can’t respond to sharonsj below directly, so here goes…I actually agree that conspiracy theories are wacky. They emerge because we don’t have real journalism in the country, so people are left to surmise what’s going on behind the scene. Then the sky’s the limit…chemtrails, vaccine-theories, etc.
That said, corruption is by definition “conspiracy,” and there are many confirmed “conspiracies” all around us. LIBOR rigging, NSA spying, market manipulation, lying about the unemployment and economic statistics in the compliant media, etc. We should never ban speculations of corruption a priori because we label them “conspiracy theories.” And we often describe the actions of the System in personalized, anthropomorphic terms – we can’t wrangle about words when the SHTF.
You can’t wreck outer space since its infinite. And also wrecking implies an ecosystem: none of the planets or asteroids in our solar system have such a thing except for Earth.
In other words, or industrial base should be moved off world if possible.
“Now they’ve got resource rich Africa to syphon till the day is done and the way the gallop through that, I don’t give it many years.”-BT.
Well, there’s competition from China as well as African nations for Africa – while resources for inter-continental power-projection dwindle. It may turn out that actually, Africa has “got” them.
Cheers!
“The lack of thought behind this dynamic is staggering, especially because it doesn’t account for the obvious political consequence — which is to say the potential for uprising, revolution, civic disorder, cruelty, mayhem, and death…”
I got a taste of what is going to happen first hand last night when people have no jobs, nothing but time on thier hands, and nothing to lose. Two drunk (and stoned, probably) guys tried to get into the house last night. SUNDAY NIGHT/MONDAY MORNING!! When I went out to confront them, one was carrying a guitar and said ‘he wanted to sing me a song.’ I aksed him why he tried to get into the house: ‘because your light was on.’ ??? Apparently, he took that to mean a welcome light to come on in. They were out there in front of the house for about three hours before they tried to get in, right around daybreak. Things like this will be happening with increasing frequency in this ‘economic recovery’. And we all know what would have happened if they had come into the house and I had ventilated the middle of thier chests with high velocity projectiles; I would be in jail this morning, because even if we had called the ‘police’ for help, thier job is not to deter and arrest criminals, rather it is to hassle citizens. It would have taken them an hour to get there anyway.
That’s one scary story, selaretus
I have no doubt that the plutocrats have nothing to worry about. They can hire protection and probably already have all that in place. It’s the rest of us on the front line between the have somethings/ and the have nothings.
We’re gonna get it from the top and the bottom. A real devil sandwich.
They do have it in place. Every friggin’ police dept. in this country!
Well Selaretus, if that was at my house I would have asked the fellow if I could try his guitar as I can play. I would have told him it was slightly out of tune and proceed to smash it on the ground!! Unless of course if it was a nice Gibson or Martin, which I doubt it was. If it was I would of just taken it and walked in my door and told them to call the cops if he wanted it back. Obviously I had back-up in the house.
Scary. Closest thing I had was a couple Jehovas Witnesses rang the doorbell today and said “would you mind if we read you …”
I said yes I would mind and they left.
When the Jehovas ring the bell my wife hides, I answer the door in my underwear and ask them in for a drink. Needless to say they mark my house as a no visit. They have not been here for a few years.
” thier job is not to deter and arrest criminals, rather it is to hassle citizens. It would have taken them an hour to get there anyway.”-selaretus.
When seconds count, well-trained and heavily armed police are just minutes away…
🙂
Cheers!
I hate to say it, but the nonsense about the transgendered is itself a manifestation of the “desperate people going maniac” analysis put forward here. This creeping tone in Kunstler’s work of “women better get back in their place and queers and trannies better not confuse us at this critical time, or else” I find disturbing. Yes, let’s blame our problems on confusion caused by feminists and queers of all stripes, not the rapacious assholes who have got us into this mess and the craven politicians and pundits who service their every desire. What James seems to long for is the good old days of patriarchy and the closet. Why not go back to the good old days of institutionalized anti-Semitism and Jim Crow? Certainly they helped everyone understand “their place.”
What we need is honesty. We need to look our economic problems and political dysfunction square in the face. And our prejudice. And our desire for privilege rather than equality. We’ve got to pull together and right the ship. That ship is not going down because of transsexuals. It is going down because of arrogance, greed, a hunger for power and control, and good old fashioned stupidity. So lets worry about the big stuff.
James levy writes: “Yes, let’s blame our problems on confusion caused by feminists and queers of all stripes, not the rapacious assholes who have got us into this mess and the craven politicians and pundits who service their every desire.”
You misinterpret (perhaps for your own mental convenience).
I consider this sexual confusion business to be a symptom not a cause of our problems. –JHK
Exactly! Confusion wrought by feminism and homosexualism is a manifestation of social breakdown which has many causes, not the least of which are financial and economic rapaciousness. And, less we forget, the lower and middle economic classes are just as rapacious as the upper; they just don’t have as much opportunity to actualize it. There is a sameness in human behavior that doesn’t really change with times. However, when the sameness is distorted on the personal level, the breakdown for that society is nearing completion. So, babble away about the “assholes” and craven politicians as the foundation crumbles.
Well, then you had better be able to explain how the phenomenon that we call transsexualism shows up in highly functioning cultures uncorrupted by Western decadence.
For example, Westerners first encountering Native American tribes were puzzled if not horrified by the existence of the berdache (two-spirit people).
Or look up the Kathoey in Thailand. Not every culture recognizes only two genders.
The Wikipedia article talks about these & other non-Western occurrences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender#Transgender_people_in_non-Western_cultures
Transsexualism occurs because the human body, by default, is female until chemical triggers change it into a male. The physical form of person is set in the womb, but through-out childhood, the male brain requires additional input, through good nutrition and emotionally-healthy experiences, to attain its full developmental potential. Deprived of these things, the male brain may not reach its developmental potential and may retain female-like traits.
The “third-genders” in what you call “fully functioning” societies are often the result of poverty, oppression, unsuccessful competition for resources in an over-populated society, and familial breakdown. The Hirja in India, for example, are drawn overwhelmingly from those abandoned in dumps and on the street as children – and their lives are subject to horrific abuse and marginalization from “normal” society. These gender-constructs are nothing to admire or glorify. They are the institutional expressions of oppression, social stratification, and horrible human suffering and abuse.
I saw the Time magazine in question and read most of it with interest. There was a good article on Syria, and, in fact, the cover article itself was well composed and sensitive. I guess my problem with the issue is that the whole transgender hoopla seems a tempest in a teapot – at least in the grand scheme.
Why feature the ‘trans’ article on the cover? I guess it can be filed under the “all the news that’s fit to sell” marketing philosophy of practically all current media outlets (there are notable exceptions).
Every time I have looked at a Time recently (they still set them out at dentists’ offices, oddly enough) it has been a bunch of extremist gibberish. I always forget, which was the one that sold for $1, Time or Newsweek?
I agree with JHK’s reply.
I don’t think sexual confusion is a big deal; nor is it new to our times, or a particular sign of our times. The big deal is that people relate to others in accordance with prejudiced views about sexuality. Because they are in the majority, as identifying strongly as single sexed, and skewed towards the opposite sex as attractive, they cannot imagine others having a different nature. It makes things difficult for the minorities, and the uber-rich take advantage of this to create hostilities. Obviously if we are all fighting each other over nonsense, we won’t be paying attention to what they are doing with the economy.
Playing on nationalistic, religious, sexual, and racial differences to keep the hoi-poloi off balance is part of their natural state of mind. And, just as hetrosexuals cannot imagine homosexuals’ point of view, ordinary folks just cannot imagine the state of mind of sociopaths – which is what the uber rich are (mostly).
I know what you meant in the lead item, though. The idea of an entire issue of Time being devoted to what should be inconsequential is absurd. And is certainly a sign of our times.
Craig
p.s.: when Hitler was securing his power in Germany, the media was more concerned with the homosexuals in Germany than the Nazis.
The Elite have backed Feminism, Gay Liberation, and now Transgenderism to the hilt. Anything and Everything to break down America. Rights of the minorities? What about the right of the Majority? Culture has to be Heteronormative – even if that is perceived to be or is unfair to weirdos. The alternative is simply horrendous suffering for all. Yet that is what the Gays want. Like so many other aggrieved groups, they are filled with fantasies of retribution against White Christian America – that has given them so much.
None of the gays I know want any retribution. Merely to have the same treatment as everyone else. The same tax treatment, marriage treatment, right to inherit, and to be left alone just like you and I would like.
And, what exactly has “White Christian America” given them? Disparate treatment, mis-information about sexual preferences, and blatant prejudice in jobs, apartments, personal integrity and the rest.
150 years ago you would have made the same post about women and blacks, and felt ‘justified’ by your religion, I suppose. (yeah, I know, there was no internet then – just saying, if there had been)
I am sorry that your personal sexual insecurity creates such a distorted world view on your part, and even sorrier that you listen to the media in their effort to create dissent. You need to recognize that 1) the poor are not going to attack you. It is safer for you to walk through a black neighborhood than for a black person to walk through a white one. 2) homosexuals are not trying to take over the world, or to change anything about you – remember, they are not asking for homosexual marriage to be required, merely permitted. And, 3) homosexuals ARE born that way – it is not a choice on their part.
Oh, and I would add, Gays certainly have nothing to gain from creating horrendous suffering for all. I have no idea where you got that idea, or what suffering you have incurred as a result of any rights gays have succeeded in achieving.
Craig
OK, lunatic.
Due to the bankers’ shenanigans, and the average amerikan’s naive stupidity, what’s about to happen is a reset in the currency situation, as the PTB switch to an SDR system that devalues the $USD by 40% at first and then 80% shortly thereafter (read the recent IMF and BIS documents; its all there if one can read eco-babble). When these events occur, none of the concerns about transgender, homo this, hetero that, peak oil, running out of energy, suburban dysfunction, etc etc ad nauseum, will matter at all (except as intellectual curiosities for idle minds to contemplate).
What WILL matter is that the cops will no longer receive a paycheck that buys anything of value (they will ALWAYS receive a paycheck, as will pensioners; but it won’t be worth the paper its printed on), and they will no longer “protect and serve.” At that point, the gangs that are already out there (near your neighborhood and mine) and very well organized (look at the FBI’s 2011 and 2013 Gang reports), are coming INto your neighborhood and everyone else’s to get/take whatever they want.
When this happens, it won’t matter whether your being ass-raped by a homo, hetero, gender bender or transwhatever. The future is not one of confusion about anything, but one of violent transition, where the issues are very clear: protect, defend, obtain food/water, survive.
Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending upon one’s perspective), all the “civilized” people out there are going to suffer unimaginably because of their very civility and “liberality.” The roving tatoo’d gangs could care less about political correctness, about articulations of gender issues (to the ‘primitive,’ satisfaction is satisfaction), or property rights (from your own body to your house and yard). They represent the primal human state where the basic needs of sustenance, aggression, and sex are the driving forces for all behavior, without the ‘window dressing’ of civility (read Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents). And, all the psychobabble about gender, human rights, climate, economics mean exactly squatt!!!!!
Here’s to the barbarians who own the future….
Wardoc
lock and load, if you can, and have the balls
“What WILL matter is that the cops will no longer receive a paycheck that buys anything of value (they will ALWAYS receive a paycheck, as will pensioners; but it won’t be worth the paper its printed on), and they will no longer “protect and serve.” At that point, the gangs that are already out there (near your neighborhood and mine) and very well organized (look at the FBI’s 2011 and 2013 Gang reports), are coming INto your neighborhood and everyone else’s to get/take whatever they want.”-wardoc.
It’s nice to see someone not wasting time on the irrelevant. Well done.
However (and since we’re being realistic), you’ll need to factor in law-enforcement people working with or forming their own gangs. That trend is already on the rise. It only gets worse as when the pay and compensation actually goes third-world.
Just look at what happened in New Orleans.
Cheers!
EDIT: 2nd to last paragraph:
<>
I will tell you what 200 million Americans are going to do since I see many of them already doing it. Tattoo their bodies, hook up with a local girl, have a baby, and push the stroller right to the nearest county social service dept. I see it everywhere I travel around the Capital District, from Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, to Gloversville, Catskill, Hudson, Amsterdam, Corinth, Glens Falls, and yes, even Jim’s hometown of Greenwich. After that, they probably work on having another baby.
But one wonders what these people are going to do when the $USD sinks to its true value (as all currencies all eventually), and the so called “social” services can’t provide for basic needs.
Answer: join a gang that provides for their needs in exchange for their assistance in stealing, home invasions, distributing drugs, etc.
Yes and many of the babies will be coffee colored. Let’s face it, Blacks are better at this form of life. If it continues, our Race is doomed since women will go with what works – or in this case, with those who don’t work. Once this corrupt system crashes, women will want to go with normal men again, men who can produce. They are amoral in other words, only caring about results.
If by “results” you mean stay away from self-appointed judges of all women, then you are right.
I can’t help but feel sorry for someone like you. Have you really been mistreated by women so badly? Or is it simply “they” prefer to look for “results” with other males?
i prefer the term mocha, not coffee.
“If we knew how to act we would bend every effort to prepare for the end of mass motoring, but instead we indulge in fairy tales about the “shale oil miracle” because it offers the comforting false promise that we can drive to WalMart forever (in self-driving cars!).”
Not knowing how to act, waiting for miracles, is by far the easier path. One most definitely in vogue. I actually do know as do many others, how to act, but we have little influence or power and are voices crying in the wilderness with messages few want to hear or have time for.
Just last night I was at a local restaurant and a young man (early twenties and healthy) had a large dog in the restaurant with him. An employee asked him if it was a service dog and he said it was but that he had left ‘the vest’ at home. That’s all she needed, an explanation, and then it was all good. It did not matter that the explanation was a bullshit lie or that the dog crapped on the floor while I was there. It was a ‘service dog’ and that’s all that mattered.
On the way out the door I had the opportunity to let the employee know I had a service dog with me too but that mine was invisible. All other customers acting brain dead, taking in the situation like it was perfectly normal. Lost as they were in their own private worlds.
No rules and anything goes.
In just about any realm of activity this nation does not know how to act!
In that old Jimmy Stewart movie, invisible animals were known as pookas. Is this connected with Dr David Pook, one of the founders of Common Core I wonder (as I wander)?
“Just last night I was at a local restaurant and a young man (early twenties and healthy) had a large dog in the restaurant with him. An employee asked him if it was a service dog and he said it was but that he had left ‘the vest’ at home. That’s all she needed, an explanation, and then it was all good. It did not matter that the explanation was a bullshit lie or that the dog crapped on the floor while I was there. It was a ‘service dog’ and that’s all that mattered.” – K-Dog.
What a pathetic situation. Why didn’t you leave a s a p?
Also, have you put that absurd BS on Yelp? The restaurant owners really do not need your business, or anyone else’s for that matter.
I confess, it was a fast food joint and I was hungry. I’ve no excuse.
Perhaps one reason that “transgenderism” is becoming such a big deal now is that the Kardashians aren’t much of a draw anymore. But really, governance in the US hasn’t changed much. Back in the first depression, there was much ado about movie stars. As though they made any difference to the average family trying to feed and house themselves. Ha. So now it’s the Kardashians, homosexuals and transgenders that are supposed to occupy our concerns. Once the fascination with them is exhausted, perhaps it will be polysexuals (bisexuality and pederasty coupled with bestiality) and transspecies (especially those with unusual genitalia) that will provide new thrills.
Holy Sh-t, Jim, that’s the best piece you ever wrote! Profound. It lays it out and sums it up.
And how about the lack of thought behind this dynamic: I was listening to CNBC on XM radio the other nite and the host with several experts guests were kicking around the question “Should the US start exporting oil?” Exporting oil” We still import about 9 million barrels a day. Nobody mentioned that fact. They all agreed its time to start exporting oil.
–BRH
These people are in the “Twilight Zone” gold rush, snake oil, call it what you want. It’s about creating a fiction for people to think they are in the driver’s seat of the world.
Our friend Cheney boasted that “We create reality”.
A “Twilight Zone” gold rush. That has a nice ring to it.
If it’s about a fiction so people think they are in the driver’s seat I’d say the evidence strongly shows it is more important for most people to think they are in the drivers seat of life than to actually sit in it.
Exactly right. They manufacture reality. Politicians always have. Walnuts don’t lie as well as they do.
One of the more interesting observations of the past week has been that US gasoline consumption has fallen off a cliff.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-30/us-gasoline-consumption-plummets-nearly-75
It puzzles me that this did not excite any discussion. The evidence is as plain as the boarded up former gas station/convenience store coming to a corner near you. The conventional wisdom has been that demand destruction starts at $4 per gallon. I bought two days ago at $3.39.
Retail faces a similar conundrum, as ultimately will the electrical power industry. The business models that worked 20 years ago are failing all around us. Capital is being consumed by retirees and the elderly as their savings dissipate in daily living expenses. The application of microprocessors in manufacturing and services displaces tens of thousands of productive taxpayers while ten thousand a day retire at age 65 believing in a system that will afford them the necessities, oblivious apparently to the fact that this system is insolvent and the claims on the future unpayable.
That’s enough to drive anyone to distraction. Maybe even transgenderism!
Florida, being driven into transgenderism would truly be just a distraction. From what I am given to understand, needing to eat, be clothed and sheltered are not in any way dependent upon gender! Ah – we’ve finally found some common ground independent of gender or sexual orientation. Needing to eat. The simplicity of this observation is quite overwhelming.
“One of the more interesting observations of the past week has been that US gasoline consumption has fallen off a cliff.”-FL Power.
I agree. That’s why I posted the link last week. I also noticed the lack of interest in something that blatantly sums the situation up.
Also from last week:
http://www.zerohedge.com/node/488920
The retail sector all but posted a memorial service notification, for itself.
We are already exporting 4 million barrels a day of that imported oil in the form of diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline, etc.
California’s largest export product last year was gasoline and diesel fuel!
We are importing 9 million bbl/day of crude and exporting 4 million bbl/day of refined product.
Tell me this makes sense.
Import resources, export products. That is the recipe for colonialism. Makes perfect sense to me.
Craig
Yep, and we get to keep all the pollution of the refining process. Smart!
It’s safer for Whites to walk thru Black neighborhoods than vice versa? Ladies and Gentlemen of Jury, the man is delusional.
In Europe and Canada, ministers are already going to jail for preaching against Homosexuality. In America it’s still at the civil court stage with suits against bakers and photographers. As Harry Hay said, Gays intend to change everything. Everything. They must be fought and if need be, forced back into the closet with the door nailed shut.
I’m not gay but one thing I would really like to change is your twisted little mind.
As far as trangenders, it all part of the ongoing American Freak Show, which is no longer a sideshow, but the main event.
–BRH
I’m going with JHK and echoing that transgenderism is a symptom of a greater disease but not the disease itself. If we had real positive role models to emulate and aspire to, then most people would be far too busy living meaningful lives to have any time for self-centered confusion.
Yes, there will always be some two fries short of a happy meal but the large contingent of weak-willed minds would be far more invisible because they would be out emulating positive role models. But as they can only imitate and are never original they will only imitate what is presented to them. And what is presented to them is that gender confusion is cool and that the gender confused are actually ones who have their shit together.
At last you have passed the Rubicon and are beginning the transition to maturity. You will be a Conservative in a few years. Any man who isn’t a Liberal in his youth has no heart; and if he doesn’t become a Conservative later he has no head.
You should attribute that quote. My understanding has been that it’s from Winston Churchill, but I could be wrong.
So I guess he’s saying you can’t have both, at least not at the same time. Sounds like something he came up with just to sound clever, while smoking a cigar and sipping his brandy (and maybe dodging plaster falling on his head from German bombs?).
Winston Churchill may have puffed in a bit of plaster dust but the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels knew Winston to be no fool and admired him privately as a very formidable adversary. In public the Nazi daily vilified Churchill, as was his job.
Read Pat’s book: Winston was a tool of the nascent New World Order; the cost of his greatness was the greatness of Britain. Hitler warning to Britain proved correct: If you fight another World War you will lose your Empire.
Sure, Churchill was brilliant, and a “very formidable adversary” of the Germans—in addition to being an imperialist—but he would have lost more than just the British Empire at the end of WWII if the Americans had not come to the rescue. He’d have been dangling at the end of a German rope.
Desperate populations turn to maniacs. You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.- JHK
Yes indeed.
Don’t try to squeeze every last nickel from the deal, always leave some money on the table.
But no, this gang of three hundred or so that run the show is insatiable. And, if you want to know, I just pulled that number out of my ass but I don’t think it’s too far wrong.
Besides the increasing scarcity of cheap oil, the industrial hollowing-out of the western world is at the root of the financial crisis of 2008 and about every other one going back about thirty years.
What is there now that productive capacity has been transplanted to China? The absurd, criminal shenanigans of the financial world, asset bubbles and busts, are the consequence, all enabled by the nonsense of exhorbitant central bank money printing/Quantitative Easing.
So is this robotics stuff an outgrowth – besides being more of the same insatiable scaping the barrel for every last dollar.
Never mind the logic of longer term consequences for the corporate bottom line given that robots don’t buy the things they produce unlike human factors of production. When people are left out of the production cycle there are terrible consequences as surely as night follows day as JHK most astutely pointed out.
You see, the problem is that paying a buck an hour to undernourished Asians is just too, too much. Plus the ingrates want time off, they want to live something resembling a life.
No, there’s still more costs to be forced from the system. Profit maximization is the one and only priority. It’s never enough. As JHK says, a staggering lack of thought behind this dynamic.
To the uber-rich, it is a zero sum game. If anyone has a dollar, then they do not have that dollar, and they want it. The game for them is to die with the most dollars – if you are the person who does that, you won.
Sociopathic psychopaths. That’s what they are.
Craig
I think you’ve nailed the dynamic, Zaphod. Let me add to it a bit. Which is to be so fixated on “dollars” without any real interest in the consequence of that fixation really must be an indication of stupidity, not intelligence. If not stupid then evil. I’m betting on stupid though. But your claim of sociopathic psychopaths surely works too.
Why can’t one be stupid and evil at once?
But seriously, the government which was so carefully crafted with checks and balances is the thing most off-balance of all. The govt agencies are supposed to oversee corporate avarice, not ignore bad practices.
With the laws after the last great depression in place and the gold standard adhered to and the economy based on sovereign national states, this couldn’t have happened.
We always had international trade, but globalism is a cover for something far worse than the communism or fascism of the last century.
“Don’t try to squeeze every last nickel from the deal, always leave some money on the table. “-v.
I was raised on a couple more:
“Never eat alone” and:
“Don’t crap on your own doorstep”..
But that’s just common-sense stuff for people who understand what consequences are… What use is that to the people you referred to?
/s
Cheers!
When I was a kid my parents put me in front of a TV and I watched cartoons like Johnny Quest, Fat Albert and the Pink Panther until noon every Saturday. It was a cherished weekend tradition. Little did I know that the seeds of everything wrong with America were planted right then and there, from the endless consumption of useless products and the requisite advertising required to achieve that state of mind, to the violence without consequence model that cartoons embody. engender, and promulgate to the crass and mindless plots that became are archetypes of human interaction and existence. Then when I went to grade school; rinse and repeat with the Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island and I Love Lucy. Who put these people in my living room and why? Why weren’t my parents or any parents for that matter more vigilant? How could the Catholic Church get away with what they did for all those years? Everyone thinks they had good parents, but very few of us did.
OK, I gotta admit I liked Gilligan’s Island, but unlike the Skipper Maryanne was my favorite, not Ginger! Pass over this off topic post.
The word on the street is that you favor Gilligan.
Please attempt to corral your madding crowd of skeletons and stuff them back into your closet while locking the door securely. If we’re all [very] fortunate, they’ll spontaneously combust in such a highly pressurized environment. Then you may continue your wanderings without carrying such a heavy load of crackpot assertions with you. Try to leave off the wonderings though, they’re leading to some twisted off-world conclusions.
Good luck!
I didn’t post much last week so I have skeletons stored up. Did you ever see the movie Zardoz? The gun shoots death and the penis shoots life. Which is better? Kdog and I know there is ultimately no difference. Why? Because as the Gita says, “Death is certain for the Living. And Birth is certain for the Dead.”
Do you think this could be used as an argument for the 2nd Amendment?
Your hydraulic theory of the libido is not wrong, but you have to see it in even more universal terms – both inwardly and outwardly, horizontally and vertically on the scale of being.
Multimedia bundled package including broadband access. $100.00/mo. One pithy remark that cuts to the quick…priceless. Well done!
And that reply was intended for the ‘zone.
Your parents, and mine, did the best they knew how.
There is no instruction manual issued with that new life… you pays your money, and you takes your chances, just like everyone else.
Meanwhile, we are growing old, feeling guilt, and trying to deal with that.
I have always maintained that we create our own Hell or Heaven here on Earth, as we go through life.
Karma lives.
Craig
If you attain Enlightenment, all karma (and guilt) is over since you don’t identify anymore with the person who did those things. But fear not!, your creditors will be paid back with an infinitely finer coin than you could have ever done.
And yes, it’s very important to forgive our parents at the very least. Ideally, one should revere them since they are the foundation of our lives.
But inasmuch as one considers a membrane theory of existence time disappears and our entire lives viewed from that perspective appear to be like frozen statues or still paintings. From such a vantage point the present has no more meaning than the past and so we never escape ‘the person who did those things’.
God is the Eternal Present. Past, Present, and Future are one to Him. Once you attain this perspective, you no more care about the “Universe” (the waves) than you do about the cut hairs of your beard or snot out of your nose. Only compassion for the deluded embodied beings can entice such a one back to the front line of the material worlds.
I’ve had the experience you describe. The past as eternal. What can I say – it’s a trick of the mind. A projection of your eternal Self onto part of your being, namely the memory. Remember lasting forever or enduring duration is not the same as Eternity or being beyond Time.
I watched those cartoons on Saturday mornings too. Including Bugs, Road Runner, etc. It was the only time of the week where I could watch TV outside the family context. Otherwise, TV was a limited and shared family event.
I don’t think it was bad parenting any more than allowing children unsupervised play time. And my parents turned off the TV and kicked us out of the house long before we became hypno-lumps stuck to the carpet!
What our parents probably didn’t understand was how manipulative the programming, the advertising in particular, was becoming. Insofar as they were manipulated by newspapers and newsreels in their youth, they assumed that those in ultimate control of the culture-influencing information stream were truthful and good.
I suppose I’m also giving them a pass on that one considering the “newness” of TV aimed at children. Today, the manipulation inherent with mass media should be common knowledge and the mind bogglingly vast number of hours spent with a TV on is inexcusable.
In that regard, I distinctly remember my father being wary of the fact that advertisers were self-serving. He explained the fallacy of “saving money” when in fact it probably involved buying something you didn’t need, etc. I was probably the youngest person on the block to know what the word “fallacy” meant although I usually interpreted it to mean “deprived” of what I thought the other kids were getting.
He was truly a product of both the Great Depression and a thrifty (we called it “cheapskate”) family. We’d get annoyed as kids when my father declared something we “knew” we wanted as unnecessary or a very poor value. Waste was unacceptable in our household. It took years for us to understand what a valuable lesson that was. Funny enough, large expenditures on something of lasting quality was not necessarily out of the question, back when the purchase of an expensive major appliance meant having a long-lived and durable product. I still use a few of those items 40+ years later, so Dad was on to something.
In the future, the old maxim, “Use it up or wear it out, make it do or do without,” will again be held in its proper regard. My kudos to your Dad!
Craig
Terry,
I can absolutely relate. It was very much the same in our household, and it’s resulted in my being sharply aware of a lot of cognitive dissonance in this culture that others seem to be alarmingly “okay” with. Yep, Dad was most assuredly on to something, and that something included the realization of actual value (and shabby pretense of same).
Russians and Chinese and Muslims think Americans are out of their gourds for a lot of reasons. Having said that, Russians, Chinese and Muslims need to pay attention to what’s cooking under their own noses.
In my estimation the on-going culture wars are just a distraction for the masses. So they get everyone fired up over transgender rights, gay rights, evolution in the classroom, the right to bear arms, climate change etc.
Because while you’re fired up over that stuff you’re not paying attention.
This isn’t unique to the USA. Look close to home. If you talk to anyone from Toronto, what do you hear? Rob Ford, Rob Ford, Rob Ford, Rob Ford’s crack use, Rob Ford’s drunken tirades, Rob Ford in rehab, Rob Ford’s refusal to attend the Gay Pride Parade.
All entertaining I suppose, but really, what does it matter?
While city politicians divert people’s attention and piss away time posturing about Ford (as if they themselves weren’t up to their eyebrows in cocaine and booze and hookers), massive problems that need urgent attention get ignored.
Same thing elsewhere. Why did Putin re-take Crimea? Why did Galtieri invade the Falkland Islands? Why does the Israel-Palestine issue have the Muslim world all in a lather? All this shit was just to conceal mis-rule, mis-management, incompetence, injustice and theft.
The USA is the exceptional country in some ways, Americans having walked on the moon etc. But what ails the US ails much of the world.
“The USA is the exceptional country in some ways, Americans having walked on the moon etc. But what ails the US ails much of the world.”-v.
Yes, we’ve all been ultimately answering to or in conflict with the same folk.
That’s like saying Christians are exceptional because Jesus rose from the dead. That event, like the lunar landings, has never been proven, yet it has spawned the religion of exceptionalism in much the same way. How many years has to pass before YOU don’t believe it happened. We’re closing in on 50. 100? 200? Let’s admit the truth. It could be a 2,000 years and there are still going to be some people who still believe, just like Jesus.
Just to be clear, I was referring to the “But what ails the US ails much of the world” part of what I quoted.
I really don’t see the point of arguing about lunar landings – did we?/didn’t we? – with anyone… ;]
Cheers!
What is this, Andy Rooney’s blog all of a sudden? There’s no sexual confusion. Homosexuals are homosexuals. Now granted, the opportunity to have a frivolous surgery is something that only happens in an advanced petro-industrial society. But homosexuals have always been there and always will be there. They are not especial to America or any country at this or any time in history. If there’s any confusion, it’s on the part of those who wish gays didn’t exist, which is a type of magical/wishful thinking similar to the kind this blog critiques.
Why is it so important to be “non-confused” about sex anyway? There is a population surplus. And there are always plenty of people eager to do sex the normal, Jesus-sanctified way. On my farm your ability to shoe a horse or turn a shovel is going to be a lot more important than what kind of hole you like to put your junk in. Maybe I’d say different if I were hiring junk-putters instead of shovel-turners.
Janos Skorenzy calling me gay in 3… 2… 1…
Well put, rollie!
In an ideal society, we would consider people by their talent, abilities and training, and ignore superfluous accidentals like gender, sexual preference, color, , etc.
In my experience, the “people” all want the same thing, no matter where they live, what color, gender, preference, or even religion (caveat: some of these want to impose their will on others), which is to be left alone, be allowed to work, and be paid fairly when they do. Those who would discriminate are more interested either in distracting us, or in stealing from the alienated “others.”
Craig
Gore Vidal said that heterosexuality and homosexuality are no more different than blue eyes and brown eyes. Why is our society so obsessed with sex? If we yawned over it instead of protesting it I am quite convinced the “flaming” element would evaporate. When you’re 20 a titty bar is like a candy store, you can’t believe such a place exists. When you’re 50 it has got to be short of a church the creepiest place on the planet. What changed? Your perception of the girl’s in the place. Are priests any different? I mean what is so great about a virgin birth? What credentials does that lend to the bearer? These things we are taught are so painfully stupid they simply hurt too much to bear.
Contents of character, right? Just like MLK said? In other words folks, he wants Affirmative Action for Gays and Trannies.
A dog who has to lift his leg to stay dry but thinks that really inside he has the brain and soul of a bitch is confused. Dogs who cannot be comfortable with what they were born with are confused.
Homosexuals are homosexuals which is an entirely different subject. And indeed there may be genuine transgendered individuals but that does not invalidate my assertions for we are talking about a social media sanctioned phenomena and not isolated rare occurrences who may by strange twists of biology actually exist.
Confusion reigns and sexual confusion is a symptom of a rudderless society with deep problems.
It’s the sign of a round-up ready food supply.
Have you considered doing this as performance art in Seattle? Just find a good fire hydrant and I’ll come to see it. It beats McDonald’s. But if you end up going to work at one, I’ll make a pilgrimage and order from you.
I couldn’t care less about gay, straight, lesbian, trans-gendered, or however people choose to describe their sexual identities and preferences. If they’re not having sex with me, it’s none of my damn business. Actually, even if they are having sex with me, as long as it’s consensual, it’s really none of my damn business. And there are people-other-than straight as my neighbors, friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances, relatives, and even, I’m starting to think, my own adolescent daughter.
What is my business is that people treat each other decently. That gets to be my business because apparently a lot of people worry a great deal about how still other people feel sexual attraction. They even set up a lot of their opinions and attitudes based on such things as are supremely and manifestly none of their damn business, and use it as an excuse to not treat others decently.
That’s the problem. We have very legitimate and pressing concerns, yet we devote so much energy to being upset that two adults who share a household and raise children and pay taxes and vote and try to make our society work properly might get some tax breaks or legal rights as the due consideration for their constructive social behavior, because we imagine them having sexual relations in some manner we find distasteful, as if it were any of our damn business.
Seriously. As if there’s so much love in the world, the problem is that too many people are loving each other the wrong way. For Chrissakes. And really, when you’re dealing with a person, do you need to visualize genitalia? So if it’s a person presenting as female, in our cultural norms of how female humans present, and it turns out the person has a penis, that’s a) your business and b) a problem?
I wish those were the legitimate problems facing us today. Because then all our problems would be solved by behaving decently because we feel better doing that, and by minding our own damn business.
Now you’ve gotten to the core of this convenient distraction, the distribution and application of raw power. Using that lens, many things become clearer and indicate the manufactured consent, so diligently pursued as a CAUSE, rather than a symptomatic EFFECT, of a culture devoid of any common empathy. This allows unrestrained pandering and sops to narcissism in the pursuit of profit for profit’s sake.
So if I may translate: you are all for all sexual perversions since they aren’t in your view. Perversions can only exist when there are norms. You deny man’s innate nature – except for the animal part.
No, you may not. The lenses you myopically squint through were ground “fun-house” style. These “interpretations” are further evidence that your assertions and ideology are cobbled together from junk and garbage and serve no one but yourself.
(See, I can do your magic mischaracterization act too; did you enjoy it?)
Transvestitism is a mental disorder. I do not have to accept it as anything other. I do not have to tolerate it as a societal/cultural norm, for it isn’t. No matter what the media taste arbiters dictate to the clueless youth, I will not accept it. If they present to me a clown I shall laugh and they shall not convince me that I can not laugh at the clowns.
All right, suppose transvestitism is a mental disorder. So what? Do you know any transvestites, that you know of? Is that a thing you have to deal with? Or, on the other hand, do you have nothing more important with which to occupy yourself? If that’s the case I envy you. Those of us who do have more pressing concerns than how somebody else likes to dress, find it much more tidy to just be pleasant to people, and get on with more important issues. Not because we’re such wonderful, tolerant, consumers of media-appointed taste. Because we have things to do which matter far more to us. Because, frankly, we don’t give a damn, and if it makes somebody else more happy than less, it suits our purposes as well as anything else.
Amen to that brother, what an incomprehensible waste of time and emotional energy, all the drivel about assorted sexualities while we’re circling the big drain.
Exactly – Gays think they are better than the “breeders”. Cool str8s want in on this State Sanctioned Cool so they embrace the “tolerance”, the tolerance that is increasingly draconian against ordinary people. Congratulations, you are well programmed.
Transvestites are confused. He wasn’t stating that homosexuals are confused. Men that want to dress and act as women have mental disorders. They are abnormal, and just like the dwarf with an arm growing from his forehead you shall ignore the abnormalities and just accept it.
“In fact, just the opposite. We don’t need confusion of any kind. We need clarity and an appreciation of boundaries in every conceivable sphere of action and thought. We don’t need more crybabies, or excuses, or wishful thinking, or the majestic ass-covering that colors the main stream of our national life.”-J H K.
Yes we need the crystalline clarity of understanding where we really are right now, what our time and resources are and what we need to do.
This really is not the time for distractions.
I would say, let the Chinese century begin! Their politicians are engineers and their women are better looking and female.
Ever hear of Madame Butterfly?
If Hillary put her hand on your knee, what would you do?
I just read the Highway fund is broke and Republicans want to cut Saturday mail delivery from the post office(another broke govt. agency) and with the billions they save? give it to the highway fund.
You can’t make this stuff up!!
The Republicans want to cut the public commons. It fits with their free market fundamentalism which is neoliberalism. No barriers to entry, nor regulations.
The Postal Service is a self sufficient operation. They are required to break even over time. Profit/loss from operations are pretty much doing just that. Again, any operational losses are extremely small and often go into the positive.
The vast majority of Postal Service losses are the result of legislation passed by Congress in 2006.
This legislation demands that all health care costs from that point to 75 years in the future have to be PRE PAID and set aside and that they only have until 2016 to do it. There don’t appear to be any other public agencies, let alone private corporations that do this or are required to do so.
I can only presume that this is being done to fatten up the accounts so that the Postal Service can be predatorily privatized with the vast reserves divvied up among the usual racketeers/profiteers of wall street and other Vampire Squids of the financial “services” “industry.”
And this action on the part of the culture of the Big Swindle (JHK’s term, I think) will be sold to the public as necessary due to “hopeless losses” on the part of the Service. And the public will buy it as Time runs yet another distractionary cover article.
The personal choice remains as to whether one willingly embraces this inevitable action and the distractionary tactics of powerful swindlers. A few will see through it as the legerdemain it is. I presume readers of JHK would be in the latter group.
The postal service has about 50 billion in the kitty for health benefits but congress says it’s not enough. As for the transgender issue we just had 2 shock jocks fired in Rochester for alleged hateful comments about transgender people getting free operations with the cities money.
Concise. To the point. One of your best.
While in general I agree with your post, two things came to mind: first the criticism of G.W. Bush for his lack of nuance – for his black & white view of the world. A black & white view of the world does help avoid confusion, but I still cannot support it. Second, Dostoyevski’s “Grand Inquisitor” in Brothers Karamozov. The Grand Inquisitor insisted that people don’t want freedom – they really want to be told what to do. I cannot support that approach either. (I’m quite certain that I don’t need to explain Dostoyevski to a professional writer, so I won’t even try.) In short, I see a certain value in confusion, but can’t find any value in the bamboozled, delusional thinking that seems to rule the roost here in the USA.
I have similar feelings. The old trope of decadence and societal collapse is ever more difficult to deny when the assumed taste/trend arbiters and the media authorities that dictate permissible societal norms and deviations decide that the metal disorder of transvestitism is the new vanguard in tolerance by way of ramming it down the philistines’ throats. The absurdity of it all can only be met with laughter, not at them, but at a situation which finds the sane locked inside the lunatic bin of America 2014. There is nothing to care about… not in our habitat, not in our society. They ruin it all.
Well said, Frankiti!
So called ‘Gay Marriage’ is just the beginning. However, I’m not sure how much further down it can go. One thing I’m afraid, in the future, the kids will not be safe; that’s the next frontier. Polygamy, multiple partners, marrying your dog or a monkey, why not? Door’s wide open, Skies the limit.
Like I said its the American Freakshow. In the 17th and 18th centuries the British held to a theory that the American Continent was a howling wilderness which corrupted and degraded, by degrees, thru out generations, Englishmen who emigrated here. I think they were on to something.
–BRH
I love this post, but I disagree with the assessment of the recent cover of Time as indicating that we are deluded in our preoccupation with sexuality or perhaps simply debauched. As has been written about exhaustively elsewhere, and in particular in feminist literature, our culture’s relationship with the erotic is very much connected with how we do everything else, including a topic dear to the author of this blog — how we inhabit the land and arrange to meet our basic needs. If we don’t get this area right, we won’t get anything else right, but in figuring out where to go next, one can expect a lot of wrong turns and blind alleys. So, while it can be fairly argued that we’re blindly bumbling, stumbling, backsliding and often acting either mean or silly, at least it does not appear that the fundamentalist agenda of “going medieval” in terms of gender and sexuality is winning decisively here at this time, and I find that hopeful. Most experiments fail, but that’s always true in life.
Meanwhile, in Connecticut, the ‘Spring Offensive’ continues unabated, this low level war which produces casualties every day and seems to go on forever. The front is the cities of Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, once prosperous and orderly, now nasty, poverty stricken and dangerous. Who’s fighting? This is a Hobbsian struggle as described in The Leviathan, in short, all against all. Today a woman driving thru New Haven was shot in the head, a 14 year old girl attending the ‘Puerto Rican Day Parade in Hartford disappeared, and a stabbing in Bridgeport. That about covers it, report from the front.
One bit of good news, almost unbelievable, Hartford, one of the poorest cities in North america, is planning on building a minor league baseball stadium with hopes of attracting a team. Where’s the money coming from? Probably issuing more bonds (which will never be paid off)
–BRH
http://clashdaily.com/2014/06/bombshell-first-words-bergdahls-father-white-house-arabic/
None dare call it treason. Another scandal here. Six dead soldiers looking for this deserter and a countless millions spent in a month long search of the area.
The conveyer belt of cheap manufactured goods from China to the WalMarts and Target stores doesn’t work so well when the American customers lose their incomes, and have to spend their government stipends on gasoline because they were born into a world where driving everywhere for everything is mandatory, and because central bank meddling adds to the horrendous inflation of food prices.
thesis above is way more important to perpetuating life on this planet.
the poor spend most of their income on food.
***
How big a threat is inflation? bb Feb 5th 2011
Commodity price increases have speculative and structural roots
Richard Koo our guest (economist.com)
wrote on Feb 5th 2011, 20:50 GMT
THE commodity price increases seen around the world can hardly be called monetary phenomena: if they were, all prices should be going up more or less equally. To the extent that they are not monetary phenomena, central banks should be careful not to let increases in these prices derail their traditional interest rate policies. The central banks of those economies that are already overheating should continue to raise rates. The central banks of those economies with large output gaps should continue to maintain low interest rates. For most of the developed world where unemployment is still a huge problem, there is no reason for central banks to raise rates…
http://flic.kr/p/nzddpQ
no service at ten pumps this morning
I’m not sure I get this whole transexual thangy. I mean, we are born as we are – why not just accept it, and deal with reality? I get homosexuality (even tried to give it a chance, but no-way/no-how), but to stoop to needle&knife savagery in order to change your genitalia, seems beyond reason.
I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones, that dodged all the estrogen-laced cow products of the past few decades, and still ended up straight. I know I’m quite feminine in many ways – no chest/back hair, inability to grow a full beard at 47 years old – but hey, at least I still got a FULL head of hair, and barely any greys (hair club for ???)…
It’s very scary to see a supposed “woman,” 25 years old, already bald with an adam’s apple and chest hair to boot, taking estrogen and waiting for surgery… Doesn’t really make sense, certainly not to surgically alter yourself.
Fixing the gold/silver standard through high volume millisecond naked shorts seems hardly rocket science – it’s pure fraud, plain and simple.
Printing Fed Res money out of thin air, loaning it to banks at 0%, who then leverage it 10 to 1, and loan it back to the govt at 3%, is hardly rocket science – it’s the same sort of pure fraud. And it explains why our (US) deficit is $16 trillion, when the global holdings of US debt barely equal $4 trillion.
Creating fraudulent inflation (CPI) statistics by replacing T-Bone steak with pink slime, is hardly rocket science either – it’s pure fraud.
And, pretending to withdraw all troops from Iraq/Afghanistan/etc while paying Xe[Academi]/Wackenhut/Halliburton to supply 100k+ troops is hardly rocket science either – again, fraud (and 5-10x as expensive).
Anyone catch Eddie Snowden’s interview? THEY’re (corporate media) all up in arms about it – complete traitor. Hell, the NSA even released all of his email (bullsh!t), to “prove” he never tried to escalate the problem in-house (har-dee-har-har). Notice they said NOTHING about the content of his discourse – only tried to show he “lied,” via the “eschelon” logs… If’n I were Eddie, I’d post the emails (and replies) WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES that he sent to the “high guard”. He still apparently wants to keep those cards close (or not expose NAMES)…
I love all the shows I’ve seen lately, concerning global warming and supporting data – they’re still using 6 year old data – sub-400-ppm CO2. One show, called Years of Living Dangerously, actually tried to convince evangelical (mega-church) “skeptics” that it is human made, with tons of data from hundreds of different scientific sources. No need to guess – they weren’t convinced.
I’m not sure why those zealots don’t apply that same skepticism to their own religion, where the only “facts” are words (non-apocryphal, TO BE SURE) written in a SINGULAR book thousands of years ago, by desert dwelling cultist doomers. Evangelicals believe (87%? higher?) that the world is only 5k years old, and it was created in 7 days, and women (you know, those “lowly subservient beasts”) were created from a rib, Noah packed 2 of each species onto a boat, man rode on the back of dinosaurs, etc, ad-nauseum…
The trinity? The resurrection? The virgin birth? These X-Tian ideologies were all stolen from much older mythology (Egyptian/Indian/Greek/Roman). Where’s the SKEPTICISM, evangelicals/X-Tians?!?
I actually don’t disagree with most of the article, although a few choice phrases (both in the article itself and in the comments section) struck me as largely incorrect, if not blatantly wrong. Which, I think, stems from not personally knowing any gay people or transgender people.
I’m a gay person, myself, and I know transgender people. I’m friends with trans people. What I’d like to point out is that there is no rumored “sexual confusion.” I’m not confused. I’m attracted to women, I think ladies are gorgeous and I want to kiss them. Not confusing. Transgender people are not confused. They were born in the wrong body. Nothing about these issues is confusing, for the average member of the LGBT+ community. We’re queer, we’re here, end of story.
The people on this website seem to largely think of us as some kind of “other.” The collective Gays and Transgenders. Some kind of freak show to be gawked at and occasionally used as a scapegoat. Reducing our legitimate struggles to a sort of chosen distraction for the “real problems.” Which, I think, is in itself causing more of a problem. Why do you care if a transwoman gets top surgery to end her dysphoria and help her feel comfortable in her skin? Why do you care if I decide to get married to a woman? Gay people and trans people are not contributing to the collapse of society as a whole, and claiming that is reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh shouting into his microphone about the sanctity of marriage.
Proof that we’re not just doing this because of our privileged society is out there. This article (http://www.bilerico.com/2008/02/transgender_history_trans_expression_in.php) talks about transgender and queer people recognized in society and viewed as normal as far back as ancient Egypt. In modern times, it says that many, many African societies recognize transgender people. I’m not sure where so many people get the notion that we’re only cropping up because of our society, or that we’re only here to serve as a distraction. We’re not, and that kind of ignorance is what leads to hate crimes.
YES we’re a society in danger, YES our culture as a whole is on the verge of collapse. But don’t tell me that the LGBT+ community is being glorified and is one of the CAUSES of said collapse. Here’s your clarity: transgender people are not a distraction. Gay people are not a distraction. We’re real, and so are our feelings. We have existed since the dawn of recorded humanity, and not only in the developed cultures.
And that is what is referred to in the vernacular, as a bitch-slap…
“The people on this website seem to largely think of us as some kind of “other.” The collective Gays and Transgenders. Some kind of freak show to be gawked at and occasionally used as a scapegoat. Reducing our legitimate struggles to a sort of chosen distraction for the “real problems.” Which, I think, is in itself causing more of a problem. Why do you care if a transwoman gets top surgery to end her dysphoria and help her feel comfortable in her skin? Why do you care if I decide to get married to a woman? Gay people and trans people are not contributing to the collapse of society as a whole, and claiming that is reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh shouting into his microphone about the sanctity of marriage.”-karkata.
Just to be VERY clear, I don’t think the LGBT community is an unwelcome distraction, or an undesirable deservedly marginalized ‘Other’… Not at all.
I think that agonizing over the fact that trans-sexuality exist is a distraction.
Arguing that the phenomenon is a cause OR a symptom is a distraction.
It is a non-issue in the big picture. Raising the topic in the community conversation is a counterproductive tangent.
What you’re seeing karkata is a lot of folk putting the fact that they don’t get out much, that they have little experience in prioritizing relevant data and in many cases know less than squat about the history of their own culture – let alone others – on public display.
Do Not Sweat This.
In the words of George Carlin: “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
That’s a really good point 🙂 That’s what I was kind of inelegantly trying to get at, actually. It should be a non-issue and generally accepted in western society that LGBT+ people exist instead of fighting over whether or not we deserve basic human rights.
And yeah, we’re not a cause or a symptom of anything. Correlation =/= causation.
no one has been successful at stopping people from having sex if they wanted to with whomever they wanted to have sex with, including pedophiles.
it is not illegal to have sex outside marriage and if your state can legally arrest you for that activity, who will enforce it and how?
there is no point in discussing your sexual preferences with anyone unless you are interested in having sex with them. because of women’s lib it has become a criminal activity for either sex to express their normal desires within the confines of work.
people work all the time in this country and spend more time with workers than their families. something is going to give and has given many times over. kunstler is saying, i think, that our easy oil lifestyles have given us a false sense of confidence about the way we work and cohabit now as opposed to the edwardian era.
i believe glaad people are capable of having heterosexual sex and can be tempted to have it thats why they desire a formal marriage commitment for added reassurance and legal compensation.
changing your outward appearance does not guarantee you a more satisfying life no matter what your preference. that superficial mentality (kardashianism) is a symptom of our decadent times.
Gays and transgendered have real and legitimate interests. But there’s been a lot of needless hate and divisiveness whipped up (deliberately IMO). There’s many examples. Gays are just one.
Meanwhile mis-rule, thievery, corruption, economic exploitation continue unabated.
Look at how the Israeli- Palestinian conflict has been exploited. Keep the masses riled up, keep excitable young men’s attention focused on Palestine so they don’t notice the injustice at home right under their noses.
Putin is playing Russians like a fiddle. His buddies are robbing everyone blind. Meanwhile the people they’re stealing from are rejoicing in the street. Time tested technique.
The issue of gays is just one example. Many, many others.
Well as Jim said, it’s not THE CAUSE, but rather a symptom. But I would add that effects become secondary causes in and of themselves.
Remember, in most of these cultures trannies were looked down as 2nd class. And in some it was forced on boys for one reason or another and in one way or another. In American Indian cultures, if a boy couldn’t measure up to the Macho he might have a dream to make the transition. In Polynesia, where women do much of the work, some boys are coerced into becoming girls. To help with the heavy work perhaps? In any case, that’s not showing much respect for the personhood of the boys is it?
As for Gays, I would advise people to read “After the Ball” – the Gay plan to change America. They must be stopped. They will not tolerate Conservative people even if they Conservatives are foolish enough to tolerate them.
JHk talks about the dishonesty of central bank operations. Zrcrypdik talks about the same plus fraudulent statistical reporting.
Add idiocy to all that. All those Harvard trained minds and what have they been trying to get us to believe for all these years? Did I say “years”? I should have said decades.
Regardless, it’s been a long time. But what they’ve been telling us is that no matter that people’s earned income is going down the drain year-by-year.
No, you see, what you don’t have in cold hard cash in your bank account you have in smoke and mirrors equity in your house or stock holdings. Feel better?
I’ve been trying to say this since I was in short pants but Zerohedge cuts to the chase: income and savings (you know, cold hard cash in your bank account) CANNOT be replaced by speculating in real estate and stocks. This is the nonsense the tall foreheads have been trying to make us swallow.
Sigh. All that money burned on doctorates. And for bullshit like this? Is this the best they can do?
Yes, nice observation volodya.
Here’s another one: As we fall through to the next stage of collapse (Commerce) the official stats become so inaccurate that they’re no longer relevant.
It was useful to track them up until now, but we seem to be over the horizon of what we used to be able to refer to as ‘The Economy’.
What are your ideas about what to watch now? What are the relevant metrics?
You live in a latter day Sodom & Gomorrah….look at it too closely and you risk being turned into a pillar of salt…….
This is true.
nsa,
I’ve been chuckling about this post since seeing it yesterday. I find it incredibly ironic that you used *this* Bible story.
After all,
Lot, his wife, and their daughters were fleeing Sodom & Gomorrah – doing as they were told by the Angels of God, etc.,
Mom turns around to give the town(s) one last look and gets turned into salt,
Well then, that just wound up with Lot (dad) to living alone with his nubile daughters, didn’t it?
L O L !
Why did you use this particular tale? ?
Want to know the madness of a society heading to oblivion. The LA Clippers will fetch 2 billion dollars, revaluing the Lakers and Knicks to 5 billion apiece. A basketball team employs 200 people. So the Knicks and Lakers together are worth 10 billions dollars and employ 400 people. I work for a company with a 10 billion dollar market cap and it employs 30,000 people. Now I know there are those who say think of the economic activity generated by a sports franchise to which I say $%^#&*((()_&%#$$.
seawolf,
The first thing that comes to mind about this is the way the Byzantines valued their chariot-racing teams, and the Romans their gladiators… Empires on their way out emphasize unquestioning loyalty, docility and distracted acquiescence, in that order.
Yes, emphasize a functioning chewy nugget of organized hierarchy power, luxury, privilege, and excess. Project a Potemkin village image of past glories to con the disenfranchised masses into a fantasy of making it big and breaking on through to the other side of a vibrant functioning civilization.
Do it well and the deceived will be faithful to the day they die.
It is needed to add up all the medical costs, casino turnover, drug sales ‘legal’ and otherwise, sports teams to make it look like the economy is growing. Yes it does produce armies of ticket takers, sales reps and card dealer. The vapor economy expands while the tangible and future economy is shrinking.
“The vapor economy expands while the tangible and future economy is shrinking.”-carstars.
I had in interesting exchange with a smug techie a few months ago. He seemed to like regurgitating Friedman and quoting Schumpeter out of context.
He mentioned the “ephemeralization” of the job-market a lot (it was that kind of conversation)…
“Ephemeralization”… Is that supposed to sound reassuring, somehow?
But just remember, “vapor” and The Ephemeral aren’t actually ‘bugs in the program, they’re really _features_!
Is that the plan Stan? Mickey D’s??
15 an hour within three years – the Washington minimum. It’s time that you merge with the people whom you (profess to) love so much.
You could become a labor leader. Or maybe even fix their computer systems that operate with food symbols instead of words. But aren’t we going back to hieroglyphs anyway with emoticoms and twitterese?
Yes, <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Pune-born-socialist-Kshama-Sawant-scores-for-Seattle-Record-15-an-hour-minimum-wage-for-workers/articleshow/36011205.cms" she did it! Imagine, a law to raise the minimum wage becomes international news. Now as far as Mickey D’s goes McDonald’s Doesn’t Need Time To Phase In $15 Minimum Wage.
“Why does McDonald’s need 4 years to bring their workers out of poverty. Let the CEO of Starbucks, let the CEO of McDonalds come to city council and justify why they need to keep their workers one day longer in poverty.” – Kshama Sawant
Lets try that first line again:
Yes, she did it!
And while I’m at it computer systems already use food symbols:
McDonalds Touch Interface Ordering System
AG Holder announced today he is setting up a unit to investigate and fight domestic extremism. He then goes on to say they will be looking at people who harbor racial prejudice and express anti government views.
That seems like a pretty low bar. Vlad they’ll probably be giving you a hard look on the racial score, and everybody else here on the anti government theme.
Expect a knock at the door? Interrogation? Charges filed? This is sh-t Orwell wrote about,and the Soviets and Nazis practiced.
I expect most of you here voted for these people. How do you like them now?
–BRH
“But we also must concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice. To that end, I am announcing today that the Department of Justice is reconstituting a committee on domestic terrorism that was first established nearly 20 years ago under my predecessor, Attorney General Janet Reno, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.”
And the justification is what?
Further, are we supposed to believe this is something new and that serious investigations have not already been going on to find boogeymen and rabid dogs who are opposed to the reigning plutocracy morning noon and night for a long long time now? Perhaps there is a need to justify what is already going on ahead of new disclosures?
The quote is from AG Holder.
To not know implies knowing.the not knowing is the opposite of knowing. Not knowing is confusion high entropy conflict and even war whereas true knowing or Gnosis is balance low entropy greater peace and understanding of our relationship to the whole,a holistic medicine. Those who have followed my posts realize that this leads to a deeper spiritual psychological insight ,but for now let this suffice.
I have compassion – in other words I suffer your posts (passion) with you (com).
You need Buddha’s perspective of knowing or not knowing that you know. Gnosis is ++ whereas Ignorance is –. The middle terms are not knowing that you know or knowing that you don’t know.
According to Ophuls in his book “Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail”, it seems that the consensus of historians who have studied the decline of civilizations is that a common theme and cause of a civilization in decline is moral breakdown.
In other words, assuming that our industrial civilization is in decline, then one cannot probably differentiate between political and financial fraud and phenomenon such as transgenderism. It all represents moral confusion in the society.
Many people in the US associate transgenderism with being “Progressive”, but if one accepts that the civilization is in decline then one has to accept that such “Progressive” thinking is actually moral collapse.
In other words, Archie Bunker may have been right, and his son-in-law really was a “Meat Head”.
Archie may also have been wrong. Perhaps moral breakdown is a consequence of the decline process but not a cause; at least not the significant major one. Getting the distinction straight is important so the right cure may be found for the disease. I’m not condoning moral breakdown, but a misdiagnosis for the disease of collapse could be fatal.
Only treating symptoms will not cure and we have enough false consciousness already. In fact only false consciousness can allow whoppers like “manufacturing renaissance” and “shale oil revolution” to be swallowed in the first, the second, or even the third place.
“In other words, assuming that our industrial civilization is in decline, then one cannot probably differentiate between political and financial fraud and phenomenon such as transgenderism. It all represents moral confusion in the society.” -pucker.
It also follows that those who cannot differentiate between political, financial and foreign policy fraud – issues with broad, deep life-changing impact – and the transgender ‘phenom’ – an ‘issue’ on the level of soap-opera trauma – cannot properly prioritize, and consequently operate at a disadvantage.
History has a place for people like that, and for those that maintain a level head under pressure.
I’ll tell you who has plenty of cash, the State of Connecticut. We rank last in places to do business, all categories, but announced today a new UCONN campus in Hartford ($150 million) and a new baseball stadium ($50 million). Phew!!!, Jim, there is plenty of swag, you just need the power to tax the shit out of productive people to get at it. That takes State Power, the highest power there is now that God has been eliminated.
–BRH
You are exactly correct……we here in Ft. Meade have orchestrated the ascendance and awesome expansion of our glorious national security state. Full spectrum dominance in every facet of human existence……total information awareness in every aspect of human interaction. WE ARE NOW AS GODS………….
Mister Darling
First, can you find a statistical gatherer that isn’t corrupted by either political allegiance or ideology or economic interest?
What metrics? First re-define “core” inflation to INCLUDE and not EXCLUDE necessities like food. Or re-define it to include ONLY necessities like food, clothes, housing, medical care, fuel.
Stop this nonsense of massaging downward inflation stats through product substitution. Official inflation rates have no resemblance to actual costs of living especially if you look at the price of food.
This is just a start.
volodya,
Based your posts – this one and previous entries – I know that you know perfectly well the people holding sway in the financial market (it is unified, there is no plural necessary) will never let that happen.
IF:
— BLS unemployment stats were reported sans the addition of birth/death model projections,
— The CPI was reported the way it was pre-1980, ie., with food and fuel prices still factored in, and ex the practice of price-substitution,
— The GDP – here and abroad – subtracted financial transactions instead of adding them as if they represented productive economic activity,
THEN:
The central bankers of the world (and their vassals in elected government) would have to admit defeat… And they aren’t about to do that. They are going to extend and pretend until the figurative wheels fall off.
They’re now in the pathetic position of allowing (as of this month) estimated underworld cash-flow figures from drugs and prostitution to be added to the published GDP stats (UK, Italy and elsewhere).
As I mentioned. We’ve collectively said goodbye to anything that might have been considered a ‘normal’ state of affairs. We’re over the horizon now… *well* out to sea.
We’ll need to navigate by other means.
We’re over the horizon now… *well* out to sea.
N tie yourself to something bolted solidly to the deck. The sea is about to pitch according to where I found this.
St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base (AMBNS)
Can you explain what the St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base is?
With the figurative wheels already falling off,
(“The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently (and very reluctantly) announced that U.S. food-inflation has exploded this year. Just until May; beef/veal prices have already risen by 10%, which works out to an annual inflation rate of 22%. Egg prices increased by 15% in the month of April, alone (an annual inflation rate of 180%). Pork prices have risen even faster – but at least there government can point to disease as the (partial) culprit.”)
this article author considers Weimar Republic style hyperinflation to be baked in the cake.
If you don’t know about the author’s AMBNS graph that’s fine. I’m asking since you were able to answer volodya.
K-Dog,
Thanks for the link. Yes, I did find it interesting.
But, before we discuss total measures of dollars, dollar-denominated instruments, and debentures, what is your first and foremost concern?
Are you primarily interested in when hyper-inflation will kick in?
If you are, that has gotten a lot harder since March 2006 when the Federal Reserve stopped publishing M3.
http://inflationdata.com/articles/2006/03/16/goodbye-m3-what-is-the-government-hiding/
http://www.fgmr.com/end-of-mthree-hiding-the-truth-about-inflation.html
The Fed has done everything in its power to strip key measures, statistics and evidence from public view ever since.
They really do not want people beyond a small circle having indication or advance warning of the dollar’s collapse.
Why would they? Their actions have turned it from a possibility to a certainty.
I read an article in the Boston Globe today about a navy vet going to hospitality school at BU..he served five years active duty as a cook, serving the likes of beef Wellington and stuffed lobster tails to officers on a ship…now he gets over $19k per year tuition, and $2,500 per month tax free as a “housing allowance” via the GI bill. Does anyone else see something wrong with this or is it just me who thinks this is a bit over generous? between the costs of useless wars, VA benefits, and lifetime medical care for vets, the true cost of the military is crazy…and the presidents asks for extra money now for Poland. We are on a sinking ship…where is my beef Wellington?
But, from the Article:
“Less than half of Daly’s $45,686 tuition and expenses are paid by the Post 9-11 GI Bill.”
“To make up the difference, Daly waits tables on weekends at Joe’s American Bar & Grill on Newbury Street.”
The $45,686 tuition bill seems a bit over generous to me. And that has nothing to do with the fairness or unfairness of this young man’s situation. It has everything to do with education being one among the many matrix or rackets in a quickly withering economy of a nation that does not know how to act and coasts toward zero. A society with clarity and an appreciation of boundaries would not let a $45,686 tuition bill for the School of Hospitality Management happen. Years of government sponsorship of financial industry school loan scams put the machinery in place to make that happen.
“It has everything to do with education being one among the many matrix or rackets in a quickly withering economy of a nation that does not know how to act and coasts toward zero. A society with clarity and an appreciation of boundaries would not let a $45,686 tuition bill for the School of Hospitality Management happen.”-K Dog.
Nicely done, ‘dawg’.
Cheers!
Cept that the ‘r’ is directly above the ‘f’ on my keyboard and I’d prefer ‘education being one among the many matrix of rackets’
“Does anyone else see something wrong with this or is it just me who thinks this is a bit over generous?”-gnarly.
Well the navy veteran DID step forward and volunteer to defend his country. He didn’t know that his way of defending his country was to serve in the Officer’s Mess, that was luck ‘o’ draw (he was a newbie after all).
Is it “over generous”? Well, behavior which is rewarded is repeated. In a nation without military conscription that’s probably a good thing.
Considering how few people responded to this last ‘call to arms’ (0.5% participation rate, ahem), there really aren’t going to be a lot of veterans claiming those benefits.
In comparison to the trillions flushed down the toilet to ‘save the economy’ by bailing out the insolvent and criminal financial institutions of Wall Street, veteran’s benefits don’t even rate.
“Trillions flushed down the toilet to ‘save the economy’ by bailing out the insolvent and criminal financial institutions of Wall Street”
And the wiggle of the flush lever is called a bail-out but really it is Insanity Cubed. Nothing gets bailed out. Our stinky mess doesn’t vanish down the pipes. The mess just swirls around in a noisy dark turbulence because fundamentally nothing is changed. More frantic jiggling of the lever is used to again try and make the financial mess go down. But it won’t and all the lever jiggles do is aggravate an approaching overflow of revolting mayhem. Fundamentally nothing is changed and the only way to control an exponential function is to make fundamental changes to whatever system it describes. Anything else can only buy time and less and less of that can be purchased with each bail-out as an unavoidable overflow, mathematically guaranteed by a bail-out approach, comes to pass. A clog must be addressed for there to be any fundamental changes to our financial system and people holding sway in the financial market will never let the clog be addressed. They caused it.
“Nothing gets bailed out. Our stinky mess doesn’t vanish down the pipes. The mess just swirls around in a noisy dark turbulence because fundamentally nothing is changed.”-K Dog.
I couldn’t agree more. Nothing was fixed. The money paid out was an installment on an even greater catastrophe farther down the road. [*]
The market’s pricing mechanisms, exchanges, et al. are that much more out of whack. And the Fed is doing it’s level best to keep the rest of the world in the dark about when the axe falls.
When the end comes, there will be no point in turning back, or even remembering (beyond score-settling).
— — —
[*] then again, who wants to bleed from being gut-shot when they can save up for a swift blast to the head?
JHK, and Co.,
I jumped in rather late as the dog needed walking, grass must be cut (lest the Weed Patrol give me a citation).
James writes:
“We surely don’t know what to do about relations between men and women.”
and: “I’ve got news for the editors of Time Magazine: the raptures of sexual confusion are not going to carry American civilization forward into the heart of this new century.”
These two lines generated almost 25% of the comments. I think this says something about our fixations.
When I first lived in WY, my wife and I went to the grocery store. We saw this feller standing in the cosmetics aisle looking at hairbows. They were obviously born a dude. Short hair, five o’ clock shadow, hairy arms and legs, broad shoulders. They were wearing a pink sweater, poodle skirt, pumps, and had a bow is their hair. This was 1992. I went home and told my wife’s Aunt what we had seen. (teehee-teehee) She replied non-chalantly, Oh, that’s just Old Bev. She likes ladies clothes. She never batted an eye.
I heard some time later that they were ejected from the gift shop in the SLC airport by the local police. The point being that in WY (a total Red State) Bev was seen as a person, a member of the community, and it was no biggie. But in a foreign location (SLC), they were a freak.
Another example, as a Steward (you know, a radical Union type), often people come to me with personal issues (non-contractual), even if they are with a different Company and are not members. “Rafael” did so. He was asking advice about his relationship. I shut up and listened. What struck me was that, but for the fact that he was gay, this conversation resembled any other I might have had with a straight dude. “Damn, I just don’t understand, why’s he so fucking cold?”: etc., etc.
People are people.
IMHO, Jimmy’s most important point: “You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.”
This goes directly to the point I made last week about deprivation. As to plenty and scarcity, I recall a quote by Gillian Tett that the American response has always been to expand the pie. “Go West, young man” So as long as the pie is expanding, we can afford to enfranchise African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, LGBT, and even nasty subversive sorts such as Democrats, Anarchists and Socialists. Contract the pie, and it becomes a zero-sum game of musical chairs to find the most convenient scapegoat. We cannot abide facing the realities of the Limits to Growth and our own culpability.
So will you hide “Old Bev” in your basement when the Village Goons comes looking for her as a deviant that is corrupting the local youth? Or will you Hang ’em High?
Regards,
dweebus
“These two lines generated almost 25% of the comments. I think this says something about our fixations.”
You are right, This week Jim’s point is about how we have a false consciousness about how the world works and consequently have misplaced priorities. That we concentrate on trivia and things of no consequence ignoring things of great import such as keeping the peace and the survival of civilization.
“Old Bev” can stay in my basement.
“People are people”-dweebus.
A worldly attitude. Bravo.
We got this Tranny where I work, second one I’ve seen in my life. The 1st one was around town for awhile in the 90s, ended up with his throat cut alongside an offramp on I 84. After that we didn’t see this dude around anymore.
It was a little shocking when this new one showed up, talked like a girl, walked like a girl, but had a goatee and called himself Susan. I said dude what’s you’re real name because I aint calling you Sue. Real name is Matt and that’s what’s I call him. I have to say, after awhile you get used to the wierdness and interact like with anyone else.
–BRH
The meritocratic ideal of self-contained, privatized ‘lifestyles’ that LGBTers and their supporters pine for is hardly a rallying cry for cross-class alliance or common ground struggle against the bankrupt ruling elite (as zaphod42’s comments suggest). It should be fairly obvious since the discourse this present-day counterculture adopts mainly consists of abstract social distinctions mixed with saccharine thoughts about the natural nobility of the beleagured Other, neither of which hold up to scrutiny.
This points not only to the ubiquity of floating insecurities concerning matters of self, place, and history today, but also to that fact that it takes on a number of colors and shades depending on disposition and upbringing. And yet whether one paints sexual orientation/identity politic issues as a sign of regressive decadence or a beacon of progressive enlightenment is besides the point, since the demand for legally-sanctioned equality rather than tolerance abolishes the prepolitical bulwark to a leviathian state that the institution of marriage had been.
in other words…
people should be more tolerant of other’s differences while upholding the sanctity of marriage.
Issuing customized marriage licences targeted to the particular orientations of those entering a state of mutual bondage might be a new way for beleaguered state budgets to raise some extra cash just like designer license plates for cars already do. It would preserve the sanctity of traditional marriage for it would remained unimpinged under separate licensing.
But rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic could have done nothing to prevent it from hitting the iceberg and worrying where other people put it that are not bothering you (directly) will do nothing to solve the mounting crises in our economy or do anything to solve our energy or environmental needs or problems. It is but one of many distractions from the urgent task of making new living arrangements and our media is more than happy to print ink and electrons to promulgate the distractions.
” I have to say, after awhile you get used to the wierdness and interact like with anyone else.”-BRH.
= Story of my life… ;]
It’s funny how much more we can get used to than we ever imagined.
The book “Rainbow Pie” is quite good.
It is a look at traditional family relations of the Scots Irish of West Virginia and “The Hills”, as Granny on the Beverly Hill Billies refers to them.
It also looks at how post-WWII Capitalism uprooted the economic foundation of the American redneck family.
It compliments Chris Hedges” excellent book, “American Fascists”.
Hedges is quire hard on Christian Dominionists, but, quite frankly, the Christian Right does take action, and, in the end, the Christian Right may be the only folks left to get up off their butts to fix things in the US.
Is there any special significance behind the fact that the new Harvey Milk US postage stamp is the 49 cents stamp?
Is this related to the “San Francisco 49ers”?
DIdn’t Harvey Milk at one time have relations with a 16 year old kid? Was Harvey 49 years old when he was do’n the 16 year old kid?
https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?productId=S_472004&categoryId=forever-stamps
Was Harvey 49 years old when he was do’n the 16 year old kid?
No, assassinated when he was 48. One birthday short of 49. Maybe your coffee klatch got the story wrong.
I’ve entertained the idea many times that our chemically-laced water and low-nutrient foods, often polluted with hormones, antibiotics, and/or pesticides, harm us in a myriad of ways.
One way may be the ‘sexual confusion’ you wrote about. Biologists have known for decades that certain chemicals commonly found in the water have both abnormally feminized and/or masculinized in fish and amphibians, some are born intersex (both sexes) and they have lower reproduction rates.
How can any thinking person not assume that the same water we drink (and food we eat) not affect unborn human fetuses? I never anyone write about that, probably because it would hurt the feelings of gays, since no one wants to think they’re that way because of a birth defect due to environmental damage.
Girls start their periods much younger, and there are more gay and lesbian preteen and teens every five years. My own kids, ages 25 and 18, and noticed this; the older one sees more now than we he was growing up, and the 18 sees more among the middle school age crowd, ie, “there weren’t that many when I was middle school.”
I don’t buy the nonsense that there were always that many. Yes, bi- and homosexuality has been around forever, but the increase has been nothing short of remarkable – and this increase can be duplicated in any lab (or river) by introducing hormones that shouldn’t be there.
And a lot of Americans now look like and are as sick as the fat cows and chickens we eat. These animals have been pumped up with so many hormones that the life span of one of these chickens is only 42 days. The lifespan of cows is normally 20-25 years, they barely make it to 7, and suffer from a host of health problems and chronic inflammation. Also when hormones are out of whack, so are the emotions – and we have more kids and young people with ADHD, mood and bipolar disorders.
Don’t get me started on the increase of autism, or autism spectrum as they’re now including socially disengaged children, who incidentally lack compassion. I think the lack of this is a gray area; one may be deficient in it (think of the two 12 year olds who tried to stab to death their friend, and the host of others who have no hearts) are like this now because they were born this way due to prenatal damage from environmental pollutants.
So no, Jim, I don’t think the country has gone insane mainly because people have lost their values or all of the parents are incompetent. True for some, but a lot of answers are in the food on our plates and the water, milk and sodas we drink.
Here’s one link on sexual reproduction problems of fish, google for other research, its’ too numerous to post.
http://e.hormone.tulane.edu/learning/wildlife-effects.html#Fish
Good day Civility118, that sounds somewhat like a lame excuse to me. I grew up with lead paint, lead gas, asbestos, DDT, Chlordane and a myriad of other environmental poisons .The river in my town changed color every day depending on what color paper the paper plants upstream were making at that time. I ate fish from that river all the time. They also used hormones and antibiotics on the livestock back then. It is not a new thing. What is new is the lackadaisical attitude of many people today regarding what is accepted as normal social behavior. If you read this blog weekly you recall I nearly came to blows last week with some A**hole that almost ran over a mother and her child at a crosswalk. Just another social tatted miscreant
Last sentence should be anti-social, Sorry for the mistake. Cheers
Remember, all the girls are now on birth control. That gets into the water sooner or later. That directly impacts developing children and adolescents. Plastics mimic this as well.
“I’ve entertained the idea many times that our chemically-laced water and low-nutrient foods, often polluted with hormones, antibiotics, and/or pesticides, harm us in a myriad of ways.”
I recently asked the young Chinese girl selling live fresh chickens, ducks and pigeons at the local chicken market in Hong Kong whether eating the chicken will make me grow “really “Big Tits?”
She replied that if I am worried about growing Big Tits that I should “…buy the the more expensive Jia Mei brand of chicken without the growth hormones.”
Incidentally, the Chinese chicken and duck sales girl at the market has really Big Tits.
“In just about any realm of activity this nation does not know how to act.” – jhk –
It’s worse than that, JHK. This nation isn’t a nation anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. “We” can best be characterized as a collection of grievance groups, occupying the landmass presently denoted on maps as the United States of America.
The one thing that does seem to unite all these grievance groups is their disdain for the once dominant culture, that of the relatively heterosexual White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
We live in times that are becoming increasingly interesting.
Thanks for the weeks work!
Lots of good comments this week. I like they way they are all still on one page. I hope that is a permanent change.
Now you’re getting it. As White America fairs, so fairs America. Why? Because White America is America. That it could have withstood decades of abuse and mind warping shows how incredibly strong it was to begin with. But it is now falling.
Well, hell! New page about to start. And the link to the “older comments” doesn’t even appear to work.
From last week:
Mr. Darling, thanks for the comps. Glad you found the post amusing.
And Dweebus and others – I think underground living presupposes degradation of climate to the point that large scale agriculture fails, with all that would entail for civilization.
As far as underground temperatures – I recall from geology class that underground temps. are pretty close to the average of year round temperatures for any particular location. You said yours are in the 50’s, which shows you to be somewhere north of middle Iowa. Here, the underground temp is 62 F. Some global warming projections talk about a 6 degree C. increase, which would gradually increase ground temperatures, which might facilitate some sorts of crop growing and other activities. Just some thoughts.
Good for potatoes I think. But they do need water.
“Mom turns around to give the town(s) one last look and gets turned into salt,
Well then, that just wound up with Lot (dad) to living alone with his nubile daughters, didn’t it?
L O L !
Why did you use this particular tale? ?” – mr. darling, to nsa –
Fascinating. I’ve heard more than my share of sermons on Sodom, Sodomites, and being turned into a pillar of salt.
And never ONCE, did any preacher ever connect the dots to Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him.
Not even once. Fascinating.
I like the analogy. Sodom and Gomorrah one could say was a realm where anything went, nothing mattered and nobody cared. And any place where anything goes is going to be seductive and might be hard to resist. Not only that but if you look at the NSA too hard they might just turn you into a pillar of salt. Perhaps they will start by cancelling your credit cards.
A nice double entendre.
Progress,
Here’s a few more “dots”;
“Genesis 19:30 And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.
31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.
35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.” -Old Testament.
But hey, if that hadn’t happened, we would never have had the Moabites and Ammonites… 🙂
The Book of Genesis really *is not* the place to look for clear-cut examples of ‘wholesome goodness’ and good triumphing over evil.
Some might even call it “confused”…
🙂
Cheers!
Some might even call it “confused”…
Nothin confuzin boud id. Dey new xactly what dey were doin. Panned id out, dey did. Had de goal switch wuz. as de twelve-stepers wood put it.
“They Served a Power Greater than Themselves“.
Given the US judicial branch votes party-line (when have they NOT) for Citizens United (misnomer?), we are not talking rocket science. This is, yet again, pure and utter FRAUD – elite’ster corporatocracy at it’s best.
They are clearcutting every last remaining rainforest, as we *SPEAK*. Say good-bye to the 2-3 meters of peat, below those said-same forests. Say hello to silting of any remaining nearby rivers (dead-zone?!?).
I often wonder about where the original corn species is – small ears, but self-propagating… (GMO?!?) Where are the skeptics?!…
Orlov says that there is a lot of alienation in American families.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/alienation
Is Transexualism the state of alienation from one’s own body? For example, the woman who feels trapped inside a man’s body….
There’s seems to be a misunderstanding (by some) of what a looming danger might be.
Consider:
” In just about any realm of activity this nation does not know how to act. We don’t know what to do about our mounting crises of economy. We don’t know what to do about our relations with other nations in a strained global economy. We don’t know what to do about our own culture and its traditions, the useful and the outworn. We surely don’t know what to do about relations between men and women. And we’re baffled to the point of paralysis about our relations with the planetary ecosystem.” — JHK
What you don’t know can kill you, and the less you know, the worse your odds are. Then we come to the matter of what might be an issue that has a good chance of ending your stay on the blue marble. This exchange gets right to it (on the response side).:
“In other words, assuming that our industrial civilization is in decline, then one cannot probably differentiate between political and financial fraud and phenomenon such as transgenderism. It all represents moral confusion in the society.” -pucker.
**************
It also follows that those who cannot differentiate between political, financial and foreign policy fraud – issues with broad, deep life-changing impact – and the transgender ‘phenom’ – an ‘issue’ on the level of soap-opera trauma – cannot properly prioritize, and consequently operate at a disadvantage.
History has a place for people like that, and for those that maintain a level head under pressure. — MrDarling
Well, there it is; a thing I’ve witnessed up close and personal more than once Thanks for clearing the cosmic clog-up, MrDarling. Some focus on actual priorities would be helpful at this juncture, but events (fomented by irrational “policies”) now have their hands on the throttle.
Oh, BTW, here’s a little financial experiment that I can see implemented here, once they figure it can be gotten away with. (IOW, no widespread unpleasantness.)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-05/nirp-has-arrived-europe-officially-enters-monetary-twilight-zone
gender confusion has more implications on the economy than you may notice. especially now that they are entitled to half of the estate and any adopted children alimony etc. if you look at what unwed mothers and other “drama” we have incurred in exponential proportions over the last 50 yrs, you would see the toll it takes on our social services and infrastructure. split up families and you require twice as many homes. have same sex marriage and you have traditional families looking for neighborhoods that have neighboring families more like them (same goes for every other social distinction).
the healthcare system is bombarded with std sufferers who are mainly people practicing “free sex”. most of them can not work and fall on medicaid which has recently expanded to cover them. there are a lot of people who do not want to have tax money pay for expensive aids treatments or help support glaad families on welfare. so far the loudest voices for glaad have been those with money. lets see them also pay more taxes!
Pardon me, but you’ve solidly made my point for me.
How much longer do you think all these provisions are going to be funded and maintained after a collapse of confidence? If this is where you wish to apply your focus and energy, please be my guest. Meanwhile…
MrDarling’s succinct warning applies to short-sighted ‘concerns’ such as those you’ve outlined.
Once more (with feeling):
” …those who cannot differentiate between political, financial and foreign policy fraud – issues with broad, deep life-changing impact – and the transgender ‘phenom’ – an ‘issue’ on the level of soap-opera trauma – cannot properly prioritize, and consequently operate at a disadvantage.
History has a place for people like that, and for those that maintain a level head under pressure.” — MrDarling
(Try and imagine what that ‘place’ he mentions might be.)
Howdy.
Do Angels sing?
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-06-05.aud.morris.106616.flac24
Sodom & Gomorrah? In this state, a Boeing engineer was killed having sex with a horse. Fell off the ladder? Hell no…..died of a perforated colon.
nsa,
Are you referring to the Enumclaw Case(s)?
Naughty… naughty!
😉
volodya writes, “Gays and transgendered have real and legitimate interests. But there’s been a lot of needless hate and divisiveness whipped up (deliberately IMO). There’s many examples. Gays are just one.
Meanwhile mis-rule, thievery, corruption, economic exploitation continue unabated. ”
Dead on! I have felt for a very long time that TPTB intentionally sew discord based on race, sex, orientation, etc. and glorify hyper-individualism. All the better to prevent class consciousness from taking hold and continue to rake in profits.
Many folks have brought up Bible verses, particularly Genesis. One story, which I think is quite relevant, is the Fall.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Gen. 3:17-19
I have often viewed this as a metaphor for the transition from paleolithic foragers to neolithic agriculture. It is at this point that we see militarism, hierarchy, patriarchy, and worst of all, anthropocentrism take root. We are no longer a part of Nature, but are at war with it.
“And Dweebus and others – I think underground living presupposes degradation of climate to the point that large scale agriculture fails, with all that would entail for civilization. ” -progress
Maybe it should be written “Man cannot live on ‘taters alone” We are human animals, evolved to be part of a functioning biosphere.
Perhaps is IS technically feasible, to move underground, but it would be damn sad. I would much rather see Industrial Civ. fall while there is still a functioning biosphere than have a future populated with remnant troglodytes.
Never to hear the wind whispering through the cottonwoods, smell the pines after a rain, listen to the whippoorwill serenade you, watch the bees about their work amongst the boneset, clover, and the lavender. Dang, I am not sure I would wanna live in a world like that.
-dweebus
“Many folks have brought up Bible verses, particularly Genesis.”-dweebus.
Yes, sorry ’bout that. I really didn’t want to go there, but the irony was just a little too *rich*… 😉
Cheers!
I just read a beekeeper ad that said there are no wild bees anymore. If you see one, it’s probably just a robot. Why would a beekeeper lie?
i have noticed that the older comments link has been disabled.
anyone else notice?
yes, it’s been like that for days now.
“it’s been like that for days now”-v.
I n t e r e s t i n g…
Well, In Other News:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H901KdXgHs4http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/05/puerto_rico_is_burning_oil_to_generate_electricity_it_s_completely_insane.html
I’m interested in what could r can happen to the USA’s scattered island dependencies like Hawaii (which I’ve been told by locals has less than a week’s inventory of food), Guam & Puerto Rico…
This link above gives some additional insight.
Cheers!
“You crew” (U-Krew – haha high school breakdance team circa ’84) obviously don’t read anything I say – I gave the details last week, on how to get to prior page poasts. Let me re-you (Riyu – japanese?), for methods of access:
Right-click the “Older Comments” link, copy it, and paste it into the browser. Remove the “/#comments” from the end of the link. *Voila* (SP)…
OMG, those bible BS verses WHUZ making me puke – rly? Genesis is apparently not apocryphal. I’m gunna re-load here, with weeks-old discourse:
“I’m not sure why those evangelical (X-Tian) zealots don’t apply that same skepticism to their own religion, where the only “facts” are words (non-apocryphal, TO BE SURE) written in a SINGULAR book thousands of years ago, by desert dwelling cultist doomers. Evangelicals believe (87%? higher?) that the world is only 5k years old, and it was created in 7 days, and women (you know, those “lowly subservient beasts”) were created from a rib, Noah packed 2 of each species onto a boat, man rode on the back of dinosaurs, etc, ad-nauseum…”
The trinity? The resurrection? The virgin birth? These X-Tian ideologies were all stolen from much older mythology (Egyptian/Indian/Greek/Roman). Where’s the SKEPTICISM, evangelicals/X-Tians?!?”
Yep, your way is easier (from both sides of the looking glass).
Thanks again; yes I did see your post when the glitch began.
To do a reversion, here’s what the address looks like, should you want to go there:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/coasting-toward-zero/comment-page-1/#comments
(Then you will have to replace the ‘1’ with a ‘2’, or reload the main page, which will bring up page 2.)
Alrighty then, that will have to do for now. 🙂
Thank you Ozone, this was very helpful.
It also allowed me to see that you had already posted the ZH link about NIRP in the EU.
(woops?)
Cheers!
Sorry, *WRONG SIR, WRONG*!!!
Just shows t’ go ya; there’s more than one way to skin a glitch. 😉
I see it there now. The only reason that it appeared to be disabled is that we were on the first page of comments for three and one-half days, so there were no “older comments” to page back to. Just the same, I found it amazing that it took more than 200 comments to get to the second page. We must have had more people interacting by clicking on reply than starting new threads for that to happen.
Just the same, thanks Ozone for posting a link to the first page.
Now respond to our host, who wrote “the obvious political consequence — which is to say the potential for uprising, revolution, civic disorder, cruelty, mayhem, and death, along with the kind of experiments in psychopathic governance that the 20th century was a laboratory for. Desperate populations turn to maniacs.”
His prediction in “The End of Suburbia” that “Americans will elect maniacs who promise to allow them to keep their McMansions and their commutes and that’s going to produce a lot of political friction, probably a lot of violence, probably a threat to our democratic institutions” is one that I have been monitoring very closely since I first heard it in 2008. In 2012, it became obvious that it was coming true, what with both Bachmann and Gingrich demagoguing the price of gas, Gringrich mocking subways and Volts, and Ted Cruz campaigning against Agenda 21. Of all of them, Cruz was the most successful. He got elected to the U.S. Senate, where he is living up to being a maniac, and it now a leading candidate for the GOP nomination.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/search?q=maniacs
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/08/agenda-21-paranoid-ted-cruz-won-his.html
As for “experiments in psychopathic governance,” that reminds me that I have to finish posting my responses to The Archdruid on Fascism. Greer’s vacation from posting is a perfect opportunity to do that.
Heh – you a barrel of laughs.
Hear that chainsaw? It talks the song of total clearcut (palm oil?). No, I talk about the Amazon/././ All forests on Mother Earth are almost completely gone (3% US about 3 decades ago)
That’s the *REALITY* we face. Keep pretending…
If that’s the way you feel, then maybe this link is more to your liking.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/search?q=deforestation
Eight entries that mention deforestation. Does that make you happier?
Happy? You make me into a cry-baby. You think I applaud the deforestation of *MAMA*?
8-mile city can’t really be that big? That sh! got clearcut eons ago, Mr, Michigan*@* I hear all they do there now, is strip empty buildings of copper wire/tubes…
If that’s the way you’re going to be, Zippy Dip, then my unicorn farts rainbows in your general direction.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/05/rainbow-unicorn-farts-in-your-general.html
There’s a new gentler version of Fascism that eliminates much of the objectionable parts – such as the excessive militarism and worship of strong men – without sacrificing the commitment to our People, whoever those people happen to be. In other words, it accepts the relativity of the world and the rights of other people to put themselves first.
It’s called Identitarianism and you will be hearing more about it. I’m now an Identitarian. I have grown, and so should you.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/05/taking-the-streets-france-2014/#more-47281
And since we’re keeping track of the financial ‘waterline’, here’s something that may *tickle your fancy*:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-05/ecb-cuts-deposit-rate-negative-first-time-ever
Negative interest/savings rate in Europe… Kind-of-a first. There’s now NO incentive for the small account holder to maintain more than the bare minimum in their checking account.
Meanwhile the relevant authorities are switching out the lights on financial data transparency… We may be nearing our Final Destination.
Did you see how the euro exchange rate took a major hit, then immediately recovered, TODAY?!? I’m guessing high volume (frequency) millisecond shorts fixed that ISSUE. Came right back up (who’s the wiser)…
volodya May 28, 2014 at 2:01 pm #
To Mister Darling,
2008 did clarify matters. So did the years subsequent. For me suspicion became certainty.
Every time I walk into a bank I get a greasy sales pitch about this fund or that fund. It sounds like hey sucker, wanna buy a sure thing? Gives me the creeps. Sometimes it’s a glossy chick with leg and cleavage and the pitch sounds more like hey baby wanna spend some money, pant, pant. Yeah, sure sweetheart, what’s money for?
So this is the next big thing in financial innovation: banks with lounge areas with strippers, banks as houses of ill-repute, banks as opium dens.
And why not, if banks are gangster-run anyway and if banks are dens of greed and vice and corruption why can’t banks just outwardly be what they actually are, why can’t you go to your bank and get a drink etc…
To which I replied:
****************
“lounge areas with strippers”
Free toasters not bringing in the crowds apparently. As far as being houses of ill-repute; should they start charging for making deposits I think they will qualify.
NIRP Has Arrived: Europe Officially Enters The “Monetary Twilight Zone”
Gold is the ballast and anchor of mankind. When we left the gold standard, we threw out the ballast and the anchor of our vessel. We are now a ship incapable of stopping, a ship tossed along the waves of the economic seas, a ship doomed to suffer the slings and arrows of any fraud that the human mind is capable of imagining. Sound money breeds sound thinking, sound morals, sound dreams. Unsound money is moral turpitude, plain and simple. Sound money promotes peace and prosperity. Unsound money promotes wars and schemes. Gold is freedom. Is it any surprise then that Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Roosevelt’s first actions upon coming to power was to confiscate all gold? Gold is timeless. If time travel were possible, you could visit any epoch in mankind’s history, and if you had gold you could live and live well. We are heading for zero because we left gold.
You need to get out there with pick, shovel and pan and get your own gold, like some old sourdough in Montana, 1881. Gold is still over $1200. per oz., makes prospecting worthwhile for some.
–BRH
I’ve been a long-time fan of the saying:
“Gold is the money of Kings, Silver the money of Gentlemen & Barter is the money of Peasants, but Debt is the money of Slaves”…
But we must be honest with ourselves. Catastrophic levels of debt and dangerous speculation bubbles existed well before the Era of Fiat Money.
I’m sure you know this seawolf.
One could think that the NSA has something to hide somewhere in the last page of comments as it has been disabled. But of course thinking that would be P-A-R-A-N-O-I-D so it has to be a technical glitch.
Right?
Link to page 1
But not to worry, one would have to be well versed in the twistings and turnings here at the comment blog of CFN to notice it.
And now the older comments link sees to be working!
seems to be working
Speaking of the NSA, K-Dog, Fabius Maximus noted that today is the one-year anniversary of Glenn Greenwald publishing the first of Snowden’s revelations. He predicted then that nothing would come of it. So far, he seems to be correct.
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2014/06/05/snowden-nsa-surveilance-68535/
I don’t agree that nothing has come of it. Prior to the revelations knowing a little more than you are supposed to know was a lot more uncomfortable than it is now. With the Snowden revelations, suppression of embarrassing state secrets is now gone after much less aggressively. But then what you know exactly probably makes a difference.
Thanks for the Fabius link. I love the pic of the potato on the couch with the cheese doodles. His point that for all practical purposes nobody cares I’ll agree is right on the mark. And from the article:
“as in 1984 (the 1% doesn’t care what the proles do after work) — but to limit our political activities. Limit our ability to run the Republic.
The NSA (through the satellite agencies) bothers very few people. The vast majority of people not being political are consequently not worth their time. And those with a well connected public persona are ignored as gas-lighting them would be dangerous and spill the beans.
But run a joke presidential campaign, study web traffic patterns and see what happens. Then be glad the last name of anyone you know is not Tsarnaev.
“He predicted then that nothing would come of it. So far, he seems to be correct.”-Neon V.
Only if you think that IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and a host of other tech giants taking 25-30% drops in their overseas sales is nothing (they were counting on that revenue),
Or that there’s been a sea-change overseas in the way that any American internet activity is perceived (everything is considered suspect now, nothing is considered beyond the pale for Americans to be up to. Makes covert operation problematic),
Or that encryption and non-track website usage was popularly treated as superfluous a year ago and not anymore,
Or that a number of people and organizations *immediately* changed their activity signatures,
Or that they area of the internet that has ‘gone dark’ to NSA/GCHQ intrusion is expanding,
Or that national governments (like Brazil) are funding large projects specifically aimed at eliminating exposure to NSA/GCHQ spying,
Or that the internet is starting to balkanize and America has become a place to seek ‘asylum’ from,
Yes, then “nothing” has happened.
Actually, the demographic group in the developed world that act as if “nothing” happened are primarily in the US. Not that I blame them too much, the MSM is always ready to help them stay in the dark, comfortably numb.
Comfortably Numb
“Actually, the demographic group in the developed world that act as if “nothing” happened are primarily in the US.”
Which is the group FM cared about and made his prediction about. No wonder he considers it to be a success.
Sorry, that guy (fabius) didn’t really impress me. “Castle* tv series, and an analysis to boot!!! Beckett – come here and help my *SCHLONG* (they married yet)/././././…
Just FYI Clusterfuckers, another way to access the first page of comments (or the second, if you’re on the first) is to right click the link to the page and select “open in new tab.” It’s some sort of technical glitch, my guess. (Homeland Security striking again is k-dog’s guess.)
I’m not sure why comments have to be paginated, anyway. Makes no sense to me. If any of you are writing JHK, you could suggest that it would really improve the comments if they were all on a single page.
But ONLY a guess!
There’s a lot of Alienation out there.
https://www.google.com.hk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=oOyQU4SFNc6TlAXzxoCgAw&gws_rd=ssl#q=define+alienation
Regarding underground living –
Some of you seem to think that I’m advocating for it as a positive thing. Far from it, I think it would mark the end of humanity as a species connected to nature. Nevertheless, I consider underground living inevitable, if even 25% of Guy McPherson’s climate predictions come to pass.
When I was a kid, I read a book about a futuristic dystopia in which all of the people/workers lived underground. It may have been HG Wells’ “The Time Machine”?
Don’t tell me you still believe in global warming! They’ve lied about everything – this is just one more.
[The New Mr. T ]
There’s a lot of Alienation out there…and in there…over there….and under there….there…there…everywhere…..
http://time.com/132769/transgender-orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox-interview/
“Dead on! I have felt for a very long time that TPTB intentionally sew discord based on race, sex, orientation, etc. and glorify hyper-individualism. All the better to prevent class consciousness from taking hold and continue to rake in profits.” -dweebus-
We could wish that the PTB were capable of that sort of close management, dweebus. They are not.
Has anyone noticed that court case after court case has been overturning gay marriage bans, state after state, for several weeks, now. If there are PTB, that’s what they would look like in action.
And there is some really intense anti-Christian hate to be found these days. Reference this page of comments for a minor sampling.
=================
An essential precondition for Money is Alienation.
Money creates Alienation as its prerequisite. Everything is a commodity. Locusts devouring the Earth.
Desperate populations turn to maniacs. You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.
BREAKING: Shooting at Seattle Pacific University
Seven shot, two in custody.
http://www.kirotv.com/
Victims may be only three or four. This is breaking news.
The F.B.I. showed up kicking ass.
Within ten minutes.
So quick! That’s very reassuring. It’s almost like they were expecting something bad to happen. Truly the Eye is upon us…a novus ordo secloram, a new order for the ages…
novus ordo seclorum
Latest news is one dead. The gunman was taken down by SPU staff members when he was reloading but not before shooting someone in the face.
Or it may have been two students, the news is still coming in and getting sorted out. And I agree Truly the Eye is upon us! As far as the ten minute response time goes that would be the minimum given the transit time from where they started from. Somebody was on the ball. The lone fatality is a young man who will probably turn out to be a student.
New category in hiring: Biographically ineligible. They’re lowering the standards – in Air Traffic Controllers of all things. Think that might end badly? Biographically Ineligible is code for Whites Need Not Apply.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/06/faa-changes-hiring-practices-for-air-traffic-controllers-ignoring-qualified-students-and-vets/
“Then be glad the last name of anyone you know is not Tsarnaev.” — K-Dog
We shouldn’t have the opportunity to know anyone with that name – unless we travel to Chechnya.
Quoting the mayor “The epidemic of gun violence has come to Seattle”. He has repeated it about twenty times so far. He is working really hard at spitting it out so all good citizens please soak in the slogan, for that’s what you are supposed to believe!
The facts are not even in and the political agenda already emerges. Truly the Eye is upon us
Damn:
Quoting the mayor “The epidemic of gun violence has come to Seattle”. He has repeated it about twenty times so far. He is working really hard at spitting it out so all good citizens please soak in the slogan, for that’s what you are supposed to believe!
The facts are not even in and the political agenda already emerges. Truly the Eye is upon us
“the FBI showed up kicking ass…” k9 “within 10 minutes”
That’s interesting K. It used to be that Krispy Kreemes and Dunkin’ Donuts would hold local police in an area for greater crime deterrence. I don’t know what holds the FBI; maybe gyms or training classes?
If it makes you feel any better – massive LE response including the FBI is not a new thing. A friend of mine was working in the building when this guy went off his rocker in ’99.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton “…a spree killer from Stockbridge, Georgia, who, on July 29, 1999, killed 12 people and injured 13 more. The shootings occurred at two Atlanta day trading firms, Momentum Securities and the All-Tech Investment Group…”
My friend got caught up in the barricades and manhunt and spent several hours on the scene. And the told me that “within 15 minutes, Prog, I heard a helicopter, and looked up and there were two helicopters. And they were BLACK helicopters. I thought black helicopters were a myth – but there they were, right above my office on Piedmont.”
On a funny side note, my friend got to talking to a local cop during the manhunt. And the cops radio broadcasts a description of the suspect, “wearing blue jeans and a green shirt.” About that time a guy drives out of the parking garage wearing a green shirt.
My friend says to the cop, “that guy was wearing a green shirt – the one driving that car!”
The cop gets on his radio and gets the car stopped. They pull the driver out, force him to the ground and handcuff him.
They had to let him go. Wrong guy. Wrong car. Wrong shirt.
But it made for an interesting story.
“he” told me; not “the” told me
cop’s
I’ve had black helicopters over my back yard. But then I’m rather close to some important airfields.
Campus security responded in three minutes, SPD was there within seven and the FBI was there within ten. Further the entire campus reacted to the incident like they were trained to do. First one I know of that used a shotgun. Nasty bruisers but they do have a limited magazine capacity. Thank dog spelled backwards that this fool was brought down so easily.
Morgan Spurlock argues for a limited magazine capacity. (I saw the documentary recently.) Practically it makes some sense, but then it also fucks with the second amendment big and we all do like our second amendment. Lots. Might need a large capacity magazine in a revolution I imagine the thinking might go.
Meanwhile the Dow is headed up to 17000, phew!!! 17000 !!!
And I heard yesterday that new car sales are setting records too.
Oil is still over $100 per barrel and it looks like its going to stay there.
For somebody like myself, not very well versed in economics, it hard to make sense of all this conflicting information. We talk about collapse week after week, still the grocery stores are full and people are driving around on the roads like maniacs (sometimes it seems its all they do) For example, all bullsh-t aside, how is it that Hartford, Connecticut, with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the US, where nobody pays their property taxes, which is crime ridden and falling apart, can suddenly come up with $60 million for a new minor league baseball park? Where’s the money come from? This is why I’m puzzled when JHK says there is not enough capital to keep things going. It seems like there’s plenty of capital, for all kinds of stupid sh-t, like yesterday when I heard of a Boston Red Sox pitcher looking askance at a $70 million contract offer; he’s asking for at least $150 million
Back around 2005 President Bush pledged $50 billion to treat AIDS in Africa. I remember thinking $50 billion? Does he have $50 billion? Is it in a bank account somewhere? where is it? Then we heard no more about it.
–BRH
There’s a lot of Alienation out there. It’s driving a bizarre mass mania in the population to do anything to achieve “Celebrity”, to become “Famous”.
http://time.com/132769/transgender-orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox-interview/
An empty melancholic soul might well imagine fame and celebrity as rescue from the pain of their despondency. You are on to something.
This bizarre transgenderism is being packaged and sold by the mass media as some kind of avant guard civil rights movement, but, in reality, it may be just some kind of mass fixation with Celebrity and becoming famous at all costs, a kind of mass psychosis? In some ways, it’s even more bizarre than the N..a,/zi mass movement, or Ch,i,na’s C.ultu,ral Re,,vo,lut,ion, or the Grea,t Lea,p For,war,d.
To be ho nest, it rather Freaks-Me-Out….
http://time.com/132769/transgender-orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox-interview/
Well Pucker I’ve a thought. Isn’t it odd that there is such a brouhaha about transgenderism and civil rights yet Laverne Cox it seems to me is very successful. Nothing disenfranchised about her ass that I see and frankly nobody else has said the following so I shall.
People don’t worry about transgenders because there are never very many of them. So people really do not feel threatened by them. Instead people find them curious; confusing perhaps, but that’s it.
It is almost like:
This bizarre transgenderism is being packaged and sold by the mass media as some kind of avant guard civil rights movement!
Perhaps the ghost of the Rocky Horror Picture Show success is being resuscitated to sell make-up or something. The zombie apocalypse campaign ages and looses steam and transitioning from zombies to sweet transvestites may be a logical development.
But that is all speculation.
The way the transvestite Laverne talks reminds me a bit of the way that the Miss America contestants talk about wanting to solve world hunger and bring world peace.
http://time.com/132769/transgender-orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox-interview/
Transgenders might turn out to be the half time show of the great contraction. The time when America became flaccid and soft and found it could not get it up anymore.
Are the Russians letting us ride up to the space station yet?
Oh why not;
The Rocky Horror Picture Show “Sweet Transvestite”
When these Big Lefties get divorced that’s when we find out what lying hypocrites they are. A few months ago there was John Podesta’s luxurious Vienna penthouse filled with rare art and his extravagant life in DC, Now how about Michael Moore’s mansion in Michigan, and his other mansion in LA. This is MR. OWS and a big fan of Cuba and Chavez. Socialism is good enough for us Proles. For him, Sean Penn, Danny Glover et al now that’s a different story. Reminds me of Paul Robeson, personal friend of Stalin, willing to shill for Stalin and provide cover in exchange for gifts of art, vestments and relics … looted from Russian Churches and Museums.
–BRH
If you go to a travelling carnival in say, Nebraska or NDakota, and you see a sign that says ‘Side Show this way’ and you go to the side show, you don’t laugh and jeer at the freaks. No, you pass thru silently, fascinated and a little repelled, shake your head and marvel such things exist. And have pity in that stony heart of yours.
BRH
When these Big Lefties get divorced that’s when we find out what lying hypocrites they are. A few months ago there was John Podesta’s luxurious Vienna penthouse filled with rare art and his extravagant life in DC, Now how about Michael Moore’s mansion in Michigan, and his other mansion in LA. This is MR. OWS and a big fan of Cuba and Chavez. Socialism is good enough for us Proles. For him, Sean Penn, Danny Glover et al now that’s a different story. Reminds me of Paul Robeson, personal friend of Stalin, willing to shill for Stalin and provide cover in exchange for gifts of art, vestments and relics … looted from Russian Churches and Museums.
–BRH
double post sorry
The BLS publishes its job numbers today. The consensus view about that on Wall Street is in:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-06/what-wall-street-expects-todays-jobs-number
And it’s official. The US is now employing as many people as it did six years ago. Yes, that is the ‘good news’…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-06/217k-jobs-added-may-line-215k-expected-unemployment-rate-63
Then just factor in population increase, the number of folks no longer in the labor-force at all, and the pretend jobs created by the BLS’s birth/death model and you’ve got some real *fun* on your hands.
Official Ka-Ka. The only way one can think things are fine is to ignore the dispossessed.
The Truth About Western (Un)Employment
It’s strange, but it’s almost as if we’ve been reduced to cataloging reams of bullshittery and dumbfuckery [on this particular comment section]. They come so thick and fast now, it’s almost a blur; a gathering momentum of diabolical machinations and foolish, death-dealing policy decisions. Is this how collapse compounds — by rushing one mistake upon the next in the service of maintaining a wrong-headed status quo? It’s certainly looking that way to those of us paying [at least, minimal] attention. (The vast majority are not paying attention at all, so there’s that too.) …And, is this emptying ocean of crap specifically designed to make sure no one can focus on the salient points, or is it just a manifestation of one step leading to the other in advancing an agenda? (Witness gov’t. snooping before and after The Jingo Act, that was waiting on the shelf for ‘an incident’ to be implemented, etc.) “Yeah, we’ve got that one codified, quick get as much of the whole magilla under legal cover before anyone notices!”
A ‘dangerous world’ is being created by those who keep on yelling that, “It’s a dangerous world!”
Is this appointment in the service of some kind of agenda, or just plain, Duh, I didn’t know?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler_%28FCC%29
I know, that appointment was waaaaay back in the past… last November. When can we call him Wheeler Dealer? (No conflict over the public interest here, right? I say again, diabolical.)
…So, I guess I’m asking: As the general populace is ‘coasting’ toward zero, are TPTB ‘accelerating’ toward the cliff’s edge?
Someone just posited a rather fatalistic line of thought. Is WW3 being purposefully pursued as a way to ‘re-stimulate growth’ while at the same time winning dominance over the entirety of the world’s resources? Is it a race between fomenting world-wide conflict and onrushing collapse? The president’s current rhetoric would indicate that we have no choice but to employ [more] threats and violence. If that should translate into reality, all bets are officially, legally, and even prosaically OFF.
Interesting questions O3. I’m pretty sure that the WWIII talk regarding Russia and Ukraine is just talk. I also think that it’s only audible inside the matrix, here in the States. That’s not to say that our “leaders” won’t blunder us into it, through hubris, stupidity, or inertia.
Regarding this website – I’m not sure many people are reading the comments any more. I’ve floated up my reasons as to why – receiving only negative feedback for my efforts. Screw it, as they say.
Not the future we wanted, eh?
Okay then, we’ll go with ‘accidental’ should world-wide conflict break out. (Definitely not the future we wanted, in many aspects!)
So, to follow one piece of flotsam in the flood, try this one. (I know it’s lengthy, but I feel it’s worth a focused look.):
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-05/stress-test-reviewed-tim-geithner-grifter-petty-con-artist
Upon reading this review should we suspect bumbling and blundering or a bald-faced conspiracy to defraud and re-codify on a nearly unimaginable scale?
*Sidebar: As to the reading of/submitting to the comments section; I’ve come to the conclusion that countering delusionists is a waste of time and energy. (And perhaps that’s the point of posting delusionist hogwash… to waste time and energy. Valuable commodities, that when wasted can lead to mental and physical exhaustion without purpose.)
I agree, screw it.
delusionist – An individual who denies reality and advocates beliefs that serve individual self interest at the expense of the future prosperity and the greater society.
No distinction need be made between those that believe their own deceptions and those who actually know they deceive.
Well! You’ve daisy-chained quite a string of ‘WTF Tamales’ together, haven’t you Ozone?
Some of it’s amusing & provocative, so I’ll just take it from the top:
“Is this how collapse compounds — by rushing one mistake upon the next in the service of maintaining a wrong-headed status quo? It’s certainly looking that way to those of us paying [at least, minimal] attention.-Oz.
To paraphrase Hemingway collapse [*] happens _gradually_ and then _suddenly_.
There is a mathematically sound, very smarty-pants way to explain why this happens, and it goes like this:
If we only factor in TIME and CAPITAL into the way we model a life-cycle, we wind up with a small start that smoothly & gracefully ramps up to a peak of activity at the top of the cycle and then – as resources dry up – safely and very gradually tapers off to zero again… But that is not how things work in the real world, because it takes more than TIME and CAPITAL to build something, it also takes INFRASTRUCTURE & support to get it all clicked together.
What really happens is that after things have peaked and capital/cash/resources start drying up, a conflict develops about how to split what’s left between participants and the supporting infrastructure that got them there in the first place.
The supporting infrastructure (because it’s not actively creating cash-flow, or the equivalent) does not have an advocate, so it loses. What it loses specifically is the _Capacity_ to hold things together enough to allow a safe unwind.
This is Disintegrating Capacity… Our state of affairs, right now.
When capacity is lost, the fall-off on the other side of the life-cycle curve gets steeper, which makes the cash-grabbing more desperate. Capacity is then lost at an even greater rate. At this point the steep descent becomes a nose-dive, and the point of no return is reached.
Instead of a safe, symmetrical, gentle little ‘bell-curve’ shape, we wind up with something like the mid-section of a python that swallowed a hard-hat.
In point of fact, unless an unwind is planned into a system from the start, some type of collapse is inevitable. Civilian projects, trial marriages, limited-objective wars are examples of systems that don’t collapse – because unwind was built in. Outside of that all things are doomed to ClusterFuckdom to some extent.
SO, say a big !High-Dee-Ho! to your new ‘home-for-now’, Ozone!
😉
— — —
[*] of a system, a relationship, company, military campaign, political party, nation, civilization, etc.
This is a useful model. it scales upward and downward nicely.
Most edifying; that’s much appreciated as a person who acts after cool-headed ruminations.
Thanks for that and also for spotting some actionable/addressable concerns in my shotgun-blasts of misanthropy! 😉
None of us is getting through this unscathed. We may not be able to avoid it, but we can mitigate it.
Who knows? When most of it has shaken out, we might even land someplace that we don’t even mind…
Cheers!
MD,
Even a landing in a dirt-hole of less than the requisite 6 feet is not too much of a scary prospect; we’ll all get there one way or t’other. I’d like to have something to sustain those that might follow, that’s all. (No large ambition, just a simple perpetuation.)
Into the future through anecdotal story:
This mall was built in ’84. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwinnett_Place_Mall
State of the art, physical plant built to last decades. It was “home” to a generation of kids, for good or ill.
Anyway, one of those kids, a family friend now all grown up, was visiting stores in her old home mall. She finds it to be full of Korean shops, no problem, right? So she’s shopping along, in some sort of electronics accessory store – when a store clerk (owner? who knows?)walks up to her.
“You need to leave,” says the clerk.
“huh?,” says this white adult woman.
“You should not be here,” explains the clerk.
“You not Korean.”
If our looming future is being engineered by the deliberate action of Those Powers That Be – Then we have the most stupid, self-serving, and short sighted Powers That Have Ever Been.
so why is a white lady on the malls website?
turning away money don’t make much sense but they are being scared away in other malls across u.s. that are looking like third world street markets – full of asians, blacks, latinos with racks and shelves full of seconds.
http://www.shopgwinnettmall.com/
The way things are going, TPTB will soon be TPTW (the powers that were).
“I’m prepping for the zombie apocalypse,” is a pretty standard and well understood phrase. It’s a shorthand for some real problems that the future my hold. No one really expects zombies,
K-dog, you’re correct.
“I’m prepping for the transsexual apocalypse,” expresses less urgency.
This whole Tranny business seems like a red herring. ya its good for some jokes and some laughs, but how many actual Trannys are there? Not that many. i’ve known 2. One was murdered so leaves just one. Trannys just don’t have the numbers to launch a full fledged political movement, that’s all there is to it. The writers at Time are going to have to find another movement to get behind, that’s all (no pun intended)
–BRH
Remember where at the level of Pyramid Politics now. The top of the Pyramid rules and heads roll down from there. The Eunuchs gained control of old China for awhile. There weren’t many of them either.
Two hundred thousands Brits held hundreds of millions of Indians too. One Maniac and his gang held the Soviet Union until another replaced him. Ditto China. The God King rules the Pyramid. And if “he” is a tranny, then trannies will rule with “him”.
So you’re sayin we should worry about the trannies?
Not them per se, but the LGBTQ alliance? Oh most definitely. They are the point of the spear now.
“This whole Tranny business seems like a red herring. ya its good for some jokes and some laughs, but how many actual Trannys are there? Not that many.”-BRH.
… Indeed.
And if you tire of the transsexual apocalypse you can just say ‘fuck it’. But add a bit of Fukushima radiation and we just might wind up with a coven of zombie transsexuals from Transylvania walking the earth.
Then what we gonna do?
Breaking news from Georgia:
http://www.northfulton.com/hc.e.204030.lasso
“Downtown Cumming is shut down after an officer was reported to be shot and injured by a masked gunman in front of the Forsyth County Courthouse.
The incident unfolded at 10 a.m. today, June 6.”
There was a Forsyth County SWAT team training nearby and they arrived “literally within 30 seconds,” according to a TV news reporter.
Suspect is dead. He is being identified as associated with the “Sovereign Citizen Movement,” over and over by one particularly energetic TV news anchor.
Maybe we should hook up that anchor with your Seattle mayor, K9.
Interesting times, indeed.
Once again, I’d like to recommend Mark Ames’ book _Going Postal_ (find it dirt cheap on Amazon, or whatever your favorite vendor is).
Mark actually has come up with a working model for these things and he’s a decent writer.
I’m gonna’ take another run at this with a different news website, since I just got my own private “your comment is awaiting moderation” message.
Breaking news from Georgia:
http://www.macon.com/2014/06/06/3135807/forsyth-county-deputy-shot-in.html
“Downtown Cumming is shut down after an officer was reported to be shot and injured by a masked gunman in front of the Forsyth County Courthouse.
The incident unfolded at 10 a.m. today, June 6.”
There was a Forsyth County SWAT team training nearby and they arrived “literally within 30 seconds,” according to a TV news reporter.
Suspect is dead. He is being identified as associated with the “Sovereign Citizen Movement,” over and over by one particularly energetic TV news anchor.
Maybe we should hook up that anchor with your Seattle mayor, K9.
Interesting times, indeed.
================
And, yeah, yeah – who names a town Cumming?
It’s a lot funnier today, than it was 100 years ago. Probably.
This from the Huff Post; but remember you heard it from me first.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, noting previous mass shootings in the city, said: “Once again the epidemic of gun violence has come to Seattle.”
And entertaining any other notions will be considered a thought crime.
What of the future? Here is the wisdom that you seek: White Men turn the table on Muslims and Black in the process of stomping a brother White. All politics will be local again as Ozone wants. But will Ozone step up to the plate like these men did? Will you? That’s what good citizenship will mean in a world made by hand. Right?
http://dailykenn.blogspot.com/2014/06/black-mob-taken-down-in-london-media.html
Under the circumstances if they were as described you should not be wondering if Ozone or I would step up. We both deserve more respect than that.
Actually this was not directed to me. So:
You should not be wondering if Ozone or progress4what would step up. They both deserve more respect than that.
Yeah Ok, but on which side? I could Ozone or ZipDic kicking a White who was being held down by Blacks or Browns.
Its a goddam tragedy what’s happened to England, a tragedy for the ages.
What about Scottish vote to secede from Great Britain? Good or bad? I believe its in Sept.
–BRH
Utterly irrelevant. Just one group of globalists against another with them being united ideologically on the higher level. In other words, the Scottish “Nationalists” are completely pro-third world immigration and have no loyalty to the real Scottish people.
The suspect from yesterday’s Seattle shooting has been identified as Aaron R. Ybarra but his motive remains unknown at this time. Will Ybarra turn out to be another sexually frustrated misogynist who would have not gone berserk had he ever been laid like Elliot Rodger two weeks ago. Or will the motive turn out to have something to do with watching Anwar al-Awlaki lectures and the Muslim conspiracy to destroy the American way of life. Time will tell.
Or not.
Or another hate filled Leftist like Jared Loughner perhaps. The Media tried to blame conservatives even almost simultaneously as her head hit the ground. At least Murrow and Cronkite tried to hide their bias. These pukes show no restraint whatsoever.
Not exactly, after his arrest, two medical evaluations diagnosed Loughner as paranoid schizophrenic and incompetent to stand trial.
An incompetent paranoid schizophrenic is neither left nor right, liberal nor conservative. What they are is are fucked up. And if they do what Jared did that’s all they are.
But your point is well taken. The thought police don’t wait till a body cools before starting a two minute hate.
What they are is all fucked up.
Don’t forget this was a Christian school so it could be a hate crime. Or maybe just a disaffected student. What kind of name is Ybarra anyway? We know what kind of name Aaron is, but some Christian might take it out of idolatry of course.
Sodom & Gomorrah modern equivalent…..Seattle & Tacoma. Anything goes……including delivery of pot to your house if you are too bonged out to drive. High point of lib commie WA kultur……a Boeing engineer died while having sex with a horse. Everyone figured he fell off the ladder or got trampled in the stall. Nope……….perforated colon.
Fear not, nsa…
Just be careful out Enumclaw-way, don’t join any mens ‘riding-groups’ from ’round those parts and all will (most likely) be well 😉
Being gay is dangerous as I’ve always told you people. Far better to be the pitcher in this case. Worse thing that could happen is getting your jewels kicked to the moon – or just being kicked and stomped to death by the lady in question.
Janos,
I don’t see us getting too chatty now or in the near future, but _just because it’s Friday_, here’s a couple of links that’ll make you happy:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2219/netherlands-abandons-multiculturalism
http://content.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,901495844001_2064551,00.html?iid=tabvidrecirc
😉
Cheers!
“It’s strange, but it’s almost as if we’ve been reduced to cataloging reams of bullshittery and dumbfuckery [on this particular comment section]. They come so thick and fast now, it’s almost a blur; a gathering momentum of diabolical machinations and foolish, death-dealing policy decisions.”-Oz.
Imagine working in a plant in a factory-town somewhere (in the past at this point!). You’ve heard that there’s a layoff coming.
You do some research and you learn that there’s not going to be a ‘layoff’, there’s going to be a closure – of the whole town.
Would that change your plans, just a little?
So you take stock of what your financial situation is, and you don’t make the mistake of telling all your neighbors over-and-over about the coming closures, b/c you’ve seen that they don’t know and don’t want to.
No point in flogging a dead horse.
But you _do_ get busy making new (real, substantial and actionable) plans.
And you do keep an eye on the schedule of the closure.
Who knows? You might want to take your vacation-time and cash the rest while you still can, then call in sick on the day of the lock-out?
The possibilities are not endless, but they more interesting to you than just plodding up the ramp until the gate shuts, then waiting for the hammer to fall…
“The possibilities are not endless, but they more interesting to you than just plodding up the ramp until the gate shuts, then waiting for the hammer to fall…” — MD
No worries on that score, MD; I’ve always preferred to fail on my own terms! (The lessons seem to stick that’a’way. 😉 )
Behold!
The coercive duct-tape that’s supposed to strap the body-politic together /s :
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-06-05/5000-years-history-shows-mass-spying-always-aimed-crushing-dissent
When they do it in secret, that’s one thing. When they all but shout it from the rooftops, that’s just desperate…
Cheers!
Laverne Cox is the Poster Child for America’s mass psychosis of Alienation bringing about a bizarre fixation with Celebrity and fame.
The magic formula seems to be: Industrial Capitalism dissolves traditional family and social bonds creating commoditization of social relations and Alienation; economic collapse and unemployment lead to further Alienation; Widespread profound Alienation leads to Mass Psychosis marked by a mass fixation with Celebrity and the need to become famous at all costs. The stage is set for tot,al,,itar…ian,ism as people can find solace in an insane mass political movement to solve their Alienation.
I think that Marx’s idea of Alienation had to do with the worker’s separation of his labour from the products that the worker produces. Prior to Industrial Capitalism, since the worker kept his products for his and his family’s and neighbor’s own use, he identified with the fruits of his labour. Thus, giving the worker a sense of self worth in producing quality goods. But with Industrial Capitalism, the worker no longer owned the fruits of his labour. In other words, the worker became Alienated from his labour and quality of workmanship collapsed giving rise to a class contradiction between Capitalists and the proletariat.
I suspect that the financialization of the economy and the Internet information economy would give rise to similar Alienation since the worker is not making anything Real. This would also further Alienation and Moral Collapse. Everything would become “Freakie Deakie” a la Laverne Cox.
The labour process inherently tends to anchor workers to Reality. For example, a subsistence farmer who tries to grow Virtual potatoes will come to a very bad end.
But if the economy is a financial economy or an information Virtual economy, then things could get very weird quickly as the workers are not anchored to Reality. Laverne Cox…..
I think that Laverne means “born in Spring”, but it may have another Urban Dictionary meaning, of which, I’m sure that Laverne Cox is aware:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Laverne%20Bush
You seem to be very interested in this “Laverne” character.
Please describe – in your own words – your feelings whenever you think of “Laverne” . . .
😉
Cheers!
There needs to be a “cleansing”;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-06/fed-wont-let-economy-heal
… of the market, that is.
😉
Cheers!
She didn’t name herself/himself “Laverne Bush”, but rather she/he named herself/himself “Laverne Cox”.
Get it?! Get it?!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Laverne%20Bush
Few here comprehend our Google subsidiary was initially funded with Darpa startup seed money. Those puny seeds have now sprouted into mighty tentacles……
And the infrastructure that supports these mighty tentacles is fed by, and dependent on… what?
(Sorry to bring up the vulnerable state of your heel, Achilles.)
Sure, duh peepull have paid for their own enslavement, and they’ll be without their intertubes when you determine it’s too annoying, but your toy will be soon to follow and your “livelihood” expunged. Contemplation before triumphal exclamation is advised.
“Sure, duh peepull have paid for their own enslavement… Contemplation before triumphal exclamation is advised”-Oz.
It might be helpful if we were clear about *who’s* “triumphal exclamation” we refer to?
Certainly not mine… 😉
Are we being rhetorical, Ozone?
By the way, I don’t recall, nor is there any record of my heel being firmly grasped for a quick dunk in the River Styx.
😉
Cheers!
MD,
Haw! ‘Clearly’ I was responding to nsa and his/her series of fuck-youses-hooray-fer-us’ns, you-really-are-really-n-truly-fucked-beyond-recuperation-or-recognition-or-recovery post toasties.
Rhetorical? Yeah, it’s all I got to work with in this space. lol
(Belief it or negative, I’ve got other things I actually do with my living-time besides yelling in keyboard clacking mode. BRH can attest to that… if you could find that credible… Damn, I could, since I’ve met him……………. but how would you know that!!!! Hoisted on my own rhetorical grenade — that I covered with my helmet made of invincible rhetorical musings…!!!! Trapped, trumped, torqued and turpitude-inized. Da Lawd has done heaved me from his graces of da good and into the maw of an uninspiring Purgatory. Well to reach just slightly beyond strict rhetoric, I would certainly agree that nothing is going to be an exercise in ‘boredom’ in the near future.)
And, no, MD, certainly not YOUR triumphal exclamations; I haven’t seen anything you’ve posted yet to be self-congratulatory or of a nature that would indicate an immunity from any general tribulation. (When pierced by high-velocity projectiles, I’ll bleed just as copiously and die just as ignominiously as any other damn-fool. Q: “Who dares to cross my bridge?!?” A: Me and my trusty RPG dare quite handily, thanks very much. )
Now, to be ‘fair’ (what does that mean – rhetorically?), nsa[the poster] types up the things that we should be keeping a sharp eye upon, and I do suppose them to be in the nature of rhetoric/sarcasm/parody as warning. If they should be authentic and threatening, I’d consider that these exalted conspiratorial consortiums are in a serious state of desperation and waning influence. After all, if you (as a governmental sanctioned institution) should feel a pressing need to slap down Kunstler’s “Clusterfuck Nation” comment section, things are in a irretrievable condition of ‘no return to normal’. That’s okay (as in: “Well we’ll just have to get on with it then”) with a boatload of more folks than just you ‘n’ me, I would think, but despair will be more in the offing than triumph.
K-dog gets to it short ‘n’ not-so-sweetly…
Succor? There is no succor in these equations that would attempt to measure the balances of human cruelty.
Ahhhhhhhh trapped in their own web. They take it down their livelihood is gone. Someone ask Zelda about this. Peeping Toms may need their own union! Yet I can find little comfort in this conundrum for in the book which may as well be considered Oh-Well now, (’84’) the intertubes were up and running and in that horror one might wind up easily facing a cage of rats.
Wasted Ukrainian soldier looses his gun during presidential inauguration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xBfb8KAJSU
The US is doomed. And stupid. Although welcoming.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0607/Feds-dumping-hundreds-of-undocumented-immigrants-at-Arizona-bus-stops
I note the article ended with a quote:
“Things have gotten out of hand, Congress needs to step up to the plate and compel this president to start enforcing the law,” he says. “Otherwise you’ve got more and more surges of people coming in, overwhelming the system, and we’ve got a bureaucratic inability to process them.”
And this from the Christian Science Monitor. The eye is upon us and the DOW is at 16,924.28. God Damn The Pusher Man. Two stones in our eyes and the pusher don’t care if you live or if you die.
And ah yes, welcoming! That’s good.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/07/rizona-texas-supplies-detention-center-migrant-children
Well great. A third page of comments is about to randomly start.
This renders all the ideas on the first two pages essentially null, void, and unsearchable.
Crotchety aint ye? Just hit older comments and watch the action. It’s a new system just for you I bet.
Garbage in garbage out.
A new page. A fresh (not blank) slate – a new beginning! Prog, go dunk your head in a barrel of bear oil. Needless to say, I agree with you on another level.
Where am I? I thought I was free, at the top of a new page?
Anyway, see here. This says it all.
http://www.dailystormer.com/hundreds-of-blacks-protest-memorial-for-cat-tortured-by-black-kids/comment-page-1/#comment-460963
Yes Prog, it is the End.
Ya, Hispanic kids from throughout Latin america are headed el norte by the tens of thousands, encouraged by the ‘Dreamer Act’ (who the hell came up with that name, George Orwell?)
Many are unaccompanied by a parent or an adult. i don’t see we have any choice but take them in. I read that Obama has staffed many Central American embassies with La Raza members, who are encouraging these kids to make the trek. Also, why do I have to tune into BBC to get honest reporting from Latin America. Some of these countries apparently are in a state of collapse and our own media hardly even mentions it.
Don’t like it? What are you going to do about it? This is what most of you voted for. Suck it up is all.
–BRH
Why do I have to tune into BBC to get honest reporting from Latin America.
Among other reasons this is one. Tom Wheeler.
And that is a link to a comment on this very page.
You will never be free.
Spring Offensive in CT cities continues, indeed, heats up with the weather. Weekends also are prime time for urban combat. I know at least of one shooting in New Haven, stabbing in Milford, and husband and wife wiped out in Bristol. and its not even Saturday night yet. That’s when things really get rolling, Saturday night, and the blood flows.
full casualty report forthcoming.
(My God, what a civilization)
–BRH
Since I don’t know what page this will be on I’ll do it this way.
“Well, now if I were president of this land
You know, I’d declare total war on the pusher man
I’d cut if he stands,
And I’d shoot him if he’d run
Yes, I’d kill him with my Bible
And my razor and my gun.”
But what happens if the president of this land turns out to be the bag man for the pusher man?
And I’ll link it to progress4what and BackRowHeckler.
There’s a lot of Alienation out there.
When is the Rapture?
Since the mass media started holding out the transvestite Laverne Bush (excuse me, Laverne Cox) as a role model for American youth, my societal Alienation meter readings have gone Off-the-Charts!
“Oh my God! Look at all of the Satanic tatoos! Mark of the Beast!”
When is the Rapture!
“When is the Rapture!”
The real answer is likely to be never. Hollywood’s answer is “‘The Leftovers’ premieres on HBO June 29th.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Leftovers_%28TV_series%29
In case of Rapture, this airliner will be pilotless.
Alienation is the Mark-of-the-Beast. Everyone now bears the Mark-of-the-Beast.
An essential precondition for violence is separation from The Other—Alienation….
When is the Rapture!
It’s a simple and fad-ishly passed on mis-reading of the highly imaginary texts of recent human history/hysteria.
It would [correctly] be, “The Rupture”.
Is that the epiphany you were fervently hoping and changing for?
There’s darkness around me – or is it within me?
You’re living forever, but I’m dieing so slow…
Well you say that so fine!!! (reach for your *winnings*)
Good News! Obama appointed a new ambassador to France, a very prestigious position. A seasoned, skillfull diplomat? Maybe not. Her name is Jane Hartley, and she was fundraiser and bundler for Obama’s 2012 relection campaign. What put her over the top tho is she’s married to an investment banker. That seems to be the main qualification.
What were Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications to become ambassador to Japan? That part of the world hasn’t been this unstable since the Korean War 1950-53 and you’d think we’d have somebody there with diplomatic experience and who knew hat the hell they wer doing, don’t you think?
“On Friday night, the US Department of Justice announced that young lawyers and paralegals are being sought for the community service program AmeriCorps to provide legal assistance in immigration proceedings to children who come to the US illegally. Officials say about 100 lawyers and paralegals will be enrolled as members of AmeriCorps in a new division called “justice AmeriCorps.”
Married to an investment banker you say. Then they will go to France to dance. Charming.
Justice? This is monstrous: Israel is giving Black Jews birth control without their consent. Please try and do something about this. I can’t because I like it too much and I’m biased.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/06/suppressing-black-births-in-israel/#more-47373
Apropos of almost everything that CFN stands for, I read the spoilers for _Witch of Hebron_ , and after it withstood that test I purchased a copy.
Are there any comments, complaints or spoilers anyone would like to make about this sequel before it arrives? I’m all eyes and ears.
There will be pickers and they will be nasty brutes.
Pickers you say? As in a bull fight, folk music, or immigrant labor?
No, pickers as were found in “The Witch of Hebron” and “World Made by Hand”. Pickers as in those who were hung at forty foot intervals from trees along the river road by Stephen Bullock for breaking in in the middle of the night and wanting to share their affections with Mrs. Bullock without asking first.
Got it. Thanks K!
Also (and just in case you were curious): the reason that I read and solicit spoilers is that I really do not like to spend discretionary income on myself alone, so if I make a || buy + reading-time || decision, I want that decision well informed.
Back at the start of our weekly kerfluffle, a comment was made about J H K’s work exhibiting a certain “creeping tone”.
I need to read more of the Union Grove Saga before I’m in a position to express an opinion about that.
Cheers!
I’m gunna call you out for what you R, mister MISTER – (A)soker. You haven’t convinced many, but maybe 1-2 is *ENOUGH*, given your agenda (6-fig-salaried-govt-stalka [tm 1999]). It certainly seems to work with so few unconvinced, though – eh, socker(-puppet)-troll?
Aaron Ybarra turns out to be a manic and distinguishes himself from the desperate population of the mentally troubled he turns out to be a member of through infamy. Ybarra obviously has some kind of personal scarcity. With a bit more time we shall find if scarcity led to him having broken dreams.
“Desperate populations turn to maniacs. You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.”
“Desperate populations turn to maniacs. You can be sure that scarcity beats a fast path to mass homicide.”-J H K.
And Mark Ames was in full agreement [*].
The biggest ‘take-away’ from _Going Postal_ was that there isn’t an accurate way to profile potential work/school-place killers, but there IS a way to profile workplaces and school-places that get attacked by them [**].
In our collective case (sorry libertarians, you are part of a collective-aggregated entity, like it or not) the conditions for creating mass-killers have increased for three-and-a-half decades.
As Mark points out, prior to 1980 workplace mass-kill-outs were exceedingly rare – until one goes back to the antebellum south…
Cheers!
— — —
[*] I’m saying “was” simply because I haven’t talked to him recently. he might have a different opinion now ;]
[**] and then there’s a small number of whack-jobs that attack institutions that they aren’t a part of, for what they think they stand for… nice little random element to ‘spice up’ your day.
We just coast along on the momentum generated by the engines in place for the idea that our society is so dysfunctional it’s driving people to murderous rage is too disconcerting to contemplate.
“Ames’ thesis in Going Postal is that workplace and school shootings are a modern form of slave revolts, every spree killer a Nat Turner for the Information Age. That mere sentence is enough to generate a kneejerk reaction from even the most limp-wristed peacenik liberal: “America’s standard of living is the greatest in human history! You work a cushy office job, live in an apartment with central AC and can afford to spend your free time jacking off and playing video games! Your ancestors had to shovel shit for fourteen hours a day just to put food on the table, so quit bitching, you pussy!”
But we can go too far looking for social undercurrents. The truth may be that Ybarra’s mind is simply as disordered and scattered as the spilled hoard of shotgun shells he dispersed about the floor was when he was taken down.
“But we can go too far looking for social undercurrents. The truth may be that Ybarra’s mind is simply as disordered and scattered as the spilled hoard of shotgun shells he dispersed about the floor was when he was taken down.”-K Dog.
Mark Ames makes the point that Nat Turner was probably more than a little nuts.
But his point was also (in the relevant chapter) that nutty people respond to environmental stimuli – like stress. This makes them more likely to ‘pop’ than the average person. It also makes them harder to spot (borderline cases tend to get ‘lost in the middle’).
Just think of them as human ‘canaries’ in the social ‘coal-mine’.
‘ “America’s standard of living is the greatest in human history!” ‘ – K Dog (quoting someone else?).
“greatest in history” ? Really? Says who? Arguable. Also, the standard keeps slipping, and it’s noticeable.
“You work a cushy office job, live in an apartment with central AC and can afford to spend your free time jacking off and playing video games!”
Tell that to the people – born here or who just got here – that have never had that. Generalizations like this come a little too easy.
Regarding Ybarra’s case; it looks like he’s that ‘random element’ that I refer to at the bottom of my last post.
Was he homeless? Poor? Did it matter? I don’t have enough data to make sweeping statements.
Cheers!
(you can) “afford to spend your free time jacking off and playing video games!”
Didn’t I just warn you, via “snail mail”, not to troll the troll?!? Why, oh why must U goad him…
BTW, Video games and jacking off aren’t all they’re made out to be. It really suxorz when you have to take a blue pill to get a hard *ONE* (troll your boyie Vlad about that)…
You did, I’ll check.
Those blue pills are something else. I’m thinking of the blue pill Neo did not take.
Like him you have taken the red pill and seen what the blue pill hides but now having seen your arm turn mirror silver you must learn the discipline not to exhaust yourself.
The hall of mirrors hides the side of the hall one actually stands on so well one can exhaust themselves trying to decipher the truth. Wax on – wax off grasshopper.
there is still some capital left. Every time Zack Grienke pitches for the Dodgers they pay him $800,000. Eight hundred grand per appearance. He’s a pretty good pitcher, I’ll give you that. But as good as he is, he must have a better agent. The agent is everything.
–BRH
The “greatest generation” never wanted to know the truth about their actions – and they still don’t. History will judge and as Hitler said, declare him right.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/06/invading-their-own-country/#more-47368
Interesting article Vlad. Only problem is the Germans had no problems enlisting Muslims to fight against fellow Christian Europeans in the World Wars, for example the Turks at Gallipoli in 1915, and the Bosnia SS Division in 1942. And the Grand Mufti from Egypt was a guest of honor more than once of the Fuhrer himself, the Fuhrer of course looking for allies in his anti Jewish campaign. He found one in the Grand Mufti. And after Germany was crushed in 1945 not a few Big Nazis sought refuge in sympathetic Muslim countries in the Middle East.
–BRH
That’s a far cry from turning Europe over to them as the “Allies” are now doing. Asia Minor and Bosnia fell to Islam long ago. Just face the naked truth, America was deceived in fighting their own brothers.
More ‘fun’ on a Sunday:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-08/suspect-yells-tell-police-revolution-has-started-shooting-spree-las-vegas-walmart
Has “The Revolution” started? Probably not.
But it is one more data-point in the disorderly unwinding of our daily life, that some fondly refer to as The Long Emergency.
Terrible, I’m going to take a wild guess, meth-heads!
Regarding the previous#.
The quote is an example of dysfunctional thinking, and was put there as an example of an erroneous point of view which could be taken to avoid looking at what is too disconcerting to contemplate. You took it too seriously. Extol real and imaginary virtues from the mountaintop. Whatever it takes to avoid what is unpleasant. The quote and context can be found by following the link in my comment. Llimp-wristed peacenik liberal or rabid brain eating redneck. The politics don’t matter; anyone could have made the quote. Dogs of all spots often tend to look at the positive so hard they distort the truth by ignoring the negative not understanding the truth not feelings is the important thing. The quote is an example of this tendency used as a defence mechanism.
That out of the way you touch on an important point. Those more than a little nuts may be triggered by environmental stimuli they are not responsible for causing them to commit acts for which they bear full responsibility.
“Terrible, I’m going to take a wild guess, meth-heads!”- K Dog.
Agreed. That whole episode seems meth-y-logical. My condolences to the surviving families.
“The politics don’t matter; anyone could have made the quote.”-K Dog.
True.
Seeya at the next go-’round!