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Creepily Close

by James Howard Kunstler

     Things that can’t go on, the prophet Herb Stein once observed, go on until they can’t. Criticality eventually bushwhacks credulity. The aggregation of rackets that American life has become is rolling over like a great groaning wounded leviathan and the rest of the world is starting to freak out at the spectacle. Instead of a revolution, we’re having a suicide party.

     But don’t worry, a revolution would not be far behind. My guess is that it would kick off as generational rather than regional or factional, but it would eventually incorporate all three. A generation already swindled by the college loan racket must be chafing at the bureaucratic nightmare that ObamaCare instantly turned into at its roll-out, with a website that wouldn’t let anyone log in. Isn’t technology wonderful? I wonder when the “magic moment” will come when all those unemployed millennials join a Twitter injunction to just stop paying back their loans. If that particular message went out during this month’s government food fight, it would do more than just get the attention of a few politicians. It would crash the banks and snap the links in every chain of obligation holding the fiasco of globalism together.

     So far, the millennials have shown about as much political inclination as so many sowbugs under a rotten log, but it is in the nature of criticality that things change real fast. In any case, the older generations have completely disgraced themselves and it is only a question of how cruelly history will treat them in their unseating. The last time things got this bad, the guys in charge divided into two teams with blue and gray uniforms, rode gallantly onto the first fields of battle thinking it was a kind of rousing military theatrical, only to find themselves in a grinding four-year industrial-scale slaughter in which it was not uncommon for 20,000 young men to get shot to pieces in a single day — one day after another.

     Of course, things are a bit different now since we became a nation of overfed clowns dedicated to getting something for nothing, but despite the abject futility of American life in its current incarnation, there is room for plenty of violence and destruction. The sad and peculiar angle of the current struggle is that both sides in government wish heartily to keep all the rackets of daily life going — they just disagree on the distribution method of the vig.

     What amuses me at the moment is the behavior of the various financial markets and the cockamamie stories circulating to explain what they are doing in this time of perilous uncertainty. One popular story is called “the energy renaissance.” This is a fairy-tale that pretends that we have enough oil at a cheap enough price to keep driving to WalMart forever. Of course, shale oil wells that cost $12million to drill and produce 80 barrels-a-day for three years before crapping out altogether do not bode well for that outcome, but the wish to believe over-rides the reality. Another laughable story du jour is “the manufacturing renaissance.” This story proposes that the “central corridor” of the USA, from North Dakota to Texas, is about to give China a run for its money in manufacturing. The catch is that any new factory opening up in this scenario will be run on robots — leaving who, exactly, to be the customers paying for what these factories produce? Think about it for five minutes and you will understand that it is just a story calculated to goose up a share price here and there, and only for moment until it is discovered to be just a story. What interests me most is what happens when the stories lose their power to levitate the legitimacy of the people who tell them.

            Well, Christine LeGarde, chief of the IMF, tried to read the riot act to the American clownigarchs over the weekend, but they’re not paying attention to her. What has she done for her own country, France, lately anyhow. They’ve got their own set of rackets running over there. The Chinese are getting a little prickly, too, since they are sitting on a few trillion in US promises to pay cash money in the not so distant future. The Chinese are beginning to apprehend that future perhaps never arriving.

     In case you haven’t heard: America is “in recovery.” We can play all the games we want with money, or what passes for money these days. And then the moment will come when we can’t. That moment begins to feel creepily close.


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About James Howard Kunstler

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

386 Responses to “Creepily Close”

  1. Neon Vincent October 14, 2013 at 10:18 am #

    “So far, the millennials have shown about as much political inclination as so many sowbugs under a rotten log”

    Oh, they came out big for Obama, twice, which is one of the reasons why he was the Democratic nominee over Hillary Clinton in 2008. The older folks, like my mom, preferred her, but my kids all were for Obama. I figured that the younger generation was going to pick the winner, not the old folks, so I joined them. I was right, at least about Obama winning the nomination and election.

    As for there being generational friction, yes, there already is. However, I don’t think the trigger you have in mind will get it going. Annoyance at Obamacare might just trigger a desire for something even more left, like single-payer. Just because the money might not be there doesn’t mean the desire won’t be. Instead, there might be a fight between the Gray and the Brown. Older Americans might not want benefits going to younger, non-white Americans, while younger Americans might not think supporting the older generations in the manner in which they’ve become accustomed is a good deal for them anymore. The first part of that is playing out already as one of the reasons for the opposition to Obamacare.

    Speaking of Obamacare, I found an editorial from Boston University that called the opposition to it “maddening.” I also found a video from the University of Virginia about post-partum depression. It turns out that that the poor woman who attempted to crash the gates at the White House and Capitol and was shot dead for her trouble was reported to have been suffering from post-partum depression. Both of those are available at the link.

    http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/10/more-health-news-from-campuses-on.html

    • lsjogren October 14, 2013 at 10:25 am #

      You don’t get it, neon. The consumer binge cannot be sustained, whether it be under a mixed economy like we have now or under a socialist economy. In fact, I would argue that socialism is even more pathetic because it can’t even generate prosperity when all the ingredients for prosperity are in place.

      Whether or not one agrees with that, everyone should be in agreement that small rearrangements of the deck chairs (e.g. single-payer health care) will not mitigate the damage from the iceberg.

      • Neon Vincent October 14, 2013 at 10:40 am #

        “You don’t get it, neon. The consumer binge cannot be sustained”

        Oh, I get it. After all, I did write, “Just because the money might not be there doesn’t mean the desire won’t be.” There aren’t enough resources now for all seven billion humans on this planet to live like Americans have for the past 50 or 60 years, and there certainly won’t be enough for the nine billion of us who could be here in 2050 to do so when there will be less fossil fuel energy. That won’t stop Americans for wishing for the Moon for quite a while. Reality will have to swat them really hard for them to give up on their dreams.

        Some people are getting the message, though, and are adjusting to their new, less wealthy circumstances, as the AP video at the link shows.

        http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/10/austerity-on-personal-level-from-ap.html

        Also, speaking of “wishing for the Moon,” quite literally, the shutdown is having devastating effects on science and space exploration. As a scientist and space enthusiast, I am displeased, but not surprised.

        http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/10/shutdown-and-science-from-campuses-on.html

        • mike October 14, 2013 at 4:59 pm #

          “…the shutdown is having devastating effects on science and space exploration. As a scientist and space enthusiast, I am displeased…”

          Really? Devastating effects?

          What was your scientific opinion of your president’s diktat when he tasked NASA with “Muslim Outreach”? Just a wild guess here but wouldn’t changing the entire mission of NASA sorta put a crimp in the “science and exploration” you so lament?

          http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0714/NASA-chief-says-agency-s-goal-is-Muslim-outreach-forgets-to-mention-space

          • Neon Vincent October 14, 2013 at 8:54 pm #

            “Really? Devastating effects?”

            I can tell you didn’t read the entry at the link. Tsk, tsk. Also, you didn’t make a counterargument minimizing the evidence I presented. Double tsk, tsk. Then you changed the subject and made a personal attack on the president, one that included a dog whistle. Triple tsk, tsk.

            “What was your scientific opinion of your president’s diktat when he tasked NASA with “Muslim Outreach”?”

            I see you didn’t even read the headline, let alone the first and second sentences. Quadruple tsk, tsk.

            “In an interview last month on Al-Jazeera, NASA chief Charlie Bolden said that one of NASA’s foremost tasks is to engage with Muslim nations. The White House disagreed, suggesting that the agency should perhaps focus on space exploration.”

            NASA then confirmed that Bolden misspoke. That puts the thin reed that you’re grasping in a suspect light. Bolden, not Obama himself, said “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” First, consider the audience; it’s Al Jazeera. Bolden wouldn’t be the first politician to blow smoke up an audience’s butt. Second, I think that getting the Islamic world’s mind off of religion and back onto science, math, and engineering would be a good idea. Third, your Islamophobia is showing. Quintuple tsk, tsk.

            Now, here’s another link of the last videos NASA posted to the agency’s YouTube accounts, videos that aren’t being posted now that the government is shut down. Maybe you’ll actually watch them.

            http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/10/nasa-videos-from-just-before-shutdown.html

    • squid October 14, 2013 at 3:06 pm #

      Jim you are dead on re the shale oil and nat gas depletion rates. The depeltion rates are so intense that the drillers are not recovering their cost at $100 oil. Thus there is less and less drilling going on. $100 oil is the low end of the scale needed for fracking and oil sands to be close to profitable. When you factor in the petro dollars demise the US is in for a big shock re the price of energy, especially oil coming our way soon. We learned nothing from the oil embargo with all the monster vehicles being manufactured and purchased. The dollar is fast losing its world reserve currency status mainly do to our over gov spending and the fed printing umlimited amounts of new fiat currrency. There is one basic understanding when it comes to paper money, it is only as good as the faith placed in that currency. If there is no faith there is no value. It appears we are fast approaching that cross road when the world will have no or very little faith in our dollar. When that occurs it will be sudden and brutal, with extreme inflationary ripples through our economy. Check out how much gold China and Russia and others are buying up as the US supresses the price to make the dollar appear to have some value left. There is an old saying he who has the gold makes the rules. Something indeed to give some serious thought to.

      • outsider October 14, 2013 at 5:38 pm #

        The commissioners in my small mostly impoverished (second highest welfare population in the state) Southwestern PA county are planning on building a new multimillion dollar prison. That’s a growth industry if there ever was one. They are hoping to pay for it in no small part through Marcellus shale gas proceeds. Their chairman claims it will not result in a property tax increase. I think we property owners will be in for some sticker shock in a few years when these funds do not materialize.

    • George October 14, 2013 at 4:30 pm #

      There is indeed a great deal of annoyance for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). I’ve been working with a client that’s under contract to develop scripted responses to questions raised by those attempting to establish the accounts needed to take advantage of the latest set of Obamacare provisions that went into effect on October 1st. Their brief, at least for this set of provisions, was rather limited but eventually they’re going to have to work up scripted responses to more Obamacare provisions as they take effect.

      The 17 call centers when “live” a couple of weeks ago. It had been assumed that calls would trickle in at first and then ramp up but when activated the centers lit up like the fourth of July! Instead of a trickle they got a deluge. So far a fair percentage of those who call in are outraged. Although some are simply outraged because they’ve been programmed by their peers to be opposed to Obamacare, the vast majority are outraged because of the complexity they perceive or their inability to navigate the government health care website.

      http://www.thesisa.org

      • mike October 14, 2013 at 5:05 pm #

        To be fair, if that’s possible in this particular hotbed and in these highly polarized times, if Obamacare was not a democrat program but a republican program under, say, Bush.

        Would there be as much bending over backwards to defend a republican attempt at gov’t taking over health care or would Bush be vilified because if the program were as screwed up as the one we’re currently dealing with?

        Be fair, whaddya think? That’s what I thought.

        • Calico October 14, 2013 at 10:20 pm #

          We are taught in high school to cheer the home team and vilify the visiting team, and I think for most people this carries on throughout their life and into every aspect of their life. And really the right or wrong of a thing really doesn’t matter as long as they win or support the winning team. I think our Gov’t is perfectly crafted for that mindset, and nothing is likely to change. We get to cheer for our team’s victories and boo the opposing side. However, as Ralph Nader once said, the only difference between a democrat and a republican is how quickly their knees hit the ground when the corporation come to call.

  2. REMONSTER October 14, 2013 at 10:21 am #

    It’s too early in the morning to comment. Back to sleep america. Back to sleep.

  3. publius October 14, 2013 at 10:21 am #

    It’s been amazing to watch things keep going, like Wile E Coyote after he runs off the cliff.

    What I have noticed is that there is an incredible divergence of outcomes: there are vast numbers of Americans who are suffering and living in dire conditions, while a prominent minority is still doing very well.

    A good example in Minnesota: the board members of the Minnesota Orchestra have locked out the musicians for a year now. I was chatting with a violist on Friday at the local pub. The latest offer was for the musicians to get a small bonus for signing, but then receive LESS money in salary each year progressively, going forward. The board has also rejected the findings of the mediator that was mandated. The director of the board, Jon R. Campbell, is CEO of Wells Fargo, and has never attended a concert.

    Thus Minnesota loses a world class orchestra.

    That’s a good synopsis of what is happening in the USA in general: few care for the commonweal anymore, especially the tiny, wealthy minority who used to act as stewards of the community.

    • pequiste October 14, 2013 at 12:08 pm #

      Yes Publius, Minnesota loses an orchestra (which has as its repertoire “The Canon” of Western music and who needs that) but has been gaining tens of thousands of Somalian immigrants. The very same nationality that has given piracy a contemporary style and birthed the Al Shababb bunch who recently slaughtered scores of civilians in a Kenyan mall. And while I’m considering Minnesota, and governments role in making a more perfect Union; who needs bridges that are safe to cross anyway? Sheesh.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 3:23 pm #

        Don’t worry, they’ll support Classical Music in time – once their heads get bigger, maybe two hundred thousand years. You don’t mind waiting do you?

  4. Malthus October 14, 2013 at 10:24 am #

    What the hell do you mean “Something for nothing?’ Our faces are pushed into the mud everyday. We have no idea what things are going to cost day to day. The bankers and politicians along with the business people have their hands in our pockets all the time and are busily trying to figure out how to get more out of us. We have a army of private contractors willing to do anything for money and meanwhile everyone is lying to us and expecting us to just take it. Welcome to the 99 cent nation. Something for nothing my ass.

    • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 10:42 am #

      Yes, life at the dollar store with an army of private contractors dedicated to keeping it that way.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 3:25 pm #

        Figured it out: as your Avatar crosses the line created by the big arrow it creates the illusion that you are wearing a hijab. Try it!

        • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 10:59 pm #

          You should get some help. Seems you are having perceptual difficulties.

    • AKlein October 14, 2013 at 10:50 am #

      Depends on who you are, Malthus. The guy who comes by your house every week to pick up your trash is most certainly not getting “something for nothing.” Add in legions of other people in the country who have “real” jobs: i.e. jobs with duties that the rest of us will actually pay for because we realize their services are really needed. Alternatively, cast your gaze upon the bureaucrats who officiously construct roadblocks, whose successful circumnavigation requires the rest of us – their “clients” – to pay their creators for “help” in the endeavor. This is the something-for-nothing crowd. There are of course others who fall into that category. Whence the old joke: “There was a small town in the Midwest which was so small that it could not support a single attorney. But strangely, it could support two.”

      • Malthus October 14, 2013 at 11:55 am #

        That is good. Good points sort of what I said but better.

  5. K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 10:39 am #

    I’m not seeing a revolution. A revolution requires clues and I’m not seeing anyone with them, generational, regional or factional. As far as paying back student loans go they will if they can but won’t if they can’t. Regardless they won’t be joining a Twitter injunction because they all think they are off to FEMA camps if they so much as growl at the powers that be.

    Will we go out with a wimper or a bang? I say wimper the apathy in america is too great for anything else.

    Perhaps if the FEMA camps were equipped with X-Boxes the situation would be different but overfed clowns dedicated to getting something for nothing won’t be revolting for well……..nothing.

    Curious that one of my browsers won’t show this weeks post but one I hardly use does just fine.

    Could it be the second to the last comment I made last week?

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    • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 10:45 am #

      For those wondering how the trick with the browsers is done the technique employs what is called ‘a man in the middle’.

    • Greg Knepp October 14, 2013 at 11:55 am #

      True, K Dog, I don’t see even an inkling of revolutionary zeal among the young folks of today, and I know a bunch of them – my daughter is 20.

      There’s no rebellious zeitgeist in the land; things are different now. When I was young I got into every scrape out there: Viet Nam protest, the environmental movement, civil rights…you name it. In those days there was a center to rebel against. People of my generation grew up with a government that had developed some credibility, so we felt that protest could reap positive results… And it often did!

      My daughter and her peers share no such notion. To them, central government seems remote and silly – something to be milked when possible, but otherwise ignored.

      I also agree that society will go out with a whimper – though perhaps noisy at certain times and in certain places. Fracturing will occur along racial and ethnic lines. Religion and region may play a part. History has shown us this. I don’t see generational fracturing playing a major role. Violence will be common, but will be local and sporadic. We see this happening already.

      • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 1:41 pm #

        I agree that generational fracturing won’t play a major role and I agree with your other points as well.

        Another sad fact is that our government learned lessons from the Vietnam experience very well. Now media is controlled so tightly that even if there were a rebellious zeitgeist any significant protest would be misreported or ignored completely. The right to assemble has also been modified so assembly is now relegated to locations where it can be well controlled. I found that out myself when I was at an anti-war protest in 2007. About 300 people attended and it was not covered by media. Police surrounding the pacifists to keep ‘order’ seemed to outnumber the attendees.

        • Calico October 14, 2013 at 10:34 pm #

          Don’t forget all the non-lethal crowd control weaponry languishing in the background should something organized and prolonged happen to metastasize in this great nation.

          • mike October 15, 2013 at 12:08 am #

            Don’t forget history, either. Each escalation leads to further escalation. Screw up too badly in DC and The Esteemed Comrades in Charge could find 100 cities burning.

    • SteveO October 15, 2013 at 10:10 am #

      As Jim is fond of pointing out, revolution requires desperation and the American people won’t get desperate until the cheap beer and Cheese Doodles run out.

  6. lost-in-north-dakota October 14, 2013 at 10:44 am #

    #1. All of the oil under North Dakota can supply US petroleum needs for….one year. Natural gas…three months.

    #2. The recent “EBT” raid on a Wal-Mart in Louisiana, leaving the shelves bare, is nothing compared to what will happen when the EBT cards, and credit cards, stop working. That event is very troubling to me. Our society could fall apart in a week. Or less.

    • Mike R October 14, 2013 at 10:55 am #

      Societies do not fall apart in a week or less. It just does not happen that way. Please.

      • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 11:05 am #

        A week is pushing it but when Safeway trucks stop moving and groceries don’t make it to the stores two or three weeks is quite possible. Are you going to go out to your garden and pick a turnip?

        When the two teams with blue and gray uniforms, rode gallantly onto the first fields of battle the lowliest among them were about a thousand times more self sufficient than you or I will ever be. Armies fall apart when there is nothing to eat.

        • edr October 14, 2013 at 1:08 pm #

          Yes, you will know you’re done for when those delivery trucks stop rolling.

      • pequiste October 14, 2013 at 12:39 pm #

        Society can collapse in minutes, days, weeks, months or years, decades even. It all depends on what hyper-complex system fails or what is attacked. Consider our rickety electric grid; a surprise EMP event; some lunatic decides the time is ripe for a biological war with Ebola or Marburgh variants as the vector….I need a drink now. Cheers.

      • mike October 14, 2013 at 3:09 pm #

        Define “society”.

        And remember, “A society is only 3 meals away from revolution.”

        Are you aware of the EBT/WalMart situation this past weekend? In only 12 hours social breakdown had begun. A week without EBT and I’d like to hear your opinion once again on just how quickly the rule of law is brushed aside and the law of the jungle gets reinstituted, especially when the top leadership in the country encourages lawlessness.

        • outsider October 14, 2013 at 5:57 pm #

          The only good thing about it is that it happened to Walmart. Sounds like poetic justice.

      • fashinrashin October 15, 2013 at 6:31 pm #

        Really ?
        http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5268

        http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/mar/06/food-riots-new-normal

        And my fave….
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_French_Revolution

        You either need to read more or pay attention Mike R
        Shit happens real fast when the belly is empty.

    • earltwitty October 14, 2013 at 5:24 pm #

      That EBT raid is a premonition I tell you. I wonder if they are going to make the people pay back the money they took out on cards with no balance on them and carts full of food.

      • mike October 15, 2013 at 12:10 am #

        No, that’s for the taxpaying comrade/rubes to pay. The Loyal Comrades free stuff remains free.

  7. budizwiser October 14, 2013 at 11:44 am #

    We live in exciting times.

    I hardly know what would or “could” happen if T-Bills start being honored as much as our current crop of Congressmen….

    It is of some interest – that these people never seem to have any sense of urgency until the latest piece of paper comes due.

    I think what is really historic is the admonition of the entire empire of the United States to get it’s collective “act” together – from none other than an international bankster from France.

    Now i ask you: “When has American foreign policy ever caused economic hardship in another country?”

    How dare you Christine? I appalled – simply appalled.

  8. capt spaulding October 14, 2013 at 11:52 am #

    Don’t worry, the people who are really in charge will do just fine regardless of what happens to the 99%. There will be no layoffs at the caviar factory. Did anybody read last week’s Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi (great writer), detailing how the powers that be are raping the pension plans of municipalities all over the country? Every day it’s just more of the same BS that happened in 2008, and no end in sight.

    • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 12:05 pm #

      A valid analogy might be the walled and gated apartment living in Johannesburg South Africa. I’d hardly call that doing just fine.

      Paramedics in South Africa

      • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 1:59 pm #

        And yet you think Blacks and Browns will be kinder to Whites here than they have been in South Africa. Why? The evidence so far says they wont. Nor does the rhetoric – enabled and encouraged by White Liberals of course.

    • beantownbill. October 14, 2013 at 12:24 pm #

      I read that article, too. I’d say that it made me angry, but then I’ve been angry the past 45 years, seeing us self-immolating ourselves. But don’t worry, the end has been pre-ordained by math and human nature, Although there will be a reckoning, we just can’t pick an exact date.

      • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 12:59 pm #

        It is indeed an odd thing about human nature. We are more afraid of the unknown than the known even when the known means self-immolation.

  9. bob October 14, 2013 at 11:54 am #

    The politicians will soon be arranging the Greek style transfer of our prime public real estate ,into corporate portfolios. The collapse is the sucking of wealth into one big racket. Sure people will be pissed off but thankfully they’ve paid for a really amazing internal spying and strongly armed military / police that when given full power and out of the site of the media will be very persuasive in keeping the peace. We have and will increasingly lose whether we are of the chisler class or the sucker class since we are all playing the money price system game. Operating a technological high energy society on an outmoded debt scarcity agrarian mode of operation is a fools game and that is why we have economists and elect politicians.

    • mike October 14, 2013 at 3:19 pm #

      “…out of the site (sic) of the media…”

      The actions of the powers that be are not only mostly highly visible, far from “out of sight”, but they are openly protected by the media, covered up by the media, excused by the media, explained away by the media.

      The profession formerly known as journalism is now the Propaganda Arm of the Powers that Be, as long as those powers are leftists.

      The right is still subject to the last vestiges of journalistic impulse beating in the chests of the formerly mainstream media.

  10. beantownbill. October 14, 2013 at 12:12 pm #

    The Civil War was really the Second American Revolution. Powerful southern landowners were on welfare, getting something for almost nothing – forcing slaves to work, while the plantation owners pursued other interests. Kind of like today, where a working class supports a marginal class through taxes levied by the government. Back in the day, when the Northern elite tried to marginalize Southern aristocrats, they rebelled.

    Today, the rich and powerful are marginalizing the middle class. When things get bad enough, wouldn’t they eventually rebel?

    It’s all about the math, folks. Too many people and not enough resources, physical and financial. It’s heartbreaking to me that we find ourselves in this position. We have the ability to resolve our problems, but because of a combination of greed and incompetence we are not going along the right path. Despite all this, I am still optimistic we’ll come out ok. Why? Because I refuse to go through life with the clouds of doom hanging over me, like Joe whatever-his-name in the Li’l Abner cartoon strips.

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    • mike October 14, 2013 at 3:38 pm #

      I’m readin your comments, BtB, and I’m not really getting your optimism.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 5:15 pm #

      Creepily close no longer – the Casimir effect has been subverted and here comes the nano-drones. As Aristotle said long ago, matter itself is a vanishing point, an x, almost a chimaera. But form or geometry – how the play dough is put together – is All. And where there is form there is an Architect or at least Mind in the Buddhist sense.

      https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/8dc2ed4cfd08

  11. pequiste October 14, 2013 at 12:29 pm #

    Jim ponders that “magic moment” when millennials are going to wake up to the concrete reality of the Ponzi Scheme they are unwitting dupes for, and decide to cancel their debts unilaterally. Maybe when the internet is closed down, by the government, for “security reasons, ” but I doubt it. The culture has propagated a relatively neutered generation – where anger is only acceptable in the virtual reality of video games and in the “hood.” And considering the culture of the “hood, “I think we had a sneak preview, over the weekend, of when the Free $h!t Army will have their moment of clarity – the Electronic Benefit Transfer system, yes the famous EBT card, went down for a little while and boy were the participants pissed. I think it wouldn’t take more than a 36 hour systems breakdown to see societal collapse and serious violence in certain precincts in the American urban landscape. That Halloween is only a fortnight away makes the possible spectacle more the devilish.

  12. dweebus October 14, 2013 at 12:36 pm #

    Fast collapse or slow? One week, three weeks, or decades? It’s funny Wile E. Coyote (super-genius) was mentioned. I used that exact metaphor in conversation with a friend just the other day. Of course they are propping up the system by any means necessary, QE-infinity, perpetually kicking the can down the road from budget crisis to budget crisis, fracking, arctic drilling, etc. It seems to me that the longer this racket is continued it exponentially raises the risk of fast collapse. The society collectively finds themselves running in air.

    And what happens to society when we collectively have our heads turn into a lollipop and plummet. The last time this happened in a big way, the Depression, FDR barely saved capitalism from itself. 2008 spawned perpetual bailouts, the Tea Party, and Occupy.

    This time we are outta bullets. So what happens when it draws on America that the greatest nation on earth ain’t anymore, and never will be again. This is the dreaded Seneca Cliff. Looks pretty nasty to me.

    • edr October 14, 2013 at 1:27 pm #

      As the system grows ever more complex the ways for the wheels come off the cart expand in geometric fashion. I think the first stage of the collapse will be a fast, sharp, wild ride followed by multiple aftershocks on the downward bounces. Grave digging will be a growth industry.

      Gold will be as valuable as paper money, maybe less since paper money can be put to some immediate uses. Dried beans will be priceless.

    • jimofolym October 14, 2013 at 4:56 pm #

      Well, Homeland Security apparently is not out of bullets. Gives me some reassurance!

  13. James Kuehl October 14, 2013 at 1:16 pm #

    When I first started following Kunstler’s writing I was revisiting a paper by an academic I knew about population growth and carrying capacity. The fellow had passed away and I recalled he had compared human population trend graphs and fermentation in beer production. We’re as hapless as yeast, I thought. Kunstler had articulated the observation more skillfully that I could, and I’ve been a reader since.

    People resemble bacteria more closely than we care to admit. The gradually (but exponentially) rising, precipitously declining curves on both graphs are, indeed, predicted by Seneca the Younger.

  14. K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 1:21 pm #

    Sadly I agree the Seneca Cliff is from what Wile E. Coyote plummets. Perpetually kicking the can down the road and avoiding truth generated ever increasing complexity with ever more tenuous connections. Fall from the Seneca cliff will happen when that complexity unravels and the bottom is the end of life as we know it.

    Had our leaders been trustworthy and the public less trusting a different outcome would have resulted but that did not happen. Patriotism like religious faith requires blind trust and since the war of terror began any real critical examination of our nations problems has been impossible. The war on terror has been a con preventing change and preserving the entitled status-quo.

    Like the Titanic we see the iceberg ahead but we have too much momentum to avoid it. I hope a remnant remains.

    • lingling October 14, 2013 at 1:46 pm #

      “Patriotism like religious faith requires blind trust…”

      Being a “patriot” of the U.S. does not require a blind faith. But a patriot does expect that the divisions of government provide checks and balances should one division attempt to usurp power from one or both of the other two.

      These checks and balances were baked into the founding principals of our republic but they are currently under attack by an executive branch that picks and chooses which laws it cares to uphold or enforce and a legislative brach that is too feckless to challenge the abuses of the executive branch.

      • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 2:00 pm #

        ‘My country right or wrong’ was a common statement in the Vietnam era and is a statement of blind faith.

        The statement ‘My country right or wrong’ was originally coined by the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI) a vast American propaganda machine mobilized in 1917 to package advertise and sell the war as one that would ‘Make the world safe for democracy’.

        Lack of critical evaluation of government policy is either blind faith or total apathy and the religion of patriotism means look at the flag put your hand over your heart and cease all critical thought.

        Patriotism demands unity. Dissent becomes a crime and unquestioned compliance is demanded. Patriotism demands intellectual sacrifice and is unrelated to love of country which I most certainly have.

        • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 2:08 pm #

          A parting thought on which we might agree.

          Being a ‘patriot’, is a personal decision, attitude, belief and position. It is not the same thing as ‘patriotism’ which is a mime or thought virus.

          • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 2:28 pm #

            Real dissent by real Americans over real issues. How different than Jerry Rubin wrapping his naked body in a flag over issues that aren’t real issues but just his own existential hatred for a Nation he loathed. Bill Ayers now does the same thing at a much higher level – and is accepted. Protest has become the Establishment – an absurd and non viable situation.

            http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/more-pix-from-dc/

        • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 2:13 pm #

          And dissent can become ritualized and ridiculous. The Mall was closed for Vets and opened for illegals. Pelosi and other Retreads went to the Illegal protest and got themselves arrested. Pelosi and Co are the Establishment now but they’ll never take responsibility since it’s advantageous to keep pointing their finger at “The Man”.

          And the secret Establishment – of which Pelosi is a junior member – doesn’t even hide its contempt for the real American people now. That’s the take away here.

          Another one – if you’re able. Can a stick only have one end? Does dissent have any legitimate meaning apart from loyalty? The Howard Zinns of the World are a pestilence. Of course America was founded by and for Whites. Every nation was founded by and for their own people. To argue this way is to destroy the psychic structure of the Nation State. Why not condemn the Chinese for founding China for themselves and not Whites. Hint: they wouldn’t even deign to answer such a ridiculous charge. And yes, people on the other end of stick break it too: loyalty has no meaning if it’s coerced.

          • K-Dog October 14, 2013 at 2:36 pm #

            Dissent can indeed become ritualized and ridiculous by those with an agenda to dissent for dissent’s sake. People with issues fall into this category.

            Dissent spawned from genuine conviction and belief is not ritualized or ridiculous. This kind of dissent can be admirable or not. that would depend on particular convictions or beliefs and the eye of a beholder would determine if a particular dissent was admirable or disgusting.

            I take it your meeting is over?

        • beantownbill. October 14, 2013 at 2:41 pm #

          The apathy you mention is because the government has distanced itself from the people. As soon as politicians joined the elite, our country was fated to fundamentally change.

          • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 3:06 pm #

            Let’s talk about Obama Care. Why is the web site such a disaster area? Many think on purpose: you have to give all your information before you are given any general information – creating a bottle neck as it were. Why was this done? To hide from the ignorant how expensive it’s all going to be. People still don’t understand how much their premiums are going to go up. And if they had known, Obama would never have gotten reelected.

            We need a dual system: private and public. Trying to mix the two is a disaster. Some European Countries have workable systems like this. Of course most have inundated themselves with Muslim parasites so their system are destined to break down in the future. Here’s some good preliminary ideas from a trained philosophical mind – a generalist and not a bureaucratic grind. Such grinds should never design anything. Their input is comes later.

            http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/10/how-about-fascist-medicine-2/#more-42887

        • outsider October 14, 2013 at 6:22 pm #

          Or how about this oldie but goodie – “Love it or leave it!” Very popular during the Vietnam period.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 14, 2013 at 3:28 pm #

        The Party System is to blame since the President is the de facto head of his Party. And even the other side doesn’t want to rock the boat too much since they are part of the same corrupt system both in terms of Party and the general centralization of power.

    • beantownbill. October 14, 2013 at 2:34 pm #

      The war on terror is a manifestation of what I call the Michael Moore Syndrome. It’s taken from his movie, “Bowling for Columbine”, in which the major premise is that Americans are the way they are because of fear, encouraged by TPTB and the MSM. Looking at statistics, many, many more Americans have been killed in automobile accidents than by terrorists, but reality mostly takes a back seat to emotions.

  15. third_martini_banter October 14, 2013 at 1:29 pm #

    See: http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/

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    • Neon Vincent October 14, 2013 at 4:52 pm #

      Hey, that’s Ugi Bardi’s blog! I was wondering what he’d be doing now that there is no longer The Oil Drum to write for.

      • Neon Vincent October 14, 2013 at 4:53 pm #

        Oops. Ugo Bardi. Time for more coffee and better glasses.

        • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 11:03 pm #

          Go to my page of links and there is a menu selection to both you and Ugo Bardi.

  16. Smoky Joe October 14, 2013 at 2:54 pm #

    JHK, Millennials in Virginia are leading voter-registration drives for both gubernatorial candidates. More of these drives seem to be for the Democrat. This pleases me, since the GOP nominated not a mainstream conservative but a Tea-Party stooge who, as Attorney General, squandered taxpayer money to harass a UVA climate-scientist and to press for stronger anti-sodomy laws.

    The GOP candidate’s possible defeat, now that polls show voters preferring the Dem by ever-larger margins, is cold comfort to me. By Friday the world economy may derail completely, thanks to the Tea-Party maniacs in the House of Representatives.

    Wonder what an election day in the Old Dominion would look like during the middle of a Global meltdown?

    • Warren October 15, 2013 at 1:38 pm #

      But do you really want to be disarmed, just before a collapse, by a Governor who will push an anti Second Amendment agenda? I would rather have a Governor who believes in the Second Amendment and not climate change, rather than the other way around, because at this point climate change is a forgone conclusion any way but gun control isn’t.

  17. wayfarer October 14, 2013 at 4:11 pm #

    Reading you, Jim, is an addiction. The civil war comparison might be too good. Unless we miraculously develop and disperse a fusion/hydrogen technology (or some equally unlikely new energy source) worldwide over the next few decades I fear it will come down to our ‘Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor’. But maybe that is what the specie needs, a spiritual growth.

  18. earltwitty October 14, 2013 at 4:38 pm #

    Here’s a article today. Stock market to rally ’till the end of the year. They can manipulate this thing forever.

  19. earltwitty October 14, 2013 at 4:40 pm #

    http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/10/14/why-this-time-is-different-than-2011/?mod=yahoo_hs
    forgot the article.

  20. WW October 14, 2013 at 4:57 pm #

    Those that think a collapse cannot happen rapidly should study Albanias collapse in 97. A huge ponzi schemes implosion caused such panic that the whole country was in chaos in less than a week. The Nstional armouries were raided and every tom dick and harry had an AK or variant. It wasnt a pretty picture. There are far more guns in the US and a large number of state dependent people….

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    • mike October 15, 2013 at 12:14 am #

      “It’s never happened here” leads to the fallacy that it cannot happen here. Right up until the time it does happen, the believers in that fallacious logic will be seen as correct.

  21. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 7:10 pm #

    [“A World Made by Robot Hands”]

    I don’t get the Marxist part about how using “robots” in the production process means the end of profits, and, hence, the destruction of Capitalism itself?

    Something about declining rates of profits as the capitalists invest progressively more profits into capital goods in order to increase efficiency, thus, squeezing out labor in the production process? Since “profit” is surplus labor and you’ve squeezed the Zit of Labor out entirely by displacing the Labor Pimple with robots then there is no surplus labor and therefore no profit. Right?

    But couldn’t one start replacing robots with “better”, more efficient robots? How are robots any different than human Zits? Machine hands are not human hands, but hands-are-hands, right?

  22. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 7:20 pm #

    I have a question concerning Ethics of the Baby Boomer F..ck Ups as such Ethics affects the young, unemployed, heavily indebted (with college loans) millennial proletariat Zits who are now getting economically squeezed:

    Question: What does the word “Good” mean in the moral maxim: If it feels “good”, do it!”?

    Thank you.

  23. ozone October 14, 2013 at 7:29 pm #

    “Criticality eventually bushwhacks credulity. The aggregation of rackets that American life has become is rolling over like a great groaning wounded leviathan and the rest of the world is starting to freak out at the spectacle. Instead of a revolution, we’re having a suicide party.” -JHK

    Jim, perhaps this is why the ‘millennials’ are taking a wait-and-see attitude and not committing to any action that could get them noticed by the fascist whack-a-mole game that is the present order. (That most folks don’t seem to notice that as the de facto system we’ve surrendered to is still surprising to me.)

    They’re waiting to see what is going to shake out or shake down first; I’d do exactly the same in their position. Not to be ‘on the winning side’, but to know if it’s more practical to fight, flee, or subvert and supply from within a morphed and panicked “system normal” police state.
    When the collapse of trust between the lumpenprole and the oligarchy is complete, the warfare will be strictly guerilla and there’ll certainly be nothing civil about it.

    “…But don’t worry, a revolution would not be far behind. My guess is that it would kick off as generational rather than regional or factional, but it would eventually incorporate all three.” -JHK

    If there’s anything that could be said to be ‘interesting’ in a political collapse, how divisional factions coalesce is one of those details. That will tell the tale. I haven’t researched it a’tall, but I wonder where the preponderance of boots-on-the-ground bases reside. (I can guess, but would rather not.) It’s the only way that territory can be held and exploited.

    BTW, all the best Muse Whisperings to you on building the next tome! Be assured that many of us are looking forward to it.

  24. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 7:31 pm #

    [Captain Phillips]

    For the average middle-aged, Baby Boomer F…ck Up American held hostage by the prospect of bankruptcy by exploding health care costs, Obamacare strikes me as a somewhat “better deal” for the hostage in a hostage situation.

    For the average twenty-something millennial in good health also held hostage by the prospect of bankruptcy by exploding health care costs, Obamacare strikes me as a somewhat “worse deal” for the hostage in a hostage situation. (For example, the millennial who formerly paid $75 a month for a policy with a $500 deductible may now under Obamacare have to pay $200 – $300 a month for an insurance policy with a $6,000 deductible.)

    The state of democracy in America: “Look at me Irish. I am the Captain now.”

  25. rube-i-con October 14, 2013 at 9:02 pm #

    Very cogent remarks this week, and Kunstler’s piece spectacularly makes the case for collapse. I am truly frightened reading it, though I do tend to lean to the technology will save us side.

    It is obvious that Americans have no choice but to revert to the self-sufficiency that was the hallmark of the country until the 1940s or so.

    A return to honor, fair play, saving (not bloody spending), and living within one’s means. I have paid cash for everything since 2009 out of necessity and am accustomed to it. I will not live on credit anymore.

    I think it’s clear that CHAOS *can* ensue within the space of a few hours. The poster who said society can’t fall apart in a week is wrong, dead wrong.

    Look at the foodstamp cards fiasco, look at the blackout riots that occur within the space of minutes.

    The ‘generation swindled by the college loan racket’ mostly has themselves to blame for awful decisions on what to study. Still, this just reflects part of the racket itself, i.e. the failure to emphasize what is worth studying.

    JHK, your writing this week is nothing short of spectacular:

    In any case, the older generations have completely disgraced themselves and it is only a question of how cruelly history will treat them in their unseating.

    James, you are entirely correct in that a time of recknoning is creepily close.

    There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But angels will arise out of the ashes.

    peace peaceniks

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    • beantownbill. October 14, 2013 at 9:48 pm #

      I agree with you. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. You were so negative last week about this blog. What’s changed?

      Reply to Mike:

      Do you want to live in fear of the future, or tackle it head on? Since no one really knows the future, why not think positive? That seems better than walking around depressed, and since the future hasn’t happened yet, at this exact moment there’s equal probability of a good outcome or bad. It’s a waste of emotional energy to be pessimistic.

      • mike October 15, 2013 at 12:23 am #

        “…I’d say that it made me angry, but then I’ve been angry the past 45 years,…”

        “It’s all about the math, folks. Too many people and not enough resources, physical and financial. It’s heartbreaking to me that we find ourselves in this position. We have the ability to resolve our problems, but because of a combination of greed and incompetence we are not going along the right path. Despite all this, I am still optimistic…”

        Just responding to your statements not that I am not optimistic but that you claim to be and I don’t see it in your dystopian and angry comments.

    • WW October 15, 2013 at 4:13 am #

      With the advent of modern technology and social media such as FB and twitter large scale social disruption and collapse can occur faster and on a far larger scale than ever before. Historically protests and revolutions took days or even months to communicate and coordinate now it can be done in minutes. Small wonder governments want the ability to kill the internet and phone networks!

      • ozone October 15, 2013 at 9:39 am #

        There it is again! It’s the race between a mass awakening and centralized full spectrum dominance.
        Good point on the speed of communications/information.

  26. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 9:28 pm #

    JHK suggests an interesting idea:

    I understand that the total U.S. student loan debt is now over US$1 trillion, and much of the debt has been securitized such that a mass default in payments on the primary student loan debt obligations could potentially create a tsunami of cascading exponential defaults in the long chain of debt and counter-security. If so, then the U.S. millennials could potentially hold the U.S. government hostage by threatening to bring down the entire economic house-of-cards by threatening to default on payment of their student loans? One mass Twitter movement threatening to default on student loans might be all that it would take?

  27. Arn Varnold October 14, 2013 at 9:35 pm #

    LeGarde and the IMF are just another tool of the Oligarchs. They along with the WB are laying financial waste to the world.
    Free Trade agreements are another tool to rape the emerging countries of the world.
    But the word is out; and many countries are not buying the crap.

  28. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 9:46 pm #

    Perhaps a good day for the millennials to threaten a mass default on their student loans would be “International Students Day”—November 17th?

  29. Pucker October 14, 2013 at 10:07 pm #

    [Halloween is coming up.]

    I bet that it’s “really weird” to go trick-or-treating at the White House.

    Standing on the White House door step, ringing the door bell, and waiting in horrific anticipation of what’s going to open the door.
    Boehner, Gingrich, Cruz, Obama and The Gang probably imbibing all kinds of weird elixirs and worshiping weird idols with human bodies and animal heads?

  30. bilbo room 101 October 14, 2013 at 10:08 pm #

    Excellent read jim,… good to see you back to old form,

    and especially good to see you have a message of action for the young, and a warning for the old parasites that fucked the young,

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  31. nsa October 15, 2013 at 12:36 am #

    We here in Langley decided to have a little fun and knock down the foodstamp system for awhile……giving you a “taste” of your future. Of course, we chose the darker regions for a test run. Did you enjoy all those videos of afros going nuts in WalMart?

  32. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 1:21 am #

    At about this time tomorrow, Typhoon Wimpha should be slamming into Fukashima.

  33. James Kuehl October 15, 2013 at 6:20 am #

    Some activists who don’t want shale gas drilling or storage here in the Finger Lakes turned to a Native American elder for help. She and two companions spent the last few days walking around the lake while carrying a pail full of water and a feather.

    No wonder my European ancestors so easily wiped them out and took their stuff.

    • Arn Varnold October 15, 2013 at 7:41 am #

      Normally I agree with your posts; but this one is befuddling.
      You blame the victim.
      What we’ve lost in terms of alternative knowledge is incalculable and we are very much the poorer for it.
      Yes, the old ways don’t deal well with the 21st centuries (and the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 20th) knowledge base; but are they wrong for a traditional way of knowing?
      Most will say yes and will remain the poorer for it.
      I say no, emphatically! And will go to my grave with this view.
      Might does not make right; rather it kills humanity in all of its iterations.
      It’s the core of my feeling that we are (the majority) doomed to a very bad existence; paradise tragically lost…

      • James Kuehl October 15, 2013 at 1:54 pm #

        I pity the victims for misjudging their position. Asking the spirit world to intervene in and industrial onslaught will end predictably. It’s okay to pray for lightning to strike, but banking on it isn’t wise.

  34. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 6:47 am #

    There must be a morbid joke in there somewhere, but I can’t think of it yet. Can someone help me out? Thanks.

    “For years, we’ve been hearing that Texas is running out of the drugs it uses to carry out the death penalty.

    In 2011, the state’s supply of the three-drug combination it had long been using expired. Texas switched to using a single drug called Nembutal, then used the last of that Nembutal in an execution late last month.

    These shortages aren’t like the dwindling national helium reserve, or NASA’s plutonium-238 shortage. There’s plenty of Nembutal out there, but the drug’s Danish manufacturers refuse to sell them to us, or any state that’ll use them to put people to death.”

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  35. Arn Varnold October 15, 2013 at 7:50 am #

    …and I will say this: Based on what I’ve seen here, I must say, there should be some serious self reflection.
    I’m a long term blog poster and I’ve never seen a blog get 70+ posts within a mere few hours of introduction.
    It boggles the mind (mine) ; are you that needy? Wanting of attention? So bereft of a life that one hangs on every word of JHK?
    JHK certainly has some things to say and he makes some (not all) good points; but the cultish atmosphere must make even him a bit uneasy.

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 9:34 am #

      Arn,
      It appears that you’ve gone from disparaging a few to disparaging all. To me, that position is deliberately provocative. (Perhaps the mark of instigation.) Generally, I’m quite suspicious of that tack from observing the reptilian buttons that get pushed by it. (IOW, it makes me “uneasy”.)

      …And, do you find another author anywhere on the net that uses hyperbolic language more entertainingly? This is why his essays are awaited with the proverbial bated breath and posters get to work finding supporting links and personal anecdotes and opinion. JHK has sparked memory and sharpened dissection tools for peering into motive and agenda that reside in our ‘news’ outlets. (IOW, it doesn’t make me “uneasy”; it’s quite encouraging and spurs creative preparations for coming hard and unstable times.)

      • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 1:56 pm #

        That’s what Arn did when he called Conservatives “Racists”. But that was alright with you, right?

        • ozone October 15, 2013 at 6:21 pm #

          I can’t make you out; is that Reptilian you’re speaking?

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 9:45 am #

      What say you about the trackbacks and pingbacks below?
      More fertile fields for cult propagation?

      • Arn Varnold October 15, 2013 at 10:09 am #

        I’m not really familiar with trackbacks and pingbacks; but what has that to do with reality?
        The day to day reality we all face.
        The cult-like following here is disturbing, if only because it reflects a lack of reflection in ones actual existence.
        Most here are sycophants and parasitically feed off of the POV that JHK presents.
        From experience I can say that dissenting opinions and POV’s are vehemently discouraged here at CFN.
        Mine is just an observation; true or not? I can’t be sure.
        but surely it’s worth discussion, no?

        • ozone October 15, 2013 at 10:28 am #

          An observation that I’ve given my opinion on: Glass-house stone-throwing.
          Of course, others will decide for themselves whether it’s worthy of discussion or not. (I certainly don’t wish for any type of control over that! ;))

          This particular JHK essay, posted to Zero Hedge, has received 11,336 reads (to this time stamping). A goodly number of comments as well; whether on-topic or tangential.
          Factor that.

        • ozone October 15, 2013 at 10:32 am #

          Ps. I’m quite puzzled that you haven’t looked into/been curious about the links at the bottom of the page. After all, one has to scroll right over them in order to compose a comment.

          • mike October 15, 2013 at 11:24 am #

            no one doesn’t. one can merely hit the “reply” button beneath any comment.

    • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 10:00 am #

      “So bereft of a life that one hangs on every word of JHK?”

      And your here why?

      LOL

      • Arn Varnold October 15, 2013 at 10:11 am #

        If that is addressed to me, the answer is easy; I’m an agent provocateur…

        • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 11:02 am #

          🙂

  36. rube-i-con October 15, 2013 at 10:20 am #

    No, that’s for the taxpaying comrade/rubes to pay

    Just make sure you keep paying your fair share, gotta get the deficit down, you know. Keep voting Left><Right, too, good citizen. There, you're a good American now, right in your place.

    .
    .
    .

    Family over taxation, no matter the price.

    peace peaceniks

  37. rube-i-con October 15, 2013 at 10:33 am #

    You were so negative last week about this blog. What’s changed?

    Kunstler’s very spot on about government decay, but generally not about the rate of descent into entropy and/or chaos on the part of the society in toto.

    The country’s much more resilient than he thinks.

    All the cheeze-doodled southern hicks he despises are overwhelmingly good folks that’d be great to have around in a real emergency. Heck, I see all the tattoo’d herds rise to the occasion to provide assistance in a pinch, it is so pleasantly surprising and wipes away all your preconceptions in a jiffy.

    That’s reality on the ground.

    Still, the US’ fiscal situation – and that of most of the world – is like a wooden cart banging down a bumpy, rocky lane, filled with highly explosive TNT that’ll blow at the slightest perturbation.

    At the same time, there is a huge groundswell of self-reliance that’s made its way back to the populace, e.g. growing own food, working outside the mainstream, forming interconnected sub-groups of support online and in communities. Using alternative energies.

    This is virtually wholly ignored by JHK. So, every now and then I get on my high horse (the higher it is, the farther you fall) and point out the tremendous technological advances that are making a huge impact towards solving many environmental problems, for instance.

    Ergo solar power in Krautland, IBM’s plans to power the world, etc.

    On top of that, all the prognostications of doomsday over the past several decades have not come to pass, and in many respects the opposite has taken place, i.e. things have gotten better, e.g. more food, more leisure time, more entertainment, less work, better health (for those that want it at least).

    Jimmy does have the firepower to make me uneasy, though. Laurels to him on this week’s awesome essay.

    peace peaceniks

  38. RE: the Millennial wave of revolution.

    I think this generation can be broken down into several cohorts:

    1. The damaged – these are the irrecoverably damaged. Physically or psychological. The road to recovery is going o be steep for these kids. They’re just messed up at a biochemical level, either from endogenous means- Mom drank too much Kool-aid during pregnancy, or they got too much Kool-aid during their youth. Or TV, or any other mass media overload.

    2. The rule-followers – these went en masse to Afghanistan, Iraq, and etc. These are the HS football players, the pool of young adults with functional testosterone. Now they’re coming back and dispersing across the landscape with a very modest bank account from months of forced savings. They are acquiring debt at fantastic rates- from car payments to renting the living room furniture. The sky is the limit- they have some physical stamina and everything thats soft with tits looks like a good deal. But the well of banked testosterone is shallow, and nothing sucks testosterone out of a man like Modern America.

    3. The rule-breakers – These kids are going to jail. They are fulfilling their cultural imperatives of being an idiot. They buy into rebellion on a pop media level, get the tattoos and will no doubt impregnate quite a few young women. Its going to be a bumpy road for this cohort.

    4. Women – as a class, they are fairly homogenous. They are circling the wagons. They were told they would inherit the Earth, and so they are. Social media devices and a life of ease and comfort- women have never had it so good. The government follows its prerogatives with a shift toward a nanny state. Their political power is ascendant and will prevail. Conformity is the order of the day. There is no historical precedent for female-driven political change. They have no will to destroy and therefore no ability to create.

    5. The outliers – That is, everyone else. They can only watch as the center comes apart. For whom can one act politically, except their own cohort? From Occupy to the Tea Party, nothing will be able to wake up any mass of people from which to launch a political assault.

    I think the next generation should be considered as well, even if they are still looked at as kids. The Millennials are lost. The next generation is still unmoulded, but how they will make substantial change with the forces arrayed against them is the question.

    They have no chance of changing the mass of the population’s political will toward their own interests. They will have no economic power to change the postmodern capitalist situation of a hollowed out society without coherent social relationships. They are the generation on whom billions of dollars of technological development is trained with the simple objective of subduing, co-opting, and subverting their choices, decisions, and even their identities. They have no chance.

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 11:48 am #

      “I think the next generation should be considered as well, even if they are still looked at as kids. The Millennials are lost. The next generation is still unmoulded, but how they will make substantial change with the forces arrayed against them is the question.

      They have no chance of changing the mass of the population’s political will toward their own interests. They will have no economic power to change the postmodern capitalist situation of a hollowed out society without coherent social relationships. They are the generation on whom billions of dollars of technological development is trained with the simple objective of subduing, co-opting, and subverting their choices, decisions, and even their identities. They have no chance.”

      Great and Infernal Packaging,
      Yikes! If this be true (and it very well might), I’d say that’s something to be very uneasy about!
      (Again, I’m glad you have pointed to “coherent social relationships” as a potent modifier.)

    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 2:42 pm #

      Yes good analysis. Women are dough, either play dough or the good kind for making bread. But man is the yeast that makes them rise to the occasion. They are zero in themselves and only become significant with a 1 in front of them. Of course the 1’s need the 0’s too. That’s equality of a kind I admit.

  39. ozone October 15, 2013 at 11:38 am #

    Mike,
    Yes, that’s true! oops.
    Unless, like this reply, there’s no reply button, or one wants to post a stand-alone comment. THEN, one would have to scroll over the list of linkages. 😉

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  40. BackRowHeckler October 15, 2013 at 11:40 am #

    Wait a minute, Jim. You’re forgetting about the new car, soon to be available, that drives itself. Ya, it navigates around obstacles using sonar and radar. Its been featured on the major news networks almost every day. All you have to do is sit back, drink a beer, f–k around with your I Pod, and enjoy the ride. No worries!

    Well, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will be riding soon, that much is clear. But I’ve been doing some riding myself. If there is anything more fun than chugging around these New England back roads on an old British Army one lunger, I don’t what it is. For I’m trying to enjoy myself in this long emergency, in these last days … while I still can! In fact, here I am right now, at this cafe along the Farmington River, waiting for a roast beef sandwich and fries, draining a few pints of Sam Adams, soaking in the last warmness of the season from the sun that is no longer high in the sky, watching the autumn leaves fall and the river flow.

    Grim days are ahead, just over that rise there.

    –BRH

    • beantownbill. October 15, 2013 at 12:04 pm #

      I’m glad you can still stop and smell the flowers. Have another Sam for me. I see you appear to have bought into the doom paradigm, whereas before you were somewhat skeptical. I generally agree with what you just said, but I don’t believe in its inevitability – there’s still a chance we can dig ourselves out of this hole.

      Here in the Boston area we’ve had very good weather. My wife told me it’s supposed to hit 70 degrees on Thursday.

      I live in the woods (as much as you can call it woods in metro Boston). The trees are so beautiful. Autumn generally depresses me because bare trees are the main sign that winter is bearing down on us, and I have to wait 4 or 5 months for the good weather to return, as well as a strong sun. In any case, I plan to enjoy myself and appreciate life regardless of the weather.

  41. K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 12:03 pm #

    One popular story is called “the energy renaissance.” This is a fairy-tale that pretends that we have enough oil at a cheap enough price to keep driving to WalMart forever. Of course, shale oil wells that cost $12million to drill and produce 80 barrels-a-day for three years before crapping out altogether do not bode well for that outcome, but the wish to believe over-rides the reality. Another laughable story du jour is “the manufacturing renaissance.” This story proposes that the “central corridor” of the USA, from North Dakota to Texas, is about to give China a run for its money in manufacturing.

    Yes along with peak everything we now have peak wishful thinking!

    Reality now far too unpleasant to deal with or mention is rejected as unpleasant. A land of screen staring lotus eaters has better things to do than feel unpleasant and sensual distraction ready at the push of a button is far more fun. Thought of reform is banished and a cargo cult emerges which worships an imagined reality where continued faith on fossil fuels and a casino economy is endlessly repeated as salvation from the very problems they create. It is madness. The world has become an asylum where the sane are locked up.

    History rhymes, peak fantasy is again repeated:

    If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels

    We ride the bumpy plateau of peak fantasy but with reality relentlessly barking at the door the decline becomes creepily close. Soon reality must inevitably defeat fantasy.

    But Chris Hedges says it better in his article below:

    The Folly of Empire

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 12:22 pm #

      Day-um, Dawg!
      That was eerily propinquitous; I was about to reference the same great essay…

      “The populations of dying empires are passive because they are lotus-eaters. There is a narcotic-like reverie among those barreling toward oblivion. They retreat into the sexual, the tawdry and the inane, retreats that are momentarily pleasurable but ensure self-destruction. They naively trust it will all work out. As a species, Margaret Atwood observes in her dystopian novel “Oryx and Crake,” “we’re doomed by hope.” And absurd promises of hope and glory are endlessly served up by the entertainment industry, the political and economic elite, the class of courtiers who pose as journalists, self-help gurus like Oprah and religious belief systems that assure followers that God will always protect them. It is collective self-delusion, a retreat into magical thinking.

      “The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than the original,” Daniel J. Boorstin wrote in his book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.” “We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories in the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”
      -Chris Hedges (et al.)

      Alrighty then. I must depart from this cult compound, so as not to be late to my own intervention and deprogramming. See yez…

      • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 5:32 pm #

        And Joseph Tainter is referenced on the second page. Complexity increase as civilization marches towards oblivion makes for a fragile, precarious and inflexible system indeed. The collapse of which shall cause our plunge from the cliff of Seneca. We’ll fall like a victim of Tiberius fell from the cliffs of Capri. It’s a long way down and ours shall also be a long hard fall.

    • beantownbill. October 15, 2013 at 1:03 pm #

      The issue is not whether we prefer fantasy and wishful thinking over reality – for wonderful fantasies can be created that are much more preferable than the outside world – but whether we use wishful thinking to avoid reality. One can hope all they want, but the real world will always trump fiction. Dreaming a phantasmagorical life is not the same thing as not acting in the real one.

      The readily availability of ever newer and potent recreational drugs (think Molly and Krocadil), the vast array of high caloric malnutritional food, the profusion of ever more realistic video games and the proliferation of hundreds of TV channels make it understandable that the average American lives in a make-believe world.

      I have had periods of depression and periods of optimism in my life. Optimism is much, much better than depression, believe me, for I speak from experience. I’ve been optimistic for many years now and it has served me well. I do fantasize a lot in my mind, but I do my acting in the real world. I realize things may fall apart and I prepare accordingly. I don’t think I’m exceptional, so if I can operate successfully in both worlds, anybody else can too. Continually crying doom creates a lot of negative energy.

      • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 5:38 pm #

        Yes Beantown one must operated successfully in both worlds. Embrace the doom, deal with it, then let it go and enjoy the hope and joy of life. Be balanced and let your optimism be true.

  42. nsa October 15, 2013 at 12:06 pm #

    Little Debbie,
    Very cogent analysis…..you should apply to work with us here in Langley where your insights would be rewarded.
    Our analysis here in Langley indicates the future of the nation will closely resemble the present political distribution in California….no R can be elected to statewide office……even female, mex, afro, fruity Rs can’t win a seat. All of social democracy is about who gives away the most free stuff. What next? Beerstamps? Free porn subscriptions? Subsidized tats? Free bus rides from the social services office to the nearest slot casino? No hope for the whigs…er Rs……….

    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 2:37 pm #

      Hah! I have heard of Whigs galore. They can drum, they can drum. This is what countless Whites have worked for, why shouldn’t they celebrate? What next? Now that Western Culture has been deleted, why not get rid of our humanity? Are we not not Men? And after that, hell the puddle is the limit. Why not get rid of our skeleton so we are just Lovecraftian puddles – gelatinous and viscous? As long as the White puddles are subservient to the Black ones, it’s all good.

  43. Startdigging October 15, 2013 at 1:19 pm #

    Here in Canuckistan, I can only shake my head at the state of affairs in the U.S. The country is so fractured, polarized and paralyzed that I can’t see how anyone can believe this will not end badly. Devoid of national leadership, armed to the teeth domestically and militarily, with a long line of haters (deserving and undeserving) drooling at the prospect of failure, your elected ass clowns fiddle while Rome burns.

    Speaking of Rome, it would not surprise me if a patriotic military leader steps up and becomes becomes the catalyst for the second civil war

    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 2:31 pm #

      Hitler agreed with you. He said he couldn’t see much hope for a country half Negrified and Judaized. Meanwhile your country becomes more diverse and thus divided every day. Third World immigration was implemented to destroy the West and it’s proceeding admirably.

      • Startdigging October 15, 2013 at 3:48 pm #

        Bullshit. I work with new commers all the time. Most are hard working and can’t believe their luck getting here. They are harder working more, more patriotic and freedom loving than some of the multi-generational home bread dipshits that consitute our welfare class. Im a 4th generation Canadian and would take them any day. Being Canadian is a state of mind not the colour of your skin.

        • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 7:05 pm #

          So having a country is just a matter of hard work and economics? None of that loyalty and values crap for you, eh? Read Londonistan – it’s coming to a city near you. The Chinese have already taken Vancover. It seems the farther north you go, the more gullible Whites become. You’re desperately competing with Sweden as to who can give their country away the fastest to the most alien groups imaginable: Blacks and Muslims. Put those together and you get Somalis – who have turned parts of Sweden and Norway into rape capitalis, with higher rates than New York City. Don’t feel bad, you’ll get there.

  44. Q. Shtik October 15, 2013 at 1:32 pm #

    Testing to see if I’m un-banned.

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    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 2:02 pm #

      Welcome. What happened? Too many annoying emails to the Boss? A hardened survivor of office politics should have known better.

      What do you think of the epic fail of the Healthcare.gov website?

      • Warren October 15, 2013 at 2:25 pm #

        640 million $US, for a website that does not work, they can not even tell us how many people signed up. The specious argument that it was overwhelmed is in actuality an argument against government control of health care, for example Amazon has many more daily customers and its website costs far less than the ACA site.

        ACA think the DMV taking over private heath clinics.

        • nsa October 15, 2013 at 2:48 pm #

          ?????????????????????????????????? Affordable cunt Act…..where do we sign up?

  45. nsa October 15, 2013 at 2:45 pm #

    The foodstamp shutdown was just a dry run. We shut down the power grid and within 3 months half of you will have murdered and eaten the other half in the darkness of night….and come to the conclusion that cannibalism is the “new normal”……..the full spectrum takeover of all of modern existence has just been too easy……

  46. Q. Shtik October 15, 2013 at 3:13 pm #

    I hope everyone, and in particular Rubeicon, will read this article from the NYT Book Review section.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/books/review/countdown-by-alan-weisman.html?_r=0

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 6:50 pm #

      Well, from reading that article, I can’t see what could possibly go wrong! They’ll think of something, won’t “they”?
      Shtik to it, it’s working.
      (Of course you do realize you’re like smallpox, leprosy and bubonic plague, don’t you? Never to be completely eradicated. ;))

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 6:54 pm #

      BTW, “That’s a joke, son!” (tm Foghorn Leghorn), as probably only you can figure out anymore.
      Welcome back to da swarming congress of fornication.

    • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 11:11 pm #

      I read it and agree with you everyone should. The problem is that there were plenty of articles like this in the seventies before the Regan era set America intellectual thought backwards 150 years. They did not do any good then except to cause sensitive high I.Q. types to have fewer kids. But sensitive high I.Q. types are always in short supply.

      So what’s the answer?

  47. Q. Shtik October 15, 2013 at 3:36 pm #

    I provide this link especially for Janos:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/purple-boots-silver-stars-and-white-parents.html

    It is a story that is a disaster on so many levels, yet I’m sure Liberals find it wonderful.

    • ozone October 15, 2013 at 7:06 pm #

      Stupid story about stupid people who encourage stupid consumerist longings… leading to the writing of stupid, inflammatory opinion pieces.
      Why would it be only “liberals” who would be blinded by their pet ideologies and unexamined social mores? I can never understand that viewpoint.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 10:44 pm #

        Because Reality is beyond both liberal and conservative – as they are merely two sides to the same coin. In other words, Reality is Conservative in the original sense. There is a price to be paid for everything. No free lunches. Race and Culture go together like peas and carrots. Of course you’re right about “conservatism” if that’s any consolation to you. And almost all you see is this kind of faux conservatism in which they ape the liberalism of yester year and wait for the Communists posing as liberals to initiate the next change.

        This kind of consumer culture and peacock behavior is natural to the Black Race as related by both Classical and Muslim authors.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 10:56 pm #

      The Liberals here refuse to talk about Obama Care. They are evidently embarrassed they voted for him or they are still bizarrely hoping that he succeeds even though he is revealed as a destroyer.

      Race is not nothing. It is far closer to being everything than nothing. Read my words carefully – I did not say it is everything.

      No matter how they are raised, Blacks will still want to primp and pimp and strut. And they will hate those who are more intelligent and beautiful than themselves. The best way to raise them is in complete isolation from the popular culture – as Schwartz Amishmen. This is their best chance. Obviously this is unlikely and beyond our means. Far better to just give them their own Nation and watch the fun from afar.

  48. budizwiser October 15, 2013 at 4:58 pm #

    I just noticed another fine website – the “Oildrum” has gone by the wayside. One of my pet peeves about the “information age” is that independent new sources are often unavailable for events covered en mass by regular media.

    For instance – how would one go about discovering the “true” – or lawful chain of events that transpire if the debt ceiling law is not amended?

    Who really decides the order of payments and daily activities of the treasury? I note that most of the “oaths” taken by most of the legislative branch as well as the executive offices are not even remotely adhered to.

    I’ve always wondered about how and when that ugly beast – known as the rule of law would present itself?

    In other words who would get to declare a particular bond or other obligation in default?

    Are the guys in the backrooms giggling like the toadies in “Alice in Wonderland?” Isn’t this whole debt-thing more kabuki theater?

    Is there a “fed.gov” site that actually tells the tales and truth?

    • K-Dog October 15, 2013 at 5:53 pm #

      Kabuki theatre and a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. An artificial placement of the line of scrimmage. A false crisis that detracts from the real problems of the land. I’d think the distractions in Washington planned but that would be way too paranoid. The dance of the clueless ignorant is unconscious. They live in a bubble that might as well be on another planet.

      An enlightened populace would vote them out.

  49. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 8:46 pm #

    The Roman Emperor Nero was a sadistic homosexual. Nero bankrupted the Empire.

    During the Wei Dynasty, the perspicacious emperor attempted to downsize the army because the empire needed more coinage which was to be made from melting down the soldiers’ armor and weapons into coins. The emperor’s order, however, was ignored by the gentry who kept their armies while the central government’s army disbanded. Result: the central government was overthrown.

    One sign of Collapse is governmental financial distress.

    As they say in Thailand: “No Money, No Honey.”

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  50. rube-i-con October 15, 2013 at 9:25 pm #

    I hope everyone, and in particular Rubeicon, will read this article from the NYT Book Review section.

    The cited book is about countdown to population decimation due to overpopulation.

    These doomsday predictions are notoriously wrong.

    “In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. “In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,” and by the 1980s most of the world’s important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million.”

    That is the same Ehrlich that bet Julian Simon that major resources would become way way expensive over subsequent decades….and lost badly, as prices tumbled.

    These latter-day warnings are the same type trumpeted here on this board, many based on the same ideas…limited resources, no room to grow.

    It’s not that black and white. Resources can be used over and over, endlessly in some cases. Water is limited, yet we reuse it unceasingly.

    Work is an unlimited resource. There are always things to do, and people willing to pay for them. This is, at times, muffed by the bureaucrats that have crafted the wonderful new obamacare website.

    All of the 7+ billion folks living have needs, ergo everyone can work for everyone else, to an extent. Yes, it’s a very simplified take, but it’s too late in the PM to expand on at my end. Think it through.

    We can endlessly grow food, forests, and reuse water. We literally have all the energy we need bombarding us from the sun each day. There, we have the makings of solving our basic needs. There is plenty of land space available on the planet, unfortunately people crowd together.

    Get rid of some goddam religions, at least in countries where it blatantly ruins the society, e.g. the middle east, india, pakistan, etc.

    As fuck, people, toughen up, the world is not ending. Humans thrive at solving problems. That’s what’s let us reach so many billions in the first place. Isn’t it?

    peace peaceniks

    • Arn Varnold October 16, 2013 at 8:04 am #

      @ rube-i-con
      Get rid of some goddam religions, at least in countries where it blatantly ruins the society, e.g. the middle east, india, pakistan, etc.
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      …and the U.S.
      Why did you not include religion in America; it’s fucking insane, no?

  51. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 9:27 pm #

    TOKYO, Japan (UPDATED) – A typhoon described as the “strongest in 10 years” was closing in on Japan Tuesday, October 15, on a path that will take it towards the precarious Fukushima nuclear power plant.

    Typhoon Wipha, packing winds of nearly 200 kilometers (125 miles) per hour near its centre and bringing heavy rains, was in the Pacific south of Japan Tuesday evening, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

    The storm was moving north at 35 km/h, according to the agency.

    It was forecast to reach an area off the Tokyo metropolitan area by early Wednesday, October 16, and later in the day would be off the coast of Fukushima, where the crippled nuclear power plant sits.

    http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/asia-pacific/41387-strong-typhoon-wipha-heads-for-japan

  52. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 10:11 pm #

    Diamond missed one important cause of Collapse: The Center’s loss of control over The Money as a powerful tool to organize, induce and coerce people. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Army handed out bags of money to the hostiles, but through accounting fraud they couldn’t control The Money. The Chinese government may not be able to control The Money either? The Money can then be used against the Central government.

    “Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed

    • Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 11:56 pm #

      Close thy Diamond and open thy Gibbon: diversity is a killer of empires. In the latter days of Rome there were very few Romans left in the City and whole ancient Aristocratic families had died out. Sir John Grubb said a similar situation occurred in the later Arab Empire.

  53. Pucker October 15, 2013 at 10:28 pm #

    When his advisers finally warned Nero that the provinces were in rebellion, Nero immediately took charge declaring that Nero himself would lead a massive Roman Army of homosexual singers, dancers, and actors “…to subdue the barbarian hordes with art and beauty.”

    It didn’t end well for Nero.

  54. Janos Skorenzy October 15, 2013 at 11:12 pm #

    The good guys won. Us. Happy Columbus Day. Columbus was a Crusader looking for help against the Muslims from the Hindus. He was looking for a passage to India since India was cut off from Europe by land by Islam.

    http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/10/life-styles-native-imposed-2/#more-42883

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  55. Q. Shtik October 15, 2013 at 11:53 pm #

    Since we last spoke, prior to my 50 days of exile by Jim to Isla Elba, events have turned life in the Q household upside down. “Mom” (91 years old) ascended the steps from the first floor to the second. My wife was right behind her. They were headed for the bathroom where my wife was going to bathe her. Mom took an extra step that wasn’t there, tumbled over and broke her hip.

    This is one of the most common accidents that old people have. Most of the time it is not actually the hip that is broken but rather the upper portion of the femur (thigh) bone close to the hip. And yet the person is said to have “broken their hip.” So it was with my M-I-L.

    Our local First Aid Squad performed admirably getting Mom down the stairs, into an ambulance and over to the hospital. Two of the three squad members were yarmulke-wearing Jews called in mid-service from Temple. It was a Saturday and an important Jewish holiday. To judge by the screaming, the pain for Mom must have been excruciating. A gruesome operation was performed in which the broken bone is said to be “nailed” back together. Four days later she was shipped out of the hospital to a rehab facility where she has been for about four weeks thus far and is making precious little progress. I can only imagine how much Medicare will be billed when all is said and done.

    My wife visits daily for several hours. I go every third day or so for moral support. Most of the time is spent with Mom weeping pathetically and asking over and over “Where am I?” and “What happened to me?” and “When am I going home?” Her dementia and loss of memory seems to have been made worse by this accident. It’s a real trip.

    On a few days I have been present at the 5PM dinner meal. Most of the patients arrive in wheel chairs and some using walkers in super slow-mo. I sit next to Mom putting bite size amounts on her fork which she lifts with a trembling hand to her mouth. Two or three bites and she doesn’t want any more but I force her. The arrival of the food at her mouth and the opening of the mouth to receive it are out of sync. Like an anthropologist, I observe all the other ancient specimens many of whom similarly cannot feed themselves in a normal manner. The old lady at our table with five broken ribs seems to have a decent appetite. A ninety six year old man at another table barks out in a stentorian voice to no one in particular, “I HAVE TO GO TO THE JOHN.”

    There are four or five women for every man. Their hair is white and thinning. Their stare is blank and joyless. They have forgotten their table manners. Some chew with mouths open and food falling out onto their bibs. Everyone has a bib. Some have daughters attending them. A 99 year old woman named Anna is attended daily by identical twin, unrelated but devoted, god-daughters who, themselves, are in their seventies. Some had never married, had no children and no living friends or relatives to visit them.

    The longevity fostered by technology of which Rube-I-con is so enamored is in fact a curse. We are living too long. Seven billion people is too many.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 12:08 am #

      I saw a bit of this kind of horror with my Father. I don’t know how people who work in these kinds of places can take it: it would overwhelm me with sadness. Big hearts and small minds? Dulled perceptions? Or really really big Hearts that can digest all of the negativity? Probably all of these in varying degrees in each worker…

      Read Larry Niven’s “Protector” for another perspective. Humanity was seeded here by an alien race known as the Pak. The Pak are just semi-intelligent apes until middle age until they are irresistibly drawn to eat of the “Tree of Life” whose fruit transforms them into brilliant almost ageless supermen. In other words, old age is unnatural. We are supposed to turn into Pak Protectors. But evidently, the Tree of Life failed on Earth. And humans mutated into more intelligent but weaker apes. Phsstpok came here from the Pak world looking for the lost expedition. He finds Earth and begins to plan on transforming us into a Pak World by modifying the Tree of Life so it can grow here.

      • Neon Vincent October 16, 2013 at 6:11 pm #

        Congratulations, Janos, you’ve found the one topic that can get me to engage you civilly–Larry Niven. As long as we stick to his writings, I think we can converse without me lunging at your virtual neck like an enraged Kzin–or finding some sunlight to burn your undead corpse to a crisp.

        Anyway, after decades of false starts, including one that cost me money and an opportunity for some minor league fame and money, it looks like there will finally be a Ringworld movie. In fact, it will be a mini-series. Who knows, the sequels might even get to the Protectors on the Ringworld.

        http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/05/finally-ringworld-movie.html

    • K-Dog October 16, 2013 at 2:58 am #

      I wish the best for you and your family in your difficult time.

    • beantownbill. October 16, 2013 at 12:43 pm #

      I know where you are coming from. My mother, living in Florida, turned 100. She has no mind left. She was a very smart woman and would be appalled if she could see herself now. I’ve decided that if she gets sick or develops some serious condition, I will let her go. If she gets pneumonia, for example, I’d let her be given antibiotics, but that’s it.

      The last time I visited her in Florida, in March, she couldn’t walk and could barely see or talk. She had no idea who I was. I can’t tell you how difficult it was for me to see this once-vibrant woman as a mere husk. Maybe, just maybe if I go Florida next winter, I’ll visit her again, but I might not. Why see her when she gets no enjoyment or has any awareness at all from my presence? I’d only be going for myself, and the pain of seeing her again like she is, far outweighs any benefits.
      I know she is being well taken care of, so I feel comfortable with her in Florida. I have already said goodbye in my mind.

  56. ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 5:06 am #

    “It would crash the banks and snap the links in every chain of obligation holding the fiasco of globalism together.”

    I swear, I had to re-read that line 3 times (and it slowed down my 150 words per minute to about 95 or so)… Yet, I did *finally* get the message (whuz that the ‘point’?). I think I missed the, “that’s,” between “obligation” and “holding our” (haha, the ‘chain’ [{tm} Fleetwood Mac], “that’re”, “,”, …)…

    “sowbugs under a rotten log”

    After reading that, I srsly HAD to do a google on trilobites… I ripped on ma and step da tonite, about how there were only 2 billion when they grew up, yet there are over 7 billion now, and there are about 3000% less forests, and the ocean wasn’t a cesspool of mercury and lead back then ({tm} coal burning), and how their grandchildren were going to be the ones to suffer the consequences of overconsumption and overpollution – well, not *quite* in those words (but about *exactly* most of them, say 87.4%)… Thx tho, for the 20k daily civil war stat – really *grinds* ideals about exceptionalism…

    Leveraging (100::1) exponential growth without bounds!!! Fraudsters rejoice?!… OMG, the vig – hehehe!!!

    Wishing for 12 million $$$ wells!!! AHAHAHAH!!! BOT-boy workin’ for a *LIVIN*!!! I play with 10 year interest rates (2.79?!?)…

  57. Pucker October 16, 2013 at 6:37 am #

    Is it healthy to worry about one’s Anxiety Disorder?

    Thank you.

    • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 6:54 am #

      What about anxiety worries *you* – HaH! 2.79% 10 yr *RISING*…

  58. Pucker October 16, 2013 at 6:50 am #

    Speaking of “Creepily Close”, if you don’t have anything better to do and have an inclination to freak yourself out, then Google what inmates on Death Row choose as their Last Meals.

    Examples from memory include:

    – A bucket of blueberry ice cream

    – 3 fried T-bone steaks and bucket of ice cream.

    Very occasionally, there’s the Death Row inmate who declines to eat anything for his last meal, but this is very rare.

    Usually, they seem very hungry, and take that one last chance to “Go Whole Hog”, as they say…..

    This must be The Human Condition?

    • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 6:57 am #

      Well, at least 90% of them are *GUILTY* – heh (FUCK the 10%)

      KILL THEM!!!

  59. rube-i-con October 16, 2013 at 10:12 am #

    The longevity fostered by technology of which Rube-I-con is so enamored is in fact a curse. We are living too long.

    I may be enthralled by technology, but not past the point of humanity. I’ve experienced the horrific old-age homes up close and personal, as in spending hours beside the lights-are-on-but-no-one’s-home elderly using diapers, tied to chars so they don’t wander off, the stink of shit everywhere, oldsters so decrepit they can barely move. It is inhuman.

    They don’t want to eat because their brains are telling them to stop living, and rightly so.

    I have always maintained that, if I get close to such a point, I will dress up in a coat and tails and tophat, have a wonderful dinner at the top of a massive cliff with my family and loved ones, and then soar downwards into eternity. God grant me the fortitude to do so.

    What better pean to life than to live it in the fullness of ability, and to recuse onesself, so to speak, when circumstances warrant?

    Like an athlete, you gotta know when to retire.

    So nice to see you back, Q, I missed you.

    peace peaceniks

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    • I’ve always wondered about death with dignity. I get it, I respect it, but with Obamacare, I can live on the public dime pretty much until forever.

      We are closing in on a cure for cancer. By “we” I mean my fellow scientists. Basically, we’re going to use our knowledge of the immune system to make it possible for your very effective patrol systems to destroy any cancer cell or tumor. If you are outside of the monitoring network (that is not regularly submitting to a blood sample) you might get kicked in the nuts by your own prostate.

      After that will come a whole cargo ship full of innovations that will essentially patch the holes in your leaky boat as they appear, until the boat is all patch. Its already started.

      I don’t have a problem with this at all. As long as we can keep the hormone levels in range, etc., human life is going to creep into the realm of perpetuity, which will only make death less dignified and seem more wasteful. The consequences of everyone staying on Earth forever in terms of the environment are obvious. The only way to have both a functional ecosystem and immortal population is a radical change of life priorities in respect to how we live on the planet.

      The prudent thing to do, for the young people, and especially the very young, is start designing their upbringing in such a way as to prepare them to live essentially forever. If a conscious effort is not undertaken, we are going to have continued the three-act paradigm over a longer time frame. The three-act paradigm (youth, adult, old age) is way past relevance. Even though average lifespan has nearly tripled since the 19th century, the scheme remains. The effect has been an extension of adolescence and old age, and an unreasonable expectation of a 20-year career. I’d hold that a wasted late adolescence is as undignified as a wasted old age.

      We are living longer but the socio-economic “package” the culture foists on us is built around a 1950’s era concept of a lifetime. Hence, a generation is going into the post-65 bracket with no idea what to DO with their lives, not even having PREPARED for it.

      The modern concept of “retirement” is a vision of leisure and relaxation- also a good descriptor of the current post-adolescent period. A period of aimlessness, lack of ambition, and a whole lot of killing time. When I look at a Carnival cruise ship full of Boomers, I can only think, yes, but what is the purpose of your living? I think the party lasts a few years, but then, a general boredom sets in, because you literally had no plans for this time of life. No goals. No direction. You become delinquent. You adopt the stupid conventions of your peer group. You become a stoned, sleepy idiot reading the New York Times and think you’ve seen it all and know it all. In short, you blow it. It gets pathetic before it gets rest-home pathetic.

      • beantownbill. October 16, 2013 at 12:25 pm #

        At last! Someone here on CFN who, at least on this subject matter, thinks exactly as I do.

        I am over 65, And still working. Over the years I enjoyed a very good lifestyle devoid of savings. Now I’m paying for it. But you know what? I had very good times and I don’t regret for a minute how I lived my life. I’m still in good health (apparently) and running my business is no problem. Even so, I’d like to take a year off. At the end of the year, I’d be crazy to get back to work.

    • Arn Varnold October 16, 2013 at 11:37 am #

      @ rube-i-con
      Get rid of some goddam religions, at least in countries where it blatantly ruins the society, e.g. the middle east, india, pakistan, etc.
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      …and the U.S.
      Why did you not include religion in America; it’s fucking insane, no?
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Hey! Are you ignoring me on my comment?
      Come on man, get with the program…

    • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 3:07 pm #

      “at the top of a massive cliff”

      Bwah, the cliffs of Moher!!! We hiked that 1 back in ’98 – my sister hung over the edge many times – hell, most of the topsoil was totally saturated with rainwater (slip’slidin’ away)…

      And do you fall all the way down, into the “social security” net?!?

  60. Q. Shtik October 16, 2013 at 11:28 am #

    No one has mentioned it but Oct 11th has come and gone and the DOW did not drop to 3837. That was the date and the number, or something like it, I believe, that Jim mentioned for the financial demise of the western world.

    Professional doomsters like Jim are forced in a way to condense their clear long term vision into a scenario that plays out in the very near future. But as we all know, dire circumstances almost always develop slowly. People of the year 2113 may not even be aware that earth and humanity have suffered a terrible collapse in the last hundred years. They will have all but forgotten the pandemic of 2057 that killed off 37% of earth’s population. After all, how many of us dwell sadly each day on the horrors of the bubonic plague?

    This is my problem with Rube-i-con’s relentless optimism.

    • beantownbill. October 16, 2013 at 12:46 pm #

      For me, better relentless optimism than relentless depression.

      • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 3:10 pm #

        Better for me, to focus on other triviality, than to *obsess*…

  61. rube-i-con October 16, 2013 at 11:52 am #

    This is my problem with Rube-i-con’s relentless optimism.

    In my best Indian accent: Karma is a bitch, Q.

    Make it your bitch, and come over to the light on the side of optimism.
    Strike a match in all the pitch black darkness, and know you were made to be part of that light.

    Positive thinking begets positive results, it cascades down thru all the chinks and crannies of your life & just keeps making things better and better.

    And, as you well know from quantum physics, we apparently create our reality on a certain level. Why not create peace and harmony and solutions, friend?

    Even the souls in hell will be released once they repent and only think
    positively.

    peace peaceniks

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:44 am #

      “Positive thinking begets positive results, it cascades down thru all the chinks and crannies of your life & just keeps making things better and better.”

      Please provide a link to a rigidly controlled study that shows any such thing. I call patent bullshit and more layers of new-agey wishing to hide behind.

      …Or is it simply true because you want it to be? Strangely similar to pronouncements of the player of the one-string racial banjo.

  62. rube-i-con October 16, 2013 at 12:13 pm #

    Hey! Are you ignoring me on my comment?

    No, friend, not ignoring you, I think everyone should just append their comments to the END of the comments section, which makes it much easier to follow what’s being written and responded to.

    Everyone, please write your comments at the end of the comments section, like on the old JHK board.

    peace peaceniks

  63. hawk711 October 16, 2013 at 1:27 pm #

    Another great post Jim.

    Now that the crisis in Washington appears to be over for the short term, read the alternative history of how it ends… starting with the Treason Trial of Ted Cruz…

    December 1, 2013, 10 AM EST. The Supreme Court.

    “How do you plead, Senator, to the charges of Treason?”

    “Not Guilty, your Honor.”

    “I guess we have a ball game then. Play ball gentleman. Mr. Holder, you may proceed with your opening statement.”

    “Yes, Mr. President… I mean Mr. Chief Justice. We have a very detailed and well documented case against the defendant, Mr. Cruz. We will show that he conspired with his fellow Republicans and strategically chosen members of the media to bring down the Government of the United States. This heinous act of treason was almost successful in destroying the Republic.”

    “Thank you Eric. Mr. Cruz, your turn.”

    Ted stood up and looked around the courtroom, stroking his beard. He glared at Eric Holder. Justice Clinton appeared to be nodding off.

    “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country. Four score and twenty years ago, the democrats foisted upon this nation an abomination, or should I say an Obama nation. Socialism came to our shores, big time! Oh, they said that the only thing we had to fear, was fear itself. Well, be afraid. Be very afraid. The reign of terror has begun. The guillotine is being set up in the square. Madame Defarge is knitting while the executioner sharpens his blade. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Get locked and loaded my friends. That’s what you can do for your country. Remember the Maine!!! Seriously. Remember the Maine. Remember the Alamo too.

    read more of parts 7-9 and Epilogue at http://jimheald.blogspot.com

    • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 2:53 pm #

      Yeah how dare someone try to put us on a budget and avoid default. The Democrats are holding America hostage. They merely have to turn the EBT cards off and America burns.

  64. volodya October 16, 2013 at 1:30 pm #

    China’s official press agency published an article calling for a de-americanized world and an end to the USD as the world’s reserve currency.

    I don’t know what Beijing is contemplating. Who knows, maybe they’re thinking the US is looking a bit too much like Argentina.

    Maybe they think they’ve milked this thing as much as they can, that they now have un-godly productive capacity and technology they didn’t have 20 years ago. All raining down from the sky, all gratis. Or that’s how it seemed at the time.

    Maybe they really are casting a skeptical eye on that couple trillion in T bills they have on the books. Maybe they’re looking at this thing from a cost-benefit point of view, maybe they’re thinking that writing off a trillion or two isn’t the worst thing considering what was handed over to them.

    Maybe they’re rationalizing this two trillion as what it cost to industrialize China. Because, after-all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

    Too bad it won’t get re-paid. OTOH, who could really have believed in the first place that the US would ever make good on these astronomical amounts? Nobody but delusional Nobel prize winners in economics and for sure nobody with a stitch of sense.

    Waving good-bye to two trillion or a substantial piece of it will create seriously large problems. Nobody but silly-assed Nobel prize winners would think that debt on this scale doesn’t matter.

    Maybe this is the Chinese leadership serving notice that it was fun and profitable (for them). But it’s over.

    Things go on until they can’t. People accept USD until they don’t.

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    • ozone October 16, 2013 at 7:33 pm #

      While america the indispensable has been re-inflating and pretending the stock market has real value for real people, here’s a picture of what the chinese have been doing with their Treasury IOU’s:

      http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/05/China%20vs%20US%20currency%20war.jpg

      You decide which might be the better strategy…

      • ZrCrypDiK October 17, 2013 at 4:31 am #

        Let me guesss – ghost-town vegas in the China desert?!… Hehe, sounds “tout sweet”!!!

        • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:02 am #

          lol
          I’d say that’s a Vegas that’s already in place! Just gotta change the name on the deed. 😉

  65. volodya October 16, 2013 at 1:32 pm #

    Oh yeah, something else may be over too. European walking dead banks are so rotten that even Draghi says you’re not allowed to know just how rotten. Because everyone is wondering who’s going to pay to prop them up. But nobody gets to know just how messed up things are until there are committments to pay. Make sense?

    What’s that you say? “Bail ins?” Meaning, snatching deposits? But maybe letting well connected depositors get their money out quietly? Or, IOW, save the powerful and shag the powerless?

    What’s that you say? There’s SO much more? Like silencing whistle blowers who might tell lies about European banks’ involvement in tax evasion and money laundering? Maybe police charges to keep them arrested and incommunicado? Maybe some tragic accidents? No, perish the thought.

    But, having said that, we can’t let a few ill-informed, low level malcontents threaten the system, can we?

    Given Europe’s history of not letting minor moral qualms get in the way of greater objectives, maybe these things aren’t so unthinkable. I mean, given the severity of the situation.

    Maybe a temporary imposition of martial law wouldn’t be out of line either. You know, just until things calm down, you know, until people start to think straight and understand.

    • ozone October 16, 2013 at 7:42 pm #

      So we ask why them-what-counts in the EU are getting a robust trade in yuan for euro revved up. They can’t possibly be imagining that the yuan might be a better bet for a stable currency than the good ol’ usd could they?? Think this might just be a one-off thing? Think again.

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24486685

      …and awaaaaay we go!

      • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 10:36 pm #

        Ahaha!!! *ZONER*!!! R U gunna give us that link to your musical talents, already? Should I spend an hour scouring the *repository,* looking for said-same?!? PLZ, make it *E-Z*!!! Besides, I’m already side-*tracked* with the 1:40 big country concert (100 minutes)…

        • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:05 am #

          C’mon now! I’ve given you the giant hint: The Cloud of Sound.
          (High tech and everything… woo hoo! The conner of rubes would be proud.)

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:18 am #

      China and Brazil, who needs dollars?

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21949615

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:19 am #

      China and Australia:

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17471095

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:20 am #

      China and UK:

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23020718

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 8:29 am #

      China and Japan:

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16330574

      Anybody in the US PAYING ATTENTION yet??
      You see, if you don’t look out for the edge of the cliff, you just walk right over… suddenly and unexpectedly.
      This is what cornucopians, technocrats and other wishful thinkers advocate: “Don’t worry, they’ll think of something that erases all possible cliffs, so there’s no need to prepare for anything unpleasant.”
      Fortune and survival do not favor those who engage in false hopes.

  66. Q. Shtik October 16, 2013 at 1:44 pm #

    “In my best Indian accent: Karma is a bitch, Q.” – Rube-i-con
    =============

    I am so glad you used the word “Indian.” It lets me segue smoothly to something else that’s on my mind and is relevant to the issue of the over-population of the earth.

    Late last night I finally finished a book titled An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul. It was written in the early 1960s. I wouldn’t mention this book if I didn’t recommend it highly.

    Naipaul, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is Indian but born and raised in Trinidad and educated mainly in England. He makes a one-year trip to India, the country from which his grandfather emigrated 60 years earlier, to see, first-hand the land of his heritage which he knows only from dinner table conversations and the culture of other Trinidadian Indians. Naipaul’s view of India is quite awful in myriad ways.

    In recent years we have been made to believe that there is an economic contest between the two giants of Asia: China and India, and that there is still some doubt who will come out on top. If my epiphany is correct there is zero doubt. India is going downhill vis a vis China and the rest of the world. India with its billion people will be the first gigantic disaster in die-off and misery as the future unfolds.

    A sign of this appeared in business news within the past week. Walmart had a huge program they were working on for several years to expand into India. They threw up their hands in frustration and abandoned the entire project. The country lacks the necessary infrastructure of roadways and the delivery of electrical power is so spotty and intermittent as to make the project impossible. The politics, the corruption, the entire Indian culture makes for insurmountable economic problems. India’s stock market and currency have been dropping like a rock in 2013. India is a harbinger of hard times to come.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 2:50 pm #

      Good. Modern Indians are insufferable with their telemarketing and incomprehensible tech support in sing song English.

      We are all One. Therefore they can take our jobs. But if we took their jobs they wouldn’t feel so Oney. You can’t just show up in India and stay there living off them. Their famed officials will track you down and expel you. Nor do they welcome Whites to show up and open up convenience stores and motels. Nor will they offer special minority loans to them to do so. And if a White was to open up such an establishment, it would be boycotted by the people.

  67. Q. Shtik October 16, 2013 at 3:57 pm #

    “I don’t know how people who work in these kinds of places can take it: it would overwhelm me with sadness.” – Janos
    ===============

    Precisely how I felt my first 2 or 3 times at the facility. Then I began to see it’s like any other shit job…after awhile you get used to it. And “shit job” is a perfect description. The nurses and nurse’s aids spend their days taking helpless octogenarians and septuagenarians to the toilet, washing down their genital and anal areas with blue rubber-gloved hands, and putting on fresh diapers. If the patient is constipated (and they frequently are) they literally pry the shit out of them with their rubber gloved fingers.

    These positions, in particular the aides, are the stoop labor of the medical world. They are filled by people of various hues of brown. Filipino, Hispanic, Jamaican, African American. Mom’s care center has two whites who are RNs. There are no white aides.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 8:30 pm #

      They wouldn’t hire Whites at this point probably. Those positions have been “captured” by non-Whites.

      The enlarged stiff joints, the leathery skin, and recession of the face – all of these are non-viable imitations of the changes ingestion of the Tree of Life brings about. A protector has joints huge enough to act as appropriate levers for the vastly increased musculature. The skin is tough enough to turn a knife. The whole mouth is changed into a beak.

      • ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 9:05 pm #

        Hah, Janos Racist (missed the “Jesus Christ” analogy)? Who else could give us such descriptive ***. Can’t say being a soft-skinned white child-boy makes me feel much *buttah*…

        • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 10:49 pm #

          It’s from a novel. And yes Christ was White from the classical descriptions and depictions. Sorry that you hate Him and his race.

          • ZrCrypDiK October 17, 2013 at 4:15 am #

            BWAH!!! Touche’!!!

  68. nsa October 16, 2013 at 4:16 pm #

    We here in Langley turn the power grid off…..and all of you start eating each other within two weeks…..by the six month mark half of you will have disappeared down the gullets of your fellow citizens of the great republic. Bon Appetit……….

  69. Q. Shtik October 16, 2013 at 4:22 pm #

    “We are all One. Therefore they can take our jobs. But if we took their jobs they wouldn’t feel so Oney. You can’t just show up in India and stay there living off them.” – Janos
    ===============

    I think you have concocted a straw man here. It is ridiculous to think there are hordes of Americans clamoring to get into India to start small businesses. And I can hardly blame the Indian techies manning the call-in centers of Delhi and Bangalore for taking this work from Americans. As long as there is such a wage differential the work, like water, will seek the lowest level. Trade barriers will be ineffective when even oceans are no hurdle.

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    • Janos Skorenzy October 16, 2013 at 8:22 pm #

      No, but IF Whites did move to do so, their system would reject them on all levels. Of course the Indians take our jobs. And of course our Corporations are eager to let them. The mystery is why we don’t tell both sides to go to hell. Why isn’t loyalty demanded from American Corporations? Until we do, we will have no real country. Economics can’t be separated from politics. As as Andrew Breitbart said, Culture is uphill from politics.

      60 minutes said some of the jobs may be coming back – for robots. Don’t worry though – whatever the robots can’t do will still be open for humans, at least until the robots improve. And they’ll always need a very few people to Serve the robots! That is our System: no concern whatsoever for actual human beings. In other words, if they could, they would automate everything and make no provision for anybody. And if became cheaper to send the robots overseas, they’d do that again too.

      Marx was for Free Trade since he saw it was a Nation destroyer. Conversely, the Tariff is a Nation Builder.

  70. Q. Shtik October 16, 2013 at 4:57 pm #

    Q makes the Nurse’s Aide laugh out loud…..

    Yesterday a nurse’s aid came into Mom’s room with a bright smile and a Jamaican accent. “How’s my princess doin’? Look at all this nice company you have (my wife and me). Are you ready to take some pills for me?”

    She had in one hand a water container with a flexible straw and in the other a small plastic cup with pills in it. I asked what kind of pills they were. She said “a stool softener and a calcium pill.” By way of explanation she said the Percoset pain pill she gets at other times of the day has the side effect of causing constipation.

    Mom reached the index finger of a trembling hand into the little cup, retrieved a pill, and was given a sip of water to wash it down. She then reached for the second pill and took more water. Then she reached for a third, fourth and fifth pill. I said to the aid, “Whoa, I thought she was only getting two pills.” She said “No, beside the calcium pill there are two different stool softeners and she gets two pills of each of them.” “Ohhhhh,” I said, “that would explain why people say they have to “do number two.”

    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 3:51 am #

      I don’t get it. Can you explain the joke or would that ruin it? Assuming that it had wit to begin with.

      • ZrCrypDiK October 17, 2013 at 4:46 am #

        Soker pretending to be Q is tired – don’t bother feeding that troll. Nice old folks stories, tho!!!

  71. ZrCrypDiK October 16, 2013 at 6:06 pm #

    Gotta give it up to Jim – he’s a ghad-damned wordsmith. And, you can *hardly* argue (but there are master-debaters, making 6+ fig salaries doing just that – arguing against what they believe, just *because*). Paul Simon, NE-1?!?

    I *jest*. However, counting on these youths of the cell-phone-text-email era for NE-thang other than *compliance,* seems more than short-sighted. “JUST SAYIN’!!!”

  72. rube-i-con October 16, 2013 at 9:04 pm #

    Indians may be great programmers, at least those that make it to the states, but from first-hand experience i know they are wholly inflexible and if you don’t tell ’em 1,000% what to do they sit there idly waiting for instruction.

    in the new world order, which ain’t really new anymore, everyone’s gotta find a niche.

    everyone bellyaching needs to glom onto something that can’t be outsourced, for instance appliance repair, a programming language extremely specialized that only US citizens are allowed to be hired for.

    keep thinking, there are ways to beat this. it’s just that, with the abhorrent lack of these skills by the majority of folks, everyone’s getting trounced financially.

    yeah i know it may sound trite and easy, i know it’s not so don’t come back at me with that. tryin’ ta make a living is hard work these days, the halcyon days went by the wayside starting in the 70s.

    hey i got top-notch service from darnell the indian in bangalore the other day online, he really was superb. reminds me, i need to send an email to his manager now commending him.

    such is the world.

    peace peaceniks

    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 3:48 am #

      Darnell – a real assumed name.

      • ZrCrypDiK October 17, 2013 at 4:41 am #

        Damn, d00d – wtf U smokin – and when you gunna pass it to *ME*!!!

  73. rube-i-con October 17, 2013 at 9:50 am #

    Darnell – a real assumed name.

    Yes, his real name is Gopalakrishna or something to that effect.

    Talent counts though. If the guy can pitch, I don’t care what his ethnicity is. Not quite a good enough analogy, but semi-serves the purpose.

    peace peaceniks

    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 1:42 pm #

      But you see Gopal does care about Race – the slightest contact with Hindus will confirm this if you are watching. It’s demanded that Whites not care even while others races do: a program for White dispossession and ultimately genocide as White Women breed with dominant minorities.

      To sum up, you may not be interested in race but race is interested in you.

  74. rube-i-con October 17, 2013 at 9:52 am #

    BTW Janos, I’ll see you one white Christ and raise you a black Beethoven. Call.

    peace peacenikkas

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    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 1:44 pm #

      Why? Because he had curly hair? No one but the nuttiest Blacks believe that. And you of course.

  75. BackRowHeckler October 17, 2013 at 9:52 am #

    Looks like the Govt. shutdown is over … so now its back to the same old BS, swindles, obfuscations and subterfuges. Oh well …

    Has the Civil War ended in Syria? Has Egypt evolved into a Jeffersonian Democracy? It is out of the news, so who knows. I’ll have to assume all problems have been solved on that front, the Middle East Front, until I hear something different.

    Hey BTBill, thanks for responding to my post earlier in the week. I remain skeptical of Jim’s predictions, which seem hyperbolic and overstated. Still, I think he’s on to something. Besides, its fun reading what he says every week, and the comments which come after. Its similar to the Coast to Coast radio show, where you hear all kinds of crazy stuff.

    A local radio program this morning featured a guest, some sort of energy expert, claiming the US is the leading petroleum producer in the world right now, exceeding Saudi Arabia and Russia. He also claimed we lead the world in Natural Gas, making the US the leader in World Energy Production. This is what is out there right now, and this is what people believe. And why wouldn’t they. There are no gas lines, and the supermarkets are full. Nothing much has changed, and the events of 2008 are written off as just another recession, with recovery ‘right around the corner’.

    –BRH

    • Arn Varnold October 17, 2013 at 10:52 am #

      A local radio program this morning featured a guest, some sort of energy expert, claiming the US is the leading petroleum producer in the world right now, exceeding Saudi Arabia and Russia. He also claimed we lead the world in Natural Gas, making the US the leader in World Energy Production. This is what is out there right now, and this is what people believe. And why wouldn’t they. There are no gas lines, and the supermarkets are full. Nothing much has changed, and the events of 2008 are written off as just another recession, with recovery ‘right around the corner’.

      –BRH
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Yep. Predictions are a form of silliness because they usually involve a timeline, which is woo woo at best. I saw the trend of the housing bubble in 1989; but lacked validation because it just kept going and going and going. It defied all logic (shows the power of magical economic policies). When it all came down 22 years later it all came clear.
      Haven’t believed a thing from the government since. But my real epiphany was the events leading up to March of 2003.
      That was the deal breaker and I’ve never looked back.

      I have a question; why (rather, what is, the reason Janos [racist punk here] is tolerated)?
      I find him offensive and somewhat irrelevant, not to mention, a huge negative to the credibility of this blog.

      • Arn Varnold October 17, 2013 at 11:49 am #

        It does occur that Janos is some sort of perverse entertainment that/who is tolerated for that purpose; however the price paid is too high and brings to question the values of this forum.
        Values frankly, I can not and will not support.
        So, there it is; do as you will…

      • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm #

        All Americans (including the Founding Fathers) thought this way until the Globalist Meme Machine got into their heads. Since you wont define your terms how about this: Do you have any evidence that Blacks are our intellectual equals? The evidence that they’re not is overwhelming.

        Oh and Prog, did your Darwin think that Blacks were our equals? Want to bet on that? Before you throw away your money, there is nothing, NOTHING in Darwin’s theory that would lead you to think that. On the contrary, the first premise in his theory is Variation in a species. Need I say more?

        Oh and Arn: Have you read Mr Kunstler’s Long Emergency? And the first novel? If you have, you know that he is a race realist as far as their behavior is concerned. He probably doesn’t believe in intrinsic difference but he sure believes in their cultural dysfunction.

  76. Q. Shtik October 17, 2013 at 11:43 am #

    On Oct 15 I posted this link:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/purple-boots-silver-stars-and-white-parents.html

    It drew responses from Ozone and Janos, both of which baffle me. As though the outlandish consumer goods to which the black kids are attracted were the only story here.

    Doesn’t anyone notice that two black children were adopted by gay married white males and these children distance themselves from (literally, do not want to be associated with) these white “parents” when they are taken to the mostly black-patronized mall and that these children have announced to their “parents” that they “hate white people.”

    When these “parents” admitted their naivete about what they were encountering I take that to mean they believed they would be raising black children with a nice blend of black and white culture… But au contraire.

    This is what I mean by Liberal. There’s (the “parents”) is a liberal goody-two-shoes mindset that is backfiring and they are doing their best to pretend it isn’t.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 2:00 pm #

      Well let’s talk about it. People are unwilling to discuss anything and then wonder why the blog lags. What part of my response baffles you? I did miss that they were a gay couple. I’m sure that didn’t help given the attitudes towards gays in the ghetto. I merely emphasized that Blacks naturally want to pimp and strut – and that they are attracted by “power objects” such as diplomas and air jordans. Thus they are good consumers. In the old Congo, they wore Kodak cases around their necks sans the cameras, in imitation of the White tourists.

  77. Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 2:18 pm #

    No one can say now that they weren’t warned: the House Stenographer just did. At last an Honest Woman. I’ve been running through the streets with a lantern looking for her. Of course now she’s officially “crazy” for talking about Masonry and a House divided cannot stand. I think I’m in love.

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/house-stenographer-yanked-from-chamber-ranting-about-god-freemasons/

    The Weeper’s job is to lose. Fake opposition is now the rule.

  78. Q. Shtik October 17, 2013 at 3:53 pm #

    In case you missed it, this is the latest essay by Fred:

    http://www.fredoneverything.net/Mudgeon.shtml

    It is a clever spoof on the efforts of the insanely politically correct people in our society to force a change in the name of the Washington Redskins pro football team. Honest to god, I don’t get it.

    Perhaps some of you reading this would be willing to participate in an unscientific poll. Is a reference to “Redskins” the native American equivalent of “Nigger?”

    • ozone October 17, 2013 at 4:17 pm #

      Let me change the parameters of your poll question a bit:

      “Is a discussion about what a football team chooses to name itself a waste of time and energy?”

      Yes.

      Thank you, Frank Luntz.

      (They can call themselves “The Mean-ass Knife-wielding Chink Motherfuckers” for all I care. Their sponsorship might suffer, but I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut about that either. ;))

  79. rube-i-con October 17, 2013 at 5:11 pm #

    I’m starting a war for peace…

    Anyway, is there a country out here please that doesn’t tax its citizens to death, and has lots of work and great healthcare and public safety and respect for the law?

    It’s not that complicated a list of nice-to-haves.

    Andorra sounds decent in that respect. Think I’ll get me one of their passports.

    peace peaceniks

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  80. rube-i-con October 17, 2013 at 5:12 pm #

    scratch dat, andorra doesnt allow dual citizenship.

    peace peaceniggas

  81. K-Dog October 17, 2013 at 5:16 pm #

    Marijuana, burn, wave, sick, hurricane, snow.

    Here’s a video everybody here at the honeypot will wake up to. When a mans job security is threatened they generally pay attention.

    What I find particularly cool is that it says most people will never know they are being surveilled. That makes me kinda special and we all like feeling special from time to time don’t we.

    It’s worth watching just for the music.

    How the government tracks you.

    And there is new dog.

    Don’t you love it 🙂

  82. rube-i-con October 17, 2013 at 5:23 pm #

    no way , the govt is watching us(!#)?

    peace peacenix

  83. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 8:49 pm #

    “What interests me most is what happens when the stories lose their power to levitate the legitimacy of the people who tell them.”
    …..jhk……

    Yeah – that interests me too, JHK. It used to be that there was some internal consistency to to the stories that United States residents heard. Those days are gone, lost in a morass of political grievance coalitions and personalized news sources.

    I think the country has turned some unfortunate corners recently.
    And that there is little hope of turning back.

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

    Also JHK, I’m really not liking this comment software. Rubeicon has the best work-around, that all comments should avoid linking to prior comments, and post at the bottom of the thread.

  84. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:00 pm #

    “What I find particularly cool is that it says most people will never know they are being surveilled. That makes me kinda special…”
    ….k-dog….

    Nice link, K. And it’s good to see you on CFN.

    My suspicion, based on the Boston Bombing and the Snowden debacle, mostly, is that the NSA et al is DROWNING in information, data, scans, and intel – to the point that it is all nearly useless. Will they find a way to make it useful, to catch GENUINE bad actors??? That’s the question – but I see little reason for optimism thus far.

    What I find far more worrisome than the loss of personal privacy, is the idea that elected and appointed officials, from Local Sheriffs to SCOTUS Chief Justices – will be compromised.

    Robert’s decision that the ACA is Constitutional because those “fines” were really a “tax,” all along, makes no sense.

    So, does that mean “they” got to him?

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  85. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:05 pm #

    BTW, K, you’ll like this.
    One of several reasons that I haven’t been posting to CFN is that my laptop monitor had developed an INCREDIBLY ANNOYING flicker. And, I swear, I rarely saw the flicker on websites, but it was ALWAYS there for CFN.

    It was driving me nuts. I tried IE instead of Firefox, and that goddam’ flicker DID NOT CHANGE!!

    I finally went into Settings and detuned the screen resolution slightly, and after 3 ENDLESS WEEKS, the flicker was gone.

    Weird, huh?

    • K-Dog October 18, 2013 at 1:46 am #

      Welcome to my world.

  86. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:11 pm #

    Q – It’s good to have you back from the Land of the Banned. And I’m really sorry to hear about your family troubles. That’s rough.

    I’m guessing that you don’t read a lot of Huff Post, and I’m hoping this will give you a laugh – knowing how much you enjoy errors of speech and spelling.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shelley-emling/made-up-words_b_4072552.html

    Here’s a little sample, to get you started:
    “When it comes to words, people have all sorts of pet peeves.

    There are the common mispronunciations that drive people crazy. (When you say “escape” it is “es-cape” and not “ex-cape.”) There also are the language errors — like confusing “affect” and “effect” — that put people over the edge. “It makes me nuts when someone says they’re going to ‘speak to’ something when they mean they’re going to ‘speak about’ something,”…..”

  87. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:19 pm #

    Also, Q, I caught the man and his husband raising the two “white-hating?” black kids. Talk about a recipe for dysfunction, heh?

    And your NYT’s article on population was a good one, too. NYT’s doesn’t have a comment section, which is too bad. I’d like to see what they had to say about this excerpt:

    “Biologists have calculated that an ideal population — the number at which everyone could live at a first-world level of consumption, without ruining the planet irretrievably — would be 1.5 billion.” …nyt….

    1.5 billion for the PLANET, right?? Even though present immigration proposals will have over a billion JUST in the US, by the middle half of this century.

    Rubeicon will tell us, “they’ll think of something.”

    But what if they don’t Rube, what if they don’t?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:17 am #

      Over a billion here by 2050? Can you source that? That’s worse news than I’ve heard. I hope you mean “only” half a billion – and even that’s worse than the 400 million that’s been touted for a while.

  88. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:22 pm #

    Bill – it’s good to see you back, too. You said something pretty profound – but it’s on the previous page of comments and I don’t feel like losing this post to go look for it.

    Why do these posts have to be divided into pages, JHK????

  89. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:26 pm #

    Varn – You keep telling us that Janos offends your sensibilities, but you won’t give specific examples. Why?

    And some of his stuff is logical and accurate. Darwin did address race, for example, saying, “Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties.”

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    • Arn Varnold October 17, 2013 at 10:49 pm #

      Janos:
      I merely emphasized that Blacks naturally want to pimp and strut – and that they are attracted by “power objects” such as diplomas and air jordans. Thus they are good consumers. In the old Congo, they wore Kodak cases around their necks sans the cameras, in imitation of the White tourists.

      All Americans (including the Founding Fathers) thought this way until the Globalist Meme Machine got into their heads. Since you wont define your terms how about this: Do you have any evidence that Blacks are our intellectual equals? The evidence that they’re not is overwhelming.

      It’s from a novel. And yes Christ was White from the classical descriptions and depictions.
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      If you can’t see the blatant racism in these statements; then I’ll just move along because this isn’t a place I want to associate with.
      Janos is a racist; he thinks he’s clever by couching it pseudo intellectualism with no facts based on any real scientific evidence and at the very least whatever he uses for backup is long discredited pseudo science.
      He goes on like a broken pedant, prancing about in his harlequin suit. Intellectually bankrupt.

      • Arn Varnold October 17, 2013 at 11:00 pm #

        And some of his stuff is logical and accurate. Darwin did address race, for example, saying, “Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties.”
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~
        Absurd on it’s face. You would make a hierarchy of intelligence from that statement?
        The ignorance of history here is astounding; the lack of knowledge regarding achievements by blacks, Arabs, Persians, and Asians.
        There is no superior race on this planet and be very careful the metric you base your hierarchical judgments upon.
        Intelligence is not, in fact, well or totally understood, despite the racist and egotistical rantings of said poster.

        • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 12:46 am #

          We don’t deny achievements by Asians or Arabs. Persians used to be White, now they are mostly Arabized and just Southern Caucasians – our poor cousins. Southern Caucasians have IQ’s around 90. Whites around 100. East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews a bit above 100. Yes they are superior to us in this on average.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 12:42 am #

        Yes! Good, you got it Arn. I Am a Racist. When did I deny it? But what does that mean? Maybe one thing to you and another to me. Obviously I don’t think loving my own people is a crime. You see that’s also a definition. Yes Arn: words can have more than one definition. Nor do I think telling the Truth about different races is a crime either.

  90. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:29 pm #

    And Ozone, I really like the idea of the Washington Mean-ass Knife-wielding Chink Motherfuckers.

    But, how are they gonna’ fit that on the jersey?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 17, 2013 at 9:40 pm #

      Change the name to the Whiteskins and watch the liberal freak out.

  91. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 9:29 pm #

    OK, I will now subside into background energy, for a while.

  92. Q. Shtik October 17, 2013 at 10:58 pm #

    These words appear under a NYT editorial titled The Republican Surrender.

    The health care reform law will not be defunded or delayed. No taxes will be cut, and the deal calls for no new cuts to federal spending or limits to social welfare programs.

    To the editors these are reasons for joy. Go figure.

    BIG GOVT rolls on.

  93. Q. Shtik October 17, 2013 at 11:13 pm #

    The NY Times Arts section advises us that Miley Cyrus Rules Chart

    Oh goody! If there is one thing I want to see and hear more of it is Miley Cyrus. All the sooner will she reach a critical mass of over-exposure and fade from view. (What ever happened to Paris Hilton?)

    They say America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore, doesn’t produce anything. What nonsense…we churn out young sluts like this by the dozens.

    Can someone explain to me what is interesting, sexy or attractive about hanging a large tongue out the side of her mouth?

  94. progress4what October 17, 2013 at 11:27 pm #

    “If you can’t see the blatant racism in these statements; then I’ll just move along because this isn’t a place I want to associate with.”
    ….arn…..

    No offense intended, man (and some humor intended), but you’ve set this up like a logic problem for 3rd graders.

    1. if I don’t SEE the racism
    2. if I see the racism but don’t ACT on it
    3. if I don’t see the racism to your (undefined) standards
    4. if I don’t act on the racism to your (undefined) standards

    Somehow, arn, you are making me personally, along with ALL other CFN posters by implication – responsible for constantly correcting Janos to your standards. And you STILL have not defined your standards, or your terms.

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    • Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 12:14 am #

      Oh dear, you speak of third grade; it does seem we’re at that level of understanding here.
      Understanding racism is not rocket science and is easily defined; sorry if my expectation exceeded the grasp here.
      The Oxford English Dictionary;
      Racism:
      Noun
      [mass noun]

      the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races:
      theories of racism

      For my purposes that pretty clearly sets the metric for what racism represents and it all falls from there.

      • Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 12:22 am #

        Just a bit more; common sense has gone by the wayside as has the ability at basic communication. I would find it incredible if racism, at least at some basic level, isn’t pretty generally understood by most here.
        Some embrace it and few speak it down when it rears its ugly head.
        I only make choices for myself, I only take responsibility for myself, I don’t tell others how to behave. But, I will and do speak to violations of common decency and racism is a violation of common decency; at least in the world I inhabit.
        Not speaking against racism implies an acceptance of said crime against humanity.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 12:51 am #

        Blacks are better sprinters than Whites or anybody else. Is that racist too Arn? In other words, does racist automatically mean untrue?

        In other words, is a class of objects incapable of having any unique characteristics? The problem is that you haven’t studied Philosophy and I have.

        • Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 12:58 am #

          There you go again; are you sure I haven’t studied philosophy?
          Of course you’re not; you.do.not.know.me.
          And you’re a Sophist too boot, you twist words, meanings and assume way beyond your knowledge. Bye. Move along; there’s nothing here folks.

          • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:09 am #

            Then answer the questions – if you understand them.

            Do you deny that Blacks are better sprinters? If not, is that fact “racist”? Can a fact be racist or just true or false? And if Blacks are better sprinters, might not some other race be better at something else? If not, why not?

            You are the sophist – an unconscious one perhaps. You assume that the word “Man” means “All Men are the same”, but Darwin said otherwise. Individuals vary within a group. And groups vary. Without this variation, survival of the fittest couldn’t take place obviously. Race is just a large group.

  95. Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 12:03 am #

    404 error page does not exist.

  96. Karah October 18, 2013 at 12:34 am #

    Revolution has been hijacked by the technology sector.

  97. Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 1:56 am #

    Then answer the questions – if you understand them.

    What? And allow you to drive a sophist narrative?
    You’ll not control a conversation with me by your lame attempt at establishing the rules and furthering your belief system.
    I’ll not give you the platform to spout your pseudo science or pseudo sophist philosophy.
    We will never agree, thus rendering any further discussion moot.

  98. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 3:33 am #

    Did you know that the Romans used the booty taken from the Temple of Jerusalem when they sacked Jerusalem to build the Colosseum in Rome? In a way, I suppose that it was a kind of Jewish financing?

    In “Olden Times” before they had banks and bankers that’s how they’d finance shit. If they needed money, they just go out and steal it and/or take slaves.

    I guess that in the “Good ‘Ole Halcyon Days” of the Roman Empire, if the emperor needed some cash, he’d just go and rob some Jewish people?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum

  99. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 5:00 am #

    Cheap slave labor probably also contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire?

    As a result of Rome’s successful military conquests, the Roman armies brought back to Italy hordes of cheap labor in the form of foreign slaves. The Roman gentry then confiscated the small farms of free Romans and used cheap foreign slaves to farm the land.

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  100. Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 6:37 am #

    @ progress4what
    And some of his stuff is logical and accurate.
    From Janos; Blacks are better sprinters than Whites or anybody else.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Prog, you’re being lazy and not using your critical thinking skills (do you have any?).
    Blacks? Which Blacks? All Blacks? No, just the few who excel at sports.
    Janos has made a huge generality about an entire race of people.

    Look, I’m not going to do your work for you but I just showed you a crack in his propaganda of lies, generalities and just plain falsehoods. People like Janos are so shallow, they are easy prey to any one who can think.
    It’s this very inability at critical thinking that allows bigots like Janos to dominate and intimidate a web site like this.
    Yes, you all are complicit in his bullshit because you never challenge him on it and even say he has points; valid points!
    Wake the fuck up for crying out loud.
    Use your fucking brains.

    • ozone October 18, 2013 at 11:10 am #

      Now that’s provocative for the sheer hell of it.
      You say you’ve been following along for a while. If you indeed have, you’d realize that it’s pointedly futile trying to refute (or even ignore) the Bus Station Pest as he plunks his one note on his one-stringed banjo of race and fascist hierarchical superiority.
      When banned for brief periods, he just returns under a “new” moniker to bring us his obsessive dogma. (He believes he’s teaching rather than pestering.)

      So you see there’s nothing to be done by us common posters in regard to such pestilential persistence (which he’s cackling with perverse glee about as he reads this).

      In my life’s experience, those who espouse the above symptoms of anti-social aggression are those who feel their powerlessness acutely. This results in an innate need to have power over others, and any justification toward this end can be, and is, employed. EVERYTHING he posts contains this as a [blatant or coded] subtext.
      Engagement only encourages these proclivities. (Another strange thing of note is his insistence that there’s some kind of ‘rule’ that he must be engaged or he ‘wins’. Or that you’re abrogating his “right to free speech” by wishing he’d STFU. Really weird, but common among authoritarian and unimaginative folks, imprisoned by their own narrow focus and mythology.)

      Sit back and witness the vituperative outbursts to follow, but be apprised, your complaints and ripostes will avail you nothing…

      • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:47 pm #

        So it doesn’t matter who wins a debate? Or are you saying debate is not possible to begin with? Do you even know what you mean? I’m not the only to notice that you are not willing to engage people who do not believe 99.9% of the same things you do. Now pray tell, how will a Civil Society function if everyone adopts your bad attitude?

        Perhaps it’s wisdom on your part: like many Liberals, you know that your beliefs on Race are wrong and know that I’d easily defeat you. So you content yourself with throwing your verbal feces from your branch far above the fray.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:42 pm #

      So you’re saying that the Blacks who are better sprinters are better sprinters? Or are you saying that the Blacks who sprint are better than Whites who do? The latter makes sense and is simply a smaller version of what I said. Blacks are better sprinters on average. Can you live with that? Likewise, Whites have higher IQ’s on average than Blacks. They have longer legs and a more developed Achilles heel and we have bigger more convoluted brains.

  101. Arn Varnold October 18, 2013 at 6:40 am #

    Oh, Janos confuses racial attributes with cultural differences; if he can’t differentiate that difference (which he doesn’t), then his whole house of cards collapses at the touch of my feather.
    Cheers you zombies…

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:51 pm #

      Well obviously a lower IQ and a higher Testosterone level (both on average) will lead to profound cultural differences. Blacks have little interest in our Culture except insofar as they can profit from it. Why would Blacks be interested in Classical and Calculus? It’s very hard to be interested in things that you don’t understand. Tragically White kids are interested in Black things and have been dragged down by the glorification of ghetto/prison culture.

  102. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 11:51 am #

    “Even though present immigration proposals will have over a billion JUST in the US, by the middle half of this century.” – Prog
    ================

    Please define the “middle half of this century.” Would the middle half be a 50 year period running from 1/1/2026 thru 12/31/2075 bookended on either side by 25 year periods which together comprise the other half?

    Orrrr…did you mean to say “by the middle of this century?” There are 37 years until we reach 2050. If the US adds about 680 million to its present 320 million in 37 years we are indeed in shit trouble (though it would bring joy to the hearts of Asoka and Rubeicon). Thank god I will not be here to witness it.

    I realize that the key words in your sentence are “present immigration proposals” but even so that would mean that between immigrants, birth rates and increasing longevity we would be adding a net 18.4 million a year. (net = immigration + births – emigration – deaths) That doesn’t seem possible.

  103. rube-i-con October 18, 2013 at 1:03 pm #

    If the US adds about 680 million to its present 320 million in 37 years we are indeed in shit trouble (though it would bring joy to the hearts of Asoka and Rubeicon).

    stop bloody linking me with asoka, i am not he. nor have i ever said i want burgeoning populations. i live in stinking south america with its squalid magepopulations, that the last thing i want to see replicated (infected) in the untied states.

    take that back, Q.

    jeez, i love abraham lincoln, wild bill cody and colt revolvers, and huntin’ injuns, for god’s sake.

    peace peaceniks

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 2:00 pm #

      So you want our border closed? But that’s against Free Trade since human beings are just considered capital according to Capitalism. Free Trade and Mass Immigration go together now like peas and carrots. Likewise, closed borders and the tariff (not “isolationism) do.

      Historically free trade was tried before mass immigration, but that was an earlier phase and both were often resisted by intact Nations. The Global Slave Masters realized long ago that the Nation has to go if they are to rule. And yes, that’s their goal – they already have enough money for God’s sake.

  104. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 1:22 pm #

    Arn,

    As the oft-banned commenter who, when we last heard from him, went by the name Mistified used to say, “You must be new around here.”

    Janos (formerly Jaego, Vlad, etc.) has been around these parts 5.5 years outraging men better than yourself with his openly expressed racism, fascism, anti-Semitism and misogyny.

    At one time in lexicographical history the word racist did not include the negative sense of inferiority or of hatred. Racists were simply people who believed there were recognizable differences between groups of people. They believed “race” was a valid categorization of different groups of people. And the definition of “race” included (and still includes) more than the obvious visible differences resulting from genetics such as skin color and eye shape but also “any people united by common history, language, cultural traits, etc.”

    It didn’t take people long to put two and two together to realize that some traits were obviously superior and others inferior.

    (Interestingly, as a result of my mother-in-law’s broken hip incident, I learned via Google that white people are far more prone to broken hips than blacks because blacks have thicker, more dense bones. And women are more prone than men. There is no shame in recognizing these differences. Doctors would be remiss if not complete idiots to not recognize this.)

    As a matter of rabid political correctness that has infected the US if not the whole world, this notion that different races have different traits and that some of these traits are superior to others is a notion that must be bitterly fought (to the point of absurdity, if necessary).

    This is where you are, Arn. You dare not admit there are differences between races for to do so, you believe, would lead to the next awful step of recognizing inferior and superior traits…to being the modern negative definition of a “racist.”

    For society, then, the issue is: What do we do, how do we deal, with this valid information that there are inferior and superior racial traits, that does not lead to “the ovens?”

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    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 1:38 pm #

      Yes Q, Blacks do indeed have thicker bones – a big advantage in boxing and other contact sports. I must have mentioned this at some point but you ignored or dismissed it. Think how much richer your life would have been if you had investigated it and found the truth out back then.

      Conversely their heaver bones make them sink like stones. Really bad swimmers. The Asoka Entity would have none of this, insisting that they were just supermen better at everything. Also their heavier bones and lack of slow twitch (endurance) muscles make them bad distance runners. Their East African Cousins are of course the opposite and the best distance men in the world.

      Blacks themselves know their superiority in these realms but are outraged if Whites talk about it. They realize the simple Truth that we are better at other things – and even they dimly realize that “those other things” are more important.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 2:22 pm #

      Greek Clarity, Q, Greek Clarity. I commend you. The ovens you say? Nay friend, we are not cannibals. Let us separate from them and let wind and weather have their say. They belong to Nature or God. We have no right to hurt them – and no obligation to help them. Arn and Zone think we have the duty to serve them and give them our Civilization to destroy. Arn and Zone are insane on this question.

  105. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 1:54 pm #

    “take that back, Q.”
    ===========

    You’re right. That was unfair. I do take it back.

    Inviting unrestricted immigration was Asoka’s shtick. Your’s is the sometimes infuriating blind optimism that technology will overcome all problems.

    BTW, while as Welles, you first seemed to present yourself as a US citizen who emigrated to Brazil (and somehow was fluent in Portuguese) it is now evident to me from your use of words such as “bloody” and spelling of words such as labour and neighbour that you are some sort of Brit. Fill us in on that.

  106. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 2:10 pm #

    magepopulations…….untied states. – Rube
    ===========

    mega

    United

    Have you ever been checked for dyslexia?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 2:16 pm #

      He meant mange perhaps. Based on the above, do you think Arn understands the concept of an average?

      The passion of Liberals on this point cannot be underestimated. It is their Faith. In old debates, Liberal Academics were caught comparing the highest Black test scores with the lowest White ones and calling it macaroni.

  107. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 2:21 pm #

    “I must have mentioned this at some point but you ignored or dismissed it. Think how much richer your life would have been if you had investigated it and found the truth out back then.” – Janos
    ============

    Yes, you mentioned it several times in the past. I found it perfectly logical and neither ignored nor dismissed it. But not until a month ago did I connect bone density data with broken hip occurrences. To say that if I had investigated it and found the truth out back then my life would have been richer is a bit of a stretch.

  108. rube-i-con October 18, 2013 at 2:59 pm #

    BTW, while as Welles, you first seemed to present yourself as a US citizen who emigrated to Brazil (and somehow was fluent in Portuguese) it is now evident to me from your use of words such as “bloody” and spelling of words such as labour and neighbour that you are some sort of Brit. Fill us in on that.

    I am fluent in Portuguese and translate it for a living, among other languages. I use UK spelling just to throw out false positives. Or do I?
    One can never tell on the interwebs, can one?

    Untied states is a deliberate gaffe.

    i think its high time we admit some cultures are just much more stinkin’ superior to others, and try to emulate them. for example, the chinks and nips could teach us lots about discipline and saving lots of money and living debt free.

    the anglo-saxons can teach us lots about advancing science and technology.

    those are about the only two i think have anything much to offer, seeing how the whole stinkin’ würld wants ta emulate them.

    am i wrong here? doesnt everyone want an iphone, a coke and a big mac?

    currently lissening to: wagner and shostakovich, symphony no. 11. thank god i can escape the wretched bile that passes for music these days by accessing eternal masterpieces at will online.

    peace peaceniks

  109. hawk711 October 18, 2013 at 3:17 pm #

    Thanks to all of you have taken a peek at The Obamacare Wars.

    I have a huge favor to ask. Now that the storm has passed here in DC (for three months anyway) please download a copy of my satire and media spoof “The Obamacare Wars” for Kindle at Amazon.com for FREE for the next 5 days.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Obamacare-Wars-James-Heald-ebook/dp/B00FR269JW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382102408&sr=8-1&keywords=the+obamacare+wars

    You can read it on your Smartphone, iPhone, Kindle, or Computer. You can send it to a Liberal friend or an Independent or even a daring Conservative. You can throw it in the trash. You can feed it to a digital dog. You might like it!!! You might hate it!!! It could make you laugh (though you might need to be a socialist Muslim drag queen to see the humor in it)… Discover the pop/rock song references embedded in the narrative and win free prizes! Forward this to your friends (and enemies). Can we get 100 downloads? 200? 300? more? And if you do read it, please consider writing a review on Amazon (one line, thumbs up or down, whatever). Unburden your soul.

    The blog posts that make up this story are being read all over the world. People from Turkey to China, Western Europe, Australia, Ukraine, India, Africa and even the US have been reading this to help them figure out what’s goin’ on, what’s goin’ on…

    Parts 1-9 and the Epilogue are still available to read at http://jimheald.blogspot.com but why not grab the updated and corrected complete version for free, while you can.

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  110. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 5:44 pm #

    Arn and others –
    There is an amazingly dense tangle of verbiage devoted to proving that Darwin was not a racist. Even though he almost certainly WAS a racist, by modern contemporary standards.

    “Darwin often resolved ambiguities surrounding race and natural selection by recurring to intelligence as the factor that allowed one group to dominate another. De Paolo’s recapitulation of Darwin’s reasoning here will be familiar. It was a short step from ideas about superior intelligence in general, to the supremacy of European intelligence in particular, especially when it came to scientific and technological matters. On this view, European imperialist and industrial projects were not only evolutionarily advantageous but their success was also, for that reason, a “biological certainty”
    …Diane Greco Josefowicz reviewing Charles De Paolo…..
    http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/darwin-reader-darwins-racism/

    And – why this urge to the defense of Darwin?

    We see that arn wishes to completely negate ALL of the ideas of Janos by labeling him to be a racist. Arn’s tactic is duplicated 100’s of times a day. (for example, anyone opposed to amnesty will find themselves called “racist” by immigrant rights activists)

    By extension, if Darwin were “racist,” then modern academics would have to ignore all of Darwin’s ideas, which is impossible. Therefore Darwin must be defended from charges of racism. Interesting circle, eh?

  111. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 5:48 pm #

    My post on population numbers was inspired by reading this guy. And, note that I said “the middle half of this century,” note 2050 specifically.

    “U.S. population will double from 300 million to 600 million on its way to 1 billion in the lifetime of a child born today if we fail to change course.” – Frosty Wooldridge
    http://www.frostywooldridge.com/index.html

  112. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 6:01 pm #

    “Inviting unrestricted immigration was (a now departed poster’s) shtick. Your’s is the sometimes infuriating blind optimism that technology will overcome all problems”
    ….Q, to rube, concerning _____________……

    Shhh, Q, if you please.

    JHK asked us not to mention that poster by name again.
    I’m hoping that there’s a tacit promise by JHK to keep this thread Troll free – as long as JHK’s request is honored.

    Here’s hoping, at any rate!

  113. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 6:13 pm #

    Damnitall, JHK!!!!!!!
    I just lost a post TWICE, apparently because it contained a link to elearnenglishlanguage (dot) com.

    And Q, “your’s” is not a real word, in standard English.

  114. ozone October 18, 2013 at 6:29 pm #

    Apologies in advance for returning to matters at hand.

    “We the not-so sovereign shock-doctrined [9] people are supposed to be so relieved that the bipartisan plutocrats in Washington have decided “at the last minute” not to throw the already weak recovery and savagely unequal economy into catastrophic decline (something that no Washington players beyond a part of the GOP.’s proto-fascistic Tea Party faction might seriously seek or welcome) that we are ready to accept whatever regressive bargain is worked out supposedly on our behalf. We are expected to direct our ire at one or both of the two dominant political organizations, and/or at government and politics and “Washington” in general, but not at the real power behind the outwardly reigning parties and state – the nation’s hidden senate of corporate and financial wealth, which has trumped democracy with plutocracy for quite some time now.”
    -Paul Street
    (If marginally interested, look it up yourself.)

    Ps. I’ve drawn a couple conclusions regarding the thoughtful discussions on race in all its’ myriad permutations.
    To wit:
    Niggers – bad
    Whiteys – good
    Is that about right? I wouldn’t want to be accused of being sadly misinformed.
    (Thanks for the invaluable help and let us know when the race war is nicely engaged; we’ll wait. Notice I’m not saying what the rest of us will be up to while waiting; it’ll be a surprise, and that’s something I’m sure we all enjoy, don’t we?)

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  115. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 6:48 pm #

    Hey Ozone –
    I assume you’ve been keeping up over at the ArchDruid’s place?
    Interesting ideas about religion. He hypothesizes that ONE out of three human beings has legitimate “otherworldly?” religious experiences one or more times in their lives. And, he says, this is what drives religion to exist in human society.

    I won’t try to recreate the Arch Druid debate over here. BUT, I will state emphatically that Archie (and I) believe that some sort of religion will help humans through the keyhole and over the collapse.

    I also agree with JHK (and Janos) that there will be a racial component to collapse/keyhole events. Which is why some (by no means all) of Janos’ posting is relevant to this CFN thread.
    (that’s for arn and any other newby’s, btw, O3 – mostly)

    • ozone October 18, 2013 at 7:46 pm #

      I’ve already told you that I’m on board with the blackbad/whitegood stuff in the face of the bombardment of irrefutable scientific evidence! Let it go [concerning myself], fer chrissakes. (See, with just that tiny allusion, I’ve covered all the bases to show that I’m on the side of the angels… or, um, somebody that will kick me down the shaft to hell if I don’t adopt their belief system.) I hope that doesn’t mean I’ll have to attend ‘services’ to prove it. When was the next rally again? Just take my word for it. Say, if you don’t believe me, just ask me, I’ll tell you. (Or maybe not; maybe I’m unrepentant and it’s the stake for me. Who knows. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”)

      • ozone October 18, 2013 at 8:13 pm #

        Please keep in mind that modern American religiosity is massively more interested in punishment than forgiveness and tolerance. Listen to the talk when it doesn’t directly involve the praising of God or this Jesus guy. Better yet, just casually ask (at the diplomatic moment, of course), “What do you think we should do with these unbelievers anyway?” Let me know if the result is on the benevolent side. (No fair asking the Rev., he’s got his own political and righteous appearances to closely guard, unlike the rest of us who are steeped in sin and animal carnality.)

      • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 8:15 pm #

        I agree that you are an Idiot with the mind of a hysterical Women Studies major.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 8:12 pm #

      Polls, (including Gallup I believe) have shown similar results in regards to mystical experiences. I’m not sure if that includes out of body experiences or not. Talk to some nurses: surgery patients talk about this all the time. But our society doesn’t respect such talk so they soon shut up about it.

  116. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 6:58 pm #

    “And Q, “your’s” is not a real word, in standard English.” – Prog
    =============

    Yeah, I’m hip. Neither is our’s. Both these non-words here in the comment block have squiggly lines under them. They do not pass muster with the automatic spell checker. I have to remind myself that these words are like “its” where the possessive is not created by an apostrophe.

  117. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 7:16 pm #

    “JHK asked us not to mention that poster by name again.” – Prog
    ==============

    Really? I must have missed that.

    BTW, I am in total agreement with you about the problem of submitting comments via REPLY. Many such replies simply will never be read since who has the time to scroll back through days and pages of posts to see if something new has appeared.

    I agree that the only sensible thing to do is post at the very bottom. If one wants to make it clear that the comment is a reply I recommend people do as I have been doing recently: Copy an excerpt and identify its author. If a reader wishes to read the entire original comment they can find it by copying the excerpt into the Edit/Find search block. Of course, if there is more than one page of comments that complicates things.

  118. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 7:43 pm #

    “Really? I must have missed that.”
    …Q….

    I misspoke. JHK sent an email to me concerning that topic, specifically. He sent something similar to O3, which I could confirm because ozone and I swap emails occasionally. I theorized that JHK might have emailed his whole login email list, or maybe he just emailed all of the posters who were currently logged in at that particular time. (I login once/week and just let the thread stay in the background for when I want to read and respond.) Or, maybe some other poster gave JHK my email, or maybe he saved it from when I posted it last year. Or maybe….this whole thing is getting pretty far afield.

    At about that same time, Q, I’m pretty sure JHK deleted an email of yours – where you had quoted an email of his, verbatim.

    Interesting – in an insider CFN baseball sort of way, hey?

  119. nsa October 18, 2013 at 7:45 pm #

    We here in Langley find minority idiots to be the most useful……Powell with his My Lai 1 year coverup and then later the brilliant UN expositiion of Iraq chemical weaponry…….Holder in charge of the Waco massacre investigation finding the Davidians burned their own kids alive………the Rice lesbo with her mushroom cloud……..and of course the ultimate useful idiot…..Barry. We found Barry selling shoes in Nairobi and with some effort by our History Revision department…..voilla……the denizens of the great republic had a new dusky leader they could look up to and admire…….

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    • ozone October 18, 2013 at 7:52 pm #

      How you gonna screw the French over good and proper if you can’t be persuaded to learn how to spell their language for the big leaflet drop? Details, people, details! Get with the program!

      • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 8:16 pm #

        Still expecting perfection from the Federal Government? Daddy doesn’t love you!

  120. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 7:46 pm #

    Deleted a POST of yours, not an email.

    And, btw, one can also include links of particular posts, like this.
    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/comment-page-3/#comment-159778

  121. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 8:40 pm #

    “Why persecutist thou me?”
    ….ozone to prog, paraphrased….

    Sorry, man, no offense intended. It’s just that I thought of you while reading the discussion over at ADR last week. Specifically, they were discussing the physical parts of the human brain that might be sensitive to religious experience. Mental (neurological?) hardware that I possess and which you indicated you do not possess, btw.

    You’ve changed me, ozone, ever so slightly, making me a little less religious and a little more suspicious. I wish you could say I’d returned the favor. Guess I’ll have to try harder. (boxer, paraphrased – hah!)

    ——————
    BTW, nice catch of the NSA guy misspelling a French word!
    And voila, that was funny!

    Can you play the viola, perchance?

  122. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 8:57 pm #

    Why don’t They just invade the Cayman Islands, BVI and other pirate tax havens and steal their money?

    Did you know that the Romans used the booty taken from the Temple of Jerusalem when they sacked Jerusalem to build the Colosseum in Rome? In a way, I suppose that it was a kind of Jewish financing?

    In “Olden Times” before they had banks and bankers that’s how they’d finance shit. If they needed money, they just go out and steal it and/or take slaves.

    I guess that in the “Good ‘Ole Halcyon Days” of the Roman Empire, if the emperor needed some cash, he’d just go and rob some Jewish people?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum

  123. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 8:58 pm #

    Cheap slave labor probably also contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire?

    As a result of Rome’s successful military conquests, the Roman armies brought back to Italy hordes of cheap labor in the form of foreign slaves. The Roman gentry then confiscated the small farms of free Romans and used cheap foreign slaves to farm the land.

  124. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 8:59 pm #

    “And, note that I said “the middle half of this century,” note 2050 specifically.”
    ========

    For Christ’s sake Prog, there is no such thing as the middle half of this century. There is either the first half from 1/1/2001 thru 12/31/2050 or the second half from 1/1/2051 thru 12/31/2100.

    This reminds me of the numerous times I have ridden down a narrow street that barely fits two cars abreast and I see coming at me down the center another car. I scream out, “what the fuck are you doing, taking your half of the road out of the middle?!!”

    Secondly, in my excerpt from your comment you ended with “note 2050 specifically.” I assume you meant to say “not 2050 specifically.”

    If I am correct on these points please tell me the outside limit date by which time your source says we will be over a billion in US population.

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  125. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 9:12 pm #

    And, btw, one can also include links of particular posts, like this.
    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/comment-page-3/#comment-159778 – Prog
    ============

    Please tell me how you do this^. Keep in mind, I am technically challenged.

  126. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 9:21 pm #

    “At about that same time, Q, I’m pretty sure JHK deleted an email of yours – where you had quoted an email of his, verbatim.” – Prog
    ============

    ^That’s^ pretty close to an accurate description of what happened but not exactly. What happened was JHK deleted a post of mine – where I had quoted an email of his, verbatim.

    I suspect we are beginning to bore some people here.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 19, 2013 at 12:51 am #

      Bore? Not at all. Why were you banned?

    • ZrCrypDiK October 19, 2013 at 1:04 am #

      “Agreed. Conan?!…”

      • ZrCrypDiK October 19, 2013 at 3:22 am #

        Cry no more, my valliant adobe constructor!!! Sokes to the -Q!!!

  127. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 9:51 pm #

    One of the causes of the Chernobyl meltdown/explosion was that the Soviet government didn’t have money to pay critical safety workers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Key nuclear plant employees at the time had been forced to engage in sideline businesses such as selling vodka.

    “The shutdown of the U.S. government has made our nation’s nukes more dangerous than ever.

    All but 300 of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 3,900 employees have been furloughed during the government shutdown. The NRC must monitor safety at the 100 reactors still licensed to operate in this country. That works out to about three staff per reactor, except that only half the 300 are resident inspectors. The nation’s nukes may be flying all but blind.

    “Yes, I am worried,” said Ed Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, as the furloughs began. Among other things, Lyman complained that the cutbacks would delay the safety changes being made by the NRC in response to the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan. “But the most acute issue is assuring that the operating reactors” are safe. “I’m not expecting overnight that it’s going to be a collapse of safety,” he said. “You can only hope for the best that a situation doesn’t occur during this time.”

  128. progress4what October 18, 2013 at 9:53 pm #

    “I suspect we are beginning to bore some people here.”
    ….Q….

    That may be, but there’s not a whole lot else happening on CFN right now.
    Or – there may be a rancorous free-for-all of a threaded discussion going on, but if those sum’bitches aren’t willing to post at the bottom of the freakin’ thread – then I’m not willing to go looking for it.

    As far as how one goes about linking to a post, look for the “hashtag,” which you or I would be as likely to call a “pound sign,” at the end of the date/time stamp:

    October 18, 2013 at 9:12 pm # (SEE – there it is “#”!)

    Right click the hashtag and then click “Copy Link Location.”

    Then go to the box where you are typing a reply, right click and then click Paste. Voila, a link to your referenced comment should appear.

    Or – viola, a large stringed instrument will appear.

    =======================
    To answer your more serious question about population numbers – I linked to the Woodridge article. It’s a little hyperbolic, perhaps. But, if you look at exponential growth rates – whether yeast in a vat of beer, or humans on the American landmass – it is ALWAYS the LAST doubling of population that causes the problems and the die-off.

    And we’ll be well on our way toward that by 2050, one way or another. Of course, I’ll be 95, and you’ll be pretty well over death yourself by then …. but – why shaft future Americans today by continuing to pack this place more and more full?

    Just so nobody can call us “racist?” Don’t think so.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 18, 2013 at 10:44 pm #

      Not much happening? You can say that again. I threw down the gauntlet yet there are no takers. Liberals “know” they are right and therefore don’t have to debate anyone else. And of course this attitude leads them to censor everyone else since they alone know the truth.

      Of course Arn may be furiously researching and finding out to his dismay what an uninformed ninny he is. In which case he’ll probably do a Turk and say “So what if Blacks have lower IQ’s?” That is my favorite line of all time on CFN. The absolute epitome of stupidity and fecklessness.

      I met Frosty once while he was riding across America protesting the Amnesty. He seemed like a very fine man – a pure blood Nordic btw, very rare now. Doubly amazing since Nordics are the most suicidal Whites of all. I highly doubt America will be able to hold together a billion people from all corners of the globe. China and India do because their diversity is very small in China’s case or very old and defined by tradition in India’s. Even so there is growing dissent in both places.

      Glad you used quotation marks around racist. The dictionary definition does not at all exhaust the meaning of the word – and it is NOT the meaning Liberals, Socialists, and Communists accept.

  129. Pucker October 18, 2013 at 10:25 pm #

    Perhaps like the Chinese leadership during The Great Leap Forward, they may be starting to drink their own Kool-Aid?

    http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fossil_fuel_euphoria_20131017

    “In a matter of a few years, the trends have reversed,” Moreau declared last February. “There is a new energy reality of vast domestic resources of oil and natural gas brought about by advancing technology… For the first time in generations, we are able to see that our energy supply is no longer limited, foreign, and finite; it is American and abundant.”

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  130. rube-i-con October 18, 2013 at 10:28 pm #

    “JHK asked us not to mention that poster by name again.” – Prog
    ==============
    Really? I must have missed that.

    wow, what a chummy club you have, can’t mention certain posters by name. shhhhh. must make sure we don’t offend any sensibilities. you know, everyone has to agree. it’s the american (liberal nitiwit) way. and if they continue to disagree, why then we’ll just call them a Troll, that dreaded word that covers up any ability to counter their arguments.
    Troll!

    what weak-kneed sissies you american have become.

    for the second time….post at the bottom of the frikkin posts, like on the old board. common sense, ok?

    can’t wait for the untied estates population to hit a billyun, hear that Festus? we gonna be a billy-un, you worried yet?

    “no, Amos, they’s plenny o´ land fo´ lots o´folks. i could do with some comp´ny.”

    it really does get tyresum this end o´times brouhaha that kinda never pans out. reminds me of newton’s law statin’ that things kinda lykes ta stay doin´what they is doin´,’stead ó changin´.

    if you is gonna cite the yeast analogy, i will out-cite you with a newtonian law. these physical universal laws don’t like ta be made fun o’, ya know, they’s real mean like.

    peace peaceniks

  131. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 10:29 pm #

    “I use UK spelling just to throw out false positives. Or do I?
    One can never tell on the interwebs, can one?” – Rube

    Going this far to maintain anonymity indicates an over developed sense of your own importance.

    “Untied states is a deliberate gaffe.” – Rube

    If I had college to do over again I might try this ploy of yours…Professor, I want you to know that every last thing you marked in red as wrong on my treatise was, in fact, a deliberate gaffe for purposes of humor and I am sorely disappointed that you didn’t recognize it as such.

    “…for example, the chinks and the nips could teach us lots about discipline and saving lots of money and living debt free…the anglo-saxons can teach us lots about advancing science and technology… those are about the only two i think have anything much to offer,”

    Two?

    This reminds me of the guy who yells I’ve got just two words for you…GO FUCK YOURSELF!

  132. rube-i-con October 18, 2013 at 10:33 pm #

    Going this far to maintain anonymity indicates an over developed sense of your own importance.

    why would i choose a moniker like rube-i-con if i was concerned about self-importance?

    i repeatedly say i reserve the right to be wrong.

    and i commonly am.

    like the rest of the retinue out here.

    man, people, don’t read too much into the things folks say. once you get to know them up close and personal, you really change your tack.

    peace peaceniks

  133. Q. Shtik October 18, 2013 at 10:46 pm #

    “Voila, a link to your referenced comment should appear.” – Prog
    ===========

    Thanks for the hash tag tip, it should prove useful.

    BTW, regarding me, on the subject of immigration/over-population, you are preaching to the choir.

  134. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 1:53 am #

    “Bore? Not at all. Why were you banned?” – Janos
    ===========

    I can’t rightly say. It is unclear to me how JHK’s mind works in these matters. There was a great hue and cry that had gone up that Carol and Aso.. (the poster who Prog says must not be named) were destroying the comments section by creating numerous accounts/monikers and posting nonsensical BS. It would be like Carol adopting your name and posting a heartfelt apology for all the “false and nasty shit” you had ever said against blacks, Jews, women and commies.

    I found myself caught up in this onslaught and tried to fight fire with fire. When Jim finally took a look at what was going on he concluded I was an asshole in a nonsensical battle with As… So all at once he dumped a slew of offenders and I was among them.

    I stayed on the sidelines from Aug 27, reading but unable to post. Then I wrote to Jim by email, groveled humbly at his feet, and asked to be reinstated. He said he’d have his “techie” take care of it if I promised to behave myself. A week or two went by with no action so I wrote again. There was another delay of a few days and then the tech guy (Neil) accomplished my un-banishment.

    Now I am trying to keep my nose clean, whatever constitutes a clean nose in Jim’s mind I’m not sure. I think he is happiest when he hears nothing about what is going on in the comments section.

    I don’t know what happened to a lot of the regulars like Buck, Bustin, etc… whether they were banned or just plain fed up…left…and never returned. I miss them. There were some great thinkers and writers who’ve fallen by the wayside.

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    • ZrCrypDiK October 19, 2013 at 3:23 am #

      Heh You *weren’t* banned. Nor whuz *I* – now let’s get back to *CHAT*!!!

  135. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 3:36 am #

    Q. Shtik wrote: “Then I wrote to Jim by email, groveled humbly at his feet, and asked to be reinstated. ”

    Jeez…….Someone call the Jamaican Nurse’s Aid with the blue rubber gloves….

    • ZrCrypDiK October 19, 2013 at 3:52 am #

      Heh! OK, I’ma gunna do a *magik* trick for you’ll. Check out this ‘lil diddy: youtube.com/watch?v=uu2_CxKrhVU

      Heh! C that? *EMBEDDED?*

  136. ZrCrypDiK October 19, 2013 at 4:29 am #

    So I’ll open with flawed text, that the Q can handily *handle*. 8 balls don’t matter in the game of 9-ball (Q?). You run the table out in ball-number-order. Does NE-1 understand me here?!? HEHE!!! That youtube vid is *balls-out* best-evah concert I’ve *SCENE,* in over 30 years… Stew Adamson whacked himself (same ol’, same ol’). Can you say, Croce, Randy California, Nirvana, Jimmy, Janice, etc/./ H3ll, even Rafferty (steelers wheel) is gone…

  137. Arn Varnold October 19, 2013 at 6:21 am #

    You say you’ve been following along for a while. If you indeed have, you’d realize that it’s pointedly futile trying to refute (or even ignore) the Bus Station Pest as he plunks his one note on his one-stringed banjo of race and fascist hierarchical superiority.
    ozone
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    A while defined as, not a year.
    But, I got your point.
    Look at the post count, 300+; so, I’m now part of an endless cycle of same.old.thing. Rather boring, no?
    Cheers

    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 3:00 am #

      “endless cycle of same.old.thing.”

      Hahaha, same ol’, same ol’… Wish I could offer an *ALTERNATIVE*, but, alas, we cut all the *TREES* down. And *THAT* whuz pretty much the end of it all…

  138. brosil October 19, 2013 at 7:28 am #

    Happy Birthday, Mr. Kuntsler. I noticed your birthday listed over on Survivalblog.

  139. progress4what October 19, 2013 at 10:19 am #

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/comment-page-3/#comment-159796 ” if you is gonna cite the yeast analogy, i will out-cite you with a newtonian law.” ….rube, in hillbilly vernacular….

    That will be interesting, I’ll be looking for it.

    ======================
    And I got the idea of the “last doubling” as being where ALL the troubles appear, from a financial website I was reading. But – it seems even more applicable for biological systems, like yeast in a vat or humans on a planet.

    And, we on Earth, have approached a point where a LOT of last doublings are, inevitably, about to occur.

    Thoughts, anyone?

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  140. volodya October 19, 2013 at 10:30 am #

    Ozone

    Good stuff there with the links you came up with. Pure fantasy to think that the US govt and the Fed can continue on the present course. The parties to these deals aren’t having it.

    Not that the various parties are themselves paragons of economic and fiscal probity. I mean, they’ll screw anything softer and pinker than themselves. But one damn thing at a time, right? First these deals. Gradually inch the USD out the door.

    And then what? Other stuff. Like maybe stealing bank deposits to prop up zombie banks, then swipe more cash deposits to prop up half dead government treasuries. The IMF is apparently talking about one time wealth confiscations to get sovereign debt levels to 2007 levels. Or something.

    And then how about defaults galore. Maybe moratoriums on sovereign bond interest. First one country, then more.

    And then govt pension payments will be late. First they’ll say it’s because of computer glitches, then they’ll say it’s because of temporary liquidity issues, then it’ll be because of, geez I don’t know, it’ll be because of mice gnawing on power cables.

    But, don’t worry, half the payment will be in the mail. Soon.

  141. volodya October 19, 2013 at 10:32 am #

    To Qshtik

    Great observation about India. Beats me as to why companies are falling all over themselves to re-locate critical corporate back office functions to that shithole.

    I just read Naipaul’s book Magic Seeds. Not as good IMO as Area of Darkness but still good. You might also want to have a look at Among the Believers.

    Mystic Masseur, Miguel Street, A House for Mr Biswas all good for a laugh.

  142. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 12:09 pm #

    “Heh! C that? *EMBEDDED?*” – ZrCry…
    ===========

    I watched/listened for 11 mins and was unimpressed.

    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 12:41 am #

      Thumbs down? OMG, so you’re one of those! Maybe that ebow [tm] sound of bagpipes just ain’t fer ya (being of the “Elvis” era)… I get it, but I never could, up til now, understand how someone could vote that 1:40 concert down (but now I do!)…

  143. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 12:30 pm #

    “Beats me as to why companies are falling all over themselves to re-locate critical corporate back office functions to that shithole.” – Volodya

    There’s no mystery, labor is cheaper there.

    “I just read Naipaul’s book Magic Seeds. Not as good IMO as Area of Darkness but still good.” – Volodya

    I just started another book about India written by a Scot named William Dalrymple. It’s titled City of Djinns, A Year in Delhi. It is copywrited in 1993 whereas An Area of Darkness was copywrited (copywritten?) in 1964. So the experiences described in Djinns are about 30 years more current than those in Darkness. But nothing has changed. There is still the mindboggling bureaucratic nightmare to get anything done. But I’m only 25 pages into the book so maybe things get better…tho I doubt it. I loved the authors description of taking an apartment in Delhi, then starting the process of applying to get phone service. It’s hilarious and sad at the same time.

    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 3:37 am #

      Definitely Not Q – as in, Definite Soker-puppet… *STAY TUNED*!!!

  144. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 12:49 pm #

    “why would i choose a moniker like rube-i-con if i was concerned about self-importance?” – Rubeicon
    ===========

    I looked up the definition of rubicon and see no connection between it and your supposed lack of concern for your self-importance. Maybe the answer lies in the definition of the word rube? Please explain.

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  145. rube-i-con October 19, 2013 at 1:01 pm #

    That will be interesting, I’ll be looking for it.

    it was rhetorical, go up a line or so where newton sez things like to stay doin what they is doin. can’t you read hilbilly?

    course you knew that, prolly. but gots to be real smart and learned like.

    for the non-Newtonians out here: A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force.

    …to which i opined it might apply to a society as well.

    which is maybe why in spyta all tha shenannigans, moneywise and otherwise, thats taken place since 2008, the cuntry aint gone down yet, tho it mite be sinkin.

    then again, you can interpret the above to mean the body (politic and society) are in motion towards entropy and chaos and kunstlerian descent and aint nuthing gonna stop it unless an outside force, maybe like obeying the law and living within ones means, acts upon it.

    choice is yours.

    let me know if you all need any more help, i got time today.

    will be roastin’ an entire pig tomorow COMMUNALLY, just ta let those pig-hatin’ folks among yas know. the skin gits all crispy and crunchy and is scrumdillyishus, tho it feels funny eatin the ear like that.

    peace peaceniks

  146. rube-i-con October 19, 2013 at 1:06 pm #

    yep, rube as is i reserve the right to be wrong. i may be a rube at times.

    i-con as in i may be conning you, or conning myself.

    who the hell thinks they know everything?

    always leave rum open for doubt.

    and walk softly but carry a big Q-shtick.

    peace peaceniks

  147. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 1:08 pm #

    This is a reply to the following: http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/creepily-close/comment-page-3/#comment-159794
    ===========

    I am testing the instructions Prog gave me.

    Prog, you said ‘Right click the hashtag and then click “Copy Link Location.”’ I did this but the dropdown box does not contain an option titled Copy Link Location. It does contain an option titled Copy Shortcut so I clicked on that and pasted it into the comment box. Now I will click Submit Comment and see what happens.

  148. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 1:12 pm #

    “Now I will click Submit Comment and see what happens.” – Q.
    ==========

    Voila!

  149. Q. Shtik October 19, 2013 at 3:03 pm #

    OK, new subject.

    For all readers but likely will be of most interest to people over 65 and on Medicare.

    I have been covered by Medicare for the past 7-8 years. When you start out people will advise you that you must be careful, “Medicare doesn’t cover you 100%.” It covers you something like 80% and for the rest you need to purchase “Medigap” (Supplemental) insurance. If you were to have a million dollar quintuple heart bypass surgery that 20% that YOU are responsible for could kill you financially. Thus the need for “gap” insurance.

    “Yeah, yeah,” you’re probably saying, “we know all that, get on with it.”

    Sooo, when I first went on Medicare I purchased Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield gap insurance. The particular plan is called a Medicare Advantage program. What this means is that Horizon is actually taking on the total responsibility of Medicare from the Govt. The govt pays Horizon a fee to do this so that the govt can essentially wash its hands of the responsibility. The responsibility that Horizon has taken on includes Medicare, drug coverage, AND that all important GAP.

    When I began with Horizon several years ago the monthly premium for this was $62 per month. Essentially that was the fee for the gap insurance. A year or two went by and during a fall enrollment period a miracle happened. A letter arrived saying that in the coming new year the $62 premium was being reduced to ZERO. I called up with great skepticism and asked what’s the catch, who are you guys trying to shit, etc etc or words to that effect. No, they assured me, no bullshit…your monthly premium is now zero and your coverage remains the same.

    And so it has been for the last few years.

    Now, yesterday I get a letter from Horizon and the first paragraph reads as follows:

    Dear Mr. Shtik:

    Medicare has confirmed your disenrollment from Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO). Beginning 01/01/2014, Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO) won’t cover your health care. If your doctor needs to send Medicare claims, you may want to tell them that there may be a short delay in updating your records since you recently disenrolled from Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO).

    Naturally I am stunned by the bluntness of this unexpected unwanted news. Several paragraphs of insurance gobbledygook follow on page 1 then the first paragraph on page 2 reads:

    If you think you didn’t disenroll from Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO), and you want to keep being a member of Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO), please call us right away at 1-800-xxx-xxxx so we can make sure you stay a member of Horizon Medicare Blue Value w/Rx Standard (HMO). Medicare gives you only 30 days from the date of this letter to contact us. TTY users should call blah blah……

    Whew!!! I thought, thank god.

    I call the number and inform the representative that I “didn’t disenroll” and “want to keep being a member of………..

    The rep informs me that that page 2 paragraph is completely erroneous and that all Medicare “Advantage” programs have been done away with. I tell her I’m stunned and shocked and if I wasn’t going on 73 years old I might even cry. Without emotion she says “If you’d like I can switch you over to Sales and they can tell you what other options you may have.”

    “Yes,” I say, “switch me.”

    The rep there confirms that the letter I got was completely wrong, my plan is defunct. So “what do I do” I ask, my lower lip quivering. “Well,” she says, “we have another plan that has all the same coverage as your current plan but the premium is higher than the zero amount you’ve been paying.”

    “OK, and what is that premium amount?”

    “One hundred and fifty three dollars and seventy cents a month.” ($153.70).

    I pick myself up off the floor where I landed when I fell out of my chair and begin to gather myself to ask questions about how a plan can have an infinite percentage increase in a premium. I am informed that “they cut off the funding of the Advantage programs so they (the programs) no longer exist.”

    “Who is THEY that cut off the funding? I blurt.

    “The government,” she says with amazing calm.

    I ask, “would you say this change is the result of Obamacare?”

    “Oh, I couldn’t say if that is the case” she responds. “I think the two things are independent of one another but I really don’t know. Would you like me to send you an application package in the mail?”

    Yeah, send me the fuckin package I grumble under my breath.

    So, story over. In 2014 I will pay $1,844.40 for the same thing that previously cost me nothing.

    Sorry for the long-winded post…I had to get it off my chest.

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    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 12:28 am #

      Now *THAT* soulds liek Q!!! Heh, sorry, smells like the same ol’, same ol’ fraud of the economics of system, but you shouldn’t sweat – Rn’t you getting $70k/year in retirement income (not including SS)?!?

      I want to see the same sort of rant as above, but about the cost of food – prolly more pertinent to those of us without ~6-fig-salaries…

  150. progress4what October 19, 2013 at 3:06 pm #

    “…the dropdown box does not contain an option titled Copy Link Location. It does contain an option titled Copy Shortcut…”
    ….Q….

    Thus do we discover that there are differences in Mozilla Firefox and Internet explorer, and that Q is running IE.

    “A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force.”
    ….Sir Isaac Rubicon….

    Thus do we discover that there are differences between Newtonian Physics and population biology, and that Rube-I-Con is running NP.

    OK – don’t take offense, that’s supposed to be something like funny.

    And I’d never noticed the triple meaning of your handle; the river, the Rube, and the “I con.”

    And enjoy the pig. Who conned it into gutting itself and jumping into that pit? hah!

  151. Janos Skorenzy October 19, 2013 at 3:16 pm #

    The whole village was Baltimore, Ireland was taken by Muslim slavers. It was common in the 1700’s to hear the chanting from their ships off in the fog. Sound carries well over water. The total number of Europeans enslaved runs into the millions – larger than the American Negro Slave trade. Attention from Academia? Zero. And zero to the virtual White Slavery that existed in colonial America.

    http://www.amren.com/features/2013/10/is-the-west-guilty/

  152. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 7:40 pm #

    What do you know about the “Succubus”?

  153. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 8:17 pm #

    Here’s the link for you to send in your prayer requests to pray for unlimited fossil fuels and the return to the 1950s halcyon days of “Happy Motoring”, discharge of your student loans, and whatever other unrealistic bullshit that comes to mind.

    https://www.ernestangley.org/prayer

  154. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 8:19 pm #

    Remember:

    Please use English when submitting your prayer request.

    God only speaks English.

    Thank you.

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  155. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 8:42 pm #

    In response to the US threat to default on interest payments on US Treasury Bonds, the foreigners are now threatening to suspend shipments of Blue Rubber Gloves to the U.S.

    “It’s O.K. to Touch It ’cause I got on my Blue Rubba Glubs!”

  156. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 9:15 pm #

    Jewish people probably have certain cultural values that are propitious for accumulating wealth. As a minority group, this probably made Jewish people an inviting convenient target in the ancient world for dominant groups like the Egyptians or Romans who’d come and steal their money?

    I suspect that over time Jewish people probably eventually figured out that rather than playing the victim of robbery that it’s better to assume the role of the Banker and “lend” the money to the crazy foreigners and charge interest on the “loan”, which the dominant foreigners could then collect by allowing Jewish people to do business in their empires and/or by stealing from other non-Jewish peoples?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 19, 2013 at 10:41 pm #

      You never commented on the story of Joseph who had the Egyptians sell themselves into slavery so they could eat their own grain. Are you one yourself perhaps?

      The whole West has gone down over this very issue. The Muslims never allowed them near their finances. If we had only been so wise. But “our” leaders conspired with them so the fault is ours first and foremost. No doubt they were cut in for a generous stake.

    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 12:48 am #

      Oh, you mean usury? Yeah, I’m sure they figured that 1 out *LONG* ago…

      • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 1:16 am #

        ““lend” the money to the crazy foreigners and charge interest on the “loan”,”

        OOpz, forgot that preface quote…

        And don’t get me wrong, it certainly whuz Jews milkin’ usury fees – but I’m not one to hold that infernal, eternal, racist *grudge*… It could just as easily be JPM, Chase, Citi, BofA, Deutsche BanCorp, etc… BTW, how many losses they *STILL* holding off books?!… GAAP, *INDEED*!!!

  157. Janos Skorenzy October 19, 2013 at 10:47 pm #

    The Elephant in the room talks about the Oliphant in the room.

    http://clashdaily.com/2013/10/ate-baby-chicago-teachers-unionthis-city-belongs-black-people-white-people/

  158. Pucker October 19, 2013 at 11:32 pm #

    Janos asked: “Are you one yourself perhaps?”

    Answer: No…..

    Did you hear about the Underwear Bomber who rigged it so that it’d go off when he shit in his pants?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 3:54 am #

      You are getting increasingly bizarre and risqué even I might add. Look whose talking! Is this not the pot calling the kettle black? Nevertheless, as one black to another, do you eat with those fingers?

  159. Deblonay October 20, 2013 at 3:59 am #

    The Events in Baltimore Ireland in the 1600ies
    _____________________
    from Wikipedia
    a more complicated event than one would imagine
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore

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    • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 2:51 pm #

      You quibble while Baltimore burns. The Blackamours have now taken Baltimore, Maryland.

  160. ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 4:05 am #

    SRSLY, stumbed over this *doozie*!!!

    youtube.com/watch?v=5JDUeecZehA

    *EMBEDDED*!!!

    • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 5:24 am #

      Did NE-1 srsly think we could clearcut the *AMAZON*, without consequences? (Apparently, *THEY* did)

      • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 5:28 am #

        Same ol’, same ol’ – I membaz that argument back in the early 80’s. Same ol’ – clearcut the forest, silt the rivers, concrete the land. Apparently that *WHUZN’T* an obvious enough *CLUE*…

        • ZrCrypDiK October 20, 2013 at 5:39 am #

          Definitely worth a ban (douche responds to himself 4 times) – but wait! Just think about it for a moment – if we still had forests, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere wouldn’t be growing exponentially beyond 400PPM… It’d be well under control of *THE FORESTS*…

          Unfortunately, we cut all those forests down, already (google amazon basin, and hope the images aren’t 4 years old). So it’s *NOT* peak oil that’s our demise (as global warming is directly tied into CO2 PPM)…

  161. BackRowHeckler October 20, 2013 at 9:56 am #

    So called ‘Millennials’ are the hope of the future? At the vanguard of the revolution? We had a sampling of these millennials up this weekend, from Manhattan, mostly, for a weekend in the country, looking at Fall Foliage and all that, a niece, some of her friends, from Paris and Spain, step daughter, some fiends of hers, including a coupla of young dudes who seemed kind of effeminate, a whole slew of them and their I pods and laptops. So i volunteer to make a sort of communal breakfast, cheese omelets, bacon, French Toast (which got a big laugh from the Frenchies.) Wait, there’s a problem. The coffee? Where is it from? Is it certified picked by fairly treated pickers, like at Starbucks? Why is it in a can and not a bag? I don’t know, this is what I have here in the cupboard. And the chickens that laid these eggs? Were they free range? Were they well treated? Are these eggs organic? What’s the expiration date on them. The cheese was problematic too in that it was sliced American Cheese from the Deli Dept. What the hell kind of cheese is that one of them asked? And forget about the bacon. One young bud couldn’t be in the same room where bacon was being consumed, the same house, the same street, the same Universe.

    That pretty much ended our cozy homecooked breakfast. The upshot is that they piled into two cars and drove to the Starbucks in Town. Jim, If you are looking for some sort of revolution with these kids out front I think you are in for a disappointment. These are highly evolved, refined human beings who need everything just right. Otherwise its nogo!

    –BRH

  162. Q. Shtik October 20, 2013 at 2:31 pm #

    “tin yot pinultee; please set the game clock ta fo oh nahn” – Jets/Pats game referee

  163. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject October 20, 2013 at 2:45 pm #

    “So called ‘Millennials’ are the hope of the future? At the vanguard of the revolution?” BackRowHeckler

    I loved your observation BRH. As a millennial I find myself looking at my own generation as well as my complacent elders in the same manner you’ve described. However, I’m probably a bit harder on the older generations than is polite to mention. Petty gripes aside, I would agree with many who recognize that IF the Millennials are to be the backbone and the Boomers the mind of a revolution which shows no sign of occurrence, then we are in fact creepily close to nothing but species extinction.

    Although, I’d like to ask JHK’s permission to submit this video link for you and ‘Zone (Howdy,man!!) to ponder; the rest of the oft banned and relentlessly desperate to reappear Trolls can continue steeping in their own incurable narcissism. I’m not really here for forum participation per se. Anyhow, the vid from philosopher Slavoj Zizek, probably seen on CFN before, describes the new form of Cultural Capitalism, which I think is what you’re noticing from today’s “conscientious consumers”, BRH. Starbucks as an example of the phony altruism you observed during your weekend is reflected in the vid.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

    I’m not sure what this says about an entire generation, whether they’ve simply become effeminate, atrophied ninnies, or simply that Western culture is so well indoctrinated into the efficient market system that the mythology of choice has reached its final utopia – where WE won’t notice we’ve truly fucked ourselves and over used everything via technology til the last moment. That is, None of the so called revolutionary local food or global commerce practices we’re witnessing today are making us more resilient in the long run, just adding fruitless complexity. ADR has recently produced a great series demonstrating that idea. You know, good intentions and all?

    What I am sure of is that in the event of a collapse, millenials like me, fit and intellectually self-sufficient, will triage the environment; that is, we will be forced to allow the redundant mass, no matter the generation, to fall by the wayside as we concentrate our labors on the center mass that hasn’t fallen into general apathy. Be a fat old man with a lot of “wisdom” or a pusillanimous youth faint of heart, and either one will be of little use in hard fought survival. So I imagine.

    -UFIA

    • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 2:55 pm #

      It may be the result of fluoride and plastics in the water – weakening the will and lowering the IQ and sperm count. These chemical eunuchs are then subjected to years of conditioning by female teachers and the mass media. It’s a wonder they aren’t worse than they are.

      • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject October 20, 2013 at 3:03 pm #

        So what’s the excuse for you? Just naturally stupid, I’ve noticed.

        -UFIA

        • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 3:15 pm #

          More civic consciousness from our nasty “liberals”. You and your kind never deserved freedom and you have done your utmost to destroy it for others.

    • BackRowHeckler October 20, 2013 at 3:34 pm #

      Unstoppable! You’re a millennial? For a youngster you come across as a pretty substantial dude with not a little insight. Now I’ll have to rethink my previous post.

      BRH

    • ozone October 20, 2013 at 9:06 pm #

      UFIA,
      It appears someone doesn’t think your thoughts or opinions are worthy of anything other than dismissal, but that would be typical. Who could it be now?

      On to cases:
      “What I am sure of is that in the event of a collapse, millenials like me, fit and intellectually self-sufficient, will triage the environment; that is, we will be forced to allow the redundant mass, no matter the generation, to fall by the wayside as we concentrate our labors on the center mass that hasn’t fallen into general apathy. Be a fat old man with a lot of “wisdom” or a pusillanimous youth faint of heart, and either one will be of little use in hard fought survival. So I imagine.”

      This is more than an imagining, it’s a solid foundation of a plan.
      If it comes to desperate times, triage is the only reasonable way forward. Beware of entrenched hierarchies that [strangely enough] benefit only those in charge.
      Useful, smart and able-bodied? Let’s go get busy.
      Useless, stupid and physically dependent? Stay where you’re at and fight it out with the other boneheads.

      (Older folks of real wisdom know the roots of that wisdom firsthand, by doing the hard work that puts theory into real-world practice. These people are rarely sedentary, and always keep a sharpened curiosity about not only their own field of expertise, but many others as well. Believe me, they’re not hard to spot. Unless their expertise is in political science, eugenics or state/economic religion, some might actually prove “useful”.)

      Me? I could be bypassed, as I don’t think I know anything so specific that a thousand others don’t know it too. (I could probably tell you how to cobble together a septic system off the top of my head, but so can a lot of others in the construction trades. Meh.)

      So… good luck! 🙂
      *I’ll watch that vid tomorrow; thanks.

      • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 10:53 pm #

        Yes, his (your) view of the world is a sick and crabbed one to use the old Southern term for how they viewed Yankees. And no, if we ever get a Nation of our own we wont allow the sickness of Liberalism to ever rise again. And you all feel the same way about us. But here’s the difference: we Want to separate from you all and y’all wont let us go.

  164. Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 3:17 pm #

    Remember the Alamo! Gun Owners rally for their rights at the Alamo yesterday – and the Mighty Dead silently applaud. Liberty is always unfinished business.

    http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-rallies-at-the-alamo-with-gun-owners-for-open-carry/

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  165. Pucker October 20, 2013 at 7:05 pm #

    [Scene from the movie “Deliverance”]. City Slickers, Ned and Bobby, the beneficiaries of urban Capitalism and complexity, take a break from canoeing on the riverbank and encounter the post-Collapse redneck mountain men.]

    Ned: “What is it that you Gentlemen require?”

    Mountain man: “We require you to git your ass up inta dem God-Damn woods!”

    Ned: “Is this about money?”

    Mountain man: “Oh we’ll take your money.”

  166. progress4what October 20, 2013 at 7:22 pm #

    Nice post about the Millennials, BRH. Funny stuff!

    And a nice rejoinder by UFIA, too. Good stuff. I haven’t watched the video yet, I’ll give it a shot after a while. I expect one difference in younger vs. older generations is reduced ability to process text and increased ability to multi-task and process video. I can tear through a transcript of a 10 minute video in a couple of minutes. But I digress.

    I would like to quibble over this: ” Be a fat old man with a lot of “wisdom” or a pusillanimous youth faint of heart, and either one will be of little use…” ufia

    I agree that the pusillanimous will be of no use, regardless of age. As far as a “fat old man with a lot of wisdom,” that’s outside my field of encounters – because all of the wise old men I’ve ever known have been pretty thin. I expect the fat ones die young (Buddha? how old was he?) or else they are wise enough not to ever get fat.

    The last old man of my extended family was my father-in-law, who passed away about a year ago, now. Great guy, but with more social and managerial skills than hard-core survival skills. Nevertheless, I would have sacrificed a LOT to keep him in food and shelter, should a SHTF event occurred during his lifetime. He always had a positive impact on the family, just by being around.

    And that’s got to be part of your definition of wisdom, I hope.

  167. Pucker October 20, 2013 at 7:27 pm #

    [Re-make of the movie “Deliverance” for the 21st Century Collapse.]

    [Ned and Bobby dis-embark from their canoe on the riverbank to enjoy a cup of bullshit STARBUCKS COFFEE when they encounter the mountain men.]

    Mountain Man: “What da Hell duya think you’re do’n?!”

    Ned: “We’re take’n a canoe trip down to Aintry.”

    Mountain Man: “Aintry?!”

    Bobby: “Yeah Captain….This River only goes one way. Or haven’t you heard?”

    Mountain Man: “This River don’t go da Aintry. Dis River don’t go anywhere near Aintry. See uh….You done made da wrong turn.”

    Bobby nervously: “Well…this River must come out somewhere. That’s where we’re go’n…somewhere…..”

    Mountain Man: “You Boys sure is lost, ain’t ya?”

  168. progress4what October 20, 2013 at 7:34 pm #

    Janos – that Baltimore information was new information to me, thanks!

    Of course, as the wiki entry about it showed, reality was a little more nuanced than AmRen implied.

    Nevertheless, the story should be told – to get the word out that the world has always been a pretty brutal place, and that slavery is by NO MEANS an always white-against-black phenomenon.

    I don’t know why that AmRen writer had to postulate a vast Jewish Conspiracy in the last few paragraphs. Not only did it not fit with the rest of the article, but it would lead almost anyone who was not of the AmRen “uberfaithful?” to negate the whole article, even the whole concept of White Slavery.

    Which is too bad.

    • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 9:44 pm #

      Well remember, the title of the article was “Is the West guilty”. He used the facts of invasion and slavery to show that we have been more sinned against than sinning – or at least equally so. Yes it was an awkward and abrupt shift in the article but still a valid if limited approach.

      Many people point to the Frankfurt School as having had a key role in making us the bad guys in the human drama – even to ourselves. And yes, they were European Jews who were offered refuge here. Because of people like this, White Americans are now just considered Nazis waiting to happen – even though we defeated their enemies in Central Europe for them. And this is the kind of gratitude we can expect in the future as well.

      Jews played a huge role in the Atlantic Slave Trade. But that has been hidden has it not?

      When the Conquistadors reconquered Spain, they felt they were fighting both the Muslims and the Jews. Why? Because that’s how Spain had been conquered centuries before: Muslim soldiers would take a City and then a Jewish garrison would hold and administer it for them. In some Cities, it is said that the Jews opened the gates to the Muslims.

  169. Arn Varnold October 20, 2013 at 8:44 pm #

    Nevertheless, the story should be told – to get the word out that the world has always been a pretty brutal place, and that slavery is by NO MEANS an always white-against-black phenomenon.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    This is not new knowledge. It’s called history.
    You know; those who don’t know, oh never mind…

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    • progress4what October 20, 2013 at 9:07 pm #

      Yeah, arn, I know it’s history, you know it’s history – –

      But you ask the average inner city gang-banger (or cosseted college trained millennial) who is responsible for “SLAVERY,” – and report back with your findings.

      • Arn Varnold October 20, 2013 at 10:18 pm #

        Education in America is an oxymoron.
        One is/must be responsible for one’s education. To rely on other is perilous at best.
        And, what do you know about inner city gang-bangers?

    • Janos Skorenzy October 20, 2013 at 9:29 pm #

      Oh Really? Then why has Academia never picked it up? Why have they taught generations of students that Whites are “the cancer of humanity”? Why no coverage of the brutal indentured servitude system in colonial America? Why no mention of the very large Jewish aspect of the slave trade? And why no concern about slavery in Africa Today? Because there are no Whites to blame perhaps? And in the case of indentured servitude, it was “just” Whites exploiting other Whites.

  170. progress4what October 20, 2013 at 9:14 pm #

    From the wiki:
    “The villagers were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa. Some prisoners were destined to live out their days as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the seclusion of the Sultan’s harem or within the walls of the Sultan’s palace as laborers. At most three of them ever saw Ireland again.[2] One was ransomed almost at once and two others in 1646. Since several others are known to have been still alive in 1646 why they were not ransomed is unclear: it has been argued that Algerians, on the whole, treated household slaves kindly enough, and that after fifteen years some may simply have preferred to remain where they were.[3]”

    “Algerians, on the whole, treated household slaves kindly enough,”

    Revisionist history.

    You ever hear that “African slaves in the Americas were treated kindly enough,” recently?

  171. UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject October 21, 2013 at 1:57 am #

    “I haven’t watched the video yet, I’ll give it a shot after a while. I expect one difference in younger vs. older generations is reduced ability to process text and increased ability to multi-task and process video. I can tear through a transcript of a 10 minute video in a couple of minutes.”

    I don’t know what to make of any of the above assertions. First, I would only agree that many of the older generation are terrific text transcribers and minimally adept collators of data. My sense is that preceding generations who held sedentary office positions were barely required to be competent and efficient typists, simply due to the during their peak work years, and employers were forced to cultivate these generic skill sets to suit their purposes.

    • UnstoppableFarceImmovableAbject October 21, 2013 at 3:33 am #

      Well that was strange. My post submitted automatically for some reason. Correction of my reply to another comment:

      I would only agree that many of the older generation are terrific text transcribers and minimally adept collators of data.My sense is that preceding generations, especially members who held sedentary office positions, were mostly only required to be competent, efficient typists, simply due to the limited access to multi-modal tech during their generation’s peak work years. As such, employers were forced to cultivate those generic secretary-like skill sets to suit the elite’s basic information transfer purposes. These skills never fully equated to strengths in critical thought or the ability to truly perform deep readings. That’s always been the province of an insatiably hungry few. Instead, most office-working people became only proficient fact-collectors and lost the capacity to distinguish facts from ideas, or, at least, to understand that facts grow from ideas, not the other way around. To not understand an underlying idea is to be easily blinded my misleading facts. See ANY of janoS’ notions about religion, history, or race.

      Simply, I’ve found out that most people today, no matter their age, cannot provide any example of a natural idea without drowning their expression in abstract, inductive logic. As a result, we can trace the evolution of this country’s intellectual economy from a Marketplace of Ideas into an Idea Marketplace; wherefore, natural concepts were dumbed down, packaged and sold to non-thinking idea consumers, who at best only learned to collect the facts they could easily parse, which ultimately only ever suits narrow self-interest. Thus the reason why you’re likely not as adept at tearing apart text as you claim is because you were likely barely ever required. In fact, I suspect you don’t even have the needed bandwidth to watch the video, let alone the discipline to really discern or research the ideas presented therein. The transcript would do ya no good, buddy.

      If that’s not a gross enough over-generalization for ya, I can even put an arbitrary start date on this evolution into an Idea Marketplace – post WWI. Yes, we might agree, the “facts” back it up, that every generation since then has fallen just another rung down the intellectual ladder, as technology advanced and human wit became obsolete. Recent generational educational status reports proclaim that the latest bunch of American idiots is the dumbest ever. But there is no accounting for the autodidacts hiding among us. And I’m not talking about the public geniuses out to drastically change the world with their brilliance. I’m talking about the ones who don’t really care about proving their smarts all that much or saving the world. Let’s not shit each other, Frog, neither of us have an interest in a real debate on the matter. We’re only here for our own selfish interests, not to truly figure shit out for the younger generations.

      -UFIA

  172. Pucker October 21, 2013 at 2:42 am #

    Do Young Uns today watch a lot of p,orn on the Internet?

  173. Pucker October 21, 2013 at 2:44 am #

    In his final interview, Ted Bundy said that he was deeply influenced by p,ornog,raphy as a child.

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  174. progress4what October 21, 2013 at 9:00 am #

    UFIA-
    You have a bizarre belief that insulting a thing, idea, or person is the same as negating and disproving that thing, idea, or person.

    You might want to examine your use of “logic,” in this regard.

    Thanks for posting that RSAnimate YouTube. There is a whole series of them, and they all look to be worth a look. I like the blending of voice, text, and graphics with relatively unique perspectives.

  175. progress4what October 21, 2013 at 9:07 am #

    And I know more about gang-bangers than you might suspect. Many of them are OK individuals, one-on-one, and on some kind of neutral turf.
    On their home turf and in a group, however, they can be a menace.

    • Arn Varnold October 21, 2013 at 9:35 am #

      Not knowing you, I’ll not take your word on that.
      But your following comment reflects my experience.
      The utter bullshit here drowns out reasonable and experiential real world relationships.
      Pity, no?

      • Arn Varnold October 21, 2013 at 9:41 am #

        The utter difficulty of following a cogent conversation, post by post, is making it impossible to have an easy conversation here.
        You didn’t attribute to me, so, I had to go the extra step of reflection.
        Not a problem in and of itself, but not a smooth process all in all…

  176. progress4what October 21, 2013 at 9:08 am #

    “can be,” hell. They ARE a menace. This is well documented.

  177. progress4what October 21, 2013 at 9:13 am #

    And my riff on boomers/millennials and their approaches to text/video was supposed to be a slightly humorous extrapolation of my own personal observations.

    Of course, the same can be said of your insulting attack on a whole generation of office workers.

    Choose happiness when you can, man.

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