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Welcome to the American hall of mirrors… and mind the broken glass all over the floor. That’s Nature’s way of saying the country has run out room to punk itself. 2018 was the consolidation of bad faith in everything we do: politics, the news media, economics & finance, show biz, regular biz, jurisprudence, medicine, education, and relations between men and women — the year of peak dishonesty and self-deception. Of course, the trouble with dishonesty is that it doesn’t comport with Reality, and Reality being Mother Nature’s husband, bats in the cleanup position. Entering 2019, the bases are loaded with delusions, misdirections, and turpitudes. I shall get right to it without further throat-clearing.

Trumpology

The nation’s focus remains clamped to the mercurial character in the White House. If you subscribe to Strauss and Howe’s theories about The Fourth Turning, then you might see president Donald J. Trump playing the archetypal role they call “The Gray Champion,” an elder figure of the “transcendental” Boomer generation sent by fate to rescue a floundering society at a grave moment in the seasons of history. Yes, I know: we might have been better off calling Ghostbusters. A cardinal precept at this blog is that fate is a trickster. You order a Gray Champion and room service sends up a Golden Golem of Greatness.

To put it mildly, Mr. Trump has failed to charm at least half the country. They are embarrassed at his physical presence: his lumbering gait, like unto a behemoth land mammal of the Oligocene; that swaying bay window stomach half-concealed by the flaps of his suit-jacket and bisected by the oddly elongated necktie; the pained smile he puts on for the photo-ops; his man-spreading when seated with the world’s poohbahs, and that strange confection of sculpted hair, like the spun sugar on a Croquembouche, or the pouf on some horrifying plastic dashboard figurine. His manner of speech, the weird, palindromic repetitions, the childish artlessness of his casual utterances, the absence of Beltway focus-group cant, and of course the reviled Tweets — drive his opponents up a tree. The gilt-plastic trappings he surrounds himself with also offend them. For all I know, they hate his cologne, too.

His adversaries say he is “undermining institutions.” By this perhaps they mean the beloved DC gravy-train of regular institutionalized grift divvied up between elected officials, Wall Street, the War-and-Intel matrix, and the unholy infestation of lawyer-lobbyists slithering around the Swamp. Just look what happened when Mr. Trump threatened to end US military operations in Syria: apoplexy among the Neocons and Progs-for War — though none of them could coherently state what our strategy is there (is it to overthrow Assad so we can have another failed state in the Middle East?). Whatever Trump proposes in the way of policy is inadmissible because, according to the Resistance, Mr. Trump should not be allowed to propose policy, or order it, or direct it. Because he is… Trump….

Whatever you think of his agenda, Mr. Trump made the fateful mistake of bragging on the bubble economy that is now collapsing, and it will probably un-do him more effectively than all of the attempts to pin some actual crime on him by Robert Mueller. The Special Prosecutor has spent two years and has come up with little more than a handful of rinky-dink “process crimes” — mainly lying under oath, engineered by Mr. Mueller’s legal team and old friends in the FBI and DOJ after-the-fact. The Mueller investigation started with a false predicate — collusion with Russia — and entailed loads of prosecutorial mischief. We approach the climax of all that in early 2019. Mr. Mueller will issue his report before March. Maybe it will contain surprises, but the investigatory process involves so many people that it’s hard to believe no hints of any “bombshells” have leaked to the papers and cable news outfits. Rather, Mr. Mueller will depict a whole lot of nothing in the darkest possible light for the convenience of a house impeachment process, the holy grail of the Resistance, though the exercise is likely to fail if it gets to a senate trial.

But before that, there is the question of Mr. Mueller himself. My view is that Mr. Mueller has run a colossal cover-your-ass operation for the many documented misdeeds among the FBI and DOJ in cooking up this mess starting in the spring of 2016. His appointment in the first place was a gross error, considering his mentor relationship with James Comey and prior association with his putative supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. RR remains in that position despite being a witness in matters pending before Mr. Mueller (and other regulators such as federal prosecutor John Huber and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz), including the FISA warrant scandal, the Uranium One deal, and the tortured doings of the Hillary Clinton and her foundation.

January will kick off with the congressional extravaganza I’ll call Investi-Gate, as committees headed by Democratic chairs Gerald Nadler (Judiciary), Elijah Cummings (Oversight), and Adam Schiff (Intelligence) swarm the President and his associates like army ants on a drove of peccaries. They’ll haul in everybody and his uncle to keep the show going for their pals in the media. The star attraction will be Trump ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, though he will appear as a convicted liar. He may even defy the committee by not answering their subpoena before he has to report to federal prison in March. After all, Rod Rosenstein successfully defied more than one summons to congress for months on end. What will the House committee chairs do to Cohen? — threaten him with jail?

The house committee Investi-Gate circus is a sure thing, though, don’t forget, minority members can also call witnesses, and there is room for blowback on the venture. Republicans still chair the senate committees, and there may be a mud-fight between the two houses. Otherwise, expect a whole lot of grandstanding at the expense of paying attention to any of the nation’s serious business. Mr. Huber and Mr. Horowitz will also release reports in early 2019. Much of the recent criminal misbehavior in FBI / DOJ / Mueller orbit  lies within their commissions. Abundant evidence has already been published concerning the conspiracy to defeat Mr. Trump by subterfuge in the 2016 election, and further illegal attempts to injure him in the years following. Some of the characters in this horror show have already testified to grand juries.

Gen. Flynn was sent to the doghouse by Judge Emmet Sullivan at his December sentencing hearing for the purpose of rethinking his guilty plea. The idea is to persuade him to go to trial and force Mr. Mueller to go through a discovery process (of evidence) that could easily derail Mr. Mueller’s case and reflect poorly on the Special Counsel, perhaps even lead to legal problems for him in the way of malicious prosecution. Gen Flynn’s case also resolves one way or another in March.

Finally, Mr. Trump will be free to declassify a trove of documents in all these matters after Mr. Mueller reports. Doing so prior to that might set up the president on an obstruction of justice charge. If there’s anything germane in those docs, they could change the whole dramatic arc of the story that took over two years to develop. There’s plenty of chatter across the web about Mr. Trump invoking martial law or declaring some kinds of national emergency, plus loose talk about military tribunals and “thousands of sealed indictments,” but I’m not persuaded that there’s any reality to that.

Politics That Maybe Matter

This country faces a lot of practical problems that are not likely to be addressed if congress is preoccupied with Investi-Gate, and depending on how ferocious the action gets in bear markets, currencies, and banking, which could alter the entire picture (more below).

The crisis in medicine is obvious. Whatever else you can say about ObamaCare, it just didn’t do enough and is now crippled by court decisions. Health Care is simply unaffordable for a growing demographic of the sinking middle class. Much of that is due to plain old racketeering, and I propose that it could be mitigated to some degree if a simple law were passed that required doctors, surgeons, hospitals, labs, and other players to publicly post prices for their services — to eliminate this ridiculous business of providers “negotiating” the price of every transaction in secret, according to deliberately incomprehensible guidelines. It may be too late to “solve” the health care problem in the way that much of the Left wishes: a single-payer system run by the government. True, other advanced nations ran single-payer systems with apparent success for decades, and still do, but they started these programs in an era of reliable economic growth based on industrial production and that era is over for reasons mostly having to do with dwindling cheap energy. The National Health Service in Britain is a shambles. France’s system still functions, but the high taxation needed to keep funding it is, ironically, a main beef of the Yellow Vest protesters. The deflating financial bubble will underscore a new order of austerity in the USA, and may usher in graver problems with the value of the dollar. One way or the other, congress will be stymied over health care reform in 2019.

The eventual result will be the disintegration of the current health care system and its eventual reorganization into local, clinic-based medicine at a much lower level of complexity and treatment. It was a tremendous blunder to consolidate hospitals and medical practices into gigantically-scaled conglomerates. The hallmark of The Long Emergency is that everything organized at the gigantic scale will fail one way or another. Get your mind right for that outcome and take care of yourself in the meantime.

The Left especially has no inclination to address immigration reform. As long as they mendaciously refuse to even make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, nothing can be done. The Right is also dishonest and cowardly about it, fearing to alienate the ballooning Hispanic voter bloc. Still there is a better chance that some immigration reform may be possible because it doesn’t require the sort of titanic fiscal outlays that Health Care does — Mr. Trump’s wall aside. More likely, though, the current immigration impasse will continue and may provoke vigilante action along the border in 2019 that could be part of greater civil violence prompted by increasing economic disparities.

Markets and Money

The jig is really up. The big bad bear market is already underway, even if it rallies in January. The debt bubble engineered by the Federal Reserve is blowing up and thundering through the system. The epic market instability of December 2018 on the heels of persistent Fed rate hikes points to major credit problems and especially an inability to roll over old debt into new loans at higher interest rates — in particular loans to zombie enterprises that need to borrow to keep paying interest on previous loans (a lot of that among the shale oil companies). The US government can’t take higher interest rates either. It’s already paying about as much in annual interest on US debt as we pay for our war machine. There are only two ways out, both of them nasty. Either suck up debt defaults, which will induce an impoverishing disappearance of money; or provoke high inflation, by injecting more Central Bank QE “money” into the system, which can destroy the value of money. Inflation is typically the choice of governments because it reduces the face value of debts while it allows government to pretend that it is taking action. In the end, you may have plenty of worthless money, which is no different from having not enough money that retains value. The latter was the main feature of the Great Depression.

So, inflation is the usual choice, but it also typically leads to incendiary resentment among the citizenry when they realize they’ve been played and it takes a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. I suppose that Fed chief Jerome Powell knows all too well he’s popped the Mother-of-All-Bubbles. He can blame it on Mr. Trump. Everybody else will, of course. Sometime in the second quarter of 2019, the Fed will resume the money-for-nothing gambit of “quantitative easing” in the hope of arresting the damage, but this time the dollar will lose value uncontrollably and catastrophically. Many people will be ruined, especially retirees at the mercy of insolvent pension funds.

Before 2019 is out, the US could find itself in a situation worse than the Great Depression. Supply lines are much longer now than they were then. If suppliers can’t get paid because trust has collapsed in the short-term corporate paper system, they won’t deliver supplies, which means you may not eat, or fill your gas tank, or heat your house, or get whatever else you need. Also, the USA in 1931 had not yet transformed itself into the fiasco-waiting-to-happen called suburban sprawl. How is Dallas going to work for people who spend a substantial chunk of their income on mandatory motoring (if there’s little or no income)?

Stock market activity may appear to stabilize in January, but it will go south again later on in the first quarter and the Bear will growl louder for the rest of the year.

Civil Disorder

Be prepared for it in 2019. There are going to be a lot of pissed-off people around the country. They are liable to attack Federal property and their fellow citizens (and their property). The hungrier they are, the worse it will be. They will not understand the forces that are destroying the money system. There are a gazillion small arms out there and the government will not be able to control them or confiscate them. Any attempt to do that will only inflame the situation. A major principle of The Long Emergency is that government becomes increasingly impotent and ineffectual as it rolls out. We’re already seeing that in Washington, and it is not at all just because Mr. Trump has inspired such an impasse between the branches. The states, too, will be hard-pressed to do anything useful. Many of them, like Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, are already technically insolvent. The federal government may have to pretend to rescue them financially, which will only make the national predicament worse.

Oil

The shale oil “miracle” was an impressive stunt. For a while, it goosed US production way above the former all-time production peak of 1970, and it achieved that with astounding speed — about a decade. But this is oil that is very expensive and complex to produce. It was made possible by massive borrowing at artificial low interest rates, which are now rising. Something like three-quarters of the shale operators never made a red cent in net profit, and many of these companies will find it hard or impossible to roll over their existing debt, especially with oil under $50-a-barrel. But the price is a deceptive metric. If it zoomed up to $100-a-barrel tomorrow, the effect would only be to crush economic activity, because industry requires cheaper oil to pencil out its operations and citizens can barely afford to drive when gasoline hits $4-a-gallon at the pump. At the lower $45-a-barrel, the price crushes the oil producers. Take your pick. There’s no “Goldilocks” price.

The other problems with shale oil have to do with the nature of the shale plays. The Permian Basin in Texas is very large, but the best plays are developed in the so-called “sweet spots” and there’s a limited amount of them. They are the places that the producers developed first, and when they are played out, the next round of plays will be in spots not-so-sweet (or productive) — possibly not worth drilling. The character of the shale oil wells is also way different from the old conventional classic oil wells. The old wells cost about $400,000 (in current dollars). It involved just sinking a pipe into the permeable source rock. The oil came out under its own pressure at the rate of thousands of barrels a day.  Eventually, you put a simple pump-jack on the well (the “nodding donkey”) and it produced for decades, like running a cash register. Shale oil wells cost between $6- 12 million. They require technically demanding horizontal drilling and fracking, with additional costs in highly technical labor, water for fracking, sand to hold open the fracks, chemicals to aid the process, and a gazillion truck trips to deliver all the water and sand (and take the oil away). Shale wells produce maybe a few hundred barrels a day for one year, after which they typically deplete by over 60 percent. After four years, they’re done. The oil is also different. Shale oil is typically ultra-light. It contains little-to-none of the heavier diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, and heating oil distillates, making it less valuable.

Trouble in the credit markets could shut down shale production for a period of time and create dire problems for the American economy. That could happen in 2019 as poorer-performing companies fail to get new financing. As mighty as it seems to be, the industry is fraught with fragility. Meanwhile, discovery of new, producible oil has fallen to the lowest level since the 1940s, after three recent previous record low years. Current low oil prices at around $45-a-barrel may give Americans a false sense of security. Low prices are mostly indicative of the collapse of the demand for oil at the global margins and among the large US demographic that cannot afford it anymore — that is, the impoverished former middle class. As the damage becomes more obvious, we could hear calls to nationalize the oil industry. The attempt to do that would collide with the aforementioned trend for government to become more strapped  for revenue, more impotent, and more incompetent.

Geopolitical

The Golden Golem has gone an extra mile to antagonize Russia the past two years. Is it to demonstrate how not Putin’s puppet he is? If so, it’s pathetic. For instance, heaping ever more sanctions on Russia, tossing Russian diplomatic staff out of the country because of the laughable Novichok poisoning of the Skripal father-and-daughter in Britain. Nobody believed that set up — who recovers from the world’s supposedly most potent, high-tech military toxin? The larger Russia hysteria, ginned up by the US “Intel Community” to cover the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton’s election loss, has destroyed the brains of thousands of Washington insiders and infected whole sectors of the educated coastal elites who really ought to know better. Meddling in elections? Is that something the US has never entertained? Recall that 1996 Time Magazine cover with the headline that bragged, “Yanks to the Rescue: the Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.” And now we’re wetting our pants over a baker’s dozen Russian Internet trolls on Facebook? Yes, this is what the brightest people in the room have been doing for two years. The net result is a new cold war, pushing Russia into the arms of China, giving both of those countries an incentive to construct a new framework for global relations that excludes the toxic US as much as possible.

That new framework, by the way, will not be the same as the late, unwinding Globalism Release 2.0 (Release 1.0 was 1870 – 1914) that allowed America to exchange IOUs for flatscreen TVs lo these many years. Let’s call that Tom Friedman Globalism, after the pundit who said it would last forever. The world will become a wider place again as the Great Powers are increasingly bound to their own regions for trade relations in a world growing short of energy and capital resources. The exception to that is in weaponry, now that Russia has demonstrated its ability to launch hypersonic rockets that can reach the US in little more than a few Noo Yawk minutes. Do we have anything like that? I suppose we wish we did. The media is not even talking about it, the implications are so dreadful.

Has Mr. Trump actually accomplished anything with his deal-seeking in China while beating it on the snout with his tariff stick?  Well, he got a lot of US companies loading up on inventory of goods they feared will carry costly duties a year hence, so they’re all stocked up just in time for a vicious bear market and the recession / depression that it entails. A lot of that stuff may end up being distributed by the bankruptcy judges.

How does our antagonism against China work with the campaign to “normalize” the behavior of North Korea. I doubt it helps. In 2019, North Korea will be the whoopie cushion that China places under America’s seat at the negotiating table. Mr. Trump defied the conventional State Department wisdom by meeting face-to-face with Kim. It got the two Koreas actually speaking with each other for the first time in 60 years, with some concrete steps toward ending the de facto state-of-war. Will Li’l Kim play the role China assigns to him? I think so. They can squash him like bug. And, of course, everything that the US congress and Mr. Mueller do to injure and weaken Mr. Trump will make further progress in Korea unlikely.

How about the second greatest economy in the world? That would be the European Union. The EU’s financial system is way more dysfunctional than even ours, with no mechanism or provision for regulating each country’s spending vis-à-vis the debt generation of the Union as a whole. There’s no way it can continue and no prospect for debugging the set-up. What’s more, decades-long shenanigans of the European Central Bank have created imbalances that will never be corrected. Even the attempt to normalize operations — as the ECB ceases its debt monetization routines staring in the first quarter of 2019 — is guaranteed to crack up the EU economy, which is a horror show of zombie companies and zombie banks. They will suffer particularly in the recession / depression to come. The next domino to fall, theoretically Italy, will take the EU down, whatever happens with the dithering over Brexit. Without the ECB vacuuming up unwanted EU paper, nothing really pencils out over there. In 2019, expect a substantial fall in the value of the Euro, and possibly its demise as a currency.

In fact, expect wholesale disintegration of many structural arrangements all over Europe beginning in 2019, along with more political violence that exceeds the simple street actions of the Yellow Vests in France. NATO has been staging war games on Russia’s border for two years, apparently with no awareness that the NATO members are deeply dependent on Russian oil and natural gas to remain advanced nations with comforts and conveniences, like heating their homes. Perhaps that recognition will hit in 2019. But there will be plenty of noise for that signal to cut through.

Climate Change

Something’s going on ‘out there’ though the picture is deeply non-linear and is being confused for the moment by an extraordinary low level of cyclical sunspot activity. Not being a scientist, I have only two salient points worth considering about the issue:

The first is, we’re not going to do anything about it — because nothing can be done about it. Whatever’s happening, we’re going to have to roll with it. I’m also not persuaded that many of the proposed mitigations — carbon taxes, seeding the upper atmosphere with reflective particles — will accomplish anything.

The second thought is this: the civilized world has experienced many many instances of climate change over the past several thousand years. Civilizations rise and fall with these changes, but the human project as a more general matter continues, with periods of history that appear to be restful time-outs. The Roman Optimum (warming period) segued into the Dark Age Cooling, and then the Medieval Warming (viniculture in England!), and eventually the Little Ice Age comes along with Isaac Newton and skaters on the Dutch canals. The difference this time is that our civilization is so deeply complex that successful adaptation to new conditions is a low percentage outcome, at least in the form of salvaging many of our current arrangements. In other climate disruptions, people adapted, sometimes with very severe changes in customs, practices, political arrangements, and life-styles.

It will be especially stark this time, and the broad pop culture of Collapse suggests that we intuit this — everything from Game of Thrones to The Road, to my own World Made By Hand novels. It begins with the wobbling of the most abstract and fragile of our systemic arrangements, finance, which is mostly based on ephemeral trust (that the other fellow will pay you). From there, the trouble proceeds to politics and culture. A few concluding words on the latter:

Culture

2018 was a low point for American culture, such as it is. The idiotic drivel emanating from the university campuses has infected the entire nation like a toxic shock disease. Most damaging, of course is the umbrella ideology of “multiculture” in a society that formerly thrived precisely because of the opposite of that: a common culture composed of ethics, customs, norms, and standards of decent behavior that people not insane could subscribe to. Remove the common culture of a nation and you will not have a nation — it’s that simple. Hence Americans are divided foolishly into battling identity groups who do not believe in a common culture and are doing everything possible to defeat it. They have no idea what E Pluribus Unum used to mean and they have no desire or intention to rediscover it. I return to the cardinal theme of The Long Emergency: that we can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us, and therefore we can’t make any coherent plans about what to do.

The financial hardships of 2019 provide an opportunity for some overdue mind-cleaning on these matters. There may even be a significant number of survivors among the brain-damaged former thinking classes who refuse to go along with the emperors-new-clothes ideas of recent years any longer. The main thing to understand about the so-called Progressive Left behind this toxic shock is that the whole crusade has been less about ideas of justice or fairness than the sheer joy of coercing others, of pushing people around and punishing them because its fun! The ideologies around that behavior are just window dressing.

The response to it so far has been surprisingly mild. If the financial unwind shapes up as harshly as it looks from here, the response will get more severe. The universities themselves will suffer hugely as their budgets crash through the floor and all, of a sudden, they have to issue pink slips to a half dozen Diversity deans on six-figure salaries. Many colleges will begin the process of shutting down in 2019 as their student loan racket disintegrates.

Well, you’ve suffered long enough for today, and I’ll leave it at that.

Happy 2019 everybody!


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

568 Responses to “Forecast 2019: Ding Ding ! Margin Call USA”

  1. malthuss December 31, 2018 at 10:45 am #

    Will 2019 be the year of USA financial meltdown?

    • Neon Vincent December 31, 2018 at 11:20 am #

      I say yes. I expected our host to write about Stocks and oil crashing and he lived up to my expectations. I agree that the bear market is here, even though it hasn’t been officially called, and will continue through 2020. I also agree that it will do more harm to Trump and Pence than the Russia investigation.

      Finally, it looks like this will be the last Christmas for Sears and KMart. Fast Eddie Lamprey just announced more store closings and it looks like Sears Holdings will finally be forced into liquidation. Expect the morning to be even louder than for Toys R Us.

      On another topic, I always enjoy when our host references the work of Strauss and Howe. Although conservatives mostly cite it these days, liberals used to read it, too. “Generations,” the prequel to “The Fourth Turning,” had favorable comments by both Newt Gingrich and Al Gore on its cover. If Gore knew about Strauss and Howe, I’m sure the Clintons did as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Hilary thought she would be the Gray Champion. Nope.

      • Neon Vincent December 31, 2018 at 11:27 am #

        As a paleontologist, I also have to credit our host for likening Trump to “a behemoth land mammal of the Oligocene.” The largest land mammal ever to walk the face of the planet was Paraceratherium, which lived during the Oligocene and was twice the size of an elephant. Still, any metaphor can only go so far, as I would like to think the beast was more majestic than Trump ever could be.

        • K-Dog December 31, 2018 at 11:29 am #

          Giant ground sloth I think.

        • Kafkaesque January 3, 2019 at 10:21 am #

          Hear, hear!

          Those flapping lapels he refuses to button down conjure a Terradactyl’s leathery flesh.

          Lumber on, oh, dine oh sore.

      • amb December 31, 2018 at 4:40 pm #

        Stocks may crash, and they may not. BUT BUT BUT… the stock market is NOT the economy. The fundamentals of our economy are actually pretty good. Mark my words, you will not be seeing a recession in the near future.

      • Robert White January 1, 2019 at 10:58 am #

        The real Grey Champion was instrumental March 10th 2008 around 11:00am Bear Stearns time New York shitty. Moreover, this is NOT a so-called ‘fourth turning’ but more aptly it is an extinction level event. In brief, the worldwide Global Ponzi Scheme is fully dependent upon exponential growth of population and debt in a fiscal environment of deflation & Secular Stagnation.
        Volcker had the gonads to ameliorate the last crisis and Powell has bigger gonads than Orange Jesus Cheeto-head-in-Cheese which makes the tyrant in the Whore House look inept & powerless by comparison.

        Once the Western Banking System evidences structural impairment via systemic bear markets it will be GAME OVER
        via the Zero Sum End Game.

        Assuming we will see official bear market numbers emanating across the board is to miss the point of the worldwide banking system as being a Control Fraud & Ponzi that is officially locked down via circuit breakers on the HFT which is 95% of the market.

        We can only evidence Flash Crash events that will NOT broach the technical level to a defined Bear Market as all available channels that would have allowed a breach have been locked down via Stress Testing & Limit Down Circuit Breakers on the worldwide exchanges.

        RW

    • K-Dog December 31, 2018 at 11:28 am #

      How can it not be?

    • lateStarter December 31, 2018 at 12:07 pm #

      Do you mean meltdown for those in the 10% class? I’m pretty sure the rest of us are already there.

    • MewsMan December 31, 2018 at 11:01 pm #

      1. tax breaks and repatriating money drained the national cushion.

      2. White Hose instability, daily turn around, finger-pointing and general malaise works when negotiating for a new gambling hotel, casino. Acting crazy doesn’t work for markets.

      3. Real income for the vast majority has not improved,

      4. Supply chains really aren’t longer. Many supply chains connect the China economy to ours. Tariffs are a poor choice.

      5. Energy: A national effort would have us entirely oil independent 20 years ago.

      6. Healthcare is indeed hosed.. Healthcare like the oil supply chain is highly resistant to free-market economics.

      What to do?

      a. Insulate, buy renewable, generate energy regionally.
      b. build transportation infrastucture and beef up existing mass transit.
      c. become a net-exporter, but empowering regional economies in the US.
      d. pass most profits from efficiency to the majority – because in a free-market, the majority defines the market, not central capital planners.

      • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 3:08 pm #

        e. Party like it was 1957….

    • ejhr January 1, 2019 at 7:12 am #

      the USA is two nations.The freedom loving corny stuff, we all used to think made it great. That one is still out there, but now being swamped by the Military industrial machine and the neo cons interfering in nearly all the world “s nations, searching for a fix.

      I pointed out in a response to you 2 days ago that you don’t see what is strange for the mainstream economists to, want us to supinely want us foa not see that is totally bullshit about the world economy today First is the oft quoted mainstream falsehood the household analogy. Then there is the lie that federal taxes pay for Federal spending. They don’t. However the neo-cons are totally sold on trying to destroy the middle class and the wealth taken and passed on to the 1%

      My contention is that MMT describes a way to slow down the coming destruction, but it does depend on seeing the light, which is no sure thing. Since even you are sold on the mainstream nonsense, which is a pity, you won’t be able to pick correctly what will go down in the financial world. how to make a difference.

    • gonetohell January 1, 2019 at 7:19 am #

      With a few changes here and there Kunstler will write something very similar at the end of 2019. He’s so smart that he knows exactly how it’s all going to go down, but not smart enough to actually do anything about it. Except of course to write a few books for you to read on our inevitable demise. Naturally he’ll have to bank all that worthless cash from book sales to fill his wheelbarrow for bread shopping.

      • Walter B January 1, 2019 at 3:33 pm #

        The intelligence that is required do “do something about it” already exists at the small level that many of us here do now possess. It is the intelligence or better yet, the motivation of large numbers of Americans to change what we are doing wrong and make it right that is not only missing in action, but probably will never exist at all. Our host and those of us who banter back and forth here are attempting, possibly in vain, to wake up more people out there so that even if we cannot get enough motivated to implement the necessary changes, at least a few more may be better prepared to deal with what the future brings. That, my friend, is the real point.

      • megaculpa January 1, 2019 at 9:21 pm #

        There is no evidence that Jim is getting rich from his books or blog. So, maybe park that theory where ultraviolet rays will not degrade its quality any further.

    • BuildTheWall January 1, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

      My wife and I have spent the past ten years “prepping”, so we will be just fine.

      The rest of you, stock up on food and medicine, and Buy More ?mmo, while you still can.

      This won’t end pretty, ?merica.

    • megaculpa January 1, 2019 at 9:17 pm #

      I guess wishing Jim a happy new year would kind of miss the point of his column.

    • ghostlimb January 3, 2019 at 7:20 am #

      Vlady’s fascist reach into the gearworks of the US apparatus will meet with formidable resistance and exposure in 2019 – it’s orange cheeto useful idiot continuing to implode into the vortex of his criminal family enterprise.
      The other useful idiots installed within the cabinet and gum’mnt leadership, including the deliberately left unfilled positions will continue being exposed for their incompetence at the American citizens’, and democracy’s expense. Incoming replacements will not take the fascist loyalty oath. The gangrenous, noxous smells will become nastier before the sweet aromas of the cleansing take place.

      • Kafkaesque January 3, 2019 at 10:43 am #

        Here’s the Chinese ‘Fired!’ Drill:

        1/Mueller says to Pence: ‘Easy way or hard way? Got you and most of the Cabinet on major felonies—wanna be ‘felonious monks’ in priz, or………? 24 Hours to do the 25….th Amendment thingy. You can caretake for the remainder….and, um, no Pardon.”

        2/Pence kneels to pray, then sprouts a Satanic grin: ‘Never liked the dotard, if it helps; no priz, right?’

        3/Mueller, poker faced: ‘Throw in a mild reproach with the Judge—take or leave.’

        4/Vlad impales the lot of them, releases tapes, pissing games, etc. Trump holes up in Nixon’s bowling alley.

        5/Director of the Simulation, E. Musk yells ‘Cut!’

        Rod Serling summarizes, via coda/epilogue; cue Hermann theme. Do do…………

    • Pseudorashevsky August 29, 2019 at 5:59 pm #

      Mr. Kunstler,

      I couldn’t help noticing all your 2019 forecasts have (so far!) turned out to be pretty diametrically wrong. Is there a reason for this? Or is the debt complexity collapse scheduled to occur in the *second* half of this calendar year?

      Yours (&c.),

      Pseudorashevsky

  2. akmofo December 31, 2018 at 10:49 am #

    Yeah, some simple math addition to consider:

    Lower US dollar (likely $72)
    Lower Oil (likely $34)
    Lower Interest rate (likely 2% / 10yr yield)
    ================
    Higher stock market prices (likely 38k / DJI)

    The Vatican/Roman Sun-God known as Isus Cristos er Titus Flavius Caesar has now arisen from his 3 day slumber, so all is good.

    • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 10:54 am #

      DJIA going up is a function of funny money. How much longer can that continue?

      • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 10:59 am #

        Who Invented Jesus?
        https://youtu.be/_0rS88RGpQg

        How much longer can that continue?

        • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 11:04 am #

          you speak in riddles.

          • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 11:09 am #

            You present a lie (funny money) and ask how much longer can it continue. I presented you the same, namely Christianity, and ask you the same. That is your answer. There’s no riddle here.

        • Epicur December 31, 2018 at 11:51 am #

          “How much longer can that continue?”

          Predictions are difficult, especially about the future, but one consistent feature of human behavior is that in times of stress we return to old structures and forms (morphed and transmogrified, to be sure, but self-similar). The last thing I would expect is a wholesale abandonment of religion.

          • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 12:36 pm #

            One would hope that false religions are recognized for what they are, especially when the gov mafia power structure that supports them is thoroughly discredited.

          • gonetohell January 1, 2019 at 7:26 am #

            “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future,…..”
            I wholeheartedly agree, predictions about the past are so much easier.

        • teddyboy46 December 31, 2018 at 1:36 pm #

          So you are the new Social Media Agent assigned to JHKs blog. I know what your objective is. It is to distract the readers and discredit JHK . We are wise to your tricks.

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

            If decades of JHK’s house-on-fire rhetoric hasn’t led you to suspect his talents as a soothsayer, no tricks requiring wisdom to uncover would be useful and necessary.

        • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 2:05 pm #

          It’s all fiction, that’s been proven by Joseph Atwill to be fiction. But more than that, it’s Roman gov mafia PSYOP poison, just like Nazism.

  3. malthuss December 31, 2018 at 10:53 am #

    2018 was a low point for American culture, such as it is…

    Does anyone here watch the Grammys [TM] or listen to Pop and Hip hop?

    Country music is ruined, as well, as judged by whats on the radio.

    • Neon Vincent December 31, 2018 at 11:35 am #

      I do. In fact, I wrote about nominated movie songs at the 2019 Grammy Awards, two of which, “All the Stars” from “Black Panther” and “Shallow” from the latest remake of “A Star Is Born,” are also nominated at the Golden Globes. One of those two will likely win both awards and be nominated for an Oscar as well. If you’re a fan of country music, then you might prefer Dolly Parton’s song from “Dumplin'” instead.

    • Raindogs January 1, 2019 at 3:53 am #

      If you’re gauging country music by what’s on the radio then of course it’s been dead for years.

      There’s still great modern country music being made – check out Jason Isbell for starters.

  4. FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 11:05 am #

    Climate Change The first is, we’re not going to do anything about it – because nothing can be done about it.

    Huge resources are being spent on global warming research, but they are not going to serious land reclamation projects or to breeding crops that are resistant to new conditions, but are being sprayed into large and small “scares”.

    And at the same time, the idea is being introduced into the heads of citizens and politicians that if they do not deal with a problem in the West, then it is not worth dealing with!

    • The only real solution to my mind is using US military hegemony to enforce a new UN consensus. We are the only force with the necessary conventional, precision targeting capability on a truly global scale.

      I don’t believe widespread action would be necessary. A few cruise missiles might be launched to prove we are serious, though, against weaker targets- which would be coal-burning power plants. The others will be shuttered.

      In the US, there will be difficulties, as with everywhere else, imposing the period of transitional carbon austerity. But ultimately adaptation will be considered a national security issue for all nations. The leading nations will spearhead the conversion to carbon neutral energetics.

      What this effort must not do is convince China and Russia we are entering a period of military adventurism. Basically, we are going to have to play a game of chicken if they attempt to use this crisis as a means to gain political or military advantages in exchange for “cooperation”. No, hegemonic action is necessary, and their compliance is not up for negotiation.

      There is enough self interest in the situation to make it unnecessary to use global military firepower, but we cannot fail to convey the seriousness of our resolve.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 11:55 am #

        So, US 20-year obsolete cruise missiles are solution to all world problems in your opinion?

        Start by targeting headquarters of large US pharmaceutical companies that are engaged in price gouging and illegal monopoly practices.

        • Asia isn’t big on intellectual property- nor innovators in economic free markets. As such, most of it goes over your head- supersonically.

          • zizzybalooba January 2, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

            Lil Debbie, please remove the obnoxious hyperlink tied to your username. I click the link and there’s an ominous msg about stealing my private information. You’re an asshat – you don’t own the Hostess domain.

      • Epicur December 31, 2018 at 12:05 pm #

        “The only real solution to my mind is using US military hegemony to enforce a new UN consensus. ”

        The only solution is a greatly lowered human population, but getting there is so ugly that we will not allow ourselves to face that reality. So we divert our gaze to peripheral artifacts like climate change and pretend we can do something about them instead.

        A system under stress reacts in a direction to relieve the stress.

        Imagine Ted Kaszynski with a small lab and a supply of CAS9.

        See the cat, see the cradle?

      • hmuller December 31, 2018 at 12:05 pm #

        Your idea is to bully Russia and China militarily and then bully the American people into feudal poverty and Orwellian control under the banner of carbon compliance?

        First of all, “UN Consensus” is the whatever the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and their evil allies want.

        Secondly, some nations are tired of being bullied by the military arm of this evil Cabal. Russia’s new supersonic missile far outclasses the 600mph “few cruise missiles” you think sufficient for the USA to control the world.

        Thirdly, how can you talk of man-made climate change and ignore the chem-trails they are spreading every day.

        Fourthly, that term “carbon austerity” is code for destroying the middle class economically and re-instituting a feudal world of poverty in true Hunger Games style – the long game of the evil ones.

        Clearly, you are true believer in the Globalism of the evil elite; this is what come from reading that enormous waste of paper (an ecological crime) the New York Times.

        • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 12:31 pm #

          Removed by Admin for being disrespectful to other commenters.

          • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 3:34 pm #

            These were his remarks to me yesterday on the previous blog post:

            The Great and Infernal Truthiness of Lil Debbie Snack Packaging
            December 30, 2018 at 7:27 pm #
            Were you born into poverty, or did education fail you?

            The Great and Infernal Truthiness of Lil Debbie Snack Packaging
            December 30, 2018 at 12:30 pm #
            Even the Romans rebalanced their portfolios.
            Grapes, wheat, olive, and slave futures settled on the steps of the Duomo.
            Jesus ak, you’re uncultured. I’ll bet you live in a ’97 Monte Carlo.

        • hmuller, I’m advocating the return of a Big Stick diplomacy. The UN framework operates only when there is a serious resolve by the major power to use its hegemony toward global welfare.

          Over the prior 3 decades, we’ve soft-pedaled everything and the institution diminished.

          The threat of destroying non-military targets is part of a mailed fist in velvet glove approach. Quite likely such actions will not have to commence, because the incentive structure will bend strongly toward compliance and a new cooperative framework. But obviously, you have to have a posture that indicates you are not bluffing. Leveraging the over 800 military bases world-wide is a tool to get things done.

          I have not read anything remotely close to this scenario anywhere, its entirely my own thinking.

          The carbon issue might seem mighty abstract to you, but I think it will become critical over the next few years. It will be clear- a generational divide will form- if not economic- and if the US is going to be ahead of the curve it will have to lead, not follow, or expect a global consensus to form a la the Paris Agreement.

      • darrell dullnig December 31, 2018 at 1:08 pm #

        What the hell? And I was thinking things could not get worse. Now Lil Debbie indicates that she could fuck things up considerably better than previously thought possible. Or faster, at any rate.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:38 pm #

        I thought you were ignorant, but I know you are crazy and evil as well. Both Eurasia and Eastasia have Weapons of Mass Destruction. You need to review your basics. And stop rereading Herman Kahn about how nuclear war is both fine and winnable.

        Even most of Oceania’s pundits know better and are committed to undermining their opponents with the same methods of corruption and race mixing by which they triumphed in Oceania.

        • Russia and China will come to the table and negotiate. Nobody said anything about nuclear war. This is not warfare, okay. Its gunboat diplomacy. Everybody can and will win, but the push that shoves the world toward a carbon-neutral industrial economy is going to have to be backed by military power.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 3:15 pm #

        I think what Snacks is saying is the US must be willing to declare war on Russia and China over long term weather forcasts.

        Brh

        • elysianfield December 31, 2018 at 6:38 pm #

          “I think what Snacks is saying is the US must be willing to declare war on Russia and China over long term weather forecasts.”

          BRH,
          A great summarization….

          • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm #

            Hey E, if youre looking in …

            To pick up an earlier thread …

            That Winchester model 62 i mentioned, I still have it. It was manufactured in 1937 and was handed down to me. It takes only .22 shorts, but i don’t think its a gallery gun because its a carbine with a 20″ barrel, not a full length rifle. I’m not sure what its value is but I’d never sell it anyway.

            Brh

        • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

          BRH,
          Regarding your Winchester;

          If the SN is under 99,000 it is a pre-war model, and the correct designation is a model 62. After 99,000 it is a 62A. Both had 23″ barrels and there were no carbine designation. A gallery gun can be identified by the cut in the magazine where the cartridges are loaded…if it is in the profile of a 22 cartridge, it is a regular model, but if the cut is of a triangle configuration, it is considered a gallery gun.

          The gun was always popular with the public…the marketability is strong. Value is determined by condition of finish and originality. For a run of the mill 40% finish, you can expect to see it’s value in the $500+ range.

          Gallery guns can add 50% to the above

          Pre-war models can add 30%.

      • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:19 pm #

        Are you freaking kidding me? You want the military to do something because of the climate? Do realize what you are saying? I we would get out of the UN altogether!

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:22 pm #

          …wish we would get out of the UN altogether!

      • DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 3:59 am #

        We’ve see throughout history how wonderfully effective it is to bomb the fuckers who just don’t get it.

        Every schoolboy is amused for 10 seconds by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Curtis LeMay. A bit like Ayn Rand infatuation.

  5. 400,000,000: gallons/day, fuel burned, USA

    Everything the average person does is a conversion of energy, from a concentrated state to a distributed state. In that conversion, energy is lost as heat. The end product is an oxidized carbon molecule, 4 such molecules created for every one molecule of hydrocarbon.

    We’re putting that into the atmosphere and it is heating up the planet. This is disastrous experimentation that touches every single living thing on the planet. Almost certainly this is going to lead to a future where human intervention in the atmospheric chemistry will be necessary. Further, this will be no panacea because the oceans will continue to acidify. Instead we will turn this planet into an terrarium where we are all interred. No one wants this but it’s what we are going to get, because we’ve decided to believe absurdities, and the price of that is commission of atrocities.

    In the future, they will die by the millions like so many flies, but today, they will strive to live as they did the day before, burning their oil, and tap dancing on their own graves, enthrall to some spectacle which viruses probe their outer defenses. Underneath the ground, the hyphal tendrils of our planetary successors are willing to wait the interregnum, whether a thousand or ten thousand years, to repeat their feat of setting the stage for a million year period of capturing, and sequestering, the carbon we’ve released, to be seized by some other creature to live and perhaps flourish aboveground for some brief period.

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    • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 11:56 am #

      Lil Deb, you often display keen insight and fine prose, as here, when you are not flogging that stupid paper.

      Happy New Year.

    • hmuller December 31, 2018 at 12:16 pm #

      Debbie,

      Google NASA and global cooling. You’ll discover you’re one climate change behind. The problem now is a mini-ice age, or possibly a big one.
      I’m sure with a little thought, you and the globalists will be able to spin that into a reason for destroying the middle class, instituting neo-feudalism and Orwellian dictatorship, and creating a total surveillance society.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:40 pm #

        Quite so. The ice caps on Mars are growing as well. The climate of both planets is ultimately controlled by the Sun – the Ball of Fire up in the sky. When will the sheep look up?

      • That and a quarter will get you on the Short bus, mate

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

        Certainly a project as vastly important as maintaining the cornball ‘American Way of Life’ is worth fiddling with the planet’s thermostat.

        The stonemasons are already hard at work on humanity’s tombstone. After much soul-searching the epitaph will read:

        In the End, they simply wanted more stuff

    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 3:11 pm #

      Hey Snacks do you drive your car, heat your house, keep your family as safe and as confortable as possible? Like Jim says not a goddam thing can be done about earth’s climate, and as i mentioned last week more coal and oil was burned up in 2018 than in any previous year. Expect even more coal and petroleum to be mined in 2019.

      Brh

      • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 3:28 pm #

        Yes BRH, they will bitch and moan and cry and call us all sorts of demeaning names, but nobody, absolutely no one is going to use less electricity, much less do without it totally or stop driving their infernal combustion engine driven baby carriages. In the final analysis, they are all talk (all whining more like it) and NO action. STFU comes to mind, does it not?

  6. FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 11:15 am #

    With alliance of Bush Clan with Trump Clan, I expect stabilization of political situation in Washington and calming down of media hysteria.

    If the Bushes made an alliance with Trump, then it is natural to assume that they demanded a change in the cabinet and an appointment to the key positions of “their people.” Actually it became clear even at the moment when Trump appointed to the post of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and nominated for the post of US Attorney General William Barr, who was the US Attorney General 30 years ago in the administration of George H. W. Bush.

    But after he nominated Patrick Shanahan as Secretary of Defense it became very difficult to doubt the authenticity of this fact, especially if you are not lazy and type “Shanahan + Bush” in Google.

    Very likely Special Prosecutor will be appointed to investigate and indict Hillary Clinton – pick a crime, any crime, but the most obvious which has been already proven in public records is criminal nature of transferring top secret US intelligence data from inside US Government to outside private, unsecured server, including the identities of US intelligence operatives and their whereabouts, including US Ambassador Stevens.

  7. K-Dog December 31, 2018 at 11:21 am #

    No suffering involved. Nobody is going to agree with everything you wrote but it’s all pretty well thought out. ‘Margin Call‘ is a good title. Put up or shut up time now because the game can’t go on as it has much longer. If game controllers can get put down long enough for some contemplation and some righteous indignation could accompany their festering flatulence things could get exciting, but not this year.

    There are going to be a lot of pissed-off people around the country. They are liable to attack Federal property and their fellow citizens (and their property). The hungrier they are, the worse it will be.

    I agree about the pissed off part but people won’t be hungry before 2020. This means any pissed off will be more lone wolf crazies or their false flag equivalents of an another day another shooter type. Lots of shooters I suspect so false flagging most likely won’t be required. The people will keep themselves in fear; mission accomplished.

    Hunger will organize people into something else but not before 2020. At the earliest.

    • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 12:03 pm #

      The whole lynchpin of the Hungry System is the SNAP scheme. If there is any lengthy (three days or so) function failure of the EBT system, watch for some major destructive activity by the famished Dark Hordes.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 5:08 pm #

        SNAP/EBT … Holy Talisman of the welfare state, wards off hunger, provides shelter, gives sustinence, eliminates men from the nuclear family, keeps welfare bureaucrats in high paying jobs, frees recipients from productive work and allows them to stay home and watch the Jerry Springer show on TV. Entire human populations brave 2000 miles of Mexican desert and cross a fortified border to get one: its that valuable.

        Brh

        • schvitzatura January 3, 2019 at 7:42 am #

          Movement toward the imperial core of the principal hegemon, for the best “panem et circenses” was always a foregone conclusion.

          Enough nutrition, shelter, and shelter climate control, to be able to fling their genetic material forward into the gaping void of an always unpredictable future is the biological imperative.

  8. Ishabaka December 31, 2018 at 11:27 am #

    “True, other advanced nations ran single-payer systems with apparent success for decades”

    Yes – but – you pays your money and you gets your choice.
    My 83 year old mother lives in Canada. She is having some painful but not life threatening hip problems. Doc ordered a hip ultrasound – the waiting period is 2 1/2 years.

    • Try Mexico, because it’s cheaper and they take cash

    • Raindogs January 1, 2019 at 4:01 am #

      Believing anecdotal scare tactics like this is why most skidmarked dullard Americans will continue to fight tooth and nail to save the “best healthcare system in the world.”

  9. volodya December 31, 2018 at 11:31 am #

    The 2019 ejaculations of the Democrat controlled House and Republican controlled Senate will signify maybe even less than the hysterics of wild chimps at the appearance of a stuffed leopard on their equatorial hunting grounds, placed there by animal behaviorists in order to observe simian capabilities, you know, maybe like throwing rocks, and tool use, like jabbing the ersatz predator with a sharp stick.

    What about the Washington Swamplands and its own denizens? What are their capabilities? What if the object in question, unlike the “leopard”, is ambulatory and vocalizes? What then? Will its true nature be recognizable despite its orange coloration?

    The point I’m making is that events have got a trajectory and momentum behind them, propelled mostly by natural laws, that the simians-in-charge in the Washington Bog apparently have no conception of, something like chimps contemplating a fake leopard. Did it eventually occur to the elder chimps that the leopard wasn’t real? Will it occur to the elder legislators that they’re similarly wasting time and energy dealing with fake leopards, all the while ignoring real threats?

    • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 2:01 pm #

      They know they’re ignoring the real threats. When the facts and the natural law is against you, pound the table.

  10. Paulo December 31, 2018 at 11:31 am #

    Excellent job, JHK.

    I do think that Mueller’s report will show much much more than you have indicated, starting with Trump’s debt and Oligarch money. The tax returns will be inteeresting and Junior wil be indicted for sure, with DJT facing a sealed idictment for after election. Nice Christmas present, “Please open February 2021”.

    Nice job on your forecast and summation. Have a good year.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU

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    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 11:48 am #

      With adults and professionals in the Justice Department, Herr Mueller will have his own share of problems to deal with, including obstruction of justice – the real one, expressed in destroying the text messages of his subordinates.

      None of the “russian oligarchs” nonsense is going to help him.

  11. robert magill December 31, 2018 at 11:32 am #

    [ The Right is also dishonest and cowardly about it, fearing to alienate the ballooning Hispanic voter bloc. Still there is a better chance that some immigration reform may be possible because it doesn’t require the sort of titanic fiscal outlays that Health Care does — Mr. Trump’s wall aside. ]

    When I Googled the “wall” when this cock-up began I was told over 500 miles already existed. I didn’t rush down to measure it but perhaps I should have. Poll: Raise your hand if you have heard anyone on either side of the debate refer, even once, to the question,” should we add on to the existing 500 mile wall, or not?”

    Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me a two year mainstream debate can occur with neither side once mentioning adding on to an existing wall.

      

    • robert magill December 31, 2018 at 8:53 pm #

      The lack of hands raised is indicative of the sleepwalking we are all now doing. Good luck in the new year.

  12. Walter B December 31, 2018 at 11:50 am #

    You have been a busy fellow Jim, and I would say that your efforts have come together in fine form for a roadmap to 2019 that will surely point the way at all plays out. I have read and heard many non-MSM commentators talk of the Trump election as a reprieve from the insidious degradation that the last decade of two has brought us, and certainly has avoided (at least for now) the Reign of Terror that a HRC presidency would have thrust upon us. These folk believe that this is America’s opportunity to look at itself in the mirror and see the errors in our ways and maybe even start to undo the damage, or not. Whether you believe or not, the question of whether Judgment will soon be upon us or not should be something we should all consider for bad behavior has just as much ability to crush a society as a divine entity. And we have been very, very bad boys. Just ask the EU which is now attempting to outlaw the word “man” in all it’s forms and replace it with “person” or some other feel good crap talk. I suppose it is easier than actually solving real problems, right?

    I too am skeptical about all of those “sealed indictments”, and I’ll believe them when I see them. The point made by Bill Holter that those executive orders penned by the GGG were set to take effect tomorrow and not when they were released IS interesting, so perhaps we shall soon know if they are real or simple more political garbage.

    It is beyond my abilities to understand how a nation so infatuated with sporting events of every kind can somehow lose the idea that working together as a team is the only way to success and that everybody pulling in their own, “diverse” directions can only result in abject chaos and failure. Perhaps chaos and failure are somehow the new entertainment media of the masses. I they are it will surely lead to destruction of the entire society just as it has already destroyed the American family. Someone had better tell the people that in the game of Chaos, in the end there can be only one. Perhaps everybody has become convinced that they will be the one.

    Oh well, great work again James, thank you. Happy New Year. Be well, stay healthy and keep your powder dry.

    • Anon1970 December 31, 2018 at 12:26 pm #

      The Romans had their gladiator competitions and chariot races and we have our basketball, football and baseball. I suspect that corruption had a lot to do with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and that it has a lot to do with the decline of the American Empire. There seems to be some thing very obscene when a hand full of billionaires are able to buy the loyalty of our Congress and our presidents.

      • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 12:49 pm #

        People seem to forget that one of the most important duties of government used to be to oversee and regulate business and prevent monopolies from developing, especially in critical industries. I has been a very long time since American businesses took ownership of the American politicians who now do their bidding for pay at our expense. Corporations are people too, right? Once we reached that point it was game, set, and match and was over for We The People. .

        • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:34 pm #

          been hearing about ‘sealed indictments’–even 60,000
          of them, for 1-2 years.
          Since Pizzagate.

        • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:07 pm #

          You’d like Tepper’s new book on monopolies, Walter. Making my way through it now.

          Contrast Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, where he explicitly says the goal of any startup is to establish a monopoly,not to compete.

          My guess is something gets done, and soon.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:45 pm #

      Amazing. What does a Team do, Walt? They play against another Team. And that’s what the Democrats are all about. It’s the Civil War all over again – and there is simply no way we can live with these people in the same State. Nor is there any good reason why we should. Yet they won’t let us go – the idea of Whites being happy and prosperous somewhere is simply unbearable to them as per below.

      https://godfatherpolitics.com/left-wing-store-clerk-totally-loses-his-mind-over-customer-wearing-trump-shirt/

      The soy boy is ridiculous and harmless, but a dozen of them could have torn this man apart.

      • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 2:15 pm #

        True Janos, but at the end of the season, once their is only one winning team, the competition goes away and all of the players get together, share drinks, change teams, and laugh at all of the money they make by playing together in the same business at our expense. Heck, even in war once it is over bygones become bygones and countries that were once killing each other are the best of buddies. I friend who fought in Vietnam for three years went back last year for a thirty day vacation. He returned with tales of how wonderful it was, how the Vietnamese people love us and have shrines to Elvis and all and how he has come to realize that we fought on the wrong side.

        The situation in American society is quite different Janos, at least it is to me. There are feelings of intense hatred out there in the Progressive camp. With their “my way or the highway” and “I am the center of my own universe”, snowflake mentalities, I am getting the feeling that they are eyeing us white guys up as the Nazis looked at the Jews. They had the assets as do we, so they were the prime targets for assault for only the truly stupid rob poor people. There is far more profit in stealing from those that have something worth taking isn’t there? I’m thinking that they have violence in their plan, don’t you?

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 2:59 pm #

          Yes. If only everyone could just drink beer and worship Elvis! But the Muslims won’t do either one. They are admirable in this. American soldiers are told to pander to them so there are pictures of them holding up one finger – which means God is One. Thus White Americans betray their faith at the drop of a hat. Ditto any Christian who puts on a yarmulke and prays at the so called Temple Wall. Christ said not one one stone would be left upon another.

  13. bob roberts December 31, 2018 at 12:01 pm #

    I have been enjoying Mr. Kunstler’s books and blog for many years, and I often recommend them to my friends. But I confess I would like to see some day a compilation of his dire prognostications excerpted from his earliest blogs to his latest; how rich I would be if I had not been persuaded that he and others like him are right!

    • darrell dullnig December 31, 2018 at 1:28 pm #

      Whoa! 20/20 hindsight is a bitch, isn’t it? There you were, minding your own business, and along comes Jim with his prognostications and sucker punched you into poverty. There goes the old rose garden. I’ll shed a tear for you, Bob. But only one…..

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:07 pm #

      So you wish you would have done things differently? Hey, if it’s any consolation it happens to everybody in all types of ways.

  14. JustSaying December 31, 2018 at 12:09 pm #

    ..To put it mildly, Mr. Trump has failed to charm at least half the country. They are embarrassed at his physical presence: his lumbering gait, like unto a behemoth land mammal of the Oligocene; that swaying bay window stomach half-concealed by the flaps of his suit-jacket and bisected by the oddly elongated necktie; the pained smile he puts on for the photo-ops; his man-spreading when seated with the world’s poohbahs, and that strange confection of sculpted hair, like the spun sugar on a Croquembouche, or the pouf on some horrifying plastic dashboard figurine. His manner of speech, the weird, palindromic repetitions, the childish artlessness of his casual utterances, the absence of Beltway focus-group cant, and of course the reviled Tweets — drive his opponents up a tree. The gilt-plastic trappings he surrounds himself with also offend them. For all I know, they hate his cologne, too…

    This is absolutely hysterical. Trump really is a comedic figure. Great summation – too bad it is so bleak, but as you said, fate is a trickster! Happy New Year, I think.

  15. Anon1970 December 31, 2018 at 12:10 pm #

    Elijah Cummings represents the 7th District of Maryland, which includes more than half of the City of Baltimore. The city is one of the deadliest in the country in terms of murders per capita. In 2017, it made Wikepedia’s list of the 50 most dangerous large cities in the world ranked by murders per capita. It was one of 4 American cities to make the list, along with St. Louis, New Orleans and Detroit. As of late December, Baltimore has had more murders than New York City, which has about 14 times the number of people.

    It is time our leaders, the mainstream media and the neo-cons realize that Americans face a much more serious threat from domestic criminals than from Isis or Russia or Syria or Iran. The irony is that Elijah Cummings is black and most murders in the country appear to be committed by blacks against black victims in heavily black neighborhoods.

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    • Anon1970 December 31, 2018 at 12:11 pm #

      … has had more murders in 2018 than New York City …

      • swazimoto December 31, 2018 at 4:13 pm #

        Apropos of perhaps “rien du tout” (nothing at all), French philosopher/thinker/sociologist Jacques Elul (deceased 1994) has an excellent book “The Meaning of the City” in which he posits that the city and murder are spiritually enmeshed as Cain, the first murderer, is credited with founding the first human settlement behind the defensive walls of a city.
        What does the news continually talk about regarding cities? The murder rate.
        Happy Murder-free New Year!

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:48 pm #

      Elijah Cummings is a far more grotesque, dumb, and pathetic figure than Trump could ever be. Yet because he is Blacks and got beat up in a Civil Rights demonstration, he is worshiped as a Demigod by sick White Liberals.

      • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:56 pm #

        The soft bigotry of low expectations.

        The left’s calling card.

        Some people simply cannot be held to the same high expectations.

        To do so would be insensitive of the struggle, and we can’t have that.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:02 pm #

      Oh that ain’t nothing to worry about. That is a community issue. Now if a Black person is killed by a White person well then hold up, they will burn the b*tch down!

  16. volodya December 31, 2018 at 12:12 pm #

    Deetrump said last week that I seem paranoid.

    You get to call it as you see it. I guess documentary evidence doesn’t convince. If that’s the case, if someone doesn’t believe what’s under their nose, there’s nothing much to be done.

    And there’s a lot that happened to K-dog in the aftermath of his outing “asoka” that he didn’t talk about in last week’s commentary. I’ll leave it to him if he wants to delve back into it. If he chooses to talk about it, you can accept his say-so on what happened to him or not.

    Maybe Dee wasn’t around to witness the endless blab in past years about eastern mysticism, the “Chinese” poster and his multiple screens of utter gibberish. And others.

    And this is “Janet”, a couple weeks ago, formerly appearing as “Asoka”, re-appearing as “Asoka”, complaining about JHK deleting “Janet’s” posts.

    Asoka….
    December 21, 2018 at 4:38 pm #
    Wow! All my posts removed! Merry Christmas to all!

    So, now that “Janet” has apparently been banned, what new name takes “Janet’s” place? Maybe after the Xmas and New Year holidays we’ll find out. Maybe it’s DeeTrump.

    • hmuller December 31, 2018 at 12:36 pm #

      I always suspected Janet was paid by the DNC and by the word. I imagined her as a rounded, less good looking version of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. (LOL)

      Now, there’s a bitch with a direct phone line to the killers in MS-13, so don’t get on her bad side (like Seth Rich).

      • volodya December 31, 2018 at 12:52 pm #

        A trail of $ from the Dems to the Russians plus a dead body. What more do you need?

      • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 12:55 pm #

        Wasserman-Schultz is plumb hideous, and probably a major threat to national security; Pakistani staff I.T. experts and all.

        Yet somehow reelected to the Congress by the imbeciles in S. Florida and evading any investigation of shenanigans at DNC?

        How’s that work again? Oh, right – tool of the Evil Fuckers.

        • Nightowl January 2, 2019 at 11:10 am #

          Indeed. I can’t believe the Awan scandal has disappeared.

      • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:59 pm #

        Janet mentioned one time inviting M-13 members over for tea.

    • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:27 pm #

      You know a lot. I am a mere poster here.

      Did K dog get bothered by the government?

      • K-Dog January 1, 2019 at 1:17 am #

        Big Time! Security was built into surveillance backed by a few decades of study on behavior control. I sort of figured that out. Gang stalking is being bothered you can say. Not quite as bad as the creatures in the Sandra Bullock ‘Bird Box’ horror movie going around but bad enough to do a weak mind in.

        Nowhere to go they have all their bases covered. Try to get media involved and you find media has been bought and paid for and media doesn’t even know it. How can that be you ask?

        Glad you asked!

        For national security reasons any nut-ball or potential nut-ball or any sane person reporting any skulduggery of any kind is hereby directed to send an email to arrange any meeting with any American reporter or news agency.

        You will be reminded by any news agency you try and just call up thus violating procedure. Media has been patriotically educated to do their part. All of them and the procedure is enforced.

        Any radical upstarts must also be reached by email since they too trust email and as they do you have nowhere to go. Email is fully and totally monitored. It can be scrambled and returned to you at will once you are on ‘the radar’. In triplicate and it is scary when that happens.

        Harassment is electronic. It leaves no trace.

        • K-Dog January 1, 2019 at 1:50 am #

          Media cooperates because the program was sold as a tool to fight terrorism. As a reason to require emails it makes total sense and it stops any further questions very effectively. A follow on questioned stopped is:

          But doesn’t that give you guys the power of a police state?

          That question can’t be asked. It would be supporting terrorism and our government works for us don’t you know goes their argument. So nothing to see here. Can’t happen here. That’s how it rolls.

    • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:28 pm #

      “Chinese” poster and his multiple screens of utter gibberish?????

      I missed that.

      • K-Dog January 1, 2019 at 1:42 am #

        Clippings from Chinese newspapers strung together. I know because I took the trouble of translating a few. Eventually I figured it was coming out of Honolulu. This was pre-Snowden by a few months and I think there was a connection.

    • K-Dog January 1, 2019 at 1:39 am #

      Just today I was driving along a road I had driven on when the funny business was going on. At the time I had been with Mrs. Dog and I had been given a private performance by some stooges from homeland security IMHO.

      One had impersonated a drunk driver who high centered on the road divider in front of us. Tried to drive right through the bushes to go the other way. We had been following this drunk and were trying to report him to 911 as it looked as if he could kill someone the way he was driving.

      Two big suburbans stopped driving from the other direction as soon as he high centered in the bushes and beauty bark. It is two lanes, center divider. Close to a dozen men piled out and lifted this ‘drunk’ we had been following back on the road. Lifted the car right off the ground. Big Navy Seal types they were. Then they were all gone. It all happened in twenty seconds or less. This was in a high end suburban neighborhood about this time of year.

      Psychological games! But who would believe it I thought as I was driving today. It was a way to make the message clear that there was nowhere to go and my story would be kept to myself.

      Or not, It could have been coincidence and a professional football team was driving in the other direction and just decided to help someone who was a clear and present danger out. As if they have no mothers.

      Believe it or not. Lots of things happened.

  17. messianicdruid December 31, 2018 at 12:32 pm #

    Trump will nationalize the FED.

    What will be the repucussions of this?

    “Many of us who know the history of the Fed’s founding in 1913 understand that this event put us into bondage to the moneyed interests of international banking. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act is specifically what put us into the Laodicean Age of captivity to Mystery Babylon. So the nationalization of the Fed would specifically mark the overthrow of Mystery Babylon, ending its rule (“independence”) over the US government.”

    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 12:44 pm #

      That, probably, a bit of a stretch.

      But I fully expect Trump + Bushes to intercept full control of the Federal Reserve in the coming 2019 and stop their fucking around with the interest rate at the crucial time for American re-industrialization.

    • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 1:00 pm #

      After two years in the Oval Office, The Man From Queens probably knows too well how the bread is buttered.

      But if he attempted to do so; he would get his own Zapruder film.

    • “What will be the repercussions of this?”

      An immediate and prolonged decline in the stock market, international credit rating downgrades, companies moving their operations out of the country…

      Its not gonna happen for all those reasons above. I sympathize with the critiques of a private bank running the money supply and adjusting the economic rates, but the alternative is, from the long view of history, inviting disaster.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:56 pm #

      Whatever Mystery Babylon is, it is clear that it is related to global finance and commerce. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her.

      • messianicdruid December 31, 2018 at 5:00 pm #

        “To understand Mystery Babylon, one must know that it is structured as a corporation. The KJV translators knew this centuries ago when they put it in all capital letters in Revelation 17:5, KJV because in legalese, all capital letters is how you identify a corporation.

        The main goal of Mystery Babylon is to turn nations into corporations on equal footing with the big banks, oil, chemical, pharmaceutical, auto, and other corporations. The corporations then attain power and influence according to their size and money on their balance sheets. This aspect of Mystery Babylon is known politically as Fascism.

        But Mystery Babylon is more than a Fascist entity. It also uses Socialism as a way of putting nations (actually national corporations) into their debt. Since the big banks were given power to create money and loan it to the government at interest, theoretically, there was no limit on the amount of debt a nation could have. The only question was whether or not a government could service that debt—in other words, could it pay the interest when its bonds came due?

        But even then, the government could go further into debt to pay the interest payments. At some point, however, this system would have to implode. It is a finite system, and its demise has been characterized by volatility and by the exponential rise on all of the financial charts.

        The Deep State understood this many decades ago, and they planned to use that collapse to bring in another financial system that gave them even greater political control. Their plan, however, ran aground with the Trump victory in 2016. Now they have been complaining loudly that he is undoing everything that they had put in place for so long.”

        https://gods-kingdom-ministries.net/daily-weblogs/2006/01-2006/the-structure-of-mystery-babylon/

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 8:30 pm #

          It is also referred to as a city. Not sure if those references are intended to be literal or symbolic.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 9:32 pm #

            Both Rome and Jerusalem (referred to as “Sodom”) will be seats of the Anti-Christ.

            David Duke says that the literal Babylon (the ruins of whch are in Iraq) is sacred to the Jews because the Talmud was written there. Interesting if true. Might explain why we want to maintain a presence there so badly.

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2019 at 4:22 am #

            That is very interesting since the second and more prominent compilation of the Talmud is called the Babylonian Talmud.

  18. FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 12:38 pm #

    The net result is a new cold war, pushing Russia into the arms of China, giving both of those countries an incentive to construct a new framework for global relations that excludes the toxic US as much as possible.

    China’s refusal to sign an agreement about settlement in national currencies before the end of the year is attributed to political factors, namely, their reluctance to threaten Beijing-Washington trade negotiations.

    Great news to sober up a significant part of Russian hurray-patriotic community. This refers to the fucked up Soviet and neo-Soviet comrades who crave alliance with China to resist imperial America.

    The Soviets, as always, are mistaken. A couple of years ago, the United States and China were not even allies, but far closer countries than Russia and China. It’s just in Russian propaganda, after every meeting between Putin and Xi there was a corresponding wave of information slops, about how we are friends and dear partners.

    In fact, the Chinese establishment and business all this time, if it was focused on some external countries, it was exclusively on the United States, as its main partner over the past few decades. And only the beginning of the Americans’ economic confrontation forces the Chinks to reconfigure their views and orientations.

    Not so long ago, the news appeared that a number of Chinese banks began to deny service to Russian customers, citing US and EU sanctions. At the same time, banks clearly went beyond the limits of the sanctions regime, refusing everyone with a Russian passport.

    Do not bother your the head of the Soviet patriotic garbage. China is not at all Russian ally and never was. Yes, for Russia is not profitable for the United States to lose to the Celestial Empire. For Russia, it is much more dangerous. If only because they are too close. We are the bears in the same den. Please note that we have a good deal with the USA to negotiate, even in the conditions of the most severe internal resistance of Congress and the Media.

    And with China, with all the allied partner rhetoric, NOTHING.

    The Silk Road through Russian territory to Europe has been actively discussed for 5-7 years, but things are still there. The only agreements reached are that which is strategically beneficial or necessary for China – Russian weapons and Russian resources.

    On all other issues – projects related to the development of infrastructure and production in Russia – there is no movement or it is extremely negligent.

  19. pequiste December 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm #

    What’s been brewing in JHK’s alembic?

    A caustic, concise concoction of the crazy situation as extant. Aught to be a warning label on this stuff– it’s enough to trigger even the most jaded CFNer.

    What’s next? As good a prognosticator as our host is*; I leave it to you all to think that (and I think he likes a good baseball metaphor as any) the catalyst for the next big-bad-thing is going to come from way out in left field.

    Ebola pandemic?

    A Nancy Pelosi presidency?

    Ottoman Empire.2, courtesy of the current management? Think Lepanto or Gallipoli redux with nukes.

    A free-lance radiological op by some overexuberant, former ISIS troubadours?

    Stock market collapse due to a “computer glitch”; a present perhaps from one of America’s many friends around the world?

    Fall of The House of Saud and the end of the Petrodollar?

    God, how I love a little Doom-porn.

    Whatever shall happen in 2019, it will be via the gross stupidity of our species in direct proportion to the technical genius available.

    A toast to our host! Wishing all CFNers felicitations for the New Year.

    *(Sorry Jim, but gas in my remote neck of the woods is below $2.25 a gallon with a global glut suppressing prices for at least the next few years notwithstanding any catastrophe. We may have a hydrocarbon energy reprieve for a decade or so, but only Rex Tillerson and his friends may know for sure.)

    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 12:57 pm #

      Fall of The House of Saud and the end of the Petrodollar?

      How about the rise of new PetroRubleDollar?

      Only two countries on Earth have abandoned oil/gas production and ability to protect the fields and the shipping routes.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:51 pm #

      Apparently Liz Warren is going to go for it. Oh happy day! I want to dress up an Indian and dance at her rallies, whooping and fanning my mouth like in the Old Westerns. Did they really do that? Who cares. They do now. And they have high cheekbones just like Tin Lizzie said.

      • hmuller December 31, 2018 at 6:17 pm #

        Maybe she can breathe some life into her “Native American credentials” by persuading a judge to force Yale’s Skull and Bones Society to return the stolen bones of Geronimo. Won’t that piss off the entire Bush clan.

        • Tate December 31, 2018 at 8:56 pm #

          Especially old Prescott Bush, 41’s father, if he’s tuning in from somewhere in the Afterlife.

    • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 2:00 pm #

      I don’t know why people think that the prices charged or quoted for commodities have anything to do with supply and demand pequiste. I do not believe that these factors have anything to do with price, certainly not in a system where the central government can print up all the cash it wants to and can backdoor it to it’s corporate masters through subsidies and the Plunge Protection Team. It is so easy for the government to dictate prices for fuel and food and anything else it wants, then compensate those entities that supply these commodities allowing the population to remain well fed, getting to work everyday, and driving around spending their credit cards to the limits. I call baloney on supply and demand pricing. Print and payoff gives the government the guarantees that it needs to remain in power regardless of whether the populace knows how corrupt and self serving they are. There has never been a single case in the history of mankind of any population that was fat and happy rising up and overthrowing their government. Staying in control and in power is the number one priority of every government ever established, and fat and happy assures this. They certainly have the power and they are not afraid to use it.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:47 pm #

      ISIS has warned about radiological and biological attacks for a long time. Seems like it is just a matter of time before they do something like that. They are deadly serious about their beliefs.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 2:56 pm #

        After Hillary goes to jail, you do not have to worry about ISIS.

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:36 pm #

          Can you please do a citizen’s arrest so we can hurry up and get that show on the road?

          • messianicdruid December 31, 2018 at 5:06 pm #

            I don’t want to break into jail. Last I heard she was wearing an ankle contraption.

          • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 9:18 pm #

            Messi: That would be a rather large diameter device for them cankles, eh?

    • elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

      “What’s been brewing in JHK’s alembic? ”

      Pequiste,
      You know that the alembic distills, not brews? Do not ask me how I know this….

      One might brew in a mash-tun…

      But then…”what’s been brewing in JHK mash-tun” seems a bit…cumbersome…hardly elegant.

  20. wet dog December 31, 2018 at 1:04 pm #

    Thank you, JHK.

    If I am to summarize how to handle the current imploding world situation:

    1. Learn to grow a large garden. For example, see the many No-dig gardening videos on youtube by Charles Dowding. An outstanding learning series on what to plant, and how to do it easily.

    Also check out books on Medicinal Herbs and Veggies from Chelsea Green and New Society. I’ve learned a lot from their authors.

    2. Somehow invest in your community. Share the wealth of your garden, have weekly/monthly potlucks. See what old ladies are having a hard time with their lousy pensions not keeping up with inflation.

    3. Cut out GMO grains, get back to basic simple foods. Think of what your ancestors ate 150 years ago, and eat that. They weren’t munching on Cheez Dooooodles, and they didn’t weigh 250 pounds.

    That also means there’s less chance to end up in the sick-care industry. Remember, every person who gets cancer raises the GDP of America! The doctors and 6-figure admins can keep paying for their Mercedes! All is good, MAGA!

    4. Turn off the electronic media, of every type. Learn to hear nature again. It will stabilize your hormone system, and you’ll become calmer and wiser, able to navigate this new terrain more easily, bringing confidence into your group.

    That means tv, sports, music, internet videos, political forums on the net, almost all the news. Throw it all out. As a wise lady once said: Once the alarm goes off, you don’t need to keep setting it again. Move on with life.

    This means: you know what’s coming, you know it ain’t going to be good, so invest your life energy into what’s healthy and productive, and quit obsessing over all these news trends and stupid internet stories. They suck the life out of you. You’re awake. Good. Now drop all the news and videos, and get something done.

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    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 1:09 pm #

      Also check out books on Medicinal Herbs and Veggies from Chelsea Green

      Don’t you miss our Joseph Stalin and Lavrenty Beria to arrange a new “Doctor’s Plot”, American edition, for some of your “Medical Industry” executives?

      It’s a shame that citizens of formerly most advanced industrialized nation are reduced to collecting medicine herbs in public parks.

    • darrell dullnig December 31, 2018 at 1:37 pm #

      All good advice, wet dog. You get a gold star on your chart today.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:38 pm #

      Thanks for the inspiration and the info on no-dig gardening and medicinal herbs and veggies!

    • capt spaulding December 31, 2018 at 5:33 pm #

      wet dog, all of your solutions are sensible, but they’ll never be implemented by people. You might as well add a fifth solution: End war by destroying all of the weapons. All good ideas, but they’re never gonna happen. Therefore, they are not solutions at all.

      • wet dog December 31, 2018 at 6:01 pm #

        I agree. To 99% of the population, what I just wrote is madness. Heck, I’ve lost most my friends by advocating these things – they thought me crazy for saying there was a tech bubble in ’96, and a housing bubble in ’03. They told me to go to hell, that I should think “positive”. And they lost a lot of money.

        And no one has learned anything. Maybe I’m being foolish now, and time is running out to get to a sparsely populated country in the southern hemisphere. Because up here, it’ll be a zoo.

        • capt spaulding January 1, 2019 at 10:04 am #

          You are right, wet dog. With the world population at 7 billion or whatever, zoo is probably an understatement. People living in 1st world nations are unprepared psychologically and otherwise for what’s going to happen. I’ve always pictured the earth as a spaceship with us as the crew. Problem is, if we screw up the spaceship, there’s nowhere else to land.

  21. teddyboy46 December 31, 2018 at 1:33 pm #

    I love starting the Year off with JHKs predictions. I have noticed thru the years that his predictions are fairly accurate. It will be gratifying to see the Diversity Movement collapse along with the economy.

    Looks like JHK has picked up a new Social Media Agent. akmofo. This Agent posts on JHKs blog about Jesus when it has nothing to do with what anyone is talking about . This is a trick to distract people from the subject at hand, and get into meaningless arguments about a subject that is a matter of faith as much as it is fact. Happy New Year.

  22. FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 1:54 pm #

    Big Bargain: From Judge Kavanaugh Confirmation to General Flynn Verdict. The conclusion.

    This time I will start from the end – maybe in this way I will be able to finish this endless series, without which it is meaningless to talk about the results of 2018.

    And the year turned out to be significant and I would not be surprised if in the remaining hours of the old year we were told something about the first Borei-A class submarine “Prince Vladimir” and at least two submarines of the 949th project, which are now undergoing finishing touches on the famous “Star” whose construction my grandfather began.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borei-class_submarine

    And that is why the question of the Big Bargain acquires an applied significance, up to the need to make vital political decisions in the light of this circumstance.

    Meanwhile, if you listen to all that nonsense carried by political commentators on American and Russian television alike about the reshuffle in the Trump’s cabinet, your hair just stands on end. What silly conspirological hypotheses they just do not put forward? And it is good if this conspirology is determined by the genre of TV infotainment.

    Meanwhile, the Big Bargain hypothesis not only explains the all known facts, making it possible to avoid Trump’s mental inferiority theories developed by you know who, but also to anticipate the policies that will be implemented by Trump’s union with the Bushes after defeating Bastinda and her flying apes.

    But the struggle that has now unfolded in the United States clearly goes beyond the North American continent, and Bastinda from Volkov’s book is painted on the basis of Baum’s purely American political tale “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. This allegory can be adequate only within the framework of the Russian-American relations, since Volkov substantially Russified the tale, but China and the world government clearly fall outside this framework.

    Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Bastinda is the primary source and the main ideologue of anti-American propaganda in Russia, since its main task is to prevent the embryo of the Orthodox World Project that announced itself in Valdai from joining the Red and White World Projects of the West.

    Indeed, if the Bushes made an alliance with Trump, then it is natural to assume that they demanded a change in the cabinet of ministers and an appointment to the key posts of “their people.” Actually it became clear even at that moment when Trump appointed to the post of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and nominated for the post of US Attorney General William Barr, who was the US Attorney General 30 years ago in the administration of George H. W. Bush Sr. But after he nominated Patrick Shanahan, Minister of Defense it became very difficult to doubt the authenticity of this fact, especially if you are not lazy and type “Shanahan + Bush” in Google.

    The death of George H. W. Bush on Nov. 30 is an event that no one can predict except the Lord God, but it was the watershed where the intrigues of the Black Project were completed and the rise of the flying monkeys was replaced by their fall.

    In particular, it is quite obvious that the provocations of Petro Poroshenko in the Kerch Strait were bundled with frontal attacks on Trump in US, among which were convictions to the former leader of his election campaign Manafort and admission of guilt by his lawyer Michael Cohen, which is still the only episode that allows to associate Trump with the special investigation mandate of Special Prosecutor Mueller. It is obvious that this set clearly exceeds the level necessary to disrupt the meeting between Putin and Trump in the G-20 in Buenos Aires. And in this regard, I can guess as much as I want to about the reasons for this redundancy and assume a regular coup d’etat by Hillary Clinton, but Vladimir Putin this time obviously knew about it in details, as the urgent deployment of the RLS “Container” was clearly the answer to these plans of Bastinda.

    And then George Bush Sr. dies, who no doubt was the main guarantor of the Big Bargain, and all the leaders of the West come to his funeral, and the notorious envelopes were an invitation to the meeting, which was to determine the collective response of the West to Putin’s demarche, since putting the RLS “Container” on combat duty not only closed the last holes in the Russian Federation nuclear attack early warning system, but also ruled out the possibility of a sudden attack on Russia of all kinds of stealth crafts like F35.

  23. Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 1:58 pm #

    So few posts. The Commentariat is enraged at the goring of the Leftist Oxen. They expected History to become Herstory under the new order of Hillary. No more Western Civilization. No more two Genders. No more White Race. No more Private Property for ordinary pale binaries. We dodged a bullet, friends. But we may not next time. But there may be a temporal gap as White Woman are now considered to be Racists. We need to widen this gap so none can get across in terms of ideology and actual space.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:29 pm #

      You mean we can’t go back to believing we can be friends with everyone. That is what I took from it I should say. I still don’t like it per se but it does make sense. You can even tell through comments online how much hate is out there and I don’t see how it gets better.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 2:53 pm #

        It don’t. All good Whites are Southerners now.

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:26 pm #

          Good! Finally something we can be good at :-)!!

          • capt spaulding December 31, 2018 at 5:35 pm #

            Paddle faster, I hear banjos.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 6:03 pm #

            So does this finally mean you are in?

  24. SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 2:20 pm #

    Happy New Year Mr. K! Happy New Year CFN!

  25. DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 2:25 pm #

    Inflation is typically the choice of governments because it reduces the face value of debts while it allows government to pretend that it is taking action. In the end, you may have plenty of worthless money, which is no different from having not enough money that retains value.

    The problem in our society is unplayable debt, which grows exponentially with additional interest. For a while, exponentially growing supplies of energy created enough “wealth” to offset the exponentially growing claims on wealth that interest adds to the finance side of the economy. Since global peak conventional High-EROEI oil in 2005, we’ve not had a relief valve from the crushing burden of exponential debt.

    It turns out that SO MANY of our current problems would go away if we had a realistic renegotiation of debt. School loans of 1.5 trillion? $130 billion dollars in pension obligations in Illinois? 21 trillion dollars in recognized federal debt, now incurring over $600bln in interest annually? Most of this debt is an asset of the 1%. I think it becomes obvious: JHK’s call for high inflation will come true.

    Only one thing really prevented the FedGov from inflating away the costs of SS, and at the same time increasing tax revenues due to inflation: honest indexing. That’s where and why the 2017 tax bill includes the change to Chained CPI, which will give inflation adjustments far below the rate of inflation, gradually eroding SS checks and gradually (and yes, exponentially) increasing the share of “income” subject to income taxation. Using Chained CPI will also get Illinois out from under its pension obligations, as the nominal amount gets paid off in grossly inflated currency.

    It’s interesting to note that it was a Democratic congressional idea first to switch to Chained CPI, but the Paul Ryan Republicans instead decided to adopt it. Alea iacta est, and the inflation rate will have to go into double digits as a result.

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    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 2:45 pm #

      Unfortunately, the capitalist economy has only one mechanism to get rid of excessive cash printed by Clintons in the 1990s during Informational Superhighway Era – inflation.

      That excessive cash is the main reason for all past and present economic misfortunes.

      According to some estimates, Clintons printed in excess of 20 trillion dollars.

      • Anon1970 December 31, 2018 at 4:32 pm #

        I thought most of the excess cash was printed by the Fed when it bought up trillions of dollars of debt during the Bush 43/Obama years.

        • FincaInTheMountains January 1, 2019 at 6:42 am #

          That is exactly what Clintons want you to think.

    • Anon1970 December 31, 2018 at 4:29 pm #

      My SS checks are being rapidly eroded by Medicare premium surcharges and the Federal income tax payable on the gross amount of my SS benefit (not the actual amount of my checks). I am glad I was able to take early retirement. The Feds couldn’t tax what I didn’t earn. I suppose if I live long enough, my entire SS benefit could disappear in Medicare premiums including premium surcharges and income tax. It is means testing by the backdoor, kind of like the boiling frog fable. By the time the average American figure it out, it will be too late to do anything about it.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:19 pm #

        Can you give some perspective of hard numbers? I’ve not crossed into Medicare territory yet, but I’m not looking forward to it.

        What percent of pre-retirement income did SS replace for you? What percent of the dollars you get from SS, gross, do you have to pay for Medicare? What percent of SS dollars you should get do you actually pay in Federal taxes?

        Every dollar I’ve paid into SS has already been taxed at thefederal, state and local levels. I would think they would have the decency to treat it like a Roth IRA: only dollars in excess of what you paid in are subject to tax, since they’re nominally interest, not already-taxed dollars. won’t happen, but still.

        As I recall, the first 25k for an individual, and 32k for a couple, are not subject to tax.

        Thanks, and don’t reveal what you’re uncomfortable to reveal.

  26. Ron Anselmo December 31, 2018 at 2:39 pm #

    Jim,

    Happy New Year to you! Thanks for all the wit, wisdom & musings in 2018, always appreciated and looking forward the same in 2019.

    Stay buckled up my friend, 2019 looks to be an especially bumpy ride.

    All the best,

    RA

  27. DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 2:40 pm #

    The universities themselves will suffer hugely as their budgets crash through floor and all, of a sudden, they have to issue pink slips to a half dozen Diversity deans on six-figure salaries.

    This is only one facet of the onrushing horror of the elites: the collapse of the cult of management. In return for economic growth since 1975, we’ve allowed the wealthiest 5% to keep essentially all the gains. 2016 was the revolt of the economically denuded against the elites, who are going to have to share a few more of the spoils with the little people, or find out that their privileges weren’t based on hard work or brains as much as muscle, that muscle abandoning them to go side with the Gilets Jaunes of every western society.

    That the cult took hold as strongly as it did in the academy is a surprise, since most of the lumpenproletariat adjuncts also have advanced, and often terminal, degrees. There’s no easy way to claim that the six-figure Deans are owed their bloated salaries over other advanced-degree-holding educated men and women except that “they have got/the gold and power/and adjuncts have not.”

    This arrangement is coming rapidly to an end, and students and learning will be better off for it. Thanks for noticing, JHK.

    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 2:48 pm #

      Some of the highest paid deans are the ‘Diversity Coordinators’. Something tells me they’ll be the last ones laid off.

      Brh

      • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:26 pm #

        You’re right, BRH. I quote to you from the book leadership BS, by Pfeffer:

        A while ago, the organizational sociologists John Freeman and Michael Hannon asked why the size of the administrative component – administrative overhead – seems to rise inexorably in organizations. Their answer, empirically tested in a study of school districts, is simple: when times are good, the number of administrators (and probably everybody else) expands, but when times are bad, administrators, closer to the locus of decision-making and with more power, protect their jobs disproportionately, with the loss of jobs concentrated among the frontline people with less influence over the decisions about where and what to cut. Therefore, as this cycle repeats itself over Time, the percentage of people in administration inexorably increases.

    • Ron Anselmo December 31, 2018 at 3:03 pm #

      Yes Doc, and this as well:

      “Many colleges will begin the process of shutting down in 2019 as their student loan racket disintegrates.” – JHK

      Nothing short of a complete criminal enterprise. Just like 2007-2008, the loans have been bundled into tranches of SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities). No shit, and they’ll go to near zero, with the criminals shorting them all the way.

      Happy New Year Doc, I enjoy your comments throughout the year.

      RA

      • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:38 pm #

        I was not aware of SLABs, Ron. I shudder to think.

        The problem is that we actually need real education more, but we’ve created a giant educational jobs scheme designed to funnel more and more of the dollars paid in the systemto people who provide no independently-verifiable benefit to students: administrators. The Feds have a huge hand here: the contribution 1/7th to 1/6th of all monies spent in higher ed. In return for that investment, they get to control fundamentally ALL the spending in higher education, a 6- or 7-1 “profit” for them.

        The money spent on administration is also about 1/6th of all higher ed spending. So if you fired all the admins (extreme, of course) you could do without the Federal dollars. And require a lot fewer admins, too.

        Colleges are differently efficient, of course. THere must be some schools where the cost of federal dollars already exceeds the dollars received. Some accountant ought to figure that one out.

        • AKlein January 1, 2019 at 7:42 am #

          Dr. Tom, has not the same thing happened in the healthcare “industry?” I mean the vast increase in the number of administrators, but only a small increase in the number of actual providers – i.e. the “boots on the ground” nurses and physicians providing real services. In fact, I would dare venture a guess this same process has occurred in many other economic sectors. The similarity between education and healthcare is that both sectors were once a “calling” rather than a profession (a calling being arguably higher on the societal totem poll than a profession.) The only “calling” which has not fared so well is the the “cloth”, those involved in religion. I’ll leave it to other CFNers to speculate on why that is so. In any case, we seem to be following a similar course to that taken by the former Soviet Union; hordes of administrators of dubious value, all supported by a shrinking cadre of those doing real work, i.e. work that people would actually pay for, as opposed to having the monies extracted from their wallets, all made quite legal by various administrative rulings. I suspect our end will be the same as that for the Soviets. Unsustainability awaits.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:40 pm #

        I’m offended by your assuming I follow a Gregorian Calendar, Ron. It’s as offensive as wishing someone a Merry Christmas. My hope is that you’ll offend me just the same next year, and for many years beyond.

        Thank you for your kind words.

        Tom

  28. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 2:44 pm #

    “Everbody is a suspect, we’re not ruling anyone out.” — Commissar Smith

    To any of you who last week commented on the sad story concerning two pretty Scandanavian girls who were raped, murdered and beheaded while on a hiking trip in Morocco, please beware. If you mentioned the killers and rapists were Muslim (which they were) and shouted “alihu ackbar” when they sawed the girls heads off (which they did), you have broken Swedish law, and the Swedish govt has announced you are subject up to 4 years in prison for the crime of fostering hatred toward Islam. This law will be strictly enforced; if you have broken it do not travel to Sweden. They know who you are.

    Brh

    • FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 2:51 pm #

      something is rotten in the state of Sweden

      Now, the rotten diseases
      of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
      loads o’ gravel i’ the back, lethargies, cold
      palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
      lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
      limekilns i’ the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
      rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
      again such preposterous discoveries!

  29. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 2:59 pm #

    Student loan debt is approaching $1.5 trillion. How’s any of it ever going to be paid? It seems like an insurmountable sum, and it grows bigger every year.

    Brh

    • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:30 pm #

      paid off in dollars that are worth a lot less?

    • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:49 pm #

      Well, there’s good and bad debt, BRH.

      As you might guess, I’ve been involved in the academic racket. Once, as a Dean, no less. I regularly had studentadua from my school with 30-40k in debt, in STEM. In truth, I had no problem with this, since the students’ prospects were such that, with a year or two living at home after graduating, they could wipe out the debt and be much better off with the degree and the life and career skills they had gained.

      The problem isn’t those kids. It’s the ones who took out loans and never graduated; or ones who got worthless degrees in business and saw not 2 or 3x their previous salaries, but MAYBE 1.1x what they would have earned without the degree. In the latter case, the debt becomes a 20year drag, and in the former case, the kids are just screwed: they will likely NEVER earn enough to get ahead of the interest.

      I quit that institution when it became clear that they would enroll anyone, regardless of their ability to actually graduate and see a positive return.

      If there’s any justice, that place will go belly up, and soon. The millions paid to top-level admins will never be clawed back, however.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 8:36 pm #

        Excellent posts, Dr. Schmidt.

        You appear to be one substantial dude, very knowledgeable.

        Brh

  30. bukowskisghost December 31, 2018 at 3:07 pm #

    I was going to tell Janos to take his head out of his ass, but then I forgot about the shit storm that comes out of his mouth every day.

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    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:38 pm #

      And what are you bringing to the table?

      • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:30 pm #

        H A T E

  31. Luhrenloup December 31, 2018 at 3:23 pm #

    Two things happened this past week that presage the coming adventures for the coming year:

    A man enters a vape shop wearing a MAGA hat and the clerk loses it, ends up decking the guy who is simply asking to be served. The clerk is fired.

    A man enters a store wearing jeans a cut off tee, big guy, blond, wearing earrings and face makeup. The clerk addresses him as Sir and all hell breaks loose. Big guy wants corporate tel # to report this. So far, clerks have not been fired.

    I could say that the Democrats are unleashing this madness. But it’s much more complicated than this. Trump was elected because the system is broken. He’s not going to MAGA, too late for that, but he’s at least pointing out that America is no longer great for many, many people in the country , , , Attention Must Be Paid.

    In an effort to keep their hold on the zeitgeist, the elites have created a tsunami of false agendas, inequities, on a populace that’s been played with for years now.

    And today, Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for the executive office.

    I’d say, let’s keep our cool this coming year.

    My best to everyone at JHK and you too, Jim

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:31 pm #

      I can’t believe she is going to run for President. It MAY be possible that I like her even less than Hillary.

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:05 pm #

      Ole Warren, using her native privilege. Her legacy: shrill but pointed questioning in inconsequential congressional depositions.

    • Luhrenloup December 31, 2018 at 5:47 pm #

      WOW! What a vid!!

  32. chipshot December 31, 2018 at 3:32 pm #

    In summary, first we go broke, then we starve.

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 3:41 pm #

      Gee, just in time for my New Year good mood….

  33. 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 3:43 pm #

    “It will be especially stark this time, and the broad pop culture of Collapse suggests that we intuit this — everything from Game of Thrones to The Road, to my own World Made By Hand novels. It begins with the wobbling of the most abstract and fragile of our systemic arrangements, finance, which is mostly based on ephemeral trust (that the other fellow will pay you). From there, the trouble proceeds to politics and culture.”

    When I was of elementary school age I often wondered what it was like during a civilization’s collapse. As if it happened over night, or the course of a summer. Later, you learn how it was often presaged by purple toga’d or powdered wig’d curmudgeons. The old grumps that bitterly complained that nobody can jitterbug these days. The only common thread extending through time is the entertainment factor. It’s unrivaled. The collective losing their mind. The synchronistic yet incongruent immovability and gullibility of the masses. How they always deserve their fate for their sheer stupidity alone. The whining. To many it’s like the sirens’ song, but to my ears it’s heaven. The enchanting melody of comeuppance. The awakening to the deeply buried painful truth: you’d much rather see them lost to time than to continue on, not for the indignity, but for being undignified.
    Popcorn tossed in mouth. Yum

    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 4:48 pm #

      You know avatar, you can look at cities like Hartford, Ct, Baltimore, and Newark, to see what civilizational collapse is all about. It happened in an astonishing short time, and with tons and tons of cash pouring in from state and federal government. It seems once decay sets in no amount of money can stop it.

      Brh

      • Anon1970 January 1, 2019 at 11:04 am #

        The City of Baltimore rang out the old year with its 308th homicide, according to the Baltimore Sun. My guess is that this total will be high enough to place it once again on the 2018 Wikipedia list of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world (measured by murders per 100,000).

  34. Ol' Scratch December 31, 2018 at 3:48 pm #

    What? No “gird your loins” in the forecast this year, Jim? I’m highly disappointed! LOL!

    Great forecast once again. I think you’ve summed up the current zeitgeist pretty well here. I think the noose is finally tightening in earnest on GGG now, and he appears to be acknowledging it with his increasingly desperate thrashing about as well. The DC powers rarely agree on much, but Trump has finally coalesced beltway opinion on something. By hook, by crook, or by assassin’s bullet or bomb if necessary, I expect him to be gone by the end of the year, and oh boy, won’t we have fun then!

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:02 pm #

      Trump has only now come to realize that all the “generals” that “love(d)” him were really only standing in his way. On issues of defense, and with Kelly, as former DHS head, immigration as well.
      He only now realizes that the wall was in his cabinet. No troop withdrawal. No border walls. No border closures. No no-flys. No asylum denials. He let the swamp beasts with fruit salad lapels in to roost through the front door. He forgot how he came this far: tough talk and a bigger shtick. What has he to lose now by actually fulfilling his platform of tariffs, walls, and no more wars?

      • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 8:41 pm #

        They are going to do everything they can to destroy him and his family anyway. It just might be a good thing if he governed as if he had nothing left to lose. I hope you are right about that.

      • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 1:47 am #

        https://youtu.be/pR4q5mXHppo

    • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 5:58 pm #

      You gonna bet that way at the betting markets?

  35. 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:14 pm #

    “The Left especially has no inclination to address immigration reform. As long as they mendaciously refuse to even make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, nothing can be done. The Right is also dishonest and cowardly about it, fearing to alienate the ballooning Hispanic voter bloc. Still there is a better chance that some immigration reform may be possible”

    There is no need to address IR because neither want it, because they both now have what they want: open borders.

    It’s not wide open borders, but it’s not a trickle. It’s a strong and steady stream of expendable cheap labor and dependable cheap votes. From H1-B indentureds to “undocumented” laborers, from big-tech and big-pharma to construction and meat-packing. Cheap and available labor now in exchange for dependable and exploitable votes later. Win-win…

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    • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 5:01 pm #

      Those at the top are all for mass migration in every corrupt nation regardless of politics. It brings in an army of those at the bottom that will immediately attack, distract and compete with those of us in the middle to keep us from competing with the top dwellers for positions, wealth and resources. It is brilliant in a twisted, evil way.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 31, 2018 at 6:01 pm #

        And it creates more people competing for the same amount of land. It’s easy to build suburbia in 1950s America with plenty of land. We now have twice the people of then with no more land, and no more cheap gas to drive further and further to live 60miles from jobs.

        If you own land or capital, you benefit from the flood of labor. A real estate billionaire knows this better than anyone.

        • Cavepainter December 31, 2018 at 6:52 pm #

          Yes Tom, and appropriate to your post and the Christmas season just past, consider the social developments which triggered the writing of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Population had been spiraling for a hundred years while “titled” family estates were increasing and enlarging, forcing into the burgeoning cities the “landless”. On the estates private security made up of “bailiffs” (of water, woodland, game, etc.) could with impunity apply the cruelest measures of enforcement. Though the poor in Europe were “freemen” it was not unusual for slaves on American plantations to be be better off, but particularly the ranks of plantation Black bourgeois. This bourgeois class (livery and tiers of house servants) was attired appropriately by the owners who vied for status of having the most elegant and refined “staff”. This bourgeois not only valued it standing compared to “field niggers”, but also to poor whites who often were less well off (it was this Black bourgeois that originated usage of the expression of “white trash”). I know, I know, bringing up such facts of history counters the generalizations of Harriet Beecher Stowe, so the PC police will probably sensor this little intrusion upon the mythologies of the Left.

          • Cavepainter December 31, 2018 at 7:39 pm #

            Additionally, there’s the irony of wearing African tribal origin clothing and hair style to virtue signal protest against 19th Century American slavery. An irony most evident when one recons the reality that the Africans that ended up in the US were of tribes that lost the tribal wars, the winners of those wars profiting by selling the losers to the slave trade.

          • DrTomSchmidt January 3, 2019 at 12:08 am #

            Thanks for the backstory on Dickens. America was long wealthier for farmers for being emptier.not so, Europe.

            I get the sense that we are in stasis or decline in per capitawealth. Black and white. That won’t benefit any of us.

        • Anon1970 January 1, 2019 at 11:15 am #

          There is plenty of underutilized land in many of the nation’s larger cities but even dirt poor immigrants wouldn’t want to live there. Think Detroit, where the population has dropped by about 2/3 since 1950. One rapid transit train stop from downtown San Francisco, with all of its high priced real estate including Embarcadero Center, sits the West Oakland ghetto, with its public housing projects and unsafe neighborhoods. West Oakland is in desperate need of major urban renewal, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

      • Cavepainter December 31, 2018 at 8:19 pm #

        Yes Walter, as demonstrated by how the owners and managers of the industrializing North prior to the civil war got to “virtue signal” opposition to slavery in the South, but all the while using the influx labor of escaped or free Blacks to undercut the workforce wages and pressure for improved working conditions that were typically as brutal as was laboring on plantations in the South. For decades prior to the war workers in the North rioted against the Abolitionists cause as well as on basis of feared social impact (having doubts, no less than Lincoln, about whether Blacks could fully assimilate into European society).

    • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 8:51 pm #

      We need a moratorium on all immigration for the foreseeable future.

      • Walter B December 31, 2018 at 8:58 pm #

        Watch this SSL, it is excellent and makes the point in spectacular fashion:

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

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 9:44 pm #

          I like NumbersUSA a lot! Isn’t it crazy that we automatically take in a million immigrants a year without question? And Roy Beck is correct that the only hope for most people lies in the improvement, or not, of their home countries. We don’t need to take the cream of their crop. We don’t even worry about our own as it is.

          • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 10:25 pm #

            I like Japan. They’re like, “f*** it, we’d rather have Japanese robots than foreign immigrants”

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

            Just make sure the robots aren’t creepy Chikans ;-)! But really, they are much more dedicated to limiting immigration than we are, and overall they have low crime and high levels of social harmony. We can learn some lessons.

  36. 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:24 pm #

    “They have no idea what E Pluribus Unum used to mean and they have no desire or intention to rediscover it.”

    They certainly do not, and neither do most people, particularly the left.

    It means that out out of 13 (many) individual states a new united country (state) would arise.

    It has absolutely nothing to do with immigrants and different peoples and melting pots and huddled masses.

    That’s straight up communist bulls*t.

    • malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:31 pm #

      Out of one many,

      Al Gore.

  37. 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 4:34 pm #

    Reading this with a sazerac while listening to Beegie Adair’s, ‘what a difference a day makes’ is just a swell way to end the year

  38. malthuss December 31, 2018 at 4:37 pm #

    DJIA UP 265, ON LAST DAY OF YEAR.

    • hmuller December 31, 2018 at 6:26 pm #

      All those bonus loving Wall Streeters will be happy. Did the Plunge Protection Team “pump it up” a little this last week or so? Sure, but who cares; it’s all good for now.

      Yet, financial markets do resemble an over the hill madame whose pasty makeup is likely to crack in the cold light of day.

  39. amb December 31, 2018 at 4:50 pm #

    As far as a big picture goes, nobody knows what is coming.
    In regard to that, ALLl forecasters, prognosticators and speculators are clueless.

    Because… NO ONE is based in reality.

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 5:01 pm #

      Oh no, we all know what is coming, ‘cept many prefer to bury that truth.
      Man’s burden and all.

      • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm #

        People fretting and feigning interest in a future they will never see.
        It is totally disingenuous; a deceit.

        In economic theory, one, when given the option, should always pay the lowest cost. It is why many of the pay-what-you-can models employed on recording album releases failed. People took the product for free when given that option.

        Man has now come to embrace that thinking over the course of one’s life. If I can have it now although it may be detrimental to a future that may not come, and may not come to me, what will I do?

        Well, I’ll have it now of course. Because it’s my life in the here and now that matters. Not someone else’s in the future.

        Some call it greed. Some call it short-sightedness.
        Are we to carry the lantern for humanity?
        Really?
        Deep down inside, we know we’re not worth it.
        So we don’t.

        We embrace the mantra. We embrace the moment. Embrace the now.
        The future is not your’s to see, and with no lantern, we’ll make sure that is so.

  40. FincaInTheMountains December 31, 2018 at 5:59 pm #

    The former Russian intelligence officer Victor Boyarkin helped the Mueller Commission connecting dots in the space-time continuum of his investigation by telling him to “go dig a ditch” from the fence all the way to the lunch.

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  41. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 6:07 pm #

    Tonite at Times Square … 7000 NYPD, 12000 cameras, 2500 state and federal police, and as many undercover officers circulating thruout the criwd as there are cutthroats and pick pockets circulating thruout the crowd … thats what it takes now to keep the peace …

    Brh

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 6:52 pm #

      Oh. I thought it was to keep Kathy Griffin away from Trump Tower, or from Anderson Schtupper.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 9:41 pm #

      And it’s pouring rain. Some people have very funny ideas of a good time. Anything for the chance to get on TV, their “screen test” perhaps…..

      • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 10:10 pm #

        Perhaps there is a better chance of getting to make out with Jenny McCarthy. Although the prospect is titillating, one must remember that her abstention from vacs makes the probability for an in STD in 2019 highly probable.

  42. Mike Roberts December 31, 2018 at 7:05 pm #

    Jim, you say that civilisations have risen and fallen with climate changes in the past. Have you got any links to information about that? I know that the climate is currently changing at the fastest rate for hundreds of thousands of years, though civilisations have only been around for about 10,000 years. Past civilsations and empires may have been affected by environmental changes but, specifically, climate? I think this is the first time I’ve heard that. It’s possible, though, since most of the often raised warming/cooling episodes, in the past, have either been short term or regional. In the latter case, regional empires may have been affected.

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 7:08 pm #

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/modern-humans-didnt-kill-neanderthals-weather-did-180970167/

      A a genocidal civilization collapse

      • SoftStarLight December 31, 2018 at 9:14 pm #

        Interesting article. The Mayas were wiped out by a drought. DuckDuckGo it. Angkor Wat was supposedly abandoned because of drought. The Vikings abandoned Greenland during the Little Ice Age. From the long view of history it seems to happen frequently.

        • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 9:22 pm #

          20,000 years ago there was a 1 mile thick sheet of ice over where im sitting right now, extending from the arctic to Long Island. Then it melted.

          Brh

          • malthuss January 1, 2019 at 12:05 am #

            even 10,000 years ago?

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

            And it did so long before we could have melted it with our crazy carbon addictions so the climate crazies can get over it and suck a lemon lol.

  43. BuckP December 31, 2018 at 7:17 pm #

    In Damascus, this holiday season, Christians along with Muslims celebrated Christmas together. How can this be in such oppressive, authoritarian country run by an iron-fisted tyrant, like, the Butcher, Assad? Could our “permanent state” (intelligence, defense, state) and MSM be lying to us? Yep! Thanks to the pseudo-righteous good ole USA led by war-trumpeteers like John McCain,Hillary Clinton, and the Dick Cheney, Christians are no longer safe to worship,live and thrive in formerly secular Islamic-majority countries, like Iraq, Egypt, Libya and now eastern Syria. Millions of Middle Eastern Christians are now hunkered down in refugee camps with no hope for the future. Good job USA! Heck, these refugees cannot even seek asylum here in the US. Colin Powell warned the neocons, W and the Dick Cheney that if you break Iraq, you own it. He was wrong! We never own up to any of the damage, we do!

    On a lighter note, on Christmas night, here in Vegas, my wife and I ventured down to the Strip to see the Bellagio Garden Christmas display (awesome), watch the Bellagio Fountains, which were synchronized to Christmas music (the fountains moving to Handel’ Hallelujah Chorus was pretty cool) and have a late dessert. The Strip was packed with people from all over the world. We met families,many with babies in strollers, from China, Japan, England, South Korea, Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, France, Spain, Italty and from many American states. All had a smile and were very respectful and kind to oneanother. Is there hope? Maybe! The people amongst us on Christmas night, no matter where they were from, seemed to have it.

    We are presntly in the middle of the Holocene warm period nestled between Ice Ages. 15,000 years ago, parts of the US were under a mile-thick sheet of ice.
    Global warming > Global Cooling
    At 4 parts per 10,000 carbon dioxide does not seem to be the principal driver of climate change. What is? Cosmic rays? Sunspots?

  44. malthuss December 31, 2018 at 7:31 pm #

    Before 2019 is out, the US could find itself in a situation worse than the Great Depression.

    1930s,

    USA 90% White.
    People were debt free [except for a mortgage, Id guess]
    30% were farmers, and many others had relatives on farms to ‘go back to.’

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 7:43 pm #

      Damn brown people and their infernal CDOs!

      • malthuss January 1, 2019 at 12:06 am #

        you have a problem with facts?
        can you give me facts about Haiti?

        • 100th Avatar January 1, 2019 at 1:14 am #

          French (and others on Hispaniola) imported African slaves.
          They were of course treated as second class citizens and denied proper breeding and education.
          They rebelled
          The French retreated and abandoned the island
          Voi fu***g la

          • malthuss January 1, 2019 at 12:14 pm #

            They were of course treated as second class citizens–

            you think that they had class?

          • 100th Avatar January 1, 2019 at 3:41 pm #

            The point is that the African people in Haiti were never treated equally, but now they will be judged equally.

            Can’t win for losing with you racists.

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2019 at 11:01 pm #

            They shouldn’t have massacred the Whites and instead used their know-how to make the island better. Oh well, it just goes to show that Blacks can be racists too.

    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 8:26 pm #

      Malth, the mortgage as we know it today didn’t really exist until after WW2. In the 30s a mortgage was issued for about 6 years, and you had to put down about 1/2 the value of the property. Also, your mortgage could be negotiated each year. That all changed when the feds got involved, backing loans for GIs in the 40s, and with the creation of fanny mae and freddy mac in the late 60s.

      You’re right about social capitol holding the country together in the 30s which doesn’t exist today. Connecticut was not only 95% white but a majority descended from the original English Protestant settlers, and the major cities were not yet dystopic welfare colonies. From what i heard from fhe older folks in my family the Great Depression wasn’t too bad around here. Most of them lived on family farms handed down to them, so most had a place to live and enough to eat. Those farms no longer exist, and the welfare population here is immense.

      Brh

      • malthuss January 1, 2019 at 12:06 am #

        Mah grandpa had a place in Litchfield.
        Too bad he didnt keep it.

  45. akmofo pulls his ’97 Monte Carlo out from the WalMart parking lot… his MAGA hat down low over the rim of his coke-bottle glasses. He knows his license plate is odd-numbered. “Fuck ’em,” he mumbles as he turns slowly onto the road. “They ain’t got nothing on me.”

    He flicks his eye from one side of the road to another. “Fuckin’ bastards… telling ME they got the right…” he mutters as he grips the wheel. He’s noncompliant, and he knows it.

    Since the Green Agenda began under President Pelosi, things have really changed. Now, with gasoline at $10 a gallon, while the G-7 enforces a global embargo on carbon emissions, Sec. of State Geo. Soros has been directing the uneasy enforcement of rationing through the transition period. The penalty is high- destruction of the vehicle- for driving on the wrong day. Grown men cry in viral videos with pictures of their beloved 4×4 burning in the background.

    But tonight, the stakes are even higher. He’s got a date with a lady down at the bowling alley. Plus, he’s outta smokes. He brings his iphone 5 to his head and talks into it. “Alexa, gimme Stacy.”

    “Calling Stacy… ” replies the voice. Immediately a man’s voice explodes from the speaker. “Hello? Who the fuck is this!?”

    Akmofo almost swerves off the road as the phone goes flying out of his hand. “Shit!” he exclaims.

    “You better not be fucking my wife, motherfucker, you hear me? God- damn it if I catch you down at the Sit ‘n’ Spin, I’m gonna break your goddamn fuckin, neck, you hear me??”

    He kicks the phone several times until silence returns. “Fucking fuck!” he swears, “Everytime I meet a new piece, somethin’ happens!”

    The phone flashes under his feet. “Aww hell…”

    He picks it up, and squints at the tiny letters.

    “Incoming message from Little Debbie – Accept / Deny”

    He blinks and taps the screen. Eyes looking quickly from the road to his phone, he reads aloud:

    “You’re dead meat buddy. I got you locked with a tracking device. You’ll rue the day you ever fucked with my homies at the DNC.”

    His face turns red as he squints again at the screen. Suddenly the car is awash with light. Blazing white headlights are in front and behind, flashing colors lighting the roadway. The police. But how?

    “Stop and exit the vehicle. Stop Right Now.”

    The distant noise of a helicopter and barking dogs rise over the sound of Rush Limbaugh. He’s trapped, and there is nowhere to go except a row of low bushes 20 feet from the driver’s side door. Beyond that, he could escape through the neighborhood. Its a real possibility- he’s lived there all his life so he has the advantage in pursuit.

    “Show us your hands! Exit the vehicle!” shouts the officers. He leaves the key in the ignition, running, and opens the drivers-side door, stepping out slowly with his hands in the air. In the glare of the lights he realizes he’s addressing a man in military camouflage. These aren’t cops. Its the National Guard. The giant vehicle behind him is a half track, 2-ton assault truck.

    “Get clear of the vehicle! Now!!” screams the man into the megaphone, and akmofo stumbles, and then sprints toward the low bushes. A motor whines as a large battery of rockets rises out of the truck and aims at the Monte Carlo. “Ready, Fire!” Screams the man.

    The rocket launches with a shriek of flames and blows the Monte Carlo to smithereens as akmofo dives into the underbrush, loose change flying everywhere. He gets up, and runs for his life through the neighborhood, lit by fire and searchlights, the smell of burned plastic in the air.

    He makes it to his mom’s house, out of breath, and climbs in through the back window. Safe- for now. He fumes. It was Li’l Debbie- Little Debbie that stabbed him in the back.

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    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 9:16 pm #

      President Pelosi? That old bag is pushing 80, and Secretary of State Soros gotta be close to 100. WTF is Pelosi president of, Society of Keepers of the Crypt?

      Brh

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2018 at 9:39 pm #

        That the Gays keep electing this rabid poodle is proof positive that there is something wrong with homosexuality.

        • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 10:01 pm #

          I thought you’d offer SF’s Tim Cook’s performance with Apple as better proof… of lack of genuine creativity.

      • EvelynV January 1, 2019 at 2:35 pm #

        Because even on the day before they seal her casket she’ll be whip smarter than the brightest of the dim bulbs in the r’publican party.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 7:50 am #

          Why Trump has spared Pelosi from his personal vitriol — so far

          Title of an interesting Politico article describing Trump’s respect for this remarkable woman. It notes the fact she is one of the few important politicians Trump has not assigned one of his juvenile derogatory names to.

          quote from article

          “I think the president admires people he views as strong, and he does view her as strong,” said Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative affairs director. “She’s not only the first woman speaker but she hung around and fought to get back to that place. She’s a historic figure, you can’t deny that.”

    • pequiste December 31, 2018 at 9:26 pm #

      At least it wasn’t a ’70 Monte Carlo.

    • Tate December 31, 2018 at 10:09 pm #

      I idly noticed that L’il Debbie & akmofo had a feud goin’ but never dreamed it was this bad.

    • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 10:21 pm #

      Lawrence to Faisal:

      “We must not take Medina. The Turk was harmless there. In prison in Egypt he would cost us food and guards. We wanted him to stay at Medina, and every other distant place, in the largest numbers. Our ideal was to keep his railway just working, but only just, with the maximum of loss and discomfort…. [His] pride in his imperial heritage would keep him in his present absurd position — all flanks and no front.”

      In other words, all ass and no balls. That’s you, QStick er QShit.

    • akmofo December 31, 2018 at 10:36 pm #

      Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s..

      Who the hell is Caesar?! Everything Caesar has and everything Caesar is, he has stolen from me by force! I want this back! There’s nothing that belongs to Caesar! Nothing!

      Of-course you don’t understand that. You’re a Vatican eunuch.

    • elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

      SnakPak,
      Excellent! In the next chapter, could the National Guard be described as wearing the uniform of the Vatican Guards? Fuckin’ Papists mumbles mofo….

  46. Pucker December 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm #

    Do you practice Divination? Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, and Chinese cults. Not everyone does, you know….

  47. Pucker December 31, 2018 at 8:49 pm #

    Free Bill Cosby!

    • 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 10:03 pm #

      Poor Bill, in his better days, on a night like tonight, he’d be raising the roof(ie)

      • Pucker December 31, 2018 at 11:44 pm #

        “What happens in the Playboy Mansion should stay in the Playboy Mansion.”

  48. Pucker December 31, 2018 at 9:46 pm #

    George Taylor in the original “Planet of the Apes”:

    Happy New Year! What year is it?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YuytpQT6gW4

  49. 100th Avatar December 31, 2018 at 10:15 pm #

    Heaven help us. 2019 and election season has begun. Again. Liz Warren is instagramming videos of her cooking away in New England. She’s keepin’ it realz and native in her L.L. Bean Wicked Good Moccasins. A real shout-out to her peeps back on the golf club rez.

    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 10:39 pm #

      Xi JinPing, Putin, Little Kim in NKorea, they gotta be shaking in their boots at the prospect of facing off withthis Cherokee War Chief.

      Brh

  50. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2018 at 10:53 pm #

    2 more people shot tonite in Hartford, that makes about 10 for the week. This is how you ring in a new year in welfare colonies. Happy New Year.

    Brh

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  51. deetrump January 1, 2019 at 12:06 am #

    She’s keepin’ it realz and native in her L.L. Bean Wicked Good Moccasins. –100th Avatar

    I don’t care what she wears on her feet or what her heritage is. What I care about is Medicare for All, her anti-corruption bill, her plan to give workers voices on the boards of large companies, her plan for a major investment in housing affordability, and her plan to create a public option for generic drug manufacturing.

    I would vote for her if she can accomplish any of those ideas. She has written a lot of good legislation that benefits the 99%, not the 1%, and she has gotten big name House cosponsors for her various legislative ideas. She is a realist, not a pie-in-the-sky idealist…. She is keeping it real by wearing good quality, good value L.L. Bean garb.

    • shabbaranks January 1, 2019 at 12:36 am #

      Congress, not the President, is the seat of power in the US. Witness the failure of Trump to legislate himself a border wall between the US and Mexico. Just another political science lesson for the mass of Americans.

      As for L.L. Bean, even they have fallen prey to the China trap:

      https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-ll-bean-made-in-china/3674742.html

      • DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 4:43 am #

        And who whispers in the ear of Congress? That is where the real power lies.

        Certainly not with ‘The People’ – a howler that continues to excite and amuse.

      • Anon1970 January 1, 2019 at 10:49 am #

        Congress is supposed to be the body that declares war but has not done so since Dec. 1941. Many thousands of Americans in the military have died under hostile fire since the end of WWII in Aug. 1945. Congress has abdicated a lot of its power to the president. Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia,Syria and maybe Ukraine. And this list does not include the minor conflicts like Panama or Grenada.

    • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 4:32 am #

      Sounds lije she’s your gal, Little Jane.

  52. PeteAtomic January 1, 2019 at 1:12 am #

    thanks Jim,

    another grim prediction there. Well maybe they’ll be some positive opportunity in the change and struggle. Who knows. Gotta look at it at that angle, so I don’t submerge my head in a pool of booze.

    What do the Chinese say about interesting times. Apparently that saying was supposed to be some kind of curse. I don’t know.

    I do know that I gotta keep on a’ truckin’. Gonna crank up the radio and put the hammer down on the ole Mustang, there. There’s no turning back for ole Petey. Whiskey & whores all the way, baby.

    • DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 4:37 am #

      And lots and lots of fuel. The American birthright.

  53. Pucker January 1, 2019 at 2:40 am #

    According to to the book “Blitzscaling”, “atoms have been overthrown by Bits, and atoms no longer matter.”

    Get it?: Atoms no longer “Matter”.

  54. DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 3:17 am #

    Jim,

    You touched on what I believe will be the prime mover to scrape the Trump barnacle from the Good Ship USA. Primarily, Trump was installed by the corporate plutocracy to transfer wealth. Never mind all the other reindeer games, that is his whole function @ 1600 Penn.

    Once he screws that up, as he simply cannot help but tripping over his own diminutive wanker, he will recede to the middle distance. Enter stage left the equally, but not as visibly awful Mike Pence. And let the merry mix-ups begin anew….

    • SoftStarLight January 1, 2019 at 5:04 am #

      How can he trip over it if it is so diminutive? Just a process question of course.

      • DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 5:34 am #

        This is a man of great and as yet undiscovered talent.

  55. Pucker January 1, 2019 at 4:47 am #

    Free Cosby!

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  56. DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 5:03 am #

    Great story out of Chandler, Arizona of all places. It seems that Google’s Waymo (1st prize for idiotic names) self-driving car testing is being greeted with sticks and knives and hurled rocks. The people there are not amused or, more importantly, impressed.

    Perhaps the first healthy signs of blowback from Too Much Magic? Stay tuned.

    • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 6:33 am #

      There’s a facility near here where you can get rid of your electronic junk — Commodore 100 computers, Tandys, vacuum tube TVs and so on — they crush everything up in a huge hydraulic compacter — wonder how long before people start dropping off their self driving electric cars down there, batteries dead, full of bullet holes, tires flat, windows stove in, body rusted out from fire — of course there will be an environmental fee, a steep one, to render this wreck benign? Before you bring it in be sure to pry off the chrome ‘W’ (Waymo) logo for your collection!

      Brh

      • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 6:42 am #

        Copper wire will bring about $3 per pound at the scrapyard, and lead batteries have value too. A whole new career opportunity will open up dismantling those goddam things, mining them for scrap metal,

        Brh

      • DEFCON1 January 1, 2019 at 7:06 am #

        Reminds me of that great documentary ‘Who killed the Electric Car’ although that time the owners were begging the suits at GM to reconsider. This time I believe there will be a solid rejection of this arch-stupidity.

        Another soon to be on that list will be delivery by drones.

    • elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

      Luddites….

  57. FincaInTheMountains January 1, 2019 at 6:31 am #

    Happy New Year!

    Though it was sad!

    But this year there have been so many miracles that there is hope that in the New Year they will not leave us!

    And I hope that I have told you about the miracles that took place in 2018, but I will be able to tell you about the new miracles that will happen in the new 2019! (For example, the Fifth Hurricane or a new split of the Deep State)

    And I also have to celebrate New Year, but after the Irony of Fate, which has just ended, I began to fall asleep again and am not sure that I can wake up in time! So once again, happy New Year!

    Irony of Fate:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGBxVkmKNHg

    • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 11:11 am #

      s novim godom !

    • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 11:53 am #

      Soft Tempo Broadcasting Service:
      https://youtu.be/5ra67bSMxpY

      🙂

  58. akmofo January 1, 2019 at 10:27 am #

    Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor
    https://youtu.be/xpkuNkgRpjg

    • FincaInTheMountains January 1, 2019 at 10:55 am #

      That’s funny.

      I thought India with their caste system is the only true Nazi state on Earth. Black Project’s “paradize”.

      • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 11:10 am #

        As regards the “Caste System”, don’t forget Athens Troy Rome London Kiev, etc., even ancient Davidic Israel is on that list. Nazism has deep and ancient roots that need to be thoroughly exposed and expunged.

        • FincaInTheMountains January 1, 2019 at 11:53 am #

          Sting – Englishman In New York

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

          Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety
          You could end up as the only one
          Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society
          At night a candle’s brighter than the sun

          Takes more than combat gear to make a man
          Takes more than license for a gun
          Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
          A gentleman will walk but never run

          If “manners maketh man” as someone said
          Then he’s the hero of the day
          It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
          Be yourself no matter what they say

          • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

            Yeah, and then there’s the old joke:

            The reason that the sun never set on the British Empire is even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark

          • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

            Richard Feynman:
            “There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.”
            ==

            But there is!
            YeHeVeH ! (That that shall be) !

  59. BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 11:01 am #

    What really tickled the Muzzies was, after raping the two Scandanavian girls, was the way one of them called out for her mother when her head was being sawed off just before she died. What, didn’t hear anything about it on CNN? They fell about the place with laughter, then kicked the severed heads around like a soccer ball, before spitting on them! It was so good in fact they used the girls own cellphone to send video of the momentous event back to Sweden! Yes why not? Show the Swedes what tolerance and multiculturalism is all about. I understand the whole event has been played down by the Swedish press and government, and what i just wrote here is a crime in Sweden punishable by 4 years in prison.

    Brh

    • Gotta turn the other cheek, brh, even when they’re kicking your head around the field.

      • Walter B January 1, 2019 at 2:54 pm #

        Proving once again that Those Who Do Not Believe don’t know shit about Faith or what it is that those of us who do Believe are required or allowed to do. Self defense is always an option because forgiveness comes with real Faith. Inflicting casualties upon hundreds of government employees who are coming to disarm you, may never be ok, but sending four Goat Humpers to their final judgment as they attempt to rape and murder your family – no problem. Keep that in mind when you lead your merry band up the driveway and the hot lead starts flying from behind the sandbags.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:43 am #

          “Faith: not wanting to know what is true.”

          ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

  60. Robert White January 1, 2019 at 11:19 am #

    An excellent article this week, JHK. You are a great writer and I enjoy reading your work.

    All my best in the New Year to Clusterfuck Nation.

    RW

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  61. elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 12:30 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    Very disturbing news from the BBC this AM. It is reported that Germany…the Fatherland…has passed a law that now allows for an individual to declare itself a third gender…”diverse”( or “Sheisskopf” in German).

    Janos is correct…all the good German men were killed during the war…the gene pool corrupted with what Arnold Schwarzenegger has described as the issue of “girly men”.

    The horror….

    • akmofo January 1, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

      Have you had a look at the German uniforms during the war? Tell me they were not fag “Sheisskopf” to begin with.

      • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 7:31 pm #

        “Have you had a look at the German uniforms during the war? ”

        Mofo,

        You cannot be serious…those uniforms looked so good they could make a nun kick in a stained glass window….

        • akmofo January 3, 2019 at 11:29 pm #

          Yup, exactly!
          Fashionistas are all fags. From the designers to their models.

          The Nazis used their hostility, being repressed fags, to target the flag-bearers of normal society — that being Jews and traditional Jewish culture. The attack on the family, patriarchy, and men are just an extension of the same, by the same people!

          Of-course, you’ve been blinded to the source of these attacks, because essentially you believe the propaganda outlets and the propaganda outlets completely hide from you anything concerning the Vatican.

          Nazis = Progressives = Leftists = Commies = Fascists = Vatican

          They are all the same!

    • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

      No doubt millions of swarthy men named Mustafa and Mohammed, living in no go free rent ghettos inside Berlin and Nuremburg, are more than impressed. Now they’ll be inspired to stuff 7.62×39 rounds into their Kalashnakovs even faster.

      Brh

    • EvelynV January 1, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

      And that gets your panties in a wad because of why…?

      It’s not compulsory, you can still remain as what you’ve passed yourself off to be.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 2:41 pm #

        But they will be put above and before ordinary people, particularly men. They already are. It’s just a matter of time before the Affirmative Action is mandated as well. Abnormal is the Normal. Anything that topples the Old Order is deemed Good. But Nature bats last Evie. And these Abominations will be ended once the System grows weak.

      • Tate January 1, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

        “as what you’ve passed yourself off to be.”

        WTF!!!

        How about “what you’ve always been.”

      • elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 4:03 pm #

        “Panties in a wad…”

        Evelyn
        Well, where to begin? An abnormality is an abnormality in fact. The law and culture should allow us to ignore/avoid various outrages that exist and always have. By codifying a third gender, a gender that exists only in the fevered minds of the politically correct, it requires us to confront, and by extension, accept as a legal entity that which should remain a private and personal pathology…like hemorrhoids. It is a direct assault on the existing culture.

        The genteel among us will politely ignore the outrages…the less civilized among us are currently denied by law the opportunity to kill them…what more is required? Special parking spaces near the door of Wal-Mart?

        Panties in a bunch? Well…Depends.

        • EvelynV January 1, 2019 at 6:46 pm #

          You people are sick. Cancer patients are abnormalities too. Should we treat them as your crippled souls would have us think abnormalities should be too?

          It’s likely that whatever demons haunt the lives of people who are cursed with gender ambiguity are best treated with love and compassion rather than the hate and bitterness that gives you so much pleasure to express.

          I take it then you are an atheist who doesn’t believe in all the bunk Jesus tried to sell?

          • elysianfield January 1, 2019 at 7:25 pm #

            Evelyn,
            Atheist? No, just an agnostic. Physical abnormalities visited upon the unfortunate elicit sympathy. I have more sympathy for an IBS sufferer than I do for a gender confused snowflake that demands our attention with the threat of state sanctions.

            Decorum would suggest not wearing your colostomy bag visible to the public. Decorum would further suggest that those gender-indeterminates should have a Coke, a smile, and shut the fuck up.

            I take no satisfaction in anyone’s misfortune…but I also do not accept responsibility for their pathology.

          • Walter B January 1, 2019 at 7:56 pm #

            I like the way ef put it, well said. While I may be very interested in what you have between your ears, I have absolutely zero interest in what lies between your legs. Any sexual issues that another human may have should be kept to themselves and had better not involve me. I promise to return the favor. Whatever happened to TMI?

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 8:12 pm #

            Looks like the Freak Show extravaganza isn’t just in the US, its in Western and Central Europe too. Well, we all of us have a front row seat at this Freak Show, it’s in our face now 24/7. Western Civ is like some 3rd rate fair in Buttf-k, Ark, with a bizarre garish midway all lighted up, chock full of of stalls selling cheap junk from China and salty, greasy food, and around every corner side show freaks to distract you and take your money.

            we’re starting to see what Female leadership is all about in once great countries — Germany and Sweden — men nutured and turned into eunuchs, these feminized countries on their backs, legs spread, signaling to Muzzies and Africans “Come on in and get some, boys”.

            brh

          • EvelynV January 1, 2019 at 10:17 pm #

            EF – as for your chickenshittedness of claiming to be agnostic (what a farcical cop out) I’m going to settle for posting the comments of a poster who used to call himself “bustin”.

            “Unequivocally, religion must die.

            How do we get humanity to save themselves when they are seduced by the idea that something else is going to “save” them?

            How are we going to fix the problem of living on this planet without destroying it if they are seduced by the idea that this world doesn’t matter?

            How are we going to engender the volition to make decisions and judgments in accordance with solid ethical precepts to mitigate the threats to our survival if we are pressed to accept irrational directives from absolute moral authorities?

            The bottom line is that transcendentalism, supernatural thinking, and any kind of God be it vindictive, wrathful, or benign, is going to run counter to the development of self-sustaining societies of rational adults.

            You might think of religion as the glue that holds societies and individuals together. I see it as a binder which keeps us from developing coherent ethical systems. Religion and its insidious dominance is something that is thrown off in stages as a culture evolves.

            As we go forward, religion again stands in our way. Its influence is pervasive and its army of true believers leaning on the accelerator toward their “end-times”. Every day thousands of children are threatened with eternal damnation or having their genitals mutilated in some fashion.

            To me, agnostics are just pussies.”

          • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 11:47 am #

            “To me, agnostics are just pussies.””

            Evelyn,

            I have been referred to as a “chicken shit” before…but not since I was 14. So I am to be impugned for my disability to accept things on faith? I could be considered metaphysically challenged…the lack of ability to accept a Deity as an absolute is my pathology.

            I also cannot accept. on faith. Anthropomorphic Climate Change, Extra-Terrestrials that live among us, that the “Check is in the Mail”…and don’t even get me started on the myth of the female orgasm….

            For the “disability” of the gender-confused, you will not hear me label them as “queers”, “Faggots”, etc. Why then, with my own failings, can you call me a “chicken shit” and a “pussy”?

          • cbeard January 2, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

            The sick ones are the transgenders and homos. I truly believe it is a real sickness, disease, mental illness, whatever. I also believe they were born that way. I don’t care about their sex life. Just don’t be a goddamned loud mouthed exibitionist. Live and let live, just don’t fuck with me and mine. Keep your depravities to yourself and don’t expect special treatment because you are weird, insane, stupid, evil and sick.

        • EvelynV January 1, 2019 at 10:12 pm #

          I get it. You macho men feel threatened and your sense of security, wobbly in first place, gets even more agitated by knowing that somewhere out in the world, most likely far away from where you spend the day huddling by your computers, some scary person is fearlessly announcing god fucked up when he put together their mix of hormones and naughty bits.

          If I were as terrified as you about such things rather than bleat about it on the internet I’d try to find a way to afford to visit a psychoanalyst or psychologist in hopes of bringing my inner fears back to a manageable level.

          Odds are a serial killer will get his hands on you before a transgender person causes you to release your bowels if you stumble into the presence of one.

          • Walter B January 1, 2019 at 11:33 pm #

            “How are we going to fix the problem of living on this planet without destroying it if they are seduced by the idea that this world doesn’t matter?”

            I don’t know about religion Evelyn, but Faith tells us nothing of the sort. In fact we are charged with being Good Stewards of this place, this Earth, and to not overly consume or degrade it’s resources for pleasure or for profit. We are advised to leave things as good as can be for those that will follow and to not be greedy, above all.

            The sexual issues are not something that we fear, but they certainly do appear to be diverting far too much of the public’s attention away from serious problems. Why can we not spend more time figuring out how we can waste less food and somehow distribute more to places where the need is so great? Why are we not working towards using less electricity and promoting efforts to put solar collectors in Space where they will operate at great efficiency? How about we start dealing with the mountains of garbage we dump into the oceans of the world and bury in mountains in landfills? Why, because humans are bred by industry and government to consume mass quantities so that those that provide the consumables for profit can reap massive profits.

            Religions may be a serious problem, but Faith has little to do with that. The real and serious problems are the ones that mankind makes for itself in the name of greed and these are perpetrated upon us all by governments, industries, and institutions gone bad. These are the real and present dangers.

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 11:46 pm #

            When Evelyn says ‘Religions must die’, she means the Christian religion. She doesn’t mean Islam, and, as a European, will be donning a Burkha and submitting to Shariah law sometime very soon. After that she won’t be saying “Religions must die”, if she values her life.

            brh

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:37 am #

            BRH you nincompoop, I would include any and all religions that found themselves on the absurd belief in deities – Islam, Jews, Catholics, Pentecostals, evangelics, Greek orthodox, mormons, Nazarenes, Lutherans, Holy Rollers, Baptists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Episcopalians, Mithraism, christians and most of phony fucking republicans.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 9:32 am #

            Looks like you are missing Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and am sure many others as well. From everything you have expressed here it appears that you hate the Abrahamic religions. And of course your hate of Republicans shines through.

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 10:33 am #

            Starlight as usual exposing your ignorance, Buddhism isn’t based on deity worship. Hinduism probably only uses metaphorical imagery but I left out numerous other superstitions as well.

            From what I can tell christians and muslims by far the worst and take the lion’s share of the blame for the mess that exists in the world today.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:00 am #

            Another words, you are just as biased as the next person.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:00 am #

            In other words….

          • messianicdruid January 2, 2019 at 6:00 pm #

            “How are we going to fix the problem of living on this planet without destroying it if they are seduced by the idea that this world doesn’t matter?“

            Blame Dispensationalism [ a religion created by politicos in the previous centuries to accomplish theft ] and prior to that Eternal Punishment [ in about 400 ad by Augustine and Jerome ] to scare believers into Catholicism using purgatory and indulgences to the raise revenue. Sit on your haunches as the ungodly steal your inheritance [ the land ] through usury. Their accomplices will be promised access to your children, first as sexual partners, later as slaves, and eventually as adenechrome a la smorgasbord.

            The past is fading away: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/12/31/the-world-known-to-me-is-fading-away/

            “When life is not going right, you are going wrong. You believe you know better than the one who has been there and done that.. You presume that you can read a blueprint better than the Supreme Architect. You can’t. You are permitted this error in judgment so that you can learn this. You are given the opportunity to make mistakes so that the following wisdom in the aftermath can manifest in your consciousness. Here is a maxim that must be true; every master had a secret life of shame. We all climbed up out of or descended from somewhere. We may have all been perfect before the fall of desire into the sensitive life. For some reason, all that happened was meant to be. We may not like it but we need not come to our wits end arguing about it and getting angry with it. Believe me, if that worked I would have been in much higher realms much earlier than now.”

            “People who object to the mention of God have a problem with religion, which only incidentally has any connection to God and which is often simply a mechanism to set off a cash register reflex in the public mind. Then there are those who object to the use of the word because it goes counter to an agenda they have about creating a more easily manipulated culture, which is what Communism had in mind and that was so effectively demonstrated in the last century and best represented by Stalin-Mao and Pol Pot. These are the same people that want to outlaw the use of “Merry Christmas!” These are also the people who fund things like Isis, the White Helmets, Antifa, The Southern Poverty Law Scam and much of the vast umbrella of increasingly strange sexual behaviors, which have a political and social aspect, designed to diminish the perception of normality in heterosexual behavior and the importance of The Family Unit as the cornerstone of civilization.”

  62. Vol. CLXVIII, No. 58,194, The New York Times, (NYSE:NYT, $22.29) published today.

    Front page: Ukrainian orthodox schism, Russian pretext to invasion? Syrian special forces pause on withdrawal. Luddite report: Arizona residents assault self driving cars. Facebook on suicide watch. Dems strategy on gov shutdown: testing Trumps mettle, and public perception. Liz Warren officially joins race.

    2020 campaign cycle has begun. 2016 presidential election price tag: $6.2 billion. Cost to challenge one House seat: $2 million.

  63. “Canadians Fume as Chinese Stream into Country to Give Birth”

    Meanwhile, China has been quietly forcing westerners out of China.

    Its among the many policies of the 19th and 20th century, when we had railroads to build. Today? The massage parlor where you can get a yank for a wink.

    • Richmond, BC is 71% Asian, of 200,000. A place where you can be referred to as “foreigner” if you’re indigenous.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 2:42 pm #

        And do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing?

        • Oh, its bad. Sez here it cost one Shanghai couple $18,000.

          She says it shouldn’t matter because they are returning after the 4 months of gestation to China, so won’t be abusing the country’s welfare system.

          The reason for anchoring the baby in Canada? Superior political and social environment. They have a highly secure building that is visited by nurses and a western Obstetrician. There are about 8 women at any given time, so this one shop mintes 8*4*3 96 new Chinese-Canadians (returning to China for primary education), and should provide forward income and revenue to their university system in 18 years, albeit at the lower rate of resident tuition.

          So is this a bad thing? Yes and no. Yes because it is exploitative of customs and laws. No, because it illustrates where policy has become counterproductive and will force politicians to address it, eventually.

          Meanwhile the cyber-attacks continue across the continent. China is breaking into and stealing intellectual property from municipal, corporate, and military targets. Back home, they’ve tightened liberal policies on immigration and residency. Many foreigners who have settled in China are now receiving their notices to leave. Foreigners who have less time in country and in jobs considered useful to the state have been left alone- mostly young westerners teaching English as a second language.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 6:04 pm #

            Trump has legislation to deny Chinese bureaucrats who deny Westerners entry into Tibet, entry in America. Perhaps he should counter this move in similar fashion.

        • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 9:13 am #

          Yes, they are colonizing America. China and india, with a combined population of nearly 3 billion, may eventually colonize the whole world.

          A Jamacain friend recently told me Chinese are all over Jamaica building roads and ports. And it was interesting to see china recently annexed a port in Zimbabwe, which they had built and now claimed Zimbabwe stopped making payments.

          Brh

  64. Tate January 1, 2019 at 3:06 pm #

    For those of you who read my breakdown of the Netflix movie, “Bird Box” the last thread, here is a similar analysis by Devon Stack/Black-Pilled which hits on some of the same points I did, but emphasizes others I didn’t. His video is called “Inside the Birdbox.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f30F2Msa0J8

    I’ve tried to explain these things to Mrs. Tate but she pays no attention: “Well, I thought it was a good movie,” she insists. “You’re just making a big deal out of nothing,” she claims. “Yes, sweetie, you’re probably right, but it doesn’t affect me,” she continues.

    But this constant barrage of subliminal messaging about the evils of Whiteness does affect viewers. Unfortunately, some people only see the surface of things. That’s like 95% of people.

    They’re trying to normalize pedophilia at the present time & it will be interesting to see to what extent they succeed. Popular movies & other media will play a central role. Ruth Bader Ginzburg wrote a book where she wanted to lower the age of consent to 12 & under. Her people control the media so it might happen.

    • Tate January 1, 2019 at 3:20 pm #

      & Happy New Year, CFNers!

    • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

      Got a title on that thar book by Buzzie? She is sinking. Trump will get tor replace her as well if he holds fast on the Wall. Everything comes down to the Wall.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 6:09 pm #

        Ask your wife how many homeless she wants to share her bathroom with – assuming she refuses the invitation to have one move in completely. All must give some. And some will give all. Like dumb “I hate White people” Iowa Molly.

        You get points for each homeless you let use your bathroom. You can use this points for discounts in movie theatres (since you two like movies) or at any number of socially aware stores and establishments.

        • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

          I guess the snowflakes who got raped and beheaded in Morocco were SJWs as well. They chose not to see reality, and look where it got them,

          brh

          • Tate January 1, 2019 at 9:29 pm #

            The blame should be placed on their parents & teachers perhaps? Maybe the whole Swedish elite establishment should be blamed? Now they’re trying to suppress the truth, threatening people with jail time if they pass it on.

        • Tate January 1, 2019 at 9:42 pm #

          Speaking of socially aware stores & establishments, did you see the brouhaha about the bladk guy kicked out of a Hilton lobby in Portland, OR because he wouldn’t tell the security guard what room he was staying in? Now Huffpo wants the full names of the guard and the on-duty manager, because firing them wasn’t enough apparently. They’re after blood. They may offer points too.

          Hilton is one of the most “woke” businesses in America.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:50 am #

          Ask her yourself. I bet after one look at your crazy eyes she’ll slam the door shut without one morsel of guilt.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 10:33 am #

            How do you know he has crazy eyes?

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:08 am #

            Everything ever exposed about his/her/its persona appears crazy, I’m making an educated guess.

      • Tate January 1, 2019 at 9:16 pm #

        It was a report on the Columbia University Women’s Rights Project in 1974, coauthored by RBG. I couldn’t find the exact article, which contained much more on her radical views, not just that part about pedophilia, but Snopes.com refers to it & claims it was taken out of context.

        That may be true… but then why did she leave in the language of the senate bill that says, “the other person is, in fact, less than 12 years old” (meaning it’s automatically considered rape below the age of 12)? Snopes wants to claim that the emphasis was on using non-gendered language, thus “other person” rather than “she.” Again, one could argue that way I suppose.

        I was incorrect however about the ages involved. It was not “12 & under.” The above language implies informed consent is 12 & above, not below the age of 12. Also, that would technically be considered ‘hebephilia’, not pedophilia.

        • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2019 at 10:07 pm #

          Oh well. Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg will be going toes up pretty soon anyway. The only caveat is diabolical lefties may attempt to hook her up to a machine that would allow her to simulate life without actually being alive, which is what they did to Mandela in SAFRICA for about 6 months. Or maybe they’ll take the Soviet route and lay out the lifelike corpse for public display in the Supreme Court building and announce, belligerently, “Prove she’s not alive, Nazis”. They are that desperate.

          brh

          • Tate January 2, 2019 at 1:57 am #

            We’ll find out when she’s about to shuffle off. She may have instructions in place to keep her heart beating at all costs, she’s that fanatic & intent on throwing a monkey wrench into the constitutional machinery.

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:09 am #

            Even if so she’ll still remain the sharpest cookie on the supreme court.

          • capt spaulding January 2, 2019 at 11:24 am #

            A monkey wrench into the constitutional machinery eh? Would that be comparable to Mitch McConnell putting the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice on hold for a year and a half on the chance of a Republican winning the presidency? That’s completely different, right? Guess it just depends on whose ox is getting gored.

    • SoftStarLight January 1, 2019 at 9:26 pm #

      It’s never safe to drink when your pregnant. No amount of alcohol has been proven “safe” and there is no specific amount of alcohol that has been determined to cause fetal alcohol syndrome. Unbelievable that they would encourage that.

  65. kimmasad01 January 1, 2019 at 4:20 pm #

    Excellent article, Mr. Kunstler.

    I’d wish you a “happy new year” if it weren’t such an infelicitous expression- being on the very short end of the long emergency continuum of years panting toward the tragic finale, this it’s just a new year.

    One thing I wish you’d cover is the situation with world religion; its intertwisted role in a three-pronged relationship with corrupted politics and finance racketeering and why, like the other two, it operates with impunity, indeed avoids any major legal consequences for its crimes against humanity.

    All three institutions in this sick love triangle of corruption each demonstrate unique signs and symptoms of “death of the organism”, and the story of world religion’s is never told.

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  66. akmofo January 1, 2019 at 4:52 pm #

    Jonah Goldberg and Cardinal Newman
    https://www.amgreatness.com/2018/12/29/jonah-goldberg-and-cardinal-newman/

  67. akmofo January 1, 2019 at 6:02 pm #

    Geoengineering: Weather Modification on a Global Scale (Video)
    http://talknetwork.com/2016-11-08-geoengineering-weather-modification-on-a-global-scale-video.html

  68. Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 6:22 pm #

    Under the rule of the Manchus, the Han were forced to wear a queue or pigtail. What could be worse than waiting in a queue while wearing one at the same time?

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queue

    Similarly, in America, White men are forced to wear pants that are too long for them as a sign of their subjugation – textiles being controlled by the Tribe as they are. Perhaps the “new” sizes are based on the needs of Black men who have long legs. Blacks used to complain about clothes being too small for them. Now the tables have been reversed it seems.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 7:06 pm #

      https://www.britannica.com/topic/Manchu

    • SoftStarLight January 1, 2019 at 9:04 pm #

      They just need to be hemmed. One of the negatives of mass manufacturing and standard sizes.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

        That is barbaric. When I was young, clothes fit. They’ve changed all the sizes so that the number don’t mean anything anymore.

        Am I a genius or a crank? I see countless men walking around with pants below their shoes. Take a look and you may see the same. The Emperor is naked and the boy wears ill fitting clothes. If he had ones that fit, he wouldn’t be able to see his nakedness.

        • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 1:45 pm #

          LOL well I think you are a genius who is cranky about his clothes ;-). No but really, I totally get what you are saying. I have trouble myself sometimes finding clothes that appear to be the right size but for some reason don’t fit quite right. Same thing with the kids too. It is very frustrating and happens a lot now since most clothes you can buy off the shelf come from China, Bangladesh, Taiwan, etc. Another reason we should get back to doing things here instead of offshoring and outsourcing everything. In the meanwhile it sounds like these men need to get their women to fix their clothes :-). It shouldn’t be that expensive if you need a tailor to do it.

    • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:17 am #

      if only you could read and do arithmetic you could figure out the ones your size. I presume when you are wanting to buy long pants, or I should say pants that are long for you, you look for them in the section for shorts?

      So maybe you have a good point, I don’t think they label shorts by seam length.

      Changing the subject –

      Who writes your comedy material? I just can’t remember the last time I heard a black person complain about there being no clothes available that fit them.

  69. Pucker January 1, 2019 at 6:23 pm #

    The book “Blitzscaling” by Hoffman and Yeh describes the current in vogue model for building companies. It’s all about quick growth and huge gross margins at the expense of efficient use of capital and resources. Too Big quickly to Fail. All other considerations, such as customer service, product quality, are rescinded. (Your call might be important to us, but not now.”) Bits over atoms since bits are infinitely more scalable and have much higher gross margins. The Shangrila is for Silicon Valley and China to work together and cooperate. The Chinese market by 2030 will be 3 times the US market. The authors briefly mentions problems associated with monopoly and government regulation at the end of the book.

    • Pucker January 1, 2019 at 6:36 pm #

      Mark Zuckerberg in the book “Blitzscaling” is quoted as lamenting the problem of Complexity. He says that as problems become more complicated and complex, they progressively tend to take more time and effort to fix. I guess that this is what people now mean by the label “Progressive”?

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2019 at 7:05 pm #

        That may be true, but he’s using it as a way to avoid admitting that he’s a creep who sells the personal data of his customers.

        So is he going go small? Break up Facebook? Become a Lobsterman in Chesapeake Bay? Of course not!

        • Pucker January 1, 2019 at 8:30 pm #

          It’s all about gathering your data for the purpose of targeted advertising. Google rolled out it’s search engine business before it had figured out how it was going to make money off of something called “AdWords”.

          What if they roll out some horribly nefarious product or service and then only later figure out some horribly nefarious way to make money off of it? Once the company becomes a horrifying monolithic monopoly, then it’s too big for the government to regulate as the Monopoly has enough Benjamin’s to buy the politicians?

        • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

          ” Become a Lobsterman in Chesapeake Bay”

          Janos,
          A possibility, as long as he can steal a boat from the Winkelvoss twins….

  70. Pucker January 1, 2019 at 8:23 pm #

    The authors posit that the Blitzscaling model basically involves putting the cart before the horse (rollout product or service before it is perfected), and involves a lot of uncertainty and instability. Sounds like it’s laying the seeds for disaster?: You wouldn’t want to roll out some crappy software for operating on some bloke’s brain, or running a nuclear power plant, or the power grid?

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  71. Pucker January 1, 2019 at 9:56 pm #

    Mark Zuckerberg in the book “Blitzscaling” is quoted as lamenting the problem of Complexity. He says that as problems become more complicated and complex, they progressively tend to take more time and effort to fix. I think that it was Joseph Tainter who developed a theory of Societal Collapse augured by Complexity: society is eventually overwhelmed by progressively complex problems. The “Blitzscaling” growth model may be an attempt to grow in spite of increasing Complexity?: “Fake it until you make it.”

  72. EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:46 am #

    Important Message for Walter B at the white phones:

    Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

    ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 2:25 am #

      Hey Evelyn there were two major nations that were actively hostile to religion and belief in God in the 20th century. One was Nazi Germany and the other was Bolshevik Russia. In Germany the church was tolerated but the persecution of Jews and destruction of Synagogues is well known. You seem to ascribe to Soviet style atheism, which crushed all believers, Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant alike, and all religious symbols, including churches and Synagogues. Nice company you keep.

      brh

      • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 2:41 am #

        Did you have a reason for leaving out communist China? And who gives a shit how many there were? The mixture of politics and religion is toxic soup no matter what country it is. Look how badly it has fucked over our pathetic system.

        • Walter B January 2, 2019 at 7:58 am #

          Theo-political systems are terrifying indeed because politicians cannot maintain morality, a necessary element of belief. I am not one of those people that tries to make others understand what I have come to know in the regard of Faith, sorry if it seems that way sometimes. When I read the part that says that many are called and few are chosen, it seems pretty plain to me, so I leave it at that. However if nobody Believed, I would think that there would be a constant state of war and murder going on. Yes we are close and growing closer to that, so perhaps Faith is indeed dying out. I will not be one to help bring that on and if it gets to the point where I stand alone in this regard, then so be it. .

          • messianicdruid January 2, 2019 at 6:27 pm #

            “I am not one of those people that tries to make others understand what I have come to know in the regard of Faith, sorry if it seems that way sometimes.”

            I too, but I will not keep my by-lives [ beliefs – things that govern my living ] sectretly. It is for other to seek and ask and knock. It is a time when each one does what is right in his own eyes – and let the chips fall.

        • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

          “Did you have a reason for leaving out communist China?”

          …Forget it Ev…It’s Chinatown….

    • Walter B January 2, 2019 at 7:47 am #

      Germans make excellent workers and tough soldiers, (at least until they were de-balled after 1945), but no so good when it comes to philosophy. In that field, the ancient Greeks were far better.

      • The usefulness of German philosophy tends to wax and wane with the influence of Christianity.

        Speaking of which, despite the pessimism, which is certainly extant and prominent in many places, is firmly ingrained. Reminds me of the labor force participation rate, oddly enough. It falls from 68% to 64% and people believe an existential crisis has arisen.

  73. Pucker January 2, 2019 at 2:14 am #

    The idea that one can overcome material limits to growth by rejecting a business model involving material goods (“atoms”) and adopting a business model involving data or software (“bits”) is a bit weird. One can’t eat bits or run a power grid on bits…. Madness?

    • Walter B January 2, 2019 at 8:06 am #

      The reality that software and data people are allowed to demand and receive more and greater payment for their diminishing value to our society is also ridiculous. Especially true as human work is being compensated at lower and lower rates and much less in numbers. If we are forced to feed their need in ever increasing quantity surely there will be none of us and one day only them. Who then shall be their customers? AI robots? Do they really think that AI robots will have any need for them?

      • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:02 am #

        Walter, have you been sniffing glue or something?! When every person beyond the age of two, and in many cases younger than that is working hard to have a permanently deformed neck from looking down at their digital device of choice, you perceive the people who supply the addictive product to make this happen as having diminishing value in the glazed eyes of society? Are you nuts?

        Evidently you haven’t yet experienced the panic that occurs when you lose your connection to the internet, don’t know what’s wrong, and feel like the airliner has just lifted off the tarmac without you on it carrying away everything you brought with you to the foreign land you are in.

        • Walter B January 2, 2019 at 12:30 pm #

          You are absolutely right, there is a sadistic addiction to the screens of doom, large, small, in your hand or on your wrist, but that does not give them value. The value is only for those that get paid every month or every day to keep the data coming. And yes, I have seen the panic that ensues when power is cut off, three times for a week each in the last five years here. I thought is was great, even if the wife and kids may have lost it, but I found it quite enabling. Yes, I did and do miss this place and the conversations that we all have, but it is not critical, at least not for me. Cyberspace is a great source of communication but also a great distraction as well. But you know that.

      • capt spaulding January 2, 2019 at 11:38 am #

        Mr.B, If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. It’s well researched, and, I think, a highly accurate picture of the times to come, and the implications that it has for everyone concerned. If you choose to read it, I would be very interested in your opinion on the subject.

        • Walter B January 2, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

          Thanks Captain, I just put a request on it at my library. I will get back to you.

  74. SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 9:47 am #

    And so just like that the holidays are basically over and it’s full throttle into the New Year. Society is so weird in that way. And as the New Year kicks off we still have unprotected and open borders essentially. Anyone who wants to harm us can walk right into the house because the doors and windows are open. Maybe it will take a dirty bomb or a biological attack before we really get serious? Then again, the political establishment and media will probably blame America for any attack and say that we deserved it (especially White Americans) and still cry out for open borders and limitless migration. Anyhow, how many terrorists have already made their way in, and what are they planning?

    http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/02/central-american-countries-helping-middle-easterners-illegally-enter-united-states/

    • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 10:53 am #

      SSL

      How long have you been such a fearful ninny?

      The ones who will want to harm us will be the ones who we give the most cause to fear us. A succession of incompetent leaders have worked their hardest to transform what used to be respect for America into fear of America at the behest of an armaments industry that uses that fear to sap our strength by sucking up the resources we should be putting into vitalizing our infrastructure and sharing our help to improve conditions for every living person on this planet.

      We’ve become a pathetic nation of fat people, incapable of mowing our own lawns, repairing our own broken door knobs, and useless to our children for instilling wisdom.

      All, absolutely all great civilizations in the history of man have grown plump, soft, and weak because of a greatness achieved in the peak of their development and then collapsed. Wake up to the fact you are witnessing the self evident truth of it happening again.

      The worst enemy set against us in the world resides within.

      Have another piece of cheesecake while you contemplate these things while you try to figure out a way to rid yourself of fear.

      • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:08 am #

        You should speak for yourself since you like generalizations so much. I think it is funny that you think everyone has other people doing their lawns and making repairs around their homes, etc. I know no one personally who doesn’t take care of these things themselves or have family members or friends help get them done. You must live in a really plush and pampered world Evelyn. Awesome for you! The more you post the more I realize you criticize most posts but I just see no rational solutions offered other than “I HATE AMERICA”. And yes, excuse me for fearing that fanatics who vow to kill us will be able to easily come into the country. They are already here. I do fear for the safety of my children, my family and my friends. Keep living in your dream world for as long as it lasts.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:23 am #

          Yes SSL, they are already here. Didn’t I say that in my last address to you? How many of the mass shootings you’ve read about in the last several years were committed by people who were other than white American citizens, frequently with a strong resemblance to friends of your children I would guess, or their fathers.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:38 am #

            So now we are back on the blame the White people train? Is that simply because at least for the moment we live in a majority White country? I wonder how many Whites commit mass shootings in Kenya or Nigeria?

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:45 am #

            Jezzzusss SSL, you are hopeless. Yes, blame the white people for what’s wrong in this country. Not just white people but white people with swinging dicks. They happen to be white people running the show here. Boards of directors, CEOs, generals, but most importantly politicians in this country are WHITE people who pee in a different toilet than you do. Wake up!

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:55 am #

            The last time I looked around there sure are alot of Black and Brown people in government and running businesses. White people, especially men, are being openly discriminated against in all aspects of American life. If you were White you would understand.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:37 am #

          SSL – I apologize to you. If in fact you live in conditions that do not apply to what I said about mowing lawns and fixing door knobs then it suggests you do live in a somewhat impoverished situation and it isn’t my aim to torment you.

          I do make what I see as positive suggestions but you ignore them in your replies. To state them more clearly: This country needs to cease being the world’s worst agitator. Bring home our armies, stop meddling in the affairs of other peoples, offer as much help as we can afford to alleviate the suffering of others, and adopt a benevolent attitude towards all peoples, even when their self interests compete with ours.

          It won’t happen, we don’t even take care of our own because the entire society we live in worships the god PROFIT.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:47 am #

            I appreciate that Evelyn. However, I don’t consider it impoverished at all to have to handle all aspects of home and lawn care without “help”. To me that is just the normal way working and middle class people live, but apparently that is not the case at all. I live in Louisiana so maybe we are just poor bumpkins after all.

            I am in AGREEMENT with you regarding that fact that our society worships money and profit and bases all decisions on those things. Whether or not we are the world’s worst agitator or not I do not know. Anyone in power is going to agitate and it is very clear that if China could they would be swinging their stick around all over the world. They are well on track now. Yes let’s do bring our armies home. Yes, I am more than happy to help others. But, I disagree with you in helping others at the expense of our own. I believe the reverse. Let’s end poverty, hunger, etc., in our land. Then we may be in a better position to help others.

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:10 pm #

            SSL – I do over generalize in most of the statements I make. My experience throughout life is that people are good hearted and willing to make sacrifices for others.

            As a whole society however we’ve been helpless to resist the use of fear to manipulate us. I don’t think there is a practical solution.

            The so called 1% has already won the battle for themselves and it is not so slowly any more hastening us to our own destruction.

            You among the great mass of rabble have been manipulated into wasting all your energy fearfully anticipating what the hard working invariably friendly Mexicans are going to do to ruin your existence.

            No matter what demographic you focus your attention on you would be able to pick out examples that could be an existential threat to you. For example you are probably in far greater danger from having your life ruined by some person with a legal driver’s license who should not be behind the wheel of a powerful automobile. Your chances of dying from a collision with someone running a red light exceed the chances you’ll die of a gunshot wound.

            You said you have children. Try to picture the emotional state it would put you in to have them forcibly taken from you when they were 3-4-5-6 years old and deprived of all knowledge of what was happening to them.

            There is no end to the unnecessary evil our country fosters throughout the world.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

            Eve, the Elite want mass immigration and open borders. If you hate them so much (as do I), why are you willing to give them what they want?

            Is it because you hate ordinary White People too? Or even more? The Elite substituted race for class, and all of America and the Western World fell for it. Race is important too of course, but not the exclusion of class.

            You are still falling for it, hook, line and sinker. Why should regular Whites pay for the crimes of an Elite who are trying to get rid of them?

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:43 pm #

            She’s worried about her own children, Eve. Life is War. If you start by caring as much or more about other people and groups, your group will cease to exist. There would be no America without the conquest of the Indians after all. Thus Whites are the Founders, the Native Americans.

      • malthuss January 2, 2019 at 11:24 am #

        We’ve become a pathetic nation of fat people, –Are you thin?
        fat-like blacks and browns? study it by race.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:39 am #

          Now you are getting personal. My mother and brothers were and are fat, I’m svelte. Why do you ask Two-dogs?

          • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

            “Now you are getting personal. My mother and brothers were and are fat, I’m svelte. ”

            Ev,
            Yes, we are now getting personal…any Pic’s? What are you wearing right now?

            I may be lacking in faith, but not imagination….

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:31 pm #

            Now comes the hatred of Whites. Like most, she preaches Universalism but doesn’t really believe it in her heart much less practice it.

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

            We keep the house quite warm. I have had my bath yet. If there was something I could tell you I would. But alas… ~*~

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 2:11 pm #

            Your hatred keeps you warm, eh? Honesty at last!

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 11:25 am #

      Don’t worry Elizabeth Warren is swooping in to save us. She’ll be staging a cook off with the Muslim Brotherhood, Halal food only. Problem is, Liz will be using implements from the Pampered Chef, and Mustafa will be using flamethrowers.

      Brh

      • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:59 am #

        LOL so scary but not far from the reality I am quite sure. Will her Muslim allies forgive her for drinking? That could be a death sentence you know.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:33 pm #

          Oh you saw that ridiculous roll out ad of her trying to act casual by drinking a beer? One of the most grotesque things I’ve ever seen. They probably bought the Golden Retriever as a prop, the breed decided by an ad agency.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

            I didn’t watch it but read some commentary on it last night. I missed the Golden Retriever though. Likely, like you said a prop just like the whole shebang. This is her pathetic way to seem “ordinary”. I would have thought it to be more classy if she simply gave a “fireside chat” presentation and roll out monologue or whatever. Now she just looks like a typical wealthy Northeasterner trying to be relatable to people she has no desire to really meet or interact with.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 1:44 pm #

            I think Trump destroyed any chance she ever had by calling out her lies. To him is the glory – on this at least.

  75. Elrond Hubbard January 2, 2019 at 11:44 am #

    Petition calls for U.S. to give Northwest Angle to Canada
    ‘Make America great by correcting this critical survey error,’ petition says

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/northwest-angle-petition-border-1.4962228

    There is a call for the U.S. government to adjust the border near Manitoba to give Canada the geographic oddity known as the Northwest Angle.

    Known simply as the Angle to the 120 people who live there, it is a jetty of Minnesota sandwiched between Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.

    It is the only place in the United States outside Alaska that is north of the 49th parallel. And it was based on a flawed map from 1755.

    “Make America great by correcting this critical survey error,” states a petition, called “Give Canada back the Northwest Angle located in Manitoba,” and created as part of We the People.

    Launched in September 2011 under then-President Barack Obama, We the People is a section of the White House website for petitioning policy experts. Petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures are typically reviewed by administration officials who are prepared to issue official responses.

    The threshold for a response is 100,000 signatures, so it could take some for the Northwest Angle petition to find its way onto the desk of U.S. Congress.

    It was created Sunday, and as of Wednesday, had just 32 signatures.

    Click through to view a map. Oh, give us land, lots of land, under starry skies above…

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    • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 11:50 am #

      Why not? If an error was made and they’ve been our loyal friends since the beginning of time, what’s the harm.

      For once in our miserable history of national greed, show we are capable of yielding to our better selves.

      • I’d we show the Canucks any weakness they will soon send legions to colonize us with Tim Hortons and mindless pursuits like ice hockey

        • Elrond Hubbard January 2, 2019 at 3:02 pm #

          Oh, that’s already well under way, Li’l Truthy. True fact: Joel Quenneville, until recently head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks and who led the team to three! Stanley Cup victories, was my boyhood next-door neighbour.

          My dad still lives in that house. When you win, apparently they let you take the Stanley Cup home to show it off to your proud mother — which is how my own father got a picture of himself with the trophy, right in his own back yard. Cool, eh?

          Slowly, step by step, the infiltration continues

    • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 12:28 pm #

      Elrond,
      Yes, a mistake was made…they actually meant the 52nd parallel, and I think that we should send a survey team (AKA USMC) to re-survey the boundaries.

      Why not? What’s the harm? The Canadians should show that they are capable of yielding to their better selves…

      • Elrond Hubbard January 2, 2019 at 3:08 pm #

        Pshaw, elysianfield, you think too small. James K. Polk’s slogan in 1844 was “Fifty-four forty or fight!” And you’d open with a mere fifty-two? Tsk, surely the USA has better negotiators.

        • elysianfield January 2, 2019 at 6:26 pm #

          Elrond,
          Perhaps historical accounts are in error? What Polk’s slogan “54 forty or fight” really was referring to was an attempt to pander for the future black vote (like Hillary with her bottle of hot sauce she carries everywhere) He was suggesting that the blacks each receive 54 “Forties”) or “die tryin”…. He may have been the first Democrat to thus pander to the potential black vote, and he set president that exists to this day.

          Polk was way ahead of his time….

    • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:35 pm #

      We will not cede on inch of American soil to you. Indeed, we will be taking much of Canada when America partitions into its respective race nations.

      • DEFCON1 January 4, 2019 at 4:39 am #

        The US will ‘annex’ Canada when the scourge of climate change render a lot of the Midwest farmland as in-arable. It will then look north at the cooler Canadian prairies and the rest we can all guess…

    • PeteAtomic January 2, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

      Well Elrond this area has always been a borderland & claims between British possessions & US fed gov’t ones. If the proposed US/Canadian border of the St.Louis River would have held in the early 1800s, I would have been born a Canadian. The border today along the Minnesota/Ont & MB is a largely uncontrolled wilderness. You wouldn’t be able to tell if you were in the US or Canada if you were in Little Fork, MN or Nestor Falls, Ont. for that matter, other than noticing whether the speed limit was in kilometer or miles.

      • Elrond Hubbard January 2, 2019 at 3:18 pm #

        The road signs would definitely be the giveaway, PeteAtomic. In Canada, most signage tends to be unilingual English or French, depending on what prevails in that part of the country. The exception is near border crossings, where we often make a point of posting in both languages. Marking our territory, if you will.

        Gasoline prices are also a good tip-off, or will be for as much longer as that lasts. The range of numbers you get quoted in CAD$/liter is quite different from US$/gallon (and you’re probably paying more in tax, as well).

  76. On the heels of Warrior Liz Warren, Ballistic Joe Biden emerges.

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

      How old is Joe? It seems like he was a senator when i was a little kid.

      Brh

  77. volodya January 2, 2019 at 12:10 pm #

    Trump is neither undermining institutions, nor is he “authoritarian”, nor is he fascistic, nor is he in the pocket of Putin, nor has he colluded with Russians in winning the election. All this is nonsense that covers in dishonor those cretins making such accusations.

    Trump’s problems are much more mundane; is Trump competent in the areas his office requires? No, not to my eyes. This means he’s like the vast majority of us, he hasn’t got the intellectual capacity, nor the executive experience, nor the legislative, nor the communications skills.

    This all means he hasn’t got the ability to effectively twist arms in private and public like LBJ, nor the ability to make hideously tough decisions like Truman, nor the combination of character and intellect and experience to take on a world gone mad like Roosevelt did in his time.

    IMO Trump falls short in all these critical areas. There’s no objective yard-stick you can use, just your own eyes and ears to take the measure of the man and make the call.

    Having said all this, he did openly talk about issues that the others refused to acknowledge and act on – for decades. This is to the others’ discredit. But has Trump thought things through?

    But Trump’s most dire need is in having “bench strength” ie a body of competent, cabinet-level executives that he can call on, that are on board with his broad agenda, as well as support in the embedded and non-elected institutions we call the “Deep State”. This is the source of the ludicrous Mueller investigation, the preposterous Comey cover-up of Clinton malfeasance, the tooth-and-nail Pentagon opposition to withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Middle-East where day-in and day-out American presence solves nothing and wastes lives and money.

    And it’ll be a while before we see extraction of the monumentally incompetent foreign affairs establishment from positions of influence. And it will similarly take some time before Wall Street’s slithery, vampire squid-like grip on organizations like the Treasury is loosened, similarly the Fed and other agencies where regulatory “capture” makes a farce of the very notion of regulation.

    It’s like Herb Stein said, if something can’t go on forever it won’t. But you’ve also no doubt heard the saying that the market can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent. This goes too for irrationality in the bodies entrusted with governing for the commonweal. They’ve got a built-in momentum. You can point to the human tendency to group-think, institutional inertia because of size or complexity or collective laziness, the effect of money, the inherent hierarchical top-down nature of these bodies. You can theorize all you want, it isn’t going to help. If they don’t change direction, Herb’s Law will apply and they WILL go over a cliff.

    The issue is one of time. For example, Europeans and Asians had been impoverished and abused for centuries. And Marx offered a conceptual alternative. He did his writing in the mid-1800s but it wasn’t for generations that adherents to his ideas took power. And then it turned into a bloody mess ie in Russia, China, Cambodia etc. I would urge those looking to maintain the status quo to look to history, to take into account the interests of people currently disparaged.

    They might also look to people like the NSDAP and the paramilitary organizations allied to them. All these had a long incubation in the collective misery of ordinary people. That’s not to say that communism and fascism will re-surge. But if you don’t listen to the mass of common people, if you abuse them and call them deplorable, there will be hell to pay. Events will go pin-balling in directions nobody could foresee. This is what history teaches us. But we know they won’t listen.

    • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:17 pm #

      A commendable summary.

      • volodya January 2, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

        Thanks EV

  78. FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 12:12 pm #

    two major nations that were actively hostile to religion and belief in God in the 20th century. One was Nazi Germany and the other was Bolshevik Russia == brh

    That is not exactly true. Russia, even when it was in the form of the Soviet Union, was never a political monolith, which Western propaganda is trying to convince us.

    Trotskyites – Trotsky himself and later Khrushchev – were radically anti-Christian, anti-Orthodox, Stalin, on the other hand, in 1943, in the middle of WWII restored Orthodox Christianity in Russia and dissolved Communist International, wanting to make Orthodox Christianity the bases of his geopolitics.

    That, I believe, was the main reason for the Cold War of the West – which at that point almost completely turned Gnostic – against Stalin’s USSR and explains the hate that Western Gnostic Historiography feels toward Stalin.

    After Stalin was murdered by Khrushchev in 1953, Khrushchev resumed persecution of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, all the way until his own removal in 1963.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 12:18 pm #

      References:

      Restoration of Russian Orthodox Church in 1943:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Bishops%27_Council_of_the_Russian_Orthodox_Church

      Stalin dissolves Comintern in 1943:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International#Dissolution

      It can be hardly considered a coincidence.

    • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

      “Stalin was murdered by Khrushchev”

      You make it sound as if an open and shut conclusion. Is there a basis you can point to why Nikita and not Beria?

      • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

        Khrushchev murdered Beria too, as the most likey and worthy successor.

        • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

          Hmmm. You seem to be exaggerating. Beria needed to be eradicated from the planet but I don’t you’d call the way it was done murder by Khrushchev even if he engineered the mock trial etc. would you?

          • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

            You don’t know anything about Beria. All dirt on Beria goes back to Khrushchev’s memoirs.

            My father personally knew Beria and worked under him during the Soviet Manhattan Project – creation of Soviet Nuclear industry.

            If Beria succeeded Stalin in 1953, there would be no Berlin Wall.

          • EvelynV January 2, 2019 at 1:26 pm #

            If your mother was attractive she would have been working under him too for a short while. Maybe five minutes tops I expect.

          • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

            Wash your mouth, Evelin. My mother was a reputable physician.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

        Khrushchev’s hands were up to his shoulders in blood of the victims of “Stalin repressions”.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 12:32 pm #

        It is always the case in politics = for example Hillary managed to blame W. Bush for carnage in Iraq which she unleashed herself with the help of her Islamist friends.

        • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:00 pm #

          Finca, i got my read on the fate of the church in the Soviet Union from ‘The Gulag Archipelego’ and Robert Conquest’s ‘The Great Terror’ . Maybe there has been more scholarship on this subject in the ensuing years and facts have been revised, I don’t know.

          Brh

          • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

            The Gulag Archipelago = Pathetic propaganda.

            Solzhenitsyn, reportedly, was a snitch for NKVD.

    • Half of brh’s brain is marinating in a jar of formaldehyde somewhere in a medical school supply closet, so you’ll have to forgive his occasional outbursts

      • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

        Thanks for the complement, Snacks.

        Brh

        • malthuss January 2, 2019 at 10:35 pm #

          she should talk.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

      Yes, the Jewish betrayal of Communism rocked Stalin. He realized had been building on sand by depending on them and their skewed world view. So perhaps (I’ve never heard any Orthodox say a good word about him) he began to go back to the tried and true methods of Old Russia on which to build his Empire.

      He believe in nothing except personal power and what would help him attain it. That’s why he ran down the street hooting, I just got a job with the Rothchilds – meaning as a revolutionary to overthrow the Czar.

      • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

        Stalin went after Soviet Jews just before he died, starting with the doctors plot in around 1950. Astonishingly, he had his own personal physicians liquidated for nothing at all. I’ve read that if didn’t die in 1953 he would have attempted to initiate a 2nd holocaust.

        Brh

        • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:10 pm #

          Doctors plot was directed against Stalin – just like the personal George H.W. Bush’s physician was murdered few months before his own death.

          When you can’t get to the aging leader, next best thing is to get to his physician.

        • malthuss January 3, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

          Astonishingly, he had his own personal physicians liquidated for nothing at all.

          Same w his wife.

          DJIA dropped almost 660 this a.m.

  79. volodya January 2, 2019 at 1:07 pm #

    One of the more blatant dishonesties out there you find all the time is in the lame-stream media that seems to make it a point to discolor or conceal or misrepresent reality. I read one such instance not long ago where the writer referred to the “uneven benefits” of globalization.

    We’ve heard it over and over, this Big Lie, that the relocation of American industry to third-world slave-wage despotisms is to the good, especially to people living in the US, the only possible complaint being to whom the benefits accrued. Was there a fair distribution?

    Of course this conceals the real effects of this off-shoring of American industrial might; the impoverishment of tens of millions of Americans. To these people, globalization had life-wrecking effects, the narrative of millions of new jobs and prosperity for all and re-training for those in need, a complete and utter fraud.

    And so was a fraud the characterization of a few pockets of “left-behinds”, these people actually occupying large swathes of the country, numbering in the millions and having been deliberately thrown overboard rather than accidentally “left behind”.

    Such dishonesty, especially in print, especially when it involves people’s livelihoods, especially when it’s repeated over and over, doesn’t work the way that Goebbels said it would. It’s an insult to people’s intelligence, who, far from being “low-information” voters, can see very well what’s apparent in their lives, and fully understand the lies being told to them.

    Deception is one thing, but to the extent it’s self-deception, it’s an altogether different and worse thing. It doesn’t bode well for the continued existence of a regime and the people running it.

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

      Forget about Dr. Goebbels, V. The real propaganda genius in Germany in the 30s and 40s was CP member Wili Munzenberg, whose influence reached far and wide for many years. Alas, he finally atrractive negatuve attention from Comrade Stalin and in 1940 the NKVD was orderd to track hin down and take hin out .

      • volodya January 2, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

        I just looked him up. Fascinating story.

        • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 6:38 am #

          We dont get the whole story here V, only about half of it.

          Munzenburg was responsible for organizing the great Sacco/Vanzetti demonstrations in the US in the 20s, the big lefty cause of the day, also later on big unemployment riots in the 30s. He caused far more mischief in the west than Goebbels ever did.

          Brh

  80. Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 1:17 pm #

    Fandom, overwhelmingly White and Male, has rejected both the new female Dr Who and the latest movie in the Star Wars franchise. They (We?) reject any and all attempts to marginalize or “niggerize” us. We are the Heroes of our Story and if the producers refuse to cater to us, then we will find other stories and storytellers that do.

    That we are considered assholes for so doing is par for the course. Power is never granted – it’s taken.

    The last Star Wars movie was particularly bad with Luke Skywalker rejecting the entire legacy of the Jedi – in coded language – White Civilization. Understand the greater context: all the new stars were Non-White and/or Female. Han Solo played an old, dying good White, much like Clint Eastwood’s role in “Grand Torino” who give his blessing to the New Ordure.

    https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a25560063/how-fans-ruined-star-wars-the-last-jedi-2018/

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    • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 1:52 pm #

      I am going to take more time to read this article this evening when I have more time. I immediately noticed just by a quick glance that the writer refers to the fans posting negative reviews as trolls. Wow no big surprise there! I am super tired of this browning, blackening and feminizing of images, movies, literature, etc. I am thinking that sickening feeling is shared by millions.

    • Tate January 2, 2019 at 3:40 pm #

      Eastwood is in the senile phase of his life. His latest movie is pathetic. It’s called The Mule. It’s to be expected that there will be the usual goodthink bullshit assumptions adorning the plot so ‘whatever’ (eye roll) on that score, but the screenwriter (Nick Schrenk, same as Gran Torino) was so focused to check off all the PC boxes that he forgot that a Hero must have a moral core for an audience to care. IOW, there is no discernible struggle within the main character played by Eastwood about becoming a drug smuggler. His only redeeming feature is that he takes on some Robin Hood attributes to salve his conscience perhaps. Other than that, it’s all about buying bling & new rides.

  81. FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:25 pm #

    The common mistake all Westerners make when talking about Russia – they consider Russia (or a Soviet Union) as a political monolith, free of any internal intrigues and intense political struggle.

    How such a huge and resource-rich country could be free of political struggle befuddles me.

  82. BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:36 pm #

    The real propaganda genius in Germany in the 30s and 40s.

    Wili Munzenberg, loyal Stalinist and CP member, whose influence reach far and wide for many years.

    Not Dr Goebbels

    Brh

    • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

      Apparently, Mueller’s Gestapo go to him before they got to Trump:

      Another theory is that Münzenberg was killed by German agents working for the Gestapo, who had apparently infiltrated his organization in 1939
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willi_M%C3%BCnzenberg#Death

      • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

        Wasn’t Munzenburg’s wife’s life saved by being sent to Germanys camp for woman, Ravensbrok, where she survived the war, and not into the clutches of the Cheka and the Soviet gulag, where she most assuredly would have perished?

        Brh

  83. Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

    The Declaration, by Anonymous (not the group)

    WE, THE FANS OF STAR WARS, do this day send forth this Declaration to the President of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, and to all people in the World, to make clear to all the Purposes and Goals of this Rebellion.

    We firmly acknowledge the importance and necessity of the control of the Franchise being in the hands of one person. We accept that for a contiguous, non-contradictory Continuity to be established, much of the Old must be done away with to make way for the New, so that We can enjoy this Universe without questioning how something makes sense. We believe that those in charge of a Franchise derives its power as a creative force from the consent of the fandom of that Franchise. We believe that, should fans-lifelong fans especially-be purposefully shunned, insulted, and tossed aside by those at the head of the Franchise, it is the unalienable right of said fans to boycott or force change in such Leadership.

    We believe that Lucasfilm has willfully and malignantly discarded the fans in the sole pursuit of a misguided political agenda and therefore, it is our unalienable right to refuse to fund the Franchise, and to call on Disney to change those who are in charge of Lucasfilm.

    We do not take this course lightly. Franchises long since established should not be changed for slight and transient causes, but when those helming a Franchise display a history of callous disrespect for said Franchise, its long and storied history, & its massive fanbase’, displaying a clear design to subjugate totally and absolutely the Characters We have come to know and love solely to push a social narrative, it is our riglrt-our duty-to depose of that Leadership. The short history of the crurent Leadership of Lucasfilm is that of continued grievous offences and insults against all consumers who have been fans of the Franchise for any period of tinre before it was purchased by Disney:

    You have disrespected the characters of the original trilogy, treating them as mere tools and stepping stones for new characters, rather than the heroes they actually are.

    You have used your new characters as toys and tools to push an agenda of masculine inferiority.

    You have lied to George Lucas when you told him that Legacy characters would be protected and make sure they would continue to live in the way that he had created them.

    You have lied to George Lucas when you said you wanted to do something for the fans, and have now fully reneged upon that promise, telling Mark Hamill that the stories you want to tell matter more than the fans.

    You have given the core trinity of characters from the Original Trilogy terrible sendoffs. Luke Skywalker dying as a sour old man who couldn’t be bothered to come help his sister in person or mourn the loss of his best friend. Han Solo dying by the blade of his own son, in a move that ultimately had zero impact on his psychological state moving forwards. Leia flying back to the Raddus in a comedic scene that reminds one of Mary Poppins, and will shamefully forever be how Carrie Fisher’s last outing in film will be remembered.

    You have shamelessly attacked anyone who voiced a negative opinion, calling them racists, sexists, rnisogynists, telling them that they must have a problem with strong women, telling them that only overweight white males and members of the alt-right dislike the direction you are taking the Franchise.

    You have refused to acknowledge any complaints as legitimate from the fans, and do not even recognize that people who are not male or are not caucasian dislike your modus operandi as well.

    We, the fans of Star Wars, do therefore in the name-and by the authority-of the free market of the World, solerrmly publish and declare our intentions: To fight and oppose you and your sociopolitical ideals, by any and all means at our disposal; To refuse any decree from Lucasfilm as to what We should like that is contrary to the Right of Opinion; To bring about you destruction and the destruction of your career in anything relating to filmography; To forever restore the true characterizations of these beings in a Galaxy Far Far Away. TO THESE ENDS, WE PLEDGE OUR MERCHANDISE, OUR HONOR, AND OUR WALLETS.

    JS: They’ve done the same thing with our Politics and in the Church: pretend that there is a continuity and that the new is just a natural development of the fundamental principles – and not a radical break or quiet revolution. And dissenters get called crazy for noticing and calling attention to the discontinuity.

    Star Wars was always progressive? Perhaps. But you’ve gone too far, you’ve lost the Sun, you’ve come undone. Letting Leia defend herself and be strong was fine, making her or another into the Hero is not. Very few girls can ever aspire to this or really want to. But it’s everything for boys. They’re simply giving girls what is boys and leaving boys with nothing – except to become third rate girls I suppose. Girls can wear pants better than boys can wear dresses for some reason. Hard to define perhaps, but it’s obvious.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 2:53 pm #

      Is the Feminine more flexible and superior in some ways? Sure, Ok. I for one never denied that. In other ways, it is very inflexible and inferior. The ferocious derision and gloating of women when any male weakness is uncovered is very damning, is it not? In any case, they will not prosper without us. Men do better on that score I think.

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 12:43 am #

        You’re right. Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses. They are intended to be complementary. Let’s definitely face it, women can be vicious and mean sometimes. I personally find that in general men are not as quick to be vicious and mean. In the end, two pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly are really incomplete on their own. I think we weren’t necessarily meant to prosper without each other.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 3:05 pm #

      You probably will be laughing your ass off, but the ‘Star Wars’ contributed much more to the fall of the Soviet Union, than Afghan war did.

      Soviet Union should have really broken all diplomatic relations with US after Reagan proclaimed it an Empire of Evil.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2019 at 4:53 pm #

        Russians saw themselves as being what Reagan said because of Star Wars?

        • FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 5:37 pm #

          Combined with the flood of Western Gnosticism and Porn arriving on shiny new VCR-players in late 1970s – 1980s.

          That Reagan speech should have been never left unanswered.

    • SoftStarLight January 2, 2019 at 11:53 pm #

      So I did read both of the articles. It sounds like Lucasfilm made a terrible business decision to go PC all the way. Clearly they didn’t understand their fan base demographics or they truly did not care what their reactions would be to the character changes. I hate to say it but I am leaning toward the second. It looks like it is going to be PC hyperdrive from now on. If you don’t like what they are doing then you are clearly an alt-right extremist racist and misogynist. They ruined Walking Dead for me personally with the PC push. Once Carol was attracted to Ezekiel that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was unrealistic to me, especially when her and Daryl had a natural chemistry but yet miraculously nothing ever happened.

      Boycotting is all that little people can do in many ways to make noise. I say make noise. Make them give you what you want.

      • K-Dog January 3, 2019 at 12:08 am #

        So I did read both of the articles.

        What articles. The cut and paste job from reddit is six months old. You are so busted. Say hello to Asoka.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 12:44 am #

          If you cut and paste an article, it is still an article. Stop being so paranoid. Worry about the birds up your butte instead.

        • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 12:50 am #

          The articles that Janos linked to up thread about the fan backlash from the latest Dr. Who and Star Wars movies. What am I busted for? What did I do now lol?

      • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 12:49 am #

        Agree. It’s a Power Drive now. A Declaration of War. Hopefully we can ruin some of these guys in the process. The Elite know, but some of these people are legitimately clueless. And we’re going to clue them in big time.

        Agree again. If they wanted romance, why did they never do anything with Darryl, rough around the edges, but a beautiful man if you could get past that? Both inside and out. And yeah, they were great together.

        • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 1:05 am #

          Daryl is one of those guys that grows on you. At first he instills fear, then a period of loathing, then moments of curiosity, then days of confusion, and finally comes that beautiful moment. The realization that you’ll never get past him :-).

          • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 2:13 am #

            At one point in the first season, Carol observed his shyness and alienation. She said to him, You’re every bit as fine as any of them. Every bit.

            Not the Alpha Male Leader that Rick is, but his strong right hand.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 9:52 am #

            There is something about the shyness and alienation. I remember too when he and Beth were separated from the main group he was a jerk to her at first but then completely changed to a protector once the going got tough. In real life that is not an uncommon thing you know.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 6:17 pm #

            Yeah he was really crushing on her. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want Carol – too old.

    • K-Dog January 3, 2019 at 12:02 am #

      Cutting and pasting from reddit should be prohibited the same was as dropping a Chinese text block or nonsense block like Tabor the Ape Man used to do in the old single column days.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/BestOfOutrageCulture/comments/8uezbx/we_the_fans_of_star_wars_do_this_day_send_forth/

      Seriously If I were JHK I’d not put up with reddit on my blog. When I do have my own gig up and running pasting reddit to eat up space will turn the color of all your comment text the same color as the back ground color for 24 hours. Only way you will be read during those 24 is if someone selects your text with a mouse.

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 12:55 am #

        You should relax your rules a little bit K-Dog. We’re just talking and sharing info.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 1:53 am #

        Now that I think about it – yes I did get this magnificent document from reddit. Is that a crime? But I did post two articles further up and those are what she is referring too. So you’re wrong on that as well.

        • K-Dog January 3, 2019 at 3:20 am #

          No I’d only be wrong about one, it any. You’ll have to supply links to the articles for me to believe you. You lie better than a rug and my time is valuable. So put up.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 9:55 am #

            Gee K-Dog come on. Here are the links.

            esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a25560063/how-fans-ruined-star-wars-the-last-jedi-2018/

            express.co.uk/entertainment/films/1064927/Doctor-Who-what-time-Star-Wars-Last-Jedi-BACKLASH-fans-New…

            It is ok to be wrong sometimes :-). No big deal you are human.

          • K-Dog January 3, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

            Agreed and thank you for the links.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 5:02 pm #

            You’re welcome!

        • K-Dog January 3, 2019 at 3:21 am #

          Cross posting redditshould be a crime.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 9:57 am #

            Is it something about Reddit in particular?

          • K-Dog January 4, 2019 at 12:23 am #

            It is a tower of babble. This place leans in that direction and needs no encouragement.


            “Water, water, everywhere,
            And all the boards did shrink;
            Water, water, everywhere,
            Nor any drop to drink.”

            Drivel drivel everywhere,
            And all the brains did shrink;
            Drivel drivel everywhere,
            Nor any thought to think.

            A hurricane is not the place to blow a kiss.

            This place has a history of text bombs and allowing profuse random comments from other blogs as comments is not a preferred direction IMHO. It is allowing ‘fire’ to be screamed in a crowded theater in a metaphorical sense. In other words nonsense. Somebody posts something a troll does not like here and the troll can respond with junk from reditt. To stomp on an opposing point of view, which after enough stomping can’t even be found.

            That should be particular enough.

          • K-Dog January 4, 2019 at 12:24 am #

            It would be a return to the old days. Things are more civilized here now.

  84. FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 4:25 pm #

    The funeral of George Bush Sr. or how Western leaders made the territories of their countries a battlefield for Ukraine and testing ground for newest Russian weapons

    To be continued…

  85. FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 5:04 pm #

    The funeral of George Bush Sr. or how Western leaders made the territories of their countries a battlefield for Ukraine and testing ground for newest Russian weapons

    Without a doubt, those who incited Poroshenko to conduct provocations in the Kerch Strait timed it to the attacks on Trump by the New York prosecutors and Special Prosecutor Mueller, intended to use the results of these provocations to convert the G-20 in Buenos Aires into a demonstration of anti-Trump unity, just as G-20 in Australia was turned into a demonstration of the unity of the West against Putin.

    But the bloodlessness of these provocations in conjunction with the over-horizon radar “Container” brought a severe confusion in the ranks of the united West, put together by Bastinda, the Great and Terrible, and the corresponding meeting of Western leaders had to be moved to Washington for a wake after George Bush’s senior funeral.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/04/politics/george-bush-national-cathedral-state-funeral/index.html

    Of course, it is strange that Bastnda decided to rally the unity of the West by declaring war against the US president, but only until you remember that the World Civil War is a New War of the Roses = a crypto-religious war. And then the first thing that comes to mind is that Bastinda’s teeth gnashing wasn’t caused so much by the call of the delegates “Lock her up!”, but by the prayer of the Republican Convention under the leadership of the Orthodox priest, Orthodox not only by faith, but also by personal qualities.

    Naturally, any reminder of “In hoc signo vinces!” in the followers of Maxentius evoke the most negative emotions and Constantine the Great, who declared the tolerance of the Roman Empire is hated by them even more than Theodosius, who declared Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, and Justinian, who announced the Symphony and the closure of the Plato Academy.

    This analogy explains a lot in modern politics, since Vladimir Putin in this context is more likely associated with Justinian or Theodosius, and Donald Trump with Constantine the Great.

    And the fact that, from a formal organizational point of view, Archbishop Demetrios of America is a subordinate to the still Orthodox Bartholomew I of Constantinople, from a crypto-religious point of view, allows us to consider not only the Kerch Strait, but also the autocephalous Ukrainian Church, as an attack on Trump, but the fact that this autocephaly was “inserted into the plan of the activities of the Istanbul District Committee at the same meeting as the consideration of the personal file of Archbishop Demetrios of America, who arbitrarily blessed the candidate Trump to win the presidential elections of 2016, makes the analogy of what is happening now with the War of the Roses into something more than just historical rhyme.

    All this proves the significance of the meeting of Western leaders held in Washington immediately after the funeral of George Bush Sr., which became the most important event not only of the year, but also ….

    And displeasure of Jebb Bush with what he read in the envelope was caused by the fact that he does not have a “presidential” clearance and, being not aware of the reasons for such urgency, he considered the absence of at least some interruption between the funeral and the meeting without any understanding.

    After all, the question was really urgent, as the military-strategic grounds for giving Putin a Norman ultimatum in June of 2014, which forced the Russian president to recognize Poroshenko and appeal to the Federation Council to withdraw the permission that had just been issued to use the Russian army in Ukraine, evaporated at the second, when the over-horizon radar “Container” stepped on the combat duty.

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

    And if we consider that Putin was going to officially use the army to prevent the genocide of Russians in Donbass, you will agree that the conditions of the ultimatum were difficult, if he went on to humiliate not only himself but his country, in order to avoid the threats voiced to him, and when he polished the answer to Poroshenko’s Kerch provocations with a refusal to “participate in his election campaign,” it became clear that simply by not lifting a phone he had withdrawn his recognition of Poroshenko.

    And after introducing the “Container” radar as a matter of urgency (the radar watch was pilot) and demonstrating the Avangard (hypersonic glide vehicle), he reminded those who signed for Poroshenko in Normandy in 2014 that they had made the territories of their countries a battlefield for Ukraine and now either have to sign peace (and pay reparations?) or be responsible for words that imply irresponsibility in circumstances that are no longer present.

    All this was the subject of discussion not only in a narrow circle, when the day before the funeral and the notorious meeting, which discussed Putin’s raised middle finger as a response to the Norman ultimatum, the most rabid of Clinton channels invited the closest friend of Bush Sr. Secretary of State James Baker and I understand the latter voiced the position that the Bush clan voiced at that meeting, which took place immediately after the funeral of George H. W. Bush.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zzTiECuaDM&t=991

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  86. Cavepainter January 2, 2019 at 6:30 pm #

    This is most critical, the latest weapon now being applied in the culture wars:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp9ZJiFFBnU

    • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 10:02 am #

      It’s always about the money (SIGH).

  87. FincaInTheMountains January 2, 2019 at 9:13 pm #

    All of this was the subject of discussion not only in a narrow circle, when the day before the funeral and the notorious meeting, which discussed Putin’s raised middle finger as a response to the Norman ultimatum, the most Clintonian of the channels invited Bush’s elder friend, who as I understand voiced the position with which the Bush clan came to the meeting that was trying to resolve issues of war and peace immediately after the funeral of George H. W. Bush.

    And immediately after the death of Bush Sr., the dedication to the deceased on all the TV channels was simply going off-scale, competing with the praises addressed to Putin, who allegedly eclipsed Trump in Buenos Aires.

    Glorifying Bush, television commentators constantly referred to his famous speech, in which he painted his friendship with Bill Clinton after the latter stole away his presidency in 1992, clearly contrasting this to the attitude of hatred between Trump and Clinton supporters.

    But James Baker, who promised Gorbachev in his time that NATO will not move an inch towards Russia. In his interview on the PBS channel, he said that both the NATO advancement and, as a result, the US conflict with Russia and the Trump revolution and the financial crisis are the result of the illegal seizure of power by the Clintons in 1992 (10:30).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zzTiECuaDM&t=991

    The fact is that Hillary Clinton forced the businessman Ross Perot put forward his candidacy in the 1992 presidential election with a program similar to the Bush program to the last comma, except for attitude toward NAFTA, and he took 20 percent of the vote from Bush and brought Bill Clinton to power, or rather his wife.

    The most interesting thing is that I started writing about it as the reason for the collapse of the American political system 10 years ago, and James Baker reminded followers of Hillary Clinton that, as George Bush himself repeatedly said in 1992, she derailed his whole life, and since she brewed this mess, now her followers should try disentangling it on their own, and not involve in it those who became its victims.

    And since this interview appeared amid a loud-mouthed campaign, demanding that Trump not be invited to Bush’s funeral, he appeared on them and, having warmly greeted Obama, not even nodding toward Clinton, there is no doubt that the Bushists said briefly but with relish :

    “There will be no unity of the West against Trump and Putin, and the Clintons can go dig a ditch!”

    To be continued…

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2019 at 9:25 pm #

      You’re mighy busy up there in St. Petersburg tonite Finca. Must be those cold arctic nights, and just maybe you’re paid by the word like magazine and newspaper stringers in days gone by.

      Brh

  88. ozone January 2, 2019 at 9:54 pm #

    JHK sez:
    “Welcome to the American hall of mirrors… and mind the broken glass all over the floor. That’s Nature’s way of saying the country has run out room to punk itself. 2018 was the consolidation of bad faith in everything we do: politics, the news media, economics & finance, show biz, regular biz, jurisprudence, medicine, education, and relations between men and women — the year of peak dishonesty and self-deception. Of course, the trouble with dishonesty is that it doesn’t comport with Reality, and Reality being Mother Nature’s husband, bats in the cleanup position. Entering 2019, the bases are loaded with delusions, misdirections, and turpitudes.”

    Oh wait…………..what?
    I thought we might be well served by referencing that opening one more time.
    For all of you pinheads in the distractionary bid’nez, this is the slow grind; the end of the beginning; the payoff for that plausible-deniability little deal with the devil; the start of getting what you’ve asked for.

    As for me? It’s not important what I think or do, as I’m no cog in the machine, nor an impediment thereof. Please, for the sake of whatever you worship, continue doing what you’re doing! The loss of trust and erosion of faith is exactly what’s called for now. (If that summons a false “savior”, so much the better; events have a tendency to severely accelerate that-a-way, flushing away delusions along with those that adhere to them.) To paraphrase an old money-is-king saying, “reality talks and bullshit walks”… or falls down dead on its face by soiling its own nest.

    Just in passing: Do youse bullshitters and theme-twisters think it’s a good idea to introduce more man-made, miracle chemicals and wonder weapons into the complex web of the natural world? Go ahead, you’ve signed the death warrant for the entirety of the human race. It won’t matter your color or political ideology — dead is dead; extinct is a lasting state. (The base of the web of life is disappearing… bad tidings follow on.)

    I wish you all an interesting 2019: The Year of the Dead Horse.
    And try to remember: The Theater of Cruelty is stage-managed, promoted and invested in by the best dressed and well-heeled psychopaths in the world. Forget that at your mortal peril.

    • Walter B January 3, 2019 at 12:07 am #

      Wow, ozone, pretty intense and right on the mark. There are dividends that we reap by coming here, and you have paid one out to us tonight. Thank you, may you fare well in the coming degradation my friend!

    • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 1:30 am #

      Hmmm, you are not a cog in the machine or an impediment thereof. You are outside looking in. It all makes sense now.

      • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 6:52 am #

        Wow Pete, you pretty much nailed it.

        And no SSL, Oz is definetly not a cog in any machine, he is an independent person who has removed himself from the machine by dint of his talent and the remote place he lives.

        Brh

        • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 10:12 am #

          I find it interesting that you used the word dint. I wish I didn’t always overthink everything lol!

    • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 1:15 pm #

      “Just in passing: Do youse bullshitters and theme-twisters think it’s a good idea to introduce more man-made, miracle chemicals and wonder weapons into the complex web of the natural world? Go ahead, you’ve signed the death warrant for the entirety of the human race. It won’t matter your color or political ideology — dead is dead; extinct is a lasting state. (The base of the web of life is disappearing… bad tidings follow on.)”

      Ozone,
      Do not concern yourself with that which you cannot control.

      Party like it was 1957, dude….

  89. deetrump January 2, 2019 at 10:07 pm #

    “Sounds like she’s your gal” –brh

    No. I have an open mind.

    • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 12:04 am #

      Little jane, in some ways your mind seems decidedly closed, and has been since the summer of love in 1967.

      Brh

    • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 7:05 am #

      just curious, Little Jane, have you invited MS 13 over for tea yet?

      Brh

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 11:22 am #

        I really wanna know how that turns out. I don’t suspect they are the tea drinking type but you never know. They might like classical music too.

  90. deetrump January 2, 2019 at 10:10 pm #

    “Reality being Mother Nature’s husband, bats in the cleanup position” –ozone

    Batting last does not guarantee you win the game.

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    • ozone January 2, 2019 at 10:18 pm #

      Mis-attributed… and “winning” is absurdly beside the point.

  91. Boris Seymour January 3, 2019 at 12:15 am #

    Please comment on this article and its veracity: https://journal-neo.org/2018/12/31/whatever-happened-to-peak-oil/

    “On November 28 the US Department of the Interior announced a dramatic new confirmation of huge oil and gas in the region of West Texas into Arizona. The U.S. Department of the Interior via its US Geological Survey announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain “an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids,” according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous unconventional oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. Dr. Jim Reilly, USGS Director called the region, “our largest continuous oil and gas assessments ever released.” In brief it is major news for American energy supply.

    The report went on to state that oil and gas companies are currently producing oil here using both traditional vertical well technology and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extract the shale oil and gas. The USGS added that the Delaware Basin assessment of the Wolfcamp Shale and Bone Spring Formation is more than two times larger than that of the Midland Basin.

    Even before this major new discovery of shale oil and gas in the Texas-Arizona region around the Permian Basin, the US, including estimated shale oil, was estimated the world’s largest oil reserve. According to a July 2018 study by Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consultancy, the U.S. holds 264 billion barrels of oil, more than half of which is located in shale. That total exceeds the 256 billion barrels found in Russia, and the 212 billion barrels located in Saudi Arabia.

    If the new USGS estimates are included, the US total oil reserves would be well over 310 billion barrels. King Hubbert’s prediction of USA peak oil in 1970 turns out to have been nonsense. What happened in 1970 was that Big Oil manipulated a shift to the ultra-cheap oil of the Middle East and away from domestic USA oil drilling. For them the peak oil argument was a useful political foil that had huge geopolitical consequences for US Middle East policies after 1970. The new discoveries in Texas and Arizona insure that the more rapid depletion of shale oil deposits compared with conventional ones will not spell an early exhaustion of US oil production.”

  92. BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 12:24 am #

    Bloody holiday week in the Nutmeg State, topped off by what looks to be gangsta knife combat at Foxwood Casino yesterday. And to keep the blade theme going a woman in Hartford got stabbed — 30 times. Motive unknown, but her little one was kidnapped too, since recovered. In the New Haven area a massive car wreck caused by ‘Youths’ in a stolen SUV fleeing police. I’m anticipitating more bloodshed and mayhem before the week is out. What a way to start the year, but that’s the way it us now, social disorder everywhere. Civilization itself appears to be unravelling on all fronts.

    Brh

    • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 1:35 am #

      I for one would have never thought there were ghettos in Connecticut!

      • malthuss January 3, 2019 at 1:40 am #

        Me too. With With Greenwich and so many millionaires.
        But as BRH notes, PRs, Mexicans, Immigrants, Poor Blacks have ruined the place.

        Research, Camden, NJ as well.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 2:00 am #

          Both NJ and CT are among the leading States people are leaving. Also NY, IL, and Kansas for some reason. They’re going to AZ, OR, NV, and ID.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 9:35 am #

            Idaho seems like it would be a nice place to live.

        • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 9:32 am #

          Wow Camden, NJ! This article from 2012 says that (presumably at that time) Camden was America’s most dangerous city. I think Chicago is now America’s most dangerous city but that is a best guess.

          https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184246/Americas-dangerous-city-Camden-New-Jersey-39-people-murdered-year.html

          • malthuss January 3, 2019 at 10:44 am #

            CAMDEN, made the cover of ‘Rolling Stone.’

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 11:12 am #

            I see that. Very interesting. Apocalypse, New Jersey!

      • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 1:57 am #

        The coast is infested with a particular vicious strain of Sub-Saharans. One ghetto is just a couple of blocks away from Yale. How humiliating for the Elite. The same for parts of Washington DC.

    • Walter B January 3, 2019 at 8:34 am #

      Yes BRH, it is all unravelling, a little bit here and a lot over there. As the competition for resources, including paychecks ramps up, those with the power take care of number one first, limiting what is left to trickle down. As the limitless credit that has held the Middle together dries up as a result of increasing defaults and the inability to make payments, the center no longer can hold and The Long Emergency that Jim Kunstler has so well predicted continues to unfold. It is a natural degradation that society and government can do nothing to mitigate, but can certainly make worse, which I feel certain they will do before it all falls down.

    • malthuss January 3, 2019 at 10:47 am #

      From now on, can you give us the race of perps and victims,
      IF POSSIBLE.

  93. wm5135 January 3, 2019 at 8:01 am #

    Looks like the Noble Experiment will be to turn off the lights and mix chlorine bleach and ammonia.

    ….the little dog laughed to see such fun….

    Happy New Year

  94. Pucker January 3, 2019 at 8:38 am #

    Good Book: “American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment” by Shane Bauer.

    The current model of incarceration is a loss-making model for the State. The previous model of incarceration generated revenue for the States via convict Leasing or by using convict labor on state-owned Plantations, factories, mines, etc. Once, because of “reform” , convict labor was no longer in vogue, this forced the privatization of prisons to move the cost of prisons off balance sheet. Now, prisons generate revenue for private contractors like Corrections Corporation of America (“CCA”) by warehousing prisoners like nightmarish hotels. The prisoners largely sit around bored watching TV. The State pays CCA $34 bucks per day. The proposed Universal Basic Income is about $34 bucks per day. I suspect that in the future that the prison contractors will get a lien on the prisoner’s Universal Basic Income monthly stipends? There will be a huge incentive for mass incarceration with people locked up for long periods of time for loitering, chewing gum, touching women, Mouthing off, etc.? Apparently, now if a bloke smokes Weed near a public school, it’s 6 years in The Slammer. Jesus….

  95. Walter B January 3, 2019 at 10:12 am #

    Especially for Little Dicky – A rag so corrupt, even the employees are bailing out:

    “Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers,” writes the veteran journalist, who was also the paper’s first female editor.

    https://www.rt.com/usa/447965-jill-abramson-nyt-trump/

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    • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 10:46 am #

      Sorry but I hope it goes belly up!

    • Ahh, Russia Today- funded by the Russian government. I only look at it from time to time, when its got cameras on the ground at some happening.

      As for the NYT’s bias- well, who cares? At least its not a government puppet rag. Experienced and knowledgeable news readers can read between the lines, and aren’t clamoring for safe spaces; I can criticize the NYT on an informed basis. You and others do so through the subjective fallacy of the third-person report, here, citing Tweets as source material.

      Journalistic integrity isd a human enterprise, and this administration has led many to run out of superlatives. Those poor headline writers- they can’t just say the guy is a lying sack of shit.

      • Walter B January 3, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

        Nice try Little Dicky, but another NYC rag is just as derogatory:

        “The Times was mainly the voice of the coastal elites and reflected their interests and values.”

        https://nypost.com/2019/01/02/ex-times-editor-jill-abramson-bashes-crass-gray-lady-in-tell-all-book/

        Package that!

        • Who said it wasn’t.

          Median pay-to-play-money in NYC is 6 figures; the City is over half born somewhere else besides America, page 2 and 3 are filled with furs and watches and diamonds. A full page Ad costs a fortune; the paper is $6 on weekends… perhaps best read from the penthouse at Trump Tower. Trump himself has a direct line to the editor. Between Trump’s tweets and the Times, what possible purpose could Breitbart serve? RT can only dream of being real journalism.

          M-fers, listen up. If you think you’re getting steamrolled by an organization with a $3 billion market cap, you’re right. There are nearly four thousand employees churning out a physical newspaper that gets printed and distributed daily- worldwide. You have no hope of creating a more informed opinion about world events; none, zero, zip, nada.

          They have every major person in the world on a speed-dial, foreign offices, reporters reaching into every continent including the South Pole- there simply are no peers. Its an information superpower, outside of government and national controls. The rest of news media apes them or repeats their reports verbatim.

          Just surrender. At $3, a daily newspaper is the best investment you can make- which has been the case since the 17th century. Ask Ben Franklin.

          Peeps used to complain that it was a mouthpiece. Now they find out it was its own paper all along, and they complain about that too. Integrity is everything- they have legal and financial liability for libel and dishonest journalism. Betting against the New York Times is an exercise in false confidence.

          Love it or hate it, if you don’t read it, you don’t know shit. If you didn’t pay for it, Zero is the quality level you’re swimming in.

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:29 am #

            If I have to curb my enthusiasm all the time then you should have to too!

      • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 1:08 pm #

        The NYT isn’ t a government puppet rag when a Republican is President. When a Dem is president — like Obama — they’re the biggest suck asses and worst syncopants in the country.

        Brh

        • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 1:19 pm #

          Also, Snacks, why are you shilling for the NYT? Why do you care? Let the f-kkers go bankrupt and the world won’t be any worse off for it.

  96. SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 11:06 am #

    The NYT admits that massive immigration over the past 40 years has completely changed the demographics of Orange County essentially turning it into a Democrat stronghold. This is the plan for the entire US and so far it is working.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/02/ny-times-40-year-flood-of-immigration-turns-orange-county-blue/

  97. SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 11:15 am #

    I don’t like Mitt Romney.

    • He’s working on Self-deportation in a mormon laboratory

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 4:54 pm #

        Good, a self-deportation is in order for him. He is so wishy-washy even the seesaw can’t keep up!

    • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 1:24 pm #

      SSL,
      Nor do I care for him…he is the bain of my existence….

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 4:49 pm #

        He is? I just think he is a slithering serpent. Are you making fun of me lol?

        • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 7:36 pm #

          SSL,
          Uhh, Bain Capital….

          • SoftStarLight January 4, 2019 at 12:17 am #

            Ah I gotchya. I had to do a refresher on that one as it has been a while. I am not exactly sure what to think about it. He allegedly made a lot of money for his investors which was his job. But of course that meant people lost their jobs. Many of the bought out companies would have gone bankrupt without the investments. And then, many did even after being bought out.

    • PeteAtomic January 3, 2019 at 2:07 pm #

      Romney is obviously working on another pres.candidate bid with his recent comments lately.

      He’s an empty vessel for rent to whatever corporate entities want to use him, like many or most of the DC politicians are nowadays.

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 5:00 pm #

        A city of ill will and a grave yard of good intentions.

  98. Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 1:10 pm #

    https://www.amren.com/news/2019/01/us-border-agents-repel-migrants-with-tear-gas-after-attempt-to-cross-illegally/

    The mob forced kids to climb over the concertina wire. Then apparently smaller children were passed over the wire to them on the other side. Hispanic family values! With parents like these, no wonder so many of them end up in gangs.

    At least our boys are defending themselves and the border a bit. Obviously at some point, stronger measures will have to be taken, such as rubber bullets or live rounds. The Wall would eliminate the need for much of such unpleasantness. But of course Marxism is not a Humanism, and since Liberalism has become Marxism – well I hope you can finish the syllogism yourselves.

    • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 1:30 pm #

      ” well I hope you can finish the syllogism yourselves.”

      If Consuelo is pregnant, then Juan did it;

      If Juan did it, then he is not a good Humanist,

      But we KNOW that Juan is a good Liberal,

      Therefore, Juan is a goddamned commie….

      • elysianfield January 3, 2019 at 1:31 pm #

        …And that Consuelo is pregnant is the natural order of things….

        • Tate January 3, 2019 at 2:19 pm #

          It is the natural order of things. But you won’t admit that. The tragedy of the West is that it defies the natural order of things. But it can’t do this forever. That is also the natural order of things.

          • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 4:46 pm #

            Yep, what goes up must come down. Eventually it will make sense again or sense will slap us silly, whichever one first.

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

      It may be because those children are not actually their children. So much fraud and so many lies. Those children are their green lights to green cards. Any way to try and get in. And our system rewards this inhumane behavior and our politicians love it and our businesses love the slave labor too. And there are those out there who love the child trafficking.

    • malthuss January 3, 2019 at 9:15 pm #

      End immigration and welfare for immigrants.

      no refugees.

      • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 11:24 pm #

        Yes please, and like right now!

  99. akmofo January 3, 2019 at 1:35 pm #

    From German neo-Nazi to mikvah baptism in living water and conversion to Judaism to becoming a Hebrew speaking Israeli Zionist!

    https://youtu.be/JKZ4OWzP8RU

    A true 2019 story that even Kunstler’s imagination could not imagine.

  100. capt spaulding January 3, 2019 at 1:44 pm #

    Looks like China gets the Pink Floyd award this year.

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    • San Jose January 3, 2019 at 2:40 pm #

      Lyrics from “Brain Damage” (Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd)

      “And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
      I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”

      And wouldn’t you know, we got some seriously dark forebodings about China today from the U.S. State Department in the form of a travel advisory about China detaining visitors as they try to exit the country. Will U.S. companies send employees on business trips to China in 2019?

      Jen in San Jose

      • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 3:57 pm #

        Hell no!

      • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 5:20 pm #

        Russia, too, is holding an American ex marine and police officer, in Moscow for a wedding, for spying. Espionage appears to be the universal charge these countries arrest people on. Once arrested i dont think you have a lot of rights. If you start shouting about your miranda rights and all that youre most likely to get a boot in your face. The world is definitely hardening up, that’s for sure. Soft countries like Sweden and Germany, worried about drag queens and refugees and all that squishy bullsh-t will most certainly be crushed by this new political reality.

        Brh

  101. BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

    The significance of Willoughbyland, Englands short lived colony in Suriname on the NE coast of South America, is that the English swapped it with the Dutch for New York City as a result of the Anglo Dutch War.

    WHO GOT THE BEST DEAL AND WHO GOT HOSED?

    BRH

    • SoftStarLight January 3, 2019 at 5:07 pm #

      I guess the Dutch did not have great foresight? Then again, wouldn’t it be weird if Willoughbyland, Suriname was the Big Apple instead?

    • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 6:15 pm #

      Is that THE Willoughby – where a Man can take full measure? Sounds more like a White Man’s grave.

  102. pequiste January 3, 2019 at 5:18 pm #

    “Research, Camden, NJ as well.” Malthuss

    Research? Yes: field research of course!

    It is actually much better to visit. One can go on a jungle safari without leaving America. Much, more informative, high level cortisol-inducing excitement,and sportier.

    See the fascinating native flora and fauna in the “natural” and decrepitating state. Take a secure 4X4 drive armored car for safety’s sake you understand. Do not sick your hand outside the window as the animals may look domesticated but they are for certain wild and awfully hungry. Your wallet or purse will be ripe for the picking, as are other symbols of civilization: phones, watches, cameras. Use of any firearms is strictly prohibited by NJ law except for the natives. Sorry.

    No need for a visa or problems with a foreign language. On second thought, scratch the language compatibility.

    Yes, indeed the adventure travel destination that puts Dizney Werld or The Jersey Shore to shame: American Shitholistan.

    Visit today.*

    *Or should you care to wait just a little while longer; coming to a city or town near you.

    **The new Speaker of the House and her minions, plus the New Jersey legislature, are diligently working on it, don’t you fret.

    • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 5:27 pm #

      Well, Walt Whitman is buried in Camden. I’m sure the poetry loving natives honor his memory and venerate his final resting place in that progressive city.

      Brh

    • Walter B January 3, 2019 at 6:31 pm #

      I cannot believe that I am just sitting here taking a beating on the Garden State of my birth without fighting back. Unfortunately, I got nuthin’ to fight back with. Camden is a wasteland where even the local PD did not stick around and had to be replaced by the NJSP. If you ever care to visit the Aquarium or the Battleship New Jersey, make sure you take the ferry from Philly, it limits your exposure.

      Patterson, Irvington, Newark and Trenton are also hot zones. Once Governor Pot Head gets his weed legalized and the Sanctuary State set up properly, things will change. Unfortunately it will be for the worse. The Hunterdon County Democrat (local printed rag) had three articles just before Christmas about developments here:

      #1 – Homelessness increased by 10% last year,

      #2 – Six more Medical marijuana dispensaries were authorized,

      #3 – Governor Pot Head announced that he was going to push for the achievements and accomplishments of the QRSTLMNOP & Disabled communities to be taught in public schools. One can only wonder how the disabled are going to take being added to the list? I wonder…….

      • “The Hunterdon County Democrat”

        https://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county-democrat/

        Is this distributed to all the house-bound with dementia? If so I recommend staying the hell away from it. It could be causing the affliction.

        As for Camden, etc., I just close my eyes and envision “The Wire”. Close enough?

        • pequiste January 3, 2019 at 11:54 pm #

          Not by a country mile Deb.

          Think more like West Point, Monrovia, Liberia without Philly being on the other side of the big benjo ditch.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 3, 2019 at 11:46 pm #

        Mabe not: if you make that area attractive to young White Bohemians, they will swarm in. In Detroit, they actually have become pioneers, trying to reclaim the soil and farm in burned out lots. Pot is obviously a part of this, perhaps making them impervious to the danger posed by the natives.

        And then the cycle repeats: people like this move into a ghetto, gays follow closely – refurbishing the old houses with the money they have by not having kids, yuppies follow the, prices soar, the bohemians are pushed out, etc.

        • pequiste January 4, 2019 at 12:02 am #

          No way in hell can that be done on a stretch of Camden road I once made a turn onto in error much like in Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities”. A name straight out of the NAACP-approved nomenclature manual for Black Government Bureaucrats and Administrators: Mount Saint Ephraim Boulevard or some shit like that. Fcuking scary.

  103. Walter B January 3, 2019 at 6:57 pm #

    Ding, ding Margin Call – Hey Jim, looks like the MSM is reading your stuff:

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-bad-stuff-that-the-stock-market-worried-about-is-starting-to-happen/ar-BBRLnk9?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

    Good thing I’m a Coincidence Theorist (wink, wink).

    • You can’t have eyes on every cable news station, but you can get day-old news on dead trees. The New York Times. $3

      • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2019 at 10:46 pm #

        $3? You’re gettin screwed.

        • Walter B January 4, 2019 at 12:02 am #

          It should be screwed, in fact, it is time that this creature joined janet in the netherworld, don’ you thing? hat value does it serve here?

          • BackRowHeckler January 4, 2019 at 4:54 am #

            Wait a minute Walter, you mean you don’t like Snacks plan to nuke coal fired power plants in Russia, China and India — wth US launched ICBMs — to mitigate climate change and save Mother Earth?

            Brh

  104. Janos Skorenzy January 4, 2019 at 2:24 am #

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/03/tucker_carlson_we_are_ruled_by_mercenaries_who_feel_no_long-term_obligation_to_the_people_they_rule.html

    Friar Tuck hits it out of the Park again. So much so that youtube took the video down I heard. He sees the Problem clearly: the Economy should serve People and not People, the Economy. But he doesn’t have the solution except to hope that Capitalists will repent of their rapacity. A river cannot rise above its source. They never will because then they wouldn’t be who they are anymore.

    One could appeal instead to their own best interests, but alas few of them can see that clearly, blinded as they are by greed. No, they will have to be forced to be good, and that means Socialism. Needless to say, not Marxist Socialism but rather a National type Socialism.

    He may know more but he stays within the paradigm. If did say more, he’d be banned. As it is, he is the greatest voice in America against the religion of the so called Free Market.

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