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In all the smoke and fog emitted by Trump and his adversaries, it must be hard to make out the actual issues dogging this society, and even when you can, to find a coherent position on them. This was nicely illustrated in Paul Krugman’s fatuous column in Monday’s New York Times, “On Economic Arrogance” — the title describes Krugman’s own attitude to a T.

In it, Krugman attempts to account for the no-growth economy by marshaling the stock-in-trade legerdemain of academic economics: productivity, demographics, and labor metrics. Krugman actually knows zip about what afflicts us in the present disposition of things, namely the falling energy-return-on-energy-investment in the oil industry, which is approaching the point where the immense activity of getting oil out of the ground won’t be worth the cost and trouble of doing it. And since most of the things we do and produce in this economy are based on cheap oil — with no reality-based prospect of replacing it with so-called “renewables” or as yet undiscovered energy rescue remedies — we can’t generate enough wealth to maintain anything close to our assumed standard of living. We can’t even generate enough wealth to pay the interest on the debt we’ve racked up in order to hide our growing energy predicament. And that, in a nutshell, is what will blow up the financial system. And when that department of the economy goes, the rest will follow.

So, the real issue hidden in plain sight is how America — indeed all the so-called “developed” nations — are going to navigate to a stepped-down mode of living, without slip-sliding all the way into a dark age, or something worse. By the way, the Ole Maestro, Alan Greenspan, also chimed in on the “productivity” question last week to equally specious effect in this Business Insider article. None of these celebrated Grand Viziers knows what the fuck he’s talking about, and a nation depending on their guidance will find itself lost in a hall of mirrors with the lights off.

So, on one side you have Trump and his trumpets and trumpistas heralding the return of “greatness” (i.e. a booming industrial economy of happy men with lunchboxes) which is not going to happen; and on the other side you have a claque of clueless technocrats who actually believe they can “solve” the productivity problem with measures that really only boil down to different kinds of accounting fraud.

You also have an American public, and a mass media, who do not question the premise of a massive “infrastructure” spending project to re-boot the foundering economy. If you ask what they mean by that, you will learn that they uniformly see rebuilding our highways, bridges, tunnels, and airports. Some rightly suspect that the money for that is not there — or can only be summoned with more accounting fraud (borrowing from our future). But on the whole, most adults of all political stripes in this country think we can and should do this, that it would be a good thing.

And what is this infrastructure re-boot in the service of? A living arrangement with no future. A matrix of extreme car dependency that has zero chance of continuing another decade. More WalMarts, Target stores, Taco Bells, muffler shops, McHousing subdivisions, and other accoutrement of our fast-zombifying mode of existence? Isn’t it obvious, even if you never heard of, or don’t understand, the oil quandary, that we have shot our wad with all this? That we have to start down a different path if we intend to remain human?

It’s not hard to describe that waiting world, which I’ve done in a bunch of recent books. We’re going there whether we like it or not. But we can make the journey to it easier or harsher depending on how much we drag our heels getting on with the job.

History is pretty unforgiving. Right now, the dynamic I describe is propelling us toward a difficult reckoning, which is very likely to manifest this spring as the political ineptitude of Trump, and the antipathy of his enemies, leaves us in a constitutional maelstrom at the very moment when the financial system comes unglued. Look for the debt ceiling debate and another Federal Reserve interest rate hike to set off the latter. There may be yet another converging layer of tribulation when we start blaming all our problems on Russia, China, Mexico, or some other patsy nation. It’s already obvious that we can depend on the Deep State to rev that up.

* * *

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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.

514 Responses to “Fumbling Towards Collapse”

  1. sprawlcapital February 20, 2017 at 9:34 am #

    I invite anyone wishing to see the effects of our “living arrangement with no future” to visit the central Iowa area. Here you will see the priceless resource that is Iowa farmland paved over by suburban sprawl.

    Here you will see thousands of oblivious commuters driving each morning to their cubical paper-pushing jobs in the financial, insurance, and real estate industry, totally unaware of how destructive their way of living is.

    Here you will also see what agriculture remains: totally dependent on fossil fuels and petrochemicals, producing as much cancer as nutrition. (Only a slight exaggeration.)

    • Greg Knepp February 20, 2017 at 10:05 am #

      Or, if central Iowa proves too far a piece to travel, try central Ohio, where Delaware County – just north of Columbus – has been transformed from a bountiful farm land to an upper-crust suburban sprawl of the most ghastly sort; all in a matter of a few short decades.
      Additionally, the rolling lands that were once an agricultural mecca* west of Baltimore would be another example of the terrible effects of suburban cancer.

      *forgive the cultural appropriation

      • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:44 am #

        “all in a matter of a few short decades.”

        That part awes me when I contemplate it but it is the natural consequence of uncontrolled population growth without limit. If a group of seventy or eighty year old American strangers congregate in a public place by chance what do they talk about? What is their mark of status?

        How many kids and grandkids they have and nothing else.

        • EvelynV February 20, 2017 at 10:56 am #

          Wrong. They talk about their health problems, the health problems of everyone they know, the health problems of people they don’t know.

          • miasmo February 20, 2017 at 12:44 pm #

            Oh, the irony! So many local economies now betting on “eds and meds” for their economic salvation. So lifestyles and a food system that produce endless cancer and other diseases are just part of the economic circle of “life.” I wonder what an economic system will look like when stimulating enough consumption to match ever-increasing production is no longer the problem, but rather producing enough to satisfy basic real needs.

        • thwack February 20, 2017 at 1:49 pm #

          I don’t know if this qualifies for “fake nooz” but I read/heard somewhere that when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost their subsidies… the health of the Cuban people improved because they were forced to lose weight from eating veggies from their gardens and things like soup…

          I lost 10 pounds when Obama walked into the white house and have been unable to gain it back and I didn’t really have 10 extra pounds to lose.

          (you find this out when people you haven’t seen in a while offer food to take with you without prompting)

          • NickS February 20, 2017 at 5:16 pm #

            You’ll find that here … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6xoKmnYq8

          • ffkling February 20, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

            Blaming your weight loss on the evil Obama….now that’s a new one…..but the good news is you have access to the internet and the leisure time to condemn Obama for losing ten pounds. Maybe you will get it back now that Trump promised to make America great again. Please keep us posted. p.s. best to get your licks in against Obama now since there is a new president occupying the White House.

          • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

            “I lost 10 pounds when Obama walked into the white house ”

            Thwack,
            You’re not alone, Obama scared the crap out of a lot of people…10 pounds is, however, impressive.

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 9:55 pm #

            Blaming your weight loss on the evil Obama….now that’s a new one…

            *******************************

            Calm down Francis.

            Im not blaming Obama for losing the weight; thats happened before. Im blaming that mofo for preventing me from gaining it back.

            Not only was he the president, he was the black president; how fucked up is that?

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 10:13 pm #

            You’re not alone, Obama scared the crap out of a lot of people…10 pounds is, however, impressive.

            *********************************************

            In his defense, my Obama weight loss is due largely to my nutritional choices. I choose quality over quantity; so Im usually eating smaller amounts of better food instead of bulking up on cheap starches and crapula which is easier to do.

            I also use smaller utensil; bowls, plates, spoons, forks… makes it seem like you ate more than you did because it takes longer.

            Also, not having/watching tv is huge because every other commercial is some kind of eating thing…

            30 seconds!

            God be with you.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 2:17 pm #

          And the generation after them would boast about how few kids they have. Superior? Hardly. Simply the Death Cult that has delivered the West to its enemies.

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 10:17 pm #

            I asked you before and you never answered.

            Im gonna ask you one more time;

            How many white children have YOU produced?

            If it ain’t more than me then you need to STFU

      • KarlDehrmann February 20, 2017 at 11:18 am #

        The far east side of Cleveland is no better. Most of the wooded areas I played in as a child have been paved over. Before I realized how truly and deeply screwed we are I used to get wistful, seeing my childhood haunts erased one by one. Now I don’t care about anything other than giving my children the best possible chance at survival.

        That’s the one liberating thing about this whole godawful mess, it can give you, like a recently sober alcoholic, a sense of clarity of purpose. The Children. Or rather, MY children. In a world where anything goes and nothing matters, in an irreligious world, in a world without mores or dignity, in a world without tribe, in a world where kith and kin are scattered or gone, our predicament can give singular purpose like nothing else: My children must survive.

        • sooty February 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

          And how many children do you have, KarlDehrmann? Because like it or not, the more kids you have, the worse the planet functions. Even living modestly, one kid in the US/Canada etc uses up more stuff and creates more waste than hundreds of Bangladeshi kids. Humans already use approx half of Net Primary Productivity–what photosynthesis can provide–which doesn’t leave much for the millions of other species.

          That “our children and our children’s children” argument leaves me cold. What about other species’ children? Personally, I never had children and neither did they. Not a second’s regret.

          BTW, I hope you don’t believe morals don’t exist in an “irreligious” world. Many mammals have been observed practicing moral, ethical, or altruistic behavior. And science has just started on that topic.

          • Greg Knepp February 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm #

            I’ve always believed that ostensibly healthy, educated people who feel they are doing the planet a favor by not reproducing are probably right…but not necessarily for the reasons they think.

            Karl and I are most likely irresponsible dolts for having dared to reproduce…Still, I wonder how Darwin would view all this.

          • KarlDehrmann February 20, 2017 at 5:19 pm #

            Two, a boy and a girl. And since the day I cut the first umbilical cord, “morals” religious or not became obsolete with respect to their survival. Being childless, you have the luxury of worrying about the net primary productivity share available to the other species. I can promise you that I am not being melodramatic by stating that becoming a father came with two profound realizations, first, that I’ll never love anything or anyone as much as I love my children, and second, that there is no crime I wouldn’t commit to keep them alive. Coupling those two realizations with knowledge of the long emergency focuses ones attention on preparedness in all its forms.

            I have no doubt many (most?) other parents feel the same about their own offspring, which is why I don’t worry about the other species. If their continued existence depends upon voluntary human celibacy or the hunger of children, they are already doomed.

          • ffkling February 20, 2017 at 7:11 pm #

            Well done, Sooty. My sentiments EXACTLY.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 2:36 pm #

          Exactly. The whole question when boiled down become stark and terrible: Whose going to do the dying? Sane people and decent people say, “Not my children.” Members of the Death Cult like Sooty say, “Yes your children. All White children.”

      • GeoffZ February 20, 2017 at 6:25 pm #

        Lyrics to 3rd stanza of ‘The Pretenders’ song called “My City Was Gone” – 1982:

        I went back to Ohio
        But my pretty countryside
        Had been paved down the middle
        By a government that had no pride
        The farms of Ohio
        Had been replaced by shopping malls
        And Muzak filled the air
        From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
        Said, ay, oh, way to go, Ohio

        • Brushonfour February 20, 2017 at 8:30 pm #

          “Paving” is not eternal. The pavement can be torn out either by men with tools, or a thousand years of inattention. http://depave.org/about/mission/

        • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 12:45 pm #

          Great song and so true of many places. Yes, you can pull up the pavement. How do you remove the heavy metals and other toxic crap? We are really clueless about how to clean up from our chemical fetish. Our nuclear fetish will be millions of time worse. CHEERS!

    • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:07 am #

      Sprawl, you need to change your perspective. That Suburban Sprawl you describe in Iowa, indicative of most everywhere in America, is a crop as well. It’s called Soylent and it will be served at Walmart Distribution Centers in the very near future. People will come from many miles away for their weekly allotment of Soylant, and if they get out of hand and impatient, there will be The Scoops. A lot of Science Fiction becomes Non-Fiction given enough time.

      JHK said: That we have to start down a different path if we intend to remain human?

      This is the crux of it. I think there are more than a few who don’t want to remain human and they’re in positions of power & influence. As we speak, they’re working on Teleportation. They’re envisioning and working on a world where we evolve the way they want human to evolve — to something beyond human.

      That evolution is being strategized and it’s not a democratic process. Heretofore, Nature predicated Man’s evolution and now it’s Man, who feels it has replaced Nature as Top Dog, who is predicating its own evolution and ultimately the evolution of all things it can touch and see and smell and taste.

      Will it all come tumbling down before the Technological Ark of Evolution is complete — an Ark built of Silicon versus Gopher Wood? We’ll see, or at least some of us may see it. Others, those in their mid 70’s, you’ll probably miss it, but consider that a blessing.

      • shotho February 20, 2017 at 10:15 am #

        The ark of evolution will not be complete until it’s complete and that will not depend on the will of man.

        • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:22 am #

          Hold me close my Tony Danza.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 1:40 pm #

          the rate we’re going, it’s more of an arc…

      • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:19 pm #

        The gratuitous capitalization is surely indicative of a mental disorder…

        • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 12:29 pm #

          Your unflagging chastisement of most every commentator and even the host on occasion without an intelligent, original thought or idea of your own is surely indicative of a Turd Blossom (who can argue that this excellent & appropriate characterization of this Troll shouldn’t be capitalized?).

          What’s the purpose of the three dots? Why can’t you just be one person, you, instead of twenty or more?

          • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 12:30 pm #

            But you’re right, I was crazy to capitalize tony danza. He really isn’t that great of a actor.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 1:30 pm #

            You’re right, I aspire to a blog blaming “them” and “they” with the occasional single comment…

      • SpeedyBB February 20, 2017 at 12:57 pm #

        Meanwhile all across Southeast Asia (where I have ended up as a casualty of ‘bad’ judgment and lost opportunities) there is a go-go middle class intent on moving up from the cartoony Korean sedan to a gleaming Japanese SUV (Toyota Alphard barges going for some $90,000, enough to purchase two or three medium-size houses).

        Spunky businessmen are wheeling and dealing for shares of palm oil companies and other commodities (such as coal, long-despised, price now popping as the sad reality of winter in China sets in).

        Meanwhile 80% of Sabah and Sarawak, two of the ecological treasures of the planet, have been converted into palm oil plantations. It will take quite a while for the mark of man to be repaired, long after he and the missus have happy-motored off to their oily Valhalla.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:43 pm #

          It’s truly ubiquitous. Even found in… get this, peanut butter. Peanut butter, a food naturally rich in oils has palm fruit oil and palm oil added as a stabilizer because gringos hating having to stir their PB. Almost any boxed processed food from crackers to cookies has palm oils.

    • newworld February 20, 2017 at 10:08 am #

      Ditto Illinois sprawl for 50+ miles from Michigan Ave.

    • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 10:47 am #

      There is something wrong with the food. Whenever I happen to see news reports from the heartland, focused on some disaster or other usually, I can’t help but notice how fat the young adults are. Young women, good hair, good teeth, not evidently suffering from the malnutrition that can cause overweight as well as underweight, but blown up like balloons.
      It simply cannot be, that they all decided to drink too much soda. There is something wrong with the food.

      • Hands4u February 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

        It’s the food and preparation.

      • SpeedyBB February 20, 2017 at 1:02 pm #

        This impression is particularly acute when deplaning at an international port of entry like San Francisco. Look around and the majority of locals bumping into one another look like Fernando Botero roly-polies. It’s a ‘new normal’ and no one comments on it (remember the observation that Obama couldn’t be elected because he was ‘too skinny’?)

        The latest generation of Asians are hot on the heels of this trend, particularly with a roaring dairy industry in nearly every country. Kids are softer-looking, heavier and broader and not in a good way. But the new normal makes parents proud.

        Meanwhile check out the rates of illnesses linked to obesity in a wealthy land like Japan. Kind of ignored but when exposed they are dismaying.

      • michael February 20, 2017 at 2:32 pm #

        (I) Grain is sold by weight and not by nutrient content.
        Breeding watery varieties weighing more per bushel, less protein.
        You eat but you don’t get what you need so you stay hungry.

        (II) For about 100 years now we have been in the thrall of growth psychology. It moves to the unconscious, to the general morphic field. Now behold its lovely fruit.

      • Brushonfour February 20, 2017 at 8:34 pm #

        It’s no mystery. “Processed food” is poison. It may be a mystery how men were so successful in building so much poison into the food!

    • Hands4u February 20, 2017 at 12:40 pm #

      We’re in Iowa looking at colleges for son #2 today. Past by a couple of Amish communities on the way maybe their way of life/culture should be on curriculum!

      • sooty February 20, 2017 at 12:48 pm #

        Check out Sterling College in NE Vermont! Sustainable agriculture and living is the ground of their liberal arts curriculum. The speaker for their prospective student open house? Bill McKibben, who’s a regular there. They graduate not only knowing stuff, but knowing how to do important stuff.

        I’m not affiliated with them, just live in the (gorgeous) area and have taken courses at their summer School for the New American Farmstead.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 2:41 pm #

          Bill is in favor of open borders. An hardcore Red Leftist, not a real Green. An Enemy.

          Check out the crime stats as to how much of Vermont’s crime is committed by the few Blacks that live there. That would be an education.

          • sooty February 21, 2017 at 10:02 am #

            I know him, and he’s not a “hardcore Red Leftist.”

          • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 3:46 pm #

            If he’s in favor of mass immigration, he has betrayed his ideals and the environment. As the Ed Abbey said, Unless we stop the Mexicans, nothing else we do matters.

      • Brushonfour February 20, 2017 at 8:39 pm #

        You notice the Amish are not fat !?

    • ffkling February 20, 2017 at 7:02 pm #

      Same in the exurbs north of Chicago, once declared by planners to be ground zero for wasteful sprawl. Everything is in huge and stupid proportions. Hell, even the width of two-lane roadways is so large that two commercial jets could land side by side (i.e. Route 14 or US Highway 14 between Crystal Lake and beyond Woodstock). Yes, the developers are in a frenzy, even now, to pave over as much of the world’s most productive farmland as quickly as possible.

  2. chipshot February 20, 2017 at 9:35 am #

    You’ve been beating the drum on this message for years, Jim.
    Think this column nails it better than any other.
    Don’t know about the timing, but every other observation is on the $$.
    This country is going to regret not listening to you.

    • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 10:49 am #

      I don’t know why he doesn’t contact the Trump administration directly. Everybody and his brother seems to have done so already.
      Why not put his two cents in directly? In this case, it is more like five cents.

      • michael February 20, 2017 at 2:38 pm #

        It’s futile.
        A civilization does not change course.
        The trajectory we are on has evolved over a very long span of time
        and almost no one knows what the decisive decisions were and when they were taken. nor is there any hope of a course correction.

  3. venuspluto67 February 20, 2017 at 9:35 am #

    Yeah, I wish I could go back in time and tell my twenty-one-year-old self who was full of passion and zeal to save the world, “Don’t bother, young man. You can’t save the world because the world doesn’t want to be saved.”

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:20 pm #

      Nah, the Earth wants to be saved, but man doesn’t. Man wants to get paid. Nothing more, nothing less.

      • pequiste February 20, 2017 at 12:46 pm #

        Monsieur Frankiti,

        You forgot to note also that (Wo)Man wants to get laid.

        Hence the 21st century’s human population bomb, that subject near and dear to your heart, that is near-ready to go boom.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 1:37 pm #

          Men get laid, more frequently and by higher quality specimens if they’re paid. For many men, getting laid is synonymous with getting paid. Many arguments have been made by many philosophers and psychological types that getting paid is only made a priority because it leads to getting laid. The lay drives the pay. But the apex, the people getting most paid, don’t care about getting laid, they want the pay, the most pay, but, again this is probably more to do with narcissism and simply a way to lay oneself.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 2:45 pm #

            Yes, the world will change when women stop selecting aggressive assholes as partners. In other words, never. The female rulers of Sweden have brought in a million rapists because their men were no longer up to the task.

            Sweden now ranks behind South Africa and Botswana as the Rape Capital of the Western World.

            Africa is where Africans are. You can’t have Western Civilization without Westerners – and that means Whites.

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 10:24 pm #

            Well then why did you bring Africans over here?

  4. peakfuture February 20, 2017 at 9:46 am #

    The world at large may not want to be saved, but helping those who are OK with the lower-tech future is still something worthwhile.

    Losing all but a fraction of the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors won’t be horrible, but we can still preserve some basic knowledge and technologies that are useful and not so harmful (see Dmitry Orlov’s Shrinking the Technosphere).

    Building communities of like-minded folks is still worth it.

    • shotho February 20, 2017 at 10:18 am #

      Absolutely!

    • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:35 am #

      You must be young for the young imagine that when the world falls apart somehow they will make it through to the other side. Myself, I’m too old to survive off tree bark and bugs waiting for the chaos to subside enough for the magical future where everyone finally ‘gets it’ to arrive.

      The future where everyone ‘gets it’ will not be.

      • peakfuture February 20, 2017 at 10:52 am #

        My take is that whether any one particular person survives isn’t so important. Some will make it. If it isn’t me, oh well. Not exactly thrilled with that prospect, but doing something useful is better than ignoring reality, or being what Dmitry Orlov calls a ‘robopath’.

        • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 11:35 am #

          I’m saying that when shit hits the fan ‘basic knowledge and technologies that are useful and not so harmful’ won’t be on anybodies mind.’ All people will care about is getting through the day. How they do it they won’t care about at all.

          Technologies that are useful and not so harmful will not be adopted at the last minute. The opportunity to have adopted them has come and gone. Meaningful change might have been accomplished in more placid times but Trump is making sure none of that will ever happen.

          Now it is drill baby drill and drill like there is no tomorrow, because that is now actually the truth.

          Social entropy I’m sorry to say will dash your wishes in a thousand shards of broken dreams.

          I wish this were not so.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 2:48 pm #

            Obama was no better – he was simply against America, supporting the growth of industry elsewhere. Classic Cloward-Piven.

            He did apparently tell some in the Third World that they couldn’t become like us a few times. They didn’t like that.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:33 pm #

          Humanity isn’t the end, in fact, there is no “end”. Extinct bilaterians didn’t lie awake at night fretting over the future of their specific species. They were just a knot in a moment of rope on ole Buckminster’s slipknot. It doesn’t hinge on humanity… that’s vanity speaking.

    • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 10:56 am #

      One of the problems I see with the lower technology future, is that after the financial crash, I saw people who were trying to make do with less, have their homes seized by the local governments. You can scrimp and save in the way our parents or grandparents did, but the mayors and police chiefs and school superintendents and the connected crony purveyors of sprawl have your property hostage, and they require a king’s ransom in order for them to continue to live the lives of luxury they’ve become accustomed to, at our expense.

      • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 11:46 am #

        Property taxes in my area are climbing at a stratospheric rate and any surplus that people need to accomplish anything like self-sufficiency vanishes every day. Your point is valid and true. The time of the ‘red queen’ is upon us. Running faster and faster to stay in the same place leaves no time to contemplate our predicament and they will have their kings ransom. Taxes will be paid until they can’t.

        • aibohphobia February 20, 2017 at 4:58 pm #

          Interesting. Taxes may be going away already–
          I have heard that there are people starting to farm the abandoned neighborhoods of Detroit. You can buy a property cheaply from the Govt, but if there are already squatters using it, they will kill you if you try to take it away. Buying the land there is thus not a practical way to become a new urban farmer.
          SO…
          The way to farm in Detroit is to make a deal with the local warband and just be a squatter farmer like the rest. Bring needed skills and you will be welcome. As JM Greer wrote elsewhere, “If you hand a mug of beer to each of the visiting warband and tell them, ‘I can make as much more of this as you want, so long as I get hops and barley,’ then you have made a bunch of new friends.
          If you want to live there, you have to find a warband warlord and get under his or her protection.

          Tax payments to government are thus optional in Detroit, as is formal land ownership.

          • LLPete February 20, 2017 at 7:05 pm #

            Interesting indeed!

        • ffkling February 20, 2017 at 7:23 pm #

          Try Chicago exurban McHenry County where a 1,800 SQ. ft. home pays on average $9,800 in annual property taxes. Why? Corruption on a massive scale. The Republicans control every elected office. There are no checks and balances. It matters not if a public official is involved in a scandal so long as your name is followed by (R).

      • SpeedyBB February 20, 2017 at 3:13 pm #

        Yes, this reminds me of the ‘fly-in-ointment’ objection to the fond scenario of the ultra-rich zooming off to their [well-stocked] tropical island paradise boltholes. They will all need a support staff of cooks, cleaners, nannies and well-armed guards to keep it going and fend off hungry, desperate invader probes.

        But in fact said loyal servant class also have their own families in need, and unlike the Middle Ages are not dumb or beaten-down enough not to come to the clear conclusion that there is no point in continuing to support the grand but helpless slugs they are working for.

        Weapons get turned around, master gets popped and the [pitiful remaining] ‘wealth’ gets spread about.

        .0001%ers are trapped by their own lifestyles.

      • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:07 pm #

        Spot on. If I read about one more vet or retired person getting screwed into homelessness over a tax bill……

  5. SunnyJohn45 February 20, 2017 at 9:48 am #

    Jim,

    Your response to Krugman’s column: “Written like a true academic economist– that is, a fantasist. Mr. Krugman actually doesn’t know the reason for our no-growth predicament, namely, the crashing energy return on investment of our oil supply. All his labor metrics mean nothing in relation to our essential energy quandary.”

    Apparently his response to you: “The attack of so little substance from a man of your stature is pretty discouraging and quite frankly disgusting. Stick to writing doomsday material. It is something you know a lot about. Leave macro economic analysis to the schooled and trained.”

    Care to comment?

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    • James Howard Kunstler February 20, 2017 at 10:10 am #

      I did not return to the Times comment section to see any responses. Are you saying Krugman responded personally? Or are you just hypothesizing? Anyway, I stick by what I wrote about his cluelessness re: the true cause of our “growth” deficit.

      • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:21 am #

        If it was Krugman (he called himself Paul), then he gave you a compliment by stating emphatically “a man of your stature…” No one has ever said anything as endearing as that to me ever, and if they ever did, I think I would spit in their face.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:11 pm #

          Why would you spit in their face?

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:46 pm #

            The meds.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 4:12 pm #

            Why not?

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 5:29 pm #

            That’s crazy, Cold.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:26 pm #

            Maybe so, but you can’t deny these are crazy times. But then again, all times are kinda crazy. I’m watching The Heavy Water War right now on Netflix and that was a crazy time in its own right.

      • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:15 pm #

        It seems the more math and stat courses one masters on the way to a Ph.D in Econ the dumber one gets. Mr. Kunstler have you tried to get Joseph Stieglitz who wrote the book “THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN IT” on your podcast? One of your best Monday posts. Thanks.

    • BC_EE February 20, 2017 at 10:16 am #

      And bleeding was considered the effective treatment by the schooled and the trained.

      If macro economics had some semblance of reality to the actual physics of this planet it may have some credibility. As an Engineer I studied economics as a minor (and did quite well only because I would put my brain in Disney Land mode for the classes). I think most engineers’ experience would be summed up with WTF!?

      Where’s the Entropy? The conservation of energy? Second order differential formulae pretending to look like a science based upon mostly made up fundamental laws.

      Again Krugman et al, WTF?

      And the Nobel Prize for economics isn’t really part of the Nobel Prize foundation. That too is made up.

      • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:29 am #

        I feel your pain. I too am an engineer and I twitch along with you every time an economist mentions math. I agree with your WTF assessment. It is hell to be an engineer and have to endure the never-never land assumptions of economists and politicians.

        • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 11:37 am #

          Okay, that was weird. I was trying to post a reply to K-Dog, when I got kicked off the site and couldn’t get back on.
          The weird part is, my comment was a quote from a book I read about Deep State surveillance.
          In the book, a man asks a woman whether she believes he could be crazy without knowing it, and she replies that he is sane, “as much as any intelligent person can remain sane in a world largely governed and determined by far less intelligent minds”.
          From I Am No One by Patrick Flanery.
          I had written it down to share with someone, and I keep finding places where it fits.

          • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 3:50 pm #

            I was bumped off too but we don’t know the cause. When deep state surveillance crosses the line to become deep state action they intend to make you doubt your sanity. From the deep state’s point of view you are an enemy and they are at war with you. Causing you to doubt your sanity and second guess your reality is exactly what they want to have happen and they will encourage it by any electronic means they can to maintain their deceptions. The more agitated they can make a person the more their target will seem crazy to everyone else and that is mission accomplished to them.

            I’ll check out that book.

      • Jeremy February 20, 2017 at 12:16 pm #

        Not WTF.

        WTE – Where’s The Entropy

      • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:14 pm #

        Well with Krugs there is always the question of motive and viewpoint. Does he really identify as an American? For example, he has said that you can’t have open borders and a welfare state. Quite true. But he is also in favor of open borders I believe. So as you said, Wtf?

        He knows what’s good for a country, he simply doesn’t want it for America. Maybe his allegiance is elsewhere?

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 11:43 am #

      ” Leave macro economic analysis to the schooled and trained.””

      Schooled and trained? Yeah, how’s that working out?

      Macro Economics is not a science, but an art form.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 11:54 am #

      Disgusting? Seriously?
      Schooled and trained AKA the theorists AKA never-practicioners.

    • cbeard February 20, 2017 at 12:55 pm #

      All of the people who espouse and believe macro economic bullshit are blithering idiots. They act as if economics is a force of nature such as weather, geological phenomena as in earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.. Money, finance, economics in general are man made. They are not forces of nature. If the overpopulation of this planet is not addressed, nothing else matters. Our politicians will form a committee to study the problems and religious leaders will tell everyone to pray for solutions but no one will actually do a goddamn thing but talk about it.

      • TiredOfTheTreadmill February 20, 2017 at 10:58 pm #

        I share your critique of economic theory. It’s bad enough to hear it from economists and politicians. However, when I hear some true believing libertarian/anarcho-capitalist talking about “natural, free markets” as though markets are like a forest, or a free flowing river, I put them in the same category as any other babbling religious lunatic.

        • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:44 pm #

          Amen to that

  6. newworld February 20, 2017 at 10:06 am #

    Well if your average lumpen prole living in the geographical area known as the USA had the carbon use profile of a Haitian there would be plenty leftover for the 1%.

    And for Trump’s supposed ineptitude, hah dream on sir. He is putting the D party’s constituencies in a life boat with no provisions, cannibalism will ensue.

    • SteveO February 20, 2017 at 10:41 am #

      He also has the neocons in the Senate (both flavors) in defense mode, and hopefully on the way out. He has lie’n Ryan standing there nodding stupidly in agreement about a larger infrastructure boondoggle than the one Obama proposed and he (Ryan) stomped on.

      I’m going to have to stock up on pop-corn before the food delivery system collapses. Never a dull moment in Trumpland.

  7. shotho February 20, 2017 at 10:11 am #

    Perhaps the best we can hope from Trump is that he will put a brake on the militarists and that would be something that Clinton would not have done. It would also be nice if he responded to the upcoming financial debacle with plans to feed and house a desperate population.
    But, let me caution you with humility, Mr. K,, not to put too fine a point on it by giving us timelines. Yes, it could begin to seriously unravel at any hour now, but it could also take more years. Don’t underestimate the power of central banks; they’ve done a pretty good job of it for 8 1/2 years now.

    • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:15 am #

      This is well beyond a Trump I or a Clinton II or an Obama I or a Bush II or a Clinton I or a Bush I or…….you get the point, I hope.

      It’s The System, dammit. The faces change (or do they really?), but the System remains.

    • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:21 am #

      And the tighter the string is stretched the louder the twang will be when it rips apart.

    • Ken Hall February 20, 2017 at 11:22 am #

      “Perhaps the best we can hope from Trump is that he will put a brake on the militarists”
      Perhaps you have failed to notice that one of his incessant mantras is to build up the US Military so as to deliver “peace through power”.

      • Learner February 21, 2017 at 11:21 am #

        Making the decision to cease causing failed states is not the same as being strong enough as a military power to consider carefully before annoying.

    • abbybwood February 20, 2017 at 12:48 pm #

      If Trump wanted to “put a brake on the militarists” he never would have appointed “Mad Dog” Mattis to head The Pentagon.

      Mattis asserts that “Iran is not really a nation-state but instead a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.”

      Mattis also has stated that “Iran is not an enemy of ISIS” and that “I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief,” this flies in the face of fundamental realities about both ISIS and Iran and how the latter is combating the former, especially in Iraq.

      Now that Trump has publicly cozied up to Netanyahu in The White House and clearly has no conscience related to the plight of the Palestinians, I see Bibi calling the Middle East shots in the future.

      It looks like a war with Iran and Russia (as Iran’s ally) is coming and quickly.

      Never mind the energy quagmire. Regardless of the future “World Made By Hand” here in the U.S., we can all be guaranteed that the MIC will have all the energy it needs to pursue “U.S. global military hegemony” while chaos prevails in “the homeland”.

    • Learner February 21, 2017 at 11:14 am #

      shotho, you said “…the best we can hope from Trump is that he will put a brake on the militarists and that would be something that Clinton would not have done.” That is the most I hope and for that reason alone am glad Clinton is not in the White House.

      Your second cautionary point is also appreciated. Although it feels as though events are coming to a head no one knows when that will be. Alternatively does it matter? We are living through the unfolding right now and modifying our lifestyles to mitigate the greater destruction is of more importance than the exact timeline.

  8. K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:16 am #

    Just like it has always been. Trump will not cause collapse. He just happens to be the idiot in chief who will be holding the bag when shit hits the fan. Trump is not unique despite his personal belief. He is like most everyone else who thinks the machinery of modern life runs on perpetual motion and not a one time endowment of fossil fuels. Perhaps had we been descended from winged creatures instead of tree swinging simians with ancestors who had migrated south every year, human minds might be capable of contemplating that the future of tomorrow does not have to look like yesterday’s past.

    Our host rants frequently about the need for an education system which emphasizes the three R’s but he concentrates on the first two and neglects the third. The third being ‘rithmatic’ he never mentions but perhaps had our education system considered ‘rithmatic’ more seriously or even seriously at all we might have a society capable of contemplating reality instead of spending the days of their lives thinking we live in a road runner cartoon where the dead always come back to life and bright colors are everywhere.

    I see venuspluto67 just wrote in a comment above, “You can’t save the world because the world doesn’t want to be saved.” That is true but the problem is actually more serious. We live in a world that does not even know it has to be saved. Evidence for this is the widespread belief that immigrants are good for the rest of us and there is always room for more. That would be surprising but few people know about the Georgia Guidestones which carry the inscription. “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

    Instead America, like a spoiled child who can’t understand being up past our bedtime is not a good thing, screams bring us your consumers and polluters so they too can become useless eaters. Useless eaters who will contribute nothing but an increase in atmospheric CO2 and rising prices for the rest of us. The more the merrier for we know no limits for we knew not reading writing or arithmetic.

    Trump is only the idiot in chief and he is an idiot among the millions of others who elected him instead of demanding a better choice.

    • shotho February 20, 2017 at 10:25 am #

      Right, so let’s get about killing all of the “useless” eaters so that, we, the useful eaters will have more to eat.

      • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:46 am #

        I’m suggesting no such thing.

    • Ken Hall February 20, 2017 at 11:26 am #

      ” Trump will not cause collapse.”

      On the other hand he may damn well increase the rate of onset.

    • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:29 am #

      Instead America, screams bring us your consumers and polluters so they too can become useless eaters.

      The democrats and neo cohens do do this.
      I dont call them all of America.

      Sweden took in 164,000 repugees last year. Do even 1000
      of them now hold jobs? Hmmm.

      • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:32 am #

        That would be surprising but few people know about the Georgia Guidestones which carry the inscription. “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”

        = Forced depopulation by turning White countries into non White.
        Like the Islands and Brazil presently are.
        While Israel has its wall and gets money from White countries.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:20 pm #

          Yes, flesh is grass and can disappear quickly. As long as the Nations are taken out, the rest is gravy. Now if you take out a needle and pop the balloon, you will be seen and blamed. But if trying to be helpful, you put too much air in and it pops, then you get the same result but without the blame.

        • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:25 pm #

          In 1491 was this a WHITE country? Race is not the problem. We need to build on science without business and religion shouting it down. Face it technology is not the problem. Tech controlled by $ is the problem. We need to use it before the lights go out.

      • thwack February 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm #

        Sweden took in 164,000 repugees last year. Do even 1000
        of them now hold jobs? Hmmm.

        ********************************************

        Yes.

        Their job is to provide demand for all the things the Swedish ownership class owns.

        If you are a Swedish apartment building owner, you now have 164,000 new people in need of housing.

        Refugees need everything because they show up with NOTHING but the clothes on their backs; how great is that if you own everything?

        • JimInFlorida February 20, 2017 at 8:50 pm #

          Their job (3rd World animals) is to pollute the White Living Space of Sweden and pollute as many White women as possible.

          Third Worlders and Muslims bring NO value whatsoever to Sweden.. They don’t bring labor value. They don’t make anything of value. They don’t bring cultural value. Their ability to buy anything must come by stealing wealth from the legitimate White Nordic population.

          Third Worlders DO bring parasitic demands and there are no shortage of Jew lawyers, cucks, quislings, Catholic social workers, and Washington-based NGO’s to help these parasites get their share of the swag. Benefits that should go ONLY to the Whites who actually belong in Sweden.

          As for wondering why Nordic Men haven’t killed their ruling class, burned down the mosques, rounded up and repatriated the invaders?

          For the same reason the Cuck’d American men haven’t done the same. We’d have to fight a multi-front civil war; including fighting our own militarized Police State that exists to protect the invaders. All while being stabbed in the back by 3rd wave feminists and a weaponized gynocentric media. ZOG Amerika is so rotten that it’s a real dilemma to decide whether it’s worth saving or not. Not even President Trump can save a tree that’s already dead, even though it’s still standing.

          Who is ultimately driving this global miscegenation against White countries? Jews. This is NOT an inflammatory and unsubstantiated frothing at the mouth. Do your homework and look up the individuals and NGO’s involved. Mostly Jews and a few Catholic social service NGO’s.

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 11:51 am #

      “Trump is only the idiot in chief and he is an idiot among the millions of others who elected him instead of demanding a better choice.”

      Dog,
      With all respect;

      Shit in one paw,
      Demand a better choice with the other….

      Which will fill up first?

      Millions of us wanted the Old Socialist…what choice did we get? How shall we demand otherwise?

    • Lisa February 20, 2017 at 2:08 pm #

      “Trump is only the idiot in chief and he is an idiot among the millions of others who elected him instead of demanding a better choice.”

      What better choice? Where did you see it?

  9. ozone February 20, 2017 at 10:22 am #

    SunnyJohn,
    What JHK would or would not say/write in response to that, I can’t imagine. I also can’t imagine why this particular segment of today’s missive would require anything but a “copy-and-paste” to get the point across:

    “…Krugman attempts to account for the no-growth economy by marshaling the stock-in-trade legerdemain of academic economics: productivity, demographics, and labor metrics. Krugman actually knows zip about what afflicts us in the present disposition of things, namely the falling energy-return-on-energy-investment in the oil industry, which is approaching the point where the immense activity of getting oil out of the ground won’t be worth the cost and trouble of doing it. And since most of the things we do and produce in this economy are based on cheap oil — with no reality-based prospect of replacing it with so-called “renewables” or as yet undiscovered energy rescue remedies — we can’t generate enough wealth to maintain anything close to our assumed standard of living. We can’t even generate enough wealth to pay the interest on the debt we’ve racked up in order to hide our growing energy predicament. And that, in a nutshell, is what will blow up the financial system. And when that department of the economy goes, the rest will follow.” — JHK

    I think what you’re looking for is some kind of hackles-raised emotional retort, but this slice certainly states JHK’s opinion of Krugman’s “learned analysis” in as succinct a manner as possible.

    Kunstler, Greer and Orlov have all stopped and read the writing on the wall and calmly transmitted its message to us for our consideration and helpful preparation. Meanwhile, many, many other pundits rush by the same wall with their faces averted, carefully studying their thumb-activated devices and deep-state-infested newspapers of record. Reality is not interested in our wrong-headed interpretations of it.

    • SunnyJohn45 February 20, 2017 at 10:32 am #

      ozone,

      It didn’t raise my emotional hackles and I didn’t expect it to raise Jim’s. I was amused by Krugman’s last sentence though.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:23 pm #

      But their politics and vision are very different, are they not? The Knowledge is one thing and what you do with it quite another. Mr Kunstler wants the Old America. Greer wants an Asian-Hispanic Civilization on the West Coast and God knows what else. (you tell me). And I don’t know what Orlov wants.

  10. erik February 20, 2017 at 10:23 am #

    So, the economy is going to collapse, like Teton Dam, in just a few months?
    JHK has been saying this for the decade or more i’ve been reading his blog, and like predictions of the rapture, the deadline for collapse is always receding into the future.
    It’d be better not to be too time specific about this…

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    • Bro Jobe February 20, 2017 at 10:33 am #

      JHK just underestimated the power of illusion. Had Bush and his Fed not acted so forcefully, it would have been Mad Max after the 08 Crash. We are lucky to have survived that.

      Next time? I don’t know. Do you?

      • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 10:51 am #

        Bush packed up his bags and headed for the ranch in 08. The only forcefulness that was shown was the Feds willingness to drop helicopter money on the problem so it would come back later. What world do you think you are living in? Not this one that is for sure.

        • capt spaulding February 20, 2017 at 12:01 pm #

          Does Bush still have that ranch? I thought he only bought it for photo ops of him cutting brush. If he has it, I wonder if he still goes out & cuts brush, or if he just has the secret service do it?

          • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 12:35 pm #

            No, he’s been done with ranching for quite some time. He’s in to painting now and he is quite the artist, let me tell you.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:31 pm #

            To his credit, he didn’t want to join Skull & Bones – his father made him. Obviously he became possessed during those evil initiation ceremonies. But much of the time he remains the simple man of simple pleasure he always was. He likes to run and work with his hands. He was like the French King who liked to fix clocks – out of place.

          • daveed February 20, 2017 at 10:33 pm #

            Bush has a pretty sweet deal. Lives somewhere in Texas, gets up in the morning, goes for a jog with his Secret Service cohort. He’s given them all cool nicknames. Depending on his mood, he may paint for a couple of hours or maybe he’ll hang out with some old buddies. When Bandar Bush comes by they might pound a six-pack of O’Douls and play Crazy Eights or ping pong and reminisce about the good old Shock and Awe days. He’d ask Cheney over but, after seeing him at the Inauguration, in that big, dumb-ass cowboy hat…thought better of it. Sometimes George will pop into the Bush Library for a few hours, check on the progress of the Petroleum Pointillism exhibit that’s under construction. Later, after dinner, it’s into his jammies for TV and bedtime. Sometimes, just before dropping off, he has this goldarned dream, or something. Like, a steady stream of spirit beings marching from horizon to horizon, lookin’ right at him. It’s frickin’ annoying!

      • SpeedyBB February 20, 2017 at 5:13 pm #

        You say ‘forcefully’. Fair enough. I would also echo ‘forcibly’. Is that not what we in the west used to jeer at as the ‘command economy’?

        With inevitably the same catastrophic outcome: ‘You break it – you buy it’.

    • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:32 pm #

      I will bet on the collapse of our oil based economy before the so called RAPTURE or is it Rupture arrives. It’s going to happen we just are not wired to understand the numbers or timeline involved. Our Sciences have moved faster than our moral development. See you at the party all of us are invited. Attendance is mandatory.

  11. izzy February 20, 2017 at 10:31 am #

    Well, your take on our economic/financial predicament is certainly more reality-based than Krugman’s. But there’s an even bigger and already more dire catastrophe wrapped around it with the rapidly unraveling climate/environment. It’s not just oil that is on the way out, but much of our livable habitat as well. “Clusterfuck” barely begins to describe the future we’re headed into.

    • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:35 pm #

      Well said. Peak Everything. Except people, chemical and nuclear waste piles.

  12. Bro Jobe February 20, 2017 at 10:31 am #

    Very savvy realtor I know put it well: “If you want to buy a house to live in or for an investment, wait.”

    She said the bubble has inflated again. Soon it will pop and houses for investment will be cheap again. We also have all these new mortgage companies repeating the pre-2008 mistakes because they are not banks and not bound by any post-2008 regulations.

    Hers was not a bad bit of advice for the first part of a long-term Slide. Many with jobs won’t get mortgages, and they’ll be happy to rent from Mr. Scrooge.

    I opined that we’d have a Black Christmas. I think the next Crash will happen this year, given the political climate, overvalued stock-market, and go-go housing market.

    • SteveO February 20, 2017 at 10:57 am #

      I got an email from one of the banking chains in my area offering a seminar about how to flip houses. Last time I saw that kind of crap was in 2005. I can’t think of a better sign they actually manged to start another housing bubble.

      When the new lack of regulation kicks in, it will be 2004-2005 on overdrive. They will be making million dollar loans to Uber drivers.

    • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 11:48 am #

      Mass immigration is a factor in real estate bubbles. They import buyers, to get the prices up.

      • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 1:00 pm #

        On you tube, I saw a report from Vancouver.
        Chinese buying but leaving empty or renting those over priced homes.
        Things are changing, but not for the better.

        • aibohphobia February 20, 2017 at 5:19 pm #

          I am writing this in Vancouver now. Its true that there are skyrise condo buildings in MetroTown with Chinese owners who have bought them mostly to have a bolt-hole if the Chinese government gets too oppressive. British Columbia now charges an extra 15% tax on all real-estate transactions that involve non-Canadians. It has slowed down the foreign purchases somewhat. But if you visit Vancouver, the first signs you see after clearing customs at the airport here are 6 x 12-foot illuminated signs in Chinese (with English subtitles–I guess they forgot the French) inviting you to contact a Chinese-speaking realtor, and advertising a Chinese bank in which to deposit your loot. Its big business here.

  13. Lawfish February 20, 2017 at 10:37 am #

    “By the way, the Ole Maestro, Alan Greenspan, also chimed in on the “productivity” question last week to equally specious effect in this Business Insider article.”

    I caught a brief interview with that charlatain last week. He was asked whether he felt he was responsible for the housing bubble. He responded that he did not, and that those who think so are simply not educated or intelligent enough to understand why he does not think so. What a useless prick!

    • thwack February 20, 2017 at 11:23 am #

      “He responded that he did not, and that those who think so are simply not educated or intelligent enough to understand why he does not think so.”

      *********************************************

      Is that the same thing as saying you need a high IQ to detect another person with a high IQ?

  14. Dumbedup February 20, 2017 at 10:37 am #

    Another issue that will further complicate things is the physical unfitness of most Americans. Working and surviving in a “World Made by Hand” will require manual labor and more physical exertion than most of obese America can manage. Medical care by a doctor in a hospital will be reserved for a privileged few. The elderly, the sick, and the weak spirited will not survive long. Mother nature is not without her own recourse and she will reclaim what is hers from those who cannot manage. Wild animals (Coyotes and Wolves) will make maintaining livestock difficult if not impossible. In short, most of the human race will simply starve or die of illness because of limited healthcare.

    But it is the Republicans who will take us down this path, and it is the Republicans who will shrug their shoulders and proclaim that government and government services cannot be the answer because we have to cut taxes for their wealthy donors. But it will be answer for those who have been made rich by an unregulated economy and a downsized government. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will be safely ensconced while they hand out edict after edict dismantling the social safety net until the final act.

    Welcome to America’s version of austerity.

    • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:21 am #

      Working and surviving in a “World Made by Hand” will require manual labor —

      The future looks like one of Depopulation [by design, not Peak OIl]
      and robotics.
      Robotics makes workers unnecessary.
      Think of earth as a lush island, owned by a few.
      Why would invaders and useless eaters be tolerated?

      • My Point of View February 20, 2017 at 3:36 pm #

        Robotics and technology have driven down job numbers in the oil and gas business, as noted in this article on Texas’ Permian Basin:
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/energy-environment/oil-jobs-technology.html

        Three years ago they needed oil at $60/bbl to break even but now need only $35/bbl to break even, thus pushing the day of reckoning further out on the calendar.

        The drive to technology was driven in part by our Saudi pals who pumped furiously to keep market share, even as it drove prices down to $28/bbl. The Saudis used up a lot of their cash reserves and put a lot of American oil workers on furlough. A lot of those people who left the boom and bust oil biz for steadier work won’t be back and for others some of their oil jobs were vaporized by new technologies.

        Glad I had a vasectomy in 1976 and don’t have kids or grandkids to witness being abused in a global economy run by concentrated wealth that owns more and more of everything, especially our governments where all virtue is for sale.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:36 pm #

      You are still stuck in the duality of the party system. Most here have transcended that. The same people fund both. They are best understood as different marketing strategies to different populations.

      It’s like business: there’s such a thing as brand loyalty. One Corporations takes over two tooth paste companies. He keeps both brands going. Why not? Why lose customers? He might even move both to the same manufacturing plant and make them identical – even if they weren’t before. Most won’t notice.

  15. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 10:42 am #

    US First Lady reads to the audience the “Lord’s Prayer” and the great mass of the people is praying with her, and then – stormy jubilation.

    As if in the midst of the raging insane world with pussies on the heads and statues of Baphomet Satan in Christian churches finally gathered the Great European Christian Armies and publicly announced to the world their plans to fight.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOz3yD-wtwg

    Straight from the great European past. Probably that’s how were held solemn assemblies of honorable citizens in the times of St. Louis and Philip Augustus.

    Simply magical

    I think it’s time for the Russian patriotic community to scrap their favorite stories about the rotten West, and especially America. And engage already in our own dire problems on the part of the inner, spiritual decay, without wasting time and effort on the nonsensical gibberish…

    What we saw at this meeting is truly epic. I want it to be in Russia in another way – something like that, but still a little bit in a different style, after all, we are monarchists, and orthodox, not WASPs.

    But now I’m wildly jealous of white American Christians and their supporters.

    Because what we see is, of course, the first class of civilization. Highest. It is the only one on the planet, we obviously still fall short.

    Economy or weapons are secondary.

    We are lagging behind in our contemporary cultural condition, that’s where we have full decline as a result of separation from our own cultural roots – the main sad result of the XX century for the Russians.

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  16. peakfuture February 20, 2017 at 10:46 am #

    Regardless of the timeline, it is still a good idea to get one’s head around the idea that Things Fall Apart. That’s the thing that amazes more than a few engineer folks. Who thought you could go this far, for this long, without a correction? It as if Wile E. Coyote went off the cliff, and instead of having a second or two before realizing that he was in mid-air, he walked around for a few minutes (or hours!) and *then* realized his predicament.

    Chris Martenson also has brought this up; things may not fall apart/decline on a particular schedule, but reducing one’s use of a car, starting a garden, getting in shape by walking/biking more, building community, etc. are all good things in and of themselves.

    The P/E ratios are out of whack again, oh well.

    • K-Dog February 20, 2017 at 11:19 am #

      “Reducing one’s use of a car, starting a garden, getting in shape by walking/biking more, building community, etc. are all good things in and of themselves.

      True but others are more than willing to burn the gas you don’t so while these aspirations are noble, they won’t prevent or even delay collapse. Almost everyone would have to feel and act like you do and take these principles to heart to make any difference. And that is not going to happen.

      • peakfuture February 20, 2017 at 11:40 am #

        Oh, of course those things won’t delay it or stop it; it is just that the folks who are doing this stuff just might have a better chance of riding things out, or perhaps adapting a bit more easily.

      • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:38 pm #

        That’s why we need an Elite: to make people do the good things they won’t do on their own.

        Our current Elite is evil. On that we agree. We need an Elite that is pro-coal. Break out dependence on oil.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 11:45 am #

      The host of this blog has probably used the word “entropy” as much or more so than his other favorite word “miasma”.

      Entropy just doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t occur randomly over time. It is. Humans can build all the artificial societal worlds and synthetic virtual dimensions that they care to. Problem is, they’re all wrapped inside a very real one.

      • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 12:04 pm #

        “Entropy just doesn’t happen.”

        Frank,
        Sorry, but it does…in fact, it is the natural order of all things.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:35 pm #

          It doesn’t happen. It is… perhaps you should read more clearly.

        • michael February 20, 2017 at 2:51 pm #

          But we are receiving literally astronomical energy input,
          more than enough to keep the entropy at bay.
          We merely fail to do it.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:41 pm #

            Exactly. Likewise inwardly: God is constantly renewing our spirits if we could just tune in. The Wind is blowing, but we must put up the sail.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:51 pm #

            Yes a giant glowing orb literally over our heads like an idea bulb sits waiting to be harnessed. Roofs, roads, parking lots, all waiting to absorb instead of emit. Our structures. Wasteful structures all.

      • seawolf77 February 20, 2017 at 12:08 pm #

        It is the measure of disorder in a system. Entropy does indeed just happen.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:37 pm #

          No, it doesn’t just happen. It is omnipresent. It is.

          • seawolf77 February 20, 2017 at 12:41 pm #

            Oh for fuck sake, you could nit pick a gnat’s asshole.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:45 pm #

            Or you could simply read, but no, let me stoop down to help…

          • michael February 20, 2017 at 2:55 pm #

            No. Globally it is increasing for long periods of time.
            But then there are periods where it decreases again.
            In fact the system as a whole returns arbitrarily closely to any previous state.
            Glass shards will reassemble themselves into glasses,
            You yourselve will rise from the dead, the dinosaurs reappear,…

            The problem is: by the time this is projected to happen the
            theory predicting it will no longer be believed to be valid.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:48 pm #

            Yes, the big crunch…

        • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 1:35 pm #

          Frank,
          Re-read your original post…my apologies.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 1:54 pm #

            no need to apologize, i’m the pr*ck, always am. Anyway, I have a difficult time with people still clinging to the belief that things have to get better with time. Have to improve. It’s the secular replacement to religion… humanism, the human covenant… speciesism… man will fix, time heals, time improves. It’s a coward’s path, unrealistic expectations line the way. Landmarks never met, never seen. People set themselves up for failure. Hoping for the imaginary. Some imaginary planet where humans cease to be human and the weather never changes. Everyone wants some ideal. They think they deserve some ideal. It’s the programming. Man’s peace lies in the labor, not the result. The sublimation, the hammering and buzzing and marching makes an ear deaf to ennui. You see all this here? Arguing, postulating? It’s just more buzzing.

      • FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 1:50 pm #

        Frank is absolutely right: Entropy is always there – it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

        I just think that since every Action has a counter-Action, there is a Force which always counters the Entropy, it just didn’t make it into the physics textbooks.

        Into the Bible, perhaps?

    • Ken Hall February 20, 2017 at 11:48 am #

      “Things Fall Apart. That’s the thing that amazes more than a few engineer folks.”

      Having possessed a BS in engineering for nigh onto 50 years (1968) I find your comment specious. Capitalism requires incessant selling to increase the wealth of the few. Engineers are dissuaded from designing long lived devices for mass production, by purse holders, because of the adverse effects they have on replenishment purchases.

      • peakfuture February 20, 2017 at 12:03 pm #

        Got my engineering degree as well; not saying that *all* engineers get it, but at least were at *least* schooled in the reality of “you can’t get something for nothing!”

        At lot of engineers have bought into the idea of Progress, yes. And are dissuaded from building long lived things. And yeah, training in the sciences and/or engineering still doesn’t fix things.

        We all live in a world of illusion, to varying degrees. This is why the Flatland argument over at Decline Of The Empire is of interest. No matter how much training you get, you still have a monkey mind.

        http://peakwatch.typepad.com/decline_of_the_empire/

    • Beryl of Oyl February 20, 2017 at 11:52 am #

      I saw the Schenectady police department on the news, urging people not to try to access the new casino on foot, during its opening days.
      That was a metaphor for something, I just don’t know what.

      • thwack February 20, 2017 at 11:59 am #

        LOL

      • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm #

        “That was a metaphor for something, I just don’t know what.”

        To protect and serve….
        Motto of some profession…just don’t know which….

        • thwack February 20, 2017 at 2:11 pm #

          Actually, there is a distinct possibility the casino is attempting to use cars as a filter to keep out that “element?”

          These kinds of “filters” are very apparent if you see.

          See what?

          See what you lookin at.

          For example, a friend of mine who ran a “youth hostel” ($20 a night) was able to use the “student ID/passport routine” as a filter to keep out that “element.”

          • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:44 pm #

            Yes, one mall in Detroit demands that children under 18 be with an adult. Young Blacks have destroyed countless malls. Something must be done.

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:19 pm #

            No,

            in reality Janos, though he may complain about it; wants as much black dysfunction and chaos as he can generate because he wants to use it to sell racism.

            He can’t sell it any other way.

            If black people were as well behaved as the Amish, Janos would commit suicide because he would be out of a job; the only one he’s qualified to do.

            Janos like black people; thats all he talks about.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 4:27 am #

            You are the extreme of alieness and thus a good example of why we need our own space. Other races are less obviously alien. White Americans aren’t very subtle and need gross examples.

  17. teddyboy46 February 20, 2017 at 10:58 am #

    Another excellent essay by JHK. I stopped reading Paul Krugman a long time ago because what he was explaining did not make sense in relation to what I was seeing on the ground. Though i always thought is was very nice of Professor Krugman to try explain complicated issues in a way that regular people could understand. but JHK does it better.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm #

      Stop diminishing yourself. These economic issues are really not that complex. Just as the law is not that complex. What has been made overwrought, and overly-complex, is the language that surrounds them. Law has been made into a language, as economics has. This allows people to dabble in esoterica of the language without the intruding ears and eyes of the masses. You want in? Go get a language degree AKA a JD or MBA. Otherwise, pay one of them to translate. It’s called a racket.

      • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:46 pm #

        Well said. Born as you were to this Priesthood, you know many of their tricks.

  18. malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:26 am #

    Cannibal cool eats the chattering classes,
    JHK, $100,000 a plate;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blgEcK5StOQ

  19. seawolf77 February 20, 2017 at 11:33 am #

    I can’t believe no one talks about Trump’s press conference. Jesus the guy is mental. The pee party rumors. The ruse. “Not good. Not good. Not good. Not good.” All black people know each other. This guy could walk out and rub dog shit all over his face and I don’t think it would surprise a soul. This is bat shit crazy. Lindsey Graham was spot on.

    • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 11:42 am #

      People will go along with anything if they believe it will get them what they want. It’s crazy thinking because first, people really don’t know what they want and second, even if they did know what they wanted, going along with any and all forms & displays of lunacy isn’t apt to get you what they want, but it will get them and everyone else what we all know we don’t want.

      • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 12:14 pm #

        Cold,
        Alright, whoever you are. This is the third cogent, sane and respectful post in the name of Cold N. Holefield. posted this date. Who are you, and what have you done with Cold?

      • FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 12:25 pm #

        people really don’t know what they want and second == Cold

        Sure they do. Everybody want to be in a game.

        • pequiste February 20, 2017 at 1:50 pm #

          The mass of America’s lumpen-proles want to WATCH a game and the majority of America’s children want to play a video game.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 2:14 pm #

            Apparently, someone, somewhere, asked Camus what he preferred, theater or sport, he said he preferred football (soccer).

            He is also quoted as saying, “After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport”.

            Schopenhauer aspired to sublimation in music. Surely, there is sublimation in sport. In fact, I’m willing to argue that the true sport enthusiast respects sport for its ability to focus man’s instincts, transmogrify them, and put them on full harmless display. To showcase humanity’s deeper instincts, its base instincts and attributes as entertainment, as art, as exhibition.
            Men and women chasing inflatable balls shows more about a person’s character, free from pretense and illusion, than any art, than any word. That’s why people belittle sport… man reduced to fetching a ball. Man in his natural element.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 12:13 pm #

      The guy is absolutely genius. But of course, you’ll realize that only a year from now, looking back.

      Face to face
      You can’t see the features.
      You need distance to see what is great.
      When the ocean surface is seething
      The ship’s a pitiful state.

      Sergei Esenin, 1924

    • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 3:49 pm #

      Tell us more about Lindsey! All Blacks know each other? What are you talking about?

      Trump is a master communicator. If you don’t get it, you aren’t an American. If you gots to axe, you don’t gets to know. Blacks get it. And many White Trump supporters are more Black than the average Negro.

    • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:52 pm #

      President Trump is our Emperor Caligula. Anyone else smell smoke?

  20. Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 11:39 am #

    Ha! This economy is so utterly dependent on sprawl from housing starts, to mortgages, to construction jobs, to cars to get to the exurbs and the office park and the Krogers and t-ball games in between. Gimme-a-break. Of course they’re going to spend to maintain it.
    The host is missing a key element, a future with cars, but not personally owned cars. Fleets of electric cars powered by dangerous and dirty nuclear energy. We are already conditioned to live with the fallout, pun intended, of dangerous nuclear energy. Nobody even cares that Fukushima is a buried full meltdown and buried story. It’s far too late to ditch the car and its suburban trappings. No, we ditch the luxury of having personally owned gas powered vehicles. It’s a future of VR, drones and automated vehicles. Get with the program.

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    • thwack February 20, 2017 at 11:52 am #

      One thing that struck me immediately about all the driverless car boosterism is all the vandalism and fuckery they will attract.

      They may function well on a campus, airport, or some other structured environment; but out side of these types of “green zones” I suspect they will be magnets for rocks, bottles and all sorts of projectiles.

      Who knows, maybe it will turn into a type of job for a person to be a passenger in the drivers seat?

      See,

      we just grew the economy.

      • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 11:58 am #

        In a world of CCTV, cameras everywhere, phones that mark your every move as a GPS ping? They’ll know about that rock you’re going to throw before you put your arm in motion.

        • thwack February 20, 2017 at 12:19 pm #

          ok, and what WTF are they gonna do about it?

          Have you ever had your house burglarized?

          Sure, the police will come and make a report; they have to; but there is no squad of detectives “working your case” searching for the bad guy…

          They can’t be bothered with that; they got bigger fish to fry than chasing down some “kee-uuds”…

          You are living in a dream world Frank; you better wake up before you get woke.

          • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

            You can drop the shtick. It’s pretty worn.

            Indeed, nobody cares about a nobody’s problems. The thing is, when you start messing with somebody, or somebody’s sh*t, Problems get solved. The thing is, you’re projecting. You’re the nobody, and nobody has time for nobody. But a somebody? Somebody’s get things done, get things solved.

          • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 1:39 pm #

            “Sure, the police will come and make a report; they have to; but there is no squad of detectives “working your case” searching for the bad guy…”

            Thwack,
            Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause…and yes, thwack, there are burglary detectives. Unfortunately, they have enormous case-loads…100++ not uncommon…they do what they can.

          • thwack February 20, 2017 at 2:22 pm #

            Thats my point Ely, but this Frankshiti character can’t accept the truth unless it comes out the mouth of a white person. I used to work with whites like him.

            They have some type of weird existential compulsion to challenge anything darker than themselves.

            Very annoying.

          • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:48 pm #

            I used to work with blacks like Thwack.. who am I kidding?
            No, of course I didn’t, but, nonetheless, he lets his presumptions get the best of him just like his buddy, Vlad.

    • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

      We are in a ‘growth and debt based system.’
      In 1970s Irv Schiff called it the Un Economy.

      Now its sub prime home and auto + student loans and gawd knows what else.

    • cbeard February 20, 2017 at 5:01 pm #

      I don’t believe the Fukushima story is over yet.

      • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 1:55 pm #

        Oh we all will glow in the end.

  21. Walter B February 20, 2017 at 11:51 am #

    In any discussion about rebuilding infrastructure, especially bridges, roadways and tunnels, my Garden State of New Jersey takes front State in how to do things NOT well. Two weeks ago at the State House, the deputy director of NJDOT spoke for fifteen minutes before our assembled masses about “going forward” with their illustrious plans, and for the life of me I have NO idea what he said or what language he was even speaking. Our well publicized Transportation Trust Fund was robbed blind over the course of the last ten years and leveraged to the hilt as well to the maximum they could get. The government has recently decided to fill this demented money bag back up recently by taxing those of us that buy gasoline with a percentage tax that will go up as the prices rise, They were able to get this passed because of the low prices now. What happens as prices rise in anybody’s guess. One thing that is certain however, is that the contracts and the costs per mile will only go up and WAY up and the holes in the money bag will surely allow for the outright graft and theft to get worse rather than better.

    We have one HUGE contractor here that appears to do most if not all of the construction projects. The oversized crews of old fat white guys has long been switching over to young skinny not so white guys which might lead one to think the costs have been reduced, but apparently the profit margins have swelled enough to compensate for the change. These crews have been working steadily for a few months every year now for a decade and then they are laid off for a few months. I do not believe that this form of employment has much of a positive impact on our State as a whole, but at least there are a few cashing in big time to be sure. I do not see how expanding this program to a national level can be accomplished without even more mountains of toxic debt.

    In the end I feel certain that the story of the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg was written specifically for America after the turn of this century. Those who create value, who produce wealth will be opened up and consumed by those who can never have enough wealth. Greed is a deadly disease and it destroys individuals first, societies next, and nations at the end.

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 7:43 pm #

      “Goose That Laid The Golden Egg ”

      Walter,
      You know, there really was a Golden Egg-Laying Goose…it was a metaphor for the middle class. The wealth of a nation… is a nation of consumers willing and able to spend. Willing is the easy part…Able, not so much. The GTLTGE/ middle classes’ death was inevitable…poor choices, however accelerated it’s demise.

      • Walter B February 20, 2017 at 10:46 pm #

        Yes indeed they were. Unfortunately for them, geese, much like sheep, are not that bright and can be easily led to their own demise by the wrong lead goose or a greedy shepherd.

        • pequiste February 21, 2017 at 1:08 am #

          And then be turned into some fois gras as a final solution to the hunger question.

  22. bukowskisghost February 20, 2017 at 12:08 pm #

    I blame the jews,the blacks and all them dam arabs… oh yeah, forgot to mention pinkos. May our lord and savior Jesus save all those who wish to be saved.

    Come on people, is this deja by all over again? This discussion is like a never ending circle jerk

    • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 4:09 pm #

      Yes, normal people take the side of their own people. Thus Blacks cheered when OJ eluded justice. Only Whites care about things like the objective Truth. And that creates a high standard of living that attracts people who don’t care about us, but only our things. And being so nice, we are helpless to resist them. Because people like you start screaming “racism”.

      • cbeard February 20, 2017 at 5:04 pm #

        Again, a hat tip to Janos.

      • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:27 pm #

        “we are helpless to resist them.”

        ****************

        But what about your high white IQ?

        Don’t try to get all: “we dough no nuffin bout birffin no babeez” on me now?

  23. seawolf77 February 20, 2017 at 12:11 pm #

    I guess my hats off to JFK for not alluding to Hurricane Trump. Like John Oliver said, he’s like a fart in a VW Beetle. He dominates everything.

  24. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 12:34 pm #

    Economics isn’t a Science — it’s an elaborate Justification.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:36 pm #

      to Capitalize on every other word

  25. malthuss February 20, 2017 at 12:35 pm #

    OO site—
    From “Israel interferes in our politics all the time, and it’s never a scandal,” by Philip Weiss.

    There are two large exceptions to the Russian conspiracy. The first is that it is good policy for the United States to be talking to Russia. If Clinton were president today, there might be dogfights over Damascus. Her gang was all for regime change in Syria, and for confrontation over the Ukraine. That’s bad policy. I’m glad they’re not running the show– though they are certainly running this story. Before you get too upset about Russia winking at the sanctions, the scandal that brought down Michael Flynn, please recall that in 2012, President Obama sent secret signals to Iran to ignore congressional sanctions, we’ll be talking to you once I’m reelected. …

    Which brings up the second exception. Israel tried to interfere in that 2012 election, as Chris Matthews sensibly reminded his audience recently: Benjamin Netanyahu tried to help Mitt Romney beat Obama. Sheldon Adelson held a fundraiser in Jerusalem for Romney.

    Netanyahu didn’t stop there. After Romney lost, Netanyahu came to Congress to tell the Congress to reject President Obama’s nuclear deal. That was an unprecedented interference of a foreign leader in our policy-making, enabled by the Israel lobby; but there were never any investigations about that. Subsequently Chuck Schumer said he was torn between…etc

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  26. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 12:36 pm #

    This is the best music video editing I’ve seen in my life.

    And I took a course in video editing. And the man obviously has nothing to do with the industry, and is sitting somewhere and out of low-quality material and without any tricky software and supercomputers produces something amazing in strength.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ENUhNGVaJU

    For comparison, a strong professional work:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r16UkiI5wjY

    • pequiste February 21, 2017 at 1:22 am #

      Pure clap Finca. Now if you want to see some outstanding music video editing that not only is ingenious but is on target politically, militarily and aesthetically plus shows why those rascally N. Koreans are shooting for the wild card slot for Black Swan event catalyst that initiates the global finale:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoSFQb5HVk

      How’s that for some great dancing, hot chiks with swords, guns all to that awesome funk? Sheik Jibouti.

  27. miasmo February 20, 2017 at 12:51 pm #

    “happy men with lunch boxes”

    That gave me a chuckle. You have a way with words.

    I finally bought one of your books. Kindle version of World Made By Hand. Enjoying it so far.

    • routersurfer February 21, 2017 at 2:00 pm #

      I remember that world of men with lunch boxes and thermos of Joe……. gone the way of the 8% passbook savings account and cheap oil. Folks, if your eyes and ears worked you know we all saw the end coming.

  28. capt spaulding February 20, 2017 at 12:54 pm #

    To achieve a World Made By Hand would take time. Just like there weren’t freeways and gas stations all over the country when the first motor cars came out. It took time for them to appear. If the economy were to collapse quickly, there wouldn’t be enough time to create the conditions necessary to support the change in lifestyle. Most changes occur slowly over time. I just don’t see the average person as being willing to accept those changes without being forced to by circumstances. Which means a crash. It’s just the way most people are. Humanity is nothing if not consistent.

  29. lawrencefalk February 20, 2017 at 12:59 pm #

    As usual, big claims but without the data to back it up:

    “namely the falling energy-return-on-energy-investment in the oil industry, which is approaching the point where the immense activity of getting oil out of the ground won’t be worth the cost and trouble of doing it. ”

    Shoddy blogging and not even close to a publishable journalistic standard. Oh, how the might have fallen…or just gotten lazy.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 1:28 pm #

      Data? Journalistic standard? What in heavens would that be?
      Y’know this is mostly a realm for people to bitch and make scandalous and unsubstantiated claims, right? Just like journalism.

    • seawolf77 February 20, 2017 at 2:08 pm #

      I’m not sure you’ve done your homework. It is true that there is a decline in EIEOR. That is not in dispute. What JFK didn’t consider is the Geophysics. When you use seismic tools to locate oil, you’re not drilling any dry holes. That has plugged the EIEOR decline substantially, and also added years/decades to the final peak.

    • thwack February 20, 2017 at 2:27 pm #

      “As usual, big claims but without the data to back it up:”

      *************************************

      It got us to the moon didn’t it?

      • RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 7:50 pm #

        Why do you want to believe we didn’t go to the moon? I recall talking to Michael Collins at the 1976 Bicentenial Opening of the Space Museum in Washington, DC while we hovered up canapés and we talked about what he thought about while the other guys went for the glory…..

  30. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 1:13 pm #

    MOSCOW, February 20 – RIA Novosti. Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, died in New York on February 20, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

    Vitaly Churkin, died the day before his 65th birthday. The Foreign Ministry expressed deep condolences to the families and friends of the diplomat.

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  31. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 1:19 pm #

    World Press Photo 2017: Russia envoy killing picture wins award

    http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-38955285

    Pure female’s vindictive touch. Bastinda wants to relish her gruesome victory.

  32. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 1:28 pm #

    ISIS began large-scale offensive in the south-west of Syria

    BEIRUT, February 20 – RIA Novosti. Militants of the terrorist group “Islamic state” (IG, banned in Russia) began a large-scale offensive in the south-west of the Syrian province of Deraa.

    When you, guys, are finally planning to open a Second Western Front?

  33. norecovery February 20, 2017 at 1:51 pm #

    Mr. Kunstler enjoys criticizing domestic delusions (“WalMarts, Target stores, Taco Bells, muffler shops, McHousing subdivisions, and other accoutrement of our fast-zombifying mode of existence”) but ignores the elephant in the room: armaments and military projection. The last sentence hints at this, but fails to connect it to the larger malaise; indeed, that is where the money should be diverted from to rebuild critical domestic infrastructure. Ain’t gonna happen.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 1:54 pm #

      Military is critical domestic infrastructure.

      • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 2:19 pm #

        No military means no money. The military keeps markets open, debts purchased.

    • Ishabaka February 20, 2017 at 4:13 pm #

      The Nobel Peace Prize President had 26,172 bombs dropped in 2016. Think about that – an average 77 bombs a day dropped in a year that saw the USA enter no new wars, at a time when it was thought that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had nearly ended.

      For the ISIS-hysterical “we have to fight them over there or we’ll have to fight them here” folks – how exactly do you expect ISIS to get “here”, seeing as the would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and have no air planes or ships? The Germans and Japanese HAD huge, capable air forces and navies, and only the Japanese managed to drop a handful of ineffective bombs on the US mainland in WWII. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to suspect ISIS-hysteria is being driven by the US military-industrial complex.

      • cbeard February 20, 2017 at 5:14 pm #

        You may need to consider long range missiles and some the unsavory regimes that have them.

        • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:35 pm #

          Bigfoot got here without a missile so why can’t ISIS?

      • cbeard February 21, 2017 at 8:17 am #

        If an immigration moratorium isn’t enacted. Isis will keep arriving here by way of commercial air lines, cruise ships, or walking across an open border.

    • RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 8:43 pm #

      Yes we have a lot of enemies because we keep punching people in the nose. I recall wandering aimlessly as a student in the 60’s & 70s around Haiti, Guatemala, Trinidad, Caracas, Guyana, Mexico, Morocco, and all Europe and expecting to be treated as a dumb but generally friendly American. And I was. I wouldn’t try it now. I fault the military intervening in OPB(other people’s business) creating blowback. Cut the DOD budget relentlessly. Every year. Everything. Just tell the Pentagon to suck it up and make do with less like the rest of us.

  34. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 2:21 pm #

    Vitaly Churkin famous quotes:

    Indeed, stop now support different rabble around the world – the extremists, terrorists and various other lovers to destabilize the situation in a given country. In general, stop interfering in the affairs of other sovereign states, leave these colonial habits, leave the world in peace

    If needed a sermon, we would go to church. If we needed poetry, we would go to the theater. From UN personnel, especially the leaders of the UN, when they are invited to attend the Security Council meeting, we expect an objective analysis of the situation. This clearly did not happen

  35. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 2:40 pm #

    Frankiti said: That’s why people belittle sport… man reduced to fetching a ball. Man in his natural element.

    Why rely on an abstraction to attain the natural organic delight of the primally visceral? Yes, art is an abstraction but so too is sport. Sure, art’s a bit more of an abstraction and distraction than sport, but both are abstractions and distractions from our malaise, which is an unconscious yearning to ravenously ravage and devour one another.

    If you haven’t seen this movie, you must. It’s both beneath and above Frankiti, so don’t bother yourself, you arrogant ass.

    Plato’s Cave

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    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:34 pm #

      Someone who composed this beauty, “”… an abstraction to attain the natural organic delight of the primally visceral”, called me “arrogant”. How rich.

      • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 3:52 pm #

        I’m still waiting on a link to your blog. You’re a brilliant individual who’s talents are obviously wasted if not expounded upon in depth at your very own venue.

        • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 6:27 pm #

          Nah, y’see, I know I’m a dummy. I accept it.
          We live in a world with too many dummies acting like they know everything, or something.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 6:35 pm #

            Finally. We agree. So long as the dummy’s not me. Hee Hee Hee.

  36. BackRowHeckler February 20, 2017 at 2:43 pm #

    Elrond: Good morning honey, where you going?

    WPA: Downtown to the anti Trump rally. It starts at noon.

    Elrond: What’s the theme today, dear?

    WPA: LBGTQ rights!

    Elrond: I thought that was yesterday?

    WPA: No, yesterday was bring in more Muslims.

    Elrond: Maybe I’ll join you tomorrow. What’s on the agenda tomorrow?

    WPA: BLM will be here. We might burn down the city.

    Elrond: Sounds like fun.

    WPA: It will be. Watch the mail. The check from George Soros is due to arrive.

    Elrond: I will dear. Have a good day at work.

    brh

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 3:55 pm #

      Where you headed?
      To Canadian Tire
      What for?
      To have a destination after the Tim Horton’s drive-through.

      That’s it?
      Well, I guess, if I see a Somali making his way I’ll get him some gloves… or if the case be, mittens

  37. robert magill February 20, 2017 at 2:46 pm #

    I tweeted Trump to suggest saving our topsoil from the ravages of rising waters and doing something about the ruined hills and monadnocks that abound in Appalachia. My suggestion was to terrace those with southern exposure for farming as make work projects now and as smart future planning. Then when the waters rise the precious loam will have a new home.

    • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 4:09 pm #

      Did he threaten to deport you after you tweeted him?

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 7:54 pm #

      Robert,
      That would be an excellent WPA/CCC project. The Government, at some time or another, will have to re-institute the old programs to get the millions of un/under-employed off the streets/dole. I would love to see it.

  38. Elrond Hubbard February 20, 2017 at 2:58 pm #

    America’s Television Graveyards
    How millions of old CRT televisions have wound up abandoned in warehouses all over the country.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/americas-television-graveyards

    “Over the blaring din of forklifts overturning dumpsters full of servers, circuit boards, and miscellaneous computer parts, I watched men hit antiquated, boxy televisions with hammers.

    “‘If you don’t hit the yoke in the right way,’ Eric Mims, operations manager of the ECS Refining electronics-recycling center in a suburb of Dallas, told me, pointing at his workers, who are clad head-to-toe in blue jumpsuits, respirators, earplugs, plastic safety goggles, and thick work gloves, ‘it can explode.’

    “Years after most Americans switched to flat-screens, we’re just now beginning to deal with the long-term ramifications of sustainably disposing of old cathode-ray televisions and computer monitors. This dangerous, labor-intensive, and costly undertaking will have to be done for each of the estimated 705 million CRT TVs sold in the United States since 1980. CRT processing, as it’s called, happens at only a handful of the best e-waste recycling centers in the United States. In many cases, your old TV isn’t recycled at all and is instead abandoned in a warehouse somewhere, left for society to deal with sometime in the future.”

    • pequiste February 21, 2017 at 1:34 am #

      All that fucking physical waste of resources to be able to WATCH the God damned idiot box; the most awful waste of that most precious resource: time.

      Good thing the future is going to be so totally fucked up; there will be no time or need to think about what to do with the myriad of TV carcasses.

  39. Gherry February 20, 2017 at 2:58 pm #

    Since Winter and a mild failure to control mind body stress leaves me adrenally fucked I’ll do my own default position and just quote..then quote again.

    Couple of recent factoids that came from the McCafee guy of Artificial Intelligence claiming a recent study-only in the deep parts of the developed world psyche is that in your country of US and A the only group who’s life expectancy is going down is 45-54 year old white males…

    Did any or rather all vote for DJT!?

    Another-million Asian early 20 somethings entering the marketplace every 6 weeks and only enough work for 20-25%…

  40. ginunn February 20, 2017 at 2:58 pm #

    Everything animate, living or constructed, requires energy in some form to function properly. Our current civilization enjoyed the happy fortune of cheap – that is easily discoverable and extractable energy. First it was coal and then it was oil and natural gas.

    The first oil wells in Southern Ontario and Pennsylvania were in fields where the oil was so close to the surface it was seeping out. These discoveries fueled the phase of the industrial revolution that led to motor vehicles.

    Now we depend on oil from remote fields and fields such as deep water that require sophisticated technology to extract and bring to market.

    If we have a major societal collapse due to say a nuclear war that takes us back to the early industrial or the pre-industrial eras, there will be no recovery because the easy energy resources – inexpensive if you like – are gone for anything short of geological times.

    Barring some extraordinary discovery in new energy we are headed there anyway.

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    • Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 4:14 pm #

      They have so controlled your mind that you won’t even consider the other Black Gold: COAL.

      • Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 4:19 pm #

        I thought the other Black Gold was Melanin?

    • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:40 pm #

      If we have a major societal collapse due to say a nuclear war that takes us back to the early industrial or the pre-industrial eras, there will be no recovery because the easy energy resources – inexpensive if you like – are gone for anything short of geological times.

      **************************

      Im pretty sure the nuclear power plants will give off heat for a long time even if nobody is operating them?

  41. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 3:57 pm #

    Frankiti said: Indeed, nobody cares about a nobody’s problems.

    You’re so fucking presumptuous to speak for everyone. You don’t speak for me, douchebag. I care about a nobody’s problems. Them’s the best kind of problems. Much more interesting than a somebody’s problems.

    In my book, if you’re a somebody, you don’t have a right to have problems and certainly you have no right to complain about your problems or have anyone, but especially nobody’s, care about your problems.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 5:39 pm #

      Cold. You’re an idiot. A stone cold idiot. I hope knowing this can help, but it’s more than likely too late. You don’t seem to grasp a point until it’s boring into your skull. You see, in the context of the grand wigger’s postulations, society works for those that have the weight, the juice, to pull the levers. As it always has.
      Property damage of the important’ property won’t be tolerated.

      But I waste my time, I can’t fix stupid.

  42. Ishabaka February 20, 2017 at 4:05 pm #

    A significant point this blog brings up is the paucity of even semi-objective news available today. Eighty to ninety percent of the news is so hysterically, rabidly anti-Trump, that he could come out with the formula for clean cold fusion, and unlimited cheap, ecologically friendly energy tomorrow, and still be regarded as an insane troglodyte, while the extreme right wing news regards him as the Second Coming, who can do no wrong.

    The Chris Christie meatloaf story last week epitomized this. I gave up after finding twelve mainstream media stories relating in breathless earnestness the absolute, conclusive proof that President Trump was a ruthless psychopath because he ordered meatloaf for Christie (which Christie apparently isn’t overly fond of). I don’t recall even the kookiest “Obama is going to take all true patriots guns, put them in FEMA camps, and make them wear rouge and eye shadow” kooks going quite so far in the previous eight years.

    If anyone can suggest a reasonably fair news source, I sure would like to know!

  43. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 4:08 pm #

    Frankiti said: Man’s peace lies in the labor, not the result.

    It depends on the labor. I’m guessing an early 19th century negro in America didn’t find much peace in their labor. There are countless other examples just like that one.

    Cubicle-ism is a conventional form of soul-breaking cotton picking. How much peace can one derive from sitting on their ass all day every day producing shit that really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things? Not very much, I would imagine. No, strike that, I don’t have to imagine. I know. There is no peace in forced and/or worthless labor, only regret or at best, apathy.

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 5:32 pm #

      When man was hunter, he went home with a kill, or didn’t. Some days they came easier than others, or not at all. Any wage is making a killing. The fulfillment comes in the form of a paycheck rather than a brontosaurus burger. He didn’t complain because he sat at a watering hole all day before his prey arrived. He was happy for returning home as a provider. You should expect no better.

      • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:48 pm #

        Come on Frank, just go ahead and say it, you know you want to:

        “Arbeit macht frei”

        There,

        don’t you feel better now?

        *you’re welcome*

        • AKlein February 21, 2017 at 8:16 am #

          Arbeit macht das Leben süss.

        • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:54 pm #

          You know not of what, nor to who, you speak.

  44. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 4:17 pm #

    Frankiti said: Humanity isn’t the end, in fact, there is no “end”.

    I knew it — you’re a yuuugge Jurassic Park fan. Let me guess — you have plans to be cryogenically frozen upon your death, or maybe even before, so you can be some future species’ frozen tv dinner in a million years. Am i right?

    • Frankiti February 20, 2017 at 5:27 pm #

      What’s the sound of one head-slapping?
      On an evolutionary plane, there is no end product.. ever.

      • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 5:48 pm #

        “What’s the sound of one head-slapping?”

        Frank, the answer is…THWACK! Trust me on this….

  45. Janos Skorenzy February 20, 2017 at 4:21 pm #

    http://www.dailystormer.com/trumps-sweden-troll-unfolds/

    In trying to disprove Trump, countless people will learn about the Fall of Sweden into chaos, violence, and rape due to the vast numbers of Muslim immigrants. As ever Trump is in full control. This is what he intended, of course. The Master and Commander.

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    • thwack February 20, 2017 at 7:52 pm #

      Maybe he will bomb Sweden?

  46. johngalt February 20, 2017 at 4:25 pm #

    40.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJm6GgrEU4I

    In the New Republic, members enjoy resuming the restoration of the Constitutional republic from JFK’s point of interruption, can see for miles and miles, and enjoy Liberty in building out properties and the local means of production, with the capability to sow, nurture, grow, harvest, store, cook, engineer, design, program, automate, construct, process, raise, teach, counsel, hunt, defend, provide, debate, organize, compose, worship, dance, laugh, love, celebrate, and sustain.

    We are the sheepdogs.
    And we are old fashioned and sentimental.
    And we belong to the longest serving Civil Rights organization in the Republic.
    And we don’t require others for border protection or building bridges.
    And we have undying love and devotion to the Constitution.
    And we are happy to participate in the proper pursuit and offering of due process under the Constitution to the NETWORK globalist class charlatans who sold out the old republic in their lust for power and the love of money.
    And we are ready for what’s next.

    Sent from the New Republic.
    http://www.got-truth.com

  47. FincaInTheMountains February 20, 2017 at 4:39 pm #

    Putin orders Russia to recognize documents issued in rebel-held east Ukraine

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-documents-idUSKBN15X0KR

    Next step – recognizing Donetsk/Lugansk People’s Republic as a true legitimate heir to Ukrainian State.

  48. Gherry February 20, 2017 at 4:49 pm #

    Steady on Janos maybies with the death cult theme toward lesser numbers of people having vcildren in the developed world don’t you think!?

    I know Mr A.Jones likes that line (before we got to break yahhhh)
    But like Jim points out on other facets,certain trains won’t be stopping no more.

    We’d be foolish not to admit to a decent level of inner development in last 50 years-were just a little bit more conscious on some levels about brining the next generation into the world.

    As my old Gran used to say when I was in early teens with a devilish smile of irony whilst quoting her mother she’d say ‘as my mother would say son,well out breed them’

    That was that generations part response to bolstering the Catholic numbers against Protestant numbers having being immigrants a few generations earlier into Scotland

    (My Gran and her family survived the Nazi bastard bombings in the place bombed the most in Scotland called Clydebank as the bombs missed them by 50 yards!)

    But foolishly for the Germans they bombed civilians as opposed to 500 yards away thinking they were bombing the Scottish Ship building centre….not as smart as media make out.

    Also,I like being reminded of 50 somethings who have that bemused look often when they’re fathers or grandfathers communities were destroyed during coal
    Mining closures in UK 1970s onwards-but then watching those elders die the most painful lung diseases in end of life situations.

  49. Gherry February 20, 2017 at 4:53 pm #

    The lets have endless Children model was all part of the industrial thing…

    A little forgiven blip of excess in an otherwise under developed back woods star of the universe

  50. Pucker February 20, 2017 at 5:45 pm #

    Obama Labor Secretary running for DNC Chairman said that the Democratic Party nomination was rigged for Hillary. The MSM ignores it. Incredible….

    MSM: “Trump won because of the Russians.”

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  51. PeteAtomic February 20, 2017 at 5:51 pm #

    It’s a tough prescription and a helluva sales job, to convince the Public that their current reality & lifestyle addictions are dinosaurs. Even the “no-DAPL” crowd weren’t protesting the energy collapse– they were “water protectors” LOL. There really is zero national movement out there for any type of alternatives on how people live. There are some great ideas out there. The New Urbanist school has a lot of great points to make on urban planning, for example– like the ‘walkable neighborhood.’ But that’s the problem.

    Who the hell wants to walk?

    🙂

  52. janet February 20, 2017 at 6:03 pm #

    “countless people will learn about the Fall of Sweden into chaos, violence, and rape due to the vast numbers of Muslim immigrants.” –Janos

    Statistics in Sweden do not back Trump’s claims or Janos’ claims.

    Data released in January by Sweden’s crime-prevention council found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016.

    Officials say they have not seen any evidence for the claim, prevalent in right-wing media like Breitbart and Infowars, that migration has driven a surge in crime.

    “The general crime rate in Sweden is below the U.S. national average,” the State Department noted.

  53. PeteAtomic February 20, 2017 at 6:09 pm #

    Wow, just read Mr.Krugman’s reply to your comment. Geez.

    It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz himself, Mr. Greenspan, who testified that derivative trading ought not be regulated because the trading is “being done by professionals” LOL

    “In conclusion, the Board continues to believe that, aside from safety and soundness regulation of derivatives dealers under the banking or securities laws, regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary. ” Greenspan, 1998 to the House Committee on Finance and Banking

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/1998/19980724.htm

    • Q. Shtik February 20, 2017 at 8:12 pm #

      Wow, just read Mr.Krugman’s reply to your comment. Geez. – P Atomic

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

      Where is this reply by Krugman that you and others have mentioned. I’ve been unable to find it.

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 8:15 pm #

      “Wow, just read Mr.Krugman’s reply to your comment. Geez.”

      Link, please.

      • PeteAtomic February 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm #

        It’s in his article up there. Or it was the last time I checked.

  54. JimInFlorida February 20, 2017 at 9:22 pm #

    The vast majority of the American lifestyle is non-productive, wasteful and stupid. If everything were geared down to the basics: i.e. durable clothing, food, shelter, mass transportation, public sanitation, and public health, everybody would have enough AND it could be fueled by coal.

    Look at the insane waste of materials, capital, and resources on professional sports! Get rid of that mega-parasite and that will be a big step in the right direction.

    It’s impossible and illegal for anybody but the AMA-approved medical-industrial complex to deliver medical services. Break up that oligopoly and allow the old 20th-century country doctor to come back. The majority of health problems (not lifestyle problems) can be treated with what the country doctors used. That is how medical care will have to be delivered in a World Made By Hand that still has COAL energy available.

    The only thing COAL can’t do is support a parasitic Top 1% or imperial wars. Get rid of both and there will be plenty of energy and things for a modest, clean, and comfortable living.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 4:32 am #

      Whatever can’t be cured with witch hazel, vinegar, and cod liver oil aint worth curing.

    • cbeard February 21, 2017 at 8:39 am #

      I agree with your take on the un-productive American lifestyle and the emphasis on the basics. Ditto the part about professional sports. Where I part with you is on energy. Coal could and should be used sparingly. It is a major pollutant that has had severe health impacts on people. It makes no sense not to use alternative energy sources, especially solar in my particular locale and wind and hydro in other appropriate locations. Solar has been repressed by big power generating conglomerates and corrupt politicians. If every building had solar panels supplying power during ideal times it could cut the necessity for coal, nuclear and other dangerous methods of generation at least by half. I believe climate change is real. I’m not 100% sure about the cause of warming. It could be a totally natural process, man made causes, or a combination of both. The fact remains that this planet is a closed system and just consider for a moment all the automobiles, buses, planes, trains, power plants operating 24-7, 365 days a year, and it seems logical that it could affect climate. Even if it doesn’t, it would still be in our best interests to use other sources of energy for basic health reasons.

      • JimInFlorida February 21, 2017 at 9:33 am #

        My hopes rest in the reduced energy requirements of a nation-state liberated from professional sports, the current medical-industrial paradigm, frivolous consumption, and imperial wars.

        Coal can be made REASONABLY clean. There must be a realistic expectation of coal energy and cost-effective pollution controls. Trying to make coal smoke as clean as the air on the Swiss alps is just insane.

        Solar and wind energy can only work with an energy storage system to manage power output. Right now, everything is done by CENTRALIZED POWER ON DEMAND. That can’t be done with solar or wind, especially the centralized part. Solar and wind has to be a DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM. Such a system requires ALL homes to have their own hybrid of solar/wind generation AND a minimum storage battery capacity on site. The ONLY TIME it connects to the grid is to recharge the batteries. With such intermittent demand, the grid can be of the solar/wind energy storage type.

        For large energy consumers, THAT’S where coal comes in. Coal can be the backstop for the solar-wind energy storage system as well!

  55. BackRowHeckler February 20, 2017 at 9:46 pm #

    Heard on NPR this evening:

    China will honor sanctions and refuse coal imports from NKorea for 1 year. China is heavily dependent on coal, and it is NKorea’s largest cash export.

    China will turn to Russia and the USA for coal supply. This is good news for W Virginia and Wyoming.

    King Coal!

    brh

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  56. BackRowHeckler February 20, 2017 at 9:54 pm #

    This move might have something to do with the murder of Kim Jong-Nam as well, who was seen to be under the protection of China. Maybe the Chinese govt. has just had it with NKorea.

    brh

  57. johngalt February 20, 2017 at 10:21 pm #

    When the levee breaks.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beI6Xvpm6Gk

    Sent from the New Republic.
    http://www.got-truth.com

    • tucsonspur February 21, 2017 at 2:56 am #

      Great quote from Mr. Carlin. “Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world”. Absolutely priceless.

  58. Cold N. Holefield February 20, 2017 at 10:28 pm #

    I guess the only question I have is, should I buy gold?

    • elysianfield February 20, 2017 at 11:14 pm #

      “I guess the only question I have is, should I buy gold”

      Cold,
      The short answer is no.

      • JimInFlorida February 21, 2017 at 9:45 am #

        Agreed. Gold and silver have no official status as currency and are abandoned to the seedy markets of coin dealers and person-to-person sales. The EFT bubble proved gold’s vulnerability to shenanigans and it’s just another commodity.

        Who buys gold except to sell it at a profit someday (Greater Fool Theory) or cash it in during TEOTWAWKI? If the only buyers are your neighbors and coin dealers, then the prices will never go any higher than what an undercapitalized market will allow. In The End Of The World, your gold will be worthless because the markets will be flooded with it. The Big Buyers will snap it up at fire sale prices and then sell it back to the next generation of sheep for an insane profit.

        • elysianfield February 21, 2017 at 4:15 pm #

          JIF,

          Correct in your evaluation, assuming the Government does not make gold ownership illegal…as it has done TWICE in the last 80 years. If you have to buy precious metals…silver is the way to go, as it is available in very small denomination, and much better for barter.

          Also, silver has biblical references…30 pieces of silver, etc.

        • RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 9:05 pm #

          @JiF you are lucid but incorrect. It will be stolen and then you will know who your enemies are.

      • RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 9:02 pm #

        The short answer is “Yes”. It’s a statement not an investment. If it works out–Poor us….

    • malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:34 pm #

      long food lines.

      Venezuela’s food crisis has gotten so bad that remains of everything from dogs and cats to donkeys and even giant anteaters have been found in garbage bags at city dumps around the country.

  59. malthuss February 20, 2017 at 11:40 pm #

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    ROME (Reuters) – The head of Italy’s anti-discrimination office resigned on Monday after accusations that government funds meant to promote diversity projects and tackle racism had been earmarked for gay sex clubs masquerading as cultural centers.

    Francesco Spano quit just hours after an investigative TV program showed his department had authorized funding of up to 55,000 euros ($58,400) each for at least three such clubs.

    The TV show, called The Hyenas, visited the three businesses and found they housed male prostitutes and offered their members so-called “dark rooms” for sexual encounters.

    Opposition parties called on the government to explain its funding program, while rightist leader Giorgia Meloni said the anti-discrimination office (UNAR) should be shut immediately.

    “Not one more euro of tax payers’ money should be thrown away on paying their salaries,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

    The government said in a statement that while UNAR would stay open, Spano had resigned “out of respect” for the work his office was carrying out.

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  60. Pucker February 20, 2017 at 11:40 pm #

    Many Democrats in the US believe that the Democratic Party is the party of the poor and working man. Obama transferred US$20 trillion to the banks, which no white president could have done.

    • JimInFlorida February 21, 2017 at 10:12 am #

      The Democrat Party ceased being the party of the working class back in 1972 with McGovern.

      Jimmy Carter paid half-hearted lip service to American workers while he stabbed them in the back with deregulation of the airlines and trucking industry. Yet, he did maintain a decent Dept. of Labor. But, it was Bill Clinton who repealed the last tattered shreds of the venerable New Deal social contract and commenced removing the camouflage of the NWO.

      Obama created the placebo of Identity Politics to replace the real medicine of Labor Rights and Economic Rights, which the Democrat Party once represented. That placebo has become a poison pill. Either the Democrats vomit out the freaks and misfits or the party dies.

  61. GroverLands February 21, 2017 at 12:27 am #

    I used to enjoy reading JHK until it became apparent that he is writing the same stuff over and over again. It’s a bore. The hyper use of metaphors is tiresome. Yes, Jim, the sky is falling. I get it. Doesn’t it get lonely up there, passing judgement on us low lifes from up on high?

  62. Buck Stud February 21, 2017 at 12:59 am #

    If “art” were war, we Americans should wave the white flag of surrender to the Russians.

    It’s hard to explain, but there is “something” they have that we don’t. Call it depth, profundity or simply more experience suffering: A purity of human condition, if you will.

    Everybody in this country could learn a thing or two from the Russians, something beautiful:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5HjLYgwzgA

    • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 4:44 am #

      And the guy’s fag voice is \emblematic of all this is wrong with America. No doubt he is for open borders – which leads to lowest common denominator society and ugliness of all kinds. Isolate a people and they will produce beauty – if there is any to be had in them.

      Study the ancient Jews – fanatics about isolation, even from other Semitic peoples closely related to them. They had something going on. They felt the greatness inside themselves. They had a destiny. Why mess with that for a mess of multicultural pottage? To make a little money? For cheap labor? For strange meat, fruit, and flesh? Such merchants are the Enemy of all Destiny and Beauty.

  63. Pucker February 21, 2017 at 1:03 am #

    Podesta would have had a lot of influence in selecting Tim Kaine as someone they could control. They probably had a Control File on Tim Kaine?

    Tim Kaine was “shepherding” young boys as a Catholic missionary in Honduras.

    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 11:15 am #

      Tell us more.
      Pederasty and pedophilia [often confused] are in both parties.
      Hastert is buddies with J Podesta. One appears to be a sadist, pedophile, while DH appears to like teens.

  64. Pucker February 21, 2017 at 2:05 am #

    “Although the insider refused to reveal all the names on the list of those to be arrested by the FBI, they did reveal that Democrat and US Senator, Chuck Ellis Schumer, was one of the high-profile names that will be arrested, as well as Senator Tim Kaine and former Attorney General of Connecticut Richard Blumenthal.”

    https://www.google.com.hk/amp/yournewswire.com/fbi-pizzagate-arrests-washington/amp/

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    • Pucker February 21, 2017 at 2:14 am #

      Tim Kaine looks like a Diddler.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Kaine

    • Pucker February 21, 2017 at 3:21 am #

      Fake News?

      • thwack February 21, 2017 at 12:03 pm #

        It might be.

        pedophile is the charge people throw when they’ve run out of charges to throw; its like calling someone “Hitler”; or the whole “crimes against humanity” thing…

        Thats why I propose a new category called “crimes against the universe.”

        that’ll show em.

  65. pequiste February 21, 2017 at 2:07 am #

    Regarding all this driver-less car clap-trap:

    What “normal” teenager doesn’t have every hormone producing gland in their body working overtime to get to that moment of actually driving solo for the first time, let alone hving their first car? (although having the car drive around by itself while having unbridled sex in the backseat actually sounds rather intriguing.)

    Who actually would sit, or need to sit in the “drivers” seat since the automobile is now on A.I. autopilot and doesn’t need a useless idiot human to even think about touching the steering wheel, accelerator pedal, brake or, heaven forbid, play with the radio.

    Who gets to talk to the traffic cop when pulled over for speeding; and the moving violation ticket gets issued to which person exactly, when the driver-less car thinks that a U-turn is permitted when it is not due to the school zone lights being on? The car? If I ain’t driving I ain’t talking to no police officer! You can give the ticket to Tesla Motors officer. Am I being detained or am I free to go?

    Who the hell wants to spend $100,000.00 for a Porsche or Corvette and not have the pleasure of actually driving it?

    The Apocalypse occurs before the “real” America accepts driver-less cars. At the rate they (the Technocracy) are pushing the driver-less car – I figure by the end of the third year of Trump’s presidency the stars will be aligned properly ( but not the car.)

    • thwack February 21, 2017 at 12:16 pm #

      What “normal” teenager doesn’t have every hormone producing gland in their body working overtime to get to that moment of actually driving solo for the first time, let alone hving their first car?

      **********************************

      You must be old?

      The average teens limbic system is completely burned out from video games, internet porn, Feces book, twatter… by the time they are 16. And since they don’t have a job to drive to, why should they want to drive a car so badly?

      Finally, its a lot more expensive to own and operate a car these days. The days of getting an old hoopty and fixing it up are over because if you can’t pass emissions, you can’t get plates. And you can’t get around the system anymore (by bribing your mechanic…) because the test equipment sends the results directly to the state police in real time.

      So in a way, “happy motoring” has already ended for the younger end of the population curve.

      • JimInFlorida February 21, 2017 at 2:47 pm #

        Cars of 40++ years ago used to be icons of status, power, and sex appeal. Even the grocery getters and commuters were aesthetically pleasing and proportioned. Cars looked like they were moving, even when parked.

        Thanks to globalization, and automotive marketing groups saturated with mentally-disturbed avant garde types, cars are deliberately ugly and ill-proportioned. At best, they are transportation appliances. At worst, many “performance” cars resemble the frightening random creatures that haunt the psyche of socially-alienated teen boys. Bulbous shapes and insect-like styling cues dominate. Cars that look stationary, even when moving.

        The common psychology in all contemporary cars is to NEVER awaken the same passions that cars used to inspire. Modern cars are like the unpopular fat girl who may enthusiastically put out but, it’s still embarrassing to be seen with her. It’s no wonder that cars have lost their appeal.

        • thwack February 21, 2017 at 3:44 pm #

          “cars are deliberately ugly and ill-proportioned.”

          *******************************

          as an example, I often pull up behind new vehicles that at first glance, look like they have been rear ended?

          (like bizarro Supermans face)

          I suspect they are designed this way because of all the weird angles and curves in the body work necessary to cram the same amount of stuff into a smaller space?

          A good wax job just amplifies this dysgenia.

          • Q. Shtik February 21, 2017 at 5:41 pm #

            A good wax job just amplifies this [dysgenia]. – Thwack

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

            This sentence should be proof enough that Thwack is not Black. I don’t even know any White people familiar with the word dysgenia much less Black people.

          • thwack February 21, 2017 at 9:33 pm #

            Thats because I made it up you frothy cunt; secure in the knowledge that if it wasn’t a word, some white person would flag it.

          • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 10:54 am #

            “frothy cunt”

            Thwack,
            How the hell can you type something like that? Do you pick your nose with those fingers?

        • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:49 pm #

          My 1990s Fridge was heavy and lasted almost 20 years, with a few repairs, or maybe just 1 repair.

          The Whirlpool fridge that replaced it is lightweight and I am told may last 7 years.

          New cars look like plastic [are they?] and the chrome became too expensive to have as a bumper.

          JHK says the ‘days of happy motoring will soon be over.’
          How soon, I dunno. He has been warning for 15 years.

          • thwack February 21, 2017 at 4:03 pm #

            I can top that.

            When my grandmother died we were cleaning up her house and she still had that same old Electrolux canister vacuum that I remembered her having from childhood.

            I remembered it because it had that kinda art deco Flash Gordon jet pack look; sea foam green and chrome…

            It had to be at least 30 years old and It still worked.

            During that same time span I owned at least 4 of those all plastic uprights with the head light that would only last 3 or 4 years if I was lucky.

            grrrrrrrrr

  66. jloughrey February 21, 2017 at 3:18 am #

    Given the current volatile political climate and Trump’s deep unpopularity, don’t count out a false flag operation or a contrived war with Iran or Russia to take our minds off our real problems. George W. Bush’s popularity ratings, which were in the toilet from the get go–much like Trump’s–were quickly reversed when 9/11 happened, even to the extent of winning him a second undeserved term. There’s nothing like an epic national tragedy to bring us all together. And we know how the last one turned out: loss of freedoms including regular molestation by TSA goons, NSA spying, and a host of other societal-eroding consequences.

  67. Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 4:36 am #

    https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/breaking-the-anti-immigrant-fever.html

    The Times asks, What can Trump’s policies lead to but a Whiter America? – as if this is the ultimate evil.

    This is a Declaration of War against White America – nothing less.

    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm #

      consider the source.

  68. Cold N. Holefield February 21, 2017 at 8:07 am #

    Nice to know Trump & Bannon agree with Milo that raping a twelve-year-old who is “sexually active” is not only not rape but it’s not pedophilia either. It makes sense. Grab That Pussy!!

    Trump Supporters are depraved beyond even my cynical expectations.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 2:59 pm #

      Do you want clarity or do you prefer the shadows that you can weave any which way?

      Pedophilia is sex with children. Pederasty is sex with “youths” or pubescents and post pubescents (Hebophillia and Ephebophillia respectively). Amost everyone is against pedophilia. The Gay Movement hates NAMBLA for not distinguishing between the two – or at least for openly advocating for pedophilia. As for the two more acceptable groups, pubescents and post pubescents, opinions vary. But being “into” youths is standard for Homosexuals. And let’s face it, for Heterosexuals as well. Many girls develop at 13 or 14. And many cultures, including our own of yesteryear thought marriage was fine for them. Letting them “date” and get pregnant outside of marriage is a whole nother thing of course.

      Our culture doesn’t allow casual sex with teenage girls. Gay Culture does allow casual sex with teenage boys. Everyone knows this. The outrage depends on who it is. Liberals and the Tribe have protected Roman Polanski for decades. They feel it was his right. An ordinary White guy doesn’t have any such right. Likewise Bill Clinton has the right to anyone he wants – as does Hillary. Democrats have no real morality.

      • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:38 pm #

        That horrid Meryl Creep, or Streep. She was oh-so-quick to applaud Polanski.
        And oh-so-quick to condemn the President.

      • sallycant February 21, 2017 at 8:34 pm #

        Jerry Lee Lewis!

  69. Dubs February 21, 2017 at 8:51 am #

    Jim,

    You should pen a witty article, as only you can, about your commenters. That’s quite an eclectic bunch you have! Many of them are on first username basis! I’m not sure you could form any sort of “community” with them. At least not for more than a few weeks!

    Enjoyed the article, as always.

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    • pequiste February 21, 2017 at 10:26 am #

      Dubs,

      Pen an article about the CFN habituees? Hmmmmm.

      Kind of a pedestrian exercise if you ask me, even with Jim’s extraordinary word-smithing skill with a keyboard.

      Let me suggest that Jim preside over the first (and probably last) annual Clusterfuck Nation Conference and Symposium.

      Heck, a weekend combination extravaganza held either in pastoral upper NYS near Jim (at an abandoned railway station or crumbling shoe factory building) or in NYC closer to a large number of potential attendees. It could be like the myriad award ceremonies that are televised on the mass media. As Jim is also an accomplished speaker (see his TED talk on Geography of Nowhere
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ ) he could probably get it televised.

      Consider a bunch of provocative and incisive guest speakers to include personages such as – other culture critics D. Orlov or CHarles Hughes Smith; Dr Mercola or Health Ranger Mike Adams for medicine, Gerald Celente, Paul Craig Roberts (where did he go?) or Bill Bonner for the money side.

      A gala dinner for awards – CFN Politician of the Year; CFN Eyesore of the Year; Clusterfuck Citizen of the Year, World Clusterfuck of the Year…..all properly trademarked and copyrighted. (What does the CFN statuette look like? A contemporary skyscraper in Dubai? A Calatrava railway station? Chernobyl or Fukushima? What do you think it should represent?)

      It would put the Nobel Prizes to shame.

      Who might the entertainment be hmmmmmm? Hip Hop or string quartet? Something in between? Both? All three? Anything but Kenny G pulleeze.

      Well then consider the angle of an actual CFN championship food or pillow fight (water balloons or snowballs. Pugil sticks! fisticuffs?) between Janos and Barb, Tucson or Frank and Elrond, with a final blanket party donnybrook with everyone, who wants to participate, versus Cold N. Holefield and Janet/WPA/Carol/Asoka. That’s entertainment. Sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield natch.
      Can you say pay-per-view!

      The details can be worked out by the professional media and event types who do this for a living. Us poor folks could stay at the nearest Knights Inn, while the well-heeled can opt for the Plaza or Carlyle in Manhattan among other premiere properties.

      Who wouldn’t spend 500 bucks for a general admission ticket to such a show. I’d go just to meet Jim and many of the other participants.

      Then consider the value-added tables for those special Wall Street thieves, bought and paid for Washington D.C. nematodes and Hollyweird stars; tables going for $1000.00 $5000.00 and $10,000.00 a plate plus admission to that special after-party party for port and Punch cigars, among other more refined amusements.

      Is BackRowHeckler or QShtick good enough to be the Master of Ceremonies? Maybe a big name draw like Jimmy Fallon ( nah, he gets too much work and renumeration as it is.)

      With enough advance sales JIm will have a revenue stream to finally get the heck out of dodge and move to British Columbia or Bermuda or get that schloss in Switzerland and a yacht for wintering in the Grenadines.

      Ah, just a morning reverie here.

      Now about that article about the CFNers……..hmmmmm?

      • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 11:54 am #

        if cold is on his prescribed sedatives, it won’t be much of a fight.

        • Cold N. Holefield February 21, 2017 at 12:24 pm #

          With you, I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. You’d piss your pants if I merely looked at you.

          But it’s irrelevant. I would never share a physical space in proximity to you pedophiles.

          Trump & Bannon & Milo? That’s another story. I think they’d be willing to attend if you were willing to turn it into a Trump Rally with plenty of sexually active 12-year-olds for all.

          • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:39 pm #

            … I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered

      • aNanyMouse February 21, 2017 at 1:46 pm #

        Would this Conference have a special role for Finca? Maybe s a Ref?

        • aNanyMouse February 21, 2017 at 1:48 pm #

          Typo: maybe AS a Ref

        • pequiste February 23, 2017 at 12:55 am #

          Why certainly; yes we need Referees ( plus color commentary in Russian as well.)

          Perhaps someone could even wangle a broadcast coverage arrangement with RT.

      • Dubs February 21, 2017 at 4:16 pm #

        One things for sure, some of these posters are so voluminous, they wouldn’t have time to plant a single tomato or pepper let try their hand at anything artesianal.

        • Dubs February 21, 2017 at 4:17 pm #

          read let alone

    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:40 pm #

      WHAT A CHARMING IDEA!!! THE COMMENTERS GET JKHs SPOTLIGHT, THEIR 15 MINUTES OF FAME

  70. FincaInTheMountains February 21, 2017 at 9:37 am #

    EU 2.0 or Fourth Reich 1.0

    Recently, the European Parliament supported a resolution to strengthen the centralization of the European Union. In particular, it called for the creation of the post of EU minister of finance and a common European army. For proposed by former Prime Minister of Belgium Verhofstadt resolution voted 283 members with 269 against with 83 abstentions.

    This decision is not aimed at the centralization of the European Union, but on complete reformatting of it on new principles.

    The formation of a European army will put forward three questions:

    1. The amount of the contributions from the members for its maintenance
    2. The relationship of the EU and NATO armies
    3. The main question – the arms purchases

    This design generates the next question – who will take over Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova? Germany is not up to it. Poland will not be allowed to create Intermarum for obvious reasons – Germany and Russia. As a result, Poland may be facing the threat of the fourth breakdown. If Germany takes over the Baltics, Russia – Belarus and Ukraine, with the exception of Galicia, Transcarpathia, and perhaps some central regions of Ukraine, which would hang as unnecessary ballast on the Russian budget.

    Circumstances may arise so that Russia and the United States will support this new design, but it will result in the collapse of not only the EU in its current form, but NATO as well, which meets the interests of both Putin’s Russia, and Trump’s America.

  71. FincaInTheMountains February 21, 2017 at 10:06 am #

    May be Angela Merkel is so set on allowing as many Islamist migrants into EU that she will need passionate shock-troops for the future new Drang nach Osten?

  72. wm5135 February 21, 2017 at 10:22 am #

    Might i be so bold as to ask which of the commenters here sprang forth from the birth canal clutching a deed or title to any spot on this our home. All here were born in the era of the photograph, so in the immortal words of Saint Ronald of Reagan, “Trust but verify”. Documentation please.
    Misogony is the arsenic in the water, drink deeply and drink often.
    Look around, see anything that resembles poisoning in our culture?
    What was the perspective we were taught about the brave man and the coward? How many times does a brave man have to die?

    “Life is hard – and then you die” Johnny Winter

  73. Cold N. Holefield February 21, 2017 at 10:25 am #

    What a Cesspool of Depravity and to think, Frankiti voted for it and apparently, and recalcitrantly, still supports it.

    No wonder Milo isn’t shy about his bizarre definition of pedophilia and child rape. He doesn’t want to undermine his friends’ business interests as follows.

    Milo & Bannon & Trump consider these 13-year-old prostitutes sexually active therefore fair game — no child rape or pedophilia here so move along folks, it’s just Pure Love.

    Nevermind that they were abducted and raped into prostitution, they’re still sexually active. Sick Fucks, and Frankiti supports it.

    The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections

    At the time, Turkish investigators reportedly asserted that Arif might be the head of a criminal organization that was trafficking in Russian and Ukrainian escorts, allegedly including some as young as 13.16 According to these assertions, big-ticket clients were making their selections by way of a modeling agency website, with Arif allegedly handling the logistics. Especially galling to Turkish authorities, the preferred venue was reportedly a yacht that had once belonged to the widely-revered Turkish leader Atatürk. It was also alleged that Arif may have also provided lodging for young women at Rixos Group hotels.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 21, 2017 at 11:07 am #

      That Milo character in my view is a sick fuck and quite possible British agent-provocateur.

      How in the world his name got stuck with Trump’s?

      Would be interesting to watch how that race in mutual pedophilia accusations between Liberal Media and Trump is going to end up.

      If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Trump – after all the Highest Truth and administrative resource now works in his favor.

      Clintonoids must be in full panic mode now.

      • aNanyMouse February 21, 2017 at 5:32 pm #

        Finc, I don’t see it as a Liberal media. Rather, I suspect that, just as the slogan in the Soviet Bloc went “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”, the (subconscious) slogan of the Establishment Media is “we pretend to ask the brass the KEY questions, and they pretend to answer them”.
        Yeah, they’ve been sh*tting on Trump, like they shat on Gore about “inventing” the internet. Maybe they play “pin the tail on the donkey” when trying to decide who they’ll ambush next.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 21, 2017 at 11:18 am #

      I mean, apparently British and Trump must be working together for the good of Anglo Saxon race, but Perfidious Albion just can’t help itself not to play their usual dirty games and acquire some “goodies” on Trump.

      That exactly what they did back in the 60s with so-called “British Invasion” with rock groups such as the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones.

    • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 11:57 am #

      Post it to your blog, you and… no one else can read your adventures in mental handicaps there.

      • Cold N. Holefield February 21, 2017 at 12:19 pm #

        I thought I’d post it here at your blog since you have a much larger audience than I would ever hope to have. I’m all about sharing.

        • thwack February 21, 2017 at 1:07 pm #

          ouch

  74. VCS February 21, 2017 at 11:11 am #

    MSM and Fox News all gaga today over “outstanding” choice of McMaster for NSA.

    But wasn’t he a major co-author, with Petraeus, of the Iraq “surge” –?

    And wasn’t that “surge” a horribly expensive scam of U.S. taxpayers? Isn’t that where most of the missing Iraq War $$billions went? Basically bribing the Sunnis to quit fighting for a couple of years(until the bribery payments ended)? A cynical deception to help Bush and neocons save face?

    I don’t really know — McMaster apparently was an effective general otherwise. But to me the notion of anyone closely associated with Petraeus and the surge “speaking truth to power” rings false.

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  75. janet February 21, 2017 at 11:18 am #

    Trump talked about infrastructure constantly on the campaign trail, vowing to build roads, trains, and airports. As a brash outsider, Trump promised, he could force such a program through Congress. And as a real estate developer, he insisted he was uniquely qualified to design and implement what was basically a huge construction program.

    But it wasn’t until two weeks before Election Day that Trump finally released a proposal with some policy details. And it didn’t line up that closely with what he’d been describing on the campaign trail. His previous rhetoric had made it sound like Trump wanted to be another FDR, borrowing massive amounts of money in order to finance a building binge that would put people back to work. The actual Trump plan turned out to be something very different: A series of tax breaks to make large infrastructure projects more profitable for businesses.

    Trump is not interested in the hard work of improving the lives of the American people. He is interested in using government to improve the bottom line of Trump’s personal ledgers and he will implement policies that make him richer, an impeachable offense in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

  76. bibliomaniac February 21, 2017 at 11:50 am #

    Say goodbye to the American Bald Eagle, and the last of the wild American jaguars

    “Trump’s Mexican Border Wall threatens 111 endangered animal species and will release approximately 1.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere”

    The wall will pass through four wildlife reserves in the US and a number of nature reserves in Mexico. Some species at risk include ocelots, bears, Bighorn sheep, the last remaining wild jaguars, and the bald eagle–the national bird of America.

    The 1000 miles of concrete will prevent wildlife migration and mating patterns, until they eventually become extinct.

    The Independent, February 20, 2017

    • barbisbest February 21, 2017 at 12:12 pm #

      Bibliomaniac. Thanks for the reference of The Independent, February 20, 2017! The idea of the wall on the southern border is absurd. Why doesn’t big brother just use drones along the borders, drones that will annihilate anything that moves, human, animal, whatever. Since when has government made any sense, or controlled spending, I guess, right?

  77. janet February 21, 2017 at 12:14 pm #

    How State Attorneys General Could Take Down Trump

    This Emoluments Thing Isn’t Going Away

    “Under quo warranto proceedings, the state attorneys general and the courts have flexibility to create a balanced remedy. The first step is discovery to find out about the Trump Organization’s financial arrangements and entanglements with foreign and state entities. The next step is to take the emoluments and fraud claims into court. In the end, the attorneys general and the courts may craft a mix of injunctions, fines, divestment, and/or limited dissolutions of LLCs. It’s important to recognize that the first step of transparency about the Trump Organization is a service to the public interest by itself, but so is the rule of law and anti-corruption.

    If this action prevents foreign entities from using payments and debts to manipulate American policy, some relatively minor and temporary instability is worthwhile and necessary. Look how much instability the Trump Organization and its foreign entanglements have already created. This action will actually reduce that instability, legally, economically, and in national security.” –Jed Shugerman

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/02/how_state_attorneys_general_could_take_down_trump_over_emoluments.html

  78. barbisbest February 21, 2017 at 12:15 pm #

    I know the idea of drones to annihilate anything that moves along the borders sounds violent. My apology, I was simply trying to emphasize the absurdity of any “wall”.

    Here’s an interesting bit of trivia. At one time Trump talked about how many vacations Obama took, adding that, if I was president I wouldn’t take vacations! I’d be busy. 89 million dollars was spent in total to facilitate Obama’s family vacations. i.e., secret service that was paid by the tax payer. To date already, in one month, 10 million dollars has been spent for Trump’s family’s elaborate vacations. So much for campaign promises.

    • thwack February 21, 2017 at 12:33 pm #

      Yeah Barb, but in fairness, Obama was never under any real threat of assassination; nobody was ever gonna try to harm the first black president; even Janos isn’t that stupid.

      Trump on the other hand has infuriated a lot of people so he and his family need extra protection.

      You can’t compare the two.

  79. barbisbest February 21, 2017 at 12:23 pm #

    “Trump is not interested in the hard work of improving the lives of the American people. He is interested in using government to improve the bottom line of Trump’s personal ledgers and he will implement policies that make him richer, an impeachable offense in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.” JANET

    That is correct Janet. A great program of Chris Hedge’s recently underlined this very thing. The above is correct!

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  80. janet February 21, 2017 at 12:30 pm #

    “The wall will pass through four wildlife reserves in the US and a number of nature reserves in Mexico.” –bibliomaniac

    The wall Trump wants to build is just another project to enrich Trump. The wall he wants to build already exists. I just saw it at Nogales. Here is a picture:

    http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-image/nogalesborder.jpg

    • thwack February 21, 2017 at 12:42 pm #

      Why don’t they use a mine field?

      Mines can be set to detonate only above a certain pressure threshold. That way most animals could pass thru while adult humans would set them off..

      Let me quarterback this.

      • janet February 21, 2017 at 1:05 pm #

        https://newint.org/easier-english/landmine/lmfacts.html

        • thwack February 21, 2017 at 1:27 pm #

          Uh oh?

          another naked link response by “Janet?”

          should I click on it an be disappointed?

          or ignore it; secure in the fact that people who respond with naked links can’t even be bothered to risk affiliation by commenting on it?

          • RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 7:31 pm #

            The Wall. Some stupidity is so comprehensive it does not require refutation. With a passport I can go to Switzerland but I can’t stay there and become Swiss. Why not? I can’t buy a house, open a bank account, apply for a job, or put my kids in school. I can take $100,000 in my pocket and live on the street for a while but I can’t become “Swiss”. It’s the rules that make the difference not border control.
            Who said “tear down this wall”? I think it was a Republican. Who said, let’s build a wall? A Republican. I think we should question their sanity. I have no hard number for how many immigrants we “should” have. I like immigrants–I may even like them better than my current neighbors but whatever plan we adopt to become a citizen should be enforced. I suggest we calculate the fertility rate of the current population and admit the difference to maintain ZPG. If all the legal citizens don’t want to breed then let’s add some extras. That said, I respect Japan. They should maintain their “cultural identity” and shrink to wherever a 1.4 birthrate takes them. I think JHK suggested they were slated to become first nation back to the Middle Ages.

  81. FincaInTheMountains February 21, 2017 at 12:52 pm #

    Obama was never under any real threat of assassination; nobody was ever gonna try to harm the first black president; even Janos isn’t that stupid. == thwack

    First time General Flynn was “asked” to resign on April 20, 2014 by Obama who was once again surrounded by Hillary’s flying monkeys after the return of the Crimea to Russia.

    Obama was released by the American patriots only in six months, replacing all the protection of the President after the secret service employees, close to President Bush, found in a lift with Barack Obama an armed guard, known for his penchant for the unmotivated violence.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/security-guard-fired-after-elevator-ride-with-obama/

  82. volodya February 21, 2017 at 1:59 pm #

    Yeah, I read Krugman when I need a good laugh. Like his assertion that crime rates are at record lows. If you cherry-pick stats you can support any argument you want. Or you just look for ideologically motivated “ologists” doing “studies” and there you go.

    Ok, so here I go myself. In the first place, I rely on my own two eyes. I wipe my ass with stats, especially government supplied numbers.

    But ok, if you really want stats, let’s take a stab at it. But first, what crime matters most? Violent crime, that’s what. Property crime can be merely annoying or it can be calamitous, but violent crime, I think most would agree, is the worst.

    So what do we have? A violent crime rate in the United States in 1960 of 161 incidents per 100,000 people. And in 2015? A violent crime rate of 383 incidents per 100,000 people. Forcible rape? 9.6 incidents per 100,000 people in 1960 versus 28.1 per 100,000 in 2015. Does THAT sound like at or near record lows to you?

    So w.t.f. is Krugman talking about? No idea. OK, I confess, I have some idea. Crime rates, including violent crime, peaked in the 1990s according to people who purport to know, people who produce “data” and “evidence”.

    So, assuming such numbers are right, if you selectively delete from consideration crime rates from times preceding 1990, then maybe you can make Krugman’s assertion. But wait, some of us have got memories that go back further than 1990. Like, fer example, 1960. Did you lock your doors way back then? Nope, we didn’t either. Didn’t need to.

    So why do people like Krugman make nonsensical claims? To score ideological points, that’s why, and to establish credibility in their own in-crowd echo-chamber.

    Is Krugman full of shit? You bet, to his eyebrows. If you say crime rates are near record lows, is it even true? See here and judge:

    http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

    Look at the second chart; an overall crime rate in 1960 of 1,887 crimes per 100,000 people and an overall crime rate in 2015 of 2,870 per 100,000 people. Does 2,870 sound like it’s at or near record lows?

    And the type of crime: Financial fraud? Is THAT at record lows? Seriously? Cyber crime? Identity theft? At or near record lows? Really?

    And is it even feasible to collect accurate crime numbers over so many jurisdictions over so large a country? And at the end of the day, what do your own eyeballs tell you? Do studies or officially sanctioned numbers square with your experience?

    So, why the fuck doesn’t Krugman stay away from stuff he knows nothing about, like crime, and stick to subjects to which he, um…

    Does Krugman really know anything economics? Or is he every bit as full of shit in economics, that most disreputable field, that’s so full of lies and distortion?

    Anyway, I judge people by who they run with, and Krugman runs with The New York Times, a rag by and for bubble-landers whose bubble-land ideology justifies depredation and whose modus operandi is exploitation of immigrants (both legal and illegal) and foreign slave-wage laborers. And exploitation of and contempt for the American working class.

    Far from the alleged compassion and enlightenment that these coastal bubble-landers wrap themselves in, they are exploiters, pure and simple. For their own benefit they export American middle class jobs to China, they gut American purchasing power and then they stare at wonderment at the now dysfunctional U.S. economy. And these shit for brains academics, ideologists to the core, cannot get their heads around it. Or pretend they can’t. Fucking amazing.

    • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 8:09 pm #

      Anyone who has worked with, contracted for, or heaven forbid, worked for, any bureaucracy or government agency knows, and knows full well, that the results wanted predict the metrics needed. Always.
      This isn’t some conspiratorial accusation, this is full, out-in-the-open reality.

      People that use government provided data alone should be embarrassed and slandered to no end.

  83. capt spaulding February 21, 2017 at 2:07 pm #

    Wack is a white boy sailing under false colors & thinks that he’s fooling somebody. Many people who log on here have weird agendas, and he is just another one of those who try to chump people online into believing that they are real. Anybody with brains can see through the bullshit. He’s not fooling anybody. I don’t buy his “background” for a minute. Well Wack, where’s your comeback? I expect one.

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    • thwack February 21, 2017 at 3:32 pm #

      capt spaulding is one of those white liberals who thinks all black people have to fit into his narrow definition of what a black person is; isn’t it interesting that Janos accepts me but he doesn’t?

      capt spaulding, like Dr. Zaius; wants to castrate and then kill me.

      But first he wants to know where I come from.

      So he can wipe out the nest.

    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:42 pm #

      Like Asoka? The fake Black.

      • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:36 pm #

        Asoka, the fake Janet, Absalom, WPA…

      • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 6:02 pm #

        Malthuss,
        I know how we can authenticate Thwack’s racial bona fides…. Thwack is obviously intelligent and university trained. IF he were black, he would have taken a course or two in “African Studies”…and would have a passing knowledge of Ebonics. I propose a question to him that, if he is truly as black as he says he is, he will have no issue in answering. To wit;

        In Ebonics…conjugate the verb “to be”

        Thwack, we are waiting your response.

    • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 8:14 pm #

      Surely, he’s an entrepreneur that will hasten to remind you that he’s no monolith that really hates being called articulate, not that he ever would be.

  84. volodya February 21, 2017 at 2:11 pm #

    And besides, infrastructure spending? Makes me laugh. The American manufacturing backbone fucked off overseas to places where “infrastructure” is a dirt road, whose civil service is a gang of greasy officials and armed goons, whose judiciary is nothing more than a system for shaking down clueless gringos. So let’s not have any baloney about infrastructure. You can build roads and bridges to your alimentary canal and it won’t matter.

    And you can reduce company tax rates to zero with the same result because, simply, CEOs don’t look at corporate tax rates, they look at WAGE rates. You’d think the Grand Viziers would know this.

    • capt spaulding February 21, 2017 at 2:25 pm #

      Read “Rise of the Robots” by Martin Ford, and all will become clear.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 3:03 pm #

      Why wouldn’t they look at both? Trump’s reduction of the tax rate might entice some back. But I agree that there may be more in the deal. And of course, they care about wages and paying as little as possible.

      Can’t agree that they don’t care about infrastructure. They need some – at least the dirt road you mention. And they may need much more. No one is setting up in Somalia after all.

      • volodya February 21, 2017 at 3:17 pm #

        Why wouldn’t they look at both? Because they lose consciousness at the merest whiff of a tax issue. Tax law is inordinately complex and no man-of-action CEO has got the slightest patience for it. And besides, wages account for the great majority of a US company’s expenses, it’s in the wage expense line items that the most reduction in expense can be made.

        Tax applies to net income, that is net income massaged by tax laws, and, as such, a relatively small part of company expense. All the hoo-hah about tax inversions was so much smoke and mirrors, there was no such outrage when thousands of companies fucked off overseas, gutting the income of the middle class and the tax base of the American economy.

        Yeah, they need some infrastructure but now that so many companies are gone, and so much oligarch money sunk into getting them overseas, they ain’t never coming back. There isn’t the money for rebuilding roads etc and if it’s done to attract back home overseas operations, it’s a waste of time and money.

        And don’t forget that the political legitimacy of the Chinese regime rests on the presence of those American operations in China. American factories are staying there in China, at gun-point if necessary.

        • aNanyMouse February 21, 2017 at 6:38 pm #

          volodya, good stuff about wages vs. taxes.

          My response to your comment about Krugman doesn’t appear in the place for it above (program glitch?), so here it is:

          Outstanding, volodya, esp. on “Financial fraud? Is THAT at record lows? Seriously? Cyber crime? Identity theft?”

          But on violence, the Krugman Mentality is more myopic than you think.
          At FiveThirtyEight.com, on 9 Jan., Jeff Asher wrote some preliminary analysis of “raw” 2016 numbers:

          “If past patterns hold, the 11 percent increase in big-city murders implies that total murders likely rose about 8 percent nationwide in 2016. That would correspond to a national murder rate at roughly 5.3 per 100,000. That would represent a meaningful increase from 2014, when the murder rate fell to 4.4…. And murder is still down dramatically from the 1980s and 1990s, when the rate topped 9 per 100,000 in many years. A second CONSECUTIVE increase in murder among big cities, however, suggests that a worrisome long- term trend, requiring research….”

          This sure as hell warrants worry, irrespective of whether it’s “low” by Krugman’s “historical” standards. You can book it that Krugman etc. will spare no effort to evade the likely truth about this, described by righty Heather McDonald as the “Ferguson effect”, and by lefty Peter Moskos as “a chill wind” blowing from the MSM and DC into local PDs.

      • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 8:01 pm #

        Somalia is setting up here. You’re missing the point.

    • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 8:04 pm #

      Wage rates, benefits, and enviro regs… just grease a Baja funcinario’s pockets and your maquiladora’s effluent can join the headwaters and homes of the magnificent Tijuana Brown Trout.

  85. Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 3:09 pm #

    Zygmund Dobbs wrote in his work Keynes at Harvard:

    “ In 1967 the world was startled by the publication of the letters between Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. Undisputed evidence in their private correspondence shows that Keynes was a life-long sexual deviate. What was more shocking was that these practices extended to a large group. Homosexuality, sado-masochism, lesbianism, and the deliberate policy of corrupting the young was the established practice of this large and influential group which eventually set the political and cultural tone for the British Empire.
    Keynes’ sexual partner, Lytton Strachey, indicated that their sexual attitudes could be infiltrated, “subtly, through literature, into the bloodstream of the people, and in such a way that they accepted it all quite naturally, if need be, without at first realizing what it was to which they were agreeing.” He further explained, privately, that, “he sought to write in a way that would contribute to an eventual change in our ethical and sexual mores—a change that couldn’t ‘be done in a minute,’ but would unobtrusively permeate the more flexible minds of young people.” This is a classic expression of the Fabian socialist method of seducing the mind. This was written in 1929 when it was already in practice for over forty years. It is no wonder we are reaping the whirlwind of student disorders where drug addiction and homosexuality rule the day.[9]

    Once people like this attain power, a Civilization is finished. They have to be stopped early on. We need the Inquisition again. We need Gays back in the closet. They have abused our tolerance and they always will. Let it go back to being a private vice – and let them be tolerated in this regard and this regard only. Any who corrupt boys or youth must face the Pit and the Pendulum.

    • thwack February 21, 2017 at 3:21 pm #

      But what if homosexuality is the natural aristocracy of the white race?

      You do believe in aristocracy don’t you?

      • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 3:55 pm #

        There may be a connection between homosexuality and intelligence – certainly in a decadent society. Look at the number of Black Fags with specs and bow ties all of a sudden. And BLM is run by such people, sans the bow tie.

        And of course part of it simply the corruption of the environment. Female hormones are everywhere, with women pissing birth control hormones every time they flush. And plastics mimic some of this.

        We need training camps and male initiation rites. Women give birth to male babies, but only Men can give birth to Men. In many African cultures, the boy is kidnapped, taken from his mother and the female sphere. He is terrorized but also taught endurance and fighting skills. In some of the Buddhist countries of SE Asia, boys spend a few months as monks learning self control, discipline, and meditation. I think both approaches are good, the African one first, and the Buddhist one a few years later.

        • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 10:34 pm #

          Kalu Rinpoche 2 got raped.

          Check his talks on you tube.

          also June Campbells book about …well check it out.

        • thwack February 21, 2017 at 11:03 pm #

          “We need training camps and male initiation rites.”

          ************

          Wuhchoo talkin bout Willis?

          I can’t remember the name; but there is some tribe in Africa where the boys gets circumcised at the age of 12 or 13.

          They don’t tackle them and force it on them. They use some mind fuckery and tell them “you can’t become a man unless you get cut.”

          So they all line up to be first.

          youch

          Im glad my daddy got on that boat too.

    • volodya February 21, 2017 at 3:31 pm #

      Janos, gays are a small percentage of the population so enough of LGBTQ and all that. It’s a smokescreen, one of those, like abortion and evolution, that gets everyone to the barricades. And while we’re pitching stones at one another, for example, over who uses what bathroom, the sacking of the country goes on unabated. Pay no more heed to gays, we’ve pissed away way too much time and if you don’t believe me, no less a liberal luminary than Mark Shields said it out loud on PBS Newshour: too much LGBTQ in the Democrat talking points, gays are 5% of the population, and that’s why Hillary lost. And if Mark can say it, I can say it.

      • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 3:46 pm #

        Abortion is no laughing matter. And Whites, as a percent of the population, will continue to decline.

        African continent and Europes future.

        Blacks are already walking in by millions every year. In a couple more years that will be dozens of millions every year. Total chaos is waiting for Europe.

        We are talking about the collapse of Europe.
        Europe — 1,2 billions africans ready to walk in.
        If you look at these North African countries like Egypt or Tunis. Their tourist industry has collapsed. Their manufacturing industry is hit by Chinese producers. And the manufacturing they have for export to Europe ( like Dacia cars for Renault) will be hit in the next recession in Europe.

        Than the chaos will be complete.

        • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 12:59 pm #

          “Abortion is no laughing matter.”

          Well…yes and no.

          On the Comedy Central Roast of Justin Beiber, one comic opined that Beiber got his dance moves from dodging a coat hanger in his unwed mother’s womb….

      • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 4:02 pm #

        He’s right: ever watch Sex in the City? Women are being taught by Gay Males to be Gay Males in female bodies. And in pop culture, every girl is supposed to have a cool gay male friend to complete her corruption.

        It’s been this way for a long time now. Young women have to be at least bi or they aren’t cool, just mere cisgenders – the lowest of the low. They are trained to have contempt for cisgender men, unless they are rich that is. Between this and the divorce laws, the marriage strike by men is explained.

        Just a smoke screen? Sure, but it’s working. We need to shut down this movement – or those behind it. Too late? Yes. Everything I’m saying applies to America 2.0 – or to the Next Civilization if America can’t be revived.

        • thwack February 21, 2017 at 4:13 pm #

          “And in pop culture, every girl is supposed to have a cool gay male friend to complete her corruption.”

          *******************************

          Janos is on fire today.

          yikes

          • Janos Skorenzy February 21, 2017 at 5:01 pm #

            Tanks. Are you Asoka?

          • thwack February 21, 2017 at 5:18 pm #

            No I am NOT Asoka; I don’t even know who that is?

            This question about my identity is an unnecessary distraction and a cheap straw man for weak people like “capt spaulding” who cannot deconstruct my arguments.

            Its petty and small minded and doesn’t do justice to JHKs work.

            JHK has seen my photo; matter of fact, he’s heard my voice too.

            So this nonsense about me NOT being a black person should stop.

          • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 7:56 pm #

            Deconstruct? You mean “unpack” of course… you say that a lot, well, actually too much.

          • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 10:31 pm #

            I dunno who is who, BUT this reads like an ‘Asoka, Queen of denial’ one liner;

            No I am NOT Asoka; I don’t even know who that is?

          • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 11:27 am #

            “”deconstruct my arguments”

            Thwack,
            You offer little in arguments…most often “asides”, as do I.

            Hmmm, Dannyboy once also posted that he spoke to our Host, His meme, however, a NY 1%er, a lunch-eating Wall Street Master of the Universe, was easily carried by him…unlike your “I bees black” meme. In your next “digital reincarnation”, you would be better served to be a white, female Bryn Mawr Post Doc. with lesbian/Marxist tendencies….Sorry, Bryn Mawr Post Doc with lesbian/Marxist tendencies is redundant…my apologies.

          • capt spaulding February 22, 2017 at 1:45 pm #

            Methinks thou doth protest too much.

          • thwack February 22, 2017 at 3:41 pm #

            Ely is just mad because he finds my positions impregnable and my return fire lethal.

            he says it doesn’t matter, but if shit were brains he couldn’t even become fecal.

  86. Titchfield February 21, 2017 at 4:14 pm #

    Holefield,

    Since you obviously consider yourself some sort of litterateur, getting hold of a good grammar book, shutting off the idiot box, and doing some serious studying, is a move you might consider.

    It’s style/content thing. The content of your posts is undermined by your style, its solecisms. They’re frequent.

    An instance: “You’re a brilliant individual who’s talents are obviously wasted.”

    “Who’s” is a contraction of “who is.” The right word is the possessive of “who,” which is “whose.”

    This is an elementary mistake. You really should be beyond this.

    • Q. Shtik February 21, 2017 at 5:29 pm #

      The content of your posts is undermined by your style, its solecisms. – Titchfield to Cold N.

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

      Titch is my main man. You go Titch!

      Titch not only knows what’s right, but WHY.

      I usually know what’s right, but not WHY.

      • Frankiti February 21, 2017 at 8:15 pm #

        You mean correct, not right. There you go again…

  87. FlavianPlot February 21, 2017 at 5:49 pm #

    Fun as it is reading the destined to fail societal revitalization pleadings weekly peddled as useful intellectual exchange by CFN regulars, those with young families and the physical/mental capacity to ‘prep’ for shittier days than any can imagine might consider this:

    I guess a .12 C positive annual shift in global average temperature from here forward. Seems I’m not too far off, at least as warming over land is concerned. Here’s some tangibles to ponder regarding variance from 2015 to 2016:

    “. . .temperatures were record high across land surfaces as well. The global annual land surface temperature for 2016 was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 2015 by 0.11°C (0.19°F). Some extremely high monthly land surface temperatures contributed to this warmth. March 2016 saw the highest globally-averaged land surface temperature among all months in the historical record, at 2.35°C (4.23°F) above the 20th century average. February had the second highest all-time monthly temperature, at +2.24°C (+4.03°F) and April had the fifth highest, at +1.85°C (+3.33°F).” — https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201613

    By prep I mean preparing to get you and yours to deep southern latitudes if possible, and soon, at least if you’d like to see them youngsters grow up a bit more. There are no political solutions. None. Externalities are in control now.

    JHK, much as I appreciate the opportunity to read and comment on the weekly missives, I’m curious why ecology never occurs as a topic in your compendium. Even if you’re a skeptic, it’s time to dig in to the immutable factors overriding all political best wishes.

    I wish no one well; you’ll only be more trouble to deal with on The Road.

    Jeers, fuckers!

    • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 11:32 am #

      ” Externalities are in control now. ”

      Yes, exactly. No foolish half-measures by humanity will have any other than dark entertainment value.

      Paper or plastic?

  88. Q. Shtik February 21, 2017 at 6:20 pm #

    I can top that. – Thwack speaking of a 30 year old Electrolux vaccuum cleaner

    ===========

    Well, I’ll go you one better, Thwack:

    My first day on the new job (as a financial analyst with a defense contractor in north Jersey) was Oct 15, 1979. I was shown to my spare grey Steelcase desk on which there were two objects, a desk pad and an Adler 121PD adding machine (calculator). This machine remained in my continuous use until I retired Feb 6, 2006 having NEVER failed and never been serviced in any way.

    As I gathered my few remaining possessions that glorious Monday morning and scooped them into my black leather shoulder bag I hesitated for a brief moment and said “what the hell” and slipped the Adler into my bag as well, then headed down the GS Pkwy for that final commute into the sunset.

    This amazing machine is still in daily use at my right hand to this day, some 37+ years later.

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    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 10:38 pm #

      took me awhile to source,
      I can top that.

      When my grandmother died we were cleaning up her house and she still had that same old Electrolux canister vacuum that I remembered her having from childhood.

      I have a hair bush that is almost 35 years old.

      I used the same Minolta camera for about 20 years, until 2008, when film became scarce.

      I sold a great table that I had for 25 years, in some ways I regret that.
      I have had the same laptop for 6 years.
      The same mattress for almost 15 years–a really old mattress.

      • messianicdruid February 22, 2017 at 9:47 am #

        Throwing it away is the sin. Selling it or giving to someone to use is like a resurrection, a blessing.

        I sold several pairs of boots a couple months ago. All in good shape, I just didn’t wear them any more. At auction they brought a few bucks each. But the guy that bought them was obviously happy.

        The albino rhino they were made from lives on.

  89. malthuss February 21, 2017 at 10:29 pm #

    ‘The biomass of all wild animals will continue to shrink while the biomass of humans and their animals will continue to increase. If you believe it will change simply means you do not understand why it is happening in the first place.

    The amount of humans and their animals terrestrial vertebrate biomass is increasing at an alarming rate while that of all wild animals is decreasing at an alarming rate. The dotted line in the chart above, the long term carrying capacity of terrestrial vertebrate biomass, is declining because of our destruction of animal habitat, which means our habitat.

    This brings up a very misunderstood point about all mass extinctions. In all past extinctions, as well as the current ongoing mass extinction, it is the megafauna that have suffered the most. In all past extinctions all the megafauna went extinct. This current extinction, the sixth great extinction, will be no different. All the megafauna, save one species, will go extinct.

    Mice will survive, elephants will not. Rats will survive, orangutans will not. All great apes will be driven to extinction except one, Homo sapiens. Some small monkeys will survive. The larger monkeys and lesser apes will not. Most of them will be killed for food. The rest will die because of loss of habitat.’

    For the first time in recorded history, the Human Biomass exceeded that of Termites Biomass.

  90. thwack February 21, 2017 at 10:41 pm #

    Candice Wiggins breaks silence on womens basketball lesbian mafia

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/21/candice-wiggins-says-she-was-bullied-in-wnba-for-being-straight/

    • malthuss February 21, 2017 at 11:33 pm #

      Thats not ‘Asoka’ posting. haha.

  91. malthuss February 21, 2017 at 11:33 pm #

    NY mag,

    The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which all E.U. member states are signatories,
    mandates that the “best interests” of children govern every aspect of their treatment. Once they arrive in Europe, they have a right to medical care, psychological counselling, and legal aid, but many of them aren’t getting any of those services. They have a right to education, but often they aren’t getting that, either. “The problem is that E.U. law does not supply any real, clear explanation of how ‘best interests’ should be implemented,” Helen Stalford, who studies European children’s rights at the University of Liverpool, said. “When it comes down to the practical application, there are so many different actors that they’re not necessarily doing this in a way that is transparent, consistent, or rigorous.” As a result, refugee children are sleeping on sidewalks and in traffic medians. They are stuck in unofficial settlements like the Jungle, whose conditions have been described as “dreadful” (the British Red Cross), “deplorable” (Save the Children), “totally inappropriate” (the European Council on Refugees and Exiles), and “diabolical” (Doctors of the World), or in holding centers such as Amygdaleza, in Greece, where, according to Human Rights Watch, “the detention of children in crowded and unsanitary conditions, without appropriate sleeping or hygiene arrangements, sometimes together with adults and without privacy, constitutes inhumane and degrading treatment.” The children at such places confront a number of dangers: vermin, feces-contaminated water, bullying, petty crime, violence, sexual abuse, and diseases ranging from scabies to tuberculosis.

    According to Europol, the law-enforcement agency of the E.U., more than ten thousand migrant and refugee children have gone missing in Europe since 2014. They are obvious prey for human-trafficking groups, who exploit them for sex and slavery. A team of Italian doctors examining unaccompanied children found that fifty per cent of them suffered from sexually transmitted diseases. According to a report by Refugees Deeply, in one Athens park the going rate for a sexual encounter with an Afghan teen-ager is between five and ten euros.

    • Cavepainter February 22, 2017 at 9:31 am #

      Sometime back scholarly consensus tipped toward favoring the opinion that our human species is not so different from the Brazilian Atta species of ant. Eggs of an Atta queen always hatch whichever of the hive order “specialist” is needed, keeping operational balance. No direct ganglia connection but by a much more nebulous means the whole colony is triggered into concerted response.

      Among humans the “nebulous means” is language, the attribute of the left hemisphere – the youngest part of our brain. The right hemisphere, residence of sentiment, is older. The brain “Big Bang” loosely refers to when the Cro-Magnon (fading nomenclature usage now) gained leaps over the Neanderthal throughout Eurasia by advanced usage of language – super weapon/tool of late Paleolithic.

      In similar way to the Atta ant colony human groups react to collective sense of ambient circumstance by redirecting modus operandi. For instance, vis-a-vi compassion or aggression.

      Ah yes, language; sounds charged with meaning, all abstracts of humanity’s attempt to order sensory input into either purposeful apprehension of “reality” or otherwise fanciful escape from it. A two sided sword, so to speak, either of which could mean survival or demise of a society (or clan) dependent on which hemisphere of the brain prevails in circumstantial application of this tool/weapon.

      The Indians at Wounded Knee fared worse because they “fancied” reassurance of the shaman’s contention that white shirts would trump bullets. Today, the Western World is behaving like those Indians; rather than choosing a reasoned response for survival against the crushing consequences of global over-population it is being herded toward extinction by John Lennon’s “Imagine” fantasy that all cultures are miscible – are without significant contentious differences.

      This reaction is based purely on sentimentalism – older right hemisphere resident – due to the political Left’s Maoist like “cultural revolution”.

      • messianicdruid February 22, 2017 at 9:37 am #

        As Robert Ringer used to say, “They got their should-be [s] and is [s] mixed up.”.

      • thwack February 22, 2017 at 9:44 am #

        The Indians at Wounded Knee fared worse because they “fancied” reassurance of the shaman’s contention that white shirts would trump bullets.

        ************************

        But you gotta admit, the shamans got the Ghost Dance correct. right?

        It just took a little longer.

      • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 4:19 pm #

        Check out E.O Wilson’s book “Consilience” some time. Some Ant Queens have amazing powers. In one species, a new Queen can change her scent to match that of an established colony, and then march in past the guards and kill the Queen and take her place.

        More: In one species, the Queen can do one better. She can somehow get the workers to kill the old Queen for her. Shades of the French and Russian Revolution.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 4:21 pm #

          We already have neutered female workers donning hijabs and chanting Allahu Akbar.

          • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 5:35 pm #

            Interesting comparison.

            There are tales of campers who leave the food on a rock in a tub of water.

            The ants [thru smell?] drop from the ceiling and form a ‘bug chain’ on the water, so the food can be seized by the survivors and taken home.

            Amazing what a creature with a brain that is a few neurons can do.

            Humans, well I dont get a good sense of the present and the future. Most educated [brainwashed] people dont even know contrails from chemtrails.
            OH, WE ARE SPRAYED, LIKE BUGS.

  92. FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 6:34 am #

    Between Scylla and Charybdis

    Memory of the crowd is limited by current events minus two weeks in the past

    The vast majority of people live on experiences of current events. Some at least interested in the events of various historic periods, but only a few deliberately studying holistic picture over at least any significant historical period.

    The ship of humanity goes on the stormy sea between Scylla and Charybdis – between objective economic and environmental problems and global military and political ambitions of a narrow circle of inadequate old American national elites who do not want to part with their outgoing power, as in the new world they could be offered only work of a porter at the hotel.

    Putin is at the helm of this ship, and we have come close to the most challenging phase of the direct passage of the ship between the two monsters. How long will it take to pass, and whether it will end successfully – will see in the near future.

    The current 2017 seems the most difficult in this respect. The accumulated objective problems are really serious, and the restructuring of the world order will be very painful for all countries and peoples.

    Perhaps, for Russia it will be a little easier due to the fact that the Russian people are accustomed to hardships.

  93. FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 6:49 am #

    White House: Trump intends to conclude a deal with Russia to combat terrorism

    President Donald Trump intends to conclude a deal with Russia to combat terrorism, as well as in the economic sphere, said spokesman for the White House Sean Spicer.

    According to him, the US will try to find common ground with Russia on the issue of defeating the terrorist group “Islamic State”, as well as issues of economic growth. Spicer said that “if it is in US interests, he (Trump) will succeed.”

    Trump will strike against terrorists in the Pentagon and Langley, and Putin will end with terrorism in the Middle East

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  94. FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 7:06 am #

    What happened with Trump remarks “Last Night in Sweden”?

    The explanation is obvious: the US “intelligence” community “informed” Trump of riots in Sweden one day before they actually happened (as it was planned by the same “intelligence”).

    These idiots are exposing and setting themselves up for easy purges. Way to go!

    • thwack February 22, 2017 at 10:03 am #

      Yeah that interesting FTM.

      Now,

      as per Kim Jung Nam, can you tell me what kind of poison is so toxic it can kill you if you get it on your face for 30 seconds; but it leaves no trace?

      Because Im about to call bullshit on this “assassination?”

      • FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 10:57 am #

        Same as was used against Russian Ambassador to UN Churkin?

        Too many “unexpected” deaths of prominent people to defy the laws of probability.

        • thwack February 22, 2017 at 1:52 pm #

          The reason this assassination may be theater is because this Kim Jung Nam character was always traveling with fake passports in order to dodge his enemies; therefore, what better way to dodge your enemies than to fake your own death and blame it on your enemies?

          Qui bono?

          Regarding this “secret” super toxic poison that leaves no trace… until someone can identify its mechanics, Im filing that under “shit that never happened”

      • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 11:40 am #

        “Because Im about to call bullshit on this “assassination?”

        Thwack,
        You display your ignorance. Powerful Ju-Ju does exist.

  95. messianicdruid February 22, 2017 at 10:19 am #

    How do you go about building a canal a out 50 miles long on a little creek. It would have to raise boats about 100 feet along the route, so I figger 5 lockes, a dredge in each section, of some type to keep it cleaned out, with paths for donkeys along the sides with long ropes. Sails would be impractical since this creek goes through woods, lakes and rocks. We must learn how to move heavy loads short distances with out oil.

    • volodya February 22, 2017 at 11:04 am #

      We will dig the canal the way we used to, a lot of guys with shovels and wheelbarrows and buckets and donkeys pulling carts. Given the years-long nature of the task, this could take on the character of a societal project, like the Egyptian pyramids.

      And given that it will divert a great deal of labor from other uses, the opportunity cost will be large. Therefore the width and depth of the channel will be the minimum necessary to accommodate boat traffic and still make the dig worthwhile. Not an easy calculation.

      As far as moving the canal traffic, as you suggest, we’ll use animals walking along side the waterway pulling the boats with ropes.

      But given that this is an exhausting ordeal for the animals, we’ll breed donkeys and maybe horses with the stamina of, well, canal horses.

      • messianicdruid February 22, 2017 at 4:36 pm #

        Yes’ much to consider. Steam paddle boat would be nice if it didn’t have to be made like a locomotive. A sterling engine using the difference between air and water temp might work, too.

        Eight foot barges with 1 foot draft, two donkey power.

  96. thwack February 22, 2017 at 11:11 am #

    RocketDoc February 21, 2017 at 7:50 pm #

    Why do you want to believe we didn’t go to the moon? I recall talking to Michael Collins at the 1976 Bicentenial Opening of the Space Museum in Washington, DC while we hovered up canapés and we talked about what he thought about while the other guys went for the glory…..

    ****************

    I had to bump this forward to respond because I think it applies to many others here.

    Its not that I don’t want to believe the Apollo moon landings; like everybody else, I did believe they happened. But once I heard a few arguments claiming they were faked, I had to consider that possibility due to the fact that the most successful lies are the ones people want to believe.

    Since then I have done my own research and now have enough data to finally take a firm position on the issue. I say it didn’t happen. But unlike the white people who claim the same, most of my argument is based on intuitive political “tells” in contrast to white people who make technical arguments.

    I think you will find that once you are no longer emotionally invested in Apollo “happy moon landering” its easier to be objective about the narrative, and once that happens, you start to realize lots of good questions were not only never answered, they were never even asked.

    It is not my intent to discredit technical and scientific advancement; indeed, as a student of all the great and vast things white people have done, Im the first to give credit where credit is due; but if you abuse my trust to get my faith, you will end up with neither.

    The Apollo moon landings are to the religion of techno narcissism as the Resurrection is to Christianity; you either accept it happened or you don’t.

    Its a religion.

    And when you question a persons religion; well you know what happens?

    • FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 11:30 am #

      Unfortunately, according to research surfaced in Russia, the US Moon landing were not only faked, they were faked with full blessing of Soviet leadership.

      Things went so far, that the first man in Space – Yuri Gagarin – had to be silenced with plane catastrophe when he strongly objected to the planned Soviet-American con.

      • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 12:02 pm #

        And you know these as facts, how?

        • FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 12:36 pm #

          No, of course not for facts, but from studying the aforementioned research and bouncing it off what I know about that period of Russian-American relationship.

          Also during the most critical stretch of Russian-American relationship that came very close to nuclear exchange during the crisis of July 2014 (Malaysian airliner MH17 shot down over Ukraine), some serious Russian officials, like the Russian Investigative Committee Spokesman Vladimir Markin, were making open threats to publish the facts.

          • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 5:36 pm #

            You know the John Birch Societies facts about Sputnik?
            That it was by our consent that ‘they’ got into space first.

        • FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 12:44 pm #

          Apparently, knowing things for facts (e.g. being eyewitness) could be hazardous to your health.

      • thwack February 22, 2017 at 2:57 pm #

        Unfortunately, according to research surfaced in Russia, the US Moon landing were not only faked, they were faked with full blessing of Soviet leadership.– FTM

        *******************************

        This is a concept non white people find easier to accept; since we have experience witnessing “different kinds” of white people (including those who can’t stand each other) forming partnerships to get things done which are of mutual benefit to both of them; at the expense on nonwhite people.

        Unlike white people, for us racism is not a conspiracy, but a business; thats why we can often see it when white people can’t.

        Just sayin.

    • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 12:00 pm #

      Thwack, you’re a wack (job). By definition, you are so off-base: Religion is based on supernatural events, which can’t be reproduced at will, whereas science is based on reproducible facts.

      Your description of belief of moon landings as a religion is totally inaccurate.

      I see your moon landing posts as anti-science propaganda in an attempt to stifle technological progress.

      • capt spaulding February 22, 2017 at 1:51 pm #

        Might as well just come out & say it, Bill, Wack is pretty much full of shit regardless of whatever subject he addresses. He’s like WPA, or Janet without a penis.

        • thwack February 22, 2017 at 2:19 pm #

          Capt babbling is like one of those white liberals that gets mad when a black person exceeds his niggardly expectations.

      • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 4:27 pm #

        Religious in the sense of providing deep emotional satisfaction and meaning. Spaceships leave many cold, Bill. Others travel thousands of miles to watch in awe as they take off. The hotels around the Cape Coast have really suffered since the Apollo and Shuttle programs ended.

        Others get it this feeling thru Marxism and being part of little Marxist groups (churches). Some get it thru sports and worship Tom Brady as a God. But that leaves you cold, right? See how it works?

        Some say that no living thing can get past the Van Allen radiation belt and thus the Moon landings must be fake. I don’t know, but yes, it would be hard to keep a secret of this magnitude.

    • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 12:24 pm #

      My intuitive political “tells” inform me that the Earth is flat. If you believe otherwise, then you believe in the religion of techno-narcissism.

    • elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 12:52 pm #

      Thwack,
      I find your comments on the moon landing…racist. You say this to denigrate the achievements of the black women who got us there….

      Devil, you have shown yourself….

      • thwack February 22, 2017 at 1:37 pm #

        the thwack is our misfortune.

      • capt spaulding February 22, 2017 at 3:07 pm #

        It’s interesting that you recognize the racism in many of Wack’s posts. Somehow he seems to think that because he claims to be black, it excuses him and leaves him free to use whatever racist remarks he feels like regurgitating.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 4:29 pm #

          Yes, he’s much too smart to be Black. I agree with you, Cap. Some clever Liberal Devil noticed the influence of White Nationalism on this blog and decided to combat thru any means necessary.

          • thwack February 22, 2017 at 7:23 pm #

            Here you see the affirmational aspect of racism. Its not that spabbling and Janos think Im not black; they just hope Im not black because of the way I beat them with their own shoes and make it look easy.

            (and fun)

            The truth is, it is easy because taking the racial position requires the embodiment of several intellectual (and possibly physical) deficits. Both Janos and corporal spackling are prime examples of this phenomenon.

            I guess they don’t realize that failure makes them look fat.

      • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 5:38 pm #

        GAWD …..Found this,

        HIDDEN FIGURES’ film,
        I personally hope that the yoofs that attend this movie don’t get the idea to take “maff” classes instead of aspiring to be rappers, gangsters, pimps, or millionaire NBA stars.

        If they do take “maff”, and they (naturally) excel at it, how will we EVER be able to compete with them via honest work in the various highly paid technical fields?

  97. sprawlcapital February 22, 2017 at 11:26 am #

    If you visit Juan Cole’s “Informed Comment” blog today and see what he has to say about “undocumented” aliens, you will be subjected to some foolishness that will amaze you. Sample: the US needs illegal aliens if we are to remain a great power.

    As I have said before, Juan Cole provides useful commentary on the Palestinian rights issue. But when he strays into criticism of President Trump’s immigration policy, Cole goes off the rails, totally.

    I could not get copy/paste to work for the URL.

    • Frankiti February 22, 2017 at 1:45 pm #

      Juan Carbon might just as well say that all great powers require slave labor, an indentured class, and exploited labor pool. “Migrants”, “undocumented”, “illegal aliens” are all euphemisms for slaves.

      • sprawlcapital February 22, 2017 at 2:30 pm #

        Very good observation, Fr.

        The good professor Cole (“Carbon”) is clearly a cornucopian–he believes the US can continue growing in population forever, and that a cessation of growth would lead to our downfall. He is also, clearly, delusional.

  98. volodya February 22, 2017 at 11:40 am #

    Malthuss, no abortion is no laughing matter, and like you, I’ve heard the same thing, that in effect abortion is used as birth control.

    Now, you get into the moral argument side of it, isn’t it better to just use a condom or the pill than abortion? A lot cheaper and you’re not killing a living being.

    And these people ie progressives, that advocate for the right to kill an unborn young ‘un show an abhorrence for killing on a battlefield.

    But if it’s not ok to kill people trying to harm your country and kill your citizens, what makes it ok to kill your own unborn young? If that’s their line of reasoning, then you’d have to ask the feminist movement and abortion rights activists, have they switched off their moral faculties?

    Oh, but they say it’s the woman’s right to choose. Yes, surely, but this isn’t Saudi Arabia or the backwoods of Afghanistan or Pakistan where women have no rights and no right to choose. By the time an American woman is pregnant, rape and incest aside, she’s made many choices, to go out with a guy (or not), to have sex (or not), to get married (or not). Arguing “choice” is specious. She’s chosen to act in a way that leads to pregnancy. And killing a person, especially a defenseless unborn, is no small matter. And birth control is widely available.

    Now, to argue this gets you painted as misogynist, retrograde etc etc, all sorts of bad things by the progressive set. They don’t argue the point, they just call you names. Yeah, I know, sticks and stones and all that but it can be career ending and life limiting depending on where you live. A lot of them say you have no right to air that particular view, their aim is to silence you. And the more extreme their reaction to these views, the likelihood is the more extreme the counter reaction.

    And so you unleash the furies which is what the Oligarchs and their perfumed coastal clerisy intend. In the meantime, the clerisy holds open the bank vault while the Oligarch carries off the loot undisturbed.

    So don’t fall for it. Pick and choose your battles. Keep your eye on the ball. The oligarchs ruined the country and took away the livelihoods of millions. A woman may need an abortion. But the woman necessarily has to eat, three times a day, every day. Which is the more important issue?

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    • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 12:16 pm #

      So a woman getting pregnant as a result of a violent rape must carry the fetus to term? What about a sick pregnant woman with children who will die if she gives birth? Who should be saved? What about a fetus shown to be very damaged? Should it be born?

      When you bring morals to an issue, you make that issue black or white. In the real world, things are various shades of gray.

      • volodya February 22, 2017 at 2:02 pm #

        Nope, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Read my post again. For one thing I said, “rape and incest aside”.

        I hate quoting myself but what the hell: “And so you unleash the furies which is what the Oligarchs and their perfumed coastal clerisy intend. In the meantime, the clerisy holds open the bank vault while the Oligarch carries off the loot undisturbed.” THIS is my point.

        The point was to NOT get into these “culture war” issues. To do so falls into the trap. While you’re arguing they rob you blind.

        As one guy asked, what’s the matter with Kansas? Meaning, why do they vote against their interests? The answer: the culture wars.

        It appears though, that with this last election, the metaphorical Kansans have woken up.

        • ozone February 22, 2017 at 4:21 pm #

          V.,
          Thanks for the clarification, and I heartily agree.
          Distractions are everywhere and we’re beginning to see that a goodly number are not accidental.

          Things are getting interesting. Finding local sources for beer ingredients would be advised…

          • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 4:35 pm #

            I agree and that being said: where do you stand on abortion?

        • ozone February 22, 2017 at 4:48 pm #

          Sorry, but I find vladdie to be one of those very “non-accidental distractions”. Respect and response are in no ways required, nor should they be expected.

          • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 8:23 pm #

            This is exactly why we won the election, Zone – snobbery, even as your Druid said. Thus Buck named you well: Doomer Snob.

        • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 5:43 pm #

          As one guy asked, what’s the matter with Kansas? Meaning, why do they vote against their interests? The answer: the culture wars.

          Oh, so if they vote Dem, they vote for their self interests?
          Or if they continue to vote Repub, they vote against their interests?

          Me, I dont vote.
          At this stage, USA has a Repub president, and he wont undo the mess we are in.
          The things that concern me include,
          Fluoride
          Vaccines
          Chemtrails
          Gmos
          Electric pollution
          Cancer rates up 10x over in a century
          Fukushima

          and other things that might be mentioned in a debate, like Military, but never in a ‘lets bring the troops home’ style.

  99. volodya February 22, 2017 at 12:08 pm #

    aNanymouse, you bet, it sure as hell does warrant worry. I’ve seen the world as it was. What the progressive set (in the main, prosperous bi-coastal bubble-landers) counts on for their own ideological and economic reasons, is what they call landscape amnesia, our forgetting how things were. Well, I remember. People are told to tolerate an intolerable level of criminality to show their own progressive bona fides and their own enlightenment and intellectual attainment. Intolerable compared to what it was in the past and in-and-of-itself today.

    • aNanyMouse February 22, 2017 at 1:11 pm #

      Spot on, volodya, esp. on “people are told to tolerate an intolerable level of criminality….”
      And people are pushed to go bananas on “Russian hacking”, and “persecution” of immigrants, as if these people have a “right” to crash our party here.

      But the Right hasn’t exactly been distinguishing itself, with their Impeachment cow about Clinton’s lies about Monica (while they soon later sneered at those beefing vs. Dubya’s and the CIA’s/neocons’ lies about Saddam’s WMDs),
      their sneers at Sanders’ and OWS’ pointed beefs vs. Wall St.’s crime sprees, and
      their (at very best) deafening silence about legit points from the anti-nuke power movement (e.g. about Fukushima).

      To replace Dole’s clever quip about “Carter, Ford, Nixon: hear no evil, see no evil, and Evil”,
      I now recommend something like “Obama, Limbaugh etc., Dubya/Cheney/Hillary (and Wasserman-Schultz): hear no evil, see no evil, and Evil”!

      • volodya February 22, 2017 at 2:19 pm #

        “..hasn’t been distinguishing itself” is an understatement. There ‘s no stick long enough to measure the full-of-shitness of the Right, as you said, on the Lewinski nonsense, Wall Street’s criminality, the pure stupidity of supporting an unworkable globalist scheme for re-configuring world production and consumption, of course for the sake of their own wealth.

        • aNanyMouse February 22, 2017 at 3:30 pm #

          Quite so, volodya.
          To get back to the Left, how about BLM etc.? They whine way more about Ferguson (though Wilson was cleared by Obama’s DoJ) than they do about Van Dyke’s bosses, from Rahm to the City Council (which doesn’t DARE ask “What did Rahm know, and when did he know it?”).

      • aNanyMouse February 22, 2017 at 2:20 pm #

        While we’re having fun with an aphorism, let’s add an acronym, about the essence of 21st century civilization:
        CAPTAINS, standing for
        Corners get cut
        Asses get covered
        Palms get greased
        Turds get swept under rugs
        Agendas get hidden
        Images get crafted
        Nuances get buried
        Squeaky wheels get greased

  100. Titchfield February 22, 2017 at 1:08 pm #

    Janos,

    which ancient Jews were fanatics for isolation? Not the mass of them, not Jews in general.

    The majority of pre-exile Jews were forever hankering after Canaanite sex and Canaanite gods, Philistine too. That’s why the Jewish people, the mass of them, were chastised, century after century, by the priests and the prophets.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 8:27 pm #

      That chastisement and repentance is what I’m talking about. The people perish for lack of vision. Without such Leaders, the Jews would have disappeared as a separate people long ago. Indeed, this what they have planned for us.

  101. Titchfield February 22, 2017 at 4:47 pm #

    When the first-wave boomers were young–sixties and seventies–a lot of men wore their hair long or longish. Whether these men knew it or not, a thick head of hair, worn long, hid or diminished a number of defects: narrow forehead, protruding ears, fleshy cheeks and a vaguely defined jawline. Now that long hair is ancient history, these defects are on instant and full display.

    The good looks of even a young Marlon Brando would be marred by some of the haircuts now in fashion. To my mind, the most aesthetically stupid of these cuts is the one where the area above and beside the ears is shaved away, and the pate is topped by the hair-replica of a little bush.

    Are all the wearers of this particular haircut aesthetically dense? Of course not. But to many young men, hip-dom is all, and this kind of cut gives them certain membership.

    The collapse that’s predicted by the host of this site–if it comes–will relieve us of much foolishness.

    • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 5:09 pm #

      Yet some people look better with very short hair.

      • Titchfield February 22, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

        True. But only the good looking ones, those who don’t need a mane to hide or ameliorate the flaws of the face and the skull.

        • thwack February 22, 2017 at 7:29 pm #

          are you a homosexual?

          Why are you so focused on the way dudes look?

          • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 8:24 pm #

            where did T state its gender?

          • thwack February 22, 2017 at 9:31 pm #

            are you a homosexual?

  102. janet February 22, 2017 at 5:08 pm #

    We may be fumbling toward collapse and there are still incidents of hatred in the land… but more importantly the response to hatred is love and unity, as recent events have demonstrated. These headlines indicate that love triumphs over hate. Muslims and Catholics helping Jews. Christians and Jews helping Muslims. Real love expressed in response to violent acts of hate and bigotry.

    Muslims Raising Thousands to Support Jewish Communities After Vandalization of Jewish Graves Now Exceeds $80,000 Dollars …While Catholic Archbishop joins Missouri Governor to Host Vigil and Clean-up Efforts

    After Arson of Mosque, Christian and Jewish Communities Helping Muslims By Handing Over Synagogue Keys and Holding Human Chain

  103. elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 5:45 pm #

    Well, The BBC reported, this PM that a 14 year old white female was robbed and shot in the head by two youths…in Utah. I can no longer remain silent on this scourge…we have to do something about those Goddamned Mormons…enough is enough.

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    • thwack February 22, 2017 at 7:00 pm #

      was she trying to buy drugs?

  104. elysianfield February 22, 2017 at 6:27 pm #

    Mr, Kunstler,
    You might find this illuminating…you have commented on this subject at length in the past….

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/20/college-writing-center-declares-american-grammar-a-racist-unjust-language-structure/

    What more can be said?

    • malthuss February 22, 2017 at 8:39 pm #

      It is the logical result of illogical practices.
      Anti Americanism, multi cult, multi lingual;
      Plus africans never fit in here.
      Doubt me? See the black debate winners. They are ugly losers.

  105. FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 7:04 pm #

    You know the John Birch Societies facts about Sputnik?
    That it was by our consent that ‘they’ got into space first.
    malthuss

    It is quite possible that the Soviets had stolen the plans from the Americans, but more likely that both Americans and Russians stole them from the Germans.

    Anyway, by hook or by crook, we beat you to it and that what counts.

  106. malthuss February 22, 2017 at 8:43 pm #

    boo hoo hoo-https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexico-says-not-accept-unilateral-u-immigration-policies-172004968.html

    The comments are all Nationalist, that i read. And I read many.

  107. Janos Skorenzy February 22, 2017 at 8:46 pm #

    The Trappis One system is to be the new Home for the Human Race. The innermost habitable planet will be for Blacks. The middle one for Whites. The outermost for Asians.

    • beantownbill. February 22, 2017 at 10:18 pm #

      Sorry, that wouldn’t work out. Sooner or later, someone from one planet would visit another planet in the system, and before you know it, there’d be mixing of populations.

      • thwack February 22, 2017 at 10:51 pm #

        That would be Janos.

        Janos would get in his slave space ship, travel ALL THE WAY over and pick up a load of blacks from the black planet and take them back to the white planet to be slaves.

        Then he would go back in his moms basement, cover himself in Cheeto dust and sit around all day typing furiously:

        THA BLACKS!
        THA BLACK!!!

        WHITE GENOCIDE!!!!

        WHITE GENOCIDE!!!

        You will never get a symphony out of Janos, or a great sculpture… what you see is all you will ever get.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 23, 2017 at 2:13 am #

          You are Carbon. I am a Diamond in the rough. We are the same substance separated by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

          • thwack February 23, 2017 at 9:49 am #

            Ni66a im harder than carbon; im carbon carbon…im the black part on the space shuttle: never again attempt to compare yourself to me.

            If you even dream about it you better wake up and apologize.

        • BackRowHeckler February 23, 2017 at 7:46 am #

          thwack, please come back as Dannyboy.

          You were much more engaging, witty, and funnier in that persona.

          brh

          • thwack February 23, 2017 at 8:57 am #

            We arent dating faggot

          • Frankiti February 23, 2017 at 2:25 pm #

            No he wasn’t

      • Janos Skorenzy February 23, 2017 at 2:08 am #

        On pain of death is he ever returned to White World. This must be our new Tree of Knowledge, there or here. Race mixing has almost ended the White Race.

        Jews can be peacefully absorbed into the Negro Race on the first planet.

        • thwack February 23, 2017 at 8:59 am #

          Btw

          White people should be on the 3rd planet since they have the least color, right?

  108. johngalt February 22, 2017 at 10:21 pm #

    The sun ain’t gonna shine anymore.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8yer7IXNIE&feature=youtu.be

    Sent from the New Republic.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv8sko6hpqm6tir/New%20Republic%20rev123.pdf?dl=0

    http://www.got-truth.com

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  109. FincaInTheMountains February 22, 2017 at 11:39 pm #

    More political entertainment coming our way

    Conservative provocateur targets CNN with secret recordings

    O’Keefe said in a telephone interview with CNN on Wednesday that he has “a few hundred hours” of “secretly recorded material” from inside the network. “We’re calling it CNN Leaks,” he said, drawing inspiration from WikiLeaks’ document dumps.

    He said “part one” would be published Thursday at about 10 a.m. ET. “This is all legally recorded information,” he said, declining to be more specific.

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/22/media/james-okeefe-cnn/

    Jus keep the popcorn coming!

  110. pdxr13 February 23, 2017 at 4:09 am #

    “greatness” (fraud printing) vs. technocrats (socialist micro-planners) are not the only paths as hinted at by the “Soylent” commentators.

    Soylent is a real product/company, you know? Food-substitute-shake for people who don’t have time for, don’t like, or won’t cook real-food.

    People don’t make good food. But, we do make fine bio-Diesel and agricultural supplements to shore-up aging topsoil. Fewer people=fewer problems. Fewer people (90% fewer in North America?) ends our space and resource shortage right away with most labor shortages solved with automation and slightly-reduced “lifestyle” for the survivors. Expect some resistance from the 90% scheduled for wear-out and die-off.

  111. FincaInTheMountains February 23, 2017 at 7:18 am #

    The Seventh Floor

    If you need additional proof of the inadequacy of the coverage of the situation in the US by the Media (mainstream and alternative alike), compare the amount of news about Flynn and the material regarding the cleaning of the 7th floor of the State Department and the dismissal of Craig Deare, not to mention the interpretation of these events.

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/20/thanks-to-rex-tillerson-for-cleaning-up-the-state-department/

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/senior-trump-appointee-fired-after-critical-comments/

  112. BackRowHeckler February 23, 2017 at 7:25 am #

    Hey Pequiste, speaking of a CFN commenters convention, schedule it for August. That’s when the ponies are running up at Saratoga Springs, right near where JHK lives … give me a chance to try out my ‘Can’t Miss/Sure Fire Betting System’. Actually I had to update it from a few years ago when it didn’t work out too good. But its perfect now.

    brh

    • pequiste February 24, 2017 at 7:55 am #

      Saratoga Springs sounds pretty highfalutin to me.

      Perhaps an optional excursion could be made to see those fabulous thoroughbreds (a rayciss concept if there ever was one,) engage in some parimutuel activities, and rub shoulders with the toney crowd that summers in those precincts.

      I was thinking more along the lines of one of those quaint, nearly- forgotten, adorable old towns, that once-upon-a- time actually thrived: Hoosick Falls, N.Y.

      Favorably, it is located close to both JHK and the racetrack.

      The village was home to the Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping Company at the turn of the 20th century and the Colasta Company during the mid 20th century.

      I am familiar with the place only as I had made a journey from Montreal to New York City via old (also quite scenic and informative) N.Y. Route 22 many moons ago, and know about the backwaters of the Rust Belt of which Jim speaks.

      As an aside for Janet/Asoka/WPA: Bennington College is just across the border in Vermont, providing a “safe space” and progressive environment.

  113. ozone February 23, 2017 at 9:10 am #

    Krugman’s krude kover —
    Historical rhyming and the “banquet of consequences” patiently await the abridgement of trust:

    “For over a decade there has been an unofficial and underreported agreement between Wall Street Executives, our Congress and the Department of Justice. The agreement is simple, Wall Street will do what it pleases and continue to share its wealth with our Politicians and in return our Politicians will make sure the Department of Justice never prosecutes the Wall Street Executives.

    Per William D. Cohan of Bloomberg Markets, The Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges.” — Richard Lawless

    (Okay, another richly ironic last name, BUT, now you know that this spate of non-prosecution is anything but accidental, or the result of soberly balancing the scales of justice.)

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/22/wall-street-demanded-the-nuclear-option-and-the-congress-delivered/

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    • volodya February 23, 2017 at 11:35 am #

      Ozone, per the almighty George T., I drink alone, with nobody else, because when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself. Especially after reading stuff like this. Gimme one bourbon, one scotch and one beer.

  114. volodya February 23, 2017 at 10:37 am #

    Malthuss,

    what “Kansas” did (not just the state of Kansas but also the giant crapped-upon midsection of the country) was to vote in someone as President who had to beat not just ONE national party – the Democrats – but TWO parties, meaning the Republicans also.

    No matter what we think about Trump’s suitability for the presidency, his was an astounding achievement by any calculation. If you listen to the poobahs at the New York Times, Trump tapped into great “anger” according to a Times exec today on one of the lame-stream media’s morning shows.

    “Anger”, said the groomed and polished exec, carefully avoiding whether the “anger” has any basis in fact, or any legitimacy, or any standing in the company of respectable people.

    Now, we know who respectable people are, they are “progressives”, the opposite of “deplorables”, they are people who read the Times, who share its views and live inside the carefully nurtured echo-chamber of coastal, elite opinion. And who voted for Hillary.

    And so, to go where the Times exec avoided going, according to bi-coastal bubble dwellers: no, Kansas and like minded voters have no case, they have no standing, they are low down, deplorable, racist, xenophobes and homophobes. And ignorant too, deliberately so, people that want a living handed to them. End of story. They merit no consideration. Period.

    And so, by this view, “Kansas” did the country a huge dis-service in electing one such as Trump. It was an historic act of vandalism. No matter that the Democrats did the country a similar dis-service by nominating Hillary.

    To the point Malthuss: IMO, for Kansas to vote in Democrats would be AGAINST their own interests. Because if Republicans routinely act to strip Kansas of its economic mainstays and wealth and well-being, the same goes for Democrats, so invested are BOTH parties in the Oligarch view of the world. Both parties are bought and paid for, for either party to claim the moral or patriotic high-ground is a joke.

    So, you don’t vote? That’s fine by my lights, as not voting is to not validate any choices on offer.

    • malthuss February 23, 2017 at 11:43 am #

      Have you read Harry Browns books?

      He noted that one persons vote only counts IF the election would have been a tie and your vote is the deciding one.

  115. janet February 23, 2017 at 11:12 am #

    “And who voted for Hillary.” –volodya

    Correction: And who voted for Hillary, progressives are the majority… by 2.8 million voters.

    Kansas is now one Billion dollars in debt thanks to Brownback’s conservative tax cuts. So much for trickle down… though Trump does like golden showers.

    How do you like it now gentlemen?

  116. volodya February 23, 2017 at 12:40 pm #

    And, as Ozone sez, learn to make your own beer.

  117. janet February 23, 2017 at 1:25 pm #

    “He noted that one persons vote only counts IF the election would have been a tie and your vote is the deciding one.” –malthuss

    Like what happened on Feb. 7, 2017 when a tie vote was broken by the vote of one man. That one vote broke the tie. You never know ahead of time whether your vote might be the tiebreaker.

  118. Titchfield February 23, 2017 at 1:42 pm #

    An observation for the ages. One French writer, Sanche de Gramont, while evaluating the work of another French writer, Celine, says this: “The cry of anguish must be its own reward since there are no alternatives to human suffering.”

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    • BackRowHeckler February 23, 2017 at 4:49 pm #

      Hey Titch I think that’s the first time Louis Ferdinand Celine has been mentioned here in this CFN comments section.

      Surprising too, because ‘Death on the Installment Plan’ pretty much sums it all up, in a nutshell.

      brg

  119. FincaInTheMountains February 23, 2017 at 2:14 pm #

    The media had to declare Trump prophet

    No doubt that in US a full-blown Civil Cold War is in full swing. And for someone like me who is a former citizen of the USSR, I am well aware that the Cold does not make War or defeat in that war more humane.

    And President Trump, apparently is well aware that against him is fighting pro-Nazi bureaucracy, which in the State Department and other parts of the state apparatus was planted by Senator McCarthy, the CIA leadership appointed by Hillary Clinton, some parts (not all) of the military-industrial or rather military-financial complex and Mainstream Media.

    Until now, the damage inflicted on Trump was mainly by the Fourth Estate, as the application of the Logan Act, impeachment and other nasty things that are promised by his enemies, are highly doubtful given the Republicans control both houses of Congress.

    But the media fanning the scandal with General Flynn, caused Trump and his supporters tangible injury. But it is the media, despite its malignancy, is the weakest link of this unholy alliance, and Trump is perfectly able to manipulate them.

    In particular Saturday he very negatively described the immigration situation in Europe, and cited the example of the unrest in Sweden, becoming on Sunday an object of ridicule from the media, because no riots in Sweden have taken place. But on Tuesday, these riots took place and the media had to declare Trump a prophet.

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-crime-sweden/story?id=45610077

    Sensible people of course may not agree with such use of prophetic talent and the only explanation for what happened is the assumption that Trump just slipped and divulged the report of one of the intelligence services, which defected to his side.

    Now the main question arises: did he do it accidentally or intentionally?

    And, judging by the results of this slip, an accident can be eliminated!

    Very timely media have embarrassed itself, and Trump has demonstrated that he already has his own intelligence service!

  120. janet February 23, 2017 at 2:59 pm #

    “Trump has demonstrated that he already has his own intelligence service!” –fin a

    Or it demonstrates that Trump has ties with Swedish provocateurs and paid them to riot in Sweden.

    45 should should get his own military and stop using the military my tax dollars paid for. Did 45 pay for the military? We don’t know if he paid any taxes because he refuses to release his tax returns. Under audit? That is not an excuse.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 23, 2017 at 3:35 pm #

      45 should should get his own military and stop using the military my tax dollars paid for

      Do you prefer your tax dollars to pay for Chinese or Russian military?

      You always have to pay for the military, if not your own, then somebody elses.

  121. malthuss February 23, 2017 at 3:36 pm #

    No he wasn’t–Cute.

  122. capt spaulding February 23, 2017 at 3:39 pm #

    Janet, like wack, is not here to learn, but to post their opinions and bolster their egos. They aren’t here to learn other people’s opinions, just here to trumpet their own bullshit, just like other posters here. I usually find something here to think about, and that’s why I continue reading the comments . Lately however, it’s like trying to pick fly shit out of pepper. Not much information forthcoming. I wish more people could approach JHK’s approach and express neutral views about the state of affairs in this country. It has devolved into an insult trading blog, with nothing much to recommend itself. I admit to being guilty of contributing to that, but would like to see it revert back to a forum capable of recognizing what is going on, and remarking about that. Unfortunately human nature seems to reassert itself and people fall back into the old familiar patterns, me included. Many of the posters here are just masturbating online, and hoping that someone notices. Are you all insulted? You know who you are, and I admit to being guilty of the same offence. However I recognize what’s going on, and will try to control myself.in the future. The insults and posturing do nothing to advance knowledge, and if they don’t do that, then there’s no point in continuing to contribute to the comment section. I remain, yours in the pursuit of knowledge.

    • janet February 23, 2017 at 4:26 pm #

      “but would like to see it revert back to a forum capable of recognizing what is going on” — capt spaulding

      Thank you. Do you believe others here know what is going on? Are you ready to learn from them … instead of hurling insults and using inflammatory words? Who here is doing other than “posting opinions” (some supported by facts, some not) but what is wrong with posting opinions?

      Your earnest expression of a search for the truth of “what is going on” indicates perhaps you are on the wrong forum. Many here know what is going on: the world’s problems are being caused by (take your pick from the following): corporatists, globalist, lizards, Catholics (the Vatican), the Jews, libtards, La Raza, BLM (or Blacks in general), immigrants, jihadists, the Fed, communists, terrorists, white supremacists, racists, conservatives, liberals (or Hillarybots), progressives, labor unions, lawyers, politicians, bankers, the main stream media, Trump, libertarians, homosexuals, the cis-gendered, the trans-gendered, paid commenters on CFN, CFR, Illuminati, billionaires, millionaires, the poor, welfare (and food stamp) recipients, the ACLU, Bilderburgers, Republicans, Democrats, Planned Parenthood, religion (of any stripe), science and technology (too much magic!), Asians, free marketers, Wall Street, etc etc etc

      CFN always looks for someone to blame… and so many explanations of “what is going on” have been offered it is surprising you are even asking. It has been explained to you… and you still persist.

    • ozone February 23, 2017 at 8:39 pm #

      Capt.,
      They are not here to “bolster their egos” (although that might be a satisfyingly sadistic side benefit). They are here to distract, disrupt, refute – and most tellingly- change the subject away from what Kunstler’s missives are all about. It’s a preventative to making common cause. (Now who do you think would benefit the most from that strategy?)

      One justification for tolerating such perpetual abuse: If JHK were to moderate this comment section, it would probably take up a hell of a lot of his valuable time and in the end, be a futile exercise. (Note the sheer volume.) Orlov and Greer both moderate their blogs and one particular poster here has been banned from both comment sections, to good effect. (The main effect of keeping commenters focused on the subject at hand. I’d say that’s “helpful” in and of itself.)

      Since most of the volume of truculent crap is paid-for crap, it is helpful in one respect — it helps one to see the insidious depths that the propagandists have sunk to in order to preserve their masters’ grip on the levers of power and wealth. (Yes Virginia, the Deep State *is* the enemy of the common man.)

      • malthuss February 23, 2017 at 9:54 pm #

        Who?

        Orlov and Greer both moderate their blogs and one particular poster here has been banned from both comment sections, to good effect

    • malthuss February 23, 2017 at 9:53 pm #

      Janet, like wack, is not here to learn, but to post their opinions and bolster their egos

      As in, t disrupt people exchanging facts and opinions?

  123. Titchfield February 23, 2017 at 6:17 pm #

    Thwack, your question as to whether I’m homosexual, disingenuous as usual and very American, reminds me of a long-ago acquaintance, now dead.  He was a murder victim.

    He was murdered in one of those hell-hole cities in the Tropics. Down there, homosexuals are treated with ridicule and contempt. And if they flaunt their homosexuality, they run the risk of being beaten up or killed. This fellow was cornered by a machete-wielding mob and hacked to death.

    The young men down there have ready access to guns and kill each other in quantity. They use a machete only when they want to properly express their loathing.

    I described your question as an American one because it’s the kind that’s readily asked by someone who lives in a uniquely sex-saturated society, as you do. America’s puritan founders have cast a long shadow.  America’s current preoccupation with sex is America’s long-ago puritanism inverted.

    No, I’m not homosexual. (And no “a” before “homosexual.”  The word’s an adjective, not a noun.) 

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    • thwack February 23, 2017 at 6:56 pm #

      Are you a racist?

    • elysianfield February 23, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

      Titch,
      Do not be offended by Thwack…he is just looking for a friend….

      Thwack;

      “Are you homosexual?”

      “Are you racist?”

      “Do you like Turkish Prison movies?”

      What Thwack would not give for a friendly face, a wink and a nod….

      • thwack February 23, 2017 at 7:21 pm #

        and here come ely with the cock block; right on time.

        Titchfeild does not need you to hold his hand game boy.

        The men are talking. Please leave us alone.

        • elysianfield February 23, 2017 at 7:28 pm #

          Thwack,
          Who you calling “boy”?

          Uhh, sorry, that’s your line….

          • thwack February 23, 2017 at 8:14 pm #

            How do you get these things to leave you alone?

            Do I look like a sail boat?

            Why is this bitch made Ritz cracker trying to blow me?

            *sigh*

            I think it likes the beat down?

            how sick is that?

            is this what they mean by “cuckservative?”

            ee gads?

  124. barbisbest February 23, 2017 at 6:46 pm #

    All the pasty nations, yes, they can be useful. Good luck to small, poorer nation’s with trump. A great interview by Chris Hedges recently underscored this. Janet, another comment right on the money above, the one about love wins. LOVE STORY: recent, walking into mercantile establishment recently. Shoe untied. Elderly African woman got down on her knees and tied my shoe. Acts of love. It is amazing to see the recent stories of Jews offering keys to a synagogue when a mosque is burned down. Always win! Remember: anything Trump doesn’t like is fake news.

    • janet February 23, 2017 at 7:18 pm #

      Thank you, barbisbest.

      I was only commenting on “what’s going on” which is the outpouring of love and cooperation in the face of violence and hatred. Love is all around us. Love is “what’s going on” but love get’s little attention on CFN… where fear and loathing abound.

  125. barbisbest February 23, 2017 at 6:50 pm #

    PATSY nation’s dammit

  126. badberries February 23, 2017 at 7:31 pm #

    So now, Mister Trump wants to build us some new Bigly better atomic bombs.

    I’m hoping that somebody will remind him that we still haven’t cleaned up the mess from the last 15,000 we whipped up.

    I have a question for you smart people, how many American cities would have to be destroyed before the fabric of our society would unravel?
    I’d suggest; NY, DC, LA, Chicago (they’re killing themselves off there anyway..) Seattle, Dallas.
    Each of the cities above would get 3 fifty Megaton airbursts and the American dream gets vaporized. et voila! no more United States of America.

    Pretty cool huh?

    Mr.President, I think we already have enough.

    • thwack February 23, 2017 at 8:27 pm #

      So now, Mister Trump wants to build us some new Bigly better atomic bombs.

      *********************

      Fission/fusion products have a “detonate by date.” age/time…

      If you don’t use them by a certain date, they start to go bad.

      So its all good.

      Trump’s “big LEAGUE” better atomic bombs are simply a case of “rotating the stock.”

      Nothing to see here,

      move along…

    • JimInFlorida February 23, 2017 at 10:15 pm #

      Focusing on what a nuclear war would do is a distraction. Let’s talk about what is GUARANTEED to deter a nuclear war.

      Forget MAD. It is clear that Mutually Assured Destruction is no longer a deterrent. That is because the Billionaires and their enablers feel certain they can ride out the destruction and restore things after coming out of their bunkers. Nature will dispose of the dead and the rebuilding can be done by the surviving Goyim, who will work for food. They genuinely believe that the real NWO will arise 20-25 years after they come out.

      That means the deterrence MUST be taken to the Billionaires themselves. Such madness can only be deterred by the promise of a bullet to the head and nationalizing their estates.

      All Vladimir Putin has to do is be able to guarantee the quick EXTERMINATION of the ZOG-NATO billionaire class if Washington pulls a stunt that puts Russia in mortal danger or makes WW3 imminent. That includes wiping out the Saudi billionaires, as well.

      The Western neo-feudal oligarchies (especially the U.S) exist entirely at the pleasure of the Billionaires. If they knew, beyond all doubt, that Putin has the ability and the will to make them pay for WW3 with their lives, then they will do whatever it takes to arrest events leading to it. Just to save their own evil hides.

      Yes, I know Putin is a billionaire. So are the Castros and even Bashar Assad. But, they are NOT among those who are pushing for WW3. Even so, to unleash the Angel of Death against the ZOG-NATO billionaires will be enough to compel the rest of the plutocrats to shed their ill-gotten gain and return it to the nations they stole it from.

  127. FincaInTheMountains February 23, 2017 at 9:04 pm #

    First time Putin was trying to get to Mount Athos was in December 2001, a year and half after the disaster with the nuclear submarine “Kursk”, when he sat in Sochi with his finger on the red button, and prayed to God to rescue him from having to push it. Also around the same time began a series of “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, as well as preparations for the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and I think that Putin has already realized in 2001, that it would not settle by itself.

    And it was less than six months after 9/11 (the beginning of World War IV?), a year before the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and the terrorist attack on Dubrovka, but inevitability of both was clear to Putin already in December 2001. So the desire of the head of Orthodox Russia to pray on Mount Athos, was more than understandable.

    But then Mary, Mother of God did not let him to Athos.

    First, he had to wait a few days until the snow storm dies down, and when he still tried to go after the bad weather, Mary, Mother of God still did not let him allowing a fairly significant earthquake to shake the Holy Mountain.

    And Putin had resigned and left empty-handed, but he still realized that it was no accident that he really was not allowed to Athos by Higher Power, and those who then followed his policies, including his personal enemies, enemies of Russia and enemies of Orthodoxy all noticed that this made a very strong impression on him and greatly influenced his policies.

    The second time, he attempted to get to Mount Athos was in September 2004, but canceled the trip due to the Beslan Massacre of the Innocents. And the Holy Virgin let him to the Athos only in September 2005 after the launch of cruise missiles X-55 from board of Tu-160, and it is in vain enemies of Russian Orthodoxy laugh at the symbolism of Arzamas-16, or Orthodox priests sanctifying the nuclear weapons.

    The fact of the matter is that today’s Russia, and the USSR, and the Russian Empire were historical incarnations of “Holy Russia”, which was created by the monks of Mount Athos, when it became clear that the Orthodox Empire and its Capital Constantinople were condemned.

    And for a long time, Russia was not only the largest Christian state, but after the fall of Byzantium under the onslaught of the Ottomans was the only Christian state in the world, and all its advantages and disadvantages in one way or another were connected with the distortion of the Symphony, that is, one or other conflicts between Christianity and the State, and all international conflicts in which Russia participated throughout its history, in some aspect, were invariably religious wars.

    And the story of the visits of Vladimir Putin on Athos shows that he understands it, and it may very well be that his failure to articulate a national idea and a willingness to endure an anti-Christian economic bloc of Chubais is due to the fact that without the Athos Russian national idea can not be articulated.

    But now, when almost inevitable breakup of Turkey in conjunction with the missile defense system in Poland and Romania connected the political survival of Russia with the question of the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, national idea may not be enough.

    Indeed, together with Turkey could disappear the Montreux Convention, and if the Straits will be occupied by the Anglo-Saxons, the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean will be a launching pad for missile attacks on Russia.

    And I’m with my idea of Western Colored Projects trying to explain what’s inside the West and why it is divided into three Projects, and the essence of its conflict with the East in general and Russia in particular.

    This is all the more important because in the present situation, all three Projects are hostile to Russia, but only Black Project puts the destruction of Russia as a historical incarnation of Holy Russia above the welfare and even survival of the Anglo-Saxon world, which is a product of the Church of England.

  128. janet February 23, 2017 at 9:09 pm #

    “If you don’t use them by a certain date, they start to go bad.” –thwack

    Certain elements need to be maintained and replaced — where others last indefinitely. Each year, the directors of the Department of Energy’s three nuclear weapons labs (now expertly supervised by Rick Perry, who wanted to eliminate the Dept. of Energy) must certify that the stockpile weapons will perform as designed. Since nuclear weapons are inherently immoral, because they cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants, it would be better if they were allowed to deteriorate into an unusable state, then recycled into ploughshares or plowshares, if you are American.

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    • thwack February 23, 2017 at 9:48 pm #

      Janet is a dude.

      I dare you

      I double dare you

      • JimInFlorida February 23, 2017 at 10:27 pm #

        Nope. Janet is wpa_ccc under a different name.

        She is a tenured Jewish professor of Women’s Studies. I can only speculate atwhich insane university she teaches. Either Bryn Mawr or Mount Holyoke. Regardless of where she’s brainwashing her students, she has a HUGE poster of Andrea Dworkin in her office. Which can be seen through her office window as she glares down on the few males who DARE to walk the sacred gynocentric grounds that surround her department.

        Janet/wpa claims to be in Arizona but, I doubt it. Her writing is 100% Eastern Establishment academic rubbish; generously laced with New Leftist poison.

        • janet February 24, 2017 at 1:58 am #

          45 made a good pick in McMaster for NSA. McMaster recognizes that the Islamic State is not Islamic … (duh!) … Daesh is not Islamic because they embrace violence, whereas Islam is a religion of peace. At least McMaster is smart enough to know that. He is an active duty guy who commanded troops during the first Gulf War, receiving the Silver Star. He is intelligent, an academic, and so smart he knows Islam is a religion of peace. A good pick by 45. Bismillah!

          • JimInFlorida February 24, 2017 at 8:33 am #

            What does Trump’s pick for NSA have to do with your brainwashed victims (students)?

            BTW, if Daesh is not “Islamic,” then who are they??? Who is funding them? Who is giving them logistical support?

            I know the answer. I just want to see if you have the courage to name them.

      • elysianfield February 24, 2017 at 3:35 pm #

        Thwack;

        Janet is a dude, I’d date you

        I’d double date you….

  129. janet February 23, 2017 at 9:40 pm #

    45 made a good pick in McMaster for NSA. McMaster recognizes that the Islamic State is not Islamic … (duh!) … Daesh is not Islamic because they embrace violence, whereas Islam is a religion of peace. At least McMaster is smart enough to know that.

    “groups like ISIL, who use this irreligious ideology, this perverted interpretation of religion to justify violence. They depend on ignorance, and the ability to recruit vulnerable segments of populations to foment hatred, and then use that hatred to justify violence against innocents.” –Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, active duty U.S. Army

    Good pick by 45. An active duty guy who commanded troops during the first Gulf War, receiving the Silver Star, who is intelligent, who is an academic, who knows Islam is a religion of peace.

  130. FincaInTheMountains February 24, 2017 at 4:06 am #

    Bang Bang: this little 8-year-old girl has become for me a symbol of Ukraine

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D0e0miMSI0

  131. FincaInTheMountains February 24, 2017 at 5:00 am #

    Donald Trump Epic Battle with his own special services

    The biggest Trump’s war is a war with the intelligence community – said the NBC in its article of 16 February of this year.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/first-read-s-morning-clips-investigating-leakers-n721656

    NBC believes that the attacks of neo-liberal media hordes on the new President is conducted with the participation of US intelligence.

    This is not surprising.

    Even during the election campaign Trump realized that US intelligence and counter-intelligence work for the benefit of Hillary Clinton and using their usual dirty methods. Even then, he made it clear that the time to settle the score would eventually come.

    Series of Trump’s comments about the official version of the terrorist act of September 11, 2001, leave no doubt that he will dig deep. In his view, this official version is so openly flawed that even returning to the investigation 16 years later can bring very unpleasant surprises for the CIA.

    His poisonous comments about how “two planes in one day knocked three skyscrapers and that it has not been done without explosives”, were aimed directly at the American intelligence services.

    Trump said that the tragedy of 911 has not been adequately investigated, and expressed his intention to pursue the case.

    Judging by how the events unfold, the parties will spare no ammunition, but in this case will come up to the surface the CIA’s role as the main global drug dealer. Since the first joint operations with the Corsican Mafia in 1947 the CIA drug trafficking has grown to gigantic proportions and is now built into the structure of the US government.

    Today, only a portion of the proceeds goes to the various secret spy projects. We can assume that much of it goes to staff and departments managers, the other part comes under the control of financial groups represented in the political leadership of America.

    Drug trafficking has gone up the US government vertical of power and reached the highest level.

    The CIA and part of FBI had good reason to side with Clinton, which, according to a variety of data, together with her husband has long been linked to drug trafficking. According to a widespread belief in the US, narcotisation of Arkansas took place when Bill Clinton was governor there, and the whole scam with a separation of Kosovo from Serbia, was largely motivated by plans to turn this region into a drug hub.

    During the election campaign, US customs officials detained Arkansas restaurateur, who is a confidant of the Clintons family and a major drug dealer. This restaurateur tried to illegally smuggle $4.5 million cash as a contribution to the headquarters of Hillary Clinton. The money he laundered through his restaurant, but one John Ashe volunteered to testify about the criminal origin of the money. The case ended when the witness has died under mysterious circumstances and joined the list of the 130 known victims of the Clinton clan.

    http://www.snopes.com/un-official-john-ashe-killed-the-day-before-he-was-to-testify-against-hillary-clinton/

    Such slips give Trump the opportunity to return to the investigation of this and many other cases.

    However, for such a war the American leader will need a lot of courage and dedication.

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