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Ill winds sweep across the fruited plain in the cruel heart of winter. America can resolve nothing. The state-of-the-union is a kind of hysterical nausea, and the nation hunkers into its crib of toxic diverse identities waiting for history to bitch-slap it back on its feet. History’s big sister, Reality, stands by, witnessing all. Spring… is… coming….

Things break up in spring. Nature unlocks what was frozen. The bodies emerge from the melting ice and ripen. The air is electric and thunderbolts frighten the gathering mobs in the public square, the Walmart parking lot, with rumors of war. The earth shakes and monuments fall. That’s how it’s shaping up for 2019.

Sometimes nations just lose their shit. The complex collapse of American life proceeds as the public and its leaders fail to comprehend the forces in play. What the Federal Reserve actually accomplished with its ten years of extend-and-pretend policy was not an economic “recovery,” but a degenerative disease of the social contract. If you look more closely, you can sense what will be unleashed when the ground thaws.

There will be a reckoning in the financial markets. Something ominous is rumbling over in bonds. No more high-yield for you! Among the victims of a credit freeze in “junk” (high-risk) lending: the shale oil industry. Watch it start to roll over this spring as money becomes unavailable for the exorbitant operations that comprise fracking. The swift collapse of the shale oil industry will shock the country, but it is really just the downside of its improbably rapid and acrobatic rise since 2005 on the false premise that profits don’t matter in a business venture. Only the fall will be even sharper than the rise: a few measly years. And, of course, the bond market represents the supreme untruth of the age: that debts can be racked up forever and never paid back.

Mr. Trump will be left holding a bag so large that observers may mistake him for a Bizarro Santa Claus. But the baggage within will not consist of sugarplums. It is actually stuffed with bankruptcy filings and pink slips. A year from now, there may be no such thing as a hedge fund left on the planet Earth. Or a job opening, unless you’re really good at weeding or picking fruit. Mr. Trump will attempt a rescue, but so did Herbert Hoover, who had a good three years to try this-and-that while the Depression stole over the land like a deadly fungus. The difference, of course, is that Mr. Hoover was acknowledged as a most brilliant mind of his era, and yet Reality had her wicked way with him, anyway.

The Democratic Party should have been tossed into the rubber room two years ago, but it’s still out there shrieking in its straight-jacket of bad faith. Kamala, Liz, and Kirsten will mud-wrestle for dominance, but so far, the only cards they can show are the race-and-gender jokers in the deck. Meanwhile, the government shutdown standoff may not be the “winner” move that Nancy Pelosi thought it would be. Why do you suppose she thought that the voters would only blame the Golden Golem of Greatness? She could be gone as Speaker when we’re back in shirtsleeve weather.

Also in the background: the likely shocking reversal of the long, dreary, RussiaGate affair as about twenty-odd former officials of the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, State Department, and other dark corners of the Deep State answer charges of sedition in federal court. Many of them are connected, one way or another, to Hillary Clinton, who may be targeted herself. Robert Mueller is also liable to be smacked with a malicious prosecution charge in the matter of General Michael Flynn when he withdraws his guilty plea in March. A significant moment will be when Dean Baquet is fired as editor of The New York Times, after years of running the “newspaper of record” as an exercise in nonstop PMS.

Financial crack-up and RussiaGate reversal will leave both major parties gasping in the mud as the tide goes out. And just in time for the Yellow Vest movement to cross the ocean and bring out the street mobs to slug it out on the National Mall in lovely weather. Finally, a protest you can believe in! By June, it will be clear that the old order is being swept away. The fight over the new order struggling to be born will be even harsher and deadlier. But we may not be as confused about what’s at stake.


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523 Responses to “In the Deep Mid-Winter”

  1. Neon Vincent January 25, 2019 at 9:58 am #

    “[T]he government shutdown standoff may not be the “winner” move that Nancy Pelosi thought it would be.” Or Trump thought it would be, for that matter.
    The economic effects of the shutdown include all kinds of disruption as well as the potential for making the next recession happen sooner. That might make all of the jokes about the government shutdown from people like Stephen Colbert less funny as time goes on.

    • Neon Vincent January 25, 2019 at 10:07 am #

      “Kamala, Liz, and Kirsten will mud-wrestle for dominance, but so far, the only cards they can show are the race-and-gender jokers in the deck.” Don’t forget Tulsi Gabbard, although if you do, you’ll be in good company; most political watchers don’t think she has much of a chance at the nomination. Also, if you’re skewering left-leaning women, don’t forget Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While she is ineligible to run for President because of her age, she’s making lots of news between her dancing and proposing to raise the top tax bracket to 70%.

      • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 10:41 am #

        Raising the top marginal tax bracket to 70% might actually address one of the biggest problems America faces, namely the financial oligarchy that runs the country as a racket, sweeping the economic surplus into ever fewer and ever greedier hands. This policy and others like it are essential if America is not to fall back into a new feudalism to go along with neo-medieval standards of living.

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:48 am #

          There is no question that this is necessary, but those who hold such wealth wield more than enough power to kill any movement in this direction and I mean kill literally. Let them eat cake, right? This is one reason that the ruling class militarized the law enforcement people long ago. They knew that sooner or later the masses would wake TFU. Personally I would prefer an Atlas Shrugged movement to riots in the streets, but I know both are dreams. Americans have no spines, they will get drunk, get high and turn on Wrestling or Jerry Springer.

          • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 11:06 am #

            The current opioid and alcohol related disease (heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease, pancreatic, liver, stomach, esophageal, mouth, and kidney cancers, diabetes, depression, and suicide) rates indicate that you are correct, Walter.

          • hmuller January 25, 2019 at 11:36 am #

            You reminded me of an old country and western song about an angry drunk in a bar room singing:

            “If I could get up out of this chair, I’d kick your ass!”

        • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 10:50 am #

          it’s the only way to bring sanity back to our financial system. It favors long term profitability, not short term gains. No more crashes. No more 50 to 1 leveraging. You make $1 million on futures or options, you pay $700,000 in taxes. After writing a couple of those checks people look for long term investments and stop speculating.

          • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:58 am #

            Never gonna happen. The foxes now own the hen house.

          • hmuller January 25, 2019 at 11:41 am #

            We are past the point of no return. Here a tweak; there a tweak. The whole debt house of cards must collapse into mass bankruptcy. Then we can start over – just think of all the fun we can have doing it all again, running up debts. Or maybe it won’t be that easy.

          • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 12:11 pm #

            Ol’ Scratch: Actually, it happened once already, back in the 1930s. Partly, that was because of militant labour agitation from below. And partly, it was because America had the good fortune of having a president in office who understood that allowing the oligarchs of the day continued free rein would eventually break the country, and turn it into someone else.

            FDR didn’t institute socialism; FDR saved capitalism, by mitigating its worst excesses. He saw the need for policies that addressed the real needs of people that his fellow one-percenters dearly wished to leave high and dry, no matter the consequences. He also had the support in Congress to get his agenda through, enough to get the job done. It’s not out of the question that this could happen again; after all, we have this prior example to look back on.

          • Robert White January 25, 2019 at 5:19 pm #

            All sanity left the Financial System when the SEC preferentially gave permission to the top five Investment Banks to increase their leverage. Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers both leveraged over 40:1 whereas Goldman was not leveraged to that extreme. Within less than one decade of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act we evidenced historic & endemic fraud across the entire finance domain.

            The Committee to Destroy the World actually accomplished the task.

            RW

          • Majella January 27, 2019 at 3:29 pm #

            Go read “Perfectly Legal – the covert campaign to rig our tax system” by the brilliant (and Republican) David Cay Johnston. It’ll make you weep & puke at the asshole tricks the political donor class pursues…all perfectly legal…to shift the tax burden onto those who have way less or even next to nothing.

        • oilie January 25, 2019 at 10:57 am #

          The problem with the high tax brackets is that no one ever pays at the high rates. If you want their money, you will have to remove the tricks that let them shield their income from almost all taxes of any rate.

          • Luhrenloup January 25, 2019 at 11:17 am #

            Ollie:
            Like the death tax, the Orange One killed. Until AOC starts talking about cutting the military budget where most of the money goes, she can’t be taken seriously. The wealthy don’t pay taxes. Ask for all the tax increases you want, and they go to the tax code where they have planted the loopholes.

          • Majella January 27, 2019 at 3:31 pm #

            Yep. At present, many of those obscene ‘earners’ simply find ways to ‘defer’ paying their dues, for years or even decades. It’s a free loan on which they can continue to leave invested .

        • fugeguy January 25, 2019 at 11:43 am #

          What that might accomplish is an immigrant wave to Switzerland and others plus the removal of 10’s, if not, 100’s of billions of capital from the US. Not to mention the admittedly menial jobs, but jobs none-the-less, related to pampering the wealthy. I’ve never had a job offer from a socialist, or a democrat or a social justice warrior. So when they are all that’s left running the nation good luck feeding the populace with hurt feelings, gender issues and victim hood.

          It shall come to pass, only the timing is in question. But we are too far down the path of destruction to have any hope for a reversal.

          • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 12:25 pm #

            fugeguy: “I’ve never had a job offer from a socialist”.

            It’s sad that this kind of brain damage is as prevalent as it is, but most if not all of us suffer from it; after all, the capitalism we live under absolutely requires it. It’s simply taken for granted that we should pay rent to employers in exchange for the ability to do work. It’s no different from paying rent to a landlord, in exchange for a roof to sleep under.

            My friend, I have good news: you don’t actually need an employer. Under an economic system that actually respected individual freedom, people would own their own work in the same way that today they own their own homes. Any enterprise that you took part in would be one you owned yourself, either as sole proprietor or perhaps as a member of a worker-owned co-op. Why give away what was yours to begin with, i.e. the value of the work you do?

            The question of capital flight has not gone unnoticed, either:

            Why 70 per cent tax rates would require capital controls
            To avoid economic blackmail by the markets, any socialist government would need to impose limits on the movement of money by investors.

            https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2019/01/why-70-cent-tax-rates-would-require-capital-controls

            “The inspiring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently shocked the Democrats by endorsing marginal income tax rates as high as 70 per cent. The response from progressive economists such as Paul Krugman has been overwhelmingly positive. In a recent column, he pointed out that in the context of low bargaining power, rent-seeking by elites and the necessity of revenue-raising in the context of high US government debt (104 per cent of GDP – and more if you count sub-national debt), a top tax rate of 70 per cent is eminently reasonable.

            “As Krugman and many others have noted, top marginal tax rates of 70 per cent or more were normal in the post-war period – also known as the ‘golden age of capitalism’ due to the combination of high growth with low inflation, unemployment and inequality. Since then, successive waves of tax competition have suppressed both income and corporation taxes, leading to a situation in which the UK, the fifth largest economy in the world, levies corporation tax (19 per cent) at a lower level than Afghanistan (20 per cent).

            “Most mainstream economists today accept that tax competition has been hugely destructive to the global economy. Indeed, implementing a global wealth tax of up to 70 per cent was the central recommendation of Thomas Piketty’s 2013 landmark work Capital in the Twenty-First Century. But the problem with these “progressive” economists is that they don’t seem interested in the structural factors that have made tax competition so easy.”

            Read the whole thing.

          • Luhrenloup January 25, 2019 at 2:52 pm #

            I saw that happen in NYC in 2008. You are mistaken if you think only menial work is lost. Think of the glitzy restaurants, the gyms, the hoochie coochie girls, the drug dealers, the tailors, hair stylists, jewelers, etc . . .

          • ozone January 25, 2019 at 7:43 pm #

            Oh, I get it now! It’s the *wealthy* that are the put-upon victims of the evil tax predations that keep the courts and legislatures deciding in their favor. Thank you for the illumination; I’ll send ’em a 5-spot to relieve their distress.

          • Luhrenloup January 26, 2019 at 8:16 pm #

            I was lucky enough to get my grandmother’s peddle sewing machine, a Singer. It’s a beauty, inlaid wood on the drawer faces, the head has a golden griffon on each side, and it works beautifully. Earlier I posted the money that was lost when Wall St. took a dive. I continue to extrapolate on the rich being driven way, and what we would lose: the museums, the art galleries, Broadway, the opera, Radio City Music Hall. Without the rich it disappears.
            How many people posting here can afford to blow $500 for a Broadway play and think nothing of it.
            People talk in terms of Republicans, Democrats, liberal, conservative — that’s not what’s happening. There are only 2 groups as has ever been. Nancy went to Florida on her vacation, thank you. There are the elites and the rest of us. They own the Met, Broadway, MOMA, we are merely visitors to their world. Losing the inheritance tax, or as they called it the death tax, was a biggy. It ensures that the money stays at the top with the elites.
            When my grandmother was alive a person could buy a piece of furniture and it lasted several lifetimes. There was quality to one’s life. We live in a disposable world, cheap housing, cheap clothing, cheap electronics, cheap cars.
            The problem with the rich is that they’re insatiable which leads to the present madness. The worst of them are the nouveau riche, the horrible and vulgar TV people, Hollywood actors, the hip hop, rap folks with their cristal champagne, their ho’s and their pimps with grade 70 gold chains and ugly tats.

          • S M Tenneshaw January 26, 2019 at 8:48 pm #

            If only they knew how to talk.

          • Majella January 27, 2019 at 3:32 pm #

            if they took their dough to Switzerland, they’d have the SHIT taxed out of it. As it is, they leave it in the Caymans et al.

        • Paulo January 25, 2019 at 12:27 pm #

          Those Fonz Happy Days that everyone seems to pine over, especially in red-hatted flyover tardland, saw a tax rate in the US of over 90% for the very rich. Gee, what happened to those days when June Cleaver lived in a nice house while Mr. earned the bread ticket? Oh yeah, all the wealth was given to the likes and friends of Trumpistas.

          • fugeguy January 25, 2019 at 2:06 pm #

            First in a utopia that would be great but being a pragmatist we are left with the choices we have.

            One group makes things and provides opportunity as imperfect as it is, the other consistently and repeatedly offers shared misery. The empirical data is voluminous and not in dispute.

            Unfortunately , I also observe that even the admittedly imperfect capitalist choice is fast becoming more corrupt by the day becoming more cronyish in flavor by the moment. Feeling like a choice between scraps and slave camps. Such, unfortunately is the plight of life in the 21st.

            Regardless, to work in the upper end of technology is difficult to freelance as the costs and barriers to entry are high. Should have been a dirt farmer I suppose.

            Paulo I hope you enjoyed the temporary wood you most likely got from those useless comments. Vapid statements should provide some useful outcome.

            In the end pox on both houses. Wish we had a third viable choice.

        • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:29 pm #

          They are smarter than the officials that they control.
          With the inet and the Caymans, money moves and hides at the speed of light.

        • aibohphobia January 25, 2019 at 4:30 pm #

          It would be more effective, and easier, to undo the privileges enjoyed by huge corporations. A simple measure, for example, like requiring all wholesalers to sell the same thing for the same price to everyone, regardless of whether they buy 1 or 100,000, would be a good start. The manufacturer can set the price to anything they want, but that must be its price per unit to everyone, with no on-sales, no rebates or kickbacks or special relationships.
          Giant Corps edge out local competitors by steep discounts of large volume and by cutting staff jobs and benefits. They have to do this to support the pyramid of managers riding atop everyone else’s shoulders.
          Level the pricing field, and the little guys will win. Also, local unemployment goes down, and service goes up.

          • cbeard January 25, 2019 at 5:09 pm #

            ‘ requiring all wholesalers to sell the same thing for the same price to everyone’ I love it. Let the competition begin. Sounds like anti-crony capitalism.

        • Jigplate January 25, 2019 at 7:51 pm #

          “Raising the top marginal tax bracket to 70% might actually address one of the biggest problems America faces, namely the financial oligarchy that runs the country as a racket, sweeping the economic surplus into ever fewer and ever greedier hands.”

          This is a non-starter. At Davos, where they need valet parking for the private jets, many of your oligarchs, ( most of whom are major DNC donors) , just gave a big thumbs down to occasional-cortex’s 70% solution.

          https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/23/billionaires-davos-hate-alexandra-ocasio-cortezs-percent-tax-rich/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1979c0b73b93

        • dennis_malta January 26, 2019 at 7:29 am #

          Equality and taxing the rich aren’t the answer either. Read the book “2052”. With more equality you fuel economic growth which fuels more fossil fuel use which fuels more CO2. And alternative energy also fuels more economic growth which fuels more fossil fuel consumption. Really we need to do the impossible which is less humans, less consumption, just less all around.

        • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 12:16 pm #

          Elrond,
          We are in agreement…sadly it would be impossible, as we have honest politicians…you know, once bought they STAY bought….

          • Elrond Hubbard January 27, 2019 at 6:36 am #

            Agreement? Glory be! Have a good one, EF. (If you’re feeling generous, how ’bout sending out some good thoughts for the insomniac? To sleep… perchance to dream…)

  2. Walter B January 25, 2019 at 9:59 am #

    “CNN recorded video of the raid at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home, showing FBI agents in combat gear using large weapons and night-vision equipment, running up to the home and banging repeatedly on the door. “FBI open the door!” one shouts. “FBI, warrant!” Stone could then be seen in the doorway in his sleepwear before he was led away, CNN reported.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-associate-stone-arrested-faces-obstruction-charge/ar-BBSIHLc

    That’s what’s on deck Jim, Ninja Stormtroopers armed to the teeth invading the homes of tired old men in their PJ’s. See how they fear us? They are so terrified and such cowards that they have to outdo the Gestapo and take old men out in the night hiding behind body armor and techno-baubles left some old geezer sneeze on them and crush their fragile egos.

    Oh its coming Jim and fast. A quickening I would say and people are going to be soiling their tight whiteys as it unfolds. We have created a monster and it will consume us. It has to, that is what it does.

    • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 10:20 am #

      I haven’t watched the video of Roger Stone’s arrest, but that sounds like the national security state, all right. Things really haven’t changed since Hoover’s Bureau was assassinating Black Panthers.

      The USA has never been in more dire need of an adversarial, truth-telling news media. But Google and Facebook have slurped the corporate media’s economic model (what was left of it after the media barons’ consolidation over the past few decades) out from under them, while Trump has addled what was left of their brains into thin pea soup.

      These two threads intertwine in the evil-Putin-Russia narrative. The national security state needs an enemy as a foil to motivate its depredations, while the media need something to keep scaring people with so they’ll keep tuning in. I highly recommend listening to this week’s Intercepted podcast regarding the wet firecracker accusation from Buzzfeed that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress:

      https://theintercept.com/2019/01/23/donald-trump-and-the-media-temple-of-boom/

      Among other things, they note that Robert Mueller’s remit is to prosecute violations of federal law, not to bring down the chief executive per se, and that Justice Department policy is that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. That’s what the impeachment process is for, and Nancy Pelosi at least understands that attempting impeachment is pointless so long as Republicans hold the Senate — they simply will not convict one of their own, full stop. All those center-libs who are waiting for Mueller to descend like an avenging eagle and carry the bad man off in his talons of righteousness are being sit up for a big, big disappointment.

      • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:34 am #

        Oh too true EH, but alas our media sold out long ago. That is why so many of us come to place like this. Dr. Goebbels is laughing in his grave at how well our government has advanced his cause.

        • akmofo January 25, 2019 at 11:20 am #

          This is where you make a cardinal mistake, Walter. It was never “your” or “our” media. They were always foreign agents with a foreign agenda. They should have always been shunned and boycotted. What’s different today is that we can communicate about this fact and act on it.

          Same applies for “our” Vatican/Nazi gov mafia. The best hope for us gaining sovereignty is to agitate for secession and dissolution of the Union. Start to boycott and de-legitimize federal institutions and encourage others to do the same.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 11:37 am #

            I do not think we ever consider the media ours, but you are right, a lot of us did grow to have at least some trust and faith in it because of the reporting they did way back during the Vietnam policing action. They have certainly lost all trust, faith, and relevance by us that did now however. Dissolution of the US might be a good idea, and it could be pursued openly and legally. Of course I would half to get out of New Jersey ASAP to be sure for it would degrade overnight.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 12:57 pm #

            White Nationalists are the most hated people in America. They obviously don’t own the media – you people do.

          • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:26 pm #

            Same applies for your Israeli, Mossad, Stalinist gov mafia!!!!

          • akmofo January 25, 2019 at 8:02 pm #

            You’re not a white nationalist. What you are, is a liar a hypocrite a malicious deceiver a slave and a tool of the Vatican. You and your Vatican Nazi allegiance are the essence of centralized power and gov mafia imperialism. You are a vector of genocide — cultural genocide economic genocide and physical genocide. That’s what you are, Yan.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:17 pm #

            The Rabbi told you people to stop calling everyone you don’t like, “Nazis”. It’s stupid and wrong. Will you not obey your superior?

          • akmofo January 27, 2019 at 12:02 am #

            You self-identify as Nazi. To you being a Nazi a “good thing”. So I don’t understand your complaint. Just more deceit, I guess.

            And obey my superior? Sorry, but unlike you I’m not Catholic and I’m not a Nazi, so I don’t have any superiors to obey, you pathetic tool.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 3:54 pm #

            Yes, according to the Kaballah, the Jews are their own Messiah. You exemplify this attitude perfectly – so great is your delusion.

            Nazism was just one example of White Nationalism. A German one. I am not German so technically I can’t be a Nazi.

      • Ishabaka January 25, 2019 at 11:14 am #

        The key thing is that CNN was tipped off – they had a camera crew outside Stone’s house at 5:00am, the arrest was at 6:00. Someone in the government wanted good theater. “Triumph of Mueller’s Will” perhaps?

  3. DEFCON1 January 25, 2019 at 10:01 am #

    Excellent news today as the Mueller net drags some bycatch-grade scumbag named Roger Stone up to flop ignominiously on the dock. Of course the real prized pigs come later with the brass ring being the ignoramus-in-chief.

    Jim is more dyspeptic than usual today. Perhaps the noose tightening round his hero has him out of sorts.

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:05 am #

      You comprehension inabilities once again shine through Defcon5. Roger Stone arrested like a terror suspect for “lying” means that one day you and I may be gunned down on the spot by Ninja Stormtroopers just for looking at them the wrong wag.

      • DEFCON1 January 25, 2019 at 10:19 am #

        Hey dummy! As usual your long-winded BS gives the same reward as picking up the phone and listening to the dial tone. And about as informative.

        Ninja Stormtroopers now? Gestapo?

        Be careful – all those on the left side of the Bell Curve will be rounded up …

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:32 am #

          Actually I am one of them and come from a family of all of the Ninja Gestapo warriors. That is why I play the game from within and by the rules. I know what they want to do to people and I do not care to be one of their victims.

          • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

            “Actually I am one of them and come from a family of all of the Ninja Gestapo warriors. That is why I play the game from within and by the rules. I know what they want to do to people and I do not care to be one of their victims.”

            Walter,
            This is the second time in several days that you expressed this idea. Consider that correct actions, corrupted with incorrect thought, will not save you…The Lubyanka was awash with the blood of those who obeyed but the letter of the law.

            History, Walter, History….

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:23 pm #

            So it’s pragmatism and practicality – discretion being the better part of valor – and not Christian principle?

            Not an attack. Just handing you the Sun’s Lance. The above are not mutually exclusive by any means, at least not until the End. And there is room for many kinds of resistance.

        • Q. Shtik January 25, 2019 at 2:03 pm #

          Hey dummy! As usual your long-winded BS gives the same reward as picking up the phone and listening to the dial tone. And about as informative. – DEFCON

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

          The artistic level of the insults amongst the commentariat has definitely improved since back in the day when there was a guy who simply called everyone a moron and a fucktard.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm #

            Indeed, if I am going to be insulted I would prefer it to be with a little panache and perhaps style as well!

          • VCS January 25, 2019 at 5:00 pm #

            Walter really is a windbag.

            Sorry, no panache —

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

            You should hear me waking up each morning, I am actually a very bad bag of foul wind.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 8:05 pm #

            And yes VCS, I do take a lot of words to convey ideas and thoughts to other human beings and I realize that in today’s society that offends many people, sorry if you are one of them. It is another one of my shortcomings that I cannot seem to get a point across or express what I have seen, what I have experienced or what I wish to share with the group in a discussion by simply saying ROLF, WTF, or duh. I am going to have to work on that.

          • S M Tenneshaw January 26, 2019 at 8:56 pm #

            Fuckin’ A.

          • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

            “Indeed, if I am going to be insulted I would prefer it to be with a little panache and perhaps style as well!”

            Walter,
            Rejoin with…”And.., I’ve been insulted by better men than you!”

    • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:09 am #

      No noose tightens. He has not done his job yet. He has to hold the bag in a ‘spring thaw’ when he gives tax breaks to new oil money to keep the shell game of fracking going on.

    • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 10:23 am #

      More dyspeptic, but also growing more misogynistic by the week. “An exercise in nonstop PMS”, indeed.

      • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 12:44 pm #

        Mr. Kunstler is not misogynistic. He appreciates the words and ideas of women. You just don’t know about that.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 1:00 pm #

        All cultures have recognized that women get irritable when on their moon. At least the ones that notice things. I mean a few cultures don’t even recognize the relationship between sex and pregnancy – but that’s rare.

        • hmuller January 25, 2019 at 5:42 pm #

          In New York State they now don’t recognize the right to life for a baby hours from its natural birth. New law – Cuomo is so proud.

          • Majella January 27, 2019 at 4:34 pm #

            Huh?????? I seriously DOUBT that statement…sounds like crazy-right-conservative bullshit fake news to me – provide a link. I can’t find anything on this.

      • 100th Avatar January 25, 2019 at 11:05 pm #

        Elrond is such a priggish fag.

  4. K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:04 am #

    The swift collapse of the shale oil industry will shock the country.

    So you say; but the leaky inner tube that is the economy of America will just get another tire patch. The evidence is right in front of you and in your own words.

    ten years of extend-and-pretend policy

    You tell us this but still assume collapse not expecting more pretending to go on. Bad assumption, America has not yet begun to pretend. Years of pretending are in front of America and serendipity or deep forces nobody can articulate have put the tax thief in the oval office.

    The Golden One, how did he build all his wealth? The answer is government subsidies and tax breaks and that is what he will be giving our oil industry in your ‘spring thaw’. Our money. The show must go on and the bar of talent to make it play out any different or to even understand what is going on is far to low for any goodness to happen.

    • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:06 am #

      JHK quotes were supposed to be italic. Sorry.

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:09 am #

      Yes they can counterfeit and distribute all day long, every day, but one day, when other nations decide to not accept the bogus cash, it will all crash. They will never do that you say? Bark, bark doggie, they have been working on it patiently (so they don’t lose big time) for a decade and are closer every day. Short sightedness, limited attention spans, and the inability to think outside of the program will be the death of America.

      • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:23 am #

        Oh, I’ll agree but I’m saying this is not yet the time. Experience shows Jim to be correct in predicting the general trend but a bent for expecting balancing forces to kick in before they actually will is the historical fact. A desire for Justice makes JHK jump the gun a bit in predicting. Not saying he is wrong, just premature. I wish the universe could care as much as he thinks it does.

        Keeping the party music turned up nice and loud will be pursued with religious conviction and oafish energy. It will be an every second the status-quo is preserved a flower blooms in the desert sort of thing.

        • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 10:36 am #

          Premature like a stopped clock. When you spend enough time prophesying disaster at any moment, the moment when it actually happens must be very gratifying. I imagine Kunstler looks back on 2008 with great fondness. (I tried linking to his statement on the appalling Y2K tragedy that we all remember, but for whatever reason, it just ain’t there anymore – 404 error.)

          I grew attached to JHK because of his ideas about urbanism and his criticisms of car-oriented development. Other than the monthly eyesores, anything to do with that has long been absent from his commentary, and the weeds are still growing. Aside from the prejudices evident in his social commentary, Kunstler effectively preaches mandatory pessimism, alongside scorn for the idea of actually doing anything about the problems he diagnoses (he once responded in a Q&A that he is ‘not a hope dispenser’) other than waiting for the worst to happen.

          Kunstler’s strategy for the future amounts to figuring out how to hoard whatever wealth you can, while calamity plays out all around, so you can be better off than other people once the dust settles. Not very impressive.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:56 am #

            I must disagree with you on this EH. Warning of oncoming calamity is always early, for those who can see what is happing and where it is leading are too far ahead of the actual event for most day to day people to understand. People only see what is right in front of their noses. And no there is no victory in “I told you so” because once it happens we are all screwed. Warning is only functional if it is heeded and steps are taken to correct course. Yes, I understand that this never happens, by we must do what we do you know.

            Jim’s strategy for the future is not hoarding, but adaptation to what the new situation is and utilizing what is available to work with as evidenced by his “World Made by Hand” series. You HAVE read them, haven’t you?

          • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 12:35 pm #

            I admit, I ran out of steam partway through book #3. I may yet pick it back up and read through to the end of book #4.

            I have to say that, while it wasn’t the most discouraging reading experience I’ve ever had, it was pretty discouraging. And I’m not talking about the idea that technological civilization will go away and never come back, either — that’s completely possible, and obviously the whole point of the books.

            I won’t go into my reactions in detail; that’ll just start another fight. Let’s just say that I believe JHK’s point of view has some shortcomings. These are the same ones I complain about here from time to time, about which many people here don’t agree with me. And I find those shortcomings are fully visible in his speculative fiction as well.

          • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 12:51 pm #

            I would have to disagree as well Elrond. I see more pessimism in the comment section as opposed to Mr. K’s posts. Any successful strategy dealing with societal collapse is naturally going to include maximizing resources that already exist for the purposes of survival, will it not? However, adaptation is required over the long-term. Also, there is going to be some pessimism with any societal collapse, right? I mean it represents a re-arrangement of everything we know which is going to cause displacement and death.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 2:45 pm #

            You should definitely do your best to finish it EH. It may have been a tale about the world taking a crap, but it was mostly a tale of how those who adapted to the new model thrived. Everything in this plane of existence changes and eventually falls apart. Denying that fact is foolish and so is quaking in fear over the idea of potential change. Adapting to whatever follows next is the way of the wise and adaptation is made far easier with at least a little bit of planning and preparation. Of course if you live at the top of a high rise in a big city, perhaps denial is a better option, I’ll grant you that. Enjoy it while it lasts and hope it lasts for your lifetime.

          • MrFreeze January 26, 2019 at 8:45 pm #

            Elrond, I haven’t commented here in a number of years but you inspired me to write a quick response. It’s painful to read James’ essays these days. I haven’t been following him for the same reasons you point out: I think his work having to do with urban development and it’s impact on society was excellent. More recently; however, he seems to have embraced a nihilism suited more to a radio talk-show host rather than an author trying to inspire people to think about solutions to problems. I hate to say it but he’s become a curmudgeonly old goat. Sure, he lives in a part of NY that’s in sharp decline, and this sucks; however, like so many who have turned inward, he wants to blame our problems on leftists, liberals and homosexuals (with tattoos!!!). What’s worse is that he inspires some very nasty commentary by people who I can only characterize as self-hating bigots. I find the conversation here to be virtually devoid of facts or substance. I know, of course, I will likely be booted out for expressing my opinion. I think James is a good guy at heart, but he’s too bitter these days!

          • Elrond Hubbard January 27, 2019 at 1:19 pm #

            Thanks for your words of support, MrFreeze. Come what may, I won’t be the one to boot you out. I’m pretty sure none of us commenters have the power to do so in any case, unless you count the power to drive people away with shitposting and negativity.

            To give him his due, I wouldn’t expect JHK to do so either. He is a true devotee of freedom of speech.

          • Walter B January 27, 2019 at 5:50 pm #

            Mr. Freeze & Elrond,

            I do not think that Jim is blaming these splinter groups for our problems and you do him dirty to suggest that I am certain that his point is that our society has concentrated on these ridiculous issues rather than the real problems that plague us. And of course the fact that nobody, and I mean NOBODY is working on coming up with solutions or even working on trying to find solutions is a big problem as well. can either of you point out the last time a government solved a problem without killing people? Not that killing people solved any, just another poor attempt at solution IMHO.

      • cbeard January 25, 2019 at 5:21 pm #

        Absolutely. BRICS could be as Ed Sullivan would say “Really Big”.

      • SpeedyBB January 25, 2019 at 10:38 pm #

        Amen, Walter B: short-sightedness, the curse of quarterly results. National Amnesia a “way of life”.

        If anyone doubts the amazing patience and fierce will of the Chinese to take a “long view” consider their mammoth investments in south Asia and Africa. For sure nothing will pay off this year or next, but all that money and determination will certainly turn results over the long run.

        How favorable those results are is something else. History does, however, point out how perseverance reaps profits, time and again. Particularly if time is on your side, and our allies/adversaries (what – “frenemies”?) understand that very thoroughly.

        Trump and his comment about the ceiling caving in from debt was most telling “…but I’ll be gone by then…”.

    • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 25, 2019 at 10:49 am #

      I think you are correct K-Dog. What wealth remains in the middle, working, and under class in the hinterlands of this country will be heavily mined to maintain the illusion of a “too hot” economy on the coasts. Especially in the criminal enclave of NYC. All the while the small town and rural Trumpfoons will have cognitive dissonance trying to comprehend why their little slice of heaven is turning into a 3rd world shithole as their glorious leader tells them he’s making it all great again.

      So, TPTB will maintain the trend of utter collapse for the peons while expending any and all enegry required to maintain a first class lifestyle for the wealthy, powerful and well-connected. No cost is too great to keep the comfortable comfortable. They will destroy the planet and everything on before allowing any change to that parafigm.

      • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 12:55 pm #

        No cognitive dissonance at all. The Elite and the Establishment are the reasons for Middle America’s fall. To the extent that President Trump can do anything about it, great! If not, nature will take it’s course and history shows that elites and establishments die just like countries and empires do. All the best planning can be laid to waste by a very slight change in circumstances.

        • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 25, 2019 at 2:46 pm #

          Uh huh.

        • Nightowl January 27, 2019 at 3:56 am #

          Spot on SSL.

        • Majella January 27, 2019 at 4:47 pm #

          SSL, you are truly delusional if you actually BELIEVE that your “President” Trump has the ability, let alone the inclination, to ‘do anything about it,’…

          If you have children, surely you recognize the truculent 4 year old in his demeanor & thinking (if you can call what goes on in his head ‘thinking’)?

  5. venuspluto67 January 25, 2019 at 10:07 am #

    I am experiencing a fuck-ton of disappointment with what passes for the institutionalized left in this country for handing the right free propaganda gift-wrapped on a silver platter with the shrieking hysteria over the “Covington Catholic” non-news story. And the left, of course, responds to the revelation that the story is not really as it was originally presented, by doubling down with a Die Partei Hat Immer Recht mentality.

    But if Jim is right (maybe he is, maybe he isnt, the powers that be have proved to be very adept at staving off the coming deflationary compression), come 2020, we may marvel at how we could have gotten our collective undies in a bunch about such things!

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:15 am #

      The powers that be have proved to be very adept at staving off the coming deflationary compression), come 2020, we may marvel at how we could have gotten our collective undies in a bunch about such things!

      That is my point too. But I won’t be wondering how we could have gotten our collective undies in a bunch. When Trump turns the screw people will lie and some will die. But most won’t notice that pain so in fact you observe right. There won’t be any wondering going on. Even if there should be.

    • Jigplate January 25, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

      “come 2020, we may marvel at how we could have gotten our collective undies in a bunch about such things!”

      I for one , am looking forward to the 2020 DNC circular firing squad. The revolution always eats it’s own, and so far the buffet looks good. This week, the NYT says that Kamala Harris was not a “progressive prosecutor” – it looks like she locked up POC that actually deserved it. Creepy uncle Joe Biden along with Kirsten Gillibrand were groveling in the dirt trying to atone for the crime of being white. This is going to be a real hoot!

      • venuspluto67 January 26, 2019 at 8:00 am #

        At this point, I only have two requirements for my Dem pic for 2020: 1) Letting states “do their own thing” WRT cannabis laws and 2) Not horny to get us into a nuclear war with Russia ,though I imagine that any candidate who doesn’t want to get savaged by the press will have to pay some lip-service to the notion of “standing up to Russia and/or China”. And that’s why I don’t want to see Trump get impeached, by the way: Mike Pence doesn’t just want to “stand up to” Russia, he wants actual confrontation with Russia!

    • Sean Coleman January 26, 2019 at 6:45 pm #

      It turns out that the Indian was only a teenager when the Vietnam War ended, like myself. In fact I think he is a year younger than me, so that would make me an ‘elder’ too. I don’t think so. Now I am wondering where he got his oh-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa-yaa chant from. My guess is he heard it in 1960s cowboy films or perhaps in the Tarzan tv series. And the drum? A Hare Krishna surplus store or a present from Elizabeth Haiawatha Warren?

  6. Paul Ford O'Neil January 25, 2019 at 10:09 am #

    Hello James,

    Yes the cat-nights of our endless ‘Winter’s Tale’ are again upon us also down here at the confluence of the Anacostia & Potomac.

    There are very peculiar rumors of violence and mayhem passing around the bars/boardrooms/halls/streets:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nAPy3yMws

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytUOoFOWR4I

    Carry-on until you are carrion.

    PFO
    Washington City
    District of Columbia
    United states of America

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 11:13 am #

      Those were excellent PFO, thank you for posting them. Areal shame that so few will ever see them though.

  7. BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 10:15 am #

    Jim, you are a genius with words.

    Walter, they sent in Swat to arrest Stone? Sometime I watch those Swat programs on tv; they can pretty much do anything now … toss grenades into occupied dwellings, pull down walls of houses with block and tackle attached to armored cars, kick down doors … big difference from, say, the Soviet Secret Police arresting people in Moscow in the 30s … a polite knock at the door at 4:00 am, ok everybody up, you have 15 minutes to gather your things, don’t dawdle now, you won’t be needing much, everything you need will be provided by the state …

    Brh

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:30 am #

      Stone is an utter sleaze, but there’s something uniquely and ironically heroically American (and it goes without saying, unapologetic) about his methods.

      • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 10:47 am #

        He learned from the best when it comes to sleazebags, LBJ and Tricky Dick.

        • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:56 am #

          Yes. His bio is quite the story.

      • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 10:47 am #

        Well, at some point will they start arresting Dems too, Wasserman-Shultz, Podestas et.al., or does it work in only one direction?

        Brh

        • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:55 am #

          No argument there.

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:57 am #

          My guess is one direction only, but I would LOVE to be proven wrong.

          • ozone January 25, 2019 at 12:33 pm #

            Walter,
            Me too (sans #). As JHK keeps pointing out, the perception that the machinery of “justice” is highly politicized and one-way is very dangerous.
            Well it *is* highly politicized and one-way, but that has now been overtly revealed to those who choose to pay attention… and I believe that cohort to be growing, regardless of party affiliations. Not a good development for the law-givers and punishers.

          • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

            Im wondering why they just didn’t call Stone’s lawyer, inform hin of his pending arrest, and order him to turn himself in? Why the Gestapo raid with an entire company of Special Agents. And CNN cameras just happened to be on scene. Just a coincidence you understand.

            Brh

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

            Because these people are thugs ozone and they need to show the world that they can beat you down whenever they care to. Once the lawyers and the media gets involved it all turns into circus anyway. Perhaps the law enforcement people took the term pig as a suggested role to work into rather than an insult. In any case it is an insult to America and the Constitution, but they do not care, they worship the paycheck and the pension. They would throw babies into ovens if they were told to do so.

          • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 5:56 pm #

            Why no Mr. Nice Guy? That’s easy. Getting arrested is supposed to be painful, humiliating, dangerous. When they put the cuffs on they put them on tight. They don’t ask “Is that too tight, do you want me to loosen them?” They want you humiliated and threatened. They want you shittin your pants. It’s right up there with getting your ass kicked, having your car repossessed, or getting raped.

          • Majella January 27, 2019 at 5:20 pm #

            “Im wondering why they just didn’t call Stone’s lawyer, inform hin of his pending arrest, and order him to turn himself in?”

            As the warrant stated, it was a search for evidence and there was a clear danger that he could (and likely would) destroy such evidence. There was also concern he’d just flee – a rich man with access to corporate jets, no doubt!

            Aside from that, I had such delicious schadenfreude seeing him finally taken down. He’s the ultimate political sleazebag & hack, along with his very sorry-looking ex-partner Paul Manafort. Yay.

      • Nightowl January 27, 2019 at 4:03 am #

        Can anyone explain why, exactly?

        Whenever I have listened to him, however, he has a habit of predicting about 95% of things that come to pass well in advance.

        The indictment doesn’t look to promising either. Where’s the beef?

    • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

      We already live in a dictatorship. And I am more and more convinced that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. There may be only a few good people trying to do the right things in government but they are not enough to tip the balance in the right direction. The Gestapo tactics are used just so you know what they can do to you if they feel like it.

      • AKlein January 25, 2019 at 1:48 pm #

        Yes, SSL, this is a tacit message to observers, not so much to the accused, regarding what “they” can do if they so wish to. Just another form of terrorism.

  8. Lawfish January 25, 2019 at 10:17 am #

    I thought for sure today’s post would be about the new New York pro-abortion law. Good ol’ govvy Cuomo now says anyone who is pro-life is not welcome in New York because that’s not what New Yorkers are.

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 11:14 am #

      Cuomo is a Satan worshiping human hater and has now enabled the blood sacrifices to Moloch. He serves his master well.

      • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 12:38 pm #

        Rush said full term abortions got the green light.

        Could that possibly be true?

        Imagine being a woman and having that on your conscience for 50 years?

        Brh

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

          Do the abortionist women even have consciences?

          • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:17 pm #

            Occasionally I will regret NOT buying a book.
            It was a compilation, entitled, ‘Millennium Reader 2000 [or 2001, I forget].

            So the writer is watching, at a NY University hospital, some Black immigrant get her saline job. She is 26 weeks.

            The abortionist casually mentions a ‘survivor’ of one of his \
            previous ‘abortions’, noting,

            ‘The fetus cried.’
            Murder via neglect or suffocation.
            There was a time he would have been arrested.

            The good ole days.

          • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:24 pm #

            Another comment was from a nurse who worked in that ‘industry.’

            The babies are really cute but didnt live past a day.

    • San Jose January 25, 2019 at 11:42 am #

      I’ve never donated to Planned Parenthood, but somehow, at the end of the year I got a letter (with a postage-paid return envelope!) asking for money and ranting about Trump and Pence.

      I assume I got on the mailing list because when I registered to vote at this address in 1990, I listed “democrat” as my party affiliation.

      No matter, I filled the postage-paid envelope with about 1/2 a pound of junk mail, plus some old keys that I’d been meaning to get rid off, taped it up so it wouldn’t burst under the weight, and sent it off to PP so that they could pay the postage.

      Jen in San Jose

      • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 11:53 am #

        you tube commet at Greg Hunters channel,

        tonyglorioso61

        I live in New York state and POS Cuomo is the worst governor we ever had .

        I really believe he won re-election by voter fraud as did many other state legislators. NY is competing with California as to which state can be the most evil and F’d up. New York’s abortion law changes are pure evil.

        Add to that the fact that NY is working feverishly to usurp our 2nd Amendment rights, while offering sanctuary to illegal aliens and giving them more rights and benefits than natural citizens.

        God help us please!?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 1:09 pm #

          There have been calls for him to be excommunicated from the Church – but it will not happen. Nor the odious Pelosi. The Church fell to the Darkness generations ago at the higher levels.

        • Jigplate January 25, 2019 at 8:25 pm #

          I got out of NY this past November. The first week I was here, In my new red state home, I got three separate compliments about my NRA hat. I tell people that i’m a refugee from the people’s republic of New York – the reply I most often get is “welcome home”

      • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

        Well done. I was never an abortion fan nor am I now. I put much stock into the theory that they are actually blood sacrifices to Moloch. I was tricked into watching a series of videos of real abortions where the doctors and nurses joked about breaking up the little bodies as they ripped them out and threw them onto stainless steel trays, letting them writhe and wiggle until they died. It was disturbing and a damned shame that I cannot unsee it, but it really made the point. The only argument that I could see holding water FOR abortions is that the people that want them should probably not breed in the first place. A shame sterilization is not an option.

        • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:18 pm #

          How many months along were the ‘fetuses?”

          Wiggle?

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 4:40 pm #

            Don’t know but they had arms about 2″ long and all their fingers and they did not just lay there but moved their dismembered bodies about as they lay there in the pile of parts. They rip them apart you see and remove them in pieces. I’d say the entire bodies were 4 to 6 inches long and pretty well formed. It was more than a little bit disconcerting, especially the joking, laughing attitudes of the doctors and nurses.

      • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 12:34 pm #

        SSL,
        Did it ever occur to you that the recipient might just sell your information to other less than desirable mailing lists? Nambla, KKK, Justice for Cosby? No sense in pissing off some faceless entity that, on a whim, can cause you grief.

        He/She probably hates her job, and would “inconvenience” you for nothing other than a bit of levity…like pissing in the Coleslaw….

        • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 12:35 pm #

          Sorry for mislabeling the post…Jen in San Jose….

        • San Jose January 26, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

          I certainly didn’t put my return address on the the postage paid envelope. I made sure that the junk mail that I stuffed into the envelope didn’t contain any identifying info.

          And knowing that the envelope was opened by some poorly paid mail room worker, I didn’t pepper the contents of the envelope with my ultimate weapon–my Martha Stewart glitter. Glitter being the herpes of the craft world! (I frown upon Christmas cards with glitter because no amount of vacuuming rids the house of sparkle).

          Jen in San Jose

    • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 11:55 am #

      he is sick.

  9. Rodster January 25, 2019 at 10:21 am #

    And yet as of this writing the Dow is up almost 275 pts @ 24,832. I guess those running the show could be a lot more clever/creative than we give them credit for and could keep this sh*t show going on far longer than we could imagine.

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:27 am #

      The intentionally ironically named Dow (Tao) is indicative of nothing, other than the speculative mood of the handful of people who have money to burn, largely due to targeted QE infinity.

    • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:30 am #

      Think ‘Hunger Games’. Half the county can die in misery but if the Dow still functions nobody will claim the Emperor is naked. Seriously, with that many gone and any semblance of normalcy remaining, it would be far to dangerous to bitch about the emperor.

      • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

        You are right about that. That is the problem with a people who are not unified and do not care about each other. They can do anything they want to us and no one will say a thing. And if you do, they will kill you too.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 1:12 pm #

        And yet you hate the same Red America that the Elite hate. All your feelings of compassion are siphoned off to non-Whites, especially immigrants. They have colonized your mind.

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 10:31 am #

      That is because the Dow is irrelevant. It is a number flashed on a screen. A hundred million Americans could have their pension funds eliminated on the Stock Market one day and when the thieves put their loot into another investment, the market would rise even higher. I stopped looking at that number years ago, it signifies nothing and this would explain why it does not correspond to the situation in the streets. But you knew that didn’t you?

      • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:34 am #

        Exactly.

      • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

        Agreed. Why would they have a “Plunge Protection Team” if the stock market was some independent thing that functioned without any intervention?

    • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:18 pm #

      how is volume?

      • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 7:00 pm #

        Women prefer it to length.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 10:53 am #

          Yes, I have heard.

  10. Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:25 am #

    Today’s missive reads like the story arc for a season of FX’s excellent series Fargo, as darkly ironic commentary on the American zeitgeist as any currently out there. Excellent work, Mr K.

    I’d just add that if the American electorate actually had any skin in the game, it would stop everything and demand an immediate no confidence referendum on the whole damn shooting match in DC – Executive, Legislative, and Judicial – for the purposes of declaring the whole damn thing null and void. No series of elections replacing the current deadbeats piecemeal is ever going to solve anything. The entire US Federal apparatus has now officially reached a crisis of legitimacy. How does collapse happen you ask? We’re witnessing it as we speak.

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    • K-Dog January 25, 2019 at 10:33 am #

      This POTUS has a sign on his desk. ‘Your buck stops here, mine does not!’

      • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:46 am #

        Nice!

    • TPTB-USA January 26, 2019 at 12:59 am #

      The whole block shook from my laughter after reading your post.

      Ol’ Scratch for President!

      The latest read of MSM is that none of the residents of DC get it.

      GGG has nothing to loose, and he is holding the Trump card.

  11. S M Tenneshaw January 25, 2019 at 10:29 am #

    “Also in the background: the likely shocking reversal of the long, dreary, RussiaGate affair as about twenty-odd former officials of the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, State Department, and other dark corners of the Deep State answer charges of sedition in federal court.”

    Pssttt… the H in JHK stands for Huckabee.

    • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2019 at 10:47 am #

      Sauce for the goose is politically-motivated prosecution for the gander. One thing you can say about the impeachment process, at least it’s intended to be driven by politics.

  12. seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 10:34 am #

    This is the real danger:
    Soros, who has been sharply critical of President Donald Trump, said the U.S., rather than “waging a trade war with practically the whole world,” should focus on China and should crack down on firms like ZTE 0763, +0.51% and Huawei, arguing that “if these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.”
    Right now Huawei sells the best 5G hardware out there. It is 30% cheaper than anything any of our firms like Qualcomm and Cisco produce. Trump wants to ban Huawei from selling in America because of espionage concerns. China stealing intellectual property may seem bad, but if the ban happens it may become a Trojan Horse. The real enemy is 5G. If China takes the lead in autonomous driving which is what 5G makes possible, it will take the lead in AI and never look back. Why? Because self driving cars press the limits of machines making decisions in real time. Soros is spot on. This is the real battlefield. And China is positioned to win. That is why you can kiss the trade deal good bye. Trump see this and is trying to hamstring China. They will refuse and then it’s all out war.

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 10:54 am #

      5G, autonomous cars, and AI are all answers to questions no one in their right mind is asking, and which will be utterly resisted by the people they would be imposed on. In a country with more problems than it can possibly solve already, they all represent a precious diversion of resources that we no longer have to waste. And Soros? Two words: Globalist Criminal.

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 11:18 am #

      Gee whiz seawolf what is up with you? You and I disagree often but lately I could not applaud you more for your opinions. Please accept my most humble apologies for my past acts of less than kindness. We see too much the same way to be at odds. Though I do not see America being able to counter anything that the Chines to as it appears to be “their turn” to quote the Old Hag herself.

      • Epicur January 25, 2019 at 11:57 am #

        While the Chinese are a formidable civilization they are heavily burdened by an aging, crowded population. The last 30 years of “growth” and stability are entirely the result of the willingness of the US to include them in the “global economy”. They are completely dependent on exports for stability and the manufacturing exports are completely dependent on expanding US credit, pace Sheldon Cooper, by the transitive property they are therefore completely dependent on expanding US credit.

        When the credit expansion ends the Chinese will be a Joker in our global game of Risk. Like all of us, they will be living in interesting times.

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

          Well America is burdened by an aging dying population that is doing its best to break the back of the “healthcare” system on its way out. It also has a large population of talentless, non-motivated and outright lazy young people who were so poorly raised that they fall to the ground and cry like babies when their cars don’t start. Americans are THE most indebted people in the world with sharply declining incomes. Our population consumes almost all of the world’s supply of opioids:

          https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/27/americans-consume-almost-all-of-the-global-opioid-supply.html

          …and are so stupid that they go have to attend “higher” education institutions to understand what sex is, not that they get it right afterwards anyway.

          You don’t have to be much of anything to be better than that. As I understand it, the IMF requires that almost all investments in other nations must be made in US dollars. When this changes, and it will, the floodgates will open because every other country has central banks that can print up as must paper crap “money” as the supply of paper (or digitals) allows. Oh yes, they will take over sooner rather than later and not because they are so good, but because we are fat, lazy, greedy, and stupid.

      • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 3:53 pm #

        Hey no problem. There’s some bright people on this blog and there will be disagreement. Viva la differance!

  13. RocketDoc January 25, 2019 at 10:50 am #

    Predicting a fast reversal of fortunes in the Jenga economy has been the pillar of our hosts analysis for 10+ years. We all know why he has been wrong but we don’t know when he will be right. I see a grinding slow decline instead–there is an immense amount of waste in the system and squeezing it out rather than having it evaporate, strikes me as more likely. Thus, Not this Spring…..

    • seawolf77 January 25, 2019 at 10:55 am #

      He will never be right. The day’s of oil being the primary strategic asset are fading faster than a pair of JHK’s jeans. America has 50 years worth of oil in the Permian. That’s plenty of time to make the transition to electic.

      • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 11:09 am #

        Those in the middle of collapse are usually the last to realize it. Our time horizons – especially today – are simply not geared to comprehend it.

        • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 11:47 am #

          Liz Warren came out with an idea today that should accelerate us toward the lemming cliff. She is not content with high taxation on income, she wants to tax wealth. If you have saved money during your lifetime, she wants a piece of it for the government. This violates the Constitution that says the government cannot take property without due process of law. But remember, the Left does not give one whit about due process. She wants a graduated tax at first, aimed at the 1%, but that won’t last long. Watch out. The Dems are going to get very clever at stealing the public’s money in the near future. GOP too.

          Trump has reversed the direction of wealth flow back into the US, one big reason the world hates us right now. Even mighty Mo, China, has felt it. The globalists, thus our Deep State, hate it, and thus hate Trump.

          The explosion of Leftist voters in the US may make election of a Democrat government possible in 2020. If they do, the banks of Switzerland and the Grand Caymans will be very busy. So will international moving companies as the Elite and upper middle class desert a sinking ship while the officers of the ship order the bilge pumps shut off.

          Projection. The Progressive women are announcing for President, more every day. Some men are starting. Note Biden, Sanders, even HRC, the old timers are Biding their time. Let the young pups duke it out, then come in an sweep up the scraps. Smart!

          • Epicur January 25, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

            Historically, the income tax (as allowed by the 16th Amendment) was only supposed to be levied on the rich. A tax on wealth would simply be true to form for the American people who are not that much different from the rest of humanity.

            The Democrats have a winner, here, and they know it. I expect it to pass eventually and the rich to agree as a sop to the rest of us.

          • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

            The rich will sign up to it as they pack their bags and get the heck out of here. Leaving behind a decimated country screaming

            “Why the heck did we vote for all those Liberals who stole our country’s wealth.”

            The Liberals? They left!

          • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

            So JAZ, are you one of the super-wealthy? It sounds like you might be. Calls for the super-rich to go all “Atlas Shruggy” on us are, and have always been, misguided. But even if they do, so what? Temper tantrums are never an excuse to spoil one’s children. FUCK the rich!

          • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:59 pm #

            No, ol’ Scratch, I wish. Comfortably retired. And earned it.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 1:45 pm #

            Ah, Atlas Shrugged at last. Much as I despise her, Rand had some good points here and there. A Nation has to keep its talented people. And such people will not stay and work for peanuts.

        • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

          Yeah, the price of oil goes down 20% and everyone runs out and buys PUs, RVs and SUVs and sells their electric cars. In 1973, big vehicles could not be given away. It will repeat.

      • oilie January 25, 2019 at 11:27 am #

        And most of that oil will stay in the red Permian dirt until the price of oil rises.

      • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 11:28 am #

        Seawolf is right. We have 50 years of oil, and gas, in the Permian. The problem is, that is it folks. No more cheap energy. Convert to electric? Airplanes? Fertilizer? Plastics? Converting the transportation industry to electric may be possible, but other items have zero alternatives.

        • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 11:40 am #

          How to produce the electricity is a bigger problem than running out of oil IMHO unless solar panel in space can be perfected.

          https://www.energy.gov/articles/space-based-solar-power

          • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:01 pm #

            Walter B

            We will run out of affordable oil, it is finite and all the PU and SUV drivers are burning it up faster and faster. The only thing that will stop this, is when the price of oil skyrockets.

            Macron tried to use reason and slow down the usage of oil by taxing gasoline.

            He was attacked by a swarm of Yellow Jackets.

            The Long Emergency in force is getting nearer. I am very afraid the new order predicted will be the New World Order.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

          You are forgetting King Coal. Black like Nat King Coal. Black Gold, Appalachian Tea.

          • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 8:09 pm #

            The Climate Changers are not going to let us get away with burning coal are they?

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 9:03 am #

            Walter

            It’s not the ‘climate changers’ (those would be the people – all of us, but some more than most, who increase levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to a dangerous level).

            No, it’s ‘the climate’ that isn’t going to let us get away with it and the future of your grandchildren that’s at stake. And the much nearer future of other people’s grandchildren, because the effects are here already. Leaving aside the likes of Bangladesh or Sudan (as most people would rather anyway), the businesses in my brother’s small town in Yorkshire can’t get flood insurance any more because of the increasing frequency of devastating flash floods.

            We have relatives in Stony Point, NY, in a house beside the Hudson, built in 1834 (it says so on the house) and theirs is the only one left standing in their stretch of road following the last two hurricanes (because warmer water takes up more space and storm surges are therefore more devastating than they used to be). The others have been condemned or demolished. That’s reality, not a Chinese hoax or a mass fantasy, as those with their fingers in their ears and short-term self-interest at the front of their mind would have it.

            None of which means the coal won’t be burned anyway. Short-term self interest is what humans seem to do best. Not just politicians.

          • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 1:08 pm #

            “That’s reality, ”

            Alba,
            Reality is that the climate changes. Causal factors are educated guesses. You conflate the two.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

            People who are cold will burn things to get warm. Alba will do the same. Anything. Anything to get warm. That she doesn’t know that or denies simply means she has never been cold and has no street cred.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

            Elysianfield

            You are being disingenuous and you know it. I am not wasting any more time arguing about the nature of what you call ‘educated guesses’, because you argue in bad faith.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 2:22 pm #

            Janos, your straw man is typical.

            I don’t deny the need for warmth. But I understand the concept of ‘enough’ more than many people. So I override my heating timer so it never goes on in the morning until I get up and decide whether it really needs to. Two days ago it was perishing and the heating was on most of the day. This morning (it’s January over here too and this is Scotland) it was milder so I didn’t put the heating on till about 1pm. Then off again when the place felt warm enough. It’s a stone flat, so it’s never THAT warm. My neighbours, by contrast, leave theirs on low through the night as well. There are all sorts of ways of using ‘less’. I don’t have a car either, as you know.

            Once there’s no heating available I’ll wrap up and last as long as I Iast. I’ve had a decent life and I understand ‘enough’ in that context too. It’s not about me.

            And I don’t look for street cred from anyone, least of all you. I just live my life as best I can and I consider the effects of my actions on other people.

            You will recall I’ve asked you the same very simple question on two subsequent threads. It requires a one-word answer. I’m still waiting so here it is again. Third time lucky?

            If your Jesus were to come back as a Somali, would you kneel?

            Come on, ‘Christian’, let’s see your street cred…

          • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:15 pm #

            You are being disingenuous and you know it. I am not wasting any more time arguing about the nature of what you call ‘educated guesses’, because you argue in bad faith.

            Alba,
            At the threat of being considered as even worse than your statement indicates, I am arguing in as good faith as I possess, and am not the least disingenuous. I think that Anthropomorphic climate change is, at best, a wild-assed guess, and at worst, a political weapon of globalists.

            If I am proved later as ignorant, I , in advance, apologize.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 8:15 pm #

            EF

            I firmly believe that if you were to spend enough time reading up on the matter, with genuine curiosity and without prejudice, from sources other than those that deliberately attempt to obfuscate because of vested interests, you would change your mind.

            There is no reason for me to accept your apology since you don’t owe any apology to me personally. If you have grandchildren, you may at some point wish to apologise to them, but that’s nothing to do with me.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 8:23 pm #

            Janos

            If I haven’t had an unequivocal ‘yes’ to my question by the close of this thread, I’ll consider it to be a ‘no’ (three denials before the cock crows on Monday?) and you to be the fraud I always told you you were.

          • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

            “I firmly believe that if you were to spend enough time reading up on the matter, with genuine curiosity and without prejudice, from sources other than those that deliberately attempt to obfuscate because of vested interests, you would change your mind.”

            Alba,
            But I did read voluminously, and without prejudice. The many red flags, however, cause me to accept the “settled science” with a grain of doubt…enough doubt to sit on the sidelines and…watch. I do not say that ACC is incorrect, I opine, rather than it’s catechism of causality is suspect, and not as “settled” as you might wish.

            “You can go to your college,”
            “You can go to your school”
            “But if you don’t accept Jesus/ACC you’re an educated fool”

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

            Saying you don’t accept what you’ve read is fine, but equating the findings of science you don’t like with religious belief is Ploy no. 1 in the Disingenuous Denier Handbook. You can do better, EF.

            But let’s leave it. Your being convinced one way or the other will make no difference to anything.

            You carry on driving; I’ll carry on turning my heating down. We’ll cancel each other out, as my parents did every time they went out to vote. And I’ll get no special treatment when the oil runs out either. The guzzlers will get the same rations as the savers, if there’s anything left to ration. In fact they’ll probably make sure they get more.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 4:40 pm #

            Somalis are the lowest of the low. Thank God He didn’t come as one of them. But it would have been humorous I admit. The Angels refused to bow to Man and thus became Devils according to Islam. God would really have a sense of humor if He came as a Somali.

            If Jesus returned as a White Nationalist, would you reject him? You already rejected the PC Jewish Jesus, so of course you would. Your God is Respectability and you are Neo-Victorian. Dickens was the Prophet sent for people such as yourself.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:41 pm #

            The question is irrelevant to me as I no longer believe in the divinity of Jesus – or anyone – so am not awaiting his return.

            But, assuming your religious frame of reference for the moment, I don’t know why you think God would need a sense of humour to come back in a human form not of the ilk you’re expecting. How outrageously narcissistic to assume God’s values are the same as yours. A push further and you’ll be into the territory of blasphemy, my man. Careful…

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:42 pm #

            Respectability is piffle. I prefer something less shallow.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:48 pm #

            “If Jesus returned as a White Nationalist, would you reject him?”

            Again your narcissism is breathtaking. You want the god of all humanity (if he existed) to have a preference for one tiny part of his human creation just because you do. You haven’t a leg to stand on.

      • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

        This would seem to support Jim’s assertion:

        https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Shale-Pioneer-Hamm-Growth-Could-Fall-By-Half.html

        “U.S. shale production growth could slow by as much as half this year, according to one industry titan.

        Continental Resources’ Harold Hamm said that shale growth could decline by as much as 50 percent this year compared to 2018, although he added that it was just a “wild guess.” Hamm said that a lot of shale E&Ps are trying to keep spending within cash flow. This newfound mantra of capital discipline has been imposed on the shale industry after a decade or so of a debt-fueled drilling frenzy.

        “Producers have become more disciplined in their approach to capex,” Hamm said at the Argus Americas Crude Summit in Houston this week. “Several years back growth was a huge consideration. That consideration has been much less. The peak consideration now has been — are you overspending cash flow. Are you living within cash flow?”

        The signs of a shale slowdown have been mounting. The rig count fell sharply in recent weeks. Production growth has already begun to slow. Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, has warned that it is already seeing shale companies pulling back on drilling activity.

        In the latest Drilling Productivity Report, the EIA forecasts that U.S. shale production will grow by 62,000 bpd in February compared to a month earlier. That is the slowest rate of growth in nearly a year, and down from the prior monthly production increases that have consistently exceeded 100,000 bpd.”

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:14 pm #

      Watch for trends however. So far, things might not be moving down as fast as JHK forecasts, but they are going down. Maybe JHK is just trying to ring the alarm with overreach, but one of these days he will be right. Changes do happen quickly at times.

  14. Epicur January 25, 2019 at 11:38 am #

    “The fight over the new order struggling to be born will be even harsher and deadlier.”

    I think the fight is over who holds the power. The “order” is already established – the government prints money and decides who bankrupts and who is bailed out.

    Once the fight over who holds power is settled, the new order will get down to business.

    The main change will be that it will no longer be possible to print so much money that everyone gets a blue ribbon and a pony, or at least has a carrot dangled before their eyes to keep them on the path. There will no longer be the pretense that some day, somehow the losers might win.

    Meanwhile we (in the USA) are still sitting in the middle of the best piece of real estate on earth. Those who do well will do very well, for a while, anyway.

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 11:53 am #

      What will your new order look like? San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Chicago? No Thanks!

      • Epicur January 25, 2019 at 12:07 pm #

        My order?

        No. I am just an observer.

        To notice that the universe gives birth to psychopaths as willingly as to saints is not to argue that we should see psychopaths as saints, let alone prefer them.

  15. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 11:52 am #

    Hey, all you Liberal folks who feel so bad about all those folks in the shutdown.

    Schumer et al just voted down a GOP attempt to pay the Coast Guard.

    Politics as usual over the folks.

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    • deetrump January 25, 2019 at 1:37 pm #

      Open the government and pay everybody. Any attempt to just pay one group is divisive.

  16. malthuss January 25, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

    ‘ring out the street mobs to slug it out on the National Mall in lovely weather.’

    Not by accident but by plan.
    Los Angeles 1990s riot, planned by Van Jones and his group.

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:20 pm #

      The American And French Revolutions started with protests against governments that became malevolent. The protests became Lexington and the Bastille and the rest is history. The protestors in the US have reinforcements coming

      From the South.

      • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:15 pm #

        Yes, and the invasion is all part of the plan of demographic replacement of traditional Americans with new welfare state wards who will obey every order of the long hoped for Communist Junta.

        • EvelynV January 25, 2019 at 10:56 pm #

          No worse than fat old mama’s and withered ould geezers who sit at their computers all day, huh walter?

          • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 3:27 pm #

            Oh Evelyn, your angry projection is such an unattractive look for you. I prefer the nicer Evelyn who enjoys a good debate.

  17. volodya January 25, 2019 at 12:14 pm #

    Sometimes you can over-read the entrails, misunderstanding this node in the liver or that curvature of the spleen, ascribing too much significance to an event which turns out to be a relative triviality in the rush and hurly-burly. This is how it is from the perspective of the when-it-happens as opposed to the comfy armchair of later times.

    But this confrontation between some teens and some idiotic adults gives me hope. The contemptible louts in the main-stream press revealed themselves for what they are, and one face of the encounter revealed himself to have this one indispensable quality: balls.

    Good for young Nick Sandmann.

    • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

      It is ashamed that kids must be dragged through mud so that adults can feel good about themselves. One of the more deplorable displays of PC gloating and gravitas thus far. But hey, when you need to feel good about yourself why not destroy a kid’s life huh?

  18. tomsource January 25, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

    Occasionally I remind myself that a share of stock in XYZ corp. is just a representation of a business that the market is constantly attempting to value based on what the real company or enterprise is perceived to be worth at any given moment. Real people are working at XYZ and hopefully doing something productive or worthwhile. They may or may not have a direct stake in or even a clue as to the current value of XYZ corp. The UPS driver makes deliveries all day in pretty much the same way whether the stock is up or down. Huge sums of money are moving around in the fantasy sports leagues. Does Tom Brady think about any of that when it’s 3rd down on the 5 yd. line? Probably not. One might view the stock market as a fantasy league for Corporate America. Ball players derive no direct benefit from fantasy sports. If I buy stock in Citicorp, I don’t send them a check. I think this matters. Maybe not.

    • volodya January 25, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

      Tomsource, you hit the nail on the head. When you buy the stock of Citicorp, unless it’s a new issue of shares, you’re not sending Citi a check. You’re sending a check to someone to wants to sell their shares and Citicorp doesn’t see a penny of it.

      And you bet it matters. What matters is where money goes, nothing else. When those shares of Citi change hands, the sale price will become public and shareholders will measure their wealth by multiplying the number of shares they own by the price at which you bought your shares.

      But you didn’t send THEM a check either, and so they didn’t see a penny of sale proceeds either. And so that calculation of their wealth by way of that multiplication is a meaningless exercise. That sale, for all intents and purposes, was entirely as irrelevant to them as it was to Citi.

      The ONLY people to whom it had any significance is YOU and the SELLER because you coughed up money and the seller now has your money. Everyone else saw not one dime go through their bank account.

      • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

        The market has two uses.

        One, It is a fear barometer. The Vix is the direct measure. Volatility measures the fear factor of Wall Street.

        Two, as a consequence of fear, and also its inverse attachment to bonds and interest rates, the market is a forecaster for the intermediate future.

        That is it. The rest of marketspeak is baloney.

      • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

        Exactly right. “So-called “stock” markets are nothing more than legalized gambling venues betting on the ephemeral notional values of ephemeral notional corporate identities. A racket, in short.

  19. wet dog January 25, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

    10 years of extend and pretend. And if the Fed hadn’t printed money in overdrive, what would have happened in 2008? The banking system would have collapsed, and we would have been literally in Mad Max. That’s how serious 2008 was.

    That day is still coming, but the powers won’t stop the printing presses until they have their plans in order. You can’t print forever, and the debt situation is far worse than the horrors of 2008.

    I was just re-reading this old post from Food Assets, by John, called “Collapse Survival on a Budget”. Like Jim, he was way ahead of his time, though he ties in the ecological collapse more prominently. It’s from 2007 and still very applicable today, as things are even worse now:

    http://foodassets.com/blog/2007/08/14/collapse-survival-on-a-budget-part-i/

    Also, “The Answer” is an important read:

    http://foodassets.com/blog/2006/03/19/the-answer/

    quote:

    The final push for global domination is now underway. The worlds remaining resources have been carved up into smaller and smaller pieces, while burgeoning populations have caused devastating environmental impacts throughout the world. A desperate scramble for total control and global domination is now being implemented. This will last for at least another entire generation (40 years) or more.

    … I am convinced that many governments and their corporate slave owners already know these things. There is indeed a lot of evidence that they are well aware of the seriousness of the situation. If I can figure this out, they already did, a long time ago, resulting in a Machiavellian chess game of global proportions as they align themselves for the remaining resources. They’ve come up with a solution with horrible consequences, that must be tried. That solution is massive population reduction on a global scale.

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 12:58 pm #

      Best article I’ve read in ages on the whole thing linked here:

      https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/until-the-next-crash/

      ““OF THE MAXIMS of orthodox finance,” wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1936, “none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of ‘liquid’ securities.”

      When Keynes wrote these sentences in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money the leading stock exchanges of the world, New York and London, had placed liquidity near the center of their national investment markets. It was a virtue for investors to hold a security for which there was always a willing buyer. That way an investment could quickly be converted into money, and safely guarded until the next purchase of yet another security.

      Eight decades later, global finance is feeding off the potential convertibility of capital assets—liquidity—to an extent that Keynes could scarcely have imagined. Today’s global macroeconomy is stitched together by the balance sheets of the great financial corporations of the world. There are no more than thirty banks that matter, all of them entwined with a vast allied network of structured investment vehicles, institutional investors, and asset managers. These institutions prefer to invest in assets from which they can always confidently depart. Designed by banks with that purpose in mind, more and more assets have the liquid attributes of money. The result is that capital is extraordinarily mobile. Today, it moves in and out of different asset classes (stocks, bonds, real estate, et cetera), as well as in and out of different national economies, on a whim.

      The consequence is that as vast sums of capital and credit rush around the world in digitized bits every millisecond, the global macroeconomy suffers from a lack of long-term productive investment. Economy-wide productivity gains have disappointed; infrastructure has dilapidated; fossil-based energy systems have remained stuck in place. Keynes called liquidity a “fetish” because liquidity is a relative quality of a capital asset. Yet long-term investment is an aggregate concept. If the owners of capital prefer to hold liquid securities instead of long-term illiquid investments, capital will cycle between the two liquid options of short-term speculation, which occasionally shades into long-term investment, or nervous cash hoarding. Liquidity is a fetish, because for the community as a whole the concept makes no sense. What looks like liquidity to an individual owner of wealth means a decline in the aggregate rate of long-term investment for the macroeconomy—fewer jobs, less wealth, and more wasted human potential.

      Since the 1980s, growth in the North Atlantic economies has been asset-led. That is, the appreciation in the market value of liquid financial assets has been the predominant creator of new wealth, rather than increases in labor incomes from enterprise. Income gains have flowed overwhelmingly to the top end of the income distribution—that is, to the people who own the assets to begin with. The use of leverage, or debt, has been crucial to sustaining asset prices on the way up. By taking out mortgages, many ordinary Americans got in on the act during George W. Bush’s “ownership society” of the 2000s—until the crash wiped them out.

      After 2008, income gains again arrived through asset price appreciation, across a host of classes, from stocks to real estate. The worst off, who own little wealth and few assets and have been taking out less debt since 2008, have seen labor income remain stagnant until very recently. Meanwhile the rich have once more used debt to lever up profits, aided by the cheap money provided by the Fed. Financial asset appreciation produces income gains for the best off, who tend to live in cosmopolitan cities where finance, high tech, and liberal sensibilities cluster. These high incomes then create employment demand in the high-wage/low-wage service sector: the economy of corporate lawyers and nannies, therapists and busboys, yoga teachers and maids. During these business cycle expansions, labor markets eventually tighten and ordinary labor incomes inch up a bit, as happened in the US in the late 1980s, the late 1990s, and for a moment in the mid-2000s. It is happening again now, finally. But this top-down, urban-led macroeconomic pattern has left many places behind. Intended to increase economic activity, but not target it, the Fed’s QE policies have only abetted this pattern of development. QE has exacerbated existing economic tendencies, effectively channeling capital into one asset class after another, especially corporate stocks that are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthiest segment of the population. The policy has done nothing to reshape investments, which have remained largely short-term and speculative.

      This is the economic backdrop of the populist revolt. To the extent that it is driven by economics, it is a revolt not so much against the crash, or even its immediate aftermath—as Tooze seems to suggest—but against the nature of the recovery. This recovery, sustained by historically unprecedented “accommodative” monetary policies, is now nearly the longest on record. But it has proved to be yet another iteration of a now forty-year macroeconomic pattern for which centrist liberals bear much responsibility. It is the economy whose pre-crisis development they happily facilitated and which, during the 2008 crisis, they brought back to life, if moderately reformed. But since 2008, this same old asset-led global capitalism has slowly but steadily worn down the political establishment’s reserves of legitimacy.”

      • wet dog January 25, 2019 at 1:22 pm #

        The popular revolt has manifested in Sander’s and Trump’s success, but neither have any answers to give to the people. Not real answers that can improve the conditions. They were escape valves presented by the Establishment, letting the steam out, preventing undue pressures from exploding in the country. Instead, our Bosses allow us to have little skirmishes every month, like with the railroaded Covington kids, or the kavanaugh escapades. No “real” revolt will ever be allowed, not in the French, “chop their heads off” sense.

        I don’t know how long the “unprecedented accommodative monetary policies” can keep going, until Reality says that’s enough. Reality may be the ecological and energy collapses, a black swan from the masses’ point of view.

        Thanks for the read.

      • AKlein January 25, 2019 at 2:15 pm #

        OS, thank you for penning a very though-provoking essay. I’ll need to read it several times to glean its full meaning. After reading it once, my first impression is that the “financialization” of commercial activity has resulted in our living, to put it figuratively, in a land of intricately intertwined abstractions. At some point, abstractions supplant reality, which is “concrete” (the term used in information technology to describe the opposite of “abstract”) Woe to those who fail to make the distinction between abstract and concrete!

        • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 6:03 pm #

          That’s a good summation AK. To your description I’d just add the words “rapacious non-productive,” as in: “a land of intricately intertwined rapacious non-productive abstractions.

          • AKlein January 26, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

            Yes, the additions you made are excellent. “Rapacious and non-productive” are indeed spot on.

    • Epicur January 25, 2019 at 6:27 pm #

      “They’ve come up with a solution with horrible consequences, that must be tried. That solution is massive population reduction on a global scale.”

      The thing is, they don’t even have to try. All they have to do is dither and wring their hands while a new (man made?) plague works its way through the population. The simple logistics of developing and then distributing vaccines, especially since some people will avoid the vaccines, will do the job.

      This will not happen until after the credit expansion ends. As long as the credit expansion continues the unproductive masses are useful for perpetuating the money flow, off which they take their cut. When the credit expansion ends the unproductive masses will be manifested as a drag on the system and will no longer be useful to them. Then the woes begin.

  20. ozone January 25, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

    “Sometimes nations just lose their shit. The complex collapse of American life proceeds as the public and its leaders fail to comprehend the forces in play. What the Federal Reserve actually accomplished with its ten years of extend-and-pretend policy was not an economic “recovery,” but a degenerative disease of the social contract. If you look more closely, you can sense what will be unleashed when the ground thaws.” — JHK

    “The Harrows of Spring”, indeed.
    Although I agree with several other responders that some of the predictions in this missive are somewhat premature (oh the tricks they’ll employ to maintain the mirage), the Emperor named, Recovery, is sure showing its lack of clothing! Hell, gov’t workers and contractor lackeys have only been denied their pay for around 30 days and they’re absolutely *desperate*. This kind of learned dependence and spending every dime that comes in is a cultural anomaly (we can hope) derived from drinking kool-aid concocted and distributed by the big-money boyz. They have convinced Boobus Americanus that it can live on credit for-fucking-ever, save nothing and paying “the minimum balance” should do, whether the money is there or not. Wakey-wakey, it’s freakout time! Let’s see how things shape up if it goes another month, shall we? Will a simple changing of the flavor of the kool-aid keep the gen’l publick stone blind?

    I know folks living paycheck to paycheck (IOW: shit for savings) who go out to restaurants nearly EVERY NIGHT. WTF?? Make something from scratch, at home, for cheap, and put $20 in the coffee can for when the gravy train runs out of coal or diesel. Otherwise, “livin’ the dream” will make for a confused and terrified awakening.

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    • volodya January 25, 2019 at 12:43 pm #

      And chances are that they’re eating junk food. So, if you’re eating burgers, just make them at home. Save money, save time, it even tastes better. Same with things like chops. Easiest thing in the world to fry up, it’s nothing to crank out a salad or open a can of corn and as a concession to eating shyte, stick some frozen fries in the oven. And it takes fifteen minutes and two cents worth of dish soap to clean up.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 5:30 pm #

        I just ate out of a can of refried beans – without bothering to heat it up. Delicious. Had a bit of onion with it. Next time, some salsa.

        A special can though – low sodium.

        And how about the lowly Egg? What could be cheaper? As St Benedict said, the best seasoning is hunger. A bit of salt too and you are already in heaven.

        • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

          Janos,
          Cut to the chase. Pinto beans are 40 cents a pound in 50 lb increment. Two cups of beans are about 10 cents. Cooked and seasoned, they provide the equivalent of almost three cans of refried beans, after maceration in the blended/processor…don’t forget garlic and cumin, along with the chili powder. Scoop into individual sized portions in zip lock bags and freeze….

          Sweet Rosa Rita can kiss my black ass….

          • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

            Mea Culpa;

            I forgot to mention that a table spoon+ of lard or butter is added and adjudged adequate by the consistency of the “refried” beans.

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

      Wow. Great post.

      We kept looking for the enemy and behold, it was us.

      Boobus Americanus. Beautiful.

      Vote for a group of people that tell you that we are going to take more and more of your money away from you and give it to us, the Deep State.

      Boobus Americanus.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 5:32 pm #

        And the name fits for anyone who believes Capitalism will save us. Or Communism. Or even ultimately that balancing act known as Socialism. Only the High Middle will, not the middle between these two materialisms.

        • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 6:10 pm #

          Yes! All of our current “ism’s” have proven ultimately deficient.

    • volodya January 25, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

      And, if you tell them, it all adds up, whether you’re talking about money spent or money saved, people will nod like bobble-heads and say yes, it all adds up.

      Thing is, they don’t really believe it. Or the time line, as they perceive it, is too long and so to them the future is irrelevant.

      But, as sure as shootin the future does arrive, and the money spent or saved DOES add up and in that far off day that never comes, when it actually DOES come, you’ll either be poor or you’ll have some moolah saved up. Arithmetic is this inexorable thing, an aspect of REALITY.

    • SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      Do everything you can to not owe anyone anything. Never throw out anything if it can be fixed. Recycle old stuff to make new stuff. Rely on friends and family when you can’t pay the electric bill. There are alot of people “out there” who have learned these life lessons already. Not everyone is a Boobus Americanus :-).

      • volodya January 25, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

        Yeah, yours was a necessary corrective, not everyone is and a lot of people learned those lessons.

        I suppose that in looking at “time” is the degree of uncertainty. For example, when they talk about average life expectancy they don’t talk about the distribution. Roughly half die before that average life expectancy and roughly half die after. Which half are you in? A substantial percentage never make it to retirement. So, how far in the future are you supposed to plan?

        The problem is one of “time”. Ten years in the future sounds like an imponderable stretch. Who even knows if you’ll be alive? The problem is that when that ten years is up and you’re still kickin’ and you’ve made no provision for it.

        I guess life is a crapshoot. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

      Yup, like my brother — who knows you incidentally from a previous time, who makes $75 bucks an hour, with all the overtime he wants, most of it blown at the Riverton Inn on drinks and dinner every nite with various broads, broke at the end of the week.

      Brh

      • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:21 pm #

        “who makes $75 bucks an hour, with all the overtime he wants, most of it blown at the Riverton Inn on drinks and dinner every nite with various broads, broke at the end of the week.”

        BRH,
        Sounds like a good job, if you can get it…who’s to say in the marathon of life that he will not be anointed a winner?

  21. volodya January 25, 2019 at 1:19 pm #

    What the 1930s accomplished, besides ruining the lives and finances of a lot of folk that didn’t deserve it, was to ruin the lives and finances of a lot of people that DID deserve it. The streets of Manhattan were just a-bouncin’ with the bodies of bankers that took a leap of faith in the unstoppability of markets that stopped, said bankers then taking a leap of an altogether nother sort.

    What the events of 2008 did was to ruin the lives of those that DIDN’T have it coming, but also to preserve the lives and finances of people that in NO way shape or form DID have it coming. In short, Wall Street got bailed out, AIG got their bonuses, an uncountable deluge of dough made its way through their coffers, only to end up in the clutches of Goldman Sachs.

    How does this square with any elementary notion of common sense or fairness? It doesn’t, it came about as an exercise of raw power, an example of how Washington works FOR Wall Street and AGAINST everyone else.

    It happened all over the world. The Yellow Jackets didn’t bubble up from nowhere, and never mind claims to the contrary, they’re NOT ignoramuses working against their own interests, neither are those voters who voted Brexit. Theirs is an attempt to re-set the clocks, to reclaim power from those people that abused it for their own benefit, that made life in the UK and the Continent lousy for a great many people. Hurray for the Yellow Jackets, hurray for the Brits.

    But 2000 and 2008 were just dress rehearsals. There’s a lot more to come as an unworkable system of production and consumption does what it must, that is, to stop working because that’s the only thing it can do to bring itself into conformity with the dictates of reality. It’s Stein’s Law, if something cannot go on, it won’t.

  22. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

    uber-spook Pompeo has pulled a Hillary-in-Honduras on Venezuela == ozone

    Yeah, my honduras is bothering me lately… Maybe cold compresses?

    https://www.dogster.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/shutterstock_59316385-3.jpg

  23. SoftStarLight January 25, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

    I really liked your post today Mr. K. The other day I was looking out a window watching the sun go down and I realized that it was just a bit later in the evening and yet still daylight. The sun is slowly making it’s long journey back to the north. And I do pray that the spring melt will actually bring about blossoms of change this year. I guess we will all find out. I personally have been ready for this change for a while. Although, I sort of feel like it is just going to be exchanging one tyranny for another (maybe one more locally-based than in the past). Anyway, it really is all up in the air. Maybe in the new world to come people will also enjoy humor again and sometimes laughing about themselves rather than finding any reason possible to be in a constant state of rage and offense. One can of course hope.

  24. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 3:29 pm #

    Well, Trump did speak from the Rose Garden He caved! He out Reaganed Reagan. He let the Swamp creatures off the hook. He has committed the Carlsbad of all caves.

    Three weeks to negotiate the immigration problem that has been on hold since the great Reagan cave. Trust those Democrats, believe them when they lie through their teeth. Reagan said it, Bush 1 said it, and now Trump has joined the club.

    The real consequence is what is going to happen at the border now. All those caravan people just received assurance that when they jump the border, there is no one to stop them now. They feared Trump’s position, no longer. The rush begins.

    Even if he does the Special Emergency thing, the ninth judicial district will stop it for at least a year, With Venezuela blowing its top, a report this morning said that ten million potential refugees may be heading our way this year. The wonderful NWO, Cuba, Russia and China are supporting Madura now, but will certainly encourage mass population movement when he falls. Just like Fidel Castro did when he emptied his prisons.

    America, your last bastion of Conservatism just quit. DeeTrump, I think you just got your way.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

      Many of the people in previous caravans ended up getting in. What they’re doing is working, even if slowly. More immigration judges? More people getting in. Who cares if it’s legal? This will destroy us in the end.

      • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:47 pm #

        Right Janos. The number one issue.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 5:59 pm #

          If a White majority is good, just think how much better only White would be.

    • ozone January 25, 2019 at 5:50 pm #

      ” …the Carlsbad of all caves.”

      John,
      Thanks for that one. I’ve never heard ‘capitulation’ put so humorously! I’ll try to remember that… but they don’t call me “ozone” fur nuttin’. 😉

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 10:56 am #

        go live in one, without internet hookup.

    • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:25 pm #

      Wolfie,
      Please provide here a rant on how we hate “losing”…If I could do a good job of it, I would.

  25. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2019 at 3:30 pm #

    The end of the Knockdown (shutdown) of the Federal Government

    Trump announced that he had reached an agreement with the Democrats to start the work of the federal government for 3 weeks up to 15 February. As President Trump said, if up to this point an agreement on the allocation of $6 billion on the border wall will not be reached, the federal government will either be closed again, or he will declare a state of emergency and order the army to build a border wall.

    Formally, it looks like Trump’s capitulation – he accepted the proposal of Democratic leader Pelosi, but the expressions on the faces of the main actors of this drama and the release on bail of Advisor to the President Trump Roger Stone a few minutes before Trump’s statement says that Pelosi capitulated all the same, and now she clearly looks like a saboteur and a mafiosi who not shy hostage taking, and Mueller as a political hit man. (and both of them look like delivery boys for this mafia)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06TJidZoec

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  26. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 3:50 pm #

    Pelosi and Schumer

    We hope the president has learned his lesson and will not shut down the federal workers again.

    Democrats have shown unity, by inference GOP hasn’t.

    The mean ol’ administration is picking on the employees. We will figure out border security without a wall.

    Sure you will.

    We now live in a new country. CalorewashNYNJ, and the rest of us.

    Trump is never going to drain the Swamp.

  27. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 4:02 pm #

    I cannot believe Pelosi’s stupidity.

    The drugs come in through the ports of entry now so a wall will not make any difference. A ten year old will realize two things.

    If drugs are all coming through the ports of entry, what the hell are they doing in those ports of entry.

    And if even if they come up with a way to screen the drugs at the ports, guess what the cartels are going to do, start pushing the drugs across the open border areas, just like they do with people. They will take the path of least resistance. Our border has no resistance.

    The cartels won a huge victory today and will move quickly to take advantage.

    Another comment

    Maine, Alaska and Colorado, would you please vote out those Dems in GOP clothing you have in the senate.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2019 at 4:48 pm #

      Tactical retreat, nothing more.

      • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:46 pm #

        He has no room to retreat.

    • Sam Stone January 25, 2019 at 9:04 pm #

      You kiddin’ me? Colorado is done my friend. We are Cali East. There will be nothing but Socialists being voted in here from now on. That is no joke.

    • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:27 pm #

      “I cannot believe Pelosi’s stupidity. ”

      John,
      You assume Pelosi gives one rat’s ass…assume otherwise, as she is certainly not stupid.

  28. BuckP January 25, 2019 at 4:16 pm #

    I tried to zone out and rest my weary mind recently by watching a CGI-enhanced, disaster flick entitled GEOSTORM. The villian, Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom (played by the Ed Harris), who wanted to destroy America’s enemies, like Russia, China, etc. using weather-inducing satellites, was asked, after he being caught, why he did it. He justified his actions by saying “Because no-one else would. I’m turning the clock back to 1945, when America was a shining city on a hill, not just a bank disguised as a country”
    I guessGEOSTORM wasn’r such a mindless movie afterall. America’s printing press, which produces a currency with no real storehouse of value, buys (steals) real resources and wealth from other nations by giving them green paper in return. The rest of the world is weary of the US hegemony and it will be intersting to see how it turns out. Nations are stockpiling gold with Russia and China leading the way. Something wicked this way comes.
    It’s kind of unnerving to see how fracking has turned the heartland of America into the facsimile of an exploited third world country. Along the populous Front Range of eastern Colorado, where I used to live, fracking operations are occurring adjacent to high-end subdivisions and exurbs.Wellheads and tank farms coexist within a football field’s length of million dollar homes. If these people could see the clouds of escaping methane and other gases, which are visible using a special-filtered infrared camera, they would be shocked. They are breathing in these gases all day and night. This oil boom isn’t being occuring, out of sight, on the North Slope of Alaska or off the Louisiana coast. NIMBY no longer exists. America’s gentry are now subject to the enironmental impact necessay to keep their commuter lifestyles going. Nevermind the techno eyesores and stink, the water quality is also adversely affected. In Colorado fracking waste water is being injected into a deep acquifer. The state approved this policy because they said this pure water is too deep to economically pump out of the ground. If a long-term drought ver occurred,like that which befell the Anazai, it might then be feasible. Well, too bad, the acquiver has been destroyed so we can continue to commute in our big rigs an hour to two to work in Denver each day only to return home to pristine country living. Huh? Living the good life???

    • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:56 pm #

      Is that the one that normalizes HAARP and Chemtrails?

      • ozone January 25, 2019 at 6:58 pm #

        How is it that’s you’ve managed to turn an extremely perilous reality into the nonchalantly trivial?

        • ozone January 25, 2019 at 7:06 pm #

          (I usually just ignore your postings that are searching for “the main chance” in the stock market, but this silliness that you could have ‘googled’ in about 3 seconds was just a rude turning aside of BuckP’s main point in favor of your pet concerns.)

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 11:06 am #

      Great comment. Down here in CO’s poor neighbor to the south, NM, local pols are all in with this same poison the wells shit. And of all things to ruin in the desert SW, fucking WATER is the LAST thing we have to waste! A “civilization” this fucking stupid deserves to crash.

      • PeteAtomic January 26, 2019 at 6:08 pm #

        when the water runs out in the SW there I’m gonna have to go down and mine Iowa LOL

        I was watching a vid about California well digging companies, and how they are gonna let “somebody else” figure out where the water comes from after everything is dried up.

        Pretty nuts

      • BuckP January 27, 2019 at 1:02 am #

        Thanks Ol’ Scratch! IThe following Native American, Osage, saying hits the nail on the head:
        When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money.

  29. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2019 at 4:44 pm #

    The end of the knockdown (shutdown) of the federal government. Update

    Practically there is no doubt that settlement in Venezuela (evacuation of the US embassy and consulates) are part of the Trump and Bush alliance agreements with the Deep State, and this in turn means that, in the first place, the Deep State recognized its limitations in the US and consequently, it is no longer a state, but a mafia, and secondly, that the State Department, having turned foreign policy into domestic policy, essentially invited Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to take part in the internal political struggle, because the United States were unable to resolve their internal problems without Russia.

  30. malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:55 pm #

    Walter B January 25, 2019 at 4:40 pm #

    Don’t know but they had arms about 2? long and all their fingers and they did not just lay there but moved their dismembered bodies about as they lay there in the pile of parts. They rip them apart you see and remove them in pieces. I’d say the entire bodies were 4 to 6 inches long and pretty well formed. It was more than a little bit disconcerting, especially the joking, laughing attitudes of the doctors and nurses.

    / Abby Johnson [I think thats her name] was the big provider in Texas with 4 abortion factories [I assume before Planned not Parenthood took over].
    In her wise way she noted, ‘there were too many live births so
    the saline went out and the DnC was in.’

    Live births start at 19 weeks, 4.5 months.
    Thats science, not what PP might offer.

    Who got you to watch the movies? Were they on you tube?

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    • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 4:55 pm #

      A baby is moving around in the womb and responding to sound.
      I assume that starts in 1st trimester.

      • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

        Quickening happens in the 2nd trimester.

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:46 pm #

      To these people, baby remains are just pieces of meat, not human beings.

      • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:31 pm #

        “To these people, baby remains are just pieces of meat, not human beings.”

        John,
        It begs the question…”How many divisions do…well, you know the rest….

    • Walter B January 25, 2019 at 8:19 pm #

      It was on a thread on Godlike Productions maybe three years ago now. The poster put up a link and said something like “don’t even think about looking at THIS”. I do not even recall the topic of the original thread, although I do believe it was something about Satanic worship being alive and well. I cannot recall where the link was to and am better off not going back. I really made a deep, dark impression though. I hope that sharing was not too disturbing, but the subject itself is very disturbing isn’t it?

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 10:50 am #

        Sounds like stories I have read about goings on in China.

        USA via aid was paying for abortions, a needle thru a beating heart.
        A photo [in 1980 or 1981] was in news week or Time and
        reporters were told to stop investigating.

  31. Robert White January 25, 2019 at 5:05 pm #

    The Deep State charade cannot mask the next round of Debt Ceiling debauchery slated for Congress. Furthermore, Maxine Waters is going to drum up sufficient contempt for Republican fiscal largesse as Ocasio-Cortez mops the floor with Wall Street bankster slime.

    Never mind Orange Jesus or his plans of inaction pre-impeachment phase. When he is indicted on conspiracy he will undoubtedly become completely unhinged for the end game of a Democrat win in the polls all the way to election.

    RW

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:44 pm #

      And his action today just accelerated the pace. How many GOPers are going to the well for him now.

  32. Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 5:06 pm #

    Insightful and slightly amusing comment over on NakCap by commenter Alain de Benoist in response to an article praising globalist criminal George Soros’ recent bitch-fest diatribe at Davos regarding the growing “Chinese AI Menace/Threat” (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/soros-warns-against-ai-promoted-surveillance-and-authoritarianism-singles-out-chinas-existing-tools-and-ambitions.html). Let the term “globohomo” officially enter the Lexicon!:

    “This is an interesting triangular conflict with shifting alliances on each side.

    On one side you have Soros’ “open society” which really means nations open to globalist billionaires to latch onto and bleed white. The alt-right refers to this ideology as “globohomo” (globalized and homogenized culture pushed by billionaires, multinationals, NeoCons/Neo-liberals, along with their progressive pawns). The goal of globohomo is to weaken western societies so that they are ripe for manipulation by wealthy elites. The problem is that this ideology is working all too well as diverse, deracinated, and post-masculine Europe and the US are declining in global influence.

    On the Chinese side you have good old-fashioned collectivist ethno-nationalism. China is proudly a nation of Han Chinese and their culture and interests come first and foremost. They do not take many immigrants and non-Han cannot normally become citizens. Troublesome minorities are placed in re-education camps until they submit to the will of the Han. China is rising quickly in global power and this worries Soros as he has no way to poz them with globohomo, and in the near future the West will be so weakened by globohomo that China will rule the world, including over the globalist billionaires.

    On the dissident Western side you have individualist ethno-nationalism in the form of Trump, along with the original rebels to globohomo in Poland and Hungary. These have been joined by Italy and Brazil among other examples. Individualist ethno-nationalism is what most Western countries were until the billionaires rebelled and launched the globohomo assault on the west forty years ago.

    In Soros’ piece he is really saying he pozzed the Soviet Union with elements globohomo in order to open it up to rule by globalist billionaires. This process was stopped by Putin. China saw this and took measures to stop the same thing happening to China. So Soros now quite wisely wants to sick Trump and company against China. This is a very intelligent strategy, let the two ethnocentric camps fight it out and then let victorious globlohomo write the history books afterwards.

    In this triangular conflict China of course wants to encourage the West to commit suicide by overdosing on globohomo. Their basic strategy is: globohomo for thee but certainly not for me. But surely the Chinese can’t help but take a little pride in realizing that Trump is basically adopting their civilization model. Trump’s unspoken goal of maintaining a long term white majority in the US uses as a model Singapore’s continuing efforts to maintain a Han Chinese majority through controlling immigration.

    Trump on the other hand has to carefully balance the need to stop Chinese economic exploitation of the US (done with the full collaboration of globohomo) but at the same time Trump has to stop short of getting drawn into a military conflict with China. Back in WW2 there was a similar triangular conflict between the Yanks, the Nazis, and the Commies. The Nazis and Commies foolishly fought it out and the Yanks wisely came in a picked up the pieces.

    Of course this is exactly what Soros wants to have happen, a conflict between the two ethno-nationalist ideologies after which he and his fellow globalist billionaires can pick up the pieces. So Soros is open to assisting Trump in combating the Chinese on the economic front hoping that Trump will assist him in pushing regime change on China so that the current ethno-nationalist Chinese regime can be replaced by one open to globohomo.”

    • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:42 pm #

      You Canucks, between climate change effects and the invasion from the south, may be the recipients of an invasion of Norte Americanos from flyover USA. If the CC alarmists are right, the US will recede into the dust.

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 5:54 pm #

      How on earth did you ever get off on this Steve Bannon tangent Robert? The comment is basically saying that the US has more true common cause with both China AND Russia than it does with the globohomo-ing globalist elite. THAT’S the enemy we need to be fighting.

      • ozone January 25, 2019 at 7:26 pm #

        Ol’ Scratch,
        Thanks for clarifying! (I thought for a moment that you had characterized the Orange Eminence as a geopolitical ‘deep thinker’/’chess champion’. Whew; close one.)

        As to your comment, I often wonder why the globo-homo’s have chosen *this particular moment* to reveal themselves so openly! Personally, I don’t think their timing could be worse.

        • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 10:56 am #

          Trump’s intuition regarding globohomo is basically correct, although his execution is often scattershot. Trump’s basic mode of operation is impetuous (to say the least!) with little actual thought involved. He’s widely quoted as saying he manages “from the gut,” which seems to be evident in current events.

          The globohomo’s agenda is now coming into sharp focus for those who have time and make the effort to pay attention, unfortunately most don’t. The mass media hallucination generation machine is still all too effective in ensuring that.

    • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 3:17 pm #

      Thank you for this interesting post. More evidence supporting the case for an ethnically united and homogenous nation state. And also, what could be the antidote for the globalist infection.

  33. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 5:37 pm #

    Not just Soros, look for the Rockefeller’s, Rothschilds and old families from Europe. The US is a conundrum for them, how to knock it down while still being able to counter China.

    Overwhelming everything though is the fact that we are approaching the carrying capacity of Mother Earth and the exhaustion of various resources, oil being no. 1, will make all these global conquest plans moot.

    It will be a real thrill conquering a burnt out cinder.

    Trump’s capitulation today throws another monkey wrench into the works. Trust takes time and consistency to earn. Today’s cave will affect many relationships.

    Old saying

    One aw s—t cancels 10000 atta boys.

    • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 5:49 pm #

      Thanks for the heads up. Looks like its only for three weeks, whatever that means.

      • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 5:56 pm #

        Not sure how a three week lull in the standoff is going to solve anything.

        • Ol' Scratch January 25, 2019 at 6:32 pm #

          Ahh, the plot thickens! Two weeks until the Super Bowl now, and ATC walkout and safety concerns around Atlanta were getting to be a major issue. NOW we know what’s going on! The agreement conveniently covers that time frame. Couldn’t have corporate America’s big cash cow shindig disrupted. Roger Goodell to the red courtesy phone please, Roger Goodell.

          • JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 7:16 pm #

            Good observation!! The number one issue Trump has is not his political enemies, it is his allies whose trust he has lost. I think though that Trump in 2020 may be decided in three weeks. From within the GOP.

          • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 8:52 pm #

            Goodells not too worried, Scratch; all tolled his salary is $1 million per week.

  34. Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2019 at 6:02 pm #

    The most dangerous place on Earth is the mother’s womb. Imagine killing your own baby like that. No wonder so many of them go mad. And they will get no sympathy or aid from the psychological Establishment either. They refuse to recognize this “syndrome” – also called having a conscience.

    • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 3:12 pm #

      Did you know that a majority of women seeking an abortion (as well as looking to give their unborn baby up for adoption) are already raising at least one child if not multiple children? Bringing a baby to term and giving it up for adoption also causes distress. Sure contraception is mostly effective but oopsies can always happen. Since it takes two to tango men should also be willing to care for their kids. I am not for abortion in many cases but the circumstances that people get into can be pretty complicated and children deserve good parents and households.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 4:47 pm #

        Let He who is without sin cast the first stone. But on the other hand, fear and shame are the guardians of the world as Buddha said. If we accept everything, we’ll get everything. I admit I’ve never been in that situation. But I just can’t see it as right unless the baby is obviously going to be seriously retarded or a medical disaster.

        • Q. Shtik January 27, 2019 at 10:43 pm #

          to be seriously retarded – Janos

          ==========

          Janos, labeling someone as retarded is no longer permitted — didn’t you get the memo? — the permissible label is now developmentally delayed even though the delay generally lasts a lifetime.

  35. RB January 25, 2019 at 6:26 pm #

    What great theater we have out of DC. Wonderful stuff. Who gives a shit? Does it affect you? Hasn’t me. My SS deposit is still made and my pension as well. Medicare pays the bills nicely. The shelves at Walmart show some vacancies but I can get all sorts of shit. I saw where Walmart is needing more truck drivers and some of the salaries are in the 90K range. I wish I had my CDL. Riding the highways with my dog and playing country music. Stopping at truck stops and not being inundated with bullshit on TV. Sing it Waylon. Americans neither care nor worry about the freaks in DC. They will only worry when someone pops an EMP cap on our asses and the internet, cell phones, TV, cars and so on shut down. Then they will care but to no avail. Who ya gonna call?

    No, black swans will show up and no one will have seen them coming but blessedly we won’t have to listen to some dick on a news channel tell us all about it. We might get Mad Max scenarios yet. I feel it in my bones. Coming a reckoning.

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    • bukowskisghost January 25, 2019 at 6:43 pm #

      so Janos, do you have a catheter and a bed pan, or do you just sniff around your hut and release as necessary. Just askin……

      • malthuss January 25, 2019 at 7:49 pm #

        Are you asking RB?

      • RB January 25, 2019 at 9:39 pm #

        bukowski

        I will assume you are directing your comment to me. Fine. I give a shit.

        But let me say this, when I was a young kid, in my lifetime, Germany was slaughtering Jews, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, POWs, and others in a wholesale fashion, In the 20th damn century friend. I gather you are one of these types who says, “well, it hasn’t happened so it won’t.” Shit happens. It happens unexpectedly or expectedly. But it happens. I never expected my government of the people, by the people and for the people to forceably enroll me into a shitty war begun illegally and run incompetently. But it did.

        The problem with many is they cannot think big enough. They cannot think beyond Starbucks and #metoo. This is why most will be fucked when something does happen.

        By the way, I do have an emergency catheter in my personal medicine supply box. Who’d have thunk?

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 12:24 am #

          In looking carefully at Bs post, I guess he is calling u ‘Janos’ in a mocking way, like,
          Hi Janos Junior.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 2:17 pm #

        This enemy needs an enema because he’s full of shit.

        Why on Earth did he choose the name, Bukowski? Bukowski hated middle class people and though not lacking in compassion, loathed political correctness all of his life.

  36. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 8:13 pm #

    Roger Stone

    Arrested for having colluded with Wikileaks.

    What did Wikileaks do other than expose the rottenness of the DNC under HRC control? Remember Podestas password when he was hacked? Password. The arrogance of the DNC at the time was astounding and it was good that they were exposed. This expanded right into Mueller by the biggest group of con artists in history. The DNC makes Watergate look like misdemeanor.

  37. BackRowHeckler January 25, 2019 at 8:25 pm #

    Big back pay comin’! Phew, nothin sweeter! Big chunk of cash, go down to Cabellas and pick up that carbine you been wanting! What’s going to srop you? Stock up on the 3 Bs, beer, bacon and bullets, and wait for spring.

    Brh

  38. JohnAZ January 25, 2019 at 8:38 pm #

    For all you folks espousing the Nazis in the government

    Let me present to you 27 body armored well armed SWAT troops sent by Muellers gestapo to arrest the monster Roger Stone in his pj’s. With a news team from CNN to record it all. The news team was there before the “cops” showed up.

    • Pucker January 25, 2019 at 9:12 pm #

      The Deep State probably “Over Played” their hand by arresting Roger Stone? They now look like jack boot thugs?

      • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 10:46 am #

        Just now?

  39. Pucker January 25, 2019 at 8:52 pm #

    Michael Greer in his excellent interview with JHK says that human beings are part of the biosphere. We’re not just part of the biosphere, right? We’re part of something much larger, right?

    • Pucker January 25, 2019 at 10:15 pm #

      The Milky Way Galaxy has a giant black hole in the center of it the size of our solar system which may be the Nexus of Life and Entropy?

      I rather empathized with the male shark in the movie “Jaws II”. That Tina was Hot….

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwd1iAcTANI

  40. No one is a person in the womb. Fetuses have no thoughts, no experiences, no frame of reference, and why would they? Mammalian evolution requires all energy to be put toward forming a viable meat capsule in preparation for launch into a hostile environment.

    Once launched, the baby’s blood is almost 100% white blood cells and sleeps for most of the day, while its immune system does a 24/7 cataloging of foreign invaders.

    All the pieces of us that mature and endow upon us “consciousness” – memory, perception, insight, etc. come much later, so, we are really quite generous saying Bob is a person, given that Bob has no history of anything but squealing and drooling and shitting himself.

    The fiction, I repeat, the fiction- of a fetus as a person is a sentimental construct to goad our very susceptible imaginations into assigning moral and ethical weight to something without any. Pictures of bloody aborted fetuses, little faces, little fingers and toes, are all just agitprop to blow out our rational thought and directly fiddle with the emotional machinery, the guilt, the sympathy, the irrational- religion’s control levers.

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    • FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2019 at 11:16 pm #

      According to Dr. Martin Lings, a work of art, any art, not just the drama of Shakespeare, resonates with the reader of the book or the audience in the theater only if that work contains some truth, which we know because of our stay in the World Above before birth, but forget with the first cry at birth, and again remember when breathing our last.

      Forget but not entirely, and when we are confronted with a work of art which contains some analogue of the events in the World Above, our soul trembles and weeps and this what Aristotle calls catharsis.

      • Yes, I understand. In order for the doctrine that you are who you are after you’re dead, you must be who you are before you were born, and yet, why so many miscarriages? “God is testing us” is the orthodox response to which I reply, “very convenient”.

    • Pucker January 26, 2019 at 12:24 am #

      You may be holding onto the Feminist dogma too tight? It may be inconsistent, on the one hand, to insistent that we’re part of the biosphere and a greater whole as this buttresses the whole Feminist Mother Thang, while, on the other hand, denying the fetus’s relationship to the Mother?

      • I’m not sure feminism exists in the capacity you describe. I’ve never heard my argument presented here, stated by anyone, at any time. I can’t believe I’m the only person that ever thought it. Therefore I conclude the reason this objection never propagated is the intellectual weakness, nee sentimentalism, of the gross number of people for whom the threat of damnation, the sight and smell of blood, or the threat of hurt feelings in another, or themselves, is enough to keep them from the fight.

        I fault women, more or less, for failing to hold the door against Roe v. Wade. Too agreeable, not logical enough. Reading the histories of the suffragettes, I can’t place these figures in a contemporary context. Modern women are soft and, frankly, stupid. 60%+ of the Catholic church is women.

        So, as I’ve admitted, its the very best tactic for the Anti-choice contingent going forward. It is absolutely effective. We’re on the doorstep of putting another College-graduate Catholic on the Supremes for the express purpose of displaying how arbitrary and stupid we really are.

        If we really are being dragged back into 300 years of a dark age, you can bet the Catholic Church will sail through it like they did last time, and surely, pick up a few treasures here and there. The USA and Canada would really cap their achievement, 500 years in the making, of creating a New Dominion in the Americas.

        Erode the laws from the top down, import 30-50 million central American Catholics, and voila!

        • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:34 pm #

          Interesting how you say you are so supportive of womens’ choices and yet here you say this issue is the fault of women. No less, you say women are stupid. Which is it? You’re confusing me as to what you really stand for.

          • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:10 pm #

            Maybe its a Donny who hates women?
            And is ill packaged?

    • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 12:25 am #

      No one is a person in the womb.

      You are anti science.

      • Science has nothing to do with it. No life, no person. Nothing of value is lost. The mother and mother alone should have absolute say. The intrusion of the state, and by extension, the church, and the community, is the aim of the anti-choice contingent. An endless complication with a whole boondoggle of laws and regulations, leading to patently absurd and devious situations clearly in contravention of the Roe v. Wade statute. … as catalogued recently by The New York Times.

        Next question- will this move the needle? No, I don’t think so. We’ve lived with the regression too long, and here is another way the Anti-choice people were so successful. They got the soft-headed fools to compromise on banning it in the 3rd trimester. Same situation then- the partial birth abortion horrors just when Boomer America was sitting down with its can of beer to watch the game after a long day at work. These people never quit, which is why what really needs to happen is draw a bright line between them and the rest of society- oops, too late. They already have carte blanche access to tax-free land and tax-free organizing. They already infect our societies with their pious bullshit and when they’re not boxing us up in the cemeteries, they’re in every state trying to put artifacts in public spaces.

        • tucsonspur January 26, 2019 at 4:48 am #

          There is Life, even if as a not fully developed conglomeration of cells. No person yet, but life wanting to become one by the very nature of the “life force”. I think that the worst that can be said is that the intent of nature is ‘killed’, not a person.

          There may be no greater intrusion into a person’s life than the state or church trying to enter the womb.

          That old saying about men getting pregnant and abortion being a sacrament is a higher truth than some peddler of piety spouting off, in this context, that “life is sacred”.

          • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 10:10 am #

            “….no greater intrusion in a persons life than the state or church trying to enter the womb”.

            How about an abortionist with forceps and a scalpel? That’ s a great intrusion too.

            Brh

          • Yes, just imagine being a young lady with her life ahead of her, raped by some ne’er-do-well like brh. Imagine the trauma as the circle of congregants descends to protect the baby, binding her hand and feet, stolen away to their cult compound where she is imprisoned for the term, and then some.

            “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ? Voltaire

            This is the process unfolding now. Erstwhile “good people” who have let reason and logic slip until they are advocating for state intervention in the most intimate personal aspects of life. The logical conclusion is that the womb is state property.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:36 pm #

            Abortion is a sacrament already – that of Human Sacrifice to Moloch or the Dark Mother, Hecate. They are very clever to project it onto men like that. Feminism is an evil religion.

        • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:30 pm #

          If a fetus has no value as you say then why are you even bringing this topic up? Trivializing such a life altering moment and decision is not nice. There is a deep emotional angle to this that involves couples and families. It isn’t as cold and dry as you make it out to be.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:06 pm #

          You are bull shit.

          When my friends baby [born FOUR months early]
          was a year old, ‘he is mentally at 8 months, not 12..’

          The Chinese did or do measure yr age from day of conception.

        • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 7:42 pm #

          “Science has nothing to do with it. No life, no person. Nothing of value is lost.”

          SnakPak,
          But what if the fetus would come to maturity and cure cancer, or end wars for all time, or make Communism work…really work!

          (A note to Alba…THIS is what being disingenuous looks like.)

      • Nightowl January 27, 2019 at 4:25 am #

        No, this is just a fantasy your create in your head so that you don’t have to feel bad. I could respect your position at least a sliver if you would just call it as it is.

        Sperm and egg unite, life begins. How you choose describe the tiny life in the womb changes nothing.

        Your thinking is no different from that of the typical SJW loon who has convinced him or herself that gender doesn’t exist.

    • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:58 pm #

      This is just plain wrong and cold as well. Of couse the level of consciousness is dependent on developmental stage but to make this blanket statement is just a falsehood. By 20 weeks the baby’s hearing is intact and audio stimulation is encouraged. You can also play touch games with the baby into the second trimester. You don’t know what you are saying.

  41. Pucker January 25, 2019 at 11:12 pm #

    “What the Federal Reserve actually accomplished with its ten years of extend-and-pretend policy was not an economic “recovery,” but a degenerative disease of the social contract.”

    Shoshana Zuboff in her book “Surveillance Capitalism” says that a pivotal moment in our progressive Collapse occurred in 1976 when 2 Assholes named Jensen and Meckling published an article stripping public corporations of their social value. Why would somebody do this?

    “The double movement was scheduled for demolition under the neoliberal flag, and implementation began immediately. In 1976, the same year that Jensen and Meckling published their pathbreaking analysis, President Jimmy Carter initiated the first significant efforts to radically align the corporation with Wall Street’s market metrics, targeting the airline, transportation, and financial sectors with a bold program of deregulation. What began as a “ripple” turned into “a tidal wave that washed away controls from large segments of the economy in the last two decades of the twentieth century.” 29 The implementation that began with Carter would define the Reagan and Thatcher eras, virtually every subsequent US presidency, and much of the rest of the world, as the new fiscal and social policies spread to Europe and other regions in varying degrees. 30 Thus began the disaggregation and diminishment of the US public firm. 31 The public corporation as a social institution was reinterpreted as a costly error, and its long-standing reciprocities with customers and employees were recast as destructive violations of market efficiency. Financial carrots and sticks persuaded executives to dismember and shrink their companies, and the logic of capitalism shifted from the profitable production of goods and services to increasingly exotic forms of financial speculation.”

    Shoshana Zuboff
    The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 10:45 am #

      Excellent. The great beast is coming more and more into focus everyday now.

  42. 100th Avatar January 25, 2019 at 11:51 pm #

    “Sometimes nations just lose their shit. The complex collapse of American life proceeds as the public and its leaders fail to comprehend the forces in play”

    Although I’m not religious, Dreher from AmCon magazine has an admirable and not unfamiliar plan.

    His book description:

    “Rod Dreher argues that the way forward is actu­ally the way back—all the way to St. Benedict of Nur­sia. This sixth-century monk, horrified by the moral chaos following Rome’s fall, retreated to the forest and created a new way of life for Christians. He built enduring communities based on principles of order, hospitality, stability, and prayer. His spiritual centers of hope were strongholds of light throughout the Dark Ages, and saved not just Christianity but Western civilization.

    Today, a new form of barbarism reigns. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Politics offers little help in this spiritual crisis. What is needed is the Benedict Option.. The goal: to embrace exile from mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture.”

    This living arrangement predates Christianity. And it is practiced many places by many people today. What can one learn from the most successful and most interminable cultures? What have they practiced?
    Religion? Worship?
    Really?

    Or a proper way of life?

    Let the masses (and we see how easily they are hooked, fooled, and lead) have their world, their norms, their culture, their vices, their laws that exist outside our mind. But in here, our heads we have ours. This is not surrendered. At home, with family, with the community, we reinforce and protect our way.
    Will the times of shunning the grotesque outsider return?
    Not soon enough many feel. Who are these “fellow” men?
    Retreating to a place, a community, is one aspect, but not retreating in the mind is the most important. And especially not to them, my “fellow” Americans.
    Not my kind.

    • These people and their communities exist, for sure. They’re out there, refusing to be vaccinated.

      And to be sure, there is a lot to be admired about their way of life. And if you want to pay the price, they’ll let you in, but to be honest, they probably won’t, because they are hardened against outsiders. This evolved from becoming a nuisance wherever they were from.

      Insular groups tend to have restrictive social codes. Sure, you would be a sorely needed injection of diverse DNA. But what is DNA? Devil’s words. Taste my broadfork, heathen!

    • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 6:19 am #

      Good post, Avater.

      Victor Davis Hanson said about the same thing in a column a few weeks ago.

      Brh

      • Wishful thinking in the extreme though. Good luck implementing anything of any consequence.

        Even the Amish haven’t been able to survive without increasing their contact with the outside. Agricultural commodification and a global supply chain destroyed the profitability of their enterprises.

        Maybe the fact is you can run, but you can’t hide. Climate change doesn’t care where you live, it will touch all. Same with the global financial system. Self-sufficiency of the United States should have been a national security priority.

        • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

          I do agree that self-sufficiency should be a national security priority.

    • JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 9:51 am #

      JHK talked about localization in all his books. Your feelings may give one part of the desire to localize.

      People trying to get you to stay with the flow are the people you want to avoid. Friendships come and go as you try to maintain your internal paradigm. I can sure relate, constantly thinking about where to go and when to escape this country’s march into oblivion. Starting over at my age is no trivial matter, but may be necessary.

    • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:19 pm #

      There have always been counter-cultures, cults, sub-cultures, etc. Our society tends to have a lot of phobia about spirituality and religion. Instead the enthusiasm is generally channeled into science, engineering, etc. A singular focus on materialism and humanism leaves a lot to be desired. However, you will receive immediate and hostile reactions to suggesting that spirituality and religion play a central role again in American and/or Western society.

  43. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 2:03 am #

    It’s interesting that Trump wasn’t able to eliminate the Estate Tax….

    “Buy 2014 nearly half of the US population lived in functional poverty, with the highest wage in the bottom half of earners at about $ 34,000.49 A 2012 US Department of Agriculture survey showed that close to 49 million people lived in “food-insecure” households. 50 In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty integrated years of income data to derive a general law of accumulation: the rate of return on capital tends to exceed the rate of economic growth. This tendency, summarized as r > g, is a dynamic that produces ever-more-extreme income divergence and with it a range of antidemocratic social consequences long predicted as harbingers of an eventual crisis of capitalism. In this context, Piketty cites the ways in which financial elites use their outsized earnings to fund a cycle of political capture that protects their interests from political challenge. 51 Indeed, a 2015 New York Times report concluded that 158 US families and their corporations provided almost half ($ 176 million) of all the money that was raised by both political parties in support of presidential candidates in 2016, primarily in support of “Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations, cut taxes… and shrink entitlements.” 52 Historians, investigative journalists, economists, and political scientists have analyzed the intricate facts of a turn toward oligarchy, shining a light on the systematic campaigns of public influence and political capture that helped drive and preserve an extreme free-market agenda at the expense of democracy. 53”

    Shoshana Zuboff
    The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

    • tucsonspur January 26, 2019 at 2:24 am #

      Right on. And Surveillance Capitalism is the business model of the Internet.

      • K-Dog January 26, 2019 at 7:39 am #

        The wild west days are all gone true enough; but corporate entrapment of your personal space only happens because people allow it. If you can handle being lonely and an island unto yourself you can choose not to drink water of the poison well.

        • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 10:42 am #

          For a time, maybe. You can run, but ultimately you can’t hide.

          • K-Dog January 26, 2019 at 10:55 am #

            Yes, hiding becomes an impossible effort and Pandora has thrown open her box.

    • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 10:45 am #

      bUy?

  44. tucsonspur January 26, 2019 at 2:15 am #

    The exercise of emergency powers by the President seems to be a confusing topic. Can he use them or not. It seems that Congress can keep those powers in check, but that the decision to declare a national emergency is entirely within the President’s discretion.

    I believe that both Lincoln and FDR exercised such powers, certainly in more immediately drastic and dire situations.

    I imagine the Dems and the courts throwing up formidable roadblocks.

    I found this article interesting:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/

    Another shut down? Puhleeez! And how about that Wilbur Ross giving the Dems a huge gift by saying that the shut down workers should take out loans? What an out of touch, bumbling, stupid fuck of a billionaire!

    The raid on Stone showed that the Dems know how to do it. And all this while Hillary’s and Obama’s crew are “dancing with the Daffodils” (WW).

    Many are saying that Trump is toast. Some are saying that he’s a milquetoast. After all of his bluster, what can the MAGA man muster?

    Hannity, the Robo anchor, says Trump WILL declare emergency powers, if necessary, about 2:20 in:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNrGblaJQ98

    • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

      To me it seems like President Trump has done everything to put out olive branches to the opposition. He has conceded in various ways to reach a deal. According to the establishment media this is what every politician is supposed to do. They constantly talk up the importance of bipartisanship and negotiation. So he does that and it’s not good enough when it comes to him. I think he will declare an emergency if no deal is reached. He should. The main point of the federal government’s existence is to protect the sovereignty of the country. When you have no control over your borders you have no sovereignty.

  45. Federal workers are just like us. They hate their jobs, they aren’t responsible with money, they have bills to pay. Except unlike us, they have a strong union and collective bargaining, excellent benefits, and social prestige.

    So don’t cry too much for the poor federal worker. Wilbur Ross is right- abundant loans are on offer for very low rates.

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    • tucsonspur January 26, 2019 at 4:02 am #

      Yeah, but that’s all he’s right about!

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 10:41 am #

      So, you’re officially revealed to be a neo-lib globalist shill now too. Congrats!

      • No, just a former federal worker laughing at the credulousness of proles who have accepted the the laughable fiction of the po’ federal worker.

        • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

          This is how the elite relies on the various social classes to pick each other off one by one on behalf of the wealthy, rather than find common cause and unite against their true enemies. “Federal workers” are hardly a monolithic bloc either, and the damages of the shutdown go much further than just federal workers. While the MSM focuses relentlessly on multi-culturalism and gender homogenization, the foolish masses completely miss the fact that the real game being played too subtly behind the scenes for the proles to notice is one of power, wealth, and influence – class warfare in short.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:51 pm #

          “Heroic” TSA workers! Just not showing up. People of that shade don’t work if they don’t get paid. Just like New Orleans during Katrina. The Black police officers just walked off the job, sometime stopping to help other Blacks loot or joining in themselves.

          • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:12 pm #

            Free beer. I recall the pic of the looter with the beer.

          • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 5:59 pm #

            Once again Janos, your focus is too narrow and thus completely misses the point.

            DHS and the TSA, established in the aftermath of an historic globalist false-flag event, and thus on false premises from the very start, was inherently a “make work” project from the very start. It was largely originally manned by military retirees and separates (I was retiring from the USAF at the time, and listened to many stories of fellow retirees who were pursuing the many “opportunities” available at that time), who are themselves largely of minority makeup. Their dedication to duty and general motivation were (and are, I suspect) largely above reproach, especially considering the minimal economic remuneration on offer for their “vital” services.

            By defining this narrowly as a racial and/or ethnic deficiency at the grass roots level, you entirely miss the fact that this was 1.) another opportunity for our globalist parasite elite to bleed the US treasury for another totally necessary “service” to protect us against an imaginary “enemy,” and 2.) essentially a public welfare make-work program to disguise the fact that the US economy had been completely usurped in the service of global capital, and that meaningless make-work jobs like this were as good as it was ever going to get for the average American worker from this point on.

            I understand your frustration and rage my brother, but I think you need to redirect it.

  46. BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 7:52 am #

    Is stabbing your neighbor common practice in Latin America? In the past few weeks we’ve had stabbings — a few of them fatal — in Meriden, New London, Hartford, and Bridgeport, the stabbers and stabees all with Hispanic names.

    What might have been shocking 30 years ago is commonplace now, and hardly merits a second look. We’ve kind of expect this sort of thing, and pretty much accept this is our future.

    Brh

    • JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 10:34 am #

      The attitude about abortion is a barometer about the public feeling about the sanctity of life. Whatever the cause, the newest generations do not seem to have reverence toward life, maybe because it is taken for granted and thus is not treasured.

      The potential for a living being begins at conception, and it is in each person’s conscience what the effect of ending that potential life is. Unwanted pregnancies are catastrophic to the lives affected, but epecially the mother to be. Technology has made the removal of those unwanted pregnancies simple physically but the morality questions remain.

      The government has no business dictating to these women, period. It is between them and their gods what the “right” answer is. Society can set a standard of expectation but the final decision belongs to the mom.

      Now, that said. The mom’s responsibility to herself starts before conception. Medical high tech makes avoidance of conception reliable. Avoiding Unwanted pregnancy should be a cardinal education of any girl’s upbringing. Mom’s and Dad’s, that means you.

      Oops! A mistake. A potential life begins. What is society’s responsibility to the child and the mother to be? That is a decision that is splitting this country apart. A point of survivability needs to be agreed to. Conception, first trimester, due date, it must be decided upon and enforced. Women now have pills that remove the fetus immediately the morning after.. Pregnancy kits show the fetus’presence within two weeks. Is it murder to stop a fetus at this point? Between Mom and her god. 1st trimester? Still between Mom and her god. Quickening? Still.

      When a fetus approaches viability, however, things become complicated with the mental health of Mom. Murder or not? It is still her decision although intensive counseling is probably in order to support her decision.

      I am Pro Mom on abortion, pro choice. Especially as a male, the source of the problem, I do not have the right to affect some woman’s decision I do not know. My own child? More so but not totally.

      However, I do not condone the Planned Parenthood abortion mills that have developed from folks that have little or no respect for life. How many women looking for an easy way out of a jam are spiritually scarred for life because of these devil may care clinics. And abhorrent to me is the selling of parts for whatever reason. People supporting this practice are monsters.

      • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 1:54 pm #

        I just wholeheartedly disagree that younger generations lack a reverence for life in general. In fact as a whole, millenials are more pro-life in their choices than previous generations.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:15 pm #

          Row-Wade was 49 years ago, about.

          You know Bettys story? the woman who was used [and I do mean used] in the case?

          She ‘ended up’ working at a Texas abortion factory.
          She saw the babies in the frige.
          She turned against late abortion.

          I post facts, I just forget her real name.

        • elysianfield January 26, 2019 at 8:02 pm #

          ” millenials are more pro-life in their choices than previous generations”

          SSL,
          Pro life? Other than the issue of abortion? They might find it easy to make choices that have no immediate impact on their lifestyles.

          I have observed that it is very easy to make a decision upon a circumstance that has already been resolved, and is unable, without effort, to be changed.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

        The source of the problem? And the woman bears no responsibility? This is a radical pro-male pov. By this light, women shouldn’t have the right to vote. You are only saved from mental breakdown by your lack of introspection.

        Only the Lance of the Sun can save us. I just operated on John. Ideally one has one’s own and operates on oneself. John can’t seem to find his. It’s too dark in there….

        Until we all find the Lance of the Sun, the Cherubrim will keep us from entering the Garden. They guard it with Swords of Light that turn in every direction simultaneously. Lasers? Or Jedi Light Sabers?

      • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 3:24 pm #

        “Pregnancy kits show the fetus’presence within two weeks. ”

        Until about 9 weeks it’s still an embryo and not a fetus.

        On the whole, though, JohnAZ, I’d commend you on your balanced view, given your beliefs.

        I’m not a fan of abortion, especially beyond the early stages, but like you, I wouldn’t presume to tell someone else what they should be doing in such a situation. Although I find the idea of really late-stage abortions pretty horrific, unless there’s a genuine medical imperative, and that would just make it tragic but no less horrific.

        As is a still birth that can’t be blamed on anyone (act of God for those that way inclined?).

        If anyone ‘Christian’ tells me they are fine with letting a child be born with a rare disorder that means they can have nothing more than a short and distressingly painful life, I’d suggest they’re not a Christian, but a monster. Like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who opposes abortion in all circumstances, including extreme conditions and deformities, or rape.

        So that would be like saying Janos, if he had a 13-year old daughter raped by one of those demographics he despises, would make her carry the baby to term anyway. Everyone has their bottom line, no matter how dogmatic they think they are, when it gets personal. And a child born of rape and otherwise perfectly healthy, is still a child. But I certainly wouldn’t make someone hardly out of childhood themselves give birth, whether following a rape or not.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 3:45 pm #

          Very late ‘abortion’–what is that?
          What is the purpose?
          What is the procedure?

          Britain does what it can to abort its downs fetuses. Its the law, or is it?

          I knew a woman who went into labor at 22 weeks [5 months].

          With modern technology, the ‘fetus’ lived.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 7:58 pm #

            malthuss

            Sometimes I am just amazed at the kind of ‘information’ you think you have.

            Your query about ‘Britain’ makes absolutely no sense. And if it did you could Google it.

            Re your woman who went into labour at 22 weeks, you may find that just because the fetus ‘lived’, things may not be that rosy.

            I watched an interesting programme one time with my husband about premature babies (nothing to do with abortion) in this country and in the Netherlands. Dutch medical services have a later cut-off point than British hospitals in terms of babies they will attempt to save, i.e. British hospitals will attempt to save a very premature baby that Dutch medical services will consider not viable long term and which they will not leave to die in some horrible way that your prejudiced mind might imagine, but that they will make as comfortable as possible for the short time it is likely to survive on its own.

            We would do well to remember that it is not ‘natural’ for a 22-week baby to survive and there will be a price to pay.

            As well as looking at particular cases, including one where a teenage girl could not forgive her mother for having allowed her to survive, they looked at statistics. Of 100 very premature (borderline viable) babies, a certain percentage will have moderately serious defects or disabilities, another percentage more serious defects or disabilities, and another percentage again really serious defects or disabilities that make a decent life difficult or impossible. The percentage of babies born extremely prematurely with no long-term disabilities at all was one percent. ONE percent. Which is why the Dutch medical services consider prolonging such extremely premature babies’ lives artificially to be morally wrong.

            Sometimes nature knows best and the use of modern technology can be as overweening and unwise in healthcare as elsewhere.

          • GreenAlba January 26, 2019 at 8:56 pm #

            BTW, Malthuss, one of my daughter’s best friends has a Downs child. He’s about 18 now, but my daughter has spent a lot of time with him over the years.

            The father abandoned the family early on. The woman got married again and had another (normal) child, then that husband went off too. Not all fathers of disabled babies stick around and with step fathers all bets are off.

            Now that the boy is 18, I don’t know what he’s going to do – he’s not really able to do productive work (some Downs sufferers are), and I don’t even know if he can be left all day on his own – I know he goes too an activity centre of some sort some of the time (his mother works part time) so he’s going to be what some people on this thread like to call a ‘gimme’. Let’s hope they would be more charitable towards that kind of ‘gimme’. His mother will be hoping so, since the greatest fears of such parents are about what their ‘child’ will do when they’re not there to look after him/her any more.

            When I was pregnant, I chose not to know. With more life experience behind me I don’t know that I’d do that if I were making the decision now.

            But you’re a man so you can just pontificate at no cost.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 7:57 am #

            Malthuss

            Not letting you off the hook quite yet…

            Here’s an idea for you:

            https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2013/mar/22/day-life-volunteer-respite-carer

            It’s part of the Guardian’s regular ‘A day in the life of…’ series, which is a useful thing to dip into as it can prevent bouts of sanctimonious judgement of other people’s lives.

            This one’s ‘A day in the life of…a volunteer respite carer’.

            “Looking after a disabled child is a full time, 24-hour-a-day role and can only be sustainable if parents can get respite, while knowing someone is there to allow them some time for themselves or their other children.”

            And that’s while parents are still around to care for them. And even while dad hasn’t buggered off because living with a disabled child isn’t sexy or what he had in mind when he promised ‘for better or worse’.

            There will be organisations near you that will enable you to give a practical outlet to your clear concern for Down’s children and others whose care might be much more demanding. I’d advise you to give it a go, Malthuss. Think of the opportunity for personal growth.

            Putting your money where your mouth is is too easy. Putting your time and effort where your mouth is is something else entirely. If you think my suggestion is outrageous, perhaps you should just stop telling women what they should do.

            Other options might include offering to ‘adopt’ a 50- or 60-year-old Down’s man or woman whose parents have died. No? Thought not. Let’s just leave it to public funding then whinge about paying taxes.

        • Walter B January 26, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

          A Christian GA, or at least a real Christian would have just as much angst over the idea of birthing really bad defected children as they would in aborting them. it is a no win – no win scenario. And that real Christian would be obliged to hold the opinion that whatever choice the parents to be might make, the gift of Free Will is given to them from a much higher power than you or I. If the choice that was made in the end was one that was not in accordance with what that Power would like to see, forgiveness is His to dole out and not ours. I do not believe choices made on this issue are deal breakers, but that is just me.

    • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 10:47 am #

      Do not trust a Mexican woman with a knife.

    • Absolutely. Stabbing is easier to get away with. Hispanic criminal loves them some stabbin’.

      • SoftStarLight January 26, 2019 at 1:37 pm #

        Stabbing is easier to get away with – wow. Is this an NYT approved public message ;-)?

  47. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 8:18 am #

    The Mulattoes in San Domingo (Haiti) exploited their resemblance to the White French, their support of the White Ruling Power Structure, and the Whites’ fear of the blacks to manuveure for advantage. The Mulattoes in the US manipulate White guilt, White confusion about the Mulattoes as an Intermediate Class, and White Social Justice Warrior Narcissism.

    • K-Dog January 26, 2019 at 11:07 am #

      Most in San Domingo should be as black as soot and a Mulatto should be as common in Hati as snow is there. I don’t think Hati was white long enough to have its blood lines polluted by a white plague. White only long enough for Hatian sugar to rot some aristocratic French teeth before their heads came off, but that’s all.

      I can’t imagine there would be a resemblance except for any white culture that had been adopted before the revolution.

      The first part of the statement I must then conclude to be nonsense, there in fact being no resemblance. The second part appearing to be innocuously perceived as having some relationship to the first part by a casual readers is then not seen for the racis vermin it is.

      Good Job Pucker, you are learning to persuade.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:44 pm #

        Listen to this Anti-White racist. Yet the Blacks aren’t ashamed to beg Whitey for money, are they? Black beggars just like their brothers in Africa.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

          I read PRs are 25% afro, haitians are 96% Afro.

        • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 8:35 am #

          Careful, Janos. One of those black beggars in Africa might be Somali Jesus. He told his disciples it was fine to beg for food and drink while spreading the Word and that if they got no succour they should wipe the dust of their feet on the way out of town.

          Remember, Janos, you’ll never know which is him until he tells you (that’s when you kneel).

          ‘Whatsoever ye do unto the least of these my brethren, ye do unto me’. Hmmm…. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3…

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 8:35 am #

            *off* their feet…

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 4:51 pm #

            You mean a Somali robbing and raping might be Jesus too? Or he’s an illegal immigrant and Mary an unwed mother?

            You aren’t the first to use Christianity for Leftist purposes. And to twist the Sacred History to meet your twisted narratives.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:53 pm #

            Nobody robbing and raping would be Jesus – neither a Somali nor a robber or rapist from John o’Groats.

            You are truly getting desperate in your quest to avoid answering the question.

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 3:49 pm #

        GET RID OF WHITE PEOPLE AND THEN BLACKS WILL THRIVE?

        oh most definitely..
        like they did in haiti.
        like they did in baltimore, detroit, selma and atlanta.

        its very obvious what blacks are capable of once whitey has ceded control or in haiti’s case slaughtered. what this african bushman has said or proposed in no different than the whisperings of the haitians that plotted and planned the mass slaughter of whites.

        • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 4:39 pm #

          A Jamaican co worker recently told me Jamaica’s downhill slide started when Jamaica ceased being a British Colony. He’s an engiheer who worked in the main power plant in Kingston, said they could barely keep the thing working. Also warned me or anybody else NOT to visit Jamaica, as it is now known as the murder capital of the western hemisphere, which I thought was Honduras.

          Bru

        • Walter B January 26, 2019 at 5:57 pm #

          Well malthuss if you get rid of Whitey, blacks will indeed thrive, sort of. With Whitey gone, all crime will become black on black and as we know from the Chicago example, nobody gives a damn about that, it doesn’t really exist. So eliminating Whitey will eliminate crime, at least sort of. And without Whitey in his white neighborhoods, with his white collar jobs and Whitey lawns, there will be nobody to live “better” than those that remain, sort of.

          You see when you remove the people in a society that live well, leaving only those who live in abject chaos and poverty, you raise the standard of living and poverty becomes the “top” of the food chain, sort of. If you catch my drift. This, I believe, is how the proponents of the anti-Whitey crusade think, well sort of think.

    • K-Dog January 26, 2019 at 11:10 am #

      But please correct me if I have the blood history wrong. There was a hundred years or so, no?

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 11:20 am #

      Payback for white imperialism? You have to admit, imperialist Europeans and Americans have done this to themselves by first enslaving and then mixing with the conquered races in the first place. I think Ho Chi Minh or somebody was quoted to that effect back in the day.

      Who won Vietnam? The Vietnamese of course. They stood tall as nationalists against our “irresistible” globalist imperialist globohomo forces, and now in addition to preserving their own nationalist borders, they have infiltrated and are influencing our own culture from within. Took them awhile and at a great individual price, but that’s the cost of true independence these days. The US, the original whore to globohomo, is currently reaping the evil fruits of what its globohomo masters have sown all these many years.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 11:29 am #

        Who won Vietnam? The Vietnamese of course.

        I thought the Russian SAMs won Vietnam. Americans just ran out of planes.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 11:40 am #

        In total, the Americans lost 4,100 aircraft and 5,100 helicopters (US data) in Vietnam, from August 1964 to January 1973, i.e. about 3 units per day! About 3/4 of this number – combat losses, the rest – LP. Most of them were by the air defense missile system (mainly C-75, C-125 and Strela MANPADS appeared from 1972), and a little more than 100 – by fighter aircraft, some were destroyed on the ground. Americans “rejoice” that the relative losses are small – about 0.5 planes lost per 1,000 sorties, but they forget that during the raids on the DRV (North Vietnam), where the air defense was immeasurably the figure is much higher.
        I note the loss of certain types:

        – 31 B-52 (some say 34)
        – 765 F-4 “Phantom”
        – 243 F-100 “Super Saber”
        – 382 F-105 “Thunderchief” (about half of all aircraft of this type produced)
        – 373 A-4 “Skyhawks”
        – 106 A-7 “Corsair”
        – 140 F-8 “Kruseyder”
        – 256 A-1 Sky Trader
        – 3.197 UH-1 “Huey”
        – 277 AN-1 “Cobra”
        – 842 OH-6 “Keyus”
        – 132 CH-47 “Chinook”

        • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

          ” 765 F-4 “Phantom””

          Komaraden Finc!

          Yes, and the remaining 5000+ of the F4 production run was grounded due to a lack of Depends diapers for our cowardly pilots….

          “Hot, steaming piss”, as you have before described….

      • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 11:44 am #

        The US lost the war in Vietnam with a BANG, and that the US did not leave Vietnam because of nobility or anti-war protests, but because the Soviet air defense system beat all American aircraft and there was simply left nothing to fight with.

        • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

          Congrats Finc, I see you managed to miss the entire point once again! As we’ve all heard repeatedly over the years, the US no doubt won nearly ALL of the military battles in SE Asia, all of which amounted to squat. The war being fought by the Vietnamese was one of national, cultural, ethnic, and political integrity and sovereignty (the one the US SHOULD BE fighting now against the globalists), one fought on multiple fronts, most having NOTHING to do with the military. That was a lesson the military elite in the US has never grasped and does not grasp to this day. Had the American people grasped that concept from the start, we never would have let the globalist parasites invade and conquer our country in the first place, then we wouldn’t find ourselves on the wrong side of these skirmishes the world over on their behalf. You’re in desperate need a new set of paradigms to view the world through, old boy! Now get back to that bong!

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 1:46 pm #

            The key to understanding Finc’s viewpoints and tactics is his identity: not Russian but Tribe.

          • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 4:51 pm #

            Komrade Finklestein?

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2019 at 2:02 pm #

        You are right. We need to become a People who dwell alone. Expel all non-Whites from our Lands and cultivate our own Garden. Leave the darkies alone and their numbers will plummet and the crisis will pass. Our idiot compassion did this to us just as much as our greed for gold and the brutality that it requires.

        • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 3:50 pm #

          keep dreaming, YT.

        • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 5:00 pm #

          Our idiot compassion did this to us just as much as our greed for gold and the brutality that it requires.

          Equal parts I would say, but it was all driven by what was essentially an invading force, albeit one too subtle for the masses to notice. Either way, getting back to natural state is likely no longer possible. Not without a whole lot of blood letting over several generations, at least.

  48. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

    Why most Russian Liberals are right that nobody is going to attack Russia.

    That is because Russia is already under attack.

    They all make the same mistake:

    They all think that the USA is an ordinary state and transfer to it the ideas characteristic of a traditional society, which is still a single organism.

    And the United States is a country of permanent civil war, and this is the only war they have experienced the hard way, the genetically programmed experience of what happens when enemy soldiers come to your home and start killing your loved ones they simply do not have!

    In Russia and Europe, everyone remembers and feels it – probably there is something like the genetic memory of society, but in America there is no such memory – even soldiers of King George during the war of independence essentially waged a civil war between East and West Indian companies.

    Even the ships with tea, with the destruction of which began the Boston tea party, belonged to the East India company.

    The Americans simply do not understand what a real foreign war is, and all these overseas adventures of American soldiers are just an action movie for Americans and they think that losing the war is when many American soldiers die, and America will have to close its military base in a particular country and trade with someone on less favorable terms than before.

    They simply cannot imagine a situation where America will lose the war, not because the war will be too expensive and it will be cheaper for America to close the base from which the war has started.

    I remember how I argued with one American who was peeing boiling tea from Putin and shouted that Putin would save America from liberalism and the British (according to certain conspiracy theories the British burned the Library of Congress 200 years ago and with it very important documents, which is why America still remains a colony of England.)

    So I told him that the United States had a bad fiasco in the Vietnam War and that the United States did not leave Vietnam out of nobility or anti-war protests, but because the Soviet air defense system beat all American aircraft and there simply left nothing to fight. He was completely shocked and thought that I was crazy and wanted to call a psychiatric ambulance. And when I opened Wikipedia and showed him the loss figures, I began to fear that I would have to call the ambulance for him.

    • by “Soviet air defense system” are you referring to the Kalashnikov-47?

      Leading the huey by one length as it flies low over the canopy? Taking a bunch of pot shots until you hit the engine, fuel tank or pilot?

      • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 3:59 pm #

        Could you read English?

        I specifically mentioned air defense missile system (mainly C-75, C-125 and Strela MANPADS appeared from 1972)

        By the way, C-125 still successfully brought down quite a few Tomahawks in Syria in 2018.

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 1:30 pm #

      The US got out of Vietnam due to political unrest at home and a faltering industrial economy. Period. The military was just along for the ride.

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:16 pm #

        As an old song went. The war drags on [Donovan].

    • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 1:40 pm #

      I hope you’re getting paid by the word, Finca.

      If so, you’ll be the richest guy in St. Petersburg on no time.

      Brh

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 3:51 pm #

        funny. I doubt he is paid by someone to post here.

      • malthuss January 26, 2019 at 4:09 pm #

        Debbie, who may be a Donny, posts,

        The Great and Infernal Truthiness of Lil Debbie Snack Packaging January 26, 2019 at 1:09 pm #

        Yes, just imagine being a young lady with her life ahead of her, raped by some ne’er-do-well like brh.

        Sick, now you are a rapist.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 4:10 pm #

        I hope you’re getting paid by the word, Finca == brh

        Yeah?

        And I hope Pravda pays you well for your constant reportages from various dumpsters of American cities.

        I remember those well from the 1980s on Soviet TV programs. And I thought that market dried up.

  49. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 4:55 pm #

    Plan to complete a series of posts about the crisis of diarchy in the US

    This post is a kind of table of contents of several posts that I am going to write in order to complete the description of several plot lines in world politics that we observed in December and January, without understanding their meaning (to put it mildly).

    In particular, I did not understand in what capacity George Bush Sr. made the Big Bargain with Trump at the moment when Mrs. Ford practically buried Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination for the post of Justice of the US Supreme Court and along with it the presidency of Donald Trump – as the gravedigger of the USSR and the leader of the Black World Project or as one of the leaders of a Deep State who has risen against the tyranny of Hillary Clinton.

    Agree that the answer to this question will determine the forecast of the policy that the union of Trump and Bushes will pursue in relation to Russia.

    And yesterday, strangely enough, the conflict in Venezuela answered this question and I can now go back and rethink the events of December-January and write the conclusion of the aforementioned series. And I will start with the reference points of the above posts.

    A series of posts about the Big Bargain begins with the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh and ends with the sentencing of General Flynn because a sharp change in American domestic policy took place literally within an hour between the confirmation hearings of Judge Kavanaugh, which actually led me to conclude that the Big Bargain was struck, and the verdict to General Flynn, or rather its absence, showed that the union of Bush and Trump will probably be stronger than the Clinton part of the Deep State.

    Indeed, the judge who presided over the Flynn case could not have been unaware of Trump’s statement that the case against Flynn was fabricated and a reminder of several generals that General Flynn is one of their own, and the Army does not turn their own to civilian justice.

    And yet, at the last minute, he tried to accuse Flynn of high treason, and I see no other explanation for this act, apart from the desire to provoke the so-called mistrial and be removed from this very dangerous for the judge case. And the judge in this case is clearly aware of the alignment of forces in US domestic policy much more than me.

    In the next post I will describe the struggle for the US Department of Justice and show what role the funeral of George H. W. Bush and the crisis in Ukraine played in this fight.

    After this, I will write a separate post that the withdrawal of troops from Syria and the resignation of the Secretary of Defense in conjunction with the struggle for the US Department of Justice led to the bitterness of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, which forced them to fall into the trap set up by Trump and sabotage the appropriation of 6 billion on the construction of a border wall with Mexico, which led to the suspension of the federal government for 34 days.

    And in the last post, I will show why the events in Venezuela immediately after the confirmation hearings of the nominee for the post of US Attorney General William Barr made it possible to understand the nature of the split of the US establishment that led to the Big Bargain, and the connection of these events with the Theory of Colored World Projects as the only way to analyze ongoing conflicts.

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 5:15 pm #

      Can’t wait to read your many dissertations, Finc, but might I be so bold as to ask if you have considered the many advantages of indica vs. sativa? You’ll get a much more mellow body high as opposed to the often paranoia inducing, fractured mental state high that sativa provides. Might be worth considering this year.

      • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2019 at 6:10 pm #

        He just earned himself 50 rubles, payable in Bhukov Vodka!

        Brh

        • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 6:39 pm #

          How’s the minimum wage labor at the graveyard shift? You wife is not bitching yet and threatening to leave for a used car-salesman?

          • BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 5:41 am #

            Hey finca, you need a sense of humor

            A few years ago the WSJ had an article fearuring the organizatio you are part of

  50. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 6:03 pm #

    Let’s Get Ready-to-Rock….

    “Capitalism, like sausage, is meant to be cooked by a democratic society and its institutions because raw capitalism is antisocial. As Piketty warns, “A market economy… if left to itself… contains powerful forces of divergence, which are potentially threatening to democratic societies and to the values of social justice on which they are based.” 54 Many scholars have taken to describing these new conditions as neofeudalism, marked by the consolidation of elite wealth and power far beyond the control of ordinary people and the mechanisms of democratic consent. 55 Piketty calls it a return to “patrimonial capitalism,” a reversion to a premodern society in which one’s life chances depend upon inherited wealth rather than meritocratic achievement. 56 We now have the tools to grasp the collision in all of its destructive complexity: what is unbearable is that economic and social inequalities have reverted to the preindustrial “feudal” pattern but that we, the people, have not. We are not illiterate peasants, serfs, or slaves. Whether “middle class” or “marginalized,” we share the collective historical condition of individualized persons with complex social experiences and opinions. We are hundreds of millions or even billions of second-modernity people whom history has freed both from the once-immutable facts of a destiny told at birth and from the conditions of mass society. We know ourselves to be worthy of dignity and the opportunity to live an effective life. This is existential toothpaste that, once liberated, cannot be squeezed back into the tube. Like a detonation’s rippling sound waves of destruction, the reverberations of pain and anger that have come to define our era arise from this poisonous collision between inequality’s facts and inequality’s feelings. 57”

    Shoshana Zuboff
    The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

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    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

      More good stuff.

      The question I inevitably return to is how do we reconcile all these new found riches based on the ephemeral mathematical “certainties” of the exponential financial equations with the fact that such certainties when applied to the hard realties of the physics equations from which they were originally derived spell our certain doom? “Prosperity” as currently defined in western culture, is inherently a LIMITED concept, meant only for an exceptional few at the expense of an unexceptional many. This, the basic supposition of western culture, is assumed, but definitely not APPRECIATED by the many. Thus the rampant villainization and victimization we see today.

      In the end, the basic problem of problems remains. Homo sapiens, having seemingly conquered the natural world we inhabit, have overshot our carrying capacity on this limited planet, and now the final sorting out process has begun amongst our own. At this point, even questions such as Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism become moot. Perhaps it’s even time for a reframing of Fukyama’s infamous treatise and a redefinition of history’s TRUE last man in the light of recent events? For SURELY liberal capitalism has failed us, and it remains to be seen what can possibly save us, absent a sudden and merciful population collapse.

      • AKlein January 27, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

        OS, in regard to “…and it remains to be seen what can possibly save us, absent a sudden and merciful population collapse.” Not to worry! We will have war; our host JHK has predicted this. War in the past has not provided a “kill” factor high enough to bring population numbers satisfactorily into line with “needs” as planned by the elites. (Genghis Khan’s depopulation program in Mesopotamia excepted.) Kissinger remarked about war’s inadequacy as a population control mechanism. But that was then and this is now. Two factors have changed; 1) the instruments of death and their enabling technology have gotten much more “effective”, and 2) populations, because they are so dependent, especially ours, are much more subject to the collateral damage that war brings. Everything dependent on fossil fuels – cars, trucks, central heat – electronic everything requiring electricity, 3000 mile salads, hyper-processed food, only a few days of food in the supply chain, an obese, soft, populace, sick with lots of chronic diseases requiring a continuous stream of drugs. It won’t take much disruption for quite a large number of people to simply “disappear”. (Check Dmitry Orlov’s writings on this topic). So that sudden and merciful population collapse may be what “saves us”. OS, Mother Nature does solve all our problems if we ask her to. Alas, she often takes an approach not to our liking.

        • Q. Shtik January 27, 2019 at 9:56 pm #

          …and then once we croak………see “A project to turn corpses into compost” in the NYT.

    • Epicur January 27, 2019 at 2:25 pm #

      “As Piketty warns, ‘A market economy… if left to itself… contains powerful forces of divergence, …’ ”

      Piketty misses the obvious in trying to pin responsibility on Capitalism. The “powerful forces of divergence” are inherent in nature, and the fact that they are evident in Capitalism is of no particular significance. To miss that the same forces play out just as powerfully in socialist attempts at order is to be in denial of obvious reality (yes, many millions live their lives in this denial).

      Hierarchical societies spontaneously emerge from humans grouping together. Some bushman groups are claimed to be non-hierarchical, but they accomplish this (if they DO accomplish this) by hard moral strictures, up to and including murder – measures that have no possibility of success in larger groups.

  51. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 6:11 pm #

    The Mulattoes (like the Obama’s and the Oprah’s) will maneuver for class advantage by aligning with the White Oligarchy and selling out the blacks and the white cracker Trump Deplorables?

    The Mulattoes in San Domingo (Haiti) exploited their resemblance to the White French, their support of the White Ruling Power Structure, and the Whites’ fear of the blacks to manuveure for advantage. The Mulattoes in the US manipulate White guilt, White confusion about the Mulattoes as an Intermediate Class, and White Social Justice Warrior Narcissism.

  52. JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 6:21 pm #

    How any people went to Vietnam Nam and died, over 57000, not 3000 or 5000, 57000. I remember watching daily talleys in the hundreds on CBS.

    Things to remember

    The point of SE Asia is. Ready? OIL! Surprise. Dutch Royal Shell was centered here prior to WW2. The English had Singapore, and the French had Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, ie French Indochina. When the US stopped oil shipments to Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, Japan’s primary goal was the takeover of SE Asia with Shell’s oil fields. Japan defeated, France came back, England came back, and the US got involved, why? OIL! France got their butt kicked by Ho Chi Minh at Dien Bien Phu. Ho associated with Russia and uh oh, the US backed the opposition, Diem. SEATO was formed, and S. And N. Vietnam Nam was formed, The US backed S. Vietnam, JFK sent in trainers, LBJ blew it all up and the rest is history. The second in a row of losing bets for the US. McNamara even said we should not have involved our selves in a civil war.

    Today? Vietnam is becoming a tourist capital, and the OIL is still there.

    Vietnam. Foreign power 2. US MIC 0. 57000 dead. Our governments then shoul have been tried for mass murder.

    • Pucker January 26, 2019 at 6:49 pm #

      Wasn’t US involvement in Vietnam, like the Social Justice Warrior Movement, and the movie “Forrest Gump”, just basically White Narcissism?

      Wasn’t the story of Forrest Gump basically “White Narcissism”?

      Bubba was confused about his identity because his “Momma” gave him the name “Bubba” which is a common moniker of white Crackers. Bubba was also confused about his sexual identity because he got excited while looking at the pornography magazine with Jenny’s pictures that Forrest carried around with him in the jungle. Bubba couldn’t get any in “NAM” because he was “Too Beaucoup…Too Beaucoup”….

      • Pucker January 26, 2019 at 6:58 pm #

        The Whites and The Mulattoes (like the Oprah’s and the Obama’s) use the Blacks to satisfy their Narcissism, similar to the way that a pretty adolescent girl has an ugly, homely girlfriend to take pity on.

        • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 11:04 am #

          Michael Obama does have a trace of Euro DNA but
          has dark skin.

      • JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 9:28 pm #

        We’re you around when Nam was happening? Basing judgements on Forrest Gump?

        Vietnam as I said above was the MIC and the government trying to find a war to fight. Just like Bush with Iraq. When enough people in DC wag the Dog, stand by. And it is The Deep State, not one particular party

        Korea. Truman

        Vietnam. JHK and LBJ

        Iraq 1 and 2. Bush 1and 2

        Balkans Clinton

        Geopolitics are the number one cause of these wars. Oil, drugs, human trafficking, arms, soon to be water, clean air, coastal flooding. People love to blame the US for everything, but their MIC has lots of company in lots of other countries.

        What will stop it?

        ???????

        • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

          “What will stop it?”

          Nick O Demus,

          “Only the dead know the end of war…”.

    • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 6:55 pm #

      A fucking self-induced tragedy, to be sure. WHEN will we ever learn?

      • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

        Komrade Finklestein??????????

  53. stelmosfire January 26, 2019 at 6:45 pm #

    Does anybody see a problem with this? GOGOGO CHINA!
    https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charting-skyscraper-construction/

    • FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2019 at 6:51 pm #

      They’re going to recruit all your bureaucrats and technical junkies who is worth something, after Trump fires their ass.

      Just preparing a nice cozy headquarters to house em all.

      Globalists are planning to make out of China a new world management center, America is becoming too much trouble.

      • Ol' Scratch January 26, 2019 at 7:12 pm #

        One victory at a time!

      • JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 9:33 pm #

        Some of the latest stuff I have read is saying Soros is getting concerned about China blocking his aims as much as the US and is trying to figure out how to handle the situation. I think Ol’ Scatch wrote it earlier.

        Our socialist stupidity may make his decision easy, perhaps.

        • Walter B January 27, 2019 at 9:36 am #

          A Soros verses China grudge match? I’d pay big bucks to watch that event!

    • They’re pouring more concrete in China every year than the US did the last 100

      Reaching for the brass ring

      • stelmosfire January 26, 2019 at 9:57 pm #

        Got dam’ them chinks, I’m pourin’ as fast as I can. Concrete does not hold up under my onslaught of NACL to melt this infernal ice! My stairs are falling apart!

    • stelmosfire January 26, 2019 at 9:46 pm #

      Ho Chi Minh City of all places, I guess we showed them!
      http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/vincom-landmark-81/18192

      • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 11:03 am #

        Jim K doesnt like big buildings.
        Nor do I.

  54. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 7:21 pm #

    Many years ago, I found (and later read) an old, beat up paperback copy of a book about American culture called “Culture of Narcissism”. I found it in a used bookstore on “The Ave” in Seattle adjacent to the University of Washington. It was a strange bookstore, piles of used books strewn about in a kind of mental chaos. On the window sill, they had placed prints outs of short stories that people would leave for for customers to read for free. I picked up one such short story and perused it. It was about some bloke who took a crap and then described in fantastic detail what his turds looked like in the toilet bowl. Jesus….

    A Culture of Narcissism….

    • JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 9:37 pm #

      Here is an interesting aspect of humanity. Human power desire expresses as narciissism in the worse cases. The irony is the masses follow these people, over and over. Politics.

  55. Elrond Hubbard January 26, 2019 at 8:46 pm #

    Sundance: Amazon Closes $13 Million Deal for Mindy Kaling’s ‘Late Night’

    https://variety.com/2019/film/markets-festivals/amazon-late-night-mindy-kaling-1203119308/

    “Amazon has closed a $13 million deal for ‘Late Night,’ a buzzy comedy about diversity in a late night talk show writers room that is written by, produced by, and stars Mindy Kaling. It is the first major sale out of the Sundance Film Festival.

    “‘Late Night’ co-stars Emma Thompson as a prickly comic who grudgingly takes an Indian-American writer (Kaling) under her wing after she is shamed into hiring more women and minorities. In a cover story for Variety, Kaling said that she saw ‘Late Night’ as a chance to retell a familiar story of someone trying to break into the entertainment business from a fresh perspective.

    “‘So much of this movie is about being a fan and being on the outside of the entertainment business,’ Kaling told Variety. ‘That story has been told many, many, many times by 52-year-old white men, and I love all those movies. And as a comedy nerd I’ve always identified with them because it was the closest thing that I could identify with. There was no one like me making those kind of films.'”

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  56. JohnAZ January 26, 2019 at 11:31 pm #

    Here is a question

    The Democrats have thrown the Russian collusion theory together and are using Mueller to fabricate a scenario to get Trump.

    The question is simple

    Why?

    Why were the Russian in favor of Trump? If they wanted Trump, Why? They were getting a lot of support from the Obamas and HRC prior to 2016. Why go for a hardline narcissist?

    Walter B brought up a Utube from Daniel Estulin last blog that was very interesting and written from a Russian perspective. It might explain why the Russians unilaterally supported Trump.

    Also, there has been no mention of money exchange between Trump and the Russians, but lots with the HRC camp and the Foundation.

    Why?

    • Business as usual is what the status quo seeks to maintain. Its a gravy train and it runs on Mixtecas.

      See the montage at Pueblos Sin Fronteras:

      https://www.pueblosinfronteras.org/

      In one picture, one of the women are holding up a sign “WE ARE UR CHEAP LABOR”

      Refreshingly straightforward.

    • Walter B January 27, 2019 at 6:56 am #

      You ask why John, I’ll tell you why. Far too many Americans have been so spoiled by affluence and programmed to be so selfish and downright greedy that they eagerly buy into any line of crap that they are fed by the Magic Media about who to hate and where to take your anger out when things don’t go your way. They are easily distracted away from the real problem, the corruption in our system and are easily focused on small targets (Trump, conservatives) rather then the big problems and those who perpetrate them.

  57. Pucker January 26, 2019 at 11:45 pm #

    Are you still in therapy trying to cure your addiction to placebos?

    • Pucker January 27, 2019 at 1:11 am #

      Woman in tears at an AA meeting begs for help and declares that her marriage, her career, her relationship with her kids have been torn apart by placebos.

  58. BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 9:07 am #

    More last chance caravans headed north. Im trying to figure out, why are these people headed north to racist, imperialist, white supremacist US, and not south to the socialist paradise of Venezuela, or even getting on boats for Cuba, progressive utopia, where they already speak the language? Why come here?

    Brh

    • ozone January 27, 2019 at 9:33 am #

      Well, I think a part of it might be ‘chickens’ and ‘roosting’.
      Let’s cast our minds back into the far, far distant past and try to recall Hillary in Honduras, shall we? (Some stuff about duly elected folk and US-backed military coup shenanigans.)
      Venezuela is rhyming quite nicely, although this time the set-up was a bit more intricate and sly. Who do these crushing US sanctions really hurt anyway and why are they *deliberately* hurt?

      The cruelty and in-our-face hypocrisy is almost stunning… but it’s looking like we’ve finally become inured to it, so, meh. Bend over and take what our un-elected deciders have gifted us with.

      Border security has to be twinned with realistic POLICY, or it’s just more profitable bullshit for the racketeers, whether defined in materials or bodies.

      • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 11:02 am #

        It is the population explosion and globalism.

      • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 11:10 am #

        Yeah Ozone

        Who is the missing element in DC? Who should be instructing the decision makers on how to best control the border? How about the people having the responsibility and job knowledge of border control.

        Oh no! Only Fox, once in a while, even talks to people at the border.

        Unanimously, their answer Is Build the wall. The Democrats in DC want the border open to get votes, period. They do not give one damn about them.

        My question is, as usual, why? These a holes in DC are giving America to it enemies. Why? What are they getting out of it, except the destruction of vestiges of conservatism? Trump’s cave may be one of the later signs of the Constitutions demise.

        Just like Castro, they will win, then what?

        • Epicur January 27, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

          “…then what?”

          Population collapse.

          “A system under stress reacts in a direction to relieve the stress.” – Le Chatelier’s principle.

          The only other way to relieve the stress is for us to go under a slow grinding process that transforms the mass of humanity into much less reactive, more compliant beings – sort of what the Chinese are supposed to be.

          We will see how compliant the Chinese are when the credit bubble bursts.

          • BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 2:30 pm #

            Epicur, I understand the govt is clamping down on its citizens inside China, with advanced surveillance, new standards of behavior enforced by granting ‘social credits’, more informers and so on. They’ll be able to keep control for a long time.

            Brh

          • Epicur January 27, 2019 at 5:22 pm #

            @brh – January 27, 2019 at 2:30 pm

            They are definitely cracking down, but for the last 30 years they have used both the carrot and the stick. When the credit expansion ends carrots will be in short supply.

          • Epicur January 27, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

            @brh – January 27, 2019 at 2:30 pm

            I don’t mean to imply that they will lose control, just that if the people get restive the stick will have to be firmly applied.

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 10:53 am #

      Because they are being supported and motivated by global forces whose goal is not to give those poor folks jobs, it is to destabilize the US and overthrow our government politically. They are winning.

      These folks were born and raised under socialism where they expect their governments to take care of them, cradle to grave. What has happened is the countries have run out of disposable wealth to hand out, and the folks are left out in the cold. Venezuela is the tip of the iceberg. So they look for solutions.

      They are not the sharpest tacks in town, so when someone comes along and points north and tells them go take it away from those Norte Americanos, they sign up in droves and march north in caravans. Those magnanimous folks are Cuba, Russia, China and the NWO who are all trying to support Madura.

      America, they are coming. But hell, we do not need a wall according to over 50% of us. Let us hem in, they are good for us.

      Again, this country is nuts. Over and over.

  59. JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 10:38 am #

    The pharaoh was warned about Moses and killed Jewish male children. Herod was warned about Jesus by the Magi, and he killed all the male children in Bethlehem under two years old.

    Luckily for us today, God interceded and Moses and Jesus survived the evil.

    People today are appalled by the savagery of these two historical incidents, “Oh, those poor kids and those rotten kings.

    Then they go out and vote for Andrew Cuomo and his like. Satan is preparing a special place for them in Hell.

    Remember these 3rd trimester kids are viable. They have to be physically crushed and killed prior to removal.

    • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 11:01 am #

      live births start at 18 weeks, from what I have read.

      • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 11:14 am #

        18 out of forty.

        That means a baby would have a fighting chance if it was removed benignly

        Instead, they are murdered.

        • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 11:18 am #

          End timers KNOW what is happening. To them God has deserted the USA, who murders its children and brags about it.

          For the record, I am not one of them. But I see their point.

          • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 12:38 pm #

            Various religions talk about a dark time.

            Japanese Buddhists, ‘Mapo, age of Iron’
            Hindu, age of quarrel, shorter lifespans and dumber, less nice people. more animal like.
            Christians, end times.

            Buddhists and Hindus see a cycle. not an end of the world but iron age cycling back into golden age.
            satya, treta, drawpa, kali yuga. 4 ages.

        • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

          No it wouldn’t, JohnAZ. Didn’t you say you’d worked as a nurse or am I thinking of someone else?

          Anyway, how can any adult be this ignorant about fetal development when they claim to care about such matters?

          Have a look at the picture I linked to below and have a word with yourself. Fighting chance indeed.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:18 pm #

            If the baby lived, could the mother sue those she hired to murder it? And was she still the mother to possibly damaged goods? No one involved wants the baby to live so they don’t.

          • GreenAlba January 28, 2019 at 7:33 am #

            The picture I linked to was of a baby that was miscarried (otherwise known as a spontaneous abortion).

            Nobody killed it. Nobody wanted it dead. But its freaky, creepy parents filmed it for propaganda purposes. Personally, I’d have been too busy grieving but that’s just me. And I wouldn’t have felt entitled to have video footage of its dead body disseminated all over the place among strangers without its permission – which is odd because you’re the one who thinks it’s a full person.

      • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 1:51 pm #

        I think you may be misinformed, malthuss. And I refer you to my previous post regarding the lady with the 22 weeks’ gestation baby.

        This is what a fetus looks like at 18 weeks’ gestation:

        https://www.lifenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/jaxon3.png

        This one was miscarried. And the picture (I believe there is a video) was published by some sick pro-life outfit to make a point. Would you film your dead fetus and put it out there for propaganda purposes? No, me neither.

        But please, stop talking thoroughly obscene nonsense. It’s disgusting.

        • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 7:17 pm #

          Thanks. I have seen pics of fetuses. I will pass.

          But please, stop talking thoroughly obscene nonsense. It’s disgusting.

          Obviously, I win. You are reduced to mudslinging.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

            I am not mudslinging. I am telling you that it is disgusting to pretend that an 18 weeks’ gestation fetus, such as I have shown you, can survive.

            You can make an argument without resorting to obscene, dishonest manipulation.

            Nobody wins. There is something wrong with someone who needs to ‘win’ in such a context.

            I’ve given birth to two children and you don’t know what you’re talking about. That doesn’t make me ‘win’ either, but it gives me more insight than you have or could be expected to have.

          • Q. Shtik January 27, 2019 at 11:33 pm #

            Nobody wins. There is something wrong with someone who needs to ‘win’ – GA

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

            Our Administration says that we have defeated ISIS (i.e.we won) so now we can leave Syria.

          • GreenAlba January 28, 2019 at 7:34 am #

            You missed out the ‘in this context’ bit, Q.

  60. malthuss January 27, 2019 at 11:00 am #

    This is for Green Alba.
    I cannot confirm England has similar, but I have read it demands older women do pregnancy screenings,

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/

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    • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 1:35 pm #

      Malthuss

      I really don’t know what you’re trying to prove or why you’re trying to prove it to me.

      I cannot tell you what happens in England. I do not live in England. And I haven’t had a baby in Scotland since 1985. You could, as I suggested before, Google it – why do I have to do your homework for you?

      I am perfectly sure screening is available to all those who wish it and equally sure that no-one is forced to undergo it (forcing ANY medical intervention on anyone conscious and compos mentis qualifies in law as ‘assault’).

      Obviously the older you get the more likely you are to have a Down’s child (that goes for men as well). (My daughter’s friend was unlucky, as she was still in her early 20s, but what can you do?) So screening is likely to be advised.

      One of the problems of reducing the number of Down’s children is that the remaining few are more likely to meet prejudice than previously, as is the mother, because she didn’t ‘need’ to have the child. You seem unaware of social prejudice against disabled people and the poverty in which many live. This woman killed herself and her daughter after years of horrendous abuse by a local gang:

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6226927/Mother-and-daughter-tormented-to-death-by-bullies-kept-diary-of-abuse.html

      I could find you similar stories from your side of the pond but you can do it for yourself. You seem to have no difficulty in finding other information when it suits you.

      Most people don’t have it quite this bad, but I would nevertheless suggest, Malthuss, that you give some thought to the possibility of not forever judging people about whose lives you have no clue whatsoever.

      And what exactly is your objection to women undergoing pregnancy screenings anyway? What is it you are offering – a lifetime of support and hand-holding for those abandoned by their husbands? To lobby for decent lifetime financial support for women who can’t work because they have disabled children to care for? What?

      But do let me know how you get on in your efforts as a volunteer respite career. I’m sure it will turn you into a real mellow fellow, with more on your mind than currently troubles it.

      • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 1:40 pm #

        *carer*

      • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 2:00 pm #

        And if you’re still of working age, don’t let that stop you. You have weekends.

        They don’t.

      • PeteAtomic January 27, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

        from my experience, down’s kids are quite angelic often, and so are the ppl who have sacrificed/devoted (probably better word) their own lives and futures to serving and caring for them as well. It must be a real challenge..

        • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 2:39 pm #

          They are indeed loving and charming, by all accounts, Pete A. I’ve met my daughter’s friend’s son and the friend is also a lovely, patient woman devoid of any bitterness at her plight (although I’m not sure how much patience she has with the father who repeatedly lets his son down when he’s arranged to visit him – or the other equally useless husband).

          I read a book by a French author decades ago called ‘Le malheur innocent’, about his profoundly mentally retarded daughter. They were Catholics and it was back in the 70s so they told themselves she was a gift from God – even that her actual disability itself was a gift from God. I can’t go there I’m afraid, but, like yourself, I admire anyone who basically gives up their life to care for such a child. They must have the patience of a saint.

          But I don’t blame anyone who knows they’re not up to it.

          And I have no patience whatever with people who judge them from the privileged vantage point of having normal children.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 2:42 pm #

            I wasn’t suggesting malthuss take the easy option of limiting himself to nice, easy Down’s children 🙂 . There are others who have children in their teens (and obviously older, in the course of time) with the mental age of a one-year-old, who can’t even say if they’re hot, cold, hungry or in pain. So they wail.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 4:59 pm #

            Give them to the Somalis. Women can give birth without being conscious. One African type worker proved that over here recently. Their cruelty to old White people is legendary. Why would an unconscious female patient fare any better?

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:34 pm #

            I have no idea what you’re talking about, Janos, or any clue how it relates to anything I said.

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:35 pm #

            Have you ever considered CBT?

            I hesitate to suggest it, lest the therapist require CBT afterwards him./herself.

  61. JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 11:19 am #

    How do you spell Stupid?

    Covington Press Coverage.

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 11:23 am #

      Those drum beating a holes were picking a fight by trying to get a reaction from the “Life” crowd. Remember Ghandi? Non violent protest. Nothing pisses off the troublemakers more than when they are ignored.

  62. The weekly lame-duck session of CFN has begun!

    • elysianfield January 27, 2019 at 12:31 pm #

      “The weekly lame-duck session of CFN has begun!”

      SnakPak,

      Are you not being entertained?

      • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 12:39 pm #

        I dont understand Mr Debbie.

        • Its Sunday. Thats means no one but the hard core reads or posts what is about to expire. Shortly, Monday will dawn and all this will be forgotten.

          Which doesn’t mean we can’t have any fun. For example, look at the map on http://www.worldabortionlaws.com/

          Here you see a map of the world, showing the real redoubts of moral supremacy in Jesus Christ, Lord of Lords. That it happens to be the territory of some the dumbest, most retrograde populations on Earth, which surely only reflects God’s preference for his idiotic children, over those clever Icelanders, who prefer not to have babies with chromosomal malfunctions.

          • BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

            Nobody is saying ban abortion, as least Im not. Keep it legal by all means. But don’t try to convice us its something glorious and progressive, and you aren’t up to your knees in blood.

            Brh

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 3:03 pm #

            brh

            I think there has been a lot of blameworthy emotive and manipulative language talked on both sides of the argument.

            I find myself in the same spot as old Hitch – not religious but nevertheless unable to conclude that an abortion is anything other than bringing a potential life to an end and something that should be taken seriously.

            BTW, we seem to disagree on most things but you said something almost friendly towards the end of the previous thread, so please don’t think it went unnoticed.

            I hadn’t realised your wife and sisters-in-law were Basque, although I had picked up that they were Spanish.

            A propos of not very much, I used to own an LP of this Basque mass:

            https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/discos-vinilo/tc/2015/05/01/22/49146058.jpg

            My flatmates and I (when we were students) were lent a copy by a Basque lecturer (of economics, not Basque) and I got one of my fellow students to get me a copy when we were all on our ‘year abroad’ and the Spanish students were in Bilbao. The voices of the young male soloists and choristers were absolutely beautiful and there was a full booklet with the words in French, Basque and Spanish so it was fascinating following the Basque alongside the French.

            I kept it after all my other LPs had gone, in the hope that I might find someone who could transfer it to a digital medium, but it bizarrely disappeared (I suspect removal men or my husband ‘tidying up’). Annoying anyway…

          • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 3:41 pm #

            laws–bwaaaaaaaa
            The photo I saw [taken in China] was a needle thru a beating heart.

  63. malthuss January 27, 2019 at 12:42 pm #

    New Documentary–‘Leaving Neverland’ or How Michael Jackson raped a 7 year old.
    He outdid Roman Polanski.

  64. 100th Avatar January 27, 2019 at 1:57 pm #

    Humanity, and its overpopulation, is one disease with infinite symptoms:

    Sprawl and poor urban planning
    Fossil fuel dependency
    Carbon emissions
    Megalopolis
    Grotesque built environments
    Mass migrations
    Pandemics
    Agribusiness monopolies
    Monocultures
    Frankenfoods
    Lawlessness
    War
    Financial chicanery
    Insurmountable disparities in wealth
    Impossible debt
    Mass extinction
    Light pollution
    Noise pollution
    Fresh water shortages
    Fresh water pollution
    Soil destruction
    Autocracy
    Despotism

    We are in need of an AI superintendent, if not a superpredator

  65. deetrump January 27, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

    Stone (Trump associate of 40+ years) has flipped… and will cooperate with Mueller. The investigation may be wrapped up by Jan. 2020.

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    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 6:04 pm #

      Flipped my foot. His quote was” I will never testify against the President.” Maybe we will see one of Trump’s cohorts with some integrity. And cojones. He will fight it out against Mueller.

      • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

        Your continuous wishful thinking is becoming entertaining.

        • ozone January 27, 2019 at 8:26 pm #

          John,
          It is fun, ain’t it?

          On the other hand (…four fingers and a thumb) the possibility does exist that building a case against Assange may be what all this “highly illegal” insider download and document peeking is about. Watch for it; ya never know with the current crop of sneaky bastards.

  66. BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 5:21 pm #

    Green Alba,

    Basques are interesting people, nobody really knows where they or their language come from. (One theory is they are related to the Scots) A few years ago you (in Scotland) held a vote to secede from GB, but the movement was pretty peaceful. The Basque movement to separate from Spain was not peaceful; They had these militants called ETA who caused much violence and destruction, including murder. Thank God that is over, but in some quarters the rancor remains on both sides.

    In Spain, the past is not really past. Bitter feelings still remain over the Spanish Civil War, 8 years on.

    • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:13 pm #

      Yes, I remember ETA, brh – they were very active when I was younger. I think they had links with the IRA in terms of gun running and so on (likewise with the PLF I think). The 70s were ‘turbulent’ in a number of places.

      The French have refused to have any truck with notions of separatism or even devolution on their side of the Basque country, being even more centralist than the Spaniards.

      I came across this guy who runs a site with fairly short but interesting info. on various languages, this bit being on Basque.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1l9oDiSiEQ

      As you say, it’s fascinating because there is literally no other language related to it. It’s also entirely phonetic – so listening to the recording I had you could have pronounced any of it yourself perfectly from the written text after listening to it for a bit.

      Languages that are only written down relatively late in their history are more phonetic than languages like English or Irish, which have a longer written tradition.

      Re violent separatist movements, even the Welsh, back in the 70s took to burning holiday homes owned by English people who were there only for short periods but contributed to making homes unaffordable for ordinary locals. Scotland didn’t have the violence, but there was some reference to English ‘interlopers’ as ‘white settlers’!! In fact what really annoyed people was WEALTHY people coming up with ‘London money’ and likewise bumping up prices for local people while hardly ever being there and contributing to the local economy.

      Where I often go on holiday, up on the west Highland coast, there are quite a number of English people, but they’ve settled in properly and send their kids to the local schools, which is a different thing entirely and bolsters the economy of small villages which would otherwise struggle.

      • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:29 pm #

        Have you read Mark Kurlansky’s ‘The Basque History of the World’?

        I haven’t read it myself but I think my husband did and he definitely read his book ‘Cod’, which describes, among other things, how the Basques made it over to North America to fish for cod long before Christopher Columbus got there.

      • Q. Shtik January 27, 2019 at 11:21 pm #

        refused to have any truck with – GA

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

        Since ‘truck’ in the above sense is not a part of my everyday vocabulary I had to Google it and here’s what I found:

        https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/have-no-truck-with.html

        • GreenAlba January 28, 2019 at 7:39 am #

          Thanks, Q – interesting. I didn’t know the origin of the expression, although I think I remember ‘troquer’ in French from my distant past. I wasn’t aware of the connection.

  67. BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 5:27 pm #

    Sorry, thats 80 years on.

    I forgot exactly what I said last week, that you dont mind mixing it up, that you give as good as you get, the obvious intelligence of your posts, that you can take it and dish it out without ad hominem insults, all of which is admirable. Thats probably what i said.

    Brh

  68. So here’s the mechanism activated in the brain when you hear about little arms and legs and bloody abortions: the insula.

    Its an evolved response that kept our ancestors from eat rotting meat or otherwise spoilt food.

    Its not the tug of conscience. Its the reflex of disgust. Which tends to be a stronger reflex in conservatives. Is anyone surprised?

  69. JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

    Okay, GA. Not 18 weeks, the age of viability is 24 weeks, but survivors of 22 have been recorded. That is in the second trimester.

    The state protects life of persons. If someone is murdered, the state judges the assailant guilty of the murder. When is a fetus a person is critical. And we answer to a power much higher than the state.

    I will still stand by my point, killing a child in uterus that can survive is murder. Late pregnancy abortions are horrible.

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 5:39 pm #

      And yes, I was an RN for 17 years.

      • deetrump January 27, 2019 at 6:39 pm #

        “we answer to a power much higher than the state” –JohnAZ

        Male masturbation is murder. Sperm emissions outside of a woman’s vagina are an act against an unborn child, a failure to preserve the sanctity of life. Male masturbation should be punished by the state.

        Legislation has been proposed in Texas that would create a
        civil penalty for unregulated male masturbatory emissions:

        https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/85R/billtext/pdf/HB04260I.pdf#navpanes=0

        • Walter B January 27, 2019 at 6:50 pm #

          Not to worry dt because female masturbation will always be simply diddling. Diddle about, diddle about, diddle about.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4pQniAoeX4

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 7:06 pm #

            I’m afraid to click on that, Walter 🙂 .

          • Walter B January 27, 2019 at 9:32 pm #

            It is just the Who and the song from Tommy “Fiddle About”. I was never a fan, but that album was classic!

        • ozone January 27, 2019 at 8:19 pm #

          I would suggest that stoning unto death would be entirely appropriate. Or, if only a “short period” of onanism was engaged in, perhaps a removal of the hands would suffice. (God approves. Hadn’t you heard the word?)

          • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 9:43 pm #

            I heard it’s OK if you didn’t enjoy it, ozone 🙂 .

          • ozone January 27, 2019 at 11:02 pm #

            lol, Greenie,
            That’s also my understanding… and most assuredly, no, I never did enjoy it. (Although I did practice diligently to see if perhaps I might… someday. 😉 )

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:21 pm #

            She just recommended CBT or Cock and Ball torture for me.

          • GreenAlba January 28, 2019 at 7:44 am #

            You subject us to Cock and Bull on a permanent basis, Janos, so even with your rendering of CBT, some would say justice is served.

    • GreenAlba January 27, 2019 at 6:21 pm #

      I don’t like abortion either, JohnAZ, but unless the law is entirely different here from over your way, it isn’t legally murder, even if the child is viable.

      There was a case here not that long ago where a man kicked his ex-girlfriend in the ‘stomach’ with the deliberate aim of killing their unborn baby, because she had refused to have an abortion. She was 8 months pregnant, if I recall correctly. The baby was delivered stillborn but the guy was convicted of ‘child destruction’ and GBH (in reference to the mother) because the legal system doesn’t recognise personhood until after birth so can’t convict of murder.

    • Common sense is, the fetus becomes a person after its born. (being very charitable about the term “person” as the baby is the blankest of slates).

      But the hell with common sense. Lets drag in Old World Relijun

      • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 9:12 pm #

        Common sense is a viable child is a person. Week 24 on.

        If the pregnancy is interrupted, The child survives.

        Third trimester abortion involve killing a viable child prior to removal.

        Why not wait three months and giving up for adoption?

        When the life of the mother is threatened, different story.

  70. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 6:16 pm #

    I am Trans-Mulatto.

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    • malthuss January 27, 2019 at 7:13 pm #

      transitioning into mixed?

      • Pucker January 27, 2019 at 7:29 pm #

        I am like Bill Cosby.

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 9:13 pm #

      Ha! How does one manage That?

      • Pucker January 27, 2019 at 9:22 pm #

        As a teenager in high school, my buddy at work during Summer Jobs was a working class, phycally fit (despite the fast food lunches) horny, working class black male with an Afro in his early 30’s who perceived himself to be a bit of a stud. He liked me because I was the only White bloke on the floor who didn’t refer to him as “Spear Chucker”. He was alright…. At least, he had a job and a bit of responsibility….

  71. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 6:34 pm #

    Apparently, a pivotal moment for Google in 1991, and for the development of a dystopic totalitarian surveillance Capitalism in the US, was during some unbelievably crappy TV show called “How to Become a Millionaire” in which the dickhead show host asked contestants the question: “What is the maiden name of Mrs. Brady?”

    Apparently, at the moment this ridiculous question was asked Google search queries spiked on this search at each separate time zone that the TV Show was aired across time zones. Think about it. They got ‘em all performing like mindless seals in an aquarium show. No doubt they coordinate TV viewing to do Internet mind control war gaming?

    I never did figure out why the inmates in the Louisiana Winn Coorectional facility all gather at the same time for their weekday fix of the TV soap opera “The Young and the Restless”?

    According to the book “Surveillance Capitalism”, the breakthrough for Google occurred in 1991 when the AdWords Farts figured out that they could predict accurately that someone would click on an Ad based upon their past online behavioral profile. I guess that it’s a short step from that to shaping online behavior for the purpose of shaping future behavior? In other words, mass brain washing? Total mass mind Cornhole….

    • Pucker January 27, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

      The Business Model would then logically evolve into developing methods for getting people addicted on the Internet to particular algorithms or forms of Entertainment like gambling or porn as addictive behavior would enable relatively easy prediction of future behavior and future buying patterns? Mass Mind Control…But Not in a Good Way….

  72. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 6:50 pm #

    Because of their Confucian tradition, the Chinese tend to view Mass Mind Control as “Good”, provided that it promotes a robust, homogeneous, harmonious society….

    “Good” in a Moral sense, rather than in a culinary sense….

    “Political Correctness, unlike Fried Chicken and unlike Prosperity, IS a Moral Question. God Damn It!”

    – Colonel (Bernie) Sanders

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 9:18 pm #

      Pucker

      You are right.

      Asian thought is aimed at looking out for the community, for society as a whole. European thought is aimed at individuality. Quite a contrast.

      • Pucker January 27, 2019 at 9:36 pm #

        Perhaps because of Confucianism, the Chinese are fixated with hierarchy and the prestige (or shame) of Hierarchy. Hence, social norms and relationships gravitate towards Feudalism….

        • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:23 pm #

          Guilt is deeper – what you feel bad about even if you got away with it or no one saw.

  73. The New York Times, Dec. 28, on the Erosion and immanent degradation of Rights-

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/pregnancy-women-pro-life-abortion.html

    “Political ambition has also played a powerful role. Out of concern for individual freedom, the Republican Party once treated abortion as a private matter. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the land, in 1967. As late as 1972, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Republicans thought that the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her doctor.

    But after Roe, a handful of Republican strategists recognized in abortion an explosively emotional issue that could motivate evangelical voters and divide Democrats. In 1980, as Mr. Reagan ran for president, he raised the cause high, and he framed it in terms of the rights of the unborn. “With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there’s one individual who’s not being considered at all. That’s the one who is being aborted,” he said in a debate that year. “And I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.””

    ‘Emotional issue that could motivate’ – the sentiment vote. Old sentimental weepies with tears streaming down their cheeks in the Bible study basement watching VHS copies of Pro-Life tapes while esteemed Doctors and Pastors talk about how little fetuses made faces and kicked and squirmed and in all this froth of emotion, something that may as well have been real was created. Just like when you imagine Hell and its burning flames, and you conjure its existence into the mind of child or a congregation.

    Made into flesh, as it were. The unborn- this “person”- wholly fictional, a construct- yet eliciting emotion from our brains. Like a Magician, it is a trick. There is nothing there- but they convince you that there is- so they can convince you of the fiction of its whole life.

    Casuistry is what we are talking about: “the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry.”

    They shock you with garish images, stoke shame and fear, and in your disarmed, emotional state, bypass all rationality. They’re in. They’ve won. Now you believe their bullshit.

    Actually it sounds a lot like politics

    • JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 9:02 pm #

      Everything ends up being politics.

    • BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 9:03 pm #

      Why the hyperbole, Snacks?

      Abortion is the law of the land and is likely to remain so.

      No worries.

      brh

    • BackRowHeckler January 27, 2019 at 9:30 pm #

      Also, Snacks, I notice you like to mock Christians, but never Muslims.

      Do you get that out of the NYTs too?

      brh

      • “I notice you like to mock Christians, but never Muslims.” They are not as big a problem in America. Christians are the problem. Muslims are of course, a dangerous death cult like all the Abrahamic religions.

        Happy now?

  74. JohnAZ January 27, 2019 at 9:00 pm #

    GA

    Catch my drift, however, I am Pro choice but anti abortion after a period of gestation. I still do not have the right to judge a woman or control a woman’s decision relative to abortion. I would always try to convince a female friend to tough it out, but would not judge anyone for her decision.

    The issue is really the state’s ability to define personhood. The state defines murder as taking the life of a person. Defining the threshold of personhood in utero is the key question. It is sort of a no win scenario.

    Again, I will say, third trimester abortions are brutal.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:24 pm #

      Because women are god, right? They get to decide who lives and who dies – all based on convenience? Oh dude….

      • In order to keep the whole thing from falling into “no-win” territory, the only appropriate policy is total hands off.

        Most women desire to have a child, just not a child who never grows up and beats his head against the wall all day for decades.

  75. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 9:45 pm #

    What if a black bloke was given special X Men super powers, but the minor god who bestowed upon him the special, super human powers required him to adopt a Politically Incorrect moniker?

    Or, as a condition to keep his super powers and narcissistic super male identity, he had to apply every day some special empowering skin whitening cream, like Michael Jackson?

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    • K-Dog January 28, 2019 at 1:26 am #

      He might be able to substitute flossing for the whitening cream. Everybody likes a smile.

  76. K-Dog January 27, 2019 at 9:46 pm #

    I’m reminded of the tower of Hanoi puzzle where monks move a pyramid of disks between 2 pegs using 3 pegs in such a way a disk never goes over one smaller. The process can take a really long time and when the monks finish the universe ends. Stars wink out and all that. So it is with some discussions. It appears the discussions do not end or ever go anywhere.

    That could be the point. An intellectual uptake inhibitor.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:28 pm #

      2+3 does not equal five. Note that the number are not the same. Nor do the syllables sound the same. In what sense are they “equal”? Saying they are equivalent is just as stupid as saying, “Most people don’t care about the future = Democracy is contraindicated.

      • K-Dog January 28, 2019 at 2:34 am #

        Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it? Would you consider that equal to a Teletubby?

  77. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 9:50 pm #

    Do Farts improve with Age, or do they grow stale, like the Clintons and the Bushes?

  78. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 10:02 pm #

    I wonder if British people ever get bored, tired, and exhausted with the whole tedious “Royalty Thang”?

    • K-Dog January 28, 2019 at 2:45 am #

      Sherlock ridicule blummin’ yorkshire pudding, trouble and strife I could reet fancy a Doctor Who ey up spam fritters blighty.

  79. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 10:41 pm #

    Was Muhamar Gaddafi really Aunt Bee in disguise?

    What does Aunt Bee have to say about third trimester abortions in the back of Floyd’s barbershop?

  80. Pucker January 27, 2019 at 10:54 pm #

    What if Aunt Bee was suddenly confronted with the existential Reality of the Universe like in the Hindu holybook the Bhagavad Gita? Would she Freak Out?

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    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2019 at 11:29 pm #

      Her name is the key – BE! The Koran says Allah created things simply by saying, Be.

      • K-Dog January 28, 2019 at 2:46 am #

        Be all you can be?

  81. This is how lame duck sessions of CFN conclude. Rest up boys, showtime, tomorrow morning. If you are disciplined you’ll have read the entire print edition of the New York Times (or Wall Street Journal) and be well fortified. Week One of the compromise that isn’t. The Trump Card is abut to be played.

    • K-Dog January 28, 2019 at 2:48 am #

      Being thick as a brick puts another brick in the wall.

  82. Pucker January 28, 2019 at 12:47 am #

    I read that Governor Cuomo has signed a bill permitting abortions up to the time of birth in New York State. Is this true? If so, they’ve obviously gone insane.

  83. SoftStarLight January 28, 2019 at 9:01 am #

    Wow – this has been a particularly cruel thread. I am glad to see it go actually. Hardship is hardship. Whether one decides to have an abortion (which is not an easy decision for most anyone) or raise four children without the father’s full and devoted presence. Again, sometimes you just feel like saying f*ck it! But life marches on. Either way people will judge you and say you did not or are not doing the right thing. You either murdered your baby or you had too many kids and made a bad decision, chose to have a losers’ babies, etc.

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