JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
Now appearing Mondays and Fridays
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!
It ought to be sign of just how delusional the nation is these days that Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X is taken seriously. Musk continues to dangle his fantasy of travel to Mars before a country that can barely get its shit together on Planet Earth, and the Tesla car represents one of the main reasons for it — namely, that we’ll do anything to preserve, maintain, and defend our addiction to incessant and pointless motoring (and nothing to devise a saner living arrangement).
Even people with Ivy League educations believe that the electric car is a “solution” to our basic economic quandary, which is to keep all the accessories and furnishings of suburbia running at all costs in the face of problems with fossil fuels, especially climate change. First, understand how the Tesla car and electric motoring are bound up in our culture of virtue signaling, the main motivational feature of political correctness. Virtue signaling is a status acquisition racket. In this case, you get social brownie points for indicating that you’re on-board with “clean energy,” you’re “green,” “an environmentalist,” “Earth –friendly.” Ordinary schmoes can drive a Prius for their brownie points. But the Tesla driver gets all that and much more: the envy of the Prius drivers!
This is all horse shit, of course, because there’s nothing green or Earth-friendly about Tesla cars, or electric cars in general. Evidently, many Americans think these cars run on batteries. No they don’t. Not really. The battery is just a storage unit for electricity that comes from power plants that burn something, or from hydroelectric installations like Hoover Dam, with its problems of declining reservoir levels and aging re-bar concrete construction. A lot of what gets burned for electric power is coal. Connect the dots. Also consider the embedded energy that it takes to just manufacture the cars. That had to come from somewhere, too.
The Silicon Valley executive who drives a Tesla gets to feel good about him/her/zheself without doing anything to change him/her/zhe’s way of life. All it requires is the $101,500 entry price for the cheapest model. For many Silicon Valley execs, this might be walking-around money. For the masses of Flyover Deplorables that’s just another impossible dream in a growing list of dissolving comforts and conveniences.
In fact, the mass motoring paradigm in the USA is already failing not on the basis of what kind of fuel the car runs on but on the financing end. Americans are used to buying cars on installment loans and, as the middle class implosion continues, there are fewer and fewer Americans who qualify to borrow. The regular car industry (gasoline branch) has been trying to work around this reality for years by enabling sketchier loans for ever-sketchier customers — like, seven years for a used car. The borrower in such a deal is sure to be “underwater” with collateral (the car) that is close to worthless well before the loan can be extinguished. We’re beginning to see the fruits of this racket just now, as these longer-termed loans start to age out. On top of that, a lot of these janky loans were bundled into tradable securities just like the janky mortgage loans that set off the banking fiasco of 2008. Wait for that to blow.
What much of America refuses to consider in the face of all this is that there’s another way to inhabit the landscape: walkable neighborhoods, towns, and cities with some kind of public transit. Some Millennials gravitate to places designed along these lines because they grew up in the ‘burbs and they know full well the social nullity induced there. But the rest of America is still committed to the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world: suburban living. And tragically, of course, we’re kind of stuck with all that “infrastructure” for daily life. It’s already built out! Part of Donald Trump’s appeal was his promise to keep its furnishings in working order.
All of this remains to be sorted out. The political disorder currently roiling America is there because the contradictions in our national life have become so starkly obvious, and the first thing to crack is the political consensus that allows business-as-usual to keep chugging along. The political turmoil will only accelerate the accompanying economic turmoil that drives it in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. That dynamic has a long way to go before any of these issues get resolved satisfactorily.
New-ish: The Big Contraction – An Interview with JHK
Fourth and final book
of the World Made By Hand series
Amazon Hardcover | Kindle
Autographed Copy Battenkill Books
Northshire Books
New Interview with JHK about The Harrows of Spring
Praise for A History of the Future:
“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist
My local indie booksellers… Autographed copies Battenkill Books
Northshire Books
or Amazon
Also: Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author
Bargain Price $3.99
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
|
Order now! Jim’s new book
Click here for signed author copies from Battenkill Books
|
Order now! Jim’s other new book
|
Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
GET THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL PROVIDED BY SUBSTACK
You can receive Clusterfuck Nation posts in your email when you subscribe to this blog via Substack. Financial support is voluntary.
Sign up for emails via https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com
Jim, what do you make of this:
Georgia Has Too Damn Many Counties and That’s Contributed to Atlanta’s Traffic Disaster
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/atlantas-29-counties-have-helped-lead-to-a-traffic-disaster.html
The bizarre fire and road/bridge collapse that has made I-85 impassable for an undefined but catastrophic period of time has drawn some national attention to Atlanta’s famously terrible traffic conditions, which are now going to get immensely worse. At Vox, Naomi Shavin does an admirable job of explaining the city’s transportation problems, particularly the stunted growth of the MARTA public-transit system. Here’s a key passage:
“The metro area has a history of intentionally starving the public transportation system as an expression of segregation — affluent, predominantly white counties have long resisted connecting with public transit. Old news to locals, this reality made national headlines in 2014 when two inches of snow and a poorly timed weather dismissal strategy left thousands of Atlanta drivers stuck in traffic for hours.”
Shavin is right, but there’s a piece of information she mentions elsewhere that some readers may not connect to the transit problem: Metro Atlanta is scattered across 29 counties, which has made it easy to confine public transit narrowly to the heavily African-American Fulton and Dekalb counties. Some of the insanely superfluous number of local jurisdictions is associated with recent population growth and sprawl, but it is all interconnected since the kind of land-use planning that might have created a more compact metro Atlanta is virtually impossible with so many jurisdictions.
Read the whole thing, and I found the Vox article informative as well. Emblematic not only of the post-WWII abandonment of the cities, but with public transit treated as a disease associated with those people — y’know, when part of the point of building the suburbs was to leave those people behind.
In a word: gentrification. Longer: not in my county! Great article.
Section 8 in your county?
MARTA: Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. Sad but true.
Along the rail line thru the ruins of downtown Detroit, they refurbished the facades of the burned out building to create a kind of Potemkin Village. The moral? Where Blacks are, Africa is.
Same situation in many metro areas. As my older white generation fled the city (white flight) and went to the suburbs, numerous areas became segregated in a new way. Baltimore went majority black and the surrounding county majority white. Same with DC (majorly).
DC is a unique mess; with MD on one side and VA on the other. Those two states hate each other as the VA legislature (dominated by redneck types in the southern part of the state) is still fighting the Civil War. Zero cooperation on regional road matters; amazing the metro subway even got across the DC line. Fairfax City, VA opted out of having a metro stop for the usual racist logic of not having them nasty old DC darkies coming around to loot and leer at the white women folk. Idiots. Divide and conquer still works well, especially along racial lines.
Denver is another mess, confined to a strict city limit with numerous counties around it to complicate everything from transit to policing.
Colorado has 66 counties, about half or more of which could be merged into 30 or so and in the process eliminate at least 30 sets of redundant elected ninnies who do little but soak up tax dollars. Adding to the lunacy, El Paso County, CO, with just 650k people, has TWENTY school districts, all with redundant sets of overhead and administrators.
Nationally, we have at least 3007 counties and could get by with half that, or fewer. Redundancy R Us.
If we want to streamline government we should do so via consolidation, just like the airlines and railroads have done since ‘de-regulation.’
On to Mr. Musk. I think his SpaceX firm is little more than a rich man’s plaything, especially with two other billionaires playing Howard Hughes.
As far as his electric car goes, I love it. Boils down to a lesser of 2 evils. I’d rather recharge my electric car from rooftop solar that deal with the stinking bastards of OPEC. Politely I say: FUCK OPEC. FUCK OPEC.
Idiots? Do you have any idea how many White women are beaten and raped by Black Men. You’re the idiot.
I love “virtual signaling” thank you, I will use it frequently as it is everywhere and needs to be called out for what it is. I live in an exceptionally “virtual” part of New Jersey where the Residents of my Township have been leaving reality behind and morphing into virtuality in greater numbers every year. As they walk away from their underwater mega -mortgages to go live with Granny or wherever or get taken away by the authorities (our county has a HUGE heroin “problem” with parents as well as the kiddies) the vacated homes, the blooming house for sale signs and the growing number of working age males putting Johnny on the bus in the morning in the sweatpants.are growing signs of bad things ahead. It is all starting to have serious implications on our tax base which is what allows our Township to continue to pay it’s accumulated interest bearing debts (rates are doubling every year now). Those of us that are fighting it are probably too late, but as those who saw it coming, the least we can do is give it our best effort. Wish me luck, I am going to need it.
It’s virtue, not “virtual.”
–JHK
Sorry about that, I had not finished my first coffee yet. Virtue signaling is much better.
Since the virtue isn’t real, but only virtual, you could have had some fun word play here. That’s what I thought you were doing at first.
Bwahahaha Thank you for the morning laugh about Musk’s fantasy of dangling dreams of going to Mars when we can’t keep or shit straight on planet Earth. I’ve been musing this for decades that life can be so much nicer if we cut the rackets out. I’ve abandoned the car for this my 20th anniversary and newly retired living on a small pension just fine thanks to not having the vehicle expense and get around just fine in Florida on a bicycle. Orlov may have a boat but my stand alone apartment has maintenance I call up they come free have a dozen container plants and my pool comes with it. Would love to have the room for a large garden but love supporting my local farmers market
I’m not as quick to scorn technological achievements as many are around here. There are plenty of fripperies we can do without (confession time: I own an Oculus Rift VR headset), but enormously beneficial things too (like vaccines and antibiotics) that couldn’t exist without a pretty high level of technical and scientific capability. The fact is, we’re doing pretty well when we have time and resources to spend on the unnecessary and the nice-to-have, and we should celebrate that fact. We’re unlikely to see a scenario that eliminates the fripperies without taking away truly valuable things as well, and we are sure as hell gonna miss ’em.
As for Elon Musk, my estimation of him rose a couple of notches when this happened:
We may have just witnessed the dawn of truly commercial spaceflight
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/we-may-have-just-witnessed-the-dawn-of-truly-commercial-spaceflight/
Elon Musk had himself a day Thursday. For the first time in history, his company launched a fully reusable first stage of an orbital rocket. Then, for good measure, SpaceX landed that rocket for a second time on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Finally—because why not, when you’re on a roll—he attempted to safely return the $6 million payload fairing at the top of the rocket. Even that met with at least partial success. “This is a huge day,” he commented later. “My mind’s blown, frankly.”
The ability to re-use rocket stages instead of disposing of them after a single use will steeply decrease the cost of launching satellites, and likely transform the economics of putting things, or even people, in space. Scorn this all you want, but spaceflight is damn useful if you’re at all interested in things like (a) communications, (b) Earth sensing and weather prediction (very helpful to agriculture), and (c) basic science. Leave manned spaceflight aside — these workhorse applications make life better for a hell of a lot of people, and like the ones I mentioned above, we will miss them badly if and when we lose them.
Woo-hoo, Elon! He’s managed to replace the rather inexpensive parachute with the extremely expensive and technically complex retro-rocket.
Read the article. “Reflying the first stage alone saves about 70 percent of the cost of a rocket launch. And the company has plans to eventually recycle its payload fairing and second stages, as well.” This is more than just a stunt. If you’re putting up satellites, that 70% is money in your pocket. If someone else (maybe the Russians or Chinese) can save even more money by using parachutes instead, they should do so.
The point is, it’s now a race to minimize costs if anyone but Musk wants to stay in the launch business. We are now on the virtuous upside of the cost curve. And yes, that means there’ll be fripperies as well, like space tourism. I’m fine with that as long as there are real gains, or even provided we simply lose less of what we currently have as we take JHK’s Big Slide.
“Musk Trolls Shorts as Tesla’s Value Hits Record, Passes Ford…Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk poked fun at short sellers as his electric-car maker’s stock surged to a record, vaulting its market value past century-old rival Ford Motor Co.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-03/tesla-passes-ford-by-market-value-before-musk-delivers-model-3
“Shortly before the crash, Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, ‘Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.'”
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
Before today’s technologies existed, our lives and our work were just as fine if not better than after and the opportunities for advancement both professionally and monetarily were probably even better than today. Yes the techno-baubles have made many things a lot “easier”, certainly faster, but I am not so sure that anything is that much better. I have found in my day that as things become “easy” they tend to lose vale. They are quickly taken for granted and are soon replaced with MORE. More complicates everything and gives us far more to maintain and at far greater cost.. The US “Infrastructure” is an excellent of such a problem. The work that was made “better” was superseded with MORE work, in LESS time at greater profit for those at the top and decreased wages for us doing the work. And how much better will it become once more and more robots perform the few remaining tasks once allotted to humans? I am not bashing anyone who utilizes technology as I myself use it often in many ways and as I tippy-tap right here, right now. But I maintain the attitude that technology TAKES, far more than it GIVES. And yes, if I spent half the time working around the house as I do tippy-tapping in cyberspace I would certainly be well ahead of the curve instead of behind it.
Hear! Hear! Hi-tech is always just a justification for MORE, and quite frankly, we’ve got MORE than enough poorly maintained shit already, including PEOPLE!
I share Kunstler’s view on electric cars. The reusable rocket stages are probably good for launching sattellites, as long as they maintain control or elimination of all the space junk floating around up there. As to Mars or any other deep space missions they need to come up with a better propulsion system than what amounts to 2000 year old rocket technology. I wish Mr. Kunstler would speak more on overpopulation as it, along with religion are the root cause of a lot of problems.
But then again, I say religion IS the cause of over population with it’s ‘go forth and multiply’ crap intent on providing more foot soldiers to push the glory of the god du jour onto other peoples.
More like hand in hand, I’d say. Religion is almost certainly providing the moral justification/cover to go forth and fuck, but since when has fucking required any moral justification for most of us? I agree with cbeard’s concerns about overpopulation.
As N. Americans we use resources at five times the world average and 20 times the poor world. If you really care, get your personal resource consumption down to at least the world average, or down to the rate of the poor world. Thereby you will have had the same effect as reducing the population by 4 or 19 people respectively and will qualify to complain about religious people having too many babies.
Put another way about 300,000,000 Americans use resources like 1.5 billion average or 6 billion poor people.
I’m Canadian, we 35,000,000 are at 175,000,000 and 700,000,000.
Its quite an opportunity for us huh?
Let’s not forget that Musky is in it for all the nice taxpayer monies that he gets to play with.
…And yes, of course we need more shit floating around up there — maybe it will protect us from those pesky asteroids that keep coming like speeding planet-killers. (Yeah, right!)
http://stuffin.space/
Well said, Elrond. Btw, is this an admission that Whites aren’t all bad? Or do you still think we stopped Black Africans from having Moon Colonies?
And if we had waited “to get our shit together here on Earth” we would never have gone at all obviously. Even an Amoeba moves by throwing one part of itself out in front. Communists – or anyone ruled by resentment – can’t stand that even if they will benefit in the long or short run.
I can’t believe Jim wrote this piece. Or that he talks about ‘deep state’ all of the time pandering to the idiots, or that he has any use at all for Trump. I used to really respect Jim but now I wonder if he might need to see a doctor.
An “old time religionist,” I see? JIm’s coming around. Safe to say, you’re not? By the way, the “idiot’s” think the same if you.
Elon Musk is simply the high-tech dream weaver equivalent of the Goldman Sachs hucksters on Wall Street. Instead of packaging up toxic dreck as triple “A” derivatives, he’s selling the impossible dream of a fabulously profitable electric motoring future – let alone his ridiculously laughable plan to colonize Mars (!) in order to keep the equity funding pouring into his “21st century Tucker on steroids” sham.
You know the dirty little secret about Tesla and Model S? It was the knowledge and experience of engineers from – gasp! – Detroit that brought it to fruition. Sure it has a lot of high-tech bells and whistles, but it took a century of accumulated expertise to package it all in what is still, at the end of the day, a 20th century automobile platform and he couldn’t have done it without all the unsung talent from Motown. But you won’t hear Sir Elon saying that, because THAT’S so yesterday. Boy, those automotive engineers must be pissed at how HE takes all the credit. From what I’ve read, many of these highly talented automotive people have already left Tesla in disgust.
As everyone knows, Tesla has never turned a profit and he continues to burn through cash at a prodigious rate. Yes, he’s apparently paid back government loans (thank God, the taxpayers aren’t on the hook) but he needs that constant mainline of investor cash to keep the illusion going. At some point, I expect the whole thing to come crashing down and a lot of starry-eyed believers in his future visions are going to get burned.
GM has their chance, they produced electric cars a couple decades ago, but only rented them out. Once big oil paid them off they recalled all their electrics and shredded them in auto recycling yards.
GH had their chance, not has. Damn spellchecker.
Jim’s right. The “car culture” paradigm – gasoline, electric, or otherwise – as a whole is doomed. THAT’S the message.
The largest concentration of Ts that I see in my suburbatopia is around the medical offices.
Quite fitting that two rackets gravitate towards one another.
Excellent observation.
Also note the Tesla clusters at attorney and brokerage businesses.
They actually have pretty good resale value.
It could be argued the USA was in far worse shape in ’69 – and we put men on the Moon then.
Plus – trollybill -do you really think your apartment maintenance is “free”? Reminds me of my relatives in Canada, who talk about their medical care as “free” – while paying about 100% more in taxes than I do in the USA.
You remind me of a point I forgot to make by mentioning the Moon. Last night at dinner, my daughter was talking about the colonization of Mars that they were discussing at school. I asked her why would they be talking about colonizing Mars when they have not attempted to colonize or even put bases on the Moon yet? No answer. I guess it is all BS and distraction after all.
Nonsense. I currently live in Canada and have spent 4 years living in the US. It is amazing how Americans hold on to myths about what happens in their country and what happens in other countries.
First, our tax rates are not double. In fact, they are much closer than one might think, and in some cases, they are higher in the US. For example, if you live in NYC, you actually pay more income tax that you would in 9 of the 10 provinces in Canada. I paid more in income tax percentage living in Massachusetts than I do now in Canada, and my income is 4x higher.
In addition, my taxes actually include usable services, like medicine and decent public schools. You have to add your health premiums to your tax bill to equal what we get. In almost all cases, you are going to be doing worse in the US than in Canada. Our public school system is in much better shape because it isn’t funded by property tax so you don’t have to live in a million dollar neighbourhood to have a good public school. The disasters that I saw in metro Boston don’t exist up here, and I know there are far worse schools elsewhere in the US. College is also substantially cheaper.
There are very few circumstances where you end up ahead in the US, and these circumstances really only apply if you are super-rich.
Canada does not have 100,000,000 Blacks and Latinos.
Ever wonder why Finnish schools are top performers?
Because Finnish students are White.
The Journal will not mention RACE, which makes the article so damn funny,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120425355065601997
Right, because there is no ethnic diversity in Canada at all…
He didn’t say that. It’s just not as much – yet. And of course it depends on who the immigrants are. Not all immigrants or “refugees” are created equal.
True. But it isn’t just Blacks and Latinos that are having performance issues in school.
Read the article, please.
Black population in Canada:
Canada’s Black population is growing faster … 662,200 people identified themselves as Black, … educated as all people aged 25 to 54 born in Canada.
[Search domain http://www.statcan.gc.ca] statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-002-x/2004/03/07604/4072459-e
That may change quickly with Canadian liberal immigration policy. They seem to have opened their border to Muslim refugees.
Not really. Unlike Europe, we are only letting in certain low-risk types (i.e. families, Yazidis). Single Muslim men are being excluded at the current time. Overall, the refugee numbers are small.
Look at the glee with which virtue signaling Canadians greet Mexican refugees from the evil United States. You don’t need Muslims, Mexicans will finish you just as well. Their gangs do most of the things that ISIS does.
Except Mexican “refugees” and other coming from the US because of Trump’s immigration policy are not eligible for refugee status as per Canadian law (refugee status can only be claimed at first arrived port which is the US). They will all be deported because one cannot declare refugee status arriving from the US or because one was breaking US law.
please leave your racist droppings elsewhere…not interesting
I too am a Canadian that lived for 10 years in the U.S. Went down there with the same perceptions firmly planted in my discretionary spending imagination. And then the Gomer Pyle surprise, surprise.
My experience is Americans can spend twice as much on property taxes than Canadians. The external taxation items and rates much more pervasive in the U.S. At the end of the day the aggregate taxation is about the same. The only thing that creates the illusion of more spending power in the U.S. are stores and restaurants employing people for serf wages and no benefits.
I have this allegory: An American and Canadian are skiing together, fall and each breaks a leg. The first thing that goes through the American’s mind is how do I pay for this? The first thing the Canadian thinks is where do I get this fixed.
That is the difference. In Canada one doesn’t take an ambulance ride to the hospital gravely compounding a heart attack because bankruptcy and losing one’s house is very much a reality. And yes, I have plenty of first person case stories from immediate relatives.
And this continued rhetoric about Socialism is pure nonsense. Canadians are every much free enterprise and capitalist as Americans.
The current U.S. health care system is a stealth indentured servant racket. How many are not really free to change deplorable circumstances because they are chained by a necessary health plan which they will not get anywhere else? But go ahead with the grand experiment of The United Serfs of America – that’s where it is.
Property taxes in the USA support 3007 counties, at least twice as many counties as we really need.
There are very few circumstances where you end up ahead in the US, and these circumstances really only apply if you are super-rich.
It’s all about the stories we tell one another other, aka our cultural myths. And Americans’ stories have been delusional for at least a century now. Mass media propaganda and thoroughly crapified education based only on making one qualified to hold a “jawb” have done their jobs well.
This is not to say that things are perfect in Canada either. There are many things that we could do better and we are delusional about certain things as well. It is a mistake, however, to think that Canada is some kind of high tax jurisdiction while the US is a low tax utopia. It is not. We collect around 32% of GDP in taxes, while the US collects 26%. In contrast, most European nations are over 40%.
The difference is that Canadians can see some of the tangible benefits of taxes in health care, education etc. In the US, you do not, and that is part of the problem. It is hard to get people to pay more if you don’t see any of the benefits of paying them.
Unlike Europe, we are only letting in certain low-risk types.
Having read P Buchanan, I know that is false.
the US is a low tax utopia. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
You are delusional.
If your opinion about what is going on in Canada is coming from Pat Buchanan, then I can’t help you.
With the comment about the low tax utopia, I think you need to reread what I wrote. I said the US was not.
Of course not. But I sense that Canadians in general are still coming from something at least remotely resembling a “rational place,” a place we Americans abandoned decades ago.
As far as reduced benefits from higher taxes, that too is a benefit of the slow but steady corporate infiltration and theft of the public treasure, as mere accusations of government malfeasance slowly become revealed as fact, due to siphoned revenues and the resulting starvation of services.
Oh please only a delusional person could still believe we went to the moon. In a few years it will be 50 years ago. 50 freakin years ago! How many years have to go by before you realize it’s a lie. 100? 200? 300? No other country has even tried, let alone succeeded. Only America has the balls to lie so big.
Do not misunderstand me my friend, for my money the “Moon landings” took place in Arizona somewhere. My point was simply how can the schools be filling the children with the BS of being able to run a marathon, if you cannot even walk around the block?
My apologies. Good to see not everyone was taken in by the Tower of Babel, the towering phallic shaped bottle rocket, the precursor and necessary adjutant to the ICBM. Why would America fake the moon landings? The answer is the same for any question asked in America: MONEY. 135 billion in today’s dollar for a movie, and not even a very good one. Hell they even told us they were lying for anyone paying attention. “One small step for man, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND.”
The Giant Leap was them thumping their collective chests at their ability to dupe the entire nation who fell for it (as well as the murder of JFK). The bigger the lie, the more people believe it!
“Astronauts gone wild” documentary.
Apollo 11 post flight conference: Three rain soaked crows under the eave waiting for the storm (questioning) to pass.
Sometimes i can not shake off moon rover driver’s jii-ha: “Whata rai’… whata rai’ !”. Recorded black and white for posterity, bit grainy though.
I believe we went to the moon and I don’t feel delusional. It seems perfectly possible to spend $25 billion 1960’s dollars to build a few rockets and send 12 people there. I have heard you can see the detritus we left there. When it gets to conspiracies I always wonder how many there are: Kennedy? Moon? 9/11? Boston? Sandy Hook? and whether those of us in the matrix question none of them and those outside in possession of the truth can see all the sinister threads that link them?
You don’t feel delusional because of TV series like “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space,” both psychological operations to make people believe space exploration was possible and easy. You don’t feel delusional because back then because you got your news from Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, not the clowns we have today. You don’t feel guilty because it is almost sacrilegious to JFK’s memory to suggest we never met his challenge. Finally you don’t feel delusional because you’re probably an American, and Americans are exceptional. Yawn.
No, I felt them test the engines and watched them shoot the rocket. You say it went round and round the earth while they filmed the landing somewhere. I recall a conversation with Michael Collins at the opening of the National Air and Space Museum in 1976 and we chatted about what he did while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon. I think he was a better liar than our current President. Perhaps one day one of the 24 people that flew around the moon will recant and tell us “the truth”…. or maybe they’ll just relish going down in history as phony heroes. How’d they put that hardware you can “see” on the moon?
That’s correct. All you “saw” was the rocket leaving the pad and flying upward into space. Everything else you have taken on faith.
WTF?
Jesus Christ, Walter, you are a Point Graduate…how the hell can you deny the moon landing?
I question them and am not convinced. While technically it should have been possible, I have never heard an explanation of how the Van Allen Radiation Belt was overcome. I also am skeptical because in all the time that has passed since then we have done absolutely nothing further such as establish any bases or labs on the Moon. That is something that those whose are as “educated” as I am have been asking for a long time without reply. It is similar to Columbus sailing to America and then returning home forever and leaving America undeveloped or unexploited. That flies in the face of all that I have come to understand of the nature of mankind. See what I mean?
Good points. I haven’t read up much on that particular subject, and so am agnostic. But I do think that faking it wouldn’t have been all that hard and there were certainly good reasons for doing so, at the tail end of the troubled 60’s especially. Winning the space race purely for the propaganda value was a HUGE thing at the time.
Walter,
Is that the defining question…why we never returned? At the beginning of the “space age” we were a relatively prosperous nation…the moon landings, a very expensive proposition, ended during the Vietnam War, which, literally and figuratively, bled the country dry. Many wars since….many social issues…Johnny can’t read…Jamal won’t read…remember, the welfare state began in 1965(ish), and continued to drain the coffers to this day. What other issues due to wars and transfer payments? Look at our declining infrastructure…money not spent there, either. Consider that in the 60’s and 70’s the country was a bit more fiscally responsible than today. Consider, also, that the space program was designed to further military capabilities…satellites and orbiting space stations may have better served the military…and within budget.
The highest the space shuttle ever went was about 240 miles straight up. The moon is 240,000 miles away. That is a factor of 1,000 difference. 3 orders of magnitude. That is like saying 50 years ago we designed a dive suit that could go 1,000 feet deep, but today we can only snorkel. No telescope was brought. No instead they took a cajillion pictures, like some bizarre lunar vacation. Then they brought a car. It is so laughable on so many levels, that it is amazing anyone believes it. Nothing extraordinary was seen at any time. 1/6 the gravity, and nothing extraordinary happened. A totally different world and nothing unexpected happened. No surprise.
seawolf77: “The highest the space shuttle ever went was about 240 miles straight up. The moon is 240,000 miles away. That is a factor of 1,000 difference. 3 orders of magnitude. That is like saying 50 years ago we designed a dive suit that could go 1,000 feet deep, but today we can only snorkel.”
That’s not how space travel works. The difference isn’t in the distance; it’s in the amount of energy you have to expend to reach escape velocity. In space there’s nothing to push against except your own burning fuel, so you have to carry all of it with you from the get-go. You end up expending most of your fuel just to move your fuel, in a non-virtuous exponential race. There’s only a small part left over that moves the actual payload. Once you reach escape velocity, or at any rate a suitable trajectory, the Moon’s gravity begins to balance out and then overtake Earth’s gravity and you actually plummet to your destination. The shuttle wasn’t designed to get higher than LEO, much less reach escape velocity, so your comparison doesn’t mean much.
The Apollo program was the opposite of practical, but it was feasible if your real aim was to (a) compete with Russia and (b) funnel lots of money into the military-industrial complex. The shuttle was more of the same, except (a) had been satisfied and (b) now fully took hold. Now that Musk has proven (finally) that rockets really can be re-used, like the shuttle was supposed to, the cost/benefit calculation changes enormously. I’ll be very interested to see what’s next.
The shuttle was a complete dog from the start. Reusable entry vehicles make as much sense as Musk’s retro-rocket landing shtick. The shuttle was capable of putting 35,000 pounds of payload into low Earth orbit. A Saturn V was capable of putting 270,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. The shuttle opted for heat-sink re-entry protection, which is very heavy. By contrast, the Apollo re-entry vehicle used the simple concept of ablation to deflect the heat of re-entry.
The people designing the shuttle were trying to improve on what was already state of the art. Like these modern pickup trucks you see with all the computer-operated crap. Give me an old F-100 with a V-8 and a carburetter any day.
” I have never heard an explanation of how the Van Allen Radiation Belt was overcome”
The path to the Moon, via Saturn V, was judiciously chosen to avoid the highest concentrations of radiation and minimize the astronauts time of exposure. A Google search for Van Allen Radiation Belts will result in more than 1 million results. On the other hand there is always the possibility that all of those hits are the results generated by conspiracies.
” It is similar to Columbus sailing to America and then returning home forever and leaving America undeveloped or unexploited”
My understanding about Columbus is that he has been given credit for something he never accomplished “discovering America”. It is a well established historical FACT that Columbus never set foot on North America only upon some of the Caribbean Islands.
The US did not send astronauts to the Moon to exploit it but to denigrate the capabilities of the Soviet Union and to demonstrate to the the World that the US and her German scientists were smarter/cleverer than the Soviet’s and their German scientists at space travel, subsequent to the Soviet’s giving us the finger with Sputnik.
The “New World” issue is interesting in itself. Many people knew it was there – Basque fisherman fished off Newfoundland. But suddenly it seemed important to go there in force whereas it didn’t before. Thus they began a public relations campaign. Of course they may not have know the extent of it – thus the story of Columbus looking for India.
The point I was trying to make was that the system that replaced Apollo had less capability than what we already possessed. The Saturn V took us to the moon. The Space Shuttle could only go into LEO. That never, ever happens in the engineering world. It is always increasing performance, increasing capability. People are just thick when it comes to this subject, purposefully.
“In space there’s nothing to push against except your own burning fuel, so you have to carry all of it with you from the get-go.” -Elrond Hubbard-
Elrond perhaps a short reminisce through high school physics is in order here. Rockets do not push against anything. The propulsive effect is a result of Newton’s third law of motion, “for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action”. When the components of the fuel and oxidizer carried in the rocket’s tanks are combusted in the rocket motor the ensuing heat and pressure flings said products out through the rocket nozzle. The flinging imparts a momentum upon each and every molecule flung which is encapsulated in the definition of momentum equation momentum = mass times velocity usually spelled out in physics as p=mv. From Newton’s 3rd law we find p(e) of the exhaust gasses imparts an equal and opposites p(r) upon the rocket. If one were to simply put a hole in the rocket motor for the combustion products to exit said motor through one would find that the motor was significantly inefficient relative to rocket motors with expansion nozzles because the speed of the exiting hot gasses would be limited to the speed of sound in the combustion products mixture (not likely to be the same as air) by a normal (perpendicular) shock wave at the plug nozzle (hole). The expansion nozzles have long been used to design modern rocket motors enabling the exhaust gasses to exit the motor at multiples of the combustion products mach 1.
Rocket motors are not the only flying devices, we have invented and perfected upon, which rely on Newton’s 3rd law; all of them do. The thrust generated by a piston engine or turboprop aircraft is the change in momentum of the air the craft is passing through produced by the propeller with a much smaller change in momentum produced by the exhaust of the engines. A jet engine functions essentially as does a rocket however unlike rockets none of our “air breathing” engine powered aircraft are required to carry oxidizer along with them as they simply obtain it from the atmosphere as do we.
The shuttle was a compromised design from the start, basically because it’s much easier to persuade members of Congress to appropriate money to fund jobs in their districts than for an actual visionary project.
Ever read The Man Who Sold The Moon? D.D. Harriman was more than a little bit of a huckster, but he got where he was going (eventually..). Musk is little different, and now it looks like he’s actually caught one of the cars he was chasing. It won’t change the net-energy equation one bit, but for what it’s worth we’re now at the point in the development cycle that puts stars in the eyes of libertarians: where it’s theoretically possible to make big money by actually building something that works, instead of through financial chicanery. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be worth it in the end.
It was awfully charitable of the Soviet Union to play along, especially since the whole thing was basically done to show how superior God-fearin’, red-blooded Americans were to Godless Commies. All through the height of the Cold War! For that matter, it would still be a huge coup for Putin if he could pull out the Soviet telemetry tapes showing the Apollo rockets being ditched in the South Pacific or wherever, present the footage of LBJ and Nixon blackmailing the Soviet leadership or whatever they did to get them to join the Moon Hoax Conspiracy (and/or the secret treaties signed, etc.), and present the proof of the “Apollo Hoax” to the world.
Evidence in favor of the Apollo landings is abundant and overwhelming.
As for why we didn’t go back and build bases on the Moon, there are plenty of reasons. The Moon is an utterly barren, inhospitable wasteland, and contains no valuable resources to speak of. Well, there’s a goodly amount of Helium-3, if we had fusion reactors to fuel with it (but deuterium is cheaper). Landing on the Moon and bringing stuff back is so ridiculously expensive that if there were pyramids of gold bars stacked up and waiting on the surface, it wouldn’t be economical to go get them. NASA was able to bring back Moon rocks (more proof that they went there), but they weren’t concerned with turning a profit.
There are apparently considerable amounts of water ice in some permanently-shaded craters at the Lunar poles which could be useful for other space missions, but why bother? There’s ice in “near-Earth” asteroids, which don’t have fairly strong gravity like the Moon does. That makes it much easier to extract the resource and move it to where you want it.
Mars, despite its greater distance from Earth, is a better site for a base or colony than the Moon for a number of reasons. It has a day fairly close to the same length as Earth days (Lunar days/nights are roughly a month long each). It has water, and a CO2 atmosphere that can be used to create methane propellant with a bit of basic chemistry. See Robert Zubrin’s The Case for Mars for more.
The Apollo Program is not at all similar to Columbus sailing to America and then returning home forever. It’s more like Columbus sailing to Antarctica and going back to Spain rather than trying to colonize it…but worse. Antarctica has breathable air! I guarantee you, if the Moon was a tropical paradise, and Neil Armstrong had been greeted by welcoming natives, we’d have colonies–or resorts–there.
The Vikings had colonies in North America (still much, much more hospitable than the Moon!), yet they “left America undeveloped and unexploited.” That sort of thing does happen, if the proposed location for a colony is more trouble than it’s worth.
The Cold War was a hoax to sell weapons. Russian oligarchs profited as much as American. The salient point of Apollo was to create rocket technology for ICBM’s. That’s how they got the astronauts to play ball. National Security. And the evidence is most certainly underwhelming we ever went to the moon. That statement is like “There has never been a single piece of credible evidence to suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone assassin of President Kennedy.” Sounds good, put pure baloney. There is a mountain of evidence, not a single piece.
Nice try Zarko, but no quite good enough. The Moon has a huge advantage that would make it absolutely the first place to utilize and that is it’s proximately to Earth. It is easy (and probably pointless) for we civilians to sit here tippy tapping away in discussion of such matters, but since we are doing it let’s have at it. Every single technological development that this human race has ever developed has been first and above all, military in nature. From the discovery of bronze and then iron to make swords (not build buildings) to the development of aircraft to drop bombs (not shuttle you to the Bahamas), the military has led the way. Anyone who thinks that there is no militarization in space is simply too dumb to speak, so please STFU! If other space bodies could have been “colonized” they would have been already and the Moon would have been armed accordingly first and fooremost. Of course, some may argue that it already has been without our knowledge, but that would be one of those dreaded conspiracy theories so I won’t even go there. As far as space and the civilian population is concerned it is all distraction. Keep ’em busy looking at the moon, they will forget about Vietnam. Hey look it’s Mars, keep their eyes off the endless wars for profit or the assault on Russia. Bread and circuses, they fall for it every time and always will. The Truth may be out there somewhere but we will never know it!
It could be argued the USA was in far worse shape in ’69 – and we put men on the Moon then.
**************************
No man has ever walked on the moon. Apollo missions 11 through 17 were all fake.
Have you ever seen the Apollo 11 post flight press conference?
Matter of fact, I’ll go further and say the Apollo moon Landings are like Islam for white people; its like a hardcore fundamentalist religion, and if you even question it? You are considered some kind of infidel…
You wanna see a white person get angry?
Tell them you think the moon landings were faked.
Exactly. American Exceptionalism is a religion. Perfectly put.
400,000 people worked for NASA at its peak. That’s a lot of well paying jobs.
Actually, that money came from tax payers and could have been better spent, by those who made the money.
Think of Virginia and all the wealth that states people have.
Due to government vampires and lobbists.
“Tell them you think the moon landings were faked.”
Thwack,
You racist son of a bitch…denigrating the hard work of the black women who got us there.
400,000 people worked for NASA at its peak. That’s a lot of well paying jobs.
I think you mean sassy black women?
The “Hidden Figures” movie was designed to be “The Right Stuff” for black people; so we could also climb on board the “technology will solve all our problems” train.
Same thing with Obama.
Before Obama, black people wanted to burn down the White House,
now we wanna live in it.
Remember how when they took hostages, Jesse Jackson could show up and get the terrorists to let all the blacks go?
Not anymore.
We don’t get angry. We just feel kinda sorry for the person making the claim.
Thwack, I haven’t see the Apollo 11 post flight press conference. What did I miss?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_ZehPOMwI
Also, check out Marcus Allen’s Apollo photographic analysis.
As a professional photographer, he identifies a lot of details in the Apollo photos which indicate they were most likely taken here on Earth; either in a giant studio, or some secret desert site…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nj_jCeupYQ
They looked like they were getting sent to Death Row, not returning from the greatest accomplishment in mankind’s history.
“No (insert color here) man has ever walked on the moon….”
White.
Did they go around the moon or just stay in low earth orbit? I had not seen the press conference. It’s queer. Careful. Perhaps they were expecting the next one to fail spectacularly and did not want to celebrate until everyone was back safely? I wouldn’t use being moonstruck as any litmus test of “white competence”.
Think of a candidate winning an election. That’s how someone looks after a long and arduous struggle that leads to victory or accomplishment. That news conference displayed three men who were ashamed of themselves and afraid for themselves.
Ishabaka: “Reminds me of my relatives in Canada, who talk about their medical care as ‘free'”.
Free at point of use, you mean — like a streetlight. Everything gets paid for by someone somehow. I prefer streetlights to be paid out of my taxes rather than have to plug a nickel into each one as I walk by.
Counting the whole world as one bucket, the planet spent about 9.9% of GDP on health care in 2014:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS
Canada is running slightly above that at 10.4%. By comparison, OECD and high-income countries come in at 12.3-12.4%. while the U.S. comes in at a whopping 17.1%. How much healthier do you feel? You sure are spending a lot more.
It is very difficult for Americans to admit to the fact that not only is the USA the poster boy for corporate/political corruption, but we are the Homecoming Queen of being screwed hard for increased profit and diminishing reward. They convince themselves that they are “the Best” to deny reality and get back to the grind. It is so sad for those of us that remember it when it was so good.
Everyone knows that universal health care in Canada is not free. 100% more? Uh, no. For the most part, the costs here in Canada are covered by income taxes and while our taxes are somewhat higher, they’re nothing like 100% more than in America. We also DON’T have a falling life expectancy because of inadequacies in health care, for craps sake. What self-respecting first-world country would put up with that? Oh yea, I forgot – in America, the concept of “public good’ is considered communism, it’s dog-eat-dog, and “I’ve got mine, you go screw yourself.” Way to pull together as a society. No wonder the center cannot hold there anymore.
The concept of universal health care coverage is nothing more than following the basic economics of the insurance industry. You know, the premiums that EVERYONE pays cover the costs of those that need to make claims, and at some point, everyone is going to need health care. Seems to me that republicans have no problem with this concept when it comes to protecting their own businesses and property, but somehow, when it comes to health care, the concept doesn’t apply because, what, now we’re talking about “those” people and not things? How f*^ked up is that?
I am convinced that the great experiment called America is going down in flames because of terminal selfishness and personal greed. There is no “us” there anymore. Such a shame. America had promise at one point in the past, but that’s all history now.
The philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote that although democracy is the best political system, it requires citizens to be liberally educated (this is classical education), be politically active and concerned about the common good in order to succeed. I will make no comments about education because I think too much weight is being placed on the “name” of the institution rather than what is actually taken away in terms of knowledge and awareness. It does not appear than anyone is walking away with a liberal education in the classic sense. Voter turnout shows that the populace is not politically active, and one look at campaign promises and what voters elect tells you that no one is voting for, or if elected governing for, the common good. Hence, the problem you have here and in many Western democracies.
You are right, it requires political participation and we have preferred amusing ourselves to death.
Most people can’t really be educated. It’s not just a matter of cramming facts, but the ability to reason and beyond that, the acquisition of “taste”. College is wasted on those of average IQ.
What conclusion can we draw from this? The fewer people voting the better the results will be. In other words, it should only be for the qualified. We were supposed to be Republic, not a Democracy. Democracy is just rule by the Mob – which means rule by the Few who control the Mob.
Limited voice was the intention of the Founding Fathers as per the Federalist Papers. They clearly did not trust their average citizens to vote appropriately. That being said, the Founding Fathers clearly did not want the Republic to function in terms of the Common Good either – they were afraid of losing their privileged positions as the commoners voted themselves public education and other societal assets at the expense of their wealth. That is part of America’s problem; the system was designed to prevent endeavors for the Common Good and make everyone a single individual in society. As a result, the few can block what is harmful to them at the expense of the many.
The reverse is true in British parliamentary system. In essence, you have a benign dictatorship for 4-5 years where any bill can be passed, but if you do not like the outcome, you can boot the bums out. This allows for more nimble governance and quicker reactions to emerging problems.
Can ‘Critical Thinking’ be taught or learned?
“Can ‘Critical Thinking’ be taught or learned?”
Malthuss,
Yup, just like art. Some better at it then others. Few excel, many just go through the motions. Think of it as being shown how to paint by the numbers…this is what can be taught and learned….
Can Thwack or I be taught how to compose like our Host, or Janos? Well, the answer would have to be…to some degree…and that leaves a lot unsaid.
John: Many have said as much. You may well be right. But the answer still won’t be Democracy. And I guess it’s too late to switch to a Parliamentary System – which hasn’t saved Europe from Madness in any case.
In the End, Good Men are going to have to fight Evil. We’re not getting out of this without Churchill’s last fluid: sweat, tears, and the red, red, vino.
So naïve! But De Tocqueville said as much, “America is great because America is good”. Because of our obsession with what Mumford called “technics”, we fantasize that there is a System whereby we can avoid the need for morality and self sacrifice, the most famous being “the invisible hand” of Libertarianism.
Good morning James,
Greetings from Albany, NY. I’ve enjoyed reading you WMBH series since I’ve been to many of the places in which your story takes place. It makes it all that easier to visualize a very possible future.
I haven’t read the Geography of Nowhere yet, so maybe you have something to say about it in there, but since so much suburb has been built already, how would you suggest retrofitting them to salvage some of “the greatest misallocation of resources in human history?”
koyaanisqatsi.
Definition: ko.yaa.nis.katsi (from the Hopi language), n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life disintegrating. 4. life out of balance. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
Translation of the Hopi Prophecies Sung in the film: Koyaanisqatsi
“If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.”
“Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.”
“A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky which could burn the land and boil the oceans.”
http://funwithdad.net/funwithdad1koy.htm
Jim , you are the perennial shaman in a world annual virtue signaling.
-T
Also see the outstanding film of the same name. A mind bender.
Baraka (kind of a sequel) is also worthwhile.
I have always passed on to relatives and friends that Tesla cars and Musky is plain old scam, but if people don’t want to hear about it then what is the point?
I also think this will be a small issue as Society unwinds. If Trump screws up this week’s meet with China reps and unilaterally attempts to ‘solve’ North Korea all bets are off. Virtue signalling allows libs to puff and feel good about themselves. Trump pretending he knows what he is doing, supported by Repubics who want a rubber agenda stamp, is a far greater and more immediate danger than Green disconnect.
Imagine the state of the decay of the railroad infrastructure in the U.S.A. (as Jim emphatically and frequently points out) and its relation to out happy motoring civilization.
A real-life example:
The ONLY way to get from Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. to Atlanta, Ga. by rail is to take an AMTRAK named train, that runs once a day up past Jacksonville and Savannah, where by the way there a NO connecting trains that go to Atlanta, all the way (believe it or not) to Washington D.C..
Fucking Astounding!
Then make a connection, with another named train, after humorously, a transfer on a bus, and get to Atlanta after about 33 hours of total travel!!
To fly to Atlanta from south Florida, planes departing every hour, with all the attendant getting to the airport, TSA hassle, boarding flying then, after landing, ironically taking two trains getting to the car rental agency at the airport (cause taking the MARTA system kids just ain’t happenin’.)
Then having to drive to the final destination takes a minimum seven hours total if there is no traffic. Now add in the I-85 elevated highway mess with the crack-head’s induced blaze.
10 hours to drive to the destination via the Interstate system: I-95 to I-75 then I-85 which is now an official clusterfuck due to the highway’s major fire damage.
Holy shit folks – we are out of our collective minds here.
Now Elon Musk comes along with more of his high tech nonsense about electric cars, space tourism, and living on Mars. This is the same Elon Musk who was co-founder of Paypal; which is just another grift entity between the buyer and the seller when using a credit card (which have been accepted in commerce widely for over half a century.)
And to put the cherry on top of the iced cake, this same cyber-nabob, hyper-wealthy boob, wants to put driverless cars into an already super-saturated, near gridlocked, road system.
You need a flying car. They are now available for preorder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXuypU5lDsM
Driverless?
The limited range and charge time requirement would force people to drive less and more deliberately than they do now. Nobody considers that overall less driving helps the environment even with cars that pollute just as much. But what do I know. My obedience school degrees are from a west coast university so I must not know shit.
Jim, Mostly Off Topic: You and Dave touched on it, and it may not be in your primary wheelhouse, but would love to hear a podcast on the near/long-term probable effects of Islam, as it seems from where I’m sitting, it may be a tight race between Islamization and De-Financialization for the destruction of civilization…
Cheers
Yes I agree with you Kunstler. This whole motoring thing is utterly ridiculous. Amazing when you think about it. Look around you next time you’re stuck in traffic and realize everybody around you is making money for the oil companies. Just sitting there. In their cars. Cha ching! All because GE invented the light bulb. Remember the thing that got Standard Oil started was kerosene lamps.
Self-driving cars…….
NPR makes a lot of noise about self-driving cars. NPR goes on to say interstate truckers will soon be replaced with self-driving 18 wheelers. Sounds expensive. How long would it take to replace America’s fleet of people-driving cars? Before the oil runs out?
Probably not.
The number one Job Title is—what?
How many will be made jobless by the driverless push?
I dunno. How many farmhands lost their jobs when the tractor plow replaced the mule and moldboard plow? How many Blockbuster employees lost their jobs when streaming video replaced VHS tapes?
Things change. In theory, the increased efficiency & productivity of society as a whole benefits society as a whole.
The problem is not change and efficiency. The problem is an uber-class of one-percenters who rig the system to ensure that all the benefits flow into their coffers. But let’s not forget to cut their taxes, eh? Because, somehow, that’s important for our economy, though no one’s ever explained how.
Read ” Rise of the Robots”, Technology, and the threat of a jobless future by Martin Ford. I think it ranks up there with some of JHK’s books. It’s a pretty sobering and realistic look at some of the future problems. From other sources, magazines, etc., it’s been said that the job market will shrink by 38% within 15 years, which roughly agrees with Rise of the Robots
I would like to read a JHK article on Infrastructure.
Teslas are shiny, nice, pricey BUT they need roads to move on.
Will anyone be surprised if Elon ends up broke?
I only want him to wind up stuck on an asteroid. He can then call an Uber or something.
Perhaps a couple of JK Galbraith quotes will brighten the day. First let us look at recent details of US wealth by world standards(from Pew Research). In 2011 85% of out citizens ranked as high income and an additional 32% ranked as upper middle by comparison to 88% of the global population.
Galbraith:
“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.”
Snide remark of the day, “Let’s have a meeting and decide how YOU are going to change”.
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” That is a grand quotation my friend, and one that I have always found to be utterly correct!
I spent 15 years as a primary engineering contractor for a 200 year old publishing company and then 5 years as a direct hire. The CEO was a ratty little fellow that I only met a few times but was always suspect of. He was paid the equivalent compensation of 10,000 of the working level employees that did all of the grunt work picking, packing, shipping and processing the returns for this international giant of a company. His stock options, bonus checks and massive salary afforded him celebrity status and easily afford the $2M wedding thrown for his son and included all sorts of celebrity guests. Now I honestly don’t care in any fashion how much money any of these people make, because in the end it has no effect on what I make. I do however take issue when it comes to value paid for what a company gets from these high price office boys. This one was a real “value” at any price. We tried for years to convince him that E-books were the future, but he refused to consider our opinion. He felt that a warehouse full of 10 year old accounting textbooks would never lose value. Last I heard the 400k Returns Center had been shut down and the distribution operation was to be closed last year sometime. Ride it into the ground but skim off as much as you can first – wow, what a business model!
What could go wrong with the $12.5 trillion of direct consumer leading to consumers to buy stuff they can’t afford currently and results in a permanent and continues transfer of wealth from the poor to the investing classes?
While I like Tesla’s products, they do not address the core problem of land misuse. Let’s suppose we could power them by solar and wind. We’d still be a nation of car-dependent people. If the cars were autonomous, it probably would spur longer commutes…”hey I can sleep during my two-hour trip to the office and do work coming home!”
I’m not optimistic that we’ll wise up in time. After all, in the Great Depression, according to an academic source I read, Americans seemed more willing to give up their homes than their cars, and that was 8 decades of motoring ago.
The reason is people surrender home before wheels, is that the automobile is great for escaping a geographical point in time/space.
Makes a cozy bed down too (in a pinch.)
See the paradigmatic road antics of O.J. Simpson for more details.
The day when cars are used more for shelter than transportation may not be that far off.
Oh, you bet. People will live in their cars as they do now.
Recent article I saw commented on how autonomous cars will help the aged get around.
I’ve long viewed the automobile as nothing more than a very large, very heavy assisted mobility device.
Uber is the human pilot prototype for the AI that will be steering in the future. In these terms, Musk is in fact the genius he appears to be, and to poke another finger in the eye of Detroit auto engineers, they had over a hundred years to come up with a viable alternative to the ICE.
I don’t think Musk will become the DeLorean of his day.
Changing our long-abandoned central cities into self-sustaining local enterprises? Won’t happen without first solving our myriad societal problems, and they are so deeply entrenched that fundamental change can’t occur until after a collapse.
Ah, so there’s a name for this phenomenon: virtue signaling
It’s not just Prius drivers that engage in this. So do the military
and big industrial concerns, when it comes to soil and groundwater remediation and other token efforts to clean up their messes. Groovy and Green.
” The borrower in such a deal is sure to be “underwater” with collateral (the car) that is close to worthless well before the loan can be extinguished.”
Not only is the car worthless, the ‘dollars’ used to finance it are as well. see https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/modern-alchemy-gold-into-bytes/
From The Culture of Contentment(1992) Galbraith – note the date
“Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market. However in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there would be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits — a far from slight contribution to contentment — was permissible, as well as assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable. ”
Finc posed an important question last week when he asked why some think rebuilding from the ruins will be easier than remodeling.
What happened in past collapses? When Rome went down the tubes cities were abandoned. People built hill-top forts in rural farming areas to retreat to in times of trouble. The country-side in Europe is dotted with these dark-age and medieval strong-holds. Same deal with the eastern Mediterranean when their civilizations collapsed around three thousand years ago. People abandoned coastal cities, moved inland and settled around hill-top forts. The story of the biblical exodus from Egypt is a story of refugees running from the trouble of the times.
I think the question will be resources. First you need a reliable source of drinking water. Then you need a reliable source of food. Then you decide whether to abandon or rebuild or remodel.
People with Ivy League educations stand tall with the superb and superior sneer and poke you in the forehead and say words like “facts” and “evidence”.
See, they have the exalted degree. Even if it’s from a Little-Ivy like Colby, it entitles the forehead-poker to require you, Mister High School and Miss Inferior State College, to listen. The deal is this, according to them, THEY define what’s real, not you.
Well, as Kelly Anne sez, there’s alternative facts out there, meaning a whole reality that the Elite refuse to contemplate. Now, if that were the only problem, that’s one thing. But it isn’t. What Ivy Leaguers are doing is self-serving deception. Lying IOW for their own advantage. But that self-serving deception slides into self-deception where the liar starts to believe the lie. Much, much scarier this is.
Hence, the Coastal Bubble, where thick slices of baloney are the order of the day, like Elon’s toy car. Deception may help advance a cause, at least temporarily, but self-deception never does. See, I’m not religious, but, if I was given a choice, I’d believe in a Laughing Deity, out of our view, in our corner of the universe, that manages reality. And while this Laughing Deity will abide liars, he’s a joker and just loves to watch idiots self-destruct. It makes him laugh. Because in his set of rules it’s not pride that goeth before the fall, it’s self-deception.
This is scarier because this Laughing Deity isn’t too scrupulous about fairness. In his reality it’s ok that self-deceivers blow up not only themselves but everyone around them. Given that the Ivy League Believers-of-Their-Own-Bullshit pull the strings and run Wall Street and Washington, that gives them wide latitude to screw up a great number of people.
OK, there’s no such thing as a Laughing Deity, but the universe runs as if there is. The universe isn’t fair, and we’re letting delusional Ivy Leaguers ruin things. See, people that believe their own lies don’t go half-way, they aren’t like people that can distinguish fact from fiction.
Noise and speed are miraculous elixirs which make us feel vibrant and alive. The car combines them both. The electric car must deliver in speed what does not yield in noise. This is why whimpy, efficient electric cars are doomed to fail and zero to 60 in under 3secs will thrive.
This is pure Bokononism.
I DID say there’s no such thing as the Laughing Deity, didn’t I?
I only said that the universe operates as if there is.
Still pure Bokononism. You may be a reincarnation of old Bokonon himself. Here are the extant writings.
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/personal/bokonon.html
No doubt everyone’s heard about the bombs in St Petersburg train. 10 dead, 50 wounded.
Yzlamik over-exuberance by any chance?
And to do this dastardly deed on one of the world’s most beautiful mass transit systems. Bastards – I hope the Russians track the perpetrators down, execute them and their families. Terrorize the terrorists I say.
Plus will the Russkies be convinced to use their Ladas again for the daily commute? I do not think so.
Volodya,
A horrible example of asymmetrical warfare at it’s most cruel. Effective in changing the fabric of a society to one of fear, loathing, and a welcoming of the police state. OBL etc., extreme poverty, and immediate news coverage of any outrage fuels the war that will never end…cannot end. Malthusian doctrine insures it’s perpetuity.
That’s exactly what it is. I know what everybody’s thinking, it’s Muslims again. Given what happened, it’s a good bet that it is. So, if it really IS them again, what do you do? Well, we know where the funding comes from – Saudi Arabia and Gulf States – and we know where the ideological training comes from. But until now, it isn’t like there’s been any action. Instead the instigators are laughably lauded as “allies” and so they keep playing the double game and keep doing what they’re doing. But it only goes on as long as there’s oil money to fund it. When the oil runs dry, and it will, this comes to a stop.
When the oil runs dry, and it will, this comes to a stop.
Volodya,
Would that be the case? Overpopulation breeds poverty. Poverty breeds religion…religion breeds balkanization. The overall problem will boil down to roiling masses of poor, seeking succor in religion, with the disaffected further acting out at the suggestion of fringe elements of their faith…as is happening now. Funding? Neither small acts of kindness nor brutal acts of terror rely exclusively on funding…observe our Ghettos.
Billions of people…many poor, hungry, sexually repressed and without hope. Offer them paradise. Like Trump says…”What the Hell do you have to lose?”
And, of course, God loves the poor, if not, why would he have made so many of them.
Perhaps it’s “faked” like Boston was?
I think the Georgia free-way bridge burn is says all there is to say about the idea that we can routinely depend on technology as a means to efficiency.
Much like a Gulf oil “cap blow out” disaster – no one wants to delineate inestimable amounts of energy that it will take to keep current infrastructure intact.
How many gallons? To clean up the Gulf? How many gallons to fix a single Interstate bridge?
Inertia ….. hmm … status quo — maybe.
So Susan rice is unmasked as the Obama official who ordered the unmasking of Trump team members picked up in – cough – “incidental” surveillance during the campaign and transition. The story is that she ordered the unmasking multiple times.
Okey dokey, why don’t we just cut to the chase and stop this silliness. Stop pretending the surveillance was “incidental” and just come out and say it: Obama’s boys were spying on Trump for the sake of political advantage. They were trying to get info that could undermine the Trump presidency or unseat Trump altogether. As a hypothesis I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable. And as a conclusion I’ll bet it ends up not too far from the apples we’ve seen falling from the tree to date.
Here’s another prediction: The FBI will be compelled to investigate the continual rain of reports of intelligence and official malfeasance during the latter months of Obama’s tenure. And Comey’s fellas will conduct a diligent investigation. And no matter that the thick and sticky muck of malpractice was sucking Comey’s boots off his feet, Comey will get his fat face in front of the cameras and conclude that there was nothing that crossed the line into illegality.
So what was the nature this “incidental” surveillance? Was somebody following someone else to see who was meeting with whom, then a report written up? I’d consider that to be legal, even ethical. But what if it was electronic in nature,
…in nature? Then it’s illegal and unethical. IOW, iis this issue real or more making a mountain out of a molehill?
Big problem isn’t it, to sort out what’s bullshit and what’s not.
For all the blather about Republican-Russian Collusion, where’s the proof? Crapper and Morrell say there’s no evidence.
They mutter about Russian interference, as if it’s something new, about Fake News, as if THAT’S something new, they say there’s more than circumstantial evidence, they say the FBI has been investigating since Mar 2106. It’s been along while. Time to put up or shut up.
I’ll venture this prediction too, ALL of it is meant to up-end the results of an election that the Establishment can’t live with, not even Republicans. All of it, including and especially surveillance on Trump.
And, while we’re at it, what about the Flynn leak, a felony if there ever was one.
Yes, Trump has been completely vindicated. Susan Rice must go down for this. Consider her the Lamb who suffers for all in the corrupt Obama and Clinton machine. And yeah, that man of peachable integrity has to go too: up, down any which way as long as it’s out.
The reason the Tessa’s are big is because they need that size/weight of a battery to get any decent mileage per charge. It’s definitely a rich man’s toy at the moment. Forgetting the non green issue of ii is one thing, but practicallt speaking, the charge up time is the real stumbling block so far. The is something about Musk the rubs me the wrong way. It’s a certain smugness and arrogance the oozes out of his pores. He’s a wannabe Steve Jobs of this century .
Agreed on Musk. He’s a pompous little ass, whose technological innovation is little more than a late stage variation on a 19th century invention (the automobile), which only came to maturity in the 20th century based on a mid-century wealth surplus in a handful of countries based on an otherwise disastrous world war that gave them temporary competitive advantage based on exploitation of non-renewable resources (oil specifically, carbon based energy in general) which would begin to run out less than a half century later. Viewed historically, the carbon based fuel era will be little more than a blip, and nothing about electric vehicles will change that equation in the least.
I don’t usually engage with the scientifically-illiterate- by-choice, but I gotta respond:
Anyone paying attention to history has good reason to be cynical or skeptical. But come on people, it’s not that hard to fathom that we went to the moon, landed, and returned more than once. To argue that we didn’t is up there in Ridiculousness with the flat-earthers. The hard part of the enterprise is leaving earth’s grip… and all those people gathered at Cape Canaveral in the late sixties and early seventies to watch the launches are all in on the conspiracy too?
What’s so hard to believe about it? Sure, it was technologically challenging, stretching the limits of materials Engineering in its time, Icbm’s are real too and they too leave earth’s atmosphere.
One final Counterpoint: people are fallible, especially in the collective and it would be really hard to pull off
Such a huge hoax with so many people involved in it. The simplest explanation is usually the right one. So if people want to know where all the money went, they should look elsewhere.
The hard part of the enterprise is leaving earth’s grip
******************
Nope.
Thats one of the easy math problems.
One of the least believable parts of the Apollo missions is the idea of the Lunar module blasting off from the moon and docking with the orbiting Command module in only 6 hours (using 1969 technology)
It takes 2 days to dock with the International $pace $tation and thats with all the tracking and radar stations right here on Earth?
Once docked,
it takes two hours just to open the God damn hatch?
It wasn’t a factor of 1969 technology, thwack, it has more to do with logistics/telemetry reagrading a body 1/3 the size of Earth.
You are right, though, that leaving earth’s gravity is a math problem, just like the rest of it. (one drawn up mostly by Newton).
One can imagine a conspiracy inside their microwave oven if they try hard enough.
I mean “regarding” not “regrading”
It wasn’t a factor of 1969 technology, thwack,
*************************
Well it is now;
thats why they ain’t tryin to “go back” any time soon.
The other big “tell” is they don’t seem to have weighed the moon rocks before blasting off?
How do you calculate your thrust if you don’t know your exact weight?
BTW- both the Saturn 5 and the Soviet N-1 were completely unnecessary. Both nations could have easily split the weigh of the components in half and made two launches using smaller rockets, and then docked in space for the cis lunar journey.
“thats why they ain’t tryin to “go back” any time soon.”
Thwack,
Is it inconceivable that an obscenely expensive base on the Moon would not be militarily advantageous? Understand the metric.
How do you say “diminishing returns” in Ebonic?
A moon base would be cheaper and more efficient than a $100 billion dollar space station that will burn up on de-orbit in 7 years or less.
You do realize thats whats gonna happen to it?
Why would they need to know the weight of the rocks? They were able then (as now) to control the amount and duration of thrust on non-solid fuel rockets to correct or fine-tune trajectories and arrive where they want. The crude (by today’s standards) on-board computers were able to help them in the moment.
Apollo 13 was a good example of the need to adjust thrust mid-stroke without the anticipated load…
…on that note, our out-sized rockets (and the Soviets’) were examples of our mutual occupation with the phallic “mine’s bigger” debate, analogous to the Chicago-NewYork skyscraper competition of the 20th century. Can’t be helped-boys will be boys.
They were able then (as now) to control the amount and duration of thrust on non-solid fuel rockets to correct or fine-tune trajectories and arrive where they want.
******************************
Ok, but you can’t make it up as you go because you don’t have unlimited fuel; thats why its all scripted; just like it is here on Earth.
If you “guess” at the rendezvous you will overshoot or undershoot; then you hafta do another entire orbit; why do you think it takes 2 DAYS to dock at the I$$?
And thats with the benefit of GPS?
In 1969, rocket thrusts were far less accurate, especially the hypergolics; ideal VS measured were two completely different things; now you wanna throw in a question mark regarding the mass of the lunar module blasting off from the moon?
File that under shit that never happened.
Also,
if hypergolics are as toxic as advertised, how were these astronauts able to walk around the LM in their space suits, and then bring these space suits back inside the LM?
Both the landing site and the LM itself would have been contaminated with hypergolic residue.
That stuff is very nasty; so nasty they don’t even use reaction control thrusters near the I$$?
Absolutely correct! It’s funny, when I read the posts upthread, I immediately thought of the flat-earthers, too. I considered responding but I didn’t want to put out the time and energy. These guys will spend hours thinking up reasons why a moon landing couldn’t occur. Many non-believers are conspiracy nuts. Besides incipient paranoia, I place blame on our educational system for not teaching critical thinking.
I place the blame on baby boomers who having destroyed the country; are desparate to use the fake moon landings to salvage some kind of legacy.
Just sayin
Thwack,
I’ll give you the Moon Landings…you give us back Detroit….
How bout I give you the finger; and you give me that last breath you just took?
“How bout I give you the finger; and you give me that last breath you just took?”
Thwack,
Had an edge, but not bad….
Exactly. The so called Greatest Generation. I am part of them, and sick of them, especially the conservatives who use the moon landings almost to help them meditate. “Apolloooooo, Apolloooooo, Apollooooo.”
Uh, the Greatest Generation was from the Great Depression and WW2. Are you telling me you are in your 90’s?
Ooops! No I’m a Baby Boomer.
I place blame on our educational system for not teaching critical thinking.
What changes do you recommend?
And starting at what grade in school?
We are Brothers in Rhetoric, beantownhill!
Good day sir!
And good day to you, too. It’s rather pleasant communicating with someone who has more than half a brain.
To argue that we didn’t is up there in Ridiculousness with the flat-earthers.
Fucking Bullshit! And I think most of the people arguing that it didn’t actually happen are simply saying that it didn’t happen, not that it couldn’t happen. I’m not arguing either for or against in this particular case, but think about it, up against a self-imposed deadline imposed by the fallen hero Kennedy in 1961, and given the rather obvious technological, budgetary, and potential PR limitations of the day (risk of spectacular failure), wouldn’t it have made sense to just fake the damn thing and been done with it?
Large, elaborate hoaxes are quite easily pulled off every day, most of which you are no doubt blissfully unaware. They are nothing more than elaborate magic shows. By the way, this discussion applies to MUCH MORE than faked moon landings, in case you haven’t guessed!
1.) FIRST RULE of magic shows, Big Lies, conspiracy theories, or what have you: GO BIG OR STAY AT HOME! THE BIGGER THE BETTER!!! The fact that lies are BIG is usually an implied signal to most people that they couldn’t possibly be LIES in the first place.
2.) Prepare the ground. Mount a well-orchestrated, comprehensive PR campaign well ahead of time to convince the public of the realistic possibility of the magic act you’re about to perform, then align your act with those preconditioned beliefs. Carrot.
3.) Screen and limit the cadre to a relatively small, deeply committed cohort, then convince them of the rightness of the effort. Add in other personal perks as necessary to sweeten the deal. Segregate them by function and strictly limit their overall knowledge of the project on a need to know basis. Carrot.
4.) Identify key personal and familial vulnerabilities on all personnel and let them know that they are vulnerable to being compromised, with no measures whatsoever considered too extreme for non-compliance. Stick.
5.) Remind them that any accusations of “conspiracy theory” on their part will be met with public disbelief and personal/professional ridicule, just like you’re doing here, and then remind them once again that #3 will then apply. Bigger stick.
6.) Optional. Enlist Hollywood to make a movie about said public conspiracy, thereby removing the sting of any accusations and publicly ridiculing it.
7.) Plan a fail-safe option in case anything goes spectacularly wrong. Have multiple logical perps and plans identified to take the fall, including as many of the lower level actual conspirators as possible, of course. Their righteous denials after the fact will only further convict them in the court of public opinion.
8.) Execute the plan and relax in the sure knowledge that if you prepared the ground and aligned your plan with public beliefs properly in step 1, within hours or days at most, your magic show will be part of the largely subconscious national/public mythology, from which it will likely never</i) be unseated, no matter how many ugly "facts" rear their heads years, decades, or centuries later.
Questions?
My apologies. I fucked up the bold off tag behind ‘BETTER!!!’
Oh, f— off, sh– stain.
LOL! Your such a pleasant little ignorant dipshit, aren’t you Malthuss? You’re no doubt one of the mindless little shit-eating cretins conspiracies are aimed at.
Okay, good point, in saying there are many who think we didn’t go to the moon, and not that we couldn’t.
I’m still sticking with the argument, however, that there is no good reason to hatch a big Cluster-fuck-in-the-making of a hoax for comparably little return and lots of risk. That is not to say that the gubmint hasn’t pulled off some grand hat-tricks before (JFK, likely MLK).
I just don’t believe sane people believe there were tens of thousands of individuals working on Apollo (and perhaps hundreds in Hollywood) who were duped, let alone complicit in a grand deception. Has any credible persons stepped up to say it was all a ruse? I don’t think so. The prize for going to the moon and returning was self-evident: national pride in the face of the Soviets trying to do the exact effing thing.
Do you have any questions now?
Edit:
It may well be about more than faked moon landings,
But I have to shut knuckleheaded arguments down on this subject in the name of Reason.
I just don’t believe sane people believe there were tens of thousands of individuals working on Apollo (and perhaps hundreds in Hollywood) who were duped, let alone complicit in a grand deception.
*********************
Because of the time sensitive nature of space flight due to the fact that EVERYTHING is moving from the point of ignition; any successful mission must by design be highly scripted;
just
like
a
theatrical production.
So it would have been pretty easy to fake it since it was just a bunch of guy looking at screens and ready telemetry like they had done hundreds of times before.
Only a few people had to know the source of the data?
Delta Force/Navy Seals have their raids and operations scripted too.
Every simulation should seem real if its done correctly.
Finally,
If you want to work in the aerospace industry, you better not question the Apollo moon landings.
Its very similar to the way college professors in the hard sciences must sign onto Darwinian Evolution in order to get a good teaching position.
If you even challenge evolution by accident; your peers will start looking at you “sideways” with a raised eyebrow.
Questioning the Apollo moon landings almost,
ALMOST
has the same status as holocaust denial.
“If you want to work in the aerospace industry, you better not question the Apollo moon landings.
Its very similar to the way college professors in the hard sciences must sign onto Darwinian Evolution in order to get a good teaching position.”
Sir, this is just as it should be! This is the empirical world here, after all. They need rational, reasonable people in their ranks when lives and profits are on the line.
As for teaching positions, there is no theory more congruent with the observed natural world than Darwinism. I would personally love to hand credit for our World to a bearded man in the clouds, but like Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
~I celebrate the migration of western civilization out of the dark ages and don’t want to head that way again because of intellectual laziness. We’ll get there anyways via our modern excesses and lack of foresight.
As for teaching positions, there is no theory more congruent with the observed natural world than Darwinism.
***************************
And what is Darwin’s mechanism for the production of NEW information?
Darwin’s mechanism for the production of new information??
I don’t have the answer to that, as I don’t understand the question.
Where did the instructions (DNA) come from for making a dog?
THWACK!
C’mon bruh!
“Where did the instructions (DNA) come from for making a dog?”
Were you paying attention in your science classes in school?
Did you never take any interest in this stuff?
Well, it’s pretty well-known and accepted that dogs originated from wolves who liked hanging out near the campfires of our ancestors. The more passive and less Alpha wolves we’re tolerated and probably got access to food scraps. They became had a survival advantage, and became domesticated over many generations. The Russians did a fast track demonstration of this phenomenon with red foxes.
Natural selection, my daww!
Well, it’s pretty well-known and accepted that dogs originated from wolves
****************************
So you are telling me the instructions for making the first dog came from a KIND of dog?
That makes sense.
Did the instructions for making the first cat come from a KIND of dog?
There was a huge incentive to solve technological problems in 1961 toward the ultimate goal of going to the moon, because there would have been a lot of military applications for these new technologies–and we sure as hell we’re going to wait for the Soviets to beat us to it. It’s quite simple really, if you take off your tin hat and let the truth in, DA. Yeah it was a huge risk, but NASA was still fueling innovation. I still got to ask: where did those big rockets go to, that all those thousands of people watched exit the atmosphere at Cape Canaveral? They went somewhere, right? Seems to me they may as well have just gone ahead and went to the moon for a little National prestige. Way more to be gained from that then to feign it in Hollywood. And where will the whistleblowers then? Do you have a conspiracy theory to cover that one?
And would you care to enlighten me (and the ignorant public) on the other conspiracies that I am so blissfully unaware of?
For the record, I’m sure there are some legitimate ones, but this is not one of them.
Edit:
Where WERE the whistleblowers then?
This JHK website seems to be increasingly a refuge for kooky conspiracy theorists, unabashed racists, people resistant to change of any sort, and folks with an astounding ignorance of basic economics.
Which is why I hardly come here any more. Back in the day, JHK had a lot of insightful things to say about our societal misallocation of resources. But after his breathless predictions of 23 of our last two economic crises, I kind of lost interest.
I don’t blame you one bit; I feel the same way.
Some people are happier living in willful delusion in what I often assume to be a fairly enlightened age but that’s when I’m feeling optimistic.
It’s been a long slog out of the dark ages and into the enlightenment, Renaissance, and up to the present. We have a long ways to go but I’m going to fight like hell against idiocy and the Idiocracy
Van Allen belts are really stylish this season. They are sized for most any discerning planet intent on protecting themselves from incoming hazards or outgoing ( fleeing ) Iifeforms. More like fences, really. Can’t be climbed.
Climbing out of a gravity well is simple, just walk backwards. The only way to make it safer would be carbon fibre super conducting discs that capture and redirect electric thrusters. Gravity mirrors would serve as orbital thrusters for tight maneuvering.
Volodya – “I think the question will be resources. First you need a reliable source of drinking water. Then you need a reliable source of food. Then you decide whether to abandon or rebuild or remodel.’
Population density at the end of the Roman Empire was about 21 per square K. Today in the US about 84 per square K. The resources as you describe will be key. However the concept of an agrarian society was still fresh on the mind of the populace. We have 100s of thousands of citizens who cannot even get the idea of physical labor to remain in their consciousness for even a fleeting moment. A temporary shelter (our society) is a boon to one seeking to build a more permanent structure. Although I am asocial as a rule, the horror of collapse gives me reason enough to care for my fellow deplorables.
Interesting… Well-known conspiracy-theorist Webster Tarpley outs himself as a Crypto-Clintonoid
http://tarpley.net/
And if you think about it, all his hit-jobs were targeted political opponents of Hillary Clinton and British/Venetian oligarchy (The Moneychangers) – the main competitors of Rockefeller-led Manhattan Banking Pirates.
All those “false-flags” and “inside jobs” and as an outcome – a complete apathy and nihilism of American society.
The short term costs of slathering on a little joint compound on the cracks in your drywall is far less than fixing the foundation. Realistically it will take trillions of dollars worth of material and effort to remake the US infrastructure into walkable, sustainable, neighborhoods with all the required amenities. Half of all the oil has already gone into its construction and maintenance. And a big chunk of coal and natural gas, too. It’s still cheaper in the short term to buy Tesla cars and wind turbines than fix the underlying problem even though the electric cars and turbines are arguably making the problem worse. The supreme irony is that for the vast majority of Unitedstatesians, to work toward real sustainability would be a one-way ticket to destitution.
You don’t give up before starting a difficult task. You’re right about the cost, but we’re still here after spending many trillions bailing out TBTF banks and conducting pointless wars.
We also don’t have to re-do everything all at once. Heading in the right direction is a journey.
All you have to do is sell it without concrete.
Walkable, bikable, cart+ablle thoroughfares can be sustained indefinitely with shovels, brooms, and gumption.
I don’t know, what’s the problem? Electric-powered buses – so called trolleybuses – make perfect sense in public transportation too. I used to ride them when I was a kid:
http://ymtram.mashke.org/russia/blagoveschensk/photos/blagov21070.jpg
As for the high price of the Tesla car – it is just the first models. Let the rich folks in SF test them out and help make mainstream, after they will be on parity with gasoline cars.
As for generation of electricity, waste-free nuclear on U-238 is a way to go. 400 years of Uranium is guaranteed. In Russia, the first completely waste-free industrial nuclear reactor is under construction.
What the fuss is about?
Oh, yeah – one more thing, We need to go to Mars just to keep our head raised.
It is not about the money, it is about the antonym to the word depression – optimism.
Yes, Western Man is Promethean. We have needs others don’t have. But this shouldn’t be at the expense of our Earthly well being. It’s Johnathan Livingston Seagull vs Glass Seagall.
It’s Steagall, but nice play on words nevertheless.
Right. Man needs a frontier to keep going.
Whats wrong with gold chains, drum beats and pussy?
Notice how MSM and even the few remaining car mags never mention the huge problem of serious down time with electric autos. The country has been use to waiting only a few minutes to get a full gasoline recharge for over one hundred years. Electrics will only be good for multi car families for quite some time….. oh crap, forgot to charge the dam thing, hope the (fill in the blank) doesn’t matter if I’m six hours late. Cheaper electrics do NOT solve the charge issue for cryin out loud!
They’ll get used to plug the damn thing overnight. No biggy,
When your grill’s propane tank runs out you no longer get it refilled, you exchange it for one already filled.
Slide out the empty battery, slide in the recharged one.
Dear Mr. Kunstler
I absolutely enjoy reading your posts and have read a number of your books as well. I agree with a fair bit of what you write too. Plus, I agree with the ‘nullity’ of the suburbs; I happen to live in one and this place is as sterile as you can imagine. I live in a Phoenix exurb.
Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t invest $500K+ (so far) in this lifestyle to enjoy the nullity. Here, I have no snow to shovel, no grass to mow, and no leaves to rake. I do have a nice pool to swim in, which keeps my 50+ body in better shape than most 30 year olds. Plus, we get lots of sun here – and while I don’t believe in tanning and direct exposure, blue skies and bright sun are positively linked to mental well-being. It works for me.
In my case, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to afford overseas homes as well, and I’ve spent about half my life abroad. I have condos in Asia (related to my work) and another one along the southern coast of Spain. In NE Asia we certainly live in a walkable area with good public transport. We walk everywhere. Our 11 year old car has about 40K on it (though it’s getting pretty dinged up). Our Andalusian village in Spain is indeed very walkable and has a lovely center of town with restaurants, great old architecture and plenty of night life. We love it. We don’t have or need a car there. We walk down to the beach and pretty much everywhere.
However, when we selected our USA home we wanted to be relatively close to a major airport but not close to the city center (we also ruled out snow, a lawn to mow, and grass to cut too, and wanted to be near the west coast). In Asia, the people around us (and there are many many people around us), are hardworking, relatively quiet, considerate, and law-abiding. In Spain, we’re surrounded by Brits who have fled the UK. They’re mainly law-abiding, not as quiet as our Asian neighbors but considerate in general, educated, and mostly middle class or up. And they are there to golf. There are also bunches of Scandinavians and they’re also good neighbors. We’ve made good friends there. And that brings me to why the suburbs are necessary in the USA: it’s where you have the greatest probability of getting good neighbors provided you spend a certain amount (or up). We set our lower limit to $500K to ensure that those who can’t afford that number won’t live nearby. In the USA, the type of living arrangement you describe in this article can certainly be built, but some of the people who come to inhabit it will drive others out. Frankly, I don’t ever want to live or be around inconsiderate, anti-social, non-law-abiding people. When selecting a place to live, when you select the place with the lowest probability of having such terrible neighbors, what you get is the suburbs. It’s not about race; it’s about types of people. Horrible neighbors tend to exist in recognizable areas (again not linked to race) and those of us who wish to put distance between our families and those types simply will not live in or go to such areas.
And yes, areas like certain sections of San Francisco, for instance, are perfectly walkable, safe, and have a ‘village-type’ vibe, where a car is not necessary, and they are relatively safe. But if all you’ve got is a measly $500K, you can forget those places.
Like most of the Elite, you’re kidding yourself. It is about race. The higher Elite know this and foisted Blacks on Whites in order to destroy them. Remember, where Blacks are, Africa is. Spain is profoundly threatened by Muslims and Black Africans. It was conquered once and may be again.
We didn’t think of race at all. In fact, my spouse is of another race. We wanted mainly peace. We like quiet. There are a lot of retired folks around here, both black and white. For many, it may be about race but that was not our consideration. We considered that those who can afford this type of area (and $500K does not buy luxury around here) simply are more apt to be good neighbors. And by and large it’s been the case in the few years we’ve had this place — though we’re only here a few months out of the year (like many in the hotter parts of AZ).
No one cranks up the jams.
No one burns rubber.
No one blasts a sub-woofer from their vehicle.
There are no loud, drunken block parties.
There are no menacing dogs.
There are no gangs of youth roaming with nothing to do.
There are (to the best of our knowledge) no ‘broken families’ – lots of couples of all ages and races. We’ve gotten to know our neighbors. We’re the unusual ones in fact so they approach us.
It’s pretty bland. We bought new and really upgraded. Our house is a nice place to be, and our area is perpetually peaceful.
Prices have risen considerably since we purchased. Taxes are less than $3K. 🙂
Tucson we felt was too left field. Could mean higher property taxes.
You didn’t think of race at all because where Whites are is where the money is – and the freedoms that make it worthwhile. It’s not some kind of coincidence – nor is the invasion of the West from the 3rd World. Read
Wealth and the IQ of Nations by Lynn and Vanahem. The President of Finland was pressured into denouncing his own son who was one of the authors. Finland, like the rest of Europe, is slated for destruction. The chosen instrument is Somali Muslims.
Janos, you very wise indeed with respect to globalist method of using low life savage for conquest through cultural destruction.
red China now prepared to serve as Bilderberg enforcement division.
-onehunglo
The most common form of American virtue signalling, JHK has failed to mention, is how much money one has, how many homes, where they are, and how dinged up their 11 year old $40k car is.
Your area is not “perpetually” peaceful. Indians were genocided out of the area prior to the slaughter of thousands of men and women in the Mexican-American war. The river that fed Phoenix was killed, too, taking with it the Vaquita dolphin and the drinking water for numerous Mexican towns.
The aquifers were killed; the coyotes and bison driven out.
I am sure you are aware on some level that the lifestyle you bought comes at the expense of others.
h1, Tucson would have been a better choice. Smaller and more picturesque with less crime. Granted, you’re fairly safe with that 500k barrier. You can have “nullity” anywhere.
Like you, I enjoy living with my own kind. A lot of it is about race, however. I’ll let the Left practice what they preach by moving into minority neighborhoods, or allowing their current domiciles to become “sanctuary” dwellings.
Going to Spain to golf? Those Brits certainly need to have their “balls buried with the old bag” back in England.
I’ve got nowhere near a “measly” 500k, and that much isn’t necessary to live well.
Fucking elite, saying it isn’t about race! time for you to run into some
Crips or ms13! You have a home in Africa?
Is any farming done in your area? having been to Nevada and Arizona, the lack of rain and greenery was unpleasant.
I love desert landscaping. We have low-water plants and palms. We also have succulents. The yard is what is called ‘xeriscaped’. Water emitters run on a programmable timer. I can program it via my phone from anywhere. Like many desert homes, we have gravel instead of grass, with deer grass, purple lantana, bougainvillea, and even citrus fruit trees. There is no lack of greenery here, and the sky is very blue. Really this part of the world is lovely. They’ve done very well landscaping many public areas.
Not too far away is cotton growing. Lettuce, hay, cattle scattered here and around the state.
We get the monsoons during the summer. Actually, the Sonoran desert is fairly green, comparatively.
So don’t be fooled. The desert has its wonders. Long term water supply? A major concern. Happy motoring absolutely necessary.
And what a motor! I bought a nice one. So nice I had to buy another one to keep the miles off of it. Yes, a car is necessary in AZ no doubt about it. Regarding the monsoons I have only seen one and it was minor. I am not here in summer and we have a yard guy, a pool guy and a bug guy, like most around here. Long term? I wholly agree: our plan does in fact rely on the ‘greater fool’ theory: someone will eventually come along and pay us handsomely for this wood-framed pile of stucco and painted drywall sitting on a concrete slab with a large blue puddle behind it in the middle of the desert.
On the face of it, living here is absurd.
Before the SHTF, however, we’ll be long gone. We won’t want to maintain such a large place when we hit 80 or so, assuming we get there. But for now falling asleep on the back terrace while listening to the water feature on the pool and looking over the mountains on a lovely, lovely afternoon (like today – it’s just about 80 outside – perfect!!) will do fine.
You would like “Horse Heaven Hills” near Yakima. They put in sprinklers in every yard since they have viaducts coming down from the mountains with almost freezing water twelve feet wide and three feet deep, and the apples orchard s have apples the size of our canteloupes. Lots of snowbirds like it.
If it is about race, that happened as a by-product. We’d be fine living around any race in this type of area, because if they could afford it, we’d assume they’d make good neighbors. Regardless of race, people are generally the same. It may have more to do with education, class, upbringing, and opportunity, but generally those intractable and linked factors don’t figure into a decision about where to buy when setting up a new home. We had to go with the best odds.
And yes we live right on a golf course in the Marbella area, though I don’t golf very well or very much. It’s a great way to make friends though. Plenty of people chug their way through nine holes and have fun doing it. The courses are like paradise too and the cost of living is low there. Spain has rough edges though and the bureaucracy is difficult. The USA has bureaucracy to worry about (for us anyway) and things run smoothly. Where we live in Asia the bureaucracy is efficient but life can be boring there. Not much variety. Expensive too. When I tire of one place, I get on a plane.
Well, meant’ no bureaucracy’ about the USA
There are no successful Black nations. Keep saying it to yourself. Why? Because it’s true and you have a lot of resistance to overcome in order to accept it.
Be glad, because if there was a successful black nation, you would have to kill yourself; probably by drinking yourself to death.
This shit stain comes on here to gloat about how much fucking money he has, and recycled horseshit about black inferiority is all you’ve got Janos? You REALLY ARE rather pathetic, aren’t you?
This is for Tak and DA—-
Did you inform your colleagues that white Americans are dying in the swamps of sadness? Aha!
You’re a racist.
Do you advocate for any border besides university admissions and velvet ropes?
An avowed White nationalist.
Point out that blacks commit more violent crime per capita?
Might as well pull the robes out of the closet, son, because you’ve just been initiated into the Klan. Don’t have any robes? That’s okay, everyone else can see them.
DA seems to prove my point in a way: DA, I am very glad not to have to live anywhere near you. Not for your race but for just the type of person you are.
YOU are why suburbs exist. People like me are repelled by people like you, for good reasons, as exemplified in your post.
“because if there was a successful black nation, you would have to kill yourself”
Thwack,
Yes, and IF your Aunt had balls, she’d be your uncle,
And IF wishes were fishes, we’d all eat healthier,
And IF “ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we would all
have a merry Kwanza.
Wishes are not fishes,
Ifs and buts are not candy and nuts.
And your aunt probably doesn’t have balls.
Janos lives. Do you really believe he would not celebrate the success of a black nation considered successful? We all would. It would be an example that would inspire hope in all of us.
Let us set our sights a bit lower…how about the administration of a great city? C’mon, Thwack, give us something we can point to so that we might provide argument for the racists among us. I await your examples.
Thwack, give us something we can point to so that we might provide argument for the racists among us.
***************************
Racists don’t need a rational explanation or excuse to practice racism.
Thats what racism means.
You are reading the book upside down.
If you can read the book upside down and still comprehend the truth, ah never mind.
I live in a Phoenix exurb. – health1
===========
The first business trip I made to Phoenix I stepped off the plane into 115 degree heat. Thank God it was ‘dry’ heat. Riiight!
On my second trip it was ‘only’ 112.
Actually the heat is amazing. I felt it while looking for our home.
We leave in summer. My electric bill for one May was $400 though. We keep it at 30C inside while not here.
It could be argued the USA was in far worse shape in ’69 .
CERTAINLY NOT BY ME AND MANY OTHERS
Even people with Ivy League educations believe that the electric car is a “solution” —That tells me more about Human Nature than it does about elite schools.
I can’t believe Jim wrote this piece. – wayfarer
============
What is it about this piece that you can’t believe?
True. But it isn’t just Blacks and Latinos that are having performance issues in school. – John
=============
‘performance issues’……….hahaha
OMG, the euphemisms the liberals come up with!
In the old days you were a lush, a boozehound, or a drunk; today you ‘suffer from substance abuse.’
Q,
Suffer? Hell no, that would be demeaning, implying infirmity…they have “addictive personalities”….
they are having performance issues in school
—-Like dropping out?
I had to scroll nearly to the top o the comments to see Johns
comment.
The hilarity of it escaped me when I read it a few hours ago.
Thanks, maestro.
OMG, the euphemisms the liberals come up with! – Q.
===============
I think “undocumented immigrant” is my current favorite.
Second might be “developmentally delayed” for retarded.
How about, “follically challenged”? Or “oxygen thief” for people others would call “trailer trash”. The put-downs become infinitismal when you can string a lie and a truth together.
JHK–Palin has a ‘special needs’ child.
You mean IQ 40?
Or, how about “sex worker.”
DA went off on me.
Since you are the Edit Go To Guy–how is this? How many errors?
DA April 3, 2017 at 10:15 pm #
LOL! Your such a pleasant little ignorant dipshit, aren’t you Malthuss? You’re no doubt one of the mindless little shit-eating cretins conspiracies are aimed at.
[Is the ‘your’ incorrect? Yet DA then uses ‘you’re’ correctly].
I assume DA does not notice the Chemtrails that are appearing, worldwide.
A note on long-distance driving with a Tesla–we drove from San Jose to Salt Lake City in January to attend my mom’s 80th birthday party. There were Tesla charging stations at the Chevrons across Nevada on Interstate 80. I have no idea how long you have to sit and wait for it to charge? The first one I saw was in boring Lovelock, NV. Trust me, you don’t want to spend more than 3 minutes in that town!
My ride is a 2004 Honda Odyssey. Paid cash for it in 2004 and I have 196,000 miles on it. Amazing car with great pick-up and the cops never notice I’m speeding because minivans are so boring it’s like they have an invisibility shield.
Jen in San Jose
Lovelock is where they found the red haired seven foot plus mummies. They’ve since disappeared. Any evidence that Whites were here long ago is forbidden knowledge. This particular group might have been quite evil. The Utes tell of how they were cannibals and how they and a confederation of other tribes defeated them and wiped them out to the last man. But the Indians did things like that to good Whites too, so who is to say? We don’t have the other side’s pov.
Any evidence that Whites were here long ago is forbidden knowledge.
***********************
they were brought here as slaves.
Janos – do you read Taki Mag? If so, did you read the recent article by Jim Goad on the ‘Hoteps’? Thoughts? Opinions?
I dont think that I saw that.
I checked it out – no problem with it. Just a straw in hurricane though. In my view, genes tend to define much of temperament as well as physical traits. Thus little retriever breeds retrieve – it’s not “culture”. Blacks seem naturally to gravitate towards incredible levels of resentment and of course violence and criminality. That a few are free of this is to be expected. I may have even met a few.
Goad is a complex and apparently degenerate figure. His “Redneck Manifesto” was one of the first racially tinged books I read. Yet he has never crossed the Rubicon and become one of us. Instead, he seems obsessed with Blacks, living with a Black woman while he writes against them, always holding out hope for some kind of Trans-Racial Apotheosis. That could only be Jefferson’s greatest fear: the mixing and blending out of the two races. To prevent that, he wanted them sent out of America.
In any case, this article is just more of the same from Goad – a fine writer of course and worth reading. But I don’t because we have a galaxy of our own now and it’s growing rapidly. More stars all the time. He’s far away now, lost in the growing light of new glory.
That could only be Jefferson’s greatest fear: the mixing and blending out of the two races. To prevent that, he wanted them sent out of America.
*************************
Including the one he was fucking?
Did you hear the one about the Kandahar Giant? He was sitting in a bar with a keg ( literally ) in one hand and this guy with a machine gun walked in, and…
I know that region well. On one particular trip I decided to ride a Trailways bus out to San Francisco. On the bus there were a couple of obviously high passengers who suddenly decided it was a good idea to depart the bus on some desolate patch of the salt flats. Where they were going only God knows but the bus driver was only two eager to unload those two nutjobs.
Later on the the trip, just out of Elko, an young black male lifted a wallet out of a drunk female passengers purse. He thought I was sleeping but I saw it all and said nothing. I rationalized that she sort of deserved it, being drunk and all, but the main reason I stayed mum was I did not want to get involved in any legal procedures in out of the way regions.
An accusation and found wallet probably would have solved the crime quick enough but like you typed, I have seen those kind of towns and no thanks.
That you admit to such an act of cowardice is indeed amazing.
LOL…obviously poor Mathuss, you’ve never been on a Wild Wild West trailway bus ride.
Embroiled in a criminal fiasco in Elko Nevada over a drunk prostitute and young black criminal…yeah that sounds like a wise idea!
So now she is a hooker. A pertinent detail you left out.
My mother defended [in a store, not a court of law] a woman who was about to be pick pocketed by a Black person.
In his book “Junky”, “Bill” Burroughs describes how he and another Junky “rolled” a sleeping drunk on the NYC subway. A Black guy watched but said nothing or as Bill said, “The Shine was cool.” Perhaps U2 are cool or perhaps just balancing the karma of this incident by letting the Black go.
I just wish we could call Blacks “Shines” again!
Bukowski related his bus trip across America. A whore set up shop in the back seat. All the other men on the bus paid for her services except him. He didn’t judge them since he went to whores all the time. Maybe he just didn’t like her or the Spartan accommodations. Or maybe it was the fact that a “community” had been created, one with her as the Queen. At rest stops, surrounded by her followers, he could hear her asking “Who does he think he is?” Bukowski didn’t like pressure like this and would automatically resist. Beyond that, he knew the utter smallness of it all and was repulsed. Not the act itself nor the business aspect, but to make it some kind of loyalty issue when they’re all never going to see each other again in a couple of days. As he often said, “Humanity, you never had it.”
Social psychologists have found that after twenty minutes or so, a room full of people will begin to form factions.
Electric cars were built in Hartford from 1895-1920 by Albert Pope. They worked pretty good and I believe the range per daily charge was about the same as Tesla’s are now. Batteries haven’t improved very much over the past 100 years.
Musk is beginning to sound like Ray “I will live forever” Kurzwiel lately, planning a system where the human brain is hooked up to a computer, granting immortality
Who set the bomb off in St. Petersburg? If its muzzies, God help them. Putin isn’t the type to mince around and plaintively enquire “Why do they hate us?” and start worrying about retaliatory ‘hate crimes’ committed by Russian citizens. No, in fact he warned the muzzies if you bring terrorism here (into Russia) we will kill every goddam one of you.
He might mean it.
brh
The glory days of New England are gone, given way to wetbacks and section 8 slums.
MEANWHILE—
Remember the magic [Ka ba lla] number 6 million?
EU about to let in 6 million Africans.
I recall talking to a great Chinese mathematician who told me how revered the road builders in the American Army Corp of Engineers were in China.
Boiled down, Americans are kick ass road builders. And for a while there, road building for a country “going places”.
Ironically enough, the interstate highway system expanded the national love of nature and by extension, amplified the power of the environmental movement. After all, if all those people in the fifties, sixties and seventies would not have visited National Park lands or wilderness area in general via the family vacation vehicle, there may have never been the visceral motivation to appreciate and politically protect nature in America.
And let’s face it,we Americans love our roads and jumping into or o one form of transportation or another capable of transporting us into wild, wonderful and mystical mountain and desert sunsets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4qkGf3q7gA
red China still amazed….that why Party make purchase real estate, Hollywood studio, mainstream media, key federal politicians, and in preparation to serve as enforcement division for Bilderberg group.
silicon valley tesla driving virtue signaler represent ultimate lobster comfortable in warming kettle, complete without knowledge of who control flame.
-onehunglo
Well it has been said the Irishman will tell his boss to fuck off and quit while the Chinese will smile subserviently and then fire the boss whose company he now owns.
You’re so eager to reject the “old republic” that you fail to appreciate some of its greatness. And all those WW2 vets returning home after the war really were a remarkably productive bunch.
That was back in the days when America walked with the same swagger that De Kooning and Diebenkorn brush stroked with bravado.
Is Mr. Tibbs really black?
Buck, the question is, is Mr. onehunglo really Chinese?
silicon valley tesla driving virtue signaler represent ultimate lobster comfortable in warming kettle, complete without knowledge of who control flame.
++++++++++
If I was a lobster, I would eat myself.
Just sayin
That’s right Buck. Especially roads out here. A man’s road should be beyond his reach, or what’s a car for?
No talk about infinite primes, the Poincare conjecture, the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem, or the solving of that famous right triangle problem? A dull road then, indeed! Not to worry, head out on that highway…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1cDECkN2xg
It just occurred to me Tuscon after watching the link:
“What a long,strange trip its been!”
Hey Buck Terry Southern lived a little west of here, in a town called Canaan. I met him once, must have been in the mid 90s, in a little restaurant/bar built in an old railroad station. (Ozone knows the place) I was nobody to him but he was very cordial. He told me he didn’t make all that much on the Easy Rider movie. In fact he seemed a little down on his luck at the time. We were headed home from salmon fishing on East Twin Lake and had decided to stop there for a few cold ones.
brh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85nM–8bxMU
Roads are all fine but we don’t need hiways. Smaller vehicles, even single seaters would serve us much better. Paths thru woods, from cables between trees when needed, would get us every where we need to go. Make stuff local.
Making the Chinks pay more taxes in Hong Kover, Canada;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSLpti_AuZ8&t=800s
Musk and Branson, a pair to draw to.
Space! Between the ears, perhaps.
~toktomi~
Is the term ‘Bread and Circuses’ or ‘Circuses and Bread?’
” If you were in the business, you would see, over time, the reason men are put in cages”
” but all understand the need. ”
Err……….I never asserted there wasn’t a need.
” …no question as to why, but rather, why not? ”
You said it, I didn’t. But, yes , among that group, there is very little questioning of means and motives , or of where this is headed .
Whether that is in Russia, or in America.
well, actually, there is a difference ;
Your average Russian knows and understands perfectly well who the police work for.
Your average American Cold ‘N Holefield has to learn the hard way who campus security works for.
” I have known hundreds of men in Law Enforcement…not one, Zero, could evince your arguments with a straight face. ”
What arguments ?
So far you haven’t correctly identified any arguments I have made.
Kesa,
You have more than once derisively mentioned a system that put men in cages…please don’t make me go back and find them over the last month’s posts…but I will if required. Your contempt for the system is an implied argument…you never have mentioned why your disdain for the system of penology exists, hence my speculation as to your viewpoint.
Who the police work for? My brother, a retired chief of police, never had, I recall, directives issued to him from anyone other than his city manager…hardly sinister. When I worked the street, I had to answer to no one other than our chain of command. We had a large stack of Departmental General Orders…follow those and life was good….
Who do you imply we were working for…what simple tools were we, and for whom?
” I place blame on our educational system for not teaching critical thinking.
What changes do you recommend?
And starting at what grade in school? ”
I have no doubt that genuinely, sincerely, and seriously teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic would do it.
Elementary school is quite sufficient.
One has to engage in a type of thinking unabashedly superstitious in nature to dismiss or discount those hundreds of great writers and great thinkers , prior to the 20th century, whose education did not extend beyond the equivalent of elementary school.
What we have now isn’t really education . It is a social engineering project , and / or a means to provide employers and the state with what THEY want at YOUR expense.
Evidence the last part by paying a visit to a nursing home and asking the inmates what they did for a living, and what their level of formal education was.
They did thousands of jobs , essentially the same job then as now, but then no million dollar school plant or school bureaucracy was required before you even got the job.
And you might be surprised to find that these non-college graduates were not imbecilic and were not incompetent in their employment.
” I wish Mr. Kunstler would speak more on overpopulation as it, along with religion are the root cause of a lot of problems. ”
Perhaps he does not because he knows that is getting into a lot of unintended consequences – type scenarios,
and religious , ” too much magic ” type thinking.
I think population control is in the realm of spending a billion dollars on Mars, when back on earth the electricity doesn’t work.
It’s entirely appropriate that Mars is the red planet ; Look at all the Gee-whiz weaponry on display in Red Square at the May Day parade, and almost all of the participants and spectators go home to outhouses and water spigots that don’t work.
With population control we are talking about children , yes?
Well, never has so much collective control over the rearing of children been exercised , or so much effort and treasure been exerted in that endeavor, and by a wide margin,
And how is that working out for you ?
You can’t teach Johnny to read, but you are going to do a great job in deciding what Johnny lives to not be taught to read.
” …along with religion are the root cause of a lot of problems. ”
500 years ago kings were crowned by bishops representing a separate, and superior, authority.
But that was 500 years ago.
500 years ago if a priest committed murder the agents of the secular power thought twice about laying hands on him, because he was the agent of a separate, and superior, authority.
But that was 500 years ago .
So I suppose you are referring to a different religion all together? 😉
Westinghouse Bankruptcy: The End of Nuclear Power?
An age of innovation may be coming to an end for nuclear giant Westinghouse. On Wednesday, the company that designed those conical AP1000s that have become emblematic of U.S. nuclear plants is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/04/nuclear-giant-westinghouse-files-bankruptcy-amid-7-billion-losses/
United States – a country that was a pioneer of the mankind atomic era. But the modern state of affairs in US Nuclear industry is deplorable.
States have lost their uranium enrichment technology for the needs of nuclear power. The US lost its own nuclear engineering and has been trying for decades, but failed implementing the new nuclear power plant project, appropriate now for post-Fukushima safety requirements.
US managed to sell 20% of it uranium ore reserves on their own territory to Russia. The United States for over 20 years can not solve the problem of disposal, burial of spent nuclear fuel; legislatively ban themselves to engage in the processing of this valuable raw material. The US has no technology of MOX fuel production, the US has no commercial fast neutron reactors, US has a problem with the disposal of radioactive waste from its military programs.
Listed – not a cause for gloating, it’s just a statement of facts, which is not particularly encouraging. Why not? Because the maximum development of the atomic project in the USSR and in the world was in the years of fierce competition with US nuclear program. Now the lack of this competition may be hindering the development of all sorts.
When we say “the US atomic project”, we mean company Westinghouse. Westinghouse – is the construction of new reactors, supplying them with fuel and decommissioning the end of their term.
Westinghouse – a company incorporated in US jurisdiction, headquartered also in the States. And the owner – Concern Toshiba (Toshiba owns 87% stake in Westinghouse), that is, the American then only by name and the glorious history of the company.
For Toshiba, the sale of Westinghouse is the most logical, because all the problems of Toshiba are associated with that money-losing structural unit. And there is no buyer. Because of the problems associated with unsuccessful attempts to build reactors of Generation III+, the company, which owns 31% of the world market of nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants there are no buyers. And there is no one to complete the development of AP-1000 technology.
But if a buyer is found, it will get not only the problems but also contracts for fuel production, and contracts for the supply of fuel, and contracts for the decontamination of decommissioned reactors in several countries, including the United States.
Today in the United States operate 99 reactors, but only in the next 5 years they will have to decommission Ford Calhaun, Clinton, Quard Cities, Diablo Canyon, Piligrim, Fitz Patrik, Vermont Yankee, Ginna, Byron, Crystal River, Sun Onofre – of course, followed by deactivation of the sites, with the need to solve problems with thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel.
And there is Russia and its Rosatom, which is interested in the fuel market, and market of closing reactors and providing radiation treatment sites, and the market of construction of new nuclear power plants.
If the former competitors and bitter rivals could develop technologies together, the achievement of the closed nuclear fuel cycle could be implemented much faster. Recall that the introduction into circulation of the main isotope of uranium – uranium-238, is able to provide cheap energy to our planet for up to 3000 years.
In fact, a joint Russian-American purchase of Westinghouse is capable of becoming one of the biggest deals that Donald Trump could offer Russia and make America totally energy independent.
The tools at Westinghouse ran that company into the ground. They should have cleaned house a long time ago.
Two things are bugging me at the end of a busy day in my little corner of the Clusterfuck:
1. Regarding the ongoing CFN cornfusion over the Apollo moon landings; I have shared this great music video link before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM
– check it out then have informed speculation on the topic.
2. More importantly; Elon Musk’s Space X scares the living daylights out of me. No, not Elon Musk’s particular project – he just is a megalomaniac in it for glory and a few extra bucks.
What truly terrifies me is that if this fellow Musk can make ballistic missiles with comparative ease and launch them with only some minor problems; then what is to stop a single-minded, ideologically determined adversary, with more than a few billion bucks to throw around, from launching a one-way ( no need to reuse the contraption) intercontinental ballistic missile with a relatively small party favor on the working end of the re-entry vehicle? An EMP can put an geographic area back into the paleolithic in the blink of an eye, depending on the size of the device. Or perhaps a real live, hot-like-grandma’s-kim-chi, “Made In Best Korea” model signed by Kim Jung Un and sent on its way to his favorite paper tiger via an independent contractor who just happens to have access to a launch facility in Kazakhstan or Guyana.
And if the soma-beach ended up in Jerusalem, { or dame-@$¢-us } OMG. The thumpers would go catatonic.
Schizophrenia mows down the American Media
Americans have this expression: “To be caught by one’s own propaganda”. In principle, this is a brief description of schizophrenia.
For example, in continuation of the previous post, in which Tillerson put an ultimatum to NATO, and the NATO Secretary General is forced to answer questions about the possibility of the US withdrawing from NATO, and as a result of this hysteria the probability of such a result becomes greater and greater.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-possible-imagine-nato-without-181018585.html
But the most important thing is the interview of Peskov to Stephanopoulos – the anchor of the main “democratic” channel ABC, in which Putin’s speaker said that thanks to the previous administration, Russia’s relations with the United States are worse than ever in the Cold War. And Americans are now wondering “what could be worse than the cold war – could it be a hot war?”
Hello fellow CFN’ers long time lurker, first…etc. I like reading the comments section almost as much as Mr Kunstlers thoughts & opinions. I just want to mention some of my favourite commenters: Thwack, malthuss, back row heckler, Janos, special mention to onehunglo – speaking of which – onehunglo – why did you not end your posts this week with ‘let not your heart be troubled’? I loved your reply to capt Spaulding recently, and I couldn’t help myself, it amused me so much I have now adopted it when dealing with the irate. Strangely, it doesn’t seem to work, only make them angrier. Oh well! Kudos to you all and as onehunglo would say: Let not your heart be troubled
May God be with you
Just read your fawning letter to Wack and the boys. I look forward to reading more of of your cloying remarks in the future.
Not me!
onehhunglo sent me an instant message and said he tried to respond, but is being blocked, and not certain if it’s his ISP or CFN.
Anyway, yes, we Christians are connected worldwide as an FYI for you “conspiracy theorists”.
Here is his message:
onehunglo spend most waking minute sharing simple message of Christ truth to current and former Party member, who brainwashed into think State is only way.
only when individual Party member with knowledge of State intent come forward with truth, that world change for better.
Confucius say, “They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”
Christ say, “A new commandment I give to you. Love one another.”
onehunglo know personal time is short.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
-onehunglo
………………………………….
-T,……and yes I’m black and reside in Atlanta.
In your honor
Crack Cocaine Smoking Black Male, arrested 19 times since 1995, Responsible for I-85 Bridge Collapse in Atlanta,
Disrupting Commutes of White Commuters living in White Suburbs
Black Mecca Down: The Collapse of the City too Busy to Hate is the story of the greatest ecological disaster in America.
And it is man made, sadly.
Simply put, it’s white people abandoning suburb after suburb after suburb in a vain attempt to escape black dysfunction, black crime, and the deleterious impact black neighbors have on commercial and residential property values.
And no matter how far white people move away from metro Atlanta (closer and closer to the borders of Tennessee up I-75 N; closer and closer to the border of South Carolina up I-85 N; and closer and closer to the border of Alabama when you travel on I-85 S), the black undertow effect pulls whites escaping black dysfunction back into the very conditions they tried to leave behind.
Black Mecca Down: The Collapse of the City too Busy to Hate tells the macro story, but a micro look at what caused this horrific ecological nightmare is a crack smoking black man named Basil Eleby, who has an illustrious record of 19 arrests since 1995.
His “harmless” attempt to smoke crack cocaine (with two other blacks) underneath one of the busiest highways in America merely caused it to collapse, causing unprecedented disruption to businesses supply chains – metro Atlanta is home to a shocking number of key distribution centers – as well as disrupting the commutes of hundreds of thousands of productive white people who are forced to live in far-away suburbs and commute hours to work in a city overwhelmed by black criminals. [Who is Basil Eleby, the man accused of starting I-85 fire?, WSBTV.com, 4-3-17]:
The man accused of starting the fire that brought down an overpass bridge on Interstate 85 has an extensive past with law enforcement.
Basil Eleby, 39, was charged Saturday with first-degree arson in connection with the fire. Wearing a navy jumpsuit, flip-flops and handcuffs, Eleby reluctantly shuffled into a courtroom at the Fulton County jail for his first appearance hearing Saturday morning.
Judge James Altman announced the arson charge, which was added on top of an earlier felony charge of criminal damage to property, and set bond at $200,000. The judge said he had considered an amount more “commensurate” with the damage inflicted.
[Officials say I-85 bridge repairs will take months] [SBPDL]
And in your honor, as where you reside is in the region of ignorance.
…..and here is the recipe:
1. Add financial corruption at the top.
2. Mix with mediocre minds at the bottom.
3. Add an inept Congress.
4. Mix with local law enforcement ignoring their corrupt “elected” Democratic mayors and disrupting “sanctuary city” status.
5. Add with a politically motivated judiciary serving no justice.
6. Mix with open borders.
7. Add an inept National Education Association.
8. Mix with an accelerating national public debt of greater than 20 trillion.
9. Add with an accelerating ignorant section of the populace incapable of cognitive analysis.
10. Mix with a hip-hop culture inculcating 2 generations.
11. Add with red China purchasing Hollywood, mainstream media, and key political class members.
12. Mix with Bilderberg globalists employing red China as the enforcement division.
13. Add with forced inoculations containing toxic adjuvants.
14. Mix with eugenics.
15. Add with artificial intelligence displacing labor.
16. Mix with accelerating ignorance, bigotry, and hatred.
17. Add gender confusion poisoning children’s developing minds.
18. Mix with wide scale pedophile rings and human sex trafficking.
19. Bake in the June heat.
20. old republic BLUE ZONE anarchy cake complete, starting July 1. Serves 100 million within the ignorant zone.
+ Immigration and anchor babies and refugees.
I was watching TV, backlash against Carolinas ‘anti tranny toilet’ bill.
Anonymous said…
For those wondering as to HOW this happened, apparently, the area under the bridge was being used as on-site storage for an upgrade project in the immediate area. Parsley’s little brother was supposed to meet some friends for a smoke session, but decided to bogart ALL of it before they arrived, according to one of the others arrested. The other crackhead ratted him out, telling the cops that a chair was set on fire, which ended up spreading to the stored material.
So . . . what was being stored there that could burn quick enough and hot enough to weaken steel girders in an open air environment? A shit-ton of plastic pipe for an infrastructure upgrade. Thousands and thousands of pieces of HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) pipe. Like all plastics, HDPE is a pretty heavy duty hydrocarbon. Only a few more Cs and Hs in the molecular chain and it would be straight gasoline. Once that pile of plastic got going, that was it. A mountain of combustible plastic, with an unlimited air supply is going to burn until the fuel is consumed. Short of sending an airport crash rig to smother it with foam, it was game over.
video footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY
What a pity Flynn most likely will NOT testify!
Chances that General Flynn will testify that I was right and Hillary in June overthrew Obama, and in December tried to start a nuclear war, become slimmer.
It looks like Trump is winning that particular round of the Cold Civil War without Flynn’s testimony and the fact that a palace coup is possible in Washington could negatively affect the main asset of American economy – the Dollar Printing Press.
Now the Clintonoid Media is merely satisfied with attacking Flynn on some 45 grand payment from RT he did not disclose.
” You have more than once derisively mentioned a system that put men in cages…please don’t make me go back and find them over the last month’s posts…but I will if required. ”
I could go back and find all of the posts where you criticized someone for making a sweeping , general, statement about police,
and I could go back and find all of the posts where you made sweeping, general statements about some other group, and, apparently, thought that was just fine and dandy.
We can, for example, make general and sweeping statements about criminals. Never mind that this is a HUGE group ;
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Ayn Rand said that, and said it in reference to the United States, and not hypothetically, but in reference to an already existing condition.
But nothing special about her. A great many others have said the same , and because it is true.
There really is , legally ( law ; you know, that thing that gives the reason and authority to put people in jail ? ) no such thing as “non-criminal” .
No lawyer can tell you , generally, what law or laws you have broken without further data of course.
But any lawyer CAN tell you, generally, without further specifics, that you have committed at least one felony a day.
No psychic powers required !
( And , by the way, if you were police , then you, too, know this. )
But to make any statement about police we must pick out the one individual in 1.1 ,million representatives of that group.— and never mind what I just outlined above into the bargain.
It’s unfair to generalize about them !
An unfair characterization of your post history ?
Not at all.
I won’t bother though to go through and systematically copy-paste your posts into a new post to illustrate this point , because we both know that is the case.
” Your contempt for the system is an implied argument ”
This again ?
If the implied argument was that I saw no need for prisons, I’m some sort of criminal justice equivalent of a pacifist , well, I JUST SAID OTHERWISE .
So why back to this??
If not this, then, notice that he doesn’t state what that argument is. Has repeatedly not done so.
Wouldn’t it save a lot of trouble and bother if he did?
It would, If clarifying issues were his goal.
Not so much, or at all , if psychologizing me in a negative light is the actual goal.
Coincidence?
” you never have mentioned why your disdain for the system of penology exists, ”
Ok, how about it is bankrupting and corrupting whatever remains of the republic?
I should have thought this was an “implied argument ” of many of my posts.
But presumably an implication you did not pick up on.
Supposedly an implication you did not pick up on.
True, I have never given a personal reason .
I , for my part, get the impression that is exactly what you are fishing for.
Forget it.
I will allow you to peruse my panty drawer when , and only if , I am allowed to peruse yours, and I think that would be a cold day in Hell.
” hence my speculation as to your viewpoint. ”
I, for my part, get the impression that your speculations definitely tend toward a specific, narrow point.
See above.
” …his city manager ”
interesting info if I were compiling an organizational chart.
But I’m not, and wasn’t.
” Who do you imply we were working for…what simple tools were we, and for whom? ”
Answer already implied.
I’ll do the copy-pasting for you in this case ;
” The institution is a specific type of organism, which develops in predictable ways , and manifests predictable behaviors and characteristics , regardless of individual culture , history , ideology, or form of government. ”
A few minutes rumination on this statement should answer the question.
If you are really that dumb, which I doubt, then ;
It works for itself, and its members work for it and / or themselves.
Not necessarily sinister , no.
But another story if you are trying to imply it is somehow different and better than, say, a waitress working for herself .
A different story if you are implying they should enjoy any privilege or latitude you would not give a waitress .
Kesa,
Please take a deep breath, exhale, and relax. You can write well and express yourself competently, when not in dudgeon. At times, your comments express complete stream of consciousness…difficult to follow.
ANY statement that I have made, other than obvious humorous asides and the occasional “rassilin'” with Thwack, Dannyboy, etc. I will stand and defend…I invite your effort.
“”The institution is a specific type of organism, which develops in predictable ways , and manifests predictable behaviors and characteristics , regardless of individual culture , history , ideology, or form of government” If that is an answer…what is the question?
Also, I did take the liberty of rummaging through your underwear drawer…today is Tuesday…found the pair so marked…. What are you wearing today?
your comments express complete stream of consciousness…difficult to follow. – elysian
============
Accurate observation, e. Kesa has a disorderly mind and therefore writes poorly.
You’re only rational up to a point. But your Attitude trumps it and you refuse any questioning of your big Assumptions.
And are you assuming perhaps that he Doesn’t know that the Police can never do the job that the family doesn’t do? Nor can the Government? After reading him for years, I’m sure that he does know all that.
Somehow having a conversation with you – which means the unveiling of premises, is equated with rummaging around in your sick drawer. How dare anyone question your premises! Police!
Men’s so-called justice is dependent on punishment. God’s justice is based on Restoration.
Mercy overcomes justice.
.
In reading the Old Testament I am amazed to see how many tiny infractions’ just reward is death by stoning, as directed by God, through Moses, to the Israelites.
Q.,
But-but-but, that’s the *bad*, *false* God-guy!
M-d in the above post is in personal contact with the *real*, *good*, *sweet* God-guy. (Just ask him, he’ll tell ya.)
Jeebus Jumped-up Cricket in the couch, I sometimes don’t know why we bother to impart these very basic truths to you! 😉
Here’s George Carlin introducing the *real* Jesus-guy (just so there’s no confusion).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC7jSAvQpu4
Evil Men depend on this kind of mentality. They no longer even beg for Mercy – they demand it. And now even God is turned into the Big Cuck in the Sky.
Evil Men must be put to death. They can beg God for Mercy in Eternity. But on Earth, the Rule of Law must prevail.
But yes, the Sufis say that the miscreants have an ace in the hole: they never asked to be created. God threw them into the demonicac wombs of crack whores – they can rightly ask for Justice in Eternity as well. Thus Rumi’s “You threw me into the ocean as asked me not to get wet.” In the End of this Aeon, God must take back all of his children, even from “eternal” hell. The Hells will be closing up shop as God breathes all worlds back into Himself.
While this belongs to an “Eyesore of the month” with Elon Musk themed blog it’s perfect fitting.
Hold your breath!
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/23/supertall-hanging-skyscraper-asteroid-clouds-architecture-office-concept-analemma-tower/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dezeen%20Mail%20350&utm_content=Dezeen%20Mail%20350+Version+A+CID_e53c1e17ecedda739001693a7d65d193&utm_source=Dezeen%20Mail&utm_term=Supertall%20skyscraper%20hangs%20from%20orbiting%20asteroid%20in%20Clouds%20Architecture%20Office%20concept
Page once opened other links, one being a Mars colony building.
A
Two pre-coffee thoughts on the Analemma Tower :
1. Do the Kelvin-level temperatures get ya or is it the cosmic rays?
2. Gonna be a bitch getting a window cleaner for the job.
But think how much you could earn on just one window washing.
Sad part is that we are compared to Eiffel tower critics, or people who ridiculed Wright brothers, to name few samples from the past.
A Stephanopoulos’ interview with Putin’s spokesman Peskov made a great impression on Americans.
After all, just a couple of years ago the topic of relations with Russia was a taboo. That is, nothing at all – there is no Russia, and never was. And now thanks to Trump – as if there are no other topics.
And here is Stephanopoulos, the main anchor of the main pro-Clinton channel, whom a couple of years ago the republican public demanded to fire for secretly transferring half of his salary to the Clinton fund, takes an interview from Putin’s secretary, in the course of which it becomes clear that thanks to Obama’s policy (or rather Clinton’s policy), now the relationship between Russia and the US is worse than ever between the US and the USSR.
Moreover, this main pro-Clinton channel did not only show this interview, but the anchor of Sunday’s political review invited Clinton’s defense minister to the studio and asked him what could be worse than the nuclear confrontation during the Cold War and what it takes to get out of this state.
To which he replied that the Soviet Union approached the confrontation with the US in a responsible way, and Putin approaches it irresponsibly, and Russia should be pushed even harder, for example, by transferring lethal weapons to Ukraine, and then Putin will be frightened and the relations will again become good, like with the Soviet Union, and one must think right up to the point that Russia will disintegrate like the Soviet Union did.
And then camera showed the face of this anchor, and it was clearly visible on it that she understands that this defense minister is a psycho, and that she is very, very scared, and she no longer wants these psychos to overthrow Trump!
In general, the information blockade of Russia is over, and Stephanopoulos again played the ball right into the Trump’s team!
And against this background in Putin’s hometown there was a terrorist attack!
The suspected perpetrator of a suicide bombing in a St Petersburg subway station Monday had ties to radical Islamist groups, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/04/st-petersburg-suicide-bomber-tied-to-radical-islamists/
We all grownups here and must know by now that ISIS is a strictly Jihad-For-Cash operation.
The question remains: who ordered the hit? Could that be the same group that wanted to arrange a nuclear war with Russia in December by throwing in jail 35 Russian diplomats?
A real virtue signal would be drying laundry outdoors on a line. Also to stop eating beef and using milk products.
The cornerstone of modern politics, its main secret, which is the key to understanding the objective reality given to us not only on television, is that Wahhabism and other types of Islamism are not Islam.
The most authoritative representatives of traditional Islam in Russia openly say that Wahhabism and other types of Islamism is an artificial religion, specially designed by the British in order to tear away Arabia from the Ottoman Empire, which was originally built as the empire of Sunni Sufi Islam.
Have Janet and Finc posted this week?
Well, it is only Tuesday.
I see Finc has a few, in the nite, posts.
So here we go, we’ve got “progressives” responding to the splish-splash of revelations by saying good for Susan Rice, I HOPE she was spying on Trump. Others are all wide-eyed innocence, was it WRONG to unmask? So much for moral superiority and high-horse intellectual pretense. These people make me laugh.
Now, let’s be clear, Rice was just one cog in the state apparatus. So the question has to be what was the intent for the surveillance, who gave the orders and who knew what and when? And, of course, what did Obama know and when did he know it?
Do you remember the howls of outrage and naked scorn when Trump claimed he’d been “wiretapped”? Preposterous they all said, beneath contempt. But never mind all that because now we’ve got none other than Mr Furrowed Brow himself, David Ignatius, saying just a minute, what seemed an absurd accusation by Trump has suddenly become an argument about privacy.
Now, this was Sunday morning TV and someone as savvy as Mr Ignatius would be wary of audience sensibilities because otherwise he’d never be invited back. And ostracism by your peers is something you don’t take lightly. So while it took balls to speak up, he understated the potential import of this.
An argument about privacy? Um, yeah, I’ll say, especially when it’s about official spying on opponents of the party in power. You bet it’s an argument about privacy and a lot more than that.
“Incidental” surveilling? How about deliberate? How about American government interference in an election? How about an attempt to overturn the results? Russian hacking and collusion my ass, this is a distraction, the trail points to something bigger and worse.
The birth of a new British Empire
The expectations of those who believed that the results of the British referendum on Brexit of June 23, 2016 were anomaly that could be played back have not realized.
Speaking in parliament on March 29 this year, Theresa May made it clear that the decision to leave the EU is final and not subject to revision.
It is now obvious that the referendum itself was a mere formality. The decision to leave the EU the British elite took before it. And participation in the campaign for Brexit of bright and colorful representatives of the ruling class, such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, is a vivid confirmation of this.
An eloquent signal about where the scales leaned was the publication of the London newspaper The Sun on March 9, 2016, that Queen Elizabeth II supports the vote for secession from the EU. And although Buckingham Palace officially denied this message, those to whom it was addressed in the British ruling circles, all understood. Such diversions in the United Kingdom are not accidental. And now we see that a year later the royal “hint” was realized.
Thus, the British elite once again confirmed its excellent political flair, the capacity for strategic thinking and long-term foreign policy planning. Also, the entire operation to withdraw from the EU was perfectly performed. It was presented as a manifestation of the people’s will, which broke its way against the resistance of the British government.
The British elite have always had global interests. These interests covered not only Europe, but also the United States, China, India, Southeast Asia, a significant part of Africa, as well as former British dominions – Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For some time, Britain’s participation in the European integration processes did not harm British global interests and even harmonized with them. However, in the second decade of this century the situation has changed. Integration within the European Union has reached a level that has hampered the full implementation of British trade and economic interests in other parts of the world. This became especially important in the context of the emergence of new large markets in Asia, related to the rapid economic growth of China, India, Indonesia and a number of other countries in the region.
Moreover, London could not ignore the fact that Germany gained the greatest economic and political benefits from the EU enlargement, which created something like the Fourth Reich by someone else’s hands (including by the hands of Great Britain). And the pragmatic British, apparently, considered excessive wastefulness to pay for further strengthening of German domination on the European continent.
Another factor that influenced the choice of the UK, were doubts about the future of the United States. London, apparently, realized that the American superpower had entered its sunset. And the current split in the American elite is only the tip of the iceberg of future cataclysms. Racial and national problems in the US will only grow. By the middle of the century, the white and non-white population of the United States will be equal in numbers. The loss of power by the white majority can not pass without conflict. A sharp weakening of the country will inevitably occur. The experience of Zimbabwe and South Africa is a vivid confirmation of this. But in the US, things can be much worse. There, most likely, there will be a split and a breakup into conditionally “white” and “colored” states.
Thus, the US will no longer be able to act as a leader and defender of the Western world. And the British had to think about how to ensure their own survival in a competitive multipolar world without American protection. Staying in the EU would mean becoming a junior partner of Germany, placing the Anglo-Saxons in dependence on the Teutons, that is, agreeing with the program that Hitler had proposed at the time.
But the proud and stubborn British have once again disagreed with this prospect in 1939-1941. They did not accept it this time. In addition, this meant that other Anglo-Saxon countries, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, would be left to their fate.
Relations between Great Britain and the United States will be determined by the degree of weakening of US. If the United States continues as a single whole, but will become a regional power, such as Brazil, the UK will continue to cooperate with them in a variety of ways, but will no longer play the role of junior partner. If there is a disintegration of the United States, the United Kingdom will try to include in its sphere of influence some states that have broken away from the US with a predominance of the white population.
Some of them may join Canada; others will remain formally independent, but will go under the protectorate of London.
This is definitely Big Picture thinking.
Would Mad Dog allow transfer of control of our nuclear arsenal to the UK?
Would Mad Dog allow transfer of relocation and control of US industrial capacity to China and Mexico?
Came out garbled. Try again: Would Mad Dog allow transfer and control of US industrial capacity to China and Mexico?
Would Mad Dog allow transfer of control of our nuclear arsenal to the UK?
For now it is suffice to note that the British nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of the Fourth Reich as a result of creating an “independent” EU Army.
Does anybody have a slightest doubt that British played a far more significant role in “meddling” in US election than Russia did? British were playing both Sanders and Trump card against Clinton – probably the current head of competing with City of London Rockefeller clan of New York Banking Pirates.
Britain is destined to become a Caliphate – along with their nuclear weapons. Nobody is thinking long term – at least nobody who is sane.
Only Bannon can save the World now. Trump must allow himself to be his instrument even as the hapless Ike was merely the tool of Bernard Baruch, Wilson of “Colonel” Mandell House, Nixon of Kissinger, and Bush of Cheney.
Janos, you are the ultimate conspiracy theorist; no one is ever his own man, always the tool of someone else. And every fight ever fought has been fixed.
You’re beginning to awaken, Q. Yes, this world is horrible. Why? Because Satan is Rex Mundi or King of it. You should have listened more at St Joe’s.
“The Shine was cool.” – Janos quoting Wm Burroughs
============
Of all the derogatory terms that exist for Blacks I had completely forgotten “Shine.” My father used to use it now and then. Don’t know if I ever knew its etymology. Anyone know?
Shoe Shine. Shine Box was another derivation along with Shine. The more you know.
Blacks would shine shoes, yes.
Also ‘monkey SHINES.’
Spoon
(spook + coon)
Spoon? Never heard that one.
How about ‘deuce?’ (as in, who is number one and who is number two?)
italian –molyah [not sure of spelling for ‘eggplant.’
Cantalope = dead crackah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yon2GyoiM
Just sayin
My aunt tells about her dad saying, “I wish I had named you kids, in-a-minute, just -a-minute and wait-a-minute”.
One hundred years ago today, April 4, 1917, The US Senate approved a resolution declaring war on Germany.
Tangential to our host’s scathing smackdown of Elon Musk and Tesla is the following:
David Stockman, who was the Budget Director as a very young man under Reagan, is a person that strikes me as ‘brilliant’ and who also possesses an excellent writing style. I have been reading his missives religiously for the past two years during which time he has been relentlessly bearish on the market and thus, “always wrong but never in doubt.” (a line I loved and picked up concerning some other financial seer in another context decades ago.)
Stockman has translated his smarts and bearishness into a paid subscriber service (and it ain’t cheap) called Bubble Finance Trader. He sees us as in a bubble that is ready to burst tomorrow or certainly no later than next week.
There are certain companies that are the worst of the worse and one of them is Tesla (stock symbol, TSLA). D.S. comes out every other week with a long and well reasoned essay on one of these soon-to-crash stocks and makes a very specific recommendation on how to profit by buying a certain put option including strike price and expiration date. As you are probably aware, puts go up in value as the underlying stock goes down.
TSLA has refused to go down since the put recommendation made on 9/1/16 in which Stockman had this to say: “Tesla is a cash-burning machine, not a car company, but it is now so far behind the curve of its hype that it is heading straight into a fiery demise of cash incineration.”
Undaunted, David doubled down a few weeks ago by recommending ANOTHER TSLA put whose expiration was further out in time, giving the put buyer more time for the stock’s crash to happen. Buying more time, of course, makes the put more expensive because there is no free lunch.
Well, if you’ve been paying attention, Tesla stock was up more than $20/share yesterday and another $6 as we speak. When this happens the ass falls out of the value of the puts.
So, long story short, both Stockman and Kunstler have been wrong as hell up to this point.
Q,
I also read Stockman’s books, and his blog pre-subscription. Stockman and our Host both present valid reasons and methodologies for what they claim…I believe them both to be correct in substance. I think few on the site would consider our Host’s comments as actionable investment advice. Stockman and Mr. Kunstler paint a canvas, defining a macro-view of the world we live in, the culture and society included. It never concerned me that the time lines of either be correct, rather that the substance of the issues be so…and they are. This can not be argued.
e,
What you say is generally* true of JHK (paints a canvas, defining a macro-view, etc) but not of Stockman. When you make options recommendations it is absolutely necessary that your assumed scenario plays out within a specific timeline.
* Take a look back at Jim’s predictions for the coming year of 2017. He had the S&P falling a large percentage within the first quarter. Instead, it made new highs.
Only rank amateurs, morons, and financial suicidals use options for any reason. Numerous studies have shown them to be very inefficient sucker bets…even more inefficient than commodity ETFs. Futures contracts are the most efficient vehicle for speculating in commodities, both long and short…..but you are still subject to the usual bad fills and running of stops…..smaller punters are often treated rudely. Anyone speculating should probably get rid of the JooieVision box immediately, and stop reading the financial press…..the incessant disinfo will program you to be a bagholder. Also, it helps to get your dumbest kid or grandkid to look at the chart and venture a guess as to whether the squiggle line is heading towards the upper right hand corner, or the lower right hand corner….adults have trouble seeing the obvious. The few outsiders making any money are usually trend followers (momentum players)……trend changes occur only about 15% of the time. Cycle theory, Elliott (aka Idiot) Wave theory, Moving Average crosses, Doji candlesticks, Point and Figure, etc, etc, etc work only haphazardly…….and there are no gurus worth following, except for entertainment. Anyone betting based on Stockman is now sleeping on a park bench when not panhandling.
“Anyone betting based on Stockman is now sleeping on a park bench when not panhandling.” – nsa
funny – Q.
“..there are no gurus worth following, except for…
..nsa” – Q.
Q, I haven’t traded options in years, but when I did, I did very well. I got a 332% return. I should have continued with it, I guess, but I got very interested in real estate investment property. I did very well in that, too. Now I have almost no desire to actively trade. I like taking it easy
I probably would have lost a lot of my money if I continued with options. I’m reminded of how I put myself through college in the summer of my freshman year: by going to the dog track and winning. Years went by and I started going back to the track with my wife. I couldn’t win shit, so I quit. Somehow I had lost my touch over the years.
Same with casino gambling. I was a great craps player for a while, then I started to lose, so I decided to quit that. It seems everything reverts to the mean, which is based on probabilities, and the probability of winning is less than 50%. The moral of the story is that you can’t beat city hall or the laws of the universe.
“The moral of the story is that you can’t beat city hall or the laws of the universe”
Bill,
Of course you can, but only in the short-term.
In fact, everything now is determined by our prayers and the struggle that is taking place for the seat of the US Supreme Court judge, and the next level immediately under this is a purely spiritual struggle for the fighter-bomber F-35, railgun and other Zumwalt-class destroyers.
These are precisely the issues that I was engaged in as a young specialist in horns and hoofs in the intervals between grazing on the collective farm “Testaments of Lenin” and the identification of those ceramic tiles on the spire of one of the Moscow skyscrapers that were ready to fly off at the first gust of wind and nail some lieutenant general of the KGB.
The fact is that Trump wants to prevent a nuclear war, and Bastinda obviously thinks that she in Hell will be the deputy of the main Hater of the Human race and is not afraid of the nuclear war.
And for Trump it is naturally harder, despite the fact that he is a President, and the Witch is, in theory, a private person and we learn about who she really is just from the reports about the witches of Boston, 24 hours a day tricking the overthrow of Trump.
It is always easier to fall downward than to climb upwards, especially considering that Trump could be a good man, but not a saint, and women at one time he grabbed in various places as well as we all. Or maybe he just bragged, but in fact always behaved like a gentleman, but this slander of himself now, too, frankly, does not help.
The struggle is purely spiritual, but it has a rather funny materialistic aspect, in which I understand a little and can share this with you.
The thing is, during the election campaign all these companies that are trying to sell to US railguns and other destroyers-bombers have exposed themselves by placing their ads on those sites and TV channels that tried to bring Hillary Clinton to power.
And then I realized that the railgun of theirs was a terrible threat, first of all to the ship on which it was stationed. A small grain of sand in the working body and it’ll short-circuit in the wrong direction. And bye, bye! It will be like a small crack on the ablation tile of a space shuttle.
But the funniest thing is F-35. There’s even no need to be an expert – just look at the commercial, where it flies next to the F-15. Its angle of attack is several times higher!!! That is, it has such a bad aerodynamics that it should compensate for the lack of the lift of the wings by the thrust of the engine!!! And it is in a normal demonstration flight, not during an air battle. What kind of fighter are we talking about?! It’s a bomber, and a bad one.
US in the 90s put all bets on the stealth and inability of the Russian Federation to create good radar, but what if it can?
http://bbs.dailystormer.com/t/germany-somalian-yoof-breaks-into-care-home-sodomizes-two-old-men-kills-one-wife/96488/64
More poisonous fruits of the Allied Victory. No doubt he’s a good boy just about to get his life together.
He should be publicly drawn and quartered.
“He should be publicly drawn and quartered.”
Janos,
We really do not need a wall on our southern border. If all illegals arrested in this country were to receive 200 lashes with split bamboo prior to deportation, there would be much less motivation to re-enter illegally. They would have some “skin in the game”, if you will. As an added benefit, the scars would be easy to spot, greatly aiding law enforcement in identifying repeat offenders…of which there would be, I expect, few.
If any are squeamish with this premise…50 then, 50 lashes…and who would apply the cane? The Junior Colleges are filled with bright, apple-cheeked students studying law enforcement…perfect candidates, and more than willing.
Works in Indonesia/Malaysia.
Kesa might approve…no cages.
Its not really relevant to Jim’s post today, but I read part of Jamie Dimon’s letter to shareholders today, and it occurred to me that it is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for all the US to live peacefully together. Whether that means we split up roughly on some sort of regional lines or just continue to lurch forward with greater divisions and more strident disagreements remains to be seen. It might be that some sort of political and geographic schism happens before the federal government collapses – or that might bring about the collapse.
The aftermath of the Civil War is that it is impossible to secede peacefully and leave the constitution intact. But we are being ripped apart internally by demagoguery. Some of the disagreements are being driven by half-truths and lies.
When I was young the press could be depended upon to tell the truth and to set the record straight. Those were the days of the AP and UPI, Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. The era of 24 hour news changed all of that. The need to have something to report has created divisions or magnified minor ones. Now everyone has to have an opinion and they have to be right. It has become a matter of survival.
Did they cover the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of German POW’s – and the systematic starvation of the civilian population? Or how about the vicious treatment of the half breed children left behind in Korea? Oh, thas right – racism is just a White thing, right? And the Allies were the Good Goys!
The Revolution was enacted from the Top. And these guys were some of the Commissars and Change Agents. And let’s face it, as a System Mandarin, you do your part as well. I mean you actually think Trayvon and Big Mike were innocent. How far from Real Americans you are!
You are right. The press is so much more honest and thorough today.
They reported what they knew to be true and they worked very hard to find out what was true. The press today is sensationalism posing as objective. That makes opinions fact and fact opinions.
Yes, this country was founded by elites. But for the most part they were benign and understood that they had to lead. They were not in it for profit. (Jefferson died broke) They took that responsibility seriously; their part in slavery notwithstanding.
I think the demagoguery, half-truths, and lies, are given a bit too much credit.
Republics and large states were never compatible. You can have the one, or the other, but not both.
As for the 24 hour news thing, I always thought newspapers should at least be weeklies, if not monthlies.
TV ? Grrr, that’s like the wishful -thinking dichotomy of having your republic and an empire too.
TV is, was, and always will be ideally suited for weapons displays, porn, sports, more porn , pictures of corpses, ( in porn that’s the real thing ) and more porn.
I don’t think you can overstate the role of misrepresentation and demagoguery. There are thinking people everywhere who understand the role of truthful compromise and responsibility in order for the Republic to survive and even flourish. Most won’t run for office and if they do they cannot get elected because they are demonized or called traitorous by one side or the other. So we don’t get solutions to problems. We become isolated at one extreme or the other and so we seek like minded people instead of thoughtful people. Within the constraints of a constitutional republic there is not much we can do except forge consensus in the middle and hope that this is temporary.
Kesa,
The cable news channels began changing the dynamic. The Internet finished the job. Demagoguery, half-truths and lies are the order of the day…Unfiltered, un-alloyed bullshit is rampant on the internet, and is offered in prodigious volume, without restraint nor responsibility. Fifty years ago, the unwashed could not readily vent their spleen, nor display their ignorance…there were gate-keepers…letters to the editor were censored.
The “Internets” have made opinions powerful…right or wrong. It panders to the lowest common denominator. Cat is out of the bag…die has been cast, Genie out of the bottle….
Yes, the ten pounds of shit in a nine pound bag is flaming at our doorstep…stomping on it will provide perhaps a bit of satisfaction, but will not change the vile train wreck that is the information media.
Mr. Kunstler,
This comment is directed toward your interview with Mr. Tavaras. As much as I admire your propensity to cut to the chase, I’m not convinced that your “It seemed like a good idea at the time” notion accurately describes the evolution of the legal framework that now dictate suburban sprawl.
The major oil companies, during the first half of the twentieth century, managed to gain control then shut down transit systems all over the U.S., dictating the virtually universal dependency on the auto for transportation and increasing the demand for fossil fuels. Regarding zoning ordinances and building codes, these are instruments of centralized design and distribution. Given the covert nature of corruption in our political system, and you follow the money, zoning ordinances serve two purposes. They fragment activities, increasing fossil fuel consumption, and they enable racial and economic bracketing, enabling systemic control and marketing of various “consumer categories”. It seems to me that to say these “seemed like good ideas at the time” are a bit naïve, given the nature of our laws and policies. The public narrative and the driving forces behind policies seldom match. On the other hand, I can’t believe I’m becoming even more cynical that Mr. Kunstler!
“They fragment activities….”
US turned “picking the keys from the left pocket with right hand” into , perfectly executed endeavour – with the, of course, help of larger carbon footprint.
Never stoped to amaze me.
Why are some benign comments censored here while a neo nazi like janos can spout whatever he likes?
Good articles, poor comments section.
what color are you?
Are you a Hotep?
Im a grAPE fruit
Shoe size 13
Hilbert space = infinite
What are you trying to get?
http://kaganof.com/kagablog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/082.jpg
Benign? Some benign tumors can be dangerous; as in anyone who doesn’t believe in the First Amendment. I see you dolph – and the Susan Rice poster on your wall.
” Accurate observation, e. Kesa has a disorderly mind and therefore writes poorly. ”
Amusing.
Let’s break down this amusing statement.
” Kesa has a disorderly mind ”
This, from an Etatist , or Statolater who fancies that he has criticized or condemned religion.
A guy who hangs out on a blog where the buzzwords are, ” unintended consequences” and ” Too Much Magic ” , whose ideas are to engage in a whole lot more of that sort of thing.
” and therefore writes poorly ”
In this context , this amounts to, or is the equivalent of,
” You don’t like the color of my dress. ”
Boo hoo.
What context ?
Well, if you bothered to read that wall of text , then it kinda follows that you didn’t have too much trouble with it,
That, or you have an Olympic athletes energy , combined with more hours in your day than the rest of us.
Either way , you persisted in reading that wall of text to the end, and whether poorly written , or Fyodor Dostoyevsky psychically channeled, is neither here, nor there.
So this could only be a comment on trifling esthetics, or, as I said, “You don’t like the color of my dress. ”
Meh , big deal.
Or, you DID NOT read it , in which case you do not, in fact , have any such opinion.
If this last is the case , then , geez, if you are going to lie , then at least put some effort into it.
Or, you DID NOT read it , in which case you do not, in fact , have any such opinion. – Kesa
===========
I read it all. You’re hard to follow. But the color of your dress is okay.
Master Class from Heartiste: Diversity+Proximity=War
************************
First of all, “Heartiste” or “Roissy” as he is also known is most likely a Jew; and his purpose is to trigger provincial white males into doing stupid Dylann Roof type things in order to discredit them.
The Chateau was a pretty good site before it switched from full time poon hounding to full time racism; now its just a racial cartoon with homosexual overtones.
One of the reasons he banned me was for revealing the flawed logic of his “Diversity+Proximity=War” attempted meme.
Diversity+Proximity actually = fucking
Trying to convince young white men to fight when they could fuck is both entertaining and educational; especially given the toxic brand of narcicisstic nihilism CH is peddling.
All the best commenters left a couple of years ago due to the heavy “moderation”
The site is now a parody of its former self; extreme white male butt hurt, self pity, whining, pale puffery, and phony boosterism.
*be advised*
“One of the reasons he banned me”
Thwack,
Do you mean to say that he took you seriously?
Really?
Racists are surprisingly thin skinned.
I suspect I spooked him because he was having difficulty trying to get a “radar lock” on what I was?
They all thought I was white too; until I would hit them with some straight up weapons grade niggerish insults, then they would start scratchin holes in their heads.
BTW,
the most ironic thing about the site is the way they promote and claim to discover all these alpha male behaviors that are actually obnoxious nigger traits and culture.
Just sayin
Master Class from Heartiste: Diversity+Proximity=War
Courtesy of reader chris, a large (and growing) reference list of studies finding strong and accumulating evidence for the Chateau Heartiste maxim that Diversity™ + Proximity = War by Various Means.
Feel free to link to this post on social media platforms or drop it in a clown world combox whenever a shitlib smugly wanders into your shitlord kill zone, begging for a hail of hot Realtalk™. Pounding an equalist dingbat over the head with real world events happening right before his eyes that contradict his religious teachings doesn’t work as well as pounding him over the head with peer reviewed SCIENCE!, for nothing flatters the shitlib ego as much as his carefully manicured belief that he is on the side of science. And nothing pleases yer ‘umble Destroyer of Ids more than witnessing the exact moment when a shitlib’s ego is rent in two.
***
– Social trust is negatively affected by ethnic diversity, case study in Denmark from 1979 to the present. Link.
– Ethnic homogeneity and Protestant traditions positively impact individual and societal levels of social trust. Link.
– “In longitudinal perspective, [across European regions], an increase in immigration is related to a decrease in social trust.” Link.
– Immigration undermines the moral imperative of those who most favor welfare benefits for the neediest. Link.
– The negative effect of community diversity on social cohesion is likely causal. Link.
– In Switzerland, social peace between diverse factions isn’t maintained by integrated coexistence, but rather by strong topographic and political borders that separate groups and allow them autonomy. Link.
– “Our analysis supports the hypothesis that violence between groups can be inhibited by both physical and political boundaries.” Link.
– Diversity hinders between-group cooperation at both the one-on-one and group levels. Link.
– The best chance for peace in Syria is better borders (intrastate or through the creation of new states) “suited to current geocultural regions”, and tribal autonomy. Link.
– Using data from US states, study finds a negative relationship between ethnic polarization and trust. Link.
– Diversity is associated with more White support for nationalist parties, except at the local level where large immigrant populations cut into vote totals for nationalist parties. Link.
– In Australia, ethnic diversity lowers social cohesion and increases “hunkering”, providing support for Putnam’s thesis finding the same results in the US. Link.
– After controlling for a self-selection bias, study finds that ethnic diversity in English schools reduces trust in same-age people and does not make White British students more inclusive in their attitudes towards immigrants. Link.
– In Germany, residential diversity reduces natives’ trust in neighbors, while it also reduces immigrants’ trust but through a different pathway. Link.
– Increasing social pluralism (diversity) is correlated with increased chance of collective violence. Link.
– “[E]thnic heterogeneity [diversity] explains 55% of the variation in the scale of ethnic conflicts, and the results of regression analysis disclose that the same relationship more or less applies to all 187 countries. … [E]thnic nepotism is the common cross-cultural background factor which supports the persistence of ethnic conflicts in the world as long as there are ethnically divided societies.” Link.
– Genetic Similarity Theory (GST) could help explain why diverse groups in close proximity increases ethnic conflict and ethnic nepotism. Link.
– Genetic diversity has contributed significantly to frequency of ethnic civil conflict, intensity of social unrest, growth of unshared policy preferences, and economic inequality over the last half-century. Link.
– Using social science data and computer modeling, researchers found that policies that attempt to create neighborhoods that are both integrated and socially cohesive are “a lost cause”. Link.
– The numbers and the genetic distance matter. Minority groups that get above a certain critical mass, and that are culturally distant from the majority culture, begin to self-segregate from the majority, moving society toward division and away from cooperation. Link.
– Using data from Copenhagen school registers, researchers found that native Danes opt out of public schools when the immigrant population concentration hits 35% or more. Link.
– In the most liberal region in the US, San Francisco and surrounding suburbs, White parents are pulling their kids out of public schools that are becoming increasingly asian. Link.
– School integration (forced proximate Diversity) will not close race achievement gaps. Link.
– Exclusionary dating is a natural consequence of racial diversity. Link.
– As diversity increases, politics becomes more tribalistic. Link.
– Company diversity policies don’t help minorities or women, and they psychologically discriminate against White men. Link.
– Greater classroom and neighborhood diversity is linked to stronger tendencies to choose same-ethnic rather than cross-ethnic friends. Link.
– A longitudinal test of the impact of diversity finds that it makes existing residents feel unhappier and more socially isolated. Link. (alternate link)
– Internal dissension stoked by ethnic, social, political, and religious diversity, rather than environmental degradation, caused the collapse of the urbanized Cahokia Indian Tribe. Link.
– The volunteer participation rate in America hit a record low last year, declining 0.4% from the previous year, and has been declining since 2005. Not coincidentally, the racial composition of America has become more fragmented during the same time. Link.
– A sense of social cohesion with the people who live around us is as happiness-inducing as love for the place itself. Link.
– Our desire for ‘like-minded others’ is hard-wired. Link.
– “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation”
Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. (Link)
– A wealthy Virginia county that is rapidly racially diversifying is getting poorer and less socially cohesive. Link.
– Gender diversity does not promote nonconformity in decision-making bodies. (But individual ability diversity does.) Link.
– High ethnic diversity has a negative effect on innovation, but high “values diversity” has the opposite effect, as long as ethnic diversity is low. The best innovation happens in countries that are ethnically homogenous but diverse in values orientation. Link.
– Growing racial diversity in Houston is contributing to declining construction standards and aggravating the impact of natural disasters. Link.
– As an explanation of recent voting behavior, ethnic origin trumps class differences. “…the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically “assimilate” over time.”
***
Chris summarizes,
In short: diversity gives us violence, conflict, less welfare, less trust, less cohesion. Merkel knew what she was doing. So do other elites. They are responsible. All the negatives of immigration and refugees are predictable and backed up by scientific evidence. Ergo each act of violence can be considered to be done from the hands of the elites themselves.
Merkel raped those women.
The ruling Western elite have native White blood and the rapes of native White women on their hands. Historically, what was done to ruling elites who displayed such open, traitorous contempt for their people? I’ll leave the imaginative answer to this question as an exercise for the readers.
Related to the above thought exercise: president Butt Naked is on record declaring he wants to turn America into a “hodgepodge of folks”, i.e., he hates White people and wants to see them demographically swamped by nonWhites.
This reference list will be updated periodically as new studies arrive and older ones are rediscovered.
Link with the links:
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/diversity-proximity-war-the-reference-list/
We could also add the work of leading social scientist Robert Putnam who found diversity radically destroys social capital. Amazingly, he suppressed his own finding so as not to strengthen the anti-immigration lobby. Contemplate That. It’s the triumph of politics over Truth and unlike in the Soviet Union, the intellectuals now suppress themselves! Beyond that, (as if that isn’t enough) Putnam has a whole other realm of personal reasons for being a true believer. He is a convert to Judaism and married into the Tribe as well. Given their ferocious commitment to Diversity (for us that is), not going along with it would likely lead to ostracism and divorce.
thanks.
I found this. verify or deny;
IQ tests measure the innate and immutable mental capability that involves abstract and cognitive thinking, spatial-relations skills, logical reasoning, the ability to solve novel problems, retain knowledge and apply skills, and comprehend complex ideas.
Intelligence is inherited and not equally distributed among the races: • East Asians = 106 • Whites = 100 • South East Asians = 87 • Non-White Hispanics = 86 • American Blacks = 85 (average 24% White admixture) • Middle East and North Africans = 84 • African Blacks = 67 (only 2% of Whites score this low) • Australian Aborigines = 62
Asian IQ scores cluster around the mean; therefore, the cognitive variation among Whites produces more geniuses, but also more morons.
Highest National IQs: • 108 Singapore • 106 South Korea • 105 Japan • 105 China • 102 Italy • 101 Iceland • 101 Switzerland • 100 Austria • 100 Netherlands • 100 Norway Lowest National IQs: • 68 Somalia • 67 Guinea • 67 Haiti • 67 Liberia • 66 Gambia • 64 Cameroon • 64 Gabon • 64 Sierra Leone • 64 Mozambique • 59 Equatorial Guinea Blacks are proto-humans; modern man evolved from Blacks by hybridizing with the large-brain Neanderthals: • Blacks = 2% Archaic admixture • Whites = 4% Neanderthal admixture • Asians = 5% Neanderthal + Denisovan Genetic distance is a measure of the genetic divergence between populations. Blacks have a genetic distance of 0.23 from Whites and Asians, but only 0.17 from Erectus. That means Blacks are more genetically proximate to archaic man than to modern man.
Blacks are the only race incapable of even providing for themselves. Whites still have to provide food, medical, financial, and engineering aid to every Black nation. Blacks can’t survive without White charity. Blacks became an out-of-control invasive species after Whites domesticated them. Some groups succeed all of the time, everywhere. Some have never succeeded, anywhere. No Black civilization has ever independently developed.
There are no White Third-World nations, but all Black ones are. Put Whites on an island and you get England; put Asians on an island and you get Japan; put Blacks on an island and you get Haiti. 19 of the 20 poorest countries are sub-Saharan African (Haiti). There has never been a successful Black nation. The only successful African nations were White-governed (Rhodesia, South Africa). The more Black a nation is, the less safe and prosperous it is.
Blacks are the only race with no DNA from the large-brain Neanderthals. Civilizations didn’t begin until this hybridization created the larger brains in modern man. Brain Size by Race: • Blacks = 1267 cm • Whites = 1347 cm • Asians = 1364 cm Brain Weight by Race: • Blacks = 1261 g • Whites = 1387 g • Asians = 1374 g
Compared to Blacks, Whites’ brains: • are 7% larger • are 126 grams heavier • have deeper fissuration in the frontal and occipital regions • have more complex convolutions and larger frontal lobes • have more pyramidal neurons • have 16% thicker supra-grandular layer • contain one standard deviation more cerebrum • react faster on mental chronometry tests • have 600 million more neurons Whites are only 10% of the world’s population, yet are the most industrious and innovative race the world has known.
Whites have crossed seas, harnessed rivers, carved mountains, tamed deserts, and colonized the most barren icefields. Whites have formed nations, built civilizations, and administrated power. Whites created automation, discovered electricity, nuclear energy, X-rays and invented automobiles, airplanes, jet engines, spacecraft, submarines, helicopters, radio, television, internet, computers, currency, telephones, and medicine. Whites unlocked the secrets of DNA, and relativity, launched communication satellites, invented microwave ovens, concrete, light bulbs, photography, telescopes and microscopes and countless other technological miracles. Whites were the first to circumnavigate the planet by ship, and orbit it by spacecraft, to walk on the moon and explore the solar system, climb the highest peak, reach both poles, exceed the sound barrier, descend to the deepest points of the oceans…… yet Blacks still can’t even feed themselves. No pre-contact sub-Saharan African society ever created a written language, or weaved cloth, or forged steel, or invented the wheel, or plow, or devised a calendar, or code of laws, or any social organization, or system of measurement, or math, or built a multi-story structure, or sewer, or infrastructure of any kind. They never drilled a well, or irrigated, or created any agriculture, or built a road, or sea-worthy vessel. They never domesticated animals, or exploited underground natural resources, or produced anything that could be considered a mechanical device.
Blacks were still living in the Stone Age when Whites discovered them just 400 years ago. Blacks are the oldest race, so they should be the most advanced — but they never advanced at all. Blacks lived alone in Africa, a vast continent with temperate climates and abundant resources for 60,000 years; so they cannot blame racism, colonialism, culture, environment, or anything else for their failures. No modern creations or civilization exists in sub-Saharan Africa that was not brought there by Whites. Without the continuous intervention of charity into Black Africa they could not even maintain what they have been given. Nowhere Blacks live are they considered achievers. Blacks are universally viewed as unproductive and disruptive to society.
Simply, life is an IQ test. Black-White IQ Distribution:
Blacks: 5% above 110 IQ 16% above 100 IQ 40% above 90 IQ 70% above 80 IQ 40% below 80 IQ 18% below 75 IQ 10% below 70 IQ Whites: 10% above 120 IQ 18% above 115 IQ 27% above 110 IQ 40% above 105 IQ 50% above 100 IQ 60% below 105 IQ 35% below 95 IQ 15% below 85 IQ So, the top 16% of Blacks are only as intelligent as the top 50% of Whites.
The least intelligent 10% of Whites have IQs below 80 (low functioning); 40% of Blacks do. Only one Black in six is more intelligent than the average White; five Whites out of six are more intelligent than the average Black. For every one gifted Black, there are eight gifted Whites. 80% of gifted “Blacks” have White admixture. Geniuses by Race (IQ 140 or higher): • African Blacks 1:3,500,000 (0.000003%) • American Blacks 1:218,000 (0.0004%) • Whites 1:83 (1.2%) Therefore, the per capita genius rate for Whites is 41,000 times higher than it is for African Blacks. If all Whites in America were replaced by Blacks, the number of geniuses in the country would fall from about 2.4 million to only about 1,000. The IQ gap is also present in non-verbal tests such Raven’s matrices, digit span, and mental chronometry, and is reflected in standardized academic exams. Consider the large and persistent so-called “achievement gap”. Black-White SAT Scores by Year: Year White Black Gap 1985 1038 839 199 1990 1031 849 185 1996 1052 857 195 2000 1060 859 201 2005 1061 863 197 2010 1063 855 208 2015 1047 846 201 This gap is so significant that colleges award 230 “race bonus” points to Blacks. The Black-only National Achievement Scholarship was created because Blacks are not intellectually competitive for the National Merit Scholarship. IQ by Race and Higest Degree Earned (1972 — 2014): Highest Degree White IQ Black IQ Gap High School Drop-out: 89 82 7 High School Diploma 98 90 8 Junior College Degree 102 95 7 Bachelor’s Degree 108 100 8 Graduate Degree 113 102 11 Therefore, a Black with a graduate degree has an IQ equivalent to a White with a junior college degree. Blacks can only achieve because they are mixed with White genes or because they reside in White societies. Not enough of them are smart enough to even build sufficient infrastructure to allow the Black intellectual elite to achieve. If the races are equally intelligent, then there should be evidence that they are; absence of such evidence is itself evidence that the races are not equal.
Huff Po crows about a Nigerian Gal who got into all 8? Ivys.
Someone else posted that the Lady is a fraud, he knows her friends.
Mostly all correct though the Black IQ’s seem a little low: the average is usually given as 70, with a few areas a bit above and a few a bit below. Striking because in spite of the incredible physical diversity of the people, the IQ’s are remarkably uniform, except for the Pygmies and Bushmen which are definitely lower.
In one place it seems to say Blacks have Neanderthal admixture and then denies it further down. Everything I’ve heard denies it. As to whether we become Homo Sapiens thru small amounts of admixture or whether it was other factors as well, is still undetermined.
But Yes!, Blacks seem much closer to some kind of primal Human stock. And race that breeds with them ends up being far more like the Black parent. Perhaps it’s because they have the most Homo Erectus in them. As I told Thwack, the Aborigines are the opposite, despite their equally alien appearance. The mixed offspring often look and act more White. Thwack always invokes the Golden Age mythos here, with Blacks are the Archetypal race of Gods from whom humanity fell. It’s quite the opposite of course. If there is any truth to this Myth, it has nothing to do with Blacks.
“Homo Erectus Walks Among Us” explores this theme. For some reason, the author thinks modern men came back into Africa and then fell into the arms of these dusky beauties. It’s available online. It’s written for the layman, but still challenging. It got him kicked out of the field before he had hardly began, apparently.
Blacks never wove cloth? That seems extreme. Not sure about that.
“Denisovan Genetic Difference” – never heard this phrase before. The Denisovans are a newly discovered form of man who influenced the Asian races for the most part. Perhaps a bit like Neanderthal in basic form. Don’t know if they had the huge brain or not.
If the races are equally intelligent, then there should be evidence that they are; absence of such evidence is itself evidence that the races are not equal.
**************
OK
Lets assume everything you say is true.
What are YOU gonna do about it?
Specifically, since YOU are more intelligent than I;
what are YOU gonna do to me?
and,
and,
should I do the same thing to your son or daughter if I am more intelligent than them?
” you refuse any questioning of your big Assumptions. ”
I suspect you have scarce any genuine assertions. You are an agent provocateur, in it for the lulz.
Certainly, if you are a National Socialist, then I am Cleopatra.
And I’m not Cleopatra, so that narrows it down a bit.
” How dare anyone question your premises! Police! ”
lol.
This , supposedly , from the apostle of aggressive war ( In the Nuclear Age no less ) and Lebensraum ?
You could use a bit of credible consistency.
On the other hand…..maybe you just should have been a police officer ?
They seem to be in the habit of calling in the heavy artillery, at the drop of a hat, on “rash” , and “threatening” …..8 year olds , and then claiming it was the other way around.
Or, as you said , ” They no longer even beg for Mercy – they demand it. And now even God is turned into the Big Cuck in the Sky.”
I have met many different groups and demographics in my time, and have never met any group kinder to itself, and by a huge margin, than this dark fraternity.
No assumption Janus; that’s an assertion .
A nation of sheep create a government of wolves. The police work for those who sign their checks. So we agree.
We disagree in that you think people are good. They aren’t. Fear and Shame are the guardians of the World as Buddha said. Now that those have grown weak for the reasons cited in myt posts above, the Government grows strong and overbearing. I hope you are looking out your window all hours of the day yelling at Black kids. It takes a village Kesa, not a Global one either.
Mr.Tibbs responding to Malthus:
“And in your honor, as where you reside is in the region of ignorance.
…..and here is the recipe:
1. Add financial corruption at the top.
2. Mix with mediocre minds at the bottom.
3. Add an inept Congress.
4. Mix with local law enforcement ignoring their corrupt “elected” Democratic mayors and disrupting “sanctuary city” status.
5. Add with a politically motivated judiciary serving no justice.
6. Mix with open borders.
7. Add an inept National Education Association.
8. Mix with an accelerating national public debt of greater than 20 trillion.
9. Add with an accelerating ignorant section of the populace incapable of cognitive analysis.
10. Mix with a hip-hop culture inculcating 2 generations.
11. Add with red China purchasing Hollywood, mainstream media, and key political class members.
12. Mix with Bilderberg globalists employing red China as the enforcement division.
13. Add with forced inoculations containing toxic adjuvants.
14. Mix with eugenics.
15. Add with artificial intelligence displacing labor.
16. Mix with accelerating ignorance, bigotry, and hatred.
17. Add gender confusion poisoning children’s developing minds.
18. Mix with wide scale pedophile rings and human sex trafficking.
19. Bake in the June heat.
20. old republic BLUE ZONE anarchy cake complete, starting July 1. Serves 100 million within the ignorant zone.”
Wow, T, you put a lot of thought into your response, but for Malthus?
Let me put it another way. Some paintings are turds and don’t deserve a fine frame and yet the mediocre persist:
“Maybe the frame will sell the painting!”
You’re Trying too hard with a capitol T. Relax Bro.
Do, Re, Mi, Fa–take a leap T–over the sooooOUL bridge!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16u6w0cjjrU
Janos Skorenzy April 5, 2017 at 1:13 am #
And then I realized that the railgun of theirs was a terrible threat, first of all to the ship on which it was stationed == me
Navy instructor pilots refusing to fly over safety concerns
More than 100 U.S. Navy instructor pilots are refusing to fly in protest of what they say is the refusal of top brass to adequately address an urgent problem with training jets’ oxygen system, multiple instructor pilots tell Fox News.
The boycott started late last week and has effectively grounded hundreds of training flights.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/04/navy-instructor-pilots-refusing-to-fly-over-safety-concerns-pences-son-affected.html
What many of the Americans do not realize is that the meltdown of Clintonoid Media is largely explained by the panic, settled among weapons manufacturers who tried to sell an overpriced junk as a super-puper new weapons systems, fully expected Hillary to win and cover up for them for another large donation to Clinton Foundation, now to see Trump’s inspectors scrupulously going over their not-functioning products and blown-up invoices.
And now, apparently, Trump must prove you know whom that the Witch wants to draw the US into a war that they are going to lose.
Moreover, he must prove this without traumatizing the American people with the realization that the United States does not have a technical advantage in the military sphere, since it is something like a drug for the American people, on which they were hooked up since the Watergate scandal.
And having lost this drug, a drug addict can do bad things, that the Witch and her Boss will be very pleased. Do we really need this?
” what is the question? ”
who do you work for ?
” who do you work for ? ” was YOUR , supposed, question, of course.
So, WTF?
Who did I work for? People and the City of Oakland. And you? Your reticence to explain your bona fides speaks volumes. I expect you have no direct experience in Law Enforcement Your opinions are subject to peer review, and a harsh review it will be if you are without street experience.
In Idlib, Syrian aviation struck at a terrorist’s warehouse with chemical weapons
MOSCOW, April 5 (Itar-Tass) – RIA Novosti. Syrian aviation struck a blow near the outskirts of the village of Khan-Sheikhun in the province of Idlib at the ammunition depot of terrorists and the accumulation of military equipment, where there were arsenals of ammunition with chemical weapons, which was delivered to Iraq, an official spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday.
” A nation of sheep create a government of wolves. The police work for those who sign their checks. So we agree. ”
^ This isn’t relevant to my reply to you. I included it for ……other……reasons. 🙂
” We disagree in that you think people are good. ”
No, I do not think people are good.
Never mind for a minute whether the following story is historical fact, or a made up story, but only consider its internal logic ;
God becomes flesh, becomes man. And not a prince, not a warlord, not a rich merchant, but a real nobody.
He proceeds, intentionally , to get himself nailed to a cross.
Now it seems to me that if everything is basically fine, or partially fine, or even a little bit fine ,
then this is pointless . this makes God out to be a hysterical idiot. , or a prankster jesting with man.
It seems to me that the only explanation that gives this story any coherence, is that the situation was actually extremely bleak.
i.e. original sin, i.e. people suck.
Not a few people, not some people, not most people. All.
But, hey, I’m a religious crank and an idiot.
So don’t take my word concerning invisible Gods.
Never mind God.
Just trot down to your friendly neighborhood law library and start reading what man actually thinks of man, and how man actually treats with man.
Kafka’s , ” The Trial ” wasn’t fiction.
But then you know that.
Also try Kafka’s “In The Penal Colony” for an intriguing treatment of the human condition vis-a-vis Capital punishment. Brutal.
Too bad old Franz is not around to give us his take on the whole robots and artificial intelligence mess that is coming.
You see much Truth but react to it in a bad way, thus becoming a Black Curmudgeoness. You are probably a reincarnation of Flannery O’Connor. She accepted the validity of the Civil Rights Movement, but refused to condemn her people as good Whites were supposed to do. The karma around all of this probably lead you to taking a Black body this time.
Consider writing a piece about your inner life entitled “My Underwear Drawer”. We’ll critique it and no doubt you’ll be able to get it published somewhere at some point.
Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel
The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html?utm_term=.16be5ba098f2
To be fair, history already knows such a precedent: during the time of the Caribbean crisis, the world did not collapse into a nuclear apocalypse, largely because Khrushchev and Kennedy managed to establish a personal informal back channel, bypassing the militarized imperial structures of the USSR and the United States.
Then John A. Scali, a correspondent for the ABC News channel, and Alexander Feklisov, a KGB resident in Washington, took part in the establishment of a secret communication channel between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
Why shouldn’t White House and the Kremlin take advantage of the once proven and worked out scheme, given the complicated international situation?
The Kremlin, through the Putin’s press secretary Peskov, of course, refuted the information of the Washington Post. This, however, is natural, because an operation of this kind should be deeply conspiratorial. But the channel of such a secret communication, it seems, still exists. This suddenly became clear after the terrible terrorist attack in St. Petersburg.
After the explosion appeared arguments by various conspiracy theorists, political scientists and analysts who insistently hint: Trump regards this act of terrorism as a threat to his own power. The thing is, they say, that the explosion in the St. Petersburg metro was planned and carried out by the US special services (Trump’s main internal enemies) through their intermediary agents in the liberal opposition, close to Navalny, who managed to recruit a young Islamist fanatic.
The main goal of this act of terrorism is to provoke large-scale social instability in Russia, to accuse Trump of inability (unwillingness) to take advantage of Putin’s weakness and ultimately to overthrow the newly elected president through impeachment.
Dailymail: Russia builds an ‘unstoppable’ 4,600mph cruise missile that could sink the Royal Navy’s new £6bn aircraft carriers with a single strike
Russia has constructed a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, according to reports.
The weapon cannot be stopped by the Navy’s current defenses, experts say.
Zircon could render Navy’s two new £6.2billion aircraft carriers useless.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4350360/Russia-develops-unstoppable-4-600mph-cruise-missile.html
Over the past few years, Russia has become one of the main geopolitical players, the guarantor of many international agreements, explicit and secret. And its destabilization, let alone disintegration, along with the inexorably progressing weakening of the United States, threatens to plunge the entire modern world into bloody chaos. This is especially evident in the military field.
In the twenty-first century, the balance of power between the West and Russia changes in favor of Moscow, even where the West has for centuries been considered an unquestioned leader. Beginning with the era of great geographical discoveries in the 15th century, the West based its military power and economic prosperity on being the undisputed master of the vast ocean expanses.
First Spain and Holland, then Great Britain, and the last 75 years the United States of America reliably controlled the world’s major shipping routes. The colonial goods flowed from the overseas possessions to the West: gold and spices, oil and timber, gas and ore, and in the last twenty years also cheap Chinese consumer goods, cars, smartphones and computers from Southeast Asia.
It seemed that the cheap overseas workforce would forever provide the West with wealth and prosperity. But in the 21st century the situation changed unexpectedly and radically.
Having risen after the liberal Russophobic pogrom of the 90s, Russia began to rapidly build up its military power. And not only on the land theaters of military operations, where the Russian army was always strong and invincible, but also in the oceans that the US and NATO military strategists considered reliable zones of their naval power.
All aforementioned consideration could put a current internal conflict between Trump and liberal media and US intelligence community in a different light: the Fifth Column inside the US is doing its best to arrange a Russian-American conflict, nuclear is better, to weaken both Nations in the interest of the external power – most likely, the German Fourth Reich in unholy alliance with Islamist Saudi Arabia.
ten pounds of shit in a nine pound bag – elysian
===========
Reminds me of:
What is a blivit?
Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
Well Ladies and Germs,
This is what the former NSA Director Michael Hayden opined regarding our current Monetary System;
The system that the world has relied on for self-governance for the last three-quarters of a century is pretty much at the end of its fiscal life,” Hayden said, referring to the post-World War II financial system… “We’re not just faced with fixing the problem of the current system. I’m telling you the current system is going under and cannot survive. It is a macro-tectonic issue here.”
Who amongst us will argue that the former NSA director knows not of what he speaks? He, even above the CIA Director, is the keeper of secrets…probably even knows who killed Kennedy.
And….the reference;
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/local/former-nsa-director-ready-for-worldwide-shakeups/3UyOQ5hiE6dwEDc9ynE7eM/
“Who amongst us will argue that the former NSA director knows not of what he speaks? He, even above the CIA Director, is the keeper of secrets…probably even knows who killed Kennedy.”
elysian,
“Knows”? More likely, “participated in the killing of Kennedy”. …And probably his “little brother TOOoo!”, (to borrow a theme from the Wicked Witch of the West).
It seems the theme this week is planes, trains, automobiles…and space!!!
I believe we went to the Moon. More than once. So, there. The problem with space travel is everything is too far away, we lost the thrust of exploration in the 70’s and 80’s, and there is no commercial reason. If there was a way to get oil on Mars, believe we, we’d be there by now, because the corporations would put all they had into it.
But the essential problem is space is dangerous. There’s a lot of radiation, and weightlessness means after prolonged exposure, the skeleton would weaken. Get to Mars, and the crew would need time just to be able to walk again.
You’d have to put gravity in a spaceship, and now, there just isn’t the urge to advance human knowledge…thank you, me generation.
The Moon is empty. Mars has potential because it has a weak atmosphere, and it could be possible to build colonies using domes and creating green spaces.
But there is all of that space. Probably that’s why Stargate is such a popular sci-fi series…pop into a wormhole and zap! There you are.
Remember when Lost in Space was on, the original purpose of the ship was to find a new world for Earth’s excess population, which means you’d need about 8,000 spaceships to bus the wretched refuse of our teeming shore there. Not very practical, but the purpose of Lost in Space quickly became the Dr. Smith and Will Robinson show. if you wanted to think, you watched Star Trek.
Now, back to earth. I think Health1 is a nice guy, and Arizona is a nice place. A girlfriend of mine loved it and went to Arizona State. But his view is what Christopher Lasch wrote about some years ago, of a globalist elite who are comfortable, international, and have no interest in their country. To them, patriotism is a pathology.
Health1 and his coterie are happy to jet anywhere and live, and are unconcerned about national problems. All non-white people are adorable…let’s bring in refugees, creating a problem for us to deal with. Let’s relocate factories and get cheap labor…people here will just have to learn to use computers, work at the resort, or whatever. I’m not being mean, really. But this is the view of deracinated cosmopolitans. It’s a view that has a point, but so does a view of local power and patriotism.
Transportation: sure, I like trains. I’ve lived in Germany and Boston, and a college town, so I’ve used public transportation, and see how it can work. But also, when I took an Amtrack (I insist on using a c) from St. Louis to Boston, the ride was slow, we stopped for forty minutes so freight trains could go by…and in America, rail freight is alive and booming…and I got tired of drunks on the train, especially one jerk who had two six-packs, and tried to keep feeding me beer. A woman in back was bothered by a man, screamed, and at the next stop the cops hauled him off. Also, in New York, while the train stopped, gangs came on board and harassed people. The Amtrack police had their hands full.
As for public transportation, we have a fair system in Metrolink, but I have a car, already pay to keep it up, and can’t really afford a monthly pass. Also, I can get where I need to get in my car without waiting. Besides, there’s a lot of crime on the trains and busses. In most inner cities, a bus is a rolling psych ward, and lately we’ve had assaults. Two weeks ago, a gang robbed people by the Stadium, which is a well-used site, a gun went off and killed a homeless man on the platform. Also, I work evenings and nights, and there are no busses after midnight. In Boston, getting around wasn’t a problem, and here, it’s a wider distance. A streetcar stop in Boston would be two blocks closer.
So, as JHK would agree, there is a social problem that has to be remedied.
As for that dreaded phrase on this site, ‘happy motoring.’ Well, I am a happy motorist. I’ve had cars, especially Saturns, which ran well, and I’m sorry they stopped making them. It was an American product people really liked. Now, I have an Impala my girl friend gave me when she died. I take of it, enjoy driving to places I could never get to on public transportation, and like the freedom and comfort, as well as not having dopes and jerks next to you on the tram. I used to take Greyhound busses from St. Louis to Columbia, Mo, but Greyhound cut back their service, packed the bus so you had people sitting in the aisles (they used to get an extra bus if there were too many passengers, but stopped…an ‘economy measure.’). Then, when you arrived at Columbia, you were downtown two blocks from the university. No more. Now it’s three MILES outside of town, so you have to take an overpriced taxi (when they show up) just to get there.
So, I have a lot of fun with my car, and I like it. I enjoyed using public transportation, but times and my life changed. I do walk whenever I can, and always make sure a grocery, post office, etc., are within walking distance.
And as for Arizona, I think the Gila Monsters are cool.
BTW,
my answer for the reason the Soviets didn’t challenge the faked Apollo moon landings, is because we bought the fake moon landing rights from them.
Probably a few billions of dollars over a couple of decades.
BTW,
The reason I haven’t responded to your moon landing comments is because I choose to not discuss idiotic postings. I really hope you are just trying to pull our legs and having a good time doing it.
There are ‘Flat Earth’ and ‘Moon Landing was fake’ people.
Too many of them.
The “flat Earth” people are doing whats known as sprinkling “conspiracy candy” around the fake Apollo moon landing investigation.
Its a variant form of “agree and amplify” designed to subvert the curious and suspicious into dismissing ALL conspiracies.
I suspect “Beantownboob” is a white male baby boomer annoyed that anyone dare question his generations great accomplishment…
I would like to remind him that its not a lie when you tell someone something they want to believe; I just caution you to remember:
*you can’t cheat an honest man*
Boston public transportation is brutal. Trains are overstuffed at rush hour, bus stops every few feet and the fumes are sickening, and the trolley lines stop almost as often as buses – when they are working. Auto traffic in the morning is ridiculously heavy, drivers are impatient and reckless and you never know when you will hit a traffic stoppage. Going to the airport is an iffy proposition, especially during peak hours.
One time it will take me 20 minutes to get to Logan, the next time 50 minutes. I rarely go downtown anymore, it’s just not worth the hassle.
Regarding your (and others’) space comments, I don’t understand why the focus isn’t on orbiting space colonies. They would be close to Earth, relatively speaking, and seems to me to be the next logical step
In space exploration. We haven’t even gone back to the moon yet, let alone going to Mars. One step at a time.
Despite Musk’s exhortations, we currently have to resolve some serious technical issues before we can venture To Mars. Given our current state of emotional maturity and engineering prowess, constructing a space colony is relatively easy and inexpensive, and would give the world’s population hope and inspiration. Go to space, young man!
Try buses in Las Vegas.
And I do not mean ‘open drinks on the Strip’ type buses.
On second thought, who needs trains with flying cars on the way?
Lost in Space quickly became the Dr. Smith and Will Robinson show.
***********************
Was Dr. Smith supposed to be playing a stereotypical homosexual?
I thought that Dr. Smith and the robot was TeeVee’s first depiction of a human-robot marital arrangement.
As for me I, had the hots for June Lockhart.
Lynda Carter/Wonder Woman
10 pound boobs in a 5 pound corset
Remember when Lost in Space was on,
**********************
yes;
and I ALSO remember that it was the uncalculated weight of Dr. Smith that took them off course and caused them to be lost in space.
This is why Im calling bullshit on them loading up the lunar module with with moon rocks without weighing them.
Nobody walked on the moon.
Elysianfield, what Hayden said with regards to the financial system was in recognition of a reality that’s been apparent for a while now. But the financial system is just the grease in the wheels of an economic system that, as Kunstler and others have been saying, isn’t sustainable. And I’ve been saying it’s unworkable and unfixable. If the system of global production-consumption-trade doesn’t work, there’s slim hope that the financial system can work either. What the Fed and Treasury have been trying to do is keep the carcass of the global economy alive. It’s pointless, the longer they try to keep the corpse’s heart beating, the more time is wasted in moving to a system that’s workable.
WRT your reply to my post about the Saudis, if Saudi oilfields run dry, the money for their worldwide expansion of madrassas runs dry too. According to what I’ve read, the Saudis have been the indoctrinators and funders of terror. The madrassas were the Saudi example of soft power combined with hard power. People all over the world that depend on Saudi funding will go without and as such their activities will be curtailed. This kind of stuff needs money. No money, no talk. Maybe they can develop local sources of donation-extortion. We’ll see. We’ll see also how much of a taste there is in different parts of the world for the extreme Saudi version of Islam, you know, the kill, kill, kill, behead the infidel type.
V.,
In actuality, what had happened was that the Saud clan made a deal with the Wahabbists/da debbil (fuck the spelling and fuck them). The Sauds got to be the wealthy “rulers” of the cranky ‘folk’ (by the will of “Allah” of course) and the Wahabbi shitheads got to indoctrinate those same folk with a poisonous, so-called religion. The Wubbis pretending to hyper-violent, worldwide domination, the House of Saud to worldwide whoring and hedonism. It’s a deal that American politicians found verrry educational. Got pandering and gawd’s will?
V.,
Of course, when the goodies run dry in the Kingdom, the headless bodies of thousands of the family of Saud will be dragged through the sands by jubilant Wubbis. (Whether by Land Rover or camel is yet to be determined.)
Volodya,
I am in full accord with your views on the economic system. I believe Hayden was actually speaking of the entire global economic system…the “financial system” and the “economic system” are virtually synonymous in general discussion of the subject of “the economy” by lay persons. To those specialists and students of Economics, the two systems, while joined at the hip, have separate meanings.
Do not the dirt-poor Palestinian children throw rocks at the Israeli military? They of course, do. If the Israeli military shot my parents, would I need a madrassa to understand and channel my rage? Probably not.
Terrorism is the only viable weapon the poor can use, with any effect, against a State. Money might be considered a force multiplier, but is not entirely an enabler.
If nothing else, the Wash DC script writers are creative. They are reporting that the greatest prez since Lincoln has escaped to an all male retreat on Tahiti…..probably one of those safe spaces where males can strip down to their jock straps, bang on their tom toms, bang on each others tom toms, and realize their inner savage and primitive oneness with nature……all without adequate female supervision. So now you have a trifecta……Bongo, the first gay muzzie kenyan prez, former leader of the free world. Somebody please take the LSD away from the script writers.
Link?
Pepsi celebrates diversity and BLM.
The link to the other image is even worse.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2017/04/05/boycott-pepsi/
Word has leaked out that Musk is now undertaking another ambitious project, the self-licking ice cream cone.
It’s reported to be a somewhat erotic creation, while at the same time seeming to defy the laws of physics with its apparent perpetual motion.
Supposedly constructed in some bizarre Mobius form, (for ice cream re-insertion, I imagine), and rotating in interacting fields with quantum applications, it is said to possess an indecent but arousing mechanical sexuality.
And as you might imagine, any flavor works, but I don’t know if they’re beyond the single dip. There’s been no mention of the “tongue”.
With modifications, the idea is to also carry it on trips to Mars as kind of a “back home comfort”.
Its complete source of power has yet to be revealed, but I’m told that the “auras” or energy fields of viewers can also be tapped in a kind of “reverse” Faraday field application. Wow! What will he think of next!
Speaking of strange stuff, remember Reich and the Orgone Box?
Sunday Book Review
Inside the Orgone Box
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS SEPT. 23, 2011
In the classic confessional memoir “The God That Failed,” Arthur Koestler describes some of the characters who made up the constituency of his Communist Party group in Berlin in the early 1930s:
“Among other members of our cell, I remember Dr. Wilhelm Reich. He . . . had just published a book called ‘The Function of the Orgasm,’ in which he had expounded the theory that the sexual frustration of the proletariat caused a thwarting of its political consciousness; only through a full, uninhibited release of the sexual urge could the working class realize its revolutionary potentialities and historic mission; the whole thing was less cockeyed than it sounds.”
Pausing briefly to ask oneself how the word “cockeyed” translates into Berlin vernacular, one next inquires how the theory could have been more preposterous than at first appeared. Apart from his life of tireless and sensational debauchery, Koestler himself was famous for hitching his wagon to various movements of the paranormal and the extrasensory; he might have been expected to give Reich’s oddball theories a try even as both men spun off from the dying planet of Soviet Communism. But what is extraordinary is the number of apparently level and careful people who, in pursuit of the better and bigger orgasm, were prepared to lower themselves into Reich’s jerry-built “orgone box” and await blissful developments. One is not so surprised to read of the enthusiasm of try-anything-once artists like Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer. But how must Albert Einstein have felt, while engaged on his two weeks of study of orgone properties? (He did at least conclude that the “box” was an insult to the laws of physics.) Did Saul Bellow not succumb to the queasy feeling that he might be looking like a sap?
Is it too easy to simply speculate that men will make fools of themselves for the sake of sex? As Christopher Turner notices in his very amusing and intelligent book, “Adventures in the Orgasmatron,” George Orwell, not usually associated with promiscuity of any kind, included central elements of the Reichian theory and program almost uncritically in the pages of “1984.” The terrifying inquisitor O’Brien tells the cowering Winston Smith: “The sex instinct will be eradicated. . . . We shall abolish orgasm.” And Winston’s intensely promiscuous girlfriend, Julia, explains why the Party needs sexual repression:
“When you make love you’re using up energy. And afterward you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and Three Year Plans and all the rest of that bollocks?”
Photo
An orgone box, 1960.
Orwell’s relationship with the libidinous was, as we know, a generally distraught one. Did his private resentment on this score inhibit him from seeing that a really clever ruling class would saturate its subjects with all sorts of treats, from the erotic to the narcotic, and enlist them in their own soft slavery by means of hedonism? (Toward the end of his life, this suggestive point was actually put to him in a letter from his old French teacher at Eton, who enclosed a copy of his own latest novel, “Brave New World.”)
Continue reading the main story
EXCERPT
‘Adventures in the Orgasmatron’ SEPT. 23, 2011
An alternative explanation for the temporary success of Reich, especially among American intellectuals both of the Marxisant stripe and of the do-it-yourself “organic community” sort, is that he was able to propose an essentially mechanical and “scientific” solution to a psychological problem, yet a mechanical solution that could be easily assembled and employed at home. Arriving in the United States in 1939 as one of the many dissident Freudians and heterodox Marxists to have escaped Hitler (and in his own case, also Stalin), Reich was quick to announce the invention of the “orgone energy accumulator.” This device or contraption took the form of a wooden cupboard lined with metal and insulated with steel wool. It was about the size of a telephone booth. In his movie “Sleeper,” Woody Allen satirically referred to the humble resulting structure as “the Orgasmatron”: a ridiculous name deftly annexed by Turner. But the real terms used by Reich to promote the cupboard of ecstasy — “orgastic potency”; “orgone energy” — were hardly less hyperbolic.
Turner, an editor at Cabinet magazine, is clearly right to connect the Reich movement to the early stirrings of the postwar sexual revolution: a development that might have occurred naturally and that could well have been apolitical. However, a series of hysterically comic figures on the American right (and one or two rather sinister ones as well, like Senator Joseph McCarthy) claimed to see the figure of Alfred Kinsey, say, as a frontman for a wider conspiracy to sap American morals. It wasn’t long before agents from the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization Service were calling on Reich, either to ask him about subversive characters he might know, or about his own political past and affiliations. In a way, he made the perfect boogeyman for J. Edgar Hoover, who managed to amass a file of hundreds of pages on a man who must have seemed the perfect fusion of Red menace and sexual pervert. (One wishes that Reich had had time to do a psychosexual profile of Hoover.) What the investigators actually found, however, was a man whose breach with his Communist past was complete: stating firmly (this was in late 1953) that he favored the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg even though he might “not have wanted to be the executioner.” This may have owed something to a need to overcompensate, and even to impress authority, but we know from other sources that in many ways Reich was quite conservative. According to Paul Robinson in “The Freudian Left”: “Reich seemed to fear his would-be admirers even more than his critics. He was haunted by the thought that men with dirty minds would misuse his authority.” He not only disliked pornography but — in what must count as a startling departure from Viennese theory and practice — was opposed to dirty jokes, believing that sexual emancipation would make them obsolete. In addition, he “abhorred” homosexuality.
“Adventures in the Orgasmatron” has many fine and engaging passages, but I think my favorite must be this one, in which Alfred Kazin describes the pathetic trust in Reich shown by the writer Isaac Rosenfeld. Has there ever been a better description of the baffled naïveté of so many “New York intellectuals”?:
“Isaac’s orgone box stood up in the midst of an enormous confusion of bedclothes, review copies, manuscripts, children and the many people who went in and out of the room as if it were the bathroom. Belligerently sitting inside his orgone box, daring philistines to laugh, Isaac nevertheless looked lost, as if he were waiting in his telephone booth for a call that was not coming through.” This book will change the way in which we employ that increasingly lazy phrase about “thinking outside the box.”
ADVENTURES IN THE ORGASMATRON
How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
By Christopher Turner
I prefer the old-fashioned way to achieve orgasm. Luckily, it requires another person or persons present during the process. BTW, “Sleeper” is my favorite Woody Allen movie, and the orgasmatron was hilarious.
Good series of articles on how the Jews have utterly changed our sexuality – not to traditional Judaism, but to the Bohemian Communist mutation that they wanted for us. To be fair, some of them lived this way as well and seemed to sincerely think breaking up the family was for the best.
http://www.dailystormer.com/the-jew-as-adversary-in-the-battle-over-obscenity-pornography-and-sexual-morality-part-6-wilhelm-reich-and-the-sexual-revolution/
Freud was partly right: Civilization depends of the suppression of the life force or eros. So should we then throw it over just so we can have good sex? We might have a whole slew of new problems then – too many to worry much about sex at all. Hunter Gatherers suppress their sexuality as well thru many a taboo and stricture. So perhaps we could conclude that Human Life not Civilization depends on such suppression.
Can we learn from Reich, Marcuse, Freud, et al about the Life Force without adopting their views completely – which would be disastrous? Their views would end the family, and that would screw people up royally. Is having a good orgasm worth that incredible price?
Of course one could suppress Sexuality without creating Civilization. Some primitive societies are puritanical. Ditto some individuals. Black fundies are some of the weirdest people of all. The point is to sublimate, or save on the lower level so one can spend on the higher. This is the so called “hydraulic theory” of the life force. Significantly, the yogis and mystics all subscribe to it.
In other words, Eros is all one force. Sexuality is only one manifestation. Plato also used the word this way. Falling in love was a higher Eros. For simple sexual attraction or lust, the Greeks had another word. This is the more elegant and accurate understanding that the Freudians seemed to be groping towards, freed from their exaggerations and perversions. Reich focused only on the simply and overtly sexual – which made the Freudians uncomfortable. This is to their credit.
Mention of that “hydraulic theory” of the life force made me think of some basic fluid dynamics like steady or unsteady flow, perhaps like sexual urges, and fluid flows that can also be compressible or incompressible, like sexual urges.
Fluid flow can also be viscous or non-viscous. Sexual viscosity could be the internal emotional friction of some debased sexual desire.
A non-viscous sexual flow would be higher Eros.
Then we have the hydraulic, physical wonders performed by the molecules of Viagra.
“Some primitive societies are puritanical. Ditto some individuals. Black fundies are some of the weirdest people of all.”
***********************
“Some advanced societies are savage. Ditto some individuals. white people with money are some of the biggest psychopaths of all.”
Western civilization supports and defends a woman ability to kill her own baby?
How black and primitive is that?
Seems misguided to me to call agape an higher eros. You might be able to call phileo an higher eros, but agape is never motivated by the flesh. It is a spiritual love which is give and not a takee – induced response to carnal stimuli.
Yes, I’m tweaking the word as it’s currently used, but is that the original meaning? In any case, many mystics have compared to the Soul’s relationship to God as a love affair. Plato speaks of the flight of eros. Eros loves earthly things at first, especially beautiful bodies, then moves to loving other souls, then to loving knowledge, and then to loving wisdom, and then to loving God.
Obviously Agape is the fruit of this quest. Such a one is rich and doesn’t ask to receive but only wishes to give. Having found God, he or she loves with God’s love. So what happens? Agape becomes a social ideal and those who haven’t even begun the quest imitate it outwardly, hoping to reap the social rewards. The Neo-Puritan Culture that has triumphed in America is all about such virtue signaling – and it is a vile repudiation of Christ’s injunction to do good secretly.
Sartre writes a lot about viscousity and stickiness. My old roommate was tormented by “sticky stuff”.
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead?
The two biggest events after St.Petersburg terrorist attack:
1. The explosion of chemical weapons warehouse of “moderate” rebels in Idlib
2. Resignation of Steve Bannon from National Security Council
The explosion of chemical weapons is an indisputable proof of its possession by the anti-Assad insurgents and the “organization” of the use of such weapons in 2013.
Of course it is possible to deny, but after that any proposal for cooperation to combat ISIS is a mockery and provocation.
But the resignation of Washington’s Leninist Steve Bannon is a serious concession by Trump to establishment, which occurred after Trump caught at the crime scene the Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Yesterday she almost cried, giving interviews on this topic. After such interviews the only thing remains to hang out the white flag, no conditions.
So Trump made concessions and removed the red rag from the muzzle of the bull after its surrender. But accepting the surrender of the neocons makes sense only if the Witch is no more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ayK694PZI
Washington Post raises a white flag, signals that Russia-Trump story is over?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/04/05/media-outlets-go-easy-on-susan-rice-double-down-on-trump-russia/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6d76240f9587
Looks like some sort of armistice has been reached!
I’m now reading Burton Malkiel’s classic “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”. It seems that “Investment Theory” is dominated by 2 schools of thought: The Firm Foundation Theory which tries to determine a company’s “Intrinsic Value” (Warren Buffet favors this method.); and the “Castle-in-the-Air” theory which basically says that a company’s stock price is not rational and largely a function of mass psychology, which can be manipulated by tricks and propaganda. In short, I suspect that the business and finance schools may have been teaching people how to make money through fraudulent Ponzi and pump-and-dump schemes, which may, in part, account for the ubiquitous moral void and pervasive racketeering in the society? The schools are teaching it. Go figure…..
When the DJIA collapses, it will be ugly.
The uglier the better.
Let’s get the (shit) show on the road.
Maybe that is why the Investment Bankers always stress the importance of developing a “Compelling Story” for the company?
“Make America Great Again”
Thwack,
Its a variant form of “agree and amplify” designed to subvert the curious and suspicious into dismissing ALL conspiracies.
–THANKS, thats how they do things in the media.
I suspect “Beantownboob” is a white male baby boomer annoyed that anyone dare question his generations great accomplishment…
I think that you are right,in that he is old [and feisty].
I see that JHK hasn’t banned me yet for sounding off on you yet Malthuss, you poor ignorant bastard. How’ve you been, you shit-eating rube? Any words of great wisdom to share today, or are you still too busy licking the sweat off your masters’ balls?
What is the root of this conflict?
You must give up your resentment of the Rich. We only ask for their loyalty, not their wealth. Of course, their taxes might go up a bit….
He posted , recently, that you are a ‘shit stain’ and
I posted that he is a ‘s— stain’ or some censored version of his
term.
Oh, I missed that. He started out very polite but I noticed he didn’t respond to my passionate defense of George Zimmerman. He obviously is in the Saint (stain) Tryavon school of thought.
Thank you for defending me in my mental absence.
LOL! Janos, always the last to know.
Anybody heard from capt stubing?? (spaulding)
Commiserating at the bar with Doc, Isaac, Gopher, and Julie??
-T
test
Hello, Ms Janet.
many Americans think these cars run on batteries. No they don’t. Not really. The battery is just a storage unit for electricity that comes from power plants that burn something –JHK
Wow! That is a very 20th century way of looking at electrical energy generation. The 21st century is already seeing a transition to renewable, non-polluting sources of energy generation. This is happening now. If you look at total megawatt-hour statistics, solar nearly doubled its contributory output to electricity generation in 2016. Wind and natural gas also grew in 2016. Coal and nuclear both declined in their overall standings in 2016.
With 373,807 jobs created in 2016, solar is far and away the biggest job creator in the entire Electric Energy Generation sector according to the DOE’s second annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER) which came out in January 2017.
Just 9 solar panels on your roof provide roughly enough electricity to power 12,000 miles of electric car driving each year. If you would otherwise drive a 20mpg vehicle, your solar electric panels charging your electric car will pay for themselves in around 2 years.
Over 20 years, that would be like paying 32 cents per gallon for gasoline.
By producing your own electrical energy to charge your electric car’s batteries (which are becoming more efficient and extending range each year), a solution which scales, several goals are achieved:
** Lower carbon footprint: burning gasoline accounts for 50% of carbon emissions in New England, and 27% of all energy consumed in the United States
** Save money: Lock in a 20-year cost of power with an electric car powered by a solar electric system.
** Energy independence: stop supporting oil and gas companies and get where you need to go with power from the sun.
** Lower maintenance costs: driving an all electric car can save 36% or $10,538 over five years (based on a study of electric vs. hybrids in 27 cities, the Nissan Leaf was by far the cheapest to own.)
Please excuse this intrusion of FACTS into the electric energy generation discussion.
Please excuse this intrusion of FACTS into the electric energy generation discussion. – janet
=============
Our respite from janet lasted just under 3 days, 22 hours.
Count your blessings.
Uh, oh?
“Janet”
the life sized booger is out and about?
nsa writes:
“probably one of those safe spaces where males can strip down to their jock straps, bang on their tom toms, bang on each others tom toms, and realize their inner savage and primitive oneness with nature……all without adequate female supervision. So now you have a trifecta……Bongo, the first gay muzzie kenyan prez, former leader of the free world. Somebody please take the LSD away from the script writers.”
Sounds like you prefer a “dry” world devoid of Dionysian rapture…too bad I say, look how happy the tripper is on his totem pole at minute 54:00 mark (best to enter at the 49:20 juncture).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URtCml8FHrU
Its quite possible Obama WAS born in Kenya?
After all,
if you can get away with a fake moon landing…?
No, he was born in the United States and he is a grandson of Jack Kennedy – a Black Irishman.
Congratulations to American people with significant victory over the Black Project!
On the 5th of April 2017, on 775 year anniversary of the first victory of Russian people over the Western Black Project – The Battle on the Ice – Trump wins a significant decisive victory over American Party of War.
The Battle on the Ice was fought between the Republic of Novgorod led by Prince Alexander Nevsky and the crusader army led by the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights on April 5, 1242, at Lake Peipus. The battle is notable for having been fought largely on the frozen lake, and this gave the battle its name.
The battle was a significant defeat sustained by the crusaders during the Northern Crusades, which were directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims in the Holy Land.
The Crusaders’ defeat in the battle marked the end of their campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Slavic territories for the next century.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkCx1C7Qig9CeJ50lkmyFpzBqDjng3Kws&v=5chqT38HuTo
Eisenstein’s film, ALexander Nevsky, with its great historical narrative, and fantastic imagery is then compounded to cinematic legend by the extraordinary score by Prokofiev.
Perhaps the Teutonic Knights could be reassembled to take on the Yzlamik hordes of today’s Europe, making up for their past fratricidal indiscretions.
I look a this from the other angle. The migrants hordes from the ME are just a cannon fodder of the Order.
You can’t seriously accuse the European Elites – Children of Gods – in suddenly awakened deep love for diversity.
Good article about Finc’s “patriotic Muslim Russians”. Just as in the West, the Tribe wants to flood the nation with cheap labor, consequences be damned. Or perhaps consequences intended. Or perhaps the real reason for doing it at all.
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2017/04/muslim-terrorism-metro-attack-immigration-russia/
Execution of the citizens of Pskov by the Knights of the Teutonic Order
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4phHHyR_Ag
Elysianfield, totally agree about your point on the Palestine-Israel situation. That place is already combustible without Saudi money. A lot of other places in the world too.
Ozone, if I was a paid adviser to the Saudi royals I would advise them to keep the getaway planes on the tarmac with baggage loaded and engines running. And to make sure that officials doing the passport stamping and immigration approvals in their destination countries are generously bribed. No point landing somewhere if you’re turned away.
And, as an adviser, I would know that my life is worth shit. Same with the rest of the regime’s clerisy. Don’t look to the royals for help when it hits the fan.
I’ll bet that the higher ranking royals are positively Roman in their arrogance. But I’ll bet that a lot of lower ranking Saudi aristocracy know the fragility of their situation. Same with the hangers-on. Maybe they have their escape prepared. I know I would.
You know the famous saying, do not enter the yellow box unless your exit is clear.
The fact that an obvious deal has been reached between the warring parties in Washington could only mean one thing: Hillary is out of the picture. Permanently
The New York Times made me laugh. They say that Democrat hate for Trump voters is real. No shit Sherlock.
When I stopped laughing I realized that even though it’s a blinding grasp of the obvious, at least one writer sees it. I mean, even their presidential candidate couldn’t contain herself and gave voice to it in a widely reported speech. Nonetheless people can be resolutely blind to what’s right under their nose. So, credit to the writer.
To be fair, it’s a bi-partisan hate. Romney spewed his own contempt in that famous 47% speech. Arguably both Romney and Hillary cost themselves the election with those comments. Well, they both lost fair and square.
So now Trump opens his big mouth on the poison gas attack in Syria. I don’t know, maybe he forgot that he’s Prez and not a game show host. And, as Obama amply illustrated, once the Prez opens his mouth, he has to follow through.
It’s a simple thing really. The world outside the US isn’t like the world inside US borders. It just isn’t. The President can bullshit about domestic issues. But he can’t bullshit when he’s talking about stuff outside the borders. In the outside world there’s some really bad men taking the measure of the Prez. Can we fuck with him? Is he up to a fight? Does he follow through?
Trump really put his foot in it. So now that Trump has spoken, retribution for the poison gas attack has to be done NOW. So, my advice, for what it’s worth (and I hate to advocate something like this) is to IMMEDIATELY target Assad’s palaces, assign US submarines equipped with cruise missiles and demolish said residences. Do it NOW.
And IF perchance some Russian advisers to Assad get killed or hurt in the fracas, well, too bad. Putin after all is one of those watching and taking the measure. Trump has to show no fear of Putin. The demolition job may have some blow-back consequences. But too bad. Next time STFU.
And THEN, and this next part is important, Trump and everyone around him has to say NOTHING. When Trump and Tillerson and others are questioned, ignore the question. If cornered and collared, say no comment. Behave like assholes. Shouldn’t be too hard.
The lesson in this? For Trump it’s to keep his hole shut on issues where the US has no conceivable interest. And Syria is one of those places. For everyone else outside the US, the lesson is that the American President has a really long reach and a really big stick and when he speaks he means it.
We can only hope that Trump learns on the job.
So now CNN reports that Trump told some members of congress that he’s considering military action. Why can’t he just shut up?
Are white Christians gonna end up slaughtering each other again?
I though we were done making those kinds of movies?
You mean Americans killing Russians and vice versa? Maybe, but since when did we stop making those movies? Serbs and Croats went on a killing spree against each other, Ukrainians and Russians more recently etc.
But no, this is Trump having to put his money where his mouth is wrt the gas attack and that would mean his attacking Assad or Assad’s assets. Or, in religious terms, New York liberal atheist (Trump) vs Alawite. No point Assad’s denying involvement, nobody’s gonna believe it anyway and fair or unfair, Assad gets the blame.
Yes, it seems like Kushner and Co (Neo Cons in Ivanka dresses) are winning the War for the Heart of Trump. The fate of the World depends on him listening to the Mastermind, Bannon.
Big titted Ivanka is a deadly weapon in the Neo Cohen hand.
Are they real?
Bill Clinton was spotted horn dogging her. He usually goes for lower class Women, but he might make an exception in her case.
You just can’t shake that deep and abiding hatred of whites can you? The most racist person on this blog is you. Every post you make has something to do with people’s race. You should take onehunglo’s advice which he posts at the end of his comments. There is nothing to be learned from your posts.
What?
I love white people, especially the women; what is your problem?
You really have it in for me don’t you?
This is nothing more than a high tech lynching of an uppity black man. If you are angry about something why don’t you just beat your wife or kick your dog? I don’t need you following me around trying to police my thoughts and language.
Your white hot butt hurt and flaccid insolence have been duly noted.
Now please stop following me.
Thank you.
I implore you to become a Hotep or Alt-Right Black. I think you’re a man we can deal with. The Hoteps are Blacks who accept that Whites are equal to them and have rights – Dasein in other words. We weren’t created to serve you a la Yakgub. Our melanin in on the inside. Crazy? Sure, but that’s your business.
Here is a White interpretation. They have their own website which I haven’t deigned to go to. I already know the gist.
http://www.dailystormer.com/hotep-anthem-by-hotepgod-official/
Not all Whites can be saved. We’re going to have write off tens of millions in America alone. Once you guys get your own Nation in the Deep South, there’s no reason why a man of your caliber won’t get to be important and have his own plantation full of White Slaves. Once we warn them to GTFO, they’re your responsibility. Boy, are they going to learn the hard way. And I have no doubt you folks will enjoy teaching them.
First of all, don’t be hitting me with no Heidegger; thinking about thinking will only implode my tiny negro mind.
Janos,
I think you should stop trying to change everything but yourself?
Im exactly where I supposed to be, thats why we get along so well.
You know how right before a plane crashes, the pilot puts his hands in front of his face and closes his eyes?
I live there.
I already accept that white people have rights and are equal members of humanity with agency and dignity…
What are you really asking me?
Im just an old country doctor; I can’t be distracted with a concept as abstract as race; at least as long as gold chains, drum beats and pussy exist?
You already said there are no successful black nations, so why are you asking me to try and form one?
“This is nothing more than a high tech lynching of an uppity black man.
http://kaganof.com/kagablog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/082.jpg
http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/sick-of-fancy-white-people-woman-goes-on-rampage/
Not a Hotep. A class Chimp Out. Beware of Boons Bearing Bats. Or hammers in this case. The boat set her off. Class and Race interact in many different ways.
Are you sure thats a woman?
Get a load of that jaw?
Samson could slay a thousand Philistines with that thing?
yikes
In her defense, its possible the couple wasn’t white?
Towing a boat with a Porsche sounds kinda niggrish?
Just sayin
capt, you very wise indeed.
life too short for prejudice, hatred, and bigotry.
Confucius say, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
Many ignorant across the planet not interested in living life in harmony.
Let not you heart be troubled.
May God be with you.
-onehunglo
“Trump told some members of congress that he’s considering military action.” –Volodya
Trump is doing it the right way. According to our Constitution the Congress must authorize war after a debate. Congress represents the people and has the power to declare war. The president executes the will of Congress as commander in chief. So Trump telling congress is exactly the right thing to do.
Putin does terrible things to stay in power. Why? Because he faces terrible enemies who would deliver his people to ruin and death as the Communists did generations ago. Likewise Assad must do terrible things. Likewise we must as well.
Kesa objects. Of course, woman is all for softness when she is not directly effected. That is why they must not rule. And in their faux compassion, lies misery and ruin for all. Look at how they’ve ruined execution: is injection or electrocution really more compassionate than hanging or the firing squad? For who? Certainly not the one being executed. The latter are very quick and sure, far more so than the previous two.
Is Trump going to let himself be goaded by this foolishness into another Middle Eastern War – when our War is obviously right here in our own homeland?
Trump has to learn to shut his mouth and open his eyes and ears. Every day without a tweet from Trump is an exceedingly good day.
Volodya,
A bit of the ’60’s culture in the USA. On a number of psychedelic posters advertising bands playing at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, was the legend; “May the Baby Jesus Shut your mouth and Open your Eyes….”
V,
My apologies. It was the Avalon Ballroom Posters, and the quote was; “May the Baby Jesus Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Mind”. After 70 years, the mind begins to wander.
elysianfield, always remember how you moved liked this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqcDG_xLWPY
….And you will again, when you dance with Christ.
-T
This afternoon Trump said: “Something should happen.” Trump wisely recognized that he needs authorization from Congress. The commander in chief cannot wage war by himself. The Constitution states that Congress has the power to declare war, not the president. Trump is wise not to act alone: “Something should happen” and that something is congressional debate and action.
I can’t figure out why Assad would use poison gas at this point.
Is the intel correct? Must Trump stop his shrinking stature?
I think Putin could be stood down here. Murdering at home, but incapable of facing a fair, deadly fight with the US. No poison, or shadowy thugs to come to the rescue.
Tillerson says an international response is in the making. Next week he meets with Lavrov.
Again, why would Assad do something so stupid? And what happens when he’s gone? Another volatile void in the making, which I have to believe that this time, will be filled to the brim with Western Steel.
Will the Russians, along with the US, find a suitable replacement for Assad? Putin should be able to kill him easily.
My lack of knowledge may make the question seem obtuse, but what happens if we leave Syria to Assad and the Russians? The usual geopolitical disadvantages re Mid East energy, etc.?
I can’t figure out why Assad would use poison gas at this point.
******************
Thats because he didn’t. It was a total frame up job and it appears you are buying it?
Plus, Trump needs an excuse to flop around on his belly and betray his supporters by carrying water for Hillary.
Trump is looking more and more like a con man everyday.
(((shaking my head)))
I’m actually leaning the other way. Until I get a reasonable explanation as to why he would do this at this time, there’s no sale, I’m not buying anything.
Arabs are incapable of “Democracy” (in other words, people with an IQ of 85 can’t even keep up the appearance). They need the Strong Man. Assad and those like him are the best you’re going to get. If we take him down, an expanded ISIS state will be the result. Trump will join Clinton as Westerners who set up Muslim terrorist states. And that assumes Putin will allow this. And even if he does, our putative alliance with him is over ere it even began. In short, a complete disaster for America and the World.
You’ve been cucked, janos. Trump’s globalists, such as Kushner and Cohn, are growing in influence, while the nationalists — led by Bannon — are on the defensive. The Strong Man is not in harmony with the Tao. Embrace the feminine way, janos.
To know harmony is to know the changeless:
to know the changeless is to have insight.
Things in harmony with the Tao remain;
things that are forced grow for a while,
but then wither away.
This is not the Tao.
And whatever is against the Tao soon ceases to be.
55th Verse, Tao Te Ching
“Embrace the feminine way, janos. ”
WHAT? Trump suggested that, and you’ve been bitching about it for months….
Elysianfield, please see my comment in my ongoing conversation with volodya.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/musktopia-here-we-come/#comment-300106
PS. “Embrace the feminine way” does not mean “grab them by the pussy” in case you were confused.
Exactly. Lao Tzu advises staying at home and avoiding wars far afield. That’s what Bannon wants. Try to get it straight.
After a shower I dry myself with a Tao.
onehunglo not often in agreement in Janet, but applaud this time.
Confucius say, “they change often, who live in constant happiness or wisdom.”
many evil faction in world create more suffering, then take joy in said suffering.
onehunglo know personal time grow short.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
-onehunglo
Janos,
I agree entirely with your assessment…save that Arabs might not be capable…I would suggest that their current culture is not receptive to the Democratic ideal….
If only the Tribe can engineer a 3rd World War between the United States and Russia. That would be the end of the West and for all intents and purposes, the probable end of the White Race.
Might be coming sooner than you know Janos. I genuinely pity the Russians. None whatsoever for my own, who have foolishly embraced this suicidal course.
What’s up with this Kushner? Janet seems to have a point. A 36(?) year old real estate developer has really developed politically.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/06/steve-bannon-calls-jared-kushner-a-cuck-and-globalist-behind-his-back.html
Well I thought Bannon was smarter than that. A cuck and a globalist? Globalists pursue their class interests by selling out their nation. They don’t sell out themselves. Kushner is pursues his class interests by endorsing Globalism in the West and his ethnic interests by endorsing Nationalism for Israel. He not a Cuck in any sense of the word. Very few Jews are.
As the Protocols say, in the end there will only be one remaining Nation – and it won’t be America. If Trump thought he could have a little bit of Bannon and a bit of Kushner, he was naïve indeed. The visions are diametrically opposite.
We are betrayed.
Not so much betrayed, as simply confirmed. We were always a nation of inveterate liars and con men.
“I alone can fix it” — Trump, October 2016
“The world is a mess. I inherited a mess!” — Trump, April 2017
“Trump is looking more and more like a con man everyday.” –Thwack
I have said it all along: 45 is a complete con man… and he just got bitch-slapped by reality… and does not know how to respond. “Something should happen.” How about withdrawing all forces from the middle east? How about downsizing the military by 50% until we can figure out “what the hell is going on” with all the missing billions of dollars?
45 is an inept businessman who could not make a profit on casinos and now wants to throw more money at the pentagon when the pentagon cannot account for the money it has already been given, actively encouraging waste, fraud, and abuse… abuse of the American taxpayer.
You are correct janet. Nice to see you remaining on point.
V.,
Regarding the WMD kerfuffle in the saddened state of Syria (shades of Colon “Projectile” Powerbarf, bag-carrier for wiggly and slimy neo-cons at the U.N.), we must tiredly return to the foggy days of the forgotten year of 2013 for a look at some MOTIVES. Motives? What are these strange things of which you speak, and why are they being ignored… especially by the usual CFN shotgun posters?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-04/guest-post-us-going-war-syria-over-natural-gas-pipeline
Oh… yeah… that.
Somebody do me a favor and let the grunts in camo know exactly who and what they’re fighting for. Thanks, and have a nice fragging day.
That’s easy. They’re fighting for a paycheck denominated in US dollars. The “who” has never been all that important.
There is no doubt in my mind that Syrian chemical attack was staged by the Islamists, not Assad, and there is no doubt in my mind that both Tillerson and Trump know that.
What makes them say what they say? Further analysis is required! Things are really confusing in Washington.
Well, if Trump keeps insisting that Assad did it, I think Putin ought to go on RT and publicly “confess”: Yes, we did it, we put Trump to power!
Trump’s caving to the “official part line,” which has apparently congealed now, at least temporarily, is not a Putin problem, it’s a US problem. What we’ve been seeing played out for these past several weeks at least is nothing less than a civil war of sorts for who will own the rights to control the world.
And no, Putin can’t betray Assad – unlike Americans who always bet on two or more horses, Putin built his reputation on ALWAYS betting on a single horse and never betraying it.
He will go to war with Americans over it. Syria (as well as most of the ME) is Russian-controlled no-fly zone.
Something just doesn’t add up.
Chemical weapons victims are notoriously easy to fake; its nothing like a moon landing.
For example, because chemical weapons don’t really leave visible trauma wounds, you can use people who died of natural causes, or just tell the children to pretend they are dead and they get ice cream afterwards?
“here, lay down and suck on the piece of Alka Seltzer… here, dip your face in this bowl of Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup… now go over there and lay down while I take some photos…
Ok Fatima and Achmed, I wanna see some real grief this time, SHOW ME WHAT YOUR MADE OF, be for real
Ready?
quiet on the set
Tapes rolling,
we have speed,
Evil Assad Chemical Weapons Attack take 13
aaaaaaaaand ACTION!
Just sayin
Keep sayin!
Tillerson: ‘Steps are underway’ to remove Assad from power in Syria
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tillerson-steps-way-remove-assad-power-syria-200018022.html
Everybody start praying!
This is exactly what Hillary was saying September 9 2013
What if they stopped the Evil Witch of the West improperly and her spirit took over them?
Agreed. What is actually going on is that the anti-Russian spooks have won out. Here we go!
Hillary or her double? Hillary (TM) on today’s women’s conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhTKcu6-Gos
Dateline Hartford, CT Wed. April 5, 2017
In a hard rain, on King Street, Jose ‘Speedy’ Gonzalez found face down on the pavement, stone dead, ventilated with 7 rounds to the skull. Police recorded gunshots with ‘shot recorder’ placed thru out the city to respond quickly to shootings on the street, in parks (war zones) and on public transport. By the time police arrived the shooter (or shooters) had vanished.
brh
Yes, as a Cancer Nation (birthday July 4th), America is intensely sentimental. A few carefully arranged pictures of dead kids, and a little bit on Patriotic Music, and Americans are ready to inflict mayhem and murder thousands of miles away. As long as you have a picture of Mom and your girlfriend and you are with your buddies, what’s not to like?
Do you have any women? Any that bake apple pies and let them cool on window sills, knowing that hungry Hobos are going to snatch them? If so, I’m in.
As a Racist, and thus politically persecuted, I demand asylum.
LOL! Agreed! Perhaps we should replace the term “I love ya” with the entirely more accurate, ” I bomb ya.”
Technically, it should be missiles. Do we not offend the Indians with our “Tomahawks”. The Syrians were bombed with our political incorrectness along with the flying death. How dare we!
When one is reminded that nature is “red in both tooth and claw”, human nature included, thoughts of warm apple pie, particularly with a nice vanilla ice cream topping, are quite comforting.
Then again, we’ve always been a rather “blood, guns, and roses” culture, haven’t we? Blood and guns up front to conquer. Roses in the aftermath to whatever deity we can drum up to forgive us for our sins.
I guess we have it all.
Blood, guns, roses, and don’t forget butter.
thus spoke you one “Bob Marley”:
“Redemption Song”
Old pirates, yes, they rob I,
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have,
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
‘Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it’s just a part of it,
We’ve got to fulfill the book.
Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have,
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
‘Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Some say it’s just a part of it,
We’ve got to fulfill the book.
Won’t you help to sing,
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever had,
Redemption songs.
All I ever had,
Redemption songs
These songs of freedom
Songs of freedom
onehunglo sense day of purification is near.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
don’t you know I always love you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fdu6zRpVa8
-onehunglo
So, white men, it turns out Trump is just another stooge who launches airstrikes on an enemy of Israel because of failing support.
And you thought he was different! You thought he would change things! Suckers!
Look in your own mirror, in your hearts, and see the reflection of Trump. A bunch of militaristic morons who need endless wars against Arabs to prove your manhood.
We hoped. It was worth a shot. It looks like we were wrong. And the struggle against the Jew continues.
Look to your own dark and murderous heart.
Janos,
Sadly, you are correct…to paraphrase the Emperor;
“Trump’s presidency has not gone necessarily to our advantage….”
onehunglo know personal time grow short.
let not you heart be troubled. – Hung
============
Worry not, Q. heart not troubled onehunglo ‘personal time grow short.’
(excuse please repeating of phony Chink accent.)
Today, as we contemplate WWIII. it is fitting and proper to note that one hundred years ago, April 6, 1917, the US House of Representatives voted to declare war on Germany. Two days earlier, the Senate had also voted for war.
In November 1917 a 21-year-old Army soldier from an Iowa farm became one of the first three Americans killed in the war. His name was Merle Hay. Soon after his death a rural road from Des Moines to Camp Dodge, an important Army installation north of the city, was named in his honor, Merle Hay Road.
By 1959 Merle Hay Road was not so rural anymore. That was the year Merle Hay Plaza opened. It was the first modern shopping center in the Des Moines metro, surrounded by a vast concrete parking lot. For its first fifteen years Merle Hay Plaza was open-air; we walked from shop to shop in the great outdoors, a nice experience in, say, the month of May. but back when we often had minus 20 readings in our Iowa winters, not so good.
So, around 1974, Merle Hay Plaza became Merle Hay Mall, with a roof over a climate-controlled common area.
So different was the America Merle Hay left in 1917 from the America of 1974 and later. The Arc of History had bent from small farms, productive factories, and streetcars to cubicle workers engaged in endless happy motoring.
The real enemy of America would prove not to be the one Merle Hay fought in 1917. The real enemy has been a combination forces–greed, off-shoring of manufacturing, highway construction, industrialization of farming, and more. All of which has given us an America of entertainment addicts driving their cars everywhere to do nothing much.
Maybe it is a blessing that Merle Hay does not have to see what his America has become.
The most favorable scenario for Russia and the world (the least evil) is a show played out between Trump and Putin, the ritual sacrifice on the altar of the blind and hungry American God of War before the decisive vote in Congress on Supreme Court Justice.
What losses did the Syrian aviation incur? What ammunition was destroyed? Who of the military died? We do not know this. And if destroyers blasted all the expensive ammunition on empty concrete boxes, from which everything was taken out, or on hangars, in which there were no aircraft, and also on the runway, which can be quickly restored if desired?
That gluttonous and angry deity will calm down for a while.
But this is just one of the options.
==================================================
The largest mobilization in the history of the Donetsk People’s Republic began on April 6 at a training ground near the city of Shakhtersk.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8wlctHXoAAdOQo.jpg
Oil prices jump 2% after US launches missile strike in Syria
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/oil-prices-jump-after-us-launches-missile-strike-in-syria.html
How to tell a real Witch from a fake
To begin with, I found out that my logic is optimistic, and my intuition is pessimistic, and therefore at this critical moment in history, when American Tomahawks brazenly bomb Syrian runways and criminally empty hangars, I absolutely do not want to turn on my intuition.
In particular, there was a rumor that the Witch is alive and even speaks at the international summit, dedicated to the role of women in the world.
Meanwhile, if you look at the video of her speech, you can see that it’s a double. Indeed, the fly lands on this woman several times and she reflexively drives it away. And as shown by the second televised debate, the real Hillary enjoys when flies land on her face and will never drive them away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0iLIwfa2w
59 Tomahawks fired.
Only half made it through.
They were supposed to fly through the Russian zone of air defense in Khmeimim.
6 dead – that is 10 Tomahawks for one dead Syrian at $250,000 a piece.
The runway of the airbase is intact.
The price of oil gone up.
American Media has a week’s worth of shit to shoot around.
Trump is no longer Russian agent.
Was Trump aiming at Assad, but hit the Deep State instead?
The runway of the Shayrat airbase after attack:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58fc907e3c17d4a394353d1878de0f53847b8c7b00452c796c8743183120b4b2.png
Yeah, sounds impressive, but all in all, a rather weak attack. The Russians where warned so everybody knew it was coming. No SAM sites or associated radars taken out.
To sum up, a lot of short fingered sound and fury signifying nothing.
In addition, the Russians can easily arm the Taliban in Afghanistan if they want to?
This “strike” was nothing more than a lot of expensive theater.
Sooo…
Still think it’s not important to let the glorious “Troops” know why they’re about to get their asses blown off?
“Just collect your paycheck and head for Sadda……….. we mean, Assad.”
This bit of history is repeating note-for-note. “Gassed his own people”, does ring a bell.
Note for perpetual idiots: The Russian military is not the [former] Iraqi military, even though they’ve currently got some sand on their boots.
Beware.
And, Finca? Your stupid occult suppositions are beginning to remind me of another over-poster, and are turning out to be just as “informative”. This is about collecting the resources or the vigorish produced thereby. Enough with the smoke already.
Stop peeing your pants with a boiled tea, Ozone.
It’s not over until it’s over!
Russian TV keeps running the shots filmed by special correspondent Poddubny, where you see a pit in the field and a pit from the Tomahawk and a bunch of debris. Not a single bombed-out airplane. 4 dead, all civilians who happened to be near the base. Of 59 missiles, only half made it to the airfield.
Well known (in Russia) talking-head Satanovsky to the hysteria of the Russia-24 leading anchor-lady: Young lady, there’s no need to pee your pants with the boiled tea … this is an informational war!
I think the best translation of the original Russian saying Stop peeing with a hot compote should be Stop peeing with a steaming tea
Please help me to improve on that translation. I am open to suggestions.
But, I guess, you got my drift either way.
there’s no need to pee your pants with the boiled tea – Finc
===========
An old Russian expression, I suppose?
Terror in Sweden.
Ban cars?
Ban trucks?
Ban Muslims.
Zero Hedge, today.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/there-are-dead-people-street-truck-hits-crowd-stockholm-live-feed
Congratulations with Orthodox Day of Annunciation of Our Lady
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Robert_Campin_-_L%27_Annonciation_-_1425.jpg
Flemish, shaken by the beauty of Christ, poured out their love for him, coming up with all sorts of theological and philosophical and aesthetic concepts that became the way to identify all sorts of guilds.
And guilds were the basis of the traditional Flemish society, despite the fact that they were unsuccessfully tried to be suppressed or changed by all sorts of feudal conquerors. And the artistic expression of these concepts, even though they sometimes fell for Gnosticism, but unlike Italy, never lost its touch with Christianity as its basis, was the painting of the Flemish Renaissance artists, in particular the Meister von Flémalle. The peak of his work is the triptych of the Merode Altarpiece, written about 1425.