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Much as many people-who-ought-to-know-better have been enjoying the disruptive antics of Donald Trump, surely other cohorts and coteries have endured dark nights of the soul as they witness the 2016 election spin into a perfect storm of rebellion, corruption, and idiocy. Imagine the scenes in Michael Bloomberg’s drawing room the past eight months, the agonies of sensible people! And so after the close of business Friday comes news that the former three-time mayor of New York City is laying concrete plans to run for president on a third-party ticket. Extreme times call for extreme moves by non-extremists.

The Trump phenomenon is pretty well-understood: a politically paralyzed nation hostage to malign forces, mired in racketeering, captive to PC witch-hunters, and pitching into bankruptcy, turns to a TV clown with no filter on his angry brain and he acts out all the discontents of our time. Does anybody doubt that the perfidies of the day beg to be opposed? But those shadowy figures in Bloomberg’s drawing room must be saying, “is this the best we can do?” And so an honorable man steps forward. Someone had to.

Couple of gigantic problems. First, what about Bloomberg being Wall Street’s pet politician? To many, I suppose, Bloomberg is exactly that. I’m not so sure. While he made his multi-billion dollar fortune building a computerized information service for Wall Street, with a news service and some other apps pinned on, he was not a bankster. He consorted with them all the livelong day, day in and day out, for decades. Maybe that was bad enough. Maybe it also puts him at a very special advantage, since other public figures can only pretend to understand the esoteric rackets lately engineered in lower Manhattan.

For instance, Bloomberg must know what a CDO is, and how outfits like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs used them to swindle the taxpayers. I’m not convinced that Donald Trump could explain that to an audience if given an hour of airtime. He rarely speaks in two consecutive coherent sentences, for all his entertainment value. The next president will be on duty during the gravest and most powerful financial unwind in history, and it might be a good thing if he understood how it worked. He will probably be blamed for it in any case, but at least he will be a true mariner in a storm, not just a bigmouth passenger on the ship. Anyway, the salient question is whether the voters could ever accept him as something besides a tool of the banks?

The public that Bloomberg would have to appeal to has become a weird amalgam of cultural mutants, zombies, and special pleaders — Duck Dynasty and Straight Out of Compton meet The House of Wax. Worse, they are inflamed, not exactly disposed to weigh political fine points. They’re just out for blood against a system that has been bleeding them badly. Did I leave out some big wad of voters between the extremes who retain a few shreds of critical thought? I’m not sure they exist anymore. We’re about to find out in the months ahead. The group in Bloomberg’s drawing room may be deluding itself that there is any thread of clear thinking on the street outside. It would be very sad, if so.

I think it is fair to say that Michael Bloomberg’s success as the three-term mayor of New York City (2002 – 2013) was due almost completely to the financialization of the economy. A Niagara of money flowed into the city as banking ballooned from 5 percent to 40 percent of the US economy. As all the formerly skeezy neighborhoods of New York — the Bowery, the Meatpacking District, etc —got buffed up, the desolation in places like Utica, Dayton, Gary, and Memphis got worse. You might say New York City benefited hugely from all the assets stripped out of the flyover states. All of which is to say that that recent revival of New York City was not necessarily due to Michael Bloomberg’s genius. He presided over a very special moment in history when money was flowing in a particular way, and he went with flow.

For all that, it seems likely that he was also an able administrator as this occurred. A lot of out-front elements of city life improved visibly while he was around. Crime went down, the subways ran better, public spaces were improved. What would he be able to do in the compressive deflationary depression that I call the long emergency? Could he restore faith in authority? Could he comfort a battered public on the airwaves? Could he begin the awful task of politically deconstructing the matrix of rackets that has made it impossible for this country to move where history is taking us (smaller, finer, more local)?

Finally, on top of his Wall Street connection, Bloomberg is Jewish. (As I am.) Is the country now crazed enough to see the emergence of a Jewish Wall Streeter as the incarnation of all their hobgoblin-infested nightmares? Very possibly so, since the old left wing Progressives have adopted the Palestinians as their new pet oppressed minority du jour and have been inveighing against Israel incessantly. Well, that would be a darn shame. But that’s what you might get in a shameless land where anything goes and nothing matters.

For now, anyway, the real disrupter is turning out to be Michael Bloomberg. Finally a serious man enters the stage.

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

673 Responses to “The Agonies of Sensible People”

  1. goat1001 January 25, 2016 at 9:45 am #

    Michael Bloomberg – Yep, he may be just what the country needs – at this critical time – if he is indeed willing to take on the big banks and set things right.

    • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 12:16 pm #

      Yes, I’m sure he would really “shake things up”. LOL

      • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 12:21 pm #

        “Worse than Hitler”, “Worse than 1860”, now Bloomberg – “Worse than a coma”.

        • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 1:27 pm #

          This piece should be retitled, “The Agonies of the Super Rich Elite.”

          • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 1:48 pm #

            LOL!

            🙂

        • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 1:49 pm #

          “Bloomberg – “Worse than a coma”.”-v.

          LOL!

          🙂

          • chuckyzfr1 February 3, 2016 at 6:29 pm #

            Bloomberg – a “non-extremist, sensible, not-a-bankster, guy who cleaned up NYC”??!? Come on, Jim, you’re worrying me with this one. Bloomberg is the antithesis of most of these things, and let’s just be honest and give credit where credit is due with regards to NYC: Giuliani. Bloomberg is literally the definition of a 1%er oligarch, one of the biggest nanny-state types out there, and while he certainly may understand what a CDO is, let’s also remember that he literally invented the data mining systems the banksters used to create these and other sophisticated swindles, and market them….

    • Ussi January 28, 2016 at 12:20 pm #

      Bloomberg a serious adult and the answer to our problems?!?!

      WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot – Bloomberg and his 1%er ilk are the root, stem and branch of our problems.

      The nexus of Wall Street/the MIC/and kleptocratic power couldn’t have a better representative than someone like Bloomberg and then Kunstler, who’s righteously railed against what he represents for years, endorses him.

      Crikey Kunstler, you’ve burned up years of credibility based on good work in endorsing as “serious”:

      https://theintercept.com/2016/01/28/paul-krugman-unironically-anoints-himself-arbiter-of-seriousness-only-clinton-supporters-eligible/

  2. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 10:21 am #

    Could the former political leader of the “Rockefeller” wing of the banksters (The Pirates) represent the interests of the United States?

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/pretend-to-the-bitter-end/#comment-257644

    I am not so sure.

    • orbit7er January 25, 2016 at 11:42 am #

      Bloomberg tried to take Climate Change seriously, opened up bicycle lanes, took cars out of Times Square and tried against the Auto Addiction Lobby to get congestion traffic pricing. But he represents simply the more enlightened portion of the plutocratic billionaire class which is why DeBlasio got overwhelmingly elected. Bloomberg gave billions in NYC money to luxury condo developers and refused to raise taxes on his fellow billionaires. While there is a lack of housing for the poor and also the working class, there are vast luxury Condos getting tax breaks as their wealthy owners leave them empty but love having a wealthy getaway in the Big Apple. Bloomberg did nothing about that having consorted with all that class of people.
      Why Kunstler still refuses to see the other Jew in the race as a serious candidate is beyond me. To my knowledge Bloomberg did nothing to reign in the banksters. Bernie Sanders succeeded by allying with the populist Right represented by Ron Paul in getting the first every audit of any sort of the Fed after the taxpayer bailout!
      Which showed that our US dollars were not going to bail out just US banks but many foreign banks like UBS sheltering plutocrats fortunes from paying taxes or even being counted.
      Bloomberg would siphon votes from Republicans predominately who love plutocrats even if they are not rich themselves.

      • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2016 at 12:27 pm #

        Why does Kunstler refuse to see “the other Jew in the race” as a serious candidate? Good question. The other week Kunstler wrote something like that as far as he can tell, Sanders is just another “redistributionist”. I’m not sure either why this should count as a strike against Sanders, considering that the *need* for redistribution is precisely the consequence of the very frauds and swindles that Kunstler has been decrying for years — by which the billionaire class has increasingly, by hook or by crook, accumulated everything worth accumulating for the past 40 years regardless of merit or need.

        There’s a video clip making the rounds that compares Bernie Sanders berating Alan Greenspan for his policies in 2003, versus Greenspan admitting his ideology was mistaken in 2008 after the GFC hit. What’s more, Sanders made his case from the outside and never wavered. That’s my idea of a true mariner in a storm — not one or the other of the billionaire puppeteers who are starting to step in personally now that the public is finally rejecting their puppets served up by the two parties.

        • Newton Finn January 25, 2016 at 1:05 pm #

          I’ve also been wondering about Mr. Kunstler’s seeming aversion to Bernie Sanders. Perhaps it’s due to Bernie’s ideas about big government programs to benefit average Americans. Because such programs have been used much more often to benefit the rich and powerful, engage in endless war, and squander taxpayers’ money in a myriad of other ways, Mr. Kunstler may have turned against the very concept of “big government” in knee-jerk fashion, assuming the right wing position for different reasons.

          I don’t think this is merely a matter of America not having the money for Bernie’s programs, since we seem to have PLENTY of money to spend on fighting multiple wars at one time and handing out obscenely gross subsidies and benefits to those already rolling in money. Much better, it seems to me, to print money and throw it at people who really need it and will immediately spend it back into their local economies.

          The fact that Bernie has been in the Senate for decades without becoming a millionaire, without seeking to line his pockets by the corporate perks that most of his colleagues eagerly pursue, tells me that he is a decent and honorable man–a mensch–which is great rarity in today’s political world.

          I wish that Mr. Kunstler was proudly standing in his corner, whatever policy differences there might be between them.

          • fairguy January 25, 2016 at 4:29 pm #

            Count me in as a fellow “wonderer”.

            Amongst the candidates, Sanders emerges as the one with the intention and intention to upset the 1% economy applecart – a baseline requirement to any fundamental change in the current socio-economic malaise Mr. Kunstler is so skilled at depicting.

            My read is that Mr. Kunstler’s aversion to Sanders comes from an association he makes between his proposed policies and 1930’s style socialism which viewed capital creation as an enterprise best handled by government, using methods like nationalization and heavy handed regulation to mold the economy. Thus, the conclusion would be that if Sanders were elected, he’d look to insert numerous government bureaucracies into private sector and unregulated domains.

            An alternative view – and in my mind, closer to reality – is that Sanders would take a more modern and pragmatic approach. He wants to bring the USA (more or less) in line with public policy in other Western democracies, and without diminishing the private sector and local small business enterprises. Rather, investing in education, health and infrastructure (including alternative energy) at the national level would yield significant gains in business productivity and advance the sciences.

            The fact that he’s a 73-year old (sometimes cantankerous) Jewish guy is anecdotal and actually helps his case. One formative moment for me was earlier in the campaign, when speaking in Seattle and reacting to a Black Lives Matter activists grabbing the microphone, he simply stood to the side and waited for them to speak their piece. Any other of the candidates (Trump comes to mind) would sic his goons on them or react in some other arrogant way. Yep, he’s a mensch.

          • fairguy January 25, 2016 at 4:31 pm #

            Correction:
            “Amongst the candidates, Sanders emerges as the one with the intention and integrity to upset the 1% economy applecart etc”

          • Poet January 25, 2016 at 7:02 pm #

            And let’s not forget, he’s Jewish too–as is JHK!

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:35 pm #

            Would Bernie have humbly stood aside if it was an aggrieved White activist? Hardly. For people like Bernie and fairguy, submission to Black grievance mongers is the essence of morality. And obviously, nothing good can come of such an attitude.

          • Daphne DeMuir January 26, 2016 at 10:58 am #

            Amen.

          • fairguy January 26, 2016 at 4:05 pm #

            1. Would Bernie stand aside and let an aggrieved white activist speak? Yes, I imagine so. One example might be a representative of low income families displaced by a Wall street driven merger.

            2. Janos and Daphne will consider it “submission” to stand aside and let someone speak. This is consistent with a general attitude that shouting over your opponents (or people you disagree with) is preferable to listening to them.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 6:27 pm #

            You mean like a Welfare White Mother with a coffee colored kid in tow? Of course Bernie would have no problem with such a person. I meant a pro-White activist, a White version of the Black Lives Matter people. Nice capacity for misunderstanding you have there. Very convenient.

        • Majella January 25, 2016 at 4:38 pm #

          @Elrond – damn right…I’ve watched that clip – Greenspan comes across as a condescending asshole when facing the tirade from Bernie, and then like a possum-in-the-headlights ingenue when he has to admit how wrong he & his pure Randian philosophy was.

          There’s a compilation of Sanders’ speeches on youtube –
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxRCnwqUrc8 that is informative. The consistency & fervour of this man’s views and positions are unimpeachable.

          There’s a telling moment on one clip here the camera angle flips away from teh usual CSpand head-pn shot to one from behind and to the side. He’s speaking to a completely empty chamber, but STILL sates his position. The rooms are nmo longer empty.

      • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 12:42 pm #

        He’s trying to make NYC (more of) a playground of the rich. The only people that can afford to own cars, the tolls, and the rents are the uber-wealthy.

      • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:05 pm #

        Bloomberg tried to take Climate Change seriously,

        –ergo, he is a pawn of the PTB. Or part of them, as he is rich.

        If you want to believe in AGW, fine.
        Dont mention this joke called, ‘Climate Change.’

        Nature is ever in flux.

        • sooty January 25, 2016 at 8:38 pm #

          Please to shut pie hole. All necessary verdicts were in long ago. Good bye.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:21 pm #

            Nothing is more beautiful than a huge smoke stack belching smoke, suspended in the icy air of a slightly pre-ice age America.

      • Cerberus79 January 25, 2016 at 1:35 pm #

        Add to this Bloomberg’s jihad against Occupy Wall St. and his support of the NY Police Stop and Frisk calamity and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a Sanders victory. Run, Mike, run!

        • Majella January 25, 2016 at 4:43 pm #

          Yeah…he’d split the Republican vote perfectly.

        • outsider January 25, 2016 at 4:57 pm #

          Does Bloomberg know something about a possible HRC indictment that we don’t know yet? I can’t see him running as long as she remains the Dem favorite. How is he much different from the “liberator” of Libya?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:36 pm #

          That policy lowered the crime rate fantastically. Such things are now necessary to deal with the minorities. Otherwise the cities will become unlivable.

      • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 1:53 pm #

        RE | “Why Kunstler still refuses to see the other Jew in the race as a serious candidate is beyond me.”-orb.

        Yeah, why is that? Does he still see him as only a “meshuggenah grandpa” even now?

        😉

      • cbeard January 25, 2016 at 2:35 pm #

        I think Kunstler has more in common with Bloomberg than Sanders.

      • Layne January 26, 2016 at 10:47 am #

        Today most Americans are in the final throes of complete zombification for one reason or another, or preoccupied with promoting their variant of sexual deviancy as the most important issue facing the world. The US desperately needs a steel-fisted autocrat who nevertheless possesses a strong sense of traditional values. Bernie is a weak-kneed communist, Hillary is a diseased, slimy reptile, and Bloomberg is worse than Herbert Hoover. These times call for a Robespierre, and only Trump comes close.

      • Daphne DeMuir January 26, 2016 at 10:56 am #

        Totally agree. Also, my parents lived in Burlington when he became mayor and he really did revitalize the town, which at the time was a rather sleepy place with beat up lakefront. But the biggest plus for me is his stand on Single Payer, which I thought was supported by Jim K. National Nurses United has backed Bernie and Single Payer is their main goal. That’s good enough for me.

      • cmc January 31, 2016 at 10:18 am #

        Bloomberg tried to put limits on the automotive “modern moloch” in Manhattan, but he (like de Blasio after him and unlike Giuliani before him) also encouraged the noisy, polluting tourist/charter/limo/media helicopter industry that continues to plague residents of NYC, Hudson County NJ and Long Island – and beyond. My nominee for “Earsore of the Century.”

        Should he become president, here’s hoping that a few Londoners have caused him to think about noise pollution: “His neighbors on Cadogan Square protested when he tried to install noisy, American-style air-conditioners at his apartment. A local planning board rejected the plans.” – NY Times.

        ref:
        batterypark.tv/state-government/helicopter-traffic-over-hudson-river-increases-600-under-bloomberg-era.html;

        NYC City Council Environment Committee hearing 11/12/15 – http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=442302&GUID=C1C9BC2B-112A-40B0-9CD1-E39C86A010E8&Options=info&Search=

        Stopthechopnynj.org; Quietskiescoalition.org;
        Ehhelicopternoise.com;

  3. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 10:36 am #

    Electing someone like Bloomberg as the President of USA would dangerously disrupt the power balance in the world banking elite in favor of the War Party (or currently the Party of Economic Crisis)

    We may have a situation that two major political parties will have a War Party candidates on both sides – Hillary and Michael.

  4. George January 25, 2016 at 10:36 am #

    “For now, anyway, the real disrupter is turning out to be Michael Bloomberg. Finally a serious man enters the stage.”

    Bloomberg will likely siphon enough votes from whoever’s nominated at the GOP convention to ensure a Democratic victory in November. The Wall Street irk must be assuming that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee.

    This little “Oil Bust” we’ve been experiencing caught me off guard. I’d always assumed that oil fields, once considered marginal, would be brought back on line as oil prices increased and that as that happened oil production would increase. Records show that oil consumption has steadily increased as production was ramped up but the oversupply just doesn’t seem dramatic enough to justify the drop in the futures market price. I’m left to conclude that somebody, possibly the Saudis (and accomplices???), is selling oil futures short in an attempt, so far apparently successful, to render non-conventional methodology (fraking) non-viable.

    There’s a guy who lives across the street who used to be a Reagan appointee to Treasury. He’s one of the guys who dreamt up “Supply Side Economics”. Then he was loyal to the GOP. Nowadays he’s a socialist and although he doesn’t support Sen. Sanders, he nonetheless advocates that we, as a nation that is, now take a leftward tact. History records events but underlying history are often undiscussed trends and conditions that evolve to what are termed “Tipping Points”. Once we reach those tipping points, events worthy of the historian’s pen are expected to occur. The Fed can presumably lend into existence an infinite amount of money to put off these historically worthy events but probably not forever. Eventually some catalytic event will bring about a chain reaction of historically worthy events.

    Our history is marked by events which in retrospect suggest that one of the main drivers of change is widened wealth disparity. It has been suggested that fear of social unrest brought about by widened wealth disparity drove colonial elites to advocate revolution as a means by which to distract and occupy the masses. A similar fear eleven years later motivated the elites to seditiously adopt a constitution. When the elites blinked in 1932, FDR rolled in the New Deal.

    I think we’re at that point again. No promises. No cures. Yet I think it’s time to move cautiously forward with a leftward tack characterized with an unusually firm correctness.

    • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 25, 2016 at 11:07 am #

      I enjoyed your remark about the Reagan Treasury appointee who is now leans hard left. I watched my brother go through the same process. He came out of college as a Young Republican in the late 1980’s with his Poli-Sci degree. Two years later, after working in restaurants and other crappy jobs he changed his tune and came to despise the entirety of the conservative mythology.

      My brother, who has now passed away, was a great guy and quite sharp. However, contrary to the conservative myth of colleges being the bastions of communism, his political science profs were all hard core righties. As such, their values came through. A few years of reality smacked my brother upside the head and he changed his thinking. That’s more than I can say for a large number of other poor conservatives out there frothing for blood these days.

      I also agree with you about the tipping point. A major crash (or implosion, explosion, tipping point, etc…) is inevitable. I’m not sure we have much of a pool of people who have what it takes to lead us through this inevitability. Even if we did have such a leader, we have a large segment of our population who will insist on walking straight into the fire anyway. With any luck, those people won’t drag many others with them. However, they may drag us all in with them too. We shall see…

      • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:07 pm #

        However, contrary to the conservative myth of colleges being the bastions of communism, —bullshit.
        Look at campuses, now.

        Micro aggression’s reported.
        Thought rape.
        Black lies matter.

        you are so full crap.

        • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:39 pm #

          Just found this elsewhere—-

          No one is allowed to discuss how evolutionary differences might affect social outcomes. At the University level this type of thoughtcrime can destroy a career.

          Various genes have been identified that exist globally but not in Sub-Saharan populations.
          No one is allowed to study if these genes correlate with personality traits or intellectual development.
          Liberals in the Universities and the media will shame them regardless of merit. Liberal assumptions about race are not to be questioned and that is the ruling orthodoxy. Politically incorrect social scientists like Murray would never make it in today’s system. Smart White males are discouraged early on from perusing a career in the social sciences. The rejection of critical thinking (critical theory) and promotion of leftist causes sends most of them running to the hard sciences.
          Too much intelligence is viewed as a fault in Sociology and Anthropology. Physical Anthropology regarding racial differences is all but banned in Western Universities.

          I am convinced that liberals will only change their minds when they understand that race denial is actually damaging to Blacks. [or maybe not]

          All evidence I have read suggests that Blacks have a hard time keeping up at around age 12 which is when they start dropping out. Interestingly they walk and talk earlier than Whites which conflicts with liberal explanations of the environment holding them back (but they develop faster as toddlers??). The simple explanation is that they evolved for a different environment and we cannot expect them to have the same proportion of hereditary traits, nor can the differences be considered insignificant.

          But liberals may wonder, how is race denial still damaging? Aren’t we better off not knowing about this? The problem is that liberal programs are all designed around the assumption that race is only skin color which leads the government to spend billions trying to equalize what it believes are environmental differences.

          Head start is a perfect example as it costs taxpayers 8 billion a year for a program that liberals admit did not meet its original goals. Liberals need to consider if Blacks would have been better off with billions spent in jobs programs instead of trying to equalize them as pre-schoolers (which failed). I have concluded that this is the only way to reach liberals. They need to consider if they are doing more harm than good.

          Getting them to disconnect from their Great White Savior of the Negro complex is too difficult.

          • snarkmatic9000 January 25, 2016 at 2:03 pm #

            You obviously don’t realize that critical thinking and critical theory are not at all conceptually the same.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:15 pm #

            A co-worker once was telling me how quickly Black babies developed, implying they were superior. She didn’t realize that lower creatures always develop quicker – a baby deer is walking within a few hours.

            East Asian babies develop more slowly than Whites. They end up smarter and Blacks dumber.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:17 pm #

            Snark: If critical theory does not involve critical thinking that it is worthless. Likewise, you fail to distinguish between snarkiness and true humor.

  5. Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 10:58 am #

    Bloomberg?! The big-daddy of paternalistic politics. He crowned himself a third term and was on a holy war against 32oz Big Gulps and cigarettes (which has fueled an enormous I-95 funneled organized crime operation, so large that the ATF simply gave up.)

    He is not going to stop at sodas and smoking, nope he is fervently after firearms. He is hellbent on getting rid of your right to own a weapon.

    He is a sensible person?! His wealth is entirely dependent upon the financial racketeering system.

    Giuliani presided over NYC’s renaissance. End of story. He turned that city around. Bloomberg sailed on the ship he built. Let’s be wary of the revisionist history presented here.

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    • BeerBarrel January 25, 2016 at 3:34 pm #

      Indeed.

      Bloomberg is the author of the law Washington State recently passed making it illegal for one to hand their weapon to someone else unless they pass a background check “Absurd hypothetical” opines the supporters, but the bottom line is that just by handing your gun to someone else so they can feel the heft you’ve commited a felony!

      Bloomberg is a cheat, plain and simple – and as our Abomination in Chief, will circumvent constitutional law to an end that justifies whatever means employed!

      • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 4:14 pm #

        So sorry you lost that one in Washington State. Bloomberg is the end of our Republic. What comes next ? More rule by the rich ? What else can a disarmed population except ? The Greeks weep for us.

        • Alan January 27, 2016 at 4:25 pm #

          The Greeks fought like cats and dogs – amongst the city states like Athens versus Sparta, and with the neighbor empires, as the Persians versus the Athenians – they would likely love this and wonder at our passivity.

    • Whoopdy-Do January 26, 2016 at 10:44 am #

      Frank, you are exactly right. Thank god somebody chimed in with some clear thinking. After all the gushing from the Bloomberg lovers above, I was about to gag. I’m particularly surprised that JHK is a fan of this financial racketeer. Does a Jew think only another Jew can rule these unruly Gentiles?

      Bloomberg worship comes almost exclusively from big-city progressives in general, New Yorkers specifically, and Wall Street 1%ers in particular. They are content to let their communities slide down the toilet and rely on a big-government strongman to crack down on the troublemakers for them when things get out of hand.

      Out here in flyover country, Bloomberg is reviled for the reasons Franktiti spells out. He was the dictator of NYC and now thinks he can be dictator of the USA.

      On a positive note, he will take votes from Hilary and probably a few from Sanders too. No right-minded conservative would vote for him, and certainly no libertarian.

      PS: I am a supporter of Israel and not a supporter of Trump.

  6. Walter B January 25, 2016 at 11:04 am #

    Can the name Michael Bloomberg be somehow contorted to read as Maebus instead? Quite a reach but something to think about. The King of New York that builds up his Camelot at the expense of the rest of the countryside and then sets about to regulate how much soda his serfs can consume at one sitting, Wow, there’s a nightmare to be considered. Oh yes, and someone that changes the “law” specifically for his own gain, allowing his highness to be “elected” for a third term who then closes the door to his successors pulling the same scam? Can hardly wait to see that BS played out in a presidential role. .

    As an elected official right now myself, I have seen and been compelled to play politics from the inside and as far as my experience in the subject goes, here is my humble opinion. Trump was signed up to help get Hillary elected by degrading the already degraded Republican “candidates” even further into the sludge. Unfortunately, he is doing far too well and those that put him up to it now fear that he may actually go for it and get it! Enter another, and far more reliable butt buddy of Her Royal Hillariness to do the third party gig that propelled Bill The Raper into the White House years ago. I have seen and had to battle such BS myself in my day. It is they way it is played and the way that the Nation of Sheeple keeps winding up “electing” a government that has absolutely NO abilities to do the work that has to be done. Of course they can take a handout or three, THAT is where they excel. We are doomed.

    • bobinboiseid January 25, 2016 at 11:45 am #

      While we all revel in the POTUS election theater, the Oligarchs quietly move toward further enslavement and control of the American citizen, and domination of global affairs. Just as the magician distracts with one hand, and manipulates with the other. They play us like a finely tuned instrument, as we enable our own demise.

      • mdl17576 January 25, 2016 at 1:09 pm #

        Nailed it. Saving the country, if it were to happen (it won’t), would be a process not an event. Even the ideal presidential candidate would still need the help of a cooperative Congress and a large following of active, motivated citizens to push through needed reforms. The people have been too effectively divided and their attention span has been rendered way too short for that to happen. The smartest thing you can do is build up the strength of your immediate social groups and community, learn skills that will help when energy and stuff are more expensive and less available, and invest your money in real, tangible things – preferably made as close to where you live as possible. On that last note – http://americareforged.blogspot.com/.

        • Walter B January 25, 2016 at 4:54 pm #

          Hence the reason we gather here at our host’s site – A World Made By hand. Smaller local, more efficient and less apt to be globally corrupt. There is a reason why we assemble here I think. A common understanding of what is possible and what is crap.

    • outsider January 25, 2016 at 5:19 pm #

      Walter B – You are assuming that Bloomberg would take more votes from Trump than from HRC. I hardly think that’s a given. I can’t see too many rabid Trump supporters going to another “low energy” candidate like the little former mayor. Trump would eat him up.

      • Walter B January 25, 2016 at 6:04 pm #

        True, but it is my belief that Democraps are far more likely to hold the party line than Republicraps for many reasons. The Independants? Well who knows. Plus you have to be willing to believe that those computer generated results are not tampered with at all, which I just cannot convince myself of, having paid many a subcontractor to program the desired results myself. Perhaps I am just too old and too cynical, especially where big bucks are in play.

      • bobinboiseid January 25, 2016 at 8:50 pm #

        Hillary may be heading for prison. She had 1,000 FBI Agents assigned to her “enabling genocide” case last I heard. But, since she’s a favorite pet of the Oligarchs, maybe they’ll just exile her off to a quiet retirement.

        • Walter B January 25, 2016 at 9:57 pm #

          Having lived through watching Richard Millhouse Nixon pressed out of office just because he was pressured by a CIA operative with threats of exposing his knowledge of the murder of JFK, It truly amazes me that such scum as Hillary Rottenhamster Clinton is not already dangling at the end of a rope to the cheers of a grateful nation. Perhaps the end is closer than we thought!

        • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:43 pm #

          Ever see the video of her as she went into the Bilderberger meeting? Like a cheerleader going into a frat house party.

  7. Evan January 25, 2016 at 11:17 am #

    Bernie Sanders also seems to be a serious candidate, without the Wall Street billionaire baggage. He has a long history of being consistent on his core positions, especially maldistribution of wealth.

    • Bruce E January 26, 2016 at 10:25 am #

      He also has a long history of failing to convince enough people of his very consistent core positions in order to bring them about into reality.

      For example, Sanders voted against the Iraq war. That’s commendable and it was the right vote. However, it was also a failure. The vote passed and GWB went to war with Iraq with Congress’ blessing. An example of a non-failure would have been Sanders leading the charge and convincing a majority of Congress to vote against the resolution with him, and then convincing the GWB administration to do something else other than an invasion.

      I can come up with many, many other examples.

  8. Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 11:28 am #

    “The public that Bloomberg would have to appeal to has become a weird amalgam of cultural mutants, zombies, and special pleaders — Duck Dynasty and Straight Out of Compton …”

    I lived and worked in Paramount, Cerritos, Lakewood, Bellflower, Long Beach, Gardena, and Compton, et al.

    I got pulled-over for running a yellow in north Long Beach and had to give the officer my wallet with license at gun point.

    I remember driving (of course) to work in Compton and seeing dead rotting dogs (strays) on the sidewalks. The denizens casually walked over or around them. No city services came to clean them up. I think Jim willfully refuses to believe the permissible neglect and discrimination that the inhabitants in these largely black areas experience(d).

    I can’t begin to imagine the effects of being raised in a place that is so obviously leaves one to understand that they are lesser. The environment, the schools, the policing, the city services. How do you not grow up knowing that you are sub-human?

    When you are raised to know that you are not part of the predominant society, and never will be, you are forced to “work” around it.

    This creates a distrustful culture that never really believes it can and will be accepted, dialects and all.

    • shotho January 25, 2016 at 11:49 am #

      Do the inhabitants of these neighborhoods not have enough pride to clean up their own places? Does it always have to be a “public” service that has to do it for them?

      • S M Tenneshaw January 25, 2016 at 12:12 pm #

        Hypocritical much?

      • swmnguy January 25, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

        Who picks up the dead dogs in the “Nice” neighborhoods and privileged enclaves? It ain’t the richie-riches. It’s the “Public” Services they pay for. It’s just that in the slums, you pay for the services and you don’t get them.

        And yes, slum-dwellers sure as hell do pay for the services they don’t get. They don’t pay income tax because they don’t even have enough income to budge that needle. But they pay payroll tax, sales tax, rental tax, license taxes, fees, and all the rest of the carrying costs of finance; and at a far higher percentage of their total income than anyone else.

        • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:01 pm #

          RE |”Who picks up the dead dogs in the “Nice” neighborhoods and privileged enclaves? It ain’t the richie-riches. It’s the “Public” Services they pay for. It’s just that in the slums, you pay for the services and you don’t get them.”-swmn.

          Thank you for mentioning the obvious. It shouldn’t be necessary, but apparently…

          😉

        • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2016 at 2:15 pm #

          All true, and let’s not forget the payday lenders, the rent-to-own parasites, and the various well-documented selective-enforcement shakedowns that fall under the umbrella of policing-for-profit — tax farming by another name, visited upon those least able to pay.

        • outsider January 25, 2016 at 5:52 pm #

          swmnguy – By definition, if you get far more back in government benefits than the amount you pay in, you are not actually paying taxes.

          • swmnguy January 25, 2016 at 10:28 pm #

            I see what you’re suggesting, but I’d question who is actually receiving all this largesse. A Section 8 rent subsidy goes to a landlord. Food stamp money goes to grocers. Transportation subsidies go to transit providers. Medical coverage goes to insurance companies and medical providers.

            Who’s appraising these subsidies? Are the recipients actually getting the value? It’s far from clear.

            And I remember when I paid no income tax. It was horrible. Because I didn’t have any money. Now I pay a lot in income tax; just sent in nearly 5 figures a couple weeks ago, in fact. And it’s great, because it means I have a helluva lot more money now.

    • Bruce E January 25, 2016 at 12:11 pm #

      You make some interesting points about whose votes Bloomberg most-definitely won’t get, especially with his stance on gun control.

      To win, it seems to me, he’ll need to go left enough to entice Sanders fans to view him as viable, he’ll need to double-down on gun control to steal some low-hanging fruit from Sanders, he’ll need to sell the left on some story that (unlike Sanders) he could pull off something like single-payer health care and not simply be on the correct-but-ultimately-losing-side of all of the issues that the left cares about and steal some hold-your-nose-and-play-it-safe votes from Clinton.

      After all of that, he’ll need to steal the GOP establishment low-hanging-fruit from Trump, assuming they don’t get their head out of their asses and take care of Trump themselves during the primary (and they better do so quickly if they have any clue as to how to pull that off).

      I would be surprised to see Bloomberg pull off an outsider/anti-establishment sales pitch. The best he can do is coalesce the OMG-anybody-but-Trump crowd in the case where Clinton runs her primary campaign into the ground in a repeat of 2008 and Bernie fails to calm the country’s fears of a President Trump.

      • Bruce E January 25, 2016 at 1:15 pm #

        “The best he can do is coalesce the OMG-anybody-but-Trump crowd in the case where Clinton runs her primary campaign into the ground in a repeat of 2008…”

        And I should add, “and the OMG-anybody-but-Trump crowd turns into the that’s-not-what-we-meant crowd when Sanders is the nominee.”

        I like Sanders for the most part, and hope he does well, but it seems that he’s got an uphill battle against him because he is more than a bit of an outsider, perhaps every bit as disruptive as Trump is to the GOP.

      • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2016 at 2:22 pm #

        The GOP are in a serious pickle precisely because “taking care of Trump during the primary” (i.e. anointing an establishment candidate in place of the clear front-runner) will cost them a big part of their electorate and they know it. We are likely witnessing the unravelling of the Republican strategy of the past four decades, that of whipping people up on social issues so they can be sold out on economic ones. Enough voters have finally wised up to the fact that they never actually deliver on those self-same social issues that the strategy is now a spent force, and it’ll take them a couple of election cycles to come up with the next scam, asssuming they don’t just implode.

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:11 pm #

      Stray dogs? Or Pit bulls tossed out when they are old?
      You tube– dead pit bulls in Detroit.

      Or ‘dead woman ignored on sidewalk in Lower Ninth.’

      She was ignored as she lay there, dead.

      S.F. activist slain in New Orleans robbery – SFGate
      S.F. activist slain in New Orleans robbery SAN FRANCISCO Dolores Park’s Free Market … identification and bicycle. … “She was a woman with a huge heart …
      [Search domain http://www.sfgate.com] sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-activist-slain-in-New-O…

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:08 pm #

      RE |”I can’t begin to imagine the effects of being raised in a place that is so obviously leaves one to understand that they are lesser. The environment, the schools, the policing, the city services. How do you not grow up knowing that you are sub-human?
      When you are raised to know that you are not part of the predominant society, and never will be, you are forced to “work” around it. . .
      This creates a distrustful culture that never really believes it can and will be accepted, dialects and all.”-frank.

      If you’re in a profession where you deal with people across the whole economic spectrum every day or week, it becomes to so clear how distorted, self-deceiving and rigged the whole structure is. There’s just no room to hide from it. . . It is interesting to hear people try though.

      Cheers!

    • alphie January 25, 2016 at 3:37 pm #

      “I can’t begin to imagine the effects of being raised in a place that is so obviously leaves one to understand that they are lesser. The environment, the schools, the policing, the city services. How do you not grow up knowing that you are sub-human?”

      not many people in this cold world have that level of understanding

      Our last go ’round saw me shoot myself in the foot but I’m not so prideful that I can’t apologize and say that’s a hell of a thing you wrote there Frank.
      …much respect

      • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 5:38 pm #

        It’s not you, it’s me. I’m an a**hole, and I accept it.

        At this stage, there really is no prospect of changing.

        I can only try to manage… poorly.

        • alphie January 25, 2016 at 8:31 pm #

          we all got that a**hole in us frankiti so don’t even try that. Anyone who can write with such insight sees with better eyes than most

    • Janos Skorenzy January 25, 2016 at 11:46 pm #

      Blacks have been given many new schools and housing projects – the rate at which they destroy them is beyond belief. Not just failing to maintain, but active vandalism. They don’t deserve it and what’s more, they know that they don’t. Thus the vandalism.

      • Helen Highwater January 28, 2016 at 11:29 pm #

        Your racist comments are very tiresome.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 11:38 pm #

          Hel, the truth hurts like hell, eh?

  9. flyover country January 25, 2016 at 11:34 am #

    Bernie is Jewish also. Here in Arkansas i have heard some misguided liberals say this will give him the street cred to stand up to the Israelis when they come asking for foreign aid.

  10. bobinboiseid January 25, 2016 at 11:36 am #

    For those who failed to notice; Obama is George W Bush on steroids. The next POTUS will be Obama / Bush on steroids. It truly matters not who is the POTUS. If Bloomberg got elected, or Donald Trump, the results would be the same. If one of them got uppity and decided to think for themselves, and maybe even do things that benefited the people, they would be assassinated in some creative fashion.

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    • TiredOfTheTreadmill January 25, 2016 at 11:46 am #

      I am in your camp on this one. No matter who is elected POTUS this year, the vast majority of those who voted for him or her will be utterly disappointed by their performance within 12 months, if not sooner. We will see W’s 5th term begin next year. Or should I say Cheney’s legacy continue? The “Deep” or “Shadow” government runs this show. Just like Van Halen, the front man may change, but the songs remain the same.

      • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:11 pm #

        RE |”We will see W’s 5th term begin next year. Or should I say Cheney’s legacy continue? “-tired.

        LOL!

        😉

    • Evan January 25, 2016 at 1:19 pm #

      I wish I could disagree.

      Usually it’s a “soft” assassination, as has often been done in the past with other progressives like Howard Dean, Michael Dukakis, Tom Eagleton or Gary Hart. It attempts to manufacture a scandal or use some personal foible, with coordinated media coverage, to make a candidate look ridiculous or somehow unfit for office.

      That was recently but unsuccessfully attempted with Sanders, with the DNC’s “hacking” scandal.

      If softer techniques don’t work, other methods may be considered, such as are sometimes arranged for foreign leaders, i.e., Hussein, Qaddafi, Allende, Castro (attempted), etc., etc.

    • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 4:07 pm #

      Agreed. We have lost our Constitution and our feelings for a concept of GovMint that is positive. They are not at the Gates. They own them.

  11. shotho January 25, 2016 at 11:46 am #

    H-m-m-m, Bloomberg as the only serious person in the room. I don’t know about that, Mr. K. You also thought the same about Obama eight years ago. I guess I should be open to your suggestion. But don’t you consider Sanders, Cruz and Rubio to be serious people? Personally, I believe Rand Paul and Jim Webb to be very serious and look where that has gotten them.

    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 12:47 pm #

      Hillary and Rubio are the establishment’s “serious” offerings. Hence the endorsements by the dead print media corporations.

      • outsider January 25, 2016 at 6:12 pm #

        I can’t believe the amount of people who support Rubio (even though it’s only around 10%). Listen to his words. Little Napoleon Marco with the heeled boots wants US control over the entire world. If you are sick unto death of the GWB/Obama Wars, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet if Adelson’s boy Rubio is elected.

        • elysianfield January 25, 2016 at 8:10 pm #

          ” Adelson’s ‘

          (sigh…) “Who will rid us of this meddlesome beast…”

          (paraphrased)

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 9:37 am #

          Listening to Rubio (Spanish for “white boy” no less) speak reminds me why we try not to elect people from land grant schools.

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:22 pm #

      RE | “I don’t know about that, Mr. K. You also thought the same about Obama eight years ago.”-shot.

      Alexander Cockburn [*] @ CounterPunch stood nearly alone among alt-pol websites in calling Obama out for what he was, months before the election – while his campaign was pulling in twice the Wall Street cash that McCain’s was.

      The refusal to see the political bacchanalia of bullshit for what it was horrifying – because we were at the end of the line. . . Now it’s just hilarious.

      — — —

      [*] MHRIP…

      • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 4:13 pm #

        Thanks for the new word Mr. D! I had hunch to its meaning, but looked it up to be precise. Mr. K is great, as he or the comments section often incite me to look up a word I don’t know.

    • James Howard Kunstler January 25, 2016 at 2:50 pm #

      Of the people LEFT in the room, perhaps.
      Look, I consider Sanders a serious person, and I admire him for opposing Hillary, but I don’t think his basic political worldview is consistent with the coming trend for more local autonomy, less big government. I’m inclined to think we’d better off with “single payer” medicine, but not confident we can manage to get to it before our financial sector blows up altogether… and, yes, i realize it is somewhat at odds with a less-centralized future.

      • Walter B January 25, 2016 at 5:23 pm #

        Single payer health insurance as in I pay into it and get the service I paid for? Or I pay into it and someone else takes the money I paid and has a sex change operation at my expense? Some things sir, CAN be insured, like life, given normal operations and actuarial tables that work. Car insurance? No so much if everyone starts having minor fender benders and expects to get new bumpers for the premiums paid. And certainly not health insurance once mandated by big, corrupt government. In fact once anything is mandated by big, corrupt government it becomes a scam and NOT a service. IMHO at least.

      • Walter B January 28, 2016 at 10:21 am #

        When you analyze this issue in depth James, all health “insurance” really is, is a way for those who pay nothing to get something, those who pay little to get more and for those who pay the most to get the least. It is a system that is overloaded well past buoyancy with uber-wealthy providers, executives, and litigation enriched lawyer-scum. Everyone, everywhere will need health care on a routine basis and many on the sky is the limit spending levels as well. To assign the task of running such a hopeless scam as Single Payer Health Insurance to the hands of the World’s Most Corrupt political/corporate machine that ever devolved has to be one of the biggest travesties since the Big Boom. It is true Doom and it unfolds before our eyes my friend.

  12. Paulo January 25, 2016 at 11:48 am #

    Bloomberg is just another insider crook. I think I would rather see Colin Powell run for President.

    Thankfully, I renounced my US citizenship the day I turned 19 and could become a Canadian as an adult. That was 40 years ago. Every day I give thanks for my mom being born a Canadian, and insisting my Dad move north in ’68. A similar time: US mired in Viet Nam, big deficits, protests, nutso politicians, and black people burning down their neighbourhoods just 30 miles away from our home. One day, it was really quiet around the house. The next day we were told to not say one word, but that were moving to Canada asap. (At that time the IRS was used to investigate dissenters of ‘The War’).

    I bought extra property in case some of my US relatives need a place to run to. However, they still think it is ‘exceptionable’ to remain, even while they pay for their supplemental health insurance policies and relate tales of $8,000 deductibles their kids pay under Obama Care.

    It’s here if they need it. The sacry thing is, they just might. Trump sounds an awful like like Adolph to me.

    regards

    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 12:47 pm #

      Passports are merely keys on a keychain. The more you have, the more doors available.

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:25 pm #

      RE |”I bought extra property in case some of my US relatives need a place to run to.”-Paulo.

      Hello Paulo!

      How much “extra property” do you have north of the line, and where is it situated (roughly)?

      🙂

    • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 4:03 pm #

      I think your my long lost Cuz….send directions.

    • Doug January 25, 2016 at 4:15 pm #

      “I think I would rather see Colin Powell run for President.”

      Would that be the same Colin Powell who tried to cover up the My Lai massacre and, much later, made that famous speech about Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” to the Security Council in 2003?

      Is that the level of integrity you’d like to see in your president?

      • Paulo January 25, 2016 at 5:07 pm #

        Apologies, I didn’t know he tried to cover up My Lai. As for the WMD fiasco, I think he was misled and recited what he was told what was happening. I don’t believe he lied. I am sure you will disagree.

        My Lai, dreadful. Obama’s drone assasinations, dreadful. Trump as President? Frightening.

        Moot point, anyway. If I voted, which I would not/could not do, the new tax laws would search me out in Canada, even though I have never worked one day in the US,(and therefore did not pay US income taxes.) Apparently, new tax code allows them to look at my Canadian earnings.

        In 2008 a lot of local American expats tried to enlist me as an Obama voter. I did not vote then simply because I beieved it was unethical to do so.

        • MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 2:26 am #

          RE | “Apologies, I didn’t know he tried to cover up My Lai.”-Paulo.

          Colin Powell (he was a Major at the time) was in charge of the first board of inquiry composed of personnel from outside of Americal Division (which was the military unit under investigation).

          He wrote a final report that would have completely exonerated Lt. Calley and everyone else directly involved, and cast aspersions on Warrant Officer Anderson’s heroic actions to halt the massacre.

          Mr. Powell was and remains a man who can be counted on to lie with utmost sincerity when called upon… Why else do you think that he had the career he did?

          But – by Pentagon standards – he is an ‘A-1 Team Player!’

          That’s the kind of integrity that ‘succeeds’ in this twilit era.

          Cheers!

        • Doug January 26, 2016 at 3:57 pm #

          ” As for the WMD fiasco, I think he was misled and recited what he was told what was happening. I don’t believe he lied. I am sure you will disagree.”

          I strongly suggest watching/listening to it all or reading the transcript in full:

          Decade After Iraq WMD Speech at UN, Ex-Powell Aide Lawrence Wilkerson Debates Author Norman Solomon

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:18 am #

      Yes Black Terror drove Whites out of Detroit. Once they had the city to themselves, they destroyed thru neglect and active vandalism.

  13. K-Dog January 25, 2016 at 11:55 am #

    The current political class of this country deserves the same derision as the:

    “weird amalgam of cultural mutants, zombies, and special pleaders”

    Best to ignore this presidential carnival cycle altogether and learn how to grow potatoes. We are going to need them.

    http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/01/22/k-dog-strikes-gold-yukon-gold-potatoes/

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:35 pm #

      @ K-Dog;

      “To achieve nearly complete food self-sufficiency using European cereal grains, a family needs more than an acre and will almost have to use draft animals (which will need food grown for them too, requiring even more land than the first acre) or a husky rotary cultivator.

      If the staples are the North American ones – corn, beans, squash and sunflowers – an acre garden than can be worked entirely by hand labor will serve an extended family.

      But if the staff of life is the lowly spud, far less land will serve, considering that potato yields generally exceed 300 bushels per acre (10,000 kilograms per hectare).”- Gardening When It Counts, S. Solomon.

      Kudos to “the lowly spud”.

      Cheers!

      • Doug January 25, 2016 at 4:17 pm #

        MD: Exactly.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:28 am #

        Ask the Irish about that, sport.

        • Doug January 26, 2016 at 7:47 pm #

          “Ask the Irish about that, sport.”

          Throwaway remarks like that tell me that you don’t understand much at all, if anything, about the Potato Famine and the socio-economic-political environment that preceded it and prevailed throughout the six-or-so years it lasted.

          Read slowly, it improves comprehension:

          Irish Potato Famine

          Anyway, although Phytophthora infestans continues to be a problem for potato farmers (and some others), it’s much better understood now and potatoes are produced reliably and profitably in any number of places.

      • K-Dog January 26, 2016 at 12:31 am #

        Yes, a staff of life and that was my point, 10,000 kilograms per hectare. Thank you for your response. You gave some facts about size that are good to know and thanks for the book reference. It is $8.50 used on Amazon and now it’s on my list.

        I’ll grow beans and squash next season and I’ll add a Sunflower or two. The variety in beans are fascinating. I grew a few different kinds this year. There are so many kinds of bean I bet there is even one that looks like Jim Kunstler in silhouette.

        • MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 2:31 am #

          @ K-Dog:

          One special cautionary note about potato cultivation: grow as many different varietals as you can. The Quechua developed dozens, and they make a point of dispersing the potato-patches. Farmers back in the Old Country learned to do this the hard way…

          Cheers!

          • K-Dog January 26, 2016 at 10:59 am #

            If I did find a bean that looked like him I would name it Beanito Kunstler though if it joined the sprout train and grew on time it would have nothing to complain about. Maybe it would complain about that?

            Yes, varietals for genetic diversity. That way if one gets a disease others varieties might keep you from starving. Diversity is a good thing though one particular commenter here definitely does not think so. Kunsler himself seems to prefer everyone’s clothes cut from the same cloth too so long as the cloth is not cut into a thawb.

            I suspect neither knows how to dance.

          • Doug January 26, 2016 at 7:50 pm #

            Yup. Important advice.

            OTOH, so is my advice to Janos, above, to try to understand that the disaster of the Irish Potato Famine was as much due to the realities of English rule, law and policy as it was to the blight.

  14. Evan January 25, 2016 at 11:58 am #

    At first glance, many of Bloomberg’s historical positions seem similar to, sometimes left of Hillary, and maybe not that far from some of The Donald’s less crazy positions, at least to the extent they have been articulated. Some say Bloomberg is a threat to Dems, and could throw an election to Trump.

    I think there are still a lot of quiet middle road Republicans and conservatish independents who would be grateful to have an apparently sane alternative to Trump. Bloomberg might also get support from many relatively conservative Dem voters who just viscerally dislike Hillary. So Bloomberg could be a threat to either or both Clinton and Trump, as many former Sanders supporters stay home.

    While Trump’s true financial status has been credibly questioned, Bloomberg is a bonafide multi-billionaire, and would clearly have no problem with funding a campaign, even without any outside contributions or super-PACs. Bloomberg could buy and win election as the independent candidate to maintain the status quo, in a contest with Clinton and Trump.

    On the other hand, if Sen. Sanders becomes the D anti-billionaire nominee, I simply can’t believe that any of his increasing number of supporters would switch to Bloomberg. In a Sanders / Bloomberg / Trump three way, Bloomberg only hurts Trump.

    Bring it on.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:30 am #

      An estimated 20% of Democrats are going to vote for Trump. It’s over. We’re taking back America for the decent people.

  15. noel bodie January 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm #

    “Outta” not “out of”. IMHO a more legitimate choice for best pic than “Mad Max” which removed those chestnuts of character and plot from the mix in favor of a simple combination of chase and fight. One could make a good argument that MM is a worthy example of the status of the country.

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    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 5:47 pm #

      Awards for artistry are gauche. End of story.

      The problem is that most of the films these days are nothing near art.

      Comic books and violence and remakes.

      The Oscars are a marketing event where production companies pay for votes. It’s an industry slapping its own back and promoting itself as a form of escapism entertainment in the flesh.

      Sad ugly people at home are able to watch the real live beauty of the industry from their sofa.

      Mad Max is an attempt to give an old codger an award for sticking to an old form of movie-making. Ultimately, it’s crude violence and horrible dialogue. A perfect contender.

      • MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 2:33 am #

        @ Frankiti;

        Based on this post, I’m left with the impression that it might’ve been fun to drink a pint with you?

        Cheers!

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 9:47 am #

          One of my deeper fears rests in the seemingly prophetical aspects of the axiom, “Familiarity breeds contempt”.

          There are far too many people of which I have loose association that hold me in this way. 😉

  16. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 12:03 pm #

    I hope it’s not a secret to anybody that the struggle for oil prices has become a world war, waged by American War Party in alliance with Wahhabist regime of Saudi Arabia against the rest of the world in general, and a civil war against the US Energy sector in particular. It appears that the deflationary attack is a double-edged attack by Saudi Arabia dumping in excess of demand oil supply on the world markets and Wall Street banks conducting a massive short selling attacks on the oil futures markets.

    The goal of that war is provoking economical and political crisis in Russia and other countries, hopefully (for the War Party) followed by a “regime change”, followed by “privatization”, e.g. buying everything that matters for pennies on the dollar.

    However, that affects more and more American economy in a dangerous way since the DOW appears to be trading in a lockstep with oil price for at least couple of months now.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-oil-and-stocks-are-trading-in-lockstep-134657492.html

    That’s how the American War Party now has become the Party of Economic Crisis and there are all reasons to believe that Michael Bloomberg is part of it.

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:13 pm #

      Thanks. When does oil get expensive again?

      • FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 1:21 pm #

        Perhaps, after that:

        youtube.com/watch?v=W0l7ODVK7l8

  17. swmnguy January 25, 2016 at 12:08 pm #

    The problem with America right now is that for a growing number of people (approaching critical mass) our cultural mythology no longer correlates with observable reality.

    We all have our own take on why that is, and in many ways I think we’re all correct; even when our ideas flatly contradict one another. When things are falling apart and the center cannot hold, things get like that.

    My take is that a system that uses debt at interest as money has to expand faster than the interest load does, and ours isn’t doing that anymore. So the debt burden is binding up the works and the machine is starting to tear itself apart.

    The debt I’m least concerned about is US Government debt, because the US Government can just make more dollars whenever it wants. Yes, there are consequences, but those come later. It’s the private debt and the debt owed by entities whose debt is denominated in currencies they can’t just print that is decades overdue to be expunged and is destroying our system.

    I haven’t heard one thing out of a single US politician addressing this situation. I’d be so shocked as to fall over if I ever do. This is a “The Emperor Has No Clothes!” moment. Nobody who has any stake in the system can say that out loud or their stake becomes worthless immediately.

    In a situation like this, “The Issues” all have to be lies. If nobody can tell the truth, than they all have to lie, right? So what we’re hearing is all lies, since it can’t be the truth. Sorry to be repetitive, but that’s how logic has to work.

    The very last thing I’m going to partake in is the notion that due to exceptional circumstances, we have to betray our oldest values, which have served us through all manner of ever-changing circumstances up to now. Being kind to others is always the right thing to do, and anyone who tells you this exceptional moment is different is lying maliciously. There is no “Something For Nothing.” If a deal is such a great deal today, it will be a good deal tomorrow after you’ve thought it over; and if there’s such a hurry to do the deal right now before thinking it over, then no thanks; it’s not such a good deal. Things like that which everyone has always known are all still true.

    Bloomberg thinks maybe he can save us? That right there tells me he can’t. All these people are so of the system they have no way of comprehending, much less understanding, that it’s the system itself that is falling apart. Therefore they can’t possibly solve the issue.

    With that in mind, knowing that every person who could possibly come to the fore cannot possibly do any good, one’s own tasks become a lot more clear.

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:14 pm #

      Out of one, many. –Al Gore.

      wrt,

      The problem with America right now is that for a growing number of people (approaching critical mass) our cultural mythology no longer correlates with observable reality.

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 2:55 pm #

      @ Swmnguy:

      “… It’s the private debt and the debt owed by entities whose debt is denominated in currencies they can’t just print that is decades overdue to be expunged and is destroying our system.

      I haven’t heard one thing out of a single US politician addressing this situation. . . Nobody who has any stake in the system can say that out loud or their stake becomes worthless immediately. . .

      With that in mind, knowing that every person who could possibly come to the fore cannot possibly do any good, one’s own tasks become a lot more clear.”-Mr.Swmnguy.

      This is my sense of things as well. The people with the greatest political traction are the last people to be relied to clean up the mess they’ve created – that would require sacrifice from them – thus defeating everything they’ve worked so hard to accomplish… And *that* would never do, to be sure!

      /S

      😉

    • Sticks-of-TNT January 26, 2016 at 7:58 am #

      swmnguy,

      There is a LOT of wisdom in your post! -Sticks

  18. Hospice Man January 25, 2016 at 12:08 pm #

    Bloomberg is indeed a cohort of the Wall Streeters. It was Bloomie and other NY Democrats who browbeat Obama into going easy on the millionaire miscreants who crashed the economy, and Bloomie (and the clueless governor Patterson) both fought tooth and nail for the Wall Street crowd to keep their billions in bonuses, since the NY State and NYC budgets are balanced by dependence on Wall Street taxes. Bloomberg also drastically expanded the ‘paid detail’ function of the cops whereby uniformed police were rented out to Goldman, Chase, et. Al, at cost to the city. This made it extremely complicated to figure out who said cops were supposed to answer to when demonstrators showed up. Where their supervisors their NYPD contacts, or the Gucci-loafered banksters paying them $70 an hour?

  19. degraff January 25, 2016 at 12:15 pm #

    Since Bloomberg’s success as Mayor was due to wealth transferred from flyover to Manhattan, I’m betting his Presidency would just be more of the same. The state of the nation would be about NYC and DC, the rest of you are on your own.

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 4:08 pm #

      Whats the Bronx like?

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:39 am #

        Bet Danny is on cloud nine. Manhattan is the only part of America that matters, that and other places where the Tribe has settled.

  20. Beryl of Oyl January 25, 2016 at 12:17 pm #

    Michael Bloomberg? Oh dear God no! Did no one see the stockyard in front of the DSS in Schenectady, NYC no longer gives out Section Eight rent subsidy, let them all move en masse, like Oakies, to some crummy upstate city and let those people deal with it?
    Mayor Big Gulp, the man who decreed that no longer could wealthy New Yorkers send over the food that no one’s touched from the lavish weddings and bar mitzvahs, too the homeless shelters, lest it have more salt or fat in it than Bloomie allows? The man who attempted to coerce new mothers in NY hospitals to breastfeed? That does not sound like a reasonable man to me, it sounds like a dangerous megalomaniac.
    He didn’t get cars out of New York, either. His billionaire pals would be unaffected by any congestion tax as they keep a car and driver within the city. You don’t expect THEM to walk, do you?

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    • pequiste January 25, 2016 at 12:45 pm #

      Cleared eyed this morning as usual Beryl.

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 1:00 pm #

      Thanks Beryl. I have been to Schenectady.
      It was a mill town, long ago?

      Now its ‘Section 8’–yikes.

    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 1:15 pm #

      Exactly. Bloomberg turned a city made clean and safe by an Italo-American fascist, er, Jesuit, into a playground for the 1%. These people don’t mind paying more with laws designed to keep the riffraff and hoi polloi out. Let the laborers take trains in to the hive like the worker ants they are. NY, San Fran, and now more and more, DC, are merely gated cities for the wealthy and powerful. You can visit, you can labor, but you can’t stay.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:41 am #

        Ok, Big Gulp is his official name. But don’t lie to yourselves: stop and frisk lowered crime. Thousands of knives and guns were taken from Black and Hispanic thugs.

    • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:59 pm #

      When the boyz can no longer play with the Big Toys overseas guess they will just have to become the body & thought Police at home. Off to stock up on ammo and Super Big Glup cups.

  21. Beryl of Oyl January 25, 2016 at 12:19 pm #

    Everybody living in Albany, Schenectady or Troy at the time knew that Rudy merely dumped NYCs undesirables upstate.

    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 1:02 pm #

      The drive between Buffalo/Rochester to NYC is a trip through a derelict inbred wasteland. I remember Spitzer’s reaction having visited the decrepit cities and villages that make up central NY. He couldn’t believe it.

      For every Ithaca and Cooperstown there are a dozen drugged-out inbred towns.

      I presume “undesirables” is a euphemism for blacks and minorities that went to the prisons that employ the inbreds?

      Anyone added to the gene pool of central NY is an improvement.

      • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 4:10 pm #

        Bullshit.

        • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 5:52 pm #

          Upstate NY is rather sad, if only because of the dichotomy with it and NYC. A few hours from one of the world’s premier civilizations and one is confronted with the reality of country-fried wastelands and white people with hands coming out of their shoulders and missing teeth. It’s rather depressing, and makes many a person regret having strayed from gotham.

          • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 7:01 pm #

            You are far too dramatic.

            Yes, we are the rust belt but its not as bad as you describe.

          • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 9:44 pm #

            Of course it’s not, but it’s far from bucolic main streets in throwback villages of yore. It’s neglect, the siphoning of capital writ large. The extraction of production. Draining from upstate to foreign producers and it comes back in the big belly of NYC finance.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:45 am #

        You have exposed your anti-White hatred. It is seldom far below the surface of the average Jew.

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 10:03 am #

          Janet, how is life as a self-hating black man anyway? I mean, it’s rather obvious that you are Henry Louis Gates Jr. as you are telling me things about my ethnic background that previously went unknown.

          Thanks nonetheless. Perhaps you, I, and Trump can have a beer summit on the White House lawn… I guess I’ll need a kosher one.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 12:50 am #

            You deny being Jewish?

          • malthuss January 27, 2016 at 10:13 pm #

            are u goyim?

        • malthuss January 27, 2016 at 10:14 pm #

          I will take the Rust Belt over Israel any saturday.

  22. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 12:21 pm #

    Reality Check: It is too late for Bloomberg to gain ballot access to more than 270 electoral votes.

    Bernie Sanders 2016 (a serious candidate who met filing deadlines)

  23. Zoltar January 25, 2016 at 12:33 pm #

    Your casting Bloomberg as A Serious Man brings to mind Larry Gopnik, the central character in the Coen Brothers’ film by that name. The Coens subject their serious man to a Job-like succession of darkly amusing travails leading to no leavening insight other than the inscrutability of Fate.

    The earnest Gopnik does nothing to deserve his fate. Would that we were all equally blameless.

    As for your suggestion that, perhaps, we should get behind a billionaire whose fortune derived directly from his intercourse with Wall Street, that ain’t gonna happen for me.

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 3:00 pm #

      “Your casting Bloomberg as A Serious Man brings to mind Larry Gopnik, the central character in the Coen Brothers’ film by that name. The Coens subject their serious man to a Job-like succession of darkly amusing travails leading to no leavening insight other than the inscrutability of Fate.”-zoltar.

      That was a great movie… I like their entire catalogue of properties actually…

      Cheers!

      • Zoltar January 25, 2016 at 7:20 pm #

        Hail, Caesar! comes out in a couple of weeks. It should be a hoot.

    • sprezzatura January 28, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

      Didn’t Larry Gopnik’s ancestors kill an innocent man, a rabbi who they thought was a dybbuk (demon)? And Larry is paying for their transgression?

  24. pequiste January 25, 2016 at 12:42 pm #

    “Sensible people’? What sensible people? Where?

    Sorry to tell you this Jim: here are NO sensible people remaining.
    Everyone is insensate and anesthetized by TV soccer, immigrant crises, computers, deflation, football, smart phones, household debt, taxes, Wall Street, prepping, religion, atheism, war, Yzlamik terror, video games and popular culture in toto. People, it seems, are just totally fucking numb from all of it.

    Regarding Michael Bloomberg: he is handmaiden to the MONEY POWER, plain and simple. He would not dare ever bite the hand that has fed him oh-so-well. Besides he too would get the special Zapruder screening just in case. On a personal level – he knows better than you! Away with those big sodas, smokes and those evil guns. Only his body guards need them peasant.

    If by chance ( and in Politics NOTHING is by chance BTW) should Bloomberg make a third party run, and it was against Hillary or Bernie and The Donald, then you would have the ultimate NOO YAWKA monopoly for preznit of thee YOONYTED STAYTZ. God help us – I will try to move to New Zealand or OZ but they ain’t accepting anyone but those poor Yzlamik invaders.

    We are tout fuckay (phonetically speaking) as they say in Montreal.

    • Neoagrarian January 25, 2016 at 12:54 pm #

      Puis sans dessin aussi!

    • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:55 pm #

      Dear pequiste, we is.

    • sprezzatura January 28, 2016 at 12:18 pm #

      “the special Zapruder screening”
      You are referring to the Bill Hicks routine? Good one!

      • pequiste January 29, 2016 at 12:08 pm #

        Bill Hicks — what a tragedy: such a great comedian (social commentator,) in the very same vein as George Carlin, too early taken out of this game of life. Quel domage.

  25. snarkmatic9000 January 25, 2016 at 12:43 pm #

    Thank you Jim for an excellent post, and also for removing that extremely offensive comment. There will be others, as usual, that would benefit from the same treatment. I do believe that the primary reason it is well worth the time commitment to read the quite extensive comment section of JMG’s weekly blog is his constant endeavor to keep things on a higher plane. Free speech is all to the good, but trolling and inflammatory remarks tend to make one wish to avoid the gutter dwellers altogether, thus missing the worthy insights that do manage to appear.

    That said, returning to the election, I have to believe that it’s the Dems who have the most to fear from Bloomberg. Given a choice between Hillary, should Bernie lose to her in the primaries, and Bloomberg, I know that I’d certainly take the latter. It isn’t just Republicans who are sick of the Clintons, and the Bushes too, for that matter.

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  26. Greg January 25, 2016 at 12:44 pm #

    You may want to check out the latest posting of thearchdruid.com. Summary: The class of wage earners has been hornswoggled by the financial class and the salaried class (especially those high up enough in the chain to initiate downsizing, off-shoring, etc.) The wage class is beginning to recognize this and Trump is shrewd enough to play to their emerging discontents. He deliberately acts and speaks in a manner to provoke outrage from the wage class’ enemies, thereby increasing his support among his wage class base. Trump’s political foes underestimate him at their peril.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 12:52 am #

      And if the Social Justice Warriors really loved the people, they would love Trump. But they only love their self righteousness and in fact, hate the working class. They love the indigents, minorities, and immigrants because that bolsters their moral superiority complex.

  27. Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 12:53 pm #

    “The Trump phenomenon is pretty well-understood… turns to a TV clown with no filter on his angry brain and he acts out all the discontents of our time…”

    If only he used more adjectives.

    I prefer the laconic over word-weavers and their obfuscation.

    No matter how many florid sentences they knit, the emperor is still without clothes.

  28. Htruth January 25, 2016 at 1:01 pm #

    Sarcasm? https://youtu.be/h2F7lf6EPiM

  29. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 1:27 pm #

    “Which showed that our US dollars were not going to bail out just US banks but many foreign banks like UBS sheltering plutocrats fortunes from paying taxes or even being counted.”

    That’s the price to be paid for the privilege of issuing the only real world currency.

  30. dweebus January 25, 2016 at 1:39 pm #

    JHK-

    The ‘sensible”people in Blomberg’s parlor are the elites. He does not deign to entertain the wage class, whether they are blue collared Trumpites from MO or hippified Occupiers demanding 15/hr. Being a billionaire from NYC he has no relationship with us flyover types. He views us as, at best, captive consituencies to be manipulated. At worst, we are retarded hillbillies.

    Boomberg needs VA, IA, WI, FL, OH, CO, NV, NM, or a lg percentage thereof. Even if he gets on the ballot, how does he win 270 electors? Riddle me that.

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    • Bruce E January 25, 2016 at 1:52 pm #

      Does he need 270? A strong third-party candidate could keep anyone from getting 270 and then things could get very interesting. In such a case we’ll have a constitutional crisis before the one who gets a <270 elector plurality simply gets the nod.

      • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:53 pm #

        Wonder how many Justices Bloomberg can buy ?

        • pequiste January 28, 2016 at 5:21 pm #

          With 35 BILLION bucks – if he provided each Justice with a modest $100,000,000.00 (holy crap that’s a lot of zeros) he can have all of them in his desk drawer and have 34 BILLION dollars left over.

          If he were to attempt to acquire the entire Congress for a few shekels, ( and I think the polititutes go for cheap) he could “donate” a “such a deal” of $10,000,000.00 (that’s also a whole bunch of zeros) to each welcoming representative.

          He’d have the whole shebang with about 30 BILLION left over.

          But in reality he could just ask some of his Wall Street buddies to “chip in” a couple of bucks and he might not even have to spend a even a billion $$$ to actually purchase the whole kit and kaboodle: the Judicial and Legislative branches of the U.S.A.

          Breathtaking thought, but I think it had been accomplished – The Buyout” – many decades ago.

      • wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 4:23 pm #

        Reality Check:

        No 3rd party or independent candidate has earned electoral votes since the 1968 presidential election. That is unlikely to change in 2016.

      • Elrond Hubbard January 25, 2016 at 4:35 pm #

        American politics might be quite a bit more sensible if there were more than two parties. But even though the Dems and Republicans between them do a piss-poor job of representing actual Americans in government, the electoral system strongly incentivizes the incumbent players to keep new entrants off the political field who might reduce the spoils for everyone.

        That’s why when actual outsider candidates come along, the likes of Trump or Ralph Nader who are serious enough about criticizing the system that they refuse to play the game the way it’s played, the very people who started out crying for change end up pointing fingers for “splitting the vote” and “delivering the election to the other party”. Tribalism trumps principle once again and the clown car rolls along.

        Maybe if the Electoral College were abolished and replaced with something more representative, like proportional representation in Congress and/or a ranked ballot for president, the logjam might break. Good luck selling that to the Tea Party crowd, though — the kind of people who think that perfection was achieved in 1788 and the U.S. has done nothing but fail to live up to it ever since.

        • dweebus January 25, 2016 at 5:33 pm #

          The EC ought to be abolished, but it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment, which ain’t gonna happen.

      • dweebus January 25, 2016 at 5:28 pm #

        I am not convinced Bloomberg can win any electoral votes beyond possibly NY. Who is his national constituency? Who is his base? Setting aside the difficulty of getting on the ballot in most states, who is he aiming for? The mushy middle. The swing voter. The independent. In states that lean red, they will go red. The states that lean blue will go blue. Honestly, he will probably siphon some Dem votes, and tip the election red in a few purple states.

        But you raise a delicious scenario. No one reaches 270. The election goes to the House and hello President Paul Ryan.

        • beantownbill. January 25, 2016 at 8:47 pm #

          Stop! You’re making me nauseous.

        • Bruce E January 26, 2016 at 10:36 am #

          I think Bloomberg only gets in if Clinton is in trouble. He won’t get in if Clinton is the Democrat’s nominee and he thinks she can beat Trump. If it looks like Clinton is on her way to the White House, Bloomberg is fine with that.

          Bloomberg gets in if it’s Trump versus Sanders (or if it’s Trump versus Clinton and Clinton looks like she can’t beat Trump). At that point, he’s not in it to win it but rather he’s in it to spoil it for Trump and also Sanders.

          If he denies 270 electoral votes to everybody, it goes to the House and Paul Ryan gets to pick the next president (it’s strange that they don’t just take a majority vote of the House, but coalesce the house into 50 voting groups that each get one vote and 26 votes wins, and I think the House representation has 34 states that are net GOP). The Senate picks the VP. I don’t think he’d pick himself, but he’d manage to pick a GOP candidate that isn’t Trump.

  31. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 2:10 pm #

    We need a “decider” in the position of the President, one who could balance the powers of various coalitions and save them (and American people) from their own greed. Preferably with intelligence experience, or who could get reliable intelligence people behind him – such as Putin in Russia, Bushes in USA(both farther and son), Obama (who was rumored to have intelligence training and is closely connected with the Bushes).

    If I am correct and Trump is connected to Bush clan and if elected, will get their intelligence resources, as well as built by Obama levers of Financial Control, he’s the man.

    Now putting Bloomberg in charge of the White House would be like putting a fox in charge of the chicken coop, would it not?

  32. Vlad the Impaler January 25, 2016 at 2:11 pm #

    I have to call BS on this post. Bloomberg’s explanation of the economic crisis is a white wash of the deliberate fraud and corruption at the heart of this issue. He would do nothing to change things. But there is the other reason why i really object to Bloomberg as president. No it’s not because he’s Jewish, it’s because he’s a midget. I just don’t think the country is ready for a midget president!

    • snarkmatic9000 January 25, 2016 at 2:16 pm #

      Robert Reich for Prez!

      • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:52 pm #

        Time to stand up for Robert !

  33. I AM SULLY January 25, 2016 at 2:15 pm #

    I did not know you were Jewish – perhaps in reading your bio I skipped over that, or ignored it, or I just didn’t see it as relevant. And whereas I consider you to be sober, intelligent, deep – I’m not entirely convinced this would apply to Blomberg. Part of healing this country is lowering the temperature around the gun-control debate – and, sadly, I feel like Mr. Bloomberg helped to increase the temperature and the rhetoric and in that sense exaggerated an already bad center/periphery problem in American politics and made it even worse, the distances greater. Another great post, however, and certainly food for thought.

    • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:51 pm #

      One of the reasons I supported Bernie was he was not a leftwingnut gun banner Bloomberg style. I had a small hope the left could run a real progressive that would get off the Second Amendment Landmine and get some real work done. I disagree with the idea Bloomberg hurts Trump. Bloomberg will turn out the pro gun trailer park voters in numbers beyond Fox News wildest dreams. Peace.

  34. volodya January 25, 2016 at 2:36 pm #

    Sensible people may be in agony but “sensible” people for too long subscribed to idiotic notions.

    Many idiotic notions. But idiotic notion number one: off-shoring millions of jobs, idiotic notion number two: on-shoring millions of impoverished people from other countries.

    Sensible people bought in to these notions. Nobody, with a few notable exceptions, wanted to be the naysayer. Ross Perot got ridiculed for his efforts.

    You’ve seen the signs at every work-place, “lead, follow or get out of the way”, which is what “sensible” people did. What they DIDN’T do, is speak up against self-evident folly.

    It was said that the rising tide from all this offshoring-onshoring, free trading, tax cutting would lift all boats. Except it didn’t. Because idiocy is what it was.

    Higher value-added jobs never materialized, people were retrained at considerable personal expense for work that was sent overseas, education turned into a money sucking racket that wrecked family finances.

    Now we have an economy that doesn’t work no matter all the funny business that the Fed gets up to.

    So here we are. Will Bloomberg do any good? I doubt it. Congress will defend oligarch interests, no matter if you had Mother Theresa in the White House.

    Don’t look to Washington for solutions. Washington isn’t there to help you, it’s there to help the oligarchs. See, the oligarchs want your money. What’s in YOUR wallet?

    • MisterDarling January 25, 2016 at 3:20 pm #

      @ Volodya:

      “Sensible people may be in agony but “sensible” people for too long subscribed to idiotic notions. . .
      Many idiotic notions. But idiotic notion number one: off-shoring millions of jobs, idiotic notion number two: on-shoring millions of impoverished people from other countries.”-v.

      I’m onboard with these observations. Recently, I shut down someone who’s made a career out of offshoring US jobs. It was one of those presentations where you walk in and you *know* that you’re in charge of the outcome from the first slide.

      But that had a lot to do with the audience – almost completely business-side MBA-types. They’ve seen the whole thing happen ‘from soup to nuts’ and it just does not wash anymore. And now it’s their jobs on the line and they are pissed – very, very quietly pissed-the-fuck-off.

      We’re no longer in any place that Americans have seen since the 1930’s – and those were bloody times. And we’re going into it with fewer resources and none of the promise of a brighter future – if only we could get our collective ‘stuff’ together.

      Cheers!

      • routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:43 pm #

        Agreed. We can out of the 40’s with great infrastructure and huge natural resources. Both are now sadly lacking. We forgot to look out for the other guy. Now they are coming for us.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:00 am #

      Think of Obama and his promise of “shovel ready jobs”. When reminded of that, he had to control his laughing fit. Now that is something this supposed lover of FDR could have done. It’s not like our infrastructure couldn’t have used an overhaul. What a way it could have been to bring hope and do something essential at the same time.

  35. alphie January 25, 2016 at 3:08 pm #

    …but at least he will be a true mariner in a storm, not just a bigmouth passenger on the ship”

    what a great line.

    … (smaller, finer, more local)

    sounds splendid.
    ….we just have to run out of oil first

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    • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 3:32 pm #

      more like … “but at least he will be a true mariner of his mammoth luxury yacht, not just a bigmouth passenger on the cruise-ship of the unwashed masses”

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:27 am #

      hamsters on hamster wheels could power our civilization just like enough monkeys with typewriters could produce Shakespeare – if given enough time. But you’re not going to get it – the Big Squirrel is coming.

      • alphie January 26, 2016 at 2:48 pm #

        Yes Janos the little nut and the big squirrel. I don’t know if this is all the humor you could muster( my suspicion is that it is) but this sounds more like a third grade picture book. A little sophistication with regards to humor would go a long way in making you look more mature.

  36. hineshammer January 25, 2016 at 3:16 pm #

    Bloomberg’s odious and most likely unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy should immediately disqualify him as president. It may have decreased crime (correlation vs. causation) but it most certainly violated the fourth amendment. Then again, the way Obama’s raped the constitution, what difference would it make.

  37. fodase January 25, 2016 at 3:36 pm #

    censor test

  38. fodase January 25, 2016 at 3:38 pm #

    wpa_ccc’s beloved diversity in action, migrants attack French family with little girl in Calais.

    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/25/watch-calais-migrants-attack/

    Americans won’t put up with this, neither will the Europeans, forever. This is just one step away from real bloodshed.

    Thank you NWO leftist nation-killing thugs.

  39. routersurfer January 25, 2016 at 3:40 pm #

    Howdy Jim, Bloomberg ? Sensible people ? If you think we had a “bit” of a problem finding out who was on V.P. Cheney’s energy task force Tea Party guest list. Try and get the list of Bloomberg’s advisor’s. Please. President Bloomberg I am sure would make the trains run on time. If we did run out of oil during his term (cutting down overseas wars) I am sure he could keep busy during his next five or six terms by going house to house looking for guns and books that threaten any form of top down patriarchy. For the first time in American history we MAY have two candidates from Jewish backgrounds. One from a socialist background, one from a capitalist background. I really wish I could understand Jim’s pick. As for the mutants in the fly over land of Nod….everyone NOT part of Bloomberg’s inner group is looking at their future. Patreon was a very good idea best wishes with it,Jim. Peace.

  40. fodase January 25, 2016 at 3:49 pm #

    …wondering why my two posts were removed today by the site censor?

    not that it’s my purview to decide who gets to post what…

    i fully understand

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    • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 3:51 pm #

      You must not be an agonizing sensible person.

  41. BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 3:52 pm #

    Another pretty good NYC mayor, Rudy Guliani, never got much traction in the presidential race. I think Rudy would have made a fine president.

    Michael Bloomberg, Mr Gun Control, surrounds himself with an armed 12 man security detail at all times. As for recalcitrant Joe Six pack out there, turn in your weapons, the state will protect and take care of you. (or else)

    brh

    • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 4:03 pm #

      Do as I say, not as I do.

      • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 5:57 pm #

        Again, his plan is a simple one. Make everything cost prohibitive for the average person. Owning a car, owning a home in the city, renting a flat in the city. Sure, you can have your gun after you pay an attorney to fill out a half a dozen applications and pay for a yearly permit and relicensing tests. The people with means will, as always, be unaffected.

        This is the Bloomberg way. Sure, you can just buy 2 16oz sodas, but can you afford to? Yeah, exactly.

        • malthuss January 25, 2016 at 6:49 pm #

          The New America = 2 Americans.
          The top 5? % and the rest of us.

  42. fodase January 25, 2016 at 4:05 pm #

    yes the State sure will protect you, that’s why the Calais man only had a pellet gun to protect his family.

    guns were long ago confiscated from europeans.

    fat chance of that happening in the US, thank God.

    btw HE was arrested, while none of the invader vagrant migrants were.

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 4:16 pm #

      Yeah, that’s the strange thing about Europe, protecting yourself and your loved ones, ‘specially from Muslim Invaders, is illegal. It is one’s duty to submit, lest you be charged with a ‘hate crime’.

      brh

  43. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 4:08 pm #

    A letter home regarding American politics

    I want to educate my Russian compatriots about American politics.

    Americans do not vote on the basis of understanding of the politics, including international, but on the basis of the so-called “issues”, chief among which is, in my opinion, the right of women to kill their unborn babies, and the right of gay people to tell everyone how exactly they do it and not to hide in the closet where they instead store their jackets and panties.

    And the Americans do not care about international politics, of course, as long as it does not lead to conscription.

    You will not believe me, but the Americans really peace-loving people, who believe that they just do not need the rest of the world, and if America will cease to pretend to be the world’s policeman, and will take care of business in its own territory, ingenious Americans would achieve such success that all other nations will be jealous.

    And if they justify overseas adventure of their army, it is only with humanism to help the unfortunate natives who are not lucky to be born on the other side of the Earth.

    That is the burden of the sole superpower.

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 4:17 pm #

      On what basis do Russians vote on?

      Its either Medvedev or Putin, depending on what year it is.

      Take your pick.

      brh

    • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 4:19 pm #

      Yes, the uniquely American ingenuity has devised a way to have a permanently energized military-industrial, endless-war footing WITHOUT a draft-conscription.

  44. bob January 25, 2016 at 4:28 pm #

    Dealing with reality can only be realized with the understanding that the problem is the system itself ie. your political economy pseudo system. Both Michael and Donald are really big system winners. Michael is seen as more capable of keeping the status quo afloat,whereas the Donald is seen as a loose canon on the ship. I think you would be able to see where these observations are leading.

  45. fodase January 25, 2016 at 4:30 pm #

    i for one am nonplussed at jhk plugging bloomberg.

    haven’t we had enough isane lefty idiocy the past 8 years?

    i mean, these dolts can’t even vet known terrorists, who subsequently come into the country and massacre innocent citizens.

    i don’t get it at all.

    jhk finally wheeled about full force on obama after recognising him for the traitor shill he is….why bloomberg?

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    • vengeur January 25, 2016 at 4:40 pm #

      Yes, this is getting weird. I am waiting for someone to suggest bringing back George Bush Sr.

  46. metaforge January 25, 2016 at 4:39 pm #

    Hmm.. so the control freak who doesn’t trust people to drink a Big Gulp is a good man to guide us into a smaller more local more decentralized way of life?! I don’t think so.

  47. Buck Stud January 25, 2016 at 5:20 pm #

    As WPA correctly asserts, Bloomberg has no chance to be elected POTUS. Bloomberg would simply be acting as temporary kingmaker.

    So who does he want to help or hurt? Word on Left Wing Boulevard is that if Bernie looks to be gaining serious traction in the Dem primary Bloomberg will throw his hat into the ring. IOW, there is very little chance of a Bloomberg run.

    One has to wonder though–or at least those who have thought this through–how “serious” JHK would consider Bloomberg were his sole intent be to help elect Hillary Rodham Clinton POTUS?

    • beantownbill. January 25, 2016 at 8:55 pm #

      Exactly.

  48. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 5:25 pm #

    “We can out of the 40’s with great infrastructure and huge natural resources. Both are now sadly lacking.” –routersurfer

    What you say is true for certain non-renewable natural resources. Other resources are renewable and are being managed better now than they were in the 1940s. We actually have MORE forest resources now than in the past. MORE solar harvesting. MORE wind harvesting.

    In the United States there are more trees now than 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920.”

    In the 1940s there was no widespread utilization of solar energy. In the 1970s solar cost $100 (one hundred dollars) a watt (fully installed) and is today down to $0.40 (forty cents) a watt (fully installed). Costs of panels, inverters, racking, and installation have all come down. Efficiencies have gone up. Now solar cells can compete in situations where people need electricity distant from power lines, off the grid.

    Likewise, wind energy harvesting is much more advanced now than in the 1940s with lower costs, which are competitive with biomass, coal (conventional and advanced), geothermal, hydro, or solar.

    So, in certain cases we are better off now in our energy infrastructure than we were in the 1940s. And costs continue to fall rapidly:

    http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/29/solar-costs-will-fall-40-next-2-years-heres/

  49. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 5:28 pm #

    Obama practically admitted his authorship of a famous 2008 election video by calling Hillary Clinton “wicked smart”, which is almost same thing as calling her a “witch”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ayK694PZI

    http://news.yahoo.com/obama-contrasts-clintons-pragmatism-sanders-idealism-110340039–election.html

  50. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 5:34 pm #

    Mystical meteorological factor of Russian winter in USA

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/enter-jeb-and-hil/#comment-240749

    We are witnessing the end of the House of Clinton

    http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/266863-we-are-witnessing-the-end-of-the-house-of-clinton

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  51. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 5:54 pm #

    At the same time energy costs are falling rapidly for wind and solar, the amount of stored energy is increasing:

    “Continued battery cost reduction, government funding programs and utility tenders have helped spark a notable acceleration in the global energy storage market, and IHS recorded an increase of nearly 400 megawatts in the global pipeline during the final quarter of 2015,” said Marianne Boust, principal analyst for IHS Technology. “Suppliers and developers around the world are preparing for a record year in 2016, with significant growth projected in a wide range of regions and market segments.”

    Trump isn’t talking about future energy needs and how to meet them. Is Bloomberg?

    Bernie Sanders is talking about energy and proposing energy legislation:

    “As an adamant supporter of the science that acknowledges global warming to be a man-made danger, Bernie is a strong advocate for adopting new climate-neutral energy policies. Bernie has fought for improving access to renewable energy by introducing various bills such as the Residential Energy Savings Act, the Low Income Solar Act, the Green Jobs Act, and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program.

    Bernie helped form a public-private partnership, Efficiency Vermont, and has partnered with the National Guard to improve military energy efficiency to make Vermont a leader in clean-energy. Bernie believes that not only should the rest of the U.S. move aggressively toward sustainability, but that we can achieve sustainability while saving money for the majority of American families.

    Energy Efficiency: The United States must transform its energy system away from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, and towards energy-efficient, sustainable, clean, and renewable energy solutions such as wind, solar, and geothermal.

    Financial Access to Renewable Energy: Working families must have access to assistance in implementing sustainable energy practices at home.

    Green Jobs: Sustainable sources of energy will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

    http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-energy-policy/

  52. toktomi January 25, 2016 at 5:55 pm #

    I am not too vain to admit that I am completely confused by this post.

    “…Bloomberg. Finally a serious man enters the stage. …an honorable man steps forward.”

    If this is not satire, then I am totally lost.

    How can such a massive charade [American presidential election] be characterized as anything other than either a macabre masquerade or a comedy?

    …and please, with the Sanders or Trump or Hillary chatter; where is the sanity in this silliness?

    All I see in my mind’s eye are a bunch of old, overly thin, very fat cats slapping their bony knees and yukking it up watching the public lap up this absurd shit. See, they do have a sense of humor after all.

    ~toktomi~

  53. Doug January 25, 2016 at 5:58 pm #

    So, Bloomberg runs as an independent, the Republicans nominate Cruz, Trump runs as an independent, the Dems nominate Hillary . . .

    At least it will be entertaining.

    But the result, whoever ends up in the White House, won’t really make any difference. None of those people have the slightest notion of the inevitability of a world in descent due to over-population, over-consumption, and the consequent resource scarcity, with the world’s sinks filling with poisonous waste.

    And all of them are fully-committed American exceptionalism and the enforcement and expansion of Empire by force of arms.

    Meanwhile, the American voters, who all hate the Congress but love their own representatives, will send the same military-worshiping, culture warriors, grifters and simple morons back to Washington.

    So BAU will continue until BAU *cannot* continue. Humans have become poorly adapted to the environment we have created, and global techno-industrial-finance-capitalist civilization is doomed. In fact it is dinosaur dead: the brain is no longer functioning, but it’s a long way from that tiny, pre-programmed lump of gray matter to those huge muscles in the limbs, so the twitching will continue yet awhile.

    A few pockets of a different sort of civilization *may* survive, or Mad Max may prevail everywhere.

    So, plant a garden, teach young folks a few real skills, write down what they need to remember (on paper) and hope for the best.

    Presidential elections are a sideshow.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 6:21 pm #

      “So, plant a garden, teach young folks a few real skills, write down what they need to remember (on paper) and hope for the best”

      …and don’t forget a good set of pliers for all your oral hygiene needs…

    • beantownbill. January 25, 2016 at 9:09 pm #

      You’ve given a realistic political description of the whole electoral process. However, I don’t agree with you that we are doomed. Although our civilization is in serious danger of collapse or drastic change for the worse, there’s too many unknowns in the equation to make a definite statement on the future. For me, personally, it is not realistic to have anything but a positive outlook. I don’t think I want to live in the future hardscrabble world Jim postulates. If decline does occur, I think life will be more horrific than most people imagine.

      • Doug January 26, 2016 at 5:21 pm #

        “For me, personally, it is not realistic to have anything but a positive outlook.”

        Well, as I endlessly point out, optimism was an adaptive trait for much of our evolution, but has become maladaptive in our current circumstances. I’m going to have to post my “optimism gets more berries for the clan” story somewhere, so I don’t have to keep rewriting it. Shortest version: reality and optimism are incompatible.

        “I don’t think I want to live in the future hardscrabble world Jim postulates.”

        You can’t always get what you want.

        “If decline does occur, I think life will be more horrific than most people imagine.”

        Decline will occur. An ever-growing population of humans, consuming the resources of an entire planet, poisoning the water, air and earth, and threatening each other, and the biosphere as a whole, with nuclear annihilation can’t really have any other outcome.

        If descent is approached as we are currently approaching it — blindly and in deep denial, you can bet your children’s lives that it will be horrific beyond the imagination of most.

        If it were to be approached with eyes wide open, in cooperative fashion, with an understanding that growth must end, population must be reduced, consumption must be radically curtailed, resources and technology allocated to and limited to the most important products and services for the greater good, it is just barely possible that it is not too late to avoid Mad Max-level madness.

        But it doesn’t look to me as if humans (the vast majority, anyway) have evolved to be able to understand, accept and undertake those necessary measures, any more than the reindeer of St. Matthew Island could understand that eating and breeding, breeding and eating didn’t constitute the best strategy for long-term survival.

  54. fodase January 25, 2016 at 5:58 pm #

    so you don’t agree we need to

    get immigration under ironclad control?
    simplify the tax code drastically?
    stop the PC insanity?

    sounds pretty non-silly to me

    sure we can disagree on whether the guy’s for real or not, or whatever you wish

    platform’s really simple, so simple even an intellectual might be able to understand it

  55. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 6:11 pm #

    BLOOMBERG ON FRACKING:
    “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is opening his checkbook in support of “responsible” extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing. In an op-ed article in The Washington Post on Friday, the mayor came out strongly in favor of natural gas extraction through the controversial drilling process, known as fracking…” (NYT, Aug. 24, 2012)

    TRUMP ON FRACKING:
    “I think it’s incredible that we’re going slow on drilling. I think it’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen that we’re going slow on drilling.

    SANDERS ON FRACKING:
    Calling climate change “the greatest environmental threat facing the planet,” Sanders was a co-sponsor of the Climate Protection Act of 2013 which would tax carbon and methane emissions from coal, oil and natural gas production and use the revenue to invest in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, including investments in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and plug-in vehicles. Sanders also introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act to end subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel companies. He’s an opponent of subsidies and tax breaks for the nuclear power industry as well. Fracking? He’s unequivocally against it. “I’m very proud that the state of Vermont banned fracking,” he said last year. “I hope communities all over America do the same.”

    So, there you have it. The “serious” Bloomberg and the buffoon Trump both favor drilling and fracking. Bernie Sanders has actually banned fracking in Vermont and worked on national legislation to encourage alternative, sustainable, no-emission energy sources.

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  56. FincaInTheMountains January 25, 2016 at 6:13 pm #

    …and in other good news…

    Pepe Escobar reports that Saudis are getting ready to dump 1 trillion worth of stocks from their holdings:

    Selected Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners working in the Gulf confirm that Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion in securities and crashing global markets under orders from the Masters of the Universe – those above the lame presidency of Barack Obama.

    http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160121/1033486596/secret-behind-next-global-crash.html

    So, how ’bout bringing some hard-boiled, 500-ponds and more democracy to the Saudi Arabia? American-Russian style?

    How much money do the sheikhs need, anyway? Anybody know what’s the going price of a good camel these days?

  57. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 6:25 pm #

    “None of those people have the slightest notion of the inevitability of a world in descent due to over-population, over-consumption, and the consequent resource scarcity, with the world’s sinks filling with poisonous waste.” –Doug

    Doug, you appear to be completely ignorant of Bernie Sander’s positions on the issues you mention. Sanders has not only spoken out, he has legislated on energy issues.

    Trump and Bloomberg are multi-billionaires of the plutocracy, chums of Wall Street who do not talk about the issues you mention.

    Bernie Sanders is not a billionaire, does not take Wall Street money, and has no SuperPac. He depends upon millions of small donations because Bernie Sanders has popular support, not plutocratic support.

    Right now, we have an energy policy that is rigged to boost the profits of big oil companies like Exxon, BP, and Shell at the expense of average Americans. CEO’s are raking in record profits while climate change ravages our planet and our people — all because the wealthiest industry in the history of our planet has bribed politicians into complacency in the face of climate change. Enough is enough. It’s time for a political revolution that takes on the fossil fuel billionaires, accelerates our transition to clean energy, and finally puts people before the profits of polluters. –Senator Bernie Sanders

    Bernie Sanders 16-page Plan for Energy and Climate Change

    https://berniesanders.com/issues/climate-change/

    • Doug January 25, 2016 at 6:42 pm #

      @wpa:

      Doug: “None of those people have the slightest notion of the inevitability of a world in descent due to over-population, over-consumption, and the consequent resource scarcity, with the world’s sinks filling with poisonous waste.”

      wpa: Doug, you appear to be completely ignorant of Bernie Sander’s positions on the issues you mention. Sanders has not only spoken out, he has legislated on energy issues.

      = = = = =
      You appear not to have read what I wrote.

      “None of those people have the slightest notion of the INEVITABILITY OF A WORLD IN DESCENT . . .”

      You can’t legislate it away by pretending or imagining that renewable energy projects will allow us to continue the industry and consumption, even at current levels, much less permit a world of 10 billion humans, all with cars and iPhones. It’s not going to happen.

      That belief is just as unfounded as the oil cornucopians’ assurances that there’s plenty more where that came from.

      Both are manifestations of the fact that hope and optimism, human tendencies that were long adaptive, have become maladaptive in this world of our own creation.

      I = P * A * T

  58. Doug January 25, 2016 at 6:46 pm #

    And, for Jim:

    How the hell do you imagine that a global finance capitalism insider is going to have the foggiest idea how to help us shift to localism — from the fucking White House, no less?!?!

    • MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 1:21 am #

      @ Doug;

      I was preparing a jaunty little rejoinder to Mr. Kunstler’s weekly post (oh-so cleverly connecting the dots between Occupy Wall Street and Mr. Bloomberg) but after reading this post, I think I’ll just ride right past the ‘hullaballoo’ & keep using my time productively?

      I’ll say this for the response thus-far: funny stuff!

  59. Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 6:57 pm #

    Something is missing. Where is Janet Sarkozy?

    • Buck Stud January 25, 2016 at 8:31 pm #

      Don’t quote me on this, but I seem to recall Janos mentioning that he attends a Stormfront/ Ayran Nation/ “Y’all Queda” convention every year about this time.

      Again, don’t quote me as my recollections may be faulty.

      • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 9:47 pm #

        “Y’all queda”

        hilarious!

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:36 am #

      Hey bigot. Face it, you people have failed to disarm White America despite your best attempts. It’s now too late. You wont do to us what you did to us in Russia.

  60. Ed January 25, 2016 at 6:58 pm #

    Interesting post. We as a nation may have to consider all possibilities in the future, if we are to have a future. On the other hand, is there any actual evidence that Michael Bloomberg would have any interest in curtailing the influence of the billionaire class? I’m not at all sure why anyone would ever have the slightest hope of that happening.

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  61. tumbleweeds January 25, 2016 at 7:25 pm #

    Thank goodness Kunstler has cleared up everything – Palestinians are not oppressed and anyone who feels empathy for them is just jumping on a fad. Thanks Kunstler for the clarity of your viewpoint!

    • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 10:09 pm #

      I presume his point may be that it is far too obvious that the Palestinian human rights agenda allows antisemites (perplexingly- no, not really-mostly the same people that hate on muslims and Arabs) to infiltrate and gain a thin shroud of legitimization (in other words, they exploit it) through a significant, but immensely debatable, movement.

      My empathy with the Arab muslims in this part of the world is long gone. Fool me once shame on you…

      There are plenty of Arab muslim nations for “Palestinians” to call home. Perhaps if they adapted some fairly sensical family planning, Jordan would not be so stretched to capacity.

      The Spanish retook their vanquished ancestral homelands, why not the Jews?

      Oh, that’s right, because you have to hate on them. Yes, that’s appropriated black vernacular.

      • Doug January 25, 2016 at 10:43 pm #

        “Perhaps if they adapted some fairly sensical [sic] family planning . . .”

        Perhaps if you had some basic knowledge of evolutionary biology . . .

        Animals in harsh environments with limited resources, susceptibility to disease, violence, etc., adopt a “rapid reproduction” strategy: grow up fast, produce young early and often to increase the likelihood of leaving living progeny before you’re dead. Humans behave the same way, with the additional impetus of having the possibility of some of those progeny to care for them as they age and become less able to provide for themselves.

        Not rocket science and not news. Easily observable in societies around the world, as is the snarling complaint about poor people or “those” people having to many children or children who are a burden on “our” pocketbooks.

        “The Spanish retook their vanquished ancestral homelands, why not the Jews?”

        If that’s your argument, why not the Palestinians?

        Why not the Sioux?

        Answer: because Israel and the US have superior weaponry — and you don’t want them to.

        • Frankiti January 25, 2016 at 11:54 pm #

          Commonsensical truncated brah. You’re not the editor at The New Yorker, no need to sic ’em.

          “Animals in harsh environments….” Well, defense rests.

          You are a speciesist. Humans at all costs. More humans are never enough. Let’s try to justify it with some apologist BS.

          Sow me a Palestine. It’s a fabrication.

          Welcome to Earth, strength wins.

          That is for the time being.

          Nobody gets out of here alive.

          • Doug January 26, 2016 at 5:27 pm #

            “Welcome to Earth, strength wins.

            That is for the time being.

            Nobody gets out of here alive.”

            Well, if that’s the case (without mutual agreements that are kept, it is), and you have no problem with it . . .

            Is there any reason I shouldn’t arm myself with better weapons than you have and show up in the middle of the night and take whatever I want to improve my enjoyment of my remaining time here?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:39 am #

          Exactly Doug. All land is sword land.

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 6:08 pm #

          Yes, there is.

          I don’t have anything to offer.

          Ascetics make for poor plunder.

          On a side note, if you’re an American, you have been living the life so described for quite a long time as it is.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 2:15 am #

        The Jews rendered much aid to the Muslims in their conquest of Spain. A betrayal.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#Moorish_Conquest

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 2:17 am #

        Do you really want to know? Because you have posed as our moral superiors. News flash: you aren’t. Palestine is one proof and your role in African slavery is another. There are many more.

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 9:30 am #

          “You”? Who, exactly, do you believe me to be?

  62. Buck Stud January 25, 2016 at 8:23 pm #

    Watching some of the commercials yesterday during the football games I could not help but think of more than a few pollsters on this site. It seems that the ‘by hand’ ethos is now the national subject of ridicule:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASyhJ0lRIU0

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 9:04 pm #

      I’ve seen a few of those ads; I had to laugh, in spite of myself. They are pretty funny.

      Incidentally, the whole ‘Peak Oil’ theory has become the subject of mirth in certain quarters, as well. I myself keep quiet on the subject, so as not to invite wrath and ridicule upon myself. Once in awhile a family member or friend reminds me of my militant position on the subject back in ’07 and ’08, and what a pain in the ass I was.

      brh

      • Doug January 25, 2016 at 10:23 pm #

        “Incidentally, the whole ‘Peak Oil’ theory has become the subject of mirth in certain quarters, as well.”

        Oh, yes, indeed.

        Those who laugh, however, don’t understand the reality of the situation:

        Overall, oil production has increased since about 2002 in only the eight largest oil producers. This is due to a variety of factors, but periods of high prices and cheap money lead the list. Much of this production has relied upon expensive extraction technologies that can’t be sustained at anywhere near current prices.

        In approximately the same period, production has steadily decreased, overall, in the other oil-producing countries on the planet.

        Those who understand that peak oil is an unavoidable reality, have always understood that short-term spikes in production could delay or flatten the peak, but that there real costs involved. One of them is that it only works at high price levels. The most important is that everything done to avoid or cover up the peak has the inevitable effect of steepening the depletion curve on the downside.

        The US (“The World’s Largest Oil Producer” — but still a net importer, by about 25%, and a nation where about 45% of the crude refined is imported) will be the easiest and most entertaining to watch over the next few years.

        Jim dared (he’s a daring guy) to put numbers to it, the other week; I’ll just try to sum it up without the math:

        The cheap oil is gone. The oil that can now be produced is too expensive for the world to afford — if the price is high enough for the oil industry to make a profit.

        • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 11:57 pm #

          good post Doug. You seem to really have an understanding of the subject (peak oil)

          now if I tried to explain any of that to anybody around here they’d tell me to Shut the f–k up, I just paid $1.80 for a gallon of gas.

          brh

    • Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:16 pm #

      This is my latest favorite commercial………. “now go churn some butter and make your own clothes”………. and skinny boy trots off dutifully.

      • alphie January 27, 2016 at 9:02 pm #

        “This is my favorite commercial…” Q Hick

        You’re not going to tell us your favorite color next are you?

  63. DrGonzo January 25, 2016 at 8:57 pm #

    LOL. Kunstler seems to now be a fan of the billionaire Bloomberg(!), and the Kunstlernistas posting here are all over the political map, from supporting Bernie to Trump to Bloomberg.

    Meanwhile, global oil production is so far outpacing oil consumption that the price has crashed — just as us peak oilers predicted ten years ago (not!).

    Kunstler’s race-deaf comments furthermore tend to draw the racists out of the woodwork. Disconcerting, but predictable.

    I long ago quit coming to this site for anything resembling useful information; it’s now more for the somewhat pathetic entertainment of watching a room full of blind and people trying to tell each other how to find the exit door. A lot of noise and confusion, but no forward progress.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:43 am #

      Yes each of is simultaneously the blind man and the elephant. The results tend towards polymorphous perversity. We don’t even want to “find the exit” anymore. We like being in Plato’s cave. As Sartre said, No exit.

    • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 10:18 am #

      Of course it’s entertainment. Everyone needs brain candy from time to time. Sure Martenson’s Peak Prosperity draws some heavyweights and tends to use facts as opposed to the tea leaves offered here, but there is only so much of hearing him say “… I read the numbers, and I just can’t believe it… what is going on?”

      Then you have Contra Corner where Stockman offered up a brilliant essay explaining the global situation in a few insightful paragraphs, but again, it is lacking the personality present here.

      Then there is some guy who fancies himself as an ancient Britannic pagan or something, and that’s far too left field for me.

      I like the squishy happy medium.

  64. Pucker January 25, 2016 at 9:02 pm #

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says that US Presidents don’t have the power to choose their advisors, which explains why we keep getting stuck with the Clinton/Bush/Obama banksters and the Neocons. I’m not sure if Bloomberg would be any different?

    • toktomi January 26, 2016 at 2:29 am #

      I would venture that the biggest decision that a “US President” is allowed to make is the new dinnerware pattern upon taking office, and they probably didn’t allow Bush to make even that one.

      But, oh, yes, they would probably be allowed to recommend who would be invited to the gay white house orgies if such things were ever to exist which certainly they don’t especially not with the current heterosexual, American-born President.

      ~toktomi~

  65. beantownbill. January 25, 2016 at 9:47 pm #

    I stopped being surprised at humans’ capacity for self-delusion a long time ago. Sorry (not really) for being so cynical, but think about it: What kind of man would want to be president other than a raging megalomaniac who has at the least a touch of insanity? Who would allow him or herself to have their most intimate secrets exposed to the scrutiny of the paparazzi?

    It’s sad that the supposedly intelligent commenters here at CFN might actually believe that endorsing a particular candidate of any persuasion would make a shred of difference in resolving our most pressing issues. The only person I would ever vote for is the unwilling one who has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the election process, not the one who salivates at the thought of being the chief executive. And I don’t see any such person currently on the campaign trail.

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    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 10:05 pm #

      “What kind of man would want to become President beside a raging megalomaniac …”

      How about a man who cares about the Country, and the future of the country? I agree, he’d have to be ambitious, but not necessarily a megalomaniac. Scott Walker was such a man but he didn’t get too far.

      Also, Bill, I think good leadership could go a long way in resolving the stubborn issues the US faces today.

      brh

      • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 10:31 pm #

        I’m still trying to get my brain wrapped around free college tuition at all State Universities. Is this why so many college kids are backing Sanders? Do they really believe it? What does it mean precisely, free tuition? Does it mean the Feds will pay the tuition for everybody (which is hardly ‘free’) or does it mean these govt. owned colleges simply won’t charge anybody to attend? But then how will they raise $$$ to keep the places going? Its a conundrum all right.

        brh

        • DrGonzo January 26, 2016 at 9:14 am #

          Bernie’s proposal is (mostly) to pay for it with a small tax on every Wall Street transaction.

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 10:21 am #

          An easy way is to drastically increase the tax on the capital gains earned on the obscene endowments of the 1% universities.

        • alphie January 26, 2016 at 5:48 pm #

          It seems in a great nation two things should be free across the board: education and medical care.

          Isn’t it more expensive to have an uneducated citizenry?
          And would you agree that educated people probably make better decisions?

          How much did the U.S. invasion of Iraq cost. And how did you and I benefit from it. And don’t say we’re safer, that’s the government’s line of bull. I believe the breaking of Iraq in pieces is what spawned ISIS. But I digress. My point is that there is plenty of money, it’s just not being invested wisely.

          • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 5:39 pm #

            Well, the state college system is off the charts. Paying $30k a year for in-state? It’s madness.

          • alphie January 29, 2016 at 2:48 pm #

            My daughter starts college next fall and even with fafsa and a $50,000 scholarship over 4 yrs. we still need to burrow money. The scholarship amounts to roughly $12,000 a year, which is about a 1/3 the yearly tuition, not counting room and board, books, fees, personal and misc.( excuse me I have to go lie down for a minute)

            It’s like when you go to the store and buy something on sale. The sale price is closer to the actual value of the item. I think it’s the same with scholarships.

          • alphie January 29, 2016 at 2:49 pm #

            But what are you supposed to do? It’s a hostage situation

    • Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:21 pm #

      My feelings precisely.

  66. Pucker January 25, 2016 at 10:22 pm #

    What is Bloomberg’s relationship to the Neocons, if any?

  67. Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:32 pm #

    There’s a compilation of Sanders’ speeches on youtube ………… The consistency & fervour of this man’s views and positions are unimpeachable.

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

    Reminds me of a computer commercial some 30 years ago: a boob in the commercial says “All my decisions are sound! Wrong, but sound!

  68. Pucker January 25, 2016 at 10:36 pm #

    [Fargo]

    “We need more money, Jerry. We need the entire 80 thousand dollars.”

  69. Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:36 pm #

    i don’t get it at all.

    jhk finally wheeled about full force on obama after recognising him for the traitor shill he is….why bloomberg?

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

    Why?

    Because when all is said and done JHK is like me… he CAN NOT TOLERATE a man who can not string together 2 coherent sentences.

  70. Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:38 pm #

    Bloomberg……the little former mayor. – outsider

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

    Per Google, he’s 5′ 8″ though I doubt it.

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    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 10:59 pm #

      Name of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago, City of Big Shoulders:

      ‘Tiny Dancer’

      that says a lot.

      brh

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:49 am #

      The little former mayor – how utterly flattering!

  71. Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 10:41 pm #

    Anyone who can write with such insight sees with better eyes than most – Alphie to Frankiti

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

    Get a room.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:51 am #

      Frank hated alphie up to last week. Now he feels very differently….

      • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 10:27 am #

        Hate? I don’t hate anyone. Can a misanthrope perceive hate of an individual? It does not compute.

        I simply have a horrible mouth. All those years as a stevedore completely ruined me. Nothing but short fuses and free flowing invectives temporarily abated with a few rounds at the end of shift.

      • Sticks-of-TNT January 26, 2016 at 1:34 pm #

        The old Frankiti will be back in no time…probably when the mussies are back in the headlines. That can’t be long.

        • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 2:25 pm #

          Not sure if I said anything about muslims specifically.

          Generally, I hold all religious people in low regard.

          I also don’t waste time bothering about the excess humanity commonly referred to as refugees.

          The ignorant and/or religious (usually the same) really need to stop bringing new humans into war zonse and/or impoverished sh*t holes.

          Lest nature make the right choice you failed to make.

        • malthuss January 26, 2016 at 11:44 pm #

          Treadwell was a NUT, yet so popular among the ‘Unicorn Folks.’

          He cost his woman her life and 2 Bears theirs, one I believe was a young bear.

          A bear even charged the ‘clean up crews’ helicopter.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 12:55 am #

            I remember his video: Don’t fucking try this. Only EYE can hang out with Bears. They’ll fucking kill anyone else.

            Only great Orthodox Saints like Seraphim or Herman of Alaska can hang with Bears safely.

    • Frankiti January 26, 2016 at 10:23 am #

      It’s a chat room more or less, no?

    • alphie January 27, 2016 at 8:51 pm #

      Q Hick I don’t swing that way. Just ask your mom

  72. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 10:48 pm #

    BERNIE WILL MAKE TUITION FREE AT PUBLIC COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

    This is not a radical idea. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. Next year, Chile will do the same. Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens. If other countries can take this action, so can the United States of America.

    In fact, it’s what many of our colleges and universities used to do. The University of California system offered free tuition at its schools until the 1980s. In 1965, average tuition at a four-year public university was just $243 and many of the best colleges – including the City University of New York – did not charge any tuition at all. The Sanders plan would make tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout the country.

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 10:57 pm #

      How?

    • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:16 am #

      Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. – wpa

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

      Haha, $1,300.? That wouldn’t cover books for one year.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:54 am #

      Why not elect both? Rule by the God Brothers! In this case, two short Jews. Bernie will get free tuition and Bloomie will make them go – whether they want to or not.

  73. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:08 pm #

    HOW BERNIE WOULD PAY FOR FREE COLLEGE FOR ALL

    Here’s how it would work: The federal government would pay $2 in matching funds for every dollar states spend on making tuition free at public colleges and universities. Also, it would cut student loan interest rates to about 2% for undergraduates, and allow those with student debt to refinance at low rates. The pricetag: up to $75 billion a year.

    To pay for it, Sanders would impose a 0.5% fee on stock trades, 0.1% fee on bonds and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. This would raise up to $300 billion a year, according to Warren Gunnels, his policy director, citing a 2012 University of Massachusetts Amherst report.

    • wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:09 pm #

      Incidentally, don’t expect Bloomberg or Trump to make college free, or touch Wall Street. Don’t doubt for a minute Bernie will follow through.

    • wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:16 pm #

      Having an educated workforce, all of whom graduate WITHOUT DEBT: Priceless.

      • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:02 am #

        all of whom graduate – wpa

        ===========

        Even those with IQs <70?

        • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:38 am #

          No standards, no tests (tests are micro-aggressions).

          Everybody gets a diploma…… some say Cum Laud, most say ‘participant.’

    • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 11:22 pm #

      Well, don’t expect CT to kick in, we’re in debt hundreds of millions, and trying to figure out how to pay for all these lavish public sector pensions (many at $240,000 per year). And doesn’t the national debt stand at about $20 trillion?

      Or is it Pax Americana c1958, an industrial powerhouse, flush with cash, ruling over the world, capable of anything?

      brh

      • wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:37 pm #

        “Or is it Pax Americana c1958, an industrial powerhouse, flush with cash…”

        The top statutory tax rate back in 1958 was about 90%. We were flush with cash. Reagan started the massive transfer of weath to the 0.1%, trillions of dollars to a sector that behaved recklessly, illegally, and brought the nation to its knees economically and then demanded billions in bailouts. Sanders will start taking the money back that has been transferred from working families to the wealthy.

        • BackRowHeckler January 25, 2016 at 11:51 pm #

          Sounds like Utopia, I can’t wait.

          Bernie sanders riding in on his Unicorn, spreading Pixie Dust.

          Watch out! a pack of Hyenas coming up from behind, foaming at the mouth, yellow eyes focused on the unicorn! Whoop Whoop Whoop Whoop Whoop Whoop Whoop!!!

          for the Day of the Hyena is upon us.

          brh

          • wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:57 pm #

            I saw a special on an African who would hold meat in his teeth and the Hyenas would gently take it as an offering and not bother the man. Generally, they are not aggressive towards humans.

          • malthuss January 26, 2016 at 1:30 am #

            Bernie sanders riding in on his Unicorn, spreading Pixie Dust.

            ——- Priceless, keep them coming.

    • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:08 am #

      This would raise up to $300 billion a year, – wpa

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

      Do you really think you can transfer $300B a year from one group to another without collateral damage?

      BTW, have you not learned yet that there is no such thing as a free lunch?

      • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 12:26 am #

        Citizens provided Wall Street with a free lunch. No Wall Street will just be returning the money to the taxpayers that went to Wall Street back in the 2007-2008 bailouts and off the books “secret loans.”

        Bloomberg reporters Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz catalog the Fed’s $1.2 trillion in “secret loans” to banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. Morgan Stanley accepted as much as $107 billion, with Citigroup and Bank of America taking more than $90 billion each in public money to finance their operations amid the private lending freeze.

        The NYSE is by far the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at US$19.69 trillion as of May 2015.

        $300 billion is pocket change for Wall Street.

        • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 12:27 am #

          ^Now Wall Street^ will just be returning the money to the taxpayers

          • malthuss January 26, 2016 at 1:32 am #

            I saw a special on an African who would hold meat in his teeth and the Hyenas would gently take it as an offering and not bother the man. Generally, they are not aggressive towards humans.

            — websearch ‘Humphrey the hippo kills owner’–see them playing at you tube.

            Need I post ‘Tim Treadwell?’

          • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 1:58 am #

            Hyenas routinely bit the lips or snouts off cattle who have stuck their faces thru fences. They have been known to take children as well.

          • Sticks-of-TNT January 26, 2016 at 2:17 pm #

            I did not recognize the name ‘Tim Treadwell’ so I ‘took the bait’ and checked him out on YouTube. Turned out to be a very grizzly tale.

            There’s a metaphor in there for something we discuss here, I’m just not sure what. Any suggestions, CFN shitizens?

            -Sticks

    • Bruce E January 26, 2016 at 9:44 am #

      Reality check (as you like to say):

      Basically all of Sanders’ substantive goals require significant legislative victories, unheard of in the history of the United States.

      Combine that with a GOP-run House and Senate, which nobody (not even Bernie any longer) is projecting will change hands this year, and you see that absolutely nothing that Sanders says will happen will ever come to pass.

      His positions are one thing, his consistency over time is admirable. However, being on the losing, but morally/policy-wonky correct, side of every major vote in the legislature is not a record of accomplishment. It is a record of failure.

      I like Bernie, and I actually hope he wins. But I do not at all think a President Sanders will accomplish anything of note, let alone anything as historic as he is proposing, within the legislative sphere in 4 or 8 years.

      The only think he might accomplish that is different from Clinton or any of the GOP is a re-think of our foreign policy and the use of our military forces. But he’s not even talking about that all that much.

      • Doug January 26, 2016 at 5:33 pm #

        “The only think he might accomplish that is different from Clinton or any of the GOP is a re-think of our foreign policy and the use of our military forces. But he’s not even talking about that all that much.”

        Because he doesn’t really believe in doing so, “all that much.”

        You should review his real record on war and the MIC. He’s been fairly clever at hiding or disguising it, but he just another in a long line of American exceptionalists and imperialists.

  74. Q. Shtik January 25, 2016 at 11:53 pm #

    Interesting, but what does it mean:

    Fri DJIA +210.83 pts

    Mon DJIA -208.29 pts

    2 day net +2.54 pts

    One step forward and one step back.

  75. wpa_ccc January 25, 2016 at 11:53 pm #

    During the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, from 1953 to 1961, the top marginal rate was 91 percent. (It was 92 percent the year he came into office.)

    Good conservative Republican Eisenhower values: 91% top marginal tax rate. Let’s go back to when Trump thinks America was great (1953-1961) … go back to a 91% top marginal tax rate. Maybe I should tell Bernie. We could pay for water systems that don’t poison people, bridges that don’t fall down, universal health care as a right, a world-class military, jobs programs… and… wait for it… free public higher education.

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    • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:49 am #

      Why go through all these tax rate machinations? Why not just print the money. That is effectively what is happening anyway. When outgo exceeds income they are printing up the difference. It’s called debt.

      • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 12:57 am #

        “Why go through all these tax rate machinations?” –Q

        Q, you and I were both alive to witness the Eisenhower years, 1953-1961, the years when the “tax rate machinations” made this country great. The Interstate Highway System was authorized on June 29, 1956 and is in need of repair. If we raise the top marginal tax rates to 91% Einsenhower levels, we can provide for the “general welfare” as the Constitution demands. (Article 1 Section 8)

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 5:50 am #

        The Government should print their own money. Why borrow it from Banks that just print it, creating it from nothing as if they were God?

  76. BackRowHeckler January 26, 2016 at 1:02 am #

    “Now Wall Street will just be returning the money back to the taxpayers” -WPA

    Wall Street, Police Departments, White Males, the Armed Forces, Oil Companies, Coal Companies, Trump, Sarah Palin, Israel … that’s just a partial list of the Bad Guys.

    the good guys? BLM thugs, go from there.

    brh

  77. erik January 26, 2016 at 1:32 am #

    I like Bernie’s views on economic matters and giving haircuts to “economic royalists”. I just wish he were maybe 55 years old so he could plausibly serve 2 terms. Pity he’s not and couldn’t…

  78. MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 1:51 am #

    @ Ozone;

    | Continuing our weekend conversation |

    “(What outside forces will be forthcoming will be of the oppressive and extractive nature; it’s all they now know how to organize. New Orleans was an object lesson; those who saw it as an *anomalous* cluster-fuck are those that are the uninformed, by-standing do-nothings. This is how the Beast reacts when asked to “help”.)”-oz.

    New Orleans was the result of counterproductive malign neglect. The federal government (Bush Administration) canceled the $5M it would have taken for the Army Corp of Engineers to reinforce a few damaged levees. Why? So that he could use that money to fund a few more days of military operations in Iraq (and half of that money would wind up lining some corrupt Iraqi pockets or man-purse). Because of this misallocation, billions of taxpayer dollars would be lost and America’s reputation impugned… Seems *so* worth it, in retrospect, doesn’t it?

    This is the kind of thinking that takes hold at the end. But wait, there’s more 😉

    http://i.imgur.com/jlEvg4X.jpg

    When whole cities are being poisoned, and unarmed citizens extra-judicially executed, why bother pretending that you’re anything but a 3rd-world nation? More to the point – given today’s post – why would you imagine that any government that can’t be bothered to tell it’s citizens the truth about anything substantive, and that incarcerates whistleblowers would give a tinker’s damn about their political input? It’s absurd.

    There’s a word for the federal government’s attitude and behavior:

    http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/the-contempt-that-poisoned-flints-water

  79. MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 1:57 am #

    | I’m reposting this once on a weekday where it will get more exposure |

    Hello CFN!

    It may be true that some CFN-ers are here to “scare” themselves; “ticking way the moments that make up a dull day”.

    OTOH, some of us are coping with CFN as it is and using it as a resource, a place to have productive conversations, time-effectively glean something useful & occasionally spur collaboration in the real-world… To treat it like a ‘virtual work-group’ in other words.

    As we get older we find ourselves playing a less direct and active role in the world’s affairs. Under the conditions that pertained that involved finding ways to stay busy and ‘relevant’ in some way.

    Going forward it looks increasing likely that we won’t have as many opportunities to get bored (like it or not). It is already the case that many wannabe-retirees cannot – simply because economic conditions don’t allow that to happen. Expect more of that, with less material support and physical security as you progress down the road of your life.

    The older/outbound generation does have one vital role to play as things come apart: to stand as the visceral and personal connection to all the good things that were and could have been (under better management). To transmit hands-on skills to the next generation, and to provide some sense of what civilization IS, not just what is HAS. To do that effectively and with as few missteps as possible, you’re going to need a little reference material.

    With that in mind, I’ve created a short, interesting, possibly essential bibliography. This is information that I’ve already seen to work and have used in the faltering resource hinterland of this civilization. I’m only presenting this as an example. Certainly you will feel free to add/subtract what you consider vital.

    Primary Reference List – Presented in order of likely necessity:

    1. Where There Is No Doctor: a village health care handbook, David Werner

    2. Gardening When It Counts, Steve Solomon

    3. Pocket Ref, Thomas J. Glover

    4. The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Civilization In the Aftermath Of A Cataclysm, Lewis Dartnell

    Supplemental Reading – these are techniques and technologies that are very appropriate in desperate situations. They can also be adapted and used as work-arounds in unexpected ways, or for longer-term threats:

    Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, Joshua Piven & Borgenicht

    Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel; “&”

    The SAS Survival Handbook, John Wiseman

    100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Survival Guide, Clint Emerson

    Just to be clear: I do not a *expect* “cataclysm” to suddenly befall us. I do however see utility in having detailed background information about the guts of our life, past-present and future.

    Cheers!

    • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 2:56 am #

      Thanks, Mr. Darling. Here are free ebooks on survival:

      http://ready4itall.org/the-free-preppers-library/

      Air Force Manual 32-4005
      Army- A Survival Scenario
      Army Ranger Handbook Caching Techniques (U.S. Army)
      Counterinsurgency Warfare – Theory and Practice
      Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms JP1_02 DOD
      Domestic Support Operations
      Emergency Chemical Training
      Encyclopedia of Modern US Weapons
      First Aid for Soldiers
      FM 21-76-1 Survival-Evasion-Recovery
      fm21_10 Field Hygiene and Sanitation
      FM21-76_SurvivalManual
      Military – US Army Ranger Handbook
      Military – US Army Survival Manual FM 21-76
      Modern Weapons Caching
      MRE INFO
      Navy SEAL Breakthrough to Master Level Fitness-MANTESH
      Navy Seal Patrol Leaders Handbook
      Special Forces Caching Techniques – TC 31-29A
      State-Local-Continuity-Guide(cpg1-10)
      Survival – MCRP 3-02F FM 21-76
      Survival Evasion and Recovery – MCRP 3-02H
      The Art of War
      United states army-fm 5-20
      United states marine – mwtc summer
      United states marine – mwtc winter
      United states marine -mcrp 3-02e
      US Army – FM 1-112 – Attack Helicopter Operations
      US Army – FM 12-43 – Mines And Boobytraps
      US Army – FM 21-31 – Topographic Symbols
      US Army – FM 21-150 – Combatives
      elements psychological aspects and survival medicine
      US Army cc in0486 mountaineering techniques basic
      US army cc md0703 preservation of foods
      US Army cc md0715
      US Army cc md0723 food deterioration
      US Army Special Forces Medical Handbook
      US Marine Corps course – Automotive Engine Maintenance and Repair MCI 35.80a
      US Marine Corps MWTC Summer Survival Course Handbook – MSVX.02.01
      US Navy Seal Sniper Training Program – Manual Military Elite Doctrine Guid US_Army cc in0494 mountaineering techniques advanced USMC Water Survival Course
      USMC-summer-survival-course
      USMC-winter-survival-course

    • ozone January 26, 2016 at 1:34 pm #

      MisterDarling,
      Although I smell an attempt to poison the well (that will be lied about shortly), thanks for re-posting these selections. *I* appreciate it.

      • MisterDarling January 27, 2016 at 2:09 am #

        Hello Ozone,

        Yes, dumping a bunch of chaff is what it does to jack up the noise-to-signal ratio – when all else fails.

        There’s a reason I did not include military training manuals (TM’s) and field manuals (FM’s): because they are written in a highly stylized military format and language by committees who (by the time the project is finalized) no longer care about the subject matter. The result is training material that’s an obstacle instead of a powerful tool for learning and practical application.

        You will notice however that material written by experienced professional is included, where appropriate. These are people who – freed from military constraints – made a point of writing as clearly and straight-forwardly as possible.

        The list is meant to be as information dense and physically portable as possible. The ‘Pocket Ref’ is included so that there is a source of reference for settled facts pertaining to Math, Science and Engineering. Everything in the list is meant to facilitate the maintenance or reestablishment of stable communities. Personally, I hope that this information is never needed [*], but better safe(r) than sorry…

        Cheers!

        — — —

        [*] unfortunately, some of it already is.

  80. MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 2:13 am #

    USA’s Current *Broke-Back Strategy*:

    SO, it appears that the US is riding to the rescue of it’s jihadi buddies in Syria. Apparently the situation is dire! If something isn’t done soon there will be no Islamic extremists of any kind left for the neocon faction of the US government to work with!

    http://southfront.org/international-military-review-analysis-syria-jan-25-2016-escalation-in-syria/

    So now the plan is to “make a little lady-space” & ‘reserve’ a little corner of northeastern Syria for them to work from. Isn’t this awfully sweet, and so utterly thoughtful of the State Department to do this in the name of the American People?

    https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/24/can-us-break-with-jihadist-allies/

    While doing their damnedest to ‘up’ that nuclear armed-equipped-deployed ante?

    Can the US-State Dept. break up with it’s jihadi pool-boys? Is that possible?

    /S

    “I just can’t quit you!”

    😉

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    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 2:22 am #

      The real God Brothers, Putin and Trump, will be put an end to this foolishness.

  81. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 2:25 am #

    Maybe someone can explain this to me. There is near universal hatred on this blog (all blogs, in fact) for “the Elite,” the so-called .01%.

    The equivalent in the 1920s – 30s is portrayed by Lord Grantham and his family in the immensely popular show Downton Abbey. Why is today’s public not outraged at the sight of a prior century’s Elite who need a staff to help them dress and undress every morning, noon and night?

    If you’re watching this final season you see their world beginning to fray around the edges and it does not seem a reason for joy.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 2:39 am #

      Because they had a stake in the nation. How do we know? Because they sent their sons to die in those foolish, needless wars where they slaughtered their brothers and White Civilization was fractured, possibly forever. See the speeches of Lindbergh, Sr for WW1 and Jr for WW2, trying to prevent this unspeakable tragedy.

      Now, do our elite send their sons to die in their wars? Not since Vietnam or perhaps even Korea. They do not see themselves Americans or conversely, they see themselves as the real Americans and not the rest of us.

      Emerson’s son didn’t want to fight in the Civil War. Wise boy. Ol’ Ralph told him he had to go. Thoreau went into an altered state, and told him he would suffer greatly but would return to the Concord he loved so much. Like Thoreau, young Emerson was a localist.

      • BackRowHeckler January 26, 2016 at 3:47 am #

        Quite a high number of that Boston Brahmin elite served in the Union Army, Janos. Oliver Wendell Holmes was severely wounded at Antietam. Matter of fact these Bostonians were the most enthusiastic volunteers of all.

        brh

    • MisterDarling January 26, 2016 at 3:00 am #

      @ Q:

      RE | “Why is today’s public not outraged at the sight of a prior century’s Elite who need a staff to help them dress and undress every morning, noon and night?”-Q.

      Maybe it’s because Lord Grantham and Family treat the show’s servants and commoners like they’re still human beings – even if considerably disadvantaged – and they make an effort to *not* crush their dignity into a fine-powder at every turn. That sets them well apart from the rudeness, the predatory cluelessness and rampant sociopathic behavior of American arrivistes.

      Just a theory…

      Cheers!

    • Sean Coleman January 26, 2016 at 7:38 am #

      I think it is psychological. ‘The elite’ has to be an overo-simplification or a distortion so that nobody believes he belongs to it. It’s like the nonsense spouted about ‘the Vatican’. Well, the Pope, he’s human, one of us, and this one and that one. In the end you run out of mysterious authoritarian figures lurking in the shadows pulling all the strings.

      It is also related, I am sure, to the way the press and media are looked at from either side of the AGW/ Climate Change ‘debate’. (I put the word in inverted commas because one side wants to close down all argument – ‘the science is settled’ – while the other side want to be able to say that it is a load of rubbish.) The ‘alarmists’ claim, and seem to truly believe, that the media are in the pay of the ‘fossil fuel industries’ and ‘the Corporations’ and often refer to the Daily Mail (as if that little newspaper were the reincarnation of the Inquisition) in their rhetoric. For them the media are lined up against The Truth, they are venal, unprincipled, selfish, suffering from denial syndromes and stupid.

      The other side know that the media, with precious few exceptions, are lined up in support of AGW.

      • Sean Coleman January 26, 2016 at 7:50 am #

        Just to refine the psychological explanation, I mean more specifically that it is an extravert thing.

        I was listening to a podcast this morning of a discussion about current affairs on BBC Radio nan Gael, which is in Scottish Gaelic.

        One of the guests, clearly an extravert and fully signed up supporter of what could be called ‘The Liberal Settlement’ worked up indignation about Trump and Palin (these are obligatory terms, like ‘The Daily Mail’). Trump says that two and two is five. Palin then says, ‘No! It’s seven!’ They make no sense whatsoever he cried. There are people to whom the whole system is wrong and they want to get rid of it. Unbelievable! (The man said.)

        Then on the other side there are people like myself who *know* that the man and his friends haven’t a clue what they are talking about. (And in my case I know why.)

      • Sean Coleman January 26, 2016 at 7:59 am #

        Before Christmas I had an argument on an Irish blog about AGW (as if there were anything to argue about as it is so obviously a delusion). He came out with the usual stuff about Big Oil and the press. He actually named a few newspapers. I had a little bit of time and looked up the papers and tv stations he named: all except Fox News were completely or largely supportive of AGW alarmism and I gave him examples, to which he could not reply of course.

        One of the papers he cited was the low-brow British paper, the Sun. In the Sun I found the headline ‘Fatties Cause Increased Global Warming’. He dimissed one of the sources for my opinions with the glorious, ‘You do know, don’t you, that he is funded by the Heartland Institute?’ Hold the front page! AGW sceptic supported by sceptical organization! He didn’t mention, of course, the huge funding of environmental activist organizations such as WWF and Greenpeace. It is a perceptual thing.

        • Sean Coleman January 26, 2016 at 8:01 am #

          I note that my response to Q has gone into AGW. Oh dear. Never mind, it is an excellent example of the way this kind of psychological dynamic works across the liberal agenda. You could describe it as group think.

          • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 11:11 am #

            That’s OK Sean, we all have our own pet concerns.

            For example, wpa’s main concern is anything whatsoever that might slow the growth of BIG GOVERNMENT as reflected in the worldwide leveling of the playing field and the homogenization of its inhabitants into a light brown mass of fungible units.

  82. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 2:30 am #

    With an hour left in Tuesday trading Shanghai is down 6.38%

    Good Night!

  83. Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 2:43 am #

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ben-jerry-bernies-yearning-ice-cream-sanders-article-1.2490101

    Ben Cohen has given Bernie his own flavor. Hope Bernie has a different flavor from old Ben. Who can forget how this most moral of Ice Cream Companies used to extort free labor from the idealistic young Whites who worked for them on their days off.

    • malthuss January 26, 2016 at 10:37 am #

      I did not click link.

      I thought BnJ was now part of Unilever?

      And when Ben owned it Planned Parenthood was a beneficiary.
      One of the ‘charities’ Ben supported.

  84. KL Cooke January 26, 2016 at 4:02 am #

    “In fact, it’s what many of our colleges and universities used to do.”

    Theoretically, I think it’s doable.

    When I went to college in California, back in the 60s, the state system was essentially free, particularly if one took the route of 2 years coomunity college, 2 years state college. It cost a few hundred bucks a semester. The University of California was more, but not much more. These were 1960s dollars or course, when a student job paid a buck and a half an hour, but it was well within anybody’s capability to work their way through in 4 years.

    Even so, not everybody went to college or wanted to. People generally recognized that college wasn’t for everybody. I remember starting out at the “JC” with people from my high school. Most of them dropped out after an semester and went to work instead.

    Plus you had to keep your grades up. Academic standards were probably a little higher then. And Women’s studies, ethnic studies and social justice weren’t offered as majors. Those came later, as did massive inflation

    • malthuss January 26, 2016 at 10:38 am #

      As of 1980 they were free or cheap.

  85. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2016 at 4:34 am #

    ExxonMobil: Rumors of oil and gas demise are slightly exaggerated

    Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil produced another long-term forecast for energy development until 2040. As expected, the primary energy demand will increase by that time by 25%.

    Against the background of the popular sentiment about the decline of the hydrocarbon era, the forecast looks quite conservative.

    So, by 2040, oil and natural gas will continue to contribute about 60% of the world supply of energy, while renewable and nuclear energy will have 25%. Moreover, the oil will remain a major source of energy (33%), natural gas – in the second place.

    http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/energy/energy-outlook

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  86. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2016 at 4:57 am #

    Historical oil-price roller-coaster

    If you look at the long-term oil prices, you could see that what we are witnessing today on the oil-market is just a replay by the old Anglo-Saxon scenarios of breakup of the USSR 1972 – 1990, followed by Eastern Europe “Privatization” process.

    At first, it goes a rapid increase in oil price by 2- 3 times, so the target victim would relax and get used to suddenly increased financial capabilities.

    Then the oil price reverses its trend, followed by target country budget deficits, deterioration of local currency, lack of imports, and unrest in the population.

    Then with a little push comes a “regime change”, “privatization” of national oil fields for very low nominal price.

    Now we are ready to start increasing oil prices again.

    http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

    Obviously the political-military leadership of Russian Federation is well aware of those scenarios and has some counter-play in mind, most likely in the ME, especially in Syria and Yemen.

    We should expect more rapid developments on the anti-ISIS front in Syria and anti-Saudi front in Yemen.

  87. Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 5:44 am #

    http://www.dailystormer.com/google-searches-for-white-genocide-soar-after-glorious-leaders-tweet/

    Trump has retweeted White genocide. He knows and now, thanks to him, a lot more people know. The media is in a quandary. If they condemn him or confront him, even more people will know. And he will just brush aside their feeble protests. Truth is Truth and a lie is a lie. Error has no rights. How tender he was with Savanah Guthrie when she used the word “alleged” for Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky. He gently but firmly corrected her a number of times. She’s a famous journalist, but of course, still just a woman and always prone to foolishness like this.

    In any case, Trump has shown an utter mastery of the media, even the new one which old guy like him shouldn’t know much about. He may even be reading The Daily Stormer, rapidly becoming America’s premier news source.

  88. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2016 at 5:48 am #

    I did not believe to the last moment that they’re going to do it, but still in Amsterdam was held a protest against the harassment of Cologne. Netherlands male politicians, joined by residents of the city took to the streets in miniskirts, to demonstrate to refugees that were harassing German women true European values.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grhPAMF6VpI

  89. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2016 at 8:43 am #

    APOLOGY

    I have to apologize to CFNers – I made a mistake, incorrectly interpreting the initiative of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as Constitutional declaration of war to Islamic State. On the contrary, it appears that McConnell attempted to rewrite the US Constitution, delegating almost unlimited war powers from the Congress to the President of United States.

    In conjunction with meeting of NATO top brass, to change a decision-making procedures in response to “more aggressive Russia and other evolving security threats”, it could actually limit ability of the President to NOT get involved in a new war, like he did in 2013 when everybody expected him to start bombing Syria, and Obama requested an official Congress declaration of war, which was not given and the war was avoided.

    And when the hostility start, it is much more difficult to avoid a full-blown war.

    http://news.yahoo.com/nato-top-brass-discuss-future-strategy-force-posture-104126467.html

    • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 10:26 am #

      Apology accepted.

  90. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 9:29 am #

    Because they had a stake in the nation. How do we know? Because they sent their sons to die in those foolish, needless wars – Janos

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

    Ask a hundred people at random why today’s Elite are so hated while the Elite of Downton Abbey are loved I doubt one of them would say “because they don’t send their sons (and daughters) into the military.”

    More likely they would say something that translates as “they’re in a rich club and I ain’t in it.” (Tm: George Carlin)

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    • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 10:31 am #

      Today’s elite includes billionaires like Bloomberg and Trump. Trump who claims he will make America “great again” militarily … Why aren’t you asking Trump where he will get the money for all his massive programs of deportation, military supremacy, and wall building?

      • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 11:16 am #

        Why aren’t you asking Trump where he will get the money for all his massive programs – wpa

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

        Because he won’t be the next president.

  91. Coldwarvet January 26, 2016 at 9:38 am #

    Doesn’t it seem likely that an independent run by Bloomberg would split the Dem vote, thus assuring a cake walk for Trump?

    That said, I can think of worse outcomes. Trump, for all his bluster and lack of “polish,” at least seems to be saying the right things on most of the key issues. Whether he would change his tune, as most politicians do when handed the keys, remains to be seen.

    • wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 11:39 am #

      What is Trump saying about poverty and homeless veterans?

      • vengeur January 26, 2016 at 12:06 pm #

        Trump came out publically AGAINST Bush Jr.’s illegal invasion and war on Iraq in 2003-2004. And Hillary, what did Hillary do? She was ALL IN FOR WAR IN IRAQ.

      • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 1:37 pm #

        1. that “the poor we shall always have with us” and

        2. that he has several vacancies in Trump Place along the West Side Highway

  92. fodase January 26, 2016 at 9:48 am #

    http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/01/25/hillary-trumps-muslim-ban-shameful-offensive-and-dangerous/

    so a woman at hillary’s town hall is wearing a hijab – a sign of oppression – and representing the religion that horrifically oppresses women (you know the endless list of atrocities).

    …and hillary, the women-supporting feminist…

    ….sees fit to applaud this modern day cancer of islam.

    …and the leftist supporters see no conflict with their support of women

    …and support of women-killing islam

    seccession can’t come fast enough

    you will see ghettoised america with these type of brain dead people

    …and successful White Anglo-Saxon values in the new nation that everyone will suddenly want to emigrate to.

    • Doug January 26, 2016 at 3:05 pm #

      …and the leftist supporters see no conflict with their support of women

      …and support of women-killing islam

      And right-wingers see no conflict between their newly-adopted concern for Muslim women and their support for bombing wedding parties and hospitals “for freedom.”

      Nor do these defenders of liberty have a problem with the fate of the women and children who happen to be too close to a targeted cellphone and become what the drone operators call “bug splats.”

      No, you’re fucking up in arms over a woman choosing to wear a scarf, called a hijab in her native culture, just as people of all religions, or none, have routinely adopted head-covering or clothing traditions for many centuries.

      Baruch Goldstein wore a yarmulke (or kippah) and killed dozens of people in the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. Are all of us who pop on a yarmulke for some friend’s kid’s bat or bar mitzvah somehow celebrating or validating the vile religious perversion of Goldstein and the Kach movement?

  93. mdhendler January 26, 2016 at 11:33 am #

    Bloomberg would drain away far more coupdemocrat than republican votes. The modern republican could never vote for a gun-control, climate-change, anti-motoring, anti-junkfood, anti-smoking well-spoken urban NY jew. Bloomberg does appeal to the establishment anti-populist, third-way democrats. However, I don’t know if that would be enough for him in an election against Trump.
    The only way that I see Bloomberg being president is in the event of a coup against Trump or Sanders in which the military take over and install a National Restoration Emergency governing triumvirate of Bloomberg, General Pretorius, and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

    • pequiste January 28, 2016 at 10:43 pm #

      Where’s Al Haig when we need him?

  94. volodya January 26, 2016 at 11:36 am #

    Mr Darling, glad to see that some MBA types are waking up to what awaits them. I’ve personally seen corporate departments get off-shored. Well compensated employees are watching their jobs go bye-bye, like you say, the MBA types and CPAs.

    You and routesurfer bring up the 1930s and 1940s. Those days were instructive. A lot of the economy collapsed. But what folk that suffered in the Dirty Thirties wasn’t all for naught. A lot of misbehavior was stopped cold, especially in financial markets, and a lot of lessons were learned.

    But nowadays we take the exact opposite approach. Instead of stopping bad behavior we encourage it. We do our damndest to not learn. The Fed and Treasury prop up Wall Street, legislative action gets watered down to meaninglessness, Wall Street insiders are hired on as Wall Street regulators. It’s BAU.

    In short everyone who should know better, doesn’t. They’re doing their best to sustain the unsustainable.

  95. FincaInTheMountains January 26, 2016 at 11:48 am #

    Syrian fronts are showing pretty good progress for Russian Air Force and Assad army.
    The most recent success – after several weeks of fierce street battles cleared the strategic town in Deraa province Sheikh Maskin.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-town-idUSKCN0V32P1

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  96. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 11:57 am #

    Bernie’s proposal is (mostly) to pay for it with a small tax on every Wall Street transaction. – DrGonzo

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

    I’m assuming, although I don’t really know, that this would include every corporate worker bee with a 401k. Every payday or month the 10% withheld from pay and sent to Fidelity to purchase specified equity funds would have .5% taxed away. When that fund is sold (maybe because it is not doing well) that’s another transaction and there goes another .5% as tax. Then the proceeds of the sale are re-invested in another fund……. subtract .5% for Bernie’s tax.

    And what about way down the road (maybe age 59.5 when you can take distributions without a penalty, or at age 71.5 when “required minimum distributions” must be taken) investments must be sold to convert to cash for the distribution. I assume these are transactions subject to the .5% tax.

    A half a percent here, a half a percent there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money (Tm Everett Dirksen).

  97. wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 12:09 pm #

    So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms recently that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.

    On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.

    Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.

    And that is without solar and geothermal!

  98. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:22 pm #

    An easy way is to drastically increase the tax on the capital gains earned on the obscene endowments of the 1% universities. – Frankiti

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

    No, Frank. Try for once to hold in abeyance your knee-jerk visceral hatred of anything associated with “the 1%.”

    Wpa is talking about a transaction tax, not a capital gains tax. That’s a whole ‘nother bucket of worms.

    Forget the Harvards, Yales and Amhersts that you obviously have in mind. Let’s talk about the shit-ass private school I went to (St Joseph’s University in Philly). Every now and then some well-off alum gives them a few million and they invest it. Why is it a good idea to tax away .5%? Do you assume, as wpa does, that BIG Government knows better what to spend that .5% on than St Joe’s does?

    • Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 12:37 pm #

      Forgot to mention your use of the word obscene:

      1. (of the portrayal or description of sexual matters) offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency:

      2. offensive to moral principles; repugnant:
      “using animals’ skins for fur coats is obscene”
      synonyms: shocking · scandalous · vile · foul · atrocious

      How is endowing a favored university obscene?

      • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 6:33 pm #

        Obscene: so large an amount or size as to be very shocking or unfair.

        I suppose you are at least correct about shitty St. Joey’s

        Endowments
        Harvard 40B
        Yale 26B
        Stanford 22B

        I think the schools that inculcate the elites with ways to manipulate finance, markets, avoid taxes, import indentured H1Bs, export fabrication and award each other on their boards and then reap the rewards through alumni donations need there comeuppance.

        33% cap gains seems right.

    • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 6:34 pm #

      Go eat a d*ck Qschmuck

    • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 6:37 pm #

      Oh q-schmuck, no, they just need to fund the state schools that are getting less state support as taxes dry up. Dumbass

  99. Hoyt January 26, 2016 at 12:54 pm #

    Seriously? C’mon. Billionaire || millionaire = !Elect

  100. volodya January 26, 2016 at 1:09 pm #

    I trust everyone has seen Sander’s “America” commercial. But, if you haven’t, here it is. Have a look:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug

    Brilliant, no?

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    • Doug January 26, 2016 at 10:15 pm #

      I don’t watch TV, so I hadn’t seen it.

      Yup, it’s brilliant. Paul Simon probably approves the “message” as well.

      The only problem is that there isn’t really any message, other than an emotional appeal to America, motherhood and apple pie.

      Of course, that’s not a problem when you don’t want voters to think; you want them to feel the Bern.

      And feeling rather than thinking has long been a proud tradition in American politics.

  101. Q. Shtik January 26, 2016 at 1:18 pm #

    Thank god somebody chimed in with some clear thinking. After all the gushing from the Bloomberg lovers above, I was about to gag. – Whoopdy-do

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

    Who, other than our host himself, are all these gushing Bloomberg lovers you imagine you see? I’m not about to go back and read 300 comments but I don’t recall ANY. Tell ya what, for every pro-Bloomberg
    comment I’ll identify 5 anti.

    Also Whoopdy says:

    PS: I am a supporter of Israel and not a supporter of Trump.

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

    Don’t tell me! Are you saying ANOTHER person (named Israel) has entered the race?

    • Doug January 26, 2016 at 2:47 pm #

      Israel entered and won the race for influence on American politics long ago. So far, the victory seems permanent.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 3:01 pm #

        Courage! Nothing lasts forever, and Trump has appeared. The End of this Tyranny is in sight.

  102. wpa_ccc January 26, 2016 at 1:48 pm #

    Trump will not be allowed the Republican nomination and Trump cannot throw a hissy fit at being “disrespected” and become an independent. Trump is fucked. He cannot get the support of true Republican conservatives, so he cannot gain the nomination as a Republican … and he cannot leave the Republicans because he cannot win as an independent. After last night’s forum Hillary looks stronger than ever… though Bernie would be better for the middle class (transferring wealth back to the middle class from the wealthy who have had decades of tax breaks at the expense of taxpayers).

  103. fodase January 26, 2016 at 3:07 pm #

    you must be retarded to think hillary looks strong.

    she admits she’s “not too good at this technology thing”

    and that she “didn’t really understand it”

    way to go, put someone at the very highest post as secretary of state that doesn’t understand the rudiments of technology

    oh yes, we believe it

    she looks strong to liars who recognize one of their very own

  104. Janos Skorenzy January 26, 2016 at 3:09 pm #

    Trump trashes Common Core and vows to end it. This alone would be enough to vote for him, but there is so much more. History is your story. Be part of it. Will your own life and support the Man of the Hour. He can’t do it without you….

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-slams-americas-schools-vows-163407602.html

  105. fodase January 26, 2016 at 3:20 pm #

    …already waiting for my absentee ballot here overseas

    haven’t voted in ages

    a new Messiah may await us

    inshallah

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    • ozone January 26, 2016 at 3:36 pm #

      You’re “overland”, not “overseas”. Although the Darien Gap might prove problematic, when your ballot gets stolen by the brown-tinged Brazilian-folk you’ve chosen to barge amongst and sneer down upon, you could always strike out for the land for which you pretend so much concern by bus, train and foot. Immigrate! You might even make it in time to cast your ballot, don your uniform and bend your knee in fealty.

  106. ozone January 26, 2016 at 3:22 pm #

    Another country heard from on the Bloombergian Candidate*:

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/26/a-candidate-of-by-and-for-the-0-01/

    *Please be advised, the phrase “obscene wealth” is used in this context. Those of tender sensibilities should consider themselves duly warned!

  107. fodase January 26, 2016 at 3:52 pm #

    …you could always strike out for the land for which you pretend so much concern by bus, train and foot. Immigrate! You might even make it in time to cast your ballot, don your uniform and bend your knee in fealty.

    i pay taxes to the US, so shut the fuck up.

    as for immigrating, i am welcomed as a high-earner, highly educated desirable since my presence and activities enrich society.

    my children are all highly trained professionals as well, contributing to the US and other countries, at least 3 so far.

    so like i said, shut the fuck up.

    finally, being a US citizen, I am entitled to vote.

    knee-bending i leave to those who would live in tyranny.

  108. Doug January 26, 2016 at 6:16 pm #

    Check this out on your sensibility meters:

    = = = = =

    Ha Ha: Hillary Clinton’s Top Financial Supporter Now Controls “The Onion”

    [. . .]

    Many news outlets covered Univision Communications’ purchase last week of a stake in The Onion, the world’s leading news publication. According to NPR, Univision bought a 40 percent controlling interest in the company, and also acquired the option to buy the remainder of The Onion in the future.

    But what’s gotten no attention at all is that Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton’s biggest fan and financial supporter, is Univision’s co-owner, Chairman and CEO. Saban and his wife Cheryl are Hillary Clinton’s top financial backers, having given $2,046,600 to support her political campaigns and at least $10 million more to the Clinton Foundation, on whose board Cheryl Saban sits.

    [. . .]

    Beyond Saban’s deep connections to the Clintons, Onion staffers likely have taken note of his statement that “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”

    The Onion, in the past, has published articles like Israel: Palestinians Given Ample Time To Evacuate To Nearby Bombing Sites, Israel Vows To Use Veto Power If Chuck Hagel Confirmed As U.S. Secretary Of Defense, and Israel Calls For Increase In U.S. Taxes To Fund Attacks On Gaza.

    Saban said in 2014 that if Israel believed the anticipated international nuclear deal with Iran “puts Israel’s security at risk” that Israel should “bomb the living daylights out of these sons of bitches.”

    Much More

  109. Pucker January 26, 2016 at 8:41 pm #

    In the future, not only will the Asian kids be good at Math, but they’ll also be good at basketball. And then the Black Lives Matter Communists will really be pissed off!

    “This course examines how modern reproductive technology like cloning, genetic modification and eugenics has created a host of new legal and ethical questions that are currently being debated in the courts and legislative bodies throughout the United States. A panel of experts will illuminate all sides of the debate and discuss how reproductive technologies may affect abortion rules, agreements between (potential) parents, and control of reproductive tissue. The panel will also discuss how advancements in human genomics affect the duty to save a fetus, cloning, and medical privacy and discrimination. In this course”

    • Pucker January 27, 2016 at 2:03 am #

      “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men used to be created equal…but not anymore….”

  110. Buck Stud January 27, 2016 at 12:13 am #

    “Trump trashes Common Core and vows to end it. This alone would be enough to vote for him, but there is so much more. History is your story. Be part of it. Will your own life and support the Man of the Hour. He can’t do it without you….”–Janos

    I saw Trump going on and on about ‘Cruz the Canadian’ and ‘The Man From Canada’ and I have to say, he was quite articulate in his denunciations of Cruz.

    And frankly, the more I learn of Trump, the better I like him:

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

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    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 1:07 am #

      That’s the spirit. Hate me all you want but love yourself and all will be well. Trump is the only candidate for a White Man who doesn’t hate himself.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 6:48 pm #

      Just watched it: we may be in deep doo doo, and being taken for the ride of our lives. Oh well, the train has no breaks it’s coming towards the cliff. It either can fly or it can’t. Save us ET!

  111. wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 8:47 am #

    Trump has been great news for getting people registered to vote. (Underground ACORN work). Thousands of legal Hispanic residents are becoming U.S. citizens from Nevada to Florida and Colorado because of Trump. There is a measurable, substantial increase in Latino voter registration and voting when there is a clear villain perceived as anti-Latino. I imagine the same thing is true among KKK and white supremacists … fortunately the demographics are in favor of non-whites. The system works. Non-whites will be victorious at the ballot box.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 4:16 pm #

      Good minorities know the White Man is superior and want to be ruled by him in order to enjoy the peace, justice, and prosperity that comes from his Law and Science.

      Sure we can criticize rogue White cops, but does anyone imagine that our System is worse than African “justice”? Unfortunately, countless fools do imagine such things, encouraging minority grievance. It’s like Morton of Merrymount getting the Indians drunk and selling them firearms – simply Criminal.

  112. wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 9:15 am #

    It is a great day for America: Ammon Bundy is in jail and Trump is afraid of girls.

    Ailes… 2
    Crybaby Trump … 0

    Trump can’t stand up to Meghan, much les Putin.

    • wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 11:38 am #

      ^Megyn^

      Trump is walking away from the last debate before voting begins.

      Just like Sarah Palin, Trump is a quitter.

  113. K-Dog January 27, 2016 at 10:26 am #

    “since the old left wing Progressives have adopted the Palestinians as their new pet oppressed minority du jour and have been inveighing against Israel incessantly. Well, that would be a darn shame. But that’s what you might get in a shameless land where anything goes and nothing matters.”

    But it is not just those in the shameless land of vinyl siding that Jingo Jimbo Kunstler loves to hate who knows a pet oppressed minority du jour when they see one.Iceland Boycotts Israel.

    “The whole world needs to follow Iceland’s lead. Its capital City of Reykjavik no longer will buy products made in Israel.

    Its city council voted for boycott as long as it continues occupying Palestinian territory – a bold act deserving high praise, perhaps inspiring greater numbers of cities worldwide to follow suit, then maybe countries if enough effective popular resistance against its viciousness materializes.

    Petitions in Britain and America to arrest Netanyahu attracted growing thousands of ordinary people – expressing justifiable anger against an apartheid state brutalizing Palestinians for not being Jewish.”

    Calling America a shameless land where anything goes and nothing matters sounds cool but is simply not true. Tolerating Zionist apartheid is a clear example of letting something go and caring for nothing but that is not what is going on. America has more of a collective conscience than Jim Kunstler who with his tolerance of Jewish genocide wears the clown suit.

    • Doug January 27, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

      . . .“since the old left wing Progressives have adopted the Palestinians as their new pet oppressed minority du jour and have been inveighing against Israel incessantly.”

      I started to write a detailed post about the chasm between factions of American Jews (and Gentiles) who see Israel and its policies and actions in very different ways. I wanted to try to explain how so many Jews of our generation (Jim’s and mine) simply cannot see Israel as other than good and reasonable and Palestinians and other Arabs as other than the evil bastards who want to push the Jews into the sea, just because they’re “terrorists” by nature.

      I understand how that view was taught, made virtually holy and unchallengeable from infancy — when many of our parents could still smell the stench of Nazi camps.

      I gave up on the attempt at explanation, though, because Israeli behavior since the first Intifada should have been sufficient to shake any reasonable person’s view of Israel as inherently good and irreproachable. I just don’t understand how Jim, one of the brightest and most thoughtful guys around, can continue to cling to his position in the face of indisputable reality.

      Anyway, when my wife read the above, she decided that there is no way she’s going to make room in the monthly budget to support someone who would write such things.

      Sad.

      • MisterDarling January 27, 2016 at 2:04 pm #

        @ Doug;

        RE | “I understand how that view was taught, made virtually holy and unchallengeable from infancy — when many of our parents could still smell the stench of Nazi camps.”-d.

        The interesting thing is that this viewpoint is just one of several blocs of opinion and sentiment about how it was during and after the horror. Abba Kovner [*] said that there was a sharp divide between the people that stayed and the people who fled – to Russia, Shanghai, etc.. Also, between those that fought (as partisans) and those that suffered in the camps.

        I was raised (as I’ve mentioned before in the course of discourse) by a father who witnessed the onslaught. His war started when the sirens went off and his whole neighborhood scrambled to fit into one small shelter. I remember him telling me that when he came out of “it seemed like the whole town was in flames” and all the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up – because there was a tone in his voice I’d never heard before.

        The Nazis didn’t succeed in wiping out all resistance, but they did succeed in uniting the nation against them and removing any qualms about doing whatever was necessary to wipe them out.

        When the killing was almost over my old talked about whole trains commandeered by people fresh out of the death camps, and about how they would just roll into a town and it would all to hell would break loose. Who would stop them? Why would they? They were looking for a home that wasn’t there anymore – and maybe never existed except in their own minds.

        They’d been betrayed all over Europe by most people. The few people that resisted and protected risked brutal, horrible death for themselves and their families. *These* people – my father and his brothers among them – had NO sympathy for the weak, wishy-washy average fuck that stood silent and watched.

        SO, out of this cauldron of PTSD-creation Israel was founded. And that’s the way that it has to be viewed from 1945 forward – every action/reaction and over-reaction… Until we get where we are now, with a virulently right-wing Israeli government crushing all moderation or dissent, pushing unsustainable agendas.

        What is right for Israel? Is it what a Las Vegas-based billionaire wants?

        No one on Earth seems to know.

        — — —

        [*] http://www.largeprintreviews.com/avengers_cohen.html

        • Doug January 27, 2016 at 2:33 pm #

          “They’d been betrayed all over Europe by most people.”

          Not only by Europeans:

          What Americans thought of Jewish refugees on the eve of World War II

          And remember the St. Louis.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 4:03 pm #

            Doug, don’t be a dork. If we had let in all the Jew who wanted to come here, we would have gone down the tubes all the faster. We wouldn’t have had a decent few decades after the World Wars. The whole Neo Con collusion between the Left and Big Finance would have coalesced much stronger and earlier. After all, Trotsky and Lord Rothschild used to have lunch together. They didn’t consider each other enemies – we’re the enemy. And people like you who identify with their propaganda are useful, and used until they cease to be.

            Remember the St Louis? Nay, remember The Liberty!

            http://jamesperloff.com/2014/08/13/remember-the-liberty/

        • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 3:54 pm #

          As you know, National Socialism was a reaction to Zionism. German veterans came back to find Jews with many of the best jobs and during the inflation, Jews from all over Europe came in to buy up Germany. Why wouldn’t they get angry and try to take back their own country?

      • K-Dog January 27, 2016 at 4:15 pm #

        Perhaps some people can tell the difference between being Jewish and being a radical Zionist and some can’t.

        The situation suggests a parallel between Nazi horrors and children from families with a history of physical abuse. Some children will be enlightened and change their legacy; more likely they will repeat the physical abuse they have been taught and their own children will become new victims perpetuating a vicious cycle. Often we behave with the brains of a parrot and simply repeat what we have experienced. It is what humans do.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 5:17 pm #

          Before my awakening, I dated a Jewish woman. Her Jewish Father was a great man, and couldn’t stand Israel. When I asked him why, he told me about how horribly they had treated the Arabs. Now he was a mensch and not a Zionist. There are very few Non-Zionists. Almost all Jews support Israel. Bernie Sanders? Zionist.

          Hope that clears things up for you Kdog. You’re a smart guy who doesn’t know how to use his smarts on non-technical things. Let’s face it, those are the hard things and also often the most important.

          The Key? Same as with technical subjects or pure science: one must sit down before the facts like a little child. The difference is simply that it is harder to do so when it comes to human issues. Thus it’s a spiritual question, one of renunciation. Only that can lead to the holy indifference conducive to Wisdom.

        • Doug January 27, 2016 at 7:03 pm #

          @K-Dog

          “The situation suggests a parallel between Nazi horrors and children from families with a history of physical abuse. Some children will be enlightened and change their legacy; more likely they will repeat the physical abuse they have been taught and their own children will become new victims perpetuating a vicious cycle.”

          This.

    • Q. Shtik January 27, 2016 at 12:16 pm #

      Iceland boycotts Israel……… Its capital City of Reykjavik no longer will buy products made in Israel. – K-Dog

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

      Have they EVER bought products from Israel? Well, in fact, yes. My research shows that an order was placed by the airport gift shop for a half dozen mezuzahs back in 2nd Qtr 2011. 🙂

    • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 7:10 pm #

      After reading Finkelstein and Chomsky, one can see the appeal, and after Finkelstein was railroaded by Dershowitz after he destroyed him in a debate, even more so. But ultimately, cutting off your nose to spite your face is suicide. These 2 dignified men expect civility in the harsh reality;the base situation of life-competition for existence. Not going to happen.

      • pequiste January 28, 2016 at 5:59 pm #

        Finklestein, Chomsky & Dershowitz?

        Sounds like a Boca Raton Law firm or a Wall Street boutique brokerage.

        How refreshing it would be to actually present some ideas from people other than members of the Tribe. Not going to happen as theirs IS the dominant discourse in today’s U.S.

        Both sides of the equation as it happens, as evidenced in the political arena by exemplars Bernie Sanders, Socialist of Vermont, by way of Brooklyn, and Michael Bloomberg, hyper-Capitalist megalomaniac, also by way of New York City.

        Where is Andrew Jackson when we need him most?

  114. fodase January 27, 2016 at 11:41 am #

    wpa_ccc continues to out himself as just another ignorant, may i say, racist, i.e. judges folks on the basis of their skin color with no contributing rationale.

    mired in the past like all his blinded cohorts who view Whites as KKK members and White supremacists….

    …while touting the supremacy of all non-whites.

    President Trump is already fumigating the country of racist blacks and non-whites and dangerous muslim terrorists who want to plunge the world back to the year 900 Anno Domini

    Noble Blacks, Latinos and Muslims recognize the authenticity of President Trump and his inherent honesty. As do Noble Whites.

    They will vote for him in droves.

    It’s over for you evil leftist beasts.

    The Bell Has Tolled

    • ozone January 28, 2016 at 7:35 pm #

      Okay then, fuckit,
      It’s time to repatriate, bend the knee, kiss the ring and don the uniform!
      Your blessed struggles with the brown-tinged folk are at end and All is forgiven….. Prepare to rule the former lands of the States United without contention. (Um, before your papers are finalized, please submit a geneological chart going back at least 15 generations; purity is essential for the ruling cadre.)

  115. Q. Shtik January 27, 2016 at 12:01 pm #

    Am I imagining things? Didn’t I just read a post from K-dog about Iceland boycotting Israel? And there was an unkind remark in it about our host. Now that comment has disappeared. Hmmm.

    Well, if we never hear from K-dog again we’ll know why.

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    • Q. Shtik January 27, 2016 at 12:06 pm #

      What the hell?! K-dog’s comment has reappeared.

      • K-Dog January 27, 2016 at 4:01 pm #

        Must be problems with the ‘server’. Modern technology is built on foundations of sand; literally. Sand is made of silicon and so are computers. Perhaps a cosmic ray hit a logic gate when you thought it vanished and briefly wiped out transmission.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 4:11 pm #

          Maybe a cosmic ray was directed to hit Q’s brain gate making him see what you had not written but were only thinking?

          Not for nothing did the American Indians hate the White Man’s paper saying, We write in Stone, the White Man in paper that can be ripped up and changed. Of course they didn’t write too many novels and treatises that way. Nor did they have an alphabet, just stick men cavorting and leaping to avoid alien rays.

          • K-Dog January 27, 2016 at 9:53 pm #

            That must be it because we know our host has a thick skin and is able to tolerate other points of view!

  116. volodya January 27, 2016 at 12:39 pm #

    On Dec 5/15 in a post on this blog I wrote:

    “Imagine, in this age of economic marginalization and social atomization, an eccentric long-beard and his wife and dogs and guns in their trailer” …. “And they get visited by federal agents on some pre-text of wrong-doing.” “And you know what happens next. You could write the script yourself, bullets galore….”

    Seems it was inevitable. The FBI killed LaVoy Finicum and wounded Ryan Bundy. There’s claims already that the dead man had his hands in the air when he was shot. Sorry to sound callous but ok, not an exact match to my prediction about the hypothetical eccentric getting gunned down. Still…

    Maybe this just sinks into the sands of time un-noticed. Or maybe not.

    • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 7:00 pm #

      Ryan it appears was also kicked by a horse in the encounter. Or his mom dropped him… again.

    • S M Tenneshaw January 28, 2016 at 3:29 am #

      Dindu nuffin.

  117. wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 12:49 pm #

    Am I imagining things? Didn’t I just read a post from K-dog about Iceland boycotting Israel? And there was an unkind remark in it about our host. Now that comment has disappeared. Hmmm. –Q

    —————–

    Iceland has sent 29 banksters to jail. It is possible to hold them accountable for illegal acts.

    Bush and Obama sent zero banksters to jail. Hillary won’t either. Billionaires like Trump and Bloomberg won’t touch banksters with the law.

    Bernie Sanders is the candidate not beholden to Wall Street. He can follow Iceland’s example… On steroids.

    • dweebus January 27, 2016 at 1:44 pm #

      @wpa_ccc-

      “Bernie Sanders is the candidate not beholden to Wall Street. He can follow Iceland’s example… On steroids.”

      Whilst I will vote for Bernie in the primary, and the general should he win the nomination (I will write him or Jill Stein in unless my states electors look to be at risk of falling to a Republican, and HRC is the nominee) I have no illusions that he will be able to accomplish single payer, free tuition, or an Icelandic middle finger to the banks for at least 2 years. Probably not at all.

      Meanwhile, I just got my seed catalogs and am planning the spring garden. I will enjoy the poli-circus, have a beer (or two), watch stupid fantasy shows with my girls (Shanarra Chronicles- MTV) and then try and do something useful. Cable TV news got turned off years ago in my house. A Sanders’ political revolution is a fiction. Ain’t gonna happen till a major crisis point hits. By then it is too late anyways.

      • wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 3:27 pm #

        “Ain’t gonna happen till a major crisis point hits.” –dweebus

        Well, just like the Christians who say Jesus is returning soon, the CFN cargo cult says it is all going to collapse any day now… or as Q says: at 2:58 pm next Tuesday. Of course, Q was wrong about last Tuesday.

      • ozone January 28, 2016 at 9:04 am #

        Once again, wpasoka plays Meaning Mangler.
        The quote by dweebus that the Meaning Mangler chose to mangle is the *exact opposite* of cargo cultism.

        Can anyone now see why I believe this [and a couple other] poster to be “ungenuine”? Common tactic of twisting meanings to suit a statist and dependent agenda. It’s despicable and solidly Orwellian, but I’m sure Frank Luntz is proud.

        I’ll continue to use words and idioms as their meanings intend, not some mish-mash bullshit contrived to confuse. We can see what happened to “fuckit/fodase” when faced with cognitive dissonance overload; the scent of fried synapses is in the air.

  118. San Jose January 27, 2016 at 1:24 pm #

    Camille Paglia wrote an article published in today’s Salon, “Hillary’s “blame-men-first” feminism may prove costly in 2016.” Very interesting read on what motivates Clinton. Apparently Paglia wrote it for the New York Times, but it was too hot to handle! I’d be interested in CFN’s take on this article.

    Jen in San Jose

  119. FincaInTheMountains January 27, 2016 at 1:39 pm #

    The policy of the State Department in Ukraine supporting the Euro-association plan developed by Angela Merkel, has not only the obvious meaning of the roadmap for collapse of Russia, but also as a wedge between Russia and Europe in order to prevent catastrophic for the US development scenario.

    But the coincidence in time of the Syrian catastrophe, the Ukrainian crisis and raids on China because of the islands in the South China Sea (that brings to mind the most painful period in their history – the Opium Wars) – de facto make Russia and China into reliable allies, and Syrian refugees kick-drive the European Union into that alliance.

    And de facto the head of that anti-American conspiracy is the US Department of State.

    Of course, this view is a pure conspiracy, but it sounds like a refrain in the thinking of the American elite, choosing between Donald Trump and the establishment of both parties. And the point of application of these considerations is the fate of Syrian President Assad.

    The logical chain goes as following: Assad must go, because otherwise it is impossible to put together a Sunni coalition to defeat ISIS.

    And why it is necessary to destroy the ISIS using Sunni coalition?

    Because Sunni coalition was a staunch ally of the United States, it helped defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and therefore will be needed to squeeze Russia out from Greater Middle East in the future.

    But why squeeze Russia from the Middle East, if it can easily defeat the ISIS together with President Assad?

    And we’re back where we started, the question that sympathy for Islamism combined with squeezing Russia out from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Europe and even the planet Earth is the number one priority, the goal rather than the means for a certain group of American elite, and the rejection of Communist ideology seems to have made this goal even more a priority.

    • Doug January 27, 2016 at 9:12 pm #

      “And we’re back where we started, the question that sympathy for Islamism combined with squeezing Russia out from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Europe and even the planet Earth is the number one priority, the goal rather than the means for a certain group of American elite, and the rejection of Communist ideology seems to have made this goal even more a priority.”

      I don’t know where “sympathy for ‘Islamism’ (whatever that might be)” comes into the picture, but it is transparently clear that the number one priority for the US since the breakup of the USSR has been to prevent any entity, most especially Russia, from achieving sufficient power or influence to challenge American supremacy in Europe and/or Asia. China’s on the list, too, of course, but Russia is Target #1.

      • ozone January 28, 2016 at 9:16 am #

        Doug,
        I agree. Perhaps it’s the strange perspective that gets in the way when peering at the phrase “sympathy for Islamism”? There’s absolutely no ‘sympathy’ involved in the whole exercise; only useful idiots to be used as spoilers and disruptors, keeping things nicely off balance for future exploitation. …And the spoilers and disruptors will take whatever they can gain out of it for the immediate present (weapons, money, regional power).

  120. wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 2:34 pm #

    Hi Jen, thanks for the heads up on the article. It seems to me that Hillary got stuck in second-wave feminism, never graduated to third-wave feminism, and probably is completely unaware of fourth-wave feminism. But that shouldn’t hurt her chances of being elected, given the Republican Party meltdown in progress.

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    • wpa_ccc January 27, 2016 at 2:37 pm #

      Hillary did lie in the last forum when she said she was fighting for women’s rights in college. At least as a freshman she was a Republican Goldwater girl…

  121. mow January 27, 2016 at 3:03 pm #

    You left out Schenectady , Amsterdam , Syracuse , Rochester and Buffalo.

  122. Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 5:26 pm #

    A good man dies in defense of Liberty. The good Finc.

    http://www.opb.org/news/article/robert-lavoy-finicum-dead-rancher-bundy-burns-oregon/

    • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 6:58 pm #

      Crocodile tears over a dead hillbilly. Ranchers out west are assholes. They think they can do what they wish the land. Kill predators, trample and devour the vegetation. Poison, hunt, pollute. Don’t even read Ed Abbyey’s opinion of them. This crusade would make a better Cohen brothers film. Dipshits in over their heads.

      • Doug January 27, 2016 at 7:11 pm #

        The rancher strings barbed wire across the range, drills wells and bulldozes stock ponds everywhere, drives off the elk and antelope and bighorn sheep, poisons coyotes and prairie dogs, shoots eagle and bear and cougar on sight, supplants the native bluestem and grama grass with tumbleweed, cow shit, cheat grass, snakeweed, anthills, poverty weed, mud and dust and flies – and then leans back and smiles broadly at the Tee Vee cameras and tells us how much he loves the West.

        ~Edward Abbey

        • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 7:56 pm #

          I had experience with them on BLM and state land in AZ andSoCal… cattle guards in the wild, free rangers on trails… if you hit one, well, the rancher is coming for you… it’s their personal property you know, let loose on our patrimony.

          • Doug January 27, 2016 at 8:13 pm #

            “. . . free rangers on trails… if you hit one, well, the rancher is coming for you . . .”

            We had property in NorCal, more or less surrounded by Forest Service land — all open grazing. Those range cows don’t have much human interaction during the grazing season and, one day when they had trampled a fence were trashing my veggie garden, I went down with a stick to chase them away. Didn’t work: they chased me away. Went back with the shotgun and fired a couple of rounds of birdshot. That worked.

            Some of my neighbors had a more assertive approach: they regularly collected what they referred to as “the veal tax.”

            I never went that far, but I did go over for dinner.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 8:28 pm #

            The conflict between Ranchers and Environmentalists should be in house, a family conflict. The addition of hundreds of millions of Rio Grande, Atlantic, and Pacific wetbacks simply insures there will be no amicable solution, assuming you ever wanted one. Moral Self Righteousness is hard to beat, right?

        • Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 8:04 pm #

          Reading that again… it’s perfect and the “Tee Vee” line, with the current headlines, so prescient

      • MisterDarling January 27, 2016 at 7:37 pm #

        @ Frankiti:

        “This crusade would make a better Cohen brothers film. Dipshits in over their heads.”-f.

        I like this idea. It could be like a mash-up of *Raising Arizona + Fargo*… 😉

        On a more serious note; I have yet to see anything about the ‘Sage Brush Rebellion’ people to take seriously. They’ve gone about this whole thing with the expectation that all it would take was a bunch of posturing, guns in hand. Mythology is no substitute for training.

        Cheers!

        • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 7:43 pm #

          Mythology is no substitute for training.

          Nice, simple.

          Something a Spartan might say to the Athenian.

  123. Frankiti January 27, 2016 at 6:24 pm #

    Test

    • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 12:40 am #

      You have failed your test. Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. Your Kingdom has been weighed and found wanting.

  124. Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 6:41 pm #

    The Question, the damnable Question: Why don’t Doug, Dog, and Darling have even a fraction of this passion for the plight of their own people? Until they do, White dispossession and genocide will continue.

    To the extent they see Jews was White, to that extent they hate them. As Hitler predicted, Your White Zombies will someday turn on you. To the extent they see them as sacred Non-White minorities, they coddle, protect, and bow down to them. Some do both, which one depending on their cycle, moods, or phases of the moon.

    The Jews are desperate to have it both ways of course, basically saying we’re a small, weak, oppressed minority even though the richest people on Earth. And if you don’t see it that way, we’ll destroy you. Dersh has admitted as much and pleads for a special consideration, them being chosen and all. Instead, let’s work it the other way: Whites are fine and as fellow Whites we’re fine too. Of course that means giving up on the kvetching, Holo talk, guilt tripping, and assorted shake downs. And of course and most fundamental: that of feeling special and superior to us. Nah, the status quo is far preferable to any such unthinkable state of affairs. Even if stretched to the breaking point? Oh yes, even so.

    Even as I thought.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 7:38 pm #

      And the problem of the White Liberal (conveniently symbolized by our three amigos: Dog, Doug, and Darling) is similar: how to disavow, disparage, dispossess and destroy the White Race without experiencing any of the repercussions to themselves? The great question: will Minorities be satisfied with occasional White sacrifices or do they want massive one a la the Aztcs? Their desires do seem to be increasing. And will they be satisfied with lower class offerings or do they want something higher? Worse, will they be satisfied with any kind of symbolic offerings at all in the long term? What if they want it all? Your home and your daughter? Your very lives?

      Maybe you should have thought it through a little better – even if it displeased your Jewish Masters and their Super Ego Idols inside your brains. For your own interest merely. No one expects you to ever regain a healthy consideration for the whole of your people. This is what distinguishes National Socialism from the disease of Marxist Socialism; and volkisch thinkers like Jaego Scorzne and Vlad Krandz from pale sickly think shops stuck in their blue black hives. Look down at your feet: are they even White anymore? If so, it’s only thru luck or grace, not from any merit accruing from your own thoughts and actions.

      • alphie January 28, 2016 at 5:39 pm #

        Can I play Janos? Can I be one of the White liberals? Pleeese?
        It can be the three amigos plus one.

        “Look down at your feet: are they even White anymore?”

        I look down at my feet and see that my toenails are getting yellow. Do toenails count?

    • MisterDarling January 27, 2016 at 7:54 pm #

      @ Janos:

      The real question is why *you* can’t understand that one can be a robust champion of European Culture and Values, et al. without being a fascist operating from a worldview warped to the point uselessness by racism?

      Last year I gave you very sound advice about toning down your fixation(s). It was kindly meant. And now this year I’m going to give you your ‘yidam’ mantra: V A G I N A.

      I think it might be helpful if you repaired to wherever your quiet place or ‘inner sanctuary’ is twice or thrice daily, cleared your mind of distractions and recited your mantra while visualizing V A G I N A:

      Vagina accepting… vagina revealing… vagina parting… vagina welcoming… vagina embracing, engulfing, gripping and then just *tugging* a little bit.

      For the sake of your sanity and the diminishing of public annoyance Janos, please GET LAID.

      This concludes my selfless, random act of kindness.

      Your welcome!

      😉

      • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 7:59 pm #

        In other words, you have no defense. Thus you are guilty as charged.

        As Balzac said after every ejaculation (which is different from orgasm but you probably don’t know that), there goes another novel which will never be written.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 8:33 pm #

        So in other words, you want the scent without the flower, the effect without the cause, the Culture of the West without the People of the West?

        Racism is the only thing that can save the West. But you’ve never given it a moments real thought, or you would already know.

      • alphie January 28, 2016 at 5:51 pm #

        MD that is priceless. My stomach hurts!!

  125. Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 8:16 pm #

    The three amigos are wrong about Abbey as they are about so many other things. Abbey was one of us, just like Lovecraft.

    Was Edward Abbey Racist and Sexist?

    7/30/2009 11:22:09 AM

    by Keith Goetzman

    Tags: Environment, environmental movement, Edward Abbey, racism, sexism, patriarchy, feminism, Earth First

    Dead Horse PointEdward Abbey is a hero to many modern-day environmentalists: He’s a font of aphoristic wisdom, a forebear to lots of front-line activists, and a spiritual mentor to lovers of the desert West. But was he also a sexist and a racist? In the July-August issue of the radical environmental journal Earth First, a writer dubbed S@sh@ (EF writers often use pseudonyms) answers soundly in the affirmative:

    One quick look at Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang exposes the racism and sexism that poisoned the movement throughout the 1980s. Its transparently patriarchal depictions of gender stereotypes show up throughout the book and are even more pervasive in Abbey’s disturbing diary, Confessions of a Barbarian.

    Even if you aren’t as incensed as S@sh@ is by Abbey’s use of gender pronouns, and even if you don’t buy her outrageous claim that Abbey’s patriarchy basically killed him, it’s harder to argue with her case on his racism. She quotes piecemeal from an Abbey passage in Confessions, but in the interest of letting ol’ Ed speak for himself, here’s the whole eyebrow-raising section, which it must be noted was written in 1963, in the midst of the civil rights movement:

    According to the morning newspaper, the population of America will reach 267 million by 2000 AD. An increase of forty million, or about one-sixth, in only seventeen years! And the racial composition of the population will also change considerably: the white birth rate is about sixty per thousand females, the Negro rate eighty-three per thousand, and the Hispanic rate ninety-six per thousand.

    Am I a racist? I guess I am. I certainly do not wish to live in a society dominated by blacks, or Mexicans, or Orientals. Look at Africa, at Mexico, at Asia.

    Garrett Hardin [the author of Tragedy of the Commons] compares our situation to an overcrowded lifeboat in a sea of drowning bodies. If we take more aboard, the boat will be swamped and we’ll all go under. Militarize our borders. The lifeboat is listing.

    Well, there’s not much ambiguity here. Abbey’s views would fit right in among today’s vigilante border militias, white-power groups, and right-wing talk-radio haters.

    Close readers of Abbey know that he had plenty of rough edges, most of which he took no pains to hide. But his flagrant racism is indeed a major strike against sainting the man as some sort of green prophet.

    S@sh@ knows she’s messing with an icon and even grudgingly gives Abbey his due. But she also ultimately takes to heart his advice to “resist much, obey little”:

    These quotations are difficult to inscribe within this journal—like the Earth First! Journal itself, Abbey’s writing has done much to inspire the environmental movement to direct action. We should recognize his contributions. To be sure, he was not alone in his oppressive beliefs; it was a different time, and they pervaded and hampered the whole EF! movement. … [But] Remember, the revolutionary presence that drove Abbey and his minions away created space for the philosophical introductions of eco-feminism, deep ecology, and bio-centrism. We should never return to the petulant and puerile egoism of certain old traditions.

    Source: Earth First (article not available online)

    Image by msn678, licensed under Creative Commons.

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    • Doug January 27, 2016 at 9:32 pm #

      Was Cactus Ed a racist?

      Yeah, he pretty much was. He was also a sexist, a rotten husband (five times) and father, a mean, grouchy bastard much of the time, etc.

      Does that, in any way, diminish his contributions to American literature, anarchist theory and the Western environmental movement?

      Nope.

      And, Janos, should you produce any important contributions to civilization, literature, philosophy, etc., they will not be diminished by your vile, unapologetic racism, although we will remember and record the latter as well as any achievements of note.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 11:20 pm #

        No, my contribution is the reintroduction of racism as an essential of White Civilization.

        You got it ass backwards. But it’s you so that’s to be expected. Minorities and Liberals: always happy about the deaths of Conservative White Men. You should be ashamed of yourself, but I tend to think such a thing is beyond you now.

        • Doug January 28, 2016 at 12:37 pm #

          “Minorities and Liberals: always happy about the deaths of Conservative White Men.”

          First, I’m offended at being called a liberal; I’m much more radical than that. Libertarian socialist would be a better description, although I’m not always consistent.

          Second, there are very few, if any, deaths of conservative white men that give me pleasure. But that’s not relevant here, anyway, because you and your fellow travelers aren’t “conservatives” — you’re full-on extreme racist wackos. Barry Goldwater and Bill Buckley would have denounced you with vigor and vehemence.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 3:02 pm #

            Firstly, we aren’t all the same on this issue either, unfortunately. If it softens your heart, the Bundy’s are into non-Whites. Does that make them real people in your book, worthy of basic human rights and compassion?

            Do you extend this vicious mindset equitably? Are the Chinese invalid as a Civilization because they sweat and bled for themselves and not dark skinned, low IQ 3rd Worlders?

            Yes, the Conservative Movement over the last 70 years tore itself to shreds calling out people on “racism” – or the love of their own people. What a spectacle, one worthy to make the angels weep. Meanwhile the Liberals moved Left with scarcely a bump in the road on their part. Their motto? No enemies to the Left. Bill Ayers and bomb throwing? No problem – now he’s a college professor. Can you imagine such a thing on the right? The Elite have favored you all the way while indulging you in your fantasy of being “revolutionaries”.

          • alphie January 28, 2016 at 3:39 pm #

            “….the Bundy’s are into non-Whites”- Janoos

            What exactly does that mean? Can you elaborate?

            And this just in…
            GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is taking heat for re-tweeting a post that describes Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as a “bimbo” alongside one of her past photo spreads.

            “This is the bimbo that’s asking presidential questions?” the post re-tweeted by Trump said

            Whoa there Don you’re not president yet so they’re not technically presidential questions. They’re just questions from ordinary folks who want to know who you really are.

            So defensive. What’s that all about? Me thinks you doth protest too much Mr. Trump

            If you can’t stand the heat….

          • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 8:20 pm #

            You really are a vulgar little clown, aren’t you? Still waiting for your scholarship to Clown College to come in? Or have you decided on Dunkin Doughnuts University instead?

          • alphie January 29, 2016 at 3:00 pm #

            I like donuts. Please don’t tell me you want to rid the world of donuts now jan. Great, now look what I’ve done!!

  126. Pucker January 27, 2016 at 9:19 pm #

    What if we reach a point wherein the greatest crime is not rape or murder, but rather simply saying what one really thinks, the ultimate absurdity? And it becomes computerized, so that a robot monitors speech and thoughts, and when the robot software finds a thought crime, then the robot software orders another robot to have you picked up and liquidated?

    “I’m Bernie Sanders, and I support this message. Black Lives Matter!”

    • malthuss January 27, 2016 at 10:12 pm #

      I disagree with Tammy Bruce BUT her book, ‘New Thought Police’ is worth reading.

      I assume its cheap it Amazon.

      It was written long before I ever read of a ‘micro aggression.’

      • Pucker January 27, 2016 at 11:13 pm #

        If one is charged with murder or rape, at least you get a lawyer and due process. But not if you’re accused of a PC thought crime.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 27, 2016 at 11:26 pm #

          Yeah remember the good old days when doctors used to prescribe a certain brand of cigarettes? What’s your brand? Would you rather fight than switch?

  127. Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 12:19 am #

    33% cap gains seems right. – Frankiti

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

    Given your rationale, if 33% is good why is 100% not better?

    In fact, what’s up with these half measures? Forget the capital gains. Why not just take away all or most of any accumulated endowment from the Universities that YOU deem obscenely wealthy and divvy it up among the public universities. And let me know if poor St Joe’s is on your ‘too wealthy’ shit list, I’m curious.

    I just conceived a better idea: prepare a shit list of private Universities to which donated money is not tax deductible. That’ll put a crimp in those rich fuckers.

    • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 7:44 pm #

      Whoa bro! Who said anything ’bout rationale?

      Don’t go putting reason into other people’s heads.

  128. MisterDarling January 28, 2016 at 12:21 am #

    Well,

    Back to more productive endeavors, like tracking the speed and direction of economic descent. There was so much noise made about the wonders of the technology and especially mobile communications et al, until recently. Apparently it was where all the new jobs were coming from. Well it turns out that even owners of the latest-greatest device need an income to buy services, and yet more stuff:

    http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/sprint-cuts-customer-service-jobs-says-customers-wont-notice-a-difference/

    You know that you’re segueing from Financial to generalized Commercial Sector collapse when a person from the Bank of International Settlements is calling for a debt “jubilee”:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/former-bis-chief-economist-warns-of-massive-debt-defaults-need-for-debt-jubilee-fingers-europe-as-first-in-line.html

    Top Quote | “The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.”-william white, BIS.

    All the back to the Sumerians. Interesting… I recently saw an apples-for-apples comparison of the value of silver, and apparently it has the same buying power it did in 2000 BC?

    Cheers!

  129. Pucker January 28, 2016 at 12:27 am #

    I wonder if it’s possible to declare a Lunacy Timeout and go to a commercial break?

  130. Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 1:01 am #

    Ailes… 2
    Crybaby Trump … 0

    Trump can’t stand up to Meghan, much les Putin. – wpa

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

    I have no idea what may happen by 9pm debate time but if Trump continues his non-participation I can easily see how this might work in his favor. So far the man has demonstrated a sixth sense about tactics.

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    • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 1:09 am #

      I can visualize headlines:

      Trump Shoots Megyn and Leaves; Poll Numbers Rise

      • wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 2:10 am #

        Trump apparently is unable to make a deal with FoxNews. All that “art of the deal” blather is just blather. He just gave FoxNews an ultimatum because he can’t deal with Megyn, saying the blonde is biased.

        So far Trump has not demonstrated he has the character, nor the ability, to deal with dictators, financial entities, or the military. He does not deserve to have control over the nuclear codes (since he didn’t even know what the nuclear triad is). What Trump does not know can hurt us.

      • alphie January 28, 2016 at 3:47 pm #

        Q at your age I’m surprised you can visualize anything

    • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 5:23 am #

      O’Reilly kept badgering him to bend over and take it like a man. That’s what “real” men do in Bill’s book. Well that’s advice for grunts at best. Trump is redefining the whole situation. The Media has far too much power – and that’s apart from the specific question of Kelly’s obvious bias. So since the Media has to be taken down a few pegs and diversified into more and different hands, why not start now? A shot across the bow – the opening shot of a new war for human freedom.

      What make of car do you drive? Why?

      • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 6:03 pm #

        “A Cavalier… it’s, uh, it’s a red one.”

        O’Riledup is a big irish blowhard buffoon. Don’t even get started on his vapid “Killing _____” books.

        Ailes and Faux are instruments of the GOP establishment. The irony of all the people hating on Trump for calling out faux news’ bias is beyond perplexing.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 8:17 pm #

          And the GOP is controlled by ex-Trotskyist Jews.

          • Sticks-of-TNT January 29, 2016 at 12:00 am #

            Yes.

            Which reminds me, we haven’t checked up on her recently:

            Where In The World Is Victoria Kagan Noodleman Nuland?

            -Sticks

  131. Sticks-of-TNT January 28, 2016 at 2:46 am #

    From MisterDarling’s earlier post (12:21 am, 28 Jan)

    “You know that you’re segueing from Financial to generalized Commercial Sector collapse when a person from the Bank of International Settlements is calling for a debt “jubilee”

    IF A (good) PICTURE IS WORTH (at least) A THOUSAND WORDS…this one is really, really good:

    http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/

    Sticks-of-TNT

    P.S. Keep scrolling all the way to bottom & read labels in right column as you move down.

    • MisterDarling January 28, 2016 at 4:28 pm #

      Hello Sticks!

      Wow! That is really good. I put that right in my “charts/stats/displays” folder.

      What bugs me is that COMEX seems to have no more than 2 tons of physical gold backing about 200x in claims… And that amount is shrinking. Unfortunately, I’ve been dealing with several people who balk at the idea of holding a percentage of their pm ETF’s in the tangible form. It’s just *!inconceivable!* to them that there might *ever* be a problem redeeming.

      It’s getting weird out there – even on a good day.

      Cheers!

  132. wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 3:26 am #

    Trump does not like Kelly because she is, in his view, a mean lady who asks him mean questions. (Others would say she is a reporter who reads back direct quotes from his past and asks for comment.)

    So Trump says he will not participate, to avoid being treated “unfairly.”

    Fox responded:

    “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president. A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

    After that, Trump dropped out of the debate… petulant pansy and coward that he is.

  133. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 3:36 am #

    Deutsche Bank calls for a new Plaza Accord, now against China

    The world’s central banks should plan for coordinated currency intervention akin to the 1985 Plaza Accord to support the Chinese Yuan and keep the dollar from strengthening more, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

    “It is not too early for the U.S. and other major global players to consider how best they can support China in a transition to a market determined exchange rate,” Alan Ruskin, New York-based global co-head of foreign-exchange research at Deutsche Bank, the world’s second largest currency trader, wrote in a note on Tuesday.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/yuan-drop-may-spur-new-plaza-accord-deal-deutsche-bank-says

    The Plaza accord struck in 1985 stopped the “Japanese Miracle” in its tracks by making Japanese exports about 50% more expensive and Japanese still can’t get out of multi-decade recession. Japan, as occupied nation, just didn’t have any choice but to sign the accord.

    China might be a different story…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

  134. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 3:59 am #

    IF A (good) PICTURE IS WORTH (at least) A THOUSAND WORDS…this one is really, really good:

    money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/ == Sticks

    The picture shows pretty well the main problem of the world’d economy – overproduction of money.

    And it all happened during the Clinton’s administration and his dot-com boom when the world’s future was stolen – not borrowed – by thieves and swindlers. Now all that extra money are tied up in fancy derivatives contracts, but still dangerously overhang the economy.

    There is no sense in honest work anymore when anything you produce with hard labor could be taken away with money printed by Central banks into the pockets of thieves and swindlers.

  135. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 4:49 am #

    “I don’t know where “sympathy for ‘Islamism’ (whatever that might be)” comes into the picture” == Doug

    There was a lot of rumors regarding Obama being a secret Muslim, but in fact it is a certain part of American elite, in my opinion lead by secretary Clinton, who are the secret admirers of passionate Wahhabi Islamism as a new reincarnation of the Black Project – the division of the human race by religious-ideological affiliation into sub-humans and super-humans, and super-humans could kill any sub-human simply for the lack of utility without any damage to their conscience.

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  136. Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 5:18 am #

    http://freedomoutpost.com/2016/01/eyewitness-to-lavoy-finicums-murder-all-gun-shots-were-fired-by-feds-as-he-had-his-hands-in-the-air-snipers-in-trees-it-was-an-ambush/

    You murdered him with your indifference, your love of money, and rootless raceless cosmopolitanism. The comments from the Liberals are beyond belief – they sure have no problem with guns, violence, and jackbooted thugs now. For the record, no one on the right wished anything like this against the Occupy Movement, alien though it was to most. Are you really so sure you’re the good people? The open minded ones? The truly fair and just? Why?

    We really need to split up and get away from each other. Your utter lack of human sympathy should disturb even your hardened hearts. Let my People go.

  137. Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 5:34 am #

    http://www.dailystormer.com/swedist-police-flee-for-their-lives-after-failed-attempt-to-rescue-repeatedly-raped-10-year-old/

    Don’t worry – the Muslim pedophile rapists still have the 10 yr old in their custody. Read down a few posts – someone writes about a Marine officer who rescued an Afghan boy being repeatedly raped by an Afghan officer. He lost his commission and was thrown out of the armed forces.

  138. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 8:24 am #

    About the Red, White and Black Projects – a repost from http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/fedpocalypse-now/#comment-256102

    It is all about dualistic anthropology, which Tertullian described while fighting the heresy of Marcion.

    According to this ideology, humanity is split into purely biologically supermen, or if you prefer, the Titans and “just people”. And the Red Project suggests to the rest of humanity to give the Titans a kick in the ass, including destroying them as a class, while the White Project calls on the Titans to take care of the rest of humanity, feed them on time and stroke them on the head, and the Black Project suggests that the Titans treat the rest of humanity as animals that could be killed just for a lack of usefulness.

    Once again, not for the threat to the Titans, for example, by virtue of belonging to the Red or White projects, but just for the lack of utility.

    All these projects have roots in the past – for example, Red is associated with the Essenes of the Dead Sea, and the White and Black projects with the Punic wars.

    And over 1,000 years, these hidden projects determined culture and politics in the world, periodically appearing on the surface.

    One such moment of truth was the Second World War, when Hitler personified the Black Project, Churchill the White Project and Roosevelt the Red.

    Stalin was a part of the Red project insofar as the red Soviet Union itself was the embodiment of ideology imported from the West.

    Moreover, after the US mid-term elections of 2014, Angela Merkel accession to the leading role in a Black project previously headed by Hillary Clinton becomes almost inevitable, and then the Jews all over the world must go and watch the movie “Europa, Europa.”

    The question of the big NSDAP revanche has turned to an open stage, and this is good, because Ukraine has shown that the latent form of the Nazi Party is far more dangerous.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 8:43 am #

      The theory of the Red, White and Black project is taken from the writings of my favorite philosopher and scientist, former New York bum, and now computer repairman and poet Alexander Brodsky.

      New York, New York….

      On September 11, 2001 Alexander had a scheduled interview with the Oracle corporation on the subject of corporate employment.

      The interview was scheduled for 9 a.m. in one of the World Trade center towers…

      • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 10:48 am #

        Since he is still alive I assume he was not on time for his interview.

        • FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 11:59 am #

          You are correct. But he was on time for the festivities. He’s got an eyewitness essay regarding his experience during that day and it goes against the popular versions, official and conspiratorial alike.

    • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 10:45 am #

      Ya know what, Finc? I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. No offense.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 11:55 am #

        I know you don’t. But I hope you will.

  139. alphie January 28, 2016 at 9:49 am #

    That ego trip with the red fox sitting on his head made his first major blunder, if you don’t count entering the race in the first place.
    He’s not showing up for the debate tonight?! What?
    Scared of Megan Kelly are we?
    They will have a field day while you’re gone Mr Trump.
    I can hear them now.
    If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the oval office
    As president he’ll do all he can to avoid uncomfortable i.e. uncontrollable i.e. unflattering situations.

    Mr Trump…..you’re fired!!

    • wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 10:36 am #

      Scared of Megan Kelly are we? –Sophie

      —————

      Megyn committed the sin of correctly quoting Trump’s words back to him and asking for comment… which is standard journalistic practice. In Trump’s mind Megyn is guilty of micraggression, so Trump went on O’Reilly to whine like a PC-offended crybaby.

      To make things worse Trump continually tries to shield himself and his bad decisions by hiding behind veterans. Even veterans’ organizations have said they will refuse any money raised through Trump’s cowardly exploitation of veterans.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 3:24 pm #

      Is this your first rodeo, boy? Sounds like. Your viewpoint is utterly conventional, Fox News 101. Any time a man complains, he’s a whiner and a sissy, right? Isn’t that just the true path towards human liberation?

      After all, both Hillary and Carly both would agree on that. And such “faces” can’t be wrong on much of anything. And you’ve always been such a good boy too.

      • alphie January 28, 2016 at 5:17 pm #

        “Any time a man complains….” janoose

        What on God’s green earth does he have to complain about!?

        Oh Megyn didn’t talk to me nice last time

        The man’s a billionaire with who knows how many children toiling away in third world countries so he can walk around in$10,000 suits belittling anyone who doesn’t stroke his ego

        But the rodeo part sounds like fun. Do we get to ride things? I’m trying very hard to be a gentleman here

        • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 8:01 pm #

          Do you consider yourself a feminist, a male feminist? In other words, how loathsome are you?

          • alphie January 29, 2016 at 3:13 pm #

            Sometimes when I’m by myself I feel loathsome But I have a lot of friends. Well maybe associates might be more accurate…I mean I think they like me…sometimes they don’t talk to me. I have a brother and sometimes he calls me. OK maybe I am loathsome!! There I said it!! Are you happy!? (feigns bitter weeping)

          • Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 9:37 pm #

            You sound like a mess. That saccharine PC emotionalism leads to resentment when people don’t care about your pet ideas and projects and then straight to the bottle as a way of coping. Soon you wont need the red clown nose – your own will suffice.

  140. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

    “Doug,
    I agree. Perhaps it’s the strange perspective that gets in the way when peering at the phrase “sympathy for Islamism”? There’s absolutely no ‘sympathy’ involved in the whole exercise; only useful idiots to be used as spoilers and disruptors, keeping things nicely off balance for future exploitation.” — ozone

    I think you guys are missing the point. Just like European and American elite were fascinated with Hitler and his ideas and actions (plenty of examples there), many of the Western ‘establishment’ crowd are fascinated with naked cruelty of the Islamist killers.

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    • Doug January 28, 2016 at 11:16 pm #

      “. . . many of the Western ‘establishment’ crowd are fascinated with naked cruelty of the Islamist killers.”

      Because it so closely resembles their own, albeit at a lower technological level?

  141. Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

    or as Q says: at 2:58 pm next Tuesday. Of course, Q was wrong about last Tuesday. – wpa

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

    No, wpa, you’ve got it all balled up, I said Friday, Jan 8th and I stand by it.

  142. volodya January 28, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

    Jen in San Jose,

    Camille’s take on Hillary doesn’t sound off-the-wall: that Hillary has “daddy” issues, that she was stuck in a Southern culture that she wasn’t at home in, that like a lot of other women she has trouble reconciling between different roles. And she has a lousy horn-dog of a husband. So what else is new.

    I’m not so sure that her condescension towards men is what puts men off. After all, ever since time began (or so it seems) women have adopted a pose of moral superiority over men, that men are subject to beastly sexual and predatory drives that need to be curtailed-controlled. And it’s the civilizing effect of comparatively civilized women that have to do this. I won’t be shocking you by telling you that mostly, men just laugh and go about their beastly ways.

    So far so boring. Nothing new here. It’s politically incorrect I suppose to point out that if women take a dim view of the male collective, common male attitudes to women aren’t all that complimentary either. You’ve probably heard the short-form from your dad and older male relatives: can’t live with ’em (meaning women), can’t live without ’em. Not sure that younger men express it this way but again, nothing new under the sun here either.

    Maybe women feel a sense of solidarity with Hillary over their common victim status, you know, having to clean up after that dirty, rotten, stinkin’, lyin’, irresponsible cheat who never does the damn dishes or picks up his socks. Which is why she has higher levels of support among women. But I think that Hillary has other problems. Which is why she has lower levels of support among men.

    An example: when was the last time Hillary answered a question? All I’ve ever seen from her is evasion, non sequitur and telling the interviewer that THIS isn’t the question and then goes on to answer something that wasn’t asked.

    From my own perspective, Hillary’s handling of State Department emails is utterly mind-boggling. Hillary was the top foreign affairs official in the US government, arguably the most important official in the US government next to the President. It’s true, there’s dense thickets of laws and rules around handling of government records like emails, but Hillary is a lawyer by education and profession and she would have been surrounded by platoons of career civil servants steeped and marinated in the minutiae. As such her negligence in this can’t be excused by such nonsense as I was confused, I had two devices, I was very busy. Baloney, all of it.

    And Bernie’s protestation that everybody’s sick of her damn emails doesn’t help his cause either. Like it or not the U.S has some nasty adversaries, all of which have hackers who are busy hacking away and the Secretary of State has to avail herself of all the electronic protection the US government can provide.

    None of it would matter I suppose if Hillary had a natural connection with people like Bill did. She’s just not a natural politician. As George Carlin said, Bill would get up in front of a crowd and say “Hi, I’m Bill Clinton and I’m fulla shit” and people would cheer their asses off. Hillary doesn’t have that knack. It’s a rare gift, not many people do.

    • FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 1:11 pm #

      Volodya, it is not about emails, it’s about the Ghost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that came back to haunt her: she shouldn’t have provoke him by kicking off her campaign at the Roosevelt Island.

      It was like Don Juan in Moliere’s “The Stone Feast” challenging the dead Commander to come and look at the disgrace of his widow.

      • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 5:55 pm #

        Good one Janos.

    • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 1:35 pm #

      If asked to explain why I automatically dislike Hillary, I’d have a difficult time. Unbridled political ambition in a man is bad enough but in a woman it is revolting. That is the explanation, I believe, for men screaming from the audience “go make us some cookies.”

      My brother-in-law hates Hillary with a certain mindlessness that is actually funny. “I HATE that piano-legged seznuh* bitch.”

      Whether this unlikable-ness is enough to offset women’s gender-based, us against them, solidarity we will have to wait and see.

      * this is a phonetically rendered nonsense word that we in the extended family believe is some sort of transliteration from a Greek or Hungarian ancestor who probably passed away in the 1950s so there’s no way to verify it but it’s a very negative adjective.

      • volodya January 28, 2016 at 2:51 pm #

        “Unbridled”, and oh yeah, you reminded me, let’s not forget: “ruthless”.

        I wonder, how did Susan Rice ended up eating the Benghazi fuck-up instead of Hillary. Because of that mess, or maybe because of the communications debacle that came after, Rice didn’t get to be Sec of State after Hillary called it quits.

        Dunno, maybe I’m naive, but Hillary should have worn Benghazi, including the explanations for wtf happened. Not Rice. But somehow Hillary skated. No idea how that could happen but it did.

        Yeah, yeah, I know, Rice has a rep for sharp teeth so don’t shed too many tears. And let’s not forget that she landed on her feet as National Security Adviser. But Hillary was Sec of State and she had ultimate responsibility for the security of embassy facilities in a shit-hole war zone like Libya. (OK, maybe Obama too) .

        See, it’s like my wife said, Hillary wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.

        I like to think that after all is said and done people generally get what’s coming to them. So we’ll see if there’s any indictments coming down the pipe over these emails.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 3:30 pm #

      People need to strengthen themselves against the Bills of the world. He’s a rogue and loves his power to psychically disarm people. By smiling and laughing, they are forgiving a hard core rapist. And Hillary, the great Feminist, is an enabler of this serial rapist.

      His victims hate her more if anything. She’s the one who came and threatened to destroy them if they didn’t shut up. Yet all these women are going to vote for her because she’s a woman – as if women can’t be evil or as if it doesn’t even matter. Zero quality control, vagina power to the infinite.

  143. Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 12:38 pm #

    WOW, 30 freaking years already!

    Here’s how I began my market timing letter on February 1, 1986:

    Right Stuff Crew… Wrong Stuff Shuttle

    To borrow a boxing metaphor from Norman Mailer, the shuttle disaster hit us “like a wrecking ball from outer space.” Psychologists, we believe, are unduly concerned about the effect of this event on children. They, blessedly, are spared by their lack of perspective. Personally, we were rather blase about death in our youth but, with the years, these dramatic reminders of our mortality tend to kill, temporarily at least, any enthusiasm for our work or pet projects. The probability that we shall shortly forget the names of our seven heroes is itself disheartening. We find it, therefore, both a great effort to write and embarrassing to imply that this letter has any importance in the grand scheme of things. That said, we’ll suck in a deep breath (and thank the Lord for it) place pen to paper and go on…

    • wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 1:18 pm #

      When did you stop believing in the Lord?

      • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 1:46 pm #

        It was a process that I mentally finalized in the middle of a novena during the 1958 – 1959 Christmas break of my college freshman year.

        I use such phrases as “thank the Lord” or “Oh my God” or even “Holy shit” metaphorically. They’re entrenched in our language/culture.

    • stelmosfire January 28, 2016 at 2:02 pm #

      So Q, I was a somewhat newbie at the FD, still fetching lunch for the old timers after 6 years on the job. I was an astronomy buff, as was one of my compatriots. I came back from the local greasy spoon in my ’65 Chevy c150 to the disheartening fact that the Challenger blew at 11:39 AM. My buddy rifled his ham and cheese grinder at the TV in the day room.

      • stelmosfire January 28, 2016 at 2:19 pm #

        EPILOG:
        Still the low man on the totem pole, after six years! I picked up the tomatoes, lettuce, bread, ham and cheese! Then mopped the floor! Beats scrubbing the shitter or picking up brains!

        • stelmosfire January 28, 2016 at 2:22 pm #

          I was a worm on an oil rig before the FD. As Mike Rowe says “That was a Dirty Job!”

        • wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 3:12 pm #

          You are a regular mensch.

          • stelmosfire January 28, 2016 at 4:27 pm #

            Thanks for the the compliment Vlad, read the “The Tank Mans Son” Great autobiography, right up your alley. New release at the local library.

          • stelmosfire January 28, 2016 at 4:33 pm #

            sorry, meant for Janos,

          • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 8:15 pm #

            What compliment? We weren’t talking but as the great communicator, I am more than willing.

            How about the Ball Turret Gunner? Supposedly countless men became alcoholics because of the loneliness of being stuck back there away from their buddies and their endless patter about girls and baseball. Sounds like heaven to me but I’m unusual.

            Tank Man’s Son? About the son of a tank man? Is this because I say thanks and leave out the h? I noticed Q took this from me, much as Whites supposedly stole knowledge from the Black Egyptians, and not as one would steal a flat screen TV. In the first case, you still have what the other person “stole”.

  144. wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 2:22 pm #

    Donald Trump turned the Republican debates into a clown show. It’s a race to the bottom.

    And now he’s reached his very lowest point (yet). Trump started a childish feud with Megyn Kelly, whom he has referred to as a “bimbo,” claiming that her questions about his sexism aren’t “fair,” and refuses to participate in tonight’s debate.

    The man who hopes to become our president — and has the numbers to actually become the Republican nominee — decided to pull the nuclear option because he couldn’t handle a journalist’s question.

    It’s an eye for an eye Trump says, though Megyn did not take out his eye. This childish Trump tantrum does not bode well for international conflict resolution.

    • Q. Shtik January 28, 2016 at 3:47 pm #

      First of all, wpa, stop fretting… Trump is not going to be our next President.

      But seriously, you are too smart not to see that Trump’s gambit is a preconceived strategy. And when I say ‘preconceived’ I am talking minutes or seconds. The unique thing about Trump is that he gets these near instantaneous epiphanies about what to do or say next for his own advantage and the disadvantage of everyone else. I don’t think for a minute that he actually HATES Megyn Kelly or is offended by unfairness. This is all “trumped up.” She is a useful tool.

      Trump will be dead-center in the debate, exactly as he loves it, without having to physically stand there for two hours when he has to take a wicked leak. It will be Trump Trump Trump as the ‘debaters’ will be unable to talk about anything else. It would be great if Fox left an empty podium at the center of the stage so the other losers could hurl their feeble insults at Trump’s non-presence ah la Clint Eastwood and the empty chair.

      • wpa_ccc January 28, 2016 at 4:11 pm #

        I prefer an empty podium with a cardboard cutout or wad of hair. You have not reassured me Trump will not be the official candidate of the Republican Party.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 28, 2016 at 8:07 pm #

        Who do you like as the winner? You think Trump is in to lose it or just that the Repugs are going to rob him?

        Great idea about the empty seat. I was thinking the same.

      • Q. Shtik January 29, 2016 at 12:25 am #

        It will be Trump Trump Trump as the ‘debaters’ will be unable to talk about anything else. – Q.

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

        I was totally wrong on this. I should have known that these other candidates are not THAT stupid. Why give Trump more air time by talking about him. For 2 hours, finally, they were free of his ever-presence.

        Megyn Kelly was sporting arguably the finest set of fake eyelashes in all of North America.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 4:52 am #

          In the end she’s just another fake Fox Blonde. As Thomas a Kempis said, Men may love peace but they don’t love the things that make for peace. Similarly, people love blondes but they don’t value the racial purity and sexual discipline that makes for blondes. So they take refuge in peroxide bottle instead. Your wires (dark roots of the tar brush) are showing Meg.

    • Frankiti January 28, 2016 at 5:48 pm #

      Wrong: The GOP was a clown show long before Trump the Entertainer showed up. The only people who don’t believe this are the RNC types, McCain and his boy-toy, Graham.

      Wrong: Kelly and the sexy vixens of Faux News were Bimbos before Trump pointed out the obvious. There’s a reason that Greta’s ugly mug is off prime-time.

      Wrong: It’s strategic, not nuclear. Everyone will be slinging arrows at him, including the moderators as he is the frontrunner. It was a tactical decision.

      Wrong: He put the big mouth irish blowhard O’Riledup in his place after his pandering tongue-in-cheek comment taking a swipe at Trump’s loose religiosity. Trump knows what we all know. That Faux is a tool, ultimately, of the establishment RNC. He knows they want him gone. He’s NYC savvy. He’s no dummy.

  145. FincaInTheMountains January 28, 2016 at 4:17 pm #

    “From my own perspective, Hillary’s handling of State Department emails is utterly mind-boggling” – Volodya

    The plan of the Republicans in respect to Servergate is crystal clear: they absolutely do not want to condemn the policy of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in support the “Arab Spring”, which resulted in Islamists taking power in Libya, and US Ambassador Stevens killed in Benghazi and want to blame citizen Clinton that she, as Secretary of State did not take adequate precautions to protect the American ambassador and State Department official emails.

    The first is the condemnation of the US policy, which inevitably creates a precedent for the revaluation of all of its contents both from a moral point of view and from the point of view of international law, the entire strategy and tactics of “regime change” using the color revolutions, while the second is an accident in conjunction with criminal negligence.

    And, apparently, if Hillary Clinton refused the idea of becoming president of the United States, the Republicans agree to throw out the word “criminal” from the previous sentence.

    Unfortunately, she has such a reputation that no one wants to believe her promises, fearing that, as they say in Kiev, “she will hang them later” after she becomes president.

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  146. ozone January 28, 2016 at 7:42 pm #

    In case you missed it (and I’m pretty sure you did):
    Another opinion regarding Bloomberg.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/26/a-candidate-of-by-and-for-the-0-01/

  147. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 2:16 am #

    “. . . many of the Western ‘establishment’ crowd are fascinated with naked cruelty of the Islamist killers.”

    “Because it so closely resembles their own, albeit at a lower technological level?” — Doug

    Fortunately, the Hollywood has answered that question for me in “American [investment banker] Psycho”

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/

  148. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 2:30 am #

    “Would that be the same Colin Powell who tried to cover up the My Lai massacre and, much later, made that famous speech about Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” to the Security Council in 2003?” == Doug

    I don’t know why Colin Powell needed that vial with a white powder, but it is rumored that ever since American diplomats, when they have something to lie about, put such vial in their pocket, and then there is no sin in their lying and it goes with a bang!

    And believing in crossing your fingers is no longer fashionable.

  149. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 3:37 am #

    Do you want opium with that?

    35 restaurants busted in China for using poppies as seasoning

    Thirty-five restaurants across China, including a popular Beijing hot pot chain, have been found illegally using opium poppies as seasoning, one of the more unusual practices bedeviling the country’s food regulators.

    Five restaurants are being prosecuted while 30 others, ranging from Shanghai dumpling joints to noodle shops in southwestern Chongqing, are under investigation, said the China Food and Drug Administration.

    Cases of cooks sprinkling ground poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates like morphine and codeine, in soup and seafood are not new in China, though it is unclear whether they can effectively hook a customer or deliver a noticeable buzz

    http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1903812/do-you-want-opium-35-restaurants-busted-china-using-poppies

    Naive amateurs! They had to take an example from McDonald’s, which hooks customers on their the food in not less effective, but at the same time completely legal ways.

    • MisterDarling January 29, 2016 at 10:35 pm #

      @ BRH;

      “35 restaurants busted in China for using poppies as seasoning”-b.

      I kept seeing this pop up on Reddit… Hilarious! And people thought MSG was bad 😉

  150. Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 4:47 am #

    http://www.dailystormer.com/germany-threatens-russia-shut-up-about-migrant-gang-rape-of-13-year-old-or-else/

    Time to bring back the Holy Vehm. If Germany doesn’t clean up its act, maybe Russia will have to do it. Some Nazi I am, eh? You’ve always misunderstood me because you don’t understand the difference between means and ends. All political systems are a only a means. They are only justified insofar as they serve the People, in this case the German. A Russian invasion would be far preferable to assimilation by the Ummah into Eurarabia.

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    • malthuss January 29, 2016 at 10:13 am #

      Latest news is that the ‘Syrian refugees’ were neither, at least 4 in 5 were neither.

      No surprise. Thats just Soros at work.

  151. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 9:19 am #

    In yesterday’s GOP debate the most important question of world politics has been asked of handsome and very smart neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has repeatedly showed his complete ignorance in these matters.

    He was asked what he would do if Putin moved his military in civilian clothes into one of the Baltic cities, and that Baltic state requested US assistance in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO Charter.

    Carson gave a completely idiotic response, in the sense that the US should scare Russia with its shale oil and amass more NATO troops on Russian border, although it is clear that this is a great way to wind up being scared shitless yourself, as has already happened with General Breedlove last summer.

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 11:42 am #

      Well, Carson, moron that he is, has no chance of being nominated, let alone elected.

      But US politics, and the nation as a whole, is absolutely filled with idiots who think they can “scare Russia.”

      They just don’t understand the first thing about Russian culture and psychology, and they don’t seem to be able to remember even the most prominent events in recent history.

      They really think they can frighten the people who fought the Battle of Stalingrad and survived and ultimately broke the Siege of Leningrad. They just don’t get it.

  152. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 10:56 am #

    According to Donetsk Peoples Republic Defense Ministry spokesman Eduard Basurin, the authorities of the republic have the verified data that the “Spanish flu” was set free from a secret laboratory located in the village Shelkostantsiya 30 kilometers from Kharkov.

    The staff of this laboratory is half American bacteriologists (Eduard Basurin called them “the US military experts”), some of whom previously worked in Georgia.

    The 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five percent of the world’s population), making it one of the deadliest disasters in human history.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

    Source: Video in Russian of Donetsk Peoples Republic Defense Ministry briefing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNnyblz1NMw

    • FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 11:01 am #

      The biggest problem the Americans still have is they still cant believe that they are not going to watch the next war on their TV screens, but through the windows of their living rooms.

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 11:32 am #

      Nah, sorry, I don’t buy it.

      I’ve been a supporter of free choice for the people of Donetsk and Luhansk, including freedom from the oligarchs and Nazis in Kiev, since the US-orchestrated coup.

      And I don’t doubt that the Punishers from the West would be perfectly willing to use biological weapons against “the rebels,” maybe even with US support.

      But they probably wouldn’t be reckless enough to release a 1918-type H1-N1 into the wild (they have reconstructed it at CDC, so they probably have at AMRIID, as well). It’s way too contagious and there would be no way to prevent it spreading widely, including to the populations in western Ukraine, Russia, and maybe far beyond.

      There are no vaccines targeting the strain available in any quantity. There are antivirals that are effective against the reconstructed virus, but you’d never be able to produce enough of either quickly enough, to prevent a possible deadly pandemic.

      DNA analysis would probably nail the source pretty quickly, and Russia would be very, very angry, along with much of the rest of the world.

      They would, and they have, done all sorts of horrendous things to the people of Novorossiya, but this would be too crazy even for the crazies.

      • FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 12:35 pm #

        Hope you’re right. There is a nasty flue bug in Russia’s main, including Moscow, but not nearly as bad as in Ukraine.

        Will keep watching…

      • FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 12:37 pm #

        But that’s not the first mentioning of US-military sponsored biological laboratory in Russian borders vicinity.

        • Doug January 29, 2016 at 4:35 pm #

          No, not the first. I tracked the first stories back to 2013, but I don’t see anything authoritative.

          It would help the credibility of the claim if the DPR guys could get some photos to share. If there
          is a bio-weapons lab in a little village, there should be very suspicious-appearing facilities that everyone in the neighborhood would notice.

          Also, I can’t find the village of Shelkostantsiya. Got another name or a different spelling (Latin or Cyrillic)?

          • FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 5:20 pm #

            Coordinates: 49°50’3″N 36°4’24″E. Can’t spell the name in Cyrillic on that server.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 9:24 pm #

        Nazis are by definition, German National Socialists. If you are speaking loosely, using “Nazis” (a pejorative btw) as a cover word for all Fascists, then the Chinese of the Tiananmen Sq Movement were Nazis too. They were Nationalists who wanted China for the Chinese. One of the things that set off the movement was Black African students “dating” Chinese girls. The Black African “hey Momma” approach is not accepted. And beyond that, they want the Chinese to stay Chinese. One White guy who corresponded with them say they went thru the roof when he let out he was dating a Chinese girl. One kept saying he would “kiss his hairy hand” if he could prove that such matings were wholesome and socially worthwhile.

        Since you’ve already admitted that racists or “Nazis” can reach the highest levels of intellect, culture, and creativity, this shouldn’t be too much of a blow for you. I merely insist that you learn to use words correctly. As Confucius said, rectification of names is the first step towards social renewal.

  153. wpa_ccc January 29, 2016 at 3:17 pm #

    “They really think they can frighten the people who fought the Battle of Stalingrad and survived and ultimately broke the Siege of Leningrad.” –Doug

    Doug, those people who fought the Battle of Stalingrad are dead (or dying). The new Russians are just as soft and fascinated by their Yota devices as are Americans to their iPhones. Russia’s recent military actions are motivated by weakness. Russia is just a minor regional power with eroding influence, declining living standards, weaker economic growth, 15% inflation, etc.

    A lot of Russian people are dying young because of external reasons, for example accidents on the road, or from drinking. This is not typical for countries which are in a good shape.

    Russia is weak militarily, too. Most spetsnaz are conscripts on one year terms, not first-class special operations forces. They could not compete successfully with, for example, the French Foreign Legion, the British 16th Air Assault Brigade or the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment.

    But, hey, keep dreaming of battles long gone from the last century, if that makes you happy.

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 3:36 pm #

      Clueless Russophobes of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your delusions.

      Global Firepower List

      • wpa_ccc January 29, 2016 at 5:21 pm #

        Russophobes? You missed the point. Russia is nothing to be afraid of.

        • Doug January 30, 2016 at 9:46 am #

          Well, then, we’ll look forward to postcards from you as you stand shoulder-to-shoulder when NATO troops mass along the Russian border.

          Probably not many postcards, of course . . .

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 4:37 pm #

      “Russia’s recent military actions are motivated by weakness.”

      Oh, yeah? Which ones and how so?

  154. FincaInTheMountains January 29, 2016 at 5:03 pm #

    I will begin with a portrait of Barack Obama with the caption “killer number 1″, hung in front of the US Embassy in Moscow. I hope that the provocateurs will be caught quickly and punished according to the law.

    Obama is not a killer. If a similar signature would appear under a portrait of Victoria Nuland or Joe Biden, I would not argue.

    Obama is a supporter of Washington’s Party of Peace to which belongs the head of American diplomacy, John Kerry. The Party of Peace despite the small numbers has already prevented two world wars and is making Herculean efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement in the Ukraine, and in Syria. “Fabulous Four” Obama-Putin-Kerry-Lavrov, using direct contacts, became a few steps ahead of the Party of War in Washington, the most notable figures of which are Clinton, Nuland and Biden, who are now lagging behind.

    They don’t like lagging behind, so salvos of informational war were aimed at cooling of diplomatic and friendly relations.

    Barack Obama was hit with an unfair poster, trying to expose the Russian patriotic forces, and through them, all those who support the policy of Vladimir Putin, in a bad light.

    At the same time the US Treasury fired informational salvo aimed at Putin. It is worth noting that the information escapade against Putin was done by one Adam Shubin, deputy of Secretary of Treasury, responsible for the development of anti-Russian sanctions.

    http://www.inews163.com/2016/01/26/us-treasury-department-accused-putin-of-corruption-russian-response-complete-fiction-140056.html

    They made a loser-clerk who failed at the previous task to make a statement using the principle – “we still going to fire the idiot, let him try again”.

    As was correctly guessed by his employer, Adam Shubin failed at that task as well, as he blurted out the most terrible secret of American democracy: management through corruption – it is not the fault of the system, it is the system itself.

    Corruption is the American lever over the dependent countries.

    Until recently, who is corrupt, and who is not was determined by US Treasury: corrupt money were moved to the West, usually to US, or by using the US banking system for their laundering, and US Treasury to decide who is corrupt and immediately freeze their bank deposits, and whom to declare “a victim of the bloody regime, persecuted for political reasons”.

  155. BackRowHeckler January 29, 2016 at 7:17 pm #

    Big New Here!

    Barbie Dolls coming out in many new models, black face, slanted eyes, fat, in a wheel chair, you get the picture, not just the white curvaceous blond any more. As for Ken, well, let’s just say he’s not looking at Barbie so much, his interests lie elsewhere.

    brh

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    • wpa_ccc January 29, 2016 at 8:59 pm #

      The new Trans-Barbie doll is gender fluid. It’s two, two, two dolls in one!

    • Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 9:31 pm #

      Why no Zika dolls? It’s discrimination. See my post below. What are you doing to fight Zika Discrimination?

  156. Janos Skorenzy January 29, 2016 at 9:30 pm #

    http://bbs.dailystormer.com/t/mutant-zika-babies-will-enrich-society-and-help-the-economy/1939

    All of human history can be seen as a conspiracy to keep pinheads down. Now God has seen fit to show His hand against the Conspirators and Tormentors of his chosen. He is creating more, many more. Soon there will be Zika support groups. Soccer Moms gushing how Zikas are just as good as other kids. Advice on how to have a Zika baby. Moms saying how God loves Zikas and how happy they are to have one. In short, Zikas are IN.

    • Frankiti January 29, 2016 at 9:49 pm #

      It’s not a conspiracy. It’s the reaction to an infection. It’s just another attempt by Earth to shake its human infection.

      In short, Humans are out.

      • Frankiti January 29, 2016 at 9:55 pm #

        I’ve always sided with the toro. It gets weakened and beat down by the picadors. The matador preening, posturing, so assured that he’s in command of his destiny, of his future, his escape from the ring. But the toro, he’s never leaving the ring, he is the ring and sometimes, he reminds the matador that he is bound to it with him. That’s when I throw my rose.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 12:44 am #

          Yes, get rid of the picadors and give the bull a chance. Also bring back the ancient bull dancers who would do gymnastics off the bull’s back. Rodeo Clowns like Glenn Beck could be there to save the unlucky.

          The Zica exploded where they had previously released genetically modified mosquitoes. It may well be a genetic attack by the Elite.

  157. MisterDarling January 29, 2016 at 10:12 pm #

    Hello Doug,

    RE | “. . . many of the Western ‘establishment’ crowd are fascinated with naked cruelty of the Islamist killers.” — Because it so closely resembles their own, albeit at a lower technological level?”-doug.

    Car bombs (VBIED’s) have called “poor man’s precision guided missile”. Having seen them explode and the results, I agree.

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 10:42 pm #

      “Car bombs (VBIED’s) have called ‘poor man’s precision guided missile’. Having seen them explode and the results, I agree.”

      Indeed, and the guidance precision is much better even than the Tomahawk, for much less than a million and a half bucks a copy.

      But, of course, IEDs of any size or shape are the weapons of terrorists. Real military professionals use napalm, depleted uranium, aircraft carriers and drones.

      One would think those organized professionals would win every time, but it keeps working out differently than one expects.

      I told Janos, yesterday, that Ed Abbey’s many faults and flaws didn’t diminish his various contributions to literature, etc. Now, I’m going to be so bold as to say that the (allegedly) vile serial rapist, Bill Cosby, was indeed, once, a very funny fellow.

      Toss of the Coin

      Sorry, Jim, it’s YouTube. I promise not to do it often.

      • BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 12:13 am #

        And they’ve been around for awhile, these roadside bombs. Kermit Roosevelt served with the British Army in Iraq in 1915. He wrote a book about it, ‘War in the Garden of Eden’, in which he goes on a length about roadside bombs, and the terror they caused thruout the ranks.

        brh

  158. MisterDarling January 29, 2016 at 10:31 pm #

    @ Doug:

    RE | “They would, and they have, done all sorts of horrendous things to the people of Novorossiya, but this would be too crazy even for the crazies.”-d.

    When updating the risk matrix, I like to look for high-impact threats hiding in plain sight, like this one:

    http://www.wired.com/2015/11/colistin-last-report-antibiotic-drug-resistance/

    Colistin is the last-ditch ‘nuclear option’ anti-biotic, and now life-threatening infections caused by immune bacteria are popping up in hospitals around the world.

    The interesting thing about this situation is that researchers say that even if they *could* come up with a newer stronger replacement anti-biotic, it wouldn’t take long before resistant or immune bacteria were created by irresponsible factory farming (think Chinese short-term profit-at-all-cost business models)…

    So this is another place that civilization’s current iteration is ‘burning the candle’.

    Cheers!

    • Doug January 29, 2016 at 10:54 pm #

      Absolutely correct, again, MD.

      It’s actually likely that researchers *can* come up with new and effective antibiotics for almost any resistant bacteria, given enough time and resources.

      But, given continuous exposure in uncountable millions of hosts, the bacteria are always going to be ahead in the race.

      And people who will put melamine in infant formula are hardly going to pause if mixing a few tons of antibiotics in the pig slop yields a little extra profit.

  159. Buck Stud January 29, 2016 at 11:44 pm #

    From the elevated vantage point of a Precor, a certain woman caught my attention as she entered the gym today. She looked to be everything glorified in Cosmopolitan magazine: Attractive, urbane, draped in sartorial splendor. But then she revealed herself. As she was walking to the dressing room her “working woman on the move” progress was impeded by an unaware old man who was slowly making his way down the center of the walkway aisle, like, well, an old man The disparaging sneer and expressive disgust was staggering in its ugliness. Not once did she give an indication of reverence or respect for an old man who perhaps fought in Korea or Vietnam long before she was born. Or who perhaps after a lifetime of toil in devoted service to his family, was well beyond the point of oiling up a rusty shooting arm and calling it good.

    But then it occurred to me. I was not looking at an ugly woman prancing pretty per se; I was looking at the microcosmic banality of U.S.A. circa 2016. And then another thought occurred to me that has occurred with ever increasing frequency: Oh, say I can now see– I would no longer fight and die for “Her”. That sun has set and she don’t love me anymore.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 12:39 am #

      It started long ago. Many Europeans have called America an matriarchy. Men are always seen as expendable by women and this theme was used in a trash bag commercial, where the bags were masculinized as they were thrown away. Perhaps it was the influence of the frontier and mass immigration? With men seen as soldiers against wild nature, something to be sacrificed in her conquest, making the way smooth for the women to follow later.

      You are close, so close but not quite. She doesn’t love you anymore? No, she never did. You only ever existed as a prop, a reflection in her vanity mirror, a human armoire. Samson Agonistes, lay your burden down!

  160. wpa_ccc January 30, 2016 at 12:14 am #

    Trump is engaging in fraud, saying he cares about veterans. The money raised during a Donald Trump-hosted event for veterans was donated to the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Veterans organizations have said they will refuse money from Trump.

    Trump has said he is raising money for “Veterans for a Strong America” and that it has a membership of thousands of veterans. All lies.
    ——————

    “Veterans For A Strong America really does appear to be just one guy,” Maddow explained. “This is apparently just a guy named Joel from South Dakota.”

    Noting the “group’s” surprising show of support for Trump after his attack on Sen. John McCain’s record as a war hero, Maddow revealed that the most recent FEC filing for the group shows that they have $30 in the bank with debts totaling $318 to another company held by Arnends. Tickets to the Trump’s speech sold for as mush as $1,000. 850 Trump supporters attended the speech aboard the USS Iowa.

    “The whole thing is fake. The whole thing is made for TV. Except for the fact that presumably he did raise money for this guy tonight. And this guy really is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination by a mile. And so far Republican voters do not seem to care that it is all made up,” Maddow concluded.

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  161. wpa_ccc January 30, 2016 at 1:22 am #

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton’s home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails that contained material requiring one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes three days before Clinton competes in the Iowa presidential caucuses.

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

    Looks like Obama is taking down Hillary.

    Bernie Sanders 2016

  162. FincaInTheMountains January 30, 2016 at 5:31 am #

    It’s funny and scary to see how all calculations of the current presidential campaign in US go down one by one: for example Hillary counted on the Americans women that they would vote for a woman president out of feminist solidarity, but when Trump was not afraid to cry out that “the queen is naked”, American women were the first to support him because beautiful, rich, and famous Megyn Kelly was commissioned to attack him, and when Trump told her without mincing words to drop dead, the main electoral factor was not the female solidarity, but the female jealousy.

    A scary thing that the collapse of post-modernism in the 2016 election campaign takes place on a mystical level and Trump’s actions are constantly ahead of the events, which he could not foresee.

    For example only Trump spoke on the need to limit the rights of Muslims, as just two days later there was a terrorist attack in Paris! Only he called refugees from Syria “invading army”, they showed themselves in all their glory in the central square of Cologne.

    And a dozen other incidents in which the meaning of his actions becomes clear only after several days after he committed them, when other, more recent events show that seemingly completely idiotic actions of Trump were the only true course.

    And in the last of his speech about the role to be played by Christianity in American life, he not only got away with it, but also brought him another 5 points in the polls, making him the principal enemy of Hillary, who promised to force all the priests of all denominations to marry homosexuals in church.

  163. FincaInTheMountains January 30, 2016 at 6:02 am #

    The concept of “postmodernism” includes a denial of the very concept of “reality”, which in practice leads to belief in the unlimited possibilities of manipulation of public opinion through the mass media.

    In particular, the campaign of Hillary Clinton initially was based on the concept of her invincibility, despite the fact that after she took control of the Democratic Party establishment, the latter lost the Senate and the Congress, and 300 seats in the legislative assemblies of the states and municipalities.

    But control over the media made her to consider herself invincible, despite the refusal of the acting President to recommend her to his current position.

    • Buck Stud January 30, 2016 at 12:14 pm #

      I don’t think “postmodernism” necessarily ‘denies the very concept of reality’ as much as it acknowledges the multi-faceted nature of reality. For example, “modernism” elevated the concept of “the frame” in order to diminish the burdensome weight of narrative content. ‘Painting all about itself’ as Clement Greenberg and formalism asserted.

      Enter postmodernism’s ‘framing of the the frame’. One exhibition I recall included a frame that actually was severed and run out a museum window, representing that “Reality” cannot be ‘framed off’ from the enveloping societal/cultural influence.

      At yet, human beings naturally gravitate towards ‘The Frame’. We escape on purpose: to the mountains, to the sea, to the far corner of a quiet library, intentionally quarantining the polluting influences of day-to day “reality”. The reality of human self-preservation, in other words.

      By the way, isn’t that Trump’s game, “framing” his opponents? In this election cycle no one is close to matching him on that front. Except for one. There is one opponent that Trump fears and should fear: Bernie Sanders. Sanders will ‘frame’ Trump’s frames” with such height and width that “The Donald’ will be left climbing vertical and horizontal in pathetic displays of futility. Bernie will escape from Trump’s flimsy ‘Communism’ frame with a sturdy ‘Oligarch’ frame of his own and then clamp the frame inescapable. Donald’s political fate will be permanently sealed, and he will forever be confined inside the four corners of a frame containing the canvas titled “Hyperbole”. But who knows which “reality” will form a given frame.

  164. themisanthrope January 30, 2016 at 10:17 am #

    Whichever side you’re on (not that there’s really much difference), the bottom line is, Sanders and Trump are the most honest, ethical and clean choices of the all the viable candidates. That, my fellow Americans a sad state of affairs.

    • pequiste January 30, 2016 at 9:25 pm #

      “…Sanders and Trump are the most honest, ethical and clean choices….”

      Alright Misanthrope, I’m now certain you want to hear the punchline about the two cannibals going out to a cafe for lunch (don’t you?)

  165. volodya January 30, 2016 at 12:25 pm #

    Buck old buddy, what you saw was one of the many deformities of our modern age, all waiting for re-set. Don’t worry the re-set(s) will come. As to WHY, well, you know what they say, if something can’t go on forever, it won’t.

    Why the deformities? Well, many factors at play, a lot of interlocking wheels, but two big factors were massive food and material surpluses brought by mechanized agriculture and mass production techniques. A lot of energy saving, time saving, labor saving ingenuity, but one of the by-products was to give people options they never had before.

    “People” would include women. As I said, many inter-locking wheels, but a result was that women no longer had to live in the farming village of their birth, marry the boy their parents chose, spend short lives bearing children, tending to farm animals and their own offspring – half of whom died as toddlers.

    IMO “feminism” was an outgrowth of the changes, maybe a contributing factor, maybe in part an after-the-fact philosophical justification for changes that had just taken place.

    So, you remember the saying, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Well, maybe, maybe not, but for a large segment of the female contingent, contempt for men and boys became fashionable and so did the not-so-veiled expressions of this contempt. You can argue that it became institutionalized in the educational establishment, in the civil service, in higher education. No doubt Q-shtik has some thoughts on this.

    OK, maybe this contempt was just an affordable indulgence of these modern times. And so you have the dissing of the old man by the young woman.

    It’s also fashionable for men in our societies to let it pass, because let’s not be naive, indulging this disrespect is an expression of men’s own enlightenment and high-mindedness. Don’t you think?

    But, while we’re on the topic of naivete, let’s not be naive about something else, in other societies that have gone on different historical and developmental trajectories, such expressions of disrespect or hate or contempt by a woman for a man, would be intolerable. Particularly by a young women for an old man.

    Why? Like I said, most of the world has gone on a different path. In much of the world, a female, particularly a young female, is on the lowest rung of the tribal and societal hierarchy. She doesn’t call the shots, she does what she’s told and, if she doesn’t, well, you’ve heard of honor killings? Even if killings of disrespectful or disobedient women are extreme and uncommon, beatings aren’t. Americans may like to think that their way is the way of the world, but it isn’t. Much of the world is a wife-beating, woman-beating, girl-beating world.

    So what am I saying, that beating uppity women is OK because everyone else is doing it? No I’m not.

    Context is informative, in this case, the context being the comparative life situations of women in wide swathes of the globe. Some of the elements of the feminist community decry the patriarchy in our own society. Fine, but let me suggest that they don’t know from patriarchy.

    If women in our societies feel hard-done by, there are some very nasty alternative models of relations between the sexes. I would say that the treatment of women in most of the globe would be utterly intolerable to American women. So if they think that guys like you and me are bad, it just goes to show what they don’t know. We look damn fine in comparison.

    Having said this, am I justifying past abuses of women by men? Or the denial of rights in the workplace etc etc? No, I’m not.

    What I AM saying is that the conditions that lead us to our present state, are going away. Our industrial base is bye-bye, oil is depleting, the financial system is collapsing under the hammer blows of rampant corruption and an unsustainable production-trading-consumption arrangement.

    Where this goes nobody can know except in the broadest sense, but the times they are a changin’ and if past is any indicator of future, prospects for women are not good.

    I would argue that keeping some of the societal gains that women have made is desirable simply from a human rights perspective. But it’s not a perfect world and I think it’s about to get a whole lot less perfect. I would urge moderation in the rhetoric: women need a man like fish needs a bicycle? Enough with shit like that. Respect is a two way street. Besides, down the road men may not be the disposable social accessories that they are now.

    This is just a suggestion that societal norms will change with changing times, and what is acceptable and tolerable now may not be in the future. That is, a re-set.

    There’s an inherent conservatism in human society. I don’t know why this is, it just is. You see on the map of Europe the persistence of age old tribal affiliations. No matter that national boundaries change you even see the ethnic shape of pre-Roman societies. IMO what you will see on the societal map of the near future is the societal shape of the pre-modern past.

    IOW, the future won’t be woman or girl friendly. That’s my prediction. What happened with that old man will be a historical anomaly. And no more talk about fish and bicycles.

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    • MisterDarling January 30, 2016 at 3:22 pm #

      @ Volodya:

      RE | “IOW, the future won’t be woman or girl friendly. That’s my prediction. What happened with that old man will be a historical anomaly. And no more talk about fish and bicycles.”-v.

      Well, that was an interesting and thoughtful post [*], but I see some problems with your conclusion. For instance, I agree with your opening argument that cultures are most strongly influenced by economic reality, I see a lot of evidence to support that. On the other hand, If your reasoning is that male-female relations will revert to their former imbalance to a great degree as the economic foundation does, then I say that depends on how far back things go economically.

      Humanity spent the vast majority of it’s developmental history hunting and gathering. In actual hunter/gatherer societies [**] there is not ‘patriarchy/matriarchy’ tension – that whole gestalt is moot. Why? Because people of both sexes are equally capable of providing food/water/shelter for themselves. What they don’t have is a fallback plan if their ability to provide for themselves is impaired by illness or injury. Thus we have the necessity of banding together in optimally-sized groups. Perforce, the situation that rules is “rugged egalitarianism.

      Why this matters is that our sexuality – which is not culturally determined but neurologically hardwired (we all want what we want, regardless of what we’re told we ‘should’ want) – comes from that earliest time period. The result is that there’s a fundamental mismatch between our social institutions – monogamy and nuclear family as they have been defined within the last two centuries – and who we are as organisms – which is something that we can’t help other than to continually restrain our impulses.

      SO – and this is where it’s always gotten tricky – how do we overcome those fundamental tension? Revert to the Paleolithic? All societies that advance to the point of generating a food surplus create little ways for people to get out from under the pressure of social hierarchy and ill-fitting social conventions: monasteries, forest hermitages, pilgrims and eventually (given a sufficiently large city or population of unemployed nobility and dilettantes) ‘bohemianism’ or some near facsimile of it.

      And that’s about as close as you can get to an escape without overcoming the tyrannical time/health/wealth disparity created by the advent of agriculture. A lot of what we talk about here is a cyclic dysfunction 5000+ years deep:

      “Once our ancestors began cultivating land for food, they were running on a wheel, but never fast enough. More land provides more food. And more food means more children born and fed. More children provide more help on the farm and more soldiers. But this population growth creates demand for more land, which can be won and held only through conquest and war. Put another way, the shift to agriculture was accelerated by the seemingly irrefutable belief that it’s better to take strangers land (killing them if necessary) than to allow one’s own children to die of starvation.”-c. ryan & c. jetha, Sex At Dawn.

      It’s a lethal quandary. Once you start down the path of agriculture you’ve signed a bunch of death warrants. But if you don’t somebody else will, and they will outnumber and be better armed than you and your descendants, and they will kill you for the land you live on. No matter how superficially civilized and restrained, some ‘reason’ or pretext will be obtained to give the go-ahead on the next round of butchery. . . Count on it.

      Can we be sure that male/female relations will revert to the brutality of earlier years and 3rd world (no point in referring to them as ‘developing’ at this point) nations? only if the rate of descent isn’t too steep. If we slam all the way back to hunting/gathering we’ll be in completely different (yet strangely familiar) territory.

      Cheers!

      — — —

      [*] despite the frequent and seemingly butt-hurt reference to the Irina Dunn quote? We came of age in roughly the same time-period, and I do remember hearing it in the banter back then, but it was impossible for me to take seriously. It was all well and good to talk about not needing, but just watch that ‘fish’ hop up on that ‘bicycle’ and ride like crazy when properly motivated… I made it through the era relatively unscathed, probably b/c I knew too many needy females? 😉

      By the way, I thought it was odd that you didn’t comment on the blasé disrespect that young men deal out to subjectively unattractive and/or older women? Was that an oversight?

      [**] the typical counter to the “rugged egalitarianism” statement is to cite corrupted data gathered about Yanomamo and other tribal people in the Amazon who are not hunter/gatherers but slash-and-burn agriculturists – and highly warlike as a consequence.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 3:41 pm #

        That statement is just a throwaway line, then? Or the motto summing up the whole ethos of a vast and deeply funded revolutionary movement? Countless women believe that with their whole heart and soul. Brilliant crazies who work their fingers to the bone to implement polices based on it and pass it on to new generations of girls coming up.

        Hunter Gatherers don’t fight? I can only shake my head sadly. You know very little Anthropology. The Abos hunted each other for meat. And yes, that involves fighting. As does conflicts over territory and raids to get women. Smaller scale does not mean non-existent. Pretty basic just like the point above. How could you have missed it? You seem to be reading Headlines and not the articles so to speak.

        A slightly more subtle point: Your beloved Arabs have an average IQ of 85 – no smarter than American Blacks. Afghans, a bit lower again. They are sub-men in other words. What ever you thought you were trying to accomplish over there was never a real option. Our form of Government depends on people like us in terms of basic capacity.. They aint it. You must re-vision your past if you are to have any real future.

        Face the Unbearable: Christian Europe was the highpoint of World Civilization. The fall into secularity was the beginning of the fall back into barbarism.

        • MisterDarling January 30, 2016 at 5:41 pm #

          @ CFN:

          “Hunter Gatherers don’t fight? I can only shake my head sadly. You know very little Anthropology.”-community whack-job citing nothing.

          Would anybody else *besides* a sketchily educated, overly sheltered, apparently impotent (on many levels) nut-job like to make a cogent reply?

          Just checking!

          Cheers!

          😉

          • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 8:33 pm #

            Citing nothing? It used to be common knowledge until the dumbing down. Guess you got caught up in that. Anyway, don’t feel you have to read this. The Truth is precious gem, and not for insufferable boors and pompous asses like yourself. So other eyes only please.

            http://www.gwb.com.au/gwb/news/native/cannibal.html

    • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 3:23 pm #

      Well said. But they shouldn’t be voting. They are distinctly inferior to men when it comes to thinking. It doesn’t seem to matter how smart they are either. They just lose it all when it comes to issues. Consider: the tendency of women to complain and gang up on men may have served a purpose in Patriarchy when they had real complaints and little power. But these “let all unite against the Men” tendencies are ruinous in a Democracy. And the more men indulge them, the less respect women have for them. How can a few short years undo countless ages of evolutionary psychology? Have you even asked yourself that?

      European Women are welcoming the Muslim savages because they hate the wimps their own men have become by listening to them and “respecting” them. At a deep level, women know they are not worthy of all that. And no, they wont like what they’ll get from the Muslims, and they may well appreciate their own men at last – but it may well be too late. Feminists are still denying or being silent about the mass rape that has already started over there.

  166. FincaInTheMountains January 30, 2016 at 3:20 pm #

    A.Brodsky The oil price, the Dow Jones index and Hillary Clinton’s election campaign

    It appears that the center of all negative news in the world politics for the last 3 years has been Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Events, most absurd at the first glance, make sense if we assume that the motive for all those micro-wars, provocations and other casus-belli is not specific policy objectives, but informational support for Hillary’s campaign.

    For example the motive for the Russian bomber brought down by a Turkish fighter was not a world war, but a need to divert attention from the highly unsuccessful performance of Hillary Clinton on the second democratic debate, held a few hours after the terrorist attack in Paris, when the corpses were still lying in the Bataklan theater.

    But the positive news in world politics are usually also connected with yet another blow to the Hillary the Great and Terrible, drastically reducing her chances of getting the keys to the White House and to the coveted red button, and the normalization of the international situation will occur only after Hillary Clinton will withdraw from the race.

    And the fact that in this direction lately there have been made great advances can explain the end of the oil price war against Russia, which was led by Saudi Arabia, and the consent of the anti-Assad opposition at the Geneva talks on the cessation of hostilities in Syria, and the pressure on Poroshenko from the West who has come to the conclusion that the Minsk-2 corresponds to his interests too, and rumors of a possible termination of the anti-Russian sanctions. Wow what a list, especially in combination with the ruble exchange rate and the index of Dow Jones?!!

    These feats are related to the fact that on the Hillary Clinton server were found documents with highest security level, and even if it turns out that these documents were not stolen from the servers by other countries (including ISIL – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), still she is guilty of violating the law on criminal negligence in the handling of classified documents, which is part of the US Espionage Act.

    And according to rumors FBI Director James Comey made a scandal in the office of US Attorney Loretta Lynch and threatened to resign if the allegations against Hillary Clinton will not be presented in the next two months. Loretta Lynch in response accused him that he specifically wants to quit the post so not to participate in the “pacification” of OPR (Oregon People’s Republic), and the Hillary’s charge he needed only as a pretext. And even if it is so, given the fact that since “pacification” had already taken place and, in the “pacification” one man was shot dead and several dozens were jailed, the very existence of such factor is very important. Moreover, now it is clear that Hillary Clinton commanded in the 90’s in the White House, and therefore bears responsibility for the tragedy in Waco, Texas.

    And the fact that Barack Obama in the middle of the week invited Bernie Sanders to the White House for an unprecedented meeting with him on matters of international politics, suggests that these rumors arose not from nowhere, as this meeting is very reminiscent of a meeting with the sole candidate for the US President from the Democratic Party, which Bernie Sanders would be if Hillary Clinton would face serious charges, and she will be withdrawn from the race.

    One gets the impression that the vote in Iowa, and possibly in New Hampshire will be the last in the political career of Hillary Clinton, after a loss of which she would be for the last time suggested to withdraw her candidacy in order to preserve at least some of the US image and elections of 2016.

    Otherwise, she would face more serious charges that she intentionally “leaked” to hackers of ISIL above-mentioned documents, which contained the names of the US secret agents in the Middle East, many of whom paid with their lives for it, after having undergone the most horrible torture by ISIL adherents.

  167. Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 3:28 pm #

    Black clad Swedish “thugs” (freedom fighters) do a power wash of Stockholm Station infested with North African “street children”. And as you know, nothing on this Earth is lower than 25 year old North African street children. The Statement:

    Enough is enough
    That Sweden is not as it once was, no one can have missed by now, and basically every day, we wake up to new murders, robberies, rapes, and other abuses. We have been forced to endure countless crimes of this type where perpetrators often escape punishment by claiming that they are under 15.

    Around the country, reports are flooding in about how the police no longer have the stamina to prevent and investigate the crimes that affect the Swedish people. In some cases, such as the recent murder of a woman, an employee of a home [refugee center] for so-called “unaccompanied refugee children” in Mölndal, it goes so far that our National Chief of Police chooses to show greater sympathy for the perpetrator than for the victim.

    This type of disrespectful behavior is now so deeply ingrained in our spineless politicians, our weak judicial system, and our lying media that nothing surprises us anymore. But we refuse to accept the repeated attacks on and harassment of Swedish women. We refuse to accept the destruction of our once safe society.

    When our political leaders and police show greater sympathy for murderers than their victims, there is no longer any excuse to let that happen without protest. When Swedish streets are no longer safe to frequent for ordinary Swedes, it is our DUTY to fix the problems.

    Therefore, today 200 Swedish gathered to stand against the North African “street children” that ravage the capital’s central train station. The police have clearly shown that they lack the means to prevent their rampage, and we now see no other alternative than dealing out ourselves the punishments they deserve.

    The judicial system has given a walkover [i.e., a win by forfeit] and the social contract is thus broken – therefore, it is now every Swedish man’s duty to defend our public areas against the imported criminality.

    We who gathered here today are not your politicians, or your journalists, or your police. We are your father, your brother, your husband, your colleague, your friend, and your neighbor. Swedish men and women deserve security in their everyday lives, and we therefore call on all others who see the problems to follow in our footsteps, both in Stockholm and in other places around the country. For a better future together.

    Source https://forum.therightstuff.biz/topic/8371/happening-in-stockholm-city-last-night-sweden-no/

  168. Q. Shtik January 30, 2016 at 3:57 pm #

    You are close, so close but not quite. She doesn’t love you anymore? No, she never did. You only ever existed as a prop, a reflection in her vanity mirror, a human armoire. – Janos

    So, you remember the saying, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle………… No doubt Q-shtik has some thoughts on this. – volodya

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

    Some years ago my wife went on a vacation with her mother to France. Her Mom (since deceased) treated.

    Within the very week of their departure I happened to read a poem, probably in the New Yorker, and I was struck by its appropriateness to my then current thoughts. In a gross act of plagiarism, I copied it on my computer, changed just a few words, printed it and slipped it into a place within her luggage where I knew it would be found. Here is how it read:

    A POEM TO MY WIFE

    Have you considered how inconsequential we all
    are: I mean, in the long term: but

    anything getting closer to now — deaths, births,
    marriages, murders — grows the consequence

    till if you kiss me at the door that is a matter
    of great consequence: large spaces also include

    us into anonymity, but you beside me, as the
    proximity heightens, declares myself, and you, to

    the stars: not a galaxy refuses its part in
    spelling our names: thus you understand if you

    go out in the back yard or in to town for
    groceries — or take a plane to Paris —

    time pours in around me and space devours
    me and like inconsequence I’m little and lost.

    Q.
    xxx

    You have no idea the impact.
    It never occurred to her I’m not that talented.
    I have never told her about the plagiarism. Why would I?

    • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 4:13 pm #

      And the Land of the Beornings (men who can take form of bears) is aflame.

      http://www.dailystormer.com/happening-antifa-goes-to-war-with-nationalists-in-dover/

    • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 4:28 pm #

      There was a great movie made about a poet in an Italian or Greek village. Pablo Neruda I think. One of the locals was a fan and used one of his poems to win the local beauty. He told the poet, I just thought the poem belongs to whoever needs it – a not uninspired way of seeing things.

      Care to give us the original so we can compare? It is quite beautiful in its desperation. As the poet said, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Or in this case, weep and despair. The Zen teaches us that beings come together like sticks clinging to each other for a time in a stream. Then they come apart and may or may not join with other sticks. It doesn’t matter as long as they get to the river and then to the ocean. But one must travel hopefully in order to arrive.

      The purpose of the Universe is to disillusion us. Ponderability is inversely proportional to Substantiality. Time and Space are your true lovers. You wife is a bit of nescience in comparison. And until you realize this, you are little and lost, desperately clinging to form in the form of another little stick, this one in a skirt.

      It is a hard teaching, is it not my brother? Too hard for most mortals – myself not excluded. Thus God made himself a body and become Man in order to give us something to love, something that would liberate us instead of binding us. Christ or Krishna yes. Mrs Shtick, not so much.

  169. MisterDarling January 30, 2016 at 5:45 pm #

    It’s snowing in Kuwait:

    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/snow-falls-kuwait-first-time-ever-1565913282

    Yep, nothing’s weird about the weather! Record-setting global temps 3 years in a row and now icy streets in sub-tropical Hong Kong – and it’s snowing in Kuwait… /S

    I never knew what hot weather was until I landed at Camp Arifjan (120-F). Now this.

  170. BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 7:36 pm #

    the Merry Pranksters are gearing up for the Sanders rally (slogan: ‘Feed your head’), loading up the Magic Bus, billed as ‘The summer of Love,II’, in SF, Kesey, Faye, Neal Cassady, Pig Pen, Stark Naked, Equipment Hassler, all of ’em, Owsley mixing up a fresh batch for the occasion, Musical acts include Quicksilver Messenger Service, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Dead, the Airplane, CSNY, the Band, Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg on cymbals chanting Hari Krishna. It a new dawn, dig it?

    brh

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  171. BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 7:50 pm #

    Hyenas, yellow eyed, skulking thru the town square and in country cemeteries digging up graves of Confederate heroes, scattering bones and century old debris, digging around 125 year old Confederate monuments, and toppling them over. Hear their vengeful shrieks! Whoop whop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop … soon their hungry eyes turn North, where 350 years of Anglo American wealth lie piled up, ready to be devoured.

    for the Day of the Hyena, and the end of Western Civilization, has arrived. Don’t believe me?, look around you, Gentlemen.

    brh

    • Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 8:35 pm #

      Are you read to admit the South was right? Or do you have to suffer more?

      How about WW2? Ready to admit Germany was right? Or does all of Germany have to go under first?

  172. fodase January 30, 2016 at 7:52 pm #

    yes, obama admitting email impropriety by hillary is the official throwing in the towel on her by her rotten same party

    probably was only done because sanders has proven to be so much more likeable

    gives hillary a good ‘excuse’ to drop out

    of course there’s a pardon in the works

    they cut the deal – obama: “you’re campaign’s imploding, sanders has you garroted, and Trump will take 48 or 49 states against you. so the white house is going to announce that the emails were classified and you permitted them to be hacked. so we’re giving you an out of the race. of course you’ll be pardoned, so no worries.”

    hillary: “wait till i pass the federal deadline on campaign contributions so i can keep the money.”

    obama: “yeah we thought you’d want that. done deal then. by the way, if you release the dirt on me, we’ll release our dirt on you and bill. plus you have a nice daughter and grandkid you’ll want to see grow up healthy, if you know what we mean. take advantage of that obamacare [chuckles]. agreed?”

    hillary: “deal. fuck you, too.”

    obama: “fuck you too, madam secretary.”

    Hillary, we hardly knew ya……

    fodase

    • Q. Shtik January 30, 2016 at 8:52 pm #

      fodase,

      You should be a movie script writer……..

      but your scenario ain’t gonna happen.

  173. Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 8:58 pm #

    Mr D, avert your eyes. Incoming Truth attack.

    http://www.amren.com/news/2016/01/prehistoric-war-grave-reveals-bodies-from-first-ever-human-massacre/

    Ten Thousand years ago. Flawless Victory. Crushing Defeat for the nameless one. One almost feels sorry for the poor schmoe – a victim of Marxist education which sees Man as a blank slate, his nature only determined by the means of production. So silly, as if early Man wasn’t bringing down the largest and most dangerous game. And as if little boys don’t hit their siblings over the head with their fire engines. Countless PC couples have raised their sons without violence or TV, only to be stunned by when the boy’s real nature asserts itself. They thought they had a little robot on their hands and not a male animal if nothing more.

    • Buck Stud January 30, 2016 at 9:42 pm #

      Yes indeed. Speaking of boys, did you see the ‘Son’s of Trump” big game images going viral on social media? Some speculate that every room in their various multiple residences have a bear skin/leopard rug. And the image of a proud, smiling Trump Jr. posing with a fresh kill elephant tail that he just hacked off with a knife–priceless.

      Boys will be boys!

  174. Janos Skorenzy January 30, 2016 at 9:25 pm #

    D, avert. Incoming.

    http://www.amren.com/news/2014/07/saharan-remains-may-be-evidence-of-first-race-war-13000-years-ago/

    Race War, 11,000 BC. The Caucasians had bows. The Blacks caught arrows. The Caucasians won. So, so, so unfair. Intellect trumps mere muscles.

    Any questions, class? If I don’t know something, I know how (and am willing) to look it up. Seems many don’t know how (or are unwilling) to use google. The first entry took me 30 seconds or so. I just typed in “Cannibalism in Australia”. Why? Because the question was violence among hunter gatherers. So since Cannibalism means violence for the most part, and it existed in living memory, it supplies the best data. Amazing what is possible with modern technology if one really wants to know. That’s a big if. Obviously nothing is possible without the desire.

    If you typed in “Cannibalism in New Guinea”, you would also find some interesting things I bet. But a lot of them were farmers, so it wouldn’t be germane to the question. Of course asking the right google questions take a bit of knowledge to begin with. I’ve studied enough Anthropology to know the field was ruined by the Boas and his Marxists – and to know that Darling didn’t know that.

    • MisterDarling January 31, 2016 at 12:24 am #

      @ ‘Janos’ and CFN;

      “Any questions, class?”-CFN’s numero uno racist dipshit.

      Do you know what ‘Non Sequitur’ means? Why don’t you look it up while you’re inventing little imaginary victories for yourself. I never said that hunter/gatherers were pacifists, and that’s beside the actual point.

      While we’re on the subject of things actually said, Remember this?

      “I’ve defeated you many times in intellectual battle – you just lack the wit, grace, and humility to admit it. Other times you just refuse to fight – as when I pointed out that the inheritance tax you so endorsed was part of the Communist Manifesto. You just slandered me and ran. . . Other times you make good points. I’ve never slandered you in absolute terms the way you do to me. Or if I have, it was in retaliation for you doing so.”-janos, 2/1/15.

      When in point of fact I’ve never said anything about the inheritance tax. One has to wonder why that weighed so heavily on your mind. You blurted that nonsense out while backing up one our other dearly beloved village idiots – who was demanding that I never refer to my military experience.

      And who could forget this?

      “I’ve warned Janos not to publish vicious doggerel like this on my site. II am going to leave it up so you know what I’m referring to. But all of this race-baiting and jew-bashing disgusts and embarrasses me. This goes for all of you.”-J H K, 2/4/15.

      Which made me wonder – after witnessing the next fifty or so violations of Mister Kunstler’s prohibition WHY THE FUCK there is still a ‘Janos Skorzeny’ posting on this site? Why hasn’t he/she/it been “power-washed” back to that place from whence it came?

      And I was actually a defender of whatever ‘Janos’ is at one point, fending off the crowd gathered to bum-rush it out of the door.

      Great ‘Janos’… You’ve succeeded in convincing me that there’s no one ‘there’ to interact with, so why pray-tell must we deal with your clutter?

      • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 12:44 am #

        In other words, if you were moderator, you would have banned me long ago. Oh glorious Liberal! Defender of the First Amendment as you amend it! Not much left of it!

        Your words from above copied here below clearly indicate a noble savage/golden age/fruitarian outlook. Agriculture means war. Hunter Gathering means peace.

        Once our ancestors began cultivating land for food, they were running on a wheel, but never fast enough. More land provides more food. And more food means more children born and fed. More children provide more help on the farm and more soldiers. But this population growth creates demand for more land, which can be won and held only through conquest and war. Put another way, the shift to agriculture was accelerated by the seemingly irrefutable belief that it’s better to take strangers land (killing them if necessary) than to allow one’s own children to die of starvation.”-c. ryan & c. jetha, Sex At Dawn.

        It’s a lethal quandary. Once you start down the path of agriculture you’ve signed a bunch of death warrants. But if you don’t somebody else will, and they will outnumber and be better armed than you and your descendants, and they will kill you for the land you live on. No matter how superficially civilized and restrained, some ‘reason’ or pretext will be obtained to give the go-ahead on the next round of butchery. . . Count on it.

        Even if I am just a computer program, I have defeated you nonetheless. I await your concession.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 1:21 am #

        Btw, where do you stand on the Inheritance Tax?

        • Doug January 31, 2016 at 11:30 am #

          “Btw, where do you stand on the Inheritance Tax?”

          I’ll tell you where I stand: I would confiscate every penny over an established value, a home, all or a portion of a small business (most larger businesses would be inherited by the workers), cash sufficient to live in modest comfort for a couple of years if the heir(s) had not already established occupations or small businesses of their own — all to be adjusted for heirs with special needs, as determined by the court and social services.

          I grew up in poverty and have never reconciled myself to the fact that we live in a “civilization” where we accept it as natural that some children are born to riches and others to destitution.

          When I was younger, I thought that it was perfectly acceptable to “steal” from rich people. Now, I think we should do it in a more organized and equitable manner.

          You will note, Janos, that my policy is much kinder and gentler to the progeny of the wealthy than the Manifesto:

          “3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.”

          Also for myself: If I were the moderator, your ass would be long gone. Your vile spewing poisons the discussions and almost certainly drives away innumerable others who might add real value to the exchanges here. It’s the sort of thing that, for years, kept me from participating here and, already, makes me wonder if it was a mistake to change my mind.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 3:01 pm #

            Spewing “poison”? As in hate facts? Or in other words, things about the world you don’t want to know or deal with? Such as the Fact that not only were Australian Aborigines cannibals, but they ate their own children sometimes? Not even chimps did that.

            That the races of men are not equal, either intellectually or morally? And that horror of horrors, we are one of the higher ones? And if we choose to help the lower races (we are not obligated to), we have every right to compensate ourselves by helping ourselves to their resources. Thus Colonialism is perfectly moral, if done with the consent of the governed (which it wasn’t last time of course) What you want, colonialism in which we serve and are not compensated, is just Masochism and Sickness. It’s keeping the White Man’s Burden and adding masochism and inferiority on top – in order to make us de facto slaves.

            Your desire to ban me is utterly typical. You don’t understand or appreciate Anglo-Saxon culture and are a Neo-Stalinist/Maoist. Your gloating over the murder of Finicum was a dead giveaway to your inner state. You are the Enemy of all goodness and decency.

            Yes, the rich must pay more. But not to the point of being dragged back down into the lumpen mass. A man labors to give his family an advantage. That is too sacred to abnegated. But no child should grow up deprived of necessities. Thus National Socialism is the answer, not your Neo-Marxist horror.

          • Doug January 31, 2016 at 4:20 pm #

            “Your gloating over the murder of Finicum was a dead giveaway to your inner state.”

            That didn’t happen. You either have a memory or reading comprehension problem or you’re a lying sack of shit, as well as a racist and fascist.

            That said, the helicopter video of the Finicum shooting shows that this was one of the fairly rare instances in which “he was reaching for his waistband and we thought he was armed” was probably an honest report by the Feds.

            Now, I think the authorities handled this whole mess stupidly: they should have closed off access to and egress from the refuge from the beginning of the incident, prevented resupply and reinforcements and just waited the welfare cowboys out. The traffic stop was a stupid move that anyone should have been able to predict would likely end in violence.

            Not as bad as Ruby Ridge or Waco, but badly enough handled to give people like you an excuse (albeit a pathetically ridiculous one) to create another “martyr” for the ugly cause.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 5:56 pm #

            It was an ambush numb nuts. They had been firing into the car and Finicum got out to either defend the group or sacrifice himself by diverting their fire.

            One is reminded of the execution of the Tsar and his Family by your Trotsky.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 6:09 pm #

            I’ve already explained to you that being a “racist” (a realist who loves their race) and “fascist” (nationalist) aren’t bad things. Can you try harder to be smarter?

          • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:41 am #

            I grew up in poverty and have never reconciled myself to the fact that we live in a “civilization” where we accept it as natural that some children are born to riches and others to destitution.

            Equality is a social construct and a bad one at that.

            We fed Africa. Now that 200 million is a billion, and many more than 200 million are hungry and miserable.
            We – the White devils, oops, caring people, did that.

            Mexicans in USA have bigger families than ‘real’ Mexicans.

        • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:43 am #

          Taxes? The Fed prints money so why do taxes exist?

  175. BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 9:48 pm #

    Man, this Sanders rally is gonna be outa sight, dig. At Golden gate Park. Owsley made up this special batch for the occasion, giving it out for free man! Everything free. I hear Tim Leary is showing up, that’s right, the guru himself, Tim Leary, with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Look, there’s Cassady, all weird and wired, no shirt on, showing off his fantastic build! Quicksilver is opening, ‘take another hit, of fresh air’, then the New Riders ‘Panama Red’. Next the Airplane ‘White Rabbit’. All the Pranksters are coming, flanked by Hells Angels and Hunter Thompson, wearing their white jump suits and strange hats. ‘You’re on the Bus or you’re off the bus.’ Bernie Sanders is definitely ‘On the Bus’. Dig?

    brh

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    • Buck Stud January 30, 2016 at 10:21 pm #

      Lol BRH! And you’re right; that’s all too much cliche 60’s time warp, But to be fair, Bernie’s musical ad features Simon and Garfunkel.

      No we should all aspire to be like these two: a couple of real Rough Riding Teddy R types:

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3180201/Trump-defends-big-game-hunting-sons-shamed-Twitter-posing-trophy-kills-including-leopard-elephant-death-Cecil-lion.html

      • BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 11:03 pm #

        Teddy Roosevelt and Hemingway. Hemingway went on two African safaris, not just one. An interesting note, the man who guided Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt in 1910, guided Hemingway in the early 30s and the early 50s. Same guy.

        Those safaris are the least interesting thing about Hemingway and Roosevelt. Theodore’s son Kermit, a talented man in many ways, ended up shooting himself while stationed in Alaska during WW2. Hemingway’s youngest son, Gregory, once shot 16 African elephants in one season. He was manic. This was in the late 1950s. He was a cross dressing transvestite who died in a Miami jail cell in 2001.

        I’ve been reading that Rhinos are being poached to the point of extinction, and elephants and hippos are not far behind. The Chinese like the tusks, think it makes them virile. There’s that AK-47 again, wiping out wildlife, and challenging (and defeating) standing professional armies,

        brh

        • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 12:05 am #

          What was Kermit’s problem besides being named Kermit? Perhaps his last name? He utter loathed the FDR side of the family.

          • BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 12:32 am #

            Kermit became an alcoholic, just couldn’t get out of it. Theory now is that he suffered shell shock in WW1, which was never treated. All 4 Roosevelt sons served in the first war, the youngest, Quentin, a fighter pilot at 19, was killed. They all saw heavy combat and were all shell shocked. TR jr. a reservist, went on to become the most decorated soldier in American history.

            Janos, are you serious about a Trump/Sanders ticket? Two New Yorkers probably wouldn’t go over too well in the rest of the country.

            brh

          • BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 12:34 am #

            ‘Kermit’, his mothers last name, a colonial family from Brooklyn, CT.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 12:49 am #

            Well of course they’re of different parties so it’s a non-starter for that and other reasons on the literal level. But I am serious about the need to think big and outside the box if we want to save any part of America.

            The Parliamentary system IS better and more flexible than our winner take all system. Trump and Sanders should be able to form a Government together. Maybe as reasonable men, both of whom want immigration lowered and neither of whom hate Israel, they could actually get some things done.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 12:09 am #

      Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. It’s no good BRH. Time has passed you by as well. The America you loved lead straight to they hyena’s jaws. Best and Only way to prevent it? A Trump/Sanders ticket. There is going to be more Socialism, one way or another. Is it going to be National Socialism or Hillary Socialism is the only question.

  176. BackRowHeckler January 30, 2016 at 11:40 pm #

    Wow. Jan. not finished yet, in Chicago, City of Big Shoulders, that toddlin town, 283 shot and 51 murdered already. Phew! Still another full day to go in the Windy City to close out Jan., will do a summing up and final tally to see where it stands, and where its going (most likely to hell) sometime next week.

    Meanwhile, the hyenas are circling, the pack growing, content to wait a little longer to eat the carcass of a dead civilization.

    brh

    • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 12:23 am #

      Any arrow strikes? Maybe Whites need to be given crossbows and taught how to use them.

  177. wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 12:53 am #

    JHK said there would be no economic recovery. The data say otherwise, thanks to President Obama. People now have good jobs, unemployment is down to 5%, and that means they can buy places to live.

    Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, ascended 14.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.46 million in December from 4.76 million in November. After last month’s turnaround (the largest monthly increase ever recorded), sales are now 7.7 percent above a year ago.

    Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said December’s robust bounce back caps off the best year of existing sales (5.26 million) since 2006.

    People don’t make big purchases like housing if they are unemployed, maxed out on credit, etc. The economy is back, contrary to JHK’s pronouncements, thanks to President Obama’s economic policies.

  178. Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 1:19 am #

    http://today.tamu.edu/2014/10/16/kennewick-mans-injuries-bones-reveal-ancient-secrets/

    Ouch! How painful his wounds, much like D’s though of a different kind. It seems that ancient or pre-Aggie man was a not only a hunter and killer of animals but of other men. Pretty obvious and basic? Apparently not to our Neo-Marxist/Jared Diamondian Comrades under the sway of Globalists who want to radically reduce the world’s population a la the Georgia Guide stones.

    Many ancient skeletons show such wounds. Anyone with even a smattering of Anthropology and Archeology knows this. Or used to. But of course minds paid to be obtuse will believe as they are instructed by those who sign their checks or grade their papers.

    Kennewick was of an interesting racial mix. Definitely not of the same race as the modern Northwestern Tribes. So they dumped thousands of tons of debris on the site to hide any more such evidence from coming to light. How very Liberal of them. Such “seekers of knowledge” (sons of Belial and perdition) dominate the social sciences today. They’re are handing the West over to the Blacks and Browns as quickly as possible. How great their amazement when they themselves are purged as racists – as D wishes for me. Thus their reign will be short and inglorious in the extreme. For they are Ichabod, the glory departed.

    • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:35 am #

      Kennewick was of an interesting racial mix. ???

  179. wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 2:36 am #

    Sanders is a tough-minded Independent (not a Democrat, not an idealistic dreamer)

    As mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders grew the economy by giving new entrepreneurs start-up funding, creating trade associations, offering technical assistance, and lobbying the state government to promote business growth, while saving the city thousands of dollars by employing competitive bidding and scouring the budget for wasted resources.

    He was so fiscally conservative that some Republicans say he managed to “out-Republican the Republicans.”

    Sanders also instituted long-term restrictions to keep housing affordable for working families, implemented neighborhood planning assemblies to empower the city’s communities, raised taxes on business, protected low-wage workers, financed training programs for women, opened up the waterfront to the public, and founded organizations like the Youth Office, the Arts Council, and the Women’s Council.

    Frederick J. Bailey, a conservative stockbroker, says of Mayor Sanders, “It is a nitty-gritty job of day-by-day executive decisions and he did it well. He got things done.”

    Sanders did not flail about in “happy dreams,” as Krugman asserts, but “worked collaboratively with other politicians to create a more livable city.”

    As a representative in the House, Sanders passed more amendments than any other representative serving with him, steadily working with the “hardheaded realism” that he is not, by Krugman’s account, supposed to have, to reduce the cost of college, expand free health care, crack down on child labor, increase winter heating funding for the poor, fight corporate welfare, and hold the IRS accountable.

    Contrary to the notion of Sanders as an alienating “purist,” the democratic socialist put together “bipartisan coalitions of Republicans who wanted to shrink government or hold it accountable and progressives who wanted to use it to empower Americans” to get concrete results.

    As Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, says,

    “[Sanders] would call them ‘tripartite amendments’ because we’d have him and he’d get a Republican, he’d get a Democrat and he’d pass things. He’s good at building coalitions.”

    Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., says the same, finding Sanders “to be one who’s willing to sit down and compromise and negotiate to get to a final product.”

    In the Senate, Sanders has continued his sensible, persistent push for real change by bringing together bipartisan coalitions to pass legislation that has protected our troops, restricted the bail-out to protect U.S. workers, greened our government, exposed corruption in the military-industrial complex, helped to treat autism in military health care, and taken care of veterans’ kids.

    • BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 3:22 am #

      Far out!

      Pass that tab, will you WPA?

      Owsley’s new batch, made special for this moment, totally free man.

      brh

      • BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 3:22 am #

        See you at the Phish concert.

  180. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 3:14 am #

    Reporters asked the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova to comment on the statement by the commander of US forces in Europe, general Breedlove, who said that they have been hugging the “Russian bear” for too long.

    However, Maria Zakharova said that she prefers not to comment on private life and [sexual preferences] of American generals.

    https://pp.vk.me/c627631/v627631201/1b08d/Rr426jBPP_M.jpg

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    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 1:05 pm #

      Here’s the kind of “hugging” the US and NATO have been trying to apply to Russia since the breakup of the USSR:

      I can’t breathe!

      For a brief period, when they had the compliant Yeltsin around, they played warm and fuzzy. Since No-Nonsense Putin has been in charge, there’s been a non-stop campaign to demonize the man and sling insults at the Russian Federation. It works pretty well on the know-nothing jingoists at home, not so much in the rest of the world.

      And poking the bear, rather than hugging her, has always been unwise.

      “The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”

      “Do not expect that [having] once taken advantage of Russia’s weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians always come for their money. And when they come – they will not rely on the Jesuit agreement[s] you signed, that supposedly justify your actions. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russians you should use fair play or no play. ”

      ~Otto von Bismarck (separate quotes)

  181. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 3:38 am #

    The MP accused the US of a flu epidemic in Russia

    The flu epidemic, which began in several regions of Russia, should be blamed on the United States, said to “Russian news service” State Duma Deputy Vadim Solovyov.

    “Americans for a long time have been and continue to be active in bacteriological warfare against Cuba where they unleash various plagues all the time from their base there, I do not exclude that their technologies are very advanced. The flue wave came from Ukraine. I do not rule out that the Americans have started a “flue-war” against our country, “- said Solovyov.

    The deputy noted that state agencies should check his assumption using their own channels.

    “I think it is time, and we should forward the request to the Ministry of Health, and the Prosecutor General, and perhaps to the FSB because it goes beyond all permissible levels” – said Solovyov.

    Russia, in spite of the activities of the Russian Ministry of Education, remains a highly educated country and all standard American excuses regarding “conspiracy theories” will fail.

  182. wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 1:00 pm #

    As mayor of Burlington Bernie Sanders (Independent, not Democrat) was so fiscally conservative that some Republicans say he managed to “out-Republican the Republicans.”

  183. wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 1:04 pm #

    Signe Toly Anderson, co-founder of the Jefferson Airplane died on the same day as Paul Kantner died (Jan. 28, 2016). May the peace of Allah be upon them.

  184. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 1:08 pm #

    Quote of the day:

    “Indians did not pay attention to the flow of refugees from Europe. Now they live in reservations.”

    • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 2:58 pm #

      I’m not sure why but generally Indians are said to live on reservations not in reservations. Please advise whoever (whomever?) it was that you were quoting.

  185. Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 2:00 pm #

    “Btw, where do you stand on the Inheritance Tax?”

    I’ll tell you where I stand: …………………. – Doug

    ===========

    I could not disagree more with your stand on inheritance.

    Do you have children?

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    • wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 2:11 pm #

      I agree with Doug. Whether or not you have children does not matter. Why should your children receive a giant unearned welfare headstart over other children in the community? This is how wealth inequality is perpetuated.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 3:06 pm #

        Unearned? It was earned by the parents or forbears. The inheritance tax is just part of the Marxist Plan to undermine the family. Shame on you and the three amigos for buying into this evil.

        Your perfect Marxist Man is a Zika.

        • Doug January 31, 2016 at 4:00 pm #

          “It was earned by the parents or forbears.”

          Most likely “earned” by the efforts of exploited labor and/or the expropriation of natural resources from the commons.

          As for undermining the nuclear and near-nuclear family of global industrial capitalism, I’m all for it. Hell, tear the fucker down.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 5:37 pm #

            Yes, destruction of the family is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. You’re a good clone, comrade.

          • Doug January 31, 2016 at 9:03 pm #

            “Yes, destruction of the family is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto.”

            Well, in reality, it was the wholly capitalist Industrial Revolution that destroyed the authentic family — and has continued to grind its remnants to dust until this very day.

            It was the abolition of the perverted and perverse versions of family that prevailed in 1847-48 with which the Communists were concerned.

            Let’s read what the Manifesto actually says, with historical context in mind:

            = = = = =

            Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of
            the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

            The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both
            will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

            Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

            But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by
            social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

            The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

            But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
            The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of
            production. He hears that the instruments of
            production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that
            the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

            He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production. For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

            Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal,
            not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

            Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the
            Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for
            a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-
            evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
            = = = = =

            As I wrote and copied this, I couldn’t help but think of the wealthy community that surrounds me, a place where the workers come on buses, often with their kids in tow, to clean the mansions where the bankers and traders keep their 30-year-younger trophy wives and second sets of children — the first wives having been discarded as insufficiently impressive, due to aging, to host important associates and clients at formal dinners.

      • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 3:21 pm #

        First of all, not all inheritances go to the children of the deceased. I have a friend Charlie (old high school chum) who lives in Maine. He had an uncle who was wealthy but never had children. He (the uncle) set up a trust that paid out his fortune over time to 5 relatives, Charlie among them. As the 5 beneficiaries aged and died off the payouts to the still living grew larger. Charlie (now age 75) is the last of the 5. A few years ago he received a lump sum payout of what remained in the trust: $500K.

        He went straight to his local Lincoln dealer and bought a $50K+ Navigator for cash. Three years later he tired of the dark color and traded it in on a new Navigator in White.

        I guess you and Bernie would outlaw “good fortune.”

    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 3:10 pm #

      “I could not disagree more with your stand on inheritance.”

      Tell me why you disagree.

      “Do you have children?”

      No. My wife and I saw, decades ago, what the future holds for civilization as we know it. We would neither want to add to the ridiculous human overpopulation nor subject children of our own to the world that is developing around us, every day.

      • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 4:14 pm #

        “Do you have children?”

        No. My wife and I saw, decades ago, what the future holds for civilization as we know it. – Doug

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

        If, despite the best laid plans, you had had a kid or two, I would venture with near certainty that you would want your children (and their children) to be the beneficiaries of whatever you had managed to accumulate in life.

        • Doug January 31, 2016 at 4:28 pm #

          “I would venture with near certainty that you would want your children (and their children) to be the beneficiaries of whatever you had managed to accumulate in life.”

          Standard talking-point response from a selfish breeder: “You just can’t understand because you didn’t have children.”

          And you’re just plain wrong.

          The applicable reality: If you understood the truth of the matter and didn’t imagine your genes to be so special that they must be propagated, you wouldn’t have children (unless, of course, you were a poor, suffering peasant in some unholy corner of the world where children are needed for survival and care-giving in old age).

          I = P * A * T

          • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 5:31 pm #

            I notice that people such as you, wpa and Janos who either have no children or CLAIM to have no children (not that I doubt YOU, but who really knows about wpa) tend to have a world view quite different than the (vast majority of) people who DO have children.

            Your response to my response is a standard talking-point response to the valid observation that “You just can’t understand because you didn’t have children.”

          • Doug January 31, 2016 at 8:11 pm #

            Repeat:

            “If you understood the truth of the matter and didn’t imagine your genes to be so special that they must be propagated, you wouldn’t have children. . .”

      • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 5:42 pm #

        Nice, Pat. History belongs to those who show up for it. You cede the world to the lower races who will NEVER limit themselves, both from your choice of sterility and your open border politics.

  186. Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 2:34 pm #

    Sanders also instituted long-term restrictions to keep housing affordable for working families, – wpa

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

    Why affordable for families?

    Why affordable for working families?

    What about single people?

    What about unemployed single people?

    What about people too incompetent to work and too heinous to find a spouse and have children?

    We all have to live somewhere don’t we?

    This is just populist talk. All this means is that Bernie is a socialist who wants to decide (or set a limit on) what a landlord may charge as rent. I say: let the landlord charge a million dollars for a 6 x 8 utility shed if he can find a taker. I believe in the law of supply and demand.

  187. Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 2:44 pm #

    I believe what parents in all places, times and ages believed: they want to see their children “get ahead in life.”

    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 3:19 pm #

      “. . .they want to see their children ‘get ahead in life.'”

      What does that mean? Accumulate and consume more the the children of others? Why should society let you and your kids do that, unless it is organized in a way that benefits us all and truly “leaves no child behind?”

      And, if society is rigged so as to perpetuate these inherited inequalities, why shouldn’t those who suffer from “the mistake of having chosen the wrong parents” rebel against such a society, by any means necessary?

      Or, if rebellion can’t be organized, why shouldn’t the “born poor” “get ahead” by selling drugs, or seizing the opportunity to smash a few windows and grab some goodies for themselves when circumstances allow?

      Why should they be expected to follow the rules laid down by the powerful and wealthy and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” against rigged odds?

      • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 4:02 pm #

        Why should society let you and your kids do that, ……. etc etc – Doug

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

        OMG, you have no idea how GALLING ^that^ sentence is.

        I believe in maximum individual personal freedom. The individual comes first ….. society, a distant second.

        • Doug January 31, 2016 at 4:35 pm #

          “I believe in maximum individual personal freedom.”

          Then you will be in perfect philosophical agreement with the ethics of one or several free individuals who decide to come and take what you imagine is “yours.”

          “The individual comes first ….. society, a distant second.”

          You have no idea how stupid that sentence is. Do you know the formal name for solitary humans who absent themselves from (or are expelled from), and do not rely upon, the structures of societies of one sort or another?

          “Very short-lived.”

        • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 5:49 pm #

          He has a point Q. The Individual does not stand alone. Such an imaginary thing would in reality be very unpleasant and brief. As the Ancients said, a man alone is either an animal or a god. And gods are few indeed. But his Socialism would rob you and drag your class into the slums. They are already beginning to integrate the rich towns north of New York. My Socialism respects your achievements, your drive, your property, and your money. We “merely” would “ask” “you” to be generous to the Nation. Needless to say we would not ask but neither would we ruin you. How would driving the most gifted people out of the Nation benefit anyone? Besides being utterly immoral in and of itself.

          • Doug January 31, 2016 at 8:20 pm #

            “How would driving the most gifted people out of the Nation benefit anyone?”

            Well, driving the most gifted scientists out of Germany certainly benefited . . . the Allies.

            Why did that happen? Because the fuhrers believed the most gifted among them were untermenschen.

            Better be careful about unintended consequences, Janos. You could end up losing the race.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 11:17 pm #

            That’s not true, Doug. No one ever said the Uber Unters were dumb, just bad. What did they do after they developed the atom bomb for America? Why give it to the Russians of course – fair is fair. After that they had gained control over the Atomic Energy Commission, they made every effort to get all nations to disarm and submit to the United Nations. Luckily Patriots stopped them. You would have fallen for it, just as you fall the global warming scam today.

            Hitler waved and shook hands with Jesse Owens. The Ubu owned Press lied.

            http://www.tomatobubble.com/hitler_jesseowens.html

  188. volodya January 31, 2016 at 3:23 pm #

    Mister Darling,

    one can visualize a lot of possible trajectories for events in the coming years. From our perspective in the year 2016 I think it’s a matter of weighing likelihoods.

    I think that SOME people may go back to hunter-gatherer mode depending on where they’re at geographically. What about the U.S.? Will we see gigantic herds of bison back on the plains? I doubt it. Hunting as a viable way of life, at least in North America, I think won’t come back anytime soon.

    Similarly, the old economic model of central Asian steppes being the meat-locker for nomadic hunters may come back but I think the odds are against it, at least for the foreseeable future.

    So what are we looking at then? Firstly, the current model we have for food production will come to a shuddering stop. Just think of the massively long and complicated supply chains for getting a tractor onto a farm. Those supply chains depend on abundant and cheap and reliable energy, lately in the form of gasoline. What are the odds of finding an alternative form of energy remotely as concentrated as oil?

    The supply chains also depend on a banking system supplying credit to the farmer, to the tractor manufacturer, to the dealer, to the multitude of suppliers that make tractor components.

    But look at the state of things in the financial sector. There’s no practice in the financial world that’s too criminal or too abusive or too destructive. The way that things are going, it’s not as if the gangsters on Wall Street MIGHT destroy the banking system. They WILL destroy the banking system. There will come a point where no indulgent Fed or Treasury or Justice Department or Congress will be able to salvage the mess. To borrow a famous quote, the sucker’s goin’ down, down, down, glub, glub, glub, and it won’t come back.

    What takes the place of overly convoluted supply chains and overly corrupt financial systems? Well, to over-simplify, systems less convoluted, less reliant on oil, less corrupt. Meaning, back to past ways that are quickly passing out of living memory but not QUITE out of living memory. Which means, if you talk to an old timer, relative impoverishment for a lot of people and back breaking work, as the song goes, choppin’ cotton and bailin’ hay.

    There’s not enough time to do even a rough sketch of what the convulsion in food production portends for the rest of the economy simply because EVERYTHING else depends on agricultural surplus. What happens when that surplus contracts?

    So, to the point, what about women? There’s a lot of possible ways to paint the economic picture. But I think that, in general, economic niches for a huge multitude of women in academic or administrative functions or retail functions are going away the same way that jobs for millions of men disappeared with offshoring to China.

    The big question is what will take their place in economic terms (if anything) and what does this mean for the status of women?

    I don’t think it’s likely that women will lose ALL the gains they’ve made, but I think how much they lose will depend on how events play out, how women in general and women leaders in particular play their cards.

    I know this isn’t saying much. But I think that their present day independence from hubby, father, brother depended a lot on the economy and their role within it. But, as sure as we’re sitting here, that economy is going away. Will it get as lousy for women as it is in today’s semi-developed and undeveloped world?

    IMO the blase disrespect of young men towards unattractive or older women is matched by disrespect of women towards men deemed deficient in looks, size, wealth etc. IMO not much new there.

    Q.shtik, about that poem you gave your wife: you dog you. I’m impressed.

    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 3:55 pm #

      “What are the odds of finding an alternative form of energy remotely as concentrated as oil?”

      Slim and none. It isn’t going to happen.

    • MisterDarling January 31, 2016 at 6:49 pm #

      Hello Volodya,

      This post is perfectly reasonable and essentially sound. I do have several observations to make, however.

      RE | “But look at the state of things in the financial sector. There’s no practice in the financial world that’s too criminal or too abusive or too destructive. The way that things are going, it’s not as if the gangsters on Wall Street MIGHT destroy the banking system. They WILL destroy the banking system.”-v.

      From where I’m standing (dealing with the outcome) the Financial Sector has already collapsed. Let’s face it; when the only thing holding the grim-reaper is massive, globally coordinated ‘QE’, and the equities market rises and falls based on the level of central bank intervention, you are all done. Stick a fork in it. All that’s going on right now is a lot of bluffing and rear-guard action.

      RE | “I think that SOME people may go back to hunter-gatherer mode depending on where they’re at geographically. What about the U.S.? Will we see gigantic herds of bison back on the plains? I doubt it. Hunting as a viable way of life, at least in North America, I think won’t come back anytime soon.”-v.

      As I wrote, it all comes down to the rate of descent. If nuclear disasters, war or an biological weapon release are not a factor, there’s a fairly good chance that the rate population deflation won’t be steep enough to lose every last vestige of 21st-Century civilization.

      But then again, humanity has already lost arable farming land to nuclear power fuckups (Chernobyl and Fukushima). That is land that is not coming back online in our lifetimes – media blackouts or no. Additionally, if we’re at a place where treatable diseases and common-place surgeries can become deadly due the loss of antibiotic efficacy, then we’re already primed for a steep ‘pop-drop’.

      The real problem now it that everything about ‘Collapse’ phenomena is inherently unstable – including forecasting. As things fall apart data gets thin, less reliable and therefore preparation and adjustment becomes more of a gamble. That’s why it’s vital get a good read on speed, direction & rate of acceleration in the early stages – for dead-reckoning purposes later on.

      They say you can’t actually see a black hole’s event horizon, only predict it’s probable location mathematically. The problem is, once you’ve crossed it it’s too late.

      😉

      Cheers!

    • elysianfield January 31, 2016 at 6:56 pm #

      ” choppin’ cotton and bailin’ hay. ”

      San Francisco Mable Joy

      • elysianfield January 31, 2016 at 6:57 pm #

        Or Mabel, perhaps…

  189. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 3:59 pm #

    “I believe in the law of supply and demand” — Q

    We live in the world where supply and demand for money, the most important “commodity”, is obviously not subject to what we have come to understand as “classical” supply and demand, but something that is a pure political power play.

    Since the money affects every other aspect of human economic activity, the law of supply and demand only applicable to relatively small markets and for relatively short periods of time.

    Everything else is rigged.

    • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 4:55 pm #

      “Everything else is rigged.” – Finca

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

      This is exactly what the guys watching boxing on TV at the bar of The Bottle and Cork used to say: “every fight is fixed.”

      Sorry, I don’t subscribe.

  190. Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 4:42 pm #

    Q.shtik, about that poem you gave your wife: you dog you. I’m impressed. – Volodya

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

    ……and while we’re on the subject, Janos wanted to know the original words to the poem. Here they are with the words I modified bolded:

    BIRTHDAY POEM TO MY WIFE

    Have you considered how inconsequential we all
    are: I mean, in the long term: but

    anything getting closer to now — deaths, births,
    marriages, murders — grows the consequence

    till if you kissed me that is a matter
    of great consequence: large spaces also include

    us into anonymity, but you beside me, as the
    proximity heightens, declares myself, and you, to

    the stars: not a galaxy refuses its part in
    spelling our names: thus you understand if you

    go out in the back yard or downtown to the
    grocery store,
    — or take a plane to Paris —

    time pours in around me and space devours
    me and like inconsequence I’m little and lost.

    by A.R. Ammons
    August 1997

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    • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 6:00 pm #

      No bolds seen on this end.

      • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 8:39 pm #

        I’m guessing you are using Internet Explorer. When I switched from IE to Chrome a couple three months ago I was able to bold and italicize and to SEE what had been bolded and italicized by others.

        The poem has a title and 7 sets of 2 lines each. The differences between my plagiarized version and the original are minimal, specifically in:

        . the title
        . the 3rd set of two lines
        . the 6th set of two lines

        That should help you spot them.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 11:19 pm #

          Who wrote it btw?

          • Q. Shtik February 1, 2016 at 12:19 am #

            Read to the end of the poem, it’s right there.

  191. wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 5:44 pm #

    “I believe in maximum individual personal freedom. The individual comes first ….. society, a distant second.” –Q

    So, Q, you support the ACLU, right? The ACLU is dedicated to advocate for the freedoms of all Americans, and illegal individuals in some cases as well. They proudly defend the freedoms of Klansmen, Nazis and Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives.

    How much do you donate to ACLU to preserve maximum individual freedom? I guess zero. As a conservative/libertarian/Republican you probably really don’t want freedom expanded. You probably are anti-religious freedom (anti-building Muslim mosques at ground zero), anti-marriage rights, anti-transgender rights, anti-union organizing rights, anti-abortion rights, pro-death penalty, anti-gay rights, anti-drug rights, anti-tobacco rights, anti-language freedom (English as national language), anti-immigration rights, pro racial profiling, anti-voting rights, anti-labor freedom, anti-bill of rights (except the 2nd amendement), anti flag burning, anti-right to trial by jury, pro-torture, etc. etc. etc.

    Republicans have a deep-seated hatred of social freedom. And this list just gets longer. Right-wing messiah’s like Santorum have come out supporting bans on gay sex and pornography. Where’s the love for “maximum individual freedom”? Where is support for ACLU?

    • Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 8:52 pm #

      Don’t be silly. Until I became a patron of JHK the other day I hadn’t donated to anybody or any cause in 20 years.

      I take that back. When I was still working it was virtually mandatory to have a payroll deduction made to the United Fund. I gave the minimum possible amount of $1.00 per pay period (2 weeks).

      Sometimes one must bow to political correctness to protect their career and their family.

      • wpa_ccc January 31, 2016 at 9:13 pm #

        You better be careful about the legalities of your inheritance. What if your kids turn liberal and gives to ACLU, or your daughter becomes a feminist activist and gives your money to radical causes?

  192. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 6:15 pm #

    RAND: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics

    https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/rand-wargaming-the-defense-of-the-baltics/

    Here’s What Russia’s Incursions In The Baltics Will Do To The World

    http://anonhq.com/heres-what-russias-incursions-in-the-baltics-will-do-to-the-world/

    No one wonders why Russia should invade the Baltic, except for a preemptive strike if the concentration of NATO forces in the vicinity St. Petersburg left no doubt that this is not the defense of, but a preparation for a surprise attack a la June 22, 1941.

    Conversely Breedlove & Co. fools pretend and try to convince the American public that since NATO is not possible to defend the Baltic States against the Russian invasion, only the concentration of NATO troops in the Baltic States would deter Russia from a ready plan of attack.

    Apparently, not being able to start a war in Ukraine, the company decided to take revenge in the Baltic States, which, unlike Ukraine, Russia doesn’t give a fuck about.

    Such articles have been a legion, but in these there is something new: first they are pleasantly animated by advertising of Ukrainian and Russian hookers: apparently Google has decided that readers of these articles will be glad to get acquainted with women from Eastern Europe, and secondly, the authors somehow come to the conclusion that a local conflict escalating into a nuclear war, though “unthinkable” (“unthinkable” is the name of the British plan for a nuclear attack on the USSR’s in late 40’s early 50-ies of the 20th century), but not impossible. Very possible.

    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 8:30 pm #

      The US and its NATO minions have been outplayed at every step of this aggressive game they’re playing with Putin. They have absolutely no idea what Russia does or doesn’t value and no idea if or when they might “cross the line.”

      What’s more, some of them honestly think that they can either surround and eventually fragment the RF or provoke Russia into a real fight in Europe and “win” — about as crazy as an idea can get.

      They’ve been running this same program since the Wolfowitz memo and they still haven’t noticed it isn’t working. It’s the dumbest and most dangerous program ever, since it has every chance of leading to the launch of the first “battlefield tactical nuke” — which would likely be the beginning of the end.

      • MisterDarling January 31, 2016 at 10:34 pm #

        “What’s more, some of them honestly think that they can either surround and eventually fragment the RF or provoke Russia into a real fight in Europe and “win” — about as crazy as an idea can get.”-doug.

        Even after being straightly told that there’s no future in a direct military confrontation by the US military. But who’s been listening to actual SME’s for the past 35 years?

        And now the results are in.

        • Doug January 31, 2016 at 11:05 pm #

          “But who’s been listening to actual SME’s for the past 35 years?”

          Not our benighted leaders who “create their own reality,” certainly. And not the generals who want the cool gigs like the Joint Chiefs’ chair or NATO commander.

          You’ll never get that last star by telling a Rumsfeld or a Cheney (or even an Ash Carter) what they don’t want to hear. And that’s why, although the experts know better, the bosses are willing to play dangerous games like this:

          NATO Military Buildup on Russia’s Doorstep: Who Is Doing the Saber-Rattling in Eastern Europe?

  193. FincaInTheMountains January 31, 2016 at 6:43 pm #

    Bernie Sanders Calls Hillary Clinton’s Emails ‘A Very Serious Issue’

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-emails_us_56ae254be4b077d4fe8e7023

    Otherwise, she would face more serious charges that she intentionally “leaked” to hackers of ISIL above-mentioned documents, which contained the names of the US secret agents in the Middle East, many of whom paid with their lives for it, after having undergone the most horrible torture by ISIL adherents.

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-agonies-of-sensible-people/#comment-259736

  194. Q. Shtik January 31, 2016 at 10:02 pm #

    “If you understood the truth of the matter and didn’t imagine your genes to be so special that they must be propagated, you wouldn’t have children. . .” – Doug

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

    I can’t speak for your genes but mine ARE special.

    Sorry to be so Trump-like.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 1, 2016 at 1:02 am #

      They encouraged Whites to have few or no kids because of the “environment”, and then opened the borders to fast breeding minorities from everywhere. Yet Doug is oblivious of the betrayal. Incredible.

  195. MisterDarling January 31, 2016 at 10:07 pm #

    @ Doug;

    “You have no idea how stupid that sentence is. Do you know the formal name for solitary humans who absent themselves from (or are expelled from), and do not rely upon, the structures of societies of one sort or another? “Very short-lived.”-d.

    One of the lessons of Jon Krakauer’s book ‘Into the Wild’ was that a person can’t live by themselves and their own efforts indefinitely. No matter how bad-assed that person is they will have a bad day, and in the wilderness, that’s game-over. [*] A ‘Society of One’ is not resilient enough to survive indefinitely.

    Expanding the lesson; Jared Diamond wrote about the settling of Iceland as being one of the purest cautionary tales about taking Libertarian ideals too seriously… Consider; a thousand or so Viking free-holders and chieftains of roughly equal means and resources fleeing the tyranny of King Harald. They set up an intentionally minimalist republic ruled by a yearly council with little in the way of common institutions or infrastructure, in a land that was 40% forested and had wide swathes of stable grassland.

    200 years later, their descendants were starving, living in thrall to 5 remaining warlords, on a treeless island, with no boats (no timber), pastureland rapidly disappearing due to overgrazing, who literally went begging to the Norwegian crown to take them over to stop the killing and bring essential supplies (and new blood).

    Fast Forward to Now; a number of rich-folk conveniently *unaware* of how much of their wealth depended on the collectivist organizations (with all their lawyers, guns & money) to gain and maintain that wealth – let alone give their wealth a context in which to be wealthy. Seeing that ‘wealth’ threatened they suddenly find common-cause with Libertarians and their rationalizations. Well, that’s healthy /S

    So you want to have your cake and eat it too? Sure, whatever you say *princess*…

    😉

    Cheers!

    — — —

    [*] Jon devoted an entire chapter reviewing the examples of those who tried and died testing this theory out, and Jon’s a guy who does his research. I know that for an eye-witnessed fact.

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    • Sticks-of-TNT January 31, 2016 at 10:37 pm #

      MisterDarling,

      Interesting insight on Iceland.

      Krakauer is indeed a fine writer. I enjoyed “Into the Wild.” I especially liked his book about Pat Tillman, “Where Men Win Glory”, as much for what it had to say about the U.S. Army as it did about Tillman. My guess is that’s a subject you might have some first-hand knowledge about.

      -Sticks

      • MisterDarling February 1, 2016 at 2:21 am #

        “I especially liked his book about Pat Tillman, “Where Men Win Glory”, as much for what it had to say about the U.S. Army as it did about Tillman. My guess is that’s a subject you might have some first-hand knowledge about.”-Sticks.

        I don’t want to say too much other than this: Jon was out on the FOB’s, going outside the wire doing ride-alongs in the area that Pat got fragged. He’s no armchair researcher.

        Cheers!

    • Doug January 31, 2016 at 10:44 pm #

      You’re one of the reasons I haven’t abandoned these threads, already, MD (Jim’s the other one because, like Ed Abbey his flaws don’t diminish his contributions to literature, culture and our understanding of the built environment).

      I’m old and tired and I just have to type the intro and you expand and elucidate to make it clear to all but those who “got two good eyes but still don’t see.”

      In our next chapter, we will explore Ayn Rand’s enrollment in Social Security and Medicare.

      Mahalo nui loa.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 31, 2016 at 11:24 pm #

      Would you eat other people if you got hungry enough? Like so many 3rd Worlders did? The Donner Party ate dead people. Ditto the Chilean Soccer team. I’m talking about killing to eat. It’s so natural, why don’t uptight Whites do it? One Anthropologist, working in New Guinea and having a gay affair with a Chief, did try some long pig. Figures, huh? Gays are so progressive….

      • BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 11:56 pm #

        You mean the Rockefeller kid?

        He got et, in New Guinea I believe.

        • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:23 am #

          Abby Rockefeller once lived in a 4 or 5 floor walk up in NYC Chinatown w a heroin pusher. A friend of mine shared the place with them.

          ‘The FBI was always outside due to Abby staying with us.’

          wiki –abby rockefeller

      • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:26 am #

        The were not Chilean. They had this nutty notion that ‘on the other side of the mountain were verdant Chilean farms.’

        They were from Uruguay, I believe. [Or Paraguay].
        I really liked the book.
        It was yr kinda book.

        DO OR DIE, MEN MUST BE MEN, EAT YR DEAD FRIEND.
        All the wimmen on the plane died.

    • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:29 am #

      This guy was a parasite—

      Man who lived in woods as hermit for 27 years is … – Fox News
      A man who lived nearly three decades in the Maine woods has a job and is … Man who lived in woods as hermit for 27 years is now working, participating in …
      [Search domain http://www.foxnews.com] foxnews.com/us/2014/08/20/man-who-lived-in-woods-as-h…
      He’s surreal’: Officers amazed at ‘hermit’ burglar’s survival …
      … it’s hard to believe that Christopher Knight lived alone in the Maine woods … Bangor Daily News … man who had been living in the Maine woods …
      [Search domain bangordailynews.com] bangordailynews.com/2013/04/10/news/state/its-surreal-hes-sur…
      Maine man, 47, became burglar to survive in woods for 27 …
      Hermit in Maine woods for 27 years is suspected in … quiet capers that officials believe he’d made so he could survive the woods near Rome, Maine. …
      [Search domain articles.latimes.com] articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/11/nation/la-na-nn-maine-hermit

  196. BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 11:06 pm #

    Well, Signe Daly and Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane founding members, died in the past few days. So don’t expect the Airplane to show up at the ‘winter of love’ Bernie Sanders Campaign rally. Baba Ram Das is here, tho, still going strong at 85. “A vote for Bernie is a vote for fun”, says Ram. Ram scored some bodacious primo Oaxacan and several thousands hits of Orange Sunshine (endorsed by God) from his friends in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, actually was a guest on their tropical island 700 miles off the west coast of Mexico, a psychedelic Vatican with timothy Leary the reigning Pope, got this stuff for free to set the rally on the righteous path straight to the White house, 50,000 college kids out of their minds, dreaming of free tuition, free love, free ass, free munchies, free everything, so goddam high and ramped up by the Country Joe, the Electric Prune and the Anonymous Artists of America that not only are they willing storm those goddam ramparts with Bernie and Baba Ram Das, they’ll storm heaven itself. and the World will hold its breath.

    brh

    • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:20 am #

      can you elaborate?
      bodacious primo Oaxacan and several thousands hits of Orange Sunshine (endorsed by God) from his friends in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, actually was a guest on their tropical island 700 miles off the west coast of Mexico, a psychedelic Vatican with timothy Leary the reigning Pope, got this stuff for free to set the rally on the righteous path straight to the White house, 50,000 college kids out of their minds, dreaming of free tuition, free love, free ass, free munchies ????? Now, 2016?

      And I know someone who knew Paul K. ‘He smoked 2 packs a day and was a boozer.’

      • BackRowHeckler February 1, 2016 at 2:54 am #

        Just fukk-n around, Malt.

        It seems like Sanders is the Hippies Last Go ‘Round, and I’m dredging up what I remember of that time, tho I was pretty young.

        What surprises me is how college students still buy into the utopian bullsh-t, just like they did back in the day. There’s something about free stuff, evidently, that appeals to young people of every generation.

        It takes awhile to figure out that, indeed, there is no free lunch.

        brh

      • Q. Shtik February 1, 2016 at 2:57 pm #

        Who smoked 2 packs a day and was a boozer? The someone you know who knew Paul K. or Paul K. himself?

  197. BackRowHeckler January 31, 2016 at 11:19 pm #

    MD, to pick up an earlier thread …

    In the book ‘Into the Wild’, wasn’t that simply a case of a fragmented personality and mental illness. Its been awhile but that’s what I took out of it if I recall correctly. Plus the kid was totally unprepared for life in the Alaskan outback.

    Also, in Greenland, wasn’t there pretty drastic climate change from when the Vikings first arrived and about 300 years later when they had to clear out? Climate change in that Greenland got a lot colder and was entering into a ‘little ice age’, making the place uninhabitable.

    brh

    • malthuss February 1, 2016 at 1:21 am #

      You know Ram das is jewish homo?

      • Q. Shtik February 1, 2016 at 2:54 pm #

        Why would I care? Plus, I never heard of Ram das. I have heard of a RAM 1500.

    • MisterDarling February 1, 2016 at 2:15 am #

      Hello BRH!

      Jared spends 3 chapters talking about the Greenland Norse colony – and why they seemingly chose to fail. Iceland – which is where the Greenland Norse launched from – was a separate case all on it’s own.

      Regarding ‘Into the Wild’ Jon digresses from the main narrative once he’s filled in the reader about what the young man was intending to do, and he spends a whole chapter looking at stuff that risked as a younger man, and what had already been tried by similarly inclined people – and what ultimately went wrong.

      One rugged back-to-nature type tried to make it in the Alaskan wilderness all on his lonesome doing the whole ‘with only what I can carry’ routine for 15 years before calling it quits. He was good, but he almost starved several times, and at another point he had to drag himself in with a life-threatening/ending injury.

      Having completed a number of solo adventures in deserts, mountains and a jungle, trust me, the moment you step across the line into the actual wilderness *the *clock *is *ticking*…

      Cheers!

  198. MisterDarling February 1, 2016 at 2:03 am #

    @ Doug;

    “You have no idea how stupid that sentence is. Do you know the formal name for solitary humans who absent themselves from (or are expelled from), and do not rely upon, the structures of societies of one sort or another? “Very short-lived.”-d.

    One of the lessons of Jon Krakauer’s book ‘Into the Wild’ was that a person can’t live by themselves and their own efforts indefinitely. No matter how bad-assed that person is they will have a bad day, and in the wilderness, that’s game-over. A ‘Society of One’ is not resilient enough to survive indefinitely.

    Expanding the lesson; Jared Diamond wrote about the settling of Iceland as being one of the purest cautionary tales about taking Libertarian ideals too seriously… Consider; a thousand or so Viking free-holders and chieftains of roughly equal means and resources fleeing the tyranny of King Harald. They set up an intentionally minimalist republic ruled by a yearly council (the Althing) with little in the way of common institutions or infrastructure, in a land that was 40% forested and had wide swathes of stable grassland.

    200 years later, their descendants were starving, living in thrall to 5 remaining warlords, on a treeless island, with no boats (no timber), pastureland rapidly disappearing due to overgrazing, who literally went begging to the Norwegian crown to take them over to stop the killing and bring essential supplies (and new blood).

    Fast forward to Now; a number of rich-folk seemingly *unaware* of how much of their wealth depended on collectivist organizations (lawyers, guns & money) to gain and maintain that wealth – let alone give their wealth a context in which to be wealthy. Seeing that wealth threatened they suddenly find common-cause with the Libertarians and their rationalizations.

    So you want to have your cake and eat it too? Sure, we’ve never heard that one before. Whatever you say *princess*… /S

    😉

    Cheers!

    • BackRowHeckler February 1, 2016 at 3:07 am #

      Recently read Pitcairn Island is dying out, will be people-less by about 2030. The Bounty mutiny was in 1789 so these people lasted quite a long time. A few years ago a scandal was uncovered, men on the island molesting underage girls. The British legal system actually went down there and prosecuted a bunch of people, including Fletcher Christian himself.

      brh

  199. FincaInTheMountains February 1, 2016 at 6:06 am #

    The Sheiks are in total panic: nobody loves them

    The Saudis selling their stocks in the open market en masse, especially in the first weeks of January, spreading panic all around the world, appears to have seriously displeased another faction of the Masters of the Universe. This faction might eventually let everyone know what the secret Saudi position is in US Treasuries. Remember, we’re talking about at least $8 trillion.

    The House of Saud cannot possibly believe that the FSB, SVR and GRU deeply love them for trying to destroy Russia; that Texans love them for trying to destroy the shale oil industry; that Germany or Italy love them for dumping a trillion dollars in securities on the markets to crash them as Mario Draghi pumps major QE trying to rescue the eurozone.

    The standard US government procedure in a case such as this — the dumping of securities and bonds, destabilizing markets — is to freeze assets and go for regime change. Only this time the House of Saud thought they had unanimous support in Washington — as part of their oil price war against Russia. Not really; Washington is now issuing a veiled warning that they have had enough of Saudi Arabia. And that implies the House of Saud must change course on an emergency basis to stop the oil price war before it is too late.

    The ball is the House of Saud’s court. The jig of crashing the oil price and dumping securities seems to be up. They’d better get their act together, or soon every “prince” may be driving cabs in London. Although serious doubts remain Warrior Prince Mohammed bin Salman has an IQ strong enough to master all the streets necessary to pass the exam.

    http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20160129/1033920936/saudi-arabia-plays-russian-roulette.html

    Could anyone tell me how all that relates to recent revelation regarding Hillary’s emails?

    Washington’s Party of War has become the party of Economic Crisis and it seems to be loosing. Its all now in the hands of the American voters.

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