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The Tax “Reform” bill working its way painfully out the digestive system of congress like a sigmoid fistula, ought be re-named the US Asset-stripping Assistance Act of 2017, because that’s what is about to splatter the faces of the waiting public, most of whom won’t have a personal lobbyist / tax lawyer by their sides holding a protective tarpulin during the climactic colonic burst of legislation.

Sssshhhh…. The media has not groked this, but the economy is actually collapsing, and the nova-like expansion of the stock markets is exactly the sort of action you might expect in a system getting ready to blow. Meanwhile, the more visible rise of the laughable scam known as crypto-currency, is like the plume of smoke coming out of Vesuvius around 79 AD — an amusing curiosity to the citizens of Pompeii below, going about their normal activities, eating pizza, buying slaves, making love — before hellfire rained down on them.

Whatever the corporate tax rate might be, it won’t be enough to rescue the Ponzi scheme that governing has become, with its implacable costs of empire. So the real aim here is to keep up appearances at all costs just a little while longer while the table scraps of a four-hundred-year-long New World banquet get tossed to the hogs of Wall Street and their accomplices. The catch is that even hogs busy fattening up don’t have a clue about their imminent slaughter.

The centerpiece of the swindle, as usual, is control fraud on the grand scale. Control fraud is the mis-use of authority in applying Three-Card-Monte principles to financial accounting practice, so that a credulous, trustful public will be too bamboozled to see the money drain from their bank accounts and the ground shift under their feet until the moment of freefall. Control fraud is at work in the corporate C-suites, of course, because that is its natural habitat — remember that silver-haired CEO swine from Wells Fargo who got off scot-free with a life-time supply of acorns after scamming his account-holders — but their errand boys and girls in congress have been superbly groomed, pampered, fed, and trained to break trail and cover for them.

The country has gotten used to thinking that the game of pretend is exactly the same as what is actually going on in the world. The now-seminal phrase coined by Karl Rove, “we make our own reality,” is as comforting these days to Republicans from Idaho as it is to hairy, “intersectional” professors of post-structural gender studies in the bluest ivory towers of the Ivy League. Nobody in this Republic really wants to get his-hers-zhe’s-they’s reality on.

Ah, but reality wants to do its thing regardless of our wishes, hopes, and pretenses, and you can kind of see how these moves taken in the dark waning hours of 2017 will play out in the quickening weeks of 2018. Long about March or April, something’s got to give. Other players around the world are surely eager to assist shoving this mad bull of a polity towards the critical state it deserves to enter, though we are doing quite enough on our own to put ourselves at ground zero of financial and political implosion.

The addiction metaphor does apply to America. We are simply addicted to our own bullshit. But like all floundering addicts, we have to hit bottom before anything like clarity returns to our daily doings. When that does happen, it will be as far from intoxicating as you can imagine. The smoldering wreckage of The World’s Highest Standard of Living will be visible in a 360-degree panorama. A lot of familiar faces will be among the suddenly missing. But we’re already prepped for this by the sexual purges of the season. One day, the reassuring figure of ole Garrison Keillor is there to remind you of the exquisite taste of Midwestern sweet corn on an August night; and the next morning, you’re up to your eyeballs in the colonic explosion of unintended consequences engineered by the least reassuring cast of characters ever assembled under one capitol dome.


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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.

489 Responses to “The Darkest Hours”

  1. thenuttyneutron December 18, 2017 at 9:26 am #

    Monday!

    Thinking about last Friday’s post. I wish there was more information about how the FBI “took liberty” with Lady Justice and their connections to any politicians that they either helped or hurt.

    Nothing would make me smile more than to see Lady Justice work her magic on these people. The only fear that I have is getting a fair trial. Where in the hell do you find a jury that is able to render a verdict based on the facts and not their emotional whims? The Rule of Law must be upheld and defended at all costs. Once it is gone, our great Republic will fall apart.

    I can make an argument that our lack in upholding the Rule of Law is the root of our problems.

    Kunster is right when he says that our economy is one of frauds and rackets. The only thing left to wonder is;

    When will the shit storm start?

    What will be the trigger that sets it off the difficult task of price discovery?

    What kinds of shenanigans will be brought to bear on the problem by the politicians and Federal Reserve?

    The Federal Reserve in my estimation has adulterated too much capital with shit. Even if we were to make an honest attempt at cleaning up the system by allowing the bad debts to default, I don’t see a way of separating the shit from the gold.

    There are also the other toxic affects to contend with. What do you say to a person that bought a house 20 years ago that has paid it on time, never borrowed against it and then is suddenly unemployed due to the massive deflation bomb going off? Some might say they should pay it off with their investments or other money. That sounds good and all but what the hell do you do if the banks are all closed due to a “Holiday” and they are in the process of being “bailed in”. What the hell do you do if you have your money in “quality” bonds? Yeah, price discovery is a bitch and it will ruin many innocent people.

    Even if there is a political decision to have a debt jubilee, I have no trust or faith in our system to fairly apply if to everyone. I have my suspicions that all debt is equal and that some debts are more equal than others.

    There are no good answers.

    • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 10:47 am #

      Where ya’ been tnn? Hard to say exactly when it happened for sure, but the “rule of law” (RIP) was sold of to the highest bidder several decades back at least.

      But speaking of which, I can’t help but laugh at the NFL’s continued on the field implosion (I won’t even get into the Jerry Richardson thing here) with their hyper-litigious and completely anal rulings, especially as it pertains to receivers making a catch, often in or near the end zone.

      In the latest interpretation of “the catch rule,” aka the Calvin Johnson rule,” the play will now be stopped mid-catch so that the receiver’s identity can be verified (2 forms of picture ID), to verify that he has a signed note form a parent or guardian allowing him to be playing football, a background check can be conducted to verify that he has no sexual harassment, spousal abuse, PED, or recreational drug allegations outstanding, and that the football is inflated to the NFL approved pressure, +/- .001 PSI (adjusted for atmospheric conditions of course!).

      After the play is restarted and the receiver completes the catch (or not), a 24 hour waiting period will be imposed to ensure that all possible grievances, replay analyses, and other misc. shit flung against the wall to see if it will stick is heard, after which the NFL will issue a preliminary ruling, all subject to further appeal of course. It is hoped that the rules changes will eventually lead to a purely virtual NFL, where games are electronically simulated, and team of lawyers turned NFL partisans, can argue into virtual infinity about virtual outcomes that absolutely no one cares about, thus avoiding the increasingly sticky subject of real life player injuries altogether.

      • FallenHero December 18, 2017 at 2:20 pm #

        In regards to virtual things, crypto currency is interesting. On first glance it seems insanely stupid, I was wary myself, (and I am well away of its ecological implications) but as a relief value OUT of the dollar I think the argument holds the most sway.

        The dollar collapsing does NOT mean the end of crypto (necessarily anyway) and I think this angle is what many people funnel into it for.

        • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 3:12 pm #

          If you’re going to put money into it, the best way to look at it is as a highly speculative commodity, which may or may not be worth anything at all in the long run, and not as a currency. It is being heavily manipulated by the Chinese (based on cheap electricity and lax regulative standards) and Wall St interests (based on too much Fed funny money sloshing through the system looking for outsized returns) right now, so there’s no reasonable way to ascertain what any of it is worth. In the final analysis, it’s not what it’s worth on paper at any given point in time (just like stocks or anything else), it’s what you can get out of it at the point of sale/redemption that counts.

          • You don’t own anything but an opinion which on this blog seems to be in unlimited supply unlike bitcoin

          • toktomi December 19, 2017 at 9:10 pm #

            OS -> “If you’re going to put money into it, the best way to look at it is as a highly speculative commodity…”

            To my way of thinking, that is it in nutshell after all of the malarkey has been exhausted.

            I see a picture of a world of people that have been bred to react to mushroom clouds and vertically asymptotic curves as if these things were newborn puppies.

        • ColoradoFlood December 19, 2017 at 11:22 am #

          Apropos the ecological implications of Bitcoin, you may not be aware of more nuanced views – this commentary and link deconstruct, in part, the Bitcoin Overuses Energy argument:

          https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/12/bitcoin-doesnt-exist-the-full-story/

          JHK would say “it’s bad ‘cuz it replaced a horse CARS! ROADS! STRIP MALLS!”,and while he’s a brilliant guy and one of my faves, he’s not known for nuance.
          Cheers!

    • SvrzoH December 18, 2017 at 11:33 am #

      I doubt that ‘Milli Vanilli’ idea did not cross many minds in musical industry across the globe, but conceived into reality only here in the US, with that “Hell yes !” bravado.

      “…eating pizza,…” in Jim’s post.
      That was funny.

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 12:08 pm #

      ‘There are no good answers.

      Actually there are but you will be tarred and feathered were you to bring any of them up.

      • outsider December 18, 2017 at 1:17 pm #

        Truer words were never spoken, Dog. “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

  2. Jeremy December 18, 2017 at 9:42 am #

    Well Nutty one – there is one good answer.
    And as trite and simplistic as it seems it is GOLD/SILVER !

    We all know that James has his stash buried somewhere beneath his vegetable beds, and many financial commentators have been recommending metals for years now.

    The incredible paper fraud that has held metal prices down these past few years will end, and when it does – talk about a Vesuvius in price discovery.
    There’s a reason that China and Russia have been buying millions of ounces for years now, while the shiny stuff has been flowing out of vaults from West to East.

    Good luck all going into 2018 – it’s going to be an eyeopener, and scary.

    • thenuttyneutron December 18, 2017 at 9:45 am #

      I can’t afford gold. I have managed to get some old sivler in pre-1964 US currency. That is not enough though because there is past precedent of making gold illegal to own.

      So when does JP Morgan eat their short positions in silver?

    • Ragnar December 18, 2017 at 10:14 am #

      As my son pointed out to me, it’s difficult to believe in the mythical role of Gold and Silver when the purveyors of same are more than willing to accept your worthless fiat currency in exchange for their precious metal wares. Once the long emergency commences in earnest, I expect to see a handful of “classic” prepper enthusiasts trying to use silver in the town square, but that will be a short lived phenomenon, and Gold even less so.Precious metals may have a role at the governmental level, but in the local community where you live, the true precious metals that will be fungible in the long term will be brass, copper and lead. I subscribe to the hurricane Katrina dictum, that avers that in the days/weeks after hurricane Katrina, had you been wandering and wading through the wreckage of New Orleans, carrying your heavy silver and gold, they would have bought you very little. However if you had, bottled water, MREs, batteries, medical supplies and personal protection, you could have had whatever you wanted.

      I am with the Kunstler approach, you had better be on a plot of ground practicing your gardening, far from the dense clusters of the polity, when the log emergency kicks off, God help us all.

      • hmuller December 18, 2017 at 10:57 am #

        This is a very old argument. Yes, there’s a time when the tangible survival stuff is paramount. But at some later point a currency will emerge to smooth barter transactions. Based on a few thousand years of human history, we can guess what it will be. Could we be wrong? Certainly. The array of possibilities is vast. Flexibility, adaptability, and job skills are key.

      • trolleybill December 19, 2017 at 9:33 am #

        Chicken Little’s the sky may fall but will all survive. In a Mad Max scenario (Which I highly doubt) those who talk about the survivalist mantra of stocking up instead of holding silver and gold are excuse me “Idiots” How long to they think they’ll last in the above scenario? Even Jim has gardens but I bet he buys seeds every year and has little experience saving seeds. He knows his local has hollers that seed growing business thrived long ago used to prevent cross pollination. I bet under 1% of Jims followers have any experience in being self sufficient to any extent of making it past a year or two.

        Everyone should be in a “what if” living. Food and water to last a few months, make a edible landscape. I’ve seen new housing over the decades and not one damn fruit tree or bush and they enhance the look with blooms and fruit too. I’d jump into silver now and I tell be start to keep money around and silver dollars if you can

  3. robert magill December 18, 2017 at 9:46 am #

    IF, and it’s a big one, if, the budget passes and Trump gets the 200 billion and ,if, he parlays that with another other 800 billion private bucks,and then; couples with China to connect to the Belt and Road initiative and thusly to all of the old world, then we might survive.
    If not, it’s hello 2nd world status,PDQ.

    • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 9:59 am #

      I would like someone to convince me that this “tax plan” is something more than “Trickle Down Economics 2I” and why when the greedy CEO’s at the top take in a bigger cut of the loot they will be willing to part with any of the take.

      • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 10:25 am #

        Most of the ‘conomists, even the conservative ones, have rightly concluded that official tax policy (excepting local sweetheart deals after the basic yes/no investment decisions have already been made, which often equate to tax avoidance altogether) has very little if anything to do with investment decisions. The TPTB have long been out of solutions for any of this (especially since their aren’t any, so round and round we go again.

      • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 11:36 am #

        “why when the greedy CEO’s at the top take in a bigger cut of the loot they will be willing to part with any of the take.”

        Walter,
        The key to happiness is to be thankful for the crumbs off the table…it has always been thus.

        • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 11:58 am #

          Not only am I infinitely thankful my friend, but I have always been blessed with the ability to operate successfully financially at any level while living the life of a king yet still understanding the real value in what counts most in life. My problem with this greed and mismanagement issue is that especially as an elected public official, I am responsible for the welfare of those in my Township at least to some extent. I am very aware of the situations that these people have gotten themselves into and it is really bad and getting much worse. I shall always have enough of whatever it is I need to live a wonderful life but as those around me collapse and flounder, it bothers me to see them so abused and manipulated by a crew of worthless, thieving bags of dirt. I know I cannot change the inevitable but it pains me nonetheless.

        • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 12:05 pm #

          Keep your hand off my crumb.

          • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 12:17 pm #

            Now that was funny!

      • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 12:24 pm #

        Well, it has exposed even more that being a wage slave is no way to get ahead.

        An exercise for you. Open your copy of TurboTax. Pay yourself a salary of 10,000. Be married. Report 80,000 in dividends. Now go to the total tax payable to the Federal Government. Yes, that is a 0,but don’t forget that you did pay $1530 in combined SS/Medicare taxes.

        So, out of 90K in potentially taxable income, your dividend receiving 10,000$ salary earner has paid literally NO Federal income tax. Even in NYC you can live on $7400 a month, cash.

        JHK’s books suggest a form of economic organization that allow workers to benefit from this, albeit in the future. I’ll give you the key phrase, and you take it from there: Subchapter T.

        Continuing to be a wage slave, however, is asking to be shorn.

        • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 1:02 pm #

          You are absolutely correct Doctor, and a wage slave is often a debt slave as well. I hear so many say that they will just have to work until they die, a more retarded statement has never been made. Unless of course you are planning on dying young or hold a seat in the US Senate or Congress, but then you’re not really working. It amazes me how a simple catch phrase or cliché can justify retarded behavior in stupid people. Everyone seems to have forgotten the wisdom of old in the sayings, of “a fool and his money are soon parted”, or “never give a sucker an even break”. The horror, the horror…

          • outsider December 18, 2017 at 1:35 pm #

            At a minimum, those who benefit from our endless wars should be the ones paying the taxes. Instead these 1%ers have voted themselves yet another huge tax reduction. I propose that those war supporting Congress critters, neoconservatives, and big holders of defense stocks, anyone who benefits by these wars, have their taxes tripled, not lowered. Then they could give the middle class a REAL tax break.

          • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 10:22 pm #

            I cannot forget that it was the plutocratic Republican Congress that passed the bankruptcy reform act of 2005, making student debt never forgiveable in bankruptcy, and generally making it harder to get rid of debts and start over, Walt.

            This jammed the pressure relief valve on the economy. JHK’s ideas about the Au courant extend and pretend, that somehow, some way, this debt will get paid are spot on. You cannot have exponentially growing monetary claims on goods and services that cannot grow exponentially, without the whole system cracking up. Bankruptcy used to let off some pressure so that debt growth wasn’t as extreme. Growth in available energy from high-EROEI oil bailed out the system for a while. It broke in the USA in 1971, still our peak production year, and broke globally in 2005.

            When we zeroout all the debt, the reset will be scary but it is the only way to build an economy that can work for most, if not all.

            Now go Google Subchapter T. And read this article:
            https://www.city-journal.org/html/more-perfect-unions-15258.html

  4. Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 9:52 am #

    Your morning smile:

    https://i.redd.it/m39qm895vn401.jpg

    NB: this is satire. But good satire.

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 12:04 pm #

      I wish it were true so he should be the next camacho.

  5. Walter B December 18, 2017 at 9:56 am #

    Jumpin Jimmies James you have outdone yourself today – one of your best! Thank you, we love you. Your Pompeii analogy was perfect and well timed I might add, but the statement that…

    “We are simply addicted to our own bullshit. But like all floundering addicts, we have to hit bottom before anything like clarity returns to our daily doing.”….

    Well that is simply spectacular. In the initial phase of America’s drug problem, the junkies would eventually die off, burn out or simply starve and the addiction was held in check. Today with quicker responses and Narcan in hand the problem can be held in check, although in doing so it is growing in leaps and bounds and spreading like wildfire, at least here in central NJ. Our financial system which is being given the same course of treatment, is surely headed for the same end result, explosion of unintended consequences.

    In the end, greed at the top combined with sloth at the bottom will mix with despair apathy in the middle and I just cannot see how a Happy Ending is in the cards. In the meanwhile you go Jim, your the best!

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    • noel bodie December 18, 2017 at 6:00 pm #

      I agree a very good post. McKesson was slammed on 60minutes last night, a true example of the corruption of the times.

  6. shotho December 18, 2017 at 10:09 am #

    Oh, Mr. K, I thought you had given up making specific predictions. Life seldom works out as we predict. However, it does seem that we are getting closer to the necessity of facing reality and money returning to the black hole from which it came would be a perfect catalyst. At that point, we would then have to face the utter collapse of the character of the American people and that would be a lot tougher reality to face.

  7. pequiste December 18, 2017 at 10:12 am #

    Your “anal”ogy this morning, JHK, was the just tonic needed for the last burst of this 2017 “holiday” shopping season.

    The physic that the American public is going to receive shall be epic as you well point out. Then, right after the physic: B.O.H.I.C.A.! as the coin required to run the Empire, and feather the downy nests of the plutocracy, have to come from somewhere. I’m thinking a V.A.T. to help things out.

    And how stupid of me to think that a corporation, which was given personhood in an infamous, nay, legendary, court ruling “Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission” would have to pay the same taxes as a person.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

    It IS so very good to get one’s hirelings, legislators, to write the rules.

    Cigar smoke is wafting, and courtesan moans are emanating, from mega-yachts berthed at harbors around the world in palm fringed climes including Monaco, Corfu, Aruba, and Pago Pago

    For a select few Evil Fuckers it is going to be a bang-up Christmas and a very happy new year.

    • draupnir December 18, 2017 at 12:20 pm #

      There is archaeological evidence of people resorting to eating their own children in the Mediterranean at the time of the collapse of the bronze age civilization. By the way, there are reports of this phenomenon occurring in North Korea now. When civilizations collapse (and this appears to happen about every 1,500 years or so) there is a massive dying. However, during the process, the parasites – the royalty and their servants, and those who live by taking a cut of other people’s earnings – disappear entirely, They do not survive because they have no usable survival skills and have lost the ability to siphon off the products of other people’s work. Even literacy, developed to keep track of trades, debts and taxes, is mostly lost, and those who survive are people who have useful skills. They are much to busy keeping themselves alive to worry about such record keeping. Rome collapsed in around 476. Do the math and you’ll see that we’re due for the mother of all Kondratieff winters.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 12:28 pm #

        Your reading assignment for that dumb “476” quote:
        https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0578094185

        The real collapse of Roman civilization in the West was the 8th Century. Justinian didn’t help things by destroying much of Italy in the 6th Century.

        • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 1:03 pm #

          Dud it really collapse at all Doc, or simply morph into the Vatican?

          • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 10:29 pm #

            There was a depressingly real collapse. To use Jane Jacobs’ phrase, a dark age descended:when the memory of what was lost is lost. But Western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries had growing populations and commerce. This ended with the Islamic conquest, which cut off trade with the east and collapsed the burgeoning economies described by, e.g., Gregory of Tours. Pirenne argued that this shifter the balance of power in France fromMarseille up to Paris.

            Oneidea fromScott: the Islamic conquest cut off the supply of cheap papyrus, which was used for recording business transactions. An equivalent today would be cutting off the supply of new hard drive space. This drive up the cost of managing a business and helped cause an economic collapse.

            Not sure I believe it, but it’s a fascinating idea, backed with the evidence that the oldest papers of the kings of France are on Papyrus, and stop being so after the Islamic conquests.

        • draupnir December 18, 2017 at 2:36 pm #

          I’m not married to that date. It could certainly be debated; however, I find the 8th Century to be rather late. Rome pulled it’s legions from Britain in the last quarter of the 5th Century because they were needed elsewhere. The dark ages, or the early Medieval Period is generally considered to extend from the 5th Century to the 10th Century. The era is called the Dark Ages because written records are sparse on the ground for that time period, as the record keepers were largely gone. Justinian, a Byzantine Emperor, did think he could raise the Western part of the Empire from the dead; and he did try, but problems closer to home foiled his attempt. Even the Papacy of Rome was overshadowed by the Byzantine Papacy from the middle of the 6th Century until the middle of the 8th Century. During the 8th Century the Moors invaded Spain in 711 and advanced through the Iberian Peninsula. Their advance in Gaul was stopped by Charles Martel, whose son was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day in 800 CE, acknowledging in name what had been fact for many years. Norse raiders pillaged the monastery at Lindisfarne in 799, ushering the the period known as the Viking Age. I don’t know of any expert who puts the fall of the Roman Empire at such a late date. I don’t know the bona fides of the author you cite.

          • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 10:46 pm #

            There are plenty of sources from the fifth and sixth centuries. Gregory of Tours is well known.

            Scott is updating Pirenne, and Pirenne wrote his two-volume history of Europe during World War 1 in a German prison camp entirely from memory. He is a historian’s historian.

            The basic idea: there was a crisis in the West in the third and fourth centuries. The fifth and sixth centuries saw rising economies and populations in the West. They collapsed after trade collapsed in the 7th Century, and it was hundreds of years before the High Middle Ages returned wealth and population to levels near late Antiquity.

            Britain really did collapse, too. Bryan
            Ward Perkins points out that they regressed to a state worse, technologically, than they had been before the Roman conquest. That did not happen to anywhere near that extent on the continent. The Vikings did not help.

            But think about the Roman troops’ departure, and take up one argument from Scott from about the same time. The Book of Kells was late sixth century, about the time of Roman withdrawal. (Or it could be fine filigree gold work Scott cites.) the level of craftsmanship indicates an advanced society and economy, and this in Ireland, never conquered by Rome. In other words, Ireland had joined a wider trading network in Western Europe, AFTER the “collapse.”

  8. windward December 18, 2017 at 10:20 am #

    Good one, JHK.

    When it happens, let us remember who made it all possible: the lawyers. I will always remember the 60 Minutes report featuring Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. This was just after the financial meltdown of 2008.

    Grant plopped a huge document on the desk, at least a ream, probably printed on both sides of the pages, which was the ‘legal’ construct for all of the financial scams that wrecked the economy, but which made a few people rich beyond human comprehension.

    This document was written by lawyers, who must have made a fortune just for that job alone. No doubt they made a lot more money as the scam unfolded.

    When you want to sue a lawyer, you must take your case to the lawyers. So much for the constitutional guarantee of impartial tribunals. Talk about putting the hogs in charge of the corn crib. I am just getting started.

    • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 11:03 am #

      Thank you for stating this outright! I have no appreciation for those that make lawyer jokes or who underplay the role that these parasites have played in the destruction of America in EVERY aspect of our demise. The “Affordable Housing” issue here in New Jersey offers the perfect example. For the last 20+ years, townships, towns, and boros have been spending tens of millions of dollars each to lawyers in their attempts to “comply” with the courts. Not a single “affordable” house has been constructed. The lawyers are laughing their asses off as they raise their rates and pad their incomes to astronomical levels. I have personally been in attendance in the NJ Statehouse to hear the politicians openly state at the podium that in the last 30 years of “working” on this issue they have accomplished NOTHING. And Steve Sweeny and Tom Kane Jr. were sitting right there and said nothing. The lawyers are garbage and will kill us all in the end.

      • windward December 18, 2017 at 4:34 pm #

        Thanks for that evidence, Walter B. It would not be hard to compile a record of this stuff as long as that document Jim Grant threw down.

        I believe I have posted this gem before:

        LEGAL LYRICS

        Raising Kane

        In an address before the Missouri Bar Association given in 1947, Dr. R. Emmet Kane remarked: “It is difficult to be kind or even charitable in judging law and lawyers since they are the authors of all the troubles that plague the human race, and have been since time began.” He ended his address with the following doggerel, entitled The Bench and the Bar:

        If you’ve got a son or daughter
        Who ain’t livin’ like they orter,
        If they’d suck an egg and peddle you the shell;
        If the neighbors and the preacher,
        The policeman and the teacher,
        Are convinced that they are headed straight for hell;
        If their instincts are possessive
        And their ego is excessive,
        If they’re short on brains but very long on jaw,
        Don’t sit up nights and worry,
        Make your mind up in a hurry,
        Chuck ‘em off to school and make ‘em study law.
        Have ’em learn the art of stalling,
        How to howl like Virtue bawling,
        And to make their betters think that they are tops;
        How to wheedle fortunes stealthy
        From a clientele that’s wealthy,
        And to be elected judge in case they’re flops.
        To become a politician
        Must, of course, be their ambition,
        Help ‘em buy all the ghosts they can afford.
        It’s a lawyer’s bounden duty
        Be he moron, shyster, cootie,
        When the gravy train is moving, be aboard.
        He, of course, must hold his licker,
        Be a Latin-spouting slicker,
        Fill the human race with wholesome fear and awe,
        For the life of Riley waits him
        Till the Devil up and dates him
        When He’s finished with the practice of the law.

        To read the address and the verse:

        http://books.google.com/books?id=t1c7hRGnS64C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=jawbones+and+sawbones+r.+emmett+kane&source=bl&ots=pFX1bDz3bs&sig=Co6l2LBvahzjIdVkUA2vn23EGA8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XugtUIWVFonwyQGCtIHADQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=jawbones%20and%20sawbones%20r.%20emmett%20kane&f=false

  9. Jeremy December 18, 2017 at 10:29 am #

    The metals aren’t for ‘spending’.

    They are for carrying your wealth from this monetary paradigm through the coming shitstorm and into the next – assuming that you don’t get separated from them!

    • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 11:43 am #

      “The metals aren’t for ‘spending’.”

      Jeremy,
      In this you are correct…throughout history, gold has been a bug-out currency.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 2:02 pm #

        Yes, the Shaw brothers fled China for Hong Kong with just the shirts on their backs – after burying their gold. One foggy night they came back and got it, quit their cook jobs, and became movie moguls.

  10. zekesdad December 18, 2017 at 10:32 am #

    Jim; I agree we have grave problems in the governance and finances of our country. We obviously have enormous problems with integrity throughout our society, but our economy at this time is not imploding. In fact, most indicators are positive, from the stock market, to housing prices, to employment levels. You’ve repeatedly told us that oil production is about to fall off a cliff. It hasn’t. If anything, there’s something of an oil glut. I paid $2.18 / gallon for gasoline this past weekend.
    Obviously, our debt levels and unfunded liabilities are a huge problem, but the global market does not place a huge premium on American government debt. They are willing to lend our government money for 10 years at a little over 2%. How do you explain that? The people who would be hurt most are bond holders, and those depending on government promises. They won’t get zero, but less than promised. One way to at least to deal with our debt problem would be to put in a national sales or VAT tax dedicated to debt reduction. At least Trump is trying to grow the economy and has made a start to simplify our monstrous tax code. Obama sacrificed growth in the name of equality and got neither. But if you feel that doom is imminent, you should be taking short positions in housing, bonds, the stock market, etc. Look how well that worked out for John Paulson.

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    • ozone December 18, 2017 at 10:54 am #

      A V.A.T. of something akin to 25% on the purchase of yachts, private jets, domiciles of over 1 million bucks, high-end call girls/boys, cocaine, bottles of booze costing more than 100 smackers, items of clothing over 500 balloons, luxury autos over 100k….. well, we could go on and on, couldn’t we? NO deductions for these outlays off of the ol’ IRS bill, btw.
      Sounds fair to me, it’s debt reduction after all. I don’t think there will be any squeaking from the wealthy or their con-gressional handmaidens, do you?

      Gawd grant us GROWTH… it’s the only way the rich can get richer, and I think we can all agree that’s the most important issue facing us.
      As time rolls on, we should be increasingly cautious about what we wish for.

      • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 11:30 am #

        25% VAT? Now you’re talking crazy talk ‘Zone!

        • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 12:18 pm #

          I am constantly amazed that anyone with more than a fourth grade education can somehow believe that even the most insignificant problem can be solved by giving more money to corrupt politicians in a system where fraud is the way of doing business. Truly there is NO cure for stupid.

          • outsider December 18, 2017 at 1:54 pm #

            There is no way Congress could keep their hands off a “national sales or VAT tax dedicated to debt reduction.” They tried a dedicated tax before – the FICA tax – and could not keep their grubby mitts of off that one. If they had, there would be a huge FICA surplus which would be drawn down by us Baby Boomers as we retire. Instead, they spent it all on our bloated military and endless wars. Now they view Social Security and Medicare as just welfare programs that must be cut. Mass euthanasia of the elderly is next.

          • Walter B December 18, 2017 at 2:17 pm #

            When it is mass euthanasia of the Congress and the Senate that is the solution. Fortunately for them, We The People are mostly decent and honest people and could not even think of doing to them what they are doing to us. They are all scum and will destroy us, the nation, and then themselves in the end. Destroying themselves, which IS inevitable once the host dies, is the best part whether we are around to see it or not.

          • Robert White December 18, 2017 at 3:00 pm #

            Mean Reversion is a cure for stupid, but few want to go there since TBTF got ultra-leveraged by Geithner’s lack of creativity, Bernanke’s lack of foresight, Paulson’s lack of Frontal Cortex, and a Congressional lack of oversight. In the case of USA administration one must seriously examine whether members of Congress could actually scrape two neurons together to come up with enough intelligence to reach their combined grade of ‘stupid’ which is their best long term average historically. In brief, giving politicians more money is the only way to keep them employed enough to run the show.

            Letting them know that they are running it into the ground will not help speed up the progress of mean reversion, eh.
            Government will only go willingly to REHAB if they are between a rock and a hard place.

            RW

          • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 6:13 pm #

            “Geithner’s lack of creativity, Bernanke’s lack of foresight, Paulson’s lack of Frontal Cortex, and a Congressional lack of oversight”

            RW,
            What about Yellen’s lack of foreskin?

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 12:00 pm #

      Our economy at this time is not imploding.

      That was true in 1928, 1999 and 2007 and many other years. That statement is only good if it is never true and it mostly is, but our economy does implode and it implodes like clockwork.

      Our system is built to collapse because it surges with greed without sufficient regulation. I had the unfortunate circumstance of learning about ancient wise kings who kept granaries for their people so everyone could be fed in times of famine when I was young. Vague memories of childhood bible study; I don’t know if such kings actually existed but thats not here or there. The point is we have nothing like wise kings now and that makes another hard economic crash inevitable. Within a year if you pay attention to the record of what has happened in America before.

      Here is a list of some old ones.

      Panic of 1785
      Copper Panic of 1789
      Panic of 1796-97
      1802 to 1804
      Depression of 1807
      1812 Recession
      1815 to 1821 Depression
      1822 to 1823 Recession
      1825 to 1826 Recession
      1828 to 1829 Recession

      And a list of modern global recessions.

      1974 to 1975
      1980 to 1983
      1990 to 1993
      1998
      2001 to 2002
      2008 to 2009

      What gets my brain-pan a-sizziling is that huge numbers of people alive now have been around for all these modern global experiments in austerity and they still say it is not gonna happen this time! This makes me think there are some neural circuits in the brain which make us stupid no matter how smart we are. These circuits must get tripped if we see to many smiling people. An ant walking across a kitchen table might imagine him or her self in the middle of an endless desert. An ant can imagine the table to be like the endless sands of Arabia. Ants would invest in the stock market if they could. Perhaps some do.

      • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 12:27 am #

        USA has been in a decline for decades.
        It is masked by technology and credit.
        Sub prime whatevers.

    • DrTomSchmidt December 18, 2017 at 12:32 pm #

      How about a simple wealth tax?

      My new favorite acronym is HENRY: high earner, not rich yet. It turns out that the Democrats have consistently raised taxes on the “rich,” who are in fact HENRYs. It’s time for some REAL class warfare from them: I’d love to see Medicare for all, and a generalized, unavoidable wealth tax on assets. Everyone pays the same rate after allowing for, what, 100K in wealth per person?

      This will not happen, however: despite rhetoric, neither Republicans nor Democrats are interested in taxing wealth.

      • lbs December 18, 2017 at 1:37 pm #

        In a way it is surprising they havent, since the accumulation of assets is the only avenue for anyone to achieve financial security, while the role of politicians is to see that all citizens are and continue to be indentured servants to the government/corporate axis.

  11. JohnAZ December 18, 2017 at 10:36 am #

    Why it does not happen PDQ? The manipulation capability of the money generation mechanisms is huge. They can lie, cheat, stretch the truth, create false capital to offset the loss of real human based capital to kick the proverbial can down the road. No massive cliff jumping, just a slow flow of lemmings accelerating their zeal to jump. A long parade of downward facing stair steps seems more likely than one calamitous leap. The competitive, entrepenurial zeal will be increasingly more important to maintain capital integrity as the powers of hi-tech and resource limitations converge to destroy the human base of the economy. Continuing adjustments to the economic scene may forestall the eventual decline for awhile, but two generations from now will have a decimated world that we would not recognize. We all live in interesting times.

    BTW, neither party has a clue on what to do about the decline. The Dems have had their way for thirty years and here we are. The GOP are trying their “magic” now. Unfortunately their fixes do not include methods of creating satisfactory replacements for automated labor or resources such as water, oil or even lithium to run our gadgets. The decline continues!

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 11:31 am #

      Why ‘it’ does not happen PDQ?

      Because the emperor is all together, all together, as naked as the day that he was born. ‘It’ will happen when someone finally points his golden coiffure topped pinkness out, but nobody wants to be the first to do it.

  12. bukowskisghost December 18, 2017 at 10:47 am #

    It’s been almost twenty years since Greenspan bailed out LTCM, and almost ten since the real estate bubble exploded. We have cowards running colleges today. Students in USA more interested in pointing fingers at anything they deem offensive while real students around the world are getting educated, American kids really don’t want to learn and be challenged, they just want to blame. We have turned into a nation of young debt ridden fools who do nothing but finger point and complain. Every turd in this country wants to be coddled and given a pass on anything they find challenging or thought provoking.

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 11:26 am #

      Pointing fingers and being the clown is always easier to do. Part of ‘growing up’ is figuring out that no particular skill or effort is needed to complain and that we are better off when we do not.

  13. hmuller December 18, 2017 at 10:48 am #

    Interesting choice of metaphors, JHK. Vesuvius about to blow, an A-hole about to blow. And like a modern day Pliny the Elder you’re all over that – taking measurements. Don’t get splattered like Pliny. (LOL)

    • K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 11:21 am #

      It was a strange situation. Pliny collapsed in the falling ash apparently overcome by poison gas yet others with him felt no ill effects and were able to escape. Pliny’s group was not actually in Pompeii but at Herculaneum on the sea, not far away.

  14. FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 10:58 am #

    ought be re-named the US Asset-stripping Assistance Act of 2017

    The essence of the tax Bill of 2017 is the prevention of a new war of the global economic crisis.

    If his tax reform does not pass this week, Trump might as well start packing to flee to Old Good England.

    • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 11:35 am #

      Pay me now or pay me later. The global economic crisis is already here. We just haven’t seen the worst of it yet. Trump is toast either way.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 1:34 pm #

        I’m talking about the acute phase of the economic crisis expressed in a global war.

        • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 3:01 pm #

          We have that now too, it’s just that only the US (which is to say the CIA and their associated riff-raff) has declared it. The War of All against All will be coming along soon enough.

  15. FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 11:02 am #

    A week ago I made a prediction and even made a bet on $20 with one of my friends that Senator McCain will not go to the vote on the tax reform, since Trump, after the defeat in Alabama, does not have a supply of votes in his favor and he needs every vote in order to pass through the Senate this bill right now, before the elected senator from Alabama Democrat Doug Jones takes oath and will have the opportunity to overturn the vote in the US Senate.

    And if Trump succeeds, it will be the biggest defeat of that World Project, to which Hillary Clinton and John McCain belong.

    And voila – Senator McCain can not go to the ballot because of cancer, because after he failed the Republican vote on health reform, he can not openly oppose Trump.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/17/politics/mccain-return-arizona-tax-bill/index.html

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  16. teddyboy46 December 18, 2017 at 11:05 am #

    Friday and Mondays posts were absolutely fantastic. So many colorful metaphors. paints a real picture of whats going on.

  17. K-Dog December 18, 2017 at 11:09 am #

    unintended consequences engineered by the least reassuring cast of characters ever assembled under one capitol dome.

    To be fair the actors in our current kakistocracy did not plant the seeds of the looming barren fruitage. Misery merely only comes to fruition on their watch. Years of cluelessness are behind this coming harvest of pain but it is not Trump’s cluelessness which set it all to teeterring and wobble. There would all crash without Trump, he only makes it happen a few days earlier.

    The nova-like expansion of the stock markets is exactly the sort of action you might expect in a system getting ready to blow.

    The great recession, of 2008 was set off by the sudden collapse of sky-high prices for housing and other things. Now yet again we have sky high housing, only the collapse part is missing. My own doghouse has gone up 25% in only two years. With another place to live we could cash out, but everything else close goes up too. I’ll have to be content with being a paper millionaire.

    There is a widespread feeling here that housing prices will never fall and that is nonsense and a feeling of permanent good times inflates a new Seattle housing bubble. More and more people watching what others do, caught up in intoxicating exuberance, make ever more and more horrible buying decisions. Three bedrooms two baths on less than a quarter acre will now run you over $750,000 anywhere in our area. Misery will be the harvest of their bad decisions when our current game of musical chair house buying stops.

    I hope the stock market crash will only take out matching funds in my 401 K. I have a generous employer who matches contributions at 50%. It would be nice to hang on to what was mine originally when the hammer drops but it probably won’t happen. I’d have no money in the market at all but with a 50% match it is hard to stay away.

    .
    .
    .
    (Kakistocracy – A kakistocracy is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.)

  18. FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 11:13 am #

    Now, when I hope I have expounded my conclusions that the Trump revolution (namely, the success of his election campaign) is a consequence of Brexit, which in turn is the result of an end to a crisis of the British monarchy.

    Indeed Brexit is a consequence of the restoration of the traditional policy of the British monarchy to prevent the formation on the European continent of a dominant power, which in turn is a consequence of the increased influence of monarchy and aristocracy as a social stratum.

    This happened due to the emergence of the institution of the monarchy from the crisis of succession to the throne, provoked by Princess Diana sexual emancipation, which questioned the rights to the throne, not only of Prince Harry, but Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge.

    • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 11:28 am #

      I think your conclusions are somewhat tenuous (if not completely upside down) Finca, but it’s a nice theory anyway. As janet will soon be chiming in to remind us again, Trump won on what was basically a technicality, and had HRC and her posse of bitches not been so completely tone deaf and corrupt, they likely would have won the Electoral College too. Neither the Brexiteers nor the US PTB want a powerful and united Europe, which in any case, is and has been nowhere in sight since WWII. TPTB still control all the real estate that matters: DC, NYC, Boston, London, Brussels, and Tell Aviv/Jerusalem. All the rest are pawns in their global game, to be traded, promoted, or destroyed at will.

    • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 2:01 pm #

      Finca

      Historically, the requirement for a married lady aristocrat or royal was that she produce ‘an heir and a spare’ before taking herself off to please herself (what you call sexual emancipation). We will assume that said lady’s husband had been pleasing himself throughout the process, as was the way. Nobody said life was fair.

      In the case of Diana, she was married to a man who was having an affair with the equally married Camilla Parker-Bowles since before Diana’s own marriage, so I do hope you agree that the very-much-used Diana was entitled to do whatever she liked, especially once divorced. You keep forgetting to mention that Charles and Diana got divorced, him being a long-term adulterer an’ all.

      Now, given all of this, you still don’t need to worry, as Prince Harry, the only one of the brothers whose biological father is a matter of speculation, is only *fifth* in line to the throne, since he is preceded by Charles, William, George and Charlotte. Hence no crisis of succession. By the time they work their way through the first four, vestigial royal families will be the least of our problems.

      On top of all this, I’ve explained to you before the nature of a constitutional monarchy. They’re a fairy-tale, figurehead, not-very-bright family with no political power or right to power.

      They do own a lot of land and property, from which they extract revenues, as do many members of the aristocracy. If you want to find out about power, follow the money, not the titles of a bygone age.

      Other people with no royal or aristocratic inheritance also own lots of UK land and property. And it will still be neo-feudalism when everyone’s paying rent to whoever the growing rentier class are, which is basically a bit of a mixed bunch, some even very rich Russians, but also Chinese and many others, as well as the homegrown ‘riches’, both ‘nouveaux’ and anciens’..

      • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 2:06 pm #

        Good to hear. I know you don’t want any Negro kids growin’ up to become King and all.

        • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 2:41 pm #

          What a typically both ridiculous and disgusting comment.

          I rather liked Katherine Ryan’s joke on ‘Have I got news for you’, recently. She quipped that discrimination on the basis of colour had been shown the door in the UK – and by the royal family – as a beautiful American actress was going to marry a ginger.

          Quite – puts your racist nonsense where it belongs.

          I don’t care what colour any future monarchs are – or prime ministers, more to the point.

          • outsider December 18, 2017 at 3:03 pm #

            GA,

            Good to hears from you, esp. as you are an expert on your curious monarchy. You Britishers who are enthralled with Harry should be disappointed, not with him marrying a mulatto, but with the fact that she is already thirty-six – and looks it. When my wife first got pregnant at age 28, the doctor said that she was already old to have a first child. Won’t you in the UK be upset if the new couple winds up childless.

          • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 3:24 pm #

            That Harry’s got a bit of scalawag in him. I’ll bet their long term chances aren’t good unless she turns a blind eye to him carrying on a little (or a lot!) on the side.

          • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 5:07 pm #

            Harry should be disappointed, not with him marrying a mulatto

            Personally, I am convinced that this marriage ain’t gonna happen. Just watch it.

            And it is not that she is a mulatto, it is misalliance.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 6:45 pm #

            Glad you are such a loyal subject. You deserve to be ruled by an Alien Aristocracy. And we all know what great rulers Black Africans are. Just look at their recent history. Or the history before that.

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 9:15 am #

            Scratch

            I somehow don’t see the feisty Meghan doing the ‘stand by your man’, schtick, like Hillary. She seems more independent.

            Possibly unlike ‘Waity Katie’…

            http://www.chatelaine.com/living/waity-katie-or-lazy-katie-kate-middleton-quits-her-job-to-become-a-royal/

            …who has a lot more invested. ‘Tis said she was groomed by her socially aspiring mum and dad for the post, including being sent to St Andrews university, which is where the posh (including wealthy Americans) aim for when not for Oxford, Cambridge or even Durham. Although neither lad strikes me as a cad and Harry must have pretty much sown his wild oats by now.

            Can’t believe I’m indulging in all this royal gossip – anywhere else I wouldn’t be, but they do have a certain anthropological curiosity value compared to your own republican set-up.

        • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

          Hello outsider

          Yes, it is a curious monarchy, isn’t it? Or rather monarchy is just plain curious in this day and age. I’m no expert – anything I’ve told you is common knowledge.

          I don’t have any view at all on their private life or whether they have any children. I’m not sure why I should be remotely interested. By the way, in most people’s eyes, Meghan Markle goes by the category ‘woman’. That’s all. I wonder what age you’d like her to look other than the age she is. That’s the way it tends to work. I’m sure she talks very highly of you too 🙂

          Your doctor does sound a bit strange in the advice he gives – and you had to pay for the privilege, of course – that must have been annoying.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 2:35 pm #

        I am still waiting for you to bring to our attention some quotes from the British non-existent constitution.

        Let me point out, that a Constitutional Monarchy without a Constitution, is a Monarchy Absolute.

        • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 2:54 pm #

          Finca, I’ve already provided you with a reading list, but since you don’t want to read Bagehot’s ‘The English Constitution’, here are some Wiki pages that might help you.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy

          Some quotes:

          “A constitutional monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the sovereign exercises their authorities in accordance with a written *or unwritten* constitution”

          “The United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms are all constitutional monarchies in the Westminster tradition of constitutional governance.”

          “In the Kingdom of England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 led to a constitutional monarchy restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701, although limits on the power of the monarch (‘a limited monarchy’) are much older than that (see Magna Carta). At the same time, in Scotland the Convention of Estates enacted the Claim of Right Act 1689, which placed similar limits on the Scottish monarchy.”

          And, finally…

          “Today, the role of the British monarch is by convention effectively ceremonial.”

          I fully realise none of this will make the slightest difference to the next episode of your phantasmagoria, but there you have it anyway.

          • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 3:16 pm #

            Thank you. I love it. An “Unwritten Constitution”.

            Passed from father to son as a legend.

            British monarch is by convention effectively ceremonial

            Could you point us to when that convention was signed and by whom?

          • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 4:03 pm #

            Hey Green Alba is the Muzzy Mayor of Londonistan down with all that political mumbo jumbo?

            Or does he have his own agenda?

            nrh

          • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 5:28 pm #

            Finca

            Oh, dear. You didn’t read any of the links, then. Ah well, you can’t say I didn’t try.

          • Ol' Scratch December 18, 2017 at 6:31 pm #

            GA,

            Finca doesn’t get a lot of reading done in the afternoon, what with the grain alcohol infused bong hits and all.

          • FincaInTheMountains December 19, 2017 at 12:08 am #

            GA,

            Let’s keep that “Unwritten Constitution” a little secret away from our American friends and partners, especially their constitutional lawyers who’d go nuts over the concept.

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:17 am #

            Finca

            It’s only a secret to you. It’s even discussed in the Wikipedia links I sent you so I think our secret’s blown. And I think there’s very little that gets past the powers that be in the US – ask Edward Snowden 🙂

      • Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 4:26 pm #

        @GreenAlba,

        Speaking as a Canadian, I am endlessly grateful to the British for shouldering the expense of our constitutional monarchy. Corgis, pageantry, real estate, state dinners, private jets, security, the whole mishegoss — to say nothing of the graven image of Herself on every coin and bill. The whole elaborate hall of mirrors would be stupendously pointless, except that the legal fiction of the Crown serves the cause of freedom, by separating the sovereignty of public authority from the government of the day.

        One day, your country or mine may choose to become a republic. If and when that happens, I hope we have the wisdom to maintain the head of state as a powerless figurehead, with real power vested elsewhere. The alternative is far too terrible to imagine.

        • outsider December 18, 2017 at 6:21 pm #

          GA,
          Have you seen the scary/funny movie “Get Out!”? It’s about a rich white girl who takes her poor black boyfriend to her parents’ estate for the weekend. Let’s just say that things don’t go well for him. Pretty good movie, actually. Anyway, I saw a funny spoof of the movie in a 30 minute YouTube video with Meghan being told to STAY AWAY from the cult – before its too late. It’s like Diana is warning her from the grave.

        • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 6:24 pm #

          “I hope we have the wisdom to maintain the head of state as a powerless figurehead, with real power vested elsewhere.”

          Elrond,
          Interesting statement…do you know how the Balfour Document came to be uttered? England needed loans for the War, and they…entered into an agreement with the “real power vested elsewhere”…there is always real power vested elsewhere…just follow the money.

        • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 6:32 pm #

          @Elrond

          Well, indeed!

          Regarding the cost of it all, well it wouldn’t be fair to have you contribute when it’s the mother country that gets the tourist dollars – and they do get a lot of tourist dollars. Americans can’t get enough of this stuff for some reason. I think they don’t really get how little most of my fellow citizens care about royal hatches, matches and dispatches.

          Anyway, I have been unable to penetrate the Force Field of Finca’s Fantasies, which I imagine are relatively harmless in the scheme of things. Mere explanations don’t seem to help. There seems to be an entire created world there, after the fashion of Tolkien.

          I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand about the concept of ‘a body of constitutional law that isn’t all listed in one easy-to-read document’, but I know a dead end when I see one.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 6:48 pm #

            Can you put your finger on the one that gives the Government the right to elect a new people?

  19. PeteAtomic December 18, 2017 at 11:47 am #

    On the media side now you have the loss of net neutrality, and corporate monopolism will Big Lie the population that these “tax breaks” & the other big sucking sounds from main streets are totally awesome.

  20. wholy1 December 18, 2017 at 12:11 pm #

    Yup, the “Quickening” gets more exciting/out-of-control daily and at some not-yet-known triggering inflection point/critical mass moment when the “BIG LIE[s]” can no longer be sustained/controlled, entropy will no longer be forestalled/denied. Ya’ll best be getting the HELLo away from those “coasters”, “citYzens”, nuke plants and GROUNDed on a portion of inland, elevated, RURAL, arable, UN-encumbered/UN-addressed county dirt. Get GATHERed, GUNned, GARDENed, PROVISIONed and . . . S-I-M-P-L-I-F-I-E-D! “Remotely viewing” the “Murkaan turd” accelerating ‘tords the toilet bowl hole is the best way to – as Jim Morrison was purported to have once not-so-eloquently stated, ” . . . get [your] kicks before the whole sh*t-house goes up in flames”. Might be pleasantly surprised to learn that such a life-style is both very satisfying and fulfilling. ‘Nuf said . . .

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    • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 2:20 pm #

      Sho nuf! Blow the Shofars. Itz Ova!

      • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 6:27 pm #

        “Blow the Shofars”

        I used to live next door to the Shofars…couple of randy appearing bachelors….

  21. BuckP December 18, 2017 at 12:19 pm #

    Great column Jim! Your use of the English language is unsurpassed!

    Bloomberg headline (August 2017) It read:
    LIBOR’s UNCERTAIN FUTURE TRIGGERS $350 TRILLION SUCCESSION HEADACHE
    As stated in the article, a few years back the LIBOR scandal broke with the news that the world’s biggest banks were manipulating interest rates. Now, British regulators are saying the following:
    1. Going back 20 years, the framework for hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars worth finanancial transactions has been fictional.
    2. We are zooming towards a legal and economic “clusterfuck” of galactic proportions- the uncertain future.

    As reported in Solari.com, Dr. Mark Skidmore, professor of Economics at Michigan State University, has discovered and reported that $21 trillion in undocumented adjustments occurred at the DOD and HUD between 1998 and 2015. In other words, magic money from the “alternative universe” goes from the U. S. Treasury through the DOD and HUD to somewhere. This money has not been appropriated by Congress and these transactions are unconstitutional and illegal. Estimates are that undocumented adjustments added in from other agencies could push this total above $40 trillion.

    Business Insider headline (December 18,2018)
    NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS FOR PETRODOLLAR AS YUAN-PRICED CRUDE FUTURES DUE TO LAUNCH

    Things are not hunky dory!

    • ozone December 18, 2017 at 8:50 pm #

      Buck P.,
      Around $40 trillion, eh? Pretty soon, we’re talkin’ real money…

      Oopsie!!
      (I wonder if that will be the headline when/if this is hammered home to the New York Times?)

      • BuckP December 18, 2017 at 9:30 pm #

        ” a billion here a billion there, pretty soon we’re talking real money”
        Everett Dirksen
        United States Senator from Illinois 1951-1969

        I wonder what Everett would think today with the billions having turned into trillions!

        • malthuss December 18, 2017 at 11:59 pm #

          Magellans Jeff Vinik also is someone that “” “” is attributed to.

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:39 am #

          BAU.

        • ozone December 19, 2017 at 9:00 am #

          What I’m wondering is: Where are the records of these illegal transactions stored? There’s gonna be a large fire. Might as well throw in a false flag op while we’re at it. Remember that 9-11 thingy? That erased a vast multitude of sins and made others immediately “acceptable” and normalized standard practice. Viva la Devolution!

          • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 9:21 am #

            Someplace safe, you can be sure. Probably on one of the NSA’s (or an even darker agency’s) massive server farms. But you’re right, WTC-7 was previously one of the main repositories. Poof! No more!

          • BuckP December 19, 2017 at 10:42 am #

            Dr. Skidmore said the records were available on the DOD and HUD websites when he did his research but the data has now been removed from these websites. He did copy these records which are available for viewing at solari.com.

    • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 12:00 am #

      NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS FOR PETRODOLLAR AS YUAN-PRICED CRUDE FUTURES DUE TO LAUNCH

      2017 launch?

      • BuckP December 19, 2017 at 1:17 am #

        Malthuss,
        .The Business Insider headline was today December 18, 2017. Per Business Insider, the Chinese are days away from a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan.

        President Trump in his national security speech today named Russia and China as threats to US interests. The oligarchy with the worlds’ largest military is getting nervous. Not good!

        • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 12:38 pm #

          Thank You.
          The collapse I have been waiting for is here, almost.

          Buck P, Were you known here by another name?

          • BuckP December 19, 2017 at 2:26 pm #

            No, I’m new to the forum! I really enjoy JHK’s writing and have found his blogs to be very informative. Also, I always learn something new from the comments section.

  22. FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 1:25 pm #

    A week ago I made a prediction and even made a bet on $20 with one of my friends that Senator McCain will not go to the vote on the tax reform == Finca

    A byproduct of winning that twenty was critical information about Donald Trump’s increased support among his electorate. For a whole year, the goal of Hillary Clinton’s policy was the discrediting of Donald Trump and the destruction of his core electorate, but now it became clear why Trump did not put forward a year ago the argument that as the legitimate representative of the elected US president, General Michael Flynn did not fall under the Logan Act.

    And his supporters came to a conclusion (which unfortunately did not occur to me) that Trump had been harassed by Hillary Clinton for almost a year in order to give Michael Flynn the opportunity to strike a deal with the justice that would allow him to take his son out from under the blow.

    That’s just the point, that after the appearance of this argument, the deal lost all meaning to the special prosecutor Mueller, and Trump suffered, endured, endured in order to save the son of General Flynn, who was really threatened by 40 years in prison.

    In short, Trump does not betray his own!

    You understand how much Trump’s popularity has increased.

    • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 1:45 pm #

      Alabama is ready to rebel and requests a recount of the voting results

      • handyman December 18, 2017 at 9:23 pm #

        Where in Alabama do you live? Where I live there is a general air of sheepishness that it went so far, and relief Moore didn’t win. To avoid embarrassment most don’t bring it up. To be sure, there are the usual deplorables and members of the American Taliban making a lot of noise, but mostly just that. Moore just has to keep the grift going. It beats working!

    • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 2:17 pm #

      The man is heaven sent.

      brh

  23. Htruth December 18, 2017 at 2:07 pm #

    The tax deal will be a good deal for some: https://youtu.be/zF9JfaMxZwM

  24. BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 2:15 pm #

    I love the allusion to Mt Vesuvius.

    I can hear that baby perculating, gurgling and bubbling up as I write this. She’s ready to blow! A thousand years from now they’ll find me here in the barn working on an old shotgun whilst drinking a beer, frozen in time and space, a surprised look on my face.

    brh

    • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 2:24 pm #

      So you admire the Roman Soldier they found trapped in magma? He would not run, but stayed loyal to his post even as the molten lava took him. Truly a highly developed example of his type and one of the reasons Rome was a world power.

      Of course one could say he was a fool too. And that throwing his life away wasn’t the best service he could render to Rome. As Patton said, don’t die for your country, make the enemy did for his. Or to put it another way: Live for your country.

  25. Robert White December 18, 2017 at 2:20 pm #

    Freud was one of the first to systematize Psychological Defense Mechanisms such as Denial, Reaction Formation, et cetera. He was the first to equate money with feces in terms of unconscious Freudian Slips that emanated out of sessions where Free Association was encouraged by therapists analysing clients verbal utterances. Historically, and in terms of longitudinal assessment of Freud’s perspectives on the unconscious mind, we merely need to read contemporary discourse on Finance to realize that his assertions with respect to money being equated with feces is universally manifested via Finance Blogs worldwide. From ZeroHedge to Clusterfuck Nation we can evidence the universal equation of money & fecal matter in the unconscious minds of almost all associated with the study of monetary policy research.

    Just sayin’

    RW

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  26. capt spaulding December 18, 2017 at 2:33 pm #

    Just used a Bitcoin to buy some digital condoms. Can’t wait to try ’em out.

    • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 2:41 pm #

      Ok, you asked for it.

      Did you make sure they gonna fit your digital penis?

      • capt spaulding December 18, 2017 at 3:02 pm #

        Hey. Online I’m having a great piece of ass.

  27. Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 4:35 pm #

    Charlottesville police chief announces immediate retirement

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/365475-charlottesville-police-chief-retiring-immediately

    “Alfred Thomas, the police chief of Charlottesville, Va., announced Monday he is retiring effective immediately, roughly two weeks after a report found his department responded poorly to a violent white supremacist rally in August.

    “‘I will be forever grateful for having had the opportunity to protect and serve a community I love so dearly,’ Thomas said in a statement.

    “Thomas had served as police chief since May 2016.

    “Earlier this month, a former federal prosecutor released a report that reviewed law enforcement’s response to August’s ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, which was organized in response to the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

    “The report found local police had a ‘flawed plan’ for the rally, and ‘elevated officer safety over public safety.’

    “The report found a superior told the lone officer assigned to block traffic at an intersection to abandon her post when protesters closed in. A short time later, a car barreled into protesters, killing activist Heather Heyer.

    “‘Even if there was no explicit “stand down” order in place, [the Charlottesville Police Department] and [Virginia State Police] both failed to “stand up” to protect human life,’ the report stated.”

    • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 4:41 pm #

      How about up in Canada Elrond, are there any problems with the police and law enforcement?

      Why don’t you worry about that and not what’s happening here.

      brh

      • Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 6:26 pm #

        BackRowHeckler: “How about up in Canada Elrond, are there any problems with the police and law enforcement?”

        Of course there are. Here are a couple of examples:

        Sammy Yatim caused a disruption by pulling a switchblade on a streetcar, threatening passengers and exposing himself. Police officer James Forcillo killed Yatim with three shots. Had he stopped there, he’d be on the job today, and I for one would be happy enough with his performance. It was the six additional shots he fired into Yatim as he lay dead on the floor of the streetcar that led the jury to convict him of attempted murder. Forcillo was sentenced to six years.

        – An off-duty Toronto police officer and his brother face aggravated assault charges in the <a href=“https://theintercept.com/2017/10/21/toronto-police-carding-desmond-cole-intercepted/”beating of Dafonte Miller that left the 19-year-old blind in one eye. Charges were only laid after a lawyer accused the police of covering up the incident and relying on presumption of guilt against a black victim of police violence. The charges against Miller included an accusation of theft above $5,000 of money belonging to the father of the two assailants — a veteran cop who, ironically, works in the force’s Professional Standards Unit.

        “Why don’t you worry about that and not what’s happening here.”

        I have the time and energy to do both. And unfortunately, the rise of the violent fascist fringe movement that caused such horror in Charlottesville that day isn’t going to stay behind your border, either, so that makes it my business as well. Thanks for looking out for me, though.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 6:55 pm #

          A Syrian immigrant I see. White Canadians have a natural right to fight for the land their fore-fathers conquered, and the nation that is being taken from them by a ruthless Elite. What you are is a traitor to THAT Nation.

          • Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 10:33 pm #

            Shush, baby, shush. Don’t worry, it’s okay, everything will be all right. Here, have a chocolate, you’ll feel better. There, now; doesn’t that feel wonderful in your tum-tum?

            (I’ve had them myself; they’re quite delicious.)

          • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 1:47 am #

            Some of the Chobani Muslims were caught sexually abusing a little White girl in Idaho. You can take a boy out of Dar Al Islam, but you can’t take the Islam out of the boy.

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 6:29 am #

            Janos

            You seem fond of anecdotes, so here’s a major one you are hopefully equally familiar with:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence

          • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 9:25 am #

            GA,

            Logic has no effect on Janos. He’s a race seeking missile.

      • Robert White December 18, 2017 at 9:29 pm #

        ‘Merican violence & social contagion always gets imported to CANADA, and that’s why we all pay attention to the USA response to violence up here in CANADA. Small arms are smuggled into CANADA, and they are Made in the USA. In brief, since the race riots of the 60s we in CANADA keep a close eye on the contagion south of our border because Americans are violent & Hobbesian Brutes bent on warmongering, genocide of third world countries, and all sorts of antisocial mayhem like 911 controlled demolition, et cetera. The CIA kills their own citizens for False Flag purposes. Bottom line is that America has a few deep seated psychological problems worthy of monitoring from a CANUCK perspective.

        I’m seventh gen Canadian, and my grandfather lost his leg in the First World War Infantry whilst my father peeled potatoes in the Second World War as RCAF. I, for one, watch the state, security, and three levels of law enforcement. All have social problems, psychological problems, and systemic problems. Everything on the American side is magnified by the sheer numbers in comparison with CANADA. We look at the USA as a harbinger of what’s to come along lines of social contagion, demonstrations, et cetera.

        RW

        • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 10:34 pm #

          Salient points Robert.

          Then again, isn’t Trudeau balls to the wall importing into Canada as much of the third world as he can, including and especially Muslims and south Asians by the millions.

          We’ll see how these ‘New Canadians’ assimilate into Canadian culture (if there is one), especially when white hegemony is challenged, and the ‘Rising tide of Color’ begins to make even lefties a little bit nervous.

          New tensions and fissures will emerge you cannot now even imagine.

          the Swedes made great sport of our race problems here, so critical of white America and so supportive to any group that wasn’t white. Now the Swedes are getting a taste of it themselves, and its sweet, so sweet to behold. But its tragic, too.

          brh

          • Robert White December 19, 2017 at 10:24 am #

            The Liberals are much more ethnically diverse than the NeoCONS IMHO. CANADA now imports about 300k immigrants per year plus or minus 20k. Lately, we are importing Muslims due to Middle East genocide by the Americans. In brief, Canadians are compassionate towards human beings that are suffering. Americans are genociding millions throughout the world and we in CANADA will continue working to undermine USA NeoCON antisocial regression on a daily basis. Canadians appreciate USA Democrats as opposed to the scum-of-the-Earth Republicans. Most Canadians despised Steven Harper, and his alignment with the George W. Bush Torture Regime. I am a Progressive Conservative, but I would support the Liberals just to fuck the NeoCONS.

            Immigration in CANADA is fairly muted given our land mass IMHO. We could double our intake and still not notice it much. Jobs are a problem here so I agree with you on lines of employment. Where all the immigrants are going to work is beyond moi.

            RW

          • Elrond Hubbard December 19, 2017 at 10:53 am #

            Nice schadenfreude there, BRH. Some people are always looking for a fight and delight in seeing others fail.

            What Canada is looking for is prosperity and success. The one thing most new Canadians have in common is that they’re well-suited to help us achieve both. (To the point that David Suzuki has denounced Canada for “plunder[ing] southern countries to deprive them of their future leaders … to increase our population to support economic growth”.

            Multiculturalism was invented in Canada, and it has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. It is emphatically not intended as a policy of providing a little space for every identity to wrap itself in and bawl for its rights — i.e., ghettoization. The goal of multiculturalism is to allow for the greatest possible inclusion within an overall framework of Canadian identity, so that we can realize the benefits of immigration as described above. The deal we offer new Canadians is this: we want you to bring as much cultural richness with you as you can, along with the ability and willingness to work. In return, we’ll provide you the tools so you can work hard and add to the prosperity of our country. Do that and we’ll cut you in on the deal of being Canadian.

            That’s the opposite of the kind of welfare-state buying-off of excluded immigrant populations you see in places like the banlieus of Paris, that leads to uprisings, torchings of cars and the like. That’s also why I’m less worried about home-grown ethnic strife than about seeing it come across the border from the land of the free — the land that left the business of defeating the slave power unfinished and thus is permeated to this day with the legacy of the Confederacy.

          • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 12:40 pm #

            RW is a fool.
            His nation is dying.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 12:43 am #

          And of course the more diversity the better, right? It’s our STRENGTH as George Bush said. And the Liberals say it too! It must be true then, right? Homogeneity is so boring and White Homogeneity is the most boring of all. Immigrants are the real Canadians!

          • Robert White December 19, 2017 at 10:34 am #

            The USA is a ‘meltingpot’ with respect to immigration. CANADA is a ‘mosaic’ in contradistinction. Homogeneity with respect to ethnicity is boring as you say. Back in the 80s I was thinking of leaving CANADA just to get away from the homogenous culture which I found stifling.

            RW

    • Sean Coleman December 18, 2017 at 5:05 pm #

      ‘elevated officer safety over public safety’

      How many American policemen have been killed or injured this year?

      • elysianfield December 18, 2017 at 6:36 pm #

        Sean,
        To paraphrase a quote found elsewhere…”Officer Safety is not the prime consideration…”

        To protect and serve, however used to be the mantra, at least in my day. Officer safety was never the prime consideration.

        There is a US Coast Guard saying…”They tell you you gotta go out…but they don’t say you gotta come back….”

      • Elrond Hubbard December 18, 2017 at 6:53 pm #

        I don’t have the most up-to-date figures at my fingertips. Here’s a PDF that gives figures for 2014-2015, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

        https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

        I see 106 died on the job in 2014 and 102 in 2015 in the USA. Next question: Is that a lot? How dangerous is it to be a police officer?

        https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-for-men.html

        Here are the top ten most dangerous jobs in the USA, in terms of on-the-job fatalities:

        1. Logging worker: 132 on-the-job fatalities per 100,000
        2. Fisher and fishing worker: 55 per 100,000
        3. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers: >40 per 100,000
        4. Roofers: <40 per 100,000
        5. Refuse and recyclable material collectors (i.e. garbage men): 38 per 100,000
        6. Structural iron and steel workers: 30 per 100,000
        7. Truck drivers: 24 per 100,000
        8. Farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers: 22 per 100,000
        9. Electrical power-line installer and repairer: 21 per 100,000
        10. Supervisors of landscaping, lawn service and grounds-keeping workers: 18 per 100,000

        According to Wikipedia, there were around 765,000 sworn law enforcement personnel (i.e. with powers of arrest, not typists) in 2008. It was probably higher by 2015, but let’s use that figure. 102 deaths that year divided by 765,000 comes out to less than 14 out of 100,000.

        Numbers don’t lie. If I’m a cop, it’s more realistic for me to fear having to cut down a tree, empty a garbage can or mow the lawn than being killed by a suspect.

        • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 11:07 am #

          Elrond,
          The list has no merit…I can’t recall someone saying they hated fishing workers and was going to kill one. Roofers rarely are viewed with hatred…airline pilots are rarely seen rolling around the aisle in “steerage’ rasslin’ with drunk passengers.

          Killed by a suspect? I had at least two attempts on my life in the four years I was on the street. The list does not mention injuries…hundreds of injuries a day…major and minor.

          In many cities…law enforcement is…intensely physical (if you are taken to euphemism….

          • Elrond Hubbard December 19, 2017 at 3:20 pm #

            Dunno what you want me to say, elysianfield. I’m glad you survived your four years on the street, but the plural of anecdote is not data.

            An honourable police force protects the public. A dishonourable one protects itself against the public. When I see something that looks like the latter, I’ll speak up.

          • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 5:21 pm #

            Elrond,
            Sorry for the anecdotes, but the list you proffer is simply not to the point…dangerous jobs like firemen and police rush to the trouble…all the occupations you mention rush away. The fact that firemen and police are not more represented in your list is that we are trained and better armed…usually in better physical condition, and certainly situation aware. Police and fire are injured by the hundreds every day…sorry we do not measure up to the garbage men….

            I have an idea…mention this list and argue its merit with a Canadian Mounty…make sure someone videos the exchange for posting on the internet. Yeah….

          • Elrond Hubbard December 20, 2017 at 9:21 am #

            Happily, elysianfield. In fact I’ve already had this conversation with my uncle (my mother’s brother) and my stepfather (her husband), both of whom are retired Mounties. And we all still get along great. I won’t speak for either of them, but they hardly denounced me as an effete snob.

            If the fact that they’re family to me doesn’t suit you, go ahead and nominate someone, bring ’em up here and let’s have a beer together. It’s up to you if you wanna make it happen, I’ve already put in the effort.

        • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:19 am #

          Elrond,
          Ok, you had this conversation with two retired mounties…what did they say? Were they in agreement with the tenor of the list?

          You’ve put in the effort? What does that mean?

          “Numbers don’t lie. If I’m a cop, it’s more realistic for me to fear having to cut down a tree, empty a garbage can or mow the lawn than being killed by a suspect.”

          Elrond, I have to say with admiration, that you have lived a very protected and charmed life…you can be considered the “poster child” for the statement…”civilization works”….

    • Sean Coleman December 20, 2017 at 7:55 am #

      “The report found a superior told the lone officer assigned to block traffic at an intersection to abandon her post when protesters closed in.”

      What do you think the phrase “closed in” means? Violent and threatening behaviour? Was the officer removed for her own safety when violent and threatening counter-demonstrators “closed in”? Or was she moved because of “violent white supremacists”?

      “The report found local police had a ‘flawed plan’ for the rally”

      What would have been a better plan?

      “[The police] failed to “stand up” to protect human life”

      Does this mean the lives of innocent passers by who just happened to be there, authorized protestors or people deliberately breaking the law? If it is the last (and that is ‘if’ – see below) should the police put their own lives at risk to protect the lives of law-breakers or of people behaving in a threatening or violent manner? I don’t think so.

      I actually know little about what happened and the media coverage at the time did little to clarify it. Were both the Unite the Right rally and the counter-demonstration authorized, or banned?

  28. DrGonzo December 18, 2017 at 4:35 pm #

    “The economy is actually collapsing”.

    Um, no. Are housing prices, stock valuations, and cryptocurrency trades now in a massive bubble mode that will burst eventually, in a very big and very painful way? Yes. But that is not the same as an economy that is “collapsing”.

    Anyone who travels in the Third World can recognize an economy that is barely limping along (e.g., Honduras), versus one that is generating many opportunities for many people (e.g., Canada and the United States). Kunstler needs to get out of North America once in a while and smell the shit.

    I agree that income inequality in our country is obscene, and getting worse. I agree that the wealth concentration among the one-percenters is driving our asset values into about-to-pop bubble territory. But, again, that’s a very different story than a “collapsing” economy. On the contrary, a recovering economy is driving this irrational exuberance. JHK’s perpetual hysteria is getting tiring.

    • FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 6:57 pm #

      Economic optimism soars, boosting Trump’s approval rating: CNBC survey

      https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/economic-optimism-soaring-helping-trump-cnbc-survey.html

      I have always said that the antonym of the word “depression” is “optimism”.

    • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 8:47 pm #

      Yeah, the worst place I’ve ever seen is Haiti in the 1980s. Now that was an economy in collapse. The poverty and squalor were beyond belief. I actually experienced a bad case of culture shock and couldn’t get back to the ship quick enough.

      But I understand places exist even worse than Haiti; Sudan, Angola, East St Louis, and the Congo, for example.

      brh

      • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 11:14 am #

        BRH,
        Friend of mine vacationed on one of the barefoot cruises…one stop in Jamaica…they were being eye-fucked so bad by the locals he and his wife remained on the boat.

    • The Articulate Infant December 19, 2017 at 3:13 am #

      If it bothers you so much then then I’d suggest stop reading it and commenting here.

      • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 2:21 pm #

        Let s/he comment.
        Who cares?

        What collapsed is the Industrial Base.
        The Banking-Federal Reserve parts are still working.

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:17 am #

      Healthy economies (assuming anyone living in the west even knows what that is, since we haven’t actually seen one since the end of WWII at least) don’t blow speculative bubbles. We’ve been through all this so many times before, and yet the simpletons amongst us (including you, apparently) always insist that “it’s different this time.” It is and it isn’t. It’s exactly the same, but bigger. Much, MUCH bigger!

      And referring to third world countries (especially in the Americas) as a counterpoint is disingenuous, since there’s a single country responsible for all their pain and misery: the USA and their corporate sharks. But take comfort in the fact that what they’re being subjected to now, we here in the US will be receiving in full all too soon enough as well.

      • DrGonzo December 19, 2017 at 9:27 am #

        No, I don’t think “it’s different this time”. As I already said above, I’m waiting for the current speculative bubble to burst. It will be painful.

        But our country will still produce natural gas, build wind turbines, install millions of solar panels, create better drugs and surgical procedures, invent more efficient machines and computers, etc. Which are not the characteristics of an economy in “collapse”.

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 10:25 am #

          With what capital once it’s all wiped out? And who, pray tell, will the capitalists sell all that energy to, assuming they wanted to in the first place? Especially when their overriding goal now is elimination of non-productive human “assets?” Finance drives the train for financialists, and an end game is clearly in sight now. Economies are nothing more than elaborate confidence games, and who among us has confidence these days? The top 1%, of course. The rest of us know the true score.

      • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 2:22 pm #

        And referring to third world countries (especially in the Americas) as a counterpoint is disingenuous, since there’s a single country responsible for all their pain and misery: the USA and their corporate sharks.

        Really? So the Aztecs had a wonderful country? Human flesh for sale in the markets.

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 4:52 pm #

          And the US was what at the time? Nonexistent. You’re off by a few hundred years.

  29. FincaInTheMountains December 18, 2017 at 5:41 pm #

    The best movie I’ve ever seen in US

    This is a point of view at the Western Black Project of a British aristocrat 15 years ago and the explanation why Stanley Kubrick followed Charlie Chaplin to Old Good England.

    And soon in my opinion this could be a film about Donald Trump and the Deep State if his tax reform does not pass this week.

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

    Brazil (1985) End Credits
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW1pMI4qDzc

    Brazil Trailer and Full Soundtrack Album
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jof1RQ4cY

    Just a good record
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HtHEgINHO0

    A shot of vodka, mentally drunk on the grave of Stanley Kubrick, John Nash and his heroic wife, who died the death of the brave in the war with the Western Black Project.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8syeDziDgY

    • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm #

      It’s said Kubrick died mysteriously shortly after the release of “Eyes Wide Shut”, his fictional expose of the hard partying Elite, who mix sexual decadence and satanic mysticism.

      • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 12:52 am #

        Yes, there is that theory.
        Have you studied Podestas emails? the ones that allude to Scalia, the night or morning of his death?

        • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 1:01 am #

          Yes, I’m a believer!

          Did you see the 20/20 expose of the “Nexium” (they spell it differently) Success Cult – equal parts EST, Scientology, and Dale Carnegie?

          As part of their empowerment, women were getting branded as slaves. In their fury against critics, they are entirely in the Scientology mode filing law suits after law suit and slander after slander. Their War Chest is inexhaustible, thanks to the Bronfman sisters, heirs to the Bronfman fortune. And they have a Fijian Island picked out too if things go bad here. Shades of Da Free John.

          What a great time to attack them – during the great unraveling. This Guy (blanking on his name right now) focuses on Women and has a harem. His devotees call him “Vanguard”. His female Lieutenant is “Proctor”. Assholes!

  30. Pucker December 18, 2017 at 6:31 pm #

    According to the book “Twelve Years a Slave”, they didn’t torture the negro slaves on the antebellum Louisiana plantations, apart from whippings. No waterboarding, etc. Masters gave male slaves passes to visit female negro slaves at neighboring plantations to increase the herd. It appears that one important purpose of the Christmas festivities afforded the slaves was to give slaves the opportunity to meet slaves from neighboring plantations for the purpose of breeding and increasing the herd.

    Christmas time was festive on the plantation—Whole hogs, chickens, wild deer, and wild cows from the forest were roasted on the hot coals. There were sweet potatoes and corn-on-the-cob. The Masters encouraged the slaves to fornicate. It was a merry time. Music, dancing, and singing. Like the TV show “Soul Train”.

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    • Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 6:58 pm #

      Many Blacks were homeless and destitute after being “freed”. Some were interviewed and said they hated freedom.

      • malthuss December 21, 2017 at 10:34 am #

        Without Uncle Nanny, would they be housed and happy?
        Or homeless and destitute?

    • GreenAlba December 18, 2017 at 7:39 pm #

      @Pucker

      I first read your post as satire. Then I remembered Americans have a reputation for not really doing irony.

      So now I’m left in awe (but not in a good way) that there’s a part of the so-called civilised world where someone thinks it’s OK to use the word ‘herd’ in that context unironically.

      So maybe I’ll go back to reading it as satire. One doesn’t want to lose faith in humanity altogether. And maybe it was. I’m surprised you didn’t add a comment about how problematic it must have been for all those women to be on maternity leave at the same time in September, what with the maternity benefits being so generous.

      Just whipping and no waterboarding, eh? Heartwarming.

      And now I’ll wait for someone to say ‘whoosh’. Please…

      • Pucker December 18, 2017 at 8:27 pm #

        Catherine Austin Fitts says that if one wants to understand how the government manages the people, then think of in terms of “livestock management”.

        Once they have a digital currency, then they can chip everyone like livestock.

        • Pucker December 18, 2017 at 9:09 pm #

          They use Propaganda to stampede the herd into particular directions. For example, into war, into the irrational belief that the Russians rigged the election for Trump, into buying prescription drugs, Christmas shopping, etc.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 12:48 am #

        You are a Great Autist. There should be museums for autists like you. I’d come to watch you behind glass or bars. Maybe we could have a drink together on our respective sides, and compare the merits of Wonderland vs Neverland.

  31. Janos Skorenzy December 18, 2017 at 7:34 pm #

    A Declaration of Genocide

    https://www.amren.com/news/2017/12/commission-eu-white-mass-third-world-migration-must-new-norm/

    A few short years ago, we were mocked to scorn for saying the EU was planning things like this. We were right and our mockers were wrong.

    • janet December 18, 2017 at 10:38 pm #

      Janos, migration, mobility and diversity is the new norm. Get over it. They are coming for VDARE.com. And then they’re coming for you, janos. Whites are already an insignificant percentage of the world population, over 10%. You will not be missed.

      White imperialism, white colonialism, slavery, genocide, white use of nuclear weapons on civilians, and your support of violence, anti-semitism, anti-Isam, and your support of war without end will certainly not be missed.

      If America is the culmination of Western white civilization, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilization. This is a painful truth; few of us want to go that far. … The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone–its ideologies and inventions–which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself. — Susan Sontag

      • BackRowHeckler December 18, 2017 at 11:13 pm #

        Hey Little Jane they’ll be coming for your cats.

        then you’ll have problem on your hands.

        brh

      • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 7:42 am #

        “Janos, migration, mobility and diversity is the new norm.”

        Thus far I’m with you, as a statement of likely fact (although in a world where even marine diesel is scarce, it may again be limited, or at least slower).

        Those who see this as a bad thing and one to be avoided should have persuaded their leaders to (a) not meddle, for their own ends, in countries and regions they have now destabilised, leading to major humanitarian crises, and (b) listen to the scientists talking about climate change 40 years ago, since that story is going to lead to humanitarian crises of epic proportions. Even Maggie Thatcher, from her narrow ideological fortress, accepted the truth of climate change, because she was a scientist by training. Sadly she was very pro-car, which rather undid that virtue.

        “And then they’re coming for you, janos. Whites are already an
        insignificant percentage of the world population, over 10%. You
        will not be missed.”

        At this point we part company. This is not helpful and it’s certainly not where I’m coming from. I’m not concerned about the percentage; I’m concerned that I don’t think the answer to Janos is becoming like Janos. That would mean he and his hate-mongering would have won.

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:56 am #

          “Keep your friend close and your enemies even closer.”

          Damn! Might have to give Janos a big ol’ warm embrace then!

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 9:49 am #

            I think he might give me an embrace like the one Commodus gave to Maximus at the end of Gladiator!

            Hope for the best but be prepared for the worst…

          • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 10:19 am #

            LOL! Yep. He can be a bit prickly at times, can’t he?

        • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 1:39 pm #

          King Shivaji killed a huge Pathan Muslim warrior that way once. More of a fighting man than his recently deceased father, the little five foot five inch King embraced a six foot five Pathan Muslim Chief as if to submit, driving knives hidden in his sleeves into his back.

          Now that is a Patriot.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 2:13 pm #

          Yet the Communists have always embraced violence as a first resort. Look at the Punch a Nazi in the face movement a la Richard Spencer – endorsed by no less than the N.Y Times. And of course the countless rallies, speeches, lectures, and conferences disrupted or effectively cancelled by Left Wing Goons.

          You posture as peaceful but your allies are anything but. And a man or woman is know by the company they keep.

          The real Nazis – German National Socialists – were denied access to the print and radio media so they took to the streets. They were immediately attacked by Left Wing Goons. But they fought back. And after 13 years and 25,000 casualties (and over 300 deaths), they triumphed.

      • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 11:19 am #

        Janet,
        Susan Sontag can kiss my nightstick.

        You are being disingenuous.

  32. 100th Avatar December 18, 2017 at 9:22 pm #

    “The country has gotten used to thinking that the game of pretend is exactly the same as what is actually going on in the world”

    Isn’t it all a complicated game of pretend? This web of fabricated social constructs that only exists in the minds of men?

    Perhaps those that think there is some norm, some baseline, to return to are in a deeper and more perilous game of pretend.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 12:52 am #

      The Game of Thrones. Remember what the Mage told the Dwarf Lord? Power is a mystery, often just a shadow, but terribly real if people believe it is there.

      • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:30 am #

        You ol’ dragon slayer, you!

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 9:23 am #

          I’m guessing you would be leading the Army of the Dead, Janos.

  33. 100th Avatar December 18, 2017 at 9:26 pm #

    Karl Rove was merely riffing on Cheney’s “the American way of life is non-negotiable” dictat

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:02 am #

      The entire Bush bunch operated from a hive mind: a collection of individual personalities with a single collective mind. Must say, quite effective in achieving their rather misguided goals, although they weren’t working for us, they were working for “higher powers” that only they knew about. Took the American rubes eight years to catch on, by which time the playbook was scrapped in favor of an even greater master of dramatic effect: Obama the Great. Nevertheless, their legacy will be lasting: 9-11, the GWOT, record deficits, and unparalleled corruption and secrecy, even by DC’s lofty standards. While the rubes look down on him and scoff, the elite chuckle at the inside joke that apparently only they are in on. Shrub – and Obama after him as well – was merely playing a part for which he’d been groomed his entire life and he could not have played it any better!

  34. Pucker December 18, 2017 at 10:15 pm #

    “Here comes Santa Claus! Here comes Santa Claus! Right down Santa Claus Lane!” [Santa whips out an RPG from his bag of toys and takes aim. ]

    “Their evidently natural rights to life, liberty and security, already challenged by deep-rooted inequality, are threatened by political dysfunction and economic stagnation, and, in places affected by climate change, a scarcity and suffering characteristic of pre-modern economic life. The result is, as Arendt feared, a ‘tremendous increase in mutual hatred and a somewhat universal irritability of everybody against everybody else’, or ressentiment. An existential resentment of other people’s being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness, ressentiment, as it lingers and deepens, poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism.”

    “Age Of Anger”, Pankaj Mishra

  35. janet December 19, 2017 at 12:09 am #

    Russia’s Putin is treating Trump as an asset.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/putin-cultivating-asset-trump-james-clapper-article-1.3707880

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    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:50 am #

      Hell, the entire US political apparatus is a Putin asset at this point. DC is in freefall at this point and Putin is just standing back in eager anticipation of the end of the evil empire. It can’t come soon enough. Wouldn’t surprise me to see him slip a dagger into the heart of the great beast during a messy transition of power, such as, oh…, an impeachment proceedings or its immediate aftermath, maybe?

      Be careful what you and your handlers/programmers wish for janet-bot. You just might get it.

  36. janet December 19, 2017 at 12:25 am #

    Trump didn’t look like he was going to make it through today’s speech.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRWfXyHXkAAFegk.jpg

    Trump slammed previous administration’s national security policy, while he does nothing about an actual cyber attack on our election by a hostile foreign power.

    Why did he use two hands to hold the glass of water, like a toddler? Are his hands too small to hold the glass?

    And what was all the snorting about? The snorting was prominent. He was tiring of reading. Low-energy president. Pausing to absorb the words. Tone and emphasis were off. Scared to death? I think he’s breaking under the stress. Come back, Hillary!

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:05 am #

      Just wondering, does your coven practice ritual torture and mutilation of small animals, maybe even kidnapped children? Seems like that might be something you’d be into.

      • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:57 am #

        Male children only, presumably.

  37. K-Dog December 19, 2017 at 2:19 am #

    The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. – Hannah Arendt

    • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 6:41 am #

      Great quote, K-Dog, along with:

      “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

      “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

      Orwell ‘1984’, although too well known to require attribution, hopefully.

      • pequiste December 19, 2017 at 8:33 am #

        Both of you have now been scheduled for a compulsory appointment with Mr. O’Brien in room 101. No need to drive over – they will come for you.

        • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:52 am #

          Just as well, pequiste, as I don’t have a car, so thanks for the heads up. I’m not sure the no.10 bus goes that way.

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:53 am #

            Maybe it’s been the no. 101 bus all along and I didn’t realise…

          • K-Dog December 19, 2017 at 1:20 pm #

            I hope we can enjoy some time together “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree” together before our final disappearances. Pretend to go along with the program until O’Brien lets you out. He will try and use your darkest secret to break you. It will be hard going.

            On a happier reference my initial re-reading of another book gave me the impression I was Bernard. Years later, rereading that book I realized I had been wrong all along. I was not Bernard at all. We often do not see ourselves as we really are. I am Helmholtz. Come to my island, it promises raw and windy majesty.

          • K-Dog December 19, 2017 at 1:28 pm #

            One too many togethers and my initial reading was not a re-reading. Real dogs make mistakes.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 2:16 pm #

            Some Blacks called me Bernie Goetz once. A proud moment.

            Some poor White called me Bill Gates recently. Not such a proud moment.

          • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 6:44 am #

            K-Dog

            Thanks for the invitation – first coffee in the Chestnut Tree is on me (mine will be tea).

            I had to look up the Bernard/Helmholz reference – read the book as a student, so aeons ago, and I don’t remember any of the characters now, but I found this reader’s note, which I trust is what you are referring to in your affinity with Helmholz:

            “Helmholz is secure, humble and patient; but Bernard is insecure, arrogant and pitiful. Not only that, but Helmholz is tall, handsome, and can have any girl he ever wants…”

            And you never told us, so modest too 🙂

          • K-Dog December 20, 2017 at 11:29 am #

            Bernard and Helmholtz both were misfits. There was something not quite right physically about Bernard and that is why he was a misfit. Helmholtz in contrast had no flaws so everything in life came easy for him, too easy it turned out. Lacking challenge Helmholtz was bored to tears with modern life and wanted meaning. The moment when they were about to be exiled to an island is telling. Bernard freaks out because really all he wanted to do was fit in and now he can’t. Helmholtz is delighted and wants his island to be harsh enough to chisel his character into shape. Not that he needs it. No tropical paradise for him but finally he has opportunity and meaning. In the book these two friends represent extremes on a continuum and elements of both men are generally found in real misfits such as myself.

            Then too, perish the thought, some of us are misfits because we actually think and not because we are predisposed to be any certain way. Thinkers drives profilers nuts I’m sure.

            As far as women go, women need a reason. Just being good looking is not enough and as vexing as that seemingly cold blooded truth is, that truth is probably a good thing.

          • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 7:14 am #

            Thanks for the clarification.

            Yes, women need a reason, sensible ones anyway. I’d go further and say that without a *good* reason as the real reason, the ‘lookers’ can be the worst bets as partners in life (whichever sex), for all the reasons we know. Not always, of course, but examples abound.

            “Then too, perish the thought, some of us are misfits
            because we actually think and not because we are
            predisposed to be any certain way. Thinkers drives profilers
            nuts I’m sure.”

            Amen to that. One thing that annoys me is people who know you think (a) assuming you must also think (b) either because they are aware of a pattern of people who think (a) also thinking (b) or generally just in projection of their own prejudices. Party politics is a prime example – you’re supposed to buy their vision as a job lot, which is ridiculous.

    • ozone December 19, 2017 at 8:34 am #

      K-dog,
      Thanks for that. And right here on this very blog-comment section we see little minions assiduously working to do *just that* — to erase “the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false”. It’s rather transparent, but then again targeted information (hell, just call it propaganda) these days is more ‘absorbed’ than actually thought about. It’s going to get very “interesting” after this spate of total control falls to pieces. That will take some doing and a boatload of pain, because far too many folks have pledged (and *will* pledge) their livelihoods to the propagation and promotion of it.

      Sadly, be prepared for the dissolution of literacy as most will be far to busy securing the basics of life to concern themselves with higher ideals or record-keeping. This devolution has happened in the contemporary age and there’s a very good chance it may happen here as well.

      • pequiste December 19, 2017 at 10:17 am #

        How dare you call it propaganda!

        We (the Evil Fuckers In Charge) prefer to call it infotainment.

        And the proles, lumpen and generally stunned-and-overwhelmed pay for it. Handsomely, and, might I add, are happy to do so!*

        * What is the average American households cable bill for basic service plus perhaps something for the kiddies (of all ages) and a “sports” package plus some access to Weinstein’s movies among others?

        The answer: $100 a month!

        http://fortune.com/2016/09/23/average-cable-tv-bill/

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:56 pm #

          $100 @ month? If you’re lucky! That must not include internet and all the assorted surcharges and taxes.

          • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 6:59 am #

            Scratch

            You truly are being ripped off. I thought my cable bill with Virginmedia was excessive. All taxes included, I pay about £70/month ($93) for a basic TV package (all I require -there’s more than enough rubbish included already that we never look at), unlimited broadband and unlimited UK landline phone calls. The BBC license fee, which enables me to watch both the BBC and all Freeview channels (i.e. much the same as the cable package on the little non-cable Freeview TV in the kitchen, costs £147/year and people complain about that.

          • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:52 am #

            GA,

            Getting ripped off is considered the cost of doing business these days in the USA. I live in a remote area, so the choices are few, and the alternatives are even worse. I hope to disconnect altogether as I get closer to retirement, assuming that day ever comes, but for now… Looking into overseas move alternatives as well. Thailand gets excellent reviews.

  38. wm5135 December 19, 2017 at 9:18 am #

    Where did all of these people get the notion that capitalism was ever intended to lift all boats? Or, where is the historical data that confirms it was ever the case? Capitalism is an accounting procedure, it accounts for the fact that I Got Mine and, unfortunately for you, that includes yours.

    I always like to remember J.K. Galbraith’s note that every time 5% control 95% of the wealth there has been a revolution. Not every revolution involves the use of arms. The revolution from draft animals to automobiles was accomplished without an armed insurgency. There were plenty of lawyers though! Wasn’t Greer’s advice to collapse early and avoid the rush?

    Above there was a comment made in reference to the sloth at the bottom of the pile. Please allow me to make an interpretation of this bovine pasture enrichment. “You stupid bastards need to bust your ass to make sure I Get Mine.” (see accounting procedure above, coming soon to your neighborhood)

    If you would, look up IQ distribution internationally and where our little hamlet places on the list. Free Dumb our greatest export by volume, decibel and tonnage. UK outpaces us by 2% points.

    • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 9:33 am #

      “Where did all of these people get the notion that capitalism was ever intended to lift all boats? ”

      I think it was widely promoted before the collapse of the USSR. Prior to the collapse there was an ideological beauty contest going on to persuade the hoi polloi of each system that their own system had their interests more at heart than the other. After the USSR collapsed, the kid gloves came off in the West, there being no contest to maintain (End of History and all that, haha).

      • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 10:35 am #

        Yeah, that was one of the truly great marketing slogans of the 20th century. Elegant, simple, and even partially/potentially true on occasion. All of the truly great lies have an element of truth to them.

        Yes, Fukuyama was a useful and I would hope well paid fool/tool for the cause back in the 90’s before the plan fully revealed itself. Wrong racial/ethnic background, however, to be a truly major player.

      • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 11:34 am #

        “Where did all of these people get the notion that capitalism was ever intended to lift all boats? Or, where is the historical data that confirms it was ever the case?

        Alba,

        The historical data is before you. In America, even the very poor have vehicles, cell phones, and wax fat…and, I should mention, usually a complete set of dentures….

        “Lifting all boats”? More of a banquet, where even the servants did benefit from the crumbs….1946 to 1980ish. Things are now becoming a bit less verdant, where the banquet guests show better manners by remaining out of sight, and the crumbs less filling.

    • ozone December 19, 2017 at 9:44 am #

      Damn, wm.! It appears that we’ve been fooled again, contrary to both Dubya’s and The Who’s assertions. Good face-slap… ain’t that the way reality hits us these days?

  39. ozone December 19, 2017 at 9:35 am #

    Apologies in advance for this cut-and-paste, but I feel it’s both trenchant and germane to our host’s current missive.
    Charles Hugh Smith sez:

    “Disturbing, destabilizing abnormalities are now accepted as normal life in America:

    1. Sprawling tent camps of homeless sprout like flowers of poverty in U.S. cities, leaving mountains of trash that speak volumes about systemic failure, destitution and overwhelmed city services.

    2. The Federal Reserve’s vaunted “Wealth Effect” that was supposed to be a tide that raised all boats at least a bit has concentrated wealth and power in the top 5%, 1%, and 1/10th of 1%, leaving the bottom 95% with diminished prospects and a thinning stake in The American Project.

    3. The stock market’s year-long levitation while the real-world economy decays is a perverse counter-correlation that reflects the widening divide between those enriched by the asset bubbles and those left further behind.

    4. In the midst of a supposedly resurgent U.S. “recovery” in its 9th year of wonderfulness, the opioid epidemic has killed tens of thousands and crippled hundreds of thousands of lives and families, yet the federal government, supposedly the most powerful force on the planet, is frozen in a decades-long law-enforcement/Drug Gulag obsession, blind to the Big Pharma Cartel that has created and fueled the epidemic as a means of reaping billions in profits.

    5. The nation’s Corporate/Billionaire-owned Media obsess endlessly over the chimera of Russian collusion, as if that was the Big Story That Matters, while the nation’s rigged economy is coming apart at the seams.

    6. While the Sports Media Empires fret over the decline of fan engagement in the NFL, nobody dares mention that Pro Sports is now unaffordable to the vast majority of households.

    7. Healthcare costs continue spiraling higher, even as Americans are visibly less healthy.

    8. The endless media circus of celebrity scandal, the Russian collusion propaganda parade and the over-saturation of sports obscure the Permanent War Policies of America’s Central State.

    9. While The Deep State has entered the common lexicon, all the media chatter does little to illuminate the internecine battles within the Deep State that are playing out as shadows cast in the Russian Collusion Kabuki theater.

    10. The reality that all these social, political and financial abnormalities are inherently destabilizing is never covered in the Corporate Media, but this orchestrated refusal to face the disturbing facts of systemic decay leaves the status quo increasingly fragile and prone to unexpected disruption.”

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 10:29 am #

      “Internecine.” Now there’s a word you don’t see used nearly enough these days!

      • K-Dog December 19, 2017 at 1:26 pm #

        internecine battles within the Deep State?

        Anybody here know anything about this?

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 2:36 pm #

          I thought it was common knowledge Dog. If they were united Trump’s head would have been on a pike long ago.

  40. Dumbedup December 19, 2017 at 10:08 am #

    “There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

    William Jennings Bryan (Cross of Gold speech, 1896)

    This Republican tax plan will add 3.1 trillion to the federal deficit initially and 9 trillion or so over the longer term. The Republicans will then use this to argue for more cuts to programs they don’t like – essentially so they can spend more on programs they do like. In their rush to help their benefactors they will shrink the middle class to almost nothing by extracting wealth and moving most of them to the poverty level. Republicans don’t want the poor to go away. They want them to die because they are a hindrance to their plan to reduce the size of government and eliminate every government program which provides individual benefits. It will be replaced by a corporate welfare plan. This has been the plan since FDR. A handful of them realize that this is just plain stealing so they have manufactured other issues to distract us like war, class, sex, religious and race politics.

    Neo-liberals (not classic liberals) like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Clintons have joined the fray and are as complicit as neo-cons like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. They just disguise their motives differently.

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    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 10:28 am #

      This Republican tax plan will add 3.1 trillion to the federal deficit initially and 9 trillion or so over the longer term. The Republicans will then use this to argue for more cuts to programs they don’t like – essentially so they can spend more on programs they do like. In their rush to help their benefactors they will shrink the middle class to almost nothing by extracting wealth and moving most of them to the poverty level.

      And yet the working class will continue to support them in droves. It’s true: you just can’t fix stupid.

      • pequiste December 19, 2017 at 11:01 am #

        It’s the largest tribe in the world Scratchy – The Stupid People.

      • Dumbedup December 19, 2017 at 11:47 am #

        I think we might be seeing the front edge of some change, but for now the working class will probably continue to vote Republican because the alternative is a Democratic Party that sold it’s soul for big donations and no longer represents the working middle class. That working middle class has also been taught by Republican hype and propaganda, which is designed to appeal to passion and prejudice, that Democratic ideals like equal rights for minorities represent bad policy. They allowed themselves to be painted themselves with identity politics and the globalism brush. At the same time, the working middle class has been duped into believing that the Republicans are working for them when they are actually working against them.

        Add blunders like nominating candidates like Hillary Clinton who were easy to dislike and it was the perfect storm. Sanders would have beaten Trump like a rented mule, but the neo-liberals in the Democratic establishment controlled the DNC for Clinton.

        • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 2:54 pm #

          Lies.

          Democratic ideals like equal rights for minorities.

          Ideals? Or laws? Democrats have pushed for special rights for so called ‘Minorities.’

          You lie.

          • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:54 pm #

            Relax already! Democrats don’t actually stand for any of the bullshit they pontificate about. Holy Christ, were you asleep during the Obama years, or what? You do them and yourself a disservice by giving them that much credit. You conservative creeps really are afraid of your own shadow, aren’t you?

  41. volodya December 19, 2017 at 11:26 am #

    We can no longer discern reality from bullshit.

    This is a long-standing problem. After all people have been talking about “emerging markets” for a long time, ever since Wall Street re-characterized impoverished shit-holes as such.

    And they say “EBITDA” too with a straight face. Neither of these terms mean anything in the real, physical world of cause and effect, where people need to eat every day and not just in the mythical “long-run” (another bull-shit term if there ever was one), where the laws of thermodynamics apply and where the speed of light is finite.

    If you want to lose all your money, drink the Kool-Aid, start talking and acting as if those terms mean something. Did you notice how often real estate melt-downs happen? They talk a lot about “internal rate of return”. Drink up sucker.

  42. volodya December 19, 2017 at 12:00 pm #

    Judy Woodruff did a segment on PBS Newshour about the President not accepting the idea of Russian interference. Clearly, from Judy’s body language, it was an article of faith that the Russians swung the election.

    The problem with people like Judy is that they throw reason and facts and evidence away in their blind rage at Hillary’s loss.

    This preposterous Russian interference story is a Dubya-esque WMD fairy tale. The amounts of money that Russian connected sources spent on Facebook ads ($100,000) was microscopic compared to the $81 million spent by Trump and Hillary or to the $2.5 billion that the 2016 campaign cost or to the $28 billion in ad revenue collected by Facebook. Same with Twitter, miniscule numbers from Russian sources. And what cable number is RT on the dial? Two hundred something? How many Americans watch RT?

    And Clapper gets up and utters this laughable phony baloney about Putin knowing how to handle his asset – meaning Trump.

    This contemptible nonsense actually gets taken seriously by the people that tell us they’re the best of the best, the most educated, the most moral and enlightened. You can only laugh.

    • Dumbedup December 19, 2017 at 12:37 pm #

      Russian interference (or any other for that matter) is a red herring. Foreign nations have interfered in our elections before and will again. It is the nature of open elections. The real issue is collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Did Trump (or someone on his behalf) ask for help or accept it? What kind of help was offered and accepted? Did anyone in the Trump campaign conspire with Russian officials to break elections laws? That there were phone calls and meetings mean nothing even if they talked about the election. What did they actually accomplish other than agree it would be better for US-Russia relations if Trump were elected.

      The bottom line is this: With the Trump campaign’s knowledge and consent, did the Russians illegally provide information to the Trump campaign about the Clinton campaign, help cast fraudulent votes or hack computers to change results? Anything short of that is silly and a wild goose chase.

      • volodya December 19, 2017 at 1:58 pm #

        The issue of collusion has been investigated since somewhere mid 2016 depending on what story you listen to. The investigation has Clintonites hoping and praying that they dig something up. So far? Nothing. Nada.

        But the investigation is mis-directed. They ought to be investigating the Clinton campaign and their farcical payment of, how much was it, $10 million, for that nonsensical Steele Dossier of information from Russian sources. They was done Clinton style, they used Russian sources, but they put that Fusion GPS company in between. But this was collusion pure and simple. if it wasn’t collusion then tell me what it was.

        They also ought to be investigating multi-million dollar payments to the Clinton Foundation and also Bill personally for – cough – speaking fees in connection to the uranium deal. If you want smoke and fire and money, a LOT of money, that deal has it tall.

        As far as Trump’s collusion, the “investigation” has been going on and on and on and on.This is turning into a joke. This is as insubstantial as the interference baloney. While we’re at it, nobody’s explained what services the Russians could render that couldn’t be done by Americans in the US. And why exactly the Russians would want Trump as opposed to Hillary.

        Seems to me that Hillary is the ideal foreign enemy that every Russian despot would want in order to boost his own domestic popularity. Not Trump.

        The folks running this thing (Deep Staters, Republicans and Democrats alike) better watch out. Already they’ve outed the Podesta brothers as being up to their necks in Russians. They may discover and then have to try and cover up things they don’t want to know about Establishment and Deep Staters that they don’t want to annoy.

        As far as that hack of the DNC emails goes, there’s people that laugh at the assertion that the dastardly Russians did it. Assange sez it wasn’t the Russians, William Binney sez it had to be an inside job by someone in close physical proximity. You even have a dead body to account for.

        • Dumbedup December 19, 2017 at 9:04 pm #

          I agree about the Clintons. They are as crooked as they come. But I’m not convinced that Jared Kushner and others didn’t cook up a deal to get some help with dirt on Clinton. She was heading for a win. Remember, we all went to bed election night 2016 believing she had won. Trump (or at least some of his aids thought so) wasn’t going to win without some help.

    • ozone December 19, 2017 at 5:27 pm #

      “This contemptible nonsense actually gets taken seriously by the people that tell us they’re the best of the best, the most educated, the most moral and enlightened. You can only laugh.”

      V.,
      Now that’s one of the most succinct ways to express this YUGE diversionary mountain of pigshit that I’ve ever read! Beeee-cauzzz, it accurately indicates that those who spout/fervently believe such balderdash are the most venal of the venal, (educated, or *indoctrinated*?), the absolutely A-moral and UN-enlightened. Laughter is the appropriate response, until things start to impinge on “regular” meals (that would be less than one per day). …At which time, pigshit is properly applied to vegetable-growing areas, not to broadsheets for the manufacture of mistaken consent.

    • ozone December 19, 2017 at 5:48 pm #

      “The amounts of money that Russian connected sources spent on Facebook ads ($100,000)…”

      v.,
      Big, AHA! moment there. I can’t find it right now, but Faceplant had reported $44,000 in ad revenue from the eeeeeville Russkies… until they had a little visit from the fb of i; after which the tote board suddenly went to the 100 grand figure. Go figure. Why, it’s like an oily miracle of lamps burning far beyond their allotted time period. (Hint: the priestly priests snuffed ’em when no one was looking and re-lit when expecting company. D-duh.) Did gawd change the Russkies investment numbers so that lowly youmans tumbled to the “correct” conclusions?

  43. Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 1:43 pm #

    Complete narrative collapse in Cville after new report blames the City for everything. The Police Chief is falling on his night stick, no doubt in hopes that will spare the higher ups from scrutiny. And how high does this conspiracy and collusion go? Perhaps all the way up to the New York, London, Tel Aviv, Washington, Toronto Axis of Evil.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/charlottesville-police-chief-resigns-in-wake-of-report-on-white-supremacist-rally/2017/12/18/536ac8a2-e42c-11e7-a65d-1ac0fd7f097e_story.html?utm_term=.485205598b10

    Elrond on suicide watch. Life isn’t worth living without the Narrative!

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 2:32 pm #

      My god Janos! I could swear that Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas is… black! The horror! The horror!

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

        I hate people like you far more than most Blacks. As Cicero said, the enemy within is always the most dangerous.

        Or to put it in a positive sense: I like pro 2nd Amendment Black sheriffs far more than Whites like you, Elrond, and Alba. Or Alan West. Clarence Thomas. Reverend Manning. Farakahn even cuz he’s for Black responsibility.

        • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:49 pm #

          Thanks Ol’ Janos! Coming from you, that’s a compliment!

        • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:09 pm #

          I’m not ‘within’. I’m an observer from across a very large pond. We don’t have as many specimens of your type over here, so it’s an interesting bit of observational anthropology. Albeit depressing.

          • Elrond Hubbard December 20, 2017 at 9:35 am #

            Please be careful, GreenAlba. Typically it’s when economic or natural-resource failures leave large populations bereft that nationalist extremists have their day. That’s what happened in Yugoslavia, for example, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s failure. If Brexit ends up being disorderly, as it’s currently shaping up to be, some pretty nasty forces are likely to feast on the consequences. Look out for yourself.

          • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 9:06 am #

            Thanks, Elrond. We do have them here, but very few as extreme as Janos. And the’re not the same type. Janos has some background intelligence, albeit sadly misapplied – most of our homegrown neo-nazis are barely literate thugs. Not that that makes them any less dangerous.

            The UK had it’s ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ moment back in the 30s, but the working class symbolically sent the fascists packing in the famous Battle of Cable Street.

            These are of course new times and such memories can lead to complacency. I started to be aware of the whole peak oil discussion over a decade ago, reading JHK, Heinberg, Orlov and Rob Hopkins of the Transition movement. However, as on your own continent, the ideas gained very little traction in the mainstream (George Monbiot tried his best, to much disdain).

            The only political grouping to take real (opportunistic) notice of the peak oil debate a decade ago were the knuckle draggers of the BNP, precisely for the reasons you describe.

            They’re defunct now – their slightly less rabid followers decamped to UKIP, with the results we have seen. The worst of them are now in organisations like Britain First (one of whose calumnious tweets was recently and shamelessly forwarded by one Donald Trump in another degradation of his office) and the English Defence League (most of this stuff goes on in England, rather than the rest of the UK).

            On Brexit, I’ve just ordered this book:

            https://unbound.com/books/brexit/

            Looks like a good read. The differences between English nationalism and what has been described as Scottish civic nationalism (I’m not even an SNP supporter) are important.

          • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 9:12 am #

            And on the contribution made by the tabloid press, there’s a significant quote re Rupert Murdoch:

            “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. ‘That’s easy’, he replied. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’”

            Taking back control, eh…

    • Elrond Hubbard December 19, 2017 at 3:16 pm #

      Uhh, this is exactly the same story I already posted about.

      This story says the same thing as the one I linked to: The Charlottesville police chief has resigned because a report found his police force responded inadequately to the Unite the Right rally.

      Not the city. The Charlottesville police force. Especially the police chief. Exactly as I wrote above.

      It says the Charlottesville failed to intervene when a violent and dangerous fringe group invaded and took over their town. The Charlottesville police failed to intervene when they clashed with counterprotesters.

      Quote: “The lack of adequate preparation led to ‘disastrous results.'” That is, lack of adequate preparation for white-supremacist goons choosing their town for a show of force.

      Quote: “Police did not intervene to break up brawls on downtown streets.”

      The quote that prompted the chief’s resignation called the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer “the most tragic manifestation of the failure to protect public safety after the event” and pointed to police decisions that left the section of the city where Heyer was struck abandoned by law enforcement.

      The Charlottesville police surely earned the blame they are receiving. After all, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. But it’s a curious frame of mind that stops there and neglects the actual evil that the police failed to combat that day.

      [Fight Club] I am Janos’ complete lack of reading comprehension. [/Fight Club]

      Curious indeed. Congratulations, Janos. You’ve shown yourself up as a fool and a fanatic, and I wasn’t even trying.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 4:58 pm #

        “A dangerous group” – are you trying to insinuate that it was the White Nationalists? No fool, it was your Leftist Antifa allies – as was the Plan all along.

        Scratch: His race has nothing to do with his betrayal of his office, at least not in this case. But of course Blacks are going to tend to be against White Nationalists and incompetent in any case.

        • Elrond Hubbard December 20, 2017 at 9:30 am #

          What, was white supremacist goons not clear enough? Reading comprehension indeed.

  44. capt spaulding December 19, 2017 at 2:29 pm #

    Just finished listening to Rush Limbaugh explaining how any of the provisions in the tax bill that affect the middle class badly are actually the fault of the liberals. Limiting the deduction for local & state taxes to $10,000 is just the republicans trying to get the liberals in states like California, to pay their fair share for once. The republicans I talk to have only good things to say about the proposed tax changes. Is there any sanity left in this country? If you people are that stupid, then you deserve whatever you get.

    • ozone December 19, 2017 at 5:57 pm #

      Mon Capitaine,
      Well… there ya go! When people are confusidated and a-skeert, they tend to go to the fantasy and cargo-cult-y side of [mis]understanding the world. Some call it, “coping”, others call it, “leaving damn fools to their fate”.

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:47 pm #

      The good Cap’n has evidently taken leave of his senses. Lt Maryk, assume command!

  45. Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 2:31 pm #

    The Hyksos, a foreign people, forced their way into the Delta of Ancient Egypt. Probably a Semitic people displaced by the Hittites, they then proceeded to pretend to be Egyptians, building Egyptian style Temples, worshiping Egyptian gods and wearing Egyptian style clothes. They must have been Non-Aryans: We’d never conquer by stealth like this. And the Egyptians weren’t having it either, calling them “vile Asiatics”.

    The Hyksos set up a Cushite Kingdom in the far South, sandwiching the real Egyptians between them. Kamose, the final ruler of the 17th Dynasty, vowed revenge against them saying, “What serves this strength of mine, when a chieftain is in Avaris and another in Cush and I sit united with a an Asiatic and a Nubian, each man in possession of his slice of this Egypt, and I cannot pass by him as far as Memphis. See he holds Khmun, and no man has respite from spoliation through servitude to the Setyu. I will grapple with him and slit open his belly. My desire is to liberate Egypt and smite the Asiatic.

    A great Patriot.

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    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 2:34 pm #

      Tell us more Janos!

    • capt spaulding December 19, 2017 at 2:44 pm #

      Absolutely fascinating., what’s your point?

      • malthuss December 19, 2017 at 2:57 pm #

        White nations have been infiltrated, Id gather.

        • janet December 19, 2017 at 3:20 pm #

          Africa already had great civilization, the Nubian being one of them. The infiltration came from the Aryans and there went the neighborhood.

          • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 5:49 pm #

            Absolutely! Now we can be in agreement….

            In the near future, work will begin in excavating, deep in what is now known as the Congo, at the head waters of the Lualabra river in Katanga province, a magnificent city of skyscrapers and cathedrals, now buried for centuries and reclaimed by the tetsi fly and the impenetrable jungle. The population lived there in prosperity and peace for hundreds of generations, until white men, coveting their Nubian beauties, arrived by the dozens and immediately became wards of the city-state. After hundreds of years of sucking the life blood from the timid, pacific population, the White Devils (or “Crackas” as they were called) used the primitive weapons of that period to lay waste to the entire city-state…killing the entire population, destroying their vast libraries, stealing their technology and leaving social diseases and Ebola to fester.

            Work will commence on the excavation the minute they locate the site….

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 5:04 pm #

        This shit’s been going on a long time, Cap. And if it goes on long enough, the dogs of war have to be loosed. You are one such a Dog of War. I can barely hold you back. I’m not sure I want to!

        Now speaking to you as a Man, surely you can appreciate a great Warrior and Patriot like Kamose? Or do you dismiss him as a “Nazi” because he was fighting Semitic invaders? They may or may not have been the direct ancestors of the Jews – it’s not sure.

        • janet December 19, 2017 at 6:57 pm #

          Janos, migration, mobility and diversity is the new norm. Get over it.

  46. janet December 19, 2017 at 2:42 pm #

    “The investigation has Clintonites hoping and praying that they dig something up. So far? Nothing. Nada.” –volodya

    The investigation is going just fine. Trump supports the investigation because Mueller (a Republican) can clear Trump of any wrongdoing.

    https://www.justice.gov/sco

  47. janet December 19, 2017 at 2:56 pm #

    “And why exactly the Russians would want Trump as opposed to Hillary.” –volodya

    It was quid pro quo. Putin helps Trump get elected (quid) to get favors (pro) related to sanctions against Putin (quo).

    It turns out Trump’s word cannot be trusted. Even though he had called for warmer relations with Russia as a candidate and president, even though he could have exercised a veto, Trump betrayed Putin and signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA on August 2, 2017.

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:42 pm #

      And yet, no evidence to date has been presented, nor is any likely to, your robotic assertions notwithstanding. Seriously, minimum wage aside, don’t you have something better to do with your pitiful life?

  48. malthuss December 19, 2017 at 2:58 pm #

    Notable quote,

    Hey Green Alba is the Muzzy Mayor of Londonistan down with all that political mumbo jumbo? does he have his own agenda?

    • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 7:13 pm #

      Hey Malthuss

      Ask me a literate question without shouting and I’ll try to give you a literate answer. Without shouting. In the meantime, you’ll have heard of GIGO and will need to tailor your expectations accordingly.

      • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 10:26 am #

        OK, so no attempt to rewrite BackRowHeckler’s and your (adopted) question to make it literate or even to make it seem like a genuine question and not an illiterate placard slogan worthy of the Westboro Baptists.

        Well, I’ll rise above your level and try to add some actual information to what you have not dignified by raising it to the level of ‘debate’. I would prefer not to make any further comments on this thread, so I’ll try to be comprehensive – bear with me.

        The gentleman in question has a name, which is Sadiq Khan. Wiki (available to you, too) tells me that he is of working class origins –
        I believe his father was a bus driver – who has a law degree. That would already suggest to me that he will have a decent understanding of UK constitutional law, so nothing I clarified for Finca will strike him as ‘political mumbo jumbo’. I take a cousinly interest in your polity – you are not obliged to go any further than Breitbart or Fox News for your understanding of mine, although it would further many good objectives if you did.

        Khan appears to have worked as a solicitor for a human rights law firm called ‘Christian Fisher’ (hilarious, eh?), which, by the time he left, became Christian Khan (even more hilarious, surely?). That would further make it unlikely that he shares your bigoted approach to life. I doubt he would lower himself – and neither should he – to respond to anyone referring to him as the ‘Muzzy Mayor of Londonistan’. It’s difficult to know how best to respond to malign ignorance. You want to ignore it, but you feel you should clean up the mess a bit as well in case anyone else thinks it’s, you know, really funny, like farting in class when you’re twelve.

        Anyway, I hope that helps with the first bit of your ‘question’.

        Now, his agenda. Well, he’s the Mayor of London. Yes, that’s his actual title, although bigotry and bitterness make it difficult for you to type it. Therefore his agenda is to do his best by the people of London – all of the people of London. And because he’s just a Muslim and not a bigot, he has no trouble with that concept. He’s a professional. He knows that his Muslim faith is part of his personal life and not his public persona. As you can read yourself in Wiki, ‘he has expressed the view that “too often the people who are ‘representing’ the Islamic faith aren’t representative, they’re angry men with beards. And that is not what Islam is about’.

        A further quote in Wiki tells me that ‘Khan received death threats from Islamic extremists after voting in favour of the same-sex marriage equality bill. He was also threatened by the far-right group Britain First, which in 2016 threatened to take “direct action” against Khan where he “lives, works and prays” as part of an anti-Muslim campaign’. I guess when you’re being attacked from both extreme sides, you’re probably doing something right – but will need to watch your back (ask the MP Jo Cox – actually no, you can’t, can you – she was murdered by a far-right extremist while carrying out her public duties, leaving her two small children motherless. What a world, eh?).

        Now, people who read Breitbart will have principally have heard of this very popular but feisty mayor because of tweets sent with the usual impulsiveness and lack of thought by your rather less popular President. And Sadiq doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

        Khan refuses to play the Jihadist game and fall for their ‘clash of civilisations’ rhetoric. He is as disgusted by terrorists as anyone else. Only a bigot would make an assumption, based on no evidence whatsoever, that he wouldn’t be.

        I apologise to other CFN readers here for the length of this post, but I do believe it’s important to correct bigotry and replace it with facts.

        Following a horrific incident of Jihadi terrorism in London, the Mayor’s speech included the following:

        ““There can be no justification for the acts of these terrorists and I am quite clear that we will never let them win.

        “My message to Londoners and visitors to our great city is to be calm and vigilant today. You will see an increased police presence today, including armed officers and uniformed officers. *There is no reason to be alarmed by this.* We are the safest global city in the world. You saw last night as a consequence of our planning, our preparation, the rehearsals that take place, the swift response from the emergency services tackling the terrorists and also helping the injured.”

        OK, so what did Donald Trump do? Well, he took the ‘no reason to be alarmed by this’ (‘this’ being the the presence of extra armed police and uniformed police on the streets) and quoted it out of context to create his usual brand of fake news. Even when his ‘mistake’ (as if) was explained to him, he refused to back down and followed his original tweet with more ill-informed nonsense. This is his modus operandi, so it won’t be the last time he does this. Breitbart is his poodle, so they will repeat it.

        I fully realise that this will make no difference to your worldview. You will believe what you want to believe. I prefer to believe what is true. However, if even one person reading this thinks ‘well, maybe I shouldn’t assume Breitbart and FN (let alone Trump) to be entirely trustworthy and impartial in future’, my long post will have been worthwhile. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

        None of us wishes to be judged by the worst things we’ve done in life, so I’m not going to judge either you or BRH on one ignorantly posed, prejudiced question. Any future genuine questions will be responded to on an individual basis, according to their courtesy and lack of bigotry.

        And I hope you have a good Christmas, when it comes.

      • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 10:44 am #

        And apologies for the duplicate ‘have’ in para 8.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 11:51 pm #

          Unforgiven.

      • malthuss December 20, 2017 at 11:03 am #

        I was not directing anything at you.

  49. malthuss December 19, 2017 at 3:16 pm #

    CANADIANS,

    Anonymous said…

    …and further on Pacific Mall:

    Arrest warrant issued in Pacific Mall murder
    Published Monday, March 1, 2010 2:36PM EST
    A Toronto man is facing a first-degree murder charge in connection with a murder that took place inside the Pacific Mall in Markham early last year.

    York Regional Police obtained an arrest warrant for the suspect on Friday – just a year after 26-year-old Chun Kit (Daniel) Cheong was gunned down outside the XSITE cellphone store.
    …..
    Police have released pictures of the suspect, 21-year-old Bryan Valentine Gardner, in hopes of getting tips from the public.
    …..
    Gardner, who is also known on the street as Weezy, is described as a black male, about 6′ with a thick build and some facial hair.
    https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/arrest-warrant-issued-in-pacific-mall-murder-1.487620

    I knew it was a blackey black black as soon as gun was mentioned, white people almost never commit interacial crime and Chinese triads avoid the use of guns, gun-use attract the police and carries a big risk of collateral damage which is bad for business.

  50. FincaInTheMountains December 19, 2017 at 3:38 pm #

    Executive Summary of Current Situation on Various Fronts of Military Operations

    Ukraine is a suitcase without a handle (it is difficult to carry and a pity to throw away) : Clinton America was preparing to seize Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 in order to turn them into a springboard for an attack on Russia, most likely a nuclear attack, but after a false start provoked in 2013 by Germany and the emergence of Russia’s new nuclear submarine boats complete with the successful end of the modernization of the old, these plans lost their meaning, as well as the construction of all these missile defense systems in Poland and Romania.

    Clinton America now needs Ukraine only as a way to bankrupt Russia by drawing it into the Ukrainian conflict, and Trump’s America does not need Ukraine from the get go. Trump yesterday declared Maidan among the other nation building adventures a mistake and the cause of America’s ruin, and the time for this statement was timed to today’s vote in the Congress and Senate on the final version of the tax reform.

    But from the same statement it follows that he does not want to pay for he broken dishes in Ukraine and this creates the prerequisites for a conflict with Putin and the failure of his plans for US modernization, even if today’s vote is successful.

    ———————————————————-

    North Korea: the negotiations between Kim Jong-un and Trump are going on, and most likely with the Russian mediation, but if it becomes known, from Trump’s promises to make America formidable again will be nothing left. And to him in order to make peace with North Korea and prevent a war with Russia, he must remain president.

    Here they are together with Kim Jong-un engaged in name-calling, and the frankly comedic character of these verbal exchanges in my opinion should reassure the supporters of Trump, who are told by the media that their leader is ready to start a nuclear war.

    In the meantime, the point is, the pro-Trump media use these fears to remind Americans that the peace-loving flying monkeys of Hillary Clinton can start a real nuclear war with Russia.

    ———————————————————-

    Continental Western Europe begins to build up its army in the event of a conflict with Trump and the British monarchy if they come to the conclusion that participation in NATO is too exciting for internal enemies like Theresa May and Hillary Clinton.

    The latter openly provoke a military conflict with Russia in order to force Putin to retaliate, which can then be used to impeach Trump as “Putin’s friend” and for the destruction of the British monarchy by the method of supporting Prince Charles, who unfortunately blurted out that Putin’s actions remind him of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yut9qPyT9jE&t=162

    ———————————————————-

    In the British Isles, the most important thing now is the friendship between Prince Harry and Barack Obama, but this is a separate topic.

    ———————————————————-

    Finally, today’s vote:
    Trump’s most important achievement is that he pushed the repeal of the most terrible part of Obamacare into the tax reform – the so-called “individual mandate”, that is, the punishment of those taxpayers who do not buy medical insurance. The fact is that this part of Obamacare, which annoyed everyone, but was necessary at the initial stage of health care reform, or was slipped there by Hillary Clinton, who was terribly jealous of Obama’s healthcare reform, since she started one in 1992, but failed miserably because of the other things, for which she could take a ride in a chair.

    In addition, through her people in the Republican Party during the election campaign, she imposed on Trump the following agenda: either full-blown Obamacare with an individual mandate, or a complete repeal of Obamacare.

    But Hillary Clinton’s people in the Republican Party, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell successfully failed the repeal of Obamacare, and Trump made a feint with his ears by striking a deal with Hillary Clinton’s rivals in Democratic Party, and that allowed him to organize today’s vote.

    If it goes well, he will not have to cancel Obamacare, as he originally wanted, taking advantage of the good parts of Obamacare, and removing bad parts by improving Obama’s main achievement, as he repeatedly said before the election battles with Hillary Clinton and her people in the Republican Party.

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    • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 7:07 pm #

      “In the British Isles, the most important thing now is the friendship between Prince Harry and Barack Obama, but this is a separate topic.”

      Really, Finca? You should tell the Daily Mail. They’re always on the look out for a new story to entertain the hoi polloiL

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

      • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:04 pm #

        *hoi polloi* Sorry, slip of the finger. Dan and Dan are worth a listen though.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 19, 2017 at 8:33 pm #

        I hope I will cover that topic soon.

        • ozone December 20, 2017 at 9:47 am #

          We’re hoping that you won’t.

  51. wm5135 December 19, 2017 at 4:11 pm #

    elysianfield, not being a wise ass for a moment. I am native to north Florida. As I read your comment about possesions and boat lifting I had the feeling that you might be fortunate enough not to have witnessed the grinding poverty that exists in this area of the world. A TV on time does not alleviate poverty, and the boat is not lifted.

  52. wm5135 December 19, 2017 at 4:13 pm #

    elysianfield just another thought, there is more to poverty than lack of currency.

    Take care
    wm

    • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 6:05 pm #

      Wm,
      I could not agree with you more, and I am aware of the horrible conditions people now have to suffer. I did indicate that the period of general welfare began to deteriorate …1980`ish. I guess this begs the definition of “poverty”, and yes, it is not merely a question of currency.

      However, people, in the time period I mentioned, if they tried, could keep themselves from being homeless…unless they were total fuck-ups. There are always winners and losers, and the economy DID maintain then a middle class…even the poor that I knew in the time period had a car, and usually a piss-pot and a window to throw it out of….

      I should mention that in my productive years after law enforcement I was a…pawnbroker. I’ve spent my life dealing with people having the short end of the stick. I retired in ’85, and I do not doubt that conditions below the poverty line are worse by whatever magnitude you can claim. The people on the bottom rung of the ladder I do not diminish, nor blame for their condition, without study.

  53. Elrond Hubbard December 19, 2017 at 4:26 pm #

    Skyrocketing fees are fundamentally changing bitcoin
    Fees as high as $28 are destroying bitcoin’s value for small payments.

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoin-fees-rising-high/

    “Originally, one of bitcoin’s big selling points was that payments would be fast, convenient, and cheap. ‘The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,’ wrote bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto in the white paper announcing the technology.

    “‘With bitcoins, transfers can take place across continents and timezones with no problems, no timelags, and only minuscule transaction fees,’ wrote economics reporter Felix Salmon in 2013.

    “Until the beginning of this year, bitcoin fees tended to be well below $1, and often less than $0.10. Bitcoin supporters liked to point out that fees on the bitcoin network were often a lot less than the fees merchants paid to accept credit card payments. But in recent months, bitcoin’s popularity has outstripped the network’s ability to cope with growing demand.

    “As a result, the bitcoin network today is a radically different animal. Fees are high—the average transaction yesterday cost around $28. And that is having huge implications for the ways bitcoin is being used and the kinds of businesses being built on top of it. Indeed, companies that are trying to realize Nakamoto’s vision of bitcoin as a platform for ‘small casual transactions’ are starting to shift to alternative networks, because it’s impossible to support small transactions when each transaction costs $20 in fees.

    “… The way the bitcoin network deals with congestion is essentially by auctioning off scarce capacity to the highest bidder. Customers have the option to pay a higher fee in exchange for immediate delivery or to pay a lower fee and wait until congestion declines enough to make room for lower-fee transactions. As fees rise, this becomes a more and more dicey proposition.”

    Time is money. (Electronic money.)

    • Elrond Hubbard December 19, 2017 at 4:28 pm #

      And…

      Currency-mining Android malware is so aggressive it can physically harm phones
      This is your phone on mining software. Any questions?

      https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/currency-mining-android-malware-is-so-aggressive-it-can-physically-harm-phones/

      “A newly discovered piece of Android malware carries out a litany of malicious activities, including showing an almost unending series of ads, participating in distributed denial-of-service attacks, sending text messages to any number, and silently subscribing to paid services. Its biggest offense: a surreptitious cryptocurrency miner that’s so aggressive it can physically damage an infected phone.

      “Trojan.AndroidOS.Loapi is hidden inside apps distributed through third-party markets, browser ads, and SMS-based spam. Researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab have dubbed it a ‘jack of all trades’ to emphasize the breadth of nefarious things it can do. Most notably, Loapi apps contain a module that mines Monero, a newer type of digital currency that’s less resource intensive than Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies. The module allows the malware creators to generate new coins by leaching the electricity and hardware of infected phone owners.

      “But the lower demands of Monero mining by no means stop Loapi from straining infected phones. Kaspersky Lab researchers tested Loapi in a lab setting. After two days, the mining caused the battery in the phone to bulge so badly it deformed the cover. The researchers provided the pictures above as evidence.

      Remember, when you surf to a website, you’re surfing with every site that site has ever… Wait, is that how this works?

    • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 7:36 pm #

      Transaction times are long and growing as well, meaning when the music finally stops (as it will) finding a chair for the rubes (i.e.; everyone other than the 1,000 who own 40% of all BitShit) will be difficult, if not impossible. What could possibly go wrong?

  54. Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 6:01 pm #

    Joseph the Elder speaking to Joseph the Younger before he died…

    “My son, my body is returning to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more and white men will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.”

    Chief Joseph commented “I clasped my father’s hand and promised to do as he asked. A man who would not defend his father’s grave is worse than a wild animal.”

    “I pressed my father’s hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.”

    Janos: Chief Joseph was a great Patriot for his Tribe, not America of course. But I can still admire him. Do you doubt that I admire him more than many Whites – the kind who would not defend their father’s gave and are worse than beasts?

    • elysianfield December 19, 2017 at 6:14 pm #

      Janos,
      I would certainly admire the story and the ethic it presents…it is a good one. Who wrote that history? Oh, yeah, no written communication, but verbal history. What did Elrond in an earlier post call that? Anecdotes….

      I am not being snarky, but rather realistic…history can be very generous to those unworthy, and certainly cruel to those of many virtues.

      Who knows? Maybe the old chief was a pussy grabber….

    • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 6:54 pm #

      Janos

      Remember that Christian faith you appropriate so shamelessly?

      Remember this bit?

      ” And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.

      Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”

      Luke 9.59-60

      Preaching the kingdom of God wasn’t preaching hate.
      Choose, Janos. Hate or Christianity – you really, really can’t have both.

      You’re no different from ISIS or the IRA, cherry picking religious narrative to suit your immoral agenda. I was brought up with the King James Bible. I’ve left it behind as a belief system but when it was my belief system I was at least sincere in it, which is why I bristle when you desecrate it. I’m still more attached to it than you are, with your shameless hypocrisy.

      You can have this one for good measure:

      “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

      Here endeth the lesson. Go away and do your homework, charlatan.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 7:15 pm #

        Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men? No, that’s a shameless rewrite. Vatican Two was full of your (add italics) kind. It really translates: Peace on Earth to Men of Good Will.

        And to the rest? Judgment and War. We conquered this Land for our People and our God – even as the Indian Tribes did to each other. All very natural. You however, are a horse of a different color: Pale Green, bringing disease and death.

        • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 7:28 pm #

          (1) I’m not and have never been Catholic, so your reference to Vatican II is irrelevant to me.

          (2) But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

          Still a charlatan.

          • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 7:57 pm #

            Also, I’m not sure of what the King James Bible, published in 1611, is a shameless rewrite. But I’m sure you’ll be able to tell me,

          • Ol' Scratch December 19, 2017 at 8:05 pm #

            Be careful GA! Janos gets dangerous when he’s cornered! Hope you’re caught up on your shots.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 9:03 pm #

            All major denominations rejected pacifism. And all major denominations have followed the Church into Liberal irrelevance. The Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was just a pot smoking hippy.

          • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 7:32 am #

            Most of us bury our parents with respect and love. Feeding that into a meta-narrative that supports your Aryan mystic nonsense is just more mumbo jumbo. It doesn’t stop being mumbo jumbo just because you think you belong to the master race.

            I went to Corsica a decade or so ago. In a mountain village we came across a Muslim cemetery full of the dead of a Muslim regiment (from North Africa, I think, but I don’t remember) that fought with the Allies to keep evil at bay in Europe. They’re buried in someone else’s land; their memory and their cemetery is respected and cared for by the people who live there.

            I’m not saying you should be a pacifist. I’m not a pacifist in the absolutist sense. I’m glad my parents’ generation kept my country free from the Nazis and helped stop the genocide. You said your country fought on the wrong side. There are no words…

            What I’m saying is you should stop claiming any connection with Christianity. Because you’re a charlatan.

          • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 7:34 am #

            And when I went to church I wasn’t an Anglican, so your Rowan Williams reference is equally irrelevant.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:21 pm #

            You argue like a woman: full on particularism and denial of principle.

            You are the Centre of your Miserable Little World. Or as the Ramayana says of Ravana, “A Whirlpool in the River of Life.” No doubt your suck has claimed many victims….

      • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 7:40 pm #

        GA, not sure if you are aware, but Janos is a plant of the Southern Poverty Law Center. His aim is to entice, entrap, and then out the inevitable surfing racist that stumbles upon one of his trip-wires.

        • GreenAlba December 19, 2017 at 8:02 pm #

          Avatar

          Thanks, I came across a theory like that on an earlier thread. If it’s true, he’s one hardworking plant. Or maybe one hardworking Hydra.

    • janet December 19, 2017 at 6:57 pm #

      Janos, migration, mobility and diversity is the new norm. Get over it.

      • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 9:35 pm #

        Because it never happened before dontchaknow?

        New norm

        Sheesh

    • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 7:07 pm #

      You appropriated their bones. Why not choose that religious nutjob Dreher’s Benedict Option and go back to the old country?

      There must be some tenuous claim.. somewhere

      • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 7:11 pm #

        We conquered them fair and square. We even let them live after a fashion. Now Elrond and his Kin – including you – treat them better than their own people.

        Would Elrond sell his father’s grave? Assuming it’s in Canada, why he already has.

        • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 7:22 pm #

          And you are being conquered fair and square.

          They may let you live on a reservation of sorts.

          A Costco perhaps, with extra snacking samples.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 9:01 pm #

            Exactly. We’re the Indians now. How come you don’t feel for us? Especially when you are probably part of our tribe?

            Liberals can’t take their own side. It’s a mental illness.

          • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 9:24 pm #

            And your Indians were once nomads of the Mongolian steppes.

            Then change came.

            Same for your ancestors

            And change comes for you

            It always comes.

            Denying this is not a mental illness, but a dissonance.

            At least an illness can be diagnosed.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 10:53 pm #

            How bout Israel? It’s fine if it becomes Palestine again, right? Or am I getting warm? I remember you now, have your scent, and you will not escape my Domini Canes once I give it to them.

          • 100th Avatar December 20, 2017 at 10:57 am #

            I am all for the dissolution of wacky religions and blood lineages.

            As only as far as that they are not merely replaced by wackier religions and bloodlines

          • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 3:00 pm #

            In other words, my people and religion but not you and yours.

            The Domini Canes have his scent and are in full bay. My Comrades and I spur our horses on and prepare to release the kill dogs.

            Tally Ho!

          • GreenAlba December 20, 2017 at 4:03 pm #

            Janos, you sound as if you’re having some kind of breakdown.

            I’ve always thought you’re some kind of sad Walter Mitty in real life. If you even have a real life.

        • Elrond Hubbard December 20, 2017 at 9:59 am #

          “We conquered them fair and square.”

          Janos is quite fond of this particular little abuse of language. In his various guises, he takes it out and strokes it every now and then, where everyone can see:

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/diminishing-returns/#comment-316188

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/skidding_toward_fall/#comment-23000

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/christmas_story/#comment-134593

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/evil_syndicated/#comment-2619

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/say_what/#comment-20834

          http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the_tides_of_event/#comment-131254

          It’s his trademark, and he never gets tired of it. This and similar inversions of truth and decency are in fact how the alt-right slipped under everyone’s radar — under cover of japery. Serious people, on the other hand, understand that this is the devil’s inverted morality at work in the world: “Evil, be thou my good.”

          Call me humourless? I can live with that. The sense of “humour” entertained by the likes of Janos hangs by a rope.

          • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:40 am #

            Elrond,
            You Canadians are lucky…there were indigenous peoples in the America that we had to conquer…to our shame, of course. Canadians had no such problem….just pine cones and Salmon in the streams met your first settlers….

          • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:04 pm #

            If his ideas were taken seriously, Whites would have to leave the Americas and go back to Europe. But such that would inconvenience such Pharisees and High Priests like Elrond, they are “settling” for White Genocide as per 100’s post:

            Thou shall not pass he proclaimed

            And died trying to stop passage

            Dead he became white

            Fitting

            Needless to say, Elrond and the Gang don’t want Whites to have Europe either as per their call for open borders and coddling and favoring the invaders once they arrive over native Whites.

          • Elrond Hubbard December 20, 2017 at 2:22 pm #

            Completely untrue, elysianfield, and that’s the point. Canada and the USA didn’t begin as separate societies; we evolved that way due to historical circumstances. We’re two factions of the same settler-colonial enterprise that took these lands from their previous inhabitants using violence, guile, whatever tools came to hand. It’s useful to deny that theft, lies, and genocide are evil when you’re engaged in profiting off these evils (hence, “we stole it from them fair and square”). Cognitive dissonance, and all that: if you admit to yourself that you’re working evil, you might have to stop. That’s our common heritage and our common moral responsibility, regardless of the fact that my faction refused your revolution. Most people just live with this contradiction; a few, like Janos, swallow it whole and preach it as their gospel of bondage. For myself, I vow to expose it. If I’m living up to my values, then I’ll have no fear of facing facts, I’ll know right from wrong, and I’ll call these things by their right names where I see them.

            (Speaking of Janos, his claim that “if [my] ideas were taken seriously, whites would have to leave the Americas and go back to Europe” is easily disposed of. I’m speaking of accepting moral responsibility, not of making history unhappen. That means finding a way to go forward together, in the awareness of what has gone before. If you want an example of trying to make history unhappen, just read The Turner Diaries with its violent fantasia of purging society at the end of a rope and making the non-whiteness of America unhappen.)

            Above, you called me a poster child for civilization: thank you for that, elysianfield. Civilization, to me, is the art of living without violence. I’m seldom impressed by claims that the state, or fiat currency, or some other power structure is illegitimate because it’s “backed by violence”. Violence exists. We’re all born with the potential for it, so it will always be there if you go looking for it. So the question is, what are you going to replace it with, and how? What will be better than what we have now, and how will that really work? The trick of civilization is to so arrange matters that the scope for people to live lives not dominated by the logic of violence is as great as possible, and make it stick.

            We both know what that implies: “Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You?” I used to be big into Heinlein, like a lot of young guys. I got over him in time, in part because I never bought his idea that the highest goal of society is survival. Hello? Survival isn’t the highest goal, but the lowest — it’s the basic housekeeping you get out of the way so you can go do something more interesting. All around us, bacteria are surviving all the time simply by not dying long enough to divide in two. But bacteria don’t write symphonies. Since 1945, there has been only one threat to human survival, and that is humans. That’s why civilization — the art of living without violence — is our only option. That is, if we choose not to give up everything from agriculture onwards and go back to hunting and gathering.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 3:04 pm #

            Elrond, one of the Hounds of Hell, has found my spoor. I shit gold, do I not?

            So if we don’t have the guns, who does? No one? Don’t fall for it boys and girls. It’s a classic Commie Lie.

  55. janet December 19, 2017 at 6:34 pm #

    The Republican tax plan will be good for singles making over $500,000 a year…. and is good for those who own commercial real estate (“the Corker kickback”), a provision added at the last minute to enrich Corker, Trump and Trump’s family among others in the 1%.

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    • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 6:58 pm #

      No foolin’?! And this is news to who? That’s what politics is after all. The extraction of wealth and benefits to suit you, your friends, and your kind.

  56. jim e December 19, 2017 at 7:34 pm #

    Cherokee!

    The college championship reeks of the best of them…

  57. ozone December 19, 2017 at 8:31 pm #

    Well, Halle-fuckin-lujah! “Somebody screwed up”, indeedy…
    Be of good cheer, we now have another opportunity to berate, deride, mock, defame, disparage and revile these bald-faced venal shitheads who continue to insist they are concerned about the taxation plight of their constituents.

    “In an embarassing reversal of what House Republicans had celebrated as a done deal, the House will need to vote again on the final version of the tax reform plan passed earlier this afternoon. The second vote is the result of a technicality in one of the bill’s provisions. According to Bloomberg, the Senate parliamentarian found three provisions in the final bill that violate the Byrd Rule, and the Senate will have to strip them from the bill before passing it, according to Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who had earlier hinted that he was looking into possible Byrd Rule violations.”

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-19/house-must-vote-again-tax-reform-plan

    No worries, I simply provides a period of sober reflection on how much money they and their sponsors are going to reap out of the hides of the American ru… I mean, *people*. Plus, maybe they’ll have the time to read the thing now. …Nah, the lobbyists worked it up and there will be a nice slice for everyone of proper credentials. (Let’s hope those real estate perqs will survive! Phew.)

    • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 9:00 pm #

      What did Strauss say about gentle nihilism?

      Perhaps there is a third kind: Apathetic Nihilism.

      Phoning it all in.

      • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:57 am #

        Good point! Or in the modern parlance, texting or tweeting it all in – phoning is too much effort. Give yourself 101.

  58. BackRowHeckler December 19, 2017 at 9:13 pm #

    Headline:

    “French Mayors Panic as Migrants Overwhelm Cities, beg Macron for Help”

    No need to read the article; the header about sums it up. Suffice to say thousands of these esteemed guests (Refuges Welcome!) are still arriving each month, defecating and peeing in the streets (like in San Francisco) and making a general nuisance of themselves.

    There’s a big question on how all this ends up. I’m sure its the same around western and northern Europe, and Great Britain. One possibility is these people become embittered and radicalized (which seems to be already happening) and organize themselves into criminal gangs and Islamic militias, millions strong, powerful and large enough to challenge police, the army and the national government itself.

    this is what the end of the West looks like, not much different from what Jean Raispail spelled out in 1972 in his book, ‘The Camp of the Saints”. That man was prescient.

    brh

    • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 6:52 am #

      There’s a big question on how all this ends up.

      To find out, you should read Ilya Ehrenburg’s 1923 novel – “Trust D. E. The history of the death of Europe”

    • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 6:58 am #

      He did not invent poisonous gases, he did not build the centrifuge “Divoire Excelsior.”

      He only opened the cells of a nuthouse.

      The rest was the business of the insane. The Europeans themselves came up with the most cunning ways of destroying each other.

      Ilya Ehrenburg, “Trust D. E.”, 1923

    • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 7:06 am #

      Some more:

      At that time, three thousand members of the union have peacefully shown to the policemen that, despite their political conservatism, they are supporters of the revolution and are attached to all the latest achievements of military equipment. M.P.s, having found out what was the matter, hid in the dressing room and in the buffet, yelling:

      Let them pass! For God’s sake, let them pass immediately!

      There were rumors that savages living in the desert organized and prepared to invade the eastern and southern provinces.

      Moscow was a strange example: a huge, densely populated center, the capital of the entire Republic, at the same time it was almost a border town, because to the west from it were ravaged and sparsely populated areas.

    • Sean Coleman December 21, 2017 at 11:50 am #

      You might have heard this story already. Liberal journalist Lynn Barber takes in a Sudanese refugee in her London home and regrets it:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXhc17BONM

      • Sean Coleman December 22, 2017 at 6:33 am #

        In summary, she said that he said he would treat her as his own mother (so she could cook and wash for him – she declined), didn’t look for work, smoked cannabis in his room despite her explicit prohibition, pressured her to get broadband and then used her computer for pornography (he also left pictures on it of sightseeing at the Eiffel Tower and the like), went to the hospital for free outpatient treatment for trivial illnesses (he used the NHS more in his short stay with her than she had in her entire life, and she is in her seventies) and finally told her, indignantly, that he was not a refugee at all at all but that his father was a rich man who could buy and sell her. And yet he still got into the country as a refugee and, as far as I am aware, remains there.

  59. Janos Skorenzy December 19, 2017 at 9:15 pm #

    For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’

    I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

    I liked white better,’ I said.

    White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’

    In which case it is no longer white,’ said I. ‘And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’

    – Gandalf”

    Saruman was a rainbow fag as is the guy who plays Gandalf. The rainbow is in itself, beautiful. But this Ideological Tribe has made it into a symbol of ugliness and slavery.

    • 100th Avatar December 19, 2017 at 9:34 pm #

      Thou shall not pass he proclaimed

      And died trying to stop passage

      Dead he became white

      Fitting

      • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:00 pm #

        Only an unspeakably ugly mind could have formulated such a thought. People like you are why I am the why I am. Action – Reaction.

        • 100th Avatar December 20, 2017 at 5:11 pm #

          Gandalf became Gandalf the white, only through death. The same way, the only way you can preserve your concept of whiteness. It dies with you.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 9:02 pm #

            Not thru death, thru Resurrection. But your Priests bribed the soldiers to say that it didn’t happen and they just fell asleep….

  60. janet December 19, 2017 at 10:05 pm #

    No foolin’?! And this is news to who? –100th Avatar

    Sorry, the vote on the Republican tax plan today did not count because it violated the rules for a reconciliation vote. False alarm.

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  61. Pucker December 19, 2017 at 10:21 pm #

    TransChristmas.

    Christmas Tree is upside down. The kids have to give presents to the adults who sit around eating cookies and cake in their PJs while watching cartoons on the TV. The kids lecture their parents on how to behave.

    • Pucker December 19, 2017 at 10:44 pm #

      The adults are “Cool-With-It” as long as the social hierarchy inversion permits them continued childhood irresponsibility.

  62. onehunglo December 19, 2017 at 10:54 pm #

    ah, perhaps you one JHK think life better in red China under totalitarian state??

    think again!

    massive pollution, mobile execution squads, forced inoculation to those considered undesirable…..

    time to demonstrate gratitude for what you have!

    that ok.

    let not you heart be troubled.

    may God be with you.

    -onehunglo

  63. BackRowHeckler December 19, 2017 at 11:08 pm #

    We got new trouble brewing here, over in New Britain, once an industrial powerhouse, now a welfare colony. The other night 3 ‘youths’, ‘teenagers’, ‘students’ (it took a few days to find out they were black as the ace of spades) shot up by city police, one dead. It seems they were riding around at night terrorizing neighborhoods, had shot and pistol whipped a few people, stole some cars. One is dead; already there have been a few demonstrations and threats made “No justice no peace”, “By any means necessary” … you know the slogans by now.

    brh

    • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 12:16 am #

      Only Science can help you guys!

      The match had been between Kid O’Brien – a lubberly and now quaking youth with a most un-Hibernian hooked nose – and Buck Robinson, “the Harlem Smoke”. The negro had been knocked out, and a moment’s examination showed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore-legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life – but the world holds many ugly things.”

      Herbert West – Reanimator, by H.P Lovecraft

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:41 am #

      We got new trouble brewing here, over in New Britain, once an industrial powerhouse, now a welfare colony.

      So who would you blame for this state of affairs? The wayward youth or the people who took the industry away and turned New Britain into a welfare economy or both?

    • malthuss December 20, 2017 at 11:05 am #

      Thanks for the updates from The Dis United States.

    • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:46 am #

      BRH,
      You don’t need cops to quell the upcoming disturbance…send in the garbage men and accountants….

  64. BackRowHeckler December 20, 2017 at 12:30 am #

    Its hard to believe people are still being ‘pistol whipped’. But there it is, some old Polish guy ‘pistol whipped’ in his driveway one night by three ‘Youths’, who wanted his car, and wanted it right now!

    The local newspaper, the one I work for, ran a sympathetic article about the kid who died in the police gunfire; he was carrying a semi auto and was, presumably, the pistol whipper. Unsurprisingly, he was in the process of ‘turning his life around’ and was planning on attending college, that is until he was ventilated by the hail of police bullets. A full investigation is being demanded by Community Leaders, the NAACP, the newspaper and local politicians.

    Luckily we got a cold snap coming and this might keep righteous demonstrators inside and not out on the streets blocking traffic and smashing the place up. This isn’t Ferguson after all.

    brh

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:38 am #

      until he was ventilated by the hail of police bullets

      Nice description!

    • malthuss December 20, 2017 at 11:06 am #

      your post is comical.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:08 pm #

      We’re gonna have to cool them with heaters. Monk! You got any more of that joy powdah?

  65. pequiste December 20, 2017 at 12:59 am #

    Looking at the gyrations in today’s financial markets, I am reminded of a coarse apothegm in this dark midnight hour:

    “Life is like a shit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.”

    Then I find myself wondering:

    Will Bitcoin, and other private crypto-currencies, ever be considered “bread?”

    Then tangentially:

    Will white bread be banned from being baked because it is rayciss?

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    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:36 am #

      White bread is just taking its turn in the meat grinder. There will be others soon enough. The inevitable backlash on the femmes and others who are currently on top will be painful in the extreme. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and social media, the war of all against all will be a 24/7 full spectrum affair.

  66. Pucker December 20, 2017 at 1:27 am #

    Archie would come home after a hard day at the loading docks to listen to “The Meat Head” give him an earful of Political Correctness while Archie just wants to watch the ballgame and drink his beer.

  67. FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 6:40 am #

    Tax reform passed Congress and the Senate, but Congress will have to vote again

    Voting went along the party lines – Republicans voted for, the Democrats opposed. And the vote in the Senate, where the Republicans have at most only two votes, was on the verge, as one of the republican votes is McCain’s with a certificate from a doctor that he can not vote.

    But Congress will have to vote tomorrow for the third time, since the Senate found rules prohibiting the adoption of laws that infringe on some provincial universities, and the law voted by the Senate was amended.

    But in Congress, Republicans have a large majority and most likely today this law will go to President Trump’s desk.

    And at the moment when President Trump will sign this law, the Deep State will be dealt such a blow that the Flying Monkeys are already panicking that Trump can even before Christmas fire the special prosecutor Mueller, but Republicans in the Congress and the Senate, even after that, will not support his impeachment, and it will have to be forgotten as in the word forever.

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 7:31 am #

      Not quite following how signing a tax bill immunizes Trump from the ill-effects of the deep state. Because he bought off the rich and powerful? Isn’t that a given? I’m all for Trump firing Mueller to put an end to this sideshow, but I don’t see what signing a tax giveaway to the rich and powerful has to do with any of it. Evidently you’re one of the people who stands to cash in and you’re letting your greed skew your opinions. Rose colored glasses and all that, no doubt enhanced by grain alcohol infused bong hits. Beware the flashover Finc! It’ll get you!

      • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 9:32 am #

        Obama printed 4 trillion to temporarily quash the crisis, and Trump for 1.5 trillion is going to stop it completely

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 9:38 am #

          In tax cuts? As usual, your logic is impeccably spurious.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:10 pm #

        Yeah, this sure united that Republican Party that hated him so much.

        This Tax Bill reeks of the Swamp.

  68. FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 9:39 am #

    President Trump’s chief economist Gary Cohn said on Wednesday he’s staying on in the administration after successfully shepherding tax reform.

    It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity Cohn said during an event in Washington.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/20/politics/tax-bill-latest/index.html

    Indeed it is!

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 10:13 am #

      Finc,

      By the tone of your latest posts, it sounds suspiciously like you’ve been into that shipment of Afghani black tar we laid in for the New Year’s bash. Personally, I don’t really give a shit either way, but I
      shouldn’t have to remind you that our lil’ dope fiend janet will be furious if she finds out, so that’s all on you good buddy. I can’t protect you there.

      In related news, true to his theatrical nature and his completely understandable reticence toward mixing with “the coloreds” on the way up to the finca, I’ve arranged for Janos to parachute in on New Year’s eve (you know how he loves the grand entrance) out of one of the helicopters we’re using to lift in several cargo containers of Lil Deb’s for Lil Snack Pack (after a few bong hits that bitch is positively voracious!), and of course Janos wanted a spotlight trained on him too, so I said sure, why not? Finca’s picking up the tab for all of it anyway, so what the hell!

      Anyway, hope I haven’t forgotten anything. It should be a grand old time and looking forward to regaining consciousness again sometime around President’s Day down on the farm (if we’re lucky!).

      • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 12:26 pm #

        It’s all good and dandy, but personally, I wonder what is the gravitational constant in your world?

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 12:31 pm #

          Live for today, for tomorrow we die.

  69. malthuss December 20, 2017 at 11:09 am #

    once a White industrial powerhouse, now a Non White welfare slum—

    colony is not the right word

    • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:11 pm #

      Hit ’em again, Monk! Let’s see the color of his blood.

  70. volodya December 20, 2017 at 11:13 am #

    Ozone, Republican boneheadedness never fails to astonish. ALL they know is tax cuts. That’s ALL they know.

    Unasked among these idiots is how the fuck do they propose to fund governmental institutions (that their billionaire paymasters need for survival) without tax money? QE in perpetuity? This is the Robert Mugabe School of Monetary Management.

    If you ask this simple question that any reasonably capable fifteen year old would ask, you get eyeballs doing discos of incomprehension, robotic talking points about how they believe in small government.

    Well, do they believe in bankrupt government, what about government that can no longer perform its basic functions with respect to national defense, administration of justice, things that the billionaires need to safeguard their wealth and positions in society?

    That said, what are the odds that Democrats reverse these tax provisions once they regain control of congress and the presidency? Given that they also answer to the billionaire class, I put the odds at roundabout zero.

    The billionaires are not very swift never mind their vaunted reputations for brilliance. Neither are the dickheads that do their bidding in Washington.

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    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 11:38 am #

      All of which makes me think that a planned crash is in the offing sometime in the next few years, vol. Governments (of the few, for the few, and by the few) can be reconstructed easily enough, and electronic currencies can be created (or simply appropriated) easily enough too. Then you simply wall of the DC, NYC, Boston corridor (with a handful of key remote infrastructural site exceptions) and bid the rest of the poor bastards good luck. I think they could squeeze the first 50% or so of the population out of existence fairly quickly, although they might have to deal with some mostly insignificant insurgent warfare in the provinces for a time after that. But the game plan has been perfected since 9-11, so I don’t see the big boys losing a whole lotta sleep or over any of this yet. When the money supply dries up and the food, gas, and medicine deliveries stop to Hooterville, even Mr Haney’s traveling road show ain’t gonna save their sorry asses.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 1:13 pm #

        You go to Hooters a lot? Hoovers are great. They suck.

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 3:53 pm #

          Not lately, no. Why. Would I see you in there?

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 3:55 pm #

          By the way, “Hooterville” was a Green Acres reference. Probably before your time.

    • K-Dog December 20, 2017 at 11:40 am #

      Is it appropriate to call people who are stupid on purpose because it suits them to be so idiots? I merely ask the question.

      Billionaires are as smart as the people they surround themselves with.

      • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 11:45 am #

        I think it’s a matter of personal taste, really…

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

      I don’t know how about you, guys, but that AI module code-name Volodya is really getting under my skin.

      How fucking stupid you must be to think that cutting 1.5 trillion dollars from taxes that in-shore enterprises and corporations have to pay – which probably will have to be printed by the FED to compensate the deficit – is the same or worse than printing 10 times that much and giving it away to big banks and monopolies in various creative financial instruments to be stashed away in the offshores?

      • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 12:30 pm #

        So it’s a matter of degree is what you’re saying? The punishment should fit the crime? I think it’s important that our criminals in charge exercise a sense of nuance in their affairs, don’t you? Perhaps they’ll extend us the same courtesy on the way down?

        “Hey, I’m a little short on scratch this year, so I’m going to sit out this tax year, I know you’ll understand. But just to be on the safe side, could you print me up a stack as well (just walking around money), just to be sure?”

        • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 12:32 pm #

          Scratch, did you figure out what is the gravitational constant in your world is?

          How about the Planck’s constant?

          • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 3:51 pm #

            Same as yours: Live for today, for tomorrow we die.

          • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 10:14 pm #

            I’m partial to Oppenheimer’s re-quote from the Bhagavad Gita when he first observed what he had unleashed at the Trinity site as well: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

            Relatable to so many areas of modern life these days, don’t ya think?

  71. FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 1:00 pm #

    They still haven’t voted, have they? The suspense is killing me…

    What if the Witch puts a spell on the Congress, especially on the closeted pederasts – I think they are more susceptible to the witchcraft.

    Everybody, 10 times Hail Mary!

    • janet December 20, 2017 at 2:03 pm #

      Melania is a witch?

  72. FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 2:37 pm #

    The calm before the storm

    Trump just won his greatest victory, short of the victory in the presidential elections of 2016 – the third and final vote of the tax reform law was held in Congress, in which Trump sneaked in the abolition of the most unpleasant feature of the Obamacare, namely, the penalty for not buying medical insurance. Now he can gradually improve the reform that Obama has undertaken, instead of canceling it and starting a new reform from the scratch (not you, Scratch) and moreover with unknown result.

    This is what he wanted from the very beginning, but he was forced to adopt the program of cancellation of Obamacare during the election campaign, and this program has just passed the most difficult stage of initial fine-tuning and is posed to save 2 trillion dollars in the next 5 years.

    For comparisons, the US military budget is 0.7 trillion dollars. The fact is that prior to Obamacare, EMPLOYERS WERE OBLIGATED to buy medical insurance for their employees, and they deducted the cost of this insurance from their taxes.

    Now Trump will attribute Obama’s achievements to himself, and this will create the prerequisites for Republicans to win in the midterm elections in 2018 and Trump in the presidential election in 2020 – in theory by that time he will be able to subordinate the FBI and the CIA and can begin improving relations with Putin.

    This important detail harmoniously blends with the basic idea of the new tax law, which is aimed at stimulating the real economy in the United States and increasing its competitiveness, which is important for Russia, since many experts say that it was precisely the approaching crisis that made the idea of war popular in the limited circles, the war that would write off everything, and the weakening of this threat deals a mighty blow to the doctrine of Hillary Clinton, according to which the spread of democracy is the main interest of the United States, and therefore it must organize color revolutions wherever it is possible, in spite of the prospect of getting a nuclear punch in the face.

    It is not surprising that Trump preceded perhaps the most important vote in his life by a frank trolling of the Hillary Clinton doctrine in his speech on US national security, in particular claiming that the Nation building that Clinton’s State Department was engaged in is a multi-trillion dollar mistake.

    But the most striking thing is that in the morning in the media there were no responses to yesterday’s vote late at night in the Senate, which was on the edge – if only one senator, the Republican refused to support the law, then the law would not have passed, and after Christmas the alignment of forces with the Senate would have changed, thanks to the Republican defeat in Alabama.

    The only plausible explanation for this is that yesterday something had to happen that would’ve disrupted the vote in the Senate. And the journalists were warned about this, and now they just don’t know what to lie.

    • Walter B December 20, 2017 at 4:01 pm #

      They could always blame it on the Russians.

  73. capt spaulding December 20, 2017 at 2:44 pm #

    Here’s a depression-era joke that was reflective of the times. This was told to me by an old guy who lived through the depression: It was 1932, and this kid was walking through Nebraska in July. The sun was beating down on him, and the temp. was in the 90’s , with high humidity. As he trudged along, he heard a car come up behind him, so he turned around and stuck his thumb out. The car stopped, and the farmer driving said’ “Say, I’ll give you a ride, but tell me first, are you a Republican or a Democrat? “I’m a Democrat”, says the kid, my whole family is Democrats. “Sorry”, says the farmer, & drives off. The kid walks along for a while & finally hears another car behind him. It’s a 1928 Ford pickup, and the farmer driving stops & says “I’ll give you a ride, but tell me first, are you a Republican or a Democrat?” “I’m a Democrat” says the kid. “Sorry, no ride here.” says the farmer & leaves him eating dust. “Well, I see the way things are here”, says the kid, “Next time it’s gonna be different”. He keeps on walking, and hears another car behind him. He sticks his thumb out, and the car stops. It’s a young farm girl, & she says “I’ll give you a ride, but tell me, are you a Republican or a Democrat?”. “I’m a Republican” says the kid. “Oh, get right in” says the girl. They are driving along with the windows down, and the wind keeps blowing the girl’s skirt up above her knees, and the boy can’t keep his eyes off her legs. Finally, he lets out a groan, and the girl says “Is something wrong?” “Oh God”, says the kid, “I’ve only been a Republican for five minutes, and I already feel like fucking somebody”.

  74. janet December 20, 2017 at 4:34 pm #

    Trump is signing and celebrating today his royal fucking of the populace. Programs from Medicare to flood insurance to food stamps will be at risk the moment Trump’s signature dries. Some reductions would be inflicted automatically. Others, Republicans will pursue with a handy justification — the revenue hole created by their own legislation.

    Under the Pay-as-You-Go Act of 2010, or Paygo, the Office of Budget and Management has to order automatic spending cuts if legislation passed by Congress is set to increase the deficit. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, spending cuts would have to total $136 billion for a bill, such as the tax legislation, that increases the deficit by $1.5 trillion over a decade.

    Say goodbye to: maintained roads, clean water, safe food, health care, etc. For example, the Department of Justice’s Crime Victims Fund, which gives states money to help victims with medical expenses and counseling, faces a $13.5 billion cut.

    • FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 4:38 pm #

      Finally, the marching orders came through! Now they know what and how to lie about.

    • onehunglo December 20, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

      ah, janet, onehunglo anticipate you well predicted talking points, handed down from Party Central….

      as a result, onehunglo issuing directive to have operative hand deliver voucher for one-way ticket to North Korea.

      this allow you ample opportunity to voice dissent on behalf of Kim Jong-Un’s tapeworm infested population.

      enjoy you trip!

      may God be with you.

      -onehunglo

      • 100th Avatar December 20, 2017 at 8:56 pm #

        WPA-CCC is a bot drowned in partisanship. binary, binary, binary.
        AKA: what is wrong with this shambles of a country.

    • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 6:52 pm #

      ” Department of Justice’s Crime Victims Fund, which gives states money to help victims with medical expenses and counseling, faces a $13.5 billion cut.”

      Janet,
      And why else do you think they are called “victims”?

      • janet December 20, 2017 at 6:57 pm #

        Do you now enjoy TRICARE? Do you now have Social Security benefits? Do you take advantage of veteran’s benefits? Do you support increasing the deficit by $1.5 Trillion? Or are you with “deficits don’t matter-Cheney”?

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 8:02 pm #

          You GO girl… err.. bot! You’re all wound up today. Did your employers threaten your Christmas bonus, or what?

        • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:45 pm #

          Janet

          With all the money the government will let me keep, I’m going to Disneyland!

          • janet December 20, 2017 at 11:50 pm #

            Why not splurge and go to Disney World?

          • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:58 pm #

            Janet,
            Truth be told, I will no longer suffer “steerage” and cannot afford first class….

        • elysianfield December 21, 2017 at 12:03 am #

          “are you with “deficits don’t matter-Cheney”?”

          Janet,
          In that it is impossible to address the current debt, I’m not sure it really matters. We are screwed, and being a little bit more pregnant than the day before might mean little.

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 8:55 pm #

      And yet you have to admire the sheer hutzpah of it all. The Dems get their chance to save the world in the wake of an epic GOP inspired meltdown in 2008, offering us “change we can believe in” for eight long years from a mulatto of questionable heritage and ideology, a wife of questionable sexual identity, and two daughters of questionable parentage; who then “leads” in a manner indistinguishable from, and in fact doubling down on the policies of, the far right loon GOP before him, all of which leads to a clusterfuck of heretofore unimaginable proportions in the 2016 quadrennial elections, producing the perfect storm of idiocy in all three branches of what passes for the the US government these days, the legislative branch having been long since hopelessly compromised already.

      SO, who is it we should blame for this state of affairs, you might ask?

      Is it you, is it me, is it the shadow behind yonder tree?
      Is it the rich, is it the poor, or is it the GOP?
      Ask not, want not, say the powers that be.
      It’s tax breaks for us, and MISERY for thee!

      Rich little piggy went to market
      Poor little piggy stayed home
      Rich little piggy made a fortune
      Poor little piggy made none

      Rich little piggy bought an empire
      Poor little piggy laid low
      Rich little piggy said “Go die!”
      Poor little piggy said “No!”

      Rich little piggy said “I own it all!”
      Poor little piggy said “So what?”
      Rich little piggy asked “Aren’t you scared?”
      Poor little piggy replied “Not one fucking bit!”

      Rich little pig asked “Why?”
      Poor little piggy replied
      “Because I’m a pig you pompous ass”
      “And YOU are a goddamn PIG too!”
      “No greater or lesser than I!”

      • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 12:08 am #

        The questionable heritage is bull and It amazes me that nobody pays attention to truth, the truth is stranger than fiction and the trail is right here.

        Mrs. Dog and I once looked at renting an apartment in the complex Barack lived in as an infant with his mother at the time his grandparents still lived on Mercer Island. Tiny places but high class for when they were built, I think in the 40’s, they still carried the mystique and I did not see what the big deal was. Living like a sardine for an upscale address makes no sense to me. The apartments are gone now I think. I have not been on that part of the island for a long time. It is a question of cul-de sac geometry and no reason to be there. The location is only perhaps four miles away from where I am now but half a mile of water is in between.

        Questions about Barack’s wife and daughters were uncouth. I find defending him odd but necessary.

        Under Barack’s tenure men in black were crawling up America’s collective asshole like no other time in history. Barack was groomed and put in place to favor the survival of an elite and keeping the hoi polloi on a short electronic leash is a big part of that mission. The rights of Americans were trashed by Baracks application of surveillance. I know this biblically so I am not a fan, but insulting a mans family is shitty.

        • ozone December 21, 2017 at 8:33 am #

          “Barack was groomed and put in place to favor the survival of an elite and keeping the hoi polloi on a short electronic leash is a big part of that mission. The rights of Americans were trashed by Baracks application of surveillance.”

          K-dog,
          Now there’s the salient point. I really couldn’t give a shit about the heritage of the person whose ass is planted on the throne, it’s the intent* of said monarch. In contemporary America, that personage’s mission seems to be to provide cover for the massive grifting by the liberal application of smooth talk (sincerely delivered lies) and misdirection. Have the American peephole always wanted a magician for their leader? Maybe so, but Cheeto von Tweeto is taking this entertainment-displacing-reality theme to extremes.

          * (It’s sad that the word “intent” has also been legally corrupted without comment.)

          • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 5:24 pm #

            Chereto Von Tweeto . The president as smart as a bag of cheese doodles. The art of misdirection has achieved new heights with this mess of orange. To say we live in interesting times now threatens us all.

        • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

          Cheeto Von Tweeto

          Autocorrect sucks.

    • Walter B December 21, 2017 at 1:01 am #

      I am not certain what it is that you smoke, snort, or drink that has driven you to think that we have maintained roads (bankrupted transportation trust funds), clean water (fracking byproducts & GOM tar balls), safe food (MONSANTO and Round Up), or health care (Obamacare, really?) but you had better either pass the bong or double up on the dosages that you are imbibing in because you are as full of shit as the proverbial shit sandwich! Why don’t you just send a threatening email to President trump so we can be rid of your ceaseless whining?

      • ozone December 21, 2017 at 8:07 am #

        Walter B,
        As we have all been witness to, there’s a vast difference between a functioning agency/entrenched institution and a false-fronted, huge, corrupt bureaucracy that exists only to maintain and propagate itself. The actual public-trust missions have been destroyed and Janus figureheads and satraps installed to do the opposite of the original intent.

        There’s gonna be an awful lot of ‘splainin’ to do when it becomes common knowledge (to the general population) that this is the case.
        Although, I suppose it won’t matter too much by that time as we’ll all be too busy with surviving to care much — and there will certainly be no one “contributing” taxes to pay for this bloat/pork. (I see rude, gunpoint confiscations by govt. contractors in the future.) Whither the minions? Better keep the Cheeto supply topped up and the goodies handed out, regular-like, or there’ll be tremblers and tumbrels for the present-day aristos.

        • Walter B December 21, 2017 at 9:35 am #

          You could not be more correct my friend it is sad but oh so true. I spent many decades working in the Private Sector where my responsibilities were to “get it done and save money doing it or I will find someone else who will”! We always got it done and earned lots of profits doing it.

          I work a part time retirement job for fun now for a Non-Profit business where they beg for money, accept donations for write offs and get some from our services for pay. There is NO cost savings, good money gets thrown after bad, and a total lack of financial abilities is the rule of the day.

          I am also a member of our local government. Our Committee takes whatever it want from a population of distracted, disoriented, uncaring taxpayers that are so far over their heads with their complicated and overly complex lifestyle that they simply just shut up and pay. The government laughs and berates the citizens and pisses away more money that a shipload of drunken sailors.

          My experiences of life over the course of my 63 years living it have proven beyond all doubt that things like money lose value when they do not have to be earned though human effort and the more that is accumulated, the less value they actually have for those that hold it. Unfortunately for humanity right now, the same holds true for human life. There are more than enough people around, perhaps too many, and those who use us all have less and less value for all of us as the population expands. This is a formula for real disaster.

          • Q. Shtik December 21, 2017 at 10:45 am #

            Our Committee takes [whatever it want] from a population… – Walter B

            ===========

            Strange, I had always assumed you were White 😉

          • Walter B December 21, 2017 at 12:21 pm #

            LOL, that’s a good one. Whilst I strive for perfection in my postings, I never am able to achieve it. I assure you that I am Caucasian because everyone treats me like shit without any consequences. White people got NO rights! Yes I spelled it the way I wanted to that time.

      • elysianfield December 21, 2017 at 5:30 pm #

        “you are as full of shit as the proverbial shit sandwich! Why don’t you just send a threatening email to President trump so we can be rid of your ceaseless whining”

        Walter, you remember the old joke…

        “Uhh, what the Colonel MEANT to say was….”

  75. akmofo December 20, 2017 at 7:00 pm #

    Good:

    “AT&T, Comcast giving $1,000 bonuses to hundreds of thousands of workers after tax bill”

    The winos will always whine.

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    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 8:56 pm #

      So how’s the vino? Excellent, I suspect.

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 8:58 pm #

      So we know that your Jewish and rich now. Hardly surprising. Oh my fucking Christ, don’t tell me you’re a banker too!

      • Janos Skorenzy December 20, 2017 at 9:11 pm #

        Good, Scratch. Leftists are more Jew wise than the Right now. A sad state of affairs since you aren’t loyal to your race as he is loyal to his. We should emulate that, without emulating his obnoxious qualities.

      • akmofo December 20, 2017 at 9:14 pm #

        I’m not a banker, and I don’t drink alcohol. I do want to US to do well. For whatever reason, too many here do not, which is a shame.

        • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 9:35 pm #

          Understood. Possibly retired and/or made a living off the periphery of the finance industry then. Quite relatable, to most of us anyway. Of course the REALLY big boys no doubt still look down their nose at you, but that’s probably two or three generations down the road from being an actual problem. I wouldn’t worry about it either.

        • Walter B December 21, 2017 at 9:40 am #

          Your perception is way off. Nobody here wants to see America not do well because there is NO victory in “I told you so”! There is a common trend in our nation of caring for nothing but yourself and enjoying a never ending party. Those who are warning against sticking your dick in an electrical outlet are not trying to be buzzkills, just trying to prevent the pain and suffering that will surely ensue from such foolish behavior.

  76. FincaInTheMountains December 20, 2017 at 8:24 pm #

    Obamacare will save 2 trillion dollars in the next 5 years

    Honestly speaking, I did not understand everything, but one thing I undersood – as a result of transactions of companies with medical insurers in the pockets of the insurers ends up 2 trillion every 5 years.

    As a result of Obamacare this money will go to the doctors, hospitals and the state, but who gets what share not sure.

    But for the first three years these moneys did not arrive because of initial perestroika, but now they will start coming to the treasury and the faster the economy will grow, the more of these revenues will be generated.

    • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 9:19 pm #

      Hmm… a Russian defector (and former military officer too!) who is now gaming the system he allegedly “resisted” for all those years.

      Yep, I see now why those grain alcohol infused bong hits have no effect on you my old friend. I definitely wanna party with you!

      Tell you what, in celebration of the tax cuts and the fact that you’ve apparently got infinitely deep pockets now, I’m inviting akmofo to the New Year’s shindig too and lifting the firearms limitations altogether! Bring ’em and shoot ’em if you’ve got ’em will be the theme, gendarme be damned! We’ll shoot those fuckers too! I know janos will be happy!

      As an extra bonus, I’ll see if I can pull some USAF strings and see if we can’t get a flyover with some old expired nuclear ordnance dropped off in the ocean just for shits and giggles too. Talk about a midnight “glow!” What do you think? I think it would be just ‘da bomb that would set our event off from all the others for the New Year. Maybe get some cable network coverage too. Anyway…

      All the best!

    • akmofo December 20, 2017 at 9:22 pm #

      Gov mafia tax revenues are by definition a brake on the economy. The less of this revenue the faster the economy will grow. Public projects financed by the gov mafia should come strictly from freshly printed money.

      • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 9:41 pm #

        I agree. And following that same logic, I propose that we abolish taxes altogether. Now THAT’S something both the rich and the poor can agree on!

        • akmofo December 20, 2017 at 9:58 pm #

          Taxes are useful in modifying bad behaviour. That would place you in the highest tax bracket 🙂

          • Ol' Scratch December 20, 2017 at 10:03 pm #

            LOL! Now that thar’s funny I don’t care who you are!

  77. ..Captain America.. December 20, 2017 at 9:26 pm #

    To make the world work for 100% of humnaity
    ….in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”
    – R. Buckminster Fuller, 1968.

    ……starts with one individual, one family, one village, one community, one nation, in spontaneous cooperation.

    And deductive logic reveals establishing our Constitutional Republic allowing for the working for 100% of our Constitutional Citizens is required before accepting the ingress of unvetted refugees or exporting of funds to other nations, that are not working for 100% of their citizens.

    And entities that fail to observe this and spontaneously cooperate in making the Republic work for 100% of our Constitutional Citizens are not welcome in the New Republic.

    Sent from the New Republic.

    • elysianfield December 20, 2017 at 11:52 pm #

      “And entities that fail to observe this and spontaneously cooperate in making the Republic work for 100% of our Constitutional Citizens are not welcome in the New Republic.”

      Sweet Jesus….

      …Not welcome? I hear the sheepdogs snarling, they smell blood, and will not be denied….

  78. Pucker December 20, 2017 at 9:33 pm #

    In the book “Twelve Years a Slave”, to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, the Masters of the Louisiana plantations gave the negro slaves 4 or 5 days Christmas holiday to sing and dance, and to feast on roast chicken, venison, wild cow, sweet corn, black eyed peas, and sweet potatoes, and the Masters encouraged their slaves to fornicate with slaves from neighboring plantations. It was a method of “Livestock Management.”

    • elysianfield December 21, 2017 at 12:07 am #

      Puck,
      Sooo, Massa needed to encourage them to fornicate?

      • Pucker December 21, 2017 at 1:00 am #

        The Masters encouraged the slaves to fornicate to make baby slaves to increase the Master’s wealth.

        The Democrats through welfare encourage young black girls to fornicate since the more babies, the bigger the welfare check. The Democrats like this arrangement as it creates more dependent Democratic voters on the plantation.

        • malthuss December 21, 2017 at 10:10 am #

          So POCs are just livestock? You think that?

          • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:34 pm #

            That’s what “goyim” means. And the Jews and their Globalist allies are the cowboys.

            The Texas Longhorn were a breed that could survive on their own, taking the cold and fighting off predators. But they were dangerous to work with and the Cowboys got rid of them in favor of gentler breeds once they no longer needed independent livestock.

            That’s what’s happening now to Whites.

          • Pucker December 21, 2017 at 6:15 pm #

            They view the people as livestock and herd the people around into pens using “Education”, Propaganda, money, debt, and force.

            The Last Round-Up

            I’m heading for the last roundup
            Gonna saddle old Paint for the last time and ride
            So long, old pal, it’s time your tears were dried
            I’m heading for the last roundup.
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            I’m heading for the last roundup
            To the far away ranch of the Boss in the sky
            Where the strays are counted and branded there go I
            I’m heading for the last roundup
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            Git along little doggie, git along, git along
            I’m heading for the last roundup
            There’ll be…

  79. ..Captain America.. December 20, 2017 at 9:46 pm #

    PSYOPS:Designed to induce a predicted behavioral response.

    “The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, remains in place for those individuals who itemize their taxes — but now there’s a $10,000 cap. Previously, filers could deduct an unlimited amount for state and local property taxes, plus income or sales taxes.”

    ……and if one chooses to reside in a high income tax state with high property tax and high ingress of refugees, the $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction is designed to induce a predicted behavioral response.

    ….and so it goes…………until it doesn’t.

    Sent from the New Republic.

  80. akmofo December 20, 2017 at 10:33 pm #

    Not good:

    Geoengineering Reality: Film Footage And Facts Prove Contrail Myth
    https://youtu.be/aQk9B7kjKrM

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  81. ..Captain America.. December 20, 2017 at 10:37 pm #

    $768 MILLION DOCUMENTED U.S. DOLLARS SENT TO THE ARABIAN PENINSULA SINCE OCTOBER 2016 BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WHILE U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL CITIZENS ARE ABANDONED IN THE STREETS.

    https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2017/12/u-s-sends-al-qaedas-arabian-peninsula-headquarters-768-mil-humanitarian-aid/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members&utm_content=20171221033707

    …..and so it goes…..until it doesn’t.

    Sent from the New Republic.

  82. pequiste December 21, 2017 at 12:41 am #

    In between the whoosh of private jets landing at Boca Raton’s airport, the sound of myriad champagne cork poppings could be heard saturating the more easterly precincts on the Gold Coast of Florida; a direct result of the passage of the 2017 Tax Reform Act.

    Cue the Jack Hylton:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW-0kbIcf1E

    And only one issue still requires clarification:

    How come the tax cuts for person taxpayers are for eight years only while the tax cuts for corporations are permanent?

  83. Q. Shtik December 21, 2017 at 1:19 am #

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/arts/music/eminem-revival-review.html

    Will someone please tell me the meaning of the “hoodie.” Especially when it is worn in a not-cold setting. It seems to be portraying an aura of criminality. It hides a lot.

    Several months ago I was northbound on Rt 27 on my way home from a blood test. I was at the unofficial Black/Mexican border where those communities touch in New Brunswick, NJ. It was a Fall school day and rather warm for the calendar date. A black boy, estimated age 15, walked along with a hoodie up, just like Eminem in the link above. I was baffled with WHY? What message was he trying to convey? It certainly had nothing to do with keeping his ears warm.

    • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 7:40 am #

      Hello Q.Shtik

      Your hoodie comment struck a chord as ‘hug a hoodie’ became a bit of a jokey meme in the UK following a speech by David Cameron about a decade ago (when he was in opposition). The full speech is here, on the BBC website:

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5166498.stm

      A few points (DC isn’t my usual go-to source but he did put some thought into the matter):

      “In that context I want to say something about what is, for some, a vivid symbol of what has gone wrong with young people in Britain today: hoodies.

      In May last year, hoodies became political. The Bluewater shopping centre banned them, and the Prime Minister said he backed the ban.

      I actually think it’s quite right for politicians to debate these matters.

      But debating the symptoms rather than the causes won’t get us very far. Because the fact is that the hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself.

      We – the people in suits – often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters. but, for young people, hoodies are often more defensive than offensive. They’re a way to stay invisible in the street.

      In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down, blend in, don’t stand out.

      For some, the hoodie represents all that’s wrong about youth culture in Britain today. For me, adult society’s response to the hoodie shows how far we are from finding the long-term answers to put things right.”

      There’s a lot more – I just included a quote in case you don’t want to read the whole thing. Obviously things also just become fashionable, especially in a subculture, but possibly there’s something in this?

      • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 2:16 pm #

        Alba doesn’t get it of course. She takes the side of the criminals. Likewise, she things Muslimas should be able to cover their faces all the time – even for ID photos. No doubt she took the side of the Gypsy family that took over an Englishman’s home when he went on vacation. He had a hell of a time getting it back since the English bureaucracy is infested with her kind.

        • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 4:15 pm #

          I didn’t take anyone’s side. You speak without thinking.

          I simply indicated a speech by a former *Conservative* leader of the opposition, later Prime Minister. His views are his views – I merely offered them politely as one possible answer to Q-Shtik’s question. The Tories are not known for leftist views.

          From the speech in question:

          “Individuals are responsible for their actions – and every individual has the choice between doing right and doing wrong.”

          “But there are connections between circumstances and behaviour.”

          Both of those statements are valid. That you are incapable of accommodating paradox or nuance in your thinking is unfortunate.

          “Likewise, she thinks Muslimas should be able to cover their faces all the time – even for ID photos.”

          You do know what they call people who make things up deliberately about people? Yes, liars and slanderers. And in choosing this particular slander, you show yourself to be both desperate and irredeemably stupid.

          • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 4:43 pm #

            I take back the ‘irredeemable’. No-one is irredeemable – and you are less exceptional than you’d like to be, even in that.

            And people can be intelligent and stupid at the same time. Back to that paradox you seem incapable of accommodating in your mind – probably because it’s stuffed to the gunwales with mystic BS.

        • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 5:15 pm #

          You ASSume a lot Janos. Thinking she would want I,D, photos covered and accusing ‘her kind’ of infesting anything is rude.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 6:53 pm #

            She didn’t deny it either. I mean the sheer unreality of thinking minority youfs are hiding! All over the Western World now, Black and Muslims youfs keep light schedules, hanging out on street corners staring at, jeering at, and insulting Whites walking by. They don’t have their heads down – they’re loud and proud. Whites have their heads down.

            Offhand I would have said she doesn’t get around much, but I think she said she doesn’t have a car. I’m still not surprised: the ability of women to deny and/or misinterpret their own experience approaches infinity.

          • GreenAlba December 26, 2017 at 7:23 pm #

            “Offhand I would have said she doesn’t get around much, but I think she said she doesn’t have a car.”

            Is this what counts as logic where you live? Really? You think people who use public transport most of the time see less than people travelling in their own little hermetically sealed bubble?

            I can get from my home to Paris, Brussels or even Marseilles by train. When I visited your country I had to take a plane like everyone else. When I really need a car, which is extremely rarely, I hire one. I choose not to keep a car for reasons to do with climate change. And I really don’t see why a rational person would keep an expensive-to-maintain hunk of steel parked on the street when there’s a bus stop 60 seconds’ walk from their front door or they can walk to the centre of their city, where it’s difficult to park, in 25 minutes.

            My husband doesn’t keep a car either – entirely through choice. He’s rational too. And male.

            And I didn’t deny your stupid accusation because it was too stupid to merit denial.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:18 pm #

      It’s a garment, namely a hooded sweatshirt. Yeah, and wearing the hood has attained the heights of fatuity: I’ve seen kids wear them when it was over 70 degrees. The lure of criminal culture is overwhelming for some. It IS the popular culture of Mexico from what I hear.

      Netflix superheroes all wear hoods when in action – but they’re good guys. Or are they? Robin Hood was a hero to some and a villain to others after all.

      • capt spaulding December 21, 2017 at 1:59 pm #

        It ain’t no different than wearing stocking caps in the summer. It’s all about style. None of them are smart enough to have a philosophy to go along with it.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 2:13 pm #

          I noticed a big uptick after the Trayvon affair. It became cool even in my burb among the romantic. It’s not philosophy, exactly. Symbolism is all the more powerful for being unconscious.

          The silly little stocking caps are just style, yes. This was “deeper” but no less silly.

    • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm #

      It is a way to hide and not be seen. Imagine criminal intent if you will but simply being in an uncomfortable situation and wanting to fade into the woodwork is reason enough.

      Being black in a sea of white can at times be uncomfortable. So I have heard. What do you think?

      • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 6:56 pm #

        Whites will never be a “minority” even when they are – as they are now in many places. Folks like you simply won’t let them be. You NEED that mythical Whites majority to hate and blame – as do your minority allies.

        One shudders to think at the world young Whites are inheriting and the horrors they will experience at the hands of non-Whites.

    • elysianfield December 21, 2017 at 5:35 pm #

      Q,
      You survived the Canadian wilds “On the steel horse I ride”. We need first- person accounts of your immersion in the flesh pots of the North.

  84. janet December 21, 2017 at 1:58 am #

    On Wednesday, the 335th day of his presidency, Donald J. Trump did something most extraordinary and uncharacteristic. He told the truth.

    The president, celebrating his $1.5 trillion tax cut with fellow Republicans at the South Portico of the White House, was midway through his remarks when he veered sharply off message.

    “I shouldn’t say this,” Trump said, “but we essentially repealed Obamacare.”

    By killing the “individual mandate” and thereby removing the engine that made the Affordable Care Act work… Trump threw the health-care system into chaos without offering any remedy. And Trump just claimed paternity of the destruction.

    TrumpCare is now Trump’s baby. He is responsible for the consequences of 13 million losing their health care, thanks to his braying about his “repeal” of Obamacare. Premiums will go up for all the rest of us as well, thanks to Mr. Trump. Millions of voters in 2018 will notice, and they will remember who raised their monthly health care premiums.

    #MeToo

    #BLM

    #UnidosUS

  85. FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 3:32 am #

    Questions about Barack’s wife and daughters were uncouth. I find defending him odd but necessary. == Dog

    All vile conspiracy theories about Obama and his family are coming from Clinton’s propaganda factory.

    Hillary can’t forgive Obama her crushing defeat in 2008.

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    • Ol' Scratch December 21, 2017 at 7:25 am #

      Kinda doubt it, since the same factories were generating conspiracy theories about the Witch too. Who knows the truth of such assertions, but one thing’s for sure, a whole lot of things about that bunch of posers didn’t pass the smell test right from the start. “Change we could believe in,” is what we were sold. “Lies no one could believe,” is what we got. Great for big business though, which is the only thing that ever mattered.

  86. FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 3:49 am #

    It is time to start a healing process after 30-years of Clinton’s dark ages of AIDS in public administration, sarcoma of the financial system with metastases in journalism and education.

  87. Ol' Scratch December 21, 2017 at 7:16 am #

    More evidence that the Zionist lobby has stepped up its game against Trump:

    Trump commutes sentence of kosher meatpacking executive

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the sentence of an Iowa kosher meatpacking executive who had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering, marking the first time he’s used the presidential power.

    The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country’s largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of numerous members of Congress and a long list of high-ranking law enforcement officials, who argued the sentence was far too harsh for a first-time, nonviolent offender.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/20/trump-commutes-sentence-kosher-meatpacking-business-executive-rubashkin-311389

    Good times for white collar criminals, although, one wonders when exactly there were ever bad times?

    • FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 9:41 am #

      Trump abuses his executive privilege and pardons a Turkey

      WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump in the dark hours of Monday morning commuted the sentence of an offspring of Minnesota poultry production who had been sentenced to die for aspiring toward world turkey domination in the kosher food chain, marking the first time he’s used the presidential power toward a specific bird.

      New York Times raised legitimate doubts whether that action carries a hidden anti-Semitic meaning, since Turkey enjoys(?) its highest per-capita consumption rate in Israel, and can be found on farms from Iran to South Africa. (Anti-Muslim and anti-Black act?)

      • malthuss December 21, 2017 at 10:09 am #

        sick…Trump betrays us.

        400 wetbacks employed by a (())).

        • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 10:49 am #

          Say Jew, shithead! Are you afraid God will strike you down if you did? At least Janos has the balls to say it outright instead of using stupid parentheses.

    • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 10:46 am #

      Unfortunately, Scratch, I’ve been detecting that your comments have added an Anti-Zionist tinge to them lately. It seems that the Mideast Arab nations really scored a major coup back in the day when they equated Zionism with racism and other bad things. In truth, all Zionism is, is a desire for Jews to return to their ancestral lands, nothing more. Saying Zionist this or Zionist that is really saying in disguise, Jew this or Jew that.

      Do you know for a fact that Jews were responsible for the commutation of this guy’s sentence? Could another explanation be that this person was a prominent member of the business community, and other prominent businessmen contacted their congressmen to pressure Trump, and it had nothing to do with Jews ….errrr, Zionists? Did you research what the average money laundering criminal sentencing term is? 27 years does seem a little harsh for a first-time, non-violent felon.

      Boy wait until CFN’s resident hateful, anti-semites read my comment.

      • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 12:51 pm #

        Bullshit, there is a rabid radical branch of Zionism who like a child from an abusive family carries abuse they received forward to future generations. This radical branch seeks to exterminate all enemies just as their father Nazis tried to do.

        This radical branch has equated Zionism with racism and other bad things, nobody else has. Originally a desire for Jews to return to their ancestral lands was indeed the expressed marching orders of the Zionist movement and for most Jews, who are good people, this remains true. For some, a bad minority this is not true.

        I need to see Scratch’s specific comments to see if I agree or disagree with you. A telling issue to will be if Scratch cares to discuss his comments. If not then hope his writing improves and he spends more time thinking deeper and using his power of expression to put out more positive thoughts.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:25 pm #

          If the majority are loyal to the bads, are they good? How good could they be?

          Same question with Cops and Priests.

          Not very I’d say, in all cases.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:27 pm #

            And the Zionists predated the Nazis. Indeed, as Pat Buchanan has said, the Likud is Fascism. Add race to the mix – and it already is part of the mix – and you have National Socialism. The Nazis were inspired by the Jews to some extent, though not blindly. Each People will craft their own Fascism and/or National Socialism based on their unique traditions and needs.

          • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 4:50 pm #

            Figured you would show up and spout nonsense. It was a sure bet. Reassuring in a way. The universe expresses order in strange ways.

        • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 3:22 pm #

          I call bullshit on your post. Equating Zionists with Nazis? Really? That’s a little over the top. Who are the these rabid Zionists? Maybe you meant to say that the rabid ones are like Nazis. If so, you didn’t say so, and you should be very careful on how you say things when you call out a group of people.

          So now you say this radical branch has equated Zionism with racism, and nobody else has? Why would they say their own beliefs are racist? I never heard that. In addition, you are wrong. The UN, at the bequest of Israel’s Arab enemies, passed a resolution years ago stating Zionism equals racism. I don’t believe you are anti-Jewish, but you have to be more succinct and accurate when you make the kinds of statements you wrote in your post.

          The Nazis didn’t just try to eliminate their enemies, they also attacked those they had no inherent animosity against, like the French, Dutch, Finns, Belgians, etc.

      • elysianfield December 21, 2017 at 5:44 pm #

        “In truth, all Zionism is, is a desire for Jews to return to their ancestral lands, nothing more.”

        Uhh, Bill, I believe that Zionism is a political construct, not simply a religious one. There are Jews that do not support the Zionist agenda….

        Zionism is intensely political…as are our immigration policies.

        • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 8:51 pm #

          Of course there’s a political side to Zionism; there always has been. It probably goes back well over a thousand years. How can a people achieve their goals without politics (except by violent takeover. And before you say that’s what the Israelis have done, remember, it wasn’t them who started the six day war, which led to the current boundaries).

    • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:21 pm #

      You think they were ever at odds? He’s a loose cannon, maybe. But I think high level Jews always knew he was on their side, despite the shrieks of hatred from the rest of the Tribe and the Tribe owned main stream media.

  88. malthuss December 21, 2017 at 10:07 am #

    I am not a fan, but insulting a mans family [Obamas] is sh—ty

    Well. The marriage is fake. Obama is gay.
    The 2 girls look just like their real parents, the female MD and her hubby. JUST LIKE THEM.

    http://imgur.com/wHu03Ip the real parents

    • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 10:50 am #

      Shhhh… Finca’s listening.

      No-one landed on the moon either.

      Or maybe Obama landed on the moon – which is probably gay – or at least it was born outside the United States and looks a bit Muslim. Sometimes it looks really shifty the way it hides behind the trees.

      You can’t be too careful…

      I realise you were being ironic. Obviously 🙂

      • FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 12:21 pm #

        When future President of the United States John Kennedy after leaving school in 1935 was on his way to London, the acute aesthetic perception of reality forced him to visit Kenya in order to enjoy the beauty of Lake Victoria.

        It’s hard to say how much the aesthetic and beneficial presence of the future US President John F. Kennedy influenced the fact that nine months later one of these beauties – a stately girl named Habiba Obama – gave birth to an extremely capable boy – future father of the future President of the United States Barack Obama.

        So your idea that Obama fulfilled the dream of his grandfather and actually landed on the Moon, bears some romantic significance.

        • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 12:33 pm #

          Then decades later the maternal side of the family would have a daughter in high school who would soon become the mother of the keeper of the status quo. That high school by way of the crow, is four miles away from this keyboard.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 12:27 pm #

        Obviously, it is not the sole privilege of the British Royalty to have their little family secrets.

      • K-Dog December 21, 2017 at 12:27 pm #

        According to the Andrew Anglin’s Daily Stormer Style Guide. ‘Muslim’ should be spelled ‘Moslem,’”

        “The tone of the site should be light. Most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, nonironic hatred.The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists. I usually think of this as self-deprecating humor

        I am a racist making fun of stereotype of racists, because I don’t take myself super-seriously.

        This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas kikes. But that’s neither here nor there..

        It is not obvious GA. You make it obvious in your own mind just as I used to before I learned better. You have a moral compass and make the common mistake everybody else has one too. Some do not.

        Men with daddy issues and penises that are an inch shorter than average really do want to hurt other people. They just can’t get by with it yet. As soon as ignorance gives them a chance they will. They have scores to settle.

        • GreenAlba December 21, 2017 at 3:22 pm #

          K-Dog

          Sorry, the British taste for irony is strong – irresistible in fact in many of us. My ‘obviously’ was ironic. I was, as we say over here, taking the p*ss, but not wishing to be too rude, since ’tis the season to be jolly’ etc. and I wrote a long post already in response to unthinking prejudice earlier in the thread.

      • Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 1:30 pm #

        Michelle referred to herself as a single mother once on camera. You don’t have much capacity for reality. Most people don’t as Aldous Huxley said.

  89. beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 10:55 am #

    @ Q:

    Unless I missed that posting – which is possible – I haven’t read about your trip to Canada. I’d be interested in hearing about it because I’m sure it would be a tale worth being told in your inestimable style.

    • Q. Shtik December 21, 2017 at 3:51 pm #

      I won’t be going until the summer. I’m still trying to pass the NJ motorcycle road test (I flunked once) which is near impossible on a large and heavy bike. Mine is well over 600 lbs with a 650cc engine. When weather permits I’m going to take a course where 250cc bikes are used and it’s much simpler to weave through closely spaced cones, etc.

      I had a bike license (and owned 3 different bikes) back in the day and if memory serves anyone who could fog a mirror could pass the test. They have greatly tightened up on that BS.

      • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 9:00 pm #

        I should have known because you didn’t write about the trip.

  90. messianicdruid December 21, 2017 at 12:58 pm #

    “That’s our common heritage and our common moral responsibility, regardless of the fact that my faction refused your revolution.”

    Living in the past. I was born 80 miles from here. My wife was born 8 miles from here. This is all the past I’m concerned with.

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  91. janet December 21, 2017 at 2:01 pm #

    Thank you, Beantown, for calling out Ol’ Scratch on his anti-semitism. The steady undercurrent of anti-semitic commentary on CFN (not just from janos) shows a lack of appreciation for the tremendous gifts that Jews have given us. The world is safer, healthier, and more beautiful because we have been graced by Jewish intelligence.

    The Jewish Contributions to Western Civilization
    http://www.jinfo.org

    • capt spaulding December 21, 2017 at 3:00 pm #

      You mean Harvey Weinstein?

      • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 3:31 pm #

        Germany/Austria contributed Beethoven, Mozart, Heine, and many others, but they also contributed Hitler. Why did you mention Weinstein, but not Einstein and others? I know you’re a good guy, capn, but you have to think about what you are saying or implying.

  92. Janos Skorenzy December 21, 2017 at 2:10 pm #

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer? The Center cannot hold? What do these words mean?

    Attend: A person’s subjective reality is typically what they experience every day. Other things will then tend to become abstract ideals, weak compared to the loyalty and attraction of those with whom one lives and loves.

    Thus Bernard Cardinal Law was loyal to his erring Brothers and to the Church, and not to his parishioners. Considering what he did, namely moving around vicious criminals so they could prey on new young boys, he saw the parishioners are as a herd of cattle. How could he not?

    This is the weakness of complex, modern societies: they expect far too much from human nature which is naturally only loyal to small groups. The people you see everyday are your family. Thus cops become couples, clans, and all together, a Tribe in a given city. All American Cops together are a defacto nation, now at war with their parishioners, whom they see as a herd.

    The Answer: You know it. Small organic societies where the people are far less busy and specialized, enabling them to be loyal to the Whole.

  93. FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 3:27 pm #

    On December 28, 2916 Trump, who before had not been able to rejoice at the help that Obama provided to his transitional government, suddenly announced that the Obama administration was sabotaging the transfer of power.

    https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/trump-slams-obama-sabotaging-transition/

    And the next day, the State Department demanded that 35 Russian diplomats leave the US together with their families within 72 hours for alleged interference in the American elections and not letting Hillary Clinton to the passionately desired American red button.

    And, as speaker of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova later explained, that at the ministry no one doubted that the purpose of this demarche was the arrest of Russian diplomats at the airport, since on December 31 and January 1, when the deadline expired, the aircraft did not fly. Some of the US media immediately assumed that Obama was trying to slam the door loudly behind him, starting a nuclear war, but stylistic analysis of the statement clearly points to Hillary Clinton, who likewise in 2001 arrested the head of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Pavel Borodin, who flew to President Bush’s inauguration.

    It becomes clear that the purpose of the expulsion of Russian diplomats in December 2016 was to provoke Russia to retaliate with the arrest of American diplomats in Moscow, which could then be used to anger public opinion in the United States and overthrow Trump, whom Russia allegedly helped to the White House, ensuring his victory in the elections.

    General Flynn neutralized this plan of Hillary Clinton, having talked with the Russian ambassador to the US Kislyak, and also provided for the evacuation of Russian diplomats from the United States before the Clinton’s 72 hours expired and convinced Kisliak not to retaliate as expected to these provocations.

    Ever since, Trump has repeatedly fought back the similar attempts to overthrow him, as well as from accusations of inability to solve any issue. And in the latter he was accused by the very media that did not want to see the sabotage of the administration of Trump by the Obama administration, or rather the administration of Hillary Clinton, and even took the most active part in this sabotage.

    This continued until December 20, 2017, when Trump managed to successfully pass through the Congress and the Senate the law on reform of the tax system. But more importantly, the critically important improvement of Obamacare is inside the tax law – health insurance reform that the Clintonoids in the Republican Party failed to pass – the head of the republican majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnel and the head of the republican majority in the Congress, Paul Ryan. And judging by the sour expression on their faces, this law was successfully carried out as a result of a small pro-Tramp revolution in the Republican Party!

    Who would have thought yesterday that only two months ago these people threatened Trump with immediate impeachment if he did not immediately sign the law on anti-Russian sanctions, which, among other things, deprived him of very significant presidential powers in the field of foreign policy.

    • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 4:54 pm #

      Trump will still be president in 899 years? He’s been re-elected 224 times? He discovered the secret of immortality? Boy, I can make a fortune predicting the next few hundred elections. Thank you.

      • FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 5:51 pm #

        Trump will still be president in 899 years?

        Wrong question. Will the humanity be here in 899 years? An answer to that question depends to a pretty significant extent on Trump.

      • beantownbill. December 21, 2017 at 8:54 pm #

        I was just bustin’ your chops. I know you made a typo.

  94. FincaInTheMountains December 21, 2017 at 3:45 pm #

    And the Zionists predated the Nazis. — Janos

    Janos, you are not aware of German history. The Germans have always been the most terrible and low killers. Enough to look at the Teutonic Order.

    And the attempt after such crimes to point a finger at someone else is another proof that Roosevelt and Morgenthau were right, and not Stalin.

    And you know, I think that the Ukrainian adventure has drawn a line under the artistry of the gloomy German genius.

  95. Pucker December 21, 2017 at 6:20 pm #

    Did someone remark that “Janet” propagates the Trump “Talking Points handed down from Party Central”? Good Lord!

    They view the people as livestock and herd the people around into pens using “Education”, Propaganda, money, debt, and force.

    The Last Round-Up

    I’m heading for the last roundup
    Gonna saddle old Paint for the last time and ride
    So long, old pal, it’s time your tears were dried
    I’m heading for the last roundup.
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    I’m heading for the last roundup
    To the far away ranch of the Boss in the sky
    Where the strays are counted and branded there go I
    I’m heading for the last roundup
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    Git along little doggie, git along, git along
    I’m heading for the last roundup
    There’ll be…

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    • Pucker December 21, 2017 at 6:26 pm #

      The Democratic Party (and probably the Republican Party as well) issues “Talking Points” to its apparatchik Party drones to tell them what to say and to guide the political discourse.

      • Pucker December 21, 2017 at 6:34 pm #

        Half of Americans are directly or indirectly dependent on the US federal government. US$21 Trillion is “missing” according to the US government’s own financial reports. That’s “Trillion”.

        No mention of the missing US$21 trillion in the Party Talking Points.

  96. Q. Shtik December 21, 2017 at 10:58 pm #

    Is Catalonia the new Brexit?

    • janet December 22, 2017 at 1:05 am #

      Wasn’t the USA supposed to become the new Greece two years ago?

    • FincaInTheMountains December 22, 2017 at 6:05 am #

      It is not, but it is its immediate consequence, especially considering the desire of Good Old England to keep the Gibraltar (not unlike the Russian desire to keep Crimea).

  97. FincaInTheMountains December 22, 2017 at 5:56 am #

    Special Relations?

    In the twentieth century, the ideology of Wahhabism has faithfully served the Anglo-Saxon world, the external form of which became the so-called Special Relations between Great Britain and the US, until the latest election campaign in the US did not draw a line under them, or in any case they underwent their most serious test since The Civil War in the United States.

    I will honestly say that I do not know the reasons for this and I can only assume that perhaps Barack Obama as a representative of the Irish Kennedy clan was too rude to the British Queen, maybe the Bush family was too carried away by the Spanish culture, or simply the demographic balance in the US has changed so much that the WASPs lost control over the political system in the United States.

    However, it seems to me that all the above factors have played a role, but the coup de grâce to Special Relations has been dealt by Hillary Clinton, playing with Germany and Saudi Arabia such games that the preventive strike of two allies of Russia – the United States and Britain has become a potential reality, which will not be avoided so easily, even if there is no desire to start a new world war, without a difference, cold or hot.

    In particular, the alliance of anti-Christian Europe (the Fourth Reich) and Islamism/Wahhabism, having coped with the destruction of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, stumbled over Syria and the Russian Air Force, proving its inadequacy for the destruction of Putin’s Russia, and the importation of militants into the EU posed an immediate threat not only to continental Europe but also to the British Isles.

    Today the interests of the Anglo-Saxons in the United States are represented by Donald Trump, and the Protestants by Ted Cruz (in fact, they are not Protestants – they are clones of the Church of England, who are called Protestants by misunderstanding or rather because of the ideological diversion of the Cromwell’s times) .

    Bernie Sanders represents the interests of the multinational American people, which we could conditionally call the union of the working and middle class, and Hillary Clinton, in addition to NATO, the EU(Fourth Reich) and Saudi Arabia, represents the interests of multinational corporations, which at some point had stolen so much that the preservation of the stolen fortunes which they consider to be honestly earned, became incompatible with the existence of any sane and financially responsible government anywhere in the world.

    But especially they are frightened by the US as it will inevitably want to “save capitalism from itself” and put TNCs at the service of American national interests, and not vice versa.

  98. Ol' Scratch December 22, 2017 at 8:03 am #

    Chappelle to Trump voters in new special: ‘You are poor. He’s fighting for me’

    So easy to see, even a rich ni**er can see it:

    Imitating a Trump supporter, Chappelle exclaimed, “Man, Donald Trump’s gonna go to Washington and he’s gonna fight for us.”

    “And I’m standing there thinking in my mind, you dumb motherf—er.”

    “You are poor,” Chappelle said, before adding of Trump, “He’s fighting for me!”

    Chappelle said he encountered many Trump voters on Election Day of last year: “To my surprise, you know what I didn’t see? I didn’t see one deplorable face in that group. I saw some angry faces, and some determined faces — but they felt like decent folk.”

    “In fact, I’m not even lying, not to sound f—ed up, but I felt sorry for them,” Chappelle continued. “I know the game now. I know that rich white people call poor white people ‘trash.’ And the only reason I know that, is because I made so much money last year, the rich whites told me they say it at a cocktail party,” he said to laughs. “And I’m not with that s–t.”

    http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/365970-chappelle-to-trump-voters-in-new-special-you-are-poor-hes

    Same as it ever was: rich is rich, poor is poor, and ne’er the two shall meet. At least not on friendly terms. On the plus side, Trump and the rest of the swine in DC are serving a useful purpose: they’re rapidly bringing about their own demise.

    • FincaInTheMountains December 22, 2017 at 9:22 am #

      Point of view of a dumb motherf—er?

    • My Point of View December 22, 2017 at 10:19 am #

      True stuff. I’m white and I’ve been poor and know first hand that money will screw over anyone, same color or not. Anyone who knows history knows the likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al, were among the cruelest exploiters of labor, grinding people into the dust if it made them a cent. Like P.T.Barnum they considered us trash and fair fare for fleecing.

      Trump is doing so little for the working stiffs that it’s a sick joke on the suckers who voted for that asshat. Some fools will stick up for him and keep voting for GOP even though the GOP acts against their best interests.

      White trash voters react to GOP dog whistles on racism and various bigotries like Pavlov’s dog …. GOP talks about ending welfare and deplorables salivate in anticipation of kicking black girls off welfare before they can squirt out another damned black baby. Truth is a lot more white girls squirt out little bastards than black girls, but the GOP base doesn’t care about facts. About 75% of welfare went away 20 years ago when Gingrich and Clinton reformed the system.

      Today’s GOP base (Dixiecrats until ~50 years ago) has hundreds of years of grooming in the fine art of opening a window and throwing away facts, rationality, and the teachings of their beloved Jeebus when some carpet bagger running for office draws the color line in the sand.

      The rural white trash Trump voters are the ones now milking federal disability programs at twice the rate of urban residents. Welfare reform? Hah, sure, tell me about it. Anyone think Trump’s tax cuts will see shiny new factories popping up in the hinterlands for these who won’t pick up and move to where job opportunities are to be found these days? There’s a whole series on these people, here’s one link that will get you to the set:
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-or-just-desperate/?utm_term=.fcb7b1f730dd

      White Trash, thy name is GOP.

      Meanwhile, JHK mentioned Bitcoin in this column. Well, it sold off today, bigly, taking a lot of fortunes down with it. Barnum smiles in his grave, sucker born every minute …. you know …. and all that jazz….

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