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The Instability Express

T he mentally-challenged kibitzers “out there” — in the hills and hollows of the commentary universe, cable news, the blogosphere, and the pathetic vestige of newspaperdom — are all jumping up and down in a rapture over cheap gasoline prices. Overlay on this picture the fairy tale of coming US energy independence, stir in the approach of winter in the North Dakota shale oil fields, put an early November polar vortex cherry on top, and you have quite a recipe for smashed expectations.

Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world. After years of stagnation, complacency, and official pretense, the linked matrix of systems we depend on for running our techno-industrial society is shaking itself to pieces. American officials either don’t understand what they’re seeing, or don’t want you to know what they see. The tensions between energy, money, and economy have entered a new phase of destructive unwind.

The global economy has caught the equivalent of financial Ebola: deflation, which is the recognition that debts can’t be repaid, obligations can’t be met, and contracts won’t be honored. Credit evaporates and actual business declines steeply as a result of all those things. Who wants to send a cargo ship of aluminum ore to Guangzhou if nobody shows up at the dock with a certified check to pay for it? Financial Ebola means that the connective tissues of trade start to dissolve, and pretty soon blood starts dribbling out of national economies.

One way this expresses itself is the violent rise and fall of comparative currency values. The Japanese yen and the euro go down, the dollar goes up. It happens in a few months, which is quickly in the world of money. Foolish US cheerleaders suppose that the rising dollar is like the rising score of an NFL football team on any given Sunday. “We’re numbah one!” It’s just not like that. The global economy is not some stupid football contest.

When currencies change value quickly, as has happened since the past summer, big banks get into big trouble. Their revenue streams are pegged to so-called “carry trades” in which big blobs of money are borrowed in one currency and used to place bets in other currencies. When currency values change radically, carry trades blow up. So do so-called “derivatives” such as bets on interest rate differentials. When the sums of money involved are grotesquely large, the parties involved discover that they never had any ability to pay off their losing bet. It was all pretense. In fact, the chance that the bet might go bad never figured into their calculations. The net result of all that foolish irresponsibility is that banks find themselves in a position of being unable to trust each other on virtually any transaction.

When that happens, the flow of credit, a.k.a. “liquidity,” dries up and you have a bona fide financial crisis. Nobody can pay anybody else. Nobody trusts anybody. Fortunes are lost. Elephants stomp around in distress, then keel over and die, and a lot of “little people” get crushed in the dusty ground.

The happy dance about low gasoline pump prices featured on Fox News, combined with the awful instability in currency markets, will cut a swathe of destruction through the shale oil “miracle.” That industry has been relying on high yield “junk” financing to perform its relentless drilling-and-fracking operations — imperative due to the extremely rapid depletion rate of shale oil wells. Across the board, shale oil production has not been a profitable venture since it was ramped up around 2006. Below $80 a barrel, chasing profit only becomes more difficult for those who couldn’t make a profit at $100. A lot of those junk bond “investments” are about to become worthless, and the “investment community” will lose its appetite for any more of it. That will leave the US government as the investor of last resort. Expect that to be the object of the next round of Quantitative Easing. The ultimate destination of these shenanigans will be the sovereign debt crisis of 2015.

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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.

384 Responses to “The Instability Express”

  1. Htruth November 17, 2014 at 9:20 am #

    Crisis? What crisis? Excuse me while I change the channel on my cable TV. http://youtu.be/di0Ymb_eAQg

    • K-Dog November 17, 2014 at 5:44 pm #

      Excuse me for butting into your thread. At 58 responses I don’t want to hang on at the end fluttering in the wind with g-trolls.

      Droll and banal would be the word for this weeks screed. I can read tea leaves and speculate all on my own. But is that too harsh?

      Fact is try and get a glimmer of comprehension from an average Joe about how oil really can’t be produced economically at current retail prices and nothing will twinkle or shine. The comprehension just isn’t there. Dull and drab would be overpraise for their understanding.

      What crisis indeed, droll and banal for a true collapsenick such as myself and you. I see as much effort in this weeks cipher of doom as an average Kunstler bowel movement, no more. Perhaps to others it might read as a well written martian classic.

      I don’t know.

  2. rckrueger November 17, 2014 at 9:20 am #

    I imagine that the Shale Oil story in the US is going to go bye bye at these current low prices. If it cost $80 a barrel to produce the stuff, there is no money to be made selling it at $75 a barrel.

    • upstater November 17, 2014 at 9:44 am #

      I am not sure if shale is unprofitable at $75; there are some claims of profitability well below that number.

      But so long as they are willing buyers of the junk-grade bonds issued by the frackers, the game will continue, even if it is a Ponzi scheme, regardless of the per barrel price.

      Whoda thunk that 6 years after Lehman and AIG it would still be business as usual for the financial “industry”. I think we underestimate the power of the fed to provide infusions to a dying patient.

      Having said that, at some point it crashes. But I think that day is much further off than us gloomsters think based on the past 6 years years experience.

      • seawolf77 November 17, 2014 at 11:08 am #

        I’ve done the math. The average well in the Bakken produces 130 barrels a day. $100 oil would then be around $5,000,000 a year per well. They usually play out in 3 to 5 years. It costs $10,000,000 to drill the well. All the sweet spots are now gone.

    • Neon Vincent November 17, 2014 at 10:03 am #

      At which point, the shale oil producers go out of business, the supply drops, and the price shoots up, which is exactly what the Saudis and other in OPEC want it to do. Should the price for oil rise from $75/barrel to $115/barrel in twelve months, that would be a 50% increase in one year, which is one of the two conditions for recessions in the U.S. since domestic oil production peaked in 1971; the other is the U.S. spending more than 4% of its GDP on oil. Thank James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, for figuring those two out. There may be a financial panic, but that alone won’t cause the next round of contraction. Sucking the money out of consumers’ wallets and into their gas tanks will.

      That’s the pattern that Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute described in “The End of Suburbia,” which I showed to my students last week, of high prices causing a series of longer and deeper recessions, and that’s what I expect will happen next. At that point, if some semblance of business as usual persists, the price will crash and then rise again, prompting the next set of suckers to get the capital to drill for tight oil, the supply will go up, and the price will fall again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, if the capital dries up and stays that way, the oil stays in the ground.

      Speaking of watching Peak Oil on the screen, I caught a showing of Prophets of Doomthe 2011 documentary “” on H2 (History Channel 2) yesterday. Our host was one of the featured experts along with the late Michael Ruppert, economist Dr. Nathan Hagens, author John Cronin, and computer scientist Dr. Hugo De Garis. Each spoke about their scenarios for the collapse of civilization.

      What I found most interesting was when they had mutually contradictory ideas about the end of industrial civilization and the resulting clash. One such was De Garis describing his fears of The Singularity. I didn’t think that would go over well with the rest of the guests and particularly with our host. Sure enough, JHK told him that he thought that the resources and finances needed to support the research for artificial intelligence would dry up before the technology reached that point. The result was that De Garis came away convinced that the other issues were far more pressing than his particular worry. In particular, he became most concerned about water shortages. Score one for Jim.

    • lsjogren November 17, 2014 at 12:13 pm #

      Yes, but it does mean that so long as there are new sources of oil that are accessible at $80 per barrel, we will not see $100 or higher oil.

      Only when the drillable sites for this $80 per barrel oil begin to become scarce will we start seeing prices much higher than they are right now.

  3. Smoky Joe November 17, 2014 at 9:37 am #

    Jim, yours is a barbaric yawp sounded in the firmly plugged ears of idiocracy. I keep reading about how quickly dealerships are moving big SUVs and full-sized (as if there were any small) pickups now.

    At dark times like this, I say “the morons get what they ask for.” If only they’d not pull the rest of us down when it all collapses.

    Watch the Tea Party to call for subsidies for Shale Oil from “gub’mint” and the cost to be made up from cutting social programs.

    • Neon Vincent November 17, 2014 at 10:21 am #

      “I keep reading about how quickly dealerships are moving big SUVs and full-sized (as if there were any small) pickups now.”

      That’s the story I keep hearing, too. I summarized it as gas prices and mileage down, shopping up. The average mileage of new cars sold in September fell 0.5 mpg, the largest drop in three years. Also, the number of cars and light trucks sold hit a post-recession high. That may be good news for the car makers and dealers, but it’s bad news for the planet and the future. Also, that hope that the savings may translate into more Christmas shopping may be just that, a hope. A cabbie interviewed by KCRA about the price drop thought he’d stash the difference in savings, not spend it. If so, stay tuned for more retail desperation.

      • Beryl of Oyl November 17, 2014 at 11:47 am #

        Auto loans are the new subprime mortgages. You have no money, bad credit, and need transportation. What do you do? Naturally, you walk into the nearest new car dealership and drive away with the top of the line, biggest vehicle on the lot.
        Notice one of the biggest dealers around has switched a lot of his advertising to the “we finance anybody” theme.
        I actually know of one dealership that let a young man drive off with a vehicle he hadn’t made firm arrangements to pay for.

        • BackRowHeckler November 17, 2014 at 12:39 pm #

          Also, BOO, people are taking auto loans 7, 8, even 10 years out, in other words, loans which will never be repaid.

          The day of the 36 or 48 month installment loans seem to be over.

          brh

    • cornpone2014 November 17, 2014 at 11:16 am #

      “the morons get what they ask for.”

      Uh huh, twice. lol

  4. Cold N. Holefield November 17, 2014 at 9:46 am #

    brh asked several threads back at what price does shale and sand call it quits? It’s a different price point for both since they employ different technologies and thus have differing cost structures, but for shale the price is approximately $50 sustainable but only for the large established plays. This article sums it up. How much do you want to bet the Boys In The Backroom in their attempt to squeeze Russia with low oil prices, ensure the price never dips below $50? You’d lose that bet if you took it, I assure you.

    Shale Boom Shrugs Off Falling Prices

    • Terry in Austin November 17, 2014 at 3:28 pm #

      >> Shale Boom Shrugs Off Falling Prices

      Let’s vet your source here —

      the cited article is from the Washington Examiner, part of the right-wing “mighty Wurlitzer” noise machine, owned by the same billionaire who owns The Weekly Standard, and explicitly formed to push for the conservative view on national issues.

  5. goat1001 November 17, 2014 at 9:54 am #

    Football – especially NFL – is quite profitable, nonetheless…

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    • cornpone2014 November 17, 2014 at 11:19 am #

      and half the population has a below average IQ

      • Anotherplayaguy November 17, 2014 at 2:56 pm #

        This is America. We’re exceptional, don’t you know. Well over 50% of the populations can have a below 100 IQ.

        And does.

      • hineshammer November 17, 2014 at 6:23 pm #

        Cornpone, I take it your IQ is high enough to know that your statement is incorrect. It’s the median, not the average, IQ that half the population falls under.

        • cornpone2014 November 18, 2014 at 8:02 pm #

          for this low rent meeting average works just fine!

      • Hands4u November 18, 2014 at 12:17 pm #

        Avg indicates a range of 95-105. IQ is a red herring since lively-hood and the Primary 4 drives are emotionally reactive/charged- Food, Fight-Flight/Fear and “Fun”. And since “entitlement” was created or purchased, and has become an American “Value”; those 4-F’s will drive each individual identity. Lots of Luck!

  6. Karah November 17, 2014 at 10:08 am #

    “Foolish US cheerleaders suppose that the rising dollar is like the rising score of an NFL football team on any given Sunday. ”

    This really sums up the viewpoint of most people in and out of the Gov’t. It’s about winning. It’s about out playing someone else.

    The interview with Art Berman (http://www.artberman.com/meetart/) touches on this in aspect of the oil/gas market as just maintaining existence through production at any cost. Humanity pummeling each other or the Earth, it ends in a lot of destruction, who cares as long as you win.

    • goat1001 November 18, 2014 at 3:02 pm #

      Are tickets for the “final game” on sale yet?

      • Karah November 19, 2014 at 8:15 am #

        Ya, you can not afford them.

  7. Brabantian November 17, 2014 at 10:11 am #

    Two things doomed the financial system back in the 1980s and 90s – (1) Terminating ‘Glass-Steagall’ type rules requiring banks that took customer deposits, to be separate from all financial casino gambling, derivatives etc.; and (2) Rules limiting deposit banks to 10-to-1 or 12-to-1 leverage on issuing credit, and related laws against usurious interest.

    Those two things worked for half a century to keep the Western banking system intact … But under first Paul Volcker and then Alan ‘Easy Al’ Greenspan, those good rules were slowly erased … creating the mother of all credit bubbles now about to explode.

    And curiously, billionaire George Soros is quietly funding & backing comedian Beppe Grillo’s now-leading party in Italy, which is directly taking steps to have Italy leave the German-run euro currency which has wrecked the Italian economy (along with those of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece).

    Nazis occupying Vichy etc learned that a dominant country profits greatly by controlling currency of its submissives. Germany plays that game now again with the euro (minus swastika and stormtroopers), and France too does a ‘Vichy’ on its ex-colonies, France controlling the currency of 14 African countries! (‘African franc’.)

    The euro was a horrid mistake, and southern Europe indeed needs to be free of foreign-currency slavery … but euro currency break-up must also now explode Europe’s banking system and the rest of the developed world’s banks with it (if they aren’t already blown up from some other financial explosive).

    Soros made a billion in the 1990s ‘breaking the bank of England’, as he successfully gambled on destroying Britain’s currency link to the rest of Europe … Could be that Soros and buddies, will now make billions more by backing Grillo and his anti-euro campaign, Soros now attacking the euro like he attacked the pound sterling, ready to profit from collapse and chaos. The rest of us, we non-billionaires, will likely just have ‘bail-ins’ vapourising our meagre savings and accounts.

  8. Steven W. Maginnis November 17, 2014 at 10:16 am #

    And Scott WalKKKEr keeps stopping mass transit in the Wiskonsein Reich while widening I-94, burnishing his prospects for a bid for Fuhrer in 2016, and the low gas prices make his transportation policy look astute and make him look like a genius. He’s an evil genius, that’s for sure!

    • George November 17, 2014 at 10:34 am #

      Scott Walker a genius? Sure, as long as the Koch brothers keep throwing enough money in his direction.

    • lsjogren November 17, 2014 at 12:21 pm #

      You should realize that when you make comically absurd derogatory characterizations of political figures, the only one who comes out looking like a kook is you.

      As one wag commented on the 2014 elections:

      Democrats are telling working class white Americans who voted against the Democrats in 2014: We want you back, you reactionary racist Christian bible thumpers!”

      • venuspluto67 November 17, 2014 at 6:21 pm #

        The standard national turnout for a midterm election is in the 40% range, and the turnout for this one was 36.5%. Another 4% of the electorate showing up could have made the now-bygone election a very different story. I’ve heard some talk that the new Republican-sponsored voter-suppression laws had something to do with the low turnout, but the effect of those won’t really be felt until the higher-turnout Presidential election of 2016.

        I think what really happened is a bunch of working class voters just stayed home this time because the message is starting to sink in for them that the Democratic Party doesn’t represent their interests anymore than does the Republican Party. The Democratic Party’s middle-class-originated, codependent-doormat supporters insist that it does represent those interests, but the cognitive dissonance they have to indulge to persist in this conceit is becoming ever more obvious and pathetic.

        The introductory paragraph to JHK’s post this week furnishes a sterling example: A lot of Democratic Party Kool-Aid cheerleaders are attempting to float the meme that the recent strength of the US Dollar, the deflationary fall in petroleum prices, and the inflationary heights of the US financial markets are signatures of the Obama Administration’s wild success. It’s really sad to watch the supporters of the party with which I once upon a time threw in my lot become as desperate and pathetic in their Kool-Aid drinking as BushCo’s supporters became in 2006.

        • Buck Stud November 17, 2014 at 8:36 pm #

          “I think what really happened is a bunch of working class voters just stayed home this time because the message is starting to sink in for them that the Democratic Party doesn’t represent their interests anymore than does the Republican Party. The Democratic Party’s middle-class-originated, codependent-doormat supporters insist that it does represent those interests, but the cognitive dissonance they have to indulge to persist in this conceit is becoming ever more obvious and pathetic.”

          Speaking of cognitive dissonance, only a imbecile would think that a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is not important, or even more foolish, ideologically equivalent no matter if appointed by a D or R.

          • venuspluto67 November 17, 2014 at 9:52 pm #

            Um, yeah. The problem with that is that if you give the working class a choice between a real Republican and a fake Republican, they tend to go for the real one, so good luck with that.

      • venuspluto67 November 17, 2014 at 6:30 pm #

        PS: The turnout might have been even lower had it not been for a lot of state races and referenda (the latter of which tacked decidedly to the left in their outcomes) about which voters actually cared somewhat. Were it not for those, I’m guessing the turnout would have been abysmal in a record-breaking way.

  9. seawolf77 November 17, 2014 at 10:23 am #

    It will certainly be interesting to see what transpires out in the oil patch. It always is. Oil is dirt cheap right now and still the economy sucks. Right now in the US it is about 1 barrel for every $1000 of GDP. In the Ukraine it is 2 barrels for every $1000. In Uruguay it is 1/2 a barrel for every $1000. As those barrels get cheaper or more expensive, the whole equation changes, but differently for every country. Who will prosper at the end of the oil age? IMHO, those at the low end of this scale.

    • capt spaulding November 17, 2014 at 12:34 pm #

      Used to be that cheap oil helped to climb back up out of a recession. That no longer seems to be the case. One more reason for the economy to roll over & die.

  10. George November 17, 2014 at 10:29 am #

    “Elephants stomp around in distress, then keel over and die, and a lot of “little people” get crushed in the dusty ground.”

    It’s called “Rogue Elephant Syndrome”. That occurs when older bull elephants realize it’s their time to wander off to the boneyard. They go through the five stages of grief as outlined by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. Bull elephants exhibit the “Rogue Elephant Syndrome” in the first stage. They’re usually also suffering from hypoxia. It’s common for them to charge into native villages and tear up everything in their path and kill all unable to flee. They will charge parked cars and have been known to occasionally attack moving freight trains.

    If we’re prone to cite such behavior as a metaphor, it follows that the larger investment banks may soon collectively give one heck of a performance. In the meantime however, since we’re still living in a culture that associates feelings with certain times of the year: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and has since Labor Day…”

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    • “Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But in ‘‘Elephant Breakdown,’’ a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.”

      50,000 Elephants killed every year. Last month Chinese diplomatic immunity was used as cover to smuggle tons of horns out of Africa, on no less than Xi Jinping’s convoy.

      Lets not slander Elephants, is it not enough that the Republicans abuse their representation as a logo?

  11. russ November 17, 2014 at 10:47 am #

    “…That occurs when older bull elephants realize it’s their time to wander off to the boneyard…”

    The trouble is that in our society our ‘older bull elephant’ leaders will never come to that realization. They will assume as far out as I can see that any signs of discontent among the peasants, or unpleasant ripples in the system that provides them with power, can be solved with more austerity, more Fourth Amendment ignoring surveillance, and more drones.

  12. pkrugman November 17, 2014 at 10:57 am #

    “… Oil stays in the ground.” — Neon

    Which is where we want it, if you don’t want global air quality to resemble that of Beijing… And hospitals full of dying people.

    • seawolf77 November 17, 2014 at 11:05 am #

      The Annunaki, our alleged creators, supposedly came here to mine gold. They needed it to repair their atmosphere, which they had damaged irrevocably. Isn’t it interesting that seems to be exactly what we are doing here on earth.

  13. BackRowHeckler November 17, 2014 at 11:37 am #

    Thing is, even the British business press — BBC, FT of London, Mail — is cheerleading for fracked oil out of NDakota and Texas, calling it a ‘game changer’, not just Fox News. Never a discouraging word, its all good …

    -brh

    • Beryl of Oyl November 17, 2014 at 11:49 am #

      I saw that on BBC. I was kind of shocked.

      • Hands4u November 18, 2014 at 12:31 pm #

        Self delusion tells us that someplace/one else will save the day.

  14. contrahend November 17, 2014 at 11:40 am #

    Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world.

    so, if i understand JHK correctly, cheap oil means destruction, and expensive oil means destruction.

    cuz when oil was above $100 it was the “end of the US economy”.

    plummeting oil prices are nothing more than a symptom of an oil glut, plus perhaps some slackening demand.

    plus a natural response to the massive alt energy infrastructure that has been put into place worldwide, with Europe leading the way.

    Wind is the single largest electricity generator in Spain.
    Renewables provide 41% of Denmark’s total energy requirements.
    Brazil gets 84% of its electricity from hydro.

    Oil will be left in the ground – we’re seeing the beginnings of this now.

    It has little to do with impending doom – it’s more a natural reaction to the world switching to renewable energy sources, plus massive gains in efficiency, viz the switch to LED lighting that uses 75% less energy to produce the same brightness.

    We are in the age of energy ascent & boundless technological advancements.

    kontrahend

    • dolph9 November 17, 2014 at 12:03 pm #

      I don’t think this is true.

      Oil has to remain in a “goldilocks” price. HIgh enough for producers, low enough for consumers.

      Oil dropping means consumers are broke (no demand), and in turn this will shut in new developments which cannot be brought online at a low price (no supply).

      This does not mean a glut. If anything, it means we are entering the period of permanent shortages.

      It’s game over! I wouldn’t be surprised to see things fall apart in the coming years.

    • lsjogren November 17, 2014 at 12:17 pm #

      “so, if i understand JHK correctly, cheap oil means destruction, and expensive oil means destruction”

      If so then the world must be in great shape since oil has been in an extremely tight price range around $80-100 for some time.

      So I guess you would have to modify it thusly:

      Kunstler believes lower oil prices spell doom, higher prices spell doom, and prices that stay the same spell doom.

      I believe it is really only higher prices that spell doom, and they are our long term future, but just like Malthus was a couple centuries too early because he failed to anticipate fossil fuels, we should be careful about what timetables we set on prophecies of doom.

      • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:00 pm #

        Doom is spelled in any case as long as you are even talking about an oil-based economy, like that in the US.
        We are being forced to continue this madness, even to the point of ignoring the increased demand – and thus market – for mass transit, as Walker is doing in WI, and as even the political class is ignoring in my state. All the time babbling about “Free Market” fantasies.
        This will continue to spell doom as long as those whose interests are served by taking all that oil out of the ground – no matter at what cost – are able to control this country’s political system.
        If it is true that investors already see the futility of this path, and are even thinking about next year’s return on their investment rather than making that last dime off of fossil fuels, that indeed would mark a transformational moment for this country.
        And it would be ironic indeed to me if the money folks actually get off their butts before the political class does. Something I simply do not expect.

        • lsjogren November 20, 2014 at 12:21 pm #

          One reason we perpetuate the madness of a fossil fuel economy is that the other alternative is a stone age economy.

          I hope that some day there will be alternative energy sources, but they do not exist today.

          Leftists could help if they would stop pretending that wind and solar can substitute for fossil fuels unless major scientific breakthroughs are made in addressing the intermittency problem.

          Let’s stop spending govt money building Potemkin Solar Farms and instead spend it on the basic research that might possibly one day lead to bona fide alternatives to fossil fuels.

    • wayfarer November 17, 2014 at 12:31 pm #

      Falling oil prices have always been a harbinger of global recession. It is too early to say whether we are in or entering a global recession but we are historically quite overdue based upon the average length of business cycle. However, with central banks all over the world printing money and supporting markets since 2008 it is hard to say what the business cycle is anymore. Copper is hovering around $3 which and gold is below $1200, neither of which is an indicator of growth.

      I think the statement ‘Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world’, should not be ignored.

      • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:05 pm #

        I thought part of the point of this little weekly discussion group is that we are far beyond how things “have always been.”

        • wayfarer November 18, 2014 at 11:29 am #

          As far as markets go be careful of ever thinking: ‘this time it is different’. It almost never is.

    • seawolf77 November 17, 2014 at 1:02 pm #

      Renewables are not liquid fuels.

    • Apneaman November 17, 2014 at 1:55 pm #

      How do you explain an overall drop in commodity demand? Gluts, gluts everywhere!

      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/warning-signs-from-commodity-prices.html?_r=0

      • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:07 pm #

        Per William Greider, oh, about ten years ago: Excess Capacity – everywhere. Can’t even sponge it up by giving credit away!

        • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:10 pm #

          Make that 20 years ago.

    • spencerpsn November 17, 2014 at 3:35 pm #

      OK so the increase in renewable energy systems and more efficient lighting is causing oil prices to fall? Seems kinda strange since oil is predominately used as a transport fuel, which is almost totally independent of electricity generation.

      I really wished I could go along with this cult of progress, happily waiting to be raptured by the singularity, but my damnable rationality just keeps getting in the way.

    • baird November 17, 2014 at 6:39 pm #

      I think it will be a horse race and the outcome is uncertain. “Cheap” fossil fuels have allowed population levels to rise far above what is currently sustainable. Industrialization combined with large numbers has resulted in unprecedented environmental degradation which may very well have catastrophic consequences. Perhaps a transition to less damaging forms of energy can be implemented in time to avoid the worst case, perhaps not. And there are many other complications related to the rapidly growing global manufacture of stuff which every one wants. Even if we successfully transition to much more benign sources of energy, large numbers of new chemicals are continually released into the environment about which we know very little of the ecological effects. Not to mention how we will adjust to the inevitable reduction in demand for human labor as automation rapidly impacts all economic systems, etc, etc.

  15. lsjogren November 17, 2014 at 12:10 pm #

    “Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world.”

    I believe to the contrary that plummeting oil prices are a symptom of a temporary oversupply of oil due to the ability to harvest some of the “higher hanging fruit” that was previously uneconomic, due to new extraction techniques.

    And it is indeed conceivable that the US might briefly attain “self sufficiency” in oil due to this glut of new supply, although what the energy optimists fail to recognize is that this would be a rather meaningless “milestone” since it would be very temporary and the long term trajectory will be greater scarcity of oil over time.

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    • Casualty09 November 18, 2014 at 12:03 pm #

      There is some evidence that decreasing (I wouldn’t say “plummeting” just yet) oil prices are, as you suggest, a function of a current oversupply of oil.

      See this story from a couple days ago:

      http://www.cnbc.com/id/102189040#.

      Scroll down a bit and it cites to a variety of reasons for the current oversupply, including US fracking gains, increased pipeline efficiencies, increasing stability in the oil businesses in Libya and Iraq, increased North Sea oil production and the Saudi decision to maintain production levels to keep market share – rather than cutting production to raise prices.

      The article predicts that prices could go as low as $50 per barrel next Spring. At that rate, it’s not clear whether US fracking operations would be profitable (I suspect the answer is no). It would also mean a significant revenue loss for Russia. So while US consumers may salivate at the thought of paying $1.60 per gallon at the pump, those kinds of prices may lead to significant geopolitical instability.

      It’s not difficult to imagine a scenario under which Russia’s stressed economy puts political pressure on Putin to, say, invade Ukraine. . . . Or how decreasing oil revenue, coupled with the death of the Saudi king at the wrong moment, could lead to political/religious instability in the Kingdom – perhaps opening the door to some sort of ISIS/Jihhadist Wahhabi alliance on the peninsula. . . .

      The problem with the global economy post-2008 has not been on the supply side; it’s with the demand. So declining production costs that come with cheaper energy will do little in the short term to grow the economy. On the other hand, those countries that stand to lose the most from declining oil revenues may suffer from significant economic and political instability should prices fall too much….

  16. Beryl of Oyl November 17, 2014 at 12:11 pm #

    “The mentally challenged kibitzers”- I like that. I see a lot of that locally. People keep voting back in the same politicians who are exacerbating the decline. It is very very frustrating to be able to see what these people are doing, plain as day, and not have others believe you. Even when you spell it out for them.

  17. wayfarer November 17, 2014 at 12:14 pm #

    Toyota released a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle today which it says will travel 300 miles between fuelings and refuel in 5 minutes. Its U.S. marketing is targeting the Northeast with initial funding for a limited number of refueling stations and California which has state support for fuel stations.

    My winter home in Quartzsite AZ, on Interstate 10 roughly halfway between the LA and Phoenix has a recharging station at the Carl’s Junior restaurant, funded principally by Tesla. Reportedly one of a chain of charging stations stretching across the U.S..

    Apparently some auto makers are awakening to reality even as government is hamstrung by yesterday’s lobbyists.

    • malthuss November 17, 2014 at 1:52 pm #

      In other words, Tesla and Toyota never got a subsidy or tax break?
      Oh please.

    • JL Eagan November 17, 2014 at 7:53 pm #

      Cool.

      So, next item.

      Where are you going to get the hydrogen?

      JLE

      • JL Eagan November 17, 2014 at 7:56 pm #

        PS- As soon as I posed that question, it occurred to me that I should make it clear- I am NOT talking about the presence or lack or hydrogen filling stations on every corner.

      • JL Eagan November 17, 2014 at 7:57 pm #

        PS- As soon as I posed that question, it occurred to me that I should make it clear- I am NOT talking about the presence or lack of hydrogen filling stations on every corner.

      • wayfarer November 18, 2014 at 11:23 am #

        I assume you were pointing out that hydrogen is only an energy carrier and its creation alone (from energy sources) is on the order of a 25% energy loss.

        Electrolysis extracts hydrogen from water using electricity which many alternative energies supply.

  18. Greg Knepp November 17, 2014 at 12:50 pm #

    Meanwhile Japan has gone back into recession. Higher taxes are blamed for the unwillingness of the Japanese consumer to loosen up the purse strings, but market saturation must be in the mix as well.

    I maintain that market saturation plays a significant role in today’s sluggish US economy. Smaller dwellings (condos, apartments, townhouses, house-sharing arrangements, etc.) have pretty much replaced McMansions as the homes of choice in the current real estate market.

    Smaller abodes require less ‘stuff’; this is George Carlin’s economic theory in reverse. Less stuff equals less shopping. And the fact that many of these smaller dwellings are being built (or, in many cases, renovated) in urban settings rather than in outlying areas would seem to bode poorly for the future of the suburban model in general, and its consumerist ethos in particular.

    Market saturation is not only about the availability of new stuff to buy and the funding to do so, but about evolving shared attitudes and outlooks as well.

    • malthuss November 17, 2014 at 1:55 pm #

      If I recall, Japan has been in a funk since 1987. Yes?
      Now with the radiation I wonder what future Japan Inc has.

      • Greg Knepp November 17, 2014 at 3:21 pm #

        You’re right; but ‘recession’ has become a relative term. When ‘in a funk’ becomes the norm, then ‘really fucked up’ becomes ‘recession’. Economic definitions are all in New Speak now.

        As for the radiation problem, I must assume that prospects are so ghastly that the whole mess has simply been swept under the rug.

        • sauerkraut November 17, 2014 at 7:43 pm #

          A bit of good news, Greg. TEPCO has been posting weekly progress reports for the last year or so, and recently announced that all of the spent fuel had been removed from the top of the Unit 4 building. What remains is new fuel, which can, in a pinch, be moved by hand.

          We dodged a bullet, and no mistake; make that dodging a volley of 00 buckshot.

          • Greg Knepp November 17, 2014 at 9:44 pm #

            Well that’s good news indeed….but pardon me if I remain a little skeptical.

    • Casualty09 November 18, 2014 at 12:17 pm #

      Greg wrote:

      “I maintain that market saturation plays a significant role in today’s sluggish US economy. Smaller dwellings (condos, apartments, townhouses, house-sharing arrangements, etc.) have pretty much replaced McMansions as the homes of choice in the current real estate market.

      Smaller abodes require less ‘stuff’; this is George Carlin’s economic theory in reverse. Less stuff equals less shopping. And the fact that many of these smaller dwellings are being built (or, in many cases, renovated) in urban settings rather than in outlying areas would seem to bode poorly for the future of the suburban model in general, and its consumerist ethos in particular.”

      Good point. The current generation of 20-somethings in the USA apparently has less interest in the suburban home-ownership model that was in vogue for about 3 generations following the end of WWII. These Millennials show more interest in urban living, where rents are higher. With high rents and student debt repayment taking up a significant portion of their incomes, they simply don’t have the $ to prop up the suburban, “happy motoring,” consumerist economy of the last 60 years. The question is, what will that mean for our economy going forward? If the Millennials don’t buy big houses (with all the furnishings), don’t care so much about cars (urban living doesn’t require one) and don’t have all that much disposable income after paying rent, student loans, etc. – then what will happen to a US economy that is about 2/3 consumer based?

    • MisterDarling November 18, 2014 at 4:32 pm #

      re | “Market saturation is not only about the availability of new stuff to buy and the funding to do so, but about evolving shared attitudes and outlooks as well.”-greg.

      So… Supply creates Demand and Culture “evolves” – forcing economic realities to adapt to it, and not the other way around.

      Interesting ideas. I’ll have to remember them.

      /s

  19. BackRowHeckler November 17, 2014 at 1:22 pm #

    I mentioned electricity rates are rising about 12% after the new year. About 5 years ago a decision was made to convert all in state power plants (there are just a few) from coal and oil to natural gas. The reason given for increased costs are existing gas pipelines are inadequate, and that there is not enough natgas in the market.

    Leading the effort to prevent these rate hikes are ‘environmental groups and unions’, which seems ironic to me because it was environmental groups which insisted coal and oil be done away with in the first place, and replaced with gas (cleaner burning), and the power company itself is highly unionized, its workers being some of the highest paid people in CT.

    You just can’t win.

    brh

    • venuspluto67 November 17, 2014 at 9:36 pm #

      Only about 1% of power-plants are oil-fired, so the controversial plants are certainly overwhelmingly coal-fired. Burning petroleum just isn’t a very efficient way to generate electricity at all.

    • MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 2:25 pm #

      re | “Leading the effort to prevent these rate hikes are ‘environmental groups and unions’, which seems ironic to me because it was environmental groups which insisted coal and oil be done away with in the first place, and replaced with gas (cleaner burning), and the power company itself is highly unionized, its workers being some of the highest paid people in CT.”-brh.

      Actually, this is ironic – and funny as well.

      tnx!

  20. progress4what November 17, 2014 at 1:35 pm #

    Wow. The business “news” media and Wall Street appears to be agreeing with some of Kunstler’s analysis.

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-17/halliburton-merger-with-baker-hughes-driven-by-cheap-oil-fear

    “This is what collapse looks like,” takes on a new meaning! hah. ha

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    • progress4what November 17, 2014 at 1:37 pm #

      appear

      Oops. Don’t you wish this thing had an “edit” function?

  21. malthuss November 17, 2014 at 1:53 pm #

    Is anyone here owning or thinking of buying GOLD?
    Where goes precious metals?

    • Terry in Austin November 17, 2014 at 3:47 pm #

      FWIW, the historical “average fair price” for gold (in constant dollars) is $475 per ounce. For silver, it’s $18.

      With gold currently at $1185, it doesn’t seem like such a good bet; however, silver at its current $16 might be.

      Note that this is separate from the issue of hoarding precious metals as a hedge against collapse — an unwise strategy, IMO.

      • malthuss November 17, 2014 at 6:48 pm #

        ‘an unwise strategy, IMO.’. What do you advise? What to do?

        • Terry in Austin November 18, 2014 at 4:12 pm #

          Strategies for transition get a lot of discussion. One of my favorite sources besides Kunstler is John Michael Greer at The Archdruid Report (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com).

          Briefly:
          1. Get out of debt
          2. Acquire skills (rather than stealable trade goods)
          3. Reduce your needs & dependence on “the system”
          4. Get solid with your neighbors
          5. Ally with a farmer & local food sources
          6. Make your locality your “real world”

          There’s enough to fill books, of course, but I’d say these are the high points. Don’t take my word for it, though — keep asking, keep reading!

  22. shabbaranks November 17, 2014 at 2:02 pm #

    Jim,

    Great interview of Art Berman on the Kunstlercast last week. His commentary on recent developments in shale oil and fracking has a sobering effect on the efforts of some in the major media.

    May I suggest that you interview David Aronson, author of “Evidence Based Technical Analysis” again? With volatility returning to commodities markets, now might be a good time to hear from him.

    Thanks.

  23. nclaughlin November 17, 2014 at 2:07 pm #

    I’m 71 years old. This may sound cruel, but which dies first, me or the world?

    • K-Dog November 17, 2014 at 5:52 pm #

      Would it be too cruel to desire that it be you?

      But take no affront. For I desire both you and me too. But it is a pointless question. Should the world go; we go with it.

    • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:19 pm #

      When you die the universe ends.

  24. edward4432 November 17, 2014 at 2:15 pm #

    Yep! Things look real bad. But for as long as Jim has been talking about the collapse, and nothing happens, I figure Jesus will walk the earth again before Jim’s predictions come true. .

    • GutenbergGuy November 17, 2014 at 8:20 pm #

      I am sooooo glad to hear that nothing is happening. I really must adjust . . something!

  25. FincaInTheMountains November 17, 2014 at 3:34 pm #

    Split in Bretton Woods monetary system coming in January, 2015

    BRICS offers the G20 to continue the reform of the IMF without the US

    The heads of the BRICS nations, meeting “at the margins” of the G20, expressed disappointment and deep concern in connection with the ratification of the reform of the IMF, blocked by the US Congress in 2010. Leaders said that such delays “affect the Fund’s legitimacy and credibility.” In a joint statement, the BRICS states that “if the United States does not ratify the reform, they should go with 2010 reform without US”. The deadline is set by January 2015.

    When IMF was formed in 1945, the US had over 50% of world’s GDP, now it is less than 20%. However, US is the only country member of IMF that holds a blocking vote of 17%. IMF requires a “supermajority” of 85% vote.

    IMF has a power to dictate credit policy to Nations Central Banks (except the FED, of course), which include interest rate and emission quotas.

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  26. Cold N. Holefield November 17, 2014 at 4:25 pm #

    the cited article is from the Washington Examiner, part of the right-wing “mighty Wurlitzer” noise machine, owned by the same billionaire who owns The Weekly Standard, and explicitly formed to push for the conservative view on national issues.

    All of that may be true, but it doesn’t preclude what is asserted in the article from being at least partly accurate. We’ll see. When and if oil dips below $50 and remains at that price point for any length of time, we’ll see if the shale players fold or not. Right now they’re not folding, so the current price point isn’t enough to make them pack it in.

    • Terry in Austin November 18, 2014 at 4:58 pm #

      >> _Right now they’re not folding, so the current price point isn’t enough to make them pack it in._

      I would recommend checking multiple sources with more oil industry savvy and less political dependency before coming to that definite a conclusion.

      True, established wells are managing to hang on for now, with their up-front costs out of the way, but there needs to be a constant stream of new wells for shale production to stay even.

      The system dislikes price volatility even more than low prices per se, and I think there’s a strong case that volatility is what we’re starting to see here — basically, a continuation of the price swings of ’08 – ’09.

    • Terry in Austin November 18, 2014 at 5:09 pm #

      Wups –Cold, I just saw your later post about Bloomberg’s price analysis. Good hunting!

  27. Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 6:38 pm #

    I really [wished] I could go along with this cult of progress – spencerpsn

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

    This use of the past tense for the word wish is very common and drives me wild. I think you really mean wish in the present tense as in “I really [wish] I could go along…”

    …otherwise the reader could get the impression you mean “at one time I really wished I could go along with this cult of progress but I no longer wish that.”

    Before you tell me to go f*ck myself, all I ask is that you give it a little thought.

  28. barbisbest November 17, 2014 at 6:44 pm #

    Reply to Karah- Humanity pummeling eachother or the earth,causes a lot of destruction,,who cares, as long as you win. Yes, let us Frack. Let us not rearrange ourselves for a future, Let us frack, What, no clean water in the future. Big deal. Who needs water? 11:11

  29. Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm #

    the whole mess has simply been swept under the [rug]. – Greg Knepp

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

    [jutan]

  30. malthuss November 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm #

    Cute image with this article,http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/11/19/enter-janet-yellen-intent-on-trashing-whats-left-of-the-dollar/

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  31. Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 7:11 pm #

    and remains at that price [point] for any length of time, we’ll see if the shale players fold or not. Right now they’re not folding, so the current price [point] isn’t enough to make them pack it in. – Cold N.

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

    Cold, you are suddenly enamored with the phrase “price point” as though you’d been working for Macy’s for 25 years…twice in this sentence and once a day or so ago. The point in price point is superfluous. I await your well reasoned argument as to why I am full of shit.

    I also notice that “whilst” has begun to creep back into your writings.

  32. Cassandra November 17, 2014 at 7:39 pm #

    Dear Mr. Kunstler,

    You mentioned participating in a conference on immigration and population growth. I had hoped to hear more about your thoughts and findings.

    My sense is that our current population is already stressing our environment and other animals in an unsustainable and morally catastrophic way. The NYTimes is on the war path for amnesty for all the world’s neediest. My understanding is that our immigration policy since 1965 has been the leading cause of our population growth.

    Do you think our nation’s obligations to the neediest humans all over the planet outweigh our obligations to our own citizens and the animals and ecologies we depend on? Do you think the immigration policy promoted as a moral and economic no brainer by elite journalists, corporations, and most politicians will help or harm our efforts to become more sustainable? Do you think enforcing our borders is racist?

    I recently returned from a trip to Berlin for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall. My impression was that Germany’s 2005 immigration law that effectively closed its borders to low-skilled immigration has not devastated the country.

    Sincerely,

    Cassandra

  33. Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 7:48 pm #

    Is anyone here owning or thinking of buying GOLD?
    Where goes precious metals? – Malthuss

    ==========

    Here’s an interesting article on Gold

  34. pkrugman November 17, 2014 at 8:11 pm #

    “I suppose it would help if I attached the link……”. — Qshtik

    Eliminate unnecessary words. — Strunk and White

    “It would be helpful if I…”

    • Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 9:19 pm #

      2 shay

  35. Buck Stud November 17, 2014 at 8:59 pm #

    Speaking of drones, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the CIA and other U.S. agencies were soliciting advice from everyday Americans on combating terrorism. There was even some noise about tapping into the creativity of Hollywood in order to ‘think like a terrorist’ in order to anticipate what a potential next attack might be. In short, it was a solicitation for out-of-the-box thinking.

    Being good citizen/patriot I emailed the CIA my idea to a link they provided. I suggested they camouflage/decorate mini drones in the form of a bat or bird. You know, because if Bin Laden was hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan what could be more unassuming than a bat? I’m sure that some bored low level CIA employee got a minor laugh out of that if it was ever even read (doubtful).

    A couple a weeks later after sending my brilliant suggestion to the CIA I was driving late at night on a country road and begin to think about my sent email and more specifically, about where Bin Laden really was or might be. At that exact moment a coyote suddenly sprinted in front of my car and galloped into a thicket of trees, invisible. Having read too many Carlos Castaneda books in my life, I viscerally felt that incident to be an ‘Osama The Wily ‘ omen of sorts.

    Whatever it was (it was nothing of course) I have no doubt that in the future some people will look very closely to make sure the fly on the wall really is a fly.

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  36. Pucker November 17, 2014 at 9:58 pm #

    [At the teacher-parent meeting]

    Teacher: “Tyrone has a low IQ, and he can’t read, so he tries to compensate by acting “cool” in front of the girls.”

    In a 2004 study, researchers found that teachers perceived students with African-American culture-related movement styles, referred to as the “cool pose,” as lower in achievement, higher in aggression, and more likely to need special education services than students with standard movement styles, irrespective of race or other academic indicator

    • Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 11:02 pm #

      researchers found that teachers perceived students with African-American culture-related movement styles, referred to as the “cool pose,” as lower in achievement, higher in aggression,…etc – Puck

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

      And I presume your point is that what those researchers perceived proves they were all full of shit.

      I had a similar perception 15-20 years ago during my Tavern Pool League days and wrote a poem about it. It’s titled Package Goods

      From the back, black dudes, hats askew
      With practiced cool walks saunter through…
      And at the coolers
      Choose the clinking quarts of brew
      Their culture tells them to.

      Looks, subconsciously given and observed,
      Say “You don’t fuck with me
      And I won’t fuck with you.”

      They pay up front,
      Then scan the bar again
      For chicks they’d like to know,
      But seeing none for them,
      Tuck crinkly bags of Red Bull under arm
      And through the side door slip from view.

      • Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 11:31 pm #

        In this same vein, Puck, have you ever heard of the black columnist/jazz critic, Stanley Crouch? Read about him here:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Crouch

        Twenty years ago, give or take, I watched him on TV having a discussion with a Jew. He talked about Black “cool” vs Jewish smarts and he said something very simple yet, to me, profound:

        It’s OK for a Jew to be *just* smart.

        • ZrCrypDiK November 18, 2014 at 12:08 am #

          “It’s OK for a Jew to be *just* smart.”

          Whoa, stealin’ my *style*. U do realize that should have gotten you banned, correct?

          PS – awaiting corrections, “gramps.”

      • Buck Stud November 18, 2014 at 1:48 pm #

        You guys don’t get around much, do you? It’s always the angry black man in your world of dysfunction and violence. Check out some of the Saturday Night honkly-tonks on the New Mexico/Texas/Oklahoma panhandle border for some real violence. That’s where Randall “Tex” Cobb cut his teeth before entering the professional ring and getting sliced to pieces by the far better black boxers.

        Or England. Yes, as a Brit once told me be careful how you look at at Brit because it can easily be misconstrued as an invitation to throw down. I said don’t worry, I’ll be sure to wear sunglasses 🙂

  37. venuspluto67 November 17, 2014 at 9:59 pm #

    This week’s comment-thread was surprisingly readable and informative, as opposed to the ugly and numbing bitchfight-fest I became used to taking for granted around here in the past. JHK must have been serious when he stated his intention to weed out the trolls, nincompoops, and shit-disturbers. Good going!

    • Q. Shtik November 17, 2014 at 10:05 pm #

      Wrong Venus, the comment section is always good on Mondays…then it turns to shit after that :o)

  38. ZrCrypDiK November 17, 2014 at 10:54 pm #

    “polar vortex”

    Haha, vortices (vortexes? Wtf, nice spell checker JHK, BTW). Whatever happened to the ozone hole? Oh yeah, there are now TWO, one over each pole, and apparently getting larger. The weather here in Orygone produced about 4 days in a row of a “vortex shear,” resulting in avg wind speeds of 32MPH, and gusts of 80+MPH. Tornadoes are now the new reality here (I don’t remember any tornadoes for the first 21 years I lived here [24 years total], and I used to live in “tornado alley” 20 years prior).

    Little news on the Fukushima front. Apparently, there’s an exponential increase in Japanese children suffering from thyroid cancer (3-4 orders of magnitude?), and birth defects like those seen after Chernobyl and Mayak/Lake Techa (can we say cyclops/two-headed/monster-sized-head/missing or mutated limbs[digits]/abomination, etc). Recent measurements of Cesium on the Pacific US coast are 2-3x normal baseline levels. Realize that the normal baseline level consists of the stable 133 isotope predominantly (trace radioactive isotopes), whereas the increase is almost entirely synthetic radioactive isotopes with very short half-lifes (sp).

    Hedges had an interesting article about factory farms – apparently even the environmentalists don’t want to bite off that piece of the pie (carnivores!)… In the same article, he notes that the top 2 terrorist threats to the US, according to the FBI, are animal rights activists and environmentalists. Well, good thing we have that behemoth 1.5+ million employed by DHS (6-fig-govt-stalkaz), to keep us “safe”…

    Oh, and a little “phunny” about the community I live in (oh, so green):

    http://www.hillsboro-oregon.gov/index.aspx?recordid=876&page=28

    I heard some story about Scotland producing 100% of their home energy needs from wind turbine power. Not sure I ‘BELIEVE DAT’, but they certainly can no longer afford “their” own Brent crude, given they voted for austerity instead of independence. (haha!!!)

    OMG, and apparently IS(IS) [to be or not to be?] is minting its own currency in gold and silver. Boy, this sure ‘smells’ like think-tankery, finally coming to fruition (create an enemy which must be continuously warred with, mil-ind-complex-style)…

  39. FincaInTheMountains November 18, 2014 at 3:04 am #

    Simply put, Xi Jinping finally agreed with Putin, it’s time to destroy the dollar system.

    “We’ve been growing our tree for a long time, it’s time to gather the fruits” – said Xi. And this is a very significant phrase.

    It can be interpreted as a step towards closer economic cooperation (trade). But it carries a different meaning. “We have been preparing for this, it’s time to start.” Read it that way.

    Reform of the International Monetary Fund was to be the main issue of the G20 summit in Australia. It was assumed that, in accordance with the decisions collectively (including US) adopted in 2010, there should be a change in voting rights of the IMF, in which the United States will lose a blocking stake, and developing economies will expand their participation, finally bringing the IMF to be managed collectively. But the US Congress strongly opposed. On the eve of the summit Putin gave fairly detailed account of what’s happening:

    “The US Congress has blocked this decision, and that’s it. And our partners, they say: well, we have signed the contract, we made this decision, but Congress does not want to pass. Here you have all the solutions. Nevertheless, the very fact that such a decision has been formulated, and all the G20 participants felt that it is right and just, and corresponds to today’s realities, it is already in a certain way adjusts the international public opinion, and the thinking of the experts, and this has to be considered.

    And the fact that the US Congress has refused to pass this law says that the US is refusing solutions to the problems facing the world community. But nobody talks about it. Capitalizing on its monopoly in the world media, they mute that information; make it disappear from public discussion. You see, everyone is talking about some current issue, including sanctions against Russia, but nobody talks about US default on its obligations in regards to IMF reform”

    As a result, no progress with the reform of the IMF at the summit has happened, all confined to discussion of issues of secondary importance to the development of the world economy.

    However, there were highly significant results – a regular meeting of the leaders of the BRICS was held. In a statement to the media after a meeting of leaders of the BRICS countries “on the margins” G-20 summit, it was noted that they were disappointed by the failure of the reform of the IMF and the offer to discuss the next steps if the US did not ratify the reform before the end of 2014. In fact, these steps are part of those that BRICS have already made, and they are quite clear as Russian president said at a meeting with his colleagues on the organization: “… I would like to note that successfully implemented solutions for creating a BRICS own financial institutions … Forming of established summit in Fortaleza development Bank and Pool of currency reserves. The total volume of capital is quite impressive – 200 billion. Thus, we will have common mechanisms that can stabilize the domestic capital markets in the event of crisis hit the global economy. ”

    In other words, if the existing system cannot be repaired, it is necessary to create a new one. Now, against the backdrop of global confrontation, which puts the world on the brink of disaster and the Third World War, forming the foundations of a new world order based on mutual respect for the sovereign rights and interests. This process will not be smooth and fast, it will face a tough opposition and will provoke serious conflicts. But we must understand that this is the only path to the world, which is to replace the “controlled chaos” that is, in fact, is already out of control.

  40. FincaInTheMountains November 18, 2014 at 4:24 am #

    Russian Sukhoi T-50 and Chinese stealth fighter could displace the F-35 on world stage

    http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2014/11/chinese-stealth-fighter-could-displace-f-35-world-stage?et_cid=4268803&et_rid=651568291&type=cta

    By the time the US military rolls out the F-35 in full, it’ll face ample 5th-gen competition — and not just a potentially superior Russian Sukhoi T-50, but two Chinese stealth fighters. In an unprecedented show of transparency, China recently showed off the J-31 — a companion to the J-20 — at their premier airshow.

    The single-pilot Chinese fighter — with a length of 16.9 m and wingspan of 11.5 m — has a max range of 1,250 km and can reach Mach 1.8. It also makes use of a Russian-made RD-93 engine. And like its closest competitor, the F-35 — but unlike the F-22 — China plans to export the J-31 to partner nations (meaning that it could find its way into the arsenal of North Korea and other despotic regimes).

    And given the F-35’s unwieldy price tag (and underwhelming performance), even 1st-world democracies might gravitate toward the relatively thrifty J-31 — which, needless to say, doesn’t bode well for the US or its chances of partially recouping the cost of the F-35 via export. And since the F-35 is unquestionably the most expensive weapons acquisition program in the history of mankind (and many partner nations are already having second thoughts about the Joint Strike Fighter and its cost), we’re in serious trouble.

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    • seawolf77 November 19, 2014 at 1:11 pm #

      I worked on the F-120 engine which was on the competing platform that lost out to the F-22 Raptor, even though by most accounts it was the better airplane and engine. But they needed to keep Pratt & Whitney alive. The F-22 flew its first combat mission last month. It took 20 years to bring that airplane to combat readiness. 20 years to develop. At 350 million a copy, who can afford to gamble it might get shot down.

  41. Cold N. Holefield November 18, 2014 at 6:57 am #

    Cold, you are suddenly enamored with the phrase “price point” as though you’d been working for Macy’s for 25 years…twice in this sentence and once a day or so ago. The point in price point is superfluous. I await your well reasoned argument as to why I am full of shit.

    I also notice that “whilst” has begun to creep back into your writings.

    Ha! I wondered if you would notice “whilst.” It was strategically placed just for you. Although, I will say I prefer whilst over while. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because it just sounds more appealing to me as it rolls of the tongue — and fingertips. I reserve the right to occasionally, or more than occasionally, use whilst versus while. As for the other British peculiarities of articulation, I’m not interested. I’ll let K-Dog exercise them instead.

    As for “price point,” I understand and sympathise with your concern but said concern is misplaced and misapplied in this instance. I am referring to an inflection point on a price/production curve for shale oil, so it most definitely is a “price point.” Not to mention, but I will, I’m saving words when using “price point” per PKRugman’s Strunk and White admonition to you several posts upthread. I typed the following in the post to which you were referring:

    When and if oil dips below $50 and remains at that price point for any length of time,

    In order to abide by your restrictions and yet convey my point accurately, I would have to type:

    When and if the price of oil dips below the asserted $50 inflection point on the price-production curve for any length of time,

    Price Point

    Americans seem to be paid by the syllable. Insecurity about mastery of the mother tongue is at the root of it. I suspect but don’t know that a “price point” is an inflection in a price curve – a price at which purchaser behavior abruptly changes. I’d guess the expression was modeled on “melting point,” “dewpoint,” etc. I’ve heard it used where “price” would suffice so often that my patience nears the breaking point. But hey…why administer when you can administrate, right?

    That comment is from an Ivy League snob, but I’ll be damned — you could have written it yourself sans “Americans.” FYI, I was using the term correctly per this snob’s haughty expectations.

  42. contrahend November 18, 2014 at 7:04 am #

    Oh, and a little “phunny” about the community I live in (oh, so green):
    http://www.hillsboro-oregon.gov/index.aspx?recordid=876&page=28

    add up all the alt energy whizzing out there & you get one of the reasons for an oil glut.

    Denmark – 41% from renewables
    Brazil – 84% of electricity from hydropower
    Iceland – 99% from hydro/geothermal
    Spain – wind is top producer of electricity

    and now Scotland –

    Scotland is pushing ahead with green energy, with First Minister Alex Salmond claiming that renewables could provide 100 percent of Scotland’s energy by 2025. And last month, Salmond’s push for wind farms appears to have borne fruit – wind power alone generated some 126 percent of the energy needed to power every home in Scotland in what the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) is calling a “bumper month.” Even solar fared well despite the chilly conditions, with domestic solar PV panels chipping in around a third of the domestic energy bill.
    According to WWF figures, wind turbines produced an estimated 982,842 MWh of electricity during October 2014. That’s enough to meet 3,045,000 UK homes, or 126 percent of Scotland’s entire residential demand.
    Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Wind power is inconsistent, even on the windy Highland plains, and can’t be produced on demand like gas-fired electricity, so it relies on other forms of electricity generation to fill the gaps, and can also over-generate and need to be shut down to preserve the grid when it’s extra windy.
    Solar chipped in too, with roof-mounted solar contributing between 30-40 percent of power needs to homes that have it installed, even through a cold October.
    Scotland is already well and truly the renewable energy champion of the United Kingdom, with nearly 40 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources. Salmond’s plan is to ramp up renewable energy to provide 100 percent of Scotland’s entire energy requirements by 2025, and generate as much again from non-renewable sources for export, primarily to England.

    peak oil will turn out to have been just another ebola scare

    a big thanks to all the scientists using technology to better our lives

    we are in the age of energy ascent

    kontrahend

  43. Cold N. Holefield November 18, 2014 at 7:09 am #

    Terry In Texas has a point. Here’s an article from Bloomberg about the call-it-quits shale price point and it’s $15 higher than the Washington Examiner at $65. Bloomberg, although (whilst would also have sufficed but to temporarily placate Q. Shtik I opted for something more Qosher) conservative, is arguably less conservative than the Washington Examiner. My point still remains, we’ll see. Trying to find, let alone determine the production costs of shale is likened to a shell game. Perhaps it’s much lower than we imagine, and imagination’s all we have without any further evidence that isn’t forthcoming.

    Dream of U.S. Oil Independence Slams Against Shale Costs</A

    • seawolf77 November 18, 2014 at 10:10 am #

      The fact of the matter is this: no matter how hard you work, or how long you work, and how much you inherit, borrow or steal, a banker can buy it all for free because he prints the money. He is the money spigot and he just turns the hose where he wants. At the moment, he has turned the hose on shale oil. What does that mean? How will it play out? That’s why we’re here jawboning. I think it will end disastrously with a total loss of confidence in the dollar. The reality of the cost of oil production is being tampered with by monetary policy.

      • ZrCrypDiK November 18, 2014 at 12:05 pm #

        “I think it will end disastrously”

        And you didn’t even talk about the environmental effects!!! You should really do a google map search on the Alberta shale oil fields – quite the *eye* opener.

        Wind power in Scotland, indeed – independence? Not so much…

  44. Cold N. Holefield November 18, 2014 at 7:16 am #

    we are in the age of energy ascent

    Damn — and I was really enjoying The Age of Aquarius. Oh well.

    I love this song. Gay, I know, but I don’t give a shit.

    Let The Sunshine In (Solar?)

    • seawolf77 November 18, 2014 at 10:06 am #

      You won’t love it when Florida and Louisiana are underwater.

  45. FincaInTheMountains November 18, 2014 at 9:20 am #

    In this statement Ukraine fascist president Petro Poroshenko reveals true intentions and methods of war unleashed by him and his fellow gang members and supported by whole NATO community against people of SE Ukraine.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7y019rXGms

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    • nsa November 18, 2014 at 9:30 am #

      Are you saying that american elites adore their neonazi clients? We here in Ft. Meade and Langley are shocked and hurt……

  46. BackRowHeckler November 18, 2014 at 9:23 am #

    Phew, civilization is being hammered on all fronts, just this weekend!

    In Ferguson, MO, USA, The Mob is threatening extreme violence across the country if they don’t get the grand jury verdict they want. In Syria a young American aid worker, an army veteran, is beheaded along with a dozen others and the act is recorded on video. In Israel 4 civilians are murdered (by who?) while worshipping inside their Synagogue. JHK says the time has come to begin the project of rebuilding civilization from the ground up. But how can civilization stand up to acts like these?

    Anti-World Thugs are on the march. Who will stop them?

    –brh

    • FincaInTheMountains November 18, 2014 at 9:35 am #

      May be you should start by cleaning up the act in D.C.?

      “House Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce referred on Nov. 13 on CNN to a “policy review,” making clear that US aggression against the Assad government of Syria was the desired goal. Royce recounted happily that the US strategy might now include a bombing campaign against the Assad government (the main barrier to ISIS) to impose a no-fly zone over Syria designed to please the treacherous President Erdogan of Turkey — who has been a strong backer of the ISIS butchers — and “other regional actors” including “the Gulf states” — i.e. Qatar. Royce indicated that the US air campaign, including the overthrow of Assad, would be the price for a Turkish invasion of Syria with troops and tanks. All of this would add up to a general war in the Middle East — which may well be the goal of the more lucid of these plotters.”

  47. BackRowHeckler November 18, 2014 at 9:37 am #

    Incidentally, those threatening violence in ST Louis and cities throughout the US might find the going not be so easy the further out they go from the core cities. Read Tom Wolfe’s ‘Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers”. The Red Necks in rural Missouri, rural anywhere, won’t be as easily cowed by violence and threats of violence as the Whites still living in cities: Govt. types handing out welfare benefits, homosexuals and metrosexuals, young urban pioneers, artists, bums, do gooders, and people with their heads up their ass too stupid or stubborn to clear out. Call them what you want, Hicks, Hayseeds, rednecks, shitkickers, millions of white people have held on to the balls and backbones God gave them.

    –brh

    • Buck Stud November 18, 2014 at 1:39 pm #

      Great writing there BRH. It was as if ‘Dueling Banjos’ was playing to the text of your words.

      And nothing like the specter of an old country road to make a white man feel proud and strong.The gun rack rides a little taller; the tobacco spit flies a little farther

      Keep on squealing BRH—YEEHAW!

      • Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 3:03 pm #

        You’re right Buck: you can easily get stomped in Cowboy Bar or a Honky Tonk if you don’t belong there (and I don’t) or if you don’t act “right” – and by right I mean both morally and culturally. Some things are absolute and some things are relative and “cultural” (thus Gurdjieff talked about objective art that could speak to anyone from anywhere and when).

        But all this is very different than Black neighborhoods where old White Ladies are beaten, knocked down and raped. And Black toddlers gunned down by accident, and young Blacks forced into gangs to survive. After all, you don’t have to go into a honky tonk, you don’t have to “play” macho in you don’t want to. And as far as neighborhoods, poor White neighborhoods are far safer – simple as that. It doesn’t fit your neo Marxism that equates crime with economics, but it is simply the case.

        • BackRowHeckler November 18, 2014 at 4:55 pm #

          Yup, here’s when I knew Hartford no longer belonged in the pantheon of Western Civilization but had slipped, irretrievably, into 3rd world welfare colony craphole status. Two events back to back in the early 90s, the first a fairly mundane beatdown of a young couple out for a night on the town in their capital city. The girl, of course was raped. A great effort was expended to cover up the fact that the victims were white and the assailants were black by TPTP. Then a short while later something worse happened. After the riots and disorder of the 60s some white families remained in the city; either they didn’t have the money to get out or else they were born in Hartford, considered it their home, and were determined to make the best of it. There was a family on Blue Hills Ave., an older couple raising their grandson who was what we used to call retarded but now might be termed mentally challenged or handicapped. He went to a special school somewhere in the city and the bus was supposed to drop him off in front of his house but the driver dropped him off at the wrong house. That’s when a gang of black teenagers ran him down and beat him to death as he cried out for his grandmother. (similar to to the way ISIS matter of factly shoots handicapped captives now in Syria and Iraq) If I can remember correctly the kid was 15 but had the mind and personality of a 5 year old.

          After that I determined there was no hope for that city, or any American city, and act accordingly.

          –brh

          • Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 9:09 pm #

            Yes, horrible. The mystery only deepens as to why you refuse to become a White Nationalist. Some Whites may not know we exist or what we believe. But you have no such exemption.

            Interesting – there’s a Blue Hill Avenue in Boston too. It also runs through a Black neighborhood and is a horror show. Or is yours Hispanic?

  48. barbisbest November 18, 2014 at 10:36 am #

    Valid points JHK makes this and last weeks blogs. Local food production should be the goal. Paradigms die hard. To quote a documentary, The Four Horsemen, If we do not re-humanize our lives, eventually if not sooner, they will be brutal and they will be short.
    Are we a dying civilization, the frog in the pot of lukewarm water with heat, who doesn’t know to jump out in time. A lot happened to the Mayans. 2014 was the warmest in recorded history, and that’s one issue. In my town, a couple is building a 24,000 sq.ft. home That’s good. The Mayan elite too built great temples to themselves, but didn’t come out unscathed.

    Indeed, perhaps we should all go medieval, less mess. Can we be saved. Peter Russell quotes Dante in his book A Physicist’s Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness. “The more souls who resonate together, the greater the intensity of their love, and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other” 11:11

    A AYE was here.

    • ZrCrypDiK November 18, 2014 at 1:11 pm #

      ““The more souls who resonate together, the greater the intensity of their love, and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other” 11:11 ”

      11:11 – My sister whuz trippin’ about 11:11, for the past 6 months. I’ve been a victim of 11:11 for decades – Ayup. Twice a *day*.

      I heard the yout’s screaming their 4:20 diatribe. And here I thought they were talking stainless (steel)…

      The mirror? Don’t 4:20 and drink. Don’t 4:20 and look in the ***… Not sure wut you find in the mirror, other than age/death. (narcissism/sociopathy?)

      • Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 3:06 pm #

        That happens to me sometimes too: every time I look at the clock it’s 11:11.

  49. malthuss November 18, 2014 at 11:19 am #

    When does the Dollar get devalued? The ‘hard money’ crowd says when interest rates increase the gov debt will be unserviceable.

    Any thoughts, yeah or nay?

    • BackRowHeckler November 18, 2014 at 12:12 pm #

      That’s what Peter Schiff said on C2C last night.

      • ZrCrypDiK November 18, 2014 at 7:51 pm #

        Whoa! I haven’t listened to C2C since Snory Noory took over, about 1 decade ago. How about that book, “The Coming Global Superstorm,” by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, back in ’97? I remember them both getting laughed out of book sales…

        Whit’s a bit tangential, but I think he knows *exactly* what he’s talkin’ ’bout.

      • malthuss November 18, 2014 at 8:49 pm #

        He regularly talks at Youtube/ Kitco.
        I wont post a link as JHK doesnt like vids posted here.

  50. malthuss November 18, 2014 at 11:20 am #

    In the ‘bury the shovel ready jobs’ file, http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2014/11/not-enough-sun-shining-at-ivanpah-solar.html#.VGtuU2c0jK6

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  51. budizwiser November 18, 2014 at 1:04 pm #

    Gosh darn it – it seems like so many of the posts here are about personal problems.

    Mr K, is your BLOG’s new theme the current precariousness of all “centralized systems?”

    I have couple of questions.

    Does this web space discuss the decline of life and happiness of 1st-world populations? Or are we discussing civilization from s global perspective?

    I mean the effects of “QE” and CO2 on the future of this planet are two totally different things…..

    Some aspects of life I life I’d like to see discussed:

    The idea that governments could act like they give a shit about emissions – without giving a shit about “growing the economy” and -of course – their populations.

    The idea that most of us are not generous enough to conduct activities that might prolong the time span that humanity comfortably inhabits the Earth.

    • Q. Shtik November 18, 2014 at 2:38 pm #

      Gosh darn it – Budi

      ==========

      darn?

      oooOO…such foul language. Wash your mouth out with soap.

      • Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 3:08 pm #

        Yeah what up with the Wally/Beaver talk? Gosh darn means God damn. But it’s hypocrisy and therefore worse.

  52. Buck Stud November 18, 2014 at 2:02 pm #

    What’s ironic about the staged shooting victim demonstration in Ferguson Mo is what if the real shooting victim had run a similar scenario through his own head prior to engaging in theft/roughing up a store owner and having a run in with a police officer. His own actions might have been far more considered and reticent.

    In other words, the demonstrations should be a reminder to all that only complete and total surrender and quiescence when facing a potentially trigger-happy police officer is the only way to prevent multiple bullets from entering one’s precious body. And one surely does not swag belligerent as Michael Brown was in the store prior to his own shooting death; that’s only scratching the itch of a psychopath in blue.

    Of course not all police officers are cold-blooded murders; in fact, most are doing a tough job the best they can.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 3:40 pm #

      There is a list of targets the protestors are going to torch – including an opera house and library. This far from just poor Blacks – agitators have come in from all over the country – Liberal Leftist, Radicals, Race Hustlers, Communists: your kind of people.

      • Buck Stud November 18, 2014 at 9:37 pm #

        Again you leap to conclusions in a single bound of arrogance and ignorance: people that advocate burning down and destroying property are not ‘my kind of people’.

        Unlike you and BRH, who both talk like they were eyewitnesses on that tragic day that Michael Brown was killed, I realize I wasn’t there and didn’t witness the event. Therefore, I have a completely neutral opinion and defer to the actual evidence/findings of the Grand Jury.

        Having said that, on the surface it doesn’t appear that Michael Brown was up to any good and yet what happened after the store incident might not have warranted his being shot to death. But again, who really knows except for those who actually witnessed the event. And even at that, we all know how divergent the accounts of people who witnessed the same event can and have been, time after time.

        In any event I think it’s a very bad idea to engage in violence and destruction if there are no charges brought against the police officer; it’s counterproductive.

        But there are rumors that outside groups intent on agitation have made their way to Ferguson. So one needs to ask who exactly are these potential agitators?left wing troublemakers? right wing racists? Yes I wrote right-wing racists because let’s face it Janos, there is nothing that would bring an ‘I told you so smile’ to your face( and others like you) faster than an eruption of violence in Ferguson MO.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 1:42 pm #

          Sure. Does the Triangle have three sides? Is Obama a Communist? Are the agitators Leftists and Anarchists?

          You look for the coin you lost in the light in the darkness – reversing Nasruddin’s parable of the ordinary man. Perversity indeed. That’s what can happen if you let egotism dominate your inner life. You remind me of my old friend who would make herself stop liking a song if it became popular.

        • BackRowHeckler November 19, 2014 at 2:50 pm #

          There has already been plenty of violence in Ferguson. What do you call the looting and the burned out storefronts? Surely you’ve seen the video of the esteemed young Ferguson resident running away with two, not one, flatscreens, a TV for each shoulder. It was shopping day for appliances and electronics in Ferguson, MO!!

          brh

  53. Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 3:22 pm #

    The Heroine in the Cathedral. And note, I said Heroine not Heroin.

    http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/christian-booted-from-national-cathedral-speaks-out/

    777

  54. FincaInTheMountains November 18, 2014 at 4:11 pm #

    “When does the Dollar get devalued? The ‘hard money’ crowd says when interest rates increase the gov debt will be unserviceable.” malthuss

    What the “hard-money crowd” does not understand (or maybe they do, but don’t talk about) is the fact that the health of American Dollar does not depend whether it is linked to gold or silver, but on the ability of US and its satellite countries to shift the devastating inflation their Central Banks create to other Nations. That is why they are always wrong in their predictions on Weimar-style hyperinflation. The inflation in US is around 3-5% a year; while in “developing” countries it is between 7 to 25% a year.

    That is being achieved by US and its satellite countries having control of the Breton Woods institutions such as IMF and through IMF control over the “developing” Nations Central Banks. You probably noticed that the first thing the “bombing democracy” bring to a country under the “democratization” process – like Libya for instance, is setting up the Central Bank under control of IMF.

    So in 2010, after the devastating financial crisis in the West of 2008 and FED printing tons of new money, an agreement was reached between Obama administration and the group of “developing” Nations under the economic leadership of China and political and military from Russia to redistribute the voting blocks in IMF where US is the only Nation that holds an effective veto power. Under such agreement, the IMF would be managed on a more collective basis, taking into consideration the legitimate needs of “developing” Nations. Under that agreement, the necessary credit would have been extended to US to provide for “soft landing” of their economy – basically a peace deal, acceptable for all parties.

    Unfortunately, the US congress blocked the ratification of that agreement, so US have effectively defaulted on it. Now China and Russia have no other option but to proceed with the alternative international financial system and payment clearing systems for international trade – basically a hostile takeover.

    That what happened just few days ago in G20 meeting in Australia. Now instead of “peaceful” solution to the crisis of the world financial system we will see an attempt by China and Russia, backed by other “developing” nations (mainly BRICKs) to roll forward an alternative financial system which they have already started to form in Fortaleza, Brazil.

    I think the showdown will happen next year and the fate of the Dollar will depend on the results of such showdown.

  55. MisterDarling November 18, 2014 at 4:43 pm #

    The key sentence in this week’s log-thrown-on-the-fire is:

    “Plummeting oil prices are a symptom of terrible mounting instabilities in the world.”-J H K.

    Yes, after six straight years of all-out economic cannibalization, Demand has Collapsed. Energy consumption is one of those hard-to-fake economic indicators, so are the shipping stats.

    The Baltic Dry Index has tanked – meaning that various G20 nations can say whatever they like about how great they’re doing, but if nothing actually leaving the loading dock, the smart-money knws that they are F-o-S.

    One last sure-fire bell-weather: look at how Wal-Mart is faring. It’s the biggest private employer in the world [*], as well as the world’s biggest retailer. If Wal-Mart is suckin’, so is the rest of the job-market.

    [*] If it doesn’t bother you that the No. 1 Job in all Fifty US States is ‘Retail Salesperson’, it should:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-jobs-in-america-2014-4

    Cheers!

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    • Q. Shtik November 18, 2014 at 5:01 pm #

      the smart-money knws that they are F-o-S. – MD

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

      Not familiar with “F-o-S.” Is it roughly the equivalent of S-O-L (Shit Outta Luck)?

      • MisterDarling November 18, 2014 at 11:15 pm #

        It’s equivalent to being ‘Full of [Something]’… Typo’s? Yes, acknowledged… meh… “writing is rewriting” as the saying goes.

        Cheers!

  56. Janos Skorenzy November 18, 2014 at 6:06 pm #

    Chesterton: Ten million women stood up as one and said we will not be dictated to. Then they went out and became stenographers.

    Dedicated to Venus Bluto.

  57. Pucker November 18, 2014 at 9:44 pm #

    Did Tony Abbot, Obama, Xi Jinping and Putin discuss the situation of Pussy Riot in Russia?

    Is Pussy Riot now in Crimea?

    The last that I heard some members of the Russian feminist band Pussy Riot were pussy-whipping some Cossacks.

    It must be terrible to be pussy-whipped by a Russian woman?

    • FincaInTheMountains November 19, 2014 at 7:13 am #

      Would you like to be? You, pussy-dreamer…

  58. Q. Shtik November 18, 2014 at 10:03 pm #

    The commander of the American Legion Post who is so concerned with imminent mayhem in Ferguson Mo wrote:

    “I [preceded] to tell him about….”

    OMG!!

  59. pkrugman November 18, 2014 at 10:12 pm #

    “Yeah what up with the Wally/Beaver talk? Gosh darn means God damn. But it’s hypocrisy and therefore worse.” — Janos

    When cursing, sometimes you want to say the worst.

    That is when “gosh darn” is especially effective.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 2:47 pm #

      But the onus falls on your anus, not the intended receiver. He is not chastened but will only see you as a dork.

  60. pkrugman November 18, 2014 at 10:16 pm #

    “Not familiar with “F-o-S.” Is it roughly the equivalent of S-O-L (Shit Outta Luck)?” –Qshtik

    Gosh darn, Q., you seem F-o-S.

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  61. Q. Shtik November 18, 2014 at 10:40 pm #

    To Cold N.,

    Here is something more thorough on Interstellar from the NY Times:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/science/interstellar-the-cinema-of-physicists.html?_r=0

    • Cold N. Holefield November 19, 2014 at 9:45 am #

      Thanks. I’ll take a look at it later today. Right now I’m working on finalizing my next blog post (I haven’t posted one in a while). It won’t disappoint, and even if it does, I don’t give a shit.

  62. Pucker November 19, 2014 at 3:22 am #

    Happy Jonestown Day! (Reverend Jim Jones)

  63. Pucker November 19, 2014 at 3:34 am #

    “Free Kool Aid! Come and get your free Kool Aid!”

  64. FincaInTheMountains November 19, 2014 at 5:31 am #

    Putin at the meeting of “Russian Popular Front” on Nov 18:

    “US does not want to humiliate Russia, they want to subordinate us – and solve their problems at our expense.

    It has never worked and will not work now.”

  65. FincaInTheMountains November 19, 2014 at 5:41 am #

    I have never seen such unity and cohesion of the Russian public around Russian national leader.

    On the contrary, Western public appears morally confused, fragmented and sometimes it seems to expect the collapse of their civilization with a certain measure of unhealthy anticipation,

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  66. FincaInTheMountains November 19, 2014 at 6:13 am #

    The US Fed has exported Quantitative Easing on a gigantic scale to Japan. The plausible deniability cover is that the US offers a higher bond yield, with a rising US Dollar chaser. So the US Fed announced with balllyhoo an end to QE and its unsterilized bond monetization, used for four years to cover the US Govt deficit and all the rolled over matured US T-Bills and US T-Bonds. Next just coincidentally, the Japanese announce unlimited QE in Tokyo. The Tokyo vassals will conduct highly corrosive unsterilized bond monetization, just like the Americans have done for four years. The untold part of the story is that the US Govt has demanded of its Asian vassals that they devote their $1.2 trillion in Japanese Govt pension fund to US Treasurys. The US covets the pot, which will buy another year of time. The Germans blocked QE in Euro CB.

    http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/stealth-qe3-operation-tokyo-twist

  67. Cold N. Holefield November 19, 2014 at 9:40 am #

    I have never seen such unity and cohesion of the Russian public around Russian national leader.

    Yep, The Crazy Russians love their strongmen. Stalin’s experiencing a resurgent popularity in the midst of Russia’s contemporary Gilded Age Crony Capitalism. As much as anything else, the Crazy Russians are a contradiction. Churchill had them pegged.

    Stalin Nostalgia – Russia

  68. Cold N. Holefield November 19, 2014 at 9:43 am #

    Gosh darn, Q., you seem F-o-S.

    That would be what happens when you’re constipated for $1,000, Alex.

  69. FincaInTheMountains November 19, 2014 at 12:00 pm #

    The World has lost its Covenants

    11 November, 2014

    The most prized biblical treasure in the world, the Ark of Covenant, was stolen last night from the catacombs of the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.

    The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant in a chapel in the small town of Axum, in their country’s northern Highlands. It arrived nearly 3,000 years ago, they say, and has been guarded by a succession of virgin monks who, once anointed, are forbidden to set foot outside the chapel grounds until they die. No one except the Guardians are ever allowed to see the Ark, not even the Patriarch of the Church.

    http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/ethiopia-ark-of-covenant-reported-stolen-by-church-authorities/

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 1:53 pm #

      Nazis no doubt, just like in the Indiana Jones movie.

  70. pkrugman November 19, 2014 at 12:25 pm #

    “The mystery only deepens as to why you refuse to become a White Nationalist. ” — Janos

    Janos, can one be a white nationalist and a Bircher at the same time?

    Do you support the NRA … I mean the Black NRA. I assume you support the right of Blacks to own and bear arms.

    What did you think of the Django Unchained?

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    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 1:31 pm #

      The Birchers are Kosher Conservatives – who have been right about almost everything but who refused to ever mention race. So they are in effect wrong on everything. Existentially, before you do anything, you have to ask who you are doing it for. Which means asking who you are. Whom does the Grail serve?

      Read an introduction to the Talmud. With Greek clarity they went first to this very question of “Who is in and who is out?” And glory of glories they actually had the answer: Jews are in and everyone else is out. Imagine if we had had such clarity. Instead the Elite and their agents have succeeded in muddying what little clarity Whites ever had.

      Blacks have the right to bear arms. How would they have defended themselves against the KKK if they didn’t? But that’s exactly what Pelosi, Schumer, and Reid’s legislation would do: disarm Blacks against White Racism. Shame on you.

      Obviously Whites also have the same right against Racist Blacks. Since people refuse to see the obvious (that such different peoples don’t belong in the same nation), let the games begin.

      If only we would take guidance from the Talmud and separate ourselves into different groups! I speak as a lover of Peace, the Peace that passeth understanding.

      Do you recommend that we see Django Unchained? I heard it’s violent against Whites. Is that what you liked about it?

      • MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 2:00 pm #

        re | “Do you recommend that we see Django Unchained? I heard it’s violent against Whites. Is that what you liked about it?”-j.

        Actually it has a very strong and noble German character, who is Django’s professional mentor.

        You might me interested.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 2:35 pm #

          Has the Left ever made distinctions? Acknowledged that only a small number of Southern White held slaves? That Jews held slaves at a higher percentage than Whites. That countless Northerners died to end slavery – and that it never ended in Africa except where Whites ended it? That Muslims, Blacks, and Jews were deeply involved in the slave trade, and not just Whites?

          His mentor is supposed to be a German Jew apparently.

          • MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 4:15 pm #

            Nevertheless, German Culture is presented in a positive light, shining like a beacon amidst the generalized dreck.

            That’s the salient point, IMO.

  71. Q. Shtik November 19, 2014 at 1:37 pm #

    Although, I will say I prefer whilst over while. I don’t know why – Cold N.

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

    It’s because you like the highfalutin sound of British English. I’m fond of it myself.

  72. doobiedob November 19, 2014 at 1:38 pm #

    what’s very frustrating about reading your more recent writing is while that many of us where right there with you when you were one of the few voices railing against the awfulness of suburbia – yet you’ve somehow fallen off the deep end. yes – we all agree that there is a serious problem with car/oil dependency – but there is a growing number of people who are out there doing something about it.

  73. pkrugman November 19, 2014 at 2:16 pm #

    “Do you recommend that we see Django Unchained? I heard it’s violent against Whites.” –Janos

    It shows white institutionalized and systematic violence against Blacks, and one individual’s quest to save his wife from being systematically violated sexually and physically by morally depraved and legally sanctioned white oppression.

    You should see Django Unchained and judge for yourself. Of course it might mess with the imaginary race war you have going on in your head.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:54 pm #

      You must have loved the movie “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter”.

  74. MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 2:21 pm #

    Voight-Kampf:

    this:

    http://i.imgur.com/jYvaxQ1.jpg

    *is* a kewl skill… By the way, what do you think about the skill of counting “electric sheep”?

    😉

  75. Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 2:23 pm #

    It’s all coming apart: the carefully constructed narrative about Blacks being just like us. Bill Cosby is apparently a serial rapist of White Women. Dr Huckstable (Huckster?) himself. Fell silly yet? You should. Feel betrayed? You should. Or is this all a gigantic conspiracy to destroy Cosby because of his conservative views? Does he want to have his day(s) in court? Or has the statute of limitations run out on all of these alleged crime?

    Is he going to get away with it? Roman Polanski did, but he did have to leave America. And he does belong to an even more protected minority group than Cosby. And of course Bill Clinton got away with it – power and connections making up for his disadvantage of being born poor and White.

    https://tv.yahoo.com/news/nbc-scraps-bill-cosby-comedy-183150550.html

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    • MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 4:12 pm #

      *No* to both questions. I never thought he was funny, and I always thought that he was creepy.

  76. Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 2:41 pm #

    Has anyone tried Moorish Green Tea? And no I don’t mean some kind of Pot, but actual Tea Tea. The virtue (from the root vir meaning strong) of it is great.

    Read the parables of Mullah Nasruddin if you would become wise. Also on a more mundane level, Baltasar Gracian’s Oracle.

    • MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 4:09 pm #

      It’s one of my favorites. Tasty and medicinal.

  77. johngalt333 November 19, 2014 at 3:10 pm #

    Did anyone notice the congressional vote AGAINST the Keystone XL (extra lethal) pipeline yesterday?

    Thanks to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

  78. Cold N. Holefield November 19, 2014 at 3:27 pm #

    As promised earlier — for anyone interested.

    Net Neuterality

  79. Cold N. Holefield November 19, 2014 at 3:41 pm #

    It’s because you like the highfalutin sound of British English. I’m fond of it myself.</i.

    It's true — but proper British English, not the perverted British English practiced by the downtrodden as follows:

    Animal Rights

  80. MisterDarling November 19, 2014 at 4:08 pm #

    Latest Name to go on the Wall:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-19/senior-citi-banker-found-dead-bathtub-slashed-throat

    Somebody ‘tying up loose ends’ in Bankerville, perhaps?

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  81. pkrugman November 19, 2014 at 6:45 pm #

    Tomorrow President Obama will use his lawful authority to announce immigration reform for five million dreamers, the same authority used by Reagan and H. W. Bush. Completely legal, but not enough. There are 11.3 undocumented but they need amnesty, they need citizenship, they need a social safety net and Obama is not going to offer that. Obama is a centrist … to the right of Reagan.

    Full amnesty for all 11.3 million is needed. Obama is catering to Republicans with cautious, reasonable and centrist proposals, as always.

    • Buck Stud November 19, 2014 at 8:09 pm #

      “Obama is a centrist … to the right of Reagan.”

      Oh come on Mr. P Kelly Rugman haven’t you been paying attention? When I posted an article written by a prominent conservative scholar asserting the same thing you just posted, Janos jumped and said, “no Obama is a communist”.

      When I asked Janos for proof of Obama”s communism similar to the myriad Obama legislative examples that the prominent conservative scholar provided to back up his thesis, Janos offered up a stunningly brilliant retort:

      ” Does a triangle/pyramid have three sides ? ”

      Hopefully, that should clear up any further false presumptions on your part Mr. Rugman.

  82. Q. Shtik November 19, 2014 at 8:24 pm #

    Does a triangle/pyramid have three sides – Buck quoting Janos

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

    Some pyramids have 3 sides, some four. The most famous have four.

    But I don’t get the point. Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question like “Does the Pope wear a beanie?”

    • Buck Stud November 19, 2014 at 9:51 pm #

      That’s how I took it Q.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:33 pm #

      A Triangle by definition has three sides. And just as obviously, Obama is a Communist. That was my point.

      I didn’t say anything about a Pyramid here.

      • Q. Shtik November 19, 2014 at 10:43 pm #

        I didn’t say anything about a Pyramid here. – Janos

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

        Well then Buck misquoted you.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:50 pm #

          Yes, he did. But when did a Democrat or Communist refuse dirty tactics?

  83. johngalt333 November 19, 2014 at 8:34 pm #

    Q and Buck:
    I suspect Janos’ triangle refers to the Hegelian dialectic.

    • Buck Stud November 19, 2014 at 10:02 pm #

      So his opposing stance was the anti-thesis? I don’t buy it; a true dialectic spirit would be far more prone to inquiry and exploration as opposed to just contrary statements such as “Obama is a communist!”

      I simply asked Janos for some proof of Obama and he apparently had none to offer thus his ‘is the sky blue’ response. I suspect Janos is regurgitating some far right talk-radio paranoia regarding Obama because the last think Obama has been is a progressive never mind a communist–that’s simply absurd.

      • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:41 pm #

        He was raised by Communists, taught by Communists, appointed Communists – yet you think he isn’t was? You have to prove that. I don’t have to prove that he is. You are practicing the Big Lie technique here.

        But strangely you are right despite yourself: Communism doesn’t really exist because it can’t. It’s like a rare element that only exists for a split second under extreme conditions. It only exists theoretically just like the rare element only exists on the element chart. But what a force for evil it is as “just” an incorrect theory!

        Mandela was a Communist who promised everything to the people. Now how would that have served his wealthy backers? So on the eve of assuming power, he became a European style Socialist, with a very strong affirmative action policies as one of the planks of the Government. Thus immediate destruction was staved off and the systems now slowly limps in the garbage heap of history as Whites who could got out. Mandela called them “cowards”. Another Black saint here, just like Cosby or Sharpton.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:45 pm #

          Correction: isn’t one

        • malthuss November 19, 2014 at 11:20 pm #

          http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/11/12/behind-obamas-mysterious-rise-presidency/

          Also check ‘Commie blaster’. But you already know most everything that you need to know about Barry.
          I assume there are many secrets about Barry but we know enough now.

          • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:38 am #

            Nice reportage. I might read the other parts. But the Russian hypothesis is unnecessary even if it was partly true for a time. The Russian Revolution was funded from Manhattan and other financial centers after all. Communism is a conspiracy by the Financial Elite to overthrow all traditional societies and cultures. And yes, it’s been Jewish from the get go although others are involved.

        • Buck Stud November 20, 2014 at 1:53 pm #

          You think because you post links claiming that Obama was a communist then it must be so. But do you actually read these links? I doubt because it’s all loose speculation at best. For example:

          ‘Obama’s parents met in a Russian language class.’

          LMAO, straight out of the Grocery Check Out Lane School of Journalism. Or this, which actually undermines the very links claiming to prove that Obama is a communist:

          “The left can and should advance its own views and disagree with the Obama administration without being disagreeable. Its tone should be respectful. We are speaking to a friend.”

          So the communists consider Obama a friend but disagree with his policies?

          You have proved nothing other than you don’t read the links that you cite.

    • Q. Shtik November 19, 2014 at 10:39 pm #

      the Hegelian dialectic.

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

      …saay whaat? Now I know less than I did before.

      I hope you don’t think I’m going to Google Hegelian dialectic and waste even more of the precious time I have left on this earth.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 11:20 pm #

      Not in this case. I do sometimes use that kind of thinking in my own way. But who can control the synthesis? Muslims in one school system asked for their own religious holiday. Christians (representing the status quo) opposed them. The State didn’t go with either side, but provided a solution that devalued both: they took away Christmas and now just call it the winter holiday. Since getting away from religion is what the State wants to do, this is a victory for them and not for either the Thesis or Antithesis.

      If I remember correctly, a Synthesis is supposed to preserve but transcend both thesis and antithesis, so if so, this isn’t one. So could we call it a Dysthesis instead? A triangle inverted? The Devil’s horns?

  84. progress4what November 19, 2014 at 9:13 pm #

    “same authority used by Reagan and H. W. Bush…”
    – pk rugs, on legalizing the illegal –

    Disagree. What Pres. Obama is apparently going to do is far worse in terms of numbers of persons to be legalized. It also has no basis in law. It does, however, fit into the pattern of presidential overreach and centralization of power that has been growing since the Lincoln presidency. And yeah, BushII may have been a worse president, but ObamaI is about to pass him.

    And, certainly, most of the centrist, big-business, Republicans are silently cheering for Obama to do this amnesty – to take the pressure off of them. Then they can GROW the immigrant numbers to benefit their big corporate donors. Kubuki, anyone?

    And, as I’ve always maintained, these 5 million are unimportant compared to the numbers of LEGAL immigrants allowed into the US every year. There’s the real problem, and it’s going to get worse and worse until it is finally acknowledged as unsustainable – likely at a point where it is too late for the country and far too late for the planet.

    I do wonder if Obama is going to time his immigration announcement to coincide with the upcoming festivities in Ferguson, MO – thus throwing lower socioeconomic native-born blacks even further under the bus.

    One does have to wonder if US blacks will ever care about how they’ve been played on living space and jobs. It’s already too late for them to do anything about it. Maybe they can join the upcoming Republican lawsuits against this amnesty. haha.

    • progress4what November 19, 2014 at 9:41 pm #

      kabuki. oops.

      “Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.”
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 10:48 pm #

      Yes Republicans have shown their true colors. They were given a mandate by America to stop this yet they insist on trying themselves up into knots with Democratic talking points like, “WE will not shut down the government!” – as if that’s what matters and not stopping this atrocity.

      The Hispanics will remain livid since there are 29 million more who have been left out in the cold.

  85. pkrugman November 19, 2014 at 10:36 pm #

    Don’t forget, P4W, : Obama is the president. He doesn’t have to compromise with Congress. HE is the leader of the nation. When Bush was president, there was no compromise, you were either with him or with the terrorists.

    Obama can override them if they won’t follow his orders. He does have the power to override them. He has at least two options: Executive Orders and Veto.

    Reagan, Bush, and Obama are using the exact same executive discretionary authority regarding enforcement of legislation passed by congress. They all reunite millions of families, Reagan 3 million, Obama 5 million but similar percentages for their respective times and exercising the same authority that even conservative jurists recognize as Obama’s right as president. Too little. Too late. Too few. Not amnesty. No citizenship. No “entitlements” … But completely legal and appropriate.

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  86. Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 11:04 pm #

    This is embarrassing but a gentleman does have to get his hands dirty from time to time.

    http://obamaism.blogspot.com/

    Here is extensive proof of Obama’s Communism – as if there was any doubt. A lifetime of reading? Not per se, but if you followed all the links and the links of the links, it would be. Who knows where you would end up? Perhaps in Shintoism.

    For those like Q who want to save time, go look at number 13. The CPUSA, one of America’s Communist Parties, actively endorsed Obama as a candidate. In other words, they didn’t run anyone since he was running.

    Martin Luther King was also a Communist. He practiced non-violence as a tactic not as a deep commitment.

    • malthuss November 19, 2014 at 11:23 pm #

      Here it is. She doesnt give you fools an even break.

      http://starcasm.net/archives/296492

      • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:34 am #

        You just hate Shanisha because she’s Black. Too much women for you, eh little man!

        You cannot be a Communist and a racist. Shanisha is the People! Meet the future. It’s too late for second thoughts now (as if the Libtards ever had first ones….).

  87. pkrugman November 19, 2014 at 11:05 pm #

    P4W, do you think Obama exceeded his executive discretionary authority regarding enforcement of legislation passed by congress when he exceeded Reagan’s numbers and Bush’s numbers and deported two million immigrants? Didn’t think so… Your racism is against this Black president and against brown immigrants. Your talk about law is kabuki theater. You were never concerned about “executive over reach” when Obama was deporting millions… In fact you never mention those millions fewer immigrants when you talk about the number of legal immigrants. You never give Obama credit, even when you are in agreement with him. And you do agree with Obama’s aggressive deportation of immigrants. Your racism keeps you mute and does not allow you to praise Obama.

    Now you are about to lose the immigration issue and no Republican lawsuits have a chance in hell. Even legal scholars of the Federalist Society agree Obama has an ironclad constitutional right to do what he is doing to unilaterally reform immigration.

    The Republican House can impeach but it will be another waste of time because in the Senate they don’t have 67 votes to convict. You lost this fight, good buddy.

    After Obama acts tomorrow, millions of immigrant families will remain united and America will be the better for it.

    You just lost all that money you sent to racist John Tanton hate organizations like NumbersUSA. History and American ideals and the majority who elected Obama twice are all against you.

    • progress4what November 19, 2014 at 11:16 pm #

      I continue to donate to NumbersUSA and work for immigration reduction because it is the right thing to do.

      Please call me racist several more times, rugsoaker, as this proves my point.

      • capt spaulding November 20, 2014 at 11:01 am #

        I don’t think you’re a racist at all. It’s an easy way to smear someone when you don’t agree with their position on something.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:38 pm #

          What’s a racist btw? Is someone who puts his own people first a racist? The dictionary would say no, but popular pc useage says yes – when Whites it do that is.

          They’ve conflated negative prejudice with natural preference as a cognitive weapon against Whites and Western Civilization. Has it worked? Yes, they’ve crushed us with this simple trickery.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 19, 2014 at 11:55 pm #

      Impeachment is a huge to do – unfortunately. And they don’t have the backbone for it even if they did have the votes. They could defund however, but they lack the backbone for that either. Or as Prog said, they secretly desire the same thing as the Democrats.

      A bit of one and the other no doubt. But as you go up the Republican Pyramid, you approach the permanent regime which transcends the Parties. There it is all secret joy and amusement as America becomes a multi-hued empire of squabbling peoples. Who can dethrone them now they ask as they rub their hands (tentacles) together.

      They think technology will save them from the same fate as previous Empires. They’re not wrong – it is the one obvious thing different. But read the Mercenary novels of Jerry Pournelle. Infantry will still be the Queen – even out among the stars. If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it. And you can’t hold it without Infantry. Who is going to hold it for them? Lesbians? Fags with stars on their chests? Blacks? I doubt it – in the long term. Well paid traitor Whites and their Hispanic foot soldiers are going to be their best assets.

      And even the finest minds can’t predict everything. A mini ice age would put all their plans to pickle. If they can’t pay their mercenaries, they’ll lose them. Machiavelli talked of this. No mercenary force, no matter how superb, can take the place of loyal troops.

  88. johngalt333 November 19, 2014 at 11:37 pm #

    P4W, Asoka nailed you over a year ago as a racist. It was not his words though that drove the nail home. Your racist actions did. Just give thanks you live in a free multicultural and diverse nation (moral platitude that keeps you out of jail) where you can freely throw away your money by contributing to racist causes.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 12:01 am #

      All of Ayn Rand’s heroes, including John Galt, were Nordic Supermen. Francisco was a bit darker, but still all European. No Indio blood to mess things up.

      Libertarians should be racists, if they only understood their own philosophy. Anton LaVey said that Satanism was just Libertarianism with psycho-drama. He didn’t like Blacks either. His real name was Levy, yes a Jew.

    • nsa November 20, 2014 at 12:15 am #

      Ain’t you just another leftie freeloader masquerading as an open border libertarian? Converting 15 to 20 million undocumented democrats into legal voting welfare grifters will insure most the USA will come to resemble Cholofornia….a one party state where no R or anyone else can be elected to statewide office.

  89. MisterDarling November 20, 2014 at 1:50 am #

    All True CFN-ers are well aware of J H K’s love of a train system in good running order…

    While some *talk*:

    http://www.thelocal.es/20141119/china-rolls-out-its-first-freight-train-to-spain

    Others *do*…

    Yiwu to Madrid. That is some ‘linkin’ up’.

    Chip-Cheerio Chaps (and Chapitas)!

  90. FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 5:39 am #

    New Russian Humanitarian convoy can be sent to Ukraine on 26-27 November

    Deputy Minister of Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia Vladimir Artamonov said that the ministry is preparing to send to Ukraine eighth convoy with humanitarian aid.

    In turn, the State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said at a meeting of the Board of Legislators that Western countries do not notice the scale of the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine, because they themselves were at its source.

    Over a hundred Russian engineers and repairmen drive around Donbas and make lists of destruction, and then based on that lists spare parts for electrical substations and water pumps arrive from Russia.

    http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2614798

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    • FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 5:45 am #

      A spare part for the water-pumping station or electric transformer could do a hell of a lot more for stabilization of people’s lives than a multi-billion loan from IMF that would be 90% stolen by Kiev’s bureaucrats.

  91. FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 6:59 am #

    What the new monetary system will look like?

    It is not secret that China, Russia and other countries are feverishly buying up physical gold. But does that mean that they have in plans going to outright gold standard, when each unit of currency would be linked to certain amount of gold (a direct gold standard)?

    There is very little information about the real processes that are taking place, but judging from what could be found in open press a “direct gold standard” is not in the picture. However, gold would play a significant role in coming new financial system, most likely in the form of “gold bullion standard”.

    What that means is that the new system would guarantee the exchange of currency for gold, but not for private individuals and not in any amounts, but only for Nations Central Banks and in quantities “sufficient enough for gold exchange”- let’s say starting at 10 metric tons. Probably some other banks could be licensed by Central Bank to participate in the system, but keeping the minimum amount requirement.

    Effectively, it could create two separate circuits of currency circulation in the economy – one for internal needs, servicing entirely by “fiat money” not necessarily linked to gold, and another for export-import operations where any excesses of foreign currency in sufficient quantities could be demanded for gold exchange.

    Obviously such excesses could be formed only as a result of deficit in foreign trade – when you sell more to other countries than they sell to you. If any country in such system will accumulate an excessive trade deficit, it will start losing its gold which could lead to currency devaluation.

    That will make possible for National governments to conduct more flexible internal monetary policy to stimulate development of industries and infrastructural projects by expanding internal monetary supply, while keeping a strict foreign exchange policy and, more importantly, to protect and stimulate its national producers.

    For countries with “normal deficits fluctuations” the exchange rates are going to be pretty much fixed to each other, eliminating speculation in ForEx and providing more predictable foreign trade conditions.

    It looks like not only China, Russia and other BRICKs countries are setting up such system as we speak, but some active role is being played by Hong Kong Rothschild’s HSBC bank. May be even British Pound may become a participant in that system – not surprisingly British subjects such as Canada and Australia are setting up Yuan swap facilities that could be precursors to new “gold bullion standard”.

  92. progress4what November 20, 2014 at 8:10 am #

    To consider collapse of modern society mandates consideration of the essential tribal nature of mankind.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:22 pm #

      When a homogenous society collapses, it reestablishes itself someplace else in the country. One Chinese Dynasty would fall and another one would rise a few hundred miles away – usually within a century or so. Same thing in Ancient Egypt. But when America falls, it falls for good as Orlov predicted. There is no reason why such an ethnically divided mess should be together.

  93. BackRowHeckler November 20, 2014 at 10:15 am #

    Three questions

    1) will these 5 million Hispanics automatically qualify for welfare benefits?

    2) What will be the legal status of illegals breaking into the country, or overstay their visas, after Obama’s speech later today? Does this amnesty just cover aliens already here, or does it extend to anybody who enters illegally in the future too?

    5) There might be 5 billion people in the world who would come here if they could find a way, and get an EBT card. How many are we mandated to accept, and is there enough money in the US welfare budget to take care of the entire third world population if it was necessary to do so?

    –brh

    • FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 10:49 am #

      US would do good by simply not creating conditions in foreign countries, like Mexico, forcing them to jump the fence. NAFTA did create such conditions.

      There are not so many people in reality who would willingly change their habitat, country and culture unless they are absolutely forced to or brainwashed to.

      When I came to Chicago in 88 (legally) I had to deal with my wife’s three-year depression after switching comfortable life in Moscow to life in Rodgers Park, Chicago. I was shocked as well – was absolutely nothing that I’d expected, I just couldn’t afford the depression, had to build a career from ground zero.

      But just give it couple of years more and you’d be scrambling for qualified immigrants to fill engineering and medical positions and I am not sure you’d be able to find them. Given a choice, I’d go for 3 times less compensation just to remain in my country of birth.

      • Buck Stud November 20, 2014 at 1:22 pm #

        “US would do good by simply not creating conditions in foreign countries, like Mexico, forcing them to jump the fence. NAFTA did create such conditions.”

        Was NAFTA in and of itself really a bad deal for the Mexican people? Or was it the underlying quest for the cheapest labor dynamics that ultimately proved ruinous for parts of Mexico?

        In other words, business that originally went south to Mexico eventually turned horizontally and headed to India and China for even cheaper labor. Just asking?

        • FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 1:46 pm #

          Quite honestly, I don’t know the answer – just didn’t have a chance to study the problem more deeply.

          But what I am convinced about is that immigration problem – and it is a deep problem – has multiple dimensions, and moral dimension is not the least, but may be the primary. Commercial and financial dimensions are legitimate and practical, but not the only ones.

          Personally I’ve known a few Mexican illegals in Highland Park, IL (I speak a little Spanish), and was dismayed what the system was doing to them. They worked 60-80 hours a week for half pay, lived in overcrowded apartments and were fined for driving without a license (which they CAN’T legally get) almost on a daily basis – but still let go, system needs its slaves.

          But they never fail to send little something to their mama or esposa back home.

      • Q. Shtik November 20, 2014 at 1:40 pm #

        Given a choice, I’d go for 3 times less compensation just to remain in my country of birth. – Finc

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

        This is the kind of sentence Krugs used to write (under his old handle which must never be mentioned) which demonstrated his lack of understanding of basic arithmetic. To whit:

        For demonstration purposes let’s say your compensation is $100,000. If you would “go for 3 times less” how much would your compensation be after the cut?

        Picture me twiddling my thumbs as I await your answer…

        OK, times up. You get a nonsense answer. Your compensation would be a negative $200,000. Think about it.

        • FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 2:11 pm #

          “Your compensation would be a negative $200,000.”

          Are we talking arithmetic here or incorrect use of English language?

          “Three times less” would be, at least in my understanding, original amount divided by 3. So, in your example it would be 100,000 / 3 = $33,333.33

          But if you are talking “three times less” as = X – (X * 3) = -2X then OK, go ahead, enlighten me. I have already gotten a small lesson in English from Mr. Kunstler regarding the use of word “scurrilous” which happened not to be in my vocabulary and Google translator played a bad joke on me.

          What can I say – live and learn. I don’t mind.

    • Buck Stud November 20, 2014 at 1:23 pm #

      No they will not be able to get welfare benefits.

      • BackRowHeckler November 20, 2014 at 4:28 pm #

        OK then, that clears up one question.

        Now how about the 100,000 per month or so coming in illegally here on out? What will there status be?

        Also, what about all those standing in line, going thru the process, trying to gain US citizenship the right way? Tough sh-t for them? played for a sucker, get over it?

        brh

  94. johngalt333 November 20, 2014 at 11:05 am #

    P4W, “tribal” is code for race. There is a relatively new multicultural rainbow tribe. Membership is open to all races. You are welcome to become inclusive whenever you are ready.

    • progress4what November 20, 2014 at 6:22 pm #

      oooh

      Now we’re speaking in code. Everyone be afraid.

      You should also be afraid of JHK, “johngalt”, since you appear to be outing yourself (based on verbiage, tempo, and cadence of your posts) as a second identity of “pkrugman” and, therefore of “the poster who must not be named.”

      And, btw, when I said, “To consider collapse of modern society mandates consideration of the essential tribal nature of mankind,” I was taking a shot at explaining Ozone’s absence. He (O3) blew up at me subsequent to a post I made that raised this question. I haven’t seen him very often since. Of course, I’m a known internet mind reader. hehhehheh.

  95. Buck Stud November 20, 2014 at 11:30 am #

    So now if a reporter asks Bill Cosby about the rape allegations they lack “integrity”.

    Personally, I always found Cosby to be a overbearing and creepy type. And when he began to cloak himself in right-wing virtue it only confirmed my intuition.

    Of course, Janos frames the issue as a ‘black serial rapist of white women’ but I have to think Cosby’s right wing conservative sentiments elevated a proclivity to rationalize into the realm of delusional privilege. And with the now infamous Limbaugh quote informing the judgment of his conservative followers is it any wonder?

    “How many of you guys in your own experience with women have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?”–Rusk Limbaugh

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    • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:16 pm #

      As usual you get everything wrong. You are against Cosby telling Blacks to be responsible and damn it by calling it “conservative”.

      And Blacks do rape White Women at an extraordinary rate.

      And females of all mammalian species tend to resist the male in the mating process – even after going out of their way to attract him. A test perhaps? And of course as humans we have many unique levels to consider and respect. But that doesn’t mean that women always know what they want or say what they mean.

      So do you think Obama is a Republican, or was that just a one day thing?

      • malthuss November 20, 2014 at 8:13 pm #

        Do you only care about White women’s safety?

        • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 1:36 am #

          That alone is my responsibility. Other women must be guarded by the men of their own race. See what a simplification is affected when one can mind one’s own busy-ness?

  96. Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:29 pm #

    Minorities and Illegals crow in triumph on the White House Facebook. Fuck you Whitey, we won.

    Vide well, little liberal brothers, vide well. This is what you’re supporting in your ignorance.

    http://toprightnews.com/?p=7281

  97. Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 2:42 pm #

    Rush: What infuriates the Republicans the most is that they aren’t going to get any credit for the amnesty with Hispanic voters.

    So much for the country with wrong headed mutts like this in charge. The Democrats are the Harlem Globe Trotters. The Republicans are the hapless Jersey Reds. Obama is the ultimate showboat, Meadow Lark Lemmon.

  98. FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 2:47 pm #

    Be careful using Google Translator:

    If you go to Webster dictionary and enter word “scurrilous” it will return “said or done unfairly to make people have a bad opinion of someone”.

    If you use Google Translate, translate it into Russian and then back to English, you’ll get “rough” or “rude”, or even “tough”.

    I guess we still a little far from “artificial intelligence”.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 20, 2014 at 2:55 pm #

      I just hope we aint gona start a nuclear war over some ridiculous translation mistake.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 3:35 pm #

      Maybe it was done intentionally so Russians and Anglos couldn’t understand each other. The Google Guys gave themselves over to all manner of evil after all.

      In other news, Russian bans GMO’s and vows to go organic. Let Americans eat Franken Food, the minister said. Meanwhile America’s anti-GMO movement seems to have been infiltrated to became fake opp. Is Hirshberg Tribe? Like Gruber? And like Monsanto?

      http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/who-is-gary-hirshberg-and-why-is-he-a-leader-in-the-anti-gmo-movement/

  99. johngalt333 November 20, 2014 at 5:16 pm #

    “So do you think Obama is a Republican, or was that just a one day thing?” –Janos

    Janos, Obama did not prosecute Bush and Cheney for torture. He protected the Republicans from prosecution. He did not shut down Gitmo. Obama extended Bush’s tax breaks for the rich. Obama left the Republican war machinery in place. Obama did not give amnesty to the 16.6 million when he had control of congress. Obama put into law the conservative Heritage private insurance health care plan (aka RomneyCare). Obama did not prosecute the bankers and left the Republican chosen Fed guy in place.

    If Obama is not a Republican, he sure is doing a good job of imitating one.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 20, 2014 at 5:35 pm #

      Obama serves the permanent regime which transcends the left and the right like the apex of a right triangle. That doesn’t make the left the right or the right the left exactly. There are real differences insofar as the two parties are real. Which obviously isn’t completely, and less and less at the higher levels.

      I assume that Obama has real radical viewpoints as his background suggests. If he serves the Elite, perhaps they let him institute some of the things he believes in. The Global Elite let Mandela take the leadership of South Africa and some of its wealth away from Whites. If he had tried for complete Communism and taking their wealth, they would have destroyed him. Thus on the eve of taking power he started talking Socialism and not Communism. I assume Obama is a similar figure though obviously the Revolution is not so advanced here and is proceeding differently.

  100. malthuss November 20, 2014 at 7:57 pm #

    Any one here well versed in Agenda 21?

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    • Q. Shtik November 20, 2014 at 10:00 pm #

      I don’t know Agenda 21 from Shinola.

  101. pkrugman November 20, 2014 at 10:18 pm #

    Malthus, the 21 is for the 21st century.

    Agenda 21 is a 300-page document divided into 40 chapters that have been grouped into 4 sections:

    Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions
    is directed toward combating poverty, especially in developing countries, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, achieving a more sustainable population, and sustainable settlement in decision making.

    Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources
    for Development Includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity (biodiversity), control of pollution and the management of biotechnology, and radioactive wastes.

    Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups
    includes the roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, business and industry, and workers; and strengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their communities, and farmers.

    Section IV: Means of Implementation:
    implementation includes science, technology transfer, education, international institutions and financial mechanisms.

    178 countries have signed on to this wonderful initiative!

    • Q. Shtik November 21, 2014 at 12:36 am #

      See Malthus, all you need to do is ask and Krugs has got your answer…right off the top of his head. No need for attribution. There was a guy who used to post here just like Krugs but his name must never be mentioned. The only person to ever beat Watson on Jeopardy.

  102. Buck Stud November 20, 2014 at 10:19 pm #

    I just ran across this absolutely outstanding essay from JHK:

    ” The orderly rows of elms performed an additional architectural function. The trunks were straight and round, like columns, reiterating and reinforcing the pattern of the hotel facade, while the crowns formed a vaulted canopy over the sidewalk, pleasantly filtering the sunlight for pedestrians as well as hotel patrons. All these patterns worked to enhance the lives of everybody in town — a common laborer on his way home as well as a railroad millionaire rocking on the verandah. In doing so, they supported civic life as a general proposition. They nourished our civilization.”

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/09/home-from-nowhere/376664/2/

    • Q. Shtik November 21, 2014 at 12:25 am #

      There is no question, the man has a way with words. If I have any beef it is the use of the phrase “as well as” twice in successive sentences.

  103. Cold N. Holefield November 20, 2014 at 10:32 pm #

    Any one here well versed in Agenda 21?

    Sorry, wish I could help. I’m well-versed in Agenda’s 17 through 20, but not up to speed on 21.

    Is anyone well-versed on Area 51?

  104. pkrugman November 20, 2014 at 11:40 pm #

    Obama gave an excellent speech tonight that should have the effect of motivating to pass a comprehensive immigration bill soon.

    Obama said more resources would go to border security, no one would receive amnesty, no one would receive citizenship, no one would be eligible for benefits, and if someone meets the criteria, passes a background criminal check, and pays taxes they will be eligible for a temporary work permit and freedom from fear of deportation… That’s all. It is bullshit. I don’t know why La Raza is not raising holy hell, gosh darn it.

    Obama said he will use his legal authority to switch enforcement away from the immigrants who are hard working, law abiding, and the Dreamers. That means Obama can direct more resources to catching and deporting criminals and gang members. He has already beefed up border security but wants even more resources to secure the borders. He has already deported millions of nonviolent immigrants and now wants to deport more violent immigrants.

    How much more Republican can Obama be?

    Nevertheless, even though Obama is in favor of deporting criminals and gang members, the Republicans will oppose him, sue him, impeach him… They have to… They oppose whatever he is for. Republicans and Tea Partiers are falling into Obama’s trap for the 2016 election.

  105. Q. Shtik November 20, 2014 at 11:49 pm #

    There is a relatively new multicultural rainbow tribe. Membership is open to all races. – JohnGalt

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

    John, you have made a warm and fuzzy statement designed to influence young minds but those of us who have been around the block a few times know it is largely untrue. The words multicultural rainbow tribe would lead one to believe that the races are mixing amicably, that one group is assimilating into the culture of another, or that two or more groups are blending to create a NEW culture. This is NOT what I see happening. What I see is the same thing you will observe in the cafeteria of any multiracial high school in the land…the kids self-segregate along racial/ ethnic/ color/ language/ culture lines. Allow me to tell a personal anecdote that is current up to this very minute.

    My brother moved into a brand new community of small townhouses in Miramar, FL in 1985. It was White by a large percentage. I visited in 1995 when my mother died there. It was still largely White. My (single and reclusive) brother died suddenly 2 months ago. My wife and I went to FL to handle a myriad of affairs, one of which was to clear out his home and sell the property. We were amazed by the change in ethnic composition that had occurred in 19 years. There were few if any people working in WalMart or Home Depot whose first language was English.

    Miramar is in Broward County just north of Dade County which contains Miami. Dade is vastly Hispanic and the line of Hispanic encroachment or, really, inundation is creeping northward week by week, month by month.

    It took us 3 weeks to clear out the house and prepare it to list for sale. We hired a professional cleaning service. It was run by Ray Vasquez. I placed an obituary piece in the Miami Herald. I dealt with Jacqueline Hernandez. We hired a Real Estate agent. She is white. We were considering a married couple called the Roselli Team. He was Italian and she was Mexican. Had to nix them because I couldn’t understand the woman on the telephone and she was the main mouthpiece of the two.

    The listing hit the market a few weeks ago and in 36 hours we had 4 firm offers. Their names were Salahud Din, Jessica Tejon, Marisol Rodriguez, and Jessica Rodriquez (yep, 2 unrelated people named Rodriguez bid on the house the same day). I wondered what the hell kind of a name is Salahud Din so I Googled it. As it turns out it is a Muslim name and Hispanics are adopting the Muslim religion in South Florida in great numbers. This fact is attributed to the 800 year control of Spain by Muslims.

    As the days went by more bids came in from the following: Sarah Hawkins, Reyna Garcia (whose fiancé, Jese Vega, is gifting her the money for the down payment), Fritz Ney Booz (no idea what kind of name that is) and finally two women together named Shasha Taylor and Anne Williams.

    My brother’s body, the last white person in the neighborhood was carted off to the Medical Examiner for autopsy. Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites are all alike in at least one respect…we all prefer our own race. Birds of a feather flock together and in Miramar, Florida the brown birds are taking over.

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    • malthuss November 21, 2014 at 12:22 am #

      Do Cubans have brown skin?

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 12:44 am #

      Hispanics becoming Muslims in South Florida? Ill news indeed. I knew it was happening in prison but this is the first I’ve heard of this.

      Before you said all the races were getting along down there. Now you seem to sing a different tune.

  106. pkrugman November 21, 2014 at 12:24 am #

    Q., there is a new generation coming up that does not share the prejudice of previous generations. They share hip hop values. Being an older gentleman it is understandable that hip hop values are foreign to you. Perhaps your experience of school cafeterias is dated? Perhaps hip hop culture is new to you?

    Here are a few hip hop principles.

    TENTH PRINCIPLE

    Hiphoppas are encouraged to build meaningful and lasting relationships that rest upon Love, trust, equality and respect. Hiphoppas are encouraged not to cheat, abuse, or deceive their friends.

    ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE

    The Hiphop community exists as an international culture of consciousness that provides all races, tribes, religions and styles of people a foundation for the communication of their best ideas and works. Hiphop Kulture is united as one multi-skilled, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-racial people committed to the establishment and the development of peace.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 12:46 am #

      Hiphoppa? Is that like Grass Hopper? Just the word itself, both its sound and spelling, are enough to inform a sensitive person that this is nonsense.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 1:33 am #

      On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Buck as a Hiphoppa?

      • Buck Stud November 21, 2014 at 11:04 am #

        Buck is not a Hiphoppa although some of ‘principles’ sound historically universal but certainly not original or unique. Sort of like the music, which in the vein of Warhol et al, “appropriates” and levels without shame the truly superior and original.

        As has been said about Duchamp’s urinal art stunt, it was a joke that only needed to be told once.

        As for Hip Hop music they are more dramatists than musicians. Their ‘affected’ facial contortions remind one of a imminent bowel movement but with no available toilet in the vicinity.

        And when an art movement has to define themselves via multiple principles then death and codification has surely arrived at the doorstep: more conceptual imposition crowding out the possibility of true spontaneous vision/experience.

        Take “Impressionism” in painting for example. Most people–including 99% of misguided painters–believe Impressionism to be a style and denigrate it into a cliched, formulaic exercise in ‘mark making and brush strokes’ But Impressionism is not a style it is a method of seeing color. It is not about illustration or facile drawing.

        The eye detects colors and edges differently via rod and cone receptors. Rod receptors are more tuned into value and edges such as reading text, delineating edges, or the line drawing aspect. Cone receptors are more sensitive to color and color is apprehended not by staring into a color which would activate the line and edge proclivity of of the cone receptors, but by quick peripheral glancing: the quick “Impression’ if if you will.

        In short, drawing and color are two different sets of problems solved in different manners.

        What happened with Impressionism is painters and art historians confused the characteristic look of a teleological method as the purpose thus the advent of ‘style’. But it is style without the original purpose, i.e. apprehending color to achieve an authentic light key.

        Typically with the stylists of impressionism the color aspect is never solved (achieving a true outdoor light key) and the painting is completed via drawing, value (dark and light gradations of local color) and the arbitrary use of color. A true color composition is very rare and takes years and decades worth of training to acquire.

        There are no Rachmaninoffs in the world of Hip Hop music.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 1:02 pm #

          Hip Hop as a style of “music” wasn’t my original intent. But you chose to interpret my post as a “living” document or as “text”. So I’m glad you aren’t a hiphoppa. You really had me worried there.

          I’d like Hip Hop to John Cage itself out of existence.

          The Thousand Yard Stare turns everything into peripheral vision – which allows for swift action. Nothing now is worth focusing on, only destroying. All the gods have the thousand yard stare, that is why they are gods.

  107. pkrugman November 21, 2014 at 12:33 am #

    Do Cubans have brown skin? — Malthuss

    You ask an important question. La Raza Cosmica is international, multiracial, and multicultural. Bronze skin is our future.

    The phrase, “La raza cósmica”, in English “the cosmic race”, embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of so-called “race” and nationality can be transcended in the name of humanity’s common destiny.

    So-called “Latin” Americans have the blood of all the world’s so-called “races”: European, Asian-descended native Americans and Africans, thereby transcending the peoples of the “old world”.

    Jose Vasconcelos also used the term when he coined the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s motto: “Por mi raza hablará el espíritu”.

    It has come, often in its shortened version “La Raza”, to refer to the mixed race people of Latin America, i.e., primarily mestizos, mulattos, and zambos or all three combined. Vasconcelos also used the expression, “la raza de bronce” (“the Bronze race”), in this same sense.

  108. FincaInTheMountains November 21, 2014 at 4:39 am #

    Do Cubans have brown skin? — Malthuss

    Sometimes I get a feeling that I am among a new Chapter of Ku Klux Klan.

    A KKK That Accepts Gay, Jewish Klansmen?

    A Montana man who says he no longer holds white supremacist views is starting an organization he’s dubbed the Rocky Mountain Knights, which he says won’t discriminate based on race, religion, or sexual orientation. The twist: It’s a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

    The country’s most notorious hate group, the Klan is practically synonomous with anti-black racism. The KKK has also directed vitriol toward other minority groups, including LGBT people.

    http://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2014/11/11/kkk-accepts-gay-jewish-klansmen

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 12:50 pm #

      For generations now, the KKK has been inundated by the secret police and their agents. So much so that real people have eschewed it for a long time. So many groups are left having no real members. So instead of dissolving, they choose to do mischief instead. Same thing with many American Churches. They don’t believe in God anymore, but they refuse to just cease to exist. Instead the devote themselves to “good works” such as destroying America by the importation of the most alien people imaginable.

  109. FincaInTheMountains November 21, 2014 at 4:50 am #

    At the time of its second coming in early 1920s Ku Klux Klan announced their main enemies are not blacks (who, incidentally, also got it), but new immigrants. From the turmoil of European revolutions and the First World War United States was flooded by immigrants.

    They claimed the jobs, housing, public piece of the pie that was not always lightly taken by the “local residents” who, in accordance with their traditions, united under white hoods and with a noose in their hands.

    Mainly in the southern states, famous for their humane traditions. The result was: under pressure of the Clan the US have passed laws restricting immigration.

    http://www.fondsk.ru/news/2014/11/20/zheleznye-golubye-legiony-ku-kluks-klana-30509.html

  110. FincaInTheMountains November 21, 2014 at 5:09 am #

    Putin: Russia has resumed flights of its strategic aviation in response to NATO aggressive stance

    From Interview to German TV channel ARD:

    “We have witnessed two waves of NATO expansion since 2001. If I remember correctly, seven countries – Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – joined NATO in 2004. Two more countries joined in 2009. Those were significant geopolitical game changers.

    Furthermore, the number of military bases is growing. Does Russia have military bases around the world? NATO and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing.

    Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy Special Operations Forces, again in close proximity to our borders.

    You have mentioned various exercises, flights, ship movements, and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed.

    However, first of all, you said – or perhaps it was an inaccurate translation – that they have been conducted in the international European airspace. Well, it is either international (neutral) or European airspace. So, please note that our exercises have been conducted exclusively in international waters and international airspace.

    In 1992, we suspended the flights of our strategic aircraft and they remained at their air bases for many years. During this time, our US partners continued the flights of their nuclear aircraft to the same areas as before, including areas close to our borders. Therefore, several years ago, seeing no positive developments, no one is ready to meet us halfway, we resumed the flights of our strategic aviation to remote areas. That’s all.”

    http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/23253

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  111. FincaInTheMountains November 21, 2014 at 6:16 am #

    Opinion by analyst K.Sivkov:

    United States needs to take out Russian Nuclear shield to restore its global dominance and control over world’s resources, trade and financial streams and prevent US from succumbing to devastating economic crises

    There are two main strategic directions in taking Russia out of the picture:

    One: To start a Syria-type “controlled chaos” in Russia that would lead to “regime change” in Kremlin

    Two: The concept of “Prompt Global Strike” (PGS): a system that can deliver a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within one hour.

    The PGS if brought online would be capable of taking out up to 80% of Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. The rest 20% will be taken care by Strategic Missile Air Defense System that is being deployed in Europe close to Russian borders.

    The problem with PGS system is that Russia has rapidly started development of SLBMs systems, including new nuclear submarines and ballistic missiles (like Bulava and SIneva) capable of penetrating the American Air Defense. A single salvo of a single Russian nuclear submarine will not turn US into a nuclear waste field, but is capable of destroying up to 60% of American Industrial infrastructure.

    So the more feasible scenario would be a concept of “controlled chaos”, Syrian-style, on Russian territory. But such scenario demands existence of nearby platforms or bases of operations, similar to Turkey and Jordan in the case of Syria, were you could prepare, arm and organize the extremist groups – Muslim in case of Syria, or Nazi in case of Ukraine, capable of penetrating the borders and starting a mayhem.

    Such platform was chosen – Ukraine.

    What is driving Western Elites totally mad is the fact that the things in Ukraine did not turn out the way they had expected: First Crimea, next Novorossia.

  112. BackRowHeckler November 21, 2014 at 7:19 am #

    I’m going to check on Ozone.

    My guess he’s pretty busy right now getting himself and his property ready for for the brutal winter to come in the hills of Western Mass. (if events in Buffalo are any indication)

    I myself just spent 53 straight days raking up maple and oak leaves, maybe the last guy in town using the rake and tarp method, not one of those obnoxious 200 decibel jet packs you wear on your back.

    Or maybe he just grew tired of the insults coming his way from all sides, right, left and center.

    brh

    • progress4what November 21, 2014 at 8:38 am #

      Hey Backrow –

      Yah. Maybe too much mindreading on my part, hey. I hope Ozone’s OK. I’d like to see him back here. He’s a thought-provoking guy, and we all need to have our thoughts provoked occasionally. And, let the record show, I’ve never intentionally insulted the guy. He has really shown his anger to me twice. Once was about two years ago, and the most recent was over my mindreading of the Druid, about a month ago now. Those episodes are quite likely unrelated to O3’s absence – but this comment thread is a mystery box, and I feel a duty to assemble the clues in some sort of (at least to me) logical order.

      Therefore, I’ll stand by what I said that seemed to make Ozone so mad at me this last time. And the Druid’s phrase, “Collapse now and avoid the rush,” is a powerful spell. It’s amazing how many commenters on collapse websites praise minority groups for being insular, self-protecting, and tribal – while thinking that it’s totally wrong for lower class whites to do the exact same thing.

    • Buck Stud November 21, 2014 at 10:27 am #

      Or maybe he’s living it up in Maui, recovering from a long grinding season of professional baseball pitching…

  113. progress4what November 21, 2014 at 8:01 am #

    “I don’t think you’re a racist at all. It’s an easy way to smear someone when you don’t agree with their position on something.”
    – captain spaulding –

    You are correct on both counts, captain, I am not a racist, and the entire concept of “racist” as used by pkrugsoakergalt, functions only as a thought-stopping smear – to deflect attention from his flawed arguments @ CFN.

    Nevertheless, as someone said last week, every single voice on the internet represents at least 25,000 people from the real world. And I can guarantee that there are a lot of people just like the rugsoaker out there influencing and derailing political debate with the thought stopping implications of racism.

    Could be the most misused, yet powerful, word in US politics.

    Only knowledge (and overuse) dulls its power.

    So – we’re on to you rugsoakergalt.
    Call more people racist, more often, please.

  114. progress4what November 21, 2014 at 9:06 am #

    “Hiphoppas are encouraged not to cheat, abuse, or deceive their friends.” – rugs –

    Their friends. So, pk, your hiphoppers admit to social awareness. They mask it with the politically correct term, “friends,” but they admit it. We can find some truth here. Thanks for the opening.

    There may be some people, mostly young or otherwise unfamiliar with how real people act in real life, who think they can always substitute friendship for more important human relationships. I doubt this will work over the long haul – especially if that long haul involves a shrinking economic pie.

  115. Cold N. Holefield November 21, 2014 at 9:19 am #

    maybe the last guy in town using the rake and tarp method

    Ha! Same here — I’m the only one in the neighborhood who rakes their leaves, but I wait until the majority of them have fallen because otherwise I feel like Sisyphus.

    When I’m raking, my neighbors will invariably stop as they’re driving by and roll down the window and tell me the fond memories they have of raking leaves when they were young and sarcastically say “will you rake my leaves when you’re done?” even though they all have services that blow their leaves into tidy piles the service then takes away.

    It’s a good workout, except I use a large trash can that I wheel to the back when it’s full and empty the leaves in a compost pile. I can’t even get my children to help me — they’re too busy doing God only knows what. We’re The Last of the Mohicans I suppose.

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    • BackRowHeckler November 21, 2014 at 10:11 am #

      You know CNH, maybe there is some kind significance in the fact we still, stubbornly, do some tasks the labor intensive, tried and true way, and similarly are fans of a site like this. When my neighbor sees me taking down a tree with an axe instead of a chainsaw, using a shovel instead of a rototiller in the garden, or clearing brush with a machete, he calls me a Luddite, ha!

      Just a thought.

      brh

      • BackRowHeckler November 21, 2014 at 10:15 am #

        Also CNH, there is a risk in waiting for all the leaves to fall before you start raking. If you get a heavy autumn snowfall you’re f-kked, and its a big mess in April. That Sisyphus analogy is a good one, tho.

        brh

  116. Cold N. Holefield November 21, 2014 at 11:15 am #

    When my neighbor sees me taking down a tree with an axe instead of a chainsaw, using a shovel instead of a rototiller in the garden, or clearing brush with a machete, he calls me a Luddite, ha!

    My son tells me I need to get out of the 20th century and into the 21st which is in effect calling me a Luddite, so I get the same treatment.

    I still wipe my ass the old-fashioned way rather than using one of those newfangled, highfalutin contraptions called a bidet.

    There’s no chance (or a very remote and improbable chance) in my neck of the woods of an autumn snow and early winter, so I’m safe in letting most of the leaves fall. It does make the job tougher since the leaves become water-logged and deeply entrenched in the turf by the time I get around to it, but that’s alright, it just makes the workout that much more challenging. An added benefit of doing it this way is I get so vigorous with it I end up dethatching my lawn in the process.

  117. Cold N. Holefield November 21, 2014 at 12:02 pm #

    Do Cubans have brown skin?

    Not a few actually have black skin, or so deeply brown it may as well be black, but they’re back home on the island scrapping away. The ones who ran away from Castro to Miami are of the Spanish light-skinned variety — the upper and middle classes prior to Castro. The Hispanic community in Miami and the surrounding areas, while still largely Cuban, is increasingly represented by other Latin American and South American countries, and many of those countries’ inhabitants have more browner skin than the former pre-Castro Cuban elite. The latter have more of an olive complexion and tan very easily like my wife who has some Black Irish Portuguese (interesting story about this phenomenon if you research it) in her. Her father was so dark during the summer, they made him sit in the colored section of church when he was young — that is no joke. My wife gets pretty dark too during the summer. I affectionately call her my nigger bitch. She loves it and we laugh our asses off. You have to be careful where you say it though because some overly-senstive people take such things the wrong way.

  118. Cold N. Holefield November 21, 2014 at 12:10 pm #

    Bulava………….hmmm………they make watches, don’t they?

    Indeed they do. In fact, their latest offering to be mixed and matched with the submarine is called the Doomsday Watch.

    Maybe Finca meant Fulavashit (F-A-S for short)) instead of Bulava. It’d be more appropriate.

  119. Q. Shtik November 21, 2014 at 12:33 pm #

    Before you said all the races were getting along down there. Now you seem to sing a different tune. – Janos

    ===========

    I thought you might raise this issue.

    I was treated with total respect by everyone, regardless of race, religion, color or national origin, as they say. Maybe because of my age – I’m 74 this very day, by the way. Nevertheless, there is this natural and de facto self-segregation happening. My brother’s neighborhood was at first White and then Blacks encroached. Now Hispanics have inundated the area and among them are White Hispanics, Black Hispanics and brown Hispanics. Basically, on its surface the area is a brown hodgepodge with Spanish speakers in ascendance. The affordability of these small units (around 1300 sq ft) made it possible for Blacks and Hispanics to move in as Whites either died or moved out. If you could see a time-lapse video of the Hispanic takeover of the eastern half of South Florida you would be astonished with its speed and thoroughness.

    As to Hispanics adopting the Muslim religion, my awareness of this came about when I Googled “What kind of a name is Salahud Din?” Hint – you have heard of Saladin, right? I recommend try the same Google search, then read some of the results…such as population and religion demographics.

    My recommendation to the White ‘youtes’ of this country is start learning to speak Spanish and prepare to be a minority.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 1:42 pm #

      Why? Did the minorities try to fit in with our power structure? Now that we are on the bottom, why should we either? No, we use the system against itself just as they did to us. If they refuse us our minority status, they reveal themselves to be hypocrites – and that will help awaken more and more Whites.

      http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/11/democratic-multiculturalism/#more-50903

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 1:55 pm #

      Happy birthday btw. You implied you had a terminal condition awhile back. If you care to talk about it, I (or someone else) may be able to give you some good advice, medical and/or existential. One life insurance agent had cancer and only had a 16% chance of surviving. He refused both advanced and alternate care saying that if the stats were wrong than his life had been meaningless. So instead of trying to be one of the 16%, he went with being part of the herd so as to retain “integrity” with what he had “been”.

      Of course we all have a terminal condition – it’s called “life”. As Ramana Maharishi said, the body itself is a disease. This isn’t the ultimate wisdom of the East, but it’s not a bad place to start. Or Pato, “The body, a tomb.”

  120. volodya November 21, 2014 at 1:48 pm #

    Zerohedge is reporting that another German bank is imposing negative interest rates.

    They tell you up front though. For now. What about later? How about outright theft?

    They’ll justify it somehow so it’s perfectly “legal”. Want to bet that it won’t apply to the well connected? No, they’ll just get advance notice and move the dough out of harm’s way.

    And happy Bday Q.

    So we’ll see what’s the stronger force in the USA. Will it be the ruthless and relentless (until now) assimilationist melting pot? Or will it be linguistic and cultural tribalism?

    Had a good laugh. Seems that some institutes of higher learning in France threw in the towel and are teaching in English. The barbaric language of the rosbif eating tetes carrees taking precedence? Quelle horreur. Well, the linguistic and cultural chauvinists in France can take a bit of comfort. It’s not just France. Who was it that said there’s more English speakers in China than anywhere else in the world?

    And it appears that Univision opened an English language channel. Seems that young Hispanics in the US are more comfortable in English than Spanish.

    Assimilation gets my vote. But nothing is cut in stone so we’ll see. After all assimilation is NOT on the oligarchs agenda. No, quite the opposite.

    Why assimilation? Because ethnic pride and all that shit is just for public display. And ethnics know this. Because there’s one incontestable fact behind all this. And that is the utter failure, on multiple levels, of the home countries of immigrants and not only Hispanic migrants. Immigrants know this too. That’s why they immigrated. Pride? Proud of what exactly? Poverty, misery, violence, oppression, backwardness? Those are the usual factors that cause people to up-sticks in the first place.

    Obama made me laugh. Doing just what the oligarchs want, to keep millions of illegal immigrants on US soil where they can be exploited.

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    • MisterDarling November 21, 2014 at 5:26 pm #

      Hello Volodya,

      You made it to the end of another week… Happy Friday! This is a day of good cheer for those of us stuck in a place called ‘Work’.

      In other news: We had our first $100B ‘merger Monday’ in over a decade this week. That’s what happens when Demand gets killed: economic predation moves up the economic food-chain…

      Ever seen a big decorative pool full of carp and goldfish get abandoned for eight months? I have. When you get back there’s no more goldfish, or smaller fish of any kind for that matter, and the surviving carp are darting around with quick, economical, highly alert movements. The pool has become something altogether feral in a few short months. It’s an interesting transformation.

      This was not my pool, b t w… 😉

      re | “Assimilation gets my vote. But nothing is cut in stone so we’ll see. After all assimilation is NOT on the oligarchs agenda. No, quite the opposite.”-v.

      Indeed they do not. Our phases of Assimilation were a byproduct of the Oligarch’s Grand Globalist Venture. But that’s coming unstuck now, and in more ways than they can track, so we may be defaulting to a state of unruly de-facto feudalism…

      And by ‘unruly’ I mean that the option of re-forming up in neat little racial/ethnic enclaves may not be up to us or anyone else. World population is overhung by multiple billions. That is a lot of humanity to ‘unwind’ in a decade or two.

      Where we wind up and with who, might be more a matter or random chance and ruthless expediency more than personal preference. In other words: it may not be a good time to get fussy or squeamish, or making enemies unnecessarily.

      Lastly, I revisit this item – since we’re hearing a steady stream of news about how Technology/Providence is swooping down from on-high to carry us on mighty wings to safety – and more ‘happy motoring’.

      Google threw in the towel a while ago:

      http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/google-gives-up-on-green-tech-investment-initiative-rec/

      As I’ve mentioned to certain otherwise highly intelligent contrib’s awhile ago, It Just Does Not Pen Out…

      Cheers!

  121. Cold N. Holefield November 21, 2014 at 2:17 pm #

    You implied you had a terminal condition awhile back.

    It was Polio, and I already suggested he visit Warm Springs, Georgia several times a year for good measure — in one of these:

    1931 Plymouth

    Janos, for your sleep apnea and unbearable snoring may I suggest gargling regularly and periodically throughout the day sticking your tongue out and saying “ahh” like you did for the Dr. when you were just a wee wittle Nazi. If you do this religiously, or at least as religiously as you post to CFN, you’ll be off the CPAP in no time and breathing and sleeping like a baby again without medical intervention. No need to thank me. You’d do the same for me.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 6:08 pm #

      Bruce Jenner will be a woman soon. Try to hold on.

      • BackRowHeckler November 22, 2014 at 1:31 am #

        I knew that dude back in the day, a few years ahead of me in HS. I don’t know WTF happened but he turned out to be one weird sonofabitch.

        Family had a tree business in town, brother got killed in a Porche Bruce was given when he was a Big Olympic Hero.

        brh

        • Janos Skorenzy November 22, 2014 at 1:56 am #

          His wife’s energy was too strong for him evidently. Instead of dominating or at least equaling her, she conquered him and created herself in him. Evidently this has long been in the works. People thought he just got some really bad plastic surgery, but it was the beginning of a most hideous transformation.

  122. pkrugman November 21, 2014 at 4:06 pm #

    there are some difficult issues in immigration policy. But one thing you shouldn’t feel conflicted about is the proposition that we should offer decent treatment to children who are already here — and are already Americans in every sense that matters. And that’s what Mr. Obama’s initiative is about.

    The real question, then, is how we’re going to treat them. Will we continue our current regime of malign neglect, denying them ordinary rights and leaving them under the constant threat of deportation? Or will we treat them as the fellow Americans they already are?

    The truth is that sheer self-interest says that we should do the humane thing. Today’s immigrant children are tomorrow’s workers, taxpayers and neighbors. Condemning them to life in the shadows means that they will have less stable home lives than they should, be denied the opportunity to acquire skills and education, contribute less to the economy, and play a less positive role in society. Failure to act is just self-destructive.

    But speaking for myself, I don’t care that much about the money, or even the social aspects. What really matters, or should matter, is the humanity. My parents were able to have the lives they did because America, despite all the prejudices of the time, was willing to treat them as people. Offering the same kind of treatment to today’s immigrant children is the practical course of action, but it’s also, crucially, the right thing to do. So let’s applaud the president for doing it.

  123. progress4what November 21, 2014 at 6:05 pm #

    Happy B’day, Q!

    And yeah, the United States is resegregating like crazy, which ties in with your observations about south Florida. I’m glad that you had an OK trip, especially considering the circumstances of your brother’s death.

    I’m also glad no one was disrespectful, threatening, or worse – in that multi-cult nirvana you describe down there. As to why this was the case, three ideas spring to mind:

    1. asokerrug is really correct. Humans are at their best living in a multi-cultural nirvana. This seems unlikely.

    2. Old white guys are scary. You weren’t packing, but many old white guys are, for a variety of reasons. An armed society is a polite society.

    3. Social class trumps race, and family and tribe to a lesser extent. This is my favorite explanation. And it’s the one I’ve lived my life believing. I hope this one continues forever, I truly do. As long as prosperity continues, the power stays on, and the food trucks keep running full – then it probably will.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 21, 2014 at 6:14 pm #

      Social class trumps race? Well obviously it can – at least with Whites. And that’s the very thing that lead to this outrageous and rapidly devolving situation.

      It doesn’t nearly so much with other groups btw. Jewish Gangsters used to donate to the Zionist cause. And just because White Businessmen don’t care about their Race or Nation doesn’t mean Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, or Hispanic ones don’t. So are they more admirable as men than traitorous White Corporate Executives? Obviously.

      • progress4what November 21, 2014 at 6:28 pm #

        No argument on this one from me, Vlad.

        I believe the hope (expectation, supposition, whatever they want to call it) is that all these other groups now inside the United States will soon be following the example of your “White Corporate Executives.”

        If the power never goes off, the food trucks never stop running, and the prosperity never stops – then maybe they will.

        This being a peak resources website, though, I have to say – – that the whole idea seems unlikely to be sustainable, on a forever sort of basis.

  124. progress4what November 21, 2014 at 6:20 pm #

    Concerning leaves –

    I have to travel down to Atlanta at least weekly. This time of the year, part of the joy of the trip involves searching for bagged leaves at curbside. I bring them home. Even though I carved my little homesite into 5 acres of forest, and despite the fact that I back up to 3000+ acres of hardwood National Forest – I bring home leaves when they are available. Why?

    Because, those city folks have bagged them up for me.
    Because, it’s a lot easier to pick up a bag than to rake.
    Because I like to mulch and compost with leaves.

    And, sometimes, I find bags of pinestraw at curbside. People pay $4/bale for pinestraw. I find it in bags for free. Goofy city slickers.

    And the bags – they are magnificent compostable brown paper, probably worth 50 cents apiece, great for starting fires or laying down between garden plants in the spring. Each bag probably represents a day’s carbon footprint for a third world family. (As long as that family stays in the third world. If they move to the States their footprint goes way, waaaay up, to equal that of American families pronto!) And there those bags are on the curb in Atlanta, 1000’s of dollars worth of the stupid things every day, in season.
    Most of them are so clean, dry, and pretty. If I could return them to Home Depot I’d be turning an easy profit. Go figure.

    • progress4what November 21, 2014 at 6:47 pm #

      OK, it’s only $0.38/bag, purchased today.

      http://www.lowes.com/pd_99344-94999-LOWESLL_0__

      Still, it’s a hell of a waste of resources. Isn’t that part of what you’re talking about, budizwizer?

    • Buck Stud November 21, 2014 at 9:52 pm #

      If you live in a very shady neighborhood leaves can serve as a natural alarm system and a reprieve from the rake:crunch, crunch.

  125. Q. Shtik November 21, 2014 at 8:14 pm #

    You implied you had a terminal condition awhile back. – Janos

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

    Cold N. is correct that I had polio but polio is seldom fatal. I got it in the summer of 1949 when I was 8 yrs and 8 months old. It was the Ebola of the time. The afflicted were quarantined in a special hospital for infectious diseases. The parents of a child who came down with it were devastated. President FDR who suffered some 20 years with it had died only 4 years earlier so it was fresh in people’s minds. It was a real scourge in those days. My case got a 4 inch blurb on the front page of the Camden Courier Post. But I was one of the rare lucky ones whose paralysis just faded away after a month or so.

    Thanks for all those wishing me HBD. I’m starting to get nervous about age since there’s a tendency for men in our family to die at 75. And now comes my brother’s totally unexpected death at 77.

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    • nsa November 21, 2014 at 8:26 pm #

      Thanks for reminding us of the devastation caused by the polio scourge in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. Does anyone remember the thousands of immobilized victims in their “iron lung” machines….the kids with permanent disabilities mocked by their peers….the mandatory “polio naps”….the abject parental fear and the horror of it all?

    • Buck Stud November 21, 2014 at 9:46 pm #

      Happy Birthday Q 🙂

      So you’re a Scorpio…I looked up one of those birthday astrology things and it said today was The Day of The Grammarian…I’ll try and relocate that link perhaps.

      JHK is a Libra which, astrologically speaking, lends insight to his refined sense of aesthetics.

      I believe Janos was born in the Year of The Monkey if memory serves me correctly.

      • Janos Skorenzy November 22, 2014 at 4:02 am #

        How far along are you in reading the link I sent you about Obama’s Communism? Did you get to the CPUSA endorsing him yet?

    • BackRowHeckler November 22, 2014 at 1:35 am #

      Hey Q if you kick the bucket how we gonna know?

      brh

    • Janos Skorenzy November 22, 2014 at 2:02 am #

      Oh I got it wrong. I thought there was something in the present. I must have missed or forgotten when you talked about the childhood polio.

      What kind of toothpaste do you use? Do you have brand loyalty? Are you willing to go to bat for your brand? Would you rather fight than switch?

      In any case, be careful. Your last moments determine your next birth. You don’t want something like “All the guys and gals,
      Guys and Gals,
      They all shop at Mals,
      Shop at Mals.

      playing in your head at the very end.

      • Buck Stud November 22, 2014 at 9:56 am #

        I have read the similar thoughts from Rajneesh; that to stay aware, and not in fear or despair at the moment of death insures that will incarnate as a whole being capable of further spiritual refinement in the next pass through on the planet.

        I now question the notion of a person being so certain about such things, much less writing/evangelizing about it.

        One thing is certain though. Humans never let go of avarice, be it earthly comfort and riches or promises of a voluptuous afterlife. Think the right thoughts, sing the right songs in order to not become ‘less’ in the next dimension. When we reach 70 we want 75; when 80, we want 85.

        The great and latest Robert Redford film “All Is Lost” portrays this human characteristic with brilliant poignancy. (Interestingly, I don’t think Redford utters a single word in the entire film as I recall.)

        • Buck Stud November 22, 2014 at 10:03 am #

          Actually, now as I further recall he did say a few words here and there, but 99% of the film is devoid of voice.

          • malthuss November 22, 2014 at 11:22 am #

            I was at the library one day and saw two books about him. One was by his bodyguard.
            I forget the titles of the books but they were all too eerie.

            Rajneesh wore his million dollar wristwatch for the first time when he went to meet with the immigration officer.
            How many Rolls Royces did he drive around in? 100?

          • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 5:27 pm #

            Philosophy, devoid of the realization of the things discussed, is a modern Western invention, beginning around the time of Descartes. Pretty sterile stuff.

            You seem to have no faith at all. Sad.

        • Janos Skorenzy November 22, 2014 at 4:56 pm #

          Well that’s just your democratic impulse misleading you again. Where do you get the idea all men are the same? Can you play basketball like Magic Johnson? Or Tai Chi like Chen Man Ching? Since he devoted his life to such a thing, think maybe he could do a few things that few men can do? So extend the principle: someone who devotes their life to meditation might know things you don’t just as James Watson knows more about genetics than the jackals who destroyed him.

          Now it’s said that sleep is the brother to death. The last moment before you sleep sums up your day just as the last moment before you die sums up your life. And the after death states are like dreams, good or bad according to what you have merited by your life. If you still have earthly desires, you must come back to fulfill them. If you don’t, you don’t.

          Yes, remember your Ruskin. Hold onto what you know is true. But don’t limit such possible knowing to the material. Your inner senses might develop to perceive new forms in the higher worlds. Grass is green. It might be greener or some other color. Water is wet. Sky is blue. Obama is a Communist. America has been infiltrated and overthrown. In Buddhism, the mind too is considered a sense. I can “see” these things as clearly as you see the green grass.

          But yes, the heart is corrupt above all things. That is where the hardest work must be done. A guy kicked down my back fence (which was leaning) and took a huge old window that was just sitting around in my yard. I could forgive this. But he accosted me on the street (he lives up the block) and introduced himself and tried to get me to give him some yard work. He gave himself away by his excitement, his cheater’s high – and also by asking wasn’t I glad I had a new fence up. He loved the idea of getting paid by someone he had stolen from. This Use of another human being for his own pleasure is unforgiveable.

          • Buck Stud November 23, 2014 at 10:06 am #

            Malthuss,

            Perhaps Rajneesh should have just stayed with being an outstanding philosopher/writer IMO. He wrote some very good books which I started reading in my early teen years…’The Mustard Seed’ for one.

          • Buck Stud November 23, 2014 at 10:29 am #

            Where did you get the idea that I wrote ‘all men should be the same’? And yet there is a reason Socrates frequently qualified his comments with ‘I don’t really know’. I wonder if you know why he prefaced his statements with this qualifier?( hint: I don’t think it was just a rhetorical ‘Socratic method’ didactic device.)

            You, on the other hand, seem very sure of yourself.

            Perhaps Socrates, when speaking of the infinite-Platonic Forms,God, Wuji etc–realized he was only loosely speculating at best. After all, how can the number one representing a single individual ever hope to ascertain the limitless and infinite?

            I anticipate that you might retort that some are closer to ‘infinity than others’ lol ? IOW, further satiating the avaricious spiritual ego hungering for certainty and correctness by cloaking material reality with incorporeal pretense.

  126. Q. Shtik November 22, 2014 at 12:59 am #

    Speaking of leaves…

    For the first time in my life I paid someone this past Tuesday to do my leaves. Well, that’s not technically correct. I have paid my son Thom to do it on a few occasions. But every fall from ’78 to the present I have raked and bagged those suckers till I’m ready to drop.

    Our town provides the bags and when filled they’re placed along the curb and the town trash guys come by on no particular schedule and take them away.

    My house is surrounded by 5 huge Oaks. The guy from VIP Landscape showed up with two Mexicans. Before you know it there were 54 bags lining the curb. The price, $200 and worth every penny.

    When the trash guys showed up on Thursday I bet they’d like to shit.

  127. FincaInTheMountains November 22, 2014 at 6:08 am #

    Guide to legalize ANYTHING, from cannibalism to pedophilia

    http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2561672/pg1

    In today’s society of tolerance, which have no fixed ideals and a clear division between good and evil, there is a technique that allows you to change the concepts considered totally unacceptable.

    This technique, called the ‘Overton Window‘ consists of a specific sequence of actions in order to achieve the desired result, “may be more effective than nuclear weapons to destroy human communities”, says columnist Evgueni Gorzhaltsan.

    In his article in the ADME website, there is an example of how to convert to acceptable the idea of legalizing cannibalism step by step, from the stage at which it is considered disgusting and unthinkable to the public morals, until it becomes a reality acceptable by the mass consciousness and the law. This is achieved not by a direct brainwashing, but by more sophisticated techniques that are effective thanks to its consistent and systematic application without society perceive the process, believes Gorzhaltsan.

    First stage: from unthinkable to radical

    Obviously, now the issue of legalization of cannibalism is on the lower level of acceptance in the ‘window of opportunities’ of Overton, since society considers it as absurd and unthinkable, a taboo.

    It is possible to change this perception by transferring the matter to the scientific sphere, as for scientists usually there is no taboo subjects. An ethnological symposium about exotic rituals of polynesian tribes can be used to discuss the history of the subject of study and obtain authoritative statements about cannibalism, and then ensuring the transition from negative and uncompromising attitude of society to a more positive attitude.

    Simultaneously, you must create a radical group of cannibals, although they exist only in the Internet, they will surely be cited by numerous media outlets. As a result of the first stage of Overton, the taboo disappears and unacceptable issue begins to be discussed.

    Second stage: from radical to acceptable

    At this stage, one should continue quoting scientists, arguing that no one can say that has no knowledge about cannibalism, as if someone refuses to talk about it will be considered a hypocritical bigot.

    By condemnming the intolerance, it is also necessary to create a euphemism for the phenomenon itself and thus separate the word from its meaning. Thus, cannibalism becomes ‘anthropophagy’ and later in ‘anthropophilic’.

    In parallel, one can establish a precedent of reference, historical, mythological, contemporary or simply invented, but the most important is to be legitimized, so it can be used as proof that anthropophily principle can be legalized.

    Third stage: from acceptable to reasonable

    For this step it is important to promote ideas such as the following: “the desire to eat people are genetically justified,” “sometimes a person has to resort to this, if in favorable circumstances” or “a free man have the right to decide what to eat.”

    Real opponents to these concepts, ie, people who do not want to be indifferent to the problem, deliberately convert to public opinion in radical enemies whose role is to represent the image of crazy psychopaths, aggressive opponents of anthropophily clamoring to burn cannibals alive, along with other representatives of minorities .

    Experts and journalists show that during this stage of human history there have always been times when people ate each other, and that this was normal .

    Fourth stage: from reasonable to popular

    The media, with the help of well-known people and politicians are already talking openly about anthropophily. This phenomenon begins to appear in movies, lyrics of popular songs and videos. At this stage, begins the promotion of historical characters who practiced anthropophily.

    To justify to the proponents of legalization of the phenomenon, it can be appealed to the humanization of criminals by creating a positive image of them saying, for example , that they are victims, because life forced them to practice anthropophily.

    Fifth stage: from popular to political

    This stage is the preparation of legislation to legalize the phenomenon. Pressure groups are consolidated in power and publish research that supposedly confirm a high percentage of supporters of the legalization of cannibalism in society. In the public consciousness establishes a new dogma: “The prohibition of eating people is forbidden.”

    This is a typical technique of liberalism that works due to tolerance as a pretext for prescribing taboos. During the last stage of the ‘moving windows’ of Overton, from popular to political, the society has suffered a disruption because the norms of human existence have been altered or destroyed by the adoption of new laws.

    • BackRowHeckler November 22, 2014 at 10:48 am #

      That explains a lot.

      ‘Overton’s Window’. I’ll have to remember that.

      brh

      • FincaInTheMountains November 22, 2014 at 11:33 am #

        Legalization of homosexual marriages, anybody?

  128. Cold N. Holefield November 22, 2014 at 8:01 am #

    Hey Q if you kick the bucket how we gonna know?

    Our grammar will take a turn for the worse — we’ll be unconsciously sloppy and messy with our words until one day we say to ourselves, “what’s wrong with me — did I write that?”, and at that point we’ll realize Q. Shtik is no longer chastising us for our inexcusable transgressions and consequently we’ll weep and bow our heads and offer a commemorative blessing to a great, and yet unsung, grammarian. I’m thinking of writing Q.’s eulogy in advance so we can pull it off the shelve when that time comes.

    • Cold N. Holefield November 22, 2014 at 8:27 am #

      I left a juicy morsel just for you, Q. Of Mice and Cheese. Consider it a belated birthday present. I figured you probably have enough ties.

  129. Cold N. Holefield November 22, 2014 at 8:10 am #

    The guy from VIP Landscape showed up with two Mexicans.

    Did he use a whip on them? I don’t like it when these overseers use the whip. The Mexicans, most of them at least, are hard workers and don’t need to be externally coerced, cajoled or whipped. Notice how these guys never show up with two Asians — if they did, the guy who brought them would soon enough be raking and bagging your leaves while the Asians were measuring and calculating to minimize bag use to 26 bags versus 54.

  130. Cold N. Holefield November 22, 2014 at 11:02 am #

    When we reach 70 we want 75; when 80, we want 85.

    Not in Q.’s case considering the male longevity curse in his family. Q.’s reached 74 yet he wants 65, or 55, or hell why not 25, but most definitely not 77. Sometimes less is better, and this is one of those times.

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  131. Cold N. Holefield November 22, 2014 at 11:08 am #

    Instead of dominating or at least equaling her, she conquered him and created herself in him.

    This is his former wife’s favorite song.

    Bruce, You’ll Be A Woman Soon

    Perhaps he’ll always be stuck in Limbo where the unbaptized babies used to go.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 22, 2014 at 9:51 pm #

      Neil Diamond is a wizard whose songs are spells. Look what he did to Caroline Kennedy. His song Sweet Caroline kept her from ever becoming a woman. Even physically she has no hips or breast. A girl forever.

  132. volodya November 22, 2014 at 11:48 am #

    World population is overhung by multiple billions. – Mr D

    Yes it certainly is. A dress rehearsal for what happens as a result of this overhang might be in California. What do 37 million water hungry people do if the drought goes on? Can the state government help? What about the bazillions in Silicon valley?

    You can’t conjure water by magic tricks, you can’t assume it into existence, governments study issues to death but consulting reports on the feasibility of desalinization of sea water aren’t the same thing as actually building and operating desalinization facilities.

    So what does resource depletion generally involve? Never mind whether the depletion is via over-exploitation or naturally ocurring processes. People go on the move, there tends to be conflict over whatever resources are left. In short, a struggle for survival.

    Don’t look to the feds for anything useful on this. Never mind partisan institutional paralysis. There’s the problem of President. Obama figures that SAYING something is the same as DOING something. And it’s not just Obama. This is a common affliction. The French, for example, greatly admire oratory delivered in clear and beautiful Parisian French. The problem is in the grubby details of execution, that is, once the speech is finished.

    People like Obama want the glamor and buzz of the bright lights and the television cameras and the cheers and applause. But they don’t want to get their hands dirty. I give you the Obamacare website botch as exhibit one, the Benghazi debacle as exhibit two, the Syrian red-line fubar as exhibit three, the pointless talk-talk-talk-talk-talk over the Ukrainian shoot-em-up as exhibit four, the ludicrous “negotiations” over Iran’s nuclear bomb building program as exhibit five. All of these completely absurd.

    Uninformed young people infected their elders with their enthusiasm over candidate Obama. Obama is a reasonably good college lecturer, a good talker, a good campaigner. But he is not an executive or administrator. Especially not one with the chops to handle one of the toughest executive jobs on the planet. No earthly idea why he took this on. “Know thyself” dammit.

    What about so-called “market forces”? Well, consider what we have: crony-capitalism and Wall Street’s slimy tentacles and their penetrative power. Is there anything left resembling “markets” that haven’t been subverted? I seriously doubt it. And so we can safely ignore the likes of Paul Ryan. Ryan and his ilk live in a world that doesn’t exist.

    Who takes the place of Obama in 2016? Anybody out there worth a damn? Even if there is, can he deal with Congress and a hopelessly incompetent bureaucracy?

    Nope, I suspect that the water starved Californian can maybe count on friends and relatives. Other than that I’m afraid he’s on his own.

    As you say no time to be fussy or squeamish when it’s random chance and ruthless expediency determining who makes it.

    • MisterDarling November 22, 2014 at 1:22 pm #

      Hi Volodya,

      re |”Yes it certainly is. A dress rehearsal for what happens as a result of this overhang might be in California. What do 37 million water hungry people do if the drought goes on? Can the state government help? What about the bazillions in Silicon valley?

      “You can’t conjure water by magic tricks, you can’t assume it into existence, governments study issues to death but consulting reports on the feasibility of desalinization of sea water aren’t the same thing as actually building and operating desalinization facilities.”-v.

      The first test of California’s collective intelligence and will-to-survive is getting back water it already has – by dealing out a bunch of corrupt, net-unproductive agribusiness operations – for starts. That’s a simple way to make a lot of water suddenly ‘appear’ out of ‘nowhere’.

      Along the way, they might put a screeching halt to pumping contaminated frack-byproduct wastewater into clean aquifers, and nuke any mention of draining Hetch-Hetchy in the middle of a drought – so that a more expensive (profitable for a few) water projects can be pursued.

      Just a few humble suggestions.

      Typically, when there’s a “shortage of funds” or any other resource, the most productive __first__ problem-solving step is conduct a real internal investigation, locate the missing resources and purge the parasites from the enterprise or organization.

      If CA can manage that, they buy themselves a lot of time… Time they can use wisely by redistributing that excess population. The idea that CA is a fountain of endless employment should have died in 2008.

      • ozone November 22, 2014 at 2:27 pm #

        Well, thanks, MD, I happen to be quite fond of “humble suggestions” when faced with stark realities. (Here’s some underlying thought-blockage: “…it’s remarkably common these days for people to insist that their values are objective truths, and values that differ from theirs objective falsehoods. That’s a very appealing sort of nonsense, but it’s still nonsense.” — Greer I’d agree… Take an example in a majority of the comments post-Monday.)

        “Folks” can plant their ridiculous political/idealogical banners in the barren soil of the vast and blasted wasteland commonly known as the Plain of Irrelevancy or the Graveyard of Bullshit, but I find this action to be a most purposeful (and unhelpful) muddying of the waters that only buys time for those who happen to be running the Big Cons.

        Mitigation strategies are what I’m interested in now; all else is noise and distraction.
        *****************

        As far as JHK’s continuing social criticism, a raging river-in-flood runs through it:
        Whence Trust?
        It was last seen staggering into the murky distance down Oblivion Road, supported by its’ good friend and true, Veracity. Sadly, it was following in the bloody footsteps of Honor, who was in the company of his loyal servant, Shame.

        Whether acknowledged or not, these are the explicit signs of a crumbling social order. Goodnight, Irene, Goodnight… a few “humble suggestions” are welcomed (by myself, anyhoo.)

        Aside:
        ” The idea that CA is a fountain of endless employment should have died in 2008.”

        It DID die, but it was hurriedly interred in a shallow grave in the remote woodlands. It was fervently hoped that there were no witnesses.

        • MisterDarling November 22, 2014 at 6:09 pm #

          Hello Oz’,

          re | “Folks” can plant their ridiculous political/ideological banners in the barren soil of the vast and blasted wasteland commonly known as the Plain of Irrelevancy or the Graveyard of Bullshit,”-Oz.

          Talking the short-list issues in terms of ideology is a giveaway: it’s a sure sign that they don’t have a clue… What good would it do an RMS Titanic steerage passenger to yell: “come see the oppression inherent in the system!” whilst being manhandled below-decks? [*]

          “Mitigation strategies are what I’m interested in now; all else is noise and distraction.”-Oz.

          Avoidance is no longer an option, Transference is fresh out, Acceptance is suicide… That leaves little-old Mitigation all by her lonesome, biting her lower lip and brushing the wall with her finger-tips… She’s the only girl left at the dance.

          Hopefully “she’s a predator posing as a house-pet”, in a way that works in our favor. [*]

          — — —

          [*] I’m quoting Monty Python’s ‘The Holy Grail’ and ‘Fight club’ o/c…

        • ZrCrypDiK November 23, 2014 at 6:05 am #

          Whoa – Ozone! Back from the ‘dead’? Did I summon thee (2 ozone holes still getting BIGGER)?

          Heh, lattice of coincidence. Holographic universe. There’s got to be a *REASON* (ie: way to work this out)!!!

      • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 5:21 pm #

        Deport the Illegals. That should get rid of ten or fifteen million people.

    • ZrCrypDiK November 23, 2014 at 5:48 am #

      “Who takes the place of Obama in 2016? Anybody out there worth a damn?”

      Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren in 2016. That U, beef-boy? If so, “throw ’em a *stick* already”, for GHAD’s sake.

      PS: Nestle can ‘ship’ (ie: gas guzzle) all that bottled water they *STOLE* to CA – lulz. Friggin’ cry-baby (fracked YER aquifer – heh).

  133. FincaInTheMountains November 22, 2014 at 1:45 pm #

    Ray McGovern Interview: The CIA and Propaganda vs. Reality on Ukraine
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ2ZenOV5qg

  134. BackRowHeckler November 22, 2014 at 9:24 pm #

    Drudge headline reads:

    ‘Israel Mulls Strike on Iran’

    Could it be possible Ferguson, illegal immigration, Republicans taking the Senate, ISIS, Ebola etc, is one big head fake … the real show all along was negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons? I saw Charley Rose’s interview with Defense Secretary Hagel the other night, and Hagel stated in no uncertain terms the Russian bombers patrolling our southern coast, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico are indeed armed with nuclear weapons, which is important, because if Israel strikes Iran, ‘specially with nukes, its on. I hope this President is up to the challenge the way John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were. Our lives might be depending on it.

    Marlin Williams

    • Buck Stud November 22, 2014 at 10:22 pm #

      But did you also notice what else was being sold? That the United States now needs to remodel/upgrade it’s nuclear weapons program. Oh and I was also watching our Cyber Chief stating that China (and other countries) could basically shut down the grid with a cyber attack and there is nothing the U.S. could currently do to prevent it. And again, an urgent, very urgent upgrading is needed immediately.

      We’ve all seen this movie before Marlin and it’s a movie that really rakes in the cash, especially when all that ‘paying customers’ are quivering with dread over the prospect of a president not ‘quite up to the task’. In the meantime, maybe we should start practicing duck and cover drills under the elementary school desk again; that’ll really stiffen the collective national spine if not broaden the vision to a more endemic and manipulative reality.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 3:05 am #

      “the real show all along was negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons” brh

      The real show is a standoff between Russia and China and associated countries on one side and US and its NATO satellites on another regarding single-polar world domination in political, military and economical issues.

      Iran is just important part of it, but not due to its nuclear program but rather due to its geopolitical location and energy resources.

  135. pkrugman November 22, 2014 at 9:28 pm #

    BEIRUT (AP) — More than two months into its assault on Kobani, the Islamic State group is still pouring fighters and resources into trying to capture the besieged Syrian Kurdish town, but the drive has been blunted.

    Helped by more than 270 airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, the border town’s unwavering Kurdish defenders are gaining momentum — a potentially bruising reversal for the extremists who only a few weeks ago appeared to be unstoppable.

    ————

    To Volodya: Another threat of world doom shown for what it is. ISIL stopped by women peshmuga soldiers and Obama’s words, alliance making, and air strikes: effective and coordinated government action.

    Zero cases of Ebola in the USA. Stopped by Obama’s words and effective Obama government action, starting with CDC and appointment of an Ebola czar. You don’t have to get your hands dirty to be effective. Intelligence goes a long way.

    For years peak oil was the boogey man. Obama changed all that using his mind to develop an effective government energy policy.

    More spending on big government programs leads to effective solutions to problems. Intelligently: No U.S. Soldiers died, no pandemic, no lines at gas pumps.

    There is no problem big government cannot solve intelligently. Remember that on April 15 and pay your taxes gladly. Give thanks to Obama for not having Ebola, ISIL, and peak oil to worry about.

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    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 3:20 am #

      “develop an effective government energy policy.”

      Are you talking about fracking?

      3 Billion Gallons Of Fracking Wastewater Pumped Into Clean California Aquifiers: “Errors Were Made” State Admits

      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-17/3-billion-gallons-fracking-wastewater-pumped-clean-california-aquifiers-errors-were-

      In “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of. Water might become more valuable than oil and gas.

  136. Buck Stud November 22, 2014 at 9:58 pm #

    I talked to a young man today who has obviously never heard about the impending collapse so frequently discussed on this site. He told me that he had recently started testosterone therapy which really raised an eyebrow. I looked at him and his full beard and his well developed upper body musculature and stated that he certainly didn’t look like a low T type to my eyes. He told me that was misleading, that ‘the tests’ indicated otherwise (in classic Dude fashion he also made a point of stating that there were ‘no libido issues’.)

    He went on to tell me that since starting this Low T therapy that he was retaining water and that his already somewhat high blood pressure was further aggravated by this ‘therapy’. I then suggested that perhaps he should drop the therapy and try something else such as a vegan diet as ironically enough, vegans typically have higher testosterone levels than meat eaters. He shook his head no, that once he started this particular therapy he would have to be on it the rest of his life, that the natural testosterone mechanism of his body is now forever compromised.

    A bit taken back by this I simply said “oh” but inside I was shaking my head and wondering what this strapping 29 year old Navy veteran could have been thinking. Because the one thing he didn’t consider was this ‘therapy’ might not be always available.

    • ZrCrypDiK November 23, 2014 at 6:27 am #

      Sorry, got to call “BULL” on all THIS. The only reason you get low-T treatment is because “lil billy” can’t make a *HARD* response.

      The rest of your explanations (blatherings?) really result in (nil). He’s got a limp dick – C’est *tout*.

      Sockie-troll, talkn’ limp dick (WAKE THE F* UP, morons).

      • Buck Stud November 23, 2014 at 9:54 am #

        I was just repeating what he told me but I suppose you might be right as it sounds like you have had some first hand experience of “Low T” given your highly charged response. For the moment, I will yield to your greater experience on the subject.

        And yet, you miss the larger point: what type of medical therapies to engage in, or not, if a coming collapse really is in the cards.

        • malthuss November 23, 2014 at 1:29 pm #

          I thought the government made ‘Steroids’ illegal for men under the age of 50.

          The guy sounds like a nut. Did you ask him his MD or Medical Firms name?
          Was it Balko Inc?

  137. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 3:26 am #

    “A new phase in the markets began this month. The Federal Reserve ended its QE3+ purchases. The Bank of Japan unexpectedly and dramatically stepped up its asset purchases under its QQE operations. The government’s largest pension fund announced aggressive portfolio diversification plan.”

    Here we go. “Unexpectedly?” A good example of inflation export by US to a country under US occupation (since WWII). Now, that pension plan “diversification process” – does that include “investing” into US Treasuries?

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-22/every-one-wants-dollars-again

  138. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 3:45 am #

    Ebola: US sends 3,000 troops to W.Africa to ‘turn tide’
    http://news.yahoo.com/obama-announce-major-ebola-effort-043320604.html

    Washington (AFP) – US President Barack Obama will try to “turn the tide” on the Ebola epidemic Tuesday by ordering 3,000 US military personnel to west Africa to curtail its spread as China also dispatched more experts to the region.

    So, China (and Russia) are sending medical experts and field hospitals, US is sending … military?

    Here we go – it appears that “Ebola Scare” was a “false-flag” just to create a media cover-story of sending US Military to W.Africa to take over natural resources.

  139. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 3:57 am #

    Japan Goes Full Helicopter-Ben: Prints “Free Gift-Cards” To Spark Consumption

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-17/japan-goes-full-helicopter-ben-prints-free-gift-cards-spark-consumption

    Since Ben Bernanke reminded the world of the existence of government printing-presses, echoed Milton Friedman’s “helicopter drop” solution to fighting deflation, and decried Japan for not being as insane as it could be… it has only been a matter of time before some global central bank decided that the dropping of cash onto the populace was the key to economic recovery. Having blown their wad on QQE (and been left with a triple-dip recession), it appears Japan has reached that limit. As Japan’s News47 reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed his cabinet to develop economic measures such as handing out ‘gift certificates’ to the poor to “support personal consumption directly.

  140. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 5:09 am #

    The world economy is now harvesting the bitter fruits of the neoliberals’ killer austerity.

    The main central banks are now falling back on the discredited Quantitative Easing, meaning massive purchase of bankrupt and toxic derivatives, with the hope of saving the zombie banks from another round of bankruptcy. But six years of Quantitative Easing have already failed to produce a recovery in the US, where stagnation continues.

    Instead of pouring more central bank credit down the derivatives rat-hole, we should now implement the anti-deflation, anti-depression ideas proposed in 1931 by Wilhelm Lautenbach of the German Finance Ministry and Wladimir S. Woytinsky of the German trade unions. In today’s US terms, their call would translate into a credit stimulus of $5 trillion in Fed credit used to buy 0% coupon, 100-year infrastructure bonds to be issued by states, counties, cities, and regional authorities.

    Large-scale shovel-ready projects would begin at once. No tax increases, and no borrowing from China, would be involved. The short-term goal would be the creation of 30 million new productive jobs, giving the US full employment for the first time since 1945. Further credit stimulus would be used to refinance the Exim Bank for a campaign of high-technology exports, and to freeze the burden of $1.3 trillion in student loans by refinancing these loans at 0%. (These measures can be easily adapted to other economies worldwide.) Monetary stimulus has been tried and has failed (QE), fiscal stimulus has been tried and has failed (the Pelosi stimulus and supplemental laws of 2009), and is threatening. Credit stimulus for tangible physical commodity production — not bailouts — is the only way out, and it should start immediately

    http://tarpley.net/obama-repudiates-allen-gates-petraeus-kerry-campaign-to-spare-isis-and-bomb-assad/

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    • ZrCrypDiK November 23, 2014 at 6:06 am #

      Nice, FincaL – 4 poasts in a row (at least it whuzn’t *5*, liek???

      • Buck Stud November 23, 2014 at 9:57 am #

        Keep on posting Fin; I for one enjoy your posts. It sounds like ZCrmpDik may have had another rough night Low T night given the nasty tone of his posts.

      • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 5:40 pm #

        Do you eat the worm in the tequila? The worm that dieth not?

  141. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 9:06 am #

    “Are you talking about tracking?” — Finca

    No, Finca, I am talking about intelligent strategies supported by Obama like advanced grid integration and storage to solidify grid reliability when you’ve got multiple inputs to juggle, including small scale distributed sources (mainly solar) and intermittent sources (mainly wind and solar).

    Obama supports drop-in biofuels because, despite advances in EV tech, internal combustion engines are going to be around for a while. Obama is developing renewable, carbon-neutral sources that won’t require modifications to existing engines and fueling infrastructure.

    Obama is thinking about waste-to-energy strategies like manure-to-biogas, as well as animal waste-to-energy as well as food waste biogas recovery. We will never run out of waste. We do quite well at producing waste.

    Another intelligent Obama approach is the enhancement of existing facilities. The focus is on low impact hydrokinetic technology that harvests energy from ambient currents in rivers, canals, and other constructed watercourses including existing dams.

    Obama also understands the importance of efficiency improvements. Given the amount of energy waste involved in older buildings, Obama is developing new strategies for squeezing the most energy bang out of building retrofits.

    Our government has intelligent leadership in Obama because he understands our energy solutions must be multifaceted, low or zero emission, renewable and sustainable. Fracking is short term, a harmful stop gap measure. If only Obama were king, he could order it stopped. Instead Obama is wisely developing long term sustainable energy solutions, a few of which I mentioned above. There are many many more.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 9:12 am #

      “No, Finca, I am talking about intelligent strategies supported by Obama like advanced grid integration and storage to solidify grid reliability when you’ve got multiple inputs to juggle, including small scale distributed sources (mainly solar) and intermittent sources (mainly wind and solar).”

      Are you talking about examples like that one:

      Solyndra Scandal

      Solyndra, the Silicon Valley startup that collapsed, leaving taxpayers liable for $535 million in federal guarantees .

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/specialreports/solyndra-scandal/

  142. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 9:35 am #

    Russia is planning to use small (up to 50 MWT) module nuclear reactors to support Arctic oil/gas development programs

    http://peretok.ru/smi/interview/kurs-na-sever.html

    Why it didn’t occur to them that would be OK to stick couple of solar panels plus a few wind mills to drive 800 KWT drilling machines?

  143. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 9:49 am #

    Finca, it makes you look stupid to simply repeat Republican talking points. Here are the facts about Solyndra:

    In 2011, solar panel company Solyndra defaulted on a $535 million loan guaranteed by the Department of Energy. The agency had a few other high-profile bankruptcies, too — electric car company Fisker and solar company Abound among them. But now that loan program has started turning a profit.

    Overall, the agency has loaned $34.2 billion to a variety of businesses, under a program designed to speed up development of clean-energy technology. Companies have defaulted on $780 million of that — a loss rate of 2.28 percent. The agency also has collected $810 million in interest payments, putting the program $30 million in the black.

    When Congress created the loan program under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, it was never designed to be a moneymaker. In fact, Congress imagined there would be losses and set aside $10 billion to cover them.

    Good government under Obama’s leadership plans for the unexpected And does not wastes taxpayers’ money. The DOE instead makes a profit

  144. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 9:54 am #

    “Why it didn’t occur to them that would be OK to stick couple of solar panels plus a few wind mills to drive 800 KWT drilling machines?”

    LOL! And for what do you need 800 KWT drilling machines? Fracking?
    To fracking I say nyet.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 10:34 am #

      Nyet, not for fracking. For Arctic Shale Oil and Gas.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 10:37 am #

      You may be able to run a few light bulbs and TV on a solar. However, you can’t reliably and economically use it in industry.

  145. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 10:44 am #

    OMG, Republicans use courts to file nuisance lawsuit and benefit trial lawyers!

    “The fact is, this lawsuit is a bald-faced attempt to achieve what Republicans have been unable to achieve through the political process,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “The legislative branch cannot sue simply because they disagree with the way a law passed by a different Congress has been implemented. It is clear, as one leading legal scholar put it, that this lawsuit is ‘an embarrassing loser.’”

    ZrCrypDik, please keep an accurate poast count and report to us.

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  146. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 10:59 am #

    Finca, in its infancy oil was not used in industrial settings either. As an energy source matures you see more industrial applications.

    For now solar thermal is being used for pre-heating water up to 80 degree to boilers, pasteurization, condensation and cleaning in milk dairies, drying and tanning in leather process industries, degreasing and phosphating in metal finishing industry, resin emulsification in polymer industry, drying in food, wood, live stock and pharmaceutical industry. More industrial applications of solar will follow.

    To the contrary, as oil becomes scarce it will not be available at all for your big drills. Solar has the advantage it is not going to run out.

    Or do you subscribe to the Russian idiotic abiotic theory of oil?

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 11:25 am #

      “Solar has the advantage it is not going to run out.”

      It just did – at least on me. I was using solar for drying palm nuts – took about 2 days, Now it takes up to 6 days – my productivity just went down 3 times. If I didn’t have a drum dryer operating on wood burning stove, I’d be screwed.

  147. Being There November 23, 2014 at 11:10 am #

    re: Our Ukraine coup and the puppet states of Europe not seeing where their best interests are served. This is what happens when ideology of a new kind of imperialism takes over the group think and puts the world in danger.

    I’ve had no time to share info with this blog in a long time, but I’ve run across a real good one I thought I’d share by way of Paul Craig Roberts.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40305.htm

    This is written by James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. Latest book: “The New Extractivism. A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century?” Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras. Zed Books. http://petras.lahaine.org/

  148. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 11:23 am #

    Being There, the article you reference says all-out war is imminent. The war is between Ukranian Nazis and Russians.

    Why don’t we sit this one out?

    I do not believe any GI’s are going in on the ground. Not until we elect President Cruz.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 12:48 pm #

      “The war is between Ukranian Nazis and Russians.”

      I wish it was true, then we’d simply kick the shit out Nazis in about 2 days and be done with it.

      Afraid it is a proxy Russian-American war, at least that is how it is taken by the majority of the Russian public,

  149. Cold N. Holefield November 23, 2014 at 12:19 pm #

    Not until we elect President Cruz.

    Do you think he’s the one who’s been tapped/ordained for/as the next president? They telegraphed Obama it would be Obama way back in 2004, but this time around, it’s not as obvious. Maybe it’s because I don’t give a shit anymore, and so I’m not paying close enough attention, or it could be because they’re being a wee bit less transparent this cycle.

  150. volodya November 23, 2014 at 3:00 pm #

    I don’t know BT, calling it OUR coup in the Ukraine is a bit of a stretch.

    Mainly because while there were Americans doing lot of yakking in the background, that’s pretty much all it was. Yakking. What happened in the Ukraine may have made the folks in the State Dept happy but the people that took part in the brick throwing festivities weren’t American. They were Ukrainian. Those people weren’t puppets, they did what they figured they had to do. They had their own gripes.

    Ukraine is an unholy mess. But do you know who’s to blame? Ukrainians. They screwed it all up. Not Americans. And, if you want to point the finger at foreigners, point it at Russians. The locals and not Americans are to blame. This may not suit American self image but in most of what happens in the world Americans are peripheral.

    Americans need to disabuse themselves of the notion that they control everything. They don’t, not even remotely. Foreigners can’t be jerked around on a string at the whim of American puppet masters. Americans may like to think the world works that way but it doesn’t and it never has.

    If Americans want to be effectve actors in world affairs they first need to understand how the world actually works. That means separating out personal ego, this exhalted national and collective self image from the analysis. It means taking an objective look at American resources and influence.

    If you wonder why so much of what the US does in world affairs goes dreadfully awry, like the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, the defeat Vietnam and the near defeat in Korea, it’s because of this faulty view of the world and the people in it.

    I’m not crapping on you personally. This over estimation of US capabilities and knowledge is very common. You see it week in and week out on Sunday morning talk shows, you see it when American Presidents and Secretaries of State open their mouths. You see it all the time.

    And you see the results in the real world. Bombed Libya. What for? What good did it do? Got rid of Saddam. Anyone happy with the results? Americans “re-trained” the Iraqi army. Which promptly took to its heels in combat with ISIS.

    How was it America’s business who controls Libya or Iraq? Regardless, do Americans have the knowledge, the reach, the ability, the degree of control to pull off a regime change and a remake of those societies? The results (disastrous) speak for themselves.

    It’s way past time for Americans to re-assess themselves and their place in the world.

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    • Being There November 23, 2014 at 5:33 pm #

      Our NGOs spent $5 billion over a 10 year period to make this happen and then the neocon Victoria Nuland hand chose (not alone) a banking technocrat, Yatsenyuk, to fill in until the oligarch, Poroshenko took office.

      This is about natural gas –Hunter Biden is on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

      It’s about the big transnationals like Cargill and Monsanto and at the same time China says it doesn’t want GMOs, so it’s for them too.

      The Neocons have influenced our building ABMs on the borders of the former Soviet block countries and believe think they can win a limited nuclear war with Russia.

      I firmly believe we were behind the coup and I think we convinced people that they could join the EU and be more of a part of Europe. In some parts of the country that is appealing.—but not the industrial parts close with Russia.

    • Being There November 23, 2014 at 5:35 pm #

      The debacles still bring in big tax-payer money for war contractors. You don’t need to win a war to be a winner.

  151. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 3:45 pm #

    “If I didn’t have a drum dryer operating on wood burning stove, I’d be screwed.” — Finca

    Finca, trees are renewable resources completely dependent on solar energy. So you did the right thing to use solar energy stored as wood.

    • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 5:01 pm #

      “Finca, trees are renewable resources completely dependent on solar energy.”

      So is coal, oil, and natural gas – solar energy stored in various forms. Some how burning the trees does not fit the definition of “renewable energy” – ask Haitians.

  152. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 3:52 pm #

    “Do you think he’s the one who’s been tapped/ordained for/as the next president?” — Cold

    Cruz is the new Sara Palin, but with a brain. Cruz has the same conservative Christian credentials as Palin and the same belligerent attack dog attitude toward liberals/commies/atheists/appeasers.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 5:30 pm #

      No worries, Krug. His wife is a Goldman-Sachs executive. He’s no threat the status quo.

      He recently got booed off the stage by Arab Christians. Apropos of nothing, he started talking about Israel at a conference devoted to the needs of Arab Christians.

  153. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 4:02 pm #

    “It’s way past time for Americans to re-assess themselves and their place in the world.” — Volodya

    I agree completely. But the torture (“enhanced interrogation”), the kidnapping (“rendition), the murder of civilians (“drone strikes”), etc. will not stop until people like Clinton, Bush, and Obama are brought up before The Hague, tried for crimes against humanity, and imprisoned.

  154. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 4:25 pm #

    “Ukraine is an unholy mess. But do you know who’s to blame? Ukrainians. They screwed it all up. Not Americans.”

    US supported Ukrainian Nazis before Obama took office. CIA instructed both Nazi parties, at least since 2004, in the days of George W. Bush. So, because of that one of these parties was renamed from the Social National Party to “Freedom”. “Freedom” is now one of two Nazi parties in the country represented in the ruling coalition of four parties. Two other parties simply fascist (not even the Nazis).

    The current Ukrainian government – the most ultra-right in the world. Its composition was determined by Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland, formerly chief foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

    Her husband Robert Kagan – co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (along with William Kristol). He was an active supporter of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Kagan is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in Brussels and editor of the neo-conservative publication The New Republic. Victoria Nuland and her husband are in good standing with the American elite, which fully controls the Republican and the Democratic parties.

    Obama team chose Yatsenyuk as the head of the Ukrainian government after the coup. He remained in office under the new president Poroshenko, who was elected on May 25 to replace Viktor Yanukovych, whom the United States toppled in February.

    http://mixednews.ru/archives/60666

    • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 5:33 pm #

      This is propaganda. The Jews and their New World Order minions dominate the Ukrainian Government. The Nazis are there just to confuse things.

      Why are you here? This is an American Site. You are another Lord Haw Haw. A veritable Tokyo Rose.

      • FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 6:29 pm #

        “Why are you here? This is an American Site. ”

        I am American. I am Russian Jewish American living in Latin country.

        May I go on?

        • Janos Skorenzy November 23, 2014 at 9:31 pm #

          Russian. Jewish. American. At least you don’t call yourself a Latino, not yet anyway. So which of these three are you loyal to? Not American obviously. And not Russian since you think Russia doesn’t need any actual Russians.

  155. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 4:41 pm #

    “There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine”

    Of course I do not know all the details, but looks like the “major war” is on hold, up until spring of 2015.

    It is true that Ukies were moving the fresh troops and heavy artillery towards Novorossia, but after getting a heavy treatment from some Russian military specialists who just happened to spend their vacation time in SE Ukraine, changed their minds about possible offensive.

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  156. FincaInTheMountains November 23, 2014 at 7:02 pm #

    Actually, there is a very good chance of Putin striking a deal with Poroshenko and other Ukrainian oligarchs behind American back.

    Ukraine is a rapidly disintegrating country in desperate need of economical Patronage, and today America is not so wealthy anymore to support them.

  157. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 11:17 pm #

    “So is coal, oil, and natural gas – solar energy stored in various forms. Some how burning the trees does not fit the definition of “renewable energy” – ask Haitians.” — Finca

    Actually Haiti and Dominican Republic, seen aerially, are a good argument for big government instead of an absence of government.

    And forest reserves have increased since the 1970s where there is wise government forest resource management policy because trees are renewable resources. Coal, oil, and natural gas reserves have only decreased since the 1970s because they are not renewable like trees.

  158. pkrugman November 23, 2014 at 11:57 pm #

    “So which of these three are you loyal to?” — Janos

    When you embrace multiculturalism you do not have to be loyal to only one.

    Trust, honor, shame, patriotism, race are all socially constructed. They are bullshit values and narrow identifications people foolishly die defending. States use them to manipulate people and create cannon fodder. They are not deserving of “loyalty.” Don’t deceive yourself that you have to choose.

    Finca can be Russian, American, Latino, and Jewish at the same time. Your narrow mind is creating the problem by demanding “loyalty” to one.

    BTW, Janos, you are a white separatist Christian American heterosexual male. So, which one of those five are you loyal to? The question is stupid, as was your question to Finca.

    • Janos Skorenzy November 24, 2014 at 4:08 am #

      No you are wrong. American, Russian, and Jewish are nationalities – and thus mutually exclusive. Latino is an ethnic group – with national implications and aspirations in America.

      Love the way you put loyalty in quotes. The truth at last.

  159. FincaInTheMountains November 24, 2014 at 6:00 am #

    “Russian. Jewish. American. At least you don’t call yourself a Latino, not yet anyway. So which of these three are you loyal to? “

    That is actually a very legitimate question. Quite honestly, I do not know the answer. Originally, I was very loyal to the ideas expressed in American Constitution, but apparently they were replaced by ideas of “American Global Domination”, desire of American elites to solve their problems at the expense of other Nations and at the expense of its own middle class. We should go back to the system of healthy economic and political competition based on tangible goods production and technological progress, not based on using the benefits of Seigniorage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage) by constantly expanding and defending dollar-based monetary system with all means at their disposal – informational, political, military and financial.

    I am trying to give the readers of my post a little more comprehensive, not necessarily American-centric view of current events and ideas that are out there, somewhat learning myself in the process.

  160. FincaInTheMountains November 24, 2014 at 6:28 am #

    Secret negotiations of Kremlin’s Surkov with Kiev’s Poroshenko

    In Kiev, secret talks between Russia and Ukraine are in full swing. And for a long time. Russia is represented by Vladislav Surkov. “What scenarios are being discussed by Surkov and Poroshenko behind closed doors, are only known to Putin” – ironically mentions Ukrainian edition of “The Mirror of the Week”.

    Putin is betting that pragmatic economic interests of Ukrainian oligarchs would finally take over their anti-Russian rhetoric. No wonder that Russia didn’t touch the Poroshenko’s chocolate plants that continue to operate on territory of Russian Federation, neither nationalization of coal mines in SE Ukraine belonging to Ukrainian oligarch Achmetov were allowed by Moscow.

    Only Russian Federation could offer Ukraine an economic recovery plan in current, closed to collapse. economic situation. Putin’s interests are, as always, in strengthening of EuroAsian Union.

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  161. progress4what November 24, 2014 at 8:21 am #

    “Trust, honor, shame, patriotism, race are all socially constructed.”
    – krugs –

    Yeah, ok, krugs – this means that loyalty, morality, and basic human decency are also socially constructed.

    Not a recipe for success in life IMO, especially if and when today’s prosperity comes to an end.

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