Clusterfuck Nation
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A 25 percent tariff on Chinese goods coming into the USA. That’ll git her done, all right — if you mean pulling the plug on America’s holographic economy. For about thirty years this is how it worked: China sent a massive volume of finished goods to us and we paid them with a massive volume of US Treasury bonds at ever-lower interest rates. A great deal for us while it lasted. Or so it seemed. Eventually, China caught onto the swindle and began liquidating its US bond holdings to buy gold and other real goods like African mining rights and farmland, Iranian oil, and port facilities in strategic corners of the world.
Now China has obviously designed a policy to dissociate itself as much as possible from the losing trade racket with us and replace the American market by increments with whatever customer base it can cobble together from the rest of the world. The Belt-and-Road initiative to physically link China with Central Asia (and beyond) with railroad lines and highways through some of the most forbidding terrain on earth was an out-front part of the plan, which we haplessly financed by buying all that stuff they sent over here for decades, and giving them the time to complete that colossal project.
Buying all those cheap toaster-ovens, patio loungers, sneakers, sheet-rock screws, alarm clocks, croquet mallets… well, you name it, naturally made it uneconomical for America to make the same stuff, with all our silly-ass sentimental attachment to union wages, eight-hour workdays, and pollution regs, so we just steadily let the lights go out and the roofs fall in, and ramped up the “financialized” economy, with Wall Street parlaying Federal Reserve largess into an alternative universe of Three-Card-Monte scams using multilayered derivatives of promises to repay loans (that have poor prospects of ever being paid back).
The outcome of that was two Americas: the hipsterocracy of the coastal elites and the suicidal deplorables of Flyoverland. The hipsterocracy sustains itself on the manufactured hallucinations of the holographic economy — that is, on the production of images, TV psychodramas, news media narratives, status competitions, public relations campaigns, law firm machinations, awards ceremonies, and other signaling systems to maintain the illusion that the financialized economy has everything under control as we transform into a nirvana of ultra high tech pleasure-seeking and endless leisure.
Meanwhile, out in Flyoverland, the holograms aren’t selling so well anymore. Nobody has the scratch to pay for them, not even those indentured to the neo-feudal empires of WalMart and Amazon. The children keep coming, though it’s nearly impossible for a man to support them, and increasingly the fathers just take themselves out of the picture. The women ferment in single-parent hopelessness. The children turn more feral by each generation. All remaining economic opportunity is diverted back into the leveraged buy-out mills of the Coastal Elsewhere. Even growing food out of the land was long ago converted into an Agri-Biz hustle based on practices with no future. And now the spring weather is drowning out that hustle and driving the corporatized farms into bankruptcy.
The two Americas have turned a formerly workable political system into a divorce court and for the past three years nothing of value has come out of that negotiation except more mutual grievance and animus. The hipsterocracy, drunk on craft beer, has concentrated its hologram production on an operatic extravaganza of racial and sexual melodrama and the stupendously dishonest campaign to vilify the deplorables’ champion, Mr. Trump. If it was originally designed to just divert the deplorables from their economic injuries, it actually succeeded in focusing their dwindling energy into wrathful, righteous rage against those who foreclosed their future.
As I write, the stock markets have opened up in what looks like the beginning of a very bad week — apparently a reaction to Mr. Trump’s floundering trade deal talks. When these markets go emphatically south, both Wall Street and its hipsterdom subsidiary will find themselves reduced to their own special hell of deplorability. The realignment that emerges from that unholy mess will be the surprise of our lives.
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What bothers me is that not only did we outsource our factories and jobs to China and Mexico, but we also outsourced our baby-making to legal and illegal immigrants from those countries, and others.
To people who do not read the New York Times, or listen to gender experts from Harvard and Berkeley. Just hetero people who screw the old fashioned way and make babies. Because Darwin.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Welcome back, SFGR.
See my post.
Thx Malthus!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It always struck me as odd that, if the economy is supposedly so good with a 50-year low unemployment rate, U.S. birth and fertility rates are falling and the fertility rate is at a record low. The answer is that, as our host pointed out, the economy isn’t actually that good because it’s unequally distributed. On the one hand, it’s leading us (as in the U.S.) to do our part to slow the growth of population and affluence, the P and A in I (impact) = P * A * T, where T is technology, which ideally could counteract the effects of the other two variables. On the other, I and other advocates of zero population growth should be careful what we wish for. We might not like how we get it.
RECORD NUMBERS of homeless.
record numbers of drug abusers.
suicides are skyrocketing.
record numbers of people defaulting on their car loans, credit cards, etc.
seems to be in direct opposition of our “booming economy” – until you realize that only a tiny few % of the population is benefiting from our corrupt, rigged system of robber-baron brand capitalism.
Vote for Bernie. Vote for any progressive that will call out these ‘robber barons’.
Bs and his wife are robber barrons.
That’s a stupid comment even by your standard.
Above comment was intended for FOX programmed fool who called Bernie and wife robber barons! What a hoot you are!
GTH, Turn off MSLSD and start researching facts for yourself. Bernie is not the person he purports to be.
Employment numbers are always misleading, even where they’re not altogether rigged. Those who give up and drop out aren’t counted at all, and those who have to work two or three shitty jobs to earn half what they could in a decent job are counted as fully employed. Increasingly, benefits, primarily healthcare, are where it’s at, and we all know those are going to shit as well, often even when you have “full coverage.”
Indeed Ol’ Scratch, the economy (and unemployment rate) is really good for a very few, about average for some and really shitty for most.
It’s like the two mythical islands of Alphania and Betania. Alphania has 10 residents as does Betania. Both islands appear to be very prosperous, with an average income of $100,000 per person, per year.
Alphania = each resident earns $100,000 = mean income of $100K
Betania = one resident earns $1,000,000 and 9 earn $0 = mean income of $100K (but median income of $0)
Although Alphania and Betania appear to be doing just fine, one is rather wealthy and one is destitute, kind of like the Good Ol’ USA.
Vote for Bernie. Vote for any progressive that will provide Medicare for All.
Wow, someone drank the kool aid.
The thing I despise most about progressives is their title. A euphemism if I ever saw one.
The thing I despise about progressives is that they use the tactics of those they claim to hate. They run around screaming about fascism and then engage in it’s very tactics. They scream about racism and bigotry and then are some of the very best examples of how to be racist and bigoted.
Most of all is how they want to be in charge of other peoples lives from cradle to grave.
Not much to like.
FJ, You prefer Regressives, I mean Republicans?
As I said once before, benr, our opponents never ‘say’, they always ‘scream’ or ‘shriek’. 🙂
A bunch of Alex Jones clones, one might say!
JDH, At this point in history, yes. It seems like a choice between delusional and crazy, or corporate business interests. Not a hard choice.
@GA
Indeed.
I have many progressives types in and around my life and all of them are hopped up on SSRI’s and none of them are capable of having a civil face to face conversation.
On politics, abortion, Trump, racism, immigration, or any other wedge issue.
It always devolves into them telling me I’m an evil white male with toxic masculinity.
Which always goads me into laughing full in their face and telling them to down more happy pills and to run for their safe space.
I think you missed my point there, benr, but no matter.
@ga
No it’s called doubling down on reality.
As an elderly person on Medicare, I really wonder how the government is going to pay for “Medicare for All” when they can’t finance present day Medicare? And Medicare does not cover medications and a lot of other things. Most elderly people on Medicare eventually end up on Medicaid when a major health problem arises, the disastrous bills roll in, and Medicaid is also going under financially. What will happen is folks will get their wish and get on Medicare, then to keep it from going under financially, the government will start cutting benefits and raising deductibles and copays until, like the ADA, people will “have insurance” but be unable to afford to use it. They will all start going on Medicaid until that also goes under.
I too, am an advocate of ZPG, however what seems to be happening is that if you have fewer children, the government gets worried. In Japan, the govt. says there are too many old people, and not enough young people to take care of them, due to fewer kids. The solution is to import more foreigners. The same predictions hold true here. Supposedly we need more immigration to offset the shortage of workers projected to be needed here in the future. If that is true, then my question is: What’s the point of population control? Do we have to constantly grow our population? If that’s the case, then screw population control. All we’ll do is import more foreigners to replace the children we aren’t having, and further destabilize the country. Apparently, we can’t reduce our population ever. We have to increase it. Only the third world needs to control the breeding.
There are solutions, actually, one solution. But it’s politically impossible for liberal democracy to countenance it.
This is one of the fundamental tensions driving the current to whatever comes next.
True. It will take Right Wing Death Squads and our very own form of Hitler, but IMHO, that is about 75 years away. A radical Left wing tyrant could theoretically do the same thing, but the whole scrapping of Roe v. Wade would erode most Left Wing support. Unless, the tyrant was gay and Black, and maybe a woman to boot.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Sounds like Inslee reads CFN:
Washington to test response to plague outbreak this week
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-to-test-response-to-plague-outbreak-this-week/281-11733b48-364f-45f7-a05b-668d70753bd8
Tate
Does it rhyme with thinning the herd.
Starting with anyone on social security and/or medi-care. Yikes!
@SFGR
It won’t be right wing death squads unless they are Muslims those death squads have always leaned heavily to the left.
Like in Chile and Argentina, benr?
Ah you caught me two out of hundreds of examples then again left right is all a matter of perspective there are Democrats that think Obama was right wing.
What are the hundreds of examples?
Here’s the root of the problem. Debt is growing exponentially, and you just gotta have more people and their wages to spread the debt onto. Frankly, I hear we were a pretty kewl country when there were only 200 million of us. So, really there is no need to be bigger unless we have a major land war to fight, or DEBT.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
>>> “It will take Right Wing Death Squads and our very own form of Hitler.”
Squeaky, so nice to hear from you again! I see you’re busy spreading your cheer around, as usual. What a happy thought for us all, as we anticipate the future with fond hopes! 🙂
“Be the first on your block to join a Hard Right Death Squad!” You’ll enjoy the songs, camaradiere and great speeches! We’ll have fun signs and uniforms too!
Moms and dads, if you want all that’s good for your chillen, sign them up for Summer Death Squad Training, the kiddos will love it to death (no pun) and thank y’all later!!!
See you at the concentration camps!
JDH
JdHines,
I think maybe Hitler gave “concentration camps” a bad name. But if you think about it, were not the old State Mental Hospitals a form of concentration camp? You rounded up all the insane, and you concentrated them in one place. Much more economic. Aren’t prisons a form of concentration camp, too? Where you concentrate the criminals in one place.
Frankly, I think drug addicts should be concentrated in a camp. You don’t need ovens, and gas chambers. Just a strict regimen of work, and no drugs for about 2 years or so. Why let the druggies poop on the streets and yards? After two years clean, they will not be physically addicted anymore. If I ran things, the next place for them would be prison if they started back. No reason why a concentration camp can’t be a good thing.
You need to expand your horizons.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“I think maybe Hitler gave “concentration camps” a bad name. But if you think about it…”
Don’t let them here you make that joke in Jerusalem squeaky.
Farmer
Oh, it’s OK. I got a lot of “The Chosen People” blood in me. And, isn’t Gaza sort of a concentration camp in a way? But what choice do the Israelis have? They can’t let those murdering terrorists loose in the country.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
>>> “You need to expand your horizons.”
You are right about that Squeaky!
The truth is that despite pie-in-the-sky economic theories, NO ONE has yet managed to produce a growing economy (or even a steady state one) with an aging and declining population. Hence ZPG will (and is) leading to total economic collapse. Also, like Christian Missions, ZPG has almost always focused its efforts and most of its personnel on the areas of the planet that need it the least – the countries that already have a TFR below 2.1. Africa at present is the continent that needs to cut population growth the most. The USA would have a steady state apart from immigration. Europe is way too far under a neutral TFR (like Japan) and both are headed for either economic collapse or civil war over immigration.
The economy and productivity only appear to be good thanks to China and government manipulation of the numbers. Once that appearance reverses, we are SOL!
TraffickingInDivinity.com
Neon, everybody is just waiting for the right time. Well, not everybody. As this short video shows.
“On the other, I and other advocates of zero population growth should be careful what we wish for. We might not like how we get it.”
There has never been a pleasant outcome among the possibilities, just choices among the various degrees of painful and disastrous. By postponing the inevitable we have chosen to negate the merely painful and now await the disasters.
The future in the US is bleak and the cohort that is currently of child bearing age is well aware of that fact. It is often disguised with homie, but many know what is up. That leaves people who have a blidspot due to lack of education or religion. Many of those people are poor, brown or a combo of the two. The meek shall inherit the Earth. Jokes on them though, since climate change and resource depletion will reduce the whole world to shithole status. The smart ones are doing their kids a favor by not having them. Who would want to be born into a world destined to decline for their entire life?
Homie = humor. Damn autocarrot.
Just turn it off, Dufus.
“…resource depletion will reduce the whole world to shithole status.”
With a reduced population there will be tons and tons of steel, copper, aluminum, aggregate and recyclable plastics piled up in nice prismatic structures just waiting for the detonator’s countdown.
Halylooyah………………..spot on; don’t forget those ‘refugee’ encampments worldwide where they’re ‘procreatin’ all day long, yessum.
cf: ‘The Road’, Cormac’s coming detractions.
They are still making lots of babies the old fashion way in the Hasidic communities in the New York metro area. Of course, these babies don’t get much secular schooling when they get a little older and most won’t grow up to earn enough to be self supporting, especially if they have five or six children. That’s why there are food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers. Google Chaim Levin and read about the education he never received.
I’m wondering if you are suggesting that the golden cockatoo is a threat to national security and should be removed whatever it takes?
No, I don’t think an impeachment circus will help, if that’s what you mean. — JHK
“whatever it takes” would seem to indicate methods other than impeachment.
Whatever it takes, i.e., whatever means necessary, is taken from “By any means necessary” which is a translation of a phrase used by French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre in his play Dirty Hands.
It entered the popular civil rights culture through a speech given by Malcolm X at the Organization of Afro-American Unity founding rally on June 28, 1964.
It is generally considered to leave open all available tactics for the desired ends, including violence; however, the “necessary” qualifier adds a caveat—if violence is not necessary, then presumably, it should not be used.
Sometimes cooking meat can fall off the grill into the fire. Maybe keeping Trump sizzling on the grill is better than the alternative. Trump is a bad moon, he is not good but an even badder moon could rise.
Warren Commission, 2.0
K-Dog,
Sizzling and carcinogenic, but probably true. The devil we know and all (no offense Ol’ Scratch).
JDH
Nice try, Evelyn. LOL You seem like a lady intelligent enough to know that America’s problems go much deeper than whether Trump is in office or not.
Of course.
But if your house is on fire, removing the guy who refuses to allow firemen to deal with the problem or in this case refuses to stop hurling bottles of gasoline at it a necessary requirement.
I certainly wasn’t referring to “impeachment”. Not with a stacked senate blocking the way.
The country has a history of doing egregious things using the pretext of National Security.
We all know that.
Personally I think Trump qualifies and JHK’s analysis supports the opinion.
China has its own set of problems, perhaps bigger than ours. All of the ‘stuff’ they’ve been building over there, especially apartment buildings in the millions, are not all paid for with created wealth. Most of it is financed by dodgy government loans that are no better collateralized than ours. Their banks went on a credit rampage in January which mostly accounts for the ramp in equities markets around the world since then, but just adds to their own financialized burdens. China will eventually have to pay and their defaults might even be more fantastic than ours.
Certainly China has more people.
Those who do business with them tell me -as a whole–dishonest, nasty humans.
All true. Their time in the meat grinder is not here yet, but it will indeed be bloody as well. Of course 90% of them never had much anyway, so the loss might not feel quite so catastrophic to many.
I remember reading that a tourist in China asked his guide if they had elections in China. The guide replied “Oh yes, velly many elections in China, that why so many people.”
forgot the ‘ba da bum, tshhh’
Now tell us about the “flea erections” in El Salvador.
HM, Very good!!! LOL!!! You are quick… have you ever thought about a career in comedy writing? Really! LOL!
Too funny Capt!!!
I live without hope,
We’re finished.
Decades of hyper conformity and the accompanying hyper consumerism, has pushed the last train out of the station.
As a young man, why even try anymore?
Looking around me, as I walk down the street, most peoples faces (young and old) are filled with the looks of horror, desperation and fury.
I don’t want to become one of them as I get older, but I feel myself becoming one despite my desperate efforts not to. There feels like no way out of this hellish world!
I hope it all collapses, so that “history” is possible to restart, so that there is some possibility and future other than clinging to an increasingly impoverished, narrow institutionalized life.
But with climate change why even hope for that?
Looking forward to a life of Misery and Hopelessness!
-A Millenial
Follow Jim’s and JMG’s advice and begin to unplug. The aim should be to essentially go feral again. That’s where the hope is.
Henry, you need to check your additude, bro. You are living at a time of economic upheaval, yes, and if you are on the wrong side of the trend it will be disastrous. HOWEVER, you are young and you still have it in you to be flexible and adaptive. For you, if you are smart, this is the opportunity of a millennium. Don’t you get it? What was is going away and what will be is being born now! Go give birth to something Henry. That’s your future.
Good advice, Farmer Joe. Even though it’s not actually Latin, the following applies: “Nihil illegentimi carborundum!”
I’m going to agree with you guys.
>”I live without hope, We’re finished.”
Is not an attitude that is going to put beans on the table.
(“Nihil illegentimi carborundum!” is “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” in Dog Latin.)
“Nihil illegentimi carborundum!”
Actually, it’s either:
“Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum”
or
“Illegitimi non carborundum”
Quite possibly, Henry has a bit more insight into reality than you, farmer. Your optimism is not harmful unless it turns out you’re just dreaming. IMO, things are as bad as he imagines, maybe worse. The only thing I take issue with is the implication that mankind deserves better. Together, we have created this mess, and we simply must live(or die) with the results. The world will likely last one more day, so prepare to enjoy the sunset.
I suppose time will tell, but I believe a rational optimism and self confidence are far more useful in hard times than depression and anxiety. Would you disagree?
The confusion is that a kibble of depression may lead to insight. True sight because the optimistic mind can twist reality into a tangled pretzel. Problem is a second kibble leads to immobility manifesting as learned helplessness.
A rational optimism, k
No at all; that is why I recommend enjoying the sunset. However, if our world disintegrates to the degree there is no longer support for life, all the positive thinking in the world is futile. Unrealistic expectations concerning survival and even thriving under conditions that will not support life will only bring additional pain. Acceptance is better and infinitely more dignified.
Sure, Darrell, I guess I don’t think it will come to that in my life time. The sun will burn out some day, but I’m not gonna waste time fretting over what will happen to the pyramids.
I would disagree. You are proposing a false dichotomy.
Reading a book now titled “Cruel Optimism”.
“…when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing…”
Confidence – good
Depression – bad
Anxiety – useful
Some of the boneheads on this forum who refuse to see the human catastrophe that is already inescapably about to befall us could use a heap more anxiety. As Charley Manson preached, fear is the energizer.
Why am I not surprised that you would see Charles Manson as a role model?
Why am I not surprised you always overstate, exaggerate, and misrepresent what your fuzzy mind mistakenly thinks are facts while at the same time dodging the question.
If you doubt that piece of wisdom he spewed why not just attack the argument?
That’s one of the biggest problems with you right wing fuck heads. If someone you don’t like has a good idea you therefore refuse to recognize its worth.
You have an alien form of DNA in your brains that is the cause of the mess the world is in today.
If you don’t think fear energizes you are you ever in for a surprise someday. Stupid asshole!
Are you talking to me? I missed the question.
Its not that bad Hank.
Get a plan. Plant a garden. Pan for some gold, its going to $1500 per oz soon. Learn to shoot and fish. Think for youself. Limit your time with electronics. Pick a subject and study the ### out of it. (for me its been pirates the past few years) Man up, you’ll be Ok.
Above all stay out of cities and stay away from crowds.
Brh
out of shitties? take yr own advice.
Youre right on that, Malth.
Im not tied to the place and could get out at any time,
Brh
Henry, stop reading doomster sites like CFN & your mood will improve markedly. That’s the first step to meaningfully turn around your life.
Henry,
Since China was featured, remember that the Chinese character that represents disaster is the same as the one for opportunity.
Watered, arable land. Preferably with a sizable stream for power. Your imagination, self-education, and neighborly cooperation will give you reason to hope for a meaningful and fulfilling future. Stay far away from meddling bureaucrats who demand their palms be greased. Survival trumps (sorry) governmental papers, and as the native Americans found out, those promises weren’t worth the paper they were written on.
(This happens to be their worst fear; discovery of their illegitimacy and disobedience. Head down; powder dry.)
China is a disaster and where are the opportunists?
Step 1
https://youtu.be/EWPFmdAWRZ0
Step 2
begin each day watching step 1
Step 3
http://www.diamandis.com
Henry, there is always hope and a lot to live for in times of anomie. We are indeed here for a purpose bigger than our own desires. It is common in human life for the environment to be hostile to our yearnings, more ordinary than not. American consumerism cannot be the point of our living. We can live satisfying lives with the support of those we love and God..
Lightin’ up Henry!
There’s a whole new Avenger Series in the works, a 5G iPhone on the way, and UBI legislation on the agenda.
You can also excuse yourself to the restroom of your choice.
#progress
Scratchie’s advice comes closest to being the correct choice but it has a fatally erroneous element to it. Hope is the greatest falsifier of the truth.
Farmer Joe’s advice is naive at best and I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot dick. His is born out of a stubborn state of denial. He’s sending you out to pick a strawberry field that was already picked clean down to all but the last few scrubby berries and telling you you have a real opportunity to make some good money.
Adopt a zen way of accepting what you see as the river flows by and appreciate the fact that out of the billions of people who have come and gone on this planet you might get to be one of the ones who gets to witness how it comes to an end. I know it will come probably soon and I’m going to be pissed if I don’t get to be here when it happens.
-Adopt a zen way of accepting what you see as the river flows by and appreciate the fact that out of the billions of people who have come and gone on this planet you might get to be one of the ones who gets to witness how it comes to an end. I know it will come probably soon and I’m going to be pissed if I don’t get to be here when it happens.- EvelynV
Want to bet in ten or twelve years Climate change will be about where we are right now and unless you die of natural causes or are killed in a car crash or some other event you will be right where you are right now living that almost zen life.
All bets are off if a major war breaks out and nukes start popping off everywhere or planet X aka Nibiru pops out of nowhere and bleeds off our atmosphere or causes massive global scale earthquakes and continent shifts.
Remember, when taking advice, ALWAYS consider the source.
RE: Climate change. Consider that Obama signed a deal with China that allows them to fully offset their CO2 output through 2030.
China currently belches out more CO2 than ALL of Europe and the United States combined.
If climate change was as serious as the wokesters would have us believe, why did Obama allow this?
There is no logic to it at all. You are not doomed. Turn off MSM and find out what you want to do with yourself.
By jove Jim, I think you’ve nailed it! The sad fact is, though, that was never any real option to all these shenanigans, other than ditching exponential growth industrial capitalism altogether, which was never going to happen, not in the current time frame anyway. The Chinese had to fulfill their roles as the next great engine of growth, as absent totally unsustainable levels of personal and public debt and the inflation they would have caused, the American growth engine was entirely spent. In that way, The Americans’ worthless debt could be exported to the Chinese and the rest of the world, where presumably it would impoverish them and not us.
Of course turning 1.3B and growing Chinese into American consumers is never going to work either, even if they had remained loyal to their would be American masters, which they have wisely chosen not to. One senses that all the current animosity towards the Chinese is just sour grapes recognizance that they have played the American game even better than their so-called American “masters,” and it’s now time for the piper to be paid for all that 20th century and PNAC 21st century American Exceptionalism nonsense.
Flailing hegemons getting on in years rarely react well when young usurpers predictably arise to deal them an sound ass-whupping at their own game. GOT fantasies aside, their are no Puff the Magic Dragons standing by to magically return us to preeminence again. Trump may or may not be doing the right thing to help rid us of the Globalists’ influence, but make no mistake about it, the pain will be sharp and lasting in its wake, especially once the Fed’s magic zero interest money pump finally gets turned off for good.
“…One senses that all the current animosity towards the Chinese is just sour grapes recognizance that they have played the American game even better than their so-called American “masters,” and it’s now time for the piper to be paid for all that 20th century and PNAC 21st century American Exceptionalism nonsense.”
Scratch,
I was hollering (into the hurricane of MICC hubris) about just this many years ago. (Shows how much influence us peons have, eh? 😉 )
One does not fuck with the Chinese when it comes to Business! They’ve assiduously schooled themselves to think far ahead in order that they come out with a larger portion of whatever pile we’re dealing with. A culture of instant gratification and sharp elbows does not do well in such a competition.
Americans (Trump being a perfect example) think they can get the upper hand with in-the-moment bullying and threats. Sorry, that will just motivate the Chinese to quietly screw their rival even harder in the long run.
I believe the figure was $200bn more in tariffs that Trip G threatened to impose, just *days* before another round of economic discussions. This may have worked a treat in his New York real estate dealings, but he is abysmally ignorant of who he’s messing with here. His Orange Eminence is apparently allergic to study or learning. A complete fool running an empire. Things are pretty wobbly as it is, and even though his shape vaguely resembles a Weeble, he *can* fall down… taking the rest of us along with him. Buckle up.
Yep, they’ve been playing this game for many centuries longer than the Johnny-come-lately Adam Smith capitalist acolytes can even conceive of. Trump is providing a valuable service in furthering the collapse of the American empire, however. If it hadn’t been him now, it would have been someone else later. Might as well get on with it.
The Chinese pay the long game, alright.
When Mao Tse Dong was asked what he thought about the French Revolution, he responded: “it’s too soon to tell”.
“GOT fantasies aside, their are no Puff the Magic Dragons standing by to magically return us to preeminence again.”
I certainly agree that a return to our former station is not possible, but once the “growth” paradigm is dead the world will be open to all sorts of raw “Darwinian” ideas and the US will be in a better position than most – if it finds the will.
The image of a magician cracking a bullwhip and knocking a cigarette from the mouth of a beautiful assistant without messing a hair on her well styled head comes to mind.
‘The children turn more feral by each generation.’
It is true as America bifurcated between those economically hooked up with globalism and those of a more patriotic lifestyle, ideas of what a person is supposed to do and become as an adult, which never has been clear in America, became totally muddled and confused. Leaving those who have to struggle at all figuring out such things, and many people do struggle, without a clue.
The sale of foreign made small clothes left America unable to dress itself. Short term riches for the few have destroyed the nation. I wish I could disagree with anything I read here in today’s column but I can’t. I wish I could but a very bad moon rises.
I see the bad moon arising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see those bad times today.
And lots more on the way, rivers overflowing, there is a bad moon on the rise.
Hope you got things together.
“Hope you got things together.”
…Hope you are quite prepared to die….”
Very good overview of our situation Jim. I do not see anyway to repair this short of a total collapse of the government either through financial or a war. Which by the way I think we’re getting pretty close to a major skirmish somewhere. We continue to dictate, sanction, and bully the world and the world has pretty much had enough of it. So the latest B.S. coming from our gov’t is that Iran is about to attack our troops somewhere. So we are moving a carrier fleet into position so I Iran feels the need can sink it in the Straight of Hormoz so everyone can see.
Yes, Venezuela and Iran appear now to have been linked strategically. Judging how Venezuela’s gone so far, it appears Trump would be wise to abandon any foolish pretensions of destabilizing Iran. Of course his Zionist bosses no doubt have other ideas. Nothing like a good summer time war to get everyone in the spirit again!
The CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) guy asked Pompeo: “Could it be that Donald Trump has been sort of raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Ester to help save the Jewish people from an Iranian menace?”
“As a Christian I certainly believe that’s possible,” Pompeo said, adding, “I am confident that the Lord is at work here.”
JS: The Lunatics are running the asylum. But someone on staff let them out and is guiding them – and hiding behind them. Plausible Deniability is the God of Bueaucrats.
LOL! Pompeo’s a self-proclaimed “Christian” That’s the problem with Christianity. Literally anyone can proclaim themselves to be a member of the club. They need to start certifying and credentialing their genuine members. The Zionists? They’re not so hard to identify at all – no proclamations necessary.
“If it was originally designed to just divert the deplorables from their economic injuries, it actually succeeded in focusing their dwindling energy into wrathful, righteous rage against those who foreclosed their future.”
YES!
It has definitely motivated this deplorable.
You I doubt are a deplorable. You have written that you are about 20 miles from me which puts us both at the end of the yellow brick road square in the zone of the Emerald City. That the most desirable place to live for new Americans from China is exactly where I am and 20 miles from you is no coincidence.
We may not have the blood of nation destroying globalism on our hands directly but we both live where the big metal boxes from China arrive by boat to be shipped by rail everywhere across the country. We benefit from a strong local economy that comes with those boxes where the split in America Jim writes about today is a clear as the sun in today’s bright spring sky.
I get your point K Dog. I would say that I have way more in common with the people in fly over land than I do with the Seattlites. You are absolutely correct to point that my farm town isn’t being abandoned. It’s being paved over.
A friend of mine once remarked that we live in the Bible belt of King County. I think that statement is accurate. It’s a little red island in a sea of blue.
Urban Sprawl List redo
I UPDATED AND ORGANIZED IT DUE TO BRH [ITS YOUR BEST, DUDE] AND Q [THERE ARE 2 DUPES ON IT].
Planned Parenthood
Tattoo stores
Title loans
Pay day loan
Bail bonds
Collection agency
credit repair
debt consolidation
Pawn shops
WE BUY GOLD
Storage units
Fast food joints
Diet programs [for those who had too many super sized fast food meals]
Pot shop
Liquor stores, bars
Cigars, pipes, tobacco, electronic cigarette
Starbucks and other coffee shops
Wal-Mart – Costco – Superstores
Dollar stores
7-11 run by dot Indians who got SBA loan
Korean Dry Cleaners with SBA loan
Casinos and gambling used car lots
Immigration services
Homeless services
Women shelters
methadone
Live in rehabs [gov money funded]
Plasma donation centers
Massage parlor
Chinese massage parlors with illegal’s
unlicensed hair salons run by Russians
Nail salons. Illegal’s doing nails
Cable TV pay center
Military recruitment centers
Prisons
Gov’t offices,
Social security office [costs a BILLION dollars to build]
kabbala and Chabad centers
Islamic cultural centers
Ethnic groceries giving out flyers on how to convert to Islam
Pizza joint run by Turks
Section 8 housing on Venice beach, 400? Units, all Russian Jews
SECTION 8–New Mericans
Adult day care centers, all owned by Russians
Empty stores
Boarded up abandoned homes
.
Good show, Malth.
That pretty much sums up the built landscape millions of people are living in. JHK himself couldnt come up with a better list.
Brh
…storefront churches…
…secondhand stores…
depends where.
here in el ay [LA] rents are so high only the old type junk stores are surviving…salvation army owns the property, so they can keep running it. Ive seen many small thrift stores fail. rents are high. asking 10k/month for a small space.
You’d be surprised how many businesses don’t even have signage. They operate in zoned light industrial by word of mouth & a password spoken into the intercom out front.
Then there are the fusion centers.
I used to tell people it costs 50 cents to print a $100 bill, but we expect to get $100 worth of goods for it. How long do you think people are going to put up with that fact? Until they don’t. And it almost always results in a war because it is such an extraordinary privilege.
Less. I read of an LA guy who was printing for less. The government was concerned. They managed to arrest him.
I was fascinated. I believe it was a Black man who had underground connections. He would trade copies of the same $20 bill to drug dealers.
As in give me $10 [legit] and I will give you a fake 20.
https://www.coinnews.net/2008/05/16/counterfeit-banknote-ring-caught-in-southern-california-4100/
and
https://www.dailynews.com/2008/05/14/staples-receipts-help-nail-down-counterfeiting-arrests/
After agents arrested Talton at his South Bay home Thursday, they said,
he confessed that his multimillion-dollar scheme began as an experiment two years ago when he scanned a $10 bill into his computer
When fake $20 appeared, the gov freaked.
When Albert Talton decided to print some of his own money, he had no experience in counterfeiting, printing, or graphic design. A career criminal with a curious and meticulous nature, at the time Talton didn’t even own a computer.
His first batches of fake bills were created using a standard HP desktop printer. And they weren’t very good. Yet, according to a story by Men.style.com, Talton soon became one of the most accomplished and prolific counterfeiters in the history of the U.S.
Over the course of three years, Talton managed to evade capture and print $7 million worth of $100 bills.
It all comes down to getting high quality “paper”. The Bureau of Engraving uses a 25% linen, 75% cotton mix. No trees involved.
Personally, I would suggest money from hemp with enough THC included that you can smoke it – if inflation diminishes the purchasing power. Fewer complaints, happier population of zombies.
Now that there’s some brilliant thinking!
Hey, the Fed could print money and then it could be destroyed by stoners. Inflation solved!
Yes, I am aware paper is not what a greenback is made from.
Did you read the story?
guy kept using the same $100 bill.
When he started making 20s, they really were scared at gov.gov.
Drug lords have been doing this for years. Bleaching a $20 and making a $100.
Scratch, I read that Indian money has feces on it
and much-most USA money has bits of cocaine.
If it’s cow feces, no problem, just makes the money holier.
That paper used for currency, I believe its still made in an old factory in SW Mass, near where Ozone lives. Its one of those places where many generations of the same family work, like in past days.
I think in Housatonic, Mass. I drove past it a few times.
Brh
Your piece today read more like an end-of-the-year summary. You getting ready to move back into peak oil mode and start back writing about that as the fracking story seems to be coming to an end …. ?
Now this is classic Kunstler right here:
“The hipsterocracy, drunk on craft beer, has concentrated its hologram production on an operatic extravaganza of racial and sexual melodrama….”
Love that term “hipsterocracy”. I was inspired to coin a similar term. I’ll use it in a sentence:
If the Dems will have any chance of winning the White House in 2020 the nominee and Party will need to perform a hipsterectomy during, if not before, the Convention. (And be seen drinking Bud Light).
Yes, very good today!
Yes, the DEM party is definitely in need of hypster replacement surgery. The geriatric crowd (Biden, both Clintons, Pelosi, Schumer, Bernie S. et al) are out of touch with the people and reality. Their collective brain can only come up with the idea of giving all good things to all the people in a nation they helped bankrupt.
What is this OBSESSION with accusing the liberal left of wanting to “give all good things to all the people…” ?
The reality is, at least in Bernie Sanders’ case, that it’s a desire to restore a level of FAIRNESS to the economic system, to put more in the hands of the 90% by way of a liveable wage and to fund the essential needs of health and education taxing EFFECTIVELY the wealthy, the super-wealthy and the obscenely wealthy.
If a decent rate of tax starts at $250,000 of income, I doubt there are many here who would personally find themselves paying more.
These two things – a living wage and healthcare for ALL – would go a very long way to alleviating the pain, angst & despair that is universally recognized here.
“FAIRNESS… taxing EFFECTIVELY”
They said the same thing about the 16th amendment. How’s that working out for ya?
Breadline Bernie, still fighting Franco’s facists in the battle of Madrid, scuffling with McCarthyites in Brooklyn, manning the ramparts outside Havana.
Keep the Red Flag Flying, Komrads!
brh
Just think, if he had never caved to the corporatist, war-mongering arm of the DNC in 2016, he might not have lost half of his supporters. Myself included.
Sanders is a fraud.
It’s not that he is a fraud it’s that what he believes is simply not true or impossible he knows it and he is not fighting for it because he is an old entitled white man the most hated sun group in the DEMOCRAT PARTY.
Sub Group that is.
I meant fraud in the sense that he bent the knee and openly endorsed a candidate who was the polar opposite of almost everything he campaigned for.
Trump was more aligned with Sanders on many issues than Clinton was.
He is a fraud.
Well, JHK, your opus certainly sums up the sorry mess in which we now find ourselves. In a country where so often we get shabby work products, it’s nice to read a carefully crafted, articulate, spot-on piece of writing. Thanks for the relief it provides, even if woefully short-lived.
We have taken the old Soviet adage of “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” to a more congenial “we use imaginary money to do imaginary work”. Everybody is working HARD to do useless things while the environment deteriorates. I have no idea when the “What were we thinking!?!” moment comes…..Politics is no longer the art of the possible but the fascination with the improbable.
More likely that a shitload of the current generation(s) die off and the next gens say, “What were they thinking?” I see a rapidly escalating historic blame game on the near horizon.
But you don’t know what you got till it is gone the saying goes. The next generation won’t miss what they never had so much. They will be busy just getting through their days doing whatever they can to do to find food and coolness.
I agree but prefer, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose….Janis not Joni.
Kris, actually 🙂 Although the unfortunate Janis did cover it.
Oh yes, the legendary Janis Joplin. But don’t forget Janis Ian “At 17 I learned the truth”. If that song doesn’t make you want to jump off a bridge, nothing will.
Heartwarming story today about Boeing being completely unaware that a safety warning light on the 737 MAX (MAX for Max profits, of course) was not standard equipment. Apparently pesky details like this don’t bother the Boeing C-suite all that much anymore as they have moved their HQ to Chicago away from all that noise and dust of the production floor in Seattle.
And now we read that a million species are in danger of extinction as the one species that should go extinct toot-sweet as Trump would say is humanity. Look around and see what recommends it’s continuing on.
The British Royals squeeze out yet another baby in a world where nobody should ever have another. This one will be in its dotage around 2100 when London will be an underwater attraction. A different sort of Brexit, by Jove!
You are angry about senseless human deaths in one sentence and calling for the extiction of humanity in those that follow.
The modern woke progressive is truly a paradox.
No paradox at all they are mentally ill.
Just step back and watch them.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Napoleon Bonaparte.
Brilliant explanation , and very good use of the English language. The Prose flowed so smoothly . This is why i am a fan of JHK .
Yes, he does have a way with words, doesn’t he. Even when I disagree with him, his way of framing his ideas makes him worth reading.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Janos
Heckler
Soft Star Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibNQK47CXrI&t=933s
Border Patrol has apprehended 30,000 in the last 10 days. The Flood continues unabated and now there is not much talk about the border anymore…
And whom do you think caused that flood SSL? Why, none other than Mr. Trump, of course. All migrants “knew” the gates would soon close, so they made a beeline to the US Southern border. A classic case of unintended consequences or, as I like to think of it, faulty leadership and clouded judgement. Funny how the supposed champion of keeping the illegals out has caused them to flock in by the thousands.
Keep in mind that if the Corporate state wanted the borders closed, there would have been a fortified wall decades ago. The only thing Trump secured by saber rattling about building and Mexico paying for the wall was to secure votes of fly-over folks and other malcontents.
This falls under the general heading of “be careful what you wish for…” You’re welcome, JDH
“And whom do you think caused that flood SSL? Why, none other than Mr. Trump, of course.”
I would love to see you defend this statement with actual facts.
FJ,
Many things can be known through logic. If you wanted to get into a very desirable place and thought that soon entry would be barred forever, mighten you move your plans ahead to get in while the getting is good? Is that so far fetched that I need indisputable facts to back it up? Don’t the numbers speak for themselves? 30,000 pouring in last month?
If I were an illegal trying to get into, let us say, Canida and I knew that their leader wanted to stop it all ASAP, I might try to get in before the border was slammed shut, no?
Rather, Canada
Or you’d figure out something else. Please cite a source
Thank you Joe! Trump could do so much more don’t even get me started on that :-). But this problem has been going on for a very long time and really all of Congress, the judiciary, local and state governments and even some elements of law enforcement are completely responsible for this. Then, because they are allowed to get away with it, the business community and the Chamber of Commerce is responsible. Then there are all of the private citizens who hire foreigners as nannies, landscapers, etc. Essentially our entire political edifice is filled up with traitors animated by greed, money and power.
>>> “Please cite a source”
The mind of jdhines, not influenced by Fox, CNN or MSNBC, but maybe a bit by CFN.
“The mind of jdhines”
Not a credible source.
Fake Money. Long ago, I read Iraq had ‘perfect’ fake US money.
They were counterfeiting it by the millions or billions.
Maybe thats why the security strip was put on US $.
But then W & the Boyz invaded Iraq (to stop the counterfeiting maybe?) & Afghanistan and immediately started importing PALLETS of the real thing (crisp Benjamins!) and giving it away to anyone who said they’d play the game.
tell me more.
Might be the first true thing that bot said.
Pallets all shrink wrapped all over the runways.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1
How are you seeing inflation in your part of the world?
Outside Seattle, I’m getting the feeling that we are slowly moving onto the upward curve of hyperinflation. Premium gas here is now $4.10. Food’s gone up at least 10% since the start of the year, except for some veggies, probably picked by enslaved, illegal immigrants. There’s nothing worthwhile in the store under $5 – and I only eat organic, so that’s much higher.
Is this just local to me, or is this across the US? At some point, the trillions the Fed has printed over the last 10 years is going to fall into the general economy. There is also a sense of desperateness among people. A real forlorn look amongst them.
It is not just you. Every time I visit this place somebody new is saying they are near Seattle. As the saying goes, ‘it is a small world’, but I did not know it was this small. I’ll call it dog inflation. First there was me and then this place became a virtual dog pound. It is amazing.
You should check out WinCo (24 hour savings) If you are doing your shopping at Larrys market now and complaining about nothing being under $5 you don’t get my sympathy. Gas, yeah I hope Asoka is not here in one of his forms to tell us gas isn’t at $4.10 for premium. We both know better.
WinCo Foods, 21100 91st Pl S, Kent, WA
Did you notice that diesel is cheaper than gas now at Safeway, wet dog? I was surprised when I saw that. Maybe the shale thing is about over.
Ha! Yes I did, FJ. I thought that diesel price was very strange.
I don’t get it. Oil is around $63 a barrel, but these are the highest prices I’ve ever seen. Something nasty is happening behind the scenes that we aren’t privy too.
It was only 20 years ago that i was getting gas in DC for $0.98 a gallon. Over that time, my gas and healthcare have each increased about 4 fold…
We were in Portland for the weekend and the gas was $1.20 more than here in Alabama. I filled up this morning for $2.37, Supreme is $2.87.
The average price for the lowest grade of gas in Southern California over $4 dollars a gallon same with diesel and the premium stuff is over $4.30 a gallon.
It has become so bad that our newest Democrat governor Gavin Newsom is trying to distance himself from the Democrat push to get the price of gas up to the price of a pack of Cigarettes $8 – $11 depending on where you buy and what you smoke.
https://ktla.com/2019/04/23/gov-gavin-newsom-seeking-explanation-for-high-gas-prices/
Hey dummies you priced yet another tax into the cheaper winter blend!
Fast forward to the summer blend and bam a huge increase as a result.
Democrats and the law of intended or unintended consequences won’t say a thing till something makes them take accountability for their failed policies!
$28/gallon is still the fair price. These prices are just us killing the planet for a short-term joyride
Killing the planet how does one kill a planet?
Is the planet a living thing?
Now a 100,000 crust buster nukes all set off that might do it.
Cars and the exhaust they spew are NOT killing the planet c02, water vapor and trace amounts of other gas won’t even kill a rat when pumped into a small enclosed space anymore.
Can you cite a source on that claim, Ben? I don’t think you are a liar, but that seems unlikely.
About killing a rat with exhaust.
“Killing the planet how does one kill a planet?”
benr, I’m sure you’re aware it’s a well known turn of phrase for destroying the planet as a hospitable environment for us and other advanced life (i.e. not just cockroaches and bivalves).
As regards your other contention, I can only congratulate you on your high-tech cars. Here respiratory diseases caused by vehicle emissions cause tens of thousands of early deaths.
Young children are particularly susceptible to harm from exhaust fumes because their lungs are still developing and they are nearer to the road.
But, as I said, you’ve obviously got superior technology. Lucky you.
The rat comment comes from a friend of mine trapping rats and not wanting to kill them with standard rat traps so we devised a way to put them to sleep using his Kia Rhondo.
We piped his exhaust into a carboard box flipped over with a hole in it to allow exhaust in and eventually out through the bottom with all the seems duck taped closed.
After an hour the rat was still fine and running around.
I suggested filling a trash can half full with water instead or just driving them out of town and letting them go instead.
So yea carbon monoxide in modern California vehicles is less of an issue.
I think the damage to the children’s (and others’ e.g. asthmatics’) lungs is from particulates rather than carbon monoxide.
@GA
That is usually from Diesel vehicles.
This is fixable as well typically low sulfur diesel is better but it requires some more in the way of processing the fuel before and during use.
I believe Diesel hybrids are the future using hemp/rapeseed/algae oil instead of petroleum.
Not that long ago we had leaded fuels to help lubricate the valves. I remember the smell of lead fuel it smelled very different than standard unleaded does now one of those odd smells some liked and some did not.
I see an opportunity for home scale ethanol production to power things like chainsaw. The price of gas has to be higher for it to be feasible though.
Hi Dog.
i am spending $100 a week per person on food.
thats not with water and supplements [and gas for car to get to store].
I just tried to listen to frugal granny on utube. She spends $20 a week on food. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzB-aZP_6rs&t=340s
reminds me of circa 1970 when I read an article in a housekeeping mag titled–
‘A FAMILY OF 4 SPENDS $20 A WEEK ON FOOD’
She clipped coupons and did canning.
By 1975, it was [for me n others] $5 a day for quality food.
Thanks for the link, Malthuss. I’ll watch her this afternoon.
I’m growing a decent size garden which I hope will save me a good amount of money this year. And I’m able to get natural spring water for (just about) free, right down the road. So that’s a big help.
$100 a week sounds about right, per person. Eggs (non-factory-farmed, organic) are going near $7 a dozen. I don’t know how large families handle it now, unless a parent is earning over $120k.
Get eggs at the sale barn for $3/dozen.
Get meat there too. Unwanted animals go cheap.
Joe,
Our local “Food Warehouse”, a chain that services commercial businesses, has 5 dozen eggs, large AA, for $4.08…not per dozen, but for five dozen.
That’s right, those of a macrobiotic or other fad diet pretension….suck on it.
…Oh, and another thing….
Our local Grocery outlet has a habit of blowing off items at prices that seem ridiculous.
15 oz. can of Kidney Beans…four cans for a buck…no limit.
“Consume like it was the ’50’s…”
You have a great point EF. If you don’t care about quality food can still be got cheap. Free if you’re resourceful and have no standards.
Farmer Joe
“If you don’t care about quality food can still be got cheap..”
Also if you don’t care about shameless cruelty to poultry and livestock, which I am sure you do, Farmer Joe.
What do you grow/rear, btw? I like to hear from the farmers, even when they don’t agree with my views on some other things!
Green Alba,
yes, I gladly pay more so I can see the animals are well taken care of. Chickens are out all day scratching, cows mooing in a field. It’s not the ideal, but I make sure the critters get at least this.
there are local farms around here where I buy everything, so I see how they treat the animals.
Thanks and nice to hear from you, wet dog!
And it sounds pretty ideal 🙂 .
GA, I raise beef, pigs, and I board horses,
Also, I sell firewood and timber.
Thanks for the picture, Farmer Joe. Sounds like a good set up. I wish I were 15 again – I thought of going to agricultural college but chickened out (sorry!) as I knew nobody in farming and thought most people would. And I didn’t know then what I know now…
It sounds like you were ahead of your time, GA.
” Free if you’re resourceful and have no standards.”
Joe,
Well yes. I have neither standards nor pretensions. Whether I can evince shame is an open topic.
I ferret out bargains, and buy in volume. Just today, Kit Kat bars, 4 for a buck.
@GA
Look into hydroponics it takes very little in the way of space and not much power to run the pumps.
I’ve seen/read a few bits and pieces on hydroponics over the years, benr.
I like the idea of those small-scale integral systems that include raising fish, whose poop then fertilises crops. Saw an example that was possibly from here but possibly from the Netherlands – not sure which (they speak such good English!). Small countries get into that kind of thing. Akmofo used to give me links occasionally to Israeli projects that integrated all sorts to make them energy efficient and so on. It’s a lot easier in a hot country though – several harvests instead of one risky one and cheap energy up above you.
Although the ideal is to grow locally, it can use more energy (and emit more CO2) to grow tomatoes under plastic in the UK than to grow them outside in Spain and truck them here. But then southern Spain is already becoming water stressed and eating their tomatoes means we’re drinking their water! Things aren’t always obvious.
and I only eat organic, so that’s much higher.
HOW DO WE KNOW IF ITS CERTIFIED REAL ORGANIC?
what do YOU spend a week per person on food?
I simply assume that any organic in a grocery store is “industrialized-organic”, and that I’m getting just a bare minimum of nutrients, but at least no glyphosate. I’m hoping my own garden brings much more nutrient-dense food.
A good book on growing nutrient-dense food (which goes beyond just being organic), is “The Intelligent Gardener” by Steve Solomon, the guy who started Territorial Seeds. Goes in depth on how important soil fertility is. Planting using the “no-till”, “no-dig” method isn’t enough. The minerals available in the soil for the plants is crucial. I’ve learned a lot from that book.
Another excellent book is the “Organic No-Till Farming Revolution” that just came out. It presents multiple different methods of going no-till, which saves enormous amounts of time and effort:
https://www.newsociety.com/Books/O/The-Organic-No-Till-Farming-Revolution
JHK m ight get a kick out of Gelsons, a chichi market.
Or Jimbos of san diego-OC.
There is or was a Gelsons in–get this–the basement of a parking garage.
Surreal.
$30 a pound cheese.
410 a bottle tomato sauce.
Not just soil but dense in microorganisms the industrial petro fertilizers kill the soil!
Good old fashioned herbivore poop is all you need.
You need the worms as well.
You need a lot more than poop, Ben, but that is a good place to start 😛
Same here in the rust belt of western New York, groceries are 2nd to the mortgage payments for monthly expenses, but good news our local giant Wegmans is getting rid of plastic bags, and only 99 cent we can buy theirs and save the world. The status of the produce is gone downhill as well, plant a garden but everyday they find a new chemical site left over from the glory days of manufacturing , but as JHK would say, it’s all good.
The Duck has botched the art of the deal with NAFTA & EU plus China & Russian Federation. Being the bellicose belligerent buffoon that he is has not exactly Made America Great Again. What is transpiring is the Great American Bankruptcy and at the center of incompetence is the president of Trump University.
How does it feel to be graduates of Trump U. as markets around the world implode due to the lack of business acumen on the part of leadership in the USA?
The Duck is about to announce that America is going to war again. And that’s not exactly going to make America great again due to the confounding effect that wars tend to have on the global economy.
Way to go, Tariff Man.
RW
Yawn.
The Duck is about to announce that America is going to war again.
AGAIN?? Endless wars. With Imam Barry USA was dropping a bomb every 20 minutes, the average turns out to be.
Picking on poor, rock-strewn, impoverished states like Afghanistan, Iraq & Syria is one thing, but starting a brand-new ‘hot war’ with the likes of Iran is just plain STUPID. But then again, Bolton & Pompeo would qualify as STUPID by any measure.
As for the “Imam Barry” rubric, why don’t you give it a fucking rest? It was exclusively Muslims those bombs were being dropped on ‘every 20 minutes’.
As for the “Imam Barry” rubric, why don’t you give it a fucking rest?
because he mentioned his Muslim faith, dimwit.
John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com, talks about how the economy is tanking. Of course this isn’t a surprise and I know it’s happening, but he is one of the ones that I believe has gravitas on this subject….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOos-Ae0qGI
When? when collapse? Ive been hearing this shyte for 11 years from
these experts.
And 50? years Doug Casey has been at it.
I know about hearing the “the collapse is coming” for over a decade now. I can’t count how many times I have mocked and ridiculed David Stockman. They’ve done a great job of putting off the day of reckoning. Gotta hand it to them. This time they can’t. It’s already beginning. The real unemployment rate is over 20% if calculated the old way. Go to shadowstats.com for the real inflation rate too.
As far as SHTF time I think probably later this year in the fall, or well into next year. If they, you know the all inclusive mysterious ‘they’, are somehow able to put it off through the end of 2020 then for sure 2021. Too bad ‘they’ didn’t allow it to happen years ago. Now it will be much, much worse.
But hey…..it needs to happen. We can’t keep having unlimited growth on a finite planet.
Brilliant, Jim! (Discount the Chicken-Little’s prediction of the stock market crash this week in the last paragraph. It is obligatory, because, as someone once said, live every day like it was your last because the last day is rarely much fun at all.)
To Montesegur if you’re out there.
I was thinking about what you said in a recent post about a functional partnership to replace present day European arrangements. And this ties in to what Jim is saying today about the laughably unworkable global system of production and consumption.
I think that what we’ll necessarily see is a re-localization of economies. That’s not to say it will be the frictionless process as typically depicted in economics texts, or by glib Fed and Treasury mouthpieces. It surely won’t be. But the essence of it, to take the China – US situation, is to pay Chinese workers to buy the goods that they produce and to pay American workers to produce the goods that they buy. And I think that will be the central idea whether we’re talking Europe or Asia or North America.
As Jim sez, and as we’ve said on this site before, the numbers just don’t work. You can be as skeptical of government provided numbers as I myself am, and you can doubt the accuracy of trade deficit figures, or that they truly reflect reality. Notwithstanding this, much of America and Europe is in serious condition, calamitous personal circumstances matched by messed up government finances, which have as their source, at least in part, yawning trade gaps evident all over the place. Just look at the back pages of the Economist magazine. Those guys at the Economist seem to be fore-square behind current arrangements. Evidently they haven’t seen the numbers they publish themselves. This isn’t just a matter for balding statisticians to ponder while scratching their pates, or some abstruse accounting issue for guys in green eye-shades to fuss over.
If money is the life-blood of the system, then interest rates are the system’s blood pressure. What is the blood pressure reading telling us? That the system is in extremis and you don’t need a doctorate to see this.
If there’s a re-arrangement of the present day mis-arrangement, and if there’s gonna be trade across international lines, it will surely be goods for goods, ie pay as you go as opposed to buy now, pay later. Nothing wrong with trade in itself but when it upends economies and de-stabilizes societies then maybe another look is in order if for no reason other than personal self-preservation.
volodya, for me the dice roll in this whole thing is the confidence of the public in “the system”, and that confidence is in large measure a reflection of the public’s trust in the “experts” and the “authorities”.
Just as you use interest rates to highlight the poor state of financial health, it seems to me the clearly low confidence of the public in experts and authorities, both in the USA and Europe, is an indicator that, this time, the dice may land as snake-eyes.
The numbers used in public documentation are probably a lot of accounting smoke and mirrors, but the odd thing is that, as long as the public has a given amount of belief in them, the economy continues to function.
Look at the situation in France. I mean, Jesus, how much belief can the French have in their State at this point? Yet, and this is a significant factor in Europe, the EU acts as both a buffer for State incompetence and a quasi-mystical guarantor of … some sort of economy … through the agency of the Euro.
A big problem in the EU is that the Eurocracy is arbitrary about how they enforce rules and against whom they choose to enforce them. Thus, while Poland struggles to reform a communist-era judicial system and is repeatedly subjected to EU “measures” for doing so, Spain is allowed to brutally repress a Catalan bid for more autonomy because Spain is obedient to the whims of the Eurocrats. And, of course, Macron takes no heat from Brussels because France and Germany are two special members of the EU who get to repeatedly ignore the rules without any real penalty … unlike unfortunate countries like Greece who imagined the EU was actually a fair-minded institution governed by the rule of law.
As you said one blog post ago, this situation will not be able to continue. Something will break down, and it will probably be an event that has the potential to illustrate how weak the Euro truly is because of widespread public antipathy towards the Brussels regime. That will cause the economy’s wheels to wobble, and trigger destabilizing political consequences.
Cheers
“Something will break down, and it will probably be an event that has the potential to illustrate how weak the Euro truly is …”
The dominant factor for value is the net result of the actions of the various players gaming the system.
What Will the Fed do in a Contagion?
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/central-banks/what-will-the-fed-do-in-a-contagion/
TPTB, yeah, the finances of the West are all part of a system, and a complex one at that. I’m ignorant on finance for the most part, but recognize it is part of the hyper-complex, too-large structure that will crumble if there is a serious economic blow to Europe or the USA.
Cheers
Hello montsegur,
Several of the posters on this message board seem to be knowledgeable about the EU and Europe.
For several years I have been on a mission to prove Armstrong wrong. While I am somewhat at odds with his big picture position, I find that there are very few bones I can pick with him.
I would be interested in getting other opinions on some of the views he is promoting (some of what you and volodya are discussing, seem to be in sync with that he is promoting), as well as his take on how it will all play-out.
France Calls for the Federalization of Europe
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/france-calls-for-the-federalization-of-europe/
I’ll see if I can track-down several more that I would be interested in your opinion/s.
EU In Disintegration Mode
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-in-disintegration-mode/
EMU Building the Foundation for the Next Great European Economic Disaster
http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2012/04/emu-building-the-foundation-for-the-next-great-european-economic-disaster-0796.pdf
TPTB, I’ll reply to this on the current blog comments section by JHK.
Cheers
Montsegur, one of the characteristics we see in the Eurocracy and its apologists is the cocksureness, for example, the it-WILL-be-enough-ness of the EU’s Draghis, which I guess is the necessary pre-condition for people going along with the system as it’s constructed. I mean, if the leading lights are hemming and hawing and walking around looking down at their shoes, what can you expect of the ordinary Joe?
I think that’s what kept the Soviet system alive for generations – besides the brutality of its secret police – that is, the strident confidence of the commissars in communism’s goodness and fitness and its ability to provide, long after empty shops and rampant alcoholism belied the reality. I even saw it on campus (a long time ago), middle-class kids utterly convinced of the superiority, morally and otherwise, of a system they’d never experienced first-hand. And on the other side of the Iron Curtain people went along with it, as there appeared to be a man with a plan with an organized party apparatus that held rallies and meetings and had answers for all your questions. And there was a cause to live for, that being the betterment of humanity.
But blind belief goes only so far, and sooner or later, reality intrudes. And people start to trust their lyin’ eyes more than assurances that this is the only way forward, the alternative being the descent to nationalism and fascism whether the incumbent regime is communistic or the EU, and never mind the catalog-book of phobias (ie Islamophobia, homophobia) that beckons.
In the end, even in lethally autocratic regimes, you need people to acquiesce because they far outnumber party functionaries and regime enforcers.
But I give Europeans a lot of credit for their creativity in finding new ways to self-destruct. If it’s not one crazy and unworkable “ism” it’s another.
volodya, the cocksure attitude of the Eurocracy is, for me, a European expression of the Progressive Faith. Like the American progs, these people believe they are the Good and are on a special mission, therefore, they will succeed and all others will be proven to have been intolerant and short sighted. Does that make ordinary Europeans depleurables? Heh.
The amazing thing about the Eurocracy is how many of them were bit players in their national politics. They couldn’t perform in their countries’ national political arenas, so they got promoted to work for the EU, where their incompetence is not only tolerated, but positively nurtured.
But I give Europeans a lot of credit for their creativity in finding new ways to self-destruct. If it’s not one crazy and unworkable “ism” it’s another.
IMO, the short story of ‘what went wrong with the EU’ was that Germany and France could not reform their national agendas of wanting to dominate all of Europe. This is why they have structured the EU to reflect their status as special.
Where once the French poodle pooped all over Europe before meeting its Waterloo, the German dachshund took over and left droppings from Saint-Malo to Stalingrad. Today, the German and French “leaders” have learned the stench of their dog turds is better accepted as long as they are tightly wrapped within the flag of the EU. It still stinks, but the odor is easier to take … until some impatient would-be dictator rips the flag away with a leering smirk.
The UK took part in what became the EU, I think, because of the economic opportunities and a desire to have some say about the postwar political structure of Europe. When the Franco-German power games became too blatant, it created a sense of unease among many Brits, and thus, BrExit, in all its chaos.
The other European countries signed on IMO because they thought this time it would be a genuine partnership and step away from the old days in which small countries got devoured by their larger neighbors. Well, they’re still getting devoured, just by other means now. What was once done with Stukas and Panzer divisions is now accomplished with control of financial and media firms.
Meanwhile, as you mention, to the south beckons the Middle Ages.
Cheers
Perhaps you’ve heard this joke already, montsegur:
Mrs Merkel arrives at Greek customs with her husband.
Customs official: Name?
Mrs M: Angela Merkel
Customs official: Nationality?
Mrs M: German
Customs official: Occupation?
Mrs M: No, just here on holiday.
IMO, the short story of ‘what went wrong with the EU’ was that Germany and France could not reform their national agendas of wanting to dominate all of Europe. This is why they have structured the EU to reflect their status as special. – Mont
Gosh, what could possibly go wrong? Even if it’s an unspoken understanding as to how this stuff works, and even if this specialness isn’t de jure but rather de facto, those factos build up over time so it’s not like nobody wouldn’t notice. As you say, maybe the Brits noticed.
Makes me laugh, one couldn’t conquer Europe, neither could the other, so maybe they’ll put their heads together and come up with some distracting window-dressing and ornamentation and hide the agenda in plain sight.
Sounds like two non-swimmers jumping in the drink together hoping to help each other get across some deep water, or tying two rocks together and hoping they’ll float better. I don’t think it’s an exact parallel but Austria by itself didn’t have the strength to be a great power and neither did Hungary and so didn’t they make an Austro-Hungarian arrangement between them?
The other joke is the howlingly corrupt and incompetent Greeks having so little trust in their own monetary authorities to run a Greek currency that they give up this lever of national sovereignty. And so who do they get in charge? An Italian. And, even more perverse is the Italians doing the same thing, given that Italy’s problems make Greece’s look like pebble-sized irregularities. Why oh why get an Italian? You’d think that both countries would opt for a stern Teutonic task-master as the face of the monetary regime, someone who they would necessarily listen to, a lean, ram-rod straight, hard-faced, shaved-headed fellow that wears a monocle, that has dueling scars on his face, that goes to bed at a godly hour, that gets up before the cock crows, that gets to work on time, who shouts orders incessantly and who doesn’t leave before the last dog is dead, and who doesn’t piss away his afternoons screwing his mistress, unlike denizens of those sunny places. Somebody, per Sergeant Hartman, who is a Minister of Death, praying for war, but for the time being who will whip those indolent Mediterraneans, those pukes, those non-hackers who don’t pack the gear, those grabastic pieces of amphibian shit, who don’t even behave like human-fucking-beings into some kind of shape. I’m trying for sarcasm again and quoting the merciless Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Sergeant Hartman is what the Greeks and Italians need: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHxf17yJsKs
Hello GreenAlba,
I hadn’t heard that particular joke, but know of others.
I dunno. My families pretty much experienced, with the exception naval warfare, all of the aspects of the war in Europe, camps included. Some of the personal history was so grim that the jokes simply weren’t appropriate (not a comment to you so much as a personal observation.)
Notably, such a brief joke identifies three themes which could be the topic of many blog posts — Merkel, the Nazi regime, and the German worldview. Then there is the difficult topic of individual behavior and responsibility as expressed under the domination of group expectations and behavioral dynamics.
Cheers
Hello Volodya,
Yes, IMO there has been, as JHK would say, too much magic as concerns the public face, and presentation of, the EU. A real fantasy-festival that is dangerously disconnected from reality. Europe’s neighbors aren’t Canada or Mexico. The Europeans can’t be slack about their security … but here we [they] are.
Re: Hartmann, yeah, that was a classic film.
Funny thing about the Greek “deplorables” as one might term them, is that they -are- hard workers. Okay, the afternoons are too hot for serious physical labor. But they made up for it by starting quite early, and were earnest about their work. Not a lot of BS-ing that I saw. What needed to be done was done. ‘Course, the big media outfits in Europe (many German owned or controlled) couldn’t be bothered to take note of the facts on the ground: it was much more fun to ridicule the Greeks and praise the Germans (who are more corrupt and lazy than many realize).
And so Europe turns. Or spins crazily, as the Germans would say.
Cheers
To SoftStarLight if you’re around,
We’ve been going round and round on this and I don’t mean to bore but I’ll tell you why I look at the issue of race the way I do.
I don’t see people packaged in discreet, separable categories based on appearance, or IOW, race. I’ve used this example before so bear with me. If you were to drive from the English Channel to Shanghai and you looked at what people looked like along the way, you’d see a gradation of appearance, for example, white as can be in northwest Europe, but as you drive eastward you’ll see gradual changes such that, when you pull into Shanghai, people look East Asian with the characteristic eyes, cheek bones, cranial vault etc.
But in the middle of Eurasia there’s millions of people that don’t fit either category. For example, I’ve got a young relative that worked in Turkmenistan. And he said that the people there looked like the offspring of Russian and Chinese parents ie Russki pop and Chinese mom or the other way around. It’s what geneticists would call “clines” or measurable gradients in biological traits across a stretch of geography. You see that in humans especially along the Eurasian continent, not that you or I are likely to get in a car and drive the whole way (and take blood or DNA samples). But I’m sure that researchers have done it. We see these clines as the result of migration which has been attested to in the historical record and via archaeological research. And also as a result of simple inter-marriage between people in neighboring villages even when there’s no migration.
There’s other problems with the concept of race. No doubt you’ve seen this example also, but black people in South Africa are said to be the most genetically diverse people on the planet such that neighboring tribes of Bushmen are more genetically distinct from one another than Frenchmen are from Japanese. Yet to the naked eye those Bushmen would look like people of the same race and French and Japanese people of different races. The implication is that there’s a lot underneath the skin that’s not obvious at a glance, like the make-up and workings of brains, blood, bones, guts, immune systems etc. And these differences are visible via DNA comparisons.
There’s difference of opinion among geneticists. Unlike some other politically infused fields of study, geneticists don’t try to insist that theirs is a settled science. A fair number of them will say that race is a scientifically valid construct, for example, that’s useful in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. This is apparently because people from different parts of the globe have got lesser or greater genetic susceptibility to certain diseases. Sickle cell anemia might be one, Tay Sachs may be another.
In any case, the way I look at it, “race” as a concept has limited applicability, ie White men can’t dance. Aside from the ball-room variety or if you’re Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, we’re just no good at it.
From a personal perspective, I’ve got people from various backgrounds in my family, mostly European. There’s certainly common cultural threads in Europe, Christianity being one of them. And there’s the influence on so many aspects of daily life like law and language and architecture from Greeks and Romans and the Middle East and Egypt. I’m thinking the Middle East and Egypt because that’s where our alphabet came from and also or numbering system, not to mention Judaism and Christianity.
But Europe isn’t just one thing, the shambles of the EU a perfect illustration of that. Greco-Roman philosophy may be the common operating system but there’s a wide number of cultural “apps” in use. There’s the obvious linguistic divides, the divides between Catholicism and Protestantism and also the divide with the Orthodox branch. And many differences in ways of living. But in America those differences get subsumed in the greater whole. Historic origins in Belarus, Germany, Slovakia, or wherever, don’t matter anymore.
Anyway, that’s how I look at race for what it’s worth. Sorry for the long post.
The goal of the global financial elites, or ‘Globohomo’ as it has been coined, standing for “Global Homogenization” is to destroy those ‘clines’, to inject peoples of vastly different temperaments, outlooks, faculties & cultures into the developed nations in order to destroy their national identities, making it easier for globohomo to rule. They promote an invasion & call it peace.
Globohomo – what a great descriptive term!
(((1965)))
(((The New Colossus)))
(((Gould)))
Classic pablum. Anthropologists were saying how race was just a Western Construct and the Bushmen wouldn’t even notice when the Chinese Anthropologists showed up. But they did, asking “Who are they”?
Cline. One Italian geneticist (Cavalli-Sforza, sp?) made a career out of studying race, keeping the jackals off his back by never calling it that, instead using the word “cline”. His map of the Clines follows racial maps almost exactly.
Volly is an Internationalist who seek to destroy all native peoples and cultures. He works the cognitive angle and this is a cognitive attack. 100 works the cognitive/anomie angle: It’s not real and it wouldn’t matter even if it was. Others play the “We’re all just folks angle.” Don’t fall for it – any of it. They care about their Own with a passion that would astonish you.
A Meditation: the colors fade into each other in the Rainbow. So does that mean they don’t exist? Nothing exists in isolation from everything else after all. Sure, the races morph into each other. But they still exist as true relative realities – just like almost everything else.
SBPDL—
“Most of the homicide victims were killed inside homes. In 65 of the homicides, the victim and suspect were acquaintances.”
Easy to figure out. Killings over disrespect, the last piece of chicken, tennis shoes scuffed by accident, arguments over koolaid recipes or bitches and ho’s. Or someone smoked someone else’s last blunt without permission or drank da last 40 in da fridge.
Or it could have been arguments over whose bakkaball team (or player) wuz better. Then again, it could have been something like Jonquil wouldn’t gib DeMonstrous a dolla fo’ de sto’. These things will kill over the slightest provocation with no thought as to the consequences. The only thing that matters to them is “ain’t nobody gonna treat me like dat!”
There was no mention of any of the victims being children but they too have fallen prey to adult groids for such major offenses as eating a piece of birthday cake or other heinous misdeeds.
And
negroid loses video game and decides to batter his new born son to death out of frustration.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/06/frustrated-dad-battered-newborn-son-death-losing-video-game-9421395
Murder took place in Louisville, Kentucky. Just wanted to add this as an illustration that groids will even kill children for little to no reason whatsoever.
I’ve also read reports where they’ve killed babies for pooping their diapers or for crying. It seems to be a common occurence in da hood. Also reports of groid daycare workers brutalizing children or killing them. We won’t even talk about defenseless senior citizens in old age homes- that too happens on a regular basis.
Yes, I had a previous exchange with 100 in which he made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with America because it is a polyglot. He affirmed the necessity of blood kinship as a foundation for any nation. Except that when Whites are mentioned then somehow race is not relevant or important.
Blood kinship? Doesn’t that lead to inbreeding? There exist examples of that all over the world, including some areas of the USA. This does not generally lead to beneficial outcomes. Again, be careful what you wish for.
Yeah all Blacks and Asians are inbred. Tell them to their face. Record on your phone and share the results.
Only if you join me, Janos. Deal?
And yet the Black Israelites literally did tell White kids from Covington Catholic High who went to the March for Life that they were the children of incest. Because Whites are civilized they did so with impunity. And the media ate it up and tried to destroy the White kids. You wouldn’t have any fear throwing them under the bus I bet.
Thank you V. I appreciate your thoughts and post. I don’t doubt at all that humanity has genetic clines or to use an ecological analogy, ecotones. It only makes sense that blending will occur at the borderlands between populations. After all, even as far back as the Old Testament days societies were dutifully regulating procreation to prevent or limit intermarriages between different ethnicities. So maintaining separation has been the survival mechanism for human society and it looks like the Chinese are winning in that regard. Ethnically diverse civilizations always disappear as will America if a dominate identity cannot be agreed upon. No racial group other than the descendants of the White European colonists will operate America as you know it. Spanish speaking Browns will not adapt Anglo American culture. There are no incentives to do so. Rome was better off in this regard than we are. At least their language and some of their culture survived. Whether race is important to you or me becomes irrelevant. Racial identity is important to most non-Western, non-White people so to recognize reality it must be important to us too. Either we choose to or it will be forced because the Others are always proud of who they are.
I don’t see people packaged in discreet, separable categories based on appearance, or IOW, race.
/ race is more than skin color. Mistake 1.
I’ve used this example before so bear with me. If you were to drive from the English Channel to Shanghai and you looked at what people looked like along the way, you’d see a gradation of appearance, for example, white as can be in northwest Europe, but as you drive eastward you’ll see gradual changes such that, when you pull into Shanghai, people look East Asian with the characteristic eyes, cheek bones, cranial vault etc.
/ and so what
But in the middle of Eurasia there’s millions of people that don’t fit either category.
/ there are billions who do fit in
For example, I’ve got a young relative that worked in Turkmenistan. And he said that the people there looked like the offspring of Russian and Chinese parents ie Russki pop and Chinese mom or the other way around. It’s what geneticists would call “clines” or measurable gradients in biological traits across a stretch of geography. You see that in humans especially along the Eurasian continent, not that you or I are likely to get in a car and drive the whole way (and take blood or DNA samples). But I’m sure that researchers have done it. We see these clines as the result of migration which has been attested to in the historical record and via archaeological research. And also as a result of simple inter-marriage between people in neighboring villages even when there’s no migration.
There’s other problems with the concept of race.
/ such as?
No doubt you’ve seen this example also, but black people in South Africa are said to be the most genetically diverse people on the planet such that neighboring tribes of Bushmen are more genetically distinct from one another than Frenchmen are from Japanese.
/black misbehavior is uniform. The ‘we were enslaved so we act like this’ doesn’t hold.
SSL, You cannot stand the thought that we are all slight variations of the homo sapien species that migrated out of Africa millenniums ago, can you? If there was a garden of eden, it was in Africa, yeah? We are humans first, and black, white, latino, asian, etc., comes in a distant second.
Under the hood, as it were, we all look very much alike. No black blood, or white blood, it’s red blood, all the way down. What about that fact bothers you and others SO much? Please enlighten me precious one.
Wrong, Hynes. There’s a 30 point difference between the normal White IQ of 100 and the normal Negro IQ of 70 – and that difference is the difference between barbarism and civilization.
Scratch a rat and he bleeds red too – David Duke to a Black student who made the same Ketchup “argument”. F is for Fail/Flail.
IQ is highly overrated. Observe the state of the world today and you may agree. IQ refers to how fast someone learns something… It matters not, if they learn the wrong things quickly. With the brilliant things homo sapiens comes up with, who needs demons to wreck the place? We’re doing just fine on our own.
“It matters not, if they learn the wrong things quickly.”
You’re proof of that Hines!
In an industrial state it doesn’t matter? Wrong again. Dude, they didn’t even have the wheel. And they’ll never understand what a variable is or a negative number, no matter how long you give them.
It is suspected that the Biblical Garden of Eden is now under water in the Persian Gulf JD. From that perspective we didn’t come “Out of Africa” in the way you believe. Humans are inherently tribal. If you aren’t you are an outlier or in modern times you have been brainwashed. In the old days (and in the days to come maybe) separation from the tribe meant real trouble, even death. For many people identity is everything. But in the temporary blip of today’s world some people have been able to ignore the importance of identity and race.
“From that perspective we didn’t come “Out of Africa” in the way you believe. ”
So we’re all born of Original Incest in the First Family?
“Developing nations are prone to cheating on trade agreements, and developed nations are prone to letting them cheat. It’s a simple matter of incentives and self-interest…
China is two economies: one developed and wealthy along the coast, the other rural and impoverished. China’s domestic strategy is to shift capital from the coast to the impoverished interior to raise the standard of living of its 600 million rural residents.
By any historical measure, the wealthy coast is a developed nation, and so naturally the developed nations want to level the playing field: they want China to open its domestic markets to foreign capital without demanding technology transfers, open domestic markets to foreign services and stop China’s officially sanctioned wholesale industrial espionage and theft of IP.
But the western interior of China is still a developing nation, and so by averaging the per capita GDP and income of its two halves, China can claim to be a developing world in terms of trade deal breaks while claiming superpower status for its developed half.
China can’t have it both ways.
… Trade deals have to work for both parties. China has to accept that becoming a developed nation means the implicit free passes granted to developing nations are no longer available. It has to start following the agreements it signs, or it loses access to capital and goods markets it needs.
— Charles Hugh Smith
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
China can’t have it both ways.
… Trade deals have to work for both parties. China has to accept that becoming a developed nation means the implicit free passes granted to developing nations are no longer available. It has to start following the agreements it signs, or it loses access to capital and goods markets it needs.
Odd. Sounds like Smith is channeling his inner cushy capitalist here. China’s in the driver’s seat right now, and access to US capital and goods markets don’t appear to be even a minor concern. Surely he remembers that the US employed the same ruthlessly mercantilist policies throughout the 20th century to get where it’s at today, so it comes off as pathetic whining to complain about China doing it now. Perhaps Sir Charles’ money for nothing investment returns are slipping a bit lately, especially “holed up” in there in cruddy old Hawaii?
Look what happened to the UK as a result of its fanatical free trade dogma at the end of the Nineteenth century, financing its eventual replacement as world hegemon. But it was complacent due to the compatible cultures of of itself with its rival.
As for China, there’s no comparison to that situation. And China is definitely not in the driver’s seat.
Depends on which car you’re in, I guess. Their car’s definitely more roadworthy than ours at this point. Take away our questionable military superiority and with it the petrodollar monopoly, and the US is revealed to be a broken down jalopy on the side of the road.
We’re in a disfunctional relationship, to be sure. But for that reason, I would use a different analogy than two competing vehicles. China may be in the driver’s seat from one perspective, but have you ever noticed how the backseat driver gets his/her way as often as not?
I always knew that when the third world learned to manufacture, we were done for, and eventually they did. The only way the middle class did as well as they did, was because Europe bombed itself to smithereens in WWII, and we were the only place left with intact factories. That’s also when we became an Empire. Prior to that, we had the usual distribution of wealth. 1% super rich, about 15% middle class, and the rest of the country was varying degrees of poor.
After the war, we were the only game in town, and the poor began to make better money, eventually earning enough to become middle class, enabling us to buy cabins up north, put built in bars in the basement, and become blue collar Republicans. Like I said, once they learned to manufacture and do a good job at it, we were screwed. That era of prosperity is never coming back here, we can’t compete with their workers when it comes to wages, forcing me to start my own business of exporting lead based paint to Chinese toy companies.
Brilliant Cap’n! You’ve summed it up perfectly here!
Thank you for your kind words.
America was rolling along just peachy keen until Bear Stearns was murdered and then Lehman had to follow suit because of the need for greed that Fuld had immersed Lehman in with McAllister Ranch in Bakersfield Californication. Had ‘the Gorilla of Wall Street’ not made the rookie mistake of utilizing short-term cash for long term investments [McAllister Ranch] we would never have evidenced the full scale implosion of Biblical proportions when Lehman filed for Chapter 11.
China & the communist regime had no idea that the top five bank holding companies in the USA were going to overleverage 44:1 like drunken sailors on shore leave. China had no idea that Richard Fuld was dumber than a bag of hammers whilst running the fourth largest investment bank in the world into the rocks for the sake of crushing all his enemies to become the victor of unchecked aggression & all round incompetency to govern.
Fuld’s vast incompetence has only one parallel that surpasses his penchant for worldwide dominance that ended in his monetary drunken stupor. What is worse than Fuld is the mistaken belief that America still has a chance to play nice with other nations when it comes to the great American bankruptcy that is upon us all today.
America is at war with the world whilst hiding behind the pretence that trade is somehow business as usual for all of us. Everyone is waiting for the moment when real leadership will step up to the plate to remove those that cannot do the job without blowing up the world in the process.
Competition for scarce resources is naturally going to heat things up for world markets & nations that cannot seem to conduct healthy business relations anymore due to a lack of trust between business partners. Billionaires fighting billionaires makes for much wasted time for those that are not in a position to be idle like the leadership is. The Duck would shut down all trade and launch a war just to see his name in lights one last time before the ship sank.
Who in their right mind will vote for him when the world is foisted into worldwide war just because Trump could not get his way with China, Mexico, Canada, Venezeula, Great Briton, EU, Germany, North Korea, et cetera?
RW
Well spoken………….btw, Fuld is living largish.
Only hope:
http://www.diamindis.com and his visionary ilk who rightly assert that it is foolish to assess the nearing future with present technology, evolving faster than we can type.
When Lehman toppled I checked Fuld’s Net Worth which was listed at $700 million roughly. Since litigation toppled his Net Worth he is still living large but not anywhere near as large as he was living. Moreover, previous to the 08 debacle of which he was ground zero he had a robust ego. Today, after about 50 years on Wall Street and counting he is still working to build up his depleted ego. His Net Worth today is considerably less than it was before the entire world became fully aware of his incompetence to head up the fourth largest investment bank in the world.
Today he manages a small family practice of close investors with AUM looking miniscule by comparison with Lehman after a century & a half as one of the originators of Wall Street.
Fuld may be living large but he will always be considered a sad sack instead of the fat cat he once thought he was. His old colleagues mock him still to this day.
RW
Yes, exactly. Thus National Socialism. America is still the rich land that can grow all the food it needs and make all the things it needs. The few rare earth minerals that we don’t have, we can trade for. End of Story. There is simply no reason for poverty here except human greed.
This is what Germany began to do and why it had to be destroyed before other countries copied it.
Capt. The post-war prosperity was a little more complex than that. After all Western European industry recovered remarkably quickly (thanks to the Mashall Plan). Way more powerful in creating the post-war economy was the imprisonment of Eastern Europe – hundreds of millions of ‘labor units’ were taken out of the market. The West – Europe, North America & Australasia – had limited labor and enjoyed the fruits of truly full employment.
This persisted until 1990. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a huge increase in the availability of cheap labor and much of western industry went where the profits were easier to come by, at the cost of the less educated labor force in the West.
Likewise, when China liberalized and decided to become the industrial center is has now become, millions of low cost ‘labor units’ were released onto the market and, in combination with NAFTA & the natural inclination of US manufacturing to seek out cheaper labor for greater profit, the US industrial base – at least in the traditional industries – was wiped out, and the social fabric ripped apart.
Dear Mr. Kunstler:
You are a god(small g) Please do not ever stop what you are doing for as long as you can draw a breath.
Sincerely,
Charles Peden
Excellent column today Jim! Thank you!
So the fearless warrior (except for the time decades ago when he had a chance to put his own ass in harm’s way he chose college instead) John Bolton, just announced that we are deploying an aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, and a bomber task forceto the Mideast because of some supposed Iranian threats. Some similar show of force will soon show up in the Gulf near another oil-producing nation, Venezuela, if it hasn’t already.
The real reason is that the rest of the world is finished with the petrodollar and is looking to trade oil in curriencies, such as the petroyuan, backed by gold. Even our best buddy Saudi Arabia has grown weary of the dollar and is looking for alternatives. How much overpriced real estate can they buy with all those fiat greenbacks anyway? Libya was reduced to third world status with open slave markets by the Obama administration because Qaddafi wanted to trade oil for gold.
When the petrodollar goes, so goes the dollar and the American empire. Why we couldn’t revise or replace this system with something better in the years since 1971 is a conundrum. China makes decisions looking 700 years into the future. The USA only looks to the next election. If you’re going to play chess, don’t compete against the game’s inventor.
Our government spreads propoganda claiming to care for the welfare of Venezuelan citizens and their democracy. What a crock! Our government doesn’t care about their own citizen’s welfare or democracy. The election rigging, voter suppression and fraud inherent in our elections make us look like a banana republic.
Republican Party + Democratic party = Wall Street Party = War Party
War is what they both agree on and serving the oligarchs.
Russiagate, like Clintongate and/or Hillarygate, before it, is just for show!
From Caracas, the Cuban Secret Police, Maduros ‘Collectiveros’ motorcyle thugs, Russian and Chinese special ops, Code Pink, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, 1000 army generals … thank you for your support in our campaign to crush the Venezuelan people, and maintain our glorious dictatorship of the proletariat!
Brh
MSM talking points! So enlightening! Jake Tapper?
“America is one big lie and you are a fool for believing it.”
—–George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqdsNxS_fk8&t=223s
Despite the blip in the market- not yet.
Soon trade deals galore, rate cuts and QEXXVI.
All fuel till after the next election.
Soon, I wonder though, if this can will get so large it can no longer be moved…
… then the fan will be hit with so much sh3t it will no no longer turn, nor will our modern world.
It will be spectacular, at least, until the bullets run low. Then nothing but coldness, darkness, hunger and very personal struggles.
Yep, looks like the small cap index has a good chance of being up on the day. Most likely new all-time highs on Nasdaq and S&P this week. Ho Hum…
Trump is setting up the constitutional crisis. By threatening the integrity of the election, he can claim victory even if he loses. That’s why he did not admonish Putin during the call. He’s saying help me. If I win cool, if I lose it wasn’t fair. That is why Democrats have to grow a pair and bring China into it. If the Republicans are not interested in election integrity, well then it’s like a street fight. You get as dirty as your opponent. I bet the Chinese can hack every bit as good as the Russians. And you know the Chinese don’t want another minute of Trump, let alone 4 more years. Then the Republicans will have to admit that it was wrong going down this road in the first place. They went along when it got them a win, they’ll have to go along if they lose.
Oh Wolfy! You demean yourself by remaining stuck on this stupid election rigging stuff. Time to move on already!
I beg to differ. This guy has to remain president or face indictment. This is the perfect storm brought on by the fact that he never showed his taxes. There should be a law where people in office have to show their taxes i.e. they have to be able to prove they are not beholden to anyone or any county. There should also be a law forbidding any collusion between a campaign and a foreign power. You have a recipe for dictatorship in the making here.
Over the weekend I decided to really look into the Mueller Report as much as possible. Mostly by finding out what is known for sure, or can be proven as to what is actually in it. Of course this is not possible with the redacted sections.
Anyway, there are a lot of myths circulating about, myths that I had believed. Myths that I think even Jim Kunstler believes. First of all the word ‘collusion’ isn’t a Mueller term. What the Report does say is that Russians did indeed do things to interfere with and influence the election of 2016. What Mueller found though is that there isn’t any actionable evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with these Russians.
The Report also says that Trump himself and members of his “team” (my word) were less than helpful with this investigation. In fact a bit more than just “less than helpful”. This is contrary to what Barr has been saying. In fact I now believe that how Barr is behaving right now is unbecoming of a proper Attorney General of the US. He is acting more like a political hack and a mafioso style attorney for his “Don”. If I had my way he would be immediately dismissed. I also think we should get away from this practice of having the AG appointed by a President. This has always been a flaw in our system. Those of you who can’t see this are just clueless.
Mattis, and even Pompeo when he was CIA Director both said that Russia interfered or tried to influence the election. Many other Republicans have gone on record with this as well. So Trump’s phone conversation with Putin was pretty despicable. He said they both laughed about it. What a middle finger gesture that is.
Frankly, Trump acts like a guilty man. His obsession and paranoia over not letting his tax records be examined is an extreme act of a guilty man. Suing at least two banks to keep them “quiet”. Then yesterday he said that Mueller shouldn’t testify before the House committee. Really Don? Why? Isn’t your spin that the Report exonerates you? So therefore Mueller has nothing to say that would incriminate you then. Right?
Of course Trump knows what the redacted parts of the Report say. Barr goddamn well knows.
Sorry Mr. Kunstler but I’m going to have to disagree with you on this issue. With Trump and his mafioso style band of liars and protectors we are heading toward a Constitutional crisis in this country. He is openly flaunting our laws. Not the first Pres to do this, but probably the boldest and crudest. I feel like the scales fell from my eyes over the weekend. It’s worse than I thought.
There is so much more, but I’m short on time right now.
News flash!
Russia tried to interfere in our election! lol,
The Tribe is not happy, they thought they had exclusive rights.
You don’t even need to read the report. The Russia Collusion hoax was cooked up by John Podesta.
All you have to do is read the hacked mails over at Wikileaks.
Amazing that even here, there are folks that get invested in this stuff.
In short: It’s fake. Move on and ignore the MMFA trolls.
Tate: The Tribe? Well you’re comparing apples to oranges. The Tribe owns USA, Inc. Hell even the Trumpster does their bidding. His daughter married into the Tribe. He has probably dropped to his knees and sucked off BiBi at least twice since becoming Prez.
I keep hearing morons calling Trump an anti-Semite. What a joke. He’s the most pro-Semite guy ever in the White House.
(I do hate the invented term anti-Semite though. Most of the Tribe, so called, are about as Semite as my left nut. But that’s a whole ‘nuther story).
Wolfie, Goldpen
I purchased the Mueller Report last week. I’ve invested 5 hours into it so far. I cannot agree with you more!
I was motivated to buy it after seeing this Malcolm Nance lecture in youtu.be and I recommend it to anybody – particularly those, like Ol’ Scratch & JHK, who are in denial about the Russian meddling. Trump was just a tool of Putin et al, who have had a fabulously successful campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paYbAyTtQto
He is openly flaunting our laws. – goldpen
============
OK everybody, your job is to fill in the correct word in the above sentence.
Majella…. Thanks for that YT link. Very interesting and, well, factual. Which means at least a third of this blog’s crowd wouldn’t be able to finish it. To those who don’t like facts getting in the way of their memes and narratives it becomes cognitive dissonance.
And yet you guys continued to ignore the ample opportunities to oust Trump on rock solid current events grounds: war mongering and good old fashioned garden variety incompetence. To wit: the recent “coup” attempt in Venezuela, which if we still lived within the confines of an actual functioning democracy, we’d be watching official hearings about this week.
“As a bad work of fiction, Guaidó could not mount even a lame imitation of a military-backed coup on April 30, which is just the latest in a long line of his failures this year. This character, unknown to 80% of Venezuelans a few months ago, leader of a minority party in a defunct parliament, who never campaigned for the presidency and was never elected to it—this same character posed in front of cameras and claimed military backing which he never had. So he calls on the resources of a hostile foreign power in the vain hope it would make his fiction a reality, clearly showing he understands nothing at all. Even worse: it shows a total lack of any care for all those who would suffer and die in war—Guaidó is ready to sacrifice them all. It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest.
The response to Guaidó’s call? A few hundred violent protesters showed up, traded rocks with the Bolivarian National Guard, and then stood around talking to each other for hours on end. John Bolton, pushing US intervention in the name of keeping Venezuela free of external dominance (he knows no irony), even tried to nudge Venezuelans in a pitiful attempt at bribery, promising US economic relief if Guaidó took power. As far as attempted coups go, this was fortunately among the most pathetic, lame farces. There is now no resemblance between Venezuela 2019 and Libya 2011, where in the latter case opponents actually seized towns and cities and mounted protests that lasted days on end. What remains the same in the two cases is the determination of the US to implement through violent proxies a fiction of rule.
One also has to wonder how John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliot Abrams still have jobs today. Trump is not a tower of managerial business acumen after all—if one ever believed the fiction constituting his performance on The Apprentice. Bolton, who was most prominent during the April 30 coup farce, could not even keep himself from tripping over his own excremental attempt at a “narrative”. First, John Bolton called on the Venezuelan military to side with Guaidó—but then invalidated his call, turning around and asserting that, in any case, Venezuela was under (imaginary) Cuban occupation, and it was Cuban troops who were really in charge. So everything fell apart…because of Cuba, and thus Trump threatened Cuba with an embargo, which it has already been under for six decades. Cuba was the fiction used to mask another fiction—the only thing that was real here was how utterly ridiculous US empire has become.”
https://zeroanthropology.net/2019/05/01/a-desperate-empire-crashes-in-venezuela/
But of course the cowardly shavetail Dems could never possibly countenance such a common sense action, since they’re in bed with the same rogues that Trump is! That’s what lets me know for damn sure that the Dems focus on their insipid 2016 “election fraud” mantra is just a smokescreen for their own equally legendary corruption and incompetence.
What a fucking country!
Outstanding points Ol’ Scratch. Couldn’t agree more. If Hillary were President the coup in Venezuela may have been more successfully pulled off by now. And of course the bashing of Maduro is a bi-partisan affair.
One good thing about Trump is that he appointed that clown John Bolton. He’s dangerous because of his views, but a total incompetent. I think that’s why Dubya and Cheney deep six’d him last decade. They admired his evil intents for sure, and shared them. They just came to see what a fuck up he is. In this case his incompetence has probably worked to sabotage the Venezuelan overthrow so far.
the cowardly shavetail Dems – Scratch
=============
I had to look up the definition only to discover I entered the Air Force as a shavetail.
Good Comments Scratch! For as long as I can remember Cuba has been our favorite whipping boy! The US will never forgive them for demolishing Lansly’s Havana casinos. Now, we will not even allow their most valuable export, baseball players, into the Homeland, to play ball!
There should be a law… – seawolf
=============
law schmaw
Show me where the Russians hacked some voting machines and converted Hillary votes into Trump votes, otherwise I don’t give a shit.
Yep they used our own social media against us in an attempt to screw of Hillary.
You know the very Hillary that yanked putins tail by saying his elections were a sham. Hillary pissed ol Putin off sometimes it’s better to not yank the bears tail.
Bleaching a $20 and making a $100.
How is that done?
“Bleaching a $20 and making a $100.”
Malthuss, Easy Peasey.
First you advertise an anal bleaching service for $20.00
In the middle of the procedure when the burn becomes almost unbearable, you notify the customer that the “antidote” for the pain would cost $80 extra.
On another note, why bleach a $20.00 bill, when a bleached $1.00 bill would do? (Street wisdom)
“why bleach a $20.00 bill, when a bleached $1.00 bill would do? (Street wisdom)”
Yes – one of the myriad weird things about US paper currency – all the notes are the same size..the only country that does that, as far as I can tell.
Collateralized Debt Obligation
Mix subprime mortgage backed securities with triple AAA rated investment grade blue chip Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities and you too can bleach a $20.00 dollar bill into a $100.00 dollar bill just by placing all the scraps from the floor into the mix that will make up the sirloin level payout on the CDO that is filled with bleached $20s & real triple AAA investment grade CMBS. That’s how you bleach a $20 to make $100.
RW
Janos, you know when the Graun runs a story that UBI doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-poverty-inequality
A Global Trade Federation. They want to crash the system obviously, not preserve it – and the Nations that comprise it.
I haven’t read any of the above comments yet, but what I’d like to know is, if we shouldn’t depend on getting cheap Chinese goods, and we cannot make our own stuff at reasonable prices, what are we supposed to do?
Seems to me to produce our own stuff would require a complete makeover of our own society, or to establish a new value system of what constitutes meaningful life activities, both of which seems impossible to accomplish.
Is this part of what JHK is calling The Long Emergency?
I haven’t read any of the above comments yet, but what I’d like to know is, if we shouldn’t depend on getting cheap Chinese goods, and we cannot make our own stuff , what are we supposed to do?
RETOOL, BABY, RETOOL.
at reasonable prices–what are they? the good times are over, Billy Boy.
Yes, Bill we need to make a New Kind of Man. Capitalism is every bit as evil as Communism. It we don’t do it, Nature will – and She is unspeakably brutal.
TLE appeared on shelves a ‘lifetime’ ago [15 years?]….
It did mention, USA does not make shoes in big amounts anymore.
Is this part of what JHK is calling The Long Emergency?
Id guess. Once they pull the plug, you ll need a new drug.
That’s the thing Bill. We must remake our society so that we produce most everything we need here at home. Of course its going to require drastic changes but we are kinda out of options. We have such a wealth of natural resources that we could be mostly self sufficient and then there is trade. The sooner we make these changes the better or reality forces the changes no matter how difficult.
SSL, I take it you are not a fan of David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage economic theory of (international) trade. It has worked fairly well over the centuries. I thought Republicans (RINOs?) were free traders, but I suppose the new Trump/Republican party is not, right?
Free trade is a Globalist myth. Nothing in life is free. I am unfamiliar with the author though.
SSL,
This sounds pedantic, but it is not meant to be. The Free Trade I mentioned earlier is meant to mean free, as in “no restraints,” not free, as in “no cost,” but I do agree, there is no free lunch, as it were.
Born in London, England, in April of 1772, Ricardo was the third of 17 children of a Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese origin who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic. His father, Abraham Ricardo, was a successful stockbroker.[4] He began working with his father at the age of 14. At age 21, Ricardo eloped with a Quaker, Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, and, against his father’s wishes, converted to the Unitarian faith. This religious difference resulted in estrangement from his family, and he was led to adopt a position of independence. His father disowned him and his mother apparently never spoke to him again.
He made the bulk of his fortune as a result of speculation on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. The Sunday Times reported in Ricardo’s obituary, published on 14 September 1823, that during the Battle of Waterloo Ricardo “netted upwards of a million sterling”, a huge sum at the time.
(A Global Elitist? Well, certainly an Elitist, it must be said, at the very least, but he did come up with some brilliant, noteworthy theories. JDH)
He was also an abolitionist, speaking at a meeting of the Court of the East India Company in March 1823, where he said he regarded slavery as a stain on the character of the nation. His sister, Hanna, had married David Samuda (1776–1824) who came from a slave-owning family with a substantial number of slaves in Jamaica.
Ricardo suggested that there is mutual national benefit from trade even if one country is more competitive in every area than its trading counterpart and that a nation should concentrate resources only in industries where it has a comparative advantage, that is in those industries in which it has the greatest competitive edge. Ricardo suggested that national industries which were, in fact, profitable and internationally competitive should be jettisoned in favour of the most competitive industries, the assumption being that subsequent economic growth would more than offset any economic dislocation which would result from closing profitable and competitive national industries.
Ricardo attempted to prove theoretically that international trade is always beneficial.[18] Paul Samuelson called the numbers used in Ricardo’s example dealing with trade between England and Portugal the “four magic numbers.” “In spite of the fact that the Portuguese could produce both cloth and wine with less amount of labor, Ricardo suggested that both countries would benefit from trade with each other”.
JDH
Thank you for the summary JD. Very interesting. I would agree with your original assumption that I am not a fan of David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage economic theory. It appears that his theory may have missed the mark since it does seem like the economic dislocations associated with outsourcing and offshoring are actually staggerring. The ramifications may actually be more dire politically and socially in comparison to the economic implications.
SSL: so, now, as well as halting ALL immigration (even the legal kind where educated & reasonably wealthy white folk come), you’d have the US cut itself off from international trade too, and become self-sufficient?
As you say, ‘reality forces the changes’ and may well do so eventually, but to deliberately close off & impoverish the US is, simply, nuts.
Yes absolutely. We must bring our entire manufacturing base back home. Most inventions happen right here. So why would such a large nation with seemingly unlimited resources be unable to become largely self-sufficient? Reality will likely force our hand so why not get a head start?
You’re right in the long run, SSL. The problem is the short term pain. No one wants to deal with it.
Politically, I mean, it’s unfeasible.
Unless you are promising to tax rich people to solve the problem.
Yes that is the heart of the problem Joe. How to deal with the pain of that economic/financial transition. Somehow, someway it would be so much better if we could deal with it now. But as others here have commented before it does seem like most people have to really be pushed to change, so I know it is idealistic to believe that we could reach a consensus to take this humongous project on.
I recently heard a podcaster relate a story about homeless people in his city. He commented how unmotivated they are. Good luck getting them to do anything; until a swarm of bees came. He said he never saw so many people so motivated to get something done.
My point, discomfort, pain, and fear can be incredibly motivating.
>>> “Unless you are promising to tax rich people to solve the problem.”
Yes, please! Soak the rich Dems and Repubs (anyone making $5,000,000 per year or more – we could quibble over the limits though)!!
Oh, and stop the generation wealth transfer as junior didn’t make the money and what better time to tax than AFTER you are dead! Really, no?
JDH
/\
|
Case in point.
It’s all about 5G. Whoever gets there first wins, and by all accounts China is in the driver’s seat on that one. Trump is doing his best to stop it but it’s out of his hands. China is not going to give that one up. Just like the American military fought all those wars for oil. Government is always in bed with the private sector. There is not one bit of difference between governmental systems when you get right down to it. Trump is saying we interfere, they interfere, let’s all interfere. We used to say we interfere, but no one interferes with us. That’s the difference.
5G is good? bad?
here—comments
5G was created in Israel. Why then are they not putting it …
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/9m21pq
/5g_was_created_in_israel_why_then_are_they_not/
Okay, so you have America who is putting 500 billion into 5g and then you have israel who created it and they are saying things like. “the government is offering incentives.” Yeah, that is quite different. I see no articles saying that 5g is coming to Israel and being implemented in mass and rushing to do it like over here in the US
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION 5g when implemented will be the worst thing mankind has had done to it by the mad men.
been hoping it would just go away but of course that is not going to happen. the internet of things is the last nail in our coffin. freedom is hanging on by a thread as it is with fb, google, etc. once 5g is installed our orwellian nightmare will begin in earnest.
some people are worried about the health effects of this 5g technology.
I read that it requires antennas on every street corner. It may make sense to move to a remote region without the 5G? But it may not be possible to escape it as I understand that they’re going to roll out a low orbit satellite based internet platform.
I read that the Democrats have agreed with Trump on a $2 Trillion infrastructure plan.
I wonder what nefarious plan that they have in mind? They’ll probably fry everything?
According to David Icke, the “Plan” is to link up all of the “Smart” devices (toasters, TV’s, refrigerators, computers, iPhones, washing machines, cars, lawn mowers, electronic toothbrushes, electric dildo’s, etc.) in “An Internet of Things” and then by 2030 link people’s brains to the “Internet of Things”.
Yes 5G is terrible. Say goodbye for what very little freedom and privacy we have left. And probably say goodbye to what little good health we have left too.
I haven’t heard that Trump is against it. If that is true then I’ll give him kudos at least for that.
Trump is against China winning the 5G race. That’s why the arrest of that Huwaei woman, the encouragement (wink, wink) of European and former British Commonwealth countries to not use Huwaei products which are better than any US products.
Is there any way to shield oneself from its effects? Other than moving to the Alaskan bush?
Heh heh heh heheheheheh…..You said “bush”…hehhehehheh…
Sorry—Beavis and Butthead triggering
That triggered a memory, the Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage.
“According to David Icke, the “Plan” is to link up all of the “Smart” devices (toasters, TV’s, refrigerators, computers, iPhones, washing machines, cars, lawn mowers, electronic toothbrushes, electric dildo’s, etc.) in “An Internet of Things” and then by 2030 link people’s brains to the “Internet of Things”.”
Clever bastards, those Reptilians!
shoot the messenger, troll.
Make fun of the messesger at your own peril interloper!
In other words, it doesn’t matter who wins? Oh, but it does. It does. Friends, you won’t like being a minority. Or a Dhimmi. Or a Cracker. Or a Gringo. Yet all this awaits you if people like Sea get their way.
We all need to listen to the Greek canary in our collective ‘mined’:
https://youtu.be/EWPFmdAWRZ0
Begin at 22:00
He describes what Kissinger began as junior bureaucrat via Bretton Woods, et. seq.
Stunning summary, one page of Econ 101-onward.
https://youtu.be/CIIgJq27HHA
CORRECTED link to above revelations.
Mr. Kuntsler is wrong – there will be a trade agreement with China. In every successful negotiation there’s a point where the parties say “No deal”, and then resolve their issues. If nothing else, President Trump is a master negotiator.
KUNT sler???
No, Trump is not a master negotiator. That is totally fake news. For one thing China has more leverage than ever before. Trump is too stupid to understand this.
Maybe after 2020 President Buttplug will be negotiating trade agreements. Im sure he will drive a hard bargain, no pun intended.
Then the Presidential Ass Sucking like we saw 2008-2016 will begin again; the halcyon days will be back.
Brh
I finally figured out who President “Buttplug” is. Lol…
But I doubt that guy will actually become President. Maybe he and Lindsey Graham will end up meeting and have a “special moment” gazing into each other’s eyes. Then they’ll engage in some Bi-Partisan “love”.
Not only that,
A brilliant scholar
A faithful husband
A loyal friend
A sincere Christian
A brave veteran
A tremendous orator
A loving father to his sons
A lusting father to his daughter
A wise counselor to the oppressed
A handsome devil
A generous magnate
As honest as the day is long
A terrific humorist
A gracious loser
A self effacing inspiration
A humble victor
A man totally lacking in hubris
An example for children
A lover of animals
A model of human decency
A forgiving man who looks for the best in all people
A fair employer
A kind and tender soul
and of course a man whose skills at negotiating have elicited hero worship from the Koreans and all who have negotiated with him
Wow you think about him a lot. In fact I see he preoccupies your life. I totally get it. Unrequited love is painful and thus its like you can’t stop or move forward. I know its cliche but time heals all wounds.
SSL – do’t stop, tell us more about yourself.
She likely wants to be him.
Psych 101.
All the Men on Games of Thrones are cucking themselves out of existence. Jon won’t press his claim to the Throne, preferring to bow to “his Queen”, Danaerys. Sir Jaime Lannister is now besotted with “Sir” Brienne of Tarth, a Giantess. And good Gendry knelt down to the troll like Arya only to be rejected in marriage.
The writers and producer of the show have sprung their Trap. They wouldn’t even let Jon kill the Ice Dragon. And Arya “flying” out of nowhere killed the Night King with a little dagger even though Dragon Fire couldn’t do the job.
Yeah I saw the feminist agenda behind this stupid series even at season one. With each successive season it became more obvious. I don’t even give a fuck about watching the last season. So it is okay that you “spoiled” it for me. Lol…
LOL! Great observations! Only two episodes left of this old nag. Time to shoot it and put it out of its misery.
YOU TUBE, A CALL FOR AN UPRISING.
The latest one, about the new prince or princess.
As a native Alabamian I should take offense that “Going South” means getting worse but I am in agreement that conditions are sliding toward disrepair with a destination of chaos. We here in sunny Paradise are particularly clueless because DoD spending is showering good fortune everywhere. (Why are there suddenly 3 Porsche’s in my little parking lot?)
I have a new Chuy’s restaurant close to my office and I went for lunch a little late–packed on Monday! I read my new Time magazine-which informed me that “our culture prioritizes men’s needs over women”s needs” in an interview with Eve Ensler. I asked my server about it and she was pretty sure I must be flirting with her–so she demurred with a coy smile but the article went on to inform me that all she (Eve) would like is for men to apologize–she has never heard a real apology from a man. This is very disturbing. Perhaps I should have apologized for not flirting with my waitress and asking her a serious question. I will be glad to apologize to Ms. Ensler for the unintentional patriarchy that enslaves her but I would like a personal apology for having to sit through the Vagina Monologues 20 years ago in return.
James:
I have read you for over 10 years now.
This essay is the finest work of yours I have ever read.
It is a masterpiece.
Reading it you just want to thank your Mentor that people like you are writing essays.
Thank you for this. I am sharing this freely.
Look down and see if you pissed on yourself. You seem a little over excited.
Well EvelynV you made me laugh will drinking tea…..I think you know the rest. Lol….
Feel free to chip in a few bucks on Patreon
The Cornered Rat Bites the Hardest or Chronicles of the US Civil War
In the past few days, there has been an intensification of the Black World Project, and apparently Trump and Putin’s conversation has lasted for one and a half hours in conditions that imply wiretapping by Clinton-subjugated “intelligence community”, and, along with the process of resolving pressing issues related to the aforementioned intensification of the Black World Project, Trump and Putin trolled Hillary Clinton ala the pre-emptive artillery strike on Nazi positions by Marshal Rokossovsky an hour before the onset of the German army near Kursk.
And since the war in progress is the War of Roses 2.0, I will begin the description of the above intensification with Orthodoxy:
Archbishop Demetrios of America, who blessed Trump for Victory at the Republican Convention in 2016, resigned and not voluntarily.
https://www.thenationalherald.com/242723/archbishop-demetrios-of-america-resigned/
According to Herald Tribune, he was forced to do so with the scandal by the patriarch of Istanbul Bartholomew, and now we should expect a sharp deterioration in the religious situation in Ukraine and Israel.
And on Friday, the chairman of the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives set a deadline today at 9 am for the US Attorney General Barr to provide documents related to Mueller’s investigation.
As a result of these actions, the agreement on appropriating $2 trillion for infrastructure projects in the United States seems to have hit a copper pan with a bang.
Today, a vote should be held on the charges of contempt of Congress by Attorney General Barr and lying under oath, which would be ridiculous if these actions were just a prologue for Barr’s impeachment, if only Hillary Clinton did not stand behind them with another coup up her ass.
You really think Americans will go to war just because another DC lawyer goes to jail?
Whatever you’re smoking there in the Caucasus it ain’t marijuana.
Dear Mr. Barr,
Congress passed a law that we now require you to break and if you fail to break it, we are going to have to hold you in contempt for not breaking the law that we passed.
Barr *shrugs*
😀
? PLease elucidate…
They want the grand jury testimony, which is illegal to release. They want him to break the law.
If all they seek is a minimally redacted version of the report, they can visit the reading room and read it.
It is all theater as the coup ringleaders are sweating bullets.
Trump can’t resist twisting the knife into Hillary – as seen in his hidden message about the Kentucky Derby.
“Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur,” he continued. “The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby – not even close!”
Anyone can see what he was saying was…
“Only in these days of political corruption could such an overturn occur,” he continued. “The best vote getter did NOT win the electoral college – not even close!”
I wish he had the balls to just come right out and say it because who can deny Hillary’s corruption got her into the race in the first place?
Whine, whine, whine. Are we still contesting the FL recount in 2000 now, as well? Where’s the bitch on Trump’s current efforts to start two more wars? Oh yeah, she’s totally down with that! The fat hag’s future is sealed. Now if only Billy Jeff would man up and stick a muzzle on her!
Scratchie, that is a sorrowful display of reading comprehension by you.
Reading into things a bit, aren’t we, Ev? Maybe putting a few words into a few mouths… I’ll let the man speak for himself.
The UN releases a report that proclaims millions of species will go extinct within decades.
Which only means tens of millions in considerably less time.
Everyone knows, deep down inside, that the jig is up.
As a species we do a pretty good job of suppressing difficult facts.
Realities.
Pretty good.
Because the cognitive dissonance manifests itself something terrible.
Scorched Earth living.
My time is now.
Well Avatar, I think a lot of people feel more comfortable ignoring what’s going on. One would hope that our leaders were perceptive enough to realize the full extent of the damage we have coming, but human nature being what it is, we will ignore it until it’s too late. There’s not much you can do about it, Man seems to have his heart set on creating an extinction event, starring himself.
People will adapt to conditions, like they always have.
brh
400 former prosecutors signed a letter saying Trump obstructed justice. That at least a handful are easily provable. The statute of limitations runs out if Trump wins a second term. Now if that isn’t a recipe for disaster I don’t know what is.
“All 17 intelligence agencies”
“Odds of 98 to 2 for Cankles”
Numbers always make the propaganda feel meaningful, don’t they?
“25 eminent pychologists get together and write a book ‘proving’ President Trump is mentally ill and unfit for office# (without ever examining him)
Brh
Well the Chinese tariffs news was supposed to tank the market today but coincidentally ole” Warren Buffett said stocks were too cheap to pass up this morning and lo and behold barely a negative blip on the screen
The stock market seems fake and disconnected from the real economy. The Nikkei is down right now. Maybe a trend or maybe not?
If Nixon had today’s Republicans, Fox News, and Bill Barr- ole Tricky Dick would be one of America’s greatest president’s.Created the petrodollar, opened China, ended Vietnam.
seawolf77
from where I sit he at least qualifies as the most tolerable republican president since Ike. He unwittingly, perhaps, surrounded himself with people who stabbed him in the back to save themselves.
The story I’ve heard is that the Watergate break in was engineered by Dean to retrieve a trove of documents that revealed Dean’s wife was a call girl.
Nixon, lowly character he was, got stampeded into thinking he had to help with the cover-up for something he didn’t even know was going to happen.
Some real fishy stuff about Woodard and Bernstein – one them with deep state connections.
Russ Baker presents a lengthy, detailed, and compelling case that Nixon was set up by the Republican party for surrendering Vietnam, not supporting the oil depletion allowance (a long standing grievance), making peace overtures toward China and the USSR, and for being a dangerous loose cannon with information about the JFK killing, among other reasons. Dean was indeed the man chosen to lead Nixon willingly down the path of capitulation, but the entire Watergate burglar team was made up of veteran CIA operatives chosen specifically for the operation. A compelling read:
https://whowhatwhy.org/2012/05/07/watergate-revelations-the-coup-against-nixon-part-1-of-3/
https://whowhatwhy.org/2012/05/08/watergate-revelations-the-coup-against-nixon-part-2-of-3/
https://whowhatwhy.org/2012/05/10/watergate-revelations-the-coup-against-nixon-part-3-of-3/
I’ve got Russ Baker’s book on the Bush family. Another compelling read.
…and Webster Tarpley’s unauthorized biography of Pappy Bush is a humdinger.
Thank you Itchy, just finished the first link. I need some fresh air.
No matter how bad and how rotten we think things are, in truth they are much worse.
Honest politicians with the best interests of the people as their goal all live on death’s doorstep.
Or he was super paranoid about Democrats stealing another election thru voter fraud like Cook county.
Guy Fawkes….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdl-_XVpnck
wet dog,
Shout to ya.
Thanks for the book link.
Two small (but IMHO, important) tips:
1.) Wood ash is incredibly dense in minerals. Spread them on your garden beds.
2.) Plain old grass clippings (about 2-3″ thick) placed around your growing plants have an enormously good effect: Soil does not get rain-compacted; weeds will not grow; they degrade, feeding the plants.
I do not till either. I work in last year’s clipping mulch and winter ash into the top couple inches and plant. Yes, the produce is nutritionally dense and boy, you sure can taste it. Leave them soil critters alone to do what they do best!
wet dog,
On the clippings deal, I forgot another point: It *greatly* reduces soil evaporation, so, a lot less watering! (After all, we’re trying for better crops with less labor.) I cover the entire bed if I have enough, and I almost always do.
>>> 1.) Wood ash
Careful. Raising the pH increased absorption of heavy metals. If you haven’t had your soil analyzed, do it.
>>> 2.) Plain old grass clippings (about 2-3? thick)
Check your brain if you are thinking about using a mower to cut a patch of grass that could otherwise grow a garden. Not only will this endeavor soon be much more expensive, it may get you lynched by a gang of kids pissed you are vicariously degrading the environment out of sheer vanity.
They’ll hunt you right through overgrown golf courses with assault rifles. Not that you will ever get far under the infrared cameras of the military helicopters.
Relax, and enjoy the Long Emergency. Start a garden, and think about eating rutabagas… and rats. Say goodbye to Fluffy- his noise and scent scare away game and your neighbors won’t cotton no bull shit during rat hunting season. Although your corpse will provide a fair amount of bait, it is inconvenient to have to dig more holes to bury the dead… and generally unpleasant for everyone.
I suspect O3 might have some fairly acid soil up there in the hills so the wood ash is probably doing a good job of bringing down the PH. In these parts I see the lawn growing fools spreading lime every spring to accomplish the same thing.
stelmo,
Kerrect. It’s also dense in minerals (what’s left after the cellulose structure is burned away). Wood ash has always been used in the North East as a soil builder. Slash and burn practices for areas of very poor soil (though hugely destructive if done on a large scale) follows the same principle.
Kerrect. – oz
========
In recent months my wife has taken to using ^this^ word probably to lend her responses an air of precision which she knows I like. Unfortunately she ruins it by pronouncing it as krect.
It reminds me of so many local students who pronounce Rutgers as Rukers. I want to take them by the lapels (if they HAD any lapels) and throttle them.
Q.,
You probably won’t get to see this through all the noise, but I misspelled that “heard” version of the word. It should have been something like: keee-rect! That would give it the proper emphasis and fun. The fun must always involve a bit of parody and nonsense, eh?
Your wife’s usage of “k’rect” could engender some please-don’t-talk-to-me-I’m-busy moments, but at this point, you’ll have trouble finding another that will put up with *you* as well. Soooo, I guess the both of us’n’s will just have to tough it out regarding these little peccadillos whilst we remain on this side of the turf. 😉
Finally, to throttle/strangle someone by their own lapels might be a tad difficult. Think of it… you’d have to have the foresight to cross your arms in front of you before the grabbing of the lapels (opposite hand to grasp opposite lapel), allowing you to form a tight torsion of fabric to cut off the victim’s air supply. Difficult, but with practice, I suppose it could be accomplished quite handily.
As another poster says in their sign-off: “Carry on until you’re carrion”.
Russian style of fighting
Russian boys go to dance polls in villages for one simple reason – to learn collective fighting, so called “stenka na stenky (wall against wall)”, and that art, traced back to Vikings, in combination with this skills, quickly learned in the army produce results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRuyG9UZUZk
I was taught three blows and two tricks against the knife and so far they work at 100%.
It’s funny when you first get involved in martial arts you think speed. When you get around real martial artists, and by that I mean people in law enforcement, people who fight competitively, and people who devote their lives to the art, you realize it’s all about delivering a blow with power, fight-ending power. To do that you need adequate speed, good technique, and proper conditioning so your joints won’t collapse, specifically the wrist. And there’s only one way to get there. First you have to be on the receiving end of such a blow. That is unforgettable and gut-wrenching. Second you have to deliver such a blow. That is delicious. It’s nearly the equal of a good golf shot, except it is infinitely harder to do. After all the ball is just lying there.
Do you remember back in the 1970’s when black people were enamored with Chinese Kung Fu for some weird reason?
One Summer in high school I was working in the cable TV warehouse when some black bloke came in one afternoon wearing a black cowboy hat with some nunchucks that he started twirling around. He was quite good at it. The black working class Kung Fu rage lasted for a few years and then peetered out. It was a bit like the early 1970’s black fad of black horror movies, like “Blackula”, “Black Frankenstein”, and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jive”. Now the blacks seem to want Reparations. Weird….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bmfudW7rbG0
When I was growing up people would trying to show off and be “Cool” by, for example, wearing a flamboyant cowboy hat, or doing something “Cool” like twirling nunchucks. Now, people try to “Virtue Signal” by adopting some identity like a LGBTQ Identity, or doing a one-off photo op smiling in an apron at a Soup Kitchen, Homeless Shelter, Battered Women’s Shelter, or an Abortion Clinic.
I will take the former of kung fu the virtue signaling idiots make me want to go all kung fu fighting on them.
“I was taught three blows and two tricks against the knife and so far they work at 100%.”
Komaraden Finc!
I was taught Smith & Wesson, and it works even better….
Glock easier to deal with.
+1
Semi-autos are very jam prone, much better to have an old fashioned “wheel gun,” such as a .357 or .44 mag. Roll it around in the mud, pick it up, and fire it, every time. No “sick sounding, metallic click,… oh shit…” and no pesky cartridges lying around, either. Nobody wants to litter, right? Sometimes modern contrivances are overrated and way too pricey.
JDH
Even a wheel gun can jam and misfire if not properly looked after and cleaned.
I have a colt python .357 great gun but after a couple of hundred rounds it needs a good cleaning just like my gen 2 Glock 21 and 17.
I haven’t cleaned my Benneli M1 super 90 since the last time I blew someone’s leg off with it. I alternate rounds of double-ought buck and slugs and mistakenly had a slug in the chute instead of the 00. What a messy mistake that turned out to be.
My husband gets all over me when I let that shit happen.
Don’t get excited SSL, not literally. He doesn’t get all over me until he’s invited, which isn’t often these days. The ol’ libido decided to take off when the hot flashes fired up.
Because getting shot in the leg with 00 would have been better?
Ev, you might force me to reconsider my position on the second amendment.
True enough benr
I really like my S&W Model 10. It’s been in production since 1899… a well tested design, we could say!
Finca
A universal statement about a null set is always true.
How many times have you been attacked with a knife?
Once with a knife and once with a pitchfork.
In my better days I used to work in a countryside on temporary projects, such a building a truck weight station.
Sometimes thing went rough with the locals.
They’ve got this movie in English called “Crazy Rich Asians”.
The English translation of the Chinese title of the movie “Wo de Chao Hao Nan You” is: “My Super Rich and Powerful Boyfriend”.
Chairman Mao once joked to Zhou Enlai that if China wanted to conquer the US that all that China would have to do is to send a few million Chinese women to the US.
We could send a bunch of feminist American women to China in retaliation. Like a big nuclear counterstrike….
They’d get locked up and muzzled. The Chinese have always has impeccable instincts for that sort of thing.
With the success of Extinction Rebellion (XR), it makes the UK, who have declared emergency in response to petition, seem relatively democratic vis a vis responsive government compared with the US.
I hope you guys aren’t planning on investing in gasoline stations. The kids are about to take over with the help of the rest of us.
Unless you have the physical ability to walk 5 miles in a single day I suggest you test the proposition. Preferably in an environment without them (cars).
The accumulation of airborne contaminants continues as 100 years of man made crap disintegrates. Every day, practically invisible pieces of plastic land on your face. Around cities, the ultraviolet splits hydrocarbons into strange volatiles that penetrate into your skin. The food you eat contains plastic, too.
The microbes are getting out of hand- scratch that. They’re on you… and in you. These little guys are killing off the weak and the old, and even the unborn. God has a plan… yeah right.
Satan looks over his little demons destroying Eden and cackles.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
Interesting chart here. I was born in ’54, world population was 2.7 billion and increasing at 1.76% a year. Scarily, 2019’s world population is 7.7 billion, almost 3 times what it was 65 years ago. However, 2019’s increase from last year is a mere 1.07%
Interesting.
Yes that is exactly right. Satan is laughing as we destroy the earth. And don’t blame it on demons. It’s us. Now maybe some of us are inhabited by demons but thats a whole nother conversation :-). Didn’t you know that Jesus is going to destroy those who destroy the earth upon His return? A true Environmentalist if there was one. And in all fairness haven’t microbes always taken out the weak and the old?
>>> “… don’t blame it on demons. It’s us.”
I thought they were one and the same thing, no?
Yes JD you are a demon.
That’s not very friendly now is it? Can’t we just get along SSL?
Yes I would like to. You are not a demon :-). Just a very determined soul.
Satan is a metaphor for the ego.
You’re a genuine nut-job SSL…
“And in all fairness haven’t microbes always taken out the weak and the old?”
And the very young. ‘Taken out’ doesn’t sound quite so nice now, does it?
It doesn’t Alba but you do understand what I was trying to convey.
Satan looks over his little demons destroying Eden and cackles.
Thanks for noticing. Yes indeed, it’s one of my few remaining pleasures these days to laugh at the arrogance of western humanity. My bet’s still on nuclear holocaust, however, as I think you’re rapidly approaching it once again. The lessons of the 20th Century Cold War seem to be lost on those in the US. Hubris is absolutely your greatest sin. Oh well, global reset and try, try again the next go ’round. So many possible species, so much time!
I guess the manufactured hallucinations of the holographic economy that Jim talks about could also include the writing and reading of blog posts.
Would you care for another cup of tea?
Isn’t Andrew Yang actually campaigning as a hologram?
That makes sense. You’d have to be hallucinating to believe his nonsense. As a hologram, at least you get to see him for the fake he is.
He is one of the most reasonable Democratic candidates out there at the moment. So he doesn’t stand a chance. The DNC is not going to let anyone whose views are seen as fringe get the nomination. 2020 is going to be all about full Wokester Marxism on steroids.
They should run a tranny.
But Biden is getting the nod – it’s as plain as the nose on his old wrinkled face. Hardly Wokester Marxist.
I can’t deal with the whole Biden thing. Please don’t go there right now.
Thank you for your post Mr. K. I for one appreciate that you remember that there are deplorables at all. Let alone that deplorables have legitimate concerns and greivances. The media is very good at depicting quite the opposite and the power is with them. The destruction of the family and of community in general has been ongoing (whether intentionally encouraged or not) for a long time. So of course fatherlessness, divorce, drug addiction, suicide, homelessness, etc are rampant. The wealthier and better connected have been spared generally speaking but as you say the realignment will be the surprise of our lifetime. And yet, the constant drumbeat of collusion, obstruction, impeachment and on and on will keep a good portion of hipsterdom deluded right up to the edge of the cliff. Part of them have no idea that the peasants are outside brandishing their pitchforks and the other part don’t know what pitchforks are.
>>> “The wealthier and better connected have been spared generally speaking…” by SSL
And their representative political party is????
Wait for it…… you guessed correctly, I think…… none other than…… your elephantine friends on the far, hard right….. yes, that’s them…. the Grand Old Party of A. Lincoln…. and most super-rich elites… your rich tax cutting demons…. your…….favorite guys….. loved by all…. rednecks, rubes, gun nuts, religious freaks, conspiracy lovers and other, assorted flyover malcontents…. yes, I give you YOUR favorites, the….. party of Goldwater, Nixon and Trump…. the
!!!!***+++ R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N-S +++***!!!!
Enjoy them while you can! The are lovable rascals, aren’t they?
JDH
Stop being such a fanatical bore JD. The richest enclaves in the US are all Democrat strongholds. And the rich Republicans you speak of….Most of them are your besties because the are Republicans In Name Only. YOU ARE serving as a mouthpiece for the Elite. We know you hate Middle America. Must you infuse each post you make with this hate? Branch out, live a little, stop being a pure partisan hack.
https://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2018/12/27/party-of-the-rich-democrats-hold-the-20-wealthiest-congressional-districts-n2538070
You must admit that the R’s are much friendlier to the rich, as opposed to the middle class (what is left of them) and lower classes, no? I mean right-to-work laws and union busting helps the rich elites, does it not? If it’s the elites you despise (and rightly so) the republicans are much closer to them than the dems, I would submit.
Of course the R’s are friendly to the wealthy. That is not a stretch by any means and I concur with you. I think what maybe you are getting to is that the D’s come off as more for the common man. I don’t disagree with you there either. Except that in the last several years including the Obama years the D’s really do appear to be cozied up to Wall Street, Big Business and the Chamber of Commerce. So ultimately the parties images are merging into a single party that works for the top while keeping the bottom tiers polarized with fake “opposing” viewpoints. They now all seem to be interested in the billionaires dollars. And why would they not? Our system totally rewards and incentivizes this behavior.
Well said SoftStarLight! I must AGREE with you on your 12:55pm post. They are becoming the Uniparty. We agree on some (maybe many?) things.
“… bottom tiers polarized with fake “opposing” viewpoints.” Yes, I think you are seeing things very clearly on this and I need to be reminded of it. I appreciate it. Cheers, SSL 🙂
Here in WA we are run by and for rich democrats.
Democrats and reasonable republicans are in the same kind of situation professional bicyclists (e.g. Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, et al) were in back in their day. Everyone knew the system was corrupt to core with regard to performance enhancing drugs. EVERYONE KNEW. To have any hope of competing you had to play the game. You had to juice, you had to deny.
In politics whether you like it or not you have to have gobs and gobs of money to compete. Whenever the good guys try to fix the situation, the bad guys prevent the fixes. The bad guys have been the right wing fucks at every turn.
Citizens United – what a joke, what a travesty, what a way to destroy the best form of government mankind has attempted since the Greeks. All the blame goes on the right. One of the reasons Jim declared a few years ago the Republican Party should be regarded as the party that destroyed America.
But Mr. K has clearly evolved since then as he also discusses the damage that the left wing is inflicting on the system. And he has already stated on more than one occasion that he was never a Trump supporter. Weaponizing bureaucracies against your political opponents and launching endless fishing expeditions to find the person for the fabricated crime among many other egregious acts. This is third world stuff Evelyn. You should open your mind up a little bit to see the bigger picture. The populist left wing and the populist right wing are busy fighting each other while the Elites are emptying the vaults.
The are lovable rascals, aren’t they? – JDH
========
Absolutely, the are.
Oh gawd, the blather that oozes from you…
But you never can quite skip over it. I know. I’m super persuasive. Some people even got mad at me because of it.
Sheesh SSL – you’re “super persuasive” and further down yer “clever with words”.
I hadn’t ever noticed that and I suspect no one else ever has either.
This is a clear signal my harassing might be pushing you over the edge. You be freeing fall into La la land and it could be my fault. I promise to quit saying the things that are destroying you sense of self worth, if you’ll just keep you own…er…bimbo thoughts down a little bit more.
What do you get out of being inflammatory? It’s not friends…
Some British Geiser last week remarked: “It’ll take Britain 50 years to recover from Brexit.”
Just how exactly was this timetable arrived at exactly, and what assumptions is it based on? Why 50 years? Why not 100 years?
It’ll take Britain 100 years to recover from Brexit!
— an American geiser.
Pucker
The ‘geezer’ in question was Jacob Rees-Mogg, hardline Brexit leader.
I would like to be able to provide you with a link, but I’ve tried all morning and most of yesterday to get my PC to behave and stop crashing, despite having got Avast to scan and clean everything I pay them to scan and clean. I find myself unable to link to anything as any new website just crashes. I’m beginning to think the people Volodya thinks I’m employed by are interfering with my web activities. But that would be a level of logic my brain wouldn’t be able to deal with, so I’ll settle for gremlins.
But anyway…
Quite a few Eurosceptics have varying views on the matter of how long it will take to see any benefits. In one article I wanted to link for you, Liam Fox (arch-Brexiter and the Trade Sec. who’s going to sign us up with nice countries like the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and China) says he’s putting his money on 2060, by which time he reckons there will be ‘1.1 billion middle class Africans’ to do enriching business with. Foxy clearly isn’t a CFN reader.
DIgby Jones, chairman (or ex-chairman – I daren’t risk another website crash to check) of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) reckons that in 100 years time we’ll wonder why we didn’t do it earlier. I’ll have to leave the confirmation on both of those to younger readers, alas.
And finally, Nigel Farage (former commodities broker) says he never ever promised we’d be better off anyway, just that we’d be self-governing (i.e. governed by home-grown financial interests and American ones instead of EU ones – so nothing there for the ‘deplorables’ either but they can wave some flags and have a blue passport again, which they could have had anyway).
Anyway, Mr Rees-Mogg and meeself have one thing in common. I know – amazing. That thing is that we both support Theresa’s existing deal with the EU as a means of getting out of the EU without any more damage than is necessary, albeit we’re coming at it from different sides.
I can’t remember all the details of the deal, if I ever knew them all (and again, not risking any more crashes), but my memory of it includes three main points:
(1) the ending of free movement of people from the EU – EU folks on a level playing field with everyone else as far as immigration is concerned;
(2) some protection for British businesses;
(3) the famous/infamous Irish border backstop.
Now, I accepted this early on in a spirit of ‘let’s just bloody get on with it – this is the best we’re going to get from the EUand it gives the Brexit voters the main thing they said they wanted, an end to free movement, AND it gives some minimal protection to businesses while not giving them the advantages of EU membership. All pending an actual trade deal with the EU which could take a decade.
Jacob, on the other hand, came to it late. He objected to it loudly for ages, then, in an admirable volte face, defied the rest of his ERG group to accept that it was a better option than no Brexit, while being aware that Parliament would not accept ‘no deal’. So, reluctantly, good for Jacob for that bit of pragmatism which I share with him
Very few people every get all they wanted in a negotiation. Sensible people will accept a compromise that gives them the thing they said they most wanted. Although what Jacob really wants it a low-regulation, race-to-the-bottom business environment where he can make even more money. But I’d still stand beside him on this compromise. And he can still make his extra millions.
And a note to Volodya:
I didn’t see your last long response until this morning – computer problems have been making everything take half an hour that should take 10 seconds.
However, I note that you choose to use the ad hominem of ad hominems, which puts you in a category of poster that, for me, doesn’t merit any further engagement.
I know this will be a relief to you. It will also confer the added advantage that you can claim, unchallenged, that life for the ‘deplorables’ you pretend to care about wasn’t shit in the 60s and 70s before the UK joined the Common Market and that it won’t be shit once they leave the European Union. Unlike you, I was able to see what was right under my nose during those two decades.
You mentioned plants closing. Yes, they did, where I lived in the industrial north east. The steel plants lost out to competition from the Far East – feck all to do with the EU.
Same goes for Malthuss. But before I leave you, Malthuss, yes of course the dog was a bloody rescue.
Oh, and Tate, I just saw your post this morning about Auschwitz being a fairy tale, so in the bag you go too.
Cie La Vie.
volodya May 4, 2019 at 12:29 pm
Here’s what I wrote about Auschwitz.
Tate
May 5, 2019 at 7:44 pm #
“Many have debunked the Holy Site of Auschwitz. All were branded ‘deniers’ like David Irving & sent to the woodshed. You don’t draw a cartoon of a lunatic Meccan pedophile & you don’t question cold war era Soviet propaganda from WWII.”
So I didn’t call it a fairy tale. I just said you don’t question it. The Soviets never lied, did they, until they did, & then later didn’t — depending on their relationship with Tel Aviv at the time…
It gets so confusing.
Well your posts simply do not merit further engagement :-). Someone must let you know how righteous they are with the “silent” treatment. I know, I didn’t realize we were in 3rd grade either.
I’ve been “bagged” it seems, lol. But not sacked or banned, not yet at least.
SSL
You may consider ‘many have debunked the Holy Site of Auschwitz’ as something qualitatively different from saying the whole thing is a fairy tale if you want to.
We are just different people Alba and I was just playing around with Tate. Even if I find a person’s opinion repulsive I don’t necessarily shut down the line of communication. I genuinely found your statement to be amusing that is all. I can imagine your British accent when you say something to the effect of, “Your posts simply do not merit further engagement, so in the bag you go”. Which I know I put some words in your mouth there but it made me giggle :-).
And what ever happened to the whole “Question Everything” thing???
SSL
Watch all nine hours of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and come back to me with the question everything thing in this particular context. Really, I challenge you.
I’m not shutting anything down – Tate can say whatever he wants. He has fans. Even when he advocates giving a woman a backhander to keep her in line. It’s one of my copy-pasted gems but I can’t access it at the moment or I’d give you it verbatim.
BTW, I found this comment of yours interesting a couple of post ago:
“I assume we need no real evidence and must believe the accuser.”
Given your cavalier way of throwing out accusations with none whatsoever, it caused a minor eye roll.
On another matter, I happened upon this article which you might like. You seem unwilling to take it from me that there are Muslim women who insist on considering themselves Muslim women, yet don’t go along with the angry, beardy guys (best avoided in all cultures, perhaps). So, I’ll let this one speak for herself. She’s never been backward in coming forward and she’s come to no harm – not even a single fatwa!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1195052/Why-I-British-Muslim-woman-want-burkha-banned-streets.html
If you google her name + ‘images’ you’ll see that she doesn’t normally dress in that 1950s schoolmarmy fashion normally either. And yet she insists on calling herself a practising Muslim. Maybe she wears a hijab to the mosque just as my mother wore a hat to church. But for the rest of the time she wears exactly what she pleases.
And what’s a British accent? Yorkshire? Lancashire? Scouse? Cornwall? Glasgow? Perhaps you’re thinking of 1950s BBC English? I try not to imagine you sounding like one of the ladies from ‘Steel Magnolias’. But who knows?
sorry, two ‘normally’s
And you misquoted me.
But the quip about the bag was in my head from the Dara O’Briain stand-up routine I posted another time.
I can’t link to it, as I’ve said, because of the gremlins, but if you put ‘Dara O’Briain – Science doesn’t know everything’ into YouTube, you will get five minutes of amusement.
In an Irish accent.
I don’t know how old third graders are – do they know that accusations should be accompanied by evidence?
SSL – I’ll bet you not only giggled but you jiggled also when you giggled. How much exercise do you do and what’s your favorite dessert?
Ladies, Ladies, keep it civil.
Remember the sisterhood!
Brh
3rd graders are 8 or 9 years.
Evelyn please. You couldn’t keep up with me for five minutes in my hectic and active life. Shouldn’t you be busy putting the spackle on your crevice-filled face for your dinner (mucho buffet) date with Dillweed tonight? 45 minutes does a body good, but you know lol I always like it longer and harder. I like to do it everyday too because it keeps me feeling my best and my mood is better that way. Sometimes though a day or two break is unavoidable you know crazy schedule and kids and all.
My favorite dessert? I am beginning to think it might be Baked Shoshone.
Sorry Alba, you said you had enough of talking about the scarf issue so I moved on too. So now I am not supposed to listen to bearded men? LOL ok so I guess I can just immediately discount like all of the men in my life. Sorry Daddy, Alba said bearded men bad! I guess its kinda like Orange Man. Perhaps if they shave they are getting closer to the truth? And I don’t need evidence when the accusation contains evidence. Of course there are various grades of religiosity within any given “faith community”. But just because those gradations exist does not mean that the religious documents the faith is built on does not describe a true solitary way the faith is actually to be lived out. So just because a person acts or says or does something and says “Oh I am a Christian”, or “I am a Muslim” or “I am a Buddhist” doesn’t mean they are acting, saying or doing things reflective of the actual religion or faith. And that works both ways. Just as terrorists take verses out of context to justify their deeds, so too do ordinary people in everyday situations.
Thank you, Farmer Joe. I wouldn’t expect them to know about evidence and accusations then!
Here we have P1-7 (primary 1 to primary 7, i.e. age 5 to 11/12), then S1-S6 for the senior years. In England I don’t even understand it as they have primary, middle schools and whatever follows, in some cases, so they talk about Year 10 and I don’t even know what that is – presumably 15-year olds, but I find it difficult to know immediately what people are talking about. You get used to your own system.
SSL
“Sorry Alba, you said you had enough of talking about the scarf issue so I moved on too. So now I am not supposed to listen to bearded men? LOL ok so I guess I can just immediately discount like all of the men in my life. Sorry Daddy, Alba said bearded men bad! “
At what age did they do your humour bypass? It seems cruel in one so young.
In any case I said ‘angry, beardy men’ so if your dad was an angry beardy man, I’m sorry. Mine wasn’t. You need to read more carefully.
And I don’t need evidence when the accusation contains evidence.
I was referring to your confident assertion that Muslims were likely to be responsible for the conflagration at Notre Dame. Which came with no evidence.
And you still don’t get to tell Saira Khan that she’s not a Muslim.
Meant ‘is’ not ‘was’ for your pa’, sorry.
Good God SSL – I wasn’t trying to pry into your sex life…or fantasies…or whatever got you going on that gut spilling jag!!!!
Evelyn you fell right into my trap. I was talking about my exercise regimen but I have a neat way with words and the wheels in your nasty-prone mind started spinning. I knew your mind would go to the gutter and look at you. Get your brain out of the gutter boo.
Wow Alba where did the Notre Dame fire come into the conversation? Can you please pull the full quote because I feel like I said something more like I wouldn’t be surprised if Muslims did it. I don’t recall a confident assertion but please do point this out if that is the case. I also felt like the investigation was tainted since the fire was still raging when officials expressed certainty it was an accident. That angered you too but you know it was a conjecture and not a statement of fact.
Sure SSL, I fell right into it.
And here I thought I was trying to exploit your piteous effort to make yourself sound dirty. I had to clench my teeth to even write what I did because when you get right down to it it’s a pretty horrible thing to picture. I’m guessing you probably haven’t had any exercise below an ever expanding waistline since the last time a Yankee baseball player was looking for a slumpbuster in your town.
If you feel a need to talk dirty direct it towards Janos. He could use some lovin’.
Evelyn really, I am sorry for you that obesity has gotten the best of you. I mean we all know “Indians” struggle with rampant alcoholism and obesity. I don’t judge you for it. You should try working out at least 45 minutes a day and get to the point where you are at least working out five days a week. Oh, and don’t think about your favorite dessert too much. That’s only a blue moon thing since you will be watching your waistline.
And you really are trying to smack someone down because your mind perceived their post to be dirty????? Girl you need to go back through your post and review some of the hurl-inducing nastiness you slap up on this board.
SSL – you clueless wench, I perceived you were clumsily trying to sound dirty when anyone who can read besides being slightly sickened by how pathetic the attempt was felt a little sorry for you to think how unaware you were that everyone else knew you cut a stinky fart.
Stop being jelly Evie. You got owned and thats a wrap. Have you ever considered being a bit more demure and pleasant? I think you may be able to actually have a real conversation should you really try super duper hard to be sweet and kind. I know it will be a difficult journey but it will be so worth it in the end. And one day when you find that you have turned the corner for real you will say thank you so much SSL. You’re welcome!
You’re more generous than I, SSL. I bet she dies of old age before she changes her demeanor.
volodya May 4, 2019 at 12:29 pm
You really think Americans will go to war just because another DC lawyer goes to jail?
If all these actions of Nadler are a prologue for the impeachment of Barr or Trump, then they have no chance to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, and they only make sense if they are the prelude to a power coup d’etat lead by Clinton-controlled special services.
Barr must put her behind them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdPx8cJ27Y
I don’t get involved in the fray, but I liked Jim’s writing here. I’ve enjoyed his pithy descriptions of contemporary culture for years, since Geography of Nowhere. Keep at it bud.
In a way you’re like a lot of us. We’re just watching the game. We don’t control it.
You honestly have to wonder who the Pentagon imagines believes this shit when they say it, especially following last week’s pathetically transparent coup attempt in Venzuela:
Aircraft carrier sent to Middle East after indications Iran planned attack on US forces
“The United States deployed an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in response to “clear indications” Iran and Iranian proxies were planning an attack on U.S. forces in the region, U.S. officials said.
Late Sunday night, the White House made the surprise announcement that the USS Abraham Lincoln and a bomber task force were being deployed in response to unspecified “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”
A statement from national security adviser John Bolton said the deployments were intended “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
“The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces,” the statement continued.”
Bullshit! The only “clear indications” apparent here are that the US is itching for another war to divert political tensions at home and/or keep their Zionist masters in Jerusalem happy, and the only question remaining about Trump is was he a willing participant with all nonsense or has he simply lost whatever remaining control he had over this pack of rabid junkyard mutts that he appointed? And the only remaining question remaining for the MICC is will this be the time when they finally lose one of their billion dollar assets in a relatively minor skirmish and are are finally revealed for once and for all as the puffed up paper tiger that they are? After that, the only remaining question will be how long does it take the American people to wise up and remove and try these fucking shysters as war criminals, like Obama – the great fork tongued charmer – hinted at in 2008?
Did Obama hint at that? Must have been before he got elected. In any event, do you really think the American people at some point are going to “wise up” & try the war criminals? lol.
Liberal democracy doesn’t do a very good job of “wising up,” let’s admit. Two or three people might be capable of “wising up,” but 160 million? Not a chance. Or those 160 million might be capable of ‘incrementally’ at the margins “wising up” over one thing, but over the myriad ills of these times? Not a chance.
Current affairs of our present ClownWorld has only entertainment value to be remarked upon, mocked, & handicapped. That’s it.
These are wonderful questions you ole Devil :-). I do want to know exactly when it was that Trump was compromised. Was he just another deceptive swamp creature from the very beginning or was he compromised after getting into office? I would like to believe he was genuine during the campaign. Some of his naiveté could indicate he was potentially genuine way back in 2016. I have heard some speculate that he was threatened by the Deep State at some point upon entering the White House and is thus towing their line now. Either way what we do know is that Israel has its big beautiful Wall. We are threatening WWIII with Iran to signal to Israel that we are literally ready to go through hellfire to ensure the viability of the Jewish state. We are aggravating political chaos in Venezuela. Meanwhile the homeland burns as Javanka fiddles and Trump tweets about all the stuff he could do but never will.
Could be.
Ive postulated US aircraft carriers might be vulnerable to land based cruise missiles or Iran’s diesel powered submarines.
On the other the Navy may have developed adequate defense against these and other threats posed by a 2nd rate power like Iran.
Its really a stretch calling Trump or Obama a ‘War Criminal’, Scratch. I’ll just chalk it up to hyperbole on your part. Herman Goering was a war criminal. Obama and Trump are and were trying to carry out American foreign policy in a dangerous world of shifting alliances and and complex threats.
Brh
Except the carrier is never alone. I was on a fast frigate and our job was sub hunter and to emulate a carrier electronically.
Every ship out there has a cwis and if you have ever seen one in a test action it’s impressive.
Yeah me too Ben, submarine patrol on a Fast Frigate mostly out of Gitmo. I was surprised at the number of Russian Submarines in the caribbean and gulf of mexico at the time, Havana, panama canal and so on
Brh
patrol on a Fast Frigate – BRH
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Back in the day (Junior High or HS?) I recall much juvenile tittering if a history teacher used the word frigate.
much juvenile tittering – Q.
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And then if the teacher got angry and said “Stop all that juvenile tittering” great guffaws of laughter would erupt.
In this same vein, one year in HS the administration hired two new teachers, husband and wife. Their names were Mr and Mrs Knipple. You can imagine what that was like jocularity-wise until we all got used to it.
Q,
I had a seemingly octogenarian male latin teacher that would refer to young women in translation …puella as “virgins”. The term “virgin” has a quantitative element, yes? A bit more than an honorific title. We adolescent boys, as you mentioned were titillated.
The latin term for an old woman is…unfortunate, and decorum forbids me the translation.
Diesel powered sub? How do they get the engine air?
They have to surface frequently. The diesel just charges the batteries, and the sub actually runs on electric motors.
Which was how, in WW2, every single German U boat was sunk, and all 30,000 crew were killed, by aircraft anti sub patrols.
Brh
Incidentally, Germany is currently making excellent diesel subs, almost as quiet as nuclear powered boats. Diesel boats have been around since before WW1, but by no means are they obsolete.
Brh
Thanks. Military tech and history is a fascinating subject.
Had the chance to ride a German made Chilean diesel sub it was terrifying!
Very small spaces tight quarters and smelly.
a very long straw???
I drink your Milkshake!
NightOwl, Great reference! “There will be Blood!”
Good lord farmer Joe!? Didn’t you know the subs used in WW2 were not nuclear powered?
Asking a question like that is worse than picking your nose in public.
Oddly I suddenly feel a surge of protectiveness for you. You’re just a babe in a wilderness.
Settle down, Ev. Of course I understood that. What I didn’t understand was how.
What happened to keeping it civil? I’m starting to think that only one of us has integrity.
And while we are playing war games around the world (you promised not to DJT!) the southern border is still hemorrhaging. Over 30,000 apprehended by BP in just ten days. At this rate we have already added basically the equivalent of the population of Wyoming to the country in just the first four months of the year. And Trump literally has the audacity to allow DHS to issue 30,000 new H-2B visas so that more foreigners can replace blue-collar American workers. And the Democrats cannot say one thing because they are not out there demanding that these visas not be issued to protect American workers. Where are the liberal environmentalists protesting at the border against the population increase from uncontrolled border crossings and all of the negative consequences of such a rapidly increasing population? The entire political spectrum is essentially useless in solving our problems.
Thus the solution must transcend politics.
I left a link, a day or 2 ago, for you.
You tube, Jeremiah Babe.
Ok I will look him up.
He went to the mountains, at the pass.
Its an old talk of his.
Superjet and the World Projects
Aeroflot crash landing of a Superjet in Moscow’s airport, when the first-class passengers were more concerned about saving their luggage than the lives of their fellow cattle-class travelers, shows that after the geopolitical catastrophe, the collapse of post-Christian society into Red, White and Black World Projects is a natural and even inevitable phenomenon.
Aeroflot Fire: More Passengers Could Have Been Saved
https://simpleflying.com/aeroflot-fire-luggage/
But in order for these patterns to take shape in articulated philosophies, which I call World Projects, the War of the Roses, which ends the centenary war, is necessary.
England was just lucky with Henry Beauclerc and Anacletus II, who founded the Plantagenet Empire, in which the Black World Project failed to take root and destroy the Christian Churches founded by Joseph of Arimathea and St. Patrick of Ireland.
What actually created the prerequisites for the religious revolution of Henry the VIII, which ended the War of the Roses and wrested Old Good England from the clutches of the Black World Project, which, before Tudor secularization of England, were Cistercian monasteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries
It was the intrigues of the Cistercian monasteries, directed by the Valois dynasty, represented in England by Marguerite of Anjou, inflamed the War of the Roses, which almost completely destroyed the Plantagenet dynasty, which was founded by Henry Beauclerc and his wife Matilda of Scotland, who happened to be great granddaughter of Russian Yaroslav the Wise.
Not surprisingly, Henry the VIII is accused of the same sins and following the same patterns as Ivan the Terrible, who managed in Russia to achieve approximately the same results by the same methods and burdened by approximately the same sins as Henry the VIII.
Very similar monarchs, by the way, who created similar monarchies, if to consider the Romanovs as the heirs of Ivan the Terrible, and an alternative to these monarchies is the region of the Livonian Order, also known as the Protestant Prussia, the notorious German spirit of which is most fully embodied in Nazi Germany.
P.S. I consider a geopolitical catastrophe not a Superjet catastrophe, but the collapse of Historical Russia in 1991.
P.P.S. In the Russian Wikipedia article on the religious revolution of Henry the VIII, as expected, everything is upside down.
Finca, I asked you a question last blog post, but I don’t think you saw it.
I’m curious to know if homelessness is a problem in your part of the world the way it is here in Seattle. I’m curious to know if this problem is global in nature or if it is isolated to hard left US cities.
It is a complex question, but I’d start with the fact that the right to a shelter is still included in the Russian Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia
When I was living in Russia – still as the Soviet Union, in a government (or so called cooperative) flat, nobody could kick you out for such a nuisance as not paying your bills.
Actually, I forgot to do it for about three years (!) not bothering standing long waiting lines every month in a savings bank to pay the damned bills,
Nobody bothered me with any eviction letters, but by the end of that period I still had to catch up with the bills or else I couldn’t get the papers necessary for the exchange of the flat I lived in to the different location.
by the end of that period I still had to catch up with the bills – Finca
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What about penalties and interest? Do they just let you slide or did the balance owed climb inexorably higher?
Actually, I personally know couple of cases when even “all-powerful” KGB couldn’t kick out the family of a convicted individual when it was still occupying a prestigious flat in a prestigious neighborhood.
The questions of eviction were in the jurisdiction of the so-called “People’s Court”, and they simply told KGB bureaucrats to go pound sand because there were still living wife and children of a convicted person.
Finca
“the right to a shelter is still included in the Russian Constitution.”
That’s a bit like the UK situation. Local councils have a statutory obligation to house people.
However, the majority of council houses/flats and housing association properties were sold off at a significant discount (to create Tory voters) such that in places like London ex-public housing stock is now rented out for an exorbitant amount by a new breed of rentiers.
So, this statutory obligation often means arranging for the homeless person or family to take on a private rental, with a hefty ‘fee’ being made by the council (taxpayer) to the private landlord as some sort of risk mitigation payment, since the poor and insecure are not the most reliable tenants.
In fact, some will find themselves unable to pay the rent, will be evicted, and will present themselves again (and possibly again) to the Housing Department as homeless, requiring the process to be started anew.
paid, not made…
That’s a bit like the UK situation. Local councils have a statutory obligation to house people. – GA
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What you are describing here interests me. I have no idea if my town has a similar ‘statutory obligation’ but it is just in this past week that I discovered there is an apartment building for ‘low income’ renters and we (I and the wife ;-)) are trying to get my b-i-l, Peter, on the waiting list.
If a person desiring to live in this building does NOT already reside in this town s/he will be way down the list…….you may call it being on the ‘shit list.’ If you already reside in town you automatically jump ahead of the shit list people. First you have to complete a ridiculously long application form (24 pages) titled Application for Public Housing etc. including a Criminal Background Report Waiver which may or may not apply to Peter (he IS on probation as we speak) followed by a personal interview. At present this group of preferred applicants (ahead of the shit list) totals 18. So essentially, to reach the top of the list, 18 current renters have to die and vacate a rental unit.
Yes, I can see that wouldn’t be too hopeful, Q.
Here, people are assigned ‘points’. So I’m afraid a single man with no children would be way down the list, having few points. Someone with children would be at the top. That would tend to be women, but not always.
Then there are points for e.g. being in an abusive relationship, where the person needs to be out of their situation PDQ.
Maybe being ‘vulnerable’ in some other way would help.
But regardless of the availability of accommodation such as you describe, a person who was literally on the street would still have to be housed in temporary accommodation, such as a ‘bed and breakfast’ – type guesthouse or something similar.
These places are often not very salubrious. A district nurse friend once described it as ‘a very expensive way of making people sick’.
And a huge transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector.
I phrased that bad – priority would be families (men and/or women, plus children). Single women would be same as single men in terms of priority. But these days there is more dedicated single-person accommodation (one bedroom) as well, which would be useless to a family.
*badly* even…
The Wikipedia article ends with,
“Nevertheless, the state is still obliged to give permanent shelter for free to anybody who needs better living conditions or has no permanent registration, because the right to shelter is still included in the constitution. This may take many years, though.”
My question is what happens to all of those people who are waiting. Are they currently flooding the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Plenty of open living quarters around Pripyat all free for the taking.
Komaraden Finc!
I say Fie on the Russian Constitution! In America we have true equality, for it is illegal for the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges and highway overpasses.
. Anthropologists were saying how race was just a Western Construct
—. Anthropologists like Gould.
Race is just a construct for the Globalists. After all, nothing is real except the dollar, wealth accumulation, and power. People are just means to an end. So specific national identities and cultures are just so much quaint and sentimental BS in their estimation.
Disagree. People that smart know how dumb Blacks are and how smart the Chinese are, etc. For whatever reasons, they simply don’t identify with their own Race if White. But the Jewish ones probably do identify with being Jewish. And therein lies both a Tale and an ongoing Tragedy.
Some theorists say the Jewish Elite don’t identify with being Jewish but merely hide behind them. Could be. That might make it easier for the White Elite to ally with them and intermarry. But in any case, neither identify with Whites and have declared death for our Race and Western Civilization. I see the Western Elite as in two camps, one pro-Jewish and one indifferent to them as they are to us.
Ok, the pro-Jewish camp then are the Zionist Elites and so would the other camp be the Luciferians you have mentioned? Its difficult to see how these two factions don’t eventually end up fighting one another and I believe you may have alluded to that in the past too.
Yes. My brother disagrees with me. He thinks they are basically just one thing. He even thinks that Israel will be sacrificed at some point for their Global ambitions. I just can’t see the Jews doing that, Elite or no Elite. They’ll blast the world to hell before they allow that to happen. So there may be many Jews among the UN or Luciferian camp who don’t care, but there are clearly many high level Jews who do care for their People and Nation. We can only envy such devotion. Our Elite sold us into a gradual de facto slavery a long time ago.
Both camps know about race. And both are committed to confusing us unto our destruction about race. A race that doesn’t believe in race isn’t long for this world after all.
“He even thinks that Israel will be sacrificed at some point for their Global ambitions.”
Either way, when Jerusalem and Damascus are destroyed the dispensationalists will be walking around like zombies because a different set of prophecies which do not apply to the Israel that Jesus is gathering will have been fulfilled.
Or Jared Diamond’s, Race does not exist but Jews do. He just happens to be Jewish. As was Gould.
Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man” was an outright fraud. But it is still copiously cited despite it’s being exposed for what it is.
I found this>
I-70 and I-75 in Ohio are falling apart ..
Since they took out the trains the number of Big trucks is insane and very dangerous.
I-70 and I-75 in Ohio are falling apart .. – malth
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However, as I described in my bike memoir last summer, while traveling eastward through Ohio I encountered the two most spectacular Service Plazas I have ever seen.
And if the roadways themselves were as bad as you say I would have noticed and mentioned it. By comparison, the roads in my hometown are in such a state of disrepair that I am getting steamed up enough to write the mayor. The only thing that stops me is the realization he has no doubt heard it all before………a hundred times.
Where are you going this summer? Why not Kalifornia? Do a man of the street report about the state of homelessness in San Francisco much like BRH plans to do for Goat Island and Global Warming.
Goat Island report is coming soon, have to put weekend aside to drive down there, about 75 miles.
Meanwhile, Ive been reading all i can find on 17th and early 18th century Newport, RI, want sea level report to be as accurate as possible. I aim to please.
Brh
Aim to please, huh? Are there any places where a car can be driven over a cliff?
OK I was just teasing, please don’t do it on my account, I’d feel terrible.
Um…where/which is this Goat Island? The only reference I can find is to the one at Niagara Falls, which wouldn’t yield much information on climate/sea level changes either way…
Scrub that…found it.
I had never heard of Sir Roger Scruton before a few weeks ago. It seems he got ousted from something called a “quango” in the UK for saying something mildly feather-ruffling to some jews. A quango from the context seems to be a cushy government job. Anyway, here’s some snippets from the Irish Savant on the matter:
“Most people, at least on this side of the pond, will know that Sir Roger Scruton, ‘the foremost conservative philosopher of the last hundred years’ has been sacked from his Government quango following reports of a ‘racist and anti-Semitic rant’ in the left-wing New Statesman. The interval between the Twitter storm breaking and his termination (which he learned about on the news) took less than five hours. The subsequent forced publishing of the interview tape showed no evidence of racism or anti-Semitism, and still less was it a rant. The closest encounter with the Third Rail was his mentioning of ‘the Soros empire’ in Hungary.”
Then after that, Scruton bowed & scraped to His Masters to get back in their good graces. But naturally, no dice.
Savant notes that Thought Crime started as the criminalilzing of anti-Semitism as defined by the jews. Subsequently, the concept was capitalizing on by non-whites & Muslims. Scruton used to declaim against all that was wrong with the West but he never touched the Third Rail. So he’s no real hero.
More:
“But he carefully turns away from the real enemy. In fact he could have drawn a further clue from the most prominent figures who ensured his ousting; George Osborne, Tom Tugendhat and Lord Finkelstein. All Jews. The Board of Jewish Deputies admitted that ‘as soon as we saw Roger Scruton’s unacceptable comments we contacted the government to make our concerns heard. We are satisfied the right decision has been made to dismiss him.’”
“ A quango from the context seems to be a cushy government job.
While I do not wish to engage with your arguments, Tate, for the sake of the quality of information provided to the readership, I will point out that a QUANGO is a Quasi-Autonomous NON-GOVERNMENTAL Organisation.
But don’t let that stop you. I didn’t need to look it up, but nothing was stopping you from doing so. I find it a useful habit.
Connected at the hip to the government, no doubt.
Having checked out Sir Roger, whom I used to enjoy listening to regularly on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze before I resumed full-time work, it seems he was ‘unpaid chair of the British government’s new Building Better, Building Beautiful commission, established to promote better design of homes and living areas’.
So not technically a QUANGO if one is being literal. But in any case, er…unpaid so not a cushy job in any fashion.
So he might even be a JHK fan. He has a book called ‘Why Beauty Matters’.
As long as we’re are not discussing the Mother of all conspiracy theories – the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Blood Libel, I will shut the fuck up for a change on the topic.
” the Mother of all conspiracy theories – the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion…”
…those pesky Russian Secret Police….
a QUANGO is a Quasi-Autonomous NON-GOVERNMENTAL Organisation. – GA
===========
I had to look up individually the words Quasi and Autonomous to get even a minimal understanding of this Organisation. There is a long list of synonyms for Quasi, none too flattering, the kindest of which is “purportedly” wink wink. When taken together via a hyphen it becomes an adjective modifying Non-Governmental and calls into question just how NON-governmental it actually is. Would you agree with my description of this QUANGO term, Greenie?
The term itself is usually used pejoritatively, Q, with an accompanying sneer or eye roll, but it started off meaning exactly what it says.
‘Quasi’ to me just means ‘more or less’ or ‘partly’. They may be set up by the government to do something or other, and they may be partly funded by them too. But if Sir Roger isn’t being paid, and possibly others aren’t either, perhaps they don’t need as much funding as they might otherwise.
I don’t know enough about enough of them to know how they all work. Simple NGOs are a thing too. I haven’t been involved in any, not being part of the great and the good.
Pejoratively – fingers must have run away with themselves there.
Culture is upstream from Government and thus values determine which Laws or Statutes will be vigorously enforced or winked at, when, or perhaps better put, for Whom.
Keith Olbermann on American Identity protesters at “Dying of Whiteness” book reading:
Good of these “American Identity Movement” Nazi Morons to smile for the cameras so their pictures can be spread and they can all get their scumbag asses fired by the end of next week #AntiRacismIsNoLongerPolitical
Howard Dean: Can anyone identify them?
JS: In other words, the First Amendment is fine – you will just be destroyed if you speak out on certain topics. And of course the range of acceptable topics is narrowing all the time for Whites.
Awww, you poor picked on white weaklings. Why don’t you go to your local zoo and tell all your problems to the caged monkeys. They’ll provide you with all the sympathy you need.
In other words, you admit that the persecution is real. Thank you, Squaw.
I admit that sitting up there in your ivory tower you genuinely *feel* picked on.
Well soon it will be law that all White thought is a crime. Imagine if the Jews and Muslims team up temporarily to remove White America. Ilhan Omar said recently that the US is not a country for White people. I would love to go to Somalia and state publicly, “Somalia is not a country for Black Muslims”. I bet you would hear that on every news outlet for at least a month. She also supported the whole Anti-Semitism bill that was recently passed which resulted from her words and actions no less.
I had never heard of Sir Roger Scruton before a few weeks ago. – Tate
==========
I would hate to have gone through my youth with a last name like that. “Hey Roger, how’s your scrotum today, haha ha.”
It made me think more of ‘scrutiny’, Q. you need to get your mind out the gutter 🙂 . It’s not even his proper paternal name – as I just found out today from Wiki. I have one of his books, but it’s a bit heavy – haven’t got very far in to it.
!!!!
Alex Occasional Cortex called her garbage disposal in her new DC apartment “bougie” claiming she’d never run across one before. “Bougie” in current slang is short for “bourgeois,” which shows what a commie she is.
She’s not a commie, she’s a good student of Hillary Clinton, so, must be a Nazi (with the liberal cover).
I simply want to see her make it on $12K for a year. Then lets talk about “bougie”. Guaranteed she has NEVER lived like that before.
Wow…are YOU on $12K p.a. SSL?
Maybe in her old ‘hood the tenants just threw their garbage out the window.
her family is comfortable. she didnt grow up in Spanish Harlem.
It’s her Hot Sauce Moment.
AOC is a pure uncut diamond. Easy to see why see scares the shit out of right wingers.
They love to make fun, being so helpless to refute her intelligence.
Pure uncut turd is more like it.
Liar with a silver spoon and no common sense.
Bendover,
judging for the impression I’ve gotten from the overall collection of comments you’ve posted here over time I would out you close to the bottom 5% in intelligence of all those who appear on this forum.
Is there anyone here who volunteers to put themselves lower than this guy to boost his ranking?
I find your arguments to be banal stereotypical screed from the leftist brainwashed mindset along with anger management issues to boot.
Bentover
More evidence of your bottom ranking
I seldom if ever make arguments
mostly I’m just a bar room heckler and as always you
throw out some stupid comment with nothing to back it up.
Round up a few of those arguments you refer to and point out the similarities between them the so called stereotypical ones you claim exist.
I think you’ve used a few big words too hot for you to handle, signs of trying too hard to gain another percentage point or so.
Nope do your own homework miss smarty pants.
It’s obvious your a troll.
It’s your attempts to troll and the topics you used which sent you down the path to imbecilic rhetoric.
I freely admit I am a product of public education and flowery written word was never my aim.
This is a message board period end of story.
Read Jim’s work for the skilled writer!
We can agree I’m dumb as dirt but so are you so for me being 5% lowest IQ then you are at 4% so I feel great being smarter than you.
Hurray for me and boohoo for you.
EvilV sad to be you.
Bentover you have no clue how wrong you are. None whatsoever.
I know, the fact I show up here so often lately might suggest otherwise but I have a cruel streak and teasing helpless bigots who parade their stupidity is sometimes so irresistible I can’t help myself.
I’m still learning who should be properly targeted and finally realizing Janos is the ugliest personality on the forum. He nauseates and it worries me you might be so far gone you actually identify with his filthy ugliness.
He should be put down.
Put down you say?
How totalitarian of you what makes you the God of what is right or wrong?
I have never read anything from him about violence but I can’t say the same for you as of right now.
Sure I find some of his rhetoric distasteful and extremes in any direction are bad but I do defend his right to proclaim his whiteness to the world and much like Hitler I bet he has some Jewish ancestry.
After all as someone who had a full blooded Cherokee grandmother he would probably call me a mongoloid with my sandy blonde hair and blue eyes it might be tough for him to realize that!
“mostly I’m just a bar room heckler”
Evelyn,
Well said, One must recognize his own….
Regarding your loathing of Janos, however, I differ in that I see what he offers as parables and metaphor. He is not dangerous. Elrond H, on the other hand, would have us drawn and fed to our feral brethren, our bones ground to enrich the soil of his utopia.
Elysian: You are the only Man on this site besides me who can truly think to a conclusion, no matter how unpleasant or unpopular. Even the other race realists get sentimental at some point, about one thing or another – usually Capitalism, National Socialism, or UBI. For the first, against the latter two.
Even you weaken on Black IQ at times…..
What a total asshole you can be, benr.
…and your lack of simple, basic punctuation often renders your posts non-sensical. How important is a comma? You tell me if you can see the difference in meaning in these two sentences:
“Let’s eat, Grandpa”
and
Let’s eat Grandpa!”
That is the game is it not Majella!
I do that to annoy you or have you not figured it out and yes I actually answer to asshole.
Thanks for calling me my pet name how nice of you thanks sweety.
Ha! You continue to be incoherent, you undereducated Deplorable.
She’s a big jawed donkey dummy. She needs my seed to improve her brain.
This is just your genes talking. She’s an Indian, you’re kind of an Indian (blue eyed), etc.
An Aryan ‘Indian? A Moghul-descended one of pure whiteness?
You’re not part of this conversation and everything you assume is wrong. The Moghuls ( Turko/Mongol Muslim converts, hello!) weren’t Aryans and we’re not talking about those kind of Indians anyway. AOC is an American Indian by phenotype and probably most of her genotype. Evie Lynn claims to be one (like so many Whites who say race doesn’t matter) but no doubt she has brown hair, white skin, and blue eyes. Are you this kind of make believe Indian too?
Us Greens and indies like to make fun of her, too. And we don’t feel bad about it, becuase she is a grifter.
Hard to understand. Her parents lived in Westchester County and AOC herself lived in Boston. They don’t have garbage disposals yet in those places?
Brh
I never had one growing up. You’re in higher class than me.
You were deprived.
Like me I see, you get a little careless with your typing sometimes…
“You are depraved.”
…there, I fixed it for you.
Honestly garbage disposal are over rated.
Rather compost, less chance of clogging the drain line and I hate snaking the drains and or worse having to yank the traps.
Plumbing sucks almost as much as evilV.
If you’re going to have a garbage disposal have a powerful one.
Nothing should go in that can be composted. You are dead on right about that.
I like having one when I need it but none of my rental houses have them. Renters are bound to bring on the kind of grief you allude to, even though the ones who make it through our screening process are pretty high class responsible folks.
I’m guessing neither Bendover or Janos could score a rental from you, then…
You would lose that bet I pay more for rent a year than you make anti-majella.
Cocksucker – I was referring to your unsuitability, being so deplorable, to qualify for accommodation in a rental owned by the fearsome EvelynV.
And you pay RENT? Oh, too bad. I guess you’re no longer in your parents’ basement at least, but get a grip and buy a property.
https://www.amren.com/commentary/2019/05/aim-jonathan-metzl-and-the-illusion-of-oppression/
His book, “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is killing America’s Heartland”. He wants us to beg for our very lives. Give up our identity and maybe they’ll let us live as peasants. As Hood says above, Metzl doesn’t speak Truth to Power, but rather Power to Truth.
metzel?
Dr. Metzl is it? No wonder he wants us to beg for our lives. I looked into him just a little bit and he also has asserted that Schizophrenia was made to seem like a Black disease in the 60’s and 70’s. Of course Blacks are worthy of concern, care and deep empathy….
https://www.amren.com/news/2019/05/first-time-black-women-win-all-three-biggest-us-pageants/
What are the chances O ye statiticians? At 13% of the population? Who runs these things? O I know but cannot say. First Amendment means different things to different people depending on what is being said to whom and why. As Sam Francis called it, Anarcho-Tyranny.
But if you guess, chances are your chances of being right are awfully good – depending on who you are of course.
I go to Anglin for a lot of good laffs. But also some serious commentary, right to the tip of the Assegai.
For instance, why have so many so-called ‘alt-righters’ like Alex Jones & Milo Yiannapolis been banned from Twitter but others far more in disrepute, such as David Duke or Richard Spencer, have been allowed free range there?
What about it, Green Alba, you must ‘ave an opinion on the matter, innit?
Yes some Whites can give the Jews a run for their money in the cunning department but the problem is that most of them ally with the Jews.
Imagine a large island. Groups of Whites, Jews, Hispanics, South Asians, and Chinese are dropped on the island. While the Whites were futzing around, feeling each other out, getting to know each other, the other groups would be grabbing territory and resources and making alliances with other groups. The smartest Whites would be driven crazy by the delay and haplessness and go over to the Jewish side.
A man like Anglin or Duke could have risen to the top in many fields. We are lucky that they chose to stay with us. And yes, I read that and agree with his hypothesis. I usually do.
GA is most certainly not from East London, Tate.
Well, Janos, they have nothing to complain about now, right? Right?
And yet just think what would happen if we demanded White-only beauty contests? It just goes to prove that we can’t have anything. Literally stripped of all rights to exist. Unless we exist to support and uplift non-Whites.
Seems reasonable. Why else do pasty whites try so hard to darken their bodies in the sun? Who else keeps the tanning booths in operation?
You may have heard the expression “black is beautiful”. Give them the chance and it doesn’t just mean appearances.
How many people here have read the essay JHK has posted by Catherine Ingram?
http://www.catherineingram.com/facingextinction/
Why is so much beebling going on about so much frivolous stuff that is utterly pre-empted by the facts she presents?
If it’s so frivolous, then why don’t you lead by example and walk?
Do you mean instead of cycling or what? Ya ya, I know tires are made of petro-carbon and more petro-chemicals go into keeping the bottom bracket and chain lubed but let’s not get carried away here.
That’s one of the problems I guess. I’d put up with a lot of inconveniences if I knew everyone was having to endure the same thing but I’m not big on making the big sacrifices when all the rest of the pigs get to keep on pigging. Sadly I’m not that much of an idealist.
I used to insist there should be gas rationing. In the beginning everyone would get enough gas rationing coupons to be the equivalent of what they already use.
But there would be an effect that would kick in. The effect was demonstrated with monkeys. Monkey is taught a trick to provides a token – token goes into a machine which dispenses a treat – at first monkeys go huckling buck to acquire tokens and use them – soon however monkey prizes token more than treat and begins hoarding tokens.
The same thing would happen with gas rationing coupons I believe. People would find ways to preserve them (use less gas) by husbanding their gas.
You are a monkey, I am a monkey, we are all monkeys.
No, I meant leave, obviously. The voluminous retort was unnecessary.
Ah, should have said so in the first place. buh-by!
Next time stay gone.
The US borrows trillions of dollars that it cannot and will not ever repay. In fact, our government has no intention of repaying the National Debt, and that debt rose by tens of millions in the time it took you to read this. This has lead to other folks deciding that lending people huge amounts of money that they cannot, will not, and do not plan to ever pay back is wise. Colleges routinely charge between 50K and 100K for annual tuition, mostly covered by “student loans”. Law schools charge even more. So kids borrow, say, 150 thousand to get a worthless liberal arts degree from a scam college–and they’re nearly all scams these days–can’t find a job, and scam law schools send him brochures and e-mails dishonestly saying “Get a Law Degree from us and you’ll get a job starting at 150K”. Factually only the top ten percent of the class will even get an interview for such a job, or the top five percent at really bad law schools, but, so what. Facts don’t matter in our society anymore. So, after 7 years of education, and probably failing the bar exam at least once, the “student” is now deeply in debt–many owe a quarter million dollars or more–and can’t get a job that justifies any of it. But so what–the “student” never planned to pay the debt back anyway. Our government runs on borrowed money that will never be repaid, so now many of its citizens do the same. I don’t know when the dollar will crash, what “Black Swan Event” or events will precipitate it, or when the Hyperinflation will come–but it’s coming. The party can’t go on forever.
S&P 500 down 1.65% on the day. Look out below!
dilbert, you must be new here. Jim has been explaining exactly what you have summarized with less fun to read verbiage for, what, maybe 137 blog postings.
The only thing I can figure is you must have just flunked a bar exam.
If you read the Catherine Ingram article Jim posted it will confirm a heap’o things will never be paid back. The upside to it is that no one is going to complain about it.
I read it. I thought it was mostly the hysterical ululating of a wahman who hasn’t had a good rodger scrutoning since before Clinton let Monica lick his cigar.
Respectfully, I passed with ease the first time I took it, about 25 years ago. Had a job lined up immediately, albeit a low-paying job. Back in the mid 90’s there were plenty of jobs for law school grads. No, respectfully, I am not new here, and am re-phrasing much of what he says. He is absolutely right, higher ed has become a scam, and has much else. Here is what concerns me: 20 years ago the government was borrowing too much, students were borrowing too much, colleges and law schools were charging too much etc. 10 years ago things got really bad. Now, today, things are completely out of control. I wonder how much longer we have before hyperinflation and/or a Dollar Collapse. It happened in Venezuala, it can certainly happen here.
There’s one major difference between Venezuela & the USA – no one can impose economic sanctions on the USA.
That’s what did for Venezuela, just as it killed/is killing innocent bystanders in the following currently, sanctioned countries:
the Balkans, Belarus, Burma, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe.
No one?
Are you so sure of that?
I’m sad to see the trouble in Venezuela I spent a fun week there on a Unitas in the mid 90’s.
Saw a lot of the country and drank some polar!
Lots of little German villages dot the countryside with blue eyed blonde haired Spanish speaking people running around.
Janos would be in heaven until they opened their mouths and Spanish flowed out.
Not all of Venezuela’s troubles are from sanctions a good majority of them are from Jugo the hit man Chavez government mismanagement and the take over of private industry. Corruption and mismanagement by those in power and worse they have been syphoning off the wealth and destroying industry. Venezuela is suffering the same fate Argentina suffered and the wealth is being sucked out and spirited abroad at one time “riche comme un argentin” meant something now Argentinians just drink the matte tea and wonder what happened. How long before Venezuela Is broken up and absorbed by the surrounding countries?
Ain’t Socialism grand!
I read somewhere the gold was spirited out and to Russia a couple of weeks ago. Instead of let them eat cake they get to eat rats, dirt, twigs and grass. A humanitarian crisis by anyone’s measure and the current government should be shown the door.
Wow. Punctuation! Did you cut-and-paste that from someone else’s work? Such coherence is not your style.
And, yes – no-one can impose sanctions on the USA, certainly not effective sanctions.
Common theme of projection one person is a moron the next one is a failure never that evilyn is just wrong.
No never that.
Dilbert, maybe the party CAN go on forever, and national debt doesn’t matter. That’s what the Green New Deal is premised on, apparently, and some people are taking it seriously. Hedge fund honcho Ray Diallo, for one.
brh
Peak irrationality throughout the Western empire of banking & finance only needs one more financial conflagration to topple the whole shooting match from the EU architecture to the American architecture. No bank in the world will be left standing when the system corrects as correction territory will lead to WW3 and thermonuclear winter.
Following Keynes & the Chicago School of Economics was the worst possible mistake America ever made.
RW
America has always been a multi-racial country. Just ask the Chinese who helped build the intercontinental railroad in the 1800’s or the Blacks here since at least the 1700’s or the Indian natives (attenuated Mongoloids) here for 14,000 years. When you talk about white America, you are talking about white government, which ruled from 1620 to about 1965.
I’m not for the way things are now in this country, but be honest, you can’t exclude those that have been part of American history, for good or bad. Those of you white nationalists will eventually get what you desire if America splits up, anyway.
Wait until (if) the space aliens come, and then you’ll see what it means to be human. You think they’ll differentiate us by race, or will they consider all of us as one species?
We founded America and built it. The proto-Mongoloids were just living here. We took it from them. They didn’t like it, either.
The Blacks helped build America much in the same way donkeys and horses did. We could and should have done it without them.
As per Voldoya’s allusion, some of the “Indians” may have looked more White than Mongoloid. Why? Because they were so. The Elite don’t like that narrative at all and will destroy any and all evidence for it being true, as their behavior with Kennewick Man shows. Giving his body to the “Tribe” whom he didn’t look like and whom were’t there back then. <