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On Easter Sunday, fate put me on the Jersey Turnpike at 5:30 in the morning. I was motoring home from our nation’s capital where I traveled for the memorial service of a favorite aunt who passed away last month at ninety-five after a richly rewarding life. Her husband, my favorite uncle, enjoyed a long and colorful career in America’s Intel Community, and passed-on back in 2002. They recruited him at the founding of Spooks Inc in the late 1940s, since he came out of the army intel corps in Southeast Asia during World War Two.
In the 1950s, Uncle “B” and his family were posted to Africa, first Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. In the early 1960s, with colonialism crumbling, “B” operated all over Africa, making subtle arrangements in one new country after another for things to come out in America’s favor. For all his spookish doings, “B” was an artistically inclined soul. On one assignment to West Africa, he noticed the hotel staff were pilfering some of his belongings. He took some rocks up to his hotel and, cognizant that magic ruled in the region’s culture, painted eyes on the rocks and deployed them around the room. The pilfering stopped. “B” was famous for such insights about the world’s exotic peoples. (He also played piano capably, specializing in the tunes of Gershwin and Cole Porter.)
Periodically the family sojourned in New York. With each US presidential election, the IC brought some spooks back to the homeland as the new team reassessed the global game-board. One Thanksgiving around 1961 after JFK came in, we were all gathered in the family’s rented Greenwich Village townhouse when three mysterious African gentlemen, ostensibly “from the UN,” were admitted briefly to the proceedings for a confab with “B”. I learned later that they were a delegation from Angola, where a war of independence from Portugal was catching fire. The men were in New York seeking help from our side (that is, weapons).
After that year, Uncle and the family enjoyed long deluxe postings in Rome and Paris, where “B” followed a career, he would tell me, in “public relations.” My three younger cousins were privileged with colorful childhoods overseas. After Richard Nixon came in, “B” was permanently brought home and posted to Spook Central in Washington, where he completed his career. In retirement, he turned to painting full-time and often played piano for his fellow retired spooks and diplomats at their hangout, the Cosmos Club on Mass Avenue, Washington’s Embassy Row.
My cousins, all aging baby boomers now, all turned up, of course, at Auntie’s memorial service, a warmly graceful affair, well-attended by the network of friends she maintained so late in life, and my cousin’s children with their own children, and all the flowering trees in bloom, and lovely spoken remembrances of the great lady. The crowd was very largely of the Washington insider liberal Democrat persuasion, you understand, but there was close-to-zero political chitchat in the cocktail session that followed. Back during the 2020 election, all three cousins had sent me archly opprobrious emails objecting to my support of Mr. Trump against the charming and dynamic “Joe Biden.” They were super-pissed off that their writer-cousin had turned into a right-wing extremist. But all that was put aside, possibly even forgiven, this day of sweet memoriam.
That out of the way, my more pertinent point du jour is about the journey from where I live in upstate New York to Washington DC and back. I made the trip by car because the affordable airplane routes all involved absurd hours-long connecting layovers in far-flung cities at fantastic prices, and there were no seats left on the soviet-grade Amtrak train service at any times that worked. It’s been a while since I traveled the New York to Washington corridor on-the-ground in a car, and the experience was maximally horrifying.
The various Departments of Transportation of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland are working out there at heroic scale to upgrade their stretches of the interstate highways involved. The amount of concrete, steel, and asphalt getting laid down now boggles the mind, considering the essential bankruptcy at all levels of government. But more to the point, they are doing this at the very time when the age of mass-motoring is drawing to a close.
Government itself is now militating against it, with its poorly thought-out crusade against the internal combustion engine and its promotion of electric cars that Americans can’t afford to buy, while the electric grid can’t possibly support all that proposed battery-charging at the mass scale. (Let’s leave aside for now whatever nefarious influence the World Economic Forum exerts on all this.) In any case, the standard of living is crashing in Western Civ now. Incomes are down, or lost altogether, inflation is up, and with it the price of cars. The car industry has reached its limit for trick loan schemes that enable the tapped-out middle-class to regularly replace their vehicles. Not to put too fine a point on it, the system is fucked.
And yet, here we are, building ever more motoring infrastructure as if none of this is happening. The reason, naturally, is that immense bureaucracies like the DOTs have minds of their own. They are not responding to conditions as they are; they are carrying out plans that were made years ago when conditions and assumptions were different. Those plans have implacable momentum. You can see how all this is going to end badly.
Now, I planned my return trip with a layover night outside Philadelphia, so I could leave before the crack-of-dawn Easter Sunday, when few other cars would be on the road. That proved to be the case. But even nearly alone on the highway, and with pretty good navigational skills of my own, plus the help of GPS, I made several wrong turns. This was mostly because the signage contradicted the lady robot’s voice issuing instructions, as well as my own geographical heuristics, especially in the long stretch north up the whole length of New Jersey. There were a few times I felt I barely escaped getting killed making last-second turns. There were extended moments when I thought: I’m in Hell.
Anyway, I made it home alive and undamaged. I’d never want to do that trip again, and the way things are going, I may not have to. The Easter holiday was a strange hiatus in a year that promises fantastic turbulence in public affairs, including especially American politics and our wobbling economy. Financial markets and banks managed to levitate through the first weeks of springtime, but there is a bad odor of imminent failure in the air, at the same time that government’s war against its own citizens shows signs of hardening into the threat of digital currency, renewed efforts at censorship, persecution of political opponents, and a growing awareness of “vaccine” caused death. The natives are restless, the animals are stirring. Events creep toward criticality.
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I promised our host that I would not commandeer his blogsite anymore, but today this is necessary due to the fact that it was here and through James Howard Kunstler himself that my very close friend Susan and I were connected across space and time. My apologies James, but this tribute needs to be here and to be prominent because it is this place that created the bond that Susan and I shared and shall hold until she and I meet again in the next plane of existence.
Susan was an avid CFN fan and if memory serves me correctly, even purchased one of Jim’s paintings. She loved his work and liked my take on it as well and asked Jim to be put in touch with me if I was willing, which I certainly was. Whether we have been friends for 5 years 10, I cannot recall, but it has always felt like forever since we first emailed and then called one another after every new Monday and Friday blog posting and in between. Last year I finally made the 5-hour journey to meet her and Richard in person with my wife, who fell in love with her instantly. It was a great blessing thank you James.
Susan had been a combat nurse during the Vietnam War and experienced up close and personal the horrors of what we human beings do to one another in the maimed and disfigured soldiers whom she tended and mended. She forged an iron will and the fortitude of a dozen men and remained clear eyed, focused and brilliant throughout her 80 years on this earth. She held an officer’s commission in the U.S. Navy during the war and had a PhD in Neuropathic Medicine. When she turned 60 she decided and told her close friends, that she had 20 more years in this place, and was not going to hang around any longer after that.
So, it was not unexpected when I received an email last Thursday night from another friend of hers, which advised that Susan was going to enact her exit plan that night, because I had spoken with her on the phone the day before when she called me to say goodbye. What WAS unexpected, shocking, and disturbing was when I received a link to the article from a local news website later that morning, that revealed that a woman had crashed her VW Bug on an unpopulated wooded road perishing in the fiery wreck! I spent the next few hours in shock and emotional trauma, fearing that Susan had somehow perished in a police chase and a horrific ending rather than a peaceful sedated state. I was miserable and worse when I was able to confirm that it was my dear friend who had crashed.
Through the texts, emails, and phone calls that ensued, I was eventually informed by a friend who knew, that not only was it Susan’s plan to exit in that fashion, but that she had planned it so thoroughly that an undesired survival would not be possible. At this point, most of you are probably shocked and stunned that a human being could go through with such an ending, and that anyone could allow it to happen. If this is you, then you clearly haven’t a clue how a human being could patch up and heal the shattered, broken bodies that were sent back home from the Southeast Asia killing fields that instilled in her the ability to deal with absolutely anything, even her own death, and apparently even under the extreme circumstance that she chose. Susan was the most clear-thinking, intelligent human being I have ever known and her loss is mind-boggling, but the hole in my life that she left is being filled by the joy of having been able to spend so many years with her as my friend. She was healthy, of sound mind and spirt and unafraid of the next plane of existence which she chose to enter like the comet that she was. I have never experienced anything like her exit in my life, but through the pain of it all, what Susan left those of us who loved her so, was a gift that no words can ever accurately describe.
I am working with the police and the medical examiner and her step sister, who was gracious enough to allow our group of her closest friends to arrange for what is left to be done now and her final send off. I cannot continue to participate here in this blog for it was such a special place for Susan and I, but I shall always support our host for one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given in the joy I found in my friend and soul sister, Susan. Jim, thank you. The next time you see a shooting star blaze cross the evening sky, don’t forget to wave to Susan as she passes by.
Be Thou at Peace my dearest friend. God Bless you and keep you close.
You have many great memories of her, how lucky that the fates allowed your life to so entwine with Susan. May you carry these memories on until the end of your days. This was a touching story, thank you for sharing.
She lived- she died, end of story- my close friend took his motor home out to the middle of Nevada, set it on fire, shot himself, burnt to nothing- end of story
Btw Jim- if you fly out to Vegas- will pick you up in my beast F-350 pickup or the 94 jag convertible JSX- beautiful car- take you out to some of the most remote area of USA by Area 51- my refinery, oil field is the only thing out there for 167 miles- now retired- there is a 100 places to visit in a very remote area- Vegas sucks- I hate it- you have my e mail
Jim, how did you ever survive the traffic in DC? I drove up there once from Virginia Beach to Crystal City for a job interview. It was horrible. After the failed interview driving back on Friday evening in a rain storm it took me nearly 3 hours just to exit the DC area.
My first “drive to DC” wasn’t exactly a drive, it was a ride. It was my frist trip to DC and it was in the mid 70’s and just happened instead of being planned. I was with a small group of motorcyclists riding Hondas, mine was a CB350. We were too poor to afford hotels/motels so we were hauling camping equipment along with us strapped to sissy bars. Like we were the guys in Easy Rider or something. We started in the Great Smokies park and from there entered the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway and rode North. Immediately after finishing the Parkway is Skyline Drive which gives you yet more miles of spectacular riding with the road following mountaintops instead of valleys in Shenandoah National Park. After a 500 mile plus ride in semi wilderness and arriving at the end of Skyline Drive, one of us took note that weren’t that far from Washington DC. It would be a neat change of pace to check it out. The next day we rode to DC.
I’d never been to Washington DC, After days in the semi wilderness DC came across as utterly surreal. A giant 400+ ft tall Egyptian obelisk, buildings that look like Greek or Roman temples, the Lincoln Memorial etc. – it all had an unreal and museum/cartoon like appearance. It bore no resemblance to the past 500 miles of mountain/rural American I’d just traveled through.
Traffic was difficult and required total attention to riding. In the mountains we could putt along stoned at 40 mph and daydream and enjoy the scenery, the sparse traffic (totally unlike today), and the constantly changing weather, wind, and smells. Not so all at in DC traffic, we had to be totally alert and on guard. But we did ride around for some sight seeing. We got lost a number of times, checked out the Washington monument, even rode by the Pentagon and visited the Smithsonian for a few minutes. At the end of the day, the only part of DC that really seemed genuine American was the Smithsonian. I was glad to get out of the place with it’s parade of wierd monuments and buildings and back to the mountains for the trip back.
Go ahead, criticize my grammar and spellin’. The other surreal place we visited on the way back was Biltmore House and Gardens just off the Blue Ridge Parkway around Asheville. We’d been in the wilderness for some more days and stopped to take a break at a place that was just like a European palace, including the huge professionally sculpted gardens and lawns.
We had elites and royalty back in the 1800’s like the Vanderbilts who created Biltmore. In the US, we’ve always had the notion that we’d left Europe behind and created a new place with “freedom and justice for all”. The we didn’t allow monarchies. Then we go right around and build an imperial capital city in Greek/Roman/Egyptian building style. And our new industrial monarchs build summer palaces for themselves in the wilds of Appalachia. The more things change – the more they remain the same. The Jacobins just wanted to be the new royalty. .
Jim, loved your tale about “Uncle B'” During that era (has it really been 50 years?” I was in the Peace Corps posted in the mountains of Colombia. Our training was at a remote camp in the jungle of Puerto Rico. Apart from trying to seduce the handful of single female volunteers there wasn’t a lot of entertainment so we invented a game called ” Who is the Spook?” with a nice pot at the end for the winner. Nobody won. The Spook who didn’t show up at the plane to fly to Colombia was the nicest, brightest, and most competent person of the entire 100 volunteers in training.
Since there was a nice pot waiting for the winner, the game continued once we were in Colombia. Most CIA plants were so obvious that the players of the game refused to pay up when one was outed. Except for the country Peace Corps program director who managed 800 potential spy’s in his agency. Personal friend of the liberal candidate for President (of Colombia). So trustworthy that I never was sure he was a Spook even though I met with him monthly. Never did collect my prize!
Where did the CIA get these people back in the day? And why are they all extinct just when we need people with functioning brain cells to counterbalance the insanity that rules their agencies today?
Wow! Quite a tribute Walter. Thanks. Here’s an artifact you might remember.
Sung by Dale and Roy from the “long ago”.
“Happy trails to you, until we meet again”.
We will miss you, Walter, and your thoughtful and thought-provoking posts.
From the poem Steps by Hermann Hesse:
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
Condolences. I’m glad you shared that with us.
What an utter shock, William. I am very sorry for your loss. I hope you will change your mind about sharing your thoughts in the comments section here, as you are a very valued member of the CFN-ers.
My best to you, Susan and her loved ones on their loss, and I hope you can recover from the shock soon.
I mean “Walter,” obviously. Thanks, Jarek, for the correction.
That is sad, Walter, both Susan dying and you leaving.
Do we know her as a commenter?
No comments, just an avid reader here.
@Walter B, I’m so touched by your love for a dear friend. How lucky you were to know her! I hope you may change your mind and stop by from time to time. You will be sorely missed here. I’ve barely had a chance to know you, and it just won’t be the same here without your presence. I wish for you all that is good, true, and beautiful. God bless!
My condolences, Walter.
Touching post.
thank you for sharing walter ,,, i hope you will return soon.
Walt, I don’t post much – but I’ve always enjoyed what you’ve written, and quite often agreed. You will be missed, pard, God bless you and keep you. And prayers for your loss, it sucks and there’s no easy way to put it.
At the risk of coming off as callous, I’m going to admit that this paragraph had me believing this was a set-up for some dark satirical fiction:
“What WAS unexpected, shocking, and disturbing was when I received a link to the article from a local news website later that morning, that revealed that a woman had crashed her VW Bug on an unpopulated wooded road perishing in the fiery wreck! ”
Walter,
I am very sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing.
While I have been reading CFN for a very long time, I’ve never before commented; this is my first.
Like others below, I hope you will reconsider and continue to comment in the future. Yours are among a handful whose comments I always read — and to which I look forward each Monday and Friday. I read most all, but always yours. I have great respect for your views and opinions and value your perspectives as a former public servant. Your participation and comments are something of a continuation of your public service and I’m sure have influenced many a person’s thinking over the years. I know it has mine.
Again, my condolences.
Walter,
My condolences on the loss of your lovely friend and the friendship that bloomed between you. I wish she had gone beyond reading here and commented, too. She sounds as though her commentary would have been a special addition to this already richly endowed blog.
I have known two people who died by suicide. And my overriding feeling (eventually anyway) was acceptance. Yes, the circumstances here were indeed shocking, but that should not detract from your friend’s weighty decision, one that was made long ago and that she felt strongly enough about to enact.
We all make choices in life and since she did not hide this decision, my guess is she hoped it would be, if not understood then at least respected enough to be accepted by those who loved her.
I hope you choose to continue to hang around this blog. But if you choose otherwise, I will accept it.
The price of gas continues to increase, and yet driving in your personal automobile is still the most efficient and relaxing way to travel the country. I would take that over a flight or train trip any day. You can stop when you want, don’t have to deal with crazy people in your confined space, and can get off on the back roads to see some rural scenery.
Cowbell–
The scenery in central New Jersey comprises vast panoramas of chemical refineries, ancient first-gen suburban sprawl in a state of appalling decrepitation, and vistas of illegible commercial crapola… on and on and on. Not so satisfying. — JHK Admin
That’s the thing about the bus. Once you’ve dealt with it for awhile, you will pay the price to stay off it.
Amtrak, OMG. Never would I take a long trip on that thing.
I was talking about the book, You Can’t Go Home Again, the other day, and about how many things we are dealing with today have happened before.
One of the major differences was when two of the characters, IIRC, had to travel down south.
Nowadays, that’s a major undertaking, and an expensive one, and I was expecting that stuff to be part of the story; but no, they just went down to the train station, bought tickets, and were off.
We have regressed as we have progressed.
Sounds like the opening to The Sopranos.
Five years ago i quit the interstates for the country roads and have enjoyed the peaceful scenery, historic markers and many interesting towns. Every day learning something new and arriving unfatigued at the motel.
Happy Easter all!
Great for shorter trips, but long ones can be a real bear. Out here, every revenue hungry small town has a speed trap set up to shakedown passing motorists.
Dis-
There are several good radar detectors available in the $300-500 range that will pick up radar long before the fuzz can get a reading.
If it helps you avoid 2 or 3 tickets it has paid for itself.
Disaffected, I’m not intending to be snarky, but have you considered just obeying the speed limit? Speeding through small towns is really unpleasant and dangerous for the people who live there.
Speed traps use trickery to get you to exceed the limit.
What BofO said. The local area is notorious for sudden speed limit drops in the oddest of places. If they want you, they’ll get you.
The closest I’ve been to New Jersey was Baltimore, Maryland and let me tell you, that was close enough. I have no desire to enter that part of the Country ever again.
Ford Motor Company was set to lose 3 billion dollars on their new electric truck. 3 BILLION! They chalked up the loss to the truck being a start up and start ups always lose big money. I find it interesting that even the CEOs of these major companies are in on the game.
The majority of Americans can’t afford these electric vehicles. Period. They will all fail and end up in bankruptcy.
ICE vehicles are getting more expensive as well. 3 of my vehicles are now older than 10 years, one of them is 20 years old. I will not sell them but will continue to try and keep them running until the wheels literally fall off. I can’t afford anything new and used cars cost almost as much as a new one, trucks especially.
A massive correction is coming. Nobody can stop it now.
10 years old? that’s a new vehicle in my book an I’m in the rust belt.My stuff is at least 20 years old.
20? Pfft. Mine is over 50.
I’ll probably have a “Duh” moment for asking this, but what the hell is an ICE vehicle?
Internal Combustion Vehicle.
You are right in your assessment, Cankerpuss. The price of cars is just, as my Grandaddy used to put it, “Out of Sight!” Makes me glad I switched to buying Toyota’s in the late 1990’s. I wanted vehicles that were as close to indestructible as possible with proper maintenance. Toyota off-road vehicles fit that bill.
The first one I bought new was a 1998 Toyota 4Runner SR5. I loved that car. Drove it all over the United States and to many of our national parks. I put 285,000+ miles on it before my divorce 5 years ago. The ex-wife got it and as far as I know she’s still motoring around in it.
The second one was a 2006 Toyota 4Runner Sport 4×4 V6 that I custom ordered from Japan and waited 9 months to receive. I really love this car and am still driving it. It currently has 180,000 on the odometer and still purrs like a kitten. It does everything I want it to do without complaint and is virtually never in the shop for an unscheduled repair – only for regular maintenance 99% of the time.
Recently, I moved into a new place that is literally a 2-block walk from my office. So, the 4Runner now only gets driven about 1 or 2 times a week and that is only to go fetch groceries – a round trip of typically under 8 miles.
At this rate, I anticipate the 4Runner outlasting me, (I am 60 years old), and I’ll probably end up leaving it to me niece or nephew when I finally exit this old world of ours.
At present, I can see no reason to sell it and go into debt again for a newer model. I have not had a car note since 2010 and I do not miss having one. So I reckon this car will be my last, barring an unfortunate car wreck or me finding some other way to wear it out. But if circumstances ever compel me to buy another car, it will most likely be another Toyota 4Runner – but it would have to be a used one this time. I simply cannot possibly afford to pay what the new ones cost anymore.
At this point in my life I’ve essentially done what our host has done – moved to a backwater small town where I can get most of my day to day business done WALKING instead of DRIVING. This more traditional mode of living agrees with me both healthwise and financially. When I finally retire in a few more years I hope to relocate out West and keep doing the same thing, but in even more beautiful surroundings.
So no more new cards for me. I believe that you don’t have to have a lot of “stuff” to be happy – just enough of the right stuff and the good sense to appreciate the things you have instead of lamenting the things you do not have.
It also helps to be single so you may do as you please every day and enjoy life as you see fit.
Life is good.
Wiz, I’m right there with you. ’87 Toyota pickup, bought for $500 because of a blown headgasket years ago (simple but time consuming fix – helped youngest son learn motor work). Reliable as a stone, parked often because in town everything is walking distance. Plus, the 04 Excursion diesel sits due to $4+/gal. diesel.
When you do “retire out west in a few more years” look into the Bitterroot. We’ll save you a spot if you’d like. Just please send everyone else to the Dakotas…
And I can already see articles discussing increasingly restrictive exhaust emission standards that will be implemented over the next few years, which will over time make it more difficult for older ICE vehicles to pass inspections. Gas prices will likely continue to rise, and I can see insurance companies buckling to the pressure of the ESG movement to not insure non-EVs. Even those who try to hold out with their traditional vehicles will find themselves squeezed out eventually.
“ICE vehicles are getting more and more expensive as well”
Ever wonder how Musk became the richest man in the world? Margin! The build quality of the Tesla 3 series is somewhere between the old Soviet Trablatt and today’s Hyundai, while the price point is comparable to a Mercedes Benz.It is always easier to sell BS than actual product or performance. Electric motors are inherently far cheaper than combustion engines. The actual manufacture’s cost basis for a Tesla 3 should be well under $10,000 sans battery.
Battery— that is the key word. There isn’t enough lithium on the planet to supply just the number of EVs currently under order. And there is no superior technology around yet. The only thing that will save the electric car industry is total nuclear war to reduce the number of buyers down to a level below the resource-limited battery storage capacity.. But the politicos are working to remedy the problem—.
“Ever wonder how Musk became the richest man in the world? Margin!” ~ ThorsHammer
——
Taxpayer! (AKA, the tax-pimped)
If recalled, Tesla and/or/including its satellite outfits like SpaceX, is, or at least was, among the top, if not the top, US-government-subsidized corporations. Google too.
I live 7 miles from Joisy on the Pa. side of the river. I never venture over there even to visit the shore. It’s The Land Of The Lost.
I absolutely hating driving. I have taken many long trips on Amtrak and the scenery is unparalleled, especially on the California Zephyr.
You also get to see the complete devastation of America, when you come into cities and see crumbling factories and boarded-up warehouses that used to send goods by rail.
And you can actually see it from the train, unlike when you’re driving and supposedly keeping your eyes on the road.
You don’t have to worry about crazy drivers and car crashes, you can sleep and still keep moving forward, and you can walk around while still traveling.
You end up in the middle of whatever city you’re going to, without the 3 hour traffic that every city gives you as you enter by car.
(Except for Syracuse, where for some reason they moved the train station out into the sticks, as if you are driving a car.)
I quit Amtrak when they started requiring masks and I have taken a couple of long car trips since, and they totally sucked. We ended up being driven off the road in Houston and Wyoming, one by a small car and one by a truck. Luckily, both places had dirt on the side, instead of concrete blocks or drop-offs, or I would be dead now.
Cars suck. I have had both family members and dogs killed by them, I grew up choking on the smog and I couldn’t let my children roam freely because of the assholes driving like maniacs.
I wonder how on Earth Donald Trump thinks he can make America “great again”?
It seems he is so entrenched in his gilded cage and on his Trump jet and golf course that he has become deluded?
He would certainly have no hope of MAGA considering the woke cult he is fighting and also with his notion of giving the MIC a trillion a year to keep up their Deep State grift (along with the permanent corrupt Congress).
Not a happy time to be alive.
Godspeed to Susan.
Awwww so sorry.
One of the last times I flew, I flew into NY City and then we rented a car to go to New Jersey.
OMIGOD, what a horrible trip. It was stupid to fly to NY on a Friday afternoon in the first place, but then there was a fire in the tunnel, so the only way to NJ was the bridge, and the traffic backed up into total gridlock, so we sat without moving for a couple of hours, until a very crabby cop was assigned to try to get things moving again.
So then we crept along, stop and go, a few feet at a time, for a couple of more hours.
Spare me the bullshit about the glories of car travel. Jesus.
Makes me think of Bridgegate, where day after day people were deliberately trapped on that bridge for hours, even small children on school buses.
Paula,
Yes, we’ve all had those hellish experiences – typically in large urban areas – and on that I’m with you about cars being a pretty sucky way of getting around if you spend 99% of your time in the Big city.
However, under other circumstances driving can be perfectly lovely. It all depends on the car you are driving – the company you have with you – and where you are driving.
I have enjoyed many a pleasurable road trip to beautiful places in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah and would not trade those experiences for the world. Going by car allowed me to see and do things at my own pace and in my own way. I love that.
Ah, yes, road trips. I understand that some people like them. I don’t.
Like I said, on the train you can sleep and when you wake up you are 100 miles further. That doesn’t work when you’re driving.
Yeah, the car matters. I have spent many hours sitting by the side of the road in multiple places, most recently in Arkansas, where I learned what cotton looks like growing. It’s boring.
There was a newspaper obit some years ago that was apparently supposed to be a heart warming story of romance about a couple who had been married for 60 years, never were separated and died on the same day.
If you read the whole thing, you found out that they were 90+ years old and decided to go for a Sunday drive. Because, you know, why wouldn’t you go for a pointless joyride when it’s sunny outside.
They pulled in front of another car, which hit them, causing injuries which killed both of them later that day.
The woman passenger in the other car, in her 40s, so not married as long as the old farts, died instantly.
No way she and her husband will ever make it to 60 years of marriage.
But at least the old folks had one last road trip together. So romantic.
Pretty accurate description of central NJ. I was there once about 15 years ago, and I have never returned.
Yeah – I did the NJ Turnpike just ONCE – way back in 1988.
Never went back to re-live that “experience.”
I used to travel from northern Virginia to New York City to visit my mom before she passed. Sometimes by Amtrak, sometimes driving, including on the dreaded NJ Turnpike.
Each mode of transportation was worse than the other.
But I especially remember the unrestful “rest stops” on the Turnpike. Like a scene from Idiocracy. Patrons and services employees alike modeling 50 shades of slobbism. Fluent in dozens of languages, none of them English.
I have witnessed in real time the decline and fall of the U.S.’s once pretty successful effort at civilization.
Anyway, James, maybe it is some slight comfort to you that several of your readers here have shared your experience and feelings about it.
Obviously never driven through the rolling Salem county farmland in the south, or take-your-pick of the counties in the northwest. Hell, drive from Freehold south on 537 to 206. As central as it gets.
“ Cowbell–
The scenery in central New Jersey comprises vast panoramas of chemical refineries, ancient first-gen suburban sprawl in a state of appalling decrepitation, and vistas of illegible commercial crapola… on and on and on. Not so satisfying. — JHK Admin”
This never gets old LMAO
“ Cowbell–
The scenery in central New Jersey comprises vast panoramas of chemical refineries, ancient first-gen suburban sprawl in a state of appalling decrepitation, and vistas of illegible commercial crapola… on and on and on. Not so satisfying. — JHK Admin”
The mordancy never gets old LMAO
Ah, then you haven’t been to South Jersey. There is a reason it’s called The Garden State. Very rural and beautiful. Grew up there as a kid from 6 – 15. Tracts of the Pine Barrens woods to wander in, dirt roads, wild blueberries and strawberries, ponds, lakes, fishing, toads, turtles, frogs, snakes. We even had the Jesey Devil.
I remember my one and only drive into New Jersey. I took a wrong turn because the signage in the NYC area was misleading. I was trying to go to Long Island.
No place to turn around and no way to even see where you are going for miles and miles, because of all the noise fencing.
Anyone remember Bonfire of the Vanities?
Years ago—I think it was 2010—I tried to go the “easy” way through NJ. Over the Tappan Zee, then I had see a route that kept me off the NJ Turnpike.
Except, that did not seem to be possible. Landed in hell. Traffic not moving. No obvious off-ramps.
If the country had a brain, regardless of what any and all climate theories, we would be throwing $$$ into upgrading our rail system. In fact, it seems like a no-brainer. Where are all the “New Green Deal” lobbyists on this one?
Due to construction on a portion of a trip back home from a trip to NYC, and heavyl local traffic on the Major Deegan ( it was a Saturday night), I thought I’d drive part of the way on one of those “parkways” I’d heard about. I thought it would be relaxing.
The first traffic light I came to, I was the only one who stopped.
My senior year of high school, I drove from DC area – Herndon, VA to be precise, to New Jersey (forgot where) to give a hooker a ride home. She wasn’t my hooker but a friend’s dalliance. I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t privy to the negotiation but I think part of the price was a ride home. He flagged me down as I was about to turn on the road leading to the high school and asked me to drive because there was considerable doubt his car could make the round trip. We left Herndon when school started and made it back home for dinner, my parents none the wiser. Most of the trip was a blur because we were heavily, ah….inspired but I do remember doing 110 mph thru a tunnel. Oh yeah, I found later that his puppy crapped in the back of my Pontiac. That was 1977 and from our host’s description, probably impossible to replicate today.
Thanks for another excellent post, JHK! Stirred a memory in me.
I left Upstate NY at about 7 and more or less grew up in Herndon. You were ust about 20 years ahead of me.
Ha.
What high school, BTW?
@ Night Owl – That was Herndon High! Class of ’77 – the one that put the VW on the roof for graduation.
I too yearn for a return to the glorious train travel that our great-grandparents and grandparents knew.
Sadly, I do not see it happening until the air travel system completely collapses. We may be getting near that point and I actually think that this will be a GOOD thing for most of us.
The only time I have any desire to utilize an airline is if I have to travel more than 2,000 in a limited space of time – and of course for overseas flights. But those sorts of trips are exceedingly rare for me. Maybe once in a decade now.
Islander, this is how I initially knew that the “New Green Deal” was just another scam to divert money to those who already have too much. There are so many things they could have done, upgrading the rail system being among the most obvious, but they couldn’t be bothered to even try to appear legitimate.
At the very beginning of it, there was an “initiative” in the state where I live, where lots of free money was given to grifters to set up various supposedly transformative green businesses. Less than two years later, the money was gone and so were the “green” businesses. In a couple cases that I recall, employees turned up to find the place locked, recipients of the grants having fled in the wee hours. There was no accountability, no apologies, no prosecutions, no justice. Just a profound silence.
Tom Wolfe. He probably wouldn’t get published today. He’d get mau mau’d.
Thanks Mr. K for the Easter bulletin.
My own adds:
Fox News reports that polls report that 74% of Americans think the legal action against Trump in NYC is “political.”
At my family’s dinner table yesterday the conversation drifted in a direction (money) that prompted me to bring up CBDC. No one had heard of it.
I explained as succinctly as possible. The news, though, was that a bunch of intelligent people who collectively spend quite a lot of time online, also on social media, had never herad of this.
Otherwise, the spring light and daffodils were beautiful. It was opined that they had bloomed two weeks ahead of schedule, so “our climate is definitely changing.”
My retort: “So let’s kill all the right whales!” Owing to deafness of my companion, my comment didn’t land.
I heard that putting wind farms off the Atlantic Coast was the cause of all the whale deaths that keep washing ashore especially in New Jersey.
I had a real problem trying to figure out how wind farms could kill whales. Then I heard that sonar mapping of the sea bottom is going on in preparation for the wind farms. Eureka, I have found the cause.
I was a sonar ASW type in the Navy. We operated a powerful sonar system that submariners have told me were dish rattling and teeth chattering. The cause of the whales problems is destruction of their ears and balance organs.
It makes sense and again shows how the progressive move toward Green Earth policy is much more destructive than is being reported.
What the heck, we gotta get those EVs for everyone, right?
Wrong, the Elite will get their EVs, the rest of us will “ride the bus, Train, bicycle, or walk.
Among other things, it’s the pile driving. But also right whales forage deep in the ocean and use their eyes to locate food. So murky waters also hamper their foraging. Also, mothers and infants needs to be able to see each other to remain close by. That is just for starters.
Recently 70 or so right whales were spotted in Cape Cod Bay.
httpX://news.wgcu.org/2023-04-02/up-to-70-north-atlantic-right-whales-were-spotted-in-cape-cod-bay
They might be heading for the continental Shelf south of Nantucket. They have been spotted there in all months of hte year for the past few years.
Meanwhile, ocean views from Nantucket will be brought into alignment with the views enjoyed from the New Jersey Turnpike.
In the BOEM document linked below, images start on p. 114. Viewing instructions: Enlarge to 11 X 17 inches.
httpX://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/documents/renewable-energy/state-activities/Mayflower_DEIS_AppH_SLVIA_508.pdf
Any animal, if you disturb its habitat to much, is put at risk.
Not that they are animals, but that’s how we got so many Amish moving up to the area where I live. The Lancaster PA area got too built up and popular during one of the real estate bubbles. It isn’t just the price of farmland, it’s transportation. SUVs and traffic versus horses and buggies.
Not a good mix. A real clash of cultures.
The US military is a big cause of whale and dolphin deaths, but that is never publicized.
Also, the fishing ships in Alaska injure and kill a lot of whales up there, also never publicized.
Concern for marine wildlife is targeted for political reasons.
Chris Christie died from a wind farm?
It’s uncanny how you write about things that are important to me, Jim. Thank you. I’m in the Midwest. Rural Iowa to be precise. We moved here in 2017 from an overcrowded place with a mountain backdrop and zero values. We are happy here, in spite of the penchant of people to drive too damn fast, especially on ice It’s almost like they don’t believe the ice is real, and who can blame them what with everything else they’ve believed proving not to be real as well. Anyway, we have an unwritten rule in our house now. We don’t do the Interstate unless it’s dry. People are too mindfucked (your word) to understand that they’ll slide on wet roads. Survival of the fittest, as it were. Oh, one more thing. They have beautiful autopistas on Mexico. That one from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey is as nice as any road in los Estados Unidos. Apparently it doesn’t take money..just people willing to lay down some concrete. The signage is good, too. Even in Spanish. Just sayin’.
I have actually been watching some of that Servant of The People show, the one that got Zelensky elected.
So much of what people in the news media are musing about, wondering what is going on, is right there in the open.
They mention an issue about fixing the roads, but you can see from the scenes where they travel them, that they have modern highways in good repair compared to the US.
That’s something I thought about when I used to watch that Amazing Race TV show. I like the show because it was beautifully filmed, and it was right down at ground level, showing what you really see (and deal with) when you travel, as opposed to the typical travelog with staged shots of some cathedral or other.
One could not help but notice how alike the world is becoming as seen from the highways, and also how developed and modern parts of even Third World countries have become.
Beryl of Oyl,
Every time I see a new housing complex sprout out of the ground a song goes through my head. Another Pleasant Valley Sunday by the Monkees. Charcoal burning everywhere. Rows of houses that are all the same and no one seems to care.
bill7424, The housing developments that sprang up where we used to live were extremely expensive, filled with McMansions. They were hideous beyond my powers of description, eagerly grabbed up by people with lots of new money and absolutely no taste.
I used to visit a friend who lived in Levittown, where – given a choice – I’d have unhesitatingly preferred to live as opposed to the 6,000 sq foot plastic monstrosities with their idiotic “great rooms” and “lawyer foyers”. The modest bungalows with their small, well kept yards and mature trees had at least the advantage of not being huge piles of pretentious crap. We looked askance at them when they were built, but we had no idea how bad things could get.
Zelensky promised to get along with Russia etc. during his campaign and the second he was elected (78%?) he flipped to NATO NATO NATO and Nukes.
I listened to a podcast with Megyn Kelly and RFK, Jr. yesterday and he mentioned how all elected officials spew BS during campaigns then flip the opposite way as soon as they’re elected.
Donald Trump wanted to bury the Deep State. Instead he put Bolton and Pompeo in top spots then named the liar and criminal Fauci to head the Covid response. He could have named Dr. Scott Atlas or Dr. Harvey Reisch or any other number of top people. Instead he cowered in the corner behind Fauci and Birx like he was being held in a hostage situation.
Maybe he WAS being held hostage by the Deep State?
It wasn’t the second he was elected. He tried, but was slammed down and threatened.
I posted this before, but it’s worth reading again. It explains what happened after the election in 2019.
”There was a breaking point early into Zelensky’s presidency where he and his team was made aware of the position of both president and parliament in Ukraine in the overall pecking order. The chiefly ceremonial transition of power was still in progress, coupled with nearly a month of relative calm devoid of street action by right-wing radical organizations, as they too reassessed whether they still had state backing or would be held accountable for past misdeeds.
Suddenly, hostilities on the front-line with Donbas resumed, and with such ferocity that it spilled over onto the UN platform and threatened to bury the Minsk agreement there and then. Zelensky was basically called to the front with this provocation, which gave us the notorious exchange of him trying to dress down the military: “I’m 40-something years old and I’m the president — I’m not some shmuck.” The military told him to go fuck himself and that they would do what they want, that they do not answer to him. That much was obvious by infuriated statements made by his cadre on return to Kiev.
Back in Kiev, Zelensky and his party of clowns attempted to push back by quickly formulating a law proposal, restricting the use of weapons on the front-lines to only be used in response. Needless to say, this stirred such a hornet’s nest that the proposal was scuttled before the ink had time to dry; perhaps someone was even made to eat the paper.
That week it was made apparent to everyone that neither the president nor a parliamentary majority had any control over the military or security services. Protests by right-wing radicals erupted all over, with police supervision. Court-houses and government buildings were stormed, the president’s office was vandalized and the state appointed security detail responsible for “protecting” Zelensky abandoned their positions for the duration. The message was unequivocal — the nationalists are in control of all state organizations capable of projecting force and the political establishment is merely a figleaf on a military junta.
Following this cold shower, team Zelensky reorganized the party apparatus who hadn’t even had time to warm up their seats, they rubber-stamped the advisory positions of prominent neo-Nazi figureheads to positions within both political and security organizations — presumably, for the people actually in charge to have more immediate access to their respective areas of responsibility. The only aspect that wasn’t flipped like a pancake was the conciliatory rhetoric coming out of Zelensky — in this, he was braver than his spokespeople who put on their brown shirts almost immediately..”
Paula there were recently articles talking about how Zelensky was willing to make peace deals early on but the US and UK said no.
The Israeli former PM or whomever it was has since tried to walk it back, but other people are of that opinion as well, and we also have seen from the Biden administration actions that they want the fighting to continue on indefinitely.
We still don’t know who is really running things over there, just as we don’t know who is running things here.
As for Zelensky and his agency or lack thereof, he’s an actor, for crying out loud. He’s taking instructions from somebody.
I don’t know too much about Aaron Maté, this is from him:
https://twitter.com/PhilipIttner/status/1644591438808731648?s=20
Yes, Zelensky tried to sue for peace on the second night, I believe it was.
The US told him in no uncertain terms that he was not going to do that.
And then the negotiations in Minsk ended when the Ukie SBU killed their own negotiator.
The one in Turkey got farther, but was also shot down. The story we got was that Boris Johnson flew in to Kiev to stop Zelensky, but the Israeli ambassador Bennet said that it was obvious in Turkey that the US was sabotaging the talks.
The real Nazis fought Global Finance and the international order it sought to create. These ones work for it. Thus they aren’t National Socialists, though they might think they are.
Uniforms and labels confuse people. Certainly Paula.
The desire to be in NATO and the animosity toward Putin were both on full display in the TV show.
I think a lot of people in that part of the world, even ones who are Russian themselves, think of NATO as protection from the Russian bear, which happened in their lifetimes.
Donald Trump noticed the grift that was NATO when everyone in our government was pretending not to. That grift was a yuge reason that these former Iron curtain countries and so forth were starting to catch up and even surpass us on infrastructure.
If our own government couldn’t see it, why would European governments be expected to?
As for Trump and that task force, it seems to me that it was Mike Pompeo who was responsible for President Trump getting such wrongheaded ideas about the vaxx and all.
I live in the Rocky Mountains where snow is plentiful and often. I’m always amazed at the idiots and how they drive, especially the ones driving the big Dodge Ram Hemi pickup trucks. They fly by on a snow packed road not fully understanding that 4 wheel drive may help one get moving on the ice, but, 4 wheel drive ain’t worth a damn when it comes to stopping on an ice packed road or rounding a corner. Slow speeds and increased distance to the vehicle in front of you is the key. Been driving here for 35 years and never had a problem. Yet, one day, one of these bozos in the big truck or SUV who thinks they can tailgate me in a blizzard will eventually come through my rear windshield. People are just down right crazy and have no ability to consider the repercussions of their actions anymore. It’s overwhelming.
Have you driven in California lately? Their roads are shit.
California roads are horrible. Where I experienced the worst of it was in Silicon Valley. All that money, and they can’t fix their own neighborhood’s infrastructure. Not only are the roads (local and freeway) full of pot holes, some lethal, but there are old sagging powerlines everywhere. It’s the first thing one notices about San Francisco.
Overheard there, an older couple musing about how they just returned from Europe and how it makes Silicon Valley look like a 3d world country.
And so it goes…
So true. I no longer drive my old car on the freeways, but the local roads here in Frisco are awful. And they made them so much worse by having these stupid “slow streets” and closing off a major thru road that takes the traffic off the residential streets. They funneled it all a mile inland, and now THAT road is like a minefield.
Well, at least when we get “Fifteen Minute Cities” we won’t have far to drive!
Yes, greed removes money.
Yes it’s look at me look how fast I can go, but the real question is how fast can you stop, and those big heavy vehicles tend to keep going until they hit something.
It is hilarious being an ER nurse and having some bozo come in on a backboard because they crashed their car, and having them look up and say “I know how to drive on the ice”.
LOL, no, asshole, you don’t, and the fact that you are strapped down on a backboard actually proves it. You identifying as a good driver WHILE you’re fully immobilized is hilarious. It’s like a man with a 5 o’clock shadow telling me he’s a woman, or a president making a speech in which he announces that invading another country is just not done any more.
You really should write your memoirs of your time as a nurse. Your stories are great.
Great story. Pickup truck drivers, for some odd reason, seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to offensive driving and just plain stupid driving. I’ve lived in 6 states during my life and it doesn’t matter what the local culture is – the pickup truck drivers are usually the “madmen” on your local roads.
I blame Detroit for this. They started building pickups to look like diesel locomotives (and to be almost as big as one) about a decade or so ago and once that happened, every wannabee “Road Warrior” bully out there ran out an bought himself one so he could “squash” everyone else on the road with it.
Some of these dudes pull stunts in traffic that make one fantasize about filling their tailgates with lead projectiles in retaliation – but that wouldn’t be civilized, I reckon.
They buy the trucks because they are scared. Scared of other idiots like themselves. Pretty soon we have an escalating vehicular arms race with self-fulfilling prophecies of doom for small car drivers and bikers.
I have a pickup, just spent 40k on it because my old 86 GMC diesel burned up in an electric fire. I use it to, get this, PICK UP stuff, otherwise drive my 1200cc car. Because I’ve been listening to Jim for a long time now. If nothing else I saved enough on gas over the years to buy my new truck. Thanks Jim.
Oh, and who bitches the loudest when gas prices go up? The small penis truck drivers.
I have a pickup truck too, a 94 Ram, and I also only use it to pick up stuff. I
That means the battery is usually dead when I go to use it and I have to trickle charge and/or jump start it.
But if you have to haul stuff that won’t fit in your car, like bales of hay, you need a truck. Otherwise, yeah, use a car.
When I took Drivers Ed back in the late 60s we were taught to always maintain one car length away from the car in front of you for every 10mph you drive, What ever happen to that concept? Now days everyone drives bumper to bumper at breakneck speed and all the while having their faces stuck in their cell phones. Is it any wonder that pile ups happen in bad weather conditions?
Sooby slick, drive like dick.
I’ve been fortunate (??) enough to drive most of Europe and parts of Africa. Europe has fine roads, but if you are used to US standards (I have a background in Transportation Engineering) incredibly poor signage. In Nice, it was very easy to enter the highway on an off ramp! One time in Sicily, it took us over an hour to navigate around a midsize city due to new construction and no signage at all. I will say that the Italians were the most friendly to us stupid lost tourists, even coming out of their homes to show us the way. Driving in Rome was akin to learning a new dance.
The drivers are pretty good, all the lousy ones have been weeded out.
The northern European Auto Stradas are real joy, especially if you have a good size vehicle. We picked up a Saab 9-5 at the factory and drove it around for 3 weeks. Saw a lot of Europe, but it took a lot of planning.
Also spent a month in a small Fiat driving around northern Italy just before the virus hit. The truck traffic was incredibly heavy, even 3 lane Super Strada’s were jam packed although trucks are restricted to the 2 inner lanes. Most of that traffic was coming/going to Eastern Europe. Except for the Ferraris and Lamborghinis, most of the cars are manual drive w/turbo diesel engines.
Africa, Tanzania in particular, can be total nightmare, especially in the rainy season. The army sends in special machines, essentially monster trucks with huge balloon tires to supply some of the remote villages. Having a guide is a necessity if you want to survive.
Spent a beautiful Easter Sunday watching the 1948 Easter Parade starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Whatever happened to making movies like that anyway? Interestingly, the plot was based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion.
Check out the LA Easter Drag Parade.
Oh Yeah! Been thru the first Gay-Queer-Freak Halloween carnage in the Village, did not realize humans could be act so depraved.
Dogs or other animals I could kinda accept, but humans?
Driving a big rig around this country is becoming a tedious journey in self preservation. Everyone tailgates- even some truckers.
No none it seems, pays attention to any signage. Speed limits? Merely a suggestion that most don’t bother to take.
I’ve maintained that driving a semi, you can get a sense of the masses mental state. And I’ve concluded: People are F*CKED.
Lovely narrative this morning, Jim. I’m surprised you didn’t happen to run into the mysterious “Q.” and his trusty sidekick “P.” while navigating the urban jungles of New Jersey, both of whom are now reduced to “broken heroes on a last chance power drive” most days. Both are reputed to have been intelligence assets back in their heyday as well, so they might have fit in very well with that DC crowd.
Black Communist Angola afforded shelter to the Black Communists of Rhodesia. So White Rhodesian rangers and their Black retainers would enter into Angola and crush the Blacks and Cubans.
Alas, they were too well funded and he White Rhodesians too few. I assume devil’s deal described above went through – like so many others both here and abroad.
Read a book about the South African defense force fighting communism called Koevoet.
Decent read.
amazon.com/Koevoet-Experiencing-South-Africas-Deadly/dp/0957058705
Jarek,
I too am a fan of reading histories of the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970’s. I attribute this to being the descendant of 4 Confederate veterans which makes me a die-hard sucker for all Lost Causes.
One of my most recent reads was “Three Sips of Gin: Dominating the Battlespace with Rhodesia’s Elite Selous Scouts,” by Tim Bax. A truly great read. How so few, inflicted so much damage, with so little equipment and logistical support, on the communist bastards in Southern Africa is a testament to tenacity, grit, ingenuity and esprit-de-corps that defined the legendary Selous Scouts.
Great movies could be made of their exploits, but it will never happen because Hollywood is as communist as they come. Too bad…
Good points about auto ownership. Of late I’ve been reading about people taking out enormous long term car loans — 7 or 8 years — and invariably defaulting on those loans. Also, last week the EPA proposed new CAFE standards (miles per gallon required of new cars) which under existing technology is impossible to meet; the idea is to force manufacturers into producing EVs exclusively and consumers into buying only EVs. The problem is EVs, at an average price of nearly $70,000, are beyond the reach of most potential car buyers. Presumably people would be forced into public transportation, which apparently in cities like LA, San Fran, Chicago, Portland & San Fran, is dangerous, dirty & ram shackled, filled with vagrants, the mentally ill, drug addicts & the criminally insane ~ just the place where you’d send your wife & daughter for a trip to the local market.
I have friends who bought $60,000.00 trucks and when they refinanced their home mortgages they rolled the loan of their truck into the new mortgage. I told them that they are going to be paying for the truck for the next 30 years and will be paying for 20 years after the truck has been run down.
They stared back at me like I was a green bug. No concept of what I was telling them. None. In their mind the truck was paid for.
Thats because most of them don’t expect to be alive in 20 or they expect the price of the home to keep sky rocketing.
Or a few of them, a very few, could be betting on paying things off with inflated 1/10 dollars…
A cynic might say good riddance
It ain’t for nothing that the bankers are fabulously wealthy. The average schmo out there can barely manage fundamental math and has no real concept of how compounded interest works to keep him/her per and perpetually in debt.
BRH
Yes, good points all.
20th century America is stuck with its infrastructure and its way of Happy Motoring life. Commuting is apple pie America.
To “fix” the problem a redesign of the style of living is necessary, urban life redefined into more local situations where cars are not needed.
Two problems, the government is too busy and broke creating a nouveau poor in the country to pay attention to any form of urban redesign. Two, the cities are being eaten alive financially by their new residents moving in from the southern border and cannot execute any form of a plan to rehabilitate their infrastructures.
That is actually the cause of the downfall, the impoverishment of Joe Average as the Elite just looks on, and probably laughs. The cities, owning the majority of the population, and most of the poor, are screwed and will continue their descent into hell.
BTW, we had Marlin’s virus busting orange smoothies for Easter Brunch, still the hit of the party.
JohnAZ,
JHK writes about this in one of his books, The Geography of Nowhere I think it is
That’s another thing that President Trump was correctly pointing out as a candidate, the financial drain of people working here illegally and sending the money ‘home’.
People STILL want to describe this as xenohbia on his and our part.
That was always the excuse for the illegals. Heb called it an act of love-“they send the money home to their families!”
Don’t American men bring their paycheck home.
The more and more foreigners I see in the supermarket, the more people I see sending thick wads of cash somwhere through Western Union.
Where do people without expensive clothing and vehicles get thick wads of cash they don’t need?
That’s easy. The American worker subsidizes their food and their shelter, and in many cases even their elderly parents, so they have money to give away to their extended families.
Oh but it’s mean to say so.
Just as soon as the Biden Administration put out the call to rush the border, Western Union had a sign up at the customer service desk at the market announcing that they now send money to Haiti.
Want to know why Americans’ birth rate is falling? People have to pay for other people’s kids before their own.
They just announced the medical per year cost to the American tax payer over 100 billion a year for illegal aliens.
EV’s will be a major problem out here in the west, where commute distances are much longer. We have a train from Abq to Santa Fe, and regular bus routes from there to LA, but neither one is set up to handle nearly that much volume. And the wait times would be enormous. This is big diesel pickup culture out here and that will be a hard habit to break.
I’ve been to places around the world where the cities are much smaller than anything in the US and populations larger with better public transportation systems.Some where you only wait about 5 minutes to get a ride on a bus or Jeepny to anywhere you want to go for about 2 bucks.
EV’s don’t deal with temperature extremes well either to hot and the batteries don’t hold a charge and to cold they won’t charge at all.
20 bucks a gal for synth fuel kills most ICE demand.
People can spend more time getting to work than they do at work, when relying on public transportation.
So many employers only offer part time shifts. Also, as we’ve switched away from downtown to malls, and now to those collections of individual businesses, no matter how fast they add new bus lines they can’t keep up.
There just aren’t enough people going to the same place at the same time.
I used to commute to work by bus, I frequently took a special commuter bus. Less of the general population.
I remember one morning were were pulling up to a stop, and there were some men there who were oddly dressed at that hour. They didn’t look like the usual assortment of riders.
The bus driver started cursing, which was also unusual. I learned why when the men boarded the bus, and started showing a photograph around.
It was a picture of a man wanted for a local murder. They were police detectives.
That man did ride the buses, just not that particular run as a regular.
The first 10 years I lived here in Frisco, I had no car. I used to go downtown about twice a month on weekends, do shopping, go to the big Woolworths, the library. When I could afford it, I’d get a burger at Tad’s. That was a treat.
Then the city started changing. I haven’t been downtown in years. The area in front of City Hall that used to house a farmer’s market is covered in tents, junkies sprawled all over the place, crazies runnng around. I bought a car in ’96 and started driving over the county line to go to the outdoor mall in Daly City. It’s clean, no homeless, and actually closer than downtown. I can get there in 15 minutes, whereas it takes an hour to get downtown (aka: no-man’s land).
You live in San Francisco and call it Frisco? That used to be enough to start a fight.
Given the city’s current condition, maybe no one cares to defend its honor any more. I guess “Baghdad-by-the-Bay” now has entirely different connotations than formerly.
Everyone used to call it Frisco. My grandmother’s friend went through the earthquake as a baby and she called it Frisco.
Calling it San Francisco was a one-man crusade by Herb Caen, a man from Sacramento who moved to SF and adopted it as his town.
Puh-leezze, Paula, “The City”.
Never came across a pack of more stuck-up, entitled deadbeats. Phony baloneys – most of them escapees from Flyoverica.
True story, BB.
They also referred to themselves as “The City”. My, how the mighty have fallen.
I got to visit it before it fell into the muck. An extraordinary place well deserving of the devotion of its citizens. But of course everything comes down to human quality in the end. They refused to keep up their standards, preferring to coddle scum. That and the mild climate attracted ever more of the downtrodden and vicious.
But enough about that. If you are dealing with an individual, you focus on them. If on a group, the group. But society? You first focus on the reason why so many of these people exist.
Why did we offshore our industrial base to China?
Why did we make divorce easy and profitable for women?
Etc. Like that. The broadest reasons first. Then narrow in.
I think the upshot of the govts meddling in automobile markets & manufacturing is that the super wealthy & politically connected will still have POVs, for example ‘Car of the Year’ Lucid Air, at a cost of about $185,000 per unit. As for the Proles, they’ll be riding on stinking city buses ~ as I mentioned ~ with the crazies & fentanyl addicts. I dare say you’ll be at the bus stop in the pouring rain when the Climate Czar blows by in his shiny new Lucid, splashing mud on you and maybe giving you the finger for being in his way.
That’s in a scene from the Ukrainian TV show I mentioned. Except for the rain part. You see all the government officials speeding past the bus stop where the people who support them are waiting.
You would expect the elite in Ukraine to spend some of the $155 billion of the ‘Aid Package’ on fancy cars to get around, as well as mansions in Miami Beach. After all they’re doing the important work of fighting for the Free World.
Definitely not Miami Beach
Boynton or Delray
BRH,
Consider that the Government is on the cusp of allowing the use of 40 year mortgages for homes.
You can bet that quite a few other countries are not on board with the switch to EVs–nor with the CAFE standards. This might encourage many Americans–who are able–to move elsewhere.
Rural Americans can probably keep the old cars and trucks running for a long time. A return to horses and buggies is a possibility for some, though their employment would have to be either local or work-from-home.
The EPA CAFE standards are stupid on many levels–so stupid, it is deliberate, to prod people to buy EVs.
But it’s worse than that. The technologies being used to coax more mpg are not only more expensive to manufacture (and thus cost more to buy), but they are more likely to fail SOONER and COST MORE to fix.
Before the early 201X, few cars had (gasoline) direct fuel injection (aptly referred to as GDI, god-dam injection). In the mid 201Xs, it started to become widely used in new cars and trucks. In 2023, good luck finding a new vehicle without it. GDI has been found to lead to clogged intake valves. Cleaning them is not an easy job, not a home mechanice job, requires skills AND special tools, it’s about $700-1400, every 60 to 100k miles, usually.
More and more cars have turbos. Turbos enable smaller engines to have 50% more power. They also stress the engines more, break down oil faster, and generate more engine problems, as well as turbo problems.
GDI and Turbos are for race cars, or sports cars for enthusiasts, not for “average” vehicles.
Continuously variable transmissions on smaller cars. Many have, or “had”, a reputation for failing around 80k to 110k miles. Supposedly the new ones are “better”.
Stop/start. Your car battery won’t last as long. And neither will your starter. Your grocery trip used to require TWO starts. Now, every stop is a new start. How many stops? Five? Ten? 20? Multiply that by every trip. In one year, you’ve cycled the starter more than you did in 15 years on a normal car.
So, just as Americans are getting poorer, they can look forward to MORE and BIGGER auto repair bills.
Fellow CFNers, find those late model unrusted (southern/western car perhaps) Toyota Tacoma 4-cylinders, Camry without GDI, non-turbo Ford Fusions or Chevrolet Cruzes, and put them in your fleet now. Vehicles that are relatively good on gas and relatively “low tech” is what you want for the part of the Long Emergency that still has gasoline available (hopefully decent quality fuel).
A 1962-69 VW Beetle is the best Long Emergency mobile, or a 1960s Dodge Dart/Plymouth Valiant or Chevrolet six-cylinder, but most of those left have rust.
It was poignant when Brazil stopped building VW bugs, a few years back. As I recall Mexico also had a production line going several decades.
There was a car for the ages, economical, simple to work on (engine drops out in 30 minutes) and sufficient for most family needs.
No deal, Lucille: by the 1970s consumers had been brainwashed into yearning for “planned obsolescence”. Good luck on that one.
Fuel injection and “engine management” microcircuitry and software found in practically every car or motorcycle sold today are pretty much unique to a certain run of models. Once those get long in the tooth, good luck on finding replacement parts. All you will be able to do is scavenge from the junkyard – not a particularly smart move for delicate electronic circuitry.
Any mechanic will tell never to buy a car with a CVT transmission.
Call me a Luddite but I use hard paper maps while on the road.
I dont get lost !
Ha, me too! I still keep a trusty bound atlas in the back of my car, no electronics needed to access it, which is the truly “green” way to travel. I am amazed that my State still prints and distributes a free roadmap to whomever may want one. How many states still do that, or how soon before this free service is eliminated because everyone else uses their phone GPS?
I gotta have a map. I want the big picture.
Fewer and fewer states give out free road maps. I used to count on picking up a new road map at the visitor’s centers located on the interstates. On my last road trip out west, IIRC, only the State of Missouri’s Visitor Center had free road maps. Fortunately, I had purchased most of the road maps necessary for my trip before leaving, just not those maps for the “in between” states.
But hard copy maps are not some paranoid Luddite delusion. One can NOT count on electronic connectivity in many places out west. One really does NEED hard copy maps! I try to remind peeps of this when I hear about their travel plans, but……anymore, most people just choose to travel any significant distance by air.
I have several cartography credits at Univ. level. I had a Prof. tell me “if you are unsure about an area, make it look good because if it looks poor, the user wont trust any of the rest”.
Ha Ha
Last summer wave after wave of turons started showing up in the same wheat field in eastern Idaho, guided there by Google Maps. It never occurred to the MPA’s that those mountains on the distant horizon to the east were the Tetons in the park they were trying to visit along with the other ten thousand people from Kansas.
Finally the rancher got so pissed off he threatened to go Google hunting if they didn’t pull their maps down immediately.
The reason we don’t have paper maps anymore is the same reason we don’t have paper ballots for elections.
I map out all my trips on paper before I leave.
It sounds sexist but-
I have found that most of the people I have known are separated sexually by an ability to hold a map, specially, in their heads. Vocational tests for generations have shown boys and men have a better spatial perception than females. Not all, but for the most part.
So GPS will be around forever to help out our female friends while we still like mapping the route and keeping it in our heads, gentlemen
BTW, when we do get lost, we are the last to ask for help. Right, ladies?
“So GPS will be around forever to help out our female friends while we still like mapping the route and keeping it in our heads, gentlemen”
Your really ARE an old fart.
If only those “gentlemen” could admit it when they get totally lost.
So men and women are totally the same? That sounds familiar.
Or are you fine with women being better at things but not vice versa?
Your psyche is an archeological dig like Schliemann’s Troy. You never bothered to delete and/or update so the previous levels are still around and still wrong.
Old fart? As if old is automatically wrong and the new, right? I thought we were against that kind of dogma here.
I’m a homing pigeon, a few years back I drove from close to Chicago all the way to Ivars Clam Shack in Seattle, Wa. (good chowder!) w/o checking a map or GPS. My woman was astounded. (flatlander she is.)
I guess growing up in the Mountains of Mt. does that to you, know where you are or run the chance of missing a couple of meals.
Just follow the Sun as it goes down in the West. When we die, we take the “westbound” as the hobos say.
If the feather balance is in our favor, we’ll be happy with Osiris forever in the West.
Looking at a map IS visual perception.
I can see the writing on the wall. We get a strong enough electromagnetic pulse from the sun that knocks out some of the GPS and those of us on road trips who have no maps start to ask the locals for directions. Well, sorry but you can’t get there from here. Kind of like being lost somewhere in New Jersey.
What a crock of utter shit.
I have a great sense of direction, and am great with maps. I’m also blessed with an excellent visual memory. So I could find my way around new cities I moved to after a few weeks or months of using a Thomas Guide or a map.
Bogota Colombia is a city of three million plus people. Drop me anywhere in it and I can immediataely determine where I am and how to travel to any destination. Certain benefits to using logic in street signage. And even more to having an actual public transportation system.
Rexburg Idaho is a college town of about 25,000 people. The tech specialist at the Apple repair center was totally incapable of giving directions to his business from five blocks away, only able to describe how to open Apple Maps. And the street numbering would be clearer if it was translated directly from Chinese by somebody who only spoke Swahili. .
If Mary is good with maps, then women are good with maps. She IS women just like Fauci is the science.
They can’t even get the most basic concepts of percentage and mean.
There are certainly women with a good sense of direction and visual perception, but there are always individuals to whom an otherwise true generalization doesn’t apply. I believe it’s well established that men generally have better visual perception. It’s also been my personal experience, but I wouldn’t make a judgment based on that alone.
I’ve known quite a few men who were overall not particularly bright, but who could easily do something with which I have great difficulty: mentally turning an object around to determine whether it can go up a curving set of stairs, for instance.
“…great sense of direction…” reminds me of the first time I ever came to live in East Asia (Japan), in 1962.
Don’t bother asking directions by referring to point of the compass. Nobody has an idea where north is.
I found that surprising. You grow up in the barren Texas flatlands you better have a working sense of directions.
Asians, mostly living in compact countries (or circumscribe regions of big countries) refer to a destination by some landmark nearby. If you don’t happen to be familiar with that landmark (as a foreigner wouldn’t) then good luck.
I remember asking my dad for directions to somewhere in LA. I was used to “take that freeway to that freeway to that offramp”, but my dad told me “Get off going towards the ocean”.
The ocean? How the hell would I know where the ocean was when I’m on a freeway in downtown LA?
I guess some people know, though. My dad did.
West coast I am compass, and my wife is lost it flips when we visit the east coast.
I’m lost as hell in Virginia and nothing makes sense.
No left?
My grandparents had a cottage (‘country house’) on a lake. This was about 40+ years ago…
When I recently tried to find it on Google Street View, I could not find or recognize anything. Not even the convenience/candy store we used to walk to on those lazy summer days to get our fix or sweets and sometimes shoot a game of pool in the adjacent room.
But I guess that in those 40+ years, more houses were demolished and new ones built, and maybe even roadways reconfigured, than I could have imagined.
I used a Thomas Guide for years in CA. It was great.
Me, too.
I don’t have GPS.
I have road atlases.
Sometimes I print out a map from Google maps.
Whenever I am with someone who is using it, they end up staring down a stone wall that the GPS didn’t know was there.
Islander
How many times do you “memorize” your route and visualize it while you drive, rather than follow a map?
Also, for once, why can’t folks be proud of their strengths and laugh about their “weaknesses”. Nor recognizing either can land you in trouble. Accounting for weaknesses keeps you out of trouble.
In a marriage, one partner can utilize their strengths and the other benefit from them. And vice versa. Just part of success in relationships.
There is no defined line in the difference between men and women, but there are many vive La differences. Thank you Creator.
Not being able to read (or memorize) a map is a strength?
LOL, but the ladies here have proven your stereotype wrong.
Man up, JAZ.
JohnAZ,
Those of us who are married, just be blessed that you have a better half to take the wheel when things get confused. My ex got me home from Kill Devil Hill to Virginia Beach one weekend. If not for her I’d still be lost on a dark moonless night on Indian River Road which goes everywhere and nowhere.
@ JohnAZ:
This notion that women have more trouble with maps than men is like the long-held male beliefs about “women drivers.” The insurance actuaries have been begging to differ with you ever since women started to drive.
I’ve never known any women who had any problem at all getting from point A to point B–except for teenage girls when they first start driving. They get lost a lot.
Also, when your kids are teenagers, you learn that you should NEVER get directions from a teenager of either sex. One of the first things you learn about teenagers is that they don’t know where they live. You learn this when you volunteer to drive them home from the skating rink or agree to drive your kid to their house. I made many a teenager mad at me when they tried giving me directions to their house, and I replied, “I’m not going anywhere until I talk to your mom about how to get there.”
In any case, all my daughters have made frequent road trips halfway across the country and even all the way across the country–and they did this for years before there even was such a thing as GPS.
Of course, I’ve done one hell of a lot of long road trips, myself, over the years.
Anthea, one thing I have noticed, and it is changing, is that girls used to be worse at things than boys were, because they thought that girls could not do those things.
So what did you look at to memorize your route? A map, right?
You think women cannot memorize routes?
(But why bother if you have a map . . . )
Oh, too proud to look at a map!!!
This is what leads to the refusal to admit being lost.
Many women can’t read maps. And many men can’t admit that they are lost. Or if asked, that they don’t know. Some will give false directions!
Each sex has its own foibles, plus a large intersection of shared foibles.
Some people are very rude if you say you don’t know. Especially women I’m afraid.
@ Jarek:
Since you don’t know any women–or any men, either–I doubt if you know any women who can’t read maps.
So men and women are the same? Or are uncomfortable with the idea of men being better at some things, but completely comfortable with the idea of women being better at some things?
I had a friend (female) who had a terrible sense of direction, even getting lost in places she’d been before. She made up for her disability by learning who to ask for directions, and by getting really good at listening to and following verbal directions.
Sometimes she would meet another friend for dinner and various restaurants, and if the restaurant was in my city, I would make detailed picture maps for her, so she didn’t have to try to follow highway signs or any of that.
I would even draw the traffic lights and stop signs at the intersections that had them, and I would leave out all the irrelevant stuff you’d see on a real map.
So, I have successful map-making as one of my talents.
@ Jarek:
My guess is that you have neither a car nor a driver’s license, and are legally prohibited from having a license.
me too
I dig paper maps. and vinyl records,
Ditto. If a long trip on unfamiliar roads, I’ll research the trip/route online, but I’m a retired trucker and always have a road atlas with me.
I’ve always used maps. I have never been lost in the sense of not knowing where I was. There were a couple of times that I was not where I intended to go, but I did know where I was.
Jimbo…thanks for putting politics (mostly) aside and returning briefly to what you do best…critiquing good ol’ Amerika’s geography of nowhere in light of the long emergency we have put ourselves in. Seek solace in those backyard chickens…sounds like you could use some.
I have driven that DC to New York route many times over the years. The NYC to DC area is a megalopolis in all ways possible. City density throughout the route. Northern Delaware, the area around Philly and the approaches to Manhattan are just plain stupidly horrible. The roads are beat up, the signage is pathetic, where it exists. Like a lot of places, toll roads offer a respite to the freeways, but you end up paying a ton of cash into a system that feeds welfare recipients.
How not to build a highway network is the summary of the planners on the East Coast. Maybe because their routes were “surveyed” by the Native Americans hundreds of years ago.
You have to slalom the highways to avoid the mortar craters. I’ve never seen it this bad.
The crews are out with asphalt trying to patch concrete(?) which lasts about 3 hours.
Our way of life is akin to a Luge run just short of a world speed record. One ski catches a piece of gravel frozen in the track….lateral drift at 115 mph.
“Mind” the shrapnel.
Cold and hot patch repairs have very different reliabilities. Hot patch costs too much, hence the cold patch and it’s lousy lifetime is the primary method.
I noticed in the last couple of years, crack filler (which is slippery as hell when used in large amounts) being used to fill in holes, with some kind of aggregate added, presumably for traction.
badberries
I see why you’ve always so much trouble trying to ski. Having a luge sled on one foot and a ski on the other makes it rather difficult.
Haha, I have a friend who set a Luge speed record in Glacier National Park, so he was selected for the USA Olympics Luge Team, Innsbruck, Austria 1964.
They got caught smoking pot in the hotel and were booted from the games. It was a different world then eh?
ThorsHammer, My bad for calling the Luge runner a ski.
“One “Runner” catches a chunk of gravel frozen in the track”.
Sometimes drinking and typing are a dangerous combo.
Smokem while you got em. Nobody will be driving soon.
Planning this summer to take a driving trip from my home in the Midwest to Denver. With the way things are going, this might be the last time I can enjoy those waving plains of grain on the Nebraska and Kansas backroads. I plan to hit up many of the little towns along the way off the beaten path. This is the best way to see what remains of America.
The remnants of the WWII generation are in their 90’s at the youngest, while perhaps a few spouses are still in their 80’s. As we say our goodbyes to them one by one, the bleak remnants of our once great nation increasingly resemble the hellscapes in which they fought.
All efforts to renew this country, or even to forestall the decay, have been thwarted by a corrupt elite, a corrupted government, and a thoroughly propagandized voter base. I can see no viable way forward. The only guidepost seems to be the old Churchill quote, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Well, that quote got me through a 3am drive through Newark nearly forty years ago – red lights be damned, they were only a suggestion that late night! – and it will have serve at present. But I’d give my last cigarette for just one clear beacon out of the present predicament.
Three generations of Americans have fought to keep the world’s problems overseas.
Then the WEF and it’s cohorts in DC figured out how to bring all those world problems here.
Invasion!!!
In he last 60 they fought causing trouble overseas
Get up to speed
The problems we caused overseas are now coming here. Karma.
Chickens coming home to roost.
Indeed, Jarek. That’s why, as much as I deplore the invasion of the country by hordes of people who will never assimilate (and don’t wish to) I’m uncomfortably aware that so much of it is our fault. We could have minded our own business or, if not that, we could have dealt honestly and honorably with other countries. We didn’t, and this is the result. As always, the actions of the worst among us will be paid for by the rest of us.
Vlad – “…chickens coming home to roost…” was Malcolm X’s comment when heard about the JFK hit.
Made a lot of folks very angry at him.
@Dr. Coyote
“once great nation”?
Have you ever perused the Wikipedia page on wars of the United States?
It has never been a “great” nation, that I can see. It has been for the entirety of its existence, a genocidal aberration of nature, mostly void throughout its populace of compassion and empathy. Busted empathy genes – compliments of homo sapiens migrating into Europe.
…or was that phineas t. bluster?
~toktomi~
….and yet the mucho disgruntled Toktomi is still here….living in the genocidal” USA.
Hmmmm….
Am I the only one to notice the Woke now approve of men beating up women – as long as the men are wearing dresses?
You’ve come a long way Baby!
II have seen what the Dylan Mulvaneys are doing referred to as “womanface”. That’s what it is, they are appearing in womanface, and that should be just as unacceptable as painting yourself black.
It was some mentally ill woman, hired specifically for her mental illness, who came up with the idea to insult half the human race and also all the consumers of a popular product.
The corporation won’t care, because they own so many products globally that what is just one to them?
Karma. Women invaded men’s spaces, recreational, existential, and work, now disturbed men do the same to them.
This is not to justify it, but to explain it. Most women will still defend the enslavement of men, so they will continue to get the latter. Relatively innocent women, like Riley Gaines, will suffer the consequences as well.
One assumes that Riley is in favor of the divorce rape of men and men having to pay for babies that even theirs. But who knows, maybe she doesn’t!
@Jarek
Well, they’ve kept us all dumbed down for the entirety of modern civilization and so, this is what we get, crap flying out of what could have been a relatively sanely operated squawk box.
Detritus scattered everywhere like twin tower debris.
~toktomi~
Yes, tok, people suck. But they suck in a variety of ways, cultural, in regards to sex, racial, etc. The ways can be studied and made sense of, systematized to some extent. It is a great and holy science, one that I am devoted to.
@Jarek
Apparently my reference was too thinly veiled.
~toktomi~
Women have been in the workforce forever – and forced into it as well. What is the date you’re considering where women suddenly invaded all of men’s spaces? And please name these spaces.
Your premise sucks, because women always wanted our own locker rooms, committees, sports, bathrooms, shelters and that’s what men are invading.
Women as a whole never invaded men’s locker rooms, committees, sports, shelters or bathrooms, or wanted to.
You also leave out the part (conveniently) about men being biologically stronger and more violent than women. So us being in their spaces wouldn’t present the same level of threat that them being in ours does. Also, the women who wanted into men’s clubs, for example, weren’t acting out a fetish, as the men in dresses are. They wanted some of the same opportunities as men. Not to be “seen” as a man, so they could fap about it and leave jizz all over the toilet seats to take photos of and TikTok later.
In short: Nothing in your ignorant premise is legit or makes any sense whatsoever.
But I suppose puerile fantasies is all you can manage when the lens through which you see everything is the visceral hatred of women.
In other words, you want the persecution of men to continue but want us to care about women being persecuted.
I do care, but I have no illusions about women ever caring about us in the same way we care about them.
Men will take care of women. Women will not take care of men. Thus, men must rule for the benefit of society.
@ Jarek:
You refuse to work for a living, and do not even have a job, and you claim an intention to “take care of” women? In short, you have no intention of taking care of anyone or doing the least thing for anyone, yet you claim that “we” (men) care about women?
Men do not, generally speaking, take care of women. It is, by and large, the women who take care of the men, usually filling the roles of breadwinner, wife, mother, cook, housekeeper, chauffer–along with many other little chores such as shopping and making sure the car gets an oil change and the tires get rotated, and, in your case, the plants get watered.
Comparitively speaking, men do almost nothing for women.
Modern women don’t do much of all of that. They want traditional men but aren’t traditional women.
I admit you probably have done all of that – but you are an embittered, resentful, traditional woman – thus not traditional at all in a deeper sense. Your mentality is that which led to the revolt in the first place.
We’re a single species. You can’t hurt men without hurting women. When are you people going to realize this?
Modern women want a man who isn’t addicted to porn, and who isn’t vaxxed.
Your “in other words” have nothing whatsoever to do with what I said.
Strawman Jarek strikes again.
Ain’t that the truth, @Anthea?
Women do much more than 1/2 the work and shoulder most of the responsibility in most male/female relationships. But that doesn’t stop Jar – who knows nothing about them, having never experienced it himself – from opining, using bizarre stories he’s conjured up in his reality-compromised noggin.
@ Jarek:
Well, it’s pretty clear that someone is doing all the chores I listed. And it’s not the men.
@ Jarek:
One cannot claim to “care for” people to whom one does not meet ones obligations. Men in general do not meet their obligations towards women. Thus they often find that women have recourse to the courts to force them to do so.
The expectations that men fulfill their obligations to their children and to their wives does not spring from a desire to “hurt” men. On the contrary, to demand that men meet their obligations towards their families is to confer upon a status of honor and dignity, and to demand that they be a reckonable person–though, as it often turns out, against their will by…court order.
Seems men are quite determined to repudiate any claims to anything like their proper masculine state of behaving with honor, responsibility, and dignity, and instead seek to behave dishonorably and irresponsibly.
If men “cared for” women, they would meet their responsibilities towards them, as well as meeting their responsibilities towards their children.
Anthea and Mary eschew the idea of equality since they believe women are better. Yet they rage at me for not accepting the idea of equality!
Our benign dictatorship would provide an easy yoke for women since we love them. These harpies from hell hate men and seek to enslave us. Failing that, to destroy us.
No one rages at you, Jar.
That’s another figment of your fevered imagination.
@ MaryQueen:
Yeah, the claim that women have “invaded mens’ spaces” is, like much of the rest of what Jarek posts, pure fantasy. Didn’t happen. Now, if men carry business interests into “mens’ spaces,” they cease to be private spaces, from which women can be excluded.
The “divorce rape” thing, too, is largely a myth. I’ve personally never known it to happen in real life. I think it is a largely a myth perpetuated by predatory attorneys and partly a relatively rare phenomenon experienced by wealthy men who marry women half their age–in which case I think you could often make a case that they got their pennyworth for their penny (so to speak).
You didn’t divorce your husband and take him for as much as you could get?
So men’s clubs would be alright as long as its not about business? How would you know? Better to ban them all, right? But women’s clubs must remain sancrosanct.
Women are infinitely valuable, and getting access to her “no parking zone” is worth every penny he has and the lion’s share of what he will make in the future. Anthean Justice – an abortion of Western Culture. This is what chivalry had led to. Let’s make sure it never rises again. The Romans must be our guide. The Romans never let men be made fools of – not in any of their plays. The Greeks allowed it but they never did.
Jar, you haven’t addressed one thing I actually said, but went on a schizophrenic rant about things that only exist in your fevered imagination.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who notices this is just about the only way you know how to “respond” to people. In any case, it’s out there, dude.
@ Jarek:
Your statement that the men of ancient Rome never let men be made fools of is actually pretty risible. From what I’ve read of Roman history they did little else but make fools of themselves–and often in relation to women.
Anthea hardly knows one woman who divorced her husband. Right here, gents: They’ll lie like a rug to win an argument. Say anything. No integrity whatsoever.
@ Jarek:
Re the rare old man who gets taken to the cleaners by a woman half his age, I tend to agree that the divorce settlement may in some cases be excessive–though I have never known of such a case in real life. On the other hand, when a rich old guy seeks to marry a much younger woman, that…um…makes him a “john.” Sometimes johns get rolled.
And, in actuality, neither I nor any other divorced woman I have ever known has ever gotten anything out of their divorce but a very inadequate child-support order–nowhere near half of the cost of providing for a child.
Like I said, your ideas along these lines are pure fantasy.
“Women as a whole never invaded men’s locker rooms, committees, sports, shelters or bathrooms, or wanted to.”
– yeah, yeah “as a whole” is the weasel phrase. Today, men “as a whole” are not beating up women while wearing dresses or prancing around sporting erections in girl’s locker rooms. Not “as a whole”. But some are, and there’s the rub….
Peruse these sites and get back to me about that, “Isha”:
terfisaslur.com
reduxx.info
@ Ishabaka:
Well, I guess here it would be appropriate to pull an “Elon Musk” and ask you for a singe example of such invasions by women. I do seem to remember reading about women seeking to get into the Rotary Club or something, a few decades ago. I have never known of anything of that sort in real life.
I guess I should admit to having used the men’s restroom a couple of times, when there was a long line to the women’s restroom–or someone in there seemed to have taken up permanent residence. But the restrooms in such places were “one holers,” so I didn’t disturb anyone.
No women did not invade men;’s spaces. If a space belongs to a man, he can have her arrested for trespassing. What are you even talking about?
He’s insane. I think we’ve all figured that out at this point.
@ MaryQueen:
And I’ll bet he has papers to prove it.
Ha!
No doubt.
@ MaryQueen:
Hence my earlier comment that I suspect Jarek is not legally permitted to have a driver’s license. (Yes, you can be that bad off, mentally.)
You must be a millenial – too young to recall women sportscasters forcing their way into men’s locker rooms, and women forcing their way into men-only clubs. It was a whole thing, and was celebrated as a triumph over the patriarchy.
No, they remember. They’re lying to win an argument. That’s what they do.
“Now, if men carry business interests into “mens’ spaces,” they cease to be private spaces, from which women can be excluded.”
Let’s assume for a moment that I’m a man and a business owner who just doesn’t enjoy the company of women. So I never invite women, but every Friday night I have dinner with three male colleagues in my home. If we discuss business over dinner, does my home suddenly become a public space to which I must admit women? Just how far are we willing to go in order to discover and punish violations of our supposed human right to be included in everything?
I too remember women determinedly forcing their way into spaces where men enjoyed the company of other men. I thought it was intrusive at the time, and that no good would come of it. It engendered resentment that most men learned to hide, but which continued to fester just a bit below the surface. A little prodding and it could be clearly seen. I think it’s taken quite a while, but one of the things we’re seeing is the working out of that resentment.
I don’t believe it’s a human right to have access to every space one wants to occupy, especially when doing so inevitably denies other people the right of free association.
You need to be in high office. The best women are always against other women. Women should have the right to run for office – just not vote.
An original idea by yours truly. No doubt others have said the same, but I came up with it on my own. It’s strange, but I think it has merit.
Women sportscasters didn’t force their way in, silly.
The men in charge put them there.
Or are you seriously that naive?
Hilarious!
No, you’re not even close. Some of us have been commenting upon, fighting, and campaigning against this for 6+ years.
But welcome to the fold.
Lol, he can probably figure that out by looking at the uproar his question started.
Clearly this subject has been commented on before.
…..and you better not fail to refer to these woman-beaters with balls between their legs as anything other than “women.” Otherwise the Woke Police will be at your doorstep with torches and pitchforks.
Not too long ago I took a train from Berkeley to Reno and back. Very
nice with a light snow falling as we crossed the Sierra Nevada. I
haven’t been to the East Coast in decades and have no desire to do so.
– “The West is the best, baby! – Jim Morrison
A PROUD BLACK? MIXED? WOMAN,
A judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish.
I’m sure I’ll be very surprised when that proverbial “other shoe” finally drops, because I’ve heard so many prognostications about that finally happening by now that I reflexively take it with a big grain of salt.
If I had to choose a soundtrack for the current status quo in our country – I’d choose.
“Locomotive Breath” by Jethro Tull.
If I had to choose a film clip that sums up the mindset of the US government.
-Slim Pickens takes his last ride in Dr.Strangelove.
The soundtrack for the mindset of the US government should be
“Thick As A Brick”.
If you want to travel you can’t beat the DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteers. I’ve been all over the states and they are very good. Forest roads and such. Lost in the Rockies , use a compass and, very useful.
Re DeLorme, I agree.
Also, the Arrow street atlases used to be very good, very detailed for streets, but I have a feeling the company might have gone out of business.
…while the electric grid can’t possibly support all that proposed battery-charging at the mass scale.
Here is simple experiment that anyone can perform to verify the above statement. (It took me less than 10 minutes on google) ask 3 simple questions-
1) how much electricity does it take to run an electric car down the road for 1 mile
2) How much electricity is generated in the U.S. per year.
3) How many miles do Americans drive per year.
It’s a calculation that you can do on the back of a cocktail napkin. It’s clear to me now that there is a deliberate intent to limit the mobility of Americans, and force them into crowded mega cities. They’re not stupid, They’re just evil.
Well, they will just build all the nice windmills needed to supply the power don’cha know?
@Jigplate
Elegant analysis [ie simple & effective]…
Train wreck of a conclusion however, because the majority of the population is scheduled to be gone.
I could be wrong.
~toktomi~
Remember last summer when Newsome asked people not to charge their electric cars for certain hours during the day? Once again, California leads the way — to the cliff.
It should be clear to everyone. I guess they all think they will still have cars while the “others” will be waiting for the bus.
Delaware County, NY. Pink dirt, the smells of cow manure and ammonia, and nowhere to stop and ask directions, for miles.
CFN’rs,
Sooo, vast treasure spent to repair highways when the era of happy motoring will come to an end?
Consider that the government’s primary motivation for the building and maintaining of the Interstate Highway System was to move…troops from coast to coast.
Your taxes at work.
You have my sympathy.
Good luck using the “express lanes” once military action begins here at home.
@elysianfield
Military suppression will never be necessary, I would offer.
Interstates along with the rest of the industrial infrastructure [scaled down, of course] are for what comes next.
Look around. Ubiquitous voluntary compliance was achieved long ago. Just don’t spook the herd.
This ain’t the 1940’s.
But, oh dear, I may be dreaming.
~toktomi~
“Interstates along with the rest of the industrial infrastructure [scaled down, of course] are for what comes next.”
How are you seeing “what comes next”? And what would be the role of the interstates?
That’s what I want to know. What future is he picturing? Cause I can’t see it.
There’s not much point in even reading toktomi’s posts. Every time I read one, it turns out they’re gibberish.
The fact that he continues to sign off on each of every one of his posts pretty much sums it up.
I always figured Talk to Me was female.
‘But I could be wrong’.
GA: Oh, Talk To Me.
That makes sense.
I always read the handle as tok-TOH-mi.
Kind of Indian sounding. Ha ha.
I thought that too, islander, but, unless my memory fails me (and it is still holding up remarkably well, despite the best efforts of Astra Zeneca) our commenter mentioned ‘Talk to Me’ his/herself a considerable time ago.
@Islander
If you were among the ruling elite [the $Trillionaires] of this planet, what would you do?
Here’s what you’re looking at:
* global economy in inextricable decline due to energy supplies in inextricable decline
* human populations in overshoot [beyond carrying capacity]
* a biosphere where every major system is in decline
* completely committed to your own survival
* you have been aware of all this since the 1970’s
Anybody who cannot see what is coming, indeed what is now fully underway, does not want to see. “Panglossian Disorder” ~Kathy McMahon
For an overly optimistic picture of what is coming, simply read the World Made by Hand series.
All of this was fully covered in the early 2000’s across three Yahoo discussion groups. Check the Wayback Machine for some of the source material at dieoff.org.
Anthea, calculus to a 6-yo is gibberish, is it not?
cowbell81, your summation may be more of a summation of your own intellect. It has been in my experience many times a millennial comment. Funny people that prefer to characterize other people rather than explore the issues… wow.
~toktomi~
It’s not a legit argument to call others stupid, ‘toktomi.’
We also can see your name above your comments, so there is no need to sign them.
That still doesn’t explain why TPTB are still busily building and repairing the road, toktomi.
Why would a remaining small group of wealthy people need the USA covered with asphalt?
@MaryQueen
Now, who here used the word, “stupid”?
~toktomi~
@Paula
It’s not about covering US in asphalt.
It’s not about maintaining the entire transportation infrastructure.
It is about maintaining necessary portions of it.
~toktomi~
Repairing highways during the Long Emergency? Maybe even Interstates will someday be so filled with potholes and washouts that what little traffic exists in most places will go no faster than around 30 mph. Any more and you risk either a wreck or ruining tires and suspensions.
Roads today are built either of asphalt or concrete. In other words, you build roads using either petroleum or nat gas and limestone, take your pick. It takes huge amounts of nat gas to make concrete powder. Asphalt is what remains of petroleum at the refinery after everything else is distilled out. If we lose acess to imported petroleum there might not be enough domestic supply of oil left here to keep making asphalt highways. Everybody is talkin’ about cars and driving today. Loss of the automobile culture will be a horrific shock to most of America. But the suffering involved in it all will be entirely self inflicted. We did this to ourselves when we purchased suburbia and the car culture that supports it. Only a tiny few voices out there like our host have been questioning the wisdom of building US suburban culture. Yeah, seemed like a good idea once upon a time. But after it fails, who is to blame? The Russians did this to us! Or, China did this to us – they’ve been mean and hate our freedoms!
A dead dollar will make us so poor here that we won’t be able to purchase gasoline to run all of our autos. And we sure as heck won’t be affording EV’s. Then the only new vehicles available for the average person’s budget that can practically travel the potholed roads with insanely high fuel prices will be something like Honda’s fuel injected/computer controlled high tech 125cc Super Cub. It easily gets over 150 mpg. Great wailing and gnashing of teeth will occur when the average US human is pried out of his/her Prius and forced to travel in a new way on two wheels. Motorbikes don’t have ac or heaters, and riding in the rain is something ya gotta learn to do.
Going to work or going shopping in the Long Emergency will once again give people an opportunity to have a real adventure. A century and a half ago in this part of the country you’d put a horse in a wagon harness and your horse might pull you up to 20 miles or so on a dirt road before you made it to town. You might be a farmer bringing in a wagon load of apples and cured ham, and you leave town with a new farm implement on the wagon heading back to the mountains. Instead of whining and crying about being limited to two wheeled vehicles people should be thankful instead that there’s enough fuel left in the country to at least get to Krogers on a Super Cub that has baskets and saddlebags on it. Imagine having to saddle up a horse in order to go shopping. Or imagine walking to the grocery store and carrying it all home in a hiker’s backpack. Most people don’t want to imagine that. Instead they imagine happy motoring utopia to continue on for many generations.
@ Woodchuck:
Suburbia “happened” for one reason and one reason only: integration, particularly of the public school system. Up until about 1960, at least in Kansas City, Missouri, the white middle class lived in single-family homes in the city. One of my friends often reminisces about his Leave it to Beaver childhood in a middle-class-professional neighborhood, in a then-new two-story home with tidy front lawn and back yard (like every other house in the neighborhood), served by the finest schools. The house is still there, around 75th and Troost–pretty much the heart of the black ghetto, as it has been since the late 60s.
It was during the 60s that much of the white urban population moved to the suburbs. It was during the 70s that most of the businesses moved to the suburbs.
Much of the white population of Kansas City moved across the state line to brand new subdivisions in Johnson County, Kansas. The move to Kansas was preferred, as people believed that the urban schools would not be able to integrate with the white schools across a state line. But suburban “bedroom communities” also sprang up on the Missoui side of the state line.
Some people have even suggested that one of the main reasons that integration of both schools and housing was pushed was because the real estate developers stood to profit from it immensely.
Had it not been for integration, Kansas City’s white population would have simply expanded further and further out from the urban core. (Kansas City’s city limits embrace a very large land area.) Instead they FLED.
Integration? That’s a viewpoint I’ve not seen before, but it makes a lot of sense. I’m surprised Jarek hasn’t picked this up and run with it before now.
@ Woodchuck:
Things may have played out somewhat differently in different parts of the country, but integration (of both housing and schools) was the proximate cause of suburban development in the Kansas City area. I lived through that era as a young adult, much of it spent teaching in urban schools during the period in which they were being integrated.
I worked at temp jobs during the summer, where I heard the talk about how the Kansas City company would soon be relocating to a suburban office park in Johnson County, Kansas.
Once I asked, “Why?” The reply was that most of the company’s executives and “higher-ups” already lived there and didn’t like commuting to the city.
Most middle-class whites seem to have enjoyed urban life up until the civil rights era. They had their single-family homes and lawns, safe neighborhoods, and good schools. They had easy access to (segregated) shopping and other urban amenities. That era also predated the shopping mall. The first shopping mall in the KC area opened in the mid-60s. (I have been told it was the first in the nation, but I’m not sure that’s true.) When an urban white housewife went shopping “downtown,” she wore a hat and gloves, and often took the bus. (Parking downtown was always a PITA.) The elevator operator at Macy’s was black, but there were no other blacks to be seen.
Urban life was, by all the accounts that I’ve heard, very good, prior to integration. IMHO, even the blacks had a better life. Their neighborhoods were far safer, their schools were much better, they had far less crime and drugs, and little gunplay. They also had high employment rates and far more stable families. Another effect of segregation was that there was a flourishing black small-business community.
I’ve brought it up. Whites flee Black terror. Good on Anthea for bringing it up. Mr Kunstler seldom does – though he did at the end of his book “The Long Emergency”.
Blacks aren’t going to forgive us and they want revenge. I don’t know what could be more clear yet Whites refuse to get it.
I’ve thought of a good metaphor for driving through Kansas City’s North-of-the-River region. It’s a lot like driving through West Virginia.
Suburbia “happened” for one reason and one reason only: integration, particularly of the public school system.
True, white flight was an important component of suburbanization. But another should not be overlooked, to wit: population growth.
Ever-increasing numbers of people have to go somewhere for living space. There are two basic options — expanding into newly developed suburbs, or greater housing density, which often means being stacked up in high-rises in the center city.
In general, most people have voted with their feet and moved to suburbs. They want some space they can call their own instead of being jammed next to with neighbors above, below and beside them. Most humans, given a choice, will always choose that option even at the cost of suburban sprawl and sterility.
Despite my appreciation for James’s work, I have disagreed over the years with his apparent support for greater density of living arrangements. We need better-designed suburbs, and we most of all need to discourage population growth.
@ Vegan Shark:
Well, as I mentioned, Kansas City, Missouri, has a very large land area, and there was plenty of space within the city limits for an increasing population. There still is.
But, for the most part, the white population–which could have expanded into suburbs that were within the city limits–instead chose to remove themselves outside the city limits, and preferably outside the state.
Kansas City is unusual too in that State Line Road runs right through the city. You’re driving along, minding your own business, and find that you’ve crossed over into Kansas.
Kansas City also encompasses a HUGE land area north of the river. For many reasons, many of which are not clear to me, much of the urban white population fled north of the river–an area that is organized to be as unfriendly as possible to the black population. It’s hard to explain why, unless you’ve been there. But, as an example, I drove up north of the river a couple of weeks ago to visit a friend. To get there, I took 435 north through 10-15 miles of emptiness on both sides of the road. Just woods as far as the eye could see, except for several river crossings. You can drive for many miles up there and scarcely see any sign of human habitation–or a gas station. There is not much sign of anything but freeway until you take an exit, at which point you may find yourself in a suburban development–or you may find yourself in the middle of nowhere.
This vast region, which is still inside the KC city limits, extends all the way to the airport–conveniently located about two hours out of any part of the metro area where anyone lives who is likely to fly anywhere.
I have the impression that there is now some black population in the southernmost parts of “north of the river.” I think there’s some Section 8 housing there. But as you go further north, the bigger the houses get, and the more lavish the shopping. Yet the whole region is still very empty, except for these enclaves–which, frankly, neither I nor anyone else seems to know where they even are, unless you live there.
So there was much white flight to “north of the river.”
The story is that the reason the airport is located so far outside the city is because the bazillions acres of land north of the river is/was owned by people who are politically influential, and it was believed that this would make the land more valuable and encourage development.
Another factor that perhaps discouraged the urban black population from moving north of the river was that, at least in the earlier stages of the area’s development, it was a bit of an Italian mafia enclave. During the 1960s, the wealthier and more successful Italian families evaded the integration of their schools and neighborhoods by moving north of the river, mostly from KC’s Northeast neighborhood, which used to an Italian and Jewish immigrant neighborhood, but is now an Asian/Hispanic/Somali immigrant neighborhood. The un-wealthy Italians enrolled their kids in Catholic schools and locked their doors, until about 1990.
Back in 1955 I experienced a summer in a “better designed suburb” named Pasing. It was part of the network of Munich suburbs surrounding Munich that had been “built back better” starting right after the end of WWII. My grandparent’s former bombed mansion had 11 years later been built back into a four unit apartment building that looked very much like its former pre-war construction. But now the new incarnation was a far more practical and affordable building that was a source of rental income for it’s much less affluent owners. Most German city people in the decade after the war lived like Spartans and in small homes and little apartments. Most of them did NOT own an automobile. They used bicycles, motorbikes, and public transportation. It was a simple and practical life and great fun for children who played and rode bikes and scooters in the streets, But getting to that point of more sensible living in the 50’s in Germany involved rivers of blood being spilled and countless tons of bombs raining down on them out of the skies in the 40’s. The infrastructure of their former life had been blown up and forced a “build back better” thanks to the Marshall Plan.
So how will we do when we make this transition to a very plain and simple living arrangement not involving cars? After all the air raids the Germans sifted through all their mountains of building debris in the streets and reclaimed all the usable materials like bricks, lumber, steel, etc. My relatives and their friends spent weeks on end working all day long sorting out and stacking lumber after they’d first pulled out all the nails. Bent nails were hammered straight and reused. Both German men and women were doing work like this and working as hard as the could at it. They were tired of living like rats in basements and wanted a decent roof over their heads again, that’s all.
After US suburbia fails, there will be abandoned suburban homes everywhere littering the landscape. Without reliable automobile transport many homes in the US will become obsolete and abandoned. To build new homes in areas that are still liveable will require a *lot* of building materials. If we’re too broke to buy new construction materials then the old buildings must be scrapped. Are Americans up to the task of doing this themselves with everyone young and old and men and women working together removing windows, doors, cabinets, lumber etc. to build new tiny apartments or little sharecropper style shotgun shacks? Are we ready to change over to bicycles and buses like Germans did in the 50’s? I’m not so sure. Look at how spoiled we are.
Woodchuck – I’ve always been fond of the legions of Trümmerfrau, picking up bricks, brick by brick, and passing them along.
Women rebuilding the Vaterland. Very poignant.
@Anthea
I would guess that suburbia was about nothing more than ginning up economic activity and oh, boy, did it!
~toktomi~
@woodchuck
Assume for the moment that there is no “we” or “us” in the near-future picture.
That’s essentially nobody “going to work or going shopping”.
How does your story line go in that scenario?
~toktomi~
Riding horses ain’t so bad. At times, it can be supremely pleasurable.
Sure, they aren’t cars, but horses served mankind well as transportation for many thousands of years and they will continue to do so again long after all of the ICE and EV vehicles are rusting away in junkyards, so don’t talk trash about horses. You may need one yourself sooner than you expect.
I have ridden horses recreationally and used saddlebags to carry my stuff and it works just fine and dandy once you know the drill. It’s just a matter of adjusting to whatever becomes “the new normal.”
“Riding horses ain’t so bad.” ~ Wizard of the Saddle
——
Unless of course one has bad allergies to horses.
Uppity relatives who wear their disdain for Trump like a medal of honor or something.
I have long said that one of the reasons there are places in the world which hate us so much is that our diplomatic corps and probably our military at the highest levels is composed of stuck up snots who think they are worldly but every time they go somewhere it’s with the “right” people who have all been to the same places and all know the same people, so they don’t know anything because they are traveling in a pod.
Don’t try to tell them anything, because they think they already know it all.
Yes I once admired a hippy who talked of his world travels. Later I realized he had only ever gone to hippy hang outs in India and elsewhere. He had never really gone anywhere.
Being ruled by the spooks is like being ruled by feckless hippy fools.
The hippys are the worst, because people who are high are in their own heads no matter where they are.
As one who spent a number of years working as an intelligence officer I can vouch for that, Beryl.
If you want to meet a gaggle of jackasses who literally DEFINE the phrase “insufferable arrogance,” just drop in on any American Embassy on your next trip abroad and get a load of the who populate America’s Foreign Service.
….those who populate….
The Sky King also took his own life. They tried to entice him back, saying that he could become a pilot. Treating him like a fool in other words. He knew better and chose his fiery grave – an uninhabited island.
I recently had a similar though shorter experience traveling from rural Virginia up to Washington DC. The trip involved a 25-mile stint on Interstate-66 up to the Capital beltway.
Let me first say that I have driven this Interstate off and on since the early 1970s. I saw it grow from a beautiful road with two lanes in each direction (3 near the capital beltway) to an ugly, congested monstrosity with 4 lanes in each direction separated by a wall of jersey rail. In the last few years, travel on this stretch of highway has been snarled even further by constant construction, so that I found myself going zero to 10 miles per hour on long stretches of a road whose speed limit is anywhere from 55 to 70.
On this trip, I found the construction was complete! My initial delight turned to dismay when it registered on me what the result of all that construction was. Instead of 4 lanes in each direction, there are now five. But two of the lanes are “express lanes”. That is, lanes that you have to pay to use. And let me tell you, they ain’t cheap! There are regularly placed electronic signs telling you that it will cost about 50 cents per mile to get where you’re going. Oh, yes, and the pricing is “dynamic”, meaning, of course, that the express lanes cost more when you’d most like to use them.
This is not the end of the story. The final insult is that the number of non-express lanes had been REDUCED from 4 to three in each direction for the large part of this stretch of road, causing traffic congestion that made past experiences seem like an idyllic dream.
Now if you’re wealthy enough to pony up $125 per week — or more — to use the express lanes, you can literally fly along the road just like it was 1971. If you’re a working stiff, however, your commuting life has just been made even more miserable than it was before. I would have hardly thought this was possible had I not seen it with my own eyes.
Your tax dollars at work. Welcome to your new and improved class society.
My sister lives in San Jose. She voted with the majority to raise taxes to extend the trolley system.
Instead they used the money given to them for the trolley, and built a new toll highway.
She is pissed.
@ Helix — and a lot of the tollroads in Texas are owned by a company in Spain. The money collected goes to them, not in government coffers. The price of gas is going back up (but hasn’t been mentioned on the news of course) so maybe that’s to encourage the “electric car hesitant” to buy them. Expect a massive PR campaign on the joys and benefits of a plug-in.
A friend’s daughter quit her job when the office moved 10 miles further away. She was already spending an hour both ways in the car and to use a toll tag would have dropped her income to a level that didn’t make sense. When she told her boss their response was “too bad (peasant).”
When my son moved to Chicago, he borrowed my car to move. The crowded neighborhood he lived in required a parking permit, but the landlord wouldn’t give him a permit until his roommate showed up.
So he racked up 3 parking tickets pretty quickly, at $200 a pop.
I took Amtrak to Chicago, hauling his bicycle, took the bike on the L, (that was awkward), and took my car home, sitting in traffic out of Chicago, of course.
Anyway, I was like “Screw Chicago, I’m not paying. I’ll just never go back there again in that car”, which I wouldn’t have done anyway.
But it turns out that the Sec of State was in with Chicago and they threatened me with the loss of my registration if I didn’t pay up.
And the money they extorted went to a company in Spain! I don’t know if it’s the same one. What a racket.
Needless to say, principled or carefully chosen suicide is a Pagan rite, not a Christian one.
I’m not against it for that reason btw. A few years ago an Admiral and his wife checked out. They had lived at a high level and they faced a dark future of serious illness, disability, and isolation. It didn’t seem worth it to them. Christians see it differently since we don’t own our lives.
But what if you were about to be tortured by the women on the Afghan plains? Or arrested and going to be tortured so as to betray your comrades? Remember, everyone breaks, basically. They will reduce your humanity to nothing. You will probably tell them what they want to know, sooner or later.
So there is a hierarchy of motives. Some of them passable, some of them praiseworthy. Other motives are neither.
Dang! You’ve got nightmares about being tortured by Afghan women who will reduce your humanity to nothing? At least American women don’t torture us physically.
“Needless to say, principled or carefully chosen suicide is a Pagan rite, not a Christian one.” Well, could we call the voluntary final sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as a form of ritual suicide? Had Jesus desired could he have avoided the crucifixion incident?
Run away! Run away from the Afghani women who torture!
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Kipling
As usual, Mary’s historical context is nil. She actually though I was making this up, the dummy!
A soldier from the British empire is in Afghanistan doing what Kipling famously called “bearing the white man’s burden”. White men from the maritime empire that the sun never sets on – have a burden to spread Western civilization globally. It’s a situation similar to the burden some people feel that you become “born again”, “saved” or a communicant in the Catholic Church etc. They feel they’ve not done their job until the gospel is heard world wide and their friends and family are “saved”. Kipling’s white British man’s lifestyle is considered so superior that we must all follow along and we must have a “burden” to ensure others around us live the same lifestyles we do. Unfortunately people with this minset sometimes use military force to make people everywhere compliant with the empire’s rules and desires.
The Brits were using military force on the Afghans and got beat and the left it. Just like the Russians received a beating there and left town, and so has the US recently. It’s a joke that empires go to Afghanistan to die. Maybe that’s the real subliminal reason we were there. We’re tired of the old USA and want to see it go belly up, we just don’t care anymore. Let those Afghan women carve us up.
If they’d had girlfriends/wives at home they were super happy with, what were all these guys doing over in Afghanistan in the first place. Women at home weren’t good enough for ’em. So yeah, let’s see how the Afghan ladies like them!
They carried knives and pestles for grinding grain – the size of baseball bats. Castrate, open mouth, jam the genitals in and then pound to get them in deeper. If mouth couldn’t be opened, no problem: Just pound to open it up another way.
Well at least it was fairly quick I assume. One would bleed out or into unconsciousness from the castration. But certainly a bad few minutes.
That how much they liked the Englishmen.
@JHK
“what is really happening”
And would that be?
How about subtracting some 7E9 or so souls on board, retaining a scaled down version of industrial society for the ruling elite, all staffed of course with a mostly skeleton crew of essential help staff.
Ongoing infrastructure construction like certain interstate highways and a cloud of low-earth communication satellites.?. Just part of the necessary preparations for “what’s happening”.
Just a nobody here merely taking my place in line to the showers, having failed over these last 22+ years to construct an escape pod…
~toktomi~
PS Ya might want [at a minimum] to be very, very careful about the foods that you ingest.
Oh, and lose the deodorant; consistent, reliable, ubiquitous, and metered dosing. It’s brilliant, and has been happening since the 70’s.
Lose the deodorant….?
Boy, I bet you smell nice and ripe on a warm summer’s eve.
@cowbell
more personal comments?
🙂
~toktomi~
Not really necessary….even for a Liberal dolt. There are plenty of organic underarm deodorants out there that are devoid of aluminum, phthalates, parabens and other things that are bad for your health.
All you gotta do is shop around a bit. Schmidt’s is a very good brand.
There – problem solved. Now even the wild-eyed Uber-feminist Wokesters with hairy armpits can remain fragrant smelling.
You can thank me by not staying any riots or invasions of State Capitol buildings in Red States for the rest of 2023. Cheers!
Staging….not staying.
What fool uses deodorant?
Sweat mixed with synthetic perfumes is the real turnoff. Ugh.
Oh Islander!
Cave babes. I love it.
@ Islander:
I agree about deodorant. The scents are unpleasant, and when mixed with body odors, they are even moreso.
Us old folks have very little need for deodorant, since we seldom work up a sweat out in the heat, and it also seems like your body chemistry changes–perhaps you stop producing most pheromones. (There is a distinctive “old lady” or “old man” smell, but bathing should take care of that.)
What I’ve found works well as a deodorant–better than any “natural” deodorants I’ve tried–is a blend of several floral waters. Mix together equal parts rosewater, rose geranium water, lavender water, neroli water, helichrysum water, and ylang-ylang water and put it in a spray bottle.
You could probably use fewer floral waters, but this combination has a nice fresh scent.
You can order the floral waters, or hydrosols, from New Directions Aromatics. Top quality stuff.
I’ll stick with my scent-free roll-on, thanks, until there isn’t any. If it hasn’t killed me by 71, I think at this stage it’s something else that’s going to get me.
My city informed me in about 2000 that they were going to take part of my land to widen the road in front of my house.
I was furious. People drove too fast anyway, even though the road was narrow and there were potholes.
Then came 9-11. They told us that Saudis had done the deed.
OK, then, the bright, I thought, would be that they would no longer spend the time and money to widen the road, because surely the proper response to Saudis attacking us would be to reduce the amount of oil we used.
HA! How naïve I was.
And now the road regularly has people going over 70 mph., even though the speed limit is 45 and should be 30, according to the city manager I talked to when I first tried to get the project scrapped.
They never put up the 30 speed limit sign, the way he said they would. And like I said, they already drive far past the posted speed limit.
That was my first clue that they were lying about 9-11.
”the bright side” would be them dropping the plans.
“I was motoring home from our nation’s capital where I traveled for the memorial service of a favorite aunt who passed away last month at ninety-five after a richly rewarding life. Her husband, my favorite uncle, enjoyed a long and colorful career…”
Living a rewarding life and having length of years are blessings beyond measure. With our World being as toxic and angry and dysfunctional as it is today… one can only guess at how many people alive today will be denied both the chance to live a good life and also have a long one. We seem to have a self-hating Society in our World today… and that is not the recipe for long and healthy lives.
“The amount of concrete, steel, and asphalt getting laid down now boggles the mind, considering the essential bankruptcy at all levels of government. But more to point, they are doing this at the very time when the age of mass-motoring is drawing to close.”
‘You Will Go Nowhere And Be Happy!’ Thus sayeth the Dark State Social Manipulator faux-gods of our Age. And our response should be… ‘How about YOU going nowhere and leaving the rest of us the hell alone to move about as we please!’
“…I made several wrong turns… the long stretch north up the whole length of New Jersey… There were extended moments when I thought: I’m in Hell.”
Those are Words For Our Age: ‘Are We In Hell!?’ If external evidence counts for anything… it most surely looks like we are. We are ruled by numerous demons with no regard for human life or common decency who believe that there are too many humans upon ‘Their’ Earth and so ‘They’ have to do something about that. And ‘They’ have done just that… and continue to find new ways to achieve that end. Dark spirits who wake up every morning trying to think up schemes to do more harm and cause more pain.
Some people like to make jokes about New Jersey. Yet, do they know that the worst day in New Jersey is still better than the best day in Hell?
And New Jersey has a damned good hockey team, too. Try THAT in Hell.
New Jersey: the armpit of America.
Probably smells just like Toktomi on those warm summer days sans deodorant.
Wow, a second personal insult based on deodorant non-use.
I smell a fetish . . .
Napoleon wrote to his mistress that he would be home in a few days. She responded by saying, I have stopped bathing.
Islander said above the she does NOT use deodorant.
The way I heard the story,
It was Napoleon who uttered the deathless, deodorant-less demand . . .
So you are Napoleon?
The lady in question (who was requested not to bathe) was, according to the story, Josephine, not his mistress.
GA, Yes, I think it was Josephine.
Did Nappy even have a mistress?
No idea, islander. Most of them seemed to!
The then Prince Charles allegedly asked Diana why he should be the first Prince of Wales not to have a mistress!
Well, Nap seemed to be pretty hot for his wife, the empress Josephine!
But not for long . . .
httpX://villafinale.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/napoleon-josephine-and-maria-walewska-a-traingle-for-the-ages/
When I tried to access this site today, it appeared to be down. Uh, oh, I thought. I have been reading about their plans to censor all Wrong Thought and their biggest complaints seem to be Virus/Vaccine Skepticism, Election Denial and War Resistance, all of which JHK espouses, with wit and logic. Not to mention the skepticism on the trans agenda. Batting 1000.
A couple of weeks ago, Congress tried to slam through the RESTRICT Act, which criminalizes dissent and heresy to the Official Narratives.
Thank goodness Rand Paul stood up and stopped the fast tracking.
Last week, we are told, some guy on the internet, 4chan to be exact (one of their biggest targets), supposedly got into an argument on Ukraine and released Top Secret documents to prove his point, and then it went viral. You know, as 4chan arguments are wont to do.
This is not in any way believable. So what is the point?
I think that they are stirring up the plebes to be angry that our Sacred Texts That Are Not To Be Seen Except By The Elite were released to the general public.
“This puts lives in danger!” they tell us, as they always do, no matter how implausible and downright ridiculous the claim is.
I think this is a psy op to get public support for repression and totalitarianism.
They have already set up a bureaucracy to enforce it.
://public.substack.com/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship
There’s a guy in Missouri, I forget what office he holds, who is trying to stop mRNA in the food supply; and I heard he is even against lockdowns!
Can you imagine?
So there is Rand Paul and one other person concerned about this stuff.
I had trouble with my computer today too, for a while.
I had the same experience here, first I was redirected to a site I’d never heard of so I closed the browser and re-booted the comp. Tried going to CFN and same thing happened. so I logged off and tried to use the phone. I got noticed that my phone was hacked and they were tracking me. I shot everything off and by the time I got back from lunch everything was back to normal.
The site was down for awhile. It does seem to happen now and again. Hopefully it isn’t DoD attacks.
The stretch of highways between New York City and points south thru NJ and then down into the Baltimore/Washington DC beltway is one of the most intimidating, complicated and heavily trafficked roadways anywhere on planet Earth. It is indeed a horrible section of roadway.
I absolutely hate to get on any section of it and frankly, refuse to get on some sections of it, for example, the stretch around New York City.
My nextdoor neighbor (I Iive outside of Philadelphia) regularly drives to her parent’s home in upstate Vermont; up thru NJ and then thru New York City. I have no idea how she does it!
One of the—no, *the*—most terrifying driving nightmare was driving south on I-95 approaching I think it was the bridge over the Delaware River.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was directly ahead, totally blinding one. The roadway went up and down over a series of smallish rises. In the deeps was shadow, and one could see. Approaching the top, one could see NOTHING against the blinding sun except an outline of the car ahead. I wanted to get off the road but couldn’t see enough to try to change lanes or even read an exit sign.
Thenceforth on the two trips I made between Florida or Chrarlottesvile, Virginia, and Cape Cod I took I-81 to Scranton, then 84 east to Newburgh.
Also, drivers in Virginia and the DC area are noticeably more aggressive than in New England, in my experience. The Conn Turnpike is crowded, but relatively stately . . . Of course that was well over a decade ago.
Actually, you don’t go as far north as Scranton. You get off 81 after Harrisburg and drive east on 78, to link up to the I-95 north of NYC.
In case anyone is thinking of trying this!!
Think US drivers are bad? Try driving in Puerto Rico. Not bad enough for ya? Hit the road in one of the Gulf dictatorships, or anywhere in south Asia. Those dipsticks will tailgate at half the thickness of a bumper at 15 kmph or 150 kmph. Rainstorm, duststorm, mudstorm – doesn’t matter – they drive like there’s no tomorrow.
Must be a religious thing. The Buddhists are striving for reincarnation. The Muslims are eager to get to their 70 virgins. Just don’t take me along for the ride.
Ha! Try driving in Greece! I did in 2014. The fact that I lived to tell you about it now is proof of the concept “Survival of the Fittest!”
Speed limits? Divided lane markings? Rules of the road? All of that is only for the “malakas” as far as the true malakas in the other cars tear-assign down the roadways are concerned.
Otherwise I’d still be there enjoying an eternal dirt nap in the sacred soil of the land of my forefathers.
Hey….but at least the highways there are in better shape than ours in the US. The Greeks happily spent millions of borrowed Euros they will never be able to repay making sure that all the national highways got upgraded about 20 years ago.
Speed limits and highways in good shape?
As a mostly armchair motorcyclist nowadays, I’m limited to watching biker you tube videos. One of the best motorcycle video logs is “Itchy Boots” channel. She’s very good with both taking video and editing it on the road as she’s going along. She’s just completed a ride through Morocco and Mauritania, and the visually strange towns she travels through all have automobile traffic. But mixed in with car and truck traffic are pedestrians, bicyclists, motorbikes, wagons being pulled by animals etc. There are no stopsigns or traffic signals, no seeming organization to anything moving on the streets. It all seems to be moving at random or even self organizing, if such a thing is possible.
But there is an obvious reason as to how such a system works and how everyone behaves and drives slowly. The crowded city streets I’m seeing in her videos are full of potholes, some of them very large and deep. They are everywhere. The potholes probably have the same effect as if the entire city had speed bumps everywhere to make it impossible to drive fast.
In the Long Emergency we might have this very same system in place. No traffic cops, no stop signs or electric signals, no pedestrian crossings, wagons pulled by horses and horse poop on the streets. Broke city governments will have few resources to maintain roads and no resources to pay traffic cops and maintain traffic signal infrastructure etc. Broke people won’t be doing much if any driving in the first place, and when they do drive – they will be doing it slowly. They won’t be able to afford tearing up tires and suspensions – and they’ll be too poor to afford wasting fuel on going fast. You say you can’t drive 55? Maybe before long, and if Sammy Hagar lives long enough, he can write a new song called “I can’t drive 25” .
Driving in Vermont has its own unique issues.
You mean all the liberal hippies that inhabit the land flying the BLM flags and planting “Hate Has No Home Here” signs in front yards?
No I stay away from that part.
I’m referring to it suddenly snowing when it was not in the forecast and the hilly roads being to slippery to drive on and everyone pulling off to the side of the road as if this was an everyday occurrence and they know the drill, and then finding out that the sand truck we were waiting for isn’t coming because it slid off the road.
Or it getting so foggy the entire world is white and the only way I knew which way was up or down is because the blood wasn’t rushing to my head, and then through the whiteness a moose crossing sign suddenly appears and I’m think if a moose steps out that’s it.
I totally empathize with you on that trip, Jim.
I was driving back from Cape Cod yesterday and went through hours of backed up traffic at the Snagawhore bridge, which was down to 2 lanes, and then again in Boston due to a burning vehicle just before the tunnels (speaking of insanely expensive infrastructure). Of course, 90 cops and fireman showed up to douse the car fire, blocking almost the entire highway for a simple hosing. Combine that with the lunatic Massholes that you have to constantly avoid, it’s not a trip that I ever want to make again either.
Snagawhore Bridge? What is this? For sure, this cannot be the actual name.
Sagamore. Snagawhore is just my juvenile version of the name.
Isn’t that the name of Hunter’s estate?
Jack—I am getting nervous just reading you.
I have to drive up to Salem (north of Boston) to get some stuff. I will only make that trip on a Saturday or Sunday.
New Jersey Turnpike, in the wee, wee hours
I was rolling slowly ’cause of drizzling showers
Here come ol’ flat-top, he was moving up with me
Then come waving goodbye in a little old souped-up jitney
I put my foot in my tank and I began to roll
Moaning siren, was a state patrol
So I let out my wings and then I blew my horn
Bye-bye New Jersey, I’ve become airborne
“You Can’t Catch Me”
— Chuck Berry
The real King of Rock and Roll.
Priceless, Cactus! Thanks!
We are truly living through the Great Awakening. Is there any one at the top who is not some kind of freak?
Dali Lama feels up a kid and has him suck his tongue live on television.
https://twitter.com/UltraDane/status/1644826056938106880
Just another day in 2023.
Watch the full clip here:
https://twitter.com/Domperii/status/1645404344311848960
Looks like Twitter is already censoring the clip, cutting it off right before the hot tongue-sucking action …
Even Savile’s defenders over at the BBC are covering it.
“The Dalai Lama has apologised after footage showed him asking a boy if he wanted to suck the Tibetan spiritual leader’s tongue.
His office said he wanted to apologise to the child and his family for the hurt his words may have caused.'”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65229327?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=44257AD0-D775-11ED-A6FD-7CC54744363C&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_medium=social&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_format=link&at_link_origin=BBCWorld&at_link_type=web_link
Owl,
You got this all wrong. Jarek himself has prophesized that I am doomed to having my tongue torn out by Demons…perhaps the Dali Lama has also been so condemned, and wants to see how it will feel….
Plausible….
What kind of event is this part of?
Is it some kind of traditional ritual or just jollies?
The laughter from the unseen audience or bystanders or whatever is ambiguous.
Do they find this funny? Because they are used to this kind of “teasing”? or is it uncomfortable laughter?
Seems like a lot of the energy of Tibetan Buddhism is focused on young boys, both to find the next Dalai Lama and to induct them into monasteries. The latter makes a certain amount of sense in territory that can support only a small population.
The best tongue-sucker gets to be the new Dali Lama.
You know, if the Dali Lama was into women I bet there are a whole ton of things he could do with his tongue. 😉
Don’t know. There is a lot of homosexuality in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, apparently. A sign of degeneracy in all times and places.
I once watched a Stefan Molyneux video about the Dalai Lama, which was not very flattering. Also, if you’ve ever read any of the Dalai Lama’s writings, you may have noticed that they are unimpressive.
I did a search for Stefan Molyneux, to make sure I was spelling his name right, and here’s what Wikipedia has to say about him: “Stefan Basil Molyneux is an Irish-born Canadian far-right white nationalist and white supremacist podcaster, blogger, author, political commentator, and banned YouTuber who promotes conspiracy theories, scientific racism, men’s rights, and racist views.”
Oh for Pete’s sake. I watched a number of his videos, before he was deplatformed. With few exceptions, he was merely strikingly non-delusional.
The only useful thing I learned here is that Wikipedia editors have no understanding of how to punctuate a run-in list of woke-bingo buzzwords.
Here’s the headline and link to the most absolutely pointless news article I had the pleasure of reading this afternoon. I should have quit reading while I was ahead.
Martha Stewart hangs with ‘very cute couple’ Pete Davidson and Chase Sui Wonders on Easter weekend: Pete Davidson and girlfriend Chase Sui Wonders paid a visit to Martha Stewart at her home in upstate New York over the Easter weekend.
httpsXX://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/martha-stewart-hangs-with-very-cute-couple-pete-davidson-and-chase-sui-wonders-on-easter-weekend/ar-AA19GxuT
Some publicist paid for that.
Nice house though.
Why post that?
I just did over 5k miles through US & MX
As usual, you guys are overthinking this
The entire transportation system is based on fossil fuels; there is no substitute. Therefore, why worry, debate or otherwise waste your time considering useless noise? Peak oil determines the outcome, period.the.end.
Diversity is a weakness; people are flocking to MX because it’s a safe, non threatening mono culture. Again, no need to debate or otherwise waste your time engaging those who don’t get this fact of life
De-dollarization will settle the matter and prove who is correct when welfare fails and defense/govt contracts are drastically cut
It will all come out as everyone here suspects; you know it, I know it, it’s just such a slam dunk certainly that dallying about seems pretty ridiculous.
I generally agree with you, but I’m not sure how safe Mexico is. Read the news lately? I don’t know if it’s an exaggeration to keep US citizens from leaving the country. My wife’s hairdresser moved to Mexico last year. She comes back every few months to satisfy her old customers. She appears to love it there, so who knows.
“people are flocking to MX because it’s a safe, non threatening mono culture”
Excuse me? I love MX and even lived there for a while, but even back then (1990’s) it wasn’t safe or non threatening. And I know the culture, speak the language, and to a degree look like a local, especially in whiter areas like Jalisco.
I still have many friends over there. What they tell me, and what the news tell me, is that “safe” it is not, in large part.
Sure, one can always make himself part of a small community far away from the kidnappings and narcos, but that takes time and effort.
Woe on the foreigner caught there without a community safety net, a complete outsider in his gated community, when the shit hits the fan.
When you start thinking of the really dire dislocations we may be up against in this country, even Mexico looks appealing. (It’s not going to be safe here, either.)
I’ll bet Mexicans (and ex-pats) will still be driving around in ICE vehicles–perhaps buying cheap fossil fuels from Russia. When the dollar collapses–or is converted to CBDC–peso might look attractive.
The biggest problem is how to earn a living in another country. The other problem is that most of us have a whole battalion of relatives whom we can’t leave behind. We might even have a few friends we’d regret losing.
Mexico is going down the CBDC route too – it’s just at the ‘research’ stage, below ‘development’, ‘pilot’ and ‘launched’.
atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker/
There are a couple of countries on that map that say ‘cancelled’, and a few more that say ‘inactive’ (‘cancelled’ sounds better). You’re looking at Guatemala and Senegal. And a bit chunk of Africa where nothing appears to be happening. Maybe we’ll get digital slavery and they’re going to go back to the analogue kind. I’m pretty sure no-one has been left out of the plan, grosso modo.
*big* chunk of Africa
“…people are flocking to MX because it’s a safe, non threatening mono culture.”
Well, all the gringos exiling themselves to Mexico are not part of that monoculture. Rich strangers in a strange land, sticking out like sore thumbs.
Go to any country in the world and play “Spot the American”. Easiest game there is. We are the most obvious people in the world – especially when we try to hide.
We don’t want them coming to our country, why do we think is is a good idea for us to move to their country?
A word regarding one of last week’s topics;
Niel DeGrasse Tyson’
In an interview he was pilloried for stating that individual scientists, even with impressive credentials, and not as important as a scientific consensus…(paraphrased).
In the context of the conversation, he was essentially correct..
Except that he propped up the credentialed Covid Hoaxers while denying other credentialed scientists a platform.
He was essentially against science, which is never settled and requires debate and open exchanges of information.
He is a fraud of the highest order.
That’s exactly it; a manufactured/politicized narrative (made to look legit, but illegit, since proper peer review is blocked and/or directed)…
Over here in Canada, its former prime minister, Pierre Trudeau (the father of the current prime minister– the counterpart of an American president) is famous for saying to the effect that ‘the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation‘…
Ya no kidding…
But, today, people’s lives– including people’s sexuality, skin-color, and professions, like medical and scientific and so forth– are being increasingly micromanaged. This doesn’t bode well for much of anything, except a glorified prison/panopticon or human zoo: Totalitarianism. I suppose some anthropological historians and/or the like (i.e., Tainter or Turchin) might say that that can especially be what comes just before decline/collapse, perhaps in large part because they feel their power slipping away and so they try to compensate.
Yes, micromanagement of the population and just about everything else on earth is one of the central aims of technocracy.
Once one understands this, most of the climate, population, and other narratives pushed by the corporate class and today’s pseudo-liberals (used as fig leaves by the former group) begin to make sense.
Race will always be part of medicine. It’s far more than skin color. You get that, right?
Many here do not.
Sure… There are good reasons for things and then there are rationalizations for things, sometimes the same ones.
There are real effects/issues and then they are politicized/manufactured for ulterior motives.
There are normal kids and then there are those same kids whose self-perceptions have been indoctrinated/manufactured/politicized to think that they might require, say, sex-organ mods, etc..
There are people who have a range of genetic and other differences and then there are people whose genetic and other differences are manufactured/politicized for ulterior motives.
And then there are the aforementioned politicizations/manufactures that many people can deliberately or inadvertently become politicized/indoctrinated by to help carry these new political forms/messages/perceptions to help the politicization/manufacture and micromanagement of society along.
Yes, West African Blacks are the best sprinters in the world. Even Whites who have the long legs, lean muscular builds, etc still don’t have the evolved achille’s tendon or as much fast twitch muscle. They’re fast, but not as fast as the Blacks.
Similarly, the brain is an organ and Whites have a larger one, and one that has much convolutions.
From a different angle, some of the alleles for high intelligence have been isolated – and they simply aren’t found in Black Africa.
Time to grow up, Peter Pan. Wendy is waiting for you. It will be hard on Tink, but what must be must be.
We are all our own ecosystems.
So we’re not all going to fit into the political frameworks that some government/State indoctrinates hold for us.
“In the context of the conversation, he was essentially correct..”
No, he was not.
He made no sense what-so-ever.
Is this guy even a scientist?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Tyson’s “consensus” fixation has led to a dead-end. And lots of dead.
“Is this guy even a scientist?”
I would have to say, “No”.
Tyson may have a degree in astrophysics, but he apparently never learned what science is or even what the word means. He is not alone. Most “scientists” I’ve known, I do not consider scientists. They do not understand or apply the scientific method. They do not attempt to disprove their hypotheses, and their “proof” usually amounts to “everyone who matters agrees with me”.
Consensus is not science.
Science says, “Question everything”.
Tyson says, “Accept what we tell you.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a scientist, simply a gatekeeper.
That said, I consider the #MeToo charges against him to be absolute garbage. I’ll defend him when he is in the right, and damn him when he is in the wrong.
It doesn’t require #MeToo frosting to makeTyson into a second-rate butterscotch brownie.
That’s too sweet for me. A good brownie for me– one that’s sweet and fudgy– doesn’t need frosting or butterscotch.
…I should find a good recipe and bake some, now that I think about it. I have a bar of chocolate, butter, flour, some frozen egg whites from a custard I made, brown sugar and baking soda & powder. I think that’s all I need… Maybe I’d have to get some cocoa powder though.
😀
IMO the best brownie recipe is the one on the original Baker’s box for unsweetened baking chocolate. My mother used to win the blue ribbon with these at the fair. That box used to contain 8 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, individually wrapped. Now Baker’s sells a 4-ounce box, and each wrapped piece is 1/2 ounce.
Butterscotch brownies don’t have any chocolate in them. Brown sugar, butter, and nuts.
I’ll check if the recipe is on the box in Canada here, thanks Islander.
I’ve driven along I-95 from Boston to Florida many times. When I was younger it was a 2 day trip. Now I do it in 4 days. In my experience, driving north, from Washington to home, is almost always very, very difficult and frustrating. I try to avoid DC, but somehow or other I always get stuck in bad traffic. Approaching NYC is the worst. I try to avoid the city, but the signage is ridiculously awful, and I invariably end up somewhere in the City. I then have to find a way out. I usually stop off at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut for a few mights, but I keep getting on the Merritt Parkway, which is nice, but the traffic is horrendous and it takes forever to cross part of the state to get back to Rt. 95.
Flying is an option, but I won’t fly anymore for obvious reasons.
I like driving. My father was a truck driver, maybe that’s why.
I’ve also driven cross-country. Once I drove to California with 2 women (before I was married). Now that was a wild trip! I will not elaborate on the goings on.
As long as I have a radio or a book on tape, I’m ok no matter what. As I’ve stated before, we own a timeshare at Disney World. Think what you want about it, we need some warm weather in the winter and we are ensconced inside the park when we go. We don’t go on any attractions or rides, just walk along the Boardwalk (at the Beach Club Resort, our home base). It is very pleasant.
I just don’t know of any other way to get there. Now, if I win the lottery, I could charter a jet I suppose. But if I won one of a big lottery game, I’d charter a jet to Hawaii or Tahiti). So I guess I’m stuck going to Florida.
We’ve reserved time there in February. It depends on if my wife is ok enough to get there – and if the world hasn’t fallen apart by then, which it might. No matter what, it’s good to have something to look forward to now.
This “Reality” I hear JHK frequently mentioning is not visible to most. I stopped by church yesterday to listen again to the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and I like the story but it is obvious only to the faithful. There’s a story going around that post modernism allows us to generate our own realities. I pretend to see it and it pretends to conform to what I’m seeing.
I fell hard on my bike yesterday as I cruised through a little water trickling across the concrete bike path. That was a little dose of reality. I cannot convince anyone that CBDC’s are dangerous and foolish. “It’s just a modern form of money, Dad. Tell me again how gold is going to the moon…”
I read the Geography of Nowhere in the mid-90’s and gave a Rotary Club presentation showing our strip mall littered US highway by-pass contrasted to small towns in Germany. I wondered then if we had any desire for human scale livable places. I read now that we have reached a “town” size of 250 square miles of suburbia. When happy motoring goes down, the good news is that suburban lots might be bigger than most Chinese farms and support a garden, pig, chickens, and rabbits ……
Always look on the bright side of life, as they sing in “Life of Brian.”
😀
At the time Uncle “B” was posted in Africa, the population was under 400 million. It now surpasses a billion and a half. In the 50’s and 60’s, Africans grew yams, okra and other subsistence crops using little more than fire hardened sticks, supplementing their diet with goats, chickens, and abundant bushmeat.
The new African despots had big portfolios of mining and oil resources, timber, fisheries, rare skins and ivories, to sell to foreigners that’d develop them, making them and their cronies rich, arming them, and supplying food aid, mainly grains extensively grown in the still hummus-rich soils of the US, Canada, the Soviet Union, Argentina and Uruguay, supplemented by mass produced chemical fertilizers, employing ever more powerful machinery consuming lakes of cheap diesel oil and pesticides.
Cheap energy, the “green revolution” of hybrid crops and chemicals to industrially raise them, and campaigns to vaccinate populations and distribute mosquito netting, DDT and other advances started adding to the numbers, and despite the improvements, hunger remained a step ahead. Villagers had to forage deeper and deeper in the jungles and savannahs to find monkeys or gazelles for dinner. Life-giving biodiversity dwindled every year.
An international trade in wildlife byproducts such as fine skins offered much wealth in strong currencies, that local elites took ample advantage of. Over the decades, the numbers of iconic, once abundant higher mammals went from the millions to the hundreds of thousands to the thousands to the hundreds. Rich cretins like the King of Spain or Japanese billionaries can still pay fortunes to shoot lions from safety, in reserves heavily guarded to fight off poachers, but every year there are less animals to kill, less wilderness, less biodiversity.
Starting in the 70’s, mass consumption of plastic hit the third world. With little to no waste management facilities or indeed a civic culture of proper garbage disposal, plastic started to be dumped in waterways and oceans, choking them, killing wildlife, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles that enter organisms incl humans through feeding but never degrade or disappear. Vast pirate fishing fleets depleted the once rich fisheries around the continent. The Nigerian delta and other oil extraction operations created vast pollution, mass dying of animals and compromised health and environments. The problem of plastic gets more severe by the year, with new sources of pollution such as e-waste and toxic byproducts of cobalt and other rare elements mining adding to a situation that scientists and environmentalists observe in horror, unable to correct as the momentum increases.
All along the time uncle “B” was spooking for the free world, energy was cheap and abundant. The third world could count on affordable grains and other imported foodstuffs to support booming populations. True, the rich fields of Canada and the Midwest were now devoid of the rich, black soil that had taken eras to accumulate, and had become merely sponges to absorb an ever increasing amount of chemicals in order to raise energy hungry, nutrient compromised GMO crops – but the slack was, once again, taken by cheap, abundant energy resources deployed on a global scale.
Where is the cheap, abundant energy now?
Most of it is gone. What remains is circled closely by geopolitical and corporate sharks, to claim for themselves, to offer contracts to develop its extraction, offers that “can’t be refused” – or you’ll have war on your doorstep. So called alternative or sustainable sources of energy are a net loser in terms of reliability, affordability, and even the basic equation of creating technologies capable of producing an energy surplus beyond the energy used to manufacture, distribute and operate them.
In the first world, the problem is different, and yet the same. Numbers are in decline as fertility is compromised due to pollutants and toxins present everywhere in 2023, young people for the most part avoid becoming parents living lives of eternal adolescence in a virtual and consumer oriented paradise. Immigration from the 3rd world, with its higher birth rates, compensates to a degree the fall off the cliff in fertility, but the levels and expectations of consumption remain elevated, so every European or American consumes resources equivalent to 30 or 50 Africans, most Asians and most Latin Americans. Again, all thanks to cheap fossil energy.
Where is the cheap and reliable energy now?
Culture, finance and politics, fascinating as they are, especially when dissected by Mr K, are but a construct, a scaffolding built atop basic realities. Realities of calories consumed, energy deployed, pristine biomass left, how many Atlantic cod were able to reproduce this season, how much clean drinking water is left in the aquifer, the cost, the real cost, not the subsidized cost, not the clouded in propaganda cost, about magical new solutions to keep growing forever in a planet that by definition cannot support infinite growth because she is not infinite.
Resources are depleting at a fast clip in the third (too many mouths) and first (too much consumption) world both. The energy feast of the last 200 years or so is coming to a close, and there are knives drawn over the last bones and scraps. That’s reality. Sooner or later, reality will assert itself, and the virtual, the financial, the political, the cultural scaffolding that regulates and organizes modern life will tumble down, without anything to replace it.
” Resources are depleting at a fast clip in the third (too many mouths) and first (too much consumption) world both. ”
Why it drives me up the wall when people say it was better when White People ruled Africa.
Generally speaking , White people STILL rule Africa ,
just as , generally speaking , White People still rule what JHK , presumably , calls a Clusterfuck Nation
And , believe it or not , I’m NOT saying White People are evil ,
as likewise , I doubt the Jew JHK is saying White People are evil.
I’m saying that humans —
— sorry to be a bummer , sorry to disappoint you —
— are not Gods.
Kesa,
I didn’t have the racial angle in mind. I was thinking of “humans”
The colonial era was a disaster for the environment and the natives, no doubt. The independent era, ditto. Blacks and Whites and Chinese and Indians surely all take it as good as they give it in the race to turn our planet into a wasteland.
I used to be in the camp of, “at least they had some law and order back then, and trains, and missions” – until Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” opened my eyes. The horrors of the Congo.
Still ongoing, by the way. Under new management.
Maybe you’re right and Whites own the profits (the Dutch and the Israeli in Netanya from diamonds, the Brits and Americans from oil, etc), but I’m sure their corporations have Diversity and Inclusion depts, they contribute to BLM and all the right causes, and make sure to appoint a few Black CEO’s and such.
So what? My point stands. What’s your suggested course of action? Punish the Whites in general for the mess? 1, that solves nothing, 2, hubris and greed have no skin color.
I’m glad you said , ” suggested course of action ” , and not , ” solution “.
I have called the 19th – 21st Centuries the Age of the Know – it – All – Teenagers.
That needs to change.
But then I suppose if the era of cheap coal and cheap oil is coming to an end , then it will change anyway.
Ironically if we discover tommorrow that the moon is a giant ball of coal or petroluem , then we really are fucked ,
because in that case there would be no limit placed on our getting drunk as a skunk on power and control , except extinction.
That’s why I , contrary to most on this board ( ? ) think that this era coming to an end is a GOOD THING.
Likewise , these days Atheists and their ilk don’t irk me quite as much as they did just a couple of years ago.
If an ox cart world is the future , then Atheism and secularism are on the way out the door anyway.
Indeed , all together , my writing is pretty much just a hobby.
If even half of what I predict is sound ,
I don’t really have to convince , persuade , or sell anyone .
Circumstances will fight the battle for me.
Or to put it another way ;
” What’s your suggested course of action? ”
Ask God.
Or , if you prefer ,
Ask Mother Nature.
Kesa,
many good points and insights.
“I have called the 19th – 21st Centuries the Age of the Know – it – All – Teenagers.” is one of them.
The know it alls that think they can introduce genetic manipulation, mess and “improve” the DNA sacred double helix and get away with it, for fun and profit, for example. Sorcerers’ Apprentices, I call them. Your moniker serves, too.
“That’s why I , contrary to most on this board ( ? ) think that this era coming to an end is a GOOD THING.”
Me, and many others, think the same way. Well, not exactly., It’s not a good thing the eye of the needle we’ll have to go through in the next few decades. Especially those of us that have children. I’m not afraid for myself. We’ll all pay a price for centuries of hubris and greed. Light or Heavy, time will tell.
The main thing is, this can’t go on. There has to be another way to inhabit this planet. We cannot shit where we eat and sleep. Trash doesn’t “go away” – nothing “goes away,” in karma or in ecosystems.
Read that poem I posted here, someone shared it here years ago and it is visionary, brutal and also very beautiful.
An obvious first step would be to eliminate offshore tax havens.
That is where most of Africa’s wealth is to be found.
Use the money to build up modern public health infrastructure.
Prevent entry by international NGOs such as the Gates, Gavi, and ID2020 Foundations.
I know that Europe, UK and especially France, source from Africa in more ways than one.
Jeepers Rulo, you’ve pretty much covered it all. What’s left to say?
Want to see the Hell that awaits us not much further down the road down which we are hurtling? Go to Africa.
Mozambique sought assistance from China to throw off the yoke of Portuguese colonialism. Part of the deal was unrestricted fishing privileges for the Chinese. Now fishing vessels from the ’60’s and ’70’s lie rusting in the rivers and on the beaches, while Mozambican fishermen sail out in dugout canoes with scraps of tarp as sails. Other fishermen pull in seine nets containing a few tiny (2 to 4 inches) fish. So small, and so few, they are left to dry in the Sun on scraps of tarp. They are eaten scales, bones, guts, poop, and all.
I spent time there as liaison between the multiple parties involved in a seismic survey. The Minister of the Environment, when I met with him, was not even aware that the survey was about to take place – or that material for an as-yet unapproved pipeline was already in-country and about to be assembled. Oil companies are arrogant like that.
Sitting in a bar one night, I listened in on a conversation about another – unapproved – seismic survey that was already underway. Not one to engage in industrial espionage, (reporting back to my supervisor, I was told that it was none of my business, and to shut up), I nevertheless made sure that word of the illegal survey got back to the incredibly patient and generally ignored Environmental Minister.
I would take my lunch of bread and wine at the South African cafe next to my hotel, and watch the amputees crossing the busy street. Walking on hands and butts because their legs were blown off. Another legacy of Chinese “aid” and a culture of endless war. When I was there, animals – and a few humans – were still blowing themselves up in Gorongosa National Park, thanks to the super-abundance of landmines.
The law firm in Maputo, with whom I regularly consulted, was attacked and robbed by a gang armed with AK-47s while I was in town.
Garbage mountains alongside the rivers (because where else would you pile garbage?) covered with scroungers looking for food, clothes, and housing materials.
Population growth is slowing or reversing in most of the world – but not Africa. They will be coming here, bringing their advanced culture and associated blessings of diversity.
From your post, I’d say you never belonged in Maputo or Africa.
Actually, I did. I was the liaison that project needed. I was the only person on that project that treated the Mozambican people, their country, and their laws with respect – and made sure that the project complied. It was everyone else involved – except for the Mozambican authorities – who didn’t belong there.
Nigeria 265M and Ethiopia 150M will be in the top 10 countries by population size list in 2030. (Source: WEF)
For Africa, everything depends on leadership and the outcome of the war in Europe. We’d like to stay neutral, follow our own methods, and take care of the people’s needs.
Africa is 20% of the world’s population, and is 3% of global GDP.
Look down at your white hands. Now realize that everything you see around you including the keyboard was created by black brains.
JarJar, did you bump your head again?
If you can’t be more careful, you’re going to have to start wearing a helmet to protect that delicate noggin – like you did way back in grade school.
Are you implying that Blacks didn’t create our the scientific and technical basis of our civilization? The Ancient Egyptians, hello? The Greeks stole everything from them, the honkies!
Bird,
seine nets… you, or some other commenter, introduced me to this, by Robinson Jeffers. Sometimes, this joint affords the pleasure of a great discovery:
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year’s Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea’s night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.
I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet’s tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.
Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children’s, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers–or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls–or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life’s end is death.
Wasn’t me Rulo. Although I read a lot, almost obsessively, I don’t generally remember the words. Instead the words shape my consciousness in non-verbal ways.
That said, the poem – and its feeling of foreboding, the closing of the net – fits my post-apocalyptic fishing vignette quite well.
The Moz fishermen seined from the riverbank, lacking even dugout canoes. They hauled in enough fish to fill the bottom 3 inches of a 5-gallon bucket. They did their work surrounded by two bloody limeys and a guy from Arizona (the marine mammal observers) each armed with about $5,000 of camera equipment. Any one of us could have bought the village and its inhabitants, leaving enough change to buy them all a boiled crab dinner and enough wine to forget the past and quit worrying about the future.
Their great city – a tiny fishing village – was built with driftwood and discarded building material, wrapped with a double layer of chicken wire filled with stones for walls. The ubiquitous discarded scraps of tarp serving as roofs and sometimes doors.
A National Geographic opportunity if there ever was one, but I never took my camera out of its bag. It seemed too disrespectful for a bunch of rich foreigners to poke around the private lives of such desperately poor people. The photographers were oblivious to the stares we were receiving. I shepherded my charges out of there before the scenario turned ugly.
That is fascinating, Blackbird.
It was for me too. I regret that my traveling days are over.
Bird,
Mozambique… ufff. How could you be there? I’ve been far and wide myself, but always avoided Black countries. I knew I’d stand out, a neon sign on my back saying “RICH BWANA”. North and South America, West and East Europe and the Middle East, I could blend in well enough. Haiti? Forget it. I only know bits of North Africa, which are more Arab than Black.
It’s sad, how inevitable it was.
Some here think that 100 billion humans could live on Planet Earth. I agree. Stacked in cubicles, fed insect paste and Soylent green, the sole inhabitants of the planet, along with the crickets in the farms and some random survivors, the odd cockroach or jellyfish.
Plastic Beach. Did you hear that record a few years ago? Gorillaz and Snoop dog or whatever his name is.
” Stacked in cubicles, fed insect paste and Soylent green, the sole inhabitants of the planet, along with the crickets in the farms and some random survivors, the odd cockroach or jellyfish.”
Where would the poop be stored?
Shot, or shat, into outer space ?
On that job – my last real job – I was the guy who would go where no one else would go, and do what no one else would do. I’m still that guy, but no one seems to need that guy anymore.
I like flying close to the fire.
Plastic Beach? If the band’s name has a “z” where an “s’ should be, I’m probably gonna ignore them. I like delta blues, Motown, black gospel, reggae, and (some) funk, but rap and its love child “hip-hop” – well give me a sharp pencil and I’ll punch my eardrums out.
The bird needs the blackness, the blackness needs the bird.
Hire yourself. Aim high. The guy you hired goes where nobody else goes. He’s a winner.
I knew you’d dis Gorillaz. Yes, terrible name, and Snoop doesn’t sound promising. Good music, though.
Bass player from the Clash, forget the name, old dude, and Damon Albarn, of Blur fame in the ancient 90’s, and a bunch of other talented musicians. Check it out. I think their other project was called “The good, the bad and the queen”
I forgot to tell you how much I recognized Chinese abuse, mendacity, recklessness and corruption in the fishing industry. Years ago, I shared here my impressions of the Chinese fleets, vessels in the hundreds, spread out in territorial Argie waters off Patagonia, lights out all night bottom-stripping everything for squid and whiting, how they all move just outside the line when the lone coast guard shows up, one in 100 gets towed to port and let go with a slap on the wrist after the Chinese consul bribing everyone. They even get to keep the catch. Now they have a “scientific” base in Patagonia, which everybody knows it’s in fact military, and complete control over cell and digital communications.
I mean how familiar the fishing practices and shortcuts in your story sounded to me. Very good material you shared here. Hire yourself to put it all in a book or at least a blog. It’s good reading.
Ok, maybe I damned Gorillaz too readily. (I always judge books by their cover.) I have to admit that I am rather generous when tossing out damnation. I am Blackbird, after all, not rainbow sunshine puppy-breath happy bird…
The Clash. I read (I don’t remember where…) that Joe Strummer said that from London Calling onward, the band was given lyrics and told just to put them to music. But I still like their music. More talented than the Sex Pistols, but not as talented as John (Johnny Rotten) Lydon’s supergroup Public Image Ltd.
China: a locust swarm disguised as a country.
Hire myself? I’d have to wear a disguise to the interview.
BB,
“a locust swarm disguised as a country.” is a good one. But I’m afraid it applies to us, too. We’re a bit subtler though.
Seriously, I think many would enjoy a more complete story of your time there. And in the rich and degenerate Gulf kingdoms, and everywhere else you brought your special eye and philosophy, including frozen Michigan.
I was a PIL fan too. Saw them live a few times. Did you read of Lydon’s wife Nora, 13 yrs his senior, recently dying at 80? He was her sole caretaker the last years of her life, she had Alzheimers’. He just was there with her, after over 40 years of marriage, until the very end.
Turns out Johnny Rotten was in fact a prince among men.
I saw PiL in Atlanta in ’86. As I entered the venue, Kashmir was blasting from the loudspeakers. Rather ironic, I thought, as Johnny Rotten used to despise those dinosaur bands. He showed up to his Sex Pistols audition wearing an “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirt, with the band member’s eyes scratched out. “Album” the (excellent) album released by the band in ’86, sounded more like Led Zeppelin than the Sex Pistols.
I didn’t know about his wife.
I did read his response to an interview with Neil Young. Neil’s advice to kids these days was, “Have as much sex as you can! Especially you girls – you’re not gonna have your looks forever!” John’s retort was, “Hell no! Get an education!” (All paraphrased, of course.)
Johnny’s not so rotten after all. I don’t agree with him of everything (e.g., Winston Churchill), but he does seem to develop his own opinions rather than parroting what he is told. A rarity among celebrities (or anyone else) these days.
Yes, we are as destructive as the Chinese – maybe more – but they are a lot messier.
Drive to the forest in a Japanese car…
They’re probably trying to counteract Israel which has designs on Patagonia as well.
We’re in a race to take over Antarctica, not only for its probable oil, but for the wonders of its lost cities buried under the ice.
Dang, Blackbird, that is depressing. Both you and Rulo have slapped some sense into us tonight.
Thanks, I guess.
It’s what the rest of the world looks like – and where we are heading. (As seen through my eyes.)
I don’t (usually…) intend to slap anyone – senseless or sensefull – I just like telling stories. But I have to admit, I do enjoy it when my audience laughs or cries – or both.
They’re remarkable stories, and we’re grateful to hear you tell them.
Thanks Ant. I try not to tell stories unless provoked – fortunately I find a lot of provocation around here.
Like Anthea says, thank you.
You class up the joint, BB.
Awww shucks Mary, you always say the nicest things.
Bravo, Rulo.
Excellent run-down of our current situation.
I’ve done the NYC to DC round trip a few times by greyhound Bus and Amtrak but never drove. (Friends did!)
This was the 90s and both worked fine then. (Of course, that’s a QTR century ago!) Still, your trip sounds like a doozy, JHK.
PS
I often wonder how many US spooks are in the UN. But not too much… 😉
““But the fast – track – to – college crowd were not keen on hanging out with a girl who said that the United States was no less a totalitarian society than was East Germany”
Kesa,
I’m suprised you would hold that opinion. Men, to get into a woman’s pants, will believe anything. ”
— Elysianfield.
Well , that just goes to reinforce what I say on other , less – self – pitying occasions ;
I reckon that at least 90% of the time one of two things are true —
1 . A person claims to be a victim when it was their own fault.
2. Blame is , at least , 50 / 50.
Another factor to consider is that I surmise that at least 95 % of the population , young or old , rich or poor , Black or White , nice person or asshole ,
has been a victim of violence and / or a victim of a serious fucking over at least once in their life , but commonly several times.
Which means there is actually nothing special , unusual , peculiar , or notable about being a victim.
Victimhood is in fact the ubiquitous norm.
Which brings us to the next factor to consider —
Which kinds of victimhood are emphasized , and which kinds are devalued or even erased ,
are cherry – picked , and cherry picked to an extraordinary degree.
Finally , unless you have been living in a cave the past 50 years or something ,
you should have noticed that victimhood has become a sought – after privileged status.
In the right context , a ticket to the feeding trough.
Therefore , whenever ANYONE ( including me ) claims victimhood , your default should be to take it with a hefty grain of salt.
—
As , likewise , whenever someone suggests to you that how they became a millionaire was because their shit don’t stink ,
you should likewise take it with a hefty grain of salt.
But that’s the subject of another essay.
—
In this case —
The other day I watched a film clip from some movie the name of which I can’t recall.
In the clip a father and son were just finishing up a game of tennis on their own tennis court outside their own mansion in a high rent district.
The sons girlfriend was walking away across their expansive lawn — which must go for at least 500k an acre.
The father looks at the son all serious and sober – like and says to him ,
” You know , she ( the sons girlfriend ) will never be one of us. ”
The son replies cavalierly and sarcastically , ” Yeah , I know. Isn’t that great ?! ”
Actually I think the father was right.
Don’t let the fact that my parents were both engineers and privileged , and that I grew up in Europe lead you to the wrong conclusion .
I never belonged to the Country Club set , and they didn’t belong to me .
And the father in the film clip , snob elitist or not , is right.
Class exists , culture exists , and may not be overcome.
Sounds like Ryan Gosling in that film with Kirsten Dunst where he (Ryan) ends up killing her and hiding her body?
Just a guess.
‘All good things’?
Blacks prey on Whites. Kesa is fine with that. Now she is trying to make us believe that Whites are equally responsible.
KesaAnna, your comment reminds me of something I read recently, that struck home.
One does not normally categorize Debbie Reynolds as a philosopher the likes of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, but she did have one brilliant insight:
“Nobody gets killed in Las Vegas and buried in the desert unless they deserve it.”
Children are being taught adult sexuality starting in kindergarten nowadays.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
.wavy.com/news/investigative/portsmouth-school-investigating-sexual-incident-involving-second-graders/
Yeah, who could have foreseen that kids might act out what they are being taught or given books on?
Head-smacking.
It used be playing doctor.
Now it’s playing porn star.
That happened in Scotland too. A couple of primary school boys assaulted a girl after a sex-ed class.
Springtime of last year, a 16 y.o. boy was walking with his 13 y.o. girl neighbor. They were in an undeveloped acreage but still in a residential neighborhood. The boy strangles her with intent to rape after she’s dead. He kills her but gets scared and runs.
After a couple of days he confesses to the deed and intent. He also confessed to having fantasies about doing it. Then it becomes known that the boys father is in the Klink for child assault/porn. which he shared with his son (surprise?).
It rocked our little town for about 2 months and then everything just went back to normal.
What is “Justice” in a case like that? Where is “Justice” to be found in a sick world?
In this case, it seems like looking for justice might be jumping the gun.
The boy needs some serious deprogramming, seems to me.
It’s still the same, Consume or Perish. Only major catastrophes, like the Die Centennial, will alter the course.
Some retro:
Dinocars, Triceratrucks, and Pteroplanes uselessly sit by
All the Black Lagoons have finally run dry
Machines guzzled dead life formed eons ago
Now their bellies are empty with nowhere to go.
The Die Centennial will be a terrible time
A world full of chaos, people out of their mind
Trade routes gone and no more supplies
Murder and mayhem in everyone’s eyes.
We knew it was coming but remained in denial
Computers and phones, the need to go viral
Techno narcissism smothered the land
We developed AI, but just couldn’t understand.
“Techno narcissism smothered the land”
Some young thing, during lockdowns, asked me in all seriousness if I was running my small farm with an app, or what, in order to stay safely indoors.
Yeah, I feed the chickens on zoom. And harvest cucumbers using drones.
in 2021 My granddaughter 6 y.o. asked me what I thought about what the govt. was saying about the Covid plague.
Now I gotta be careful here…right? so I asked her what she thought.
She said “Grampa, I think they’re lying”.
It broke my heart but I had to tell the truth or she would never trust me again.
“yeah sweetie, I think the government’s lying too”.
Never in my wildest thoughts did I think I’d ever have to say those words.
Wow!!
Did you ask your granddaughter what had brought her to this conclusion?
She’s a sharp kid surrounded by well educated people. She listens when the big people talk.
Kids these days are lightyears ahead of where I was at 6.
I bought her a Hoverboard clearly marked 9y.o. and above. She had it mastered in an hour, by the end of the weekend she was climbing it from the driveway up onto the lawn, about a 3 inch difference, she figured out that she needed to go faster to make the climb
or to attack it from an angle. Her younger sister (now 5y.o.) mastered the board last month so I had to buy another one, labeled 11 y.o. they were both switching back and forth. Those damned things are fast! I tried it once and decided I didn’t want to be known as grampa broken hip.
Yes, how does your six year old get this when my acquaintance is filled with folks on their third shot?
“I’ll have what she’s having.” –When Harry Met Sally
I think it’s a complacency syndrome aka Normalcy Bias re: “Our government would never lie to us…life is good, so life will always be good”.
It’s a typical belief vs. reality situation for people who have never been screwed hard by their govt. You know, what about all of those people who got imprisoned for years b/c they had some pot? I’d call that “screwed hard”!
Gay nerds are massively into dinosaurs. A federal grant has been given to them to write a dictionary about all this.
Speaking of Africa, cobalt now joins blood diamonds as a product of slave like labor (artisanal cobalt) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. China produces about 3/4 of the world’s refined cobalt required for the electric battery industry. China has us beat in the resource game, and with Russia the game may be just about over.
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the United States Embassy is to advance the interests of the United States, and to serve and protect U.S. citizens in (African country)
spur,
yes. Slave labor and massive environmental damage. Green tech.
China, Russia, US, and the rest of the players win some and lose some in the resource game you mention, individually. Collectively, they make sure everything is vacuumed up. The players represent us. All of us who take it as a God given right to have a pocket computer or drive junior to soccer and stop for takeout on the way back. Non-negotiable way of life, etc.
Anyway, of the 3 you mention, Russia and the US are the ones with the better chance to retreat into their own vast and still somewhat resource abundant landmasses, or at least not totally bare of resources like many others. China may dominate the cobalt cartel, but has a lot of mouths to feed, a police state to run, and not a lot of genuine proven resources.
Yes, critical interdependencies with ever diminishing resources, but global import needs seem to be mostly balanced with global export capabilities, trade deficits aside. For now.
I think that China imports about 20% of its food? It does have a lot of rare earths, minerals, and coal. They are into Chile, Brazil, Africa, Australia, etc., for what they need. We, of course, hunt the treasures also.
Trade. Globalization. Chained by supply chains. ‘Beds Are Burning.’
“China may dominate the cobalt cartel, but has a lot of mouths to feed, a police state to run, and not a lot of genuine proven resources.:”
But it is well situated and has (almost) always dominated its neighborhood, culturally and economically.
Per Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in “Lords of the Rim,” the Chinese diaspora is always more tied to China than to the second home. In fact, more tied to the specific tribe and locale within China than to China as a whole.
I would love to learn something of how the Overseas Chinese in California, Vancouver, and elsewhere are fitting themselves into the
current military, economic, and diplomatic sabre rattling.
Who has first dibs on the Congo’s cobalt?
China went from the one-child policy, which is a sensible thing to do when you have a billion people and no way to feed them within your means, to now pushing the population to produce more babies.
WTF? That makes as much sense as the US building more roads.
No sense at all.
Some Sinologists are of the opinion that insoluble internal contradictions will inevitably splinter the PRC into five separate states.
In my travels there, I noted how the hatred is peppered into the NorthSouth division. Particularly among the rice-eating Shanghainese, who deeply resent the “wheat-eaters” of Beijing.
Look how easily the USSR crumbled, right along the fault lines of culture, religion, language and economics.
Islander and Bird;
What Tyson was referring to was the mean. Consensus among scientists relate that gravity exists…while on either end of the bell curve, it either sucks or blows….
The moderator of the discussion was a bit animated, and seemed quick to adversary.
“The mean” means nothing when “dissenters” are not on the curve at all.
It really means nothing when the mean, the consensus, what have you, are all on one side of the supposed curve and also are all wrong or compromised and their pronouncements fly in the face of previously accepted science. Because they have some kind of agenda that has nothing to do with “science” as genuine scientists understand it.
Such as occurred in the covid case. Every single precept of long-established medical research and public health practice—as repeatedly explained by van den Bosche, Kuldorff, Malone, and many others—was ignored and actually attacked.
Repeat: Tyson is an idiot.
Your apologetics are …. odd . . . to say the least . . .
I have never heard nor read anything from Tyson that incorporated any scientific perspective.
A good example is an interview with him regarding HAARP. He did not explain how HAARP is alleged to be used to alter weather patterns, cause earthquakes, or anything else (i.e., the science behind it). He did not explain how these alleged uses of HAARP are technologically (i.e., scientifically) impossible. Instead he claimed that focusing of what HAARP may or may not be used for was an unnecessary distraction preventing people from focusing on the real problem: “climate change”. Because obviously we mere mortals cannot think about more than one thing. Neither did he provide a scientific (or any other) explanation for our apparent limited cognitive ability.
As a precocious child (he seems to have reached his intellectual peak early in life) he was selected for bigger things, things much bigger than his intellect could master. But no problem, he is fed his lines. And his target audience understands nothing of science. And of course, to question his knowledge is “racist”, therefore he must be believed.
“Climate Change,” the official narrative of “It’s not that we’re running out of easily recoverable energy resources… it’s that we are good, good people, so we choose to save the Earth”
The real Apocalypse Nows discussed earlier re Africa are barely acknowledged. It’s all about the insane mantra of a few degrees more or less.
Carl Sagan was a scientific popularizer and maybe “showman” back in the day, but my impression is that he knew his stuff, he was the real deal. This other fellow you’ve been discussing, from what little I know of him, strikes me as a diversity hire showman, without a deep well of knowledge and thought to draw from.
Nat Geo has gone the same way.
I cancelled National Geographic the year they put a 9-year-old boy pretending to be a girl on the cover. How does promoting gender confusion relate to geography? I have all the issues dating back to 1988.
If Carl Sagan were still around, I have to wonder if he would still be a scientist, or just another narrative pusher. His statement, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, bothers me. One of those profound-sounding statements that when examined, is hollow. No, extraordinary claims – like ordinary claims – require adequate evidence to negate doubt, no more, no less.
Yes, much of current madness is people wrapping themselves in a cloak of “goodness” and standing with “the consensus”.
A person doesn’t have to understand anything of science to see that the “climate change” narrative we are being fed overlooks many other looming catastrophes. In other words, we are being mislead. “We can only focus on one issue at a time!” (thanks Neil). As with “Covid” it is senseless to follow the dictates of those who are obviously lying (even if primarily by omission).
Tyson’s argument is absurd.
What happened is that someone (probably in the WHO universe) decided to make absurd claims that were put forward as a new consensus regarding a new and untested theory.
“Consensus” was achieved via totalitarian means. The goal was to destroy the old consensus and destroy those who understood and could explain the scientific bases of established scientific and medical procedures relating to new medications, epidemics, immunity, etc.
Tyson is carrying water for these science totalitarians. He is trying to sell the public on the science mindfuckery. (In fact, that is the science we need to focus on: the social science of mindfuckery: making obviously absurd statements until people start to believe them, and if they don’t, forcing them to pretend to do so [the core mindfuck].)
PS. Make that “We are being misled [no a].”
“Yes, much of current madness is people wrapping themselves in a cloak of “goodness” and standing with “the consensus”.”
This was definitely a factor in the covid op.
Many people were just trying desperately hard to do the right thing. Just as in any (perceived) emergency.
“What can *I* do?”
Well, masking up and getting jabbed is *something*.
But the unremitting propaganda and the stresses of lockdown drove a lot of them over the edge of “trying to help” into Karenism.
Bird, Islander, et al;
I view Tyson’s comment on “consensus” divorced from the then current arguments. Science does, in fact, seek consensus. The concept of peer review lies at the base of the scientific method.
Consensus. divorce it from the argument involving climate change. The concept of consensus is an absolute. Climate change but another theory. How the consensus is applied is entirely another matter.
Tyson might be politically motivated, or an outlier, or absolutely disingenuous…probably not gifted, but not stupid.
He fits the stereotype that Blacks have of scientists: Goofy nerd. Now everyone believes it. Maybe even you.
“The concept of consensus is an absolute. ”
Whaaa???
You have really misunderstood the idea behind peer review.
It is not to achieve consensus. It is to try to find holes in arguments and evidence regarding the claims of the specific paper that is under review.
And, there is no reason to exempt “climate change” from this minute examination. In fact, the more “established” a theory is (NB: “theory”), the more important to examine challenges to it, or evidence that might end up weakening a crucial aspect of the theory.
The very fact of exempting “climate change” would seem to ID you as an agenda scientist.
Islander,
Agenda scientist? Hardly. Of course peer review is meant to be critical…the hope of peer review is to, through the process, achieve a consensus…we are talking at cross purposes. The scientific method promotes critical thinking and, in the process, hopefully arrives at a truth…with, a consensus among the gathered.
The discussion of “consensus” is but a single topic…”climate change” another.
“Is this guy even a scientist?”
You may have heard that when life is looked at at the most basic level we are capable of , with the most powerful microscope ,
it turns out that a chair , and the floor the chair is sitting on , consists primarily of …….empty space.
Likewise , you may have heard that the human body consists 98% of water.
Which brings me to the question ,
” HOW did Sigmund Freud become a Coke – head ? ”
Well , science is all about measuring things.
If you can’t measure it , it isn’t scientific.
Freud wanted to make a science out of man.
Trouble is , 90% of what a man is , is invisible.
How do you determine the eye color of the invisible man , for example ?
Does the invisible man even have an eye color ?
How Sigmund Freud got involved with cocaine was first he toyed with the theory that the Olfactory sense explained man.
He eventually discarded the theory , but kept the habit.
PERHAPS , MAYBE the idea that you are led by your genitals is every bit as goofy and bizarre as the idea that you are led by your nose ?
Maybe it’s all group – think ?
Maybe it’s all the power of propaganda ?
” Children are being taught adult sexuality starting in kindergarten nowadays.
What could possibly go wrong with that? ”
What could possibly be wrong with the 19th Century theory that sex explains it all ?
I studied the historiography of Psychoanalysis and Freud started experimenting with medical grade Cocaine which lifted his depressed mood when he sampled even the smallest amount. He mistakenly assumed that he could recommend it as a treatment, but soon discovered it had addictive properties. He wrote Uber Coca and then decided that recommending Cocaine as a treatment for depression was a mistake.
He continued using Cocaine throughout his life, but was aware of the addictive nature of the drug and he stopped recommending it to colleagues. Moreover, he had cancer of the soft pallet and was always in pain from the time he was diagnosed with cancer.
He smoked cigars until his death and his dogs wouldn’t even go into his room when called as he was dying from cancer of the soft pallet.
The stench from his cancerous soft pallet stank so bad that his beloved dogs wouldn’t even enter the room when he called for them.
Best book on Freud is _The Biologist of the Mind_.
Freud was the smartest theorist I’ve even studied aside from Marx.
RW
Thank you for another great essay, Mr. K. I respect your Uncle B for playing Gershwin on piano. Right now I’m working on his wonderful score “Swanee”, made famous by Al Jolson. The music is rapturous and complex, in the key of F minor, a real challenge for my old brain. Every chord change is a world to be explored.
Walter, my condolences. Please don’t go. Just come back when you feel better. My own mother died in a fiery crash she could not escape from. I was 22. My father had already died when I was 20, a victim of the Manhattan project. He was recruited for it after serving in WW2, and was told it was safe. Long story, but he was betrayed by both the government and the medical establishment. My distrust of both laid the groundwork for my ‘vax’ refusal.
What happens when we die? Does DMT flood the brain with heaven?And we enter a quantum state where time does not exist? Or do we simply compost back into the soil?
Love to all of you here,
Nigel.
Nigel,
Gershwin made the world a better place with his music.
I live and farm in Suwannee Co, FL, a few miles from the banks of that beautiful river. They spell it differently up in GA. Many roads here display “Historic Suwannee River, x miles” signs, decorated with the musical notes of the song.
“What happens when we die? Does DMT flood the brain with heaven?And we enter a quantum state where time does not exist? Or do we simply compost back into the soil?” – All of the above? Plus the dissolution of the ego and the rejoining of universal pulses of raw energy?
Glad you utilized the harsh experience of your dad’s betrayal by gov’t and “science’ towards the positive frame of mind of permanent distrust and wariness around those two behemoths. You learned something from the bad experience.
Cheers.
Yes, what does Susan’s death have to do with not posting here?
He hates me because I reject his Zio reality structure. His group doesn’t intend to rapture on out of here either. Oh no. They want to worship Him in the Temple. This isn’t Christian Zionism it’s Zionist Christianism.
Walter explained why. Maybe go review his comment.
Why did you call him William btw?
Not too long ago, under one of her videos, I gave Sabine a ‘stupid’ hypothesis of mine where if one could travel faster than the speed of light, there may not necessarily have to be time-paradoxes by doing so (where, for example, one goes back in time and messes up their future) if by doing so, a loop is broken and a new reality emerges from that fact.
If recalled, to support my argument, at least in part, I suggested that quantum entanglement and/or the act of observing only gives probable observations and/or results, rather than predictable/precise ones, or something like that, I forget the details.
In any case, she just put out a video that suggests that faster than light trave may indeed be possible, and not necessarily without paradoxes, although she may offer different or somewhat different reasons, which are hard to understand, as to why. Or maybe they are similar, but still hard to understand haha.
——
youtu . be/9-jIplX6Wjw
——
So if you’ve been kept awake with this sort of conundrum, like how you’re going to escape planet Earth and all its trouble and miseries and end up on a better planet before you die, fear not! It may be possible. For all we know, aliens could be watching and, like a good movie thriller, swoop in at the nick of time to save us all from ourselves!
Correction:
“…and not necessarily without paradoxes…”
should read…
“…and not necessarily with paradoxes…”
——
…With the caveat again that doing so (creating a possible paradox) would break the current reality and enter into a new one, thus not affecting the old one.
So, you could meet your younger self, but since it would be a new reality, your future self would not be affected, because you’d be in a new reality by virtue of your speed/time travel.
If you met yourself would you like him?
The Three Christs of Xipsalanti (sp?) didn’t. But of course they wre three different people.
Yes, but I’m not ‘Jarek’.
Do I dislike ‘Jarek’? I could never answer that until I actually met ‘Jarek’.
Do I dislike Jarek’s comments and/or the ‘implies’ behind them?
Maybe sometimes, sure.
——
“The Three Christs of Xipsalanti (sp?) didn’t. But of course they wre three different people.” ~ Jarek
——
Sabine’s theme/saying is, “Science wihout the gobbledygook.”
And there’s also jargon, esoterism, crypticism and name-dropping too, such as as a smokescreen and/or to make one appear cleverer, smarter, and/or more learned.
You’re not Jarek? Then who are you? Who is you? Saying, “not Jarek” isn’t enough. You need a positive answer.
Is Sabine an AI? Or all AI’s the same – so just AI?
As the demon says, My name is Legion for we are many.
Yes, I already suggested some time ago hereon something along those lines…
How about some original thinking?
Maybe something that transcends the ideological State framework/apparatus or the shit you regurgitate.
Then in your life, there comes the darkness
There’s a spacecraft blocking out the sky
And there’s nowhere to hide
You run to the back and you cover your ears
But it’s the loudest sound you’ve ever heard
And are we trapped? Rag-doll, cloth people
We are helpless to resist
Into our darkest hour
Hey, “every one “ knows that the maximum speed is Warp nine. Where you been?
Sabine? As in Griffin and Sabine? And you’re Griffin?
Jarek,
Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist that, among other things hosts a U-Tube channel that provides for current scientific news, with a simplified description of the issues.
I have watched several dozens of her programs and have formed an opinion…her eyes are too close together.
I sent her an email. Her response was to blacklist me. Needless to say I am not a fan.
Has she made any discoveries in physics? Answer: No.
I was introduced to Sabine’s You Tube channel via Ron Patterson at Peak Oil Barrel, possibly in an argument with Ron about free will…
I was less-than-thrilled about her show but in any case, when I caught her video suggesting that there was ‘no free will but don’t worry about it’ (I think that was more or less the title of the episode), I gave her my first-ever comment under it suggesting, for a few reasons, that there could be free will or at least a kind of free will.
——
“Thank you for a simple and straight forward answer. Za was incapable of this, as is Mary for the most part.” ~ Jarek
——
That’s because the answer, which elysianfield may have noticed, was already via a video link that I even made bold.
While I can’t speak for MaryQueen or elysianfield, I won’t always spoon-feed you. I do too much of it as it is. LOL
In this case, thank you seconded, elysianfield.
Ed,
For God’s sake, what did you Email her?
Inquiring minds NEED to know….
If ed doesn’t reply here, we could always stalk him at Our Finite World. 😀
Zaz,
Well, if ed will not speak up, we can speculate;
I think he may have emailed with a request for nude photos, or perhaps soiled underwear.
…That will get you banned anywhere….
Thank you for a simple and straight forward answer. Za was incapable of this, as is Mary for the most part.
They think my associations are too wild and far fetched, but when I’m strictly and coldly logical they ignore me – or also call me crazy.
They just don’t like me. My Vision is different than their vision of a diverse mud world of dusky peasants, all pretty much the same.
A mud world full of mud men with dark complexions and dark eyes. Your vision reminds me of a similar situation I found myself in during a stay in Iceland a long time ago, but it was the very reverse of Jarek’s feared “mud men”. Instead the streets, stores, and bars were filled with people who had blonde hair and blue eyes. Unlike Japan’s sidewalks where all you see is black hair bobbing up and down – in Rekyavik (spelled wrong) it’s the very reverse with blonde hair everywhere.
Jarek I suggest you move to Iceland if possible, if they let you. The only dark people you’ll ever see there will be tourists or US military people. I think you’d be happy there.
Yeah, we your vision was probably skewed. You may not have been seeing what is actually there. Blondes are not the majority any more. In fact, blond hair is very rare in older men now, except in parts of northeastern Russia.
And for women – who are blonder, perhaps because of the sexual selection component of Darwinism -How much of it is real and how much of it is from the bottle?
People, especially non-Whites, call people with light brown hair, blondes now. Is this a collective effort to pretend Whites aren’t dying out?
Great article, Jim, as generally usual, by the way. I appreciate the personal touch.
Once in awhile, I like to quote– and maybe I’ve already done so hereon– this passage from Smedley Butler’s essay, ‘War Is A Racket’.
I’ve done so, for example, in one or two Russia Today comment sections and to a good number of ‘thumbs up’…
Don’t thank me, though, thank Smedley for coming to his senses at or during his retirement perhaps, when he has less to lose…
Here’s his quote:
——
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
I have to wonder if Smedley Butler was still a “gangster for capitalism” when he was invited into the “Business Plot” of 1933. The one where the plutocrats allegedly attempted to overthrow FDR.
The more I think (and read) about it, the less likely it seems that this was a legitimate attempt at a coup, and the more it seems like an attempt by FDR to burnish his “anti-corporate” image. FDR most likely saved capitalism from a socialist revolution by tossing bones to the working class.
It’s a big world, especially when history is taken into account.
A couple of thoughts occurred to me earlier…
Thinking of Africa especially, the first was the idea of mental, ideological, physical and cultural colonization (as opposed to appropriation, now that I think of that) and the second was a metaphor of living on the planet like living in a house, where the house in the past had a lot of empty rooms that we could escape to, whereas the house now has none. All the rooms are filled…
So, in the first case, what happens to a bird that is forced to eat stuff it doesn’t normally eat?
And in the second case, what happens to those in a house– on a planet– where its inhabitants have nowhere to escape to? Ukraine is just a proxy war and one that doesn’t appear to be going well, and as I’ve said before, the USA seems between a rock and a hard place.
There’re no rooms left to occupy…
Do our roomies start cooperating? What about the roomies in the largest rooms? Are they forced to finally come to their senses and get along?
If studies subjecting rats to overcrowded conditions are any indication of human reactions to similar stresses, I don’t see a lot of cooperation in our future.
Fortunately, we aren’t rats – we can’t chew through concrete or survive a nuclear blast. (See the November 1977 edition of National Geographic.)
The rooms are States and they now fill the entire house. There’s nowhere else to go that’s empty, like, say, to a room that could be some other concept, like an anarchist room.
…And we as humans have never had an entire planet chock-full to the brim with large-scale centralized States.
We’ve had bands, tribes, villages, city-states, but never this novel nation-state ’round the planet setup.
So what happens now?
It’s fun to be an adolescent and ask questions that were answered ages ago.
The Life of Man is this world is war. The word for world is War. Look at the ants, Solomon. Do they not right each other? Are you wiser than they?
A Room/Roomie Called Africa(n)
Here’s another ‘adolescent’ question from the aforementioned:
You come into my room from yours and ‘colonize’ it and me with ‘you’.
You tell me who and what I am according to your own notions, and force me to wear your wardrobe, decorate my room the way you do yours, read what you specify, educate myself with your curriculum, take your tests, speak your language, eat your kind of food, walk the way or do the things you do, and so on.
What do you think happens to me? Bonus question: And might that fulfill some of your own prophesies of me?
Ideological Colonization
——
…Triple bonus ‘adolescent’ question:
Are we and our children in the USA (and affiliates and elsewhere) being mentally colonized?
Unsure?
Islander just wrote this:
“An obvious first step would be to eliminate offshore tax havens.”
It’s been a while since I traveled the New York to Washington corridor on-the-ground in a car, and the experience was maximally horrifying. – JHK
=============
Having lived 77 of my 82 years within spitting distance of the NJ Tpke I declare the above statement and all the other hyperbolic anti-NJ comments to be utter nonsense.
A person entering the NJ Tpke from Delaware headed north could almost make it to the NY border blindfolded. WHAT is wrong with you people?
Since you’ve lived within spitting distance to it, perhaps you are taking your insider knowledge for granted.
College basketball ended a week ago with UConn winning the national title. That left a whole in my TV viewing which I filled by watching various movies on Netflix. The most recent is a show of many episodes titled Babylon Berlin that takes place around 1929 in Germany. There was a particularly disgusting scene which I will attempt to describe:
An under cover agent has occasion to visit a woman seeking certain information. This woman appears to be in her mid-fifties, rather homely and somewhat overweight. She has a sexual side-hustle to supplement her meager living. She assumes the agent has visited her to enjoy her special service.
She takes him in the kitchen, throws one foot up on a chair, grabs a worn out damp cloth that is draped over the back of a chair, shoves it up under her dress, between her legs and vigorously wipes her vagina. She then asks the agent to make a fist to insert in her.
He has no idea what she is talking about and is appalled. She is equally dismayed that that is not the purpose of his visit. It is all quite disgusting.
Wth lol?! By the way it’s spelled hole. Not whole. Spelling was particularly critical in this post and you messed it up, Q.
The only thing more boring than someone describing a basketball game in a comments section is someone describing a scene from a movie, which has nothing to do with what people are discussing or the topic of the original post.
I had to stop and laugh. Q.Shtik’s one mis-spelling in the history of his posts on this website is while typing about a sex scene.
I have no words. 🙂
We demand a retraction! This shall not stand. The hole thing must go. No more posts about hores.
Did someone ask Q, What are you watching? A veiled erotic question?
@Jarek
Is this Otto Skorzeny (Europe’s most dangerous man) the person you took a former screen name from? Or is it another Skorzeny, namely one whose first name is Janos?
It seems the Janos Skorzeny (not Otto) person is the logical answer since that would account for two of your previous screen names.
You’re angering me on this thread. His name was Janos Skorenzy and his passing was deeply troubling for me and I went through a lot at that time. You assume they are one and the same but you do so at your own peril. Now start getting things right.
I too still mourn him. He was a Light unto the Gentiles. And he loved you especially.
I know Otto Skorzeny lived for quite a long time in Spain after the war, but was to learn that he worked for Israeli Intelligence in the 1960s.
Turned papish himself
And forsook the old cause,
Which gave us our freedom
religion and laws?
Sad. Other National Socialist soldiers joined the Arabs, teaching them how to defend themselves against Zionist terror. Surely this was a nobler course.
I just want to clarify that the documentary I watched last week on Netflix and mentioned on this blog was titled Otto Skorzeny, Europe’s Most Dangerous Man. This person was adopted for homage as one of Jarek’s many screen names.
Someone should make a movie of Otto Skorzeny’s life. But they won’t because “Nazi bad”. Displaying the swastika is illegal (or at least severely frowned upon) all over the world, but the red star of communism? No problem. The Soviets beat the Nazis, so they are good bad guys – even though Stalin killed more of his people than the Nazis did.
Guess I’ll have to add the Skorzeny movie to my never-ending to-do list…
Might as well write, produce, and direct movies about Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders while I’m at it.
Actually, Janos Skorzeny was a character from Night Gallery. I don’t know if he was a relative of Otto, but I like to assume he was.
If you ever come across a vampire tell em “bite me” just to see what happens lol
Lady StarLight, you never cease to surprise me with your walks on the wild side.
I’m gonna have to assume you take your own advice.
“Lady StarLight, you never cease to surprise me with your walks on the wild side.” ~ Blackbird
——
Mm sounds intriguing…
People just want to be on the winning side. Most have no intrinsic intellectual morality. The very concept doesn’t compute. Morality is just being “nice” to people, or at least the right people.
Communism is fine because it’s part of the Capitalist system. The old timers who fought it didn’t understand that, so despite their excellent motives, they were doomed to failure.
Both hate Fascism and National Socialism because these offer a real alternative.
Even Penny Dreadful started in with the chorus about antifa brownshirts. Jesus wept.
In a daring feat, he rescued Il Duce from imprisonment by partisans towards the end of the war, using if I”m not mistaken a Fiesseler Strorch light recon plane, a 2 seater. I built that model.
Musso and his lover Clara Petacci ended hanging head down from butcher’s hooks anyhow, despite Otto’s temporary success.
Did they then devour the bodies? Anti-fascists are insane after all.
The higher third between Capitalism and Communism. What sane person could be against this?
News of Benito and Clara hanging out at the gas station was reportedly a strong impetus for Dolphy to despair and eat lead.
Time and again his quotes are full of the fear that he’ll be made to look ridiculous.
Not so far to travel, either, as Chaplin pointed out.
(Charlie once complained that Hitler stole his moustache.)
Dolphy!! Ha, Speedy!
He ate lead and poison, but too late. Massive damage had already been inflicted. Massive death. Megadeath.
Rot in hell, Dolphy…
See the hate of the Enemy of Europe. As Trump says, they hate you. I’m just in the way.
Someone posed them together, dead, arm in arm, in the morgue, and a photo was taken (gruesome).
So what? They were fascists. Or were they antifa? They fought against the Bankers, and that’s BAD.
Thank you for this important clarification Q.
Jim, you forgot the Wizard of Id’s famous line “The peasants are revolting.” As to your drive, I feel your pain, having traveled through the area in the last six months. As a Southerner, I say that I’d rather take a beating than to drive I-95. I have my own issues with the female computer voice on my navigation system. On our return from Vermont, she directed us into the heart of NYC on a Friday evening rush hour, even though I had specifically and repeatedly chose the route that would direct us around the city towards Harrisburg, PA. Too bad about those once great cities. I was born in DC, but there’s not enough money in the world for me to live there again.
Wise move. Recently I watched a segment on THE NEWS stating that DC is the carjacking capital of the United States. By all accounts many of them are quite brutal, and you might consider yourself lucky if all that you lose is your automobile.
Wow what an amazing episode Mr. K! So glad you made it home safe and sound! Oh my gosh that is so crazy that you had that feeling of literally being in Hell on that road trip. I so relate to that as I have also thought many times that Hell could simply be an endless dark and deserted and twisting road with incoherent signage that is so confusing and discombobulating that essentially you are lost forever. There is no radio and you’re super tired of the playlist on your phone and all. And eventually at a certain point you just get so flustered and tired and you feel like an eye (love Uncle B’s painted eye!!) is watching you that you just stop the car and get out and look up to the black cloudy foreboding sky and scream at the top of your lungs what the fuck do you want from me!!!
Anyhoo that was a tangent lol. I also have always wanted to go to Addis Ababa. When I was little I was under the impression that the Adidas brand was from Ethiopia and had something to do with that city lol.
Anywayz at this point in the year and given the current of recent events I feel like you are spot on that much more scary stuff is coming our way. In some ways I think a lot of people have grown numb to it all. Sort of like in an oh wow another problem. oh well hit me, sort of way. At this point it really feels like there is nothing the government won’t do to keep a facade of legitimacy going. And that is the scary part. Maybe they should learn to let go. Probably won’t happen but one can always hope.
That ‘Soprano’s section’ of the Turnpike is hell! The smell is horrendous. Everyone knows the drill: windows up, vents closed. If you’re stuck in traffic, you’ll feel like Marcello Mastroianni in the opening scene of the surrealist film ‘8 1/2’. Gas is coming through the vents, he’s suffocating, he’s trying to escape, nobody’s coming to his aid!
h(xx)ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TsElhgMeXE
BTW, the Adidas brand was proudly worn by Ethiopian distance running great Miruts Yifter and later by Haile Gebrselassie, both of whom performed superhuman feats in them.
Has anyone see the ‘resurrected’ Tiffany Dover? Mark Crispin Miller wrote a piece on it the other day, but Meryl Nass has included photos.
merylnass.substack.com/p/why-has-a-fake-tiffany-dover-suddenly
Could anyone at all be taken in by this? It looks like a giant piss-take of the ‘we know you know we know you know we’re lying [and we don’t give a flying fuck]’ variety.
I am lost, re Tiffany Dover.
I have heard the name, but don’t know why.
Also, not sure what Nass is trying to show.
She’s showing that it’s not the same person. Tiffany Dover (a nurse) collapsed on camera after her covid shot. Then she disappeared and a death certificate was circulating online.
She became a cause célèbre early on among the ‘anti-vaxx’ community in the US, while the pro-vaxx people accused the anti-vaxx people of shamelessly using her ‘fainting’ to make up conspiracy theories about the vaxx.
Now she has reappeared, but it does not appear to be her.
Our overlords seem to like their symbolism. especially when it’s part of their taking the piss. That’s why Meryl Nass mentioned it was strange that ‘Tiffany’ was resurrected at Easter time.
when it’s part of their taking the piss. – GA
==========
This must be another example of Brit or Scot slang with which I am unfamiliar. And I can’t even figure what it means.
Explanation please.
Taking the mickey. Making a fool out of people.
Just for you, Q – first comment on Bob Moran’s Twitter account!
twitter.com/bobscartoons/status/1646435134000750592
GA,
How do I access the twitter at 10:15 am?
So she disappeared from sight, and no one really knows where she is? Or what happened to her?
Is it possible that the original collapse was a fake?
No, the original collapse was a huge embarrassment. They went overboard trying to back-pedal from it. They even went so far as to put a “stand-in” for Dover in an all-masked personnel photo at the hospital she worked at. It was a video not just a photo. And the stand-in was obviously not Dover.
It’s just really creepy all around. The hospital where she worked was paid or forced to clam up, and so was Dover’s family.
Obviously, if she was OK all they had to do was show her, unmasked, in a YouTube interview but they didn’t do that – because she’s dead.
Jen Psaki looks like a different person now too. I assume it’s her, just using more, less, or different makeup.
Why would they do that? Make the vaccine look dangerous?
You lost the thread there, Isle.
Also – back in 2021 I looked at T. Dover’s still-remaining Instagram account with pics and that woman is not her. Not even close.
and theres the Heather Mc Donald story.
It’s not her, but they had to wait 2 years to get people to “forget” what the real one looked like. The irony is that even if she had died of the clotshot and they were up front about it, billions would have gotten it anyway.
I think the PTB just enjoy messing with the peasants.
GA,
If she is the driving force that jump started the theories held by the vaxxine hesitant (I googled her), then it’s rather funny that I’ve never heard of her before today.
The mask makes it a little difficult to determine if its the same person. But, you may be more familiar with her features than I am.
Fortunately, most people that have become convinced that the vaxx is a bioweapon, base that conclusion on far more than one poor person dying (or in this case perhaps not dying) after the shot.
I like your thinking though that pretty much anything is up for interpretation that is spewed by the mainstream media. I wouldn’t trust them on a report of the time of day.
I don’t know if she was the main reason for most people.
Personally, I had decided not to get the experimental GMO injection long before they actually rolled it out.
How do you watch for decades as new drugs are introduced with great fanfare, only to be withdrawn with an “Oops” later as it turns out they kill people, and not learn from that?
I already have a policy that I will take no drug that is less than 20 years old, but they wanted me to take an experimental drug for a virus that was already gone?
Sure, they rolled out the “UK variant” along with the vax, but by that time, I was onto them. I knew the virus was a bioweapon, so I “knew” (without evidence) that the variants were bioweapons.
And now, with the leak, I know for a fact that the “UK variant” was a bioweapon.
://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1632172685181550592
Somebody doesn’t want me to see that. I’m getting a ‘Something went wrong. Retry.’ message.
Now I’m curious about the leak! I check out Bernie on a regular basis, so I’ll have a root around if it’s recent.
It was the one where Matt Hancock was quoted talking about how they were going to roll out the new variant to scare people into taking the vaccine.
Smoking gun, for sure.
March 4th, 2023.
Ah, got it on the third or fourth try. Yes, I saw that at the time – thought there might have been a leak of something even more incriminating!
Yeah there was not even a little bit of consideration for me, with regards to the clotshot.
I knew the second the plandemic started that’s what they were pushing.
Not a difficult decision.
My trial run with vaxxines that are pushed on people through marketing gimmickry was with shingles in October of 2017. This was coincidentally the month that Shingrix (the new shingles vaxx) won FDA approval.
I had to make two trips to doctor’s office, once I met with my primary Dr. He had shingles in his 20s. Then I followed up with the PA (physician’s assistant). She had shingles in her 30s. I was 47 and shocked that I had it. But after hearing their stories they both separately told me shingles has nothing to do with being 50 or older. You can get it the year after you have chicken pox when you are 12. The 50 years old thing is when INSURANCE starts covering the shingles vaxxine. Oh, and the new vaxx is twice as effective as the old vaxx. The new vaxx is 90% effective!
I said, “You mean the old vaccine was only 45% effective after being around for decades?”
“Well, yeah,” they said.
“And it was just released this month?”
“Yeah.”
“And shingles is 99.9% survivable?”
“Yeah.”
“Hard pass, thanks.”
So after hearing that I had NO PAIN and the only inconvenience was not being able to wear a bra for 3 months, my husband ran out and got Shingrix (twice!) the instant he turned 50.
When covid landed (whatever that means), it was easy to decide not to get the vaxx. And I already knew a great deal about the PCR test, so I knew they were just making up the number of cases. As an experimental drug, I knew the vaxx was dangerous, but it took me too many months to figure out it was a purposeful bioweapon. By then my husband had already had his two shots and was not happy with the side effects.
I don’t care what comes out next. I’m not taking recommended shots. And I may be sourcing my beef from a local farmer soon.
Traffic and drivers in Central Texas have changed in odd ways.
There is less traffic but everything moves slower during the day. Usually you cant achieve the speed limit.
In town and in rural areas most drive like 80 year olds. Slow, over/under breaking for everything, and all over the lane.
All over the state we have vehicles going off the road at random.
In my rural burg we had a car, motorcycle, and two trucks just leave the road and the driver ultimately died.
On the toll roads the speed limit is at least 80 and almost no one goes that fast. In 2018 when I used the toll roads you could go 100 and ‘blend in’.
The empty rural highways are a blessing for us bikers and the cops arent writiting as many tickets.
The fourth turning has been good to the Machine Heads.
Might be able to chalk it up to all the illegals on the roads out this-away. They drive extra slow for cultural reasons and to be extra safe against getting pulled over. Unfortunately for them, their dilapidated vehicles themselves are usually moving violations, so driving slower might not offer any extra protection. The cops are often migrants themselves though, so I guess it all balances out.
We’ve got a nice out here locally as well. Tickets on the reservations don’t count points against your license, which is nice. On the other, that makes the Rez cops all the more likely to write you up, so once again it’s a wash. The Rez’s are famous for dropping a 55 mph speed limit (already ridiculously low and actually dangerous for anyone that actually adheres to it) on a 2 lane rural highway in the middle of nowhere down to 40 or even 35 five or ten miles out of any trace of a town, designating it *** Pueblo Land.
Dis
Ha! Just like the South. A terrific revenue stream. Just another way to get the White Man.
chet_the_farmer,
I haven’t noticed the slow driving, but I have definitely noticed the bad driving. I run a 4 mile loop most days. And I would estimate that half the drivers that I cross paths with are texting. You can tell by the tilt of their head. I refuse to wear head phones or earbuds when I run, its unsafe. And I carry a concealed knife, but that’s a whole other story.
While I’m in the car, I have noticed the lack of turn signals, turning from the wrong lane, the inability to stay in the lane, its just a mess out there!
And it seems that pre-covid traffic levels have returned.
I prefer having a taser on hand but hey! to each their own lol
SoftStar,
I love the taser idea, as long as you really know how to use it.. I don’t own one. I’ve carried mace. And I don’t “carry” it, it’s in a pocket in the winter and the bra in the summer. I just bought a concealed carry holster for my .380, but I don’t know if I could run with it.
I’ve run for 41 years now, and I’ve never had a real problem. I don’t use anything that inhibits my hearing, as I said. And I’ve had to pull my knife out a few times for cars that stop alongside me or a few angry drivers. But no one has ever exited their car to approach me. And there are streets/ paths that I will not run on due to lack of escape routes or too much seclusion.
I was in France in 1988 and lost track of how many people stopped their cars and asked me if I was OK, while I was out running, lol.
To piggy-back on the post about the Dalai Lama showing his inner Biden, they are trying to normalize all sorts of horrors with regard to children and babies. Surrogacy is the sneakiest way to traffic them.
Convicted Child Rapist Behind Surrogacy Empire Now Under Investigation For Baby Trafficking
“In 2015, Prados and Sánchez set up a surrogacy company called Subrogalia based in Spain, according to corporate records. The company, one of over a dozen currently owned by the two men, was quickly mired in controversy and allegations of child trafficking.
The probe into Prados’ extensive criminal empire found that Subrogalia had been investigated in at least two countries out of the nine where it now operates. Alleged crimes include selling and trafficking of babies, in addition to providing clients with infants that were not biologically related to them.
In 2016, the year after the Spanish franchise of Subrogalia was founded, two gay couples sued the company for failing to deliver them sons as promised. A judge ordered the company to pay €88,000 (approx. $95,000 USD) to the claimants for “serious and grave” breaches of contract.”
https://reduxx.info/convicted-child-rapist-behind-surrogacy-empire-now-under-investigation-for-baby-trafficking/
One of the MANY reasons I am anti-surrogacy, of course.
This is disgusting, a way to normalize the sick behavior, like you said. I am pretty sure they love giving little babies to gay couples. That way the infants can be brought up thinking gay households are totally normal from the start, and hopefully the baby will turn out to be gay as it gets older too. This is a win-win for the gay lobbyists.
If I was Putin I would make damn sure that no Russian infants are allowed adoption into anything but a hetero-normative family environment.
I don’t believe they allow this in Russia.
Russia refuses to allow Americans to adopt Russian children.
The media and the politicians, of course, portray this as extreme oppression.
Paula: Are you a strong woman like Islander or do you use deodorant? What brand? And would you rather fight than switch?
Jarek, are you here to make comparisons between people and to help drive wedges between them?
The beauty of the universe is in its infinite diversity.
Spock
One could say the same of its ugliness, eh? Sometimes I looks up and sometimes I looks down. And sometimes I walk straight ahead. But I never stops looking, Za.
If you don’t look, you can’t “see”. And if you don’t see, you can’t know.
Flat Earth
One can’t ‘see’ as much as one might think if they’re ‘looking’ too incessantly at a screen or flat page.
What with much of that sort of thing to the relative exclusion of the real world, including real people, one would seem predisposed to a flat view of life in general.
Paula, as I recall the Putin order came directly after the case of an American woman who had mail-ordered a seven-year-old Russian boy and then decided that she didn’t want him after all.
Return to Sender.
Zazelle:
Yes, Making Up Shit in order to annoy is Jarek’s main motivator.
That is why I branded him MUS.
Jarek, why on earth would you ask that? Are you that intrigued by the scent of a woman?
Perhaps my unchained pheromones have somehow wafted through cyberspace and straight through your olfactory nerve into your hindbrain, stirring you up and causing you to focus on me, circling and lobbing jabs in my direction.
Nah, wait, you do that to all the girls, you fickle cad. Can’t be the pheromones.
As the wise KesaAnna once said, true freedom lies in the ability to say NOYDB to impertinent questions. So, NOYDB.
Poor A-Jerk is extra desperate for female attention given he doesn’t get any in real life. He hates us, yet he can’t survive without us responding to his insane rants and musings. Even negative attention is still attention – right, Jar?
Paula: Does you deodorant make you feel safe? Do you think this general fear of olfactory non-safety helped to lead to the mania for safe spaces?
Women like Mary are the future of American women. Clusterfuck is a goldmine of consumer data on this cohort. Perhaps I am an agent of such interests, here to watch and at times, probe.
Invest in cat products and boxed wine, gents and ladies. You won’t go wrong.
Paula is interesting as someone who assimilated very late to Americanism. Most of her life was spent as a Communist. Now she fancies herself a patriot. Very little cognitive dissonance. But why not? As far as I can tell, very little inner life. Totally dominated by current events and enraged reactions to them.
In an case, an anomaly. My employers, the Martians, are interested in the average human. Paula deviated, but she has come back. Slowly but surely they are making their plans against us. They are already amongst you but you don’t recognize them.
Exhibit A of why my standard practice when Jarek addresses me is to roll my eyes and move on.
Totally, Paula!
@ Paula and Mary:
Being offensive and argumentative is an attention-seeking behavior. Suppose you were an inconsequential, boring sort of person, and you desperately wanted people to respond to you. One of the most effective ways to get people to respond to you (as opposed to ignoring you) is to make insulting or offensive remarks to them, or to engage them in arguments.
I once knew a woman who did phone sex. This is a job where you get paid by the minute. If you’d like to do well at it, your objective is to keep the customer on the phone. I was told that some phone-sex operators succeeded at this by being argumentative, and picking fights with the customers.
This behavior is Jarek’s strategy for getting people to respond to his posts. It’s also probably the only way he can get anyone to pay attention to him in real life.
Mary is for gay adoption. Love is love!
What is Mary’s line I wonder? Are flamers ok? But do they step over the first time they don a piece of woman’s apparel?
LOL, you don’t know what I’m for and it drives you crayyyyzeeeee.
Poor Jar.
Mary refuses a logical challenge and gloats about it. How did she get to be like this?
Thorazine.com – check it out!
Mary seems to be indicating that she a current or ex-mental patient.
Jarek, if MaryQueen asked you not to make any comments anc comparative comments about her and to not reply under any of her comments because she considers it bullying and/or harassment, would you comply?
I think Jaros lives to mess with MQ. And GA sometimes… and all the rest. Might be his way of showing affection – who knows? He’s incorrigible!
ZAR: Why are you compelled to always take the female side? I’ve already explained to how much they hate the Idlers of the Bamboo Grove – a group of heroes in Ancient China who embodied the best of both East and West and anarchism too – to the extent that sad movement has any worth.
Can you not see her slandering men left and right all the time?
Did you miss Mr Kunstler’s piece where he talked about men taking back control – whether honey likes it or not? You are really, really out of touch with the needs of the Hour. Women have driven our civilization into the ditch.
Za is for a super-national global unity. I’m for diversity or races, peoples, and nations. He does the Work of the Beast. Compared to him I am an anarchist. Yet somehow (how?) he thinks he is an anarchist. Is he on thorazine?
He won’t, Zazelle. I can guarantee it. It’s been tried.
Og made this deal with Mary. Mary broke the treaty within days.
“ZAR: Why are you compelled to always take the female side?” ~ Jarek
——
Who and what are your deliberate targets?
“Did you miss Mr Kunstler’s piece where he talked about men taking back control…” ~ Jarek
——
Unsure, but ‘talking about men taking back control’ isn’t necessarily the same as suggesting that men should do so, can do so, nor in what capacities, and so on.
I don’t need to remind you that women already have some sorts of fundamental control by virtue of their being women, do I?
We also don’t want to elaborate on what control in different contexts actually means do we?
“I’m for diversity or races, peoples, and nations.” ~ Jarek
——
Politically-enforced and clueless ‘diversity’ is not real diversity.
It’s Woke-style diversity.
But thank you for your self-aggrandizing propaganda, Jarek.
No, O.G. broke the treaty.
Try to keep up, Jar.
You’re not doing too well in the memory dept.
Diversity means separation. As Gandalf says when Saruman shows him his robe of many colors, “It is no longer white.” And to go deeper, the rainbow itself is only the “rainbow” because the colors are separated (though not discrete). If you mash them all together you get dingy brown.
But that’s what you want, isn’t it? What a poor water colorist (philosopher) you are, to let your colors run all together on your palette.
Remember Zion in the Matrix movies? It was a lie. There would be no Whites left after a few generations without segregation or White consciously choosing to marry other Whites, given the high number of Blacks there. Would the Blacks have accepted it? If they were like our Blacks now? No. Not in a closed environment like Zion.
Your diversity is no diversity at all. That’s the good diversity!
Zaz: Women vote left because they want to be taken care of but are unwilling to submit themselves to a husband.
This has to be stopped, one way or another.
The Man They Call Zazelle March 11, 2023 at 11:42 pm:
——
Legislating Evolution?
Birds obviously split into different kinds of birds, like blue jays. But blue jays could also split into different birds and even, given enough time and isolation, different species. We get that, right?
But as far as I know, birds didn’t have or create government to command that birds spit in specific ways. They did so from the ‘grass roots’, through chance, proximity, courtship and mating.
‘Hey, baby… Love how you fly, how you perch, how you sing, etc.., and love those shimmery colours! Do you like me too? Maybe? Well how about we get together and see where we go!’
If you want to form your own tribe, based on whatever qualities you prefer, whether these qualities are real or not or somewhere in-between, that’s your prerogative…
Coercing people to do so– to do it your way– on the other hand is not your prerogative.”
Anarchist women don’t vote for the coercive State.
Whites are the ones who are in danger now, Zar. Yet you don’t care about that, right?
Why not? Don’t answer me. Rather, sit with the question and try to understand why you don’t think this matters. Not only will our disappearance lessen the amount of genetic diversity, but you yourself are White and should care. It’s very strange if you don’t. What species doesn’t care about itself first and foremost? Ditto the sub-species of theat species. Blue Jays date Blue Jays, not Robins after all.
Anarchist women march with antifa and are antifa. You yourself said how much you love the riot porn. Stop trying to pretend that anarchists exist outside of antifa. You’re never going to meet the girl of your dreams if you stick to this Platonic Ideal, an idea with hardly any referents, a set with hardly any members; the few that there are all almost all male; the one in your state that isn’t, is a girl with a dick. There’s one next state over, but she’s old, etc.
Sorry buddy!