JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page
That crusty ole rascal, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, seems to be enjoying his sunset journey into Civil War Two or maybe the destination is more like Blade Runner (since we know that history only rhymes but does not repeat). Anyway, it’s not a good place. The once-golden state begins to look something like what one federal official recently called — dare I say it? — a shithole.
A mix of used hypodermic needles, human feces, and other trash litters the streets and sidewalks in a large section of downtown San Francisco, a local news outlet reported Sunday night. It’s a problem that has grown by epic proportions in recent years and has many concerned for the health and safety of some the city’s youngest residents….
— The Blaze
Yes, quite literally. This particular failure of the political Left started in the 1970s when states began aggressively shuttering their large mental hospitals. Many of these institutions dated from the late 19th century — ghastly old gothic revival warehouses for the mentally ill, fraught with overtones of abuse and neglect, scenes out of Vincent Price movies… lightning flashes through the barred windows… a scream in the night… hysterical laughter echoing down the dark, tiled hallways….
They were an embarrassment, for sure, and certainly an affront to liberal sensibilities. But, of course, they fucked up the remedy for that. Instead of replacing the giant old state insane asylums with smaller, better-managed institutions, they just released the inmates under the rationale that they were a politically oppressed minority group. And there it ended.
And so here we are, going on a half-century later, with an economy that manufactures failure and immiseration at a greater volume than its other finished products, and many more lost souls out on the city streets, and now we are an even more ideologically inflamed society than we were in 1973, with the ranks of intersectional oppressed minorities and aggrieved victim groups grown into virtual armies-of-the-night — and the mentally ill just lost in the crowd.
It never seems to occur to anyone that a mental hospital can be run humanely, at an appropriate scale, and that these poor, sad creatures might, at least, be better off there with a bed, a bathroom, and somebody to check in on them daily than they are wallowing in the gutters of San Francisco and other cities. Surely there are up-to-date models in other lands for this kind of caretaking — if maybe we sent a few bureaucrats overseas to have a look.
But that’s not how we roll in this exceptionally greatest of great polities. After all these years, it’s hard to avoid concluding that Americans just prefer melodrama to any other form of behavior, including problem-solving. Melodrama is colorful, fun, and absorbing. It’s just another kind of show business for a people conditioned to see everyday life as a TV series they star in. So kick back and enjoy the homeless show, because its more entertaining than doing the right thing.
Likewise, the sanctuary city show, a shamelessly sentimental exercise in virtue-signaling at the grand scale, larded with little bits of dishonesty, such as the tag “undocumented” for people here illegally, as though their status was the result of some clerical error. Gov. Brown declared war, more or less, on the federal government last week after a fracas in Oakland where mayor Libby Schaaf rode through town like Paul Revere crying that the ICE teams were coming to make arrests. That riled Attorney General Jeff Sessions enough to start filing lawsuits against this nonsense.
But the Department of Justice faces a big quandary. How are they going to make a big stink over enforcing US immigration laws while they ignore US drug laws vis-à-vis the twenty-nine states that have legalized marijuana use in one way or another? In a number of these states, marijuana production is now a major industry, with substantial political influence. AG Sessions has made noises about cracking down on the marijuana trade, but he hasn’t done a damn thing about it because he can’t. The state tax revenue alone is too large to be meddled with, never mind popular opinion.
If the AG had a brain in his head instead of the CB radio that’s implanted there, he’d realize that the answer is to lean on congress to de-list marijuana as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance. Or to write a simple law leaving the question to the states. Of course, the intelligent thing would be to put an end to the melodrama called “The War on Drugs.” Just like the intelligent thing would be to place the homeless mentally ill in caretaking sanctuaries, call them what you like.
I really don’t see how Mr. Sessions can assert federal jurisdiction over illegal immigration without resolving the marijuana question.
This blog is sponsored this week by McAlvany ICA. To learn more visit: https://icagoldcompany.com/
New Paintings by JHK 2016 — 2017
Great Winter Reading… JHK’s new book!
“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”
Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books
Other Books by JHK
| The World Made By Hand Series: | |
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
   |
|
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
|
|
 |
 |
  |
|
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
|
Order now! Jim’s new book
Click here for signed author copies from Battenkill Books
|
Order now! Jim’s other new book
|
Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
GET THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL PROVIDED BY SUBSTACK
You can receive Clusterfuck Nation posts in your email when you subscribe to this blog via Substack. Financial support is voluntary.
Sign up for emails via https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com
That the state of California does everything it can to help illegal aliens, “disadvantaged ” minorities, and other social parasites and fails to provide humane treatment for its chronically psychotic citizens, is both a scathing indictment of the politicians and system who created this mess and sad testimony to the hypocrisy of our benighted liberal democracy. Perhaps the proper term for our political system at this point in time be transitioned to a more accurate “democrazy” ?
Always easier to take care of strangers than those close to home. Same emotional kick, less investment.
I take issue with characterization that the mental hospital closures were ‘leftist’ in any way. That was pure Ronnie Ray Gun.
”
Which president closed the mental hospital?
Under President Ronald Reagan, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act repeals Carter’s community health legislation and establishes block grants for the states, ending the federal government’s role in providing services to the mentally ill. Federal mental-health spending decreases by 30 percent.
“
How does this dispute Kunstler’s assessment? Reagan left it up to the states, and Cali made its choices.
Kunstler’s real point here is that treating the mentally ill as yet another scheduled and designated minority in the Left’s ever-growing pantheon of victim-classes is detrimental, as evidenced not only by Cali’s homeless but also Florida’s school shooting incident.
I’ll make my own interpretation of Kunstler’s intentions thank you very much. In particular I reject your nonsensical notion of adding the mental ill to a ‘pantheon’ of left concerns and thus making even a bigger bogeyman of a ‘left’ which does not even exist.
I think JHK just wants people not to shit on the sidewalk and would like to see the tent cities in Skid Road gone. I doubt he is blaming the mentally ill and the unhoused on the ‘left’. I also doubt he is aware that LA has unhousing issues because over decadess they have systematically destroyed affordable housing to drive the poor away.
On that point (him being aware) I could be wrong since Kunstler is into urban planning and wanting to make cities livable. That people have to shit on the sidewalk when a 350 square foot one bedroom apartment rents for over $2500 a month in the area is no mystery.
Skid Road – Dog
===========
The common terminology is Skid ‘Row.’ Every city of any size has one.
“Before the Jones and Lavan injunctions Skid Row was one of the most policed neighborhoods in the world. William Bratton, the architect of the New York City Police Department’s CompStat (Computerized Statistics) program, became the LAPD chief in October 2002. In 2006, Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa launced the Safer City Initiative (SCI) which earmarked $6 million annually to target status crimes associated with homelessness; sitting on the sidewalk, jaywalking,littering, camping, and panhandling.”
America has a history of criminalizing the poor. Tickets written to people who can’t pay them become warrants. and the poor are criminalized.
You subscribe this sidewalk defecation to a lack of “affordable housing” (whatever that means). I guess the idea that some people just want to defecate wherever they want never occurred to you?
The price of living in a desirable place is what it is. Don’t like it? Live somewhere else. Or in your case maybe move to Venezuela, where your socialist dreams have reached their logical conclusion.
I knew you were going to do this to me Q. Shtik.
You do understand that I am in Seattle and this transgression is forgivable. Truth be known it is not even a transgression.
Skid Road to Skid Row: Seattle Pays Its Namesake For His Trouble
“On This Date in History: In the early 1850’s, white settlers set up logging operations in what is now Seattle. The settlement was mainly made up of men which prompted Asa Mercer to set up a scheme to import women to the region. About 140 years later that effort was made famous in a television adaptation called Here Comes the Brides. Now, what the area lacked in women it made up in timber. The area was teeming with trees but they needed a way to easily get the felled trees to the sawmill set up in the town. They used to skid logs down a chute on the main street to get them to the sawmill. The road came to be known as “skid road”. Later, as the town’s main center moved north, the road was left in a dilapidated part of town filled with drunkards and derelicts. The part of town went from being known as “skid road” to “skid row” and today the term “skid row” has made its way into the American lexicon for the dilapidated area of any town in the country.”
So you were attacking a local collocate Q. Shame on you. Stick to being the grammar police but deciding exactly what words I use crosses a line of becoming thought police. I regect your protest and remain the alpha dog. Yip elsewhere. Your common terminology does not speak to history and as I am deep into a reading of “Automating Inequality” by Virginia Eubanks it also teaches me nothing.
I [regect] your protest – Dog
========
Well knock me over with a feather. Google confirms your etymology.
Every school day of my college years I passed through Philly’s ‘skid row’ which ran from near the foot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge for 4 or 5 blocks on the northern side of Vine St. I would gaze at the sufferers of substance abuse (at that time known as bums and drunks) who sprawled motionless on concrete sidewalks, giving no hint whether they were dead or alive. There but for the grace of God etc etc.
I assume the bracketed word up top was placed there for me to find.
Well of coarse I put it there for you to find! My Dogs eyse not beeing sincronized with my paws had no thing to do with it.
You will find a few in that one.
Negative. President Reagan gave the States what the “Regressive Leftist Gov of California” and the “Regressive Leftist Mayor” of San Franscisco are pitching little kiddie fits over while screaming “States Rights. “. Well, President Reagan got the federal government out of the states mental health biz. Left it up to the States. But many states pitched a little fit. Said they couldn’t afford it. None, not a one even really tried to cut back on this service that service to do it. Like it or not, we are no longer quickly approaching a time when each state or the Fed can no longer afford to do this do that.
WE. ARE. HERE. NOW. FOLKS HAD BEST GET USED TO A LOWER STANDARD OF LIVING. WHICH MR KUNSLTER HAS BEEN YELLING ABOUT NOW FOR SOMETIME.
That was federally funded nut houses dunce.
JHK
You state “This particular failure of the political Left started in the 1970s when states began aggressively shuttering their large mental hospitals.” While Reagan would be a leftist today, he was far right back in the day and today is still hailed as an idealized great right-wing icon. It was Reagan, not the left that ushered this in and not out of humane concern for the mentally troubled, but to cut expenditures.
“Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.
He made similar decisions while he was the governor of California, releasing more than half of the state’s mental hospital patients and passing a law that abolished involuntary hospitalization of people struggling with mental illness. This started a national trend of de-institutionalization.
In other words, if you are struggling with mental illness, we can only help you if you ask for it.
But, wait. Isn’t one of the characteristics of severe mental illness not having an accurate sense of reality? Doesn’t that mean a person may not even realize he or she is mentally ill?
There certainly seems to be a correlation between the de-institutionalization of mental health patients in the 1970s and early 1980s and the significant number of homelessness agencies created in the mid-to-late 1980s. PATH itself was founded in 1984 in response to the significant increase in homelessness in Los Angeles.
It’s ironic that a political leader who made such sweeping decisions affecting Americans with mental health issues ultimately came face-to-face with the dangers of untreated mental illness. In 1981, President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., a man suffering from several different types of personality disorders.
Where has Hinckley been for the last 30 years? In a psychiatric hospital.
It makes me wonder just how many people living on the streets today would also be safer and better cared for in an institutional setting.”
JD
Yep.
Your right it was Reagan. I’m really beginning to think JHK has gone down the alt right rabbit hole for good.
President Reagan simply left it up to the States. That old States rights thing. The Regressive Leftist Love ? ?? To cherry pick. They love it when they need it.
NOT HARDLY and that alt right moniker means clan member or stormfront member!
Rasis
Get a grip he is actually starting to use common sense which most left thinking people have lost.
Didn’t know about Reagan in CA. He also signed the first no-fault divorce law, and was America’s only divorced President.
He didn’t start deinstitutionaliztion on the East Coast, but he did plenty to push it further along. Thanks for the reminder.
Your assertion is not correct. In New York State, for one, the decanting of state mental hospitals began in the 70s under Gov Hugh Carey. — JHK
Starting shortly after Thorazine was introduced, large numbers of mentally ill patients were released from mental institutions to live in the general population.
Ten years after Thorazine began the deinstitutionalization movement, federal Medicaid and Medicare were introduced. Because Medicaid and Medicare did not cover patients’ costs for living in state mental institutions, many more patients were moved into general hospitals, outpatient medical clinics or halfway houses. In short, they joined the general population.
Thorazine created many of the “zombies” that we see as homeless and ended up hospitalizing them again due to long term side effects. You’re right, du to MCaid and MCare most State Institutions fell into disrepair and could no longer afford to meet state regulations. The Serpent devours itself.
I really don’t see how Mr. Sessions can assert federal jurisdiction without resolving Mr. Comey’s “no criminal intent” assertion. After all where is the criminal intent in burning a little rope?
Our justice system has more tiers than a terraced Chinese rice paddy. The difference being our terraced system only produces vast quantities of injustice.
JHK
I agree completely with your view that the war on drugs is lunacy and the laws against weed and Sessions approach are particularly egregious, but why try to lay the homelessness / mental illness catastrophe on the left’s doorstep when it so clearly started and has been perpetuated by the right trying to cut taxes? I don’t think any poor / disturbed individuals will prosper under a hard right-wing regime.
JD
It didn’t start As a cost-cutting measure, JD. JHK is right that it was the reaction to things like “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” that drove deinstitutionalization. That was largely left, though the anti-Communist right was justly horrified at the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.
Doc
Yes, I can agree with JHK and you that there were other forces at work as well as the desire to reduce expenditures. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was no doubt a strong catalyst in getting public support behind the de-institutionalization movement. I wasn’t aware of the anti-communist right’s position on USSR psychiatry, but it would seem their position was well-founded.
JD
We would do well for the “State” to provide the types of Sanitariums that Kellogg provided.
Hands4u,
High colonics for Everyone; Hurrah! 😀
What work best for most constipated individuals. One of most antipsychotic medications’ side effects is constipation. I would dare say that quit a few wealthy people have the same problem.
To address those who are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Cuba, too:
http://www.cubanet.org/htdocs/CNews/y02/ago02/09e6.htm
The fact that the lobotomy was invented in the USA doesn’t speak well of our psychiatric profession, but at least they had the decency to stop doing it.
Recall that lobotomy was also used in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Yeah, I’d support deinstitutionalization too if that’s what I thought they were doing in there, JD.
Doc
As would I, but I think Ronnie had other ideas, which had more to do with ca$h than altruism.
“Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, is well known for his fiscal policies that stimulated economic growth, cut inflation and pulled America out of a recession (Cannon, 2017). What Reagan is not readily known for is the long term effect of a law he repealed that essentially deinstitutionalized mentally ill patients at the federal level (Roberts, 2013). While some of his fiscal policies had a positive effect on the U.S. economy during the 1980s, his decision to deinstitutionalize mentally ill patients had a much more deleterious effect on these patients, their communities, and the agencies that were left to contend with these individuals’ mental health issues (Honberg, 2015).
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) is the statute that repealed President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act which was supposed to continue federal funding for mental health programs. Reagan gave the appearance of making a consequentialist ethical decision because he presented his repeal of OBRA as an action that would best serve American society and do more good than harm as a result. The OBRA gave mental patients a choice to seek treatment outside of a mental institution, an option to seek treatment at clinics at the state level, and the freedom to administer their own medication (PSY533, 2017) (Pan, 2013). However, Reagan was hasty in taking unsound advice to repeal OBRA because his real motive was to cut the federal budget (Roberts, 2013). He was a leader who “never exhibited any interest in the need for research or better treatment for serious mental illness” (Torrey, 2017).”
JD
There are many culprits involved in the closing of the mental hospitals. The ACLU is one of them.
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-mental-institutions
Here is another link. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all
I think the Left and the Right are equally culpable. Just like we are all culpable in the state in which our country finds itself. Instead of constantly fighting each other, I would like us to reach across to the differing factions and try to find solutions to the many problems facing us. Unfortunately that won’t happen because most of Congress belongs to the globalist cult and no longer cares about our country. At least Trump is trying a few different things, especially in the area of trade.
Just reading JHK’s column twice a week and reading the comments, it is very clear that we are divided and polarized. When JHK talks about the Mueller witch hunt into so-called “Russian Collusion” with no evidence uncovered in almost two years, part of the readership screams that Mueller will surely find the evidence soon. Bah. Joe McCarthy would have been proud of this behavior.
Linda
It seems you are being willfully blind.
Do you expect Mueller to tip his hand before he’s done? Would you? Trump does seem particularly fond of Putin, no? Eric Prince just happened to run into a Russian banker with close ties to Putin in the Seychelles Islands. Strange. Prince, the brother of Sec DeVos, is a well know right-winger with oil/gas interests. Manafort has been know to work for pro-Putin regimes. Tillerson is practically Putin’s best friend. 17 US intelligence agencies have said there was Russian influence. Mueller has several guilty pleas. Kushner was heard on tape wanting a back channel to talk directly with the Russian government and wanted to use the Russian embassy! Nothing going on, you say with a straight face? Bah.
Well, the list could go on and on, but surely a strong case could be made that something untoward MAY be going on here. Should we get to the bottom of it or should we take the word of a known liar that “there is no collusion”?
With the ascendency of all the hard right wing fascist leaders in the world, why are you so surprised when it happens here?
JD
Yes. Some will prosper. We did. Some will not. That’s the trouble with the Regressive Leftist. They want folks like me and my family to financially babysit those that never made one ?? smart choice smart decision in there lives. Take the black community. If you want to really know why it’s so fucked up today? Go over on CensorTube and start watching videos by Tommy Sotomayor and Colin Flaherty.
The garden variety black male female inside the black community have never made one good decision in each ones lives. It’s not only ignorant but socially irresponsible to be popping out kids you cannot afford. Our Government should do to all the ones in the black trash white trash Communities what Switzerland has been doing here in the last 2 months and the things slated coming down this Year against Muslims.
Just take the name Muslim out. Stick in the name “Generational Social Welfare Cheats.” Then pass laws that state each benefit will STOP ? ? !!!! At such and such date. In fact, what Switzerland is doing now is making it so miserable on all Muslims they are leaving. In droves.
I agree with your view on the “War on Drugs,” but your claim that the terrible state of our mental health care is largely the fault of liberals and lefties is ridiculous. In Michigan, for example, a right-wing anti-tax governor and legislature dismantled much of the system and many good places had to shut down due to lack of financial support from the state. (They did a similar number on the roads & bridges, leaving the state’s infrastructure resembling 1945 Berlin). Conservatives claimed that local groups and churches (George H W Bush’s “thousand points of light”) would take care of it. Of course, they became overwhelmed. The streets filled with mentally ill people. It was greedy, selfish, right wing bullshit. The situation has only gotten worse.
Liberals did this??? Please.
Coming from different POVs, the left and the right agreed on a solution – turn them out into the streets. It doesn’t matter their motives. Fiscal motives on the part of the right or concern for ‘rights’ on the part of the left. Same result.
Same thing happens in foreign policy. Look at the Bosnian war and Libyan civil war. ‘Duty to protect’ on the part of Neoliberalism and ‘full-spectrum dominance’ on the part of Neoconservatism leading to a convergence of interests & goals. So is it just soft-headed sentimentality that defines the left and hard-headed reality that defines the right? Seems to be.
‘Seems’ being the key word.
Yes, the homeless problem, so called, as evidenced in Portland, OR that has “Keep Portland Weird” as its slogan of identity, signalling how it is in the forefront of chic non-conformance (cum street status performance art — pricey ripped jeans, tattoos and body piercings). Portland, being a Leftist bastion, virtue signals pridefully its tolerance for homelessness. The reality though is not so much a reflection of consideration for people having low coping capabilities but more for shock value, serving to weight public opinion toward the Left’s meme that all social problems stem from victimhood. Not, mind you, from lowered standards of public behavior signaled by trendy posturing of non-conformance (a tired carry-over from the 60s when “non-conformance” had specific reference to principled social change). Consequently for people who have certifiably low mental/social function skills they become cover for the very many more who simply refuse to act within civil, respectful bounds unless forced to do so. That code of conduct has been exchanged for political capital to the Left.
In Portland, Oregon one of the sports clothes and equipment companies, which had just had an office and store built in downtown Portland had to close because of the homeless constantly threatening their customers when they tried to enter their store. Also sleeping in the doorways and defecating in those same doorways and all over the streets.
Crime in Portland is rampant. Do not ever leave anything in your car because the crooks will break your windows to get at it. Even a cute lunch bag is not immune.
Homelessness is also rampant. And no one has any real solutions. I used to go to Portland all the time as family members live there. I now stay away. Although in my city, homelessness is also growing at exponential levels.
Crime in Portland is rampant because city government does nothing about it. Investigation and prosecution into property crimes is non-existent. When someone tried to steal my car in my own driveway last year (damaging my car in the process), the responding police officer said that filing a report was a formality, only to be filed away as a statistic. If your car is actually stolen, good luck with getting it back. The same goes for home and car burglaries-you’ll never see your stuff again. The perpetrators know this, so there is no incentive for them to stop.
The same goes for homelessness. Camps are swept, the homeless are displaced into another neighborhood, where they accumulate piles of garbage, human excrement and dirty needles, until their camp is swept again. Rinse and repeat. Nothing is being done to get these people off the street and into housing or treatment, so the problem grows exponentially worse.
The City of Portland has no plan for dealing with any of it. That pretty much sums up our society today.
It’s not that “liberals did this”, but in the case of San Fran, they sure as heck own it, and their mental-illness-as-diversity policies have failed.
Here’s an example in which a Washington state judge ruled that a man’s tarp in a public park is his home.
Instead of acknowledging the homeless and mentally ill, the Left would rather protect and promote these “minority lifestyles”. Left to mentally ill: it’s OK to be mental. Left to homeless: you’re not homeless; wherever you are—that’s your home. It’s the same PC nonsense we’ve seen for decades, the same idiocy that underscores the Left’s belief that gender is a lifestyle choice.
The first step toward addressing a problem is to admit there’s a problem. Can we admit that San Fran has a homeless problem?
Thought it was Reagan who closed the mental hospitals.
It will resolve itself if decriminalized, that is Sessions only avenue to avoid wasting resources we dare not squander.
While the drug em up and hope for the best approach to caring for the mentally ill clearly has produced a lot of dangerous blowback (easy to tie JHKs thoughts here to the proliferation of mass shootings, as well), I dont think that it is THE source of CAs homeless problem. It is one of many.
San Francisco and the bay area has THE HIGHEST housing costs in the country. Obviously not everyone whose homeless is mentally ill, I wouldnt venture a guess on a percentage, but many homeless wound up there due to evictions, foreclosures, etc, especially in the Bay Area. The amount of mentally ill and drug-addicts in the lot has made it an embarassing public heath crisis but NIMBYism and BANANAism as well as car-centric and restrictive zoning has created a severe shortage of housing in California’s coastal cities. Seeing as how these issues are also near and dear to JHKs heart Im surprised they werent mentioned at all.
There is a correlation between the expense of suburban development patterns and the homelessness problem in CA.
B
You are correct that the cost of housing in very expensive locales exacerbates the homeless problem in a way that is much less related to mental illness as opposed to economic realities. Vey good point.
JD
The city where I live, Toronto, also has excessively high housing costs (although not approaching the lofty heights seen in and around San Francisco, from what I hear).
Along with labour and capital, land is a primary factor of production, and land rents are a major source of unearned income. By ‘rents’ I don’t mean the cheque someone writes to their landlord every month, but the fact that ownership confers advantage without producing anything of actual value. If you happened to buy a house in the right location, or at the right time, then you can just sit back and watch the value of your purchase increase and increase, making you paper-rich without your having to lift a finger. This is a big part of what enriched the baby boomer generation while impoverishing millennials, for example.
There’s a strong case to be made, in my view, for either a tax or some change in the rules of land tenure to eliminate this mechanism, which ends up redistributing wealth upward while pricing a lot of people out of the ability to own where they live. People can still get rich, but they ought to produce something of value to others to do so.
I think real estate investment is a relatively minor factor when it comes to high housing costs and is generally a safe way to build wealth (as opposed to other investment options). It has become an industry unto itself which is a source of the problems that youre speaking of but a lot of people view real estate as an investment, millenials included. Many don’t have the capital yet to get into it but we will eventually. There is also no guarantee that the price of your house will only go up, as evidenced in the housing crash ten years ago or Kushner’s fiasco at 666 Park Ave. However, seeing as how they’re not making any more of it (actually we’re more likely to lose valuable coastal real estate to the oceans in the coming decades) the price of land will generally go up, making real estate a good investment.
Im a millenial and a renter in an expensive market (North-Central NJ) but aim to own property some day relatively soon and hopefully multiple properties for the above mentioned reasons. Also Im pretty sure that real estate sales are taxed in most places, whether its an investment or not. Maybe not in Canada but they tax everything in NJ (which is another related rant).
I dont think you can really stop real estate investment/speculation nor do i think that you should. Its a free country (supposedly). There are other reasons for high housing costs like desirability of the local market, availability of land, local taxes and cost of living, restrictive zoning, lack of development, etc. (supply and demand).
I agree that high housing costs are a big problem, especially for young people and a barrier to entry into whats left of the middle class but how can you realistically ban real estate investment?
Dr. George Zeller was the first director of the Illinois State Hospital for the Incurably Insane in 1902 and an amateur writer of short stories. Reading his “Old Book” story among others one can sense the extreme pride he had for the state’s new facility and the progressive work being done there. And yes the architecture is very gothic. With the introduction of drug therapies the politicians found cheaper “therapies” for the mentally ill.
I read somewhere that in the world today live about 2000 people who understand how the machine of the Judeo-Christian civilization works and the Western scientific method.
And if the system breaks down, then in principle they can restore it. But it seems to me that if we take into account the depth of the breakdown, then the amount of such people is an order of magnitude smaller, at least among the recognized “specialists of a wide profile.”
And all the rest are just narrow specialists who understand how this or that part of civilization works, but do not understand how the whole of these parts develops together.
But if my hypothesis is correct and someone is trying to bring humanity back to antediluvian times – somebody, please, read the Bible at last, for crying out loud -about what was before the Flood, or rather right before the Flood, judging by everything that is happening – is already being done.
But this conspiracy theory assumes that those who do this are themselves included in these 2000 people, because otherwise they can not target the potential victims. And we arrive at an antagonistic internal contradiction, because again we find ourselves either in the situation “Beetle in an Ant Hill” or in the situation “A Billion Years to the End of the World,” which is in general the same thing.
End the war on drugs? Good start. End the war on the rest of the planet and we can spend $600 Billion a year on Infrastructure, mental health, and all the other things that make life in a civilized society worth living.
I dare you to even attempt to pry the cash out of the greedy cold hands that run the endless wars for profit Doc. No wait, you are a decent guy, don’t try it, you might end up like JFK. The Mega Wealth = the Uber Power X Total Control squared, a formula that assures that nothing will ever change . At least not willingly.
My guess is that granny is going to battle the military industrial complex and win, Walter. They’re old and they vote. More likely: they don’t cut military spending or SS, but “cut” SS by inflating away the value of the benefits.
As is planned with Chained CPI in the Republican tax bill.
The federal government is now suffering from erectile dysfunction , and this form of impotence will continue to get worse. The left , through their resistance, has set the precedent. We can now pick and choose the federal laws that we will obey. Don’t like immigration law? ignore it by calling yourself a “sanctuary city”. Don’t like federal drug law? ignore it , and start a billion dollar stoner industry. What the left fails to understand , is that this rolls both ways , and now that it’s rolling, it won’t stop. Sessions will not be able to effectively fight the sanctuary and stoner movements in California , or anywhere else before the likely retaking of the white house by the Dems in 2020. You think this is bad now? wait until the house, senate and white house go left, and a red state or city refuses to abide by the likely draconian federal gun laws that ensue. What will they do then? – send in the military?
I think this is something Kunstler has said for a long time. As we get further into the long emergency, the centralized, behemoth enterprises, like the US govt., will become more and more ineffectual.
The states will get more autonomy, not because it’s their right to be autonomous, but the will and the means will no longer be possible from the bloated, centralized bureaucracy. Just like Walmart and Amazon are going down, so is the centralized, infallible government.
I was never such a fan of the novels of the late John Updike but I have to say ‘Toward the End of Time’ was a crackerjack projection of what Mr. Kunstler’s blog and discussion here is all about.
One of the themes – hard to accept at the time but eminently credible now – is that after a spastic nuclear exchange with China, which left much of the USA broken down, the Federal Government continues to go through the motions but is pretty much ignored by those desperate survivors across the land attempting to get by.
He has little buzzy killer drones, UPS and DHL taking over as enforcers and mercenaries when police and army fall apart – it is an intriguing read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toward_the_End_of_Time
” How are they going to make a big stink over enforcing US immigration laws while they ignore US drug laws vis-à-vis the twenty-nine states that have legalized marijuana use in one way or another?” — The federal government is Constitutionally charged with enforcing immigration. It has no Constitutional authority in banning any substance. Alcohol was only briefly banned due to a constitutional amendment. That says it all, or at least it should.
Yes. A false equivalency, both in terms in of Original Law and Importance, though of course drug abuse is a huge social issue. But without enforcing our borders, we wont even have a country to worry about. Part of the coming apart is total loss of any sense of priority, or of understand what is the most important.
White Men know. And Trump voters know: Immigration. Mary Jane, Good. Maria Juana, no Buena.
Hey, just as long as it gets legalized, they can call it Pepto-Fucking-Bismol for all I care! 😀
I noticed that reports about people streaming into Columbia from Venezuela never mentioned “undocumented workers” They were described as illegal immigrants putting a strain on resources and taking jobs from lower wage Colombians. I guess they’re racist and immoral.
Here in Wisconsin, all the serious Democratic candidates for governor favor some form of moving towards full legalization of cannabis (Tony Evers, the likely nominee, is promising a referendum on the matter if he becomes governor). So if the Democrats finally push Scott Walker out of the statehouse in Madison later this year, it will probably be because the prospect of legalization brought the Millennial voters to the polls.
It’s not just mentally ill, drug addicts, alcoholics that are homeless. There’s people that have jobs, maybe part-time or off-the-books or minimum wage, that can’t make the rent. People don’t make enough money, accommodation too scarce, too expensive.
This isn’t a problem just in the US. Green Alba might want to chime in, but I’ve read that accommodation is tough to find in the UK and what there is available is egregiously pricey. Hence, a lot of people are out of doors.
Of course, when borders are thrown open at the same time as jobs are being exported, the problem of housing is one of those easily foreseen problems, both in the US and UK. But then again, there’s hardly a politician out there that isn’t serving elite interests.
So do politicians give a damn? Of course not. They wrap themselves in this sanctuary city mantle of virtue, but in advocating for open borders, who and what are they really advocating for? They’re pushing for cheap labor and who but the Koch bros and their ilk would want that? Do they give damn that they’re creating a third-world squat-hole in California? Bureaucratic and political and academic elites generate blizzards of lefty jargon and buzzwords. So what?
And what about mentally ill folk? The evidence speaks for itself.
In England, Pakis in right off the boat get public housing while White couples wait for years. Alba won’t admit that. I know because White Nationalism is an International Movement of White Nationalists, each one supporting all the others in their struggle for Freedom and Nationhood.
KunStler is right. I was a social work student in the mid-60’s and all the talk was of closing the snake-pits (mental asylums) under the Great Society programs that LBJ was proposing. It was called the Community Mental Health Centers Act and it lavishly funded community health centers in all catchment areas of the nation. They were supposed to pick up and supervise people who were being released on the streets. They were well in place when Reagan was president. Of course, most of these mentally ill people got lost in the crowd and we have been suffering as a society ever since. These community health centers are now little kingdoms with a horde of bureaucrats sucking off public payrolls.
Almost did a double-take when I saw this at the end of the post: This blog is sponsored this week by McAlvany ICA
At first blush I read it as “McAlvany CIA,” and I thought, “Damn, the CIA’s officially hung out a shingle in the private sector now too and the’re sponsoring Kunstler just because they can!”
One other correction Jim: …ranks of intersectional oppressed minorities. I think the word you word going for here was intersexional, although perhaps you were going for a discreet pun that the reader had to work a little harder for. Anyway, great post, as usual.
You’re right about the MJ enforcement or lack thereof. Just too much money in it now that the corporate boys have got the scent. That’s an argument for the illegals/undocumenteds/ whatever in hell the term of the day is’s as well. Whole lot of exploitation and labor arbitrage going on there, don’t ya know? But that’s just what good little capitalists do in end stage malignant capitalism, so you and I both know that nothing can or will be done about either of them. As the conservatives are wont to say time and time again, “If you don’t like it, get the fuck out!”
Maybe we can work out an exchange program where undocumented aliens come in to work for slave wages and reap whatever benefits are still to be had in the rapidly emerging corporate plantation state, and documented disaffected Americans can go the other direction to seek whatever salvation they can find in the impoverished third world “shitholes” their tax dollars have been paying to be built for the last 100 years or so. It’s the least they could do! Now there’s an idea that’s got legs! Fucking wall indeed!
“They were an embarrassment, for sure, and certainly an affront to liberal sensibilities. But, of course, they fucked up the remedy for that. Instead of replacing the giant old state insane asylums with smaller, better-managed institutions, [b]they just released the inmates under the rationale that they were a politically oppressed minority group. And there it ended.”[/b]
********************
It was because of deinstitutionalisation and psychopharmacology.
How incredibly obnoxious this is:
A mix of used hypodermic needles, human feces, and other trash litters the streets and sidewalks in a large section of downtown San Francisco, a local news outlet reported Sunday night. It’s a problem that has grown by epic proportions in recent years and has many concerned for the health and safety of some the city’s youngest residents….
— The Blaze
The concern of course, is that the Twitterites and Facebook clones might be inconvenienced on their way to their tricked out playrooms passing for offices, not the poor souls who call that hell-hole home. I lived in SF for 11 years and watched as the unreal inequality got worse all the time. It began to seem that one slip-up and you were going to be out there with them. Now, even the blessed tech children can’t afford decent housing and are being warehoused in dorms of all things. As with the gun problem in the US, the issue is not mental health but the failure of society to provide some kind of decent baseline of life for all.
Excellent points!
Who is the “all” is the pertinent question. You can’t have a welfare state with open borders. If you try, then you’ll get a tragedy like California is becoming.
Yes, I think you’ve got it right there Georges1202 !
There is a chicken and egg here indeed.
Dr. Gabor Mate has a lot to say on this matter, supporting your thoughts to some extent, but quite naturally it is a complex issue, perhaps an intergenerational issue, made far worse by the lack of support from society in general, and individuals and institutions in particular:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-APGWvYupU
The homeless situation in the San Francisco Bay Area is horrible. My husband organizes service projects for the church and recently met with city officials. He came away feeling more discouraged. There are so many homeless that church efforts barely scratch the surface of meeting needs.
Monday I cooked dinner for about 20 homeless and medically fragile woman that are sheltered by local churches on a monthly rotating schedule. Gee whiz, 20 out of a population of 6,000. Not much feeling of accomplishment.
San Francisco is truly a shithole. I’ve seen people shooting up drugs in full view of freeway on ramps. They have no shame whatsoever.
Jen in San Jose
Jen,
Yes, San Jose is no better with the disgusting cost of housing and homeless everywhere.
I used to live on Nob Hill – the only reason it wasn’t overrun was because of the hill – they were too lazy to climb up it.
Meanwhile the whoremonger-in-chief tells us things have never been better in Freedom’s Land. A fucking fiasco.
Whoremongers in Chief George, please. They are all creators of the homeless, the jobless, the hopeless, for the more that have no hope the less there are to challenge the fact that all of the Rich Lackeys in our political “leadership” are all THEM whilst we remain US. The first step in solving a problem is realizing that you have a problem. Our problem is clearly depicted in one simple chart:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html
Looks like the Middle Ages were so special that we are going to be going back for another go at it..
John Edwards wanted to make this inequality the center piece of his campaign unfortunately his family life was more important and more fragile than Trump’s!
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
– Jackson Browne, “The Rebel Jesus”
Ah, the good old hockey stick curve. Glad to see that things are finally working out for the Oligarchs. At least now the 1% can look down at the other 4%, and feel pity. As far as the rest of the country, fuck ’em.
A friend of mine lives on Russian Hill (within a few blocks of the famous, curvy part of Lombard). Her two-bedroom apartment rents for $15K a month. It has a great view!
Jen
Let me guess, Jen…
Her company is paying for it. Amirite?
(And then writing it off their taxes.)
So you are against illegal immigration, right Self Righteous One? If not, you’re part of the problem. Let’s not put all this on Big Business and the Mentally Ill. It’s also the Democratic Party and their illegal clients from Central America, Mexico, etc.
Healthcare is a gigantic cost quagmire, and mental health is the epitome of the swamp. With a small “s”. Mental health issues are a relatively uncureable situation where drugs may be given to suppress symptoms, but the side effects are worse that the disease. The polity in the 70’s foresaw the huge outlays coming relative to this unwinnable situation and just dumped the problem onto the streets. The despair of mental health is similar to the aged, a bottomless pit with no solution except to put them away . The difference is that most of the population of the aged contribute to their care, and Medicare and Medicaid take care of most of the rest. The collective government kept Medicaid but dealt poorly with the mentally ill as they for the most part, do not vote. Cynical but probably true.
Mental illness is different from adolescence, the depressions and mid-life crises that are ubiquitous in life. The gun situation with youth is acknowledging this in the latest slaughter. Mental illness is a misfiring of the ol’ bean, a permanent state of the individual. Drugs suppress symptoms, but are not a cure. Mental illness is incurable. Criminal mental illness is put away into prison, non-criminal illness is not dealt with. And no one of substance seems to care.
JHK’s melodrama just feeds the MSM, whose job it is to bitch with no solutions. But then again, is that not the ‘job” of the Swamp, to do nothing and then justify doing nothing. The MSM is just the mouthpiece of the Deep State. And Jerry Brown is not the answer to the Deep State, he is the paragon of it. The Democrats used to be a spokesman for the less fortunate, until they started being the defenders of the worthless Federal government, The renaissance of the Democrats should be how to make people aware of the fecklessness of the government and how to fight back by becoming more independent. But then they would turn into Republicans.
“The renaissance of the Democrats should be how to make people aware of the fecklessness of the government and how to fight back by becoming more independent.”
Recoculous! Who on this site promotes becoming more independent while at the same time openly deploring governmental dysfunction? Who? Anybody…?
…oh, yeah…our Host….
There will be no renaissance of anything, certainly not of any corrupt political “party” for in order for an entity to be reborn, as it were, it first has to die. Death will come to the parasites once the host that is fed upon dies, or can no longer provide the sustenance to keep the parasites alive. There is only one goal for government grown so corrupt and that is to stay in power so that the wealth can continue to flow. In order to remain in power nothing can be done to compromise the staying power of those that have it, so nothing is or gets done, period. Slow, stinking decay remains.
“Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our process of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent, whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night – Duty – Honor – Country.” Douglas McArthur 12 May 62
Perhaps Doug was wrong. Perhaps those civilians were incapable. Sure looks it to me.
“Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.” General MacArthur (correct spelling) crossed that river on April 5, 1964. A few days later, I watched as a young man as a long line of 105mm howitzers paid tribute with a stirring 21-gun salute. ·Sticks-of-TNT
How careless of me. No excuse sir!
Many people of “substance” unfortunately our society as a whole is unwilling to address our many shadows.
Well said. Dumping the mentally ill on city streets with a prescription for medication they don’t understand and cannot afford is not a humane solution.
“Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” – Pearl S. Buck
“[T]he moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
And all of the elderly, sick, crazy, needy, handicapped, and babies of the rest of the world too – right Dumb?
Reaganism and Thatcherism whether misunderstood or misinterpreted led to the universal globalist mantra that corporate responsibiltiy only extends to share holders. Rugged individualism, massive tax cuts, demonization of revenue sharing, welfare to work and the rise of meritocracy combined with society wide denial of reality has produced what we see. I got mine only shines until somebody else gets yours. Just out of meaness let me say “It takes a village” and a village full of idiots at that.
I got mine only shines until somebody else gets yours.
That’s pretty catchy! Good work! You hit all the others points as well.
Nicely said. But I think it precedes Reagan and Thatcher. Ayn Rand and others said that profit is the greatest virtue.
Reagan, Thatcher, and Rand, all within the space of a few words. Talk about a fine collection of world class psychotics!
Yes indeed, Ol’ Scratch. I think Rand’s book “The Virtue of Selfishness” covers a lot of this. I did love reading her works, however. Great tales of daring do. Impossible to believe of course, but her work was mostly fiction no matter that Paul Ryan and so many others have enshrined her idiotic Objectivist philosophy as their raison d’etre.
wm5135 – well put. Love your last sentence.
WM
Bravo! Truer words were never written.
JD
Let us not forget the drugs, those wonderful psychotropic chemicals developed by large pharmaceutical companies and given to the mentally ill designed to create a smeared illusion of obsequious sycophancy of the world in praise of capitalism. The mentally ill were given a pill and shown the door, not much different than if we gave them all a gun. “Seems it never rains in Southern California”
I’ve worked in jail mental wards. One with 2000 inmates, round the clock armies of psych staffs, deputies, and doctors with access to jail cells and all the special equip you might need to deal with the mentally ill. Hundreds of eyes on to make sure they take their meds and they’re not harming themselves or others. Millions of dollars and incredible effort by super capable staff, and it still doesn’t work well at all. It’s a fantasy to think you’ll fix the estimated 20,000 or so mentally ill people on the streets of Orange County alone. If you build more facilities, where will you put them? No one wants them anywhere close and I can’t blame them. Where will you get the money when California is currently letting thousands of criminals out of prisons because they can’t afford them? Orange County is currently trying to move all the homeless into hotels with 30 day vouchers. What hotels would be crazy enough to take them in? Imagine what these places will look like in a month. I’ve seen people smash their heads through walls, flush full blankets to stop up the plumbing, and tear stainless steel plumbing fixtures off block walls. And, what will happen when the 30 days are up?
This is a no win situation. The mentally ill have been moving to California for half a century at least. Liberal gov’t policies and good weather are a magnet. The L.A. area averages one cop on the street for every 10 to 30 thousand people. The thin blue line is REALLY thin out here. The next financial crisis and real estate market crash might just sink us into oblivion.
We are completely overcrowded here, and our testosterone levels are dropping. We don’t have the will or money or places or psychiatrists, and soon we won’t have the balls :-), to do anything about this.
Perhaps the better question is why do we have so many apparently terminal “mentally ill” people in the first place? Not sure what that says about a society that produces so much derangement and misery in the first place. If the only answer is that there are no answers, then we all know what the final solution will inevitably be.
“Perhaps the better question is why do we have so many apparently terminal “mentally ill” people in the first place?”
Nick O Demus
The ubiquitous availability of narcotics to ease the pain of existence at a sub-subsistence level? People living to an age where dementia is prevalent? Angst brought on by spending principal?
Smart pants! I’ll bet you were the teacher’s pet, weren’t you?
Nick O Demus.
Five different High Schools…Texas, Nebraska, Stockton, Cal and Livermore Cal. Teacher’s pet? Never was gifted with an obscene proposition, sooo….
You hit the nail on the thumb, Ol’ Scratch. Moving from Japan, bright, rich, clean and prosperous, to sloppy, feudal, haphazard Indonesia was a real study in contrasts.
I have never seen, or had to deal with, so many crazy folk & borderline cases than I experienced in my time working in Osaka. Postal workers, barely in control, eyes flickering this way and that, and all I need are a strip of stamps thank you (speaking in my politest Japanese) to keep them from, ah, going postal.
Many mental cases walking the streets, mumbling to themselves – although I’m referring to the 80s when powerful pharmaceuticals were not so prevalent for mental distress (= doped up).
My moderately prosperous students at Osaka Photographic College as well: short attention span, disinterested & distracted, more than a few showing telltale signs of stress or depression.
Southeast Asian kids are the healthiest I’ve ever been around, mentally anyway (they like junk food too much). Confident, balanced, easy-going and obedient without resenting it.
Problem is that that goes along with a stunning absence of curiosity or creativity, superficial attitudes toward serious discipline and an unbreakable feudal attitude about life. They want to be wealthy and modern but do not look forward to the mental aches and pains that go along with it.
Part of the explanation is excessively, astoundingly religiosity. Brainwashing works and from infancy onward. Millions of case studies in ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.
Also about 20 point difference in IQ. Indonesians may be healthy but they are quite limited as a population. Japan is obviously suffering from a deep cultural neurosis, partly due to Americanism, partly to losing to the same, and partly just the stress of modernity as it interfaces with their formerly medieval culture.
Problem is that that goes along with a stunning absence of curiosity or creativity,–Duh.
Whites create, Yellow imitate, Blacks desecrate.
Maybe one factor is perpetual war. We’ve been at war for the Parkland shooters whole life. A lot of movies,video games and music are violent. This could be a cause or reflection (or both) of a violent society. We like violence.
Caine,
Nice post. The issue remains…either warehouse or dispose of the refuse…or accept the condition and live in untenable surroundings.
There is one viable solution, however…get rich and self-segregate with others of like mind…and those of us who are reading this post have done just that.
You can run, but you can’t hide. The ills of our society will inevitably find you again at the least opportune moment. We’re all carrying the seeds.
But I have run and hidden well…and yes, we all carry the seeds of our own destruction.
On another note…are you still in the market for souls…lately I haven’t been using mine….
Yes, but prices took a dip along with the markets. I’d hold out a bit if I were you, they’ll inevitably come back again.
“Yes, but prices took a dip along with the markets”
…Always with the grind…Art of the Deal? Remember the sage advice of T “Boone” Pickens (he should be coming along to a venue near you soon)…”If you want a deal real bad…you’ll get a real bad deal”.
Well said, Caine.
I worked as a nurse for 17 years. I saw the geriatric piece of the mental illness situation many times. We had three choices on how to deal with “out of control” patients, physical, chemical restraints or sitters. Dope them up to obliviousness or tie them down. The number one issue was getting out of bed and taking off, which never had a good outcome. Dementia is a cruel malady. Liberalism hit the situation with the reaction to tie downs. Restraints, if not applied correctly, are dangerous to the patient. They also seem cruel. Restraints, if done correctly, keep the patient from injuring themselves by uncontrolled behavior. In a world of understaffed wards, this becomes a difficult decision. Alternatives are doping the patients into submission or assigning sitters to the patient, i.e. a health care aide that monitors the patient 24/7. Sitters are expensive and hospitals do not like this alternative.
Mental illness nursing is very similar to this and the very expensive nature of the beast makes the politics very difficult. Drug control, which is temporary at best, sitters or restraints are used in milieus to control patients who WILL injure themselves. It is a no win scenario.
Thanks for the additional nursing perspective, “in the know” real world info JohnAZ.
elysian field, I agree that self segregation is probably the best we can do in a no win situation, but I can’t leave my family behind.
I’m trying the extreme self sufficiency thing JHK and his like are proposing. along with trying to get the memesis thing going, getting my neighbors to join along, as JMG prescribes.
I sure hope someone figures this out ol scratch. I’m hopeful…but realistic…I think.
@Caine,
Somewhere, in the bowels of the Kremlin, President Putin is laughing his ass off.
The Republican solution is this: “we can’t afford to treat, house or feed them so we will force families, churches and ‘do gooders’ to care for them or they can die.”
They are all Pontius Pilate washing their hands.
I’d rather live in a society willing to bankrupt itself to help the less fortunate.
Or, Dumbedup, the GOP could at least quit passing more massive tax cuts for the rich. The fact that they get to keep ever more of their quite possibly ill-gotten gains, while our cities turn into third world shitholes only a block from their posh high rise offices, does not a pretty picture make. When will it finally be time for another Coxey’s Army carrying Pitchforks to the Capitol Building and the White House? And is that even possible today?
Outsider
“…their quite possibly ill-gotten gains” Old saying: “At the heart of every fortune, is a crime.” The GOP is slavish in it’s devotion to easing the burden of the seriously wealthy. The Dems run a close second but are not as obvious. I recall what Walter-B said and agree that the parties are different sides of the same turd.
JD
The Mexicans will simply hire the gangs to kill them after the takeover.
The huge conundrum of life. Human nature being what it is, being compassionate and giving more to the unfortunate few unfortunately just makes more unfortunate few. The Stockton experiment with welfare, carefully disguised as Basic Income, will show how badly this concept will misfire. The entire compassionate model just snowballs wherever it is used. California definitely has a mental health problem, its own polity. The Left has a major problem, its philosophy just does not work. What makes me shake my head, is that they are able to sell this crap to as many people as they do, with California as the poster child.
Kamala Harris, A likely 2020 dem. presidential candidate , states that “California is the future”. I think her words will come back to haunt her.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/03/08/kamala_harris_on_immigration_sessions_wants_to_roll_back_the_clock_california_represents_the_future_.html
The huge conundrum of life. Human nature being what it is, etc – JohnAZ
============
As I see it there are three huge problems:
1. Crazy/homeless people
2. Ancient people (many of whom have totally lost their marbles as in Alzheimer’s) waiting to (blissfully) draw their last breath living in nursing homes
3. Overpopulation where the young can barely fend for themselves much less care for an increasing percentage of aged
Dare I be the prick to mention what I believe must ultimately be the solution?
Euthanasia
Or in the other building, mandatory birth control. A lottery might be in order. Generally those at the higher end of the scale intellectually, physically and morally would be able to afford the most tickets for a chance at reproduction. Slowly the stock would be improved. And this would raise a fair amount of money for the State to house the last of the defectives.
You can have the honor of being “the prick” if you like, but I think along those same lines everyday as well. Matter of fact, I fully expect to die by my own hand sometime in the next 20 years. If I’m lucky. That is indeed what we’re coming to eventually with all of our current bad choices, although if they keep defunding healthcare, that should take care of a great deal of it right there. Young people and old alike dying from American lifestyle disease (sugar and processed food consumption, lack of exercise, obesity, fatty liver disease, adult onset diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and all the litany of follow on diseases after that) and not getting any treatment.
Hello James,
Another excellent cranial stimulant from yours to ours. I grew-up in the Soviet of Washington and also remember then Republican Governor and Vice-Presidential aspirant Daniel J. Evans closing “Northern State Hospital” in Sedro Wooley in the early-1970s.
For those of your readers crippled by political IDs – Evans was an ‘R’, although I regarded him as a RINO, because I saw little or no policy difference between him and his ‘D’ predecessor Albert D. Rosellini – or for that matter, his ‘D’ successor Dr. Dixy Lee Ray:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/albert-rosellini-dies-ex-wash-governor-led-reforms-of-prisons-and-mental-hospitals/2011/10/10/gIQAn7R9aL_story.html?utm_term=.4055cfb79079
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/03/obituaries/dixy-lee-ray-79-ex-governor-led-atomic-energy-commission.html
Even, WAPO could not grasp the difference between ‘reform’ and ‘shut-down’ in Gov. Rosellini’s Obituary.
In short, I learned early – it doesn’t make a tinkers damn of difference if the political temple monkey is a Democant or a Republicrap!
THE SYSTEM rolls on decade after decade with few victims ever intuiting its existence, much-less its malevolent effect on their lives.
But a half century of observing this cluster-frag has given me one simple remedy to offer for this murderous-monolith:
Return to our Roots!
Oikos & Nomos are Greek terms for ‘household’ & ‘management’ from which we get the modern term – economy.
However, Aristotle founded his Division of the Sciences of Economy on the strict demarcation between:
A. The economy of the household (oikos)
B. From that of the city (polis)
http://www.cts.org.au/1997/aristotl.htm
EVERY so-called ‘economic’, ‘political’ or ‘social’ problem confronting modern society originates from the complete failure to grasp this cornerstone fact of the modern city-state.
Ergo, our host writes that we have become so befuddled by our present predicament that we can’t even write one simple sentence describing it.
Or, words to that effect . . .
Until oikos-nomos is fixed, nothing matters.
Keep at it Jim, it’s great brain-tonic!
PFO
PS My late sister was a freshman at Willamette U – literally across the street from the Oregon State Mental Hospital when Jack and the gang showed up to film “One Flew Over the KooKoos Nest in the summer of 1975. Oregon was far ahead of other left-coast states as the OSMH had been shuttered for years.
Kelly got some great photographs with her and cast on location there, out on the coast at Depot Bay and at “The White Coaster” bar in Salem after many a long day of movie making!
A significant percentage of the comments this morning blame the right or the left for this problem. Is this what America has degenerated into – a bunch of whiners and blames? Does every problem have to be politicized?
Using an old ’60’s mantra, “power to the people”, why don’t we take responsibility to try to resolve the issue ourselves. Oh, I forgot. We might miss March Madness; we don’t have the time or energy.
That’s a nice diatribe and all, but all you did was cleverly shift the blame from the right and/or the left to both, and presumably everyone in between. How, for instance, would we as individuals, begin to solve this problem?
My intent was to bypass the blame game; it’s all our responsibility. Obviously, if commenters here make the effort to post on this issue, they must have some interest. Here’s one suggestion as a place to start: write your congressperson and senator with a strongly worded letter telling them to make an effort to resolve the issue, otherwise you won’t vote for them. That may not end up being effective, but it’s a good starting point. Then research relevant organizations and find the it what they do and get involved. These are just 2 ideas off the top of my head.
Thanks. I like the second one anyway. Representatives? I would never give them the pleasure of wasting my time.
Nice catch. They’re good at such subtle gamesmanship.
March Madness,
Oh Christ…is that upon us again? Time to watch
“College Ball”…I hope to hell our team of hirelings beat their team of hirelings….
Elsy,
The U of Pittsburgh just fired their basketball coach. He transformed a winning program into one of the worst in the country in a mere two years. They lost all of their conference games, and by an average of 20 points or more. Yet, they must buy out his contract, which, I heard on the telly, will run into the seven figures. And we wonder why tuitions are so high!
I here Jeebus plays the brackets as well. Who knew?
We can do more together than we can alone. As a nation, we act together through government. Government is political. Thus, we can’t escape the problem by shifting the responsibility to individuals to avoid politicizing.
No, because we aren’t a people anymore. Nor do we share values. Remember, diversity destroys community and social capital.
A. The economy of the household (oikos)
B. From that of the city (polis)
Your family must care for you not your government. You must care for your government.
Since when did we start paying attention to the law?
In California, the number of patients in state mental hospitals reached a peak of 37,500 in 1959 when Edmund G. Brown was Governor. Reagan slashed the number to 22,000 in 1967 and the number continued to decline under Edmund G. Brown Jr.
The senior Mr. Brown expressed regret about the way the policy had ultimately evolved.
”They’ve gone far, too far, in letting people out,”
The source for this info is from 1984.
Color me stupid, but I don’t understand JHK’s assertion that the DOJ’s hands are tied on enforcing federal immigration laws because they are not enforcing federal drug laws. Who is allowed to be here is definitely 100% a federal issue, while federal laws against the use of marijuana are not in the Constitution, thus could be a Congressional overreach. Selective prosecution is used all the time. If it wasn’t, our courts would be much more hopelessly backlogged than they are now.
Not quite sure I followed his line of reasoning either.
Well, when the government decides to take over the operation and skimming of formerly underground and black market businesses, you know it’s past time to put your affairs in some sort of self-protective order that prepares for [more] bureaucratic overreach and propagation. The booze industry has always been a reliable source of skimmed revenue; since then, they’ve discovered gambling, loan-sharking and now, the dreaded weed.
Interestingly, here in Mass-hole land, the referendum was worded in *4 pages* of specifics that were all well reasoned and [supposedly] binding. BUT, the sober-thinking legislative body got hold of it, delayed its implementation and in the meantime, cobbled together a huge raft of restrictive by-laws and licensing. (I haven’t looked at what the licensing schedule is going to be for recreational dispensaries, but I can predict that they’ll be YUGE. It’s been confirmed that “by [a new] law”, applications for licenses *must* be accepted by April 1st. I would imagine that will be coupled with a large “deposit’ while the new bureaucracy considers whether you’d make a respectable Dr. Feelgood or not.)
Again, a body of lawyerly ass-wipe deciders subverts the “will of the people” to turn it into another revenue-generating tangle of grift and applied felonies. What they miserably fail to understand is that they’ve gifted the black market with another avenue to keep their pricing more desirable, as it will turn out to be much cheaper to buy from these unlicensed sources. Damn stupid; they just couldn’t settle for “some” or “enough”, plus they could have all but wiped out the black market. Remember, drugs sell themselves; no pushing necessary.
We incarcerate 8-10 times the amount of people than any other industrial state, we have a lousy public educational system, we have a bloated military, and start counter-productive wars and as a result have a large contingent of psychologically damaged veterans, we have the most expensive medical system by 2x and exclude mental health care. Every above group is over represented in the Homeless population.
These problems are the fault of the left? Delusional.
My theory about Jim: Stockholm syndrome. Notice how the mention of civil war comes up in this essay. Similar to the right wing bung holes out in etherland threatening violence for the due process of removing an incompetent President.
“the due process of removing an incompetent President.”
And who, sir, will be the arbiter of “incompetence”? You?
I believe in letting Mueller be Mueller.
Marcus,
I believe in letting our elected President Trump be President Trump, not defer to the unelected Mueller. As such he should have fired Mueller months ago.
Mueller was elected by our justice system, represented by the duly appointed and Congress approved Jeff Sessions.
We didn’t elect a strong-man or king. The Don has to live within our justice system. Tough nut for you to swallow huh? Maybe you and your ilk would like to live under a dictatorship. There are still plenty to choose from…
Hardly a tough nut to swallow, Marcus. BTW, Mueller was ‘appointed,’ not ‘elected’ by our justice system. And Sessions had nothing to do with it. As you should recall, Sessions recused himself from anything to do with the Russia investigation, and Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller.
Thank you for clarifying it for marcus1, outsider.
Incompetent President, my foot! This man has done more good for the economics workings of the country and if he gets NOKO to the negotiating table by just simply not putting up with their BS, the electorate will forget all about the Dems this fall. The US is not California, thank the Lord. Just think, if California had elected HRC by the popular vote, we could be proud that the President was elected by an asylum on the coast.
@JohnAZ,
If Trump had had even a smidgen of cooperation from Congress and the MIC, and had been given a remotely fair shot from the mass media, imagine where we might be today. For one, we would have known for sure if Trump really meant what he said about rapprochement with Russia. That is the main reason why millions of us on the anti-war Right voted for him – so I guess, per Adam Schiff, that means we are working for Putin.
You’re the one advocating for a coup. If there’s blood, it’ll be on you and yours.
“…scenes out of Vincent Price movies… lightning flashes through the barred windows… a scream in the night… hysterical laughter echoing down the dark, tiled hallways….”
Yeah…I know what you mean…Been there….
Didn’t they used to put the mentally ill on boats and just set the boats adrift?
Isn’t that what Castro did with the Mariel Boatlift? Pointing them due North to the Florida Keys was a great move by Fidel, IMO.
JHK,
Another entertaining missive from the Funhouse of Cruelty.
With brain-dead ideological boobs like little Gen’l Beauregard in charge of the DoJ, we’re forced to reflect on this country’s unslakable thirst for punishment and cruelty. I have only one prediction in this theater of laws and the disregard of them (because many of them are fucking ridiculous and are broken without intent/thought) — this will end very badly. And it’s 50/50 that an attempt will be made at rebuilding what will be so thoroughly destroyed in an outburst of uniquely American rage.
The cacophony of cognitive dissonance banging away in Mr Sessions’ (Esq.) head must be absolutely deafening… even though he doesn’t appear to hear it and evidently pays it no mind. “It’s just a bit – a bit of tinntinus, and – and it’s always, uh, with me.”
Not to worry though, any future laws will be inspired by a devout wish to garner more much-needed revenues for the state and the power-brokers behind it. That’s a good thing… right?
BTW, how many of our “deciders” are decidedly in need of some treatment for mental malfunctions and short-circuiting themselves? Psych Evaluations for Everybody; Hurrah!!
“BTW, how many of our “deciders” are decidedly in need of some treatment for mental malfunctions and short-circuiting themselves?”
Evidently, more than a few:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2017/10/11/congressional-pharmacy-has-reportedly-delivered-alzheimer-drugs-members-congress/4K2HsLB7YqLXIFDFzyHQxM/story.html
It’s hard to tell with some of the Black ones since they were half crazy and half retarded to begin with.
“It never seems to occur to anyone that a mental hospital can be run humanely, at an appropriate scale, and that these poor, sad creatures might, at least, be better off there with a bed, a bathroom, and somebody to check in on them daily than they are wallowing in the gutters of San Francisco and other cities. Surely there are up-to-date models in other lands for this kind of caretaking — if maybe we sent a few bureaucrats overseas to have a look.”
Thank you for that James, it’s an argument that I’ve made many times and have never seen it in anyone’s writings. My son was diagnosed as a schizophrenic at the age of 16. He’s 20 now and does quite well in a structured environment( he lives at home) , but my wife and I are in our 60’s and worry to no end how he’ll do when we’re gone.The public’s apathy stems I believe from the general misconception that mental illness is caused by bad life choices, when in reality it’s usually the other way around.A misconception I shared until I educated myself about mental illness. That the mentally ill are given rights flies in the face of what the illness is. Ask anyone who has a mentally ill loved one, I can guarantee that they will have nightmare stories of trying to get help to no avail due to the patients rights. My son was way out there during his break with reality,and everyone who saw him could see it. It’s like a bad acid trip without the drugs.(my son has never taken any drug,hell he won’t even drink carbonated sodas.) But because he was not a threat to himself or others, we were refused admission to the psych ward 4 times. We finally wised up and lied,saying he asked if we had a gun.THAT got him in,and the rest is a happy story. The drugs,while not perfect, allow him to lead a semblance of a normal life.
While I’m on and about it, to those who don’t know,the vast majority of mentally ill are non-violent. The MSM loves to scare the bejesus out of everyone with reporting of mass shootings, and often blame the meds. Well, the way it was explained to me by a DR., IF you are a violent prone or suicidal mentally disturbed person, you are often incapable of getting it together enough to carry out your plan. The meds sometimes will make the person better just enough to allow them to carry it out. Which should make screening for those behaviours a top priority.
My first Sociology professor Dr. Himelfarb was instrumental in terms of emptying out the municipal ‘mental hospitals’ in CANADA in the 1970s. The Liberal perspective at that juncture was to reintegrate warehoused people that were shuttered away from mainstream society as though they had no rights to belong to the very society they were being isolated from. The Human Rights paradigm precipitated their collective release from being warehoused, and isolated, from society. The rights paradigm forced the issue to the forefront, and legislation forced the closing of these institutions en masse all across North America. Bureaucrats in government offloaded the populations of these now bankrupt institutions onto the streets knowing that these people were being forced into a situation of survival of the fittest, but that was deemed better than the situation they were just extricated from via the legislation.
Governments all saved money by divesting from investment in these now defunct institutions. Municipalities then used police services to corral the homeless ex-mental institution patients into low rent districts and urban slums so that main street no longer had to deal with the issue in commercial districts. After near to half a century of divestment the commercial districts are now housing the homeless on main street, and the aggregation of homeless are driving down property values as well as driving up emergency services costs.
Bureaucracy has now come full circle in terms of their financial offloading of human beings that are stressing the financial coffers of municipalities, and the final stage of government divestment is to create the optimal conditions for the homeless to be genocided off the books with street violence and predatory drug culture where street dealers are armed with hand guns and unmonitored street drugs that typically have a Lethal Dosage Rate of at least 50% which ensures a rapid rate of fatalities in all municipalities across North America.
Since the 70s the modus operandi of governance has been financial divestment from the state responsibility to provide humanitarian care for financially disenfranchised citizenry.
Let them eat cake has changed to let them ingest Fentanyl.
RW
-Let them eat cake has changed to let them ingest Fentanyl
Better provide some food with that dose or your stomach will have some definite issue’s!
My stomach has no issues given that I have never used drugs, but I am educated in Pharmacology, Drugs & Behaviour, & Addictions, from an academic Experimental Psychology perspective.
RW
RW- While in college during the 80’s I worked on a chronic adult psych unit as an psytech in Minnesota. Pts from Prison for the “mentally insane” would be admitted to this unit for medication evals and changes. It would have been another unspoken level of hell if not for the compassion and diligence of staff and medical students. This pushed me towards more of the “wholistic” forms of therapy.
I applied to work in a provincial Psychiatric Evaluation Unit as a Psychometrist not too long ago, but I did not get the offer. I realize that everyone that works in these units are professional & appropriately compassionate. The threats of violence and assaults in these Psychiatric Units is a real possibility given that population and their every day difficulties. I’m too old to work in that area now, and my whole degree was a waste of time given that I never landed any jobs with the degree.
Experimental Psychology is interesting subject matter even though it is a useless degree not worthy of attaining due to a lack of employment opportunity that naturally goes with it.
Today, I’m using my Experimental Psychology statistics knowledge on Financial Intelligence & Risk analysis just to stay up-to-date on Inferential Statistics & Central Limit Theorem. Frankly, I should have sold street drugs for a living for all my degree has done for me.
RW
RW- You are probably better off financially. I went back to school for my MA in Clinical Counseling 8 years ago and still am unable to fully support my family with my new degree. I too feel that ageism has played a role in this since I’m often told- “while your background and resume’ is impressive we have decided to go in another direction…” I keep telling myself the reward here may never be financial though as I get closer to retirement age I can only hope to send my wonderful spouse to warmer climbs to visit while I’ll continue to shovel out the drive so I can get to work.
“Municipalities then used police services to corral the homeless ex-mental institution patients into low rent districts”
RW,
What, exactly, were the mechanics of that “corralling”? I am truly unaware of how that bit of social engineering could be accomplished by police services.
In Ottawa CANADA the homeless sleep & live in the downtown core. When the homeless venture out of the downtown core they get harassed by police so that they move back to the downtown core. The Homeless Shelter is in the downtown core and they want to expand it in the downtown core, but the business community does not want it expanded in the downtown core. The management is concentrating the homeless in a small manageable area so that police services are kept at an efficient monetary level. If the city allowed homeless people to live in any other areas other than the downtown core the police services would cost much more. The rights of homeless are being abused based on Mobility Rights, but the city bureaucracy still wants to warehouse the exponentially growing problem in the business & tourism district of our nation’s capital city.
Liberals create ‘Sanctuary Cities’ so that they can control the city & residents via political partisan agenda.
Your dollars at work serving Liberals.
RW
RW,
Most “progressive” departments would like to give more than lip service to enforcing existing “zoning”. There must be city ordinances that permit the “harassment”…drinking in public/ drunk in public, obstructing thoroughfares, no camping in open spaces, etc. These laws are quality of life issues, and are easily generated by local city councils.
But what happens in the Ghetto, where the indigenous demand less police contact? A political issue, then…and quality of life suffers. Without those QOL laws on the books, corralling is both difficult and usually illegal.
I want to support what K-dog said. The closing of mental hospitals was not a “failure of the political Left”. Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.
Reagan, not the “Left”, made similar decisions while he was the governor of California, releasing more than half of the state’s mental hospital patients and passing a law that abolished involuntary hospitalization of people struggling with mental illness. This started a national trend of de-institutionalization.
Janet–
As I said above, the emptying and shuttering of the public mental hospitals began in NY state under Gov Hugh Carey (D) in the 1970s. I was a newspaper reporter in the state capital at the time. And the reason was as I stated it: the idea that they were an oppressed minority held as political prisoners. So, as an act of mercy, they were put out with the trash.
The Careys, of Brooklyn.
They lived in the same building as my Auntie.
I think HLC was a drunk. Nice people though. One son was into heroin, circa 1970.
The major problem is how to deal with the chronic, out of control, severely mentally ill patients who suffer from acute psychosis from multiple causes and do not respond to known therapeutic methods of treating them. It’s a substantial population. They threw the baby out with the bath water with de-institutionalization. There were many competent and humane institutions. In respond to this, it is now a state level issue. Here in Minnesota, we’ve done a damn good job with keeping one large mental hospital open, and a number of CBHH locked units (community based hospitals) that are spread across the state for people with chronic, severe MI (mental illness). However, the problem remains. There are many in the field here that argue for another state hospital for the population. I totally agree. What happens is that when a chronic, severely MI patient presents to the ER, they will probably end up waiting to be placed on a locked psych floor of a hospital somewhere in the state. This placement period may take months. There have been patients here who have waited in the ER for very long periods of time. Mixed in with this is a large system of group home placements. Group homes are good for patients who are fairly functional. The group home system has a very important role. In the past, many of these individuals may have had been put in an asylum. Many of these patients can hold a part time job, and are active in the community. So, that’s a good. However, problems remain. Much of it has to do with state resources and priorities. It’s been a priority here. Some states, like Nevada, give their mentally ill people bus tickets and bus them to other states. That’s their solution.
By the way, think about the education systems handling of its mental illness, ADD and behavioral problems in school. Take these kids from the Special Education function and mainstream them into classrooms. Disrupt, penalize the kids who want to learn. The similarities are striking. Are these kids the mental illness problems of the future. And how many are going to shoot up these schools a few years down the road.
JA-penalize the kids who want to learn. In reality the kids with behavioral probs and ADD and depression and other mental/physical health challenges want to learn as all the other kids. Unfortunately some don’t know how, some are unable and or need additional types of learning processes. Usually, by not marginalizing them they are encouraged to learn. This could as easily apply to the high school sports player he/she doesn’t read well, has poor comprehension; problems at home or in his neighborhood but is allowed and encouraged to play none the less because he/she can contribute.
I’m sure they are doing that in part as a cost saving measure, as much as an ideological one. I think its a terrible idea.
Care in the community as it was termed in the UK, when large ‘mental’ institutions closed, would have been effective for a large proportion of those previously incarcerated… except the money wasn’t put in for the care part
Care in the community became ‘rough sleeper’ or drug addict or prostitute
There never seems to be a balance in this world between state provision where it is best, but community solutions otherwise
It is certainly the case that the modern world – that is world made by machine – has a lot less scope for people on the fringes to get by
People were more accepting of the ‘simple man’ who did the sweeping, or the man who ran the lift. These jobs are gone
Something like a farm with hand and animal labour would be good for a lot of people; productive and calming… I’d quite like it 🙂
In regards to marijuana, I think that these states out here who are hard up for revenue streams see the potential tax windfalls for marijuana based products. This will change the current policies.
The fact that states are also ignoring the federal government and enacting policy is also a new trend. I’ve argued this as a possibility. As the power of the fed gov’t recedes, states take over more of their direct policy decisions.
Is “low energy” do nothing Jeff Sessions finally getting off his duff and doing something about the California secession crisis? Maybe he could only stand so many disparaging Tweets from his Boss. Do something or resign. The Fox News nighttime hosts have been calling for the arrest of Libby Schaaf, or maybe even Jerry Brown. The near 80 year-old Brown, in particular, would probably enjoy being arrested before he heads to his last rodeo. It would definitely be a dramatic 24/7 spectacle, and might even teach our young people how our federal system is supposed to run.
Still, going after Schaaf is low hanging fruit. The Big Dog, HRC, remains at-large, as she continues to conspire against Trump. Sessions seems afraid to touch her, and, with overwhelming evidence and the power of the Justice Dept at his disposal, I don’t know why.
” the answer is to lean on congress to de-list marijuana as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance.”
Likewise, the answer to the “illegal” immigrants is a complete immediate amnesty so they can have documents, work, and pay taxes like the rest of us, instead of spending more taxpayer money on ICE to hunt them down, lock them up, or deport them.
There’s a difference between putting people away because they’re a danger to others and giving them free shelter & other necessities merely because they’re incompetent.
The State has a responsibility in the first instance to protect the public from dangerous individuals, insane or not, through involuntary confinement. It has no responsibility to house and provide for the merely incompetent.
Okay, that’s the night-watchman view of society and how it should be run. It’s not what I believe particularly but it does establish a baseline for thinking through the problem. If we as a society decide we’re going to provide free shelter and other necessities to those who are mentally incompetent and without means, then where do we draw the line insofar as first defining incompetence and next defining the extent of assistance?
A solution emerges through a dialectic process. It may not be a stable solution. There may be an equilibrium state for long periods of time and some people feel all smug and superior about their conditions and why can’t everyone else be like them and then it changes suddenly as pent-up societal changes ensure its replacement. (sobbing weeping… what happened!?)
When a people – once relatively consistent in language, religion, racial phenotypicality, shared history, economic interests, and other habits – begins to import an alien people into its ranks, the troubles begin.
That’s when societal trust dissolves, as Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam realized (reluctantly) through an exhaustive study. People don’t mind caring for those less fortunate when they share common societal traits but begin to turn away when they do not. This is universal human nature in action. Gee, do ya think there’s a connection between our ‘diversity is our strength’ nation and its callousness?
Summary: We’re fucked.
You bet, Tate. Diversity is our PROBLEM. Those who think otherwise should get their heads out of their asses, or at least get up and smell the coffee. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors).
No doubt, Outsider, that irreconcilable diversity and staggering perversity is of grave concern for America.
If you were going to mix the metaphors properly let me suggest the following:
– Those who think otherwise should get their heads out of the coffee.
– Wake up and smell the asses!
It’s said that a coffee enema is an incredible mental high….
And Jesus said- “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, 45
And Jesus said – “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)
Tate- So you’re saying that there are Christians in the US that shouldn’t be generous of heart by allowing those who have little or nothing to come into the US?! LOL!
What I’m saying specifically in response to your comment is that you are engaging in moral preening and I won’t let you get away with it without a response.
But yes, we do not need to allow other peoples to swarm into our homeland in order to practice charity. We can send aid and missions to their countries and still be generous (and we do) and that’s enough. Our resources are not unlimited. Charity begins at home.
“But if anyone does not provide for their own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
– 1 Timothy 5: 8
By the way, I’m happy to see that at least your being honest in admitting that it’s about charity and not that they will be contributors, lol.
And the horror of being incarcerated under the “care” of low paid, under educated “attendants” of another race – something One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest portrayed well.
Most successful sapiens-sapiens society/culture? Bushmen of the Kalahari.
The one who knows enough is enough will always have enough -Lao Tzu
Look in the garage of most American homes – too much
A nationwide business model of self storage – too much
Misery and homelessness, despair and alienation – too much
The left’s fault – the rights fault – Thats just TOO MUCH Bullshit!
WalterB regularly posts the solutions – Duty – Honor – Country
Rights are built on a foundation of responsibility or they are nonexistant.
Thanks all for humoring these sophomoric outbursts.
wm
wm- I understand what you’re saying; but then why is someone like Trump in the White House! (LOL!)
The Animals are unconscious imperfection.
The Gods are conscious perfection.
Man is conscious imperfection.
Being much closer to the animal than White Europeans, the Bushmen never developed such problems of scale. But don’t image they are peaceful. As Pinker of Harvard said, they do have a low crime rate for hunter gatherers – similar to that of Detroit.
At their large gathering every few years, the competition for women was intense. And some of the men settle their grievances with poisoned arrows. The Government had to step in to stop the carnage. Don’t know if they get into cannibalism like the Aborigines of Australia, who hunted people from other groups as game and on occasion would eat their own children.
Janos,
As animals are neither good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral, why are they not unconscious perfection? They don’t ruin the planet like humans do. They kill to eat, or to thwart an aggressor, not for fun like humans do. They don’t mutilate themselves as humans deliberately do with circumcision and tattoos. It is illegal to circumcise the foreskin of a dog, but humans pay doctors handsomely to cut their baby boys manhood off fresh from Mama’s womb. We indeed live in a Madhouse, a Madhouse of profound religious ignorance. God is not perfection. God is a dog.
“Your assertion is not correct. In New York State, for one, the decanting of state mental hospitals began in the 70s under Gov Hugh Carey.” — JHK
Jim, the Right’s solution was to dump them on the street and cut funding for both hospitals and community mental health centers. Reduce government expenditure and the people be damned.
“Leftists”, like Carey, took a different approach. Carey signed the Willowbrook Consent Decree, which ended the warehousing of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, but Carey did not just put people out on the street, like Reagan did. Carey did not shut down community health services, like Reagan did.
Carey supported deinstitutionalized care and treatment, AND he established high standards for humane conditions both in residential settings and institutional environments. Carey’s vision and leadership led to the community placement of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. Unlike Reagan, Carey also made major strides in community programs for the mentally ill.
Janet–
“Community placement” never evolved from more than a stated wish. You’re just engaging in cant.
cant – JHK
===========
Bazinga! Jim, again, finds the perfect descriptive word.
“In a number of these states, marijuana production is now a major industry” –JHK
Here in Colorado, the banks will not accept money from the sales of MJ because they are afraid of prosecution (seizure) by the feds.
Read this NY Times article for example: Where-pot-entrepreneurs-go-when-the-banks-just-say-no.
As a result, mountains of cash are being collected, transported and stolen — dispensaries are favorite targets for robberies.
I have heard (from fairly reliable sources) of metal shipping containers parked out in the badlands of remote ranches for the (hopefully safe) warehousing of cash. All that tax revenue the state is collecting has to be paid in cash. Must make for some interesting doings at the state house.
‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli cries in court, is sentenced to 7 years for securities fraud
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-martin-shkreli-sentencing-20180309-story.html
“Martin Shrkeli, the smirking ‘Pharma Bro’ vilified for jacking up the price of a lifesaving drug, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for defrauding investors in two failed hedge funds.
“The self-promoting pharmaceutical executive notorious for trolling critics online was convicted in a securities fraud case last year unconnected to the price increase dispute.
“Shkreli, his cocky persona nowhere to be found, cried as he told U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto he made many mistakes and apologized to investors.
“‘I want the people who came here today to support me to understand one thing, the only person to blame for me being here today is me,’ he said. ‘I took down Martin Shkreli.’
“He said that he hopes to make amends and learn from his mistakes and apologized to his investors.
“‘I am terribly sorry I lost your trust,’ he said. ‘You deserve far better.'”
—
I’d say lots of people deserved far better from Martin Shkreli, but most of them were ordinary people and therefore had no choice but to be subject to his greed.
Shkreli undid himself by making the same rich guy’s mistake as Conrad Black: you can screw the general public all you want, but you screw your fellow Masters of the Universe at your peril. After all, they can actually punish you.
Shkreli allegedly (I’m alleging it) told the judge that not only did he think the sentence was unfair, but he was honestly expecting to be rewarded with a handsome bonus for his fraudulent actions. He then promised to spend his time while incarcerated diligently boning up (pun intended) on securities law, so that he’d be sure not to get caught next time after he was released from the slammer. He then handed out business cards to all present and left with an open invitation to “call me,” before being whisked off to a luxurious rich white man’s “prison”/resort in the Catskills, where’s already outlining his forthcoming memoirs of the experience.
textbook sociopathic behavior.
LOL! Love that name!
Sheker = lie
li = me
Martin Shrkeli = a martian lies to me
Elrond,
I hope he is popular in prison…very popular.
The situation is desperate. The number of those with TDS continues to skyrocket. Not enough money in the world to even come close to effective treatment of this vast, unfortunate population.
California, land of beaches, has become the land of leeches. The Governor and the mayor of Oakland should be arrested forthwith. Jailed. They are beyond mental help. No drug or therapy can cure them.
Duty – Honor – Country
More Pablum. Not a solution.
Duty, Honor, Country (West Point ‘s ideals), gave us My Lai in Vietnam and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Duty to country results in atrocities in the name of patriotism, a complete abandonment of moral responsibility. Not a solution.
For once, Janet, I agree with you!
Thomas Hobbes likened us to ‘Hobbesian Brutes’ hell-bent on destruction, and callous in terms of disposition. General Smedley Butler & Dwight D. Eisenhower told us we have a duty to reign in the Military Industrial Complex before it became an unchecked power that was not democratically elected.
The MIC has no honour, duty, or country, that is worth mention outside of the finances that guide it. The MIC would sell America down the river for a slice of cold pizza.
RW
Pretty ironic on Ike’s part, since if anyone deserves credit for the MICC’s creation in the first place, it’s him. Yeah the Dulles scum did all the dirty work, but the doddering old bastard played golf and looked the other way all throughout the 50’s. Must have been either incipient dementia or willful neglect. Either way, he sold us out before it became in vogue.
Yes, Scratch, Ike didn’t warn us about the Military Industrial Complex until he was leaving office, when it was too late for him to do anything about it. And for those who still revere Ike, google the post-WWII “Eisenhower Death Camps”, and maybe you’ll feel differently about the sainted general.
It’s likely that Ike already knew, or at least strongly suspected, at that point that Kennedy was a marked man if he carried through on his campaign themes. I wouldn’t doubt Ike was subtly warned at least once while in office as well, although even lacking that, he knew full well what he was up against in the Dulles brothers and his duplicitous and paranoid veep, Nixon. His political view from the top as a returning legendary WWII hero was hopelessly naive, as well as apparently blatantly opportunistic.
IMHO, or maybe not so humble, Dwight David Eisenhower was more of an administrator than a general who took pretty much the entire four years to develop to the point where he really needed to be from the beginning. His success was achieved through a few of his subordinates and their abilities to lead, but most of all, by the amazing ability of the American school teachers, mailmen, ironworkers, and cab drivers that drew from within themselves the fortitude and determination that was required to defeat a determined enemy. As a president, Mr. Eisenhower was pretty much a non-entity, and although he did in fact warn the nation of the evil that rules us all today on his way out, he was especially limp after the murder of JFK, a man that had far more fortitude and nerve to face the enemy head on than Dwight did. All in all, a disappointment.
Duty, honor, country in and of itself is a noble ideal, but as always, the devil’s in the details. Blind allegiance to illegitimate orders is nobody’s duty, nor is it honorable in the least.
Coming from an idiot such as yourself Janet, it is no surprise that you twist words and meanings to support your bullshit, corrupt agenda. West Point and the training that was given during the Vietnam War was totally in opposition to what was done by Lt. Calley and I should know, I was undergoing that training there at the same time. We were trained to specifically abhor such murder which does not serve the country but only degrades it. The Abu Ghraib insult was perpetrated during the Reign of Terror of Dirty Dick Cheney and his idiot puppet George and was also diametrically opposed to what was taught at the Academy. Only Nazi’s and progressives advocate blatant murder and abuse to further their causes. You of all people should certainly know this first hand.
There is much that has degraded with my Rockbound Highland Home, especially since the Corps Went to Hell in 1976, but YOU are in NO position to have a viable opinion on any of it. Of this I am certain. You are a foul mouthed dissident and I wish you would limit your comments to things that you are capable of discussing, which in layman’s term, means none.
First I encountered this phenomenon in Rome in the Colosseum. Looking at the cellars in which, along with wild animals kept those going to death, I seemed to feel the rage and horror that they experienced, hearing the hiccups and the roar of the crowd, that come to amuse themselves with their mortal anguish. And this smell, the smell of death, which you can not forget…
I very quickly left the Colosseum and subsequently avoided approaching it.
The second time I felt this “smell” in Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, but I did not believe my sensations, attributing them to the political allusions of this place. Similarly, when I first got into the very remarkable lobby and winter garden of the World Trade Center for the first time in 1994, this sensation could be found rational explanation, as it was soon after the first attempt to blow it up, and the first building was crammed with the CIA, like a lamb leg with garlic.
But why did I feel this “smell” at Boston airport?!
Everything was clarified after I got acquainted in Pratt with an amazing town-planning project – Pruitt–Igoe. It turned out that the architect and designer of all these structures was one person – the great American architect Minoru Yamasaki. The amazing fate that befell many of his creations was able to make superstitious even such a convinced atheist as Vladimir Lenin.
It seems to me that the most symbolic, perhaps even more symbolic than the history of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, is the program for the construction of social housing in the suburb of St. Louis Pruitt–Igoe, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Nominal this program very clearly showed the devastating consequences of the war of the eras, which began at the turn of the 40s and 50s in the US, and very quickly spread to the whole world.
Minoru Yamasaki, a young talented architect of Japanese descent, escaped internment after Pearl Harbor, moving to New York and getting a job at an architectural firm that designed the Empire State Building. Pruitt–Igoe was his first independent project and, from a historical point of view was the result of conflict interaction of three different eras in the United States:
1. The ideology of the “New Deal” by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
2. Spoons of tar added to the “New Deal” by Truman, who not without black humor called the result “Fair Deal”
3. Desegregation, legislatively implemented by Eisenhower, in an attempt to somehow deal with the consequences of Truman’s artistry.
Indeed, Minoru Yamasaki himself as the creative leader of the movement in architecture, dubbed “romantic modernism,” and the original ideology of the project, came from the Roosevelt attempt to save capitalism from itself by introducing elements of socialism into it.
This ideology consisted in the fact that when development comes to a standstill, it is necessary, following Rousseau’s ideas, to renew the social contract, and Roosevelt’s attempt to do this was a link in a series of such attempts to deal with destructive and even misanthropic tendencies in the development of capitalism, state regulation of the economy and financing of the large infrastructure projects.
The beginning of this chain was laid down by the “Square Deal” of Theodore Roosevelt, continued by Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, and the end seems to have come just recently, when Alan Greenspan put the Johnson’s “Great Society” on the needle of creative financial instruments.
In 1949, the Mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, concerned about the decline in the value of property in the city as a result of the flight of the middle class caused by the Great Depression and the arrival of slums in the business center of the city, set itself the task of using federal funding to turn the Negro slums into a modern residential complex for low-income families and single young people who begin their careers.
This complex should include places for sports and recreation, kindergartens, parks and infrastructure for the deployment of educational programs. It should be noted that similar programs in the 40’s showed good results in New York, where Minoru Yamasaki was educated and started hic career.
But Truman, coming to power, was not particularly concerned with the opinion of the people of the United States and, intoxicated by the power of the sole owner of the red button, in effect, committed a coup d’état. As a result of this coup, people came to power who believed that in the Second World War the United States incorrectly chose allies, and Truman immortalized his name by throwing the Yalta agreements along with the mutual understanding and trust between the US and the USSR that arose during the Second World War.
In addition, he supported the statements of some politicians and generals on the topic of the wrong choice of allies in the World War, creating from captive Germans an impressive army in Denmark and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This philosophy in foreign policy was called the Cold War and quickly spread into domestic politics, provoking an antagonistic confrontation between the government represented by Senator McCarthy’s commission and that part of American society that demanded the continuation of the policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who planned to consolidate the moral lessons of the Nuremberg process at the level of UN Security Council, and after the war to continue cooperation with the USSR in order to build a post-war peace under the auspices of the United Nations, a guarantee postwar disarmament by the demonstration of the capabilities of nuclear weapons on the firing range.
In such a world, of course, it would be impossible to restore even the “real politic”, not to mention the “cold war”.
As a result, this confrontation resulted in a change in the philosophy of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” with the formal adherence to it. In particular, state aid to the poor, under Roosevelt, was designed to create a system of social elevators and a mechanism for expanding the middle class, under Truman began to turn into a system of “welfare state”, blocking social elevators and turning the poor into lifelong social security clients.
It should be noted that those segments of the American society that suffered most from Senator McCarthy’s activities were historically linked to the education and culture system, the main engines of social elevators, and the US has not yet recovered from this blow, despite all the efforts of the following Presidents.
But the most severe consequence of this confrontation was the bureaucratization of urban development programs. The fact is that the Korean War, which became the inevitable consequence of the “cold war”, devastated the treasury and curtailed the budgets of these projects, virtually frustrating the Roosevelt programs for the development of American cities, crowded with black workers who moved during the war to cities to work in military plants.
In particular, for the sake of economy, the Federal Housing Administration has cut the infrastructure of children’s kindergartens and educational programs, as well as places for rest and sports, in the Pruitt–Igoe project. In addition, buildings of varying storeys were thrown out of the project, and only standardized eleven-story buildings were created, creating a prison, destructive psyche landscape.
The number of staircases and elevators was reduced, making the number of apartments per corridor more than 30, which excludes the formation of a community of neighbors or even the knowledge of neighbors on the landing in the face, allowing distinguishing strangers from the inhabitants of the house. In addition, the elevators did not stop on each floor, which, combined with the drug culture of the youth groups, led to the fact that the journey from the elevator doors to the apartment doors demanded courage comparable to the courage of the heroic pilot of the Second World African American Wendell Pruitt, after whom the project received its name.
If Kunstler hadn’t degenerated into a right wing/alt-right sellout/bootlicker, he would be pointing at the real dilemma/cause: That since the early 80s the top one percent of the country has been increasingly leaving “Main Street” an economic wasteland.
Shame on you, JHK for ignoring the major reason for that which you “lament”.
Stud Buck whoever you are:
You’re probably not welcome here.
Go somewhere else.
Buck Stud predates almost everyone on here today.
May be Buck’s Avatar was usurped by the Flying Monkey?
He’s a disgruntled Clintonite and modern art aficionado.
Buck Stud don’t leave. I for one agree with you.
Buck, the sellout to Wall Street was/is universal. All the parties involved in US politics and their VOTERS are guilty. Is Trump any different? No. But if more GoldmanSucks agents resign his cabinet, then maybe you could temper your anger?
Black Stud,
You may not know this, but the Alt-Right is anti-corporate, anti-Wall Street, anti-the 1%. It is native populism pure and simple, helped along greatly by the discrimination against, and fast diminishing prospects of the white man. And also by the sick-making identity politics and man-hating feminism of the Left. It is anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anti-interventionist. It wants to bring the troops home. The all-powerful neocons are our worst enemy. That’s why Trump was our candidate. He was singing the tune of the deplorables during the campaign. That he has let us down so terribly is heartbreaking.
“That he has let us down so terribly is heartbreaking.”
That Trump has always let everybody down so terribly was obvious years ago.
Maybe it was striking too close to home and inviting unwelcome commentary. Just a theory.
His instincts are pretty good, iyam.
A thorough titration on Thorazine with a follow-up regimen of I.M Prolixin Decanoate for everyone in San Francisco, and the Sacramento, California governmental establishment would be a great start.
Commence with Governor Moonbeam Brown and work down from there. Sen. Kamala Harris could be the test case for the U.S. Senate.
Like an enema; it couldn’t hurt.
Is the answer cyber space? Keep everyone plugged in to save energy and resources?
But if you die in there, do you die out here?
Ha, Pequiste.
If you gave an enema to California, it would slide into the Pacific.
Mueller’s investigation focuses on a meeting in the Seychelles, in which Trump’s representatives in January 2017 tried to create a secret channel of communication between the White House and the Kremlin to prevent a nuclear war.
The civil war in the US continues to worsen and Donald Trump still can not believe that in order to win this war he must publicize all the crimes that Hillary and her flying monkeys have committed.
Against Russophobic policy of Hillary Clinton acts all middle to upper layers of the CIA and the FBI and probably all other intelligence services and all other security agencies, while the Deep State exercises its authority at the very top and the appropriate committees of the Congress and the US Senate.
And if my theory is correct, it turns out that power in the US was usurped by the Fourth Reich through Hillary Clinton and it is now trying to provoke a non-nuclear conflict between Russia and the US in order to overthrow President Trump.
Or if it does not succeed in realizing this plan then to provoke a nuclear war between the two states that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of the Reich the Third.
Then why does he not make all this public and try the case in the court of public opinion? He’d win that easily if the facts are on his side.
Most likely because it goes against the wishes of the leaders of the lodges (or corporate-clan groups) whose gentlemen’s agreements guarantee the Jeffersonian Democracy.
And quite frankly, I could understand them.
Corporate clan groups, lodges, Deep State? I commend your energy for all this imagining.
Quite frankly there is no evidence of any restraint or discipline by The Don so I think yer “theory” is spew.
You prefer piling them all up in one big heap of “oligarchy”? What happened to Dialectical materialism (NOT my favourite subject on the third year of the college)?
Painting with a broad brush lacks clarity and precision. Rather base characterization on direct evidence, like the evidence that results in decisions “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
I like The Don, he makes me laugh, you know like a clown. Perfect President for the US at this stage, entertain us.
I hope he is not found complicit in a scheme to launder a $billion for some Russian “oligarch.” If he did that would make him a compromised President unfit for office, dontcha think?
In liek Flint!!! The homeless problem is huge here – they got corners they squat, prolly even fight for. Needles, indeed. Canada seems to deal w/ them properly…
It has really got to *SUXORZ* tho – no money and no place to call a home… U no that’s gotta *HURT* .
Poverty makes people lose their marbles. However, there’s no way to assess and diagnose poverty in the DSM-5 political psychiatric manual.
@FincaInTheMountains
Order Out of Chaos | EU2015
— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kWz6duTcOE
Any news regarding The Clinton Foundation, the Weiner Laptop, or the missing US$21 trillion?
Mental health means to fit in with an insane system. Some go crazy because they can’t fit in with insanity.
Speaking of mental health, does anybody know if the Yountville CalVet incident involves an AR-15?
No, it involved the janet 30-06 caliber, hollow point.
This is so rich. The good old USA has an enema spout jammed up the collective rectum and the fluid is flowing at around 200 psi. Only so much can be contained and then…and then…here it comes. The modern day flood of the ages where everyone is going to get covered in the “stuff” they’ve been swallowing since someone invented politicians. Americans would not know truth if they got it via registered mail from heaven. What a riot to watch the slow motion collapse of everything.
And the billionaire class, the 1% class cannot escape. Death is the great equalizer. Now that is a great invention.
Yeah, Connecticut is on its way to declaring itself a ‘Sanctuary State’ as well. Everytime an illegal is about to be deported all the big Dem pols show up, along with their agit/prop media sponsors. Needless to say the Feds back down and the illegal is given a stay. A few years ago illegals were able to get drivers licenses — we were told only a few thousand would show up. Well 100,000 were issued and its been mayhem on the roads ever since. Our little cities have become dystopic crapholes, on life support from the state legislature. Immigration law seems to be if you can get here you’re in, ‘specially if you manage to knock out a few kids. About 4 billion people from the 3rd world would like to come in and get on our welfare system, which would be an improvement on the lives they are currently living. Are they all welcome? According to the Governor, yes, they are all welcome as long as at some point they vote for candidates from the democratic party, and sufficiently hate President Trump.
brh
BRH,
At some point wouldn’t their lives be worse here? Already, so I’ve read, many Mexicans have returned to their country, because the shithole they moved to is worse than the shithole they left. America is no longer the land of milk and honey – if it ever was. Step one is to sandblast Zionist Emma Lazarus’ ridiculous poem from the Statue of Liberty. It has done immeasurable harm to this hopelessly divided nation. The Melting Pot is a myth and the white man is finished.
There are many reasons to ‘return.’
Do not discount ‘roots.’
Oh, and cheap living on SS. How much is shitholes economy dependent on dollars?
I could not agree more with you!!
States rights and control should be reinstated to the fullest degree. Yet, immigration is a federal/national issue. The solution is so simple and easy to see (yet, Trump is fettered and prevented from implementing what is needed).
Our local and federal government are the source of most every social malady that we suffer from (poverty, drugs, economic collapse, illiteracy, medicine, healthcare, mental health, homelessness, et al).
Mental health is populated with frauds (psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc.) that have proven over and over that they are clueless. A great percentage of the “mentally ill” would clear up very quickly if just given the proper medical attention, 3 square meals and nutritional supplementation, a warm dry bed, and a safe, clean and quiet space in which to exist… and eventually some contribution to society.
I don’t know about you but I see a business sector, employment, income, utilization of dormant real estate, profits, tax revenues, and positive economic stimulus in this.
Entrepreneurs, the wealthy and humanitarians (and the unemployed) are the ones who solve such problems. Not our insane, corrupt and ineffective governments.
The debate of the week, mental illness and what to do about it, begs the same common question that divides the country, how to pay for it. If government agencies could have infinite funding, everyone would like to take care of every “different”, or impoverished individual in the world. There is the rub, government doe not have the unlimited funding in place. It is the job of our elected folks to make the hard decisions for us. Liberals think that every cause should get funding as it needs to solve the problems. They have had thirty years and $20 trillion dollars of debt to undo the social problems facing us. And things are worse today. And yes, the Bushes are included. Mental illness like so many other unsolvable issues is a bottomless pit that we could keep throwing capital into forever. The real issue is what should government do to handle insolvable problems?
You could certainly drive yourself insane as well John, just by trying to solve an impossible societal problem such as mental illness or even simply how to deal with it. In kicking around potential solutions for any problem, those who attempt to do so inevitably come up against a wall of financial impossibility, or a wall of unacceptability by the citizens, or a wall of an immoral or unethical option, or a solution that may even be evil. You will find yourself boxed in on all four sides and so no choice can be made, so a system develops where insiders profit and the problem is never addressed, only put off. Eventually, due to the abstract nature of the subject, far more patients are generated than the system can deal with and the costs can no longer be sustained by those that pay. What happens next, you say? Well our host gives us insights into that depressing eventuality does he not?
Right!
Just trying to point out the real problem, that the politics just get in the way and most of what can be done is wasted by the time someone does something. We have deteriorated to a government that feels that it can get away with doing nothing and then justifying it. Do not make waves then convince everyone back home how much you have done for them. What a racket. As long as the vast majority of these no accounts keep getting returned, nothing will change. Vote against the Deep State is our only alternative.
At my age, the primary frustration is the realization of how little influence we have to make any difference. If the Great American experiment is to continue than the vote will turn the tide, otherwise??? I have accepted the inevitability of this, so no insanity here, just sadness.
A prime example of how shot the systems are, even at the small, local level. Two weeks ago I ran into the old, bloated hippie that was our Board Of Ed president when I was Mayor twenty years ago at a school function. She was pleasant enough to speak to now so we chatted a bit. I stated to her that she used to really hate me, and she quickly replied that she still does. She went on to tell me that people like me should not be allowed to ever be in positions as I was and as I now am as a Township Committeeman. I asked why and she responded that these entities are set up and running smoothly with everyone towing the line and no one dissenting. Guys like me ask too many questions and turn over rocks that should be left untouched. I was not surprised at all when she told me, at the end of our conversation, that she was headed out the next day with her husband on a 30 day vacation to China first and then Vietnam. I thought to ask her to place a rose on Mao’s and Ho Chi’s tombs for me, but did not do it in the end. Maybe they were right about the Commies taking over from within after all. Perhaps it is time for men like me to be shipped off to a Gulag somewhere to live out my days in peace at hard labor, it might be more fun than watching it degrade any further.. .
She was in a key position for the internal takeover & subversion then – Board of Ed president.
They’ve had this figured out for a long time.
This is rich. From the guy who beat Darryl Hannah in his California mansion
We guard our world with locks and guns–– Jackson Browne,
He liked the Sandinistas. Even gave them money, if I recall.
Malia Obama’s boyfriend at Harvard is a British “Royal”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-t-r0rHD08
First Harry, now this! Janos will be beside himself. There goes the blood line.
Look, if its good enough for Strom Thurmond, its good enough for Janos.
Just sayin
Mueller is investigating President Trump for the purpose of impeachment on the basis of the following situation:
Trump was elected president of the United States, but Hillary Clinton, having overthrown Obama in June 2016, is trying to overturn the election results.
To this end, she organized the deportation of Russian diplomats in the last days of 2016, when the aircraft do not fly, so that they can be arrested together with family members on January 2 when they arrive at the airport after the expiration of the 72 hours they have been provided to leave.
At the same time, Trump phones are illegally tapped on the basis of Steele’s trumped-up Russian file, and this makes it possible in February 2017 to arrest and displace Presidential National Security Adviser General Flynn, who provided the evacuation of Russian diplomats and prevented the retaliatory arrest of American diplomats in Moscow.
And now Mueller wants to impeach President Trump himself for trying to get away from illegal wiretapping by creating an information channel that the conspirators could not listen to.
And the US Attorney General Sessions, who sold out to Hillary, spews some kind of nonsense, trying to get around the demand by many Republican congressmen to appoint a second special prosecutor to investigate the illegal wiretapping of Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNTZsRT7he8
And after a year of investigation there is no evidence of Trump’s cooperation with Russia, and the illegal wiretapping of Trump is already firmly established, well documented fact.
That is, the fact of an attempted coup d’etat stands naked in plain view and at least some strips of remaining legality are not observed at all.
And Putin’s message to the Federal Assembly, the city and the world, combined with Soloviev’s interview, The World Order 2018, gives this coup d’etat a nuclear dimension, since it is quite clear who are these people who have deceived Putin in Ukraine and with whom to negotiate is simply senseless.
But the Caribbean crisis was overcome precisely because of the personal arrangements of Khrushchev and Kennedy, and there is no doubt that President Kennedy paid for it with his life.
The most amusing is that the ray of light in this kingdom of darkness is the statement of the Chairman of the US Armed Forces Strategic Command, General John Hyten, that American submarines are still capable of destroying Russia, since the very fact of such a statement means that the congressmen received Putin’s message and they had doubts about the ability of the US Army and navy to strike back after US missile launch pads are attacked by Russian warheads flying at a speed of 20 Mach.
https://ria.ru/world/20180309/1516060721.html
Russian oligarch Deripaska goes on the warpath with Soros. Personally.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/08/the-ever-changing-russia-narrative-in-american-politics-is-cynically-false-public-manipulation/
“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its’ weakest members.”
Mahatma Ghandi
“Truly, I tell you whatever you did for one the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40, 45)
Jesus
Based on the above criteria, we are neither a great nation nor a Christian one. The (Christian?) Republican Congress has no problem with 30 million Americans being unable to purchase health insurance nor allowing insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. They got their Cadillac coverage though. Obamacare wasn’t great either with, unless qualified for Medicaid, skyrocketing premiums and deductibles.
Our system is great if you don’t weaken. Just hope a three-time convicted drunk driver without a drivers license doesn’t T-bone you going 60 mph(happened to my wife) or you don’t contract some horrible disease. If you become ill or incapacitated, your savings can depleted quickly. For example, a friend of mine requires dialysis once a month. Without Medicare, this procedure would cost him $50,000.
In America, we basically still live in the jungle, where Darwin’s survival of the fittest maxim still applies. We all hope and pray that something debilitating or incurable doesn’t come our way because we are on our own.
The USA know spends $700 billion a year on defense. Our supposed enemy, Russia, spends roughly $70 billion. We have have 1000 military bases in over 100 countries worldwide. All our enemies are also our business partners. My nephew works at a Russian-owned steel mill in the western US. With $700 billion pegged for defense, there isn’t much left for the health and welfare of the citizenry.
“If you become ill or incapacitated, your savings can depleted quickly. For example, a friend of mine requires dialysis once a month. Without Medicare, this procedure would cost him $50,000.”
“…If living were a thing that money could buy…the rich would live and the poor would die…” All My Trials…PPM
It’s absolutely amazing how people of good will don’t know or don’t remember what was happening just 7 years ago!
Does anybody remember how 2 million bikers stopped World War?
Or how West Point students were standing at Union Square with signs
“I don’t want to be an air wing of Al Qaeda”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT7AmbAW8RM&feature=youtu.be
The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines, and machines that
control humans” — Julian Assange
If you came of age before the internet you may have noticed “machine
culture” seeping into your day to day interactions with people?
(efficient, transactional, rude/thoughtless…)
The other day I went to a gas station that recently received brand new
pumps. When you lift the handle to fuel your car, a television on the
pump comes on and trys to “fill” you up with mindless chatter,
commercial jingles and fake nooz stories… as you fill your tank.
I guess the ultimate goal of the system is to colonize your every
waking moment until the thought of having an original thought
frightens you so much you intentionally avoid getting in a position
where you might have one?
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/03/inhuman-what-the-establishments-bot-hysteria-reveals-about-their-view-of-the-masses/
PS– Years ago a friend of mine told me they installed a flat screen
television in the bathrooms at his job; somebody wearing a big coat
walked out with them (yeah, they were probably black)
So who knows, maybe blacks will save humanity with some War of the Worlds type shit no one saw coming?
Niggers, the other white meat
The Tinderverse
So remember Millennial Girlz, when you take one in the magic V-spot, you take one for the team. You are performing the all important task of preserving Hanna Rosin’s insane world view. She can’t be a slut herself any more. I mean, Good lord just look at her
So you have to be a slut for her. Personal sacrifice is necessary for feminism to succeed and the sooner you damage yourself beyond repair, the sooner you can be as insane as Hanna. She can’t keep doing it by herself forever, she’s going to have to commit suicide one day and you are going to have to step up and take her place.
LOL
https://reactionarytimes.blogspot.com/2015/08/gen-x-is-forced-to-reinvent-rake.html
New Russian TV serial “Sleepers” depicts a current coup d’etat in America
Against Russophobic policy of Ms. Watson acts all middle to upper layers of the CIA and the FBI and probably all other intelligence services and all other security agencies, while the Deep State exercises its authority at the very top and the appropriate committees of the Congress and the US Senate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2389&v=OZpgAL2p1nw
You probably have guessed who Ms. Watson really is.
Most of us in NYC-land blame Reagan for shutting down the mental facilities.
In fact as I remember it, the ACLU also went along with Reagan on this one. They insisted that people should be free to make choices even if they are mentally ill. Of course it’s hard to fathom how psychotic people can make sound choices, but now we have few options for the mentally ill in long-term care. Medications are only as good as someone actually taking them….and then there are the side-effects. So instead of real therapy, just take a pill.
The homeless as a result has made the USA look more like what I call New Calcutta. I’ve been saying this since the 1980’s.
To blame the left when in fact Reagan was the one to start this and cut down the whole idea of mental illness in-hospital care is I think one-sided.
Did you ever see the big Black guy in the blonde wig? He was famous.
In a World Made by Hand, the mentally ill stay at home and destroy people’s lives there. Or if better, they are much loved village idiots.
I was on a BUS last night.
At a stop by the 99 cent store, a bunch of ‘Oh The Humanity’ got on.
2 very poor, maybe homeless Whites and 3 Blacks.
One of those Blacks got off by the ‘crazy hotel’ run by the state, id guess.
However, there were 2 strange blacks already on the bus.
One of the 2 decided to threaten and scream and ‘Ill show you the biggest Black dick’ stuff.
It was INSANE.
The US spends more money per student on education than any other country except Switzerland.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=otTaM0I_H8Q
But all that spending does is create Frank Loyd Wright architectural creations in our burbs. The unfortunate victims of these architectural masturbations certainly must be damaged for life. How could you have any self esteem after attending school in a building that reminds you are a fart in a windstorm and not worth shit.
Then why does he not make all this public and try the case in the court of public opinion? He’d win that easily if the facts are on his side == Ol’ Scratch
I was really afraid of saying that, but after seeing this article in the Mirror:
Scientists warn of mysterious and deadly new epidemic called Disease X that could kill millions around the world
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/scientists-warn-mysterious-deadly-new-12160964
I can’t exclude the possibility of a nuclear blackmail by Deep State of US Government with nukes pre-positioned in large American cities and ready to go on a satellite signal from Berlin or Riadh.
Russians will be blamed, of course.
Re the multitude of mentally ill and what to do about them.
If the key to good physical health is lifestyle, so is the key to mental health. Unfortunately the key for good mental health is snatched away from a lot of folks.
The multitude of economic and societal stresses knock people for a loop. Some – maybe a lot of them – go nuts, end up homeless or on drugs or booze.
For a lot of men the lifestyle key to good mental health is the psychological anchor of a decent paying job and a wife and kids to support ie a source of self-worth because everyday there’s something worthwhile to do and somewhere to go and a reason for getting out of bed. Without this scaffolding a lot of guys go off the deep end.
This next point would sound retrograde to a lot of lefties who wouldn’t in a million years subscribe to the notion. And utterly beyond the pale to a lot on the rightward end whose preferred model is that of the hard-bitten, self-sufficient settler-farmer or the strong, silent, lonesome cowboy-gunslinger. But the other side to good mental health is the stabilizing effect of kin-clan-tribe. The lefties do eye-rolls because to them the preferred model is government and its social service agencies full of bureaucrats and degreed and credentialed professionals. You say to them kin-clan-tribe and they get the straight-arm-fascisto-spasm. They start to sputter words like “nativist” like it’s a bad thing. Well, there’s heaping helpings of hypocrisy there because kin-clan-tribe is ok by the identity politics of the Democrats. Just as long as it doesn’t apply to White people. But what’s sauce for the goose…
Corporate culture and leftism go hand-in-hand. The rootless nomads who aspire to climb the corporate ladder in the big city dazzled by dreams conjured on TV & other mass media content as youth – usually the ablest intellectually – many of them end up alienated from their origins, their family and community. The natural meritocratic order is destroyed, or rather transposed from the local to the national level.
This is not normal, human beings were not evolved in this environment. Is there any wonder mental illness is at epidemic proportions in our society? A society whose members are ‘atomized’ and cut-off from its plane soil & sustenance will be replaced by some other more virile one. A return to Main Street localism is necessary for our survival and corporations are the enemies of the local venue, Main street. We need to disassemble the corporation and a good place to start would be the media giants.
* I mean the public-scamming C corps of course, not the S corps whereby most small businessmen conduct their business.
The “Alt Right”, White Nationalism, racism… has NOT been good to Tara McCarthy.
This is her in 2015 before she reinvented herself from Vegan Supremacist Socialist, to Alt Right darling white nationalist…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqR-phb3Wkk
Can less than 3 years really do that to a woman?
Or do ugly environments really make ugly people?
She looks and sounds way better in this video.
Now she wears too much make up, she put on a few extra pounds, she rarely smiles, and I think she may have had some “work done” which actually works against her face?
Now she has permanent “resting bitch face?” or ‘Backpfeifengesicht’, take your pick? (thank you German Idealism)
This is why we lose.
Cue Eva Cassidy and God help us.
We consider her a maniac. She won’t accept that it’s a man’s world and her place is in the kitsch.
James,
You are incorrect.
Governor Reagan made the extremely controversial decision to shut down mental hospitals in his first term as California Governor. There was a fierce uproar about this, and soon after, a former mental patient tried to shoot some broadcaster through the glass during his show (he was broadcasting on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin).
I have no love for the Democrats, and San Francisco truly has been turned into a shithole, but the mental health issue is squarely on Reagan.
During that time you can also thank Ronnie for destroying near-free upper education for all Californians. Reagan thought that free education was a breeding ground for ‘radicals.”
James if yoiu’re going to be a curmudgeon at least be an accurate one.
Two excellent articles that are available on-line are The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell and The Illusions of Psychiatry by the same author. They are highly recommended by Peter Hitchens and I have started reading them again because I had forgotten the detail, beyond the argument (in the first) that the effectiveness of the anti-depressant drugs is highly questionable as is the science behind them (they were an accidental spin-off from something quite different, as I recall, as was the birth control ‘pill’) and (in the second article) that their acceptance was hugely boosted by the fact that it allowed psychiatrists (who as trained doctors alone had the powers of prescription) to improve their relative standing with other psychologists. it is also argued that drug companies, who have taken over research in the area, publicize only those studies which show a better performance (however slight, and it is very slight) over placebos and keep the less successful ones out of view.
There is also evidence, it seems, that it is the very side-effects that are responsible for their slightly better results over placebos because patients in trials (it is argued) deduce from the appearance of side-effects (eg dry mouth) that they have been given the drug and not the placebo.
All in all it seems that it is the biggest hoax of modern times. Or it would be if it wasn’t for all the others. The financial incentive is obvious but as usual (and unlike everyone else here and, it seems, everywhere else) I believe the psychological angle is the decisive reason. It can be summed up by: “It exists because it exists” or by “It is just another part of the fantasy”.
The Illusions of Psychiatry
===========
No one will care about my totally unprofessional and anecdote-based opinion but…………. I have never noticed any positive outcome from people seeing shrinks (i.e. psychiatrists or psychologists).
That is possible, but the point of the Angell’s articles is that the current orthodoxy is that depression has a material cause in the brain, through some kind of chemical imbalance or whatever. This is in line with the prevalent line of thinking, by the way. There is no plausible explanation for this nor indeed evidence.
“For example, because Thorazine was found to lower dopamine levels in the brain, it was postulated that psychoses like schizophrenia were caused by too much dopamine. Or later, because certain antidepressants increase levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, it was postulated that depression is caused by too little serotonin… Thus, instead of developing a drug to treat an abnormality, an abnormality was postulated to fit a drug. [To my mind, this is a similar thing to Attention Deficit Disorder, where by ‘reification’ a disease or ‘syndrome’ is invented in order to explain observed behaviour. Back ache being ’caused’ by lumbago is like this.]
“Or similarly, one could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.”
If all this is true (as it seems to be) it is extraordinary – and quite in keeping with the deranged spirit of the age.
through some kind of chemical imbalance or whatever. – Sean C
===========
It seems plausible to me that some forms of mental illness might be the result of a chemical imbalance and that some pill might provide temporary mitigation along with its own side effects. I know this much: if I have a pizza with half sausage and half pepperoni I sure as hell better take a couple or more Tums before I hit the sack… and deal with the constipation later.
I see two issues here:
1 A physical cause of depression
and
2 Anti-depressants cure it.
Let’s start with no. 2. It is highly unlikely that these pills work. Their use results in changes in the levels of serotonin, dopamine and whatever else in the brain, which tries to compensate for this by over or underproducing these substances, probably causing long-term damage. As far as I can make it out, scientists did not connect these substances with depression until it was found that the antidepressants (which I think were originally designed for something else, much in the same way as the contraceptive pill) were associated with them.
So you give the pills to the patient, they cause a chemical imbalance and the chemical balance is identified as the cause of depression.
It would appear that they are expensive and dangerous placebos.
No. 1, physical cause of depression. I can see why this is attractive to many. After all, the trend in science has been increasingly towards finding a material cause for everything and rejecting everything else as pseudoscience, any evidence for which is played down or ignored. A good comparison would be eyesight, which has laboured under an orthodoxy where poor sight is caused by incurable physical factors. The great American eye doctor William Bates showed that the cause is misuse of the eyes and originates in the mind.
On top of that there is the issue as to what depression is. The word and the concept have a history and it is by no means straight forward.
Neither have me and my wife!!! Good point!!!
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/03/09/watch-tommy-robinson-knocks-migrant-trying-attack-cameraman-rome/
This is the kind of journalism that I can get behind, real Man on the Street stuff with the emphasis on Man. One punch and the Negro Marauder is out like a light, his consciousness as blank as in reality it always is.
Tommy. That’s what they used to call the English Soldiers…..
Homelessness has become the latest big thing here in Ireland. Before that it was ‘refugees’, unequal pay for women broadcasters and the unimaginable cruel treatment of babies and children at the infamous home in Tuam about ten thousand years ago (so unimaginable that it was actually inexistent as shown by the absence of evidence). There was a well-publicized occupation or sit-in at a prominent Dublin building last year (one prominent homeless couple involved turned out to have a nice little house of their own in Drogheda or Dundalk) and celebrities fought to get onto the bandwagon. A well-known figure in housing provision attracted much hostile criticism for daring to suggest that people would be tempted to make themselves homeless (or at least give the appearance) in order to get to the head of the waiting list. My guess is that there is more demand for housing because of immigration (of course) and because of the breakdown in marriage (where there was marriage to start with). Add to that grown up children who cannot get on with their parents at home and the usual legions of consumers of drugs and alcohol. I suppose I should also add those who have been driven out of their minds by anti-depressants.
By a strange coincidence my wife told me that she had seen or heard a programme the other day where half a dozen sufferers of depression said that these drugs had turned their lives around. My guess is mind over matter (placebo effect) but she really believes it. (She is by definition an extravert (seeing as I am an introvert) and therefore far more susceptible to the idea of getting a cure by means of a tangible thing.)
Attention Trump supporters.
You played yourself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZbqlXIISQQ&feature=youtu.be
Wicky Wo is the funniest Black girl ever. I almost died laffing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0S425nVBng
Please, God, White Sharia.
Now
Ah. Another closed minded well read on a 5th grade level Regressive Leftist I see. I see that you don’t keep up with the economy. Chances are you haven’t seen the running tally on the WSJ pertaining to different companies that have announced plans to close a factory or more over seas and build a new one here. Or, the number of record setting months of employment.
Or the map of all 50 states showing the most jobs added. Those “EX BLUE WALL STATES” sure have tremendous, job growth. Oh. And Wisconsin Pennsylvania Ohio are getting 9 different new plants. And Ohio is having 3 old ones reopened. After each goes though a $100 million or more upgrade.
Yep. You don’t know anything. Folks like you are what us Conservatives call “self inflicted sadomasochist.” Do keep on not feeding your brain any actual real knowledge.
Where did y’all get this guy?
The dollar store?
Dairy Queen?
He got some of that bullshit he’s spewing on his shirt.
The British controlled American finance through WWII.
The British Royalty don’t believe in “Slavery”, but they do believe in a Class System that is just as pernicious. Thus, the preoccupation with Confederate Statues somewhat misses the point?
“The Anglo-American comradeship had always been a bit one-sided. The Wall Street partners were ardent Anglophiles who celebrated British culture and made annual trips to London. Whether renting a Scottish castle or buying Sir Joshua Reynolds paintings, they identified with the British and affected their manners. This pro-British sentiment owed much to the fact that during most partners’ early adulthood, London stood supreme in world banking. The partners at 23 Wall belonged to a generation that had eagerly boarded transatlantic luxury liners in the early 1900s to partake of British sophistication. Of his first visit to London, Lamont recalled, “For me London was the most thrilling spot that I had ever known or could imagine existed.” 2 The test of a true J. P. Morgan partner was whether he saw the City as his ancestral home.”
Ron Chernow
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Capn Spaulding
Just finished first read of Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. A striking read! Ford is a product of Silicon Valley and writes a good representation of what is going to happen to all economic levels with the continued incorporation of AI. It is overwhelming! It parallels the Long Emergency. I watched Prophets of Doom which had our host and a gentlemen that figured that AI was as big a problem as Peak Oil or water shortages. I now tend to agree with him. Summing up, AI will disenfranchise a goodly part of our work force at all levels. The only sector that Ford mentioned that might not get clobbered right away is hands on healthcare. I totally agree with his idea about what to do to remedy the effect of AI on us. He supports the institution of a Universal Basic Income at a minimum level to keep consumer demand at a sustainable level. As he wanders through his justification, it becomes readily apparent that an agency will have to regulate all the incomes disbursed. Basically wage and price control will be needed to keep things in balance. He also does not think that this is welfare and will not discourage workers. With these I also disagree. When I read through all his mechanisms that he wants to administer the UBI programs, it totally reminded me of what the ideal Communist state would be that Marx envisioned. The most discouraging point however is that the efficiency of machines may force us into this income situation because there is no other alternative. Good luck to all of us!
Read “In Our Hands” by social scientist Charles Murray (co-author of the Bell Curve) A ten thousand dollar a year stipend to all American Citizens. Just enough to survive on in a basic American style. There simply is no other answer. Laziness? No, jobs will be more valued than ever for the extra money, self esteem, and social esteem.
I don’t say this is the best answer – we never even ASKED what was best for people or America – just the best and really only one moving forward. Or is someone prepared to stop robots and computers? That means getting in the way of profits. The Luddites tried slowing down “progress” and the leaders were tried and hung.
Why is unemployment all the sudden this big fucking problem now that its affecting white people?
You people think you’re too good to shoot each other, pimp your daughters and sisters, and sell crack?
Come on now, this is why we lose.
Man up and act like you been here before.
CITIZENSHIP IS ALL TOO EASY TO GET.
I vividly remember back in the early 60s how everyone Coast to Coast was believing that all of us would have our own flying cars. Homes like Mr & Mrs George Jetson. By the year 2001. Ahhhhhh. And that house of the future built at Disney Land. Funny. None of it like we all poured over in magazines from Life to Time US News & World Report. The Wall St Journal.
Fuck all that.
I just want a white slave.
Girl
Who knows how to cook.
Who knows how to “cook”….
“I really don’t see how Mr. Sessions can assert federal jurisdiction over illegal immigration without resolving the marijuana question.”
Absolutely outstanding today Jim! Except for this. Neither one has anything to do with the other. And let’s not bullshit ourselves. There is no war on anyone having a joint. No one is sitting in Jail or sitting in Prison on a short or long term sentence for a joint. The war on drugs has to do with hardcore, hardcore drugs. And large amounts of all, drugs.
“I really don’t see how Mr. Sessions can assert federal jurisdiction over illegal immigration without resolving the marijuana question.”
*****************
He can solve it the same way Mr. Lincoln solved the slavery question without resolving the negro question.
Why are you being so petty?
Peter Hitchens wrote a book about the non-existent war on drugs in Britain. It was surrendered around 1970 (with the Wootton Report) and ever since then it has been make-believe only. Needless to say it was ignored in the press, except for a couple of instances of summary dismissal by people who had never read it.
Why do the Bankers have such a “Hard On” for Russia?
Some folks in life will prosper. We did. Some will not. The trouble with the Regressive Leftist is they want folks like me and my family to financially babysit those that never made one ?? smart choice, smart decision in there lives.
Take the black community. If you want to really know why it’s so fucked up today? Go over on CensorTube and start watching videos by Tommy Sotomayor and Colin Flaherty.
The garden variety black male/female inside the black community have never made one good decision in each ones lives. It’s not only ignorant but socially irresponsible to be popping out kids you cannot afford.
The Black Community Ghetto Neighborhoods Are No Different Than Our Injun Reservations. They are a “Black Reservation,” We that live out How In Montana Wyoming North Dakota know all about these Injun shit holes. But the ones that stay do so because once they leave all the myriad of benefits they get stop ? ?. Because to leave means they got a job. Quit drinking drugging.
That is not, stereotyping. We that live here and tried and failed time and again to employ them then finally stopped know this to be a stone cold reality. Besides not being able to depend on them to show up to work each day, the stealing they do is absolutely mind boggling. They will steal absolutely anything. I mean anything.
Our Government should do to all the ones living in the black trash white trash Communities what Switzerland has been doing here in the last 2 months and the things slated coming down this Year against Muslims.
Just take the name Muslim out. Stick in the name “Generational Social Welfare Cheats.” Then pass laws that state each benefit will STOP ? ? !!!! At such and such date. In fact, what Switzerland is doing now is making it so miserable on all Muslims they are leaving. In droves.
Let me guess; you’re a white male, correct?
Thwack,
You, too, noticed the lack of spelling errors?
My lack of spelling comes from also watching the news. Unlike so many I see including you, they spend there lives online. Living out there little lives in vicarious manners. I often type and watch the news.
Many times I will start a comment then go back to it off and on. Because I’m reading one of several different newspapers I subscribe to and different oil&gas magazines and 4 different daily
oil&gas releases that pertain to folks like us that have wells. Each Oil Company puts them out daily for land owners/Royalty’s So since I am busy with a few other things, I will leave you with your little world of living tiny. Carry on now.
Hmmm,
Sad little man with multiple penises close at hand, living a tiny existence in a much-abbreviated world while being a Gestapo agent on a fence…I’m really racking them up….
Oh, and “snotty” too….
Yes I am. WHITE. And PROUD about it. Unlike so many WIMP, Regressive Leftist Cuckolds for blacks.
Chew on this. Good friend of mines blog. Gulf Coast Commentary Blog.
THERE IS NOT ONE PREDOMINANTLY BLACK, BLACK CITY/ TOWN/ STATE / PROVINCE/ ISLAND OR COUNTRY THAT IS SAFE AND PROSPEROUS. NOT. A. ONE. AND EACH ONE IS AN EPICENTER OF SHEER IGNORANCE.
Epicenters of Ignorance, Bad Ideas and Destruction
Look to African/US Blacks, Muslims and the political Left for the three major groups where ignorance and very bad ideas cause widespread destruction wherever they are found.
It’s easy see the destruction of the first two groups with even a cursory look at the Middle East and all of Africa.
Nearly all Africans and Middle Easterners are suffering from poverty, stagnation, crime, murder, war, strife, decay, disorder, tyranny, misery and/or starvation. Much of the Middle East and Africa is poorly developed — often Medieval or even Prehistoric.
Middle East Muslim majority countries are devolving dramatically rather than evolving and Africans have made little progress in hundreds of years.
Of those Middle Eastern countries not in collapse, low oil prices will eventually collapse the remaining countries that previously enjoyed high oil prices. This means that I am predicting TOTAL COLLAPSE of all of the Mideast and N. African Arab/Muslim cultures.
US blacks are also devolving into chaos and even worse ignorance. Indeed the entire West is intellectually devolving. US black populations have low IQs (80s), but it is Africans, especially sub-Saharan’s that have the lowest median IQs in the world–ranging from 60s to 80s.
In every population, there are a bunch of “nice” people, but “nice” people can be full of very bad ideas especially in the areas of politics and religion. Low IQ populations know nearly nothing, have little logic, suffer from poor impulse control and have average mental ages of adolescents.
This can actually be charming except when it results in chaos, crime and war zones as we often see from Africa to Chicago. I have written about the high correlation of poverty and misery with populations having low median IQs. Also see my blog examining the lower IQs of US blacks and it’s implications.
The Arab/Muslim Crash
Most of Arab/Muslim regions in the Middle East and North Africa are now in a cultural and political collapse. This collapse was made plainly evident in the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings and wars in recent years caused by major wars in the region started by outside powers, their failed Muslim culture, low intelligence, poor education, chronically failed economies and tyrannical leaders.
This collapse has set-off the greatest refugee crises in recent memory. The mass migration of mostly young (and poorly-educated and mostly ignorant) Mid-Eastern and African men into Europe is already causing social disruption and crime.
It’s an entirely predictable clash of civilizations. Deluded Leftist EU leaders are un-fazed and maintain an obviously destructive open-border policy.
Leftists are blinded by their ignorant and incorrect ideas (blinded by evil and political correctness). It appears that Leftist governments are somehow aligned with Muslims in some kind of unholy alliance of ruin!
Muslims are full of terrible and ignorant ideas that bring nothing but misery and death to themselves and those around them. Muslims are historically responsible for 10s of millions of deaths, if not 100s of millions, due to their horrible but widespread “Jihad”ideology.
They are truly the Medieval Death Cult and STILL ARE. For example, since just 2001, there have been about 250,000 murders and another estimated 250,000 wounded from Jihadi attacks alone(a total which excludes war-related deaths). That equates to ~2 million deaths per century–NOT including wars! So, you can imagine how annoying it is to hear ignoramus Obama saying that 99.9% of Muslims are peace-loving. It’s not true.
Muslim’s ill-treatment of women is well-known, but their belief in mutilating the genitals of young baby girls is less known. In this practice, they are trying to literally eliminate any possibility of women enjoying sex. These are sick people. Another integral part of their ideology is their belief in “conquering” and dominating the world creating an Islamic Caliphate (of misery). I lived in Jakarta and saw an entire football stadium full of “mainstream” Indonesians celebrating this belief. Islam is a supremacist (and bigoted) ideology.
Hatred of Jews and even Christians is part of their religion and has been since it’s inception since it’s supported by their Qu’ran. Remember that the Mufti of Jerusalem sat at the right hand of Hitler in WWII. And where there is Jew-hatred there is gay-hatred. ISIS has been throwing alleged gay people to their deaths off of tall buildings ignoring any kind of due process or anything else that might be called civilized. You would be correct in saying that Muslims REMAIN the Nazis of our day. Hell, many Muslims think dogs are evil! While dogs remain perfect, it is many (8 to 30%) Muslims who are evil. The rest are sheep-like, remain silent and complicit by default. Passive sheep-like behavior is more pronounced in low median IQ populations.
Their widespread emphasis of religious studies in lieu of math, science or any technology just continues widespread backward and massively outdated thinking that results in poor-performing economies. The tyranny in their political leadership also results from weak minds and passive sheep-like behavior. Their tyrannical leaders mirror the authoritarianism in Islam itself. And if you try to leave Islam, they are obliged to kill you! Talk about bad ideas!
The Destruction of Blacks–From Africa to the Americas
The rest of Africa is in total collapse too. It’s ruled by a bunch of fools, tyrants, homophobes and evil people. You could see it when Obama invited a bunch of African “leaders” to the White House. It was truly a monster’s ball. US black culture is also in collapse.
There is little evidence that any majority black community or nation on earth can adequately govern themselves. This is as true in Baltimore and Detroit as it is from Africa to Brazil. Black populations only tear down and rarely “build up.” They literally destroy everything. Black majorities elsewhere in the world are failing and collapsing — and none ascending. Every black majority city in the Americas is highly dangerous due to murders, crime, chaos and have poor health, lower life expectancy and widespread poverty. This is true even after fairly massive transfer payments for decades from the government to help them! The war on poverty has failed because black culture has failed; in part, because of government intervention.
Ignorant US Blacks believe that White people are actively holding them back. It used to be true but what’s holding them back now is what every standardized test in the world says: they are at the bottom of the scale of cognitive ability (low median IQ). And nothing will change this quickly. They blast white people, but they should be thanking white people for a mostly orderly society that Whites (Europeans) created. They COULD be living in Africa instead!
Brazil has many of the most dangerous and murderous cities in the world and a national murder tally of 50,000 murders in a recent year. It’s mostly black-on-black killing just like in America. While the US has 15,000 murders per year, Brazil has 3 times the murder rate of the US and predictably they also have 3 times the blacks than the US (~50% vs 13% in the US). The Brazil murder problem is black in color — just as it is in America. Low media IQ means that these people have a mental age of 14 to 16 years old, have poor impulse control and little logic — leading to murderous results.
South Africa can barely keep the electricity online these days now that blacks are in charge. Their current idiot President Zuma has recently vowed to seize White S. African’s land and businesses and re-distribute them to black persons. This same idiocy was tried by Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe about 30 years ago. Land and farms held by Whites were seized in Zimbabwe and given to blacks who didn’t know how to farm or do anything else. Whites fled of course. It led to starvation, stagnation and ultimately hyperinflation there (also known as collapse). Now Zuma wants that for his country! Radical niggers in South Africa have also recently vowed to wipe out White people there! There is literally no hope.
The Destruction of The Left
Hard-Left (Communist) governments have caused untold suffering in modern history due the failures of their Leftist ideologies.The failure rate is 100%. The rise, spread and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and it’s empire caused untold suffering, for example. The ongoing stagnation in Argentina is another example. Cuba is a great example. The result is the same every time.
Another hybrid communist nation, Venezuela and their kleptocratic Leftist leaders Chavez and Maduro who are the darlings of the US Black “leaders,” is collapsing as we speak with hyperinflation, stagnation, crisis and starvation.
Ignorant voters, who repeatedly voted for “free stuff” and “free money” now find that the money is worthless and there is nothing to buy even if they had money. This is always the result of hard-Left governments: stagnation, inflation, crisis, collapse. Free money lasts only so long.
And the Left never learns or changes and this is what makes them evil. The Pope, as an example, remains an avowed Socialist in outlook even after the damage and destruction caused by Socialism in his own country of Argentina.
Fidel and Raul never changed. Why would they? In communism and socialism, only the elites and those “connected” at the top benefit. The “people” just suffer, then suffer even more.
And remember, Socialism is just Communism-lite. Big government and a predominance of central planning is Socialism.
Europe and China are in this category. We have that even it in the USA to a large degree. Socialism results in the same misery as hard-Left Communism, it just takes longer to get to the point of collapse. But collapse it does.
Leftism is now allied with Blacks and Muslims in the US and Europe. Leftist media promotes pro-black propaganda in the US and shields the public from the true horrific decline of black “culture” in this country.
US Media news never identifies the racial identity of criminals, because it’s mostly black. They do the same thing in Europe — they cover-up the criminal activities of the new Muslim migrants to manipulate public opinion.
Sweden, suffering after 20 years of importing Muslim Africans and Arabs, now refuses to even collect data on crime activities and arrests. They wouldn’t want anyone to get the correct information which might cause outrage and expose government propaganda!
The US Democratic Party is now hard-Left in their politics and are apologists for US blacks and Muslims to form a triumvirate of bad ideas and destruction. Together they may be a majority in this country or might be soon. Can the fall of the US be far away?
The common denominator here is that all of these groups have weak minds. They can’t or refuse to learn the correct lessons of current events or history. They won’t or can’t change — even in light of disasters that THEY create. The Left and Islam, in this sense, are evil.
Black populations have very low median IQs which means they literally can’t learn anything. Also, statistically there are very few highly intelligent persons in these population that could provide competent leadership or start large-scale businesses that would create prosperity or favorable change.
Yes I am. WHITE. And PROUD about it
*****************
Why are you so proud of something you had nothing to do with?
Thats like me being proud to wear a size 13 shoe?
What great and vast thing have you done for the benefit of all mankind?
You said we have privilege. Now you want us to feel guilty about it even though we’ve never enjoyed it? Screw you. If we have it and you want us to feel guilty about, you have to let us enjoy it too.
Gulf Coast Commentary.
Wednesday , December 20, 2017
Black Kids Not Performing in High Schools
Some 50 years after desegregation and the busing of students to “level the playing field,” there has been basically no progress in educating black kids.
The main reason: on average, blacks don’t have the necessary innate intellectual capability to perform on par with white kids. Otherwise, we would have seen some sign of improving academic performance.
On the other hand, we’ve seen strong and rising black achievement in athletics and sports which is obviously driven by strong genetic capabilities. You don’t mind attributing high achievement in sport as due to genetics as it’s so obvious.
But most people won’t like also attributing poor academic performance to genetics, but it’s equally true. It’s just factual, not racist. This might change in 1000 years, so nothing is hopeless.
Black kids median IQ suggests an average mental age of 14 to 15 years old; or stuck at the 9th grade level. How could most of these kids ever perform at 12th grade level?? 90% can’t!
From Walter Williams at Townhall:
The educational achievement of white youngsters is nothing to write home about, but that achieved by blacks is nothing less than disgraceful. [My note: only 32% and 46% of white grade 12 students are proficient in math and reading, respectively.
But only 7% and 17% of black grade 12 students are “proficient” in math and reading, respectively. And that’s those remaining in school after nearly 60% of black kids have already dropped out of high school entirely.
Despite few black kids performing at Grade 12 levels, 70% of these seniors are going to college — but they really don’t belong there.]
Let’s look at a recent example of an educational outcome all too common. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam.
In six other high schools, only one percent tested proficient in math. In raw numbers, of 3,804 Baltimore students took the state’s math test, and 14 students tested proficient. Citywide, only 15 percent of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test.m
Last spring, graduation exercises were held at one Baltimore high school, 90 percent of whose students received the lowest possible math score.
Just one student came even close to being proficient. Parents and family members applauded the conferring of diplomas. Some of the students won achievement awards and college scholarships.
Baltimore is by no means unique. It’s a small part of the ongoing education disaster for black students across the nation. Baltimore schools are not underfunded. Of the nation’s 100 largest school systems, Baltimore schools rank third in spending per pupil.
[This story is repeated in every major city with black majorities including Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, etc. The simple fact is that blacks don’t have the intellectual capability.]
Baltimore’s black students receive diplomas that attest that they can function at a 12th-grade level when in fact they may not be able to do so at a seventh- or eighth-grade level.
These students and their families have little reason to suspect that their diplomas are fraudulent. Thus, if they cannot land a good job, cannot pass a civil service exam, get poor grades in college and flunk out of college, they will attribute their plight to racism.
After all, they have a high school diploma, just as a white person has a high school diploma. In their minds, the only explanation for being treated differently is racism.
[My note: the absurdity doesn’t end there. Some 70% of black high school graduates go to college even though few, about 7 to 17% of them, are qualified to attend. So about 80% of these kids are “in college” but don’t belong there.
They are there only because of government tuition loan money. And about 80% of that loan money won’t be re-paid. Just remember that when the government bails out all of these loans and adds it to the national debt.]
Gulf Coast Commentary. (Pays to read. And take notes. Called slipping things in a folder. And I have plenty of info. From actual factual citated statements backed up by data stats etc. and plenty of info on South Africa. And me and my family along with several other folks are doing what we can to bring as many WHITE FOLKS over here. To avoid the “White Genocide “ that is happening in SA. Now another, 100% BLACK, SHIT HOLE.
Black Kids Basically Can’t Perform in US High Schools Part 2
To a great extent, the US Government’s student loan program is a giant welfare program to occupy young adults and “keep them off the streets.” It’s especially true of Black kids.
By the time black kids reach Grade 12, some 50% have already flunked out. Of the remainder, only 7% and 17% of those kids perform at “proficient” levels in math and reading, respectively. So less than ~10% of black kids can perform at Grade 12 levels, but 70% are going to college thanks to “free” US Government students loans!!
And virtually none of these loans to Blacks will be paid back. You can safely bet that $Trillions of these loans will be forgiven and put on the taxpayer’s debt load and a disproportionate amount of those loans forgiven will be those made to blacks.
Overall then, only 3.5% to 8.5% of all blacks can do school work expected of 18 year old high school seniors. This is entirely consistent with black IQ distributions where less than ~10% of the black population has an IQ of 100 or more (100 is the white average).
A score of 100 signifies a mental age of 18 years old or that of a high school senior. The vast majority of Blacks are basically stuck at or below the 9th grade level or age 14 for their entire lives. And every other standardized test says the same thing.
This explains nearly everything about the Black cultural divide in the US. It’s not much different for Arab or other minorities either. After all, only N. Europeans and E. Asians have median IQs of 100 or greater. Everyone else’s median is MUCH lower at 80 to 90. It’s the basis of the cultural clashes with Whites and Arabs in Europe and with Whites and Blacks in the US.
And it explains why Blacks would be happier living in all black communities, since they wouldn’t suffer the humiliation of trying to compete with White kids and failing at it. Perhaps segregation was a natural and peaceful way to coexist?
That said, the legal “leveling of the playing field” had to done, but “busing” and “desegregation” was a pet project from judicial activist judges who will NEVER be held to account for their failures.
From Sheriff David Clarke:
When all 164 of Washington D.C. Frank W. Ballou Senior High School’s graduating seniors last year applied for and were accepted to college, the whole community—students, teachers, administrators, parents, and education reformers—had reason to celebrate the achievements of these obviously hard-working graduates. With a graduating class the school system considered “academically disadvantaged,” someone in the school district should have smelled a rat.
After all, 98 percent of Ballou’s 930 students were African-Americans, and two percent were Hispanic/Latino, according to data from the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) system. One hundred percent of them were considered “academically disadvantaged” by the system.
Kids like this deserve the great opportunity that a high-quality, character-building education can help provide. There was a time when good educators, in fact, would tirelessly fight to give it to them. Those days are apparently over.
Sadly, this happy story collapsed in November, when an investigation by WAMU and NPR found that the much-ballyhooed Ballou graduated dozens of these students despite high rates of unexcused absences throughout their senior year.
Half of them missed more than three months of school. One in five was absent more than present. When kids don’t show up for class, no learning can take place. And many continue to be perplexed about the growing achievement gap between black and Hispanic kids and their white counterparts. These truancy rates are a big part of the problem.
Some teachers, saying they felt pressure to pass failing students and get them to graduation, cooperated with the investigation. An internal e-mail shows that in April, just two months before the end of the school year, only 57 students were on track to graduate. Many of the others could scarcely read or write.
All of which means the graduation jubilation in June was not, in any way, justified. Put bluntly, Ballou’s administrators and some teachers cooked the books, used taxpayer money to commit fraud, and above all harmed poor black youths and their futures the most. Quite an indictment.
Perhaps even more alarmingly, NPR’s report led teachers from around the country to share similar situations in many other districts. This is a nationwide academic scandal in K-12 urban school districts, not to mention the serious disciplinary issues they have.
In late November, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson announced two investigations arising out of the Ballou deceit. One will be conducted by D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hanseul Kang and is slated for completion later this month.
Another will be led by two deputy DCPS chancellors who are examining the problem system-wide. I hold out little hope that anything more will come out of this than for the school district to attribute the problem to a lack of teacher training or a misunderstanding with no intent to deceive.
The D.C. Council’s education committee held a lengthy hearing on the matter in mid-December, and Ballou principal Yetunde Reeves has been reassigned, pending the outcome. That is likely the worst of what will happen to her, because the teaching establishment tends to punish only by reassignment.
Two things were left out of the story. First, where were the parents? They had to have some inkling that their son or daughter was not attending school regularly and certainly were not learning.
They have a duty to see that their child shows up to school everyday in a state of readiness to learn. Second, what colleges accepted the kids who can’t read or write? They should be outed.
Whoever is responsible for perpetrating, encouraging, or tolerating this Ballou fraud should be held as accountable as those who were behind the Enron scandal. Having helped to deny real opportunity to mostly poor black kids who deserved it, the fraudsters should receive what every such crook deserves….Jail.
Let me guess. Your a black male. Or black female. Or, or a White Regressive Leftist Cuckold for Blacks. Yep. You are one of the 3. And all 3 are so funny to watch in any of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different videos that Tommy Sotomayor has. A “Ultra Conservative Black Man.” Or any of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of videos that Colin Flaherty has on CensorTube. Same with Mr Sotomayor.
Slobtanaman,
What country are you from?
if black people bother you so much, why don’t you go back where you came from?
I hear Poland and Lithuania are 99% white; is that your national origin?
Please pick one because “White” is NOT a country.
You don’t belong in Montana. Like Donald Trump says: “You have to go back.”
Sorry, but who you voted for.
WOW
I was on a BUS last night.
At a stop by the 99 cent store, a bunch of ‘Oh The Humanity’ got on.
2 very poor, maybe homeless Whites and 3 Blacks.
One of those Blacks got off by the ‘crazy hotel’ run by the state, id guess.
However, there were 2 strange blacks already on the bus.
One of the 2 decided to threaten and scream and ‘Ill show you the biggest Black dick’ stuff.
It was INSANE.
DEB Dubois tried to teach negroes in rural Tennessee. I recall that the experience left him frustrated and embittered.
Paul Joseph Goebbels tried to teach Jews in the ghettos of Germany. I recall that the experience left him frustrated and embittered; something about being “stabbed in the back?”
Just sayin
Are you comparing WEB Dubois to Goebbels?
Im comparing peoples behavior to their environments; something your bitterness and frustration prevents you from doing.
Are you comparing behavior and environment? Or, are you suggesting that there may be a causal relationship between behavior and environment?
Are you a white person?
Does the dog’s life really improve if you give him a new dog house?
What color is it?
Non sequitur….
Down goes Frazier!
Down goes Frazier!
“Down goes Frazier!”
Thwack,
Yes, but no lower than has been brought the dialog….
Yawn….
Are you Albino?
If you’re White, then you’re not permitted to speak. And that includes Albino’s.
Extremely so.
Resignation or death – nuclear Pakistan or in continuation of the previous post
Here on the TV there was a film about the Badaber camp, and I remembered how in the mid-80s I found out about the Badaber camp and about the uprising in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badaber_uprising
According to the information I have received, or if you want the army rumors, the number of Soviet prisoners in it was several thousand, and when the Pakistani army murdered them, the question of a war with Pakistan arose, including the possibility of inflicting a nuclear strike on nuclear centers and on the city where the center of the Pakistani intelligence is located and where the Americans shot Osama bin Laden 20 years later.
But a month before, Western Black Project headed by Margaret Thatcher had placed Mikhail Gorbachev in the chair of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in full accordance with the plan of the Russian philosopher Zinoviev, set out in the book “How to kill an elephant with a needle.”
So according to these rumors the USSR did not use nuclear weapons, although the creation of a death camp for Soviet prisoners of war and their unpunished murder was undoubtedly an attack on the USSR that threatened the very existence of the state.
And the film “Sleepers” ends with the scene how in 2015 Deputy Director of CIA Conan (Cohen in real life) comes to arrest “Miss Watson” (Hillary Clinton) for transferring the MANPADS to Libyan (Egyptian) terrorists for attack on the presidential board and Putin’s assassination, but they from their own considerations, attacked and knocked down private airplane over the island of Djerba (above the Sinai peninsula).
But in the office of “Miss Watson”, the deputy director of the CIA is met by his chief, who tells him that Miss Watson acted within the framework of special powers given to her by the Congress and the US Senate in the implementation of the Great Game plan.
And a week before this premiere, Putin informs the Federal Assembly and Russia’s partners in the aforementioned Great Game that the military-political balance has radically changed, clearly hinting that if “Miss Watson” and the above-mentioned special powers that granted to her are not retired, then this weapon may be demonstrated not only at the firing range.
And the next day Solovyev immediately publishes on the Net an interview with Putin, in which the Russian president puts a dot on the “I” with sacramental question “And why should we have a world in which Russia does not exist?”
In the movie “Sleepers”, “Mr. Conan” (Cohen) does not take the cigar from his superior and goes on vacation (retiring), saying that the support of the terrorists will lead to the fact that they cut the throat of those who try to use them, and today it became known that Pakistan tested the most advanced and the most dangerous missile technology – MIRV – missiles carrying 10 warheads of individual guidance.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/pakistan-has-just-tested-the-ultimate-nuclear-missile-24834
A few days ago, the rabid pro-Clinton channel flared up, presented a book, from which it follows that right after the assassination of Bin-Laden, a Pakistani ship with nuclear weapons on board was almost captured by Al Qaeda.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/directorate-s-traces-pakistans-role-at-the-heart-of-the-afghanistan-war
Given the location where Bin-Laden was murdered (a kilometer from the headquarters of Pakistani intelligence), it suggests that this ship Pakistani intelligence was ready to hand over to Islamist terrorists, and that in this photo, “Ms. Watson” looks with horror at the collapse of all her plans.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Obama_and_Biden_await_updates_on_bin_Laden.jpg/1280px-Obama_and_Biden_await_updates_on_bin_Laden.jpg
Thank you. I found it all extremely interesting and this Missile is not good news!!
You have to go back
It’s ok to be White.
“A ten thousand dollar a year stipend to all American Citizens.” —janos
Agreed, janos. UBI should be implemented immediately, We cannot fight the robots, automation, scan-go, and all the other ways people are displaced into permanent unemployment.
With UBI panhandling and smash-and-grab petty crime would decrease. Life in general is more pleasant when you are able to buy food or grow to eat.
UBI would make life better all around, reduce government means-test bureaucracy, and support both artistic and entrpreneurial enterprise.
“With UBI panhandling and smash-and-grab petty crime would decrease”
Janet, in this you are correct…as it stands today, there is hardly any of this type of petty crime in the heavily subsidized Ghettos….
What’s up, Big Jim? Don’t want to talk about how you’re wrong on the financial markets for the 11th consecutive year?
I understand.
Well, why not chat about how you take a tiny “news” item about a slummy part of the USA – as if the USA itself weren’t slummy – to extrapolate on Jerry Brown?
http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jun/22/antonio-villaraigosa/does-california-have-6th-largest-economy-world-and/
The 6th (7th? Whatevs!) largest economy in the entire world, and to hear you tell it it’s the worst sort of dystopia.
Here’s a suggestion: why not stick to your knitting, and write about local shitholes you and your peers are be definition directly responsible for?
Cheers!
(watch this space)
The biggest impact of AI that will change everything that America now stands for. Individual choice and responsibility will be vastly reduced as the result of AI. Jobs and more so careers will be in the world of the elite, not available to the middle class. Ford uses the term ” techno-feudalism” to describe the world 50 years or so with AI. Government control may be the control mechanism for income distribution, if the government survives. Unemployment will be mainstream.
Thwack, this means everyone. AI will be colorblind, with the lower end of the economic scale being the first affected. Marijuana and drug culture depends on the culture being wealthy enough to afford it. I agree 100% with you that drugs are a way of making a living for the permanently unemployed. But think of what will happen with everyone making $10000 a year and that is it. With no hope of improvement. How about the feeling of hopelessness that will prevail the populace when education, experience do not mean a hoot. Why bother? Drugs will make a short term spike as people turn to drugs and booze for solace. A good example from history is the USSR where inavailabilty of a future of ones own made for high volumes of vodka drinking. But as the malaise takes hold, drug sales will languish as money will not exist to buy them.
Ford makes the point that the advent of AI is inevitable. How we respond will quickly become a political issue, one side favoring individuality and the other government control. That is enough to give me the willies. AI will definitely favor one viewpoint.
test
O these Immigrants children. DOING THE WORK WE WONT DO.
Shkreli was born in Coney Island Hospital, Brooklyn, New York City, New York. His parents are Albanian and Croatian who emigrated from Montenegro and worked as janitors
Ol’ Scratch March 9, 2018 at 4:34 pm #
Shkreli allegedly (I’m alleging it) told the judge that not only did he think the sentence was unfair, but he was honestly expecting to be rewarded with a handsome bonus for his fraudulent actions. He then promised to spend his time while incarcerated diligently boning up (pun intended) on securities law, so that he’d be sure not to get caught next time after he was released from the slammer. He then handed out business cards to all present and left with an open invitation to “call me,” before being whisked off to a luxurious rich white man’s “prison”/resort in the Catskills, where’s already outlining his forthcoming memoirs of the experience
The Pentagon took my advice: No tanks for Trump. He is commander in chief in name only. He gets a parade, but without tanks.
The parade will “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks,” the Pentagon memo said, adding that “consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.”
Just a reminder/correction that Reagan initiated the funding cuts that led to the closing of state mental hospitals. As I recall, that had little to do with a rationale that “inmates… were a politically oppressed minority group”. Even if that kind of rhetoric got bandied about, it had nothing to do with that. It was about cramming a neoliberal agenda down American’s throats.
Also, all state mental hospitals were not horrible asylums at that point. My mother worked as a psychiatric nurse at a state mental hospital in Georgia. It was bright, modern and beautifully landscaped. I’m sure it housed a few horrors. Mental illness produces those. But my point is that we already knew how to do this in a humane way. Neoliberalism has shredded our social contracts and left us with little semblance of civil society. The sometimes absurd identity politics that you reference has emerged in the midst of that collapse, but is not the cause of it.
Some people are “undocumented” due to clerical errors and other bizarre aspects of immigration law/policy in this country. It’s not so simple is “legal”/”illegal” – especially in a system that doesn’t even allow due process for the individuals targeted by the ICE nazis and the for-profit private prison camp network. How about my Polish friend, a permanent resident here since she was a kid, who got her green card confiscated at the airport Trump-pumped Muslim-hunting immigration agents (she’s not Muslim) when they found a minor infraction on her police record from 15 years ago? She’s been “legal” all along – but that’s now in limbo until she spends thousands of dollars and jumps through endless bureaucratic hoops. They are absurdly threatening to send her back to Poland despite her having little connection to the place. She works 3 jobs here, speaks flawless English, and has never been considered undocumented – until they took her documents and left it ambiguous as to how she’s supposed to get them back.
How about my Polish friend, a permanent resident here since she was a kid, who got her green card confiscated at the airport Trump-pumped Muslim-hunting immigration agents (she’s not Muslim) when they found a minor infraction on her police record from 15 years ago?
******************
Quite common after 911
Happened to a friend of mine from Wales. Minor charge from 15 years ago. Busted her coming back at the airport and treated her like an international terrorist complete with shackles and orange jump suit for any court appearances.
Then, the Washington Post did a story about the impact of the “Real ID Act” after 911 and they quoted a complaint from an 87 year old white man who could not get his “walkers license” renewed until he provided his birth certificate (which he had done back in the 1940s to get his license in the first place)
He said: “they didn’t ask for my birth certificate when they sent me to Korea?”
See how that works?
A lot of old black people from places like Gut Bucket Mississippi never got a birth certificates.
ABC news reports that Sam Nunberg, the Trump aide, has stated that there was contacts between Trump’s people and Russia, but he did say that Trump is not involved himself. He aimed accusations at Roger Stone.
My question is, what depth of the Deep State was Russia able to get into. And what are they after? They are into both sides of the political spectrum, dealing with GOP and Democrats. Are they playing both sides against the middle? It seems like everyone was working with someone in Russia. Was it a bad thing to work with Russians ten years ago and it is only a sin today because of the Get Trump campaign. How many other countries have drilled into our business structure? And also, should we even care?
Cold N. Holefield,
If you’re monitoring here, I don’t think “epitaph” was the word you were looking for in your latest blog* essay. To my knowledge one does not hurl epitaphs. Expletives, perhaps.
I also think you are losing, or have long since lost, your marbles.
*Catcher in the lie
Better yet, epithets
Q,
The word he was looking for was epithet…
You tell him, not me.
You tell him, not me. – elysian
===========
The problem is, he disabled the comment feature on his blog. He no longer accepts comments because he didn’t like it when people differed with what he had to say. He occasionally mentions this (CFN) blog so I assume he looks in here now and then.
He occasionally mentions this (CFN) blog
============
And believe me, we are all assholes.
Trump’s unscripted campaign rally today proves it is futile to expect him to pivot to being presidential. He is like all politicians. He has already announced his 2020 campaign.
Politicians are more concerned about being re-elected than about keeping campaign promises to the deplorables who voted for him. Trump is a run-of-the-mill politician, though less competent. Trump is being totally played by little rocket man.
Con man Trump told the deplorables today: “We can’t say Make America Great Again, because I already did that…Our new slogan will be…”Keep America Great!”
So there you have it. Trump claiming he has already made America great again. Look out your window. Do you believe Trump or your own eyes? Is he right? Has he made America great again? Are the evil liberals vanquished? JHK might as well retire. Trump was right when he said “I alone can fix it” … and the gullible deplorables will continue to vote for him.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second.” —President Trump
It’s called TDR.
TDS. Happy Going-off-daylight Ravingr Time!
I’m gonna miss daylight savings time. I never set my clock back last fall, so I was an hour ahead of everybody else. That comes in handy sometimes.
After reading the propaganda delirium in the American media about the “ballistic missile with a nuclear engine” and seeing how many experts rushed to retell Wikipedia, I want to ask you – will you be interested to know where the Russians got these new nuclear reactors on cruise missiles and underwater vehicles?
According to my preliminary estimates, such cruise missile could remain in flight for FIVE YEARS without refueling, patrolling the globe, avoiding all American anti-missiles sites, ready to strike at any moment.
Thanks, Hillary, for that additional uranium you sold Russia on the cheap: it’ll come handy in building a fleet of such missiles.
Footage of mysterious object above ocean stuns military personnel
Newly-released video of a mysterious object streaking over the Atlantic Ocean shows the Pentagon needs to take UFOs seriously, a researcher says.
“What the f— is that thing?” shouted the pilot in the video posted online by the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a private research company.
Three videos showing similar incidents became public last year in reports of $22 million in Pentagon spending on UFO research.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/10/footage-of-mysterious-object-above-ocean-stuns-military-personnel/
Those $22 million would have been spent much better on improving US-Russia relations by funding the serious scientific – not hysterical propaganda – based research.
Scientists from the United States and Britain have announced the largest in the volume of computer-intense calculation proof in the history of mathematics. The preprint with the study is published on the website arXiv.org, a brief publication of Nature.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.00723
To solve the Boolean problem of the Pythagorean triples, the specialists used the Stampede supercomputer of the University of Texas at Austin (USA). His calculations took 200 terabytes of memory, which is equal to the entire digitized largest library in the world (Library of Congress).
The solution of the Boolean problem of Pythagorean triples obtained by the scientists is as follows: natural numbers from the closed interval [1, 7824] can be divided into two parts so that they do not contain the Pythagorean triple. For natural numbers from the closed interval [1; 7825] this is impossible.
Scientists succeeded in optimizing the algorithm used to solve the problem with the help of symmetry ideas and methods of number theory. This has reduced the number of opportunities that Stampede had to look at from more than (10 in the power of 2300) ways to less than (10 in the power of 12). A supercomputer with 800 cores operated for two days.
As a rule, with analytical proof, scientists discover new mathematical structures and patterns, whereas in computational proof this is impossible. In particular, scientists can not explain the role of the number 7824 in their solution.
This kind of “proof” does not just contradict the scientific method, they show a lack of desire to prove or understand anything, completely undermining the public’s remains of interest in science. And this is a direct consequence of Feynman’s most unsuccessful joke: “Shut up and calculate” (or the most successful?!)
Moreover, this is direct and I would even say the impudent embodiment of this principle, which has become a distinctive feature of the “Americanization” of science, especially dangerous in combination with its politicization and distrust of American science in connection with the flight to the moon!
And now imagine what will be left out of the above-described proof if there is a simple, elementary mistrust in moral and ethical principles of the ones who made it?!
And what does the word “proof” mean now if it is completely destroyed by simple elementary mistrust?
Having arrived in America in 1988, I witnessed the destruction of American science by the American state, part of which was the so-called loss of missile technology, which delivered Americans to the Moon.
Before my eyes, American science was destroyed allegedly as unnecessary in connection with the collapse of the USSR, but in fact, as I now understand, because of the hatred of the quasi-religious sect that Hillary belongs to, to the scientific method as such.
They destroyed science because of it demonstrates a person’s ability to “read the mind of God”.
That’s what American scientists said about science when I arrived, but after 2 years they stopped saying it, and when the Clintons came to power I realized that they hate science for its ability to show that a person is an Image and the likeness of God and not an animal, and not a computer and not even a mixture of the beast and the computer!
“If the AG had a brain in his head instead of the CB radio that’s implanted there, he’d realize that the answer is to lean on congress to de-list marijuana as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance.”
Having the radio implanted was part of the job requirements. It is there on purpose to disrupt his thinking. Using a CB radio for the purpose was a brilliant move. Nothing but distracting snap crackle pops and dead air. No echoes of justice.
‘thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm. – Harrison Bergeron
Tate, yeah media giants. And add in tech giants.
How many times have you seen young couples walking together or intertwined on public transit, each grinning not at one another but rather at their own smartphone-devise. Think of it. The young guy has his inamorata right beside him and he’s paying NO attention to HER. And vice-versa.
We’ve given up kin-clan-tribe for the rugged-individualist model. While you can say that this is a result of wide historical forces or maybe claim that the individual freely makes choices for himself, and while the choices might seem rational for him alone, they have wide-spread societal consequences when taken in aggregate.
So you can say that the process of social atomization started a long time ago. And you can say that it was sped up with the onset of radio broadcasts. While you can say that the broadcasts brought the family into close proximity to listen, their attention was focused on the broadcast, not one another. You can say the same about the widespread adoption of TV sets.
But then you add in social media. And now you have people in close proximity and they’re not even paying attention to the same thing ie the same radio or TV program, never mind to one another.
The logical result? Social echo-chambers, a multitude of closed off head-spaces.
Not only does the young fella have no discernible life-path aside maybe from minimum-wage, part-time shifts at the coffee shop, but now he’s not even a member of a wider society, he exists on his own or maybe attached to an on-line subculture, the individual members maybe never even meeting face-to-face.
As you say, people were not evolved in this environment. There’s consequences to de-personalization and societal atomization so maybe it’s no wonder that natural selection is keeping apace with a proliferation of people with Asperger’s, especially working in the tech business. After all what do social skills and social interactions matter if you’re not interacting?
Decisions are made with one thing in mind and that’s the bottom line and with no other thought as to what these decisions might threaten.
“Not only does the young fella have no discernible life-path aside maybe from minimum-wage, part-time shifts at the coffee shop, but now he’s not even a member of a wider society, he exists on his own or maybe attached to an on-line subculture, the individual members maybe never even meeting face-to-face.”
Volodya,
Yes, the online sub-culture…where any pathology of the mind can be re-enforced by the existence of a like-minded group. Contrails? 911 Hoax? Pizza Parlor Pederasts, flat Earth, the female orgasm…any outrageous belief can now find validation. This will only exacerbate the Balkanization of our citizenry…it is destructive… insidious.
EF, What the F is going on in this country? I was in the trenches for years, Often before the PO showed up. My partner of 25 years,(no not my wife) actually wore a ballistic vest. He was afraid of dogs mostly. I love dogs. As a public servant in the 80’s ,90’s,and 00’s. I was regularly dispatched to low income projects. Shootings/stabbings. I was there when a domestic dispute went astro. I saw a man slice his wife’s throat in front of us. I tell ya, the blood from a cut carotid will spray easily 6 ft. .If we weren’t there she would have died within minutes. Anyway that is now off my mind.( yea right).
Stelmo,
What is going on? The endgame, I would opine.
V
You could take the change all the way back to the invention of the Gutenberg press. The image of an absent-minded David Hume wandering off into a marsh with his face buried in a book. And it’s commonly believed that the cheap printing of books led to the Protestant Reformation, the first of those earth-shaking revolutions giving birth to our modern world.
But this new thing, the Internet, it affects virtually everyone at once. It promotes a widespread hyper-accelerated skepticism.
I wonder what the actual numbers would be, comparing hours spent these days by people on social media and those spent on in person interactions, with in person interactions say fifteen years ago.
Even social media “addiction” can coexist with a fair amount of personal engagement. I still often see couples and groups of people, young and old, going to sporting events, the mall, the movies, restaurants, etc.
I’m guessing that those kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas were well into social media, but their “people” skills didn’t seem to be that adversely affected.
Some of course will be trapped by the “web”. And the cell towers can imprison.
I believe that it’s possible for social media to even promote and enhance live social engagements, and that its de-personalization and societal atomization effects are minimal, IMESHO.
I wonder if the social media addiction doesn’t stem from the fact that people can communicate with each other inside their own personal space? Watching people using their cellphones, it is like they withdraw into themselves.
There is magic in the device. As cars give power and cast their spell, so does the phone, one’s own hand held wizard, casting his spell.
https://www.prisonplanet.com/mothers-day-cards-go-gender-neutral.html
Demonic. Part of the on going attack on human nature and the human race.
Crazy and disgusting too.
You were probably laughing your clusterfucking asses off when Finca
was bloviating about the Fourth Reich and stuff.
Guess what?! Somebody – presumably QAnon – just launched into the American “conspiracy space” a theory that Angela Merkel is nothing less than Hitler reincarnated as a product of advanced Nazi bioengineering and cloning technology.
Please listen with a healthy dose of skepticism to Lionel, but be advised that his Kenyan theory as a birthplace of Obama is a complete BS launched by Hillary herself.
Hillary even requested Trump to advance that theory of hers at some point – but then again, Trump ran at her request initially as a Republican presidential spoiler to upset Jeb Bush.
As clusterfuckers well know Obama is an illegitimate grandson of John F. Kennedy, born in Hawaii.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzkBk03Dwrs&feature=youtu.be&t=700&bpctr=1520806004
But may be again, it’s just a story of a Negro child with two heads.
Right, Thwack?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/warren-rejects-dna-test-idea-prove-native-american-ancestry-nobody-going-take-part-away-173657853.html
The old fraud. She needs to dress up like an Indian maiden when she goes on the campaign trail. If race doesn’t matter, why is this so important to her – back when she started the fraud and now as she continues it?
Soon she’ll be swinging the tomahawk. She needs to be scalped.
“Please Mrs. Warren, I don’t wanna go….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Bt18kMmWs
For one hour CNN admitted that if Trump manages to negotiate a settlement with North Korea, he will go down in history as a great president. After an hour, someone reigned them in and they started back in on him.
The ever more grotesque Rachael Maddow tried to make it seem like Trump was being reckless or even a traitor by negotiating with him.
Grotesque? here is what grotesque:
Don’t you find it absolutely mind-blowing, that after Putin announced that Russia has weapons that could literally blow the United States out of the water anytime this “international thug” – as some American yellow press calls Putin – wants to, EVERYBODY are talking about North Korea with a nuclear arsenal not even equal to one millionth of what Russia has?
Trump is being set up by the crafty Asian rice eater.
This is the old “Lucy move the football trick” the Norks have pulled on the last five U.S presidents; even super smart Obama and Clinton fell for the banana in the tail pipe, chink shuck and jive routine.
Come on white man?
Haven’t you seen this movie before?
And with Trump being such a buffoon, looks like he’s taking the bait hook, line and sinker.
No country that went to the trouble of producing nuclear weapons has EVER bargained them away as part of any kind of “deal”; and no, South Africa don’t count because in that case the white people were retiring and everybody knew the blacks couldn’t handle them.
All the hype over this meeting is ridiculous.
Chinks ain’t giving up nukes
Niggers ain’t giving up fried chicken and watermelon
White people ain’t giving up racism
If you had an 8 inch cock would you give it up in exchange for some “security guarantees” from white people?
Exactly.
Thank you
“If you had an 8 inch cock”
Thwack,
In my youth I swung a lot of pipe…unfortunately not of the metaphorical variety….
Sorry to tell you that the Beloved Pudgy One only wants to have a Samsung in every kitchen and a Hyundai in each garage (though those Juche parties, however, are not going anywhere – too much Big Boss worship).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoSFQb5HVk
Trump haters and doubters always amaze me.
This President, unlike previous ones, absolutely put his feet down against the Rocket Man. I have no doubt that if NOKO had lobbed a missle anywhere near Guam or Hawaii, Trump would have done his best to “neutralize” Un. Remember MOAB from Afghanistan, we don’t even need to use nukes. The cave buster bombs will get any subterranean hiding places. As Trump said, my button is bigger than yours, he is right, and of course the haters clobbered him for it. Now that maybe Un has figured out that his capability is like a poot in a hurricane, he is trying another route. He has launched one missile that went high enough that a flattened trajectory might reach the US. He has exploded one hydrogen bomb that sorta went off. Can he hit what he wants? Will the nuke even go off if he does hit anything? Do we trust our own intelligence groups on NOKO’s capabilities? All potent questions.
Now, Trump says he wants to talk to Un Mano a Mano. I trust this man to not allow the NOKOs pull the wool over our eyes. He will talk with the power of the US behind him. And as been seen many times, he will not negotiate just to be popular, just to win the Peace Prize. If he and his family are able to withstand the baloney that the Trump haters have thrown at them, he will not compromise himself or the USA for this petty dictator. And as Finca has stated, this guy, that the world is quacking in their shoes over, has only a millionth the capability of the Russians. Let our worry be pointed in the right direction, and let this very capable President do his job.
Now that maybe Un has figured out that his capability is like a poot in a hurricane, he is trying another route.
***************
Hey John, go back to 1960 and take a look at China.
Got it?
OK, well thats exactly where North Korea is today with the white people trying to treat them like they treated China in 1960; you don’t think the Chinese notice this?
Theres a reason why Trump is the first U.S president to openly threaten North Korea; he’s an idiot, who will probably be removed from office if it looks like he’s gonna get a whole bunch of people killed?
Its possible Trump is trying to run some “good cop, bad cop” game?
Thats all fine and well, but North Korea is the wrong place to run it because South Korea has a good thing going in spite of the Norks, and if you fuck that up, you might find yourself fighting ALL the Koreans?
War in Korea means Koreans move here, and Trump moves out of the White House.
BTW, how many nuclear power plants are in South Korea?
The Norks can just target those and save their own nukes for round eye his self.
What does this look like to you?
Huffman High School is a “Magnet School”. Many of these kids and their teachers do drugs and watch porn on the Internet.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=otTaM0I_H8Q
Huffman High School is a “Magnet School”. – Puck
============
Tell me truly, could that white girl who interviewed those two black kids understand a word they said?
Does it matter?
Did Lincoln go ask a bunch of blacks what they though before freeing the slaves?
When white people REALLY wanna solve a problem, they just get it done.
Did Lincoln go ask a bunch of blacks what they though before freeing the slaves? – thwack
=========
Here are four words that a lot of people can’t seem to get straight to save their lives:
thorough
through
though
thought
And the answers to your two questions are:
1. Yes
2. I don’t know.
I wonder how extensive the societal collapse is in the US, and how to measure it?
Many people in New York City seem to be suffering from drug burnout. The last thing that they need is to legalize marijuana. Ask one of the security guards in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where is the Mesopotamia section, and you just get a confused blank stare. They have no idea where they’re at. And the constant melodramatic assertion of victimhood as a cover for irresponsibility and dysfunction is a bit bizarre.
Mention Trump, and they literally freak out.
“I was riding a bus the other night … ” — Malthus
Malthus, what the hell are you doing riding a bus? Stay off those goddam city buses. Are you looking to get knifed? Sucker punched? Robbed? If you’re living in the city get yerself a beater, the more dented/rusty the better, and fit it out for urban assault. Then you’ll have a chance, a small chance, of survival.
Buses are what big lefty environmental types with $150,000 per year EPA jobs tell you to ride on whilst they themselves whiz by in Beamers and Benzez, thinking “look at those suckers.”
brh
maybe he looks like a cop?
In the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one often finds the black person who insists that the ancient Egyptians were black even though he/she knows that the ancient Egyptians were not black. It’s weird….
I suspect they were black in a “Janos would try to hang them from a tree for dating his daughter” kind of way?
But the best “tell” that they were black is the fact white people made up weird stories about “space aliens” building the pyramids…
lol
Also, they wore very little clothing. All those sheets and towels are worn by people who can’t take the sun. Ancient Egyptians worshiped the sun.
Pucker must be one of the provincial flyover white people who has never been to an Ethiopian restaurant?
But the best way to always tell what the original people of an area looked like is to go to the least hospitable places, the places not worth conquering; the deserts, swamps, jungles, mountains, frozen tundra…
The chink eyed, flat faced !Kung people in the Kalahari were all over Southern Africa, but they got conquered and exterminated during the Bantu Migration.
Thats why they are in the desert today.
That happened lots of times in lots of different places. Native Americans used to be all over the east coast, you can tell by the names of places; but they got exterminated and ethnically cleansed to Oklahoma.
I got an insight into early 20th century mental hospitals when I read Jill Lepore’s bio of Joe Gould — Professor Sea Gull, ostensibly author of ‘Oral History of the World’ — when she describes the treatment he received at Pilgrim State Hospital in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. It seems frontal lobotomy gave way to electro shock therapy, then finally powerful pharmacuticals. I think we are at the pharmacutical stage to this day.
brh
Hemingway got electro shock therapy up at the Mayo Clinic in Minn. and it pretty much finished him off as a writer and a functioning human being.
brh
BRH,
There is a phenomena currently extant in Doctor’s offices around the country…they are requiring you to, at least during each annual visit, fill out a 6 page questionnaire. Most are innocuous questions regarding your physical health. Several questions, however are a bit unnerving. “Do you sometimes feel depressed”? Has there been an incident of domestic violence, physical or verbal, in the past year?
If you answer that you have, at times felt depressed, you fall into a category of mental health where the local police could remove guns from your residence…ditto domestic “violence”….
And remember, your answers are on your “permanent record”….
Elysianfield
You are so right. Medicare uses the annual Wellness exam to ask these questions, including social questions such as, how much do you drink, do drugs, smoke, are you depressed, measuring mental acuity and memory. For people 65 and over, are the Feds building a medical dossier on us to what ends. Do I believe there is confidentiality in the MD office, not on your life. As laws are passed that force Invasions of our privacy, we lose, bit by bit, one of the blessings of America, our own private lives. Many years ago, we criticized the USSR for State run privacy invasion. Well, here we are. Benjamin Franklin – ” Those that give up their liberty for security deserve neither one”, or something like that.
So far I haven’t come up against that, E.
that’s not to say it won’t happen during my next visit.
I worked for the feds long enough to know how to answer their questions without telling them a goddam thing.
so far all they want to know is “Do you have medical insurance?” and “What’s your deductible?” That’s it.
brh
Same thing for veterans if they seek help for PTSD
Could be that his alcohol use was a major contributor to his particular condition. Suicide by gun is just so damned messy and crazy anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEDb3xzdec
Somebody – presumably QAnon – just launched into the American “conspiracy space” a theory that Angela Merkel is nothing less than Hitler reincarnated as a product of advanced Nazi bioengineering and cloning technology.
The video I have referenced in that post has been banned by the YouTube – but Infowars are already on the case:
https://youtu.be/aLt9pbNylSo?t=2287
That QAnon handle is probably some public conspiracy side of the Trump PR machine – he can’t just blurt all dirty secrets out on his Twitter Channel.
The Informational blockade around FOURTH REICH has been broken!
“And with Trump being such a buffoon, looks like he’s taking the bait hook, line and sinker. No country that went to the trouble of producing nuclear weapons has EVER bargained them away as part of any kind of “deal” –Thwack
I agree, Thwack. Trump is being completely played by little rocket man. Trump lost all credibility when he mouthed off about “fire and fury”. Little rocket man called Trump’s bluff by launching several more rockets and Trump did not respond. USA. Paper. Tiger. Trump. Buffoon.
Alright, lets not go crazy now.
Its not that Trump is a paper tiger; its that he has the emotional maturity of a teenage boy; AND he’s a fucking idiot. He probably doesn’t even realize that the Korean War never really ended?
[edit]
Fred and Cindy Warmbier met with numerous Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, and with the Swedish ambassador, who served as an interlocutor between the U.S. and North Korea.[38] In May 2017, Fred Warmbier said that the Obama administration had encouraged them to keep a low profile about their son’s situation, but that he and his wife wanted their son to be part of any negotiations between the United States and North Korea.[39]
On June 12, 2017, Rex Tillerson, the United States Secretary of State, announced that North Korea had released Warmbier. Tillerson also announced that the U.S. State Department secured Warmbier’s release at the direction of President Donald Trump.[
Trumps big mouth probably got Otto Wambier killed
I had the opportunity to visit LA in January, and every highway underpass hosts a community of homeless people. There are thousands of underpasses in LA, and tens of thousands of homeless people. If California remains a bellwether state for American trends as it always has then LA’s homeless are our future. Onward and downward, America. Say bye-bye to the last desperate vestiges of capitalism. It’s going to get real ugly up in here, but I don’t see any stopping it. I really hope I can go back there next year and witness the further decline of the great empire firsthand. Sociologically speaking, it’s an awesome laboratory.