JHK’s Three-Act Play
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Last year, a local guy started renovating a restaurant on Main Street that has been shuttered for at least fifteen years. He’d retired from the army and started a company that made a fortune clearing landmines in faraway lands where US nation-building plans went awry. Wasn’t that a ripe business opportunity! He’s from here and loves the village and married his high school sweetheart — and would like the place to come back to life.
He’s partnered up with another guy who intends to open a bistro with a bar, a fireplace, and supposedly a boutique distillery operation in the back. That would give some people in town a reason to leave the house at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, when the day’s work is done — people like me who work alone all day. It could also give the citizens of this community a comfortable place to talk to each other about their lives and the place where we all live, and what we might do about things here. That’s called local politics.
I’ll refrain from tossing off judgments about the exterior treatment for now. Draw your own conclusions. I haven’t seen the inside and there’s butcher paper taped up on the windows while they finish in there. It looks like they’ll open early in the new year. There hasn’t been a comfortable public gathering place on Main Street in a long time. There’s a “tasting room” at a local small brewery down the block, but it’s hardly bigger than a couple of broom-closets and the New York Liquor Authority has an asinine regulation that literally forbids comfortable seating in such a designated establishment. Stools only. And only a few of those. What kind of culture does that to itself?
Ours apparently. When you get down to it, the sickness at the heart of our nation these days is the result of countless bad choices, large and small, that we’ve made collectively over decades, including the ones made by our elected officialdom. The good news is that we could potentially move in the opposite direction and start making better choices. However deficient and unappetizing you think Mr. Trump is, and how crudely unorthodox his behavior, that equation is what got enough people to vote for him. The strenuous efforts to antagonize him, disable him, and get rid of him by any means necessary — including police-state tactics, bad faith inquisitions, and outright sedition — have prevented the nation as a whole from entertaining a realistic new consensus for making better choices. In fact, it has achieved just the opposite: a near civil war, edition 2.0.
All the people of America, including the flyovers, are responsible for the sad situation we’re in: this failure to reestablish a common culture of values most people can subscribe to and use it to rebuild our towns into places worth caring about. Main Street, as it has come to be, is the physical manifestation of that failure. The businesses that used to occupy the storefronts are gone, except for second-hand stores. Nobody in 1952 would have believed this could happen. And yet, there it is: the desolation is stark and heartbreaking. Even George Bailey’s “nightmare” scene in It’s a Wonderful Life depicts the supposedly evil Pottersville as a very lively place, only programmed for old-fashioned wickedness: gin mills and streetwalkers. Watch the movie and see for yourself. Pottersville is way more appealing than 99 percent of America’s small towns today, dead as they are.
The dynamics that led to this are not hard to understand. The concentration of retail commerce in a very few gigantic corporations was a swindle that the public fell for. Enthralled like little children by the dazzle and gigantism of the big boxes, and the free parking, we allowed ourselves to be played. The excuse was “bargain shopping,” which actually meant we have sent the factories to distant lands and eliminated your jobs, and all the meaning and purpose in your lives — and cheap stuff from Asia is your consolation prize. Enjoy…
The “bones” of the village are still standing but the programming for the organism of a community is all gone: gainful employment, social roles in the life of the place, confidence in the future. For a century starting in 1850, there were at least five factories in town. They made textiles and later on, paper products and, in the end, toilet paper, ironically enough. Yes, really. They also made a lot of the sod-busting steel ploughs that opened up the Midwest, and cotton shirts, and other stuff. The people worked hard for their money, but it was pretty good money by world standards for most of those years. It allowed them to eat well, sleep in a warm house, and raise children, which is a good start for any society. The village was rich with economic and social niches, and yes, it was hierarchical, but people tended to find the niche appropriate to their abilities and aspirations — and, believe it or not, it is better to have a place in society than to have no place at all, which is the sad situation for so many today. Homelessness in America runs way deeper than just the winos and drug addicts living on the big city sidewalks.
I’ve written a ton about the bad choice of suburbanizing the USA and all its subsidiary ill-effects, and yet it’s a subject so rich that you can hardly exhaust it. It has produced an entropic wasting disease on our country so complex in symptoms that all the certified PhD economists and sociologists of the Ivy League and the land-grant diploma mills can barely diagnose the illness, or calculate the pain it has caused. Not a small part of this is the utter and abject absence of artistry expressed in the places we’ve built since 1945.
Our Main Street flaunts that boldly. The 1960-vintage post office looks like a soviet lunch-counter — or, more specifically, the box that it came in. What were they thinking? The video store looks like a muffler shop. The graceful four-story hotel that stood at the absolute center of town, and burned down in 1957, was replaced by a one-story drive-in bank. The façade re-doos of the 1970s and 80s display a mindboggling array of bad choices in claddings, colors, proportioning, and embellishment. It’s as if the entire world of aesthetics had died in the canebrakes of the Solomon Islands in 1944, and afterward nobody realized that something in America had gone missing. It’s particularly dismaying when you see the efforts that earlier generations made to instill some beauty in the things they built, with a few examples still standing for all to wonder at and dote on.
The damage done can be undone. It’s really a question of what it might take and that’s a big question because it will almost surely take a shock to the system. That shock could come as soon as the next two weeks — as not a few observers have predicted — in the form of a gross financial dislocation. The ongoing mysterious action in the “re-po” markets suggests that some kind of black hole has gaped open in the banking cosmos and is sucking literally hundreds of billions of dollars into an alternative universe. Guess we’ll have to stand by on that. The shale oil orgy is probably peaking, and the after-effects of that will be pretty harsh, but it might take a couple more years to play out. The weak leg of the stool these days seems to be our politics, the dangerous deformities of which I set forth in this blog regularly. (Some readers object to hearing about it, of course, for reasons I must regard as peevish and specious.) Most likely, the shocks will come in combinations from banking, from the rest of the actual economy, and from these deadly “gotcha” politics.
You can see the humble beginnings of change around here, or at least an end to some of the practices and behaviors I’ve described above. The K-Mart shut down last March. It left the town without a general merchandise store — besides the Dollar Store, which sells stuff that fell off a truck somewhere in China. But the chain stores will have to go down if we’re ever going to rebuild networks of local and regional commerce and bring Main Street back to life. And you must be aware that chain stores are going down by the thousands all around the country, the so-called retail apocalypse. These things have to die for a new economic ecosystem to emerge, and it looks like the process is underway. I hope the fast food joints are next. At least we’re getting a new independent bistro in town.
The landscape around here is composed of tender hills and little hollows that precede the Green Mountains of Vermont, ten miles down the pike. Apart from its stunning beauty, it’s not bad farmland, either, and the rugged topography lends itself to small scale farming which is a good thing because that’s the coming trend. I maintain that farming will eventually become the center of the next economy here as life in the USA is compelled to downsize and re-localize. We could make a few things again, too, because a river runs through town with many hydro sites — waterfalls where small factories once stood — and that river leads to the mighty Hudson four miles downstream. The Hudson can take you around the world or deep into the interior of North America via the Erie and Champlain canals that run off the Hudson.
For the moment though, the country faces that set of convulsions I call the long emergency, with politics at center stage just now. The locals, myself included, have strung up the colored lights and set out the effigies of Santa and his reindeer. I love Christmas, the trappings, the music, and the sense that we’re obliged to bring some enchantment into our lives when the days are shortest and darkest. I doubt we can Make America Great Again in the Trump sense, but we can reanimate our nation’s life, and re-enchant our daily doings in it, and learn to care about a few things again.
I’ll be putting together my usual vain and starry-eyed Forecast 2020 the following Monday, with a regular blog in between on Friday. Merry Christmas, readers! And thank you for being here!
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It seems there’s a major political party exactly working against a common American culture. They jeer at the thought of it. It seems to be the main platform, above all else.
Brh
It is a major party alright BRH, but it is no so much political as it is economic and socially stratified. They are opulent, self consumed and greedy as hell (literally). There can only be so many parasites sucking the lifeblood out of any herd of servant beasts, and they can only suck so long on their hosts before the poor beasts fall over and die. And that is the tipping point, where we lose enough life blood that we can no longer stand upright, but drop to the deck and are consumed. It is the classic Goose that laid the Golden Egg fairy tale being acted out in real life and coming to a neighborhood near you soon.
Beautiful, thoughtful post Jim, yet to be honest it fills me with a sense of anxiety, and this is simply because the catastrophic events you forecast, although for the better in the long run (as they will compel a return to a world made by hand, or the recovery of human scale) will nonetheless bring much suffering to a lot of people ( including my own family). I would personally like to believe there is another way a more sustainable civilization could be attained than on the heels of societal collapse. I do believe the world is full of mystery, and that life itself is a series of unfolding miracles we lack the capacity to comprehend due to our limited perspective. Yet perhaps you are right and some type of collapse is inevitable before a new beginning can be made. If such be the case, as individuals we will be compelled to tap into inner potentials that will needed to meet the approaching apocalypse, potentials which currently lie dormant and undeveloped. Maybe in the process of doing so we will recover our wholeness as well.
Every evolutionary quantum leap in the advancement of life has been preceded by nearly total annihilation of what came before.
Don’t expect the transition to what comes next to have many carryovers from what we have now.
Thanks EvelynV, that’s very comforting…
I agree. Jim is letting his main stream nostalgia leak out again.
These things have to die for a new economic ecosystem to emerge, and it looks like the process is underway. I hope the fast food joints are next.
A new economic system can’t emerge without markets to sell stuff in. In twenty million years when raccoons evolve to replace humans then Main Street gets revitalized. What is left of humanity might make good domestic animals. Or taste good.
Or perhaps the raccoons will treat us with reverence. Bones in their museums. Reverence for going extinct and making an empty niche for them to fill.
Anything in between is not going to happen. The coming disruption will destroy all continuity. There is no resource base for anything new. It will take millions of years for the Earth to renew.
main-street nostalgia
Ever the optimist, eh dog ?
“In twenty million years when raccoons evolve to replace humans then Main Street gets revitalized.”
K-Dog, Have you read Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos? It’s an uplifting tale of the demise of man and the evolution of a more redeeming human species.
From Amazon’s book description: “Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, America’ s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry–and all that is worth saving.”
I don’t recall reading that it was ‘all that is worth saving’.
When I read it I got the impression that having the Human Species as dumb as seals eating fish for eternity in the middle of nowhere was an improvement. By becoming stupid people could not get from the Galapagos back to the mainland. On the mainland the equivalent to the chestnut tree blight lies in wait. A sword of Damocles should humans get smart again.
Literally in the middle of nowhere. Vonnegut made the island up. His premise is that intelligence has no long term survival value in a species.
Will we still have boys and girls & trains?
No, just boys and girls and trans
Transgenders are the new saints of the alt-left. No one dare criticize them, everyone wants their child to be one, no expense must be spared in glorifying them.
And I left out – President Liz promises to dedicate a day to our transgender martyrs.
Did you mean to write “trains” or “trans”?
I read JHK’s post-apocalypse 4 book series. Don’t remember any trannies. A word of advice to Jim. If you want the establishment media’s seal of approval you better put some drag queens in volume 5. Tough ones who read library stories and practice kung-fu on the bad guys. Some real role models for the young kids.
As I recall, the critics said your female characters were too feminine. So include some butchie bitches next time. The New York Times might finally have a kind word.
These are tough days for literature, h.
The hot genre in the publishing industry is and has been ‘memoir’.
You joke (I think you were joking) about including manly women, but as someone who reads tons of fiction, I see certain PC type themes introduced in the popular books, and I have a feeling it has been added in to get the book published.
Anti-Trump sentiment with nothing to do with the story gets in there too.
One of my favorite authors, whom I didn’t know was a favorite until I realized I’ve read nearly all his books, abruptly switched from his long time publisher with his last book, the one about Cuba. He did not elaborate, but I’m wondering if his POV was no longer politically acceptable.
This is a top writer. It’s a little scary.
Yeah. I stick with the classics. Never tire of Moby Dick and Ulysses. No PC bs for me…
How can a female be ‘too feminine’?
“A word of advice to Jim. If you want the establishment media’s seal of approval you better put some drag queens in volume 5. Tough ones who read library stories and practice kung-fu on the bad guys. Some real role models for the young kids.”
hmuller,
Yes, and if he wants economic success, there must be car chases…and explosions!
Drag queens in drag races. Cars exploding. Wigs, feathers, sequined gowns blown sky high. Bruce Springsteen singing “Baby, we were born to run” in the movie version. This can work!
Trouble is, they’re out of gasoline in JHK’s future world.
There was a “he-she” working in the whorehouse featured in The Witch of Hebron, I think it was.
What the NYT finds abhorrent about Jim’s female characters, hmuller, is that they are of traditional stock…an attribute of civilization that is going to have to be recaptured if were to survive the Long Emergency (or even more interesting, a full-on Mad Max scenario).
Personally, I don’t see a lot of trannies and the like holding rallies against whatever illusory offense strikes them on any given day if modern society hiccups and goes t!ts-up. In general, there’s a lot less of that sort of thing when people (including said trannies) are spending most of their time chasing down 1600 calories per day (on a lucky day).
“Personally, I don’t see a lot of trannies and the like holding rallies against whatever illusory offense strikes them on any given day if modern society hiccups and goes t!ts-up”
Daddy,
Considering that they exist at our sufferance, when the veneer of our liberated society is stripped away, they will soon learn to be again closeted.
Tapping our inner potentials has brought us to this current state of affairs, waiting for the approaching apocalypse. Maybe we need to tap our inner, inner potentials. And dear God, what may lurk in that deep well?
Or inner, inner potentials if you will — either way they are potentials which currently lie dormant because we have surrounded ourselves with high tech conveniences and comforts, and thus don’t need to actualize them. As someone once said (I think it was the alien played by Jeff Bridges in the movie Starman, or it might have been Carlos Castaneda) human beings are at their best when their backs are against the wall, or what is the same, inner potentials are only mobilized and brought to the surface to the degree we are confronted with challenge…
Maybe God lurks in that deep well, an idea that is completely ignored in all of this discussion of apocalypse.
And, maybe someone can refresh our memories on when was the time in human history that we were not faced with “apocalypse”? I wonder if the 1930’s were so full of this doom and gloom.
Apocalypse is chastisement. It is not destruction. An echo of Ezekiel 14 [ for the same reason ].
btw: JHK this is the first time you made me weep.
I know a few well written words, the time of year, and our current situation. It could make anyone get a lump in their throat
I agree my friend. As Jesus said, ‘the kingdom of heaven lies within’. I talk a lot about God and Divine Providence here, but most people just ignore me. It is my faith God and the Angelic World have a plan for our confused and chaotic planet, and are totally committed to the spiritual awakening of the human races. After all, if there is an apocalypse it will be due only to the fallacious and intransigent human ego, which still remains under the spell of the ‘dark side of the Force’…
Meant for shotho…
Considering there are three billion Muslims determined to rule the planet with their Sharia Law and forcing everyone to face Mecca five times a day to “pray” while waiting for Mahamed to return, adding to that millions of Christians, many nutty enough to believe we need a nuclear war destroying Israel in order to save it and cause Jesus to return on a cloud, plus good luck converting the billions of Chinese to ANY of this! Destroy the planet in order to save it! Light a candle, take off your shoes and burn some incense! The end is nigh!!!
Human beings on this planet, I have come to believe, are all just batshit crazy and delusional regarding their various “beliefs”.
Just look at what that nut editor of “Christianity Today” did to President Trump!
For God’s sake! (cough), Trump and his GOP crew are against abortion, going so far as to stop ALL funding of abortions with federal money, they hate the Commies and on and on. Probably the fact that neither Trump nor his wife have set foot in a church on a Sunday morning in four years toting his well-worn Bible, was what really did him in! No regular photo-ops like with Jimmy and Rosalind or Bill and Hillary. Tsk, tsk…
Seriously. I am almost 70 years old and have lived in Los Angeles for the past ten years. This place has no soul. My friend and I want to leave here and buy a small house in a nice town with normal people. The only problem is that any of these towns that might exist are filled with depressed people, some slumped over their steering wheels dying of heroin overdoses while their toddler children sit in the back seats of the cars freezing, screaming and starving.
Starving for food, warmth and affection.
Too old to fight the snow and frozen roads and sidewalks. Wish I had a pretty lake to swim in Spring, Summer and Fall with a nice mild Winter.
And the quaint town of my childhood back again.
I wish it wasn’t so, but I will probably die here in this hell hole with nothing but my memories of swimming lakes and pretty gardens with bluebirds and robins and cardinals singing.
And in my memories I can hear my grandma saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”.
Merry Christmas.
Amen, SBS ??
“And, maybe someone can refresh our memories on when was the time in human history that we were not faced with “apocalypse”? ”
shotho,
Perhaps, because we all carry the seed of our personal apocalypse?
shotho
By “God” do you mean a deity? The preposterous notion of a big king in the sky who looks upon humans objectively and goes all Vlad the Impaler on the ones he judges haven’t lived up to his rules, or do you mean “God” in the sense Einstein sometimes used the term? Just as a metaphorical term for some unrealized unifying principle accounting for the nature of true reality, a single consciousness that subsumes all reality.
“ It’s particularly dismaying when you see the efforts that earlier generations made to instill some beauty in the things they built, with a few examples still standing for all to wonder at and dote on.”
According to a book about Sherman’s rapacious March Through Georgia, the Yankees were astounded at the elegance, sophistication, glory, and high cultural of antebellum Georgia.
Do you remember Solomon Northrup’s description of Christmas on his Louisiana Plantation in his memoir “Twelve Years as a Slave”? That was insane.
The White Masters used the Christmas holiday festivities as a backhanded way to get the slaves to fornicate and to breed more slaves in order to increase the Master’s wealth. Of course, the slaves couldn’t think that far ahead and loved it.
Re-cycling again, Pucker!
“Christmas holiday festivities as a backhanded way to get the slaves to fornicate”
Puck,
As if humans, in our teeming billions, require festivities to fornicate.
In my distant youth, the crack of dawn was enough of a festival….
At no point during the new “Star Wars” movie does Master Yoda tell the White Privileged Jedi Princess that the “Dark Side” refers to one gender trying to emulate its opposite gender. If you do that, then the Force gets all fucked up.
Sexual Perverts Are the New American Privileged Class
Paul Craig Roberts
The United Church of Christ in Ames, Iowa, for reasons unknown flew a LGBTQ flag/banner of sexual perversion. A 30 year old Hispanic immigrant took it down and burned it. For this “crime” he was sentenced to 16 years in prison!
In response to college kids or provocateurs burning the US flag during Vietnam War protests, the US Congress passed the 1968 Flag Act that permits those who burn or defile the US flag to be imprisoned, but not more than one year. What has happened to America that buring a flag of sexual perversion is 16 times more serious than burning the American flag? How can this be the case, and in a red state!? https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2019/12/19/lgbtq-flag-burning-iowa-man-sentenced-church-banner-fire/2697139001/
Almost every day I read that another person has been fired from their job because they tweeted the fact that there are only two genders. One of the most recent is the firing in the UK of Maya Forstater, “the charity worker who was sacked for her belief that there are two sexes and that sex is immutable.” This is more than a belief. It is a statement of fact, of truth. There is no scientific evidence of a third gender, much less evidence of the hundreds of genders that have been declared by utterly stupid people of no known intellectual capability or accomplishment. Hermaphrodites are considered to be abnormalities, a failure of nature. When a distinguisned author and a famous actor came to the defense of Maya Forstater, they were shouted down by a multiple of subhuman excrement. https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/12/20/the-witch-hunting-of-jk-rowling/
The Western World has lost its way. It was only a short time ago that a Google senior engineer, a white male, was fired because he posted a tweet or an email that spoke a truth that men and women are good at different things and excel in different areas. His statement of scientific fact violated the feelings of feminists, who maintain that there is no difference between the capabilities of men and women. If women aren’t excelling in men’s areas, it is ipso facto proof that women are being discriminated against. This claim doesn’t work for men who are not excelling in women’s areas. The men can’t claim they are not doing as well in women’s areas because they are discriminated against.
By making the claim that men and women are equal in every respect, feminists have destroyed women’s sports. Men now have the transgendered right to self-declare themselves women and to compete against women in sports. Many women sports stars, such as Maria Sharapova, winner of five Grand Slam titles, have protested this absurdity, and have been denounced and forced to apologize for doubting that the males are really females even though the self-declared females have penises and testicles and the muscle strength of males.
The results of men competing as women in sports contests clearly show that the two genders are not equal in all respects as the ignorant dumbshit radical feminists insist. The attack on women does not come from men. It comes from feminists and the alleged transgendered.
What kind of society is the West in which absolutely ridiculous declarations take precedence over all known science and anatomical fact? How is it possible in the US, UK, and Europe for a person to be imprisoned for disbelieving that one’s gender is independent of one’s anatomical body?
A people this insane don’t deserve to exist. The End must be Nigh.
Pucker, wouldn’t a lot of people here be persuaded that if the world’s scientists can be wrong about there being climate change happening they could be wrong about how many genders there are? You know, the belief around here is that science doesn’t know shyt, so, providing that the fat bastard says so, maybe we should just let those other genders live in peace and stick to keeping the Mexicans out. You know, the ones still making it possible for the rest of you to eat and not have to mow the lawn every week.
What is happening to the land stolen from its rightful owners, is karma finally visibly kicking in. Greed motivated you to slaughter the Indians and take our land, greed motivated you to import slaves, greed again motivated you to prevent them from enjoying their inalienable rights after the slavery business broke down, and now greed is jamming Amazon and pharma advertising down your throats until the whole nation is choking on it.
In this system, the sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes. Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), and are called the homogametic sex. Males have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY), and are called the heterogametic sex.
Problem is, Pucker, that there are people who are born with other configurations of their Xs and their Ys. For instance, X0 is called Turner’s Syndrome. Look it up. Then there is XXY, XYY, etc. Ever heard of Kleinfelter’s Syndrome? Look it up. Please don’t be stupid. Thanks!
That’s a Straw Man argument.
“ Pucker, wouldn’t a lot of people here be persuaded that if the world’s scientists can be wrong about there being climate change happening they could be wrong about how many genders there are? ”
So, you’re saying that trans-genders are a unique genetic classification with unique DNA notwithstanding their chromosome determined genitalia?
I’ll believe in climate change when the remaining 3% of scientists change their mind and say they believe it too.
Over 99% of the Austrian people voted to approval Hitler’s reuniting their country with Germany back in 1938-39. It’s amazing what power and coercion can accomplish.
The globalist cabal controls the money, the promotions, the tenure, the continuance of careers. And they favor AGW; God help anyone who disagrees.
Now say something devastatingly sarcastic, as is your talent.
Perhaps capt spaulding will say something devastatingly sarcastic when you say something devastatingly evidence based, instead of one big fat paranoid ad hominem, hm.
Voting for the Anschluss isn’t the same as doing science and finding that your results confirm and finesse what previous results have shown – repeatedly, which is the mark of scientific evidence – even those of the scientists who worked for the globalist Exxon cabal whose money still couldn’t skew the evidence. They just covered it up instead.
And maybe by then those holdouts will also admit cigarette smoking has something to do with causing lung cancer.
Previous contrary evidence I presented to you, GA, was dismissed with sarcastic, ad hominem flippant remarks which didn’t address the substantive arguments. It’s unrealistic for any of us to expect you to change your religion. So good luck and be well.
Evelyn dear, regrading AGW and smoking cigarettes, please look up the term “non-sequitur” and figure out how it applies to your remarks. You’re a bright girl, I bet you can.
The meme that there is a 97 percent consensus among scientists that there is anthropomorphic climate change is a total lie. And any real scientist who is not getting his or her paycheck from a government, university, or any kind of agency grant will tell you that “science by consensus” isn’t real science. It is politics.
Anyone who says that there is a consensus that AGW or ACC is a fact is making a political statement. Not a scientific statement.
hm
Again descending into ad hominems (religion) and patronising comments to Evelyn. We expect no more. You didn’t provide evidence disproving AGW. When you do, the world will listen.
cc rider
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
“Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. It’s why we visit doctors when we’re ill. The same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper:
Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support.
That’s why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the “consensus gap.” Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%.
“Every five years the UN-based International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a ‘consensus of the world’s top scientists’ on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. The claim that the IPCC has the world’s top 1500 or 2500 scientists is simply not true.”
~ Paul Reiter, Professor of Medical Entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, contributor to the third IPCC Working Group II, employee of the Center for Disease Control for 22 years.
“Climate experts have been attacked by these people, and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats…The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”
~ Petteri Taalas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Consensus means jack squat. “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”4 Really? Unequivocally? If this is really what they signed verbatim, we have located 11,000 scientifically trained nitwits. Here are just a few equivocators:
The Global Warming Petition Project rounded up over 31,000 scientists (9,000 with PhDs) equivocating that the panic over climate change is bullshit. Worldwide there are 21 million degrees in science, from bachelor degrees to PhDs, blurring what “scientist” means in these petitions.5
A letter sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts, all with PhDs in tow, urged NASA to dial back their support of the global warming narrative.6
A letter authored by 500 carefully vetted scientists—big swinging dicks and ovaries of steel—urged the UN to acknowledge there is no climate crisis.7
In 2015, 30 Nobel laureates got huge media attention by signing a letter asking for immediate action on climate change while it went unnoticed that 35 other Nobel laureates sitting in the room did not sign.8
The most popular of all statistics declares that “97% of climate scientists believe anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a significant problem.” A colleague and climate change activist at Cornell recently claimed in a debate at Cornell, “that 97% number is not even debatable.” He’s right; it’s complete garbage. Over 11,000 abstracts from papers supposedly on climate change were culled down to 79 papers, of which 77 said climate change was a problem.9 The one chard of truth: 77 of 79 is about 97%. Here is a nice critique of an assortment of polls.10
Above snippet taken from here:
https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#climate
Oh, and GA, that “skeptical science” site you love to pull quotes from is a politically driven site. Not a real science site. Sorry.
GA, you should consider what “great scientific minds” have said about a climate apocalypse over the last 50 or more years.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/09/idiotic-environmental-predictions/
(Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich warned: “… that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”
In 2000, David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event.
In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.
In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”
cc rider and hmuller
I hope this helps you with the random quotes you like to repeat and why they get repeated.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/steve-connor-dont-believe-the-hype-over-climate-headlines-2180195.html
The thing about random quotes is that they’re always the same ones.
It’s like the Diet Pepsi ad. I don’t know if you had the same one over your way. Half a dozen women would crowd round a window to leer at a Hot Hunk drinking a Diet Pepsi, while some of it glistened manfully down his Hot Hunk chin.
Then they sighed in unison and went reluctantly back to their desks, agreeing to reconvene tomorrow when Hot Glistening Hunk was due to reappear.
Now, the thing is that newspapers, magazines and billboards everywhere have been selling stuff forever by showing it in the vicinity of scantily clad Hot Women. Everyone knows this. We’ve seen it since we could walk.
But when a discussion would come up online, some desperate men would say ‘but the Pepsi advert’. Always.
And the thing was that the Pepsi advert was the one they thought of. The only one they could think of (things have moved on a bit since, in these metrosexual days).
Same thing with daft climate quotes, except you’ll find a few more. They don’t invalidate the current state of the science in any way. Avoid headlines. Read the small print. Regularly and frequently.
BTW, cc rider, I only use Skeptical Science as a shortcut to counter nonsense that I read on here. It happens to deal with all the main denier memes, which is useful, since you see the same ones over and over again. But there are questions and answers at the bottom – why don’t you join in and tell them something genuinely helpful?
Or you can go to RealClimate, which is a bunch of actual climate scientists discussing the boring detail with each other. There are questions underneath, and responses.
I’d also recommend the Royal Society website. Or NASA. Or Nature. Or New Scientist, which is detailed enough for general purposes but understandable by any intelligent and scientifically literate person.
And now I’m going to leave you boys to it, because it’s a waste of my time and everyone else’s.
But I’d have to say there’s a heck of a lot less snow round my way most years than there was when I was a child, even though sometimes it comes back with a vengeance and you get five years’ worth all at once. That kind of volatility, of course, is just what we were promised.
And now I’m going to leave you boys to it because it’s tedious. One of these days we’ll get a whole thread without a denier provocateur popping up and we can concentrate on other things.
Apologies for the repetition at the bottom, ‘you boys’.
Captain,
It would be enough if the remaining 3% were allowed open dialog on the issue.
wow hmuller, I thought you were a little quicker on the uptake than that. Someone suggests the lack of a 100% consensus means something and I provide an example of a case where it doesn’t and you call that a non sequitur. Whereas your pathetic reference to a made up statistic as if it has any relevance whatsoever is truly ludicrous.
There is no consensus on climate change, because there is no list of who all the scientists are, let alone whether they say yay or nay.
That’s just something somebody made up.
Has that hockey stick guy’s work been replicated?
I don’t think so.
He recently lost a court case, although the media is trying hard to spin it.
Beryl
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong/
It’s from New Scientist, not Skeptical Science. New Scientist is not a political journal. It exists to spread actual scientific evidence to the likes of you and me. There are graphs there showing you the subsequent ‘hockey sticks’ that followed Michael Mann’s.
But Skeptical Science remains useful. It was set up specifically to respond to the regular denier memes, which include the ‘Hockey Stick disproven’ myth.
But denier memes are like the headline on the front page that is what the public will always remember, because the retraction, like the rebuttals of denier memes, is in small print on page 19.
Evelyn, why do you say my statistic was made up? Let me quote Wikipedia with regard to the Austrian plebiscite . “The plebiscite was held on 10 April and officially recorded a support of 99.7% of the voters.[62] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss
And thank you GA for pointing out how repetitive the AGW deniers are. Lord knows you people never are. LOL
But what I really want to know is how far do you believe in going to punish AGW deniers, GA? Prison, re-education camps, asylums until we come to our senses? Children removed from AGW denier homes?
The people in power hate their truths questioned. You can visit the Tower of London or places like it and view the instruments the authorities used to “win their arguments”.
Today, the globalists who rule us need assent to the AGW meme to justify their totalitarian agenda. I’m sure they appreciate all your help.
I ordered my C43 AMG today. The new ones have 4 overly large exhausts.
Should I be afraid?
hm
“And thank you GA for pointing out how repetitive the AGW deniers are. Lord knows you people never are. LOL”
How many ways are there to tell the truth?
“But what I really want to know is how far do you believe in going to punish AGW deniers, GA? Prison, re-education?.”
What sort of a dumb question is that? You can believe whatever nonsense you like – who’s stopping you?
EF:
‘It would be enough if the remaining 3% were allowed open dialog on the issue.’
I can’t see them being gagged, EF – they’re quoted, Linked to and referred to often enough, hereabouts.
If your problem is that they cannot get equal standing with the 97%, then they need to work hard to shift the numbers so THEIR view is the 97%, and the ones you et al call ‘kooks’, ‘shills’ and ‘paid-for patsies’ are the 3%. Let them have at it!
Since you won’t deny supporting harsh measures against us AGW deniers, I suspect you support imprisonment and brutality against those who dare to oppose the NWO. Avoid answering with all the feigned outrage you like; we see you; we know you.
Stop being hysterical, hm, please. It’s undignified. ‘Won’t deny supporting harsh measures’? I don’t support any measures at all. Deniers will continue to believe what they want to believe. And others will try to stand up for the evidence.
Do you consider me exercising my right to free speech on a discussion board a ‘harsh measure’? Bloody hell, that’s a level of snowflakey I’d yet to encounter.
You have tried to shut me up repeatedly by means of your regular ad hominems. Sophia has just done the same, disappointingly. You can always tell the ones – they start appealing to the gallery instead of responding to you directly.
You don’t know me at all. But you’re welcome to visit anytime. Then you will. Bring Beryl and sophia and I’ll make scones.
cc rider
“Oh, and GA, that “skeptical science” site you love to pull quotes from is a politically driven site. Not a real science site. Sorry.”
Sorry back atcha.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_Science
“Skeptical Science is not affiliated with any political, business, or charitable entities.[25] The site does not contain banner ads and is funded entirely by Cook himself, with reader donations.[2]”
More ad hominems.
Cook is a cognitive scientist. One of his interests is the psychology of climate science denial.
Stop being hysterical, GA, please. It’s undignified
No one can shut you up. No one is trying. If I exercise my right to free speech, do you feel threatened? What a snowflake you are. LOL
That wasn’t very original, now was it, hm? Especially after taking so long to draft your reply.
You don’t just exercise your right to free speech, though, do you, hm? You opt for character assassination by suggesting the person who won’t accept your Weltanschauung must be paid for their troubles. And that they’ve made up a convoluted story about themselves to somehow throw you.
Look for all the holes you want in my ‘story’, hm. You won’t find a single one anywhere, no matter how many years you go back, for the simple reason that I haven’t made up the tiniest, weeniest white lie. Not one nano-fib. So hunt away, character assassinator.
Or come and make your accusations to my face, coward.
There’s my street:
https://media.rightmove.co.uk/dir/53k/52497/67524202/52497_113910_IMG_01_0000_max_656x437.jpg
I own the whole street, naturally – Soros bought it for me.
Didn’t you work in ‘intelligence’ or something? Should take you long to find me.
Pucker, not trying to say that but now that you bring the subject up. Probably the occurrence of so many people who develop the impulse for gender change can or will be tracked down to the existence of a particular genetic pre-disposition. So in a future world maybe how various external appendages are shaped won’t be the sole criteria for assigning categorization. Would you feel threatened by that in some way?
Let’s say it turned out you have a recessive gene for causing such an impulse. Would you feel it was your responsibility to not take a chance on breeding with anyone else just in case they had the same recessive gene?
This is just a hypothetical question because I assume you are long past the breeding stage.
Men are never past the breeding stage. It’s you gals who dry and wither and end up like freeze dried apricots.
Re Climate,
Guys, it seems to me that GreenAlba is not a real, sincere person. She must be paid to be here. If she were real she would occasionally actually respond to the many good points made. it obviously does not matter one bit what you say or how good your facts are. No response, except to say your comments are nonsense or daft.
I believe “rubbish” and “bollocks” are among her many thoughtful yet concise responses to points others have made. That she’s a trained, paid shill has crossed my mind. But she’s the best I’ve seen with so many heart warming real life tales of being a Scottish lass living all over the world. That part is probably true, yet there’s so much more untold.
It’s interesting how on occasion she lets drop her understanding of how social engineers control a society’s thinking (such as via advertising imagery). It’s the way a graduate of Britain’s Tavistock Institute would interpret the world.
It’s all about controlling the thoughts and opinions of the masses – what some crudely call “brainwashing”. One look at the MSM and there’s no doubt; they are doing it to us. That much systemic, coordinated, agenda driven lying and spinning doesn’t just happen unaided, any more than a tornado tearing through a junkyard can assemble a Boeing 747 by chance.
Read Ian M. Banks ‘Culture’ sci-Fi series. The tech is advanced to the stage where one can reassign gender as desired, even temporarily, for say a decade. The, the next reassignment might have extreme feline physical characteristics.
Great stories. The first is entitled “Consider Phelbas”.
It seems to me, sophia, that you have just dropped a whole lot of levels in my estimation for that remark.
Pathetic. And unworthy. Or maybe it isn’t – I don’t know you.
I didn’t respond to your rather patronising post the other day, for which you have my apologies – I was busy. There were probably others upthread that I didn’t even see.
You gave me a long lecture about how surgeons used to learn their trade, as an example of why I shouldn’t worry too much about having one who’d just picked it up as a jobbing apprentice. Coming from the city of Burke and Hare I was apparently thought not to know how surgeons and anatomists learned their business.
I still choose to be treated by the ones that know their medicine as well as their surgery, thanks. And they know a heck of a lot more about medicine now than they did then.
As regards ‘good facts’, I seem to remember you referred to ad hominems without mentioning that you people keep issuing a giant ad hominem to the entire climate science community with almost every post.
No response? I’ve posted endless evidence on here, presented graphs and figures, and I might as well talk to the wall. Exxon did their job well with you folks – they got excellent value for their disinformation dollars.
‘She must be paid to be here.’
The ad hominem, of ad hominems.
Disappointing, sophia, disappointing.
hm
Keep trying. And I haven’t lived ‘all over the world’. I’ve lived in Scotland, England and France. I’m not inclined to your kind of hyperbole.
Have you already forgotten your time on the great Canadian plains. Or was that not true?
The great Canadian plains? Are you hallucinating, hm?
I visited Toronto once for the day while staying with a friend in Colgate, NY, and travelling up to see the Niagara Falls (disappointing and somewhat tacky). Does that count?
I’ve still got the woolly hat I bought at The Pleasant Pheasant on the lakeside because it was November and bloody freezing. But the plains, wherever that exactly is, remain unknown to me.
Perhaps you are thinking of my husband having worked briefly in the Canadian boondocks before I knew him?
I guess we can all get confused.
Sorry, it wasn’t called Colgate, it was called Hamilton, NY. Colgate was the university where my friend was doing a job swap.
Sophia
Seems to me you must be so new here you’ve still got afterbirth attached to your navel. GreenAlba over a stretch of time has provided more intelligent and thoughtful responses to claims and assertions made by others here than any five or six other people combined. She does it with class and dignity and never resorts to the gutter dialogue and personal level attacks frequently aimed at her by some of her most envious critics (are you reading this SSL?)
The stupidity of people who claim other people are paid to post on forums disgusts me every time I read the claim. Who the hell do they think would consider it important enough to pay someone to rag at others in the comments section of a website that doesn’t have enough readers to fill a bus.
Green Alba,
What ad hominem did I use?
Ah, so I see.
Yes, it is true that GA comports herself with class and seems to have a pleasant personality. I do not regard my observation that she seems insincere as an ad hominem, but I do see how it comes close to the line. The reason I don’t is that it isn’t name calling, and it doesn’t dismiss her opinions based on name calling, but it is important to me when discussing things that the other person or people have a high regard for truth and not just winning an argument. I never see her concede a point.
Most of my friends who buy into climate change are too emotional to discuss it, (really) and also don’t know or care why some people disagree. Alba isn’t like that. Perhaps she is too good! By which I mean smooth. Yes, she does present the data from her side quite well, but so do a couple of the people here on the other side.
Like, for example, could we please, please dispense with the consensus nonsense? And yeah, I want the names. Where is that list?
Meanwhile, 31,000 scientists have signed their disagreement. No acknowledgement. None. Not from her or anyone else. So there really is a controversy. You just can’t get away with saying la, la, la, we have the consensus and don’t need to discuss the facts. Oh, how you wish it were so but it ISN’T. It just isn’t. Doesn’t matter how right you are and how wrong we are – the simple fact is there are a lot of people who are quite unconvinced.
And nowhere is there honest, open discussion, as in an undecided issue. Oh, yeah, I know, we’re all going to die and all that – well, the science is not settled, no matter how much you wish it were so. We are so used to the adversarial approach, such as in our courts, when a fact-finding, truth-finding approach is what we need.
I apologize if it seems I used ad hominem, but I still think what I think – which is that GA may not be here in an honest capacity. Of course I hope I am wrong!
“Skeptical science”
It is always a good sign when the name of the site is redundant.
Even better is when the “scientific,” and “fact-oriented” site spends a considerable amount of virtual ink focusing on the psychology of the side it doesn’t like.
What percentage of the ink, would you say, Nightowl, having so thoroughly read its contents?
You are free to calculate that yourself. I have to finish my son’s RC car.
In other words…
Quite. Get back to me when you’ve read some of the actual content.
and the noble Indians and descendants of slaves are not susceptible to greed and fear? truly exceptional people!
Those Indians weren’t so noble when it came to dealing with trespassers. But the slaves were taught well by masters of greed and imposing fear so they don’t exactly get all the blame. The sad thing is how willing they were to fit in when emancipated until no hope was left for them.
The Mexicans you exploit because they are in a position of weakness? In order to drive down the price of labor? Good little globalist.
As Ann Coulter pointed out, Mexico votes for the form of government they are allegedly fleeing. They like the system fine, just as it is.
If Ann Coulter…aka David Bowie in drag…points something out you can be pretty safe ignoring it. The one exception I can think of is when she means tweets Trump with things like “This guy is like a couch—he picks up whatever the person sitting on him is wearing.” Ok, maybe two exceptions: “Gutless President in Wall-Less Country,”
As if the Indians didn’t raid, make war, murder, and enslave. We were YOUR Karma!
Actually he did get 16 years for burning that flag. He is a habitual offender. I’ll just paste directly from the Des Moines news article:
“Adolfo Martinez, 30, of Ames, was found guilty last month of third-degree arson in violation of individual rights — hate crime, third-degree harassment, and reckless use of fire as a habitual offender.
He was arrested after stealing a pride banner hanging at Ames United Church of Christ, 217 6th St., and burning it early June 11 outside Dangerous Curves Gentleman’s Club, 111 5th St., police said……
…..He faced a maximum of five years in prison for the hate crime and arson charge and a maximum of a year and month for the other two charges, according to Iowa sentencing guidelines. Court records list him as a habitual offender, allowing him to be sentenced to a longer prison term.”
Now, I think still 16 years is probably too long. My bet is that he won’t serve the entire sentence behind bars though.
Correction: I meant to say that he did NOT get 16 years for just burning that flag.
Yeah, I think he was charged with the hate-crime because he was also threatening people when he was burning the Rainbow Flag outside the Dangerous Curves Gentleman’s Club.
I know Snopes.com is run by a bunch of DNC shills, but their run-down on this matter is probably the most thorough you will find on the Internet.
It is run by an ex-porn star and her boyfriend. And their cat.
It is so fitting that I use it as further evidence when debating whether we live in a simulation.
Hey Pucker, I am a feminist and I do not buy into the Trans-insanity. In fact, I find the whole dick in a dress pantomiming ‘Woman’ beyond distressing. Cultural appropriation has nothing on what these faux-women are attempting to make their own and erasing the entire biological female sex while they do it. So relieved to know that the most difficult thing about being a woman is not the threat of rape or access to safe abortions but deciding what to wear!!!
You know that society is circling the bowl when your Gynecologist can’t say ‘Pregnant Woman’ but must say ‘Pregnant Person’ and agree that Trans-women have periods and send out reminders for pap-smears to people who don’t and never will have a cervix!!!!
This mass-delusion needs to be knocked back before our legal system and society are damaged beyond the point of no return.
You are a TERF – a trans-exclusionary radical feminist just like J.K Rowling. She has been revisioning her books as society changes, making Dumbledore gay, etc. No doubt at some point she would have made Harry into Dumb’s catamite once pedophilia was normalized. But karma got her first – so satisfying.
Obeewan: “The Force is all fucked up.”
A beautifully wrapped Christmas present Jim, tied with bright bows and ribbons of hope, cheer and nostalgia. Even though the ‘old days’ are gone, and of course never to return, the ‘old ways’ will reemerge out of sheer necessity and the chaos of collapse.
Readers here can see wonders from the past by simply googling “historic homes on the Hudson” or “Beaux Arts architecture in NYC”, for example, and many small towns still hold timeless treasures.
Economic competition accompanied by the never ending drive for profits, culture, politics, population growth and diversity have all contributed to the country’s angst, apathy, and alienation, leading us eventually to some kind of Armageddon.
On the political front, the Democrats have filled the National Christmas stocking with countless tons of the blackest coal, led by head reindeer Vixen, otherwise known as Pelosi. Yes, the week before Christmas the House was stirring with many a louse.
However, let us follow Mr. Scrooge and ‘keep Christmas well’ in spite of them.
I moved to a small town in Iowa a few years back for all the reasons you write about. It’s a good place. Solid people. It’s interesting to read your observations. About two years ago, our town found some state grant money and used it to remove all those hideous 70s and 80s facades from the buildings that line the square. Might not seem like a huge deal, but it was. The square has presence again. It’s solid. Lots of good things are happening here. It’s funny how big of a difference the built environment makes. Thank you for your observations, James. Merry Christmas.
Alan Greenspans wife noted, ‘Iowa is too White.’
Andrea Mitchell dresses too white, like a barbie doll.
The sleeveless dresses in February are annoying.
But then so is Andrea.
She was up to her neck in the fraud surrounding that Trayvon Martin hoax.
I hate her.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Andrea, but only because she looks just like the dog I had as a kid.
Wise you are.
Might it have been better if the small town in Iowa had done this transformation themselves without the “grant”?
Where ever the money came from, it was put to good use. I call many of those tasteless additions to store fronts “fake Mansard roofs”.
There are places in Iowa that are not white, and those are the places that whites move away from, their worship of diversity being limited to words, not actions. The center of Des Moines, near our neighborhood, is largely non-white.
I have gone on what I call a “Tour de Race”, in which I shop at a large supermarket in one of the white outer suburbs of Des Moines, while making it a point to notice whether any of my fellow shoppers are non-white. The result: only a tiny fraction of the dozens of shoppers are black or another minority.
So much for the “Diversity is Our Strength” big lie.
Sorry I have to go negative today.
Anyway, Merry Christmas!
You could be right shotho, that grant money could have been put to a lot better use paying for the left wing of an F35 or enough drones to kill an entire wedding party in Afghanistan. When will these politicians ever learn?
Basically….
“Some people fear this could become another Civil War.
The cause of these conflicts is obvious: we are squeezed between two powerful political alliances. Like cats and rats in city alleys, they pursue their agendas and leave each other alone. They chase weaker prey: us. The Right help the 1% amass wealth and power: tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of labor and environmental regulations, crushing unions, and building bigger cartels. The Left pursues their ever-more-ambitious social engineering experiments on us (their white mice). While they vie with each other for supreme power, taking turns slowing each down, their tag-team has no effective opposition.
We get to choose who abuses us next. The conclusion of both programs will destroy the America-that-once-was. The Left seeks open borders, radical education of children so that many are weak or mentally ill, crushing of free expression and association, and use of the government’s punitive machinery to force participation in their experiments. The Right seeks to create levels of economic inequality incompatible with democracy.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/12/22/sources-of-inspiration-to-survive-the-coming-bad-times/
I grew up in a similar town, with numerous textile and shoe factories employing thousands of people. Most are vacant and derelict now, but a few “modern entrepeneurs” have found a new use for them: drying hemp.
When we’re all toiling in the fields in the future, at least we’ll be in a tranquil fog and sporting eco-hemp wear.
machines will do tomorrows labor.
By ‘Hemp’, do you mean Marijuana? Because Hemp doesn’t put you into a ‘tranquil fog.’
No shit, Sherlock. Go back to your bong.
Lovely post, JHK. Have a happy Christmas, complete with the trappings and music. And good wishes to you and your town for 2020.
Great essay as always Jim….A note to Pucker and EvelynV maybe you should start your own site so you can rattle on and swing the discussion to you or maybe just exchange e-mails so you can take up space someplace else. Going off on your own tangents is disrespectful to Jim and his readers who want to hear others input more confined to his essay. Sharing thoughts pertinent to Jim’s essay. Don’t bogard the reply board my friends
You must be new here.
Lol!
It’s Bogart, bill.
As in, “Don’t Bogart that joint (reefer)”. I’ve always thought it had to do with how Humphrey Bogart smoked cigarettes in the movies. As I recall, he died of lung cancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvGJvzwKqg0
You make a good point trolleybill. You should track down every bastid who comes here and get them to clear out when they bring up topics not pertinent to the specifics of JHK’s blog. You’d be able to have this entire comments section all to yourself…er…maybe not. Your post was a pretty uppity step out of line too. I should have just said yer a fucking idiot.
“That shock could come as soon as the next two weeks — as not a few observers have predicted — in the form of a gross financial dislocation. The ongoing mysterious action in the “re-po” markets suggests that some kind of black hole has gaped open in the banking cosmos and is sucking literally hundreds of billions of dollars into an alternative universe.”
Thanks for noticing,most bloggers seem oblivious to the almost daily infusions of 80 or so billion mackerels the fed keeps creating. It has me spooked to the point that I’m withdrawing all but what’s necessary for bills and hiding it under my mattress, in a move that hopefully allows me to spend it the second the PTB declare a bank holiday. I’d suggest people get ready, as often as I’ve been amazed in the past at the ability of the system to take a stake in the heart and and get back up, I fear the shenanigans of the past are coming home to roost on a fast track hellbound train.
Hiding worthless green backs won’t save you.
Better to convert it to lead AKA 9MM or some other precious commodity.
Booze
Storable food
Seed vaults
Land in areas with lots of game and water.
In the Great Depression, the dollar was king because so many of them had been flushed down the black hole of bad debt. And that black hole is nothing compared to the one we’re looking at today.
Back then, dollars were redeemable at the rate of $20.67 to one troy ounce of gold. Roosevelt devalued the dollar to $35 per oz. Today, gold’s price is $1500, there is no legal link whatsoever between gold and the dollar. Hence no restraint on the creation of infinite quantities of dollars.
But in case of a bank holiday or worse, if electronic money goes offline, physical federal reserve notes will be a good thing to have – for a few weeks at least. After that old US junk silver coinage pre-1965 would be better. 14 old silver dimes (90% pure) equal one troy ounce – good for smaller barter transactions.
VODKA
“Better to convert it to lead AKA 9MM or some other precious commodity.
Booze
Storable food
Seed vaults
Land in areas with lots of game and water.”
benr,
Don’t forget machine tools…and perhaps an orchard.
Best time to start an orchard: 20 years ago
Second best time to start an orchard: today! 🙂
“Best time”
Daddy,
Well said
That’s a good plan Opiem maybe too good.
Have you noticed the background noise of countries withdrawing currency altogether (I believe Sweden is trying it out) and making it illegal as a medium of exchange?
Brh
I am listening to Gerald Celente.
His predictions include the economy holding together in 2020.
But then a big depression.
So Grandma Pelosi is now sitting on the impeachment paperwork like on old broody hen.
What is she hoping it will hatch into something with actual value?
I swear I just can’t get my head around the absolute insanity om display by the party of opposition known as the Democrat party.
No platform, no plan, no common sense, just ever more mad hatter antics are they putting mercury into the coffee in Democrat committee planning parties?
Yes but in the spirit of bipartisanship they did get together with all their MIC and Bankster purchased Republican counterparts to pass a $722 Billion defense bill and a trillion dollars in funding to keep government spending going
Here here for fiscal sanity
THESE PIX ARE A MUST SEE
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/2-people-sustained-life-threatening-injuries-in-35-vehicle-pileup-on-i-64-amid-ice-fog/649777
60 CAR CRASH
69 cars..people trapped.
Pretty damn impressive! You damn near have to be trying to wreck to get that many together at one time. One more reason to avoid the east coast I guess, although the vehicular plague is spreading everywhere these days.
Combination of fog and back ice was the problem…
“69 cars..people trapped.”
Malthuss,
Nothing new here…100+ crashes were once recurring events. Highway Patrol finally set up pilot car processes to keep the carnage down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tule_fog
Can we blame AAA for this massive pileup
The NRA gets the blame whenever somebody gets shot
It’s only fair
Obviously, they were driving too fast for the conditions. The worse the weather, the more you must slow down. Most people don’t want to.
“Obviously, they were driving too fast for the conditions.”
Sophia,
Well, yes and no. The Tule Fog in the Central Valley of California had a defined edge…it was immediate white-out upon entering. Traffic flowed at 55-60 mph on the major highways…now called I-5. People who entered the fog bank, within a few seconds, hit their brakes because they could not see tail lights, even at two car lengths…the pile-ups then ensued.
If you have never been in one of those fogs, you will not understand. I remember my father opening his car door, while driving, to try to see the white lines in the road’s center.
Think zero visibility.
At 55 MPH.
Elysian,
I seem not to have as many reply buttons as needed, so my responses may come a little skewed to where they should be. So does one not see the fog up ahead at all? I have been in very bad fog, not sure about no visibility at all. But I have opened a car door!
I also wrecked in snow once – at the county line the plowed road suddenly became an unplowed road at the top of a hill – not expecting that! And I immediately took my foot off the gas and prepared to gently slow down but it was no good. Not sure how much visibility warning I got, perhaps 50 feet or 30 feet.
Looks like something ripped from the pages of a JG Ballard story.
69 cars, people trapped..the roan should have been wider, I guess.
Meant road
Bad guess. Twice as wide, twice as many cars piled up in the foggy black ice.
In general people follow the cars ahead of them too closely. If you allow three seconds between you and the car ahead, your own margin of safety improves immensely. If everyone did it traffic could move smoother and faster and you wouldn’t encounter such disasters.
If you try to follow at a safe distance, that space will immediately be occupied by another vehicle. It simply can’t be done. Drivers ED may help. Licensing should be stricter as in Germany and some other places. It’s too easy to get a drivers license in the U.S. and some people that are driving around shouldn’t be allowed near a steering wheel, ever. I think some people don’t have what it takes to be a safe driver, period. To some extent IQ isn’t a factor. I have an old friend who can’t read or write his name, that has never even had a fender bender and I would feel perfectly safe riding in a car with him. I made a living on the road most of my life and oh what tales I could tell. It mostly takes common sense and awareness of road conditions and awareness of your vehicles capabilities.
cbeard
Not so. I drive that way always. If someone fills the gap, back off enough to open another one. It keeps traffic running smoothly and at most will delay you a couple of seconds from arriving where you would be otherwise. A side benefit you will soon discover is that people tend to follow you less closely.
It seems clear to me you’ve never tried it or you wouldn’t make such an ill informed statement.
Several years after I began driving this way I ran across a great video by a truck driver who backs up everything I’ve said. If I can find it again I’ll post it here for you.
cbeard
Watch this video, if I was KING I would require it to be broadcast as a public service ad.
I play a game with myself. The object is to never use your brakes in traffic.
https://youtu.be/iGFqfTCL2fs
Failure to prepare for new ways of life will mean no way of life in our future. Localised small scale food production is the best way to grow food. Superior in the absence of fossil fuels it is more efficient. It is more environmentally friendly. But the trend is for ever more steel, glass, concrete, and city. Away from local production.
you tube–Ice Age Farmer.
Localized small scale food production.
Great to banter around, but just keeping a seed vault in yr chest freezer downstairs won’t cut it…gotta actually practice planing and growing some of those seeds.
For those who have an acre or so and haven’t tried already, please consider growing some of your own food on a yearly basis, increasing production a year at a time. Learning by (constant yearly) mistakes is the only way to become proficient.
Nothing like the taste of your own home-grown beets 🙂
“Nothing like the taste of your own home-grown beets ”
Daddy,
…dislike beets.
But beet greens, with hot sauce? DELICIOUS!
K-Dog, whose property are 350,000,000 people going to grow their own food on? Do you think there is any chance whatsoever that if things become dire that whatever you attempt to grow will be there to harvest when it is time? I see folks all around where I live who grow gardens and I’m willing to bet many of them can get at least a week’s worth of salads out of their crops, maybe even enough to invite a neighbor over for a cucumber sandwich, without the bread.
“Localised small scale food production is the best way to grow food.”
What we can also call garden farming…
Those who live in towns and villages will have the best chance of surviving if Jim’s predictions come true. This is because they are closer to the land, and the population is small enough so they can pull together and form “intentional communities” something along the lines of the television series Jericho…
And they have the ammo to pick off zombies. Who will make good fertilizer. click here/a>
Just like in the picture. Leave the zombies to rot away in the sun and then collect the bones and grind them up.
This will make for a very intentional community.
That would be a lot of freakin zombies!
We think quite alike, SBS
That’s good to know. Are you a long time fan of JHK by any chance?
Market gardening (which is what I do) or truck farming (which I used to aspire to but my 71-year old bones don’t want to co-operate nowadays.
So are you still tilling the soil at your ripe old age?
Yes indeed, in spite of a broken clavicle (year & half ago from getting R-boned in my Jetta) and torn tendons (year ago), I still managed to plant close to 3000 garlic this October. Looking forward to peas, beans, tomatoes and such this spring coming.
Do you use raised gardens to take the pressure off your back from bending over all the time? Just curious. That sounds like a hell of a lot of work…
I’m 68 and my body is winding down as well. I used to be an exercise buff, but problems with joints and tendons has really slowed me down…
“T” -boned, not “R”
As a hobby, maybe. As primary sustenance, not so much.
No, it can’t be undone. Norman Rockwell nostalgia will never bring it back. The nation’s demographics are completely different today than they were in the late 1800’s to the mid-1960’s. The greatest generations who built the landscape are long gone. Today’s immigrants have no U.S. cultural heritage whatsoever, or even the slightest appreciation of U.S. history.
The media and liberal agendas that emerged during the 1960’s in pursuit of “equality” have effectively quashed any semblance of unity. The purity tests superimposed upon every aspect of U.S. culture by the media have severely retarded over half of the population. The victim classes all trying to out-suffer each other have permanently impeded the formation of community spirit other than sports fandom. The next few generations will become even more tribal because there’s no way to stop it. There’s no melting pot, only hatred and intolerance. You can’t build a community when over half of the citizens refuse to assimilate, and cling to their victim status.
The media and universities want Socialism, and they have already infected over half of the U.S. population. They are trying to march the nation into socialist revolution. It won’t take much of an economic hiccup to tip the scales. A deep recession would pretty well do it. That is why the media so desperately embraced the yield-curve inversion last summer as signaling a looming recession. They want it badly.
Much has changed, from richest nation to most in debt [of all and any
today or in the past].
90% White to Whites as a persecuted minority.
Industrial economy to paper economy.
“persecuted”??!! Get serious.
It is you who need to get serious. Your kind are playing with fire.
My kind? What kind is that in your mind?
The lefty, liberal or white collar democrats – I’m not being very accurate with the label as there is disagreement on them. Suddenly, out of the blue – when race relations were really quite good – they are openly despising their own race, openly accepting guilt for things they have not done and the white race is not now doing, encouraging a spirit of revenge and even, (media) giving the public a false narrative of police targeting.
The latter is serious. Five white policemen were ambushed and killed in retaliation for what is probably untrue. And, accusing a group of people (police) of murder is a serious charge.
Sophia
“As the twig is bent the tree grows.”
Have you ever encountered a dog that when you approached it snarled and the closer to it you approached the more ferocious it became? In general it quickly becomes apparent the dog has been abused and is afraid of anyone who comes near it. Do you blame the dog, or who raised the dog?
Thousands of lynchings occurred following the civil war until after the 1930’s. Lynchings are only the visible tip of an iceberg of hate.
We are responsible for a hideous outcome from slavery so bleating about the inevitable consequences of how we handled it is not where you should be focusing your heat.
My father was a policeman and hate hearing about what happens to them. Some cops are vile but the vast majority are not. Without them our society collapses. Read about the collapse that happened after the Boston cops went on strike after the got fucked by the government following WWI.
No, Evelyn. This is awful. You want to justify your children and grandchildren being targeted, beaten or killed because they are white? You accept that this is our just lot? You will tell them when it happens that they deserved it because they are white?
If that is the case we may as well separate the races and be done with it.
You know, one helpful idea is for people to understand – and this is where our education system fails us – that human beings mistreat one another, make wars and enslave one another, and that every race and every culture has done so. Blacks in America were slave owners. Blacks in Africa took part in the slave trade. Lots and lots of white children were stolen and brought into the slave markets in the Mediterranean and also used as sex slaves in harems or made into eunuchs.
But mostly we need to either rise above revenge and endless hatred or just descend into chaos.
Why are you not surprised by this sudden reactivation of race hatred? It is coming from whites!!! Your type. And most older people aren’t going to be hit by it. But our children will.
Why do you want that? Or do you pretend you don’t understand what you are doing?
You people who live in fear are the human race’s biggest problem. If something bad happens to you or your family odds are it will be a white person responsible.
Evelyn,
I’m going to take your nonanswer as a good sign that you have something to think about.
But why are you such a racist as to say that if something bad happens to you the perp will likely be white?
How is such racism now acceptable?
Sophia
You conservative wackos are stupid when it comes to argument. Not justifying anybody being targeted.
Only attempting to help you understand why resentment exists in hopes it could help you become a better and more compassion person rather than a hateful fearful bitch.
Dear Evelyn,
We are not wackos when it comes to argument. I am trying to show you the implications of the path you are on. I never said anything hateful. Look closely, cuz you liberals throw that word around and it is almost entirely projection, completely uncalled for.
I am saying that teaching hatefulness and resentment are a good way to get people hurt.
Where you get hateful, fearful bitch from I don’t know.
One thing is general fearfulness, another thing is seeing that the path of constantly belittling whites, teaching that they deserve revenge, will bear a very bad fruit.
Not to mention that it means no progress has occurred. If the grand experiment in having a melting pot is going to work, we certainly can’t be teaching that.
I do see why there is some resentment, but it should be and indeed was, diminishing, as it should after 150 years and in an environment where blacks have had a lot of help, which is a privilege by the way, for nearly 3 generations now.
The present regime is anti-White. It’s what bind ‘them’ toghether.
The ‘present regime’ looks like a Republican WH & senate. There’s over 400 House Resolutions, about half of which are bipartisan, but McConnell simply won’t allow a Senate debate on
Them
In the post fossil fuel era there will be the unavoidable return to small towns and local governance, all ‘isms’ will be out the window…
I would like to believe you are correct but more likely it will be slaughter in the wilderness.
” it will be slaughter in the wilderness.”
Eve,
Consider the return to be, possibly, the chlorine in the gene pool….
The town square with a few cafes and an outdoor space in the summer used to be the place you could bump into neighbors or friends and it was a natural way to do it. I was in Mexico for about a week 10 years ago and liked how they had the small town arranged. Your home was completely private with no front yard but the town square had no cars, big verandas with multiple tables (and no pressure to order and get out as fast as possible) and a large green space in the middle with benches and the kids could run around. I hope America’s future looks like this as suburbia withers. There’s a book The Third Space that defines this well —
“The demise of community as a social construct is re-examined in this book using the lens of Ray Oldenburg’s concept of third place to view contemporary issues of alienation, loss, safety, mobility and sense of place. Third places are the spaces where we interact with people and society outside of home and work, and are vital in creating a sense of place and community.”
I hope 2020 is the start of many good things in your community and you and your family have a very Merry Christmas!
Absolutely true. The loss of ‘third spaces’ is the outward manifestation of the demise of social community as it is reflected in our built environment. Good post…
You are living in a mental institution (lunatic asylum) being run by the inmates. Is it any wonder when aliens fly by they lock their doors?
Jim, thanks for the vivid portrait of your small town during the Christmas season.
I like to think that all the melancholy Christmas songs we cherish were written in a time where family, warmth and cheer were a brief respite from the Great Depression and WW 2. They really meant so much.
“I’ll be putting together my usual vain and starry-eyed Forecast 2020 the following Monday, with a regular blog in between on Friday. Merry Christmas, readers! And thank you for being here!”
Merry Christmas to you too, Jim!
your insights are good to read & full of wit & some wisdom.. keep up the good work..
“He’s partnered up with another guy who intends to open a bistro with a bar, a fireplace, and supposedly a boutique distillery operation in the back.”
its surprising what a few entrepreneurs can start! maybe your downtown there will start to see a resurgence! who knows.. you’ll have to stop in there and get a beer & a Rueben 🙂
Happy Chanukah, James !
(The internet is conflicted whether this greeting should have been posted yesterday or today.)
And kudos for keeping all us reprobates informed, entertained and hopeful.
Andrew
Excellent reading here this morning. The exterior finishes on that reno are odd indeed. Prairie Style in vinyl maybe? The clapboards over the dark panels are a visual hodgepodge. By the way, readers, “The Christmas Orphan” is a terrific little book, cleverly written and nicely printed—highly recommend.
Merry Christmas, Jim. And thanks for the stimulating thoughts and outrageous comments, they are my Monday and Friday morning bagel and coffee break. Granted it’s not the town coffee shop, but it’s wittier!
Happy third day of Yule! And for those who are outside of the mainstream…..Happy Festivus for the Rest of Us!
Prepare for the Feats of Strength…..
The video store looks like a muffler shop.
You have a video store? I thought all those were replaced by RedBoxes in Walmarts and grocery stores!
As for Christmas and its trappings…one reason a sense of relief washes over me when I see the tail-lights of the Holiday Season is, no more freaking cheesy Christmas-music. That stuff really manages to grate on my nerves just a little bit more with every passing year.
It’s a shame really, some of the most glorious music in existence was written for Christmas, but the “holiday” music forced on us is some of the worst stuff ever recorded.
My favorite Christmas song is ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, especially the verse;
‘Joyful all Ye nations rise,
Join the triumph in the sky.
With angelic host proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem.’
When I am in the right mood and setting this can literally thrill me…
This is in very poor taste, but I really think I would have liked to have seen a video of the “Papa Smurf” guy singing a rendition of “I’ll Have A Blue Christmas Without You”! 😀
Thank You JK for the wonderful blog, the hope and inspiration.
Also the smiles added in. (set out the effigies of Santa and his reindeer…post office looks like a soviet lunch counter) LOL well said.
Great stuff Jim! Wistful with a touch of melancholy. Pitch perfect for this time of year, especially under our current circumstances. Should be an exciting 2020 ahead, no matter how it all turns out.
Maybe we could enhance plain exteriors of buildings with gargoyles. Merry Xmas.
*Really fine* essay today, Mr. Kunstler! Thank you, and Merry Christmas (is that phrase still allowed, these days?)
It would be nice if small towns could revive but I don’t see how. The for-profit, anything-goes form of capitalism has driven business and medical services to supersize themselves and go where population density supports the mega-facilities built to gain efficiencies of scale.
Our former health plan housed its docs in Falls Church, VA in a building a city block square and several stories high; it was bigger than most hospitals in small towns, and it was just the doctor’s offices. The hospital a few miles away was big enough to make General Motors envious. Small towns will get telemedicine where you shove a probe up your keister and it sends a bluetooth reading over your smart phone to a P.A. in a big city who reads to you a checklist of symptoms. Brave new world. Don’t get sick.
A hundred years ago people ordered out of the Sears catalog. Goods came in the REA package car on scheduled passenger trains that ran on time and dropped off packages at a local station where they were picked up by residents. Porch pirates will push us back to that model.
In Jim’s small town I foresee a storefront business where Amazon, UPS and FEDEX drop off packages to be safely held for people to come pick them up. This way the carriers avoid the dreaded and expensive “final mile” to the home and it puts porch pirates out of business. When people come into town to pick up packages they may stop in at the new bistro, have a bite to eat, and talk to Jim. That’s the small town of the future. If we’re lucky.
A hundred years ago people ordered out of the Sears catalog.
Including a house they would send you.
Yes, actually a pretty good house, and it too came in on a train.
When I was a child I spent the summers on my grandma’s farm in Yale, Michigan. There were stacks of old Sears catalogues stored in a dilapidated barn on her property. I still have a vivid memory of thumbing through them to see all of the interesting stuff, and the musty smell of molding paper…
I remember going through the Sears “wish book”. I was thrilled that you could actually order a dog.
I loved dogs, I watched all the dog and horse shows on TV, and since my parents weren’t going to get me one, the idea that it was theoretically possible to have one sent to my house gave me something to dream about.
Do you have bacon?
There’s a few of those houses in New Britain, Malth, still in good shape, still sturdy and habitable. Local newspaper did a story on them, and Sears (still open at the time) offered medallions to identify Sears mail order houses.
Brh
I recall the shady FBI agent in Boardwalk Empire getting one. Paint etc were extra…
Yeah, the Xmas wish book was a big thing when I was a kid. It’s a shame someone at Sears didn’t have the foresight to succeed in the internet age. They already had expertise in mail order and warehousing and distribution. They should have been the new Amazon.
The return to ‘human scale’ will be forced upon us when fossil fuels are depleted (assuming we don’t make the return under our own steam). Either way it is inevitable as the current system is not sustainable…
Jim, it’s ironic that the well-intentioned George Bailey and his Building & Loan helped create that suburban sprawl with no shops in easy walking distance.
Before FDR, home loans typically required 50% down, 5 years to pay. Under FDR 20% down 20 years to pay. By 2008 it was 0% down, 30 years to pay, with no need to prove you have the income to make payments.
As with student loans, the net result of throwing in all that money was higher prices for the item, ensuring lifetime debt slaves. An unforeseen consequence? I don’t think so.
We had an excellent system in the early days. People saved money in savings accounts with Building Societies, which also lent money to homebuyers. You didn’t need 50% as a deposit – that would have kept the majority of the population from home ownership – but when my then-husband and I bought our first tiny doll’s house for £18K (£11K maximum loan allowed – over 25 years – as 3.5 times my salary and half of his) plus £7K of savings) we only got the loan in the first place because I’d had a savings account with the Building Society since I was 18. Savers got priority. Building Societies mostly had the names of northern industrial towns – Halifax, Bradford and BIngley, and so on, since that’s where the movement started to help ordinary people buy their own homes.
Now they’re all transformed into banks. ‘Members’, either savers or mortgagees’, got a windfall to persuade them to vote for the change). Back when we bought our first house, I don’t think banks even did mortgages.
It’s the stable salaries that have disappeared, GA, that make this arrangement impossible today. Rates are low, and there’s an ability to pay for housing even at the asset-inflated prices. But, how many have the stable (and presumably rising) income to set against 30 years of mortgage payments?
Low interest rates don’t do much if your income is highly variable.
Couple of thoughts about our world.
I recall reading a novel set during the Greek Syracuse misadventure in the years BC. One of the characters said: “It takes a broad bed to hold both empire and democracy”. True that.
Then there’s the destruction of communities with any soul, mostly since 1945. To a large extent that and the “affordable housing crisis” are directly due to zoning laws, a demonstration writ large of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Of all our still extant traditional american small towns, not a one could be built with today’s zoning laws.
Jim talks forever about getting back to locally based economies, but can that happen? I think there could be little chance of that happening without the total dissolution of the existing government at all levels and its replacement with something that might emerge from the anarchy following the collapse (or conquest ny some other power). Of course many millions would die in such a scenario. Reform from within isn’t a plausible solution; history records few successful examples. Maybe the best outcome to be hoped for might be for the loss of empire to result in the collapse of the federal govt. as described by John Michael Greer in “The twilight’s last gleaming” with the resulting poverty and disorder leading to a constitutional convention in which the states would vote to dissolve the union and apportion federal property to the various states in which it’s located. His story goes on to postulate the formation of confederations of like minded states. That could work. One thing seems clear though and that’s things as they are aren’t good and won’t last forever.
Erik, good that you mentioned zoning laws. When I grew up in west Baltimore there were mom and pop stores on every corner, often a candy shop where all the kids gravitated loved to go. There’d be a bar with some food choices on a corner, maybe a dry cleaner, maybe a bakery that actually baked on-site, maybe a doc or dentist, maybe a druggist. All were small businesses, single proprietor operations; a nation of shopkeepers. You could walk to these businesses, no car needed; I lived in such neighborhoods and walked to all of these, to include MDs and DDS with their office in their row home dwellings. A lot of these are still there, grand-fathered in place, save for the MDs and DDS offices.
But it’s a different story in the suburbs. They got the full zoning treatment of “good government” that segregated homes from businesses. It would be nice to walk to a coffee shop, beer stube, eatery and a few businesses but we have to drive to them now. I’m okay with small mom and pops in my neighborhood, but no big chains with drive throughs and parking lots…walk-ins or bike-ins only. I’ve no doubt that the auto and oil lobbies helped assure this segregation to increase demand for their products. Best government money can buy. American Exceptionalism my ass.
I’m not sure it would take a total collapse to change things, we could relax zoning to allow things like converting a garage to a coffee shop or confectionary. I’ve eaten some good meals in the former living rooms of row homes in Bayonne, NJ when visiting the old Army base there; same in the Locust Point area of south Baltimore near Fort McHenry.
“I’m not sure it would take a total collapse to change things”
Things are changing all the time but usually not for the good. That is called ‘entropy’. To change things for the better the individual needs to function on a genuinely creative level. Only human creativity, which entails unfolding the potential of our deep self, can overcome or transcend entropy and the consequences thereof…
Boeing CEO fired.
They finally got the bastard Happy Festivus motherfucker
Considering his negligence killed a of people, going off to a well funded retirement seems a little too lax a punishment.
I never killed anyone and I don’t get such a rich retirement.
” killed a lot of people”
Hey, it’s tough getting by on $40 million (less tax at a max of 39%), hmuller! Just try it yourself!
My mother said having too much money only created worry and anxiety about how to keep it.
My mother also said eating burned food would give us rosy red cheeks.
My mother was a disinformation agent.
I’m too old to be around when a renaissance appears. Good luck with that. I would like to believe that there will come a time when blacks are not slaughtering white people. Best to live in a mostly white area. Then there are the increasing numbers of people shitting in the streets. How does a Main Street business handle that one? I believe it is in California where theft in a store is not prosecuted. Good luck Main Street businesswoman. Then there is the opioid epidemic with people dying on sidewalks because they just had to have that hit. I’d hate to have someone drop dead in front of my business but it would be worse inside. Walmart has so much more room and lawyers to handle the freaks walking among us. No Main Street businesses will hire old people unlike Walmart. Nor will they hire a teenager due to minimum wage costing way too much. Besides, given the new ethics the teen will steal the business blind when not on social media. The Main Street business will not want to accept returns for refunds. Walmart takes anything back without a word. At Walmart I can eat inside at a restaurant while my car is serviced and it doesn’t matter if it is hot or cold in the parking lot Walmart will have the inside conditions perfect.
I grew up in “smallville”. Not for anything would I want to relive that. There are still a lot of smaller communities around. Some seem to be thriving for whatever reason. For my part, I like having a professional fire department and EMTs who saved the life of a friend just yesterday. I also know what a hierarchy looks like in smallville. It meant that us poorer boys wound up in VeetNam while the fellas in the higher portion of society were able to escape cause of their connections.
I grew up in a small city, RB, and I always thought I had the best of both worlds.
There is, as you say, a downside to small town life.
I had some visitors from a faraway country. They had a little bit of a chip on their shoulder concerning America when they arrived, but they were pleasantly surprised when they got here.
We went to Walmart. They claimed not to be overly impressed by it, but then I noticed they kept going back. Again and again and again.
Walmart is the center of the community in some rural areas, though.
Still pretty nice around here, too (NW Ct)
I’ve always loved this place, had the time of my life here.
Avoid the urban areas, specially public housing projects, and life is pretty good. You hear about shootings and stabbings all the time (3 or 4 in the past day) but it’s always in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport. Worst thing we have to worry about round these parts are black bears wandering around looking for something to eat.
Brh
We have guests all the time from Europe, they love shopping here. The young ones like doing stuff they can’t do in Spain and France such as taking the jeep 4 wheeling and going down to the rifle range. At the range it has to be lever action Marlins and Winchesters, and the Ruger Single Six, cowboy guns as they call them. Even bought a Stetson so they can be wearing it when they send video of their activities back in Cannes and San Sebastian.
Brh
That’s because thanks to them it is Walmart or nothing.
Once Walmart becomes your center, it’s because the center is where the circling stops.
Perhaps you are right EvelynV about Walmart, but again, having come up in a small town with a Main Street, just try finding a toilet in the Main Street businesses. And if you happened to be black, fuhgettaboutit even if they have one. Walmart leveled a playing field and helped get rid of the “take it or leave it” businesses. Walmart provided/provides choices and convenience. If it were not a working model, it would have disappeared long ago.
WTF -> Walmart provided/provides choices and convenience.
I think a man in Nigeria wants you to help him move $20,000,000 to America. Check your email. In the last town on the way to the North Pole a Walmart would be better than nothing. That I could agree with.
Main Street was dead already in many places before Walmart showed up, filling the void.
I try to buy stuff at the local hardware store when I can. But sometimes it’s just too expensive. This happened last fall: I needed a 5 gal gasoline canister, and fuel stabilizer. They wanted $29 for the gas can, and $11 for the stabilizer. I knew it was too much. I drove 5 miles down the road to Walmart and got the same merchandise for less than $15. That’s why Walmart has been successful. But it won’t last forever; conditions will change and something will bring Walmart down. In fact we are already seeing the beginning of the end with the rise of Amazon. Who could’ve predicted that 20 years ago?
In 1903 author Frank Norris wrote a book called ‘The Octopus’ about the powerful Southern Pacific RR, which controlled most of Southern California at the time. 120 years later the SPRR is still around, but it’s certainly not the largest corporation in SoCal anymore.
Brh
A “working model” based on political muscle, LOL.
Yeah, right, & free association goes out the window when big business necessarily knuckles under to govt regs to achieve “equality”. How many Black businesses never saw the light because of the regime of govt coercion forcing us to do business with people we didn’t want to do business with? First order thinking of Boomer mid-wits like RB assures the dissolution will continue until it doesn’t.
I had a lengthy comment, very political, all typed out but then I deleted it.
The above essay is excellent, it illustrates exactly why I chose Donald Trump as my president, because I’m not ready to throw in the towel on America.
If we fall, there’s nobody. We are still a light to the rest of the world. Look at Hong Kong.
Jesus Bery!!!
Trump is proof we’ve already fallen.
“The above essay is excellent, it illustrates exactly why I chose Donald Trump as my president, because I’m not ready to throw in the towel on America.”
Beryl,
Funny, but I voted for him because I AM ready to throw in the towel.
Where are my manners?
Merry Christmas to you too Jim; and thank you for this blog.
Who here beside sunburstsoldier would take note that the author of “Be Here Now” isn’t here anymore? Not that there was/is really a “here” in the usual sense.
Do you mean Ekhart Tolle and his book Power of Now? I don’t understand your reference. Are you pickin on poor little me?
Ram Das.
Ram Das did a sit down with Ekhart and he admitted during their conversation that whereas he could only ‘talk the talk’ Ekhart actually ‘walks the walk’…
Meaning in Ram Das’ opinion Ekhart is a genuinely awakened individual or a contemporary bodhisattva…
proof?
That is interesting to know. Had a friend who liked to reference Castaneda often. I was part way into Power of Now and told him I thought Ekhart was the current Don Juan but what you write suggests he is much more. Castaneda turned out to be a fruit cake – a Jim Jones variant. That’s not an ad hominem attack on what he wrote, just a disappointment that he surely did not walk his talk.
Castaneda was an anthropologist and a gifted writer but he was not enlightened or awakened. Although many people believe his mentor don Juan Matus was largely a fictional character, I believe otherwise. I first read Castaneda in the early 70s when in my twenties. I was going through a lot of dark stuff at the time and had even attempted suicide. Coming into contact with don Juan and his marvelous teaching through the medium of Castaneda’s books saved my life, or at least I am so convinced. Ekhart Tolle is an unpretentious human being who had an experience of having his false sense of self (ego) suddenly and permanently collapse. As a consequence of this experience he is able to experience living in the present moment at will, and the profound peace and joy this present moment experience brings…
There is no proof Malthuss. If you are waiting for proof you’ll be waiting a long time…
SBS – do some research on Castaneda, you’ll learn otherwise. He somehow came up with a lot of the wisest philosophy ever assembled and wrote it into a wonderful fiction but he wasn’t a human that you could respect in the end.
Ram Das did not claim to have achieved enlightenment. I agree Tolle is probably the real deal.
Ram Das,
…Richard Alpert….
“The damage done can be undone. ”
I’ve been to some German cities that underwent “extreme urban renewal” at the hands of our military industrial complex. Dresden was rebuilt in Soviet Ugly; only with the end of the wall has it begun to rebuild its historic center. The work is majestic to behold. As JHK once wrote, the Germans seem to be working to erase evidence that World War 2 ever happened. Of course, in restoring Dresden they cannot restore the close-knit urban tenement dwellings that were once there.
Contrast Nuremburg, in the Western Sector. A strikingly beautiful medieval city mostly burnt down for ideological reasons, the locals who knew what it had looked like set about restoring it immediately after the war. Half-timbered houses were mostly gone (there are a few sections preserved from the middle ages), but the monumental buildings and churches were rapidly restored to some semblance of pre-War glory. Modern apartment houses of course replaced the older housing, but not done in hideous Soviet brutalist style. And many of these are being knocked down to be replaced with historic-looking new buildings. The medieval core of the city is bright and attractive again today.
The damage done was quickly undone, because the people who knew what it SHOULD be were still there. We have lost the aspect of civic beauty and neighborliness in favor of our voracious cars (40,000 per year killed, tons of oil burned), but it didn’t happen quickly like WW2 to Nuremburg. Do we even know to restore it? Who knows what it SHOULD look like?
Still, the process of making something beautiful is something all can contribute to. As the Boomers head into older age, maybe their better health and ability to remain active will militate against car-dependent places, or at least allow a few walkable retirement communities to grow. It’s a worthy role for the “prophets” of The Fourth Turning.
Much of the classic architecture in German cities that sustained heavy bombing was not rebuilt as the money to do so was not there. Outside of Munich, most of the major German cities were rebuilt in the blocky, depressing architecture of the time.
Perhaps as a result (and this is my opinion), Germans in the gens that followed also lost touch with the beauty found in the architecture of earlier times and seemed to subconsiously mimic the depressing blocky and “modern” forms that came afterward.
I live on the outskirts of a med-size city in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and the houses here were all originally built by the Nazis. The whole settlement is a mirror of the Krumme-Lanke housing estate in Berlin, with cottage-style houses built in the late 30s.
Although the history is dark, the houses are classic and beautiful (though small, by modern standards), but it is disturbing to see how many people have added “modern” extensions or done extensive and similar remodeling that has destroyed their character.
Our house is one of just a handful in the neighborhood that is almost entirely original. There are some oddities that I wish were different though — particularly the swastika-shaped floor plan for the first floor.
“All the people of America, including the flyovers, are responsible for the sad situation we’re in: this failure to reestablish a common culture of values most people can subscribe to and use it to rebuild our towns into places worth caring about. Main Street, as it has come to be, is the physical manifestation of that failure. The businesses that used to occupy the storefronts are gone, except for second-hand stores. Nobody in 1952 would have believed this could happen.”
What do you mean we white man? And WTF common culture. Common culture got us into this mess. Consider this, It was written 100 years ago. It expresses the common culture that America never lost.
“The candidate was swept into office in a tornado of excitement, and did what all “Evening Post” candidates did and always do–that is, nothing. For four long years the lad waited, in bewilderment and disgust, ending in rage. So he learned the grim lesson that there is more than one kind of parasite feeding on human weakness, there is more than one kind of prostitution which may be symbolized by the BRASS CHECK.
That lad was on the high side of forty years old in 1952. I think he had the Chevrolet dealership in Birmingham. His grandson supports Trump.
At Kdog
“WTF -> Walmart provided/provides choices and convenience.
I think a man in Nigeria wants you to help him move $20,000,000 to America. Check your email. In the last town on the way to the North Pole a Walmart would be better than nothing. That I could agree with.”
There was no REPLY button above so I’ll post here anew. Your comment is meaningless to me. What is your justification for anti Walmart unless it is the parroting of the usual senseless things such as “killing main street” Main Street committed suicide. Sam Walton saw an opportunity and went for it. Capitalism.
So, what is your beef?
M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y and the worst evils of predatory capitalism as we know it.
A company that pays workers so poorly they have to be on food plastic. Debit cards you pay for on the public dime but I guess you are fine with that. A place that sells cheap crap that breaks and then you are shit out of luck.
But I could just say:
It is the suburban megachurch church of consumerism. It is every bit as offensive to me as the fundamentalist corruption of Joel Osteen.
Let it all come tumbling down.
The same thing as the perversion of the tent preacher, to me it represents an evil way of life if you want to know.
But lets get back to you.
the usual senseless things such as “killing main street”
Killing main street is actually a very bad thing and your dismissal shallow and haughty. Main street is an economic ecosystem where all participants receive greatest benefit. The energy flow of money gives the most social benefit for each dollar. Main street is the end result of ecological social succession. It is comparable to the web of life in a rain forest. Walmart is a mono-culture comparable to the loggers of the rain forest who burn it down. Kill the indigenous and farm the land until ruined for all use it becomes a barren desert. A desert for your grandchildren to cry over as they contemplate the end of humanity.
That is my beef. Pass the salt.
Oh. I gather you are a bit of a snob. I get that. You have it all figured out if only us lessers could only see your wisdom. Got it! You evidently cannot make a replying comment without a personal assault on someone who might disagree with you. Got that too.
You prefer Walmart to pay people what YOU think the job is worth, not what the market says it is worth. If only the market system would confer with you, then the Republic would be in fine condition.
I note you throw in the environmental card. Oh goody. I’m guessing you have a stack of cards you roll out to support your god like vision of how things should run.
I won’t make the mistake of asking you a reasonable question again. Your snide, sniveling reply puts you on my nonperson roster.
Main Street got what it deserved. The world changed. That is the way the world really works for good or bad.
RB,
With all due respect I think you are looking at the Wal-Mart phenomenon from the perspective of your own comfort zone, and not seeing the big picture as to the damage the Wal-Marts of the world are doing to undermine free enterprise, especially in terms of undercutting the diversity of small scale, mom and pop business ventures. Personally I hate Wal-Mart, and cannot bear to be inside one for more than 10 minutes. Many of those who follow this blog have some background (as I do) in New Urbanism, or sustainable urban redevelopment, and for this I doubt you will find many here sympathetic to your cause…
I have no issue with anyone’s point of view on Walmart. I do have issues with people who are convinced they are the smartest person in a room or forum. That is Trump.
I think anyone looks at the world and Walmart thru their own experience. I think Walmart has been a godsend to most communities from the standpoint of choices, pricing, convenience. Main Street looks great on Hallmark Channel but in reality the world moved on and hoping for a return of small town America isn’t going to happen. And my small town businesses gouged and was not the friendly business imagined.
Cheers.
You asked.
“That is Trump.” Eh, no.
Interestingly enough, it is Trump who, thus far, has worked to bring offshored jobs and industries lost through the practices of globally oriented monstrosities like Wal-Mart back to the US.
Big box stores like Wal-Mart, which prey on average folk to lower the costs of labor, drive any competition out of business, and slowly subsume markets are the problem.
Here in Germany, Wal-Mart was actually pushed out of the market, because no one wanted it.
50 bucks says you shop Amazon regularly, too.
Are you a shareholder, or perhaps even a ‘lesser’ Walton?
Your defense of the indefensible is puke-making – “what the market pays” is particularly vomit-inducing, when ‘the market’ IS Walmart.
The bigger the pyramid of the big box store concept, the fewer people benefit. There is always few people at the top that really benefit.
Capitalism, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. Here’s some of the Ugly.
Back in 2006, Chicago had a taxi medallion auction. The auction took in millions and was considered successful. But hardly any of the winning bidders lived in Chicago, almost all of them coming from New York. During the following decade, the NY taxi industry took control of the Chicago medallion market and milked it masterfully, making millions of dollars.
Some of the well worn tools of capitalism were used, like inflating prices, granting high risk loans, and generally blowing up the bubble and getting out before it burst. The capitalists shattered the industry and ruined the lives of many a driver.
Average price of Chicago medallion in 2006: $50,000
Price in 2013: nearly $400,000.
Price today: $30,000
Profits from medallion sales by Michael Levine owned companies e.g., $155 million.
% of Chicago fleet not in service today: 40%
One ‘investor’ purchased 8 homes including a high end hut in the Hamptons. (NY)
Took those cabbies for a ride and left them a big tip; “never give a sucker an even break”.
I think Uber had a hand at devaluing that taxi medallion, Tuscon.
Yes, Uber came into play later on, but was not the cause of the medallion bubble and its bursting. Was there a Daley or Emanuel NYC connection involved in the fiasco? Probably.
Yay ‘Uber’
I have a soft spot in my heart for Andrea, but only because she looks just like the dog I had as a kid.
/that made me break into laughter.
I’m sadly put in mind of a literary passage which might be pertinent here. William Cobbet, author of ‘Rural Rides’ once took his son on a ride to view an ancient and derelict church that had been built by their ancestors many centuries previously. It was immense and produced a profound impression even in it’s decayed afterlife. Cobbet wanted his son to appreciate: ‘this is what our people were capable of ..’ And us?
Nice. Thanks for sharing that. Your post reminds me of a poem by William Wordsworth
And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for ‘tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.
— Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
” Cobbet wanted his son to appreciate: ‘this is what our people were capable of ….”
Kevin,
All cultures seek to glorify their accomplishments.
#Wakanda
Hey
Ram Das — Richard Albert — has died.
Ken Kesey, Tim Leary, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love dudes, Aldous Huxley … Ram Das, last of the 60s acid heads.
RIP, Ram.
Brh
Did you ever read Kesey’s book Kool-Aid Acid Test? Beautiful insight into the sixties…
That book you mention was by Tom Wolfe, about Kesey.
Of course, how stupid of me. I don’t know how I got the idea Kesey wrote it. Must of got it confused with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…
It’s all ancient history now SBS, in some ways a sordid chapter better left forgotten.
Homophobe you liked that old queen?
Baba Ram Dass? What’s not to like, my LA friend?
BRH,
Ram Das be hangin’ with Elvis.
His brother did not respect Richard’s faux persona…
…Called him BaBa Rammed Ass….
uh guvey
Pete Buttigieg’s former employer, McKinsey, is a big CI…A contractor that made a bundle off of the War in Afghanistan. The Chinese hired McKinsey for the Belt & Road Project. Pete is the big Deep State Tool.
https://theintercept.com/2019/12/18/capitalisms-consigliere-mckinseys-work-for-insurance-companies-ice-drug-manufacturers-and-despots/
Have you ever noticed that Pete Buttigieg’s “Husband”, Chaz Buttigieg, looks like a 12 year old kid?
Some people fear this could become another Civil War.
The cause of these conflicts is obvious: we are squeezed between two powerful political alliances. Like cats and rats in city alleys, they pursue their agendas and leave each other alone. They chase weaker prey: us. The Right help the 1% amass wealth and power: tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of labor and environmental regulations, crushing unions, and building bigger cartels. The Left pursues their ever-more-ambitious social engineering experiments on us (their white mice). While they vie with each other for supreme power, taking turns slowing each down, their tag-team has no effective opposition.
We get to choose who abuses us next. The conclusion of both programs will destroy the America-that-once-was. The Left seeks open borders, radical education of children so that many are weak or mentally ill, crushing of free expression and association, and use of the government’s punitive machinery to force participation in their experiments. The Right seeks to create levels of economic inequality incompatible with democracy.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/12/22/sources-of-inspiration-to-survive-the-coming-bad-times/
Dude, Chasten might be our new First Lady
Have some respect for krissake!
Brh
Stop rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell
Stand up for the flag and let’s all ring the liberty bell
Let’s make a ford and a chevy
That would still last ten years like they should
But the best of the free is still yet to come
And the good times ain’t over for good Merle Haggard
A Joyous Christmas is my hope for all
and my prayer is for Peace on Earth and Goodwill among men.
My dad built a sears catalog house in Van Nuys CA in 1949 after he came back from the war It was an 1100 Sq Ft house and it sold a few years ago for a little over $2,000,000.
gawd…I was looking at a book about The Monkees writers
[Boyce-Hart] and theres a pic of ‘My folks first home, cost $1,200.’
Yr dad should have built 500 of them. Billionaire.
Jim’s blog this week really strikes a chord, beautifully written … takes me back to earlier American writers on this similar theme, Lewis Mumford, Booth Tarkington, Henry Adams.
Brh
@JHK
Assuming that you are not being disingenuous and you are indeed speaking from the heart, I find your words this Monday to be those of that same ol’ starry-eyed, world-made-by-hand, optimist. Okay.
However, assuming for the moment that the ruling elites will not pull the plug, the ongoing deterioration of industrial society along a vast array of vectors while even being under the intensive care of the elites has demonstrated in agonizing detail how difficult it is for humans to survive now without a fully functioning and robust industrial economy and consequently has virtually proven how devastating the end game will be for H.sapiens. You write like you don’t understand this. hmmm?
I am not even going to bother with the peanut gallery today.
~toktomi~
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
“Hey Pete! What’s with the Mormon C…IA Look?!“
“Hey Pete! What were you do’n working for C..,IA contractor, McKinsey?!”
“Hey Pete! What were you do’n working in the C..,IA Black Site at Baghram Airbase in Afghanistan?!”
“Hey Pete! What were you do’n working for Naval Intelligence?!”
“Hey Pete! Why did a Homosexual learn Farsi (Persian) and Dari (Afghan)?!”
“Yo Pete!”
Scientists said today: “We’re in the exact point of climate change as when wile e. coyote runs off the cliff, but hasn’t looked down yet.”
Scientists have been saying that for about 40 years, Captain.
2000 was supposed to be the big lights out year, the year of no return. But 2000 has come and gone, and here we are.
Brh
Good analogy capt spaulding!
Brh – I know it is difficult for you when it comes to abstract thinking but after Wiley’s feet first left the ground there follows an interval between then and the looking down part.
That interval is just a little longer than 40 years.
Yeah right, & wile e coyote always bounces back. Not the best comparison.
Overly Optimistic, Rose Colored Glasses, Left Brain Good News!: Industrial Civilization will survive because they’ve finally perfected “Cold Fusion”….
“Grace D. is drinking a Cold Fusion by Empirical Brewery at Empirical Brewery”
I’d like to see JHK do a tour of the Cold Fusion brewery and down a few pints while discussing the collapse of Industrial Civilization.
What if you had a female transgender wrestler who looks like Pelosi who gets sexually assaulted in the wrestling ring by a wrestler with orange hair who looks like Trump?
Master Yoda is running around screaming at Pelosi: “Use the Force!” “Use your Light Saber!” “Don’t Give in to the Dark Side and have an Orgasm!”
Pelosi: “Anything to keep the People entertained and distracted, Yoda!
Oh! Oh! Give it to me!”
Impeached he is.
Undecided Voters react to the Poop Stain on the back of Joe Biden’s Brooks Brothers trousers.
Thirty years ago, I knocked on doors for Jesse Jackson because he supported National Health insurance.
I get the idea that folks think we are going to return to the golden days of yore after TLE hits.
Wrong! We are going to depress from what we are now. The cities will die, but the gangs that run them are going to go down fighting. All you folks in the flyover states that thing are going to just settle down to a small farm model, better think again. The city folks are going to come and try to take what you have. All you small scale future farmers in the suburbs, ha, what a joke. It takes farmers a lifetime to accumulate the knowledge and skills to grow food in a certain climate. You fly over farmers better have an armory available to hold off your brothers from the big city.
IMHO, after the die off, or war, a completely new social structure will emerge. It will be based on feudalism, many small states competing with each other. We are not that far from it historically. Italy and Germany did not unify their feudal city states until the late 1800’s. People will be admitted according to the skills they have to offer. Gender Studies or women’s studies will probably not be in demand.
Read, Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven for what I think the future will be like after an apocalypse and how society will react. The book’s apocalypse is a comet strike.
Hot fudge Tuesday!
I believe the only way to move towards a sustainable way of life while avoiding societal collapse, would be through some kind of mass ‘spiritual’ awakening. Such an awakening (or permanent shift to heightened consciousness) would necessarily have the power to dissolve the barriers of fear and distrust which currently stand between people, and allow the formation of genuine, functional communities. Before you roll your eyes in despair let me say such a spiritual awakening need not involve but a tiny remnant of the population. Nonetheless this remnant will, like a pat of yeast in bread dough, begin a process that will progressively gain momentum until the entire world has been transformed. In practice this process will likely take thousands of years to play out, but the point is, once it starts a light has entered our world of darkness, a light which will brighten our everyday lives and provide us with not unfounded hope for the future, for ourselves and those who will follow…
First we have to eat! And drink. Jesus promised us that God would feed us and clothe us Ike the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. I wonder if he was referring to all 8 billion of us.
Any spiritual awakening will be nipped in the bud by ad-blocking software. Failing that the deep state intervenes. Any spiritual awakening that does happen will happen far too late to matter.
spiritual awakening thru catastrophe?
that people need a terrible scare to change?
Even that won’t be enough.
Sure, that’s why the holocaust resulted in a population that bestowed love towards Palastinians.
…Palestinians…
The Good News became flesh incarnate & Christian believers are about to celebrate His birthday although nobody knows exactly what time of the year He was born. And no one knows when the King will return either to vanquish the evil one in the final battle & reign over His earthly kingdom for all eternity but the process began approximately two thousand years ago.
What a crock!
Like ‘MAGA’ only with someone worthy?
Yeast also turns grape juice into wine. It eats sugar and excretes alcohol until it has created such a toxic environment the yeast dies from it. So the yeast poisons itself with its own waste.
And you say “be the yeast”, sunburst? I rest my case.
Do you remember the Christmas Party in the movie “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest”?
Every time I see Nancy Pelosi I think Nurse Ratchet.
Turner’s Syndrome is a syndrome, not a new gender.
Merry Christmas to you too Mr. K and thank you!
Klinefelter Syndrome is a syndrome, not a gender.
Hitler had only one testicle, but he was not a new gender.
I was hoping I could avoid this. Tusconspur, are you trying to kill me?
But it’s a 3 finger shot of Wild Turkey for breakfast!
Just got home.
Who will join me in this, our Christmas toast to Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour?
Brh
My apologies. Its Pucker trying to kill me.
Godwin’s law still kicks inhere even though your info may be factually correct.
Most religions are implausible concoctions, ritualized mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus hermeneutics, unreasoned reification or just plain dumb ass bullshit. While I understand the need for them, the world would have been better off without them bathing it in blood.
I like Einstein on religion:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
It is no paradox that I can still enjoy Christmas time and its themes of love, peace and joy.
“Most religions are implausible concoctions….”
Not Buddhism nor Daoism….
In any case, what is it about the structure of the human brain that organically requires Religion? Science is definitely Left Brain….
” what is it about the structure of the human brain that organically requires Religion”
Puck,
Existential angst+Ego= Opportunity for others
Opportunity+ lack of empathy=Religion
Hmmm, interesting simultaneous equations.
These two are much better. Yes, ‘mystical union with the Universe, and the plane of the Sage.’
I agree tucsonspur, awe and wonder are the most profound emotions or sensibilities one can experience, yet they are only available to those who allow themselves to be immersed in the incomprehensible mystery that is life. How is this accomplished? By gradually stripping away all the fossilized assumptions on the nature of reality we have inherited from our culture and society. This is possible when we learn to be ‘inner-directed’ or true to our own unique journey and ‘hero quest’ whereby we come to grips with what ‘lies out there’…
It’s a step towards understanding the unity of all things, or at least getting as close as possible.
We are fortunate to have the gift of this awareness. Too many don’t and are stifled by the struggle.
Christmas is the only time of the year when Santa can slip out of the house and get away from Mrs. Claus to get a little….
Santa Claus is a big fat ass….
Do you remember what it was as like to be Fat?
I wonder what those smiling orphan African kids see when they see a fat bloke?
When I was as a kid, and even now, when I see a fat person I feel ashamed for him/ her. Whenever I see Santa at the mall self-conscious and depressed, I feel ashamed for him.
In the movie “Silence of the Lambs”, the transgender with the fucked up chromosomes got all excited when he saw a big fat girl.
I’ve always found Christmas to be a depressing time. Now, we’ve got Christmas and Homeless Camps. Good Lord!
What will Chasten’s ‘Theme’ be after he become First Lady?
Will he revive Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ campaign?
Not likely. Just the opposite! Chasten’s efforts will be directed to youngsters in a ‘Just Say Yes’ campaign, yes to transgender conversion! Plenty of PSAs in grammar schools convincing boys to become girls, and girls to become boys. Personal appearances by the first lady himself (Chasten) showing up with a huge posse of Drag Queens and butch women, sweeping into the schools in dramatic style, making it almost like a holiday for the little ones, a circus like atmosphere led by Chasten surrounded by 300 lbs trannys, a specially written theme song blaring over loudspeakers. Sure there will be parents not down with it, in places like NDakota and Mississippi, but rest assured, they will be dealt with. Names will be taken.
Also, billions of $$$ will be released to expand ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’. Not just for public libraries anymore, but day care centers, Boy Scout meetings, elementary schools, little league games anywhere there’s little kids. ATTENDANCE WILL BE MANDATORY. A specially appointed detachment of FBI and CIA agents — the ones that worked so hard to take down President Trump — will be employed to make sure your kids show up.
Brh
There’s a photo of Chaz Buttigieg on his Twitter account of Chaz in a suit with 2 big buck teeth. Chaz looks like he’s literally 12 years old. No shit….
“Looking like a 12 year old”
That’s the whole point, my friend.
Who would you rather have lead the country, Buck Swope, or Chaz 10?
Well, Buck Swope will definitely be part of a Buttgieg administration. That is if he’s still alve.
Didn’t Buck fancy himself a ‘Cowboy’?
In that case I’d give him ‘Secretary of the Interior’.
Brh
I did an image search.
with his receding hairline, he does nt look 12.
Also a lot of the images were of the other Chaz….Chaz Bono.
How anyone could think that thing is a man beyond me.
Maybe Sonny couldn’t take it and hit that tree on purpose.
To clarify, when Sonny Bono hit that tree skiing and died on January 5, 1998; Chaz had not yet been “transformed” into the stout, bearded, penis endowed, jolly hobbit we see today. But she had come out as a lesbian in 1995. The surgery happened during the 2008-2010 time frame.
Cher never stopped loving Sonny. She just didn’t want much to do with him – certainly not sharing his bed or living with him. She had found a multitude of more exciting men to be with.
They had made Chaz. Is that not enough? And Sonny had a cameo (camo?) appearance in the post apocalyptic thriller, “The Postman”, where had long blondish hair.
Names will be taken, family’s will be investigated, hate crimes will be prosecuted. (Hate crimes in this case any mother and father objecting to their little ones switching genders)
Do you remember that bloke who JHK interviewed who rejected the proposition that Industrial Civilization would collapsed because there are now Private Equity Funds investing in Fusion energy? Unfortunately, the business model now is Blitzscaling in which they just throw money at shit to try to hit the jackpot to be the first developer to corner the market. It’s not necessarily indicative of feasibility.
Empirical Brewery….
“Grace D. is drinking a Cold Fusion by Empirical Brewery at Empirical Brewery”
Jesus was ransomed for God’s sin against Job.
Jesus is not coming back.
The only way that Jesus is coming back to Earth is if God sins against someone like Job again such that God has to ransom Jesus again to clear the debt. And this time around, we’re not blameless like Job.
Obviously blasphemy does not concern you.
A very interesting idea.
Have a real debate inside the Dem primary run.
Take each issue the US faces today. State where we are right now under Trump. The have the candidates state what exactly they would do different. Stop the BS they are proposing now which is fiscally impossible.
My guess is that there would not be much difference.
Is there even any agreement on the issues we face? Politics really just seems to be all about pet issues and projects with very little in the way of real vision and direction. We have a substantial portion of people in politics now who essentially say borders are evil. Thus what purpose does a nation serve to people like them and could you ever come into agreement with them? These divisions are only bringing us further apart too from everything I can tell.
“… it is better to have a place in society than to have no place at all, which is the sad situation for so many today. Homelessness in America runs way deeper than just the winos and drug addicts living on the big city sidewalks.”
Indeed. You hear a lot of gab about “inequality”. Inequality is not an issue. This is just another deflection, a way of not talking about what really ails the polity, ie what JHK refers to above. A multitude of guys and gals have no place, no steady employment, not enough income, no way to do what JHK said in the preceding lines, that being to acquire a place of their own, eat well, raise children.
And before having the ankle-biters, to marry. Tell it ladies, no romance without finance, which I’ve burbled about previously, and young guys cannot get their lives off the ground for lack of adequate employment and income.
The story of my old classmate Roy is instructive. This was a guy as inarticulate as they come, as bored to the extremes of boredom as it’s possible to be with the usual academic subjects. But put him in shop class, which is where I also shared space with him, and you see a new Roy, one that came alive, that could take blocks of metal, shape them with lathes and milling machines into precision devices. He had intuitive feel for how machines work, for how materials behave, and how to make tools do his bidding.
The point is that not everyone is wired to be a coder any more than everyone is wired to be a doctor or lawyer. Retrain? Sure, let’s see Manhattan attorneys retrain in a high-rise construction trade or as a metal-worker like Roy. The economy can’t be all slanted one way, to the financial end or the so-called creative class. A lot of guys are set up neurologically to shape objects, guys like Roy.
And to hear comfortable urban dwellers dismiss the problem of homelessness by the minimizing rationale that most of the homeless get shelter. Assholes, try living that way, with no fixed address, and get back to us.
It would seem that our civilization is completely and hopelessly immersed in Materialism at this point. People are ultimately just units of consumption and production. If they don’t perform to your liking you may throw them out. Hear no evil, see no evil. When you can afford to live away from the ravages of our brutal system you don’t have to look at the struggle and pain up close. In that sense human nature and the wish to ignore ugly realities is kicking in as well. Our current collective way of life is not human scaled as you say and there isn’t really a chance it will ever be I don’t think.
In my view the financial sector is one vast garbage dump of debt, festering and smoking and just waiting for one inopportune lightning strike to set the mess ablaze, layered with trillions in derivatives ministered to by blissfully clueless boards of directors, with bank balance sheets bulging like aneurysms seeping and pulsing and ready to blow.
Interest rates are the economy’s blood pressure IMO, and while there’s differing views as to how rates are set, whether they’re a creature of money-creating central banks, or of money-creating commercial banks (ie when they issue loans), interest rates are the pressure of money as it flows through the economy’s financial arteries. And, as in a terribly ill patient, the interest rate/blood pressure is alarmingly low. There’s no way that minuscule rates are anything healthy, similarly, negative rates are an indicator of economies in extremis (call the priest).
The central idea of the Fed, in its own mind the world’s central bank, is that there’s such a thing as a free lunch, hence, the creation of money to buy up government debt. QE they call it. or Not QE when they want to mis-represent what they’re doing.
Now, I’m just a simple mule-skinner, but there’s no place I’ve ever seen where lunch is free. This looks to me like counterfeiting but with enough legislative and institutional imprimatur giving legal cover to the counterfeiters. No matter how it’s dressed up, this colossal misbehavior by the Fed will have dire consequences, as it’s having now as all those funny-money dollars flow through stock and real estate markets.
Civilizations on the edge of collapse always have wonky economics. When energy flow and EROEI falls creative financing attempts to fill the gap. For a while it works. But like a fatal injury this only makes the victim comfortable. Denial prevents anyone from admitting the story the financials are screaming from the town square.
It doesn’t feel like the USA is on the edge of collapse, K-Dog.
Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Angola and Yemen are examples of countries whose economies have collapsed. On the other hand, we’ll be sitting down to a prime rib Christmas dinner in a few hours.
It takes a lot to collapse a western economy. In May 1945 Germany was being pounded from the air by the Americans and British from the west, and invaded by 7 million Red Army troops from the east, but made payroll until the very last day of the war.
Brh
So because they were getting paid they were not losing the war?
How it feels and $2.70 will get you a regular drip at Starbucks.
V
Have you watched The Big Short? If not, do. Your description here is put into action in the movie. It is a true story about three groups who predicted 2008 and profited by it. The mechanisms of what caused the downturn is greed, greed and more greed. Exploitation of suckers was a huge part of it. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Mass hypnosis of America seemed to have removed this precaution in the early 2000s.
Green Alba,
“I still choose to be treated by the ones that know their medicine as well as their surgery, thanks.”
I think you deliberately twisted my point about learning. Yes, they know more now, and of course they learn surgery hands-on, with an experienced doctor standing by and watching their every move, just as they would if we called it apprentice. More class time might be necessary now, just to get them all trained. But if someone could be apprenticed all the way through – well that would be the royal road to becoming a great doctor. Assembly lines don’t increase complexity or beauty, they turn out a reliable product efficiently. My point was about insisting that anyone who hasn’t been through the assembly line cannot possibly deserve respect or be taken seriously.
“you people keep issuing a giant ad hominem to the entire climate science community with almost every post.”
Can you please explain that?
”
No response? I’ve posted endless evidence on here, ”
I meant responding to the points others have made to you.
sophia
Christmas has intervened so this reply is coming rather late, after the start of a superseding thread even. I don’t know if you will see it, but I’ll refer back to it, possibly, to try to make sure that you do. People will use any excuse, in my experience on here, to suggest a person replied at a particular time for a particular reason, and I don’t suppose Christmas Day and Boxing Day are considered legitimate reasons to take time off CFN comments for us supposed little Soros elves.
Addressing yourself to the gallery, rather than to me, you wrote this upthread:
“Guys, it seems to me that GreenAlba is not a real, sincere person. She must be paid to be here.”
Then you asked me what ad hominem you had used. Priceless.
The thing is, sophia, that your chosen tactic to deal with someone who doesn’t agree with your views is no better than that of the playground bully. And, that being the case, I feel neither inclination nor obligation to respond to any more of your posts.
I wish you will as a fellow human, obviously, and I specifically wish you very well with your health, in the circumstances. But as a poster? No thanks.
You claim not to understand my point that you folks issue a giant ad hominem‘ to the entire climate community with almost every post’.
The basis of most of your arguments (your, as in you, plural) is that the publishing climate science community (a) are influenced in their scientific enquiries by the fact that they are ‘chasing grants’ and that these grants are in some way dispensed by ‘the globalists’; (b) ignore factors that don’t support their narrative; (c) are no more qualified, in reality, to make judgements on the validity of AGW than any other scientist, engineer, doctor or educated lay person.
You keep pushing the Petition Project, a project pushed by a university bizarrely not affected by grants or globalists, one presumes. It involves 31,000 ‘scientists’. Even using the Petition authors’ rather hazy definition of what constitutes a scientist, you’re talking about 0.3% of US scientists, give or take. The petition cards were only sent to US ‘scientists’. According to figures from the US Department of Education over 10 million science graduates have gained qualifications consistent with the OISM polling criteria since 1970. And the authors refuse to give details on who they mailed and what the response rate was.
By their reckoning, my husband, who has letters after his name, like MB ChB, some Obs & Gynae bits, plus odds and sods I don’t even remember, somehow has more knowledge of climate science and its methodologies than I do, even though he’s never read a climate science article or shown any interest in the subject. Fifteen years ago he’d have signed the petition – on the basis of no knowledge whatsoever, but because it annoyed him when I talked about climate change and the effect of my awareness of it on my choices such as flying or not flying. He called climate scientists ‘arseholes’. Not because he had the foggiest clue about what they did or how they did it, but because the whole idea of it annoyed him.
He doesn’t think like that now. I stopped talking about it anyway (why would you bother?) and gradually he stopped feeling the need to regard people he knew nothing about as arseholes because they were telling an annoying story. Yet ‘doctors’ are included, (according to ‘credentials’ bit of the Petition) for the reason that they ‘are ‘trained in the functional and environmental requirements of human beings on the Earth Right. Glad they made that clear.
Similarly, engineers are included because they are ‘trained primarily in the many engineering specialties required to maintain modern civilization and the prosperity required for all human actions, including environmental programs.
Hmmmm…. So they don’t necessarily know anything more about climate science than my husband did or even does now.
The other thing that keeps coming up in arguments is ‘the sun’. Someone on the the previous thread (or so) claimed – I paraphrase from memory – that climate scientists know nothing about the effects of variations in the sun’s output, so they ignore it in their models.
And yet, how easy it is to find information on the science actually carried out so far on the relationship between solar variation and climate:
https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm#N_1_
https://www.carbonbrief.org/why-the-sun-is-not-responsible-for-recent-climate-change
So, more ad hominems, basically.
The thing is, I don’t know why you need to carry on with your efforts to push climate science denial. It seems fairly clear to me that:
(1) nothing significant is going to be done even to mitigate the worst effects of AGW;
(2) every last barrel of oil and every last tonne of coal will be exploited and burned that can be exploited and burned, within the financial constraints that are the only thing likely to stop their exploitation and burning;
(3) the only way to seriously mitigate the problem is a combination of vastly reduced consumption, together with a rigorous programme of population control, CO2 emissions (and a whole lot of other ecosystem catastrophes) being a function of population AND consumption. But we can’t vastly reduce consumption – or even reduce it a little bit – without wrecking our economies, because of they way they operate.
(4) ergo, there is no real solution other than changing the economic system and I’m not putting any bets on how that could be done.
(5) You have plenty of other arguments to present to people like AOC or even little Greta, without resorting to claiming that the science is rubbish and all paid for by George Soros.
I don’t doubt the existence of whole industries around the attempt, alleged or otherwise, to make economies less carbon dependent. But their existence says nothing one way or the other about the validity of the science. Any more than the signatures of 31,000 random American ‘scientists’.
I would remove ‘a rigorous programme of population control’ and replace it with ‘rigorous programmes of population control.’
I would not wish you to deduce that I support any ‘one world’ initiatives of the kind that strike such fear in you (like the removal of CFCs from fridges and hair sprays to save the ozone holes from expanding and giving more people cancer?).
To each country its duty to keep its population under control, within the limits of its capabilities. If richer countries feel able to help, either through altruism or enlightened self-interest, so much the better. It’s rather more useful to build clinics than bomb factories. Perhaps Halliburton could do some diversification of their portfolio, if they’re still around. Although they already seemed quite diverse in their output back when I was made aware of them.
From Source Watch:
“OISM has refused to release info on the number of mailings it made. From comments in Nature:
“Virtually every scientist in every field got it,” says Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and spokesman for the American Physical Society. “That’s a big mailing.” According to the National Science Foundation, there are more than half a million science or engineering PhDs in the United States, and ten million individuals with first degrees in science or engineering.
Arthur Robinson, president of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the small, privately funded institute that circulated the petition, declines to say how many copies were sent out. “We’re not willing to have our opponents attack us with that number, and say that the rest of the recipients are against us,” he says, adding that the response was “outstanding” for a direct mail shot.”
I liked this random but exceedingly pertinent comment by an interested party:
“The original mail out only garnered about 15,000 responses. Despite Robinson’s claims, without a precise statement of the mail out number, no significance can be assigned to the petition as a survey of scientific opinion. What is more, given the anecdotal evidence of the size of the mailout, and the small size of the respondents (15,000) compared to the number of “virtually every scientist in every field”, the reasonable conclusion is that the response rate was very small. Indeed, if it were not, you can be sure that the OISM would be trumpeting not only the absolute number of signatories, but the response rate as well.
Since the original mail out, the petition has been available online to add the signature, and has been frequently trumpeted by various political figures, so its presence has been known. Given that, the response rate is best given by the number of signatories divided by the number of potential signatories [i.e. 0.3%].
As such, this petition is no more significant than any of the various creationist petitions that get circulated. Indeed, given the close ties of the OISM and the Discovery Institute (an Intelligent Design creationist site), it can be viewed as one of the various petitions circulated by creationists.
Note also the language used in the petition itself.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.
As another random commenter puts it, ‘The weasel wording is “is causing or will”, which are 100% definitive statements (there’s no probability in them). Catastrophic heating/disruption is by no means certain so the average pernicketty scientist could sign with a clear conscience.
Quite.
I hope all the above counts as ‘responding to others’ ‘evidence’.
Apologies. The sentence:
“I liked this random but exceedingly pertinent comment by an interested party:”
…should not have been in italics.
Ah-ha. The OMB e-mails obtained under the FOIA by Axios provide a clearer picture of what was going on after the “perfect call”.
So, McConnell, lets have a trial, with witnesses & documents, you gutless troll.
What was going on?
You mean the President wanted the corrupt Bidens investigated before he forked over $500 million to the Ukraine, a large share of which would be kicked back to the Bidens.
The man was doing his due diligence, looking out for the interests of the American people, not the corrupt lefty elite who’ve bee raking it off the top for the past 50 years.
Read today about Hunter Biden’s multi million dollar digs in LA. Pretty swanky. I mean S-W-A-N-K-Y.
Brh
I don’t know Marlin, It doesn’t look like he has enough room for a decent barn.
https://nypost.com/2019/12/24/hunter-biden-owns-massive-home-in-swanky-hollywood-hills-court-docs-reveal/
Do you think Hunter can farm on his land after TLE?
Does he know how to farm. Do you know how to farm. Does anyone know how to farm here except Farmer McGregor?
Yeah, didn’t think so. Has something to do with seeds. Maybe there is a you tube video on it?
I am a hunter not a farmer Dog, but as a hunter I have always held farming in high esteem, understanding that hunting cannot feed the masses. That was one reason why, over twenty years ago I began protecting the rights of the farmers in our Township, preserving their farms, and maintaining an excellent relationship with them ever since.
You folks out there may think that our host is quite quaint with the value that he places on farming, but some of us understand the value and have been actively assuring that the future shall have at least as much viable farm land as it has Waldo-Marts.
K-Dog , I concur with RB above. You are a snob. I understand that your food arrives to your local market on a truck as you live in an urban area. I live in a densely populated state but in a rural corner. I am not a “farmer” , most main stream “farmers” buy their food at the supermarket. I can certainly grow my own food, from my own seeds, on my own land, brew beer, make wine, fix machines, etc. so take your smarmy ass attitude and shove it up your puckered ass!
And Merry Christmas Clusterfuckers one and all! Everbody here fell asleep (except me) watching ELF again for the upteenth time after a hearty Christmas Eve Feast!
Stop with the snob bullshit. You win some you lose some RB can be more gracious when he gets smoked after defending the indefensible next time.
I never claimed to be a farmer. I don’t know any more about farming than you do and probably less. It is complicated and I have enough experience with my own garden to know that people who can grow deserve great respect.
People in Russia knew how to grow their food so when they had their last long emergency they made it through. They have enough experience with adversity to not to be so stupid as to lose food independence. Americans have. Pointing out that we don’t have the smarts to take care of ourselves in a long emergency is not being snobbish. I include myself. My 6th grade teacher told me about how much more prepared the Russians were for surviving a war than we were. It would be snobbish if I wrote a book about it and then claimed it to be my own idea. That is not me.
Hey K-Dog too bad in Russia the farms were collectivized and tens of millions of peasant farmers — the ones Chekhov wrote about — were liquidated in execution pit around Kiev and Moscow — or sent to the Gulag.
Brh
looks like he is on a ‘bird street’ above sunset.
remember G Harrison singing ‘blue jay way’?
Having a trial is not dependent on whether either Biden is called. That’s the ‘whataboutery’ of the GOP defense line.
Call them both if you like, Mitch. Hang them by their balls in a public square, if you feel the need…
But also call Pompey, Mulvaney & Ghoulani to exonerate Himself, if all HIS behaviour was above board as he claims relentlessly.
Just fecking PROVE it.
Majella
I believe you are starting to get the big picture. DC is absolutely saturated by corruption from both sides, creating the Deep State. The Trumpsters voted for him because he talked a good story about a desire to clean up the Swamp. He has produced little as the Deep State has been very successful at blocking him trying to do much of anything in that direction. Remember the Deep State’s occupation is with stopping the anti Deep Staters from eliminating their jobs in DC. This is the only bipartisan effort in DC is the preservation of the Deep State.
Trump doesn’t have to prove he’s innocent, that’s not the way the system works. You have to prove he’s guilty, of anything.
So far we haven’t seen any actual crimes, just imaginary ones, based upon hearsay evidence. The case is flimsy and weak, weak!
When I see Republican Senate leaders talk about a ‘trial’ they have a smirk on their faces, as if to say, “How absurd all this is”.
Brh
Ok, correct – he doesn’t have to prove his innocence, but until now, through what was essentially a ‘grand jury’ process, he succeeded in blocking access to evidence.
If the Senate process is to be a “trial”,surely it should be real, and not a fake sham process? That might get Himself ‘acquitted’ but it won’t be exoneration.
Look back at the utterly gleeful interviews of McConnell & Lindsay in 1999 when the House Republicans, after several years of investigations of corruption, starting with the Whitewater scandal, could only nail WJC for lying about getting a blow-job. That, apparently, was an impeachable offence.
The dribbling on talking points about a ‘weak case’ is getting tiresome. It may be correct. Let’s see, shall we? McConnell, have a REAL TRIAL , allow witnesses and documents. If you want Himself exonerated, a swift sham process will not do it.
If the swift sham option is taken, it’ll be because McConnell et al, deep down, know what a ridiculous figure Himself is and just how corrupt he is.
They know the testimony against him in the House is true & accurate -despite all the blustering about it being fairy dust – and that if testimony from those in the know – Pompeo, Mulvaney &. Ghouliani – is heard and is as damning as I suspect it to be, then their eventual acquittal will be seen for the partisan joke it would be.
I agree with you about the Clinton impeachment — wholly mean spirited and unnecessary — just an attempt to embarrass the President for little more than an indisgression. I think I mentioned before that this impeachment simply could be payback for those events 20 years ago. They have a long memory in DC.
Brh
I love the idea of an ‘indisgression’, brh – an indiscretion used to create a digression. Perfect.
Although the use of the gentle euphemism ‘indiscretion’ as applied to cheating f*ckers of both sexes slightly pisses me off.
As if the real transgression was in not having hidden it well enough. Instead, in this instance, of taking advantage of someone so junior to you that it would be hard to find someone less so below cleaner level. While married.
The burden of proof is on the accuser.
So prove it.
Allow witnesses.
There are no witnesses. We already heard the second and third hand accounts in part one of the clown show.
A rather surprisingly soft and hopeful discourse given our country’s setting on the precipice of civil war 2. Things may seem tranquil in upstate NY/Vermont, etc., but in the SW and SE US, things are SEETHING. The anger is more than palpable. The whole 2A sanctuary county movement is serious and very real. This is the stuff that civil wars are made of and we are moving rapidly toward a HOT CW2. Lock and load, IF you have weapons. HA!!!!!
Wardoc
US Army Medical Command
Tennessee State Militia
Doc,
We, and the country, are watching very closely the issue in Va.
If questioned by the local Law Enforcement or the Feds, might I suggest that;
Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell, and STFU. Common sense dictates that you should be civil, but no federal law demands that you produce weapons, or even speak to them regarding any 2nd Amendment issue…if records suggest that you bought 20 weapons in the last 10 years…thank them for their interest, and say nothing further.
Politely inform them that you do not discuss 2nd Amendment issues, and then remain silent. If they have a warrant, graciously allow them to search. If they do not have one, politely suggest they get one.
Put the coffee pot on, maybe offer a plate of donuts….
There will be many arrests involving lying to a Fed during an investigation. Avoid the issue as per the above.
After the War, let’s open up a Club featuring patriot girls like this.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2019/12/24/denninger-no-we-cant-just-get-along/
The girls will wear camos to the extent they wear anything at all. It will be a celebration of Victory as well as place to meet and congregate. Families welcome. Horrible American food served. The girls will only start dancing after 10 pm. No overt Nazi stuff but White Nationalists welcome. Hell, everyone will be a White Nationalist and pretend they always were.
I remembered your Salma Hayek video and thought of you when I saw this backdoor beauty.
“remembered your Salma Hayek video”
Janos,
How could you not remember? It is imprinted upon our psyche…a gift that keeps on giving.
Yes, we want Pottersville not Bedford Falls. In our little city, the Librarians will dance on stage in Camo undies. Not be Communist Cat ladies oohing and ahing every time a black child enters into the Library.
Merry Christmas!
I didn’t send out cards this year because of the riots and the police brutality.
“He’s partnered up with another guy who intends to open a bistro with a bar, a fireplace, and supposedly a boutique distillery operation in the back. That would give some people in town a reason to leave the house at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, when the day’s work is done …”
I find this story incredibly sad and tragic on a number of levels.
Let me start with a major culturally different history. Here in Australia, the colonies were founded (in the late 18th century) on four basic cornerstones: alcohol, gambling, secularism, and mateship above all.
These differ markedly from the usual signifiers that are espoused for the founding of the US colonies a century and more earlier: they seem to be religious rigour, puritan righteousness, rugged individuality, and family above all.
I would like to suggest – at least in respect of the prosperity of amll towns – we in Australia have fared better.
Even the smallest country town in Australia will have a hotel – a pub – and in addition to that, there will often be a golf club, a football club, a return servicemen’s club, and maybe one other. Even quite small places have these vital and vibrant centres of community activity.
The notion that a small town (“village” in New England parlance) could be dead in the evening because there is no bistro – is to me quite appalling.
Small towns in Australia will always have their clubs and pubs – they are the centres of alcohol, gambling, secular community, and mateship.
You in America could try it – it works pretty well. Merry Christmas!
Sad indeed. The “community hearth” has been replaced in the US by the TV, the internet, and/or the cell phone, depending on the generation. Quite a clusterfuck indeed we Yanks have created. And the small towns are being exterminated altogether as fast as corporate American can get to them; urban huddled masses being much easier to control than self-reliant rural ones.
Another point about opening a bistro or a tavern in these small towns is that some PDs see themselves as revenue collectors for their own and the town’s budget; so let’s say you throw back a few at the local watering hole, a convivial night with a few friends. On your drive home you see the blue light in your rearview mirror, next thing you know you’re cuffed and stuffed and spending the night in jail. A DUI charge (what they’re called here) is no small thing, in this state it’s a class D felony. Suddenly the word is out and not too many people are stopping at the new bistro for a drink after work anymore.
Brh
The introduction of Random Breath Testing in the 1980s to fight the deadly results of DUI in Australia did have a major impact on pubs, clubs, taverns, and bistros. DUI cases plunged, and a lot of people lived who otherwise would not have.
Culture had to change: the rising popularity of low-alcohol beer, the use of designated drives, laws forcing pub staff to stop serving people who are drunk, cheaper taxis, and better public transport.
But still – the pub (and especially the clubs) – were always, and now remain, the centre of community like, for everyone rich and poor. People effectively use them from cradle to grave.
Mind you, there are other downsides beside drink-driving … all these pubs and clubs are fuelled by slot machines (one club in Western Sydney has about 700) – Australian per capita gambling is the world’s highest, and there are a lot of addicts.
And that’s even before one considers the mega-casinos in every large city. Melbourne’c Crown Casino has 3,500 slot machines … it’s a big part of life here.
Australia sound like a cool place to live. Thanks for the insight, Cargill.
Brh
It’s pretty good – rich, civilised, and a working combo of Anglo-Irish working-class feistiness, American capitalist know-how, and massive immigrant cultural colour.
But it has problems: it’s too hot and dry, and can’t really support 25 million people at such a high level, we’re wrecking the environment, there is a huge water shortage, and we manage to send more critters to extinction than anywhere else.
We also send vast amounts of coal overseas – shifting carbon pollution off-shore.
We have the suburbanisation and city sprawl that JHK has described so well for many years – but not quite in the same extreme way as the US. Many younger people are avoiding that model, and are living closer to the centre of cities.
But overall, you can do far worse!
AU signed its death warrant in 1974.
‘ massive immigrant cultural colour’–yikes.
CARGILL SEZ
“Yeah, really. The place started calling itself “Asian” and to make good that bullshit, started importing vast quantities of Chinese and Muslims. Even Africans for God’s sake – whom the native Black Fellows utterly loathe. Of course the loathsome creatures loathe everyone….
One famous survivalist poster, Texas Arcane, moved to Australia claiming that it was destined to be an Elite Stronghold during the coming catastrophe. He always emphasized how utterly clueless the average Australian was. More so than Americans even, if such a thing were possible.”
For anyone that wonders why the nation’s corporate Big Wigs are showered with such huge amounts of cash regardless of their abilities or performance, the answer is clear to those of us in the Arena. These clowns are the ones that contribute, back and pretty much own the elected government puppets. During the right time of the campaign seasons (primary and general), the number of invitations that I receive daily for fund raisers, political pay to play events, and high dollar meals with uppity ups is staggering. While I can attend the occasional wine tasting or polo match for a $100 or so, the $10K and $100K meet and greets at Trump National Golf course are clearly out of my ballpark, but not so for these bastards.
It is funny yet so sad when you watch the Big Boys dangle their checkbooks over the heads of their puppets as they squeal and pander for their owners. In the end it is all about the money honey, and our elected officials at every level, for the most part, will suck the chrome off of trailer hitches for the right price. The more the CEO’s make the more they can dole out. Yes the system is totally shot.
Right, Walter. And the CEO Club is itself a den of nasty, grasping ‘uppity-ups’ that writes it’s own rules, and they all play by them to generally mutual advantage?
When was the last time a CEO got the sack and DIDN’T head for the hills with a huge swag of loot?
Most recent case in point, the Boeing CEO Mullenburg, sacked specifically for the 737-Max 8 debacle, which is estimated to cost the company $8 billion in losses.
So what’s his ‘severance’ package? $40 million. And they say that Hunter Biden is corrupt for collecting a million or two in a job he wasn’t qualified for? This turkey is a way better example of commercial corruption…when will shareholders start objecting to this daylight thievery?
(Alba, that Grocer’s abomination was an autocorrect…actually, an auto-error!)
Exactly, everything that Trump is being criticized for is Standard Operating Procedure for the politicos and the Elite. When I think of how awful Hollywood is, it makes me seethe. Glass houses!
So, you’re saying it’s OKAY for Himself to act like the ‘corrupt elites’, but NOT OKAY for those ‘corrupt elites’ to act like Himself???
It is not OKAY for anyone to act the way they do. No one, President, Congress, governors, CEOs etc.
Our form of government only works if individuals take moral responsibility for themselves. When the majority feel they have to cheat, steal, kill etc. to “survive” in their environment the goodness of the government is in jeopardy. Turning a populace over to a government in this state is the main flaw of the Progressive Democrats today. Wrong!
This is what is causing some backlash from the moderates in response to the impeachment.
That’s right JAZ. I noted a column that appeared in the WSJ a few years ago by a DC attorney stating that if every law pertaining to elected officials was prosecuted we wouldn’t have a govt; every single pol would be in jail. Selective prosecution is the thing, making a big deal out of this or that violation, similar to what’s happening now with the President. But in his case he hasn’t violated any laws but has committed the unpardonable transgression of trying to implement his own foreign policy, which apparently doesn’t align with the foreign policy the careerist snakes in the State Dept. favor.
Brh
Or the military!
You guys are beyond help. You will spout the FOX/GOP talking points till the cows come home.
https://youtu.be/Tt_QIpQAZQY
And so will 63 million other folks, Majella. So there must be appeal there somewhere.
I haven’t heard anyone say Trump got 20 % kickbacks on all the foreign aid sent overseas.
He doesn’t even take a paycheck for being president.
Option C: both are corrupt.
The low of IQ will not understand this highly technical concept.
Insightful views on Himself’s communication methods.
Interestingly, the first was put up in 2016 and refers to the candidate:
How Trump Answers a Question
https://youtu.be/_aFo_BV-UzI
The second was made between the election & the inauguration;
How Trump Tweets:
https://youtu.be/geEVwslL-YY
So, his clever manipulation of language is beyond doubt…heck, there’s plenty of evidence hereabouts as to how successful a Gaslighter he is!
So what, you don’t like his style. Is that an impeachable offense?
Watch the videos. They’re not partisan. They’re analyses of how Himself communicates, and so successfully.
You might get some idea of how you’ve been gaslighted.
Don’t get your hopes up for an impeachment trial in the Senate, Majella. My prediction is Speaker Pelosi lets the whole thing drop and over a matter of maybe a month or so it fades from public discourse, superseded by other issues coming down the pike.
Brh
Zero chance of that happening, BRH. It will be put to the Senate regardless. Whichever way it goes there- sham or actual trial – it’ll be on McConnell & Graham to either prove they believe in their Constitutional Oath or they’re lying arseholes. It’ll be an interesting outcome either way.
But wait, I thought the President was an idiot?
You were so sure of this.
Awaiting your (surely) comical explanation for your 180.
He is an idiot – but trained (by Roy Cohn). Good training takes even better in idiots – they require a sense of structure.
“And you must be aware that chain stores are going down by the thousands all around the country, the so-called retail apocalypse. These things have to die for a new economic ecosystem to emerge, and it looks like the process is underway. I hope the fast food joints are next.”
The driving force behind the retail apocalypse are online stores like Amazon. As far as I know, there is nothing threatening fast food joints. Sadly, things won’t improve food-wise as long as sodas are cheaper than vegetables.
Drones could deliver fast food.
Have you been in a kiosk McDonalds lately. Do not need drones
I refuse to use them. I did try to see what they were like The closest Mickey Ds to me is a place whee they try out ideas. The place gets remodeled top to bottom every year. I hate it when they replace a good theme with shit.
They have up-selling built into the UI of the Kiosk and it is hard to get away from. I had to start over seveal times to get away from the new extra charges they are sneaking in.
That frosted the cake for me but fukitpeopleneedjobs.
I won’t be the consumer of a robot that gives me what it wants at the price they want to make a few people rich. An economy I’ll participate in but Mickey Ds crossed a line for me a long time ago.
The takeaway: The kiosks will charge you more. Upselling is a ‘feature’
To give the customer choice. Instead of the whole thing they take part of what you had away and then have you choose between lesser options. They charge you more for less in the end. Somewhere a manager gets promoted for the new automated profit stream and as the ‘technique’ of Jaques Ellul flows to the brain death of humanity. America does not even know they just got screwed because technology is always good their mantra goes.
Retail sales provide jobs all over the US, in every mall. If Amazon succeeds, it will supply very few jobs in 2-3 locations per urban area, period. Hope all the Amazon users enjoy ordering from home when their jobs go away.
Wherever minimum wage is driven up to $15 per hour, you’re going to see a lot more kiosks. Seattle, for example.
It takes longer to order from a kiosk than from a real person. Any benefit is an illusion because technology is good good good and people are dumb dumb dumb. It is not the $15 an hour. It is the greed of thinking you can get rid of people and get more for yourself just because you can.
Like a lizard ruling royal from ancient Sumeria special people are thinking to get paid just because they own property and they don’t even have to employ people. Kiosks provide no social benefit.
The $15 dollar an hour argument is a way to justify greed and fool the public. It is reading tea leaves.
In my teens I was able to work and buy my own gas and cigarettes. I’m happy robots at the time cost millions of dollars and could not replace people. It would have screwed all my dreams. I could not have got my Chevy to the levee to see it run dry.
What’s happening here, in anticipation of $15 per hour minimum wage, also 12 weeks paid family leave per year, is small businesses are closing their doors and going out of business. These are mostly restaurants and independent grocery stores.
Brh
What is “fake news”?
This Vice doco examines what is surely the question of the current age:
How Truth has Lost Its Meaning in Trump’s America
https://youtu.be/-dB_W38mCRM
Vice got sold.
“Shane Smith and two partners developed Vice Media, Inc, which grew from a Canadian based punk rock magazine and now includes print publications, vice.com, multimedia, TV and film production, a record label, and now broadcast news. Smith has recently been soliciting investments from large traditional media companies and now has sold equity positions to FOX and A&E and has a major deal with HBO, and values his company in the area between $1.5 and$2 billion. Vice went fake.
Vice hasn’t been real since Gavin left.
Here are some Vice samples. Take a trip to West Point in Liberia. 5 yrs. ago? Talk about shitholes. Think about how things can be.
https://www.sdentertainer.com/movies/12-best-vice-documentaries-youtube/
bad link? just google.
Holy Sh#t
Baboontown, General Butt Naked, Cannibals
Liberia started out with such high hopes, and now there’s a new law proposed to make some of these people US citizens. Yikes!
I didn’t think anything could be worse than Chicago or Baltimore City, but there it is.
Brh
Majella, you keep quoting news and YouTube items as though they are gospel. To you it might be because you agree with them. I have watched all the supposed fact checking facilities and figured out they are as biased as the media. One of the methods that is used is the bias of cherry picking, a major sin in statistics. The NYT and Washington Post spend editorial hours picking only anti Trump stories to publish and in today’s world do not even insist on any credibility.
The media, polls, fact checking, magazines, movies are 95% biased against the 50% of the American public that is populist. It is no wonder that there are as many brainwashed folks when all they hear is anti this or anti that. The number one thing they transmit into our society is hatred. DeNiro, for example, would be excellent cast as Caiaphas.
‘…quoting as they’re gospel’
No, I’m not. I’m simply putting things I found interesting into the conversation for others to follow & discuss, or not, as the mood takes them.
The bias you find is entirely in your perception. I can’t help that. I see Fox & infowars and cant help but laugh at the insanely dumb things they sell their audience…Screaming Alex Jones, Preaching Janine Pirro, Insane Ingraham, Smirkin’ Sean Hannity…see? My bias is in MY perception too.
Remember Alan Grayson (historian, lawyer and congressman form Florida fame)?
Here he’s touting his new book, but it’s an interesting conversation with Hartmann;
https://youtu.be/Tt_QIpQAZQY
To discover a mechanism influencing climate, other than AGW [ which IMHO, is dreadfully inadequate for the conditions anticipated by cyclical occurances from historical accounts ] consider some new theories:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ui6BLAyXLZA&list=PLHSoxioQtwZfY2ISsNBzJ-aOZ3APVS8br&index=20
Interesting. Periodic massive outbursts of solar material might cause changes in the climate. Maybe lesser outbursts could happen during shorter intervals that can cause atmospheric changes. Maybe the rise oil CO2 and the decline in ozone might be the results of solar activity changes, or the result of changes in the chemical composition of the plasma.
Maybe is a horrible word when it is used to create a monster reaction of humanity like GND. Maybe it is AGW, and we are going to die in twelve years.
Maybe?
An interesting point he made was pointing at the major mammal fauna extinction in North America recently, the mammoths,horses, saber tooth cats etc,as being the result of a major blast.
Yes, and its mainstream science even though it hardly ever gets mentioned or taken into account in people’s worldviews. North America was a tropical paradise only 11 or so thousand years ago. And that was during the ice age. It seems to me that the ice ages did not very badly affect the nonglaciated areas.
There was a real Dark Age within the last Dark Age. Yes, actually a time when sunlight became so dim that it is said that sunlight was more like moonlight for more than a year. It occurred during the 6th century. Of course global temperatures dropped like rocks, crops failed, and there was famine and disease. Apparently the sunlight was dimmed by underwater volcanic eruptions in the Atlantic that released tons and tons and tons of fried plankton and fine sediments into the atmosphere. So apparently underwater volcanic eruptions could also bring civilization down. And there isn’t anything we could do to stop it presumably, even if we could successfully predict it.
Yes, I read about that. Funny how these disasters get marginalized when there is much evidence for them, and for their ability to bring empires down.
To satisfy all the clamoring that has arisen since I stopped posting Haiku here’s one more to appease you all.
Freakin joygivers!
Their lousy taste. Here I go
To return my junk.
Eve,
Count us as appeased,
Small gifts, a smile on our lips,
A fleeting pleasure.
Very small. So fleeting. Eve was an improvement over Lillith, but only so much of one. She doesn’t try and kill us (usually), just make our lives a living hell.
Thank you Janos, that’s just about the nicest thing that has ever been said about me. I do not know who Lillith is or was but she must have been one fine lady.
Maybe you and I could get together over a cocktail somewhere and discuss this further.
xoxox
I do not know who Lillith is or was but she must have been one fine lady.
Eve,
Do yourself a favor and don’t google it….
“Yeah, really. The place started calling itself “Asian” and to make good that bullshit, started importing vast quantities of Chinese and Muslims. Even Africans for God’s sake – whom the native Black Fellows utterly loathe. Of course the loathsome creatures loathe everyone….
One famous survivalist poster, Texas Arcane, moved to Australia claiming that it was destined to be an Elite Stronghold during the coming catastrophe. He always emphasized how utterly clueless the average Australian was. More so than Americans even, if such a thing were possible.”
LOL. I love it … everything I said is totally utterly proven by this racist, incompetent, ignorant, xenophobic rant. Thank you so much!
Define racist and xenophobic. Are you non-racist and xenophillic? And what, pay tell, is the evolutionary value of those?
So then it isn’t true that Australia has a large number of Asian and Muslim immigrants?
Ask Cargill about the refugee encampments on Manus & Christmas Island, mostly muslim refugees, that they simply will not process.
Ask him about the deportation of New Zealand-citizens who have spend most, if not all, their lives in Australia, being deported after pissing off the wrong people in the Australian political system.
Or maybe I can just stick with the original question if its ok with you? I heard that many refugees that Australia refused to process were from war torn Middle Eastern places and some could easily be jihadis. Whether it is right or wrong in the end sovereign countries have a right to determine who enters their borders you know. And whether people want to consider it or not why are the refugees countries and governments not accountable or responsible for them? Why are First World countries obligated to take all refugees in without question?
Whoo!
In Russia, the floating 21,500 ton nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonsonov is on station, the first of at least 6, providing heat and electricity in the Arctic for rigs drilling for oil and mining rare earth metals under the sea. What? Apparently the Russians have not got the message “the world is on fire”, and must reduce their “carbon footprint”, and enforce treaties that would require Russian citizens to live a primitive way of life, and wreck their industry.
No windmills and flimsy solar panels for the Rooskis.
How dare they?
HOW DARE THEY?
Brh
I find it actually rather fascinating how the Russians are able to successfully occupy a vast area of territory where temperatures are so far below freezing it’s like being on the surface of Mars. Today almost the entirety of Russia is below freezing. There are 11 time zones in Russia.
Greta’s but a glance,
Russians quake with fear…oh no!
HOW DARE WE? indeed.
Yeah, the action is in the arctic. Russia is active there in a big way.
Remember when President Trump proposed buying Greenland? What a moron, right? I mean how stupid can you get? Late night talk shows had a field day with it, proof to them that the president has lost his mind and the 25th amendment needed to be invoked.
Turns out China thinks the Arctic is pretty important too and is currently negotiating with Denmark and the govt of autonomous Greenland to build a seaport and an airport in Greenland, and also to secure mineral rights on the island.
Who’s a moron now?
Brh
Well, ladies and germs;
The BBC, this AM, reports that a tortoise, kept in confinement in a home in Britain, set the house on fire, but was rescued by first responders.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-50915895
It is further rumored* that the tortoise has caused trouble in the past;
The owner of the tortoise, and damaged home states…” It is an evil terrapin…killed my dog, and I think it has been screwing the missus…if this keeps up, I will gift him to the Pakistani family next door…that’ll be the end of him!”
*unsubstantiated
Pictures of the reptile shows his countenance entirely unrepentant.
How irresponsible for the owner or owners to leave a heat lamp near the tortoise’s bedding unattended. I think the tortoise may be really mad his people are melonheads. Poor creature!
Texas said the Melonheads secretly rule mankind, their brains 1.5 times as large as ours. In ancient times, they persecuted the Neanderthals (who also had larger brains), inventing Cro-Magnon Man and unleashing them on their rivals in Europe. But instead of simply wiping Neanderthal out as ordered, they bred with them and created the modern White Race.
who is Texas?
You know, I really wish the Neanderthals still existed. I don’t know why exactly other than I think they would be better than us. I remember watching a documentary on youtube about the Gibraltar Neanderthals. Supposedly Gibraltar was like a paradise on Earth for Neanderthals. They were protected from the harshest cold of the Ice Ages there and they had a readily accessible supply of game and fish and huge caves for shelter. But even still they died out but the mainstream experts say they don’t know why. And then the scientist narrating the show went on and on about how the last Neanderthal that ever existed lived all alone in the emptied out cave hunting and going down to the beach to get clams or whatever by himself day after day and the group of Neanderthals he was expecting to arrive never came and the loneliness was stifling, etc. So basically the end of the tale was so sad and depressing it made me cry and hate modern people. Though they never said it was certain that modern people wiped the Neanderthals out. So it was Melonheads after all?
Even modern white people?! Holy jumpin’ jesus it IS the end times!
Why is that such an important point to you? I don’t recall saying White people are pristine and sinless. It seems like you always want Whites to be the reason for all the world’s problems. Well it simply isn’t reality.
Tell me they don’t:
https://celebrityinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Basketball-Player-Anthony-Davis.jpg
One further comment then I’m outa here for a long long time
If you had to cast a person to play the roll of someone really wicked and fear producing would it be possible to find someone more perfect than Mohammed bin Salman?
Looking at that guy gives me shivers.
Don’t leave shivering, grab a hat if you must, but leave with some haiku.
Why? Rich non-white guy with a beard who likes to cozy up to US power brokers. Must be at least thousands of them out there as we speak.
I support the Palestinians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M88NckqlYpE
A visit to the Wisdom Chateau:
https://gnosticwars.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/the-complete-maxims-of-chateau-heartiste/
A long, long time ago in my heart I made it my life work to lead others towards the Light (wholeness). Unfortunately in a pragmatic sense I have yet to take a single, concrete step in this direction, as I myself remained mired in darkness (suffer from a split mind).
So are you now going to take those steps yourself upon this moment of recognition?
Hey SBS, you’ve got your work cutout for you up in Detroit City.
This may be a result of our split brains. Even with the deepest of concentrations and meditations, I could not sufficiently restructure my corpus callosum. But then again I’m a Gemini.
LOL! Sounds like a typical “New Ager.” Once upon a time I fancied that stuff as well. Turned out pretty much the same way. So much mental masturbation I finally concluded. Many are attracted to the idea of idealism, but few are attracted to the actual practice. Some Buddhist monk(s) probably said that somewhere along the way, but regardless, it’s true. Not to denigrate “New Age” philosophy per se, other than what’s sold to you as such is mostly the product of good ol’ American marketing hype. Buyer beware? To say the least!
I should add, sometimes – perhaps even many times – what people seeking perfection should do instead is to seek imperfection, even “evil” if you will, in order to rid themselves of their imaginary demons. The idea of good and evil is for the most part illusory – prevailing commentary on this board notwithstanding – so for those attracted to the concepts, purging themselves of the illusion is not only a good idea in general, but indeed, to some extent or another, inevitable and unavoidable. Most of us, much to our great regret, are neither as evil or as holy as we’d like to imagine ourselves to be. Not even close.
I think they should try Peter Popoff’s ‘miracle spring water’ to sponge away their illusions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQVri6Gt4OI
LOL too funny! But does the miracle water sponge away illusions or get you 100 Gs magically and in the mail no less? And the name! And I was still chuckling from the corpus callosum restructuring comment. Geminis usually have a good sense of humor. 🙂
Phew!!!
Biden’s purported take out of Ukraine: $156 million!
No wonder Joe could build that ocean front manse in Delaware, and Hunter could buy that swanky estate in LA, with strictly cash. Who knew? Sure there was plenty of swag thrown around on the Vineyard last summer– endless lines of coke, 150 ft power yachts — money was no object. It would have been criminal for the President NOT to look into it. The man deserves a medal.
Brh
spacey
I knew an actor who knew an actor that Spacey fancied, shall we say,
https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/kevin-spacey-accuser-deaths-conspiracy-theories/?fb=dd&fbclid=IwAR0lFbPMmLOc9EnZWmuv6Jw9PWZOPWqHes3hSR0SkpS2kYuSw7tcYvZu1XY
Kevin Spacey is apparently really close friends with the Clintons. He has a big bromance with Bill and remember that “prank call” video he made with Hillary? Maybe he is learning how to disappear people from the experts. Or it could all just be coincidence and conspiracy theories.
SOMEBODY TORCHED THE FORMER HOME OF WALTER CAMP, founder of American football! In New Haven, one of those grand old places from when the city was part of the first world, but since fallen on hard times. It was vacant, undergoing conversion into small apartments. Theory is vagrants got in, possibly set a campfire trying to warm up. Happy Holidays from New Haven.
… and to all a goodnight.
A proposal for a new/old American National Anthem medley, complete with 1970’s hair and dress styles straight out of the great American heartland long before it was infested with cravenly opportunistic fucking Negro “community organizers” seeking higher office, and reflecting what will hopefully be both a repudiation of the current status quo and an affirmation of something entirely old/new (sorry for the commercials, but of course Wall St must get theirs under the current dispensation):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=5XcKBmdfpWs&feature=emb_logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=102&v=CDM6v1XhWEg&feature=emb_logo
Update: Arrest made in Walter Camp arson fire. Maunda Knight, Community Member, taken into custody for allegedly setting Walter Camp house afire, and 3 other arsons and attempted arsons that same day. Mr. Knight, aged 37, has a long criminal records with multiple felony convictions going back 20 years. Mr. Knight claims he is innocent.
In other post Christmas news, huge brawls break out in 3 Connecticut malls, including West Farms Mall outside Hartford. In what seems to be an evolving Christmas tradition, hundreds of ‘Youts’ (young community members) mixed it up in tribal combat around the food courts, shutting down the malls and triggering massive police responses. Another nail in the coffin of indoor shopping malls, IMHO. Who’ gonna go there anymore? Perhaps they have a future as arenas for urban gang warfare, keeping all confined to a single walled in area.
Brh
”You’re a bright girl, I bet you can.“
Girls are bright and fierce. Like Greta. A pat on the head is dismissive and misogynistic.
20th elderly woman revealed to have been murdered by the ‘Kenyan Killer’ in Texas.
So much for diversity being beautiful!
The mainstream media is ignoring the story about the man who may be the most prolific serial killer in Texas history.
I think you can guess why the national news is sweeping the story under the rug.
https://fraudscrookscriminals.com/…/texas-20th-murder-of-a…/
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