SPONSOR

Vaulted Invest in Gold

Visit this blog’s sponsor. Vaulted is an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold: Kunstler.com/vaulted


 

Support JHK on Patreon

 

If you’re interested in supporting this blog, check out the Patreon page.

 

Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition

Click to order!

A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster…
Three Teenagers who bring him down…
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


Now Live on Amazon

“Simply the best novel of the 1960s”


Now in Paperback !
Only Seven Bucks!
JHK’s Three-Act Play
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…


Long Emergency Cafe Press ad 2

Get your Official JHK swag on Cafe Press


The fourth and final book of the World Made By Hand series.

Harrow_cover_final

Battenkill Books (autographed by the Author) |  Northshire Books Amazon


emb of Riches Thumbnail

JHK’s lost classic now reprinted as an e-book
Kindle edition only


 

Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

And thanks to all my Patrons for your support!


The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do. The more layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality they’ve already constructed, the more certain it becomes that they will blow up all the support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe lane to continue running in.

Virtually all the big nations are doing this now in desperation because they don’t understand that the hyper-tech economy is hostage to the deteriorating economics of energy, basically fossil fuels, and oil especially. The macro mega-system can’t grow anymore. We’re now in the de-growth phase of a dynamic that pulsates through history, as everything in the universe pulsates. We attempted to compensate for de-growth with debt, borrowing from the future.

But debt only works in the youthful growth phases of economic pulsation, when the prospect of being paid back is statistically favorable. Now in the elder de-growth phase, the prospect of paying back debts, or even servicing the interest, is statistically dismal. The amount of racked-up debt worldwide has entered the realm of the laughable. So, the roughly twenty-year experiment in Central Bank credit magic, as a replacement for true capital formation, has come to its grievous end.

Hence, America under the pretend leadership of Joe Biden ventures into the final act of this melodrama, which will end badly and probably pretty quickly. They are about to call in the financial four horsemen of apocalypse: 1) Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), 2) a command economy, 3) Universal Basic Income (UBI, “helicopter” money for the people), and 4) the “Build Back Better” infrastructure scheme.

MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences. That is, we can “lend” ourselves money (borrow it into existence) without having to worry about paying it back. The theory caught on only because that’s what we’ve done for two decades and, so far, it hasn’t destroyed the banking system — though debt turned exponential, which is to say ruinous, only recently — so we won’t have to stand by long to see how this experiment works out. Note this: MMT completes the divorce between productive activity and capital formation, that is, prosperity without wealth.

A command economy means that government increasingly attempts to take over economic enterprise, to replace x-million individual economic choices of freely-acting people in a society with bureaucratic central planning. (Have you already said ha-ha-ha, knowing how that has worked out through history?)

UBI is the primary feature of that because, in a command economy, production is mostly pretend, so you just have to give people money (for nothing). Remember the old basic operating system of the Soviet Union, stated succinctly as: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Got that?

The idea behind “Build Back Better” is to renovate the infrastructure of a hyper-tech economy that actually no longer exists because we are in the contraction phase of an historic pulsation or cycle, leaving us with lots of tech and less production, tending toward zero. Nobody flogging this slogan actually knows what it ought to mean under the circumstances, which is to go with the flow of the reality of this contraction: to downsize, downscale, and re-localize all our activities to bring them back into sync with actual productivity — that is, raising food, making real stuff, and trading it. Again, it’s the energy dynamic, stupid.

To get to that point, we’re going to shed the massive over-burden of financial game-playing that has pretended to represent our economy. That means stock valuations and bond prices will vaporize along with the derivative activities concocted for trading gainfully in these now-phantom representations of capital. If that happens sooner rather than later, we won’t even be able to pretend to Build Back Better the interstate highways, the electric grid, airports, and all the other stuff in the “infrastructure” folder.

Indeed, a lot of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them. If we even have electricity twenty-five years from now, it will come from much-reduced grids on a much more regional basis. The bottom line for all this is that pretty soon every corner of the country will be on its own amid quite a bit of social disorder and financial wreckage. So, whatever energy you actually can marshal to Build Back Better, save it for your town or your local community. And remember, all of the attempts by a national government to control these events, and coerce its citizens in the service of that, will only lead to a more ineffectual and impotent national government that nobody has faith in, confirming the fact that you are on your own.


This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:  Kunstler.com/vaulted


Your Spring Reading ! ! !


Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition

Click to order!

A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster
Three Teenagers who bring him down
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

1,126 Responses to “Do You Believe in Magic?”

  1. malthuss March 29, 2021 at 8:53 am #

    TPTB are taking us down thru an invasion.

    JHK mentioned deforestation, with oil gone. how about de deer estestation?

    II found this,

    However, 330 million is a LOT of people. Even if 3/4 of the people die in six months, all the game out there is toast. 82.5 million hungry people will ravage the countryside, killing every animal in sight. They’ll figure it out. Nets, chasing them toward pits, whatever. There’s about 30 million deer in the US.
    How long will they last? A lot will be wasted due to inept processing and lack of refrigeration. If you’re right, even those who are knowledgeable survivors may have to travel extremely long distance into areas where the remaining game have migrated. Hunting is difficult enough. Competing with 82 million others, who are desperate, isn’t going to make it any easier. But, anyway, I don’t know any more than you. You may be right. I don’t wanna find out! LOL : )
    …where I live there are around 10 million people…. it’s definitely a hunting state and even here they only issued less than 570000 licenses. But people buy multiple licenses so actual hunters is more like 300000. Let’s say 1 million people here are equipped and able to hunt but not all of them do . If most people are dead in 6 months that leaves a maximum of 1 million people left here….probably less.
    All of those urban deer will quickly return to the country when people start shooting them there so my country deer population is going to increase greatly.

    We have almost 2 million deer here in my state alone…6 months after SHTF there would still be more deer left here than people to hunt them.

    The population would definitely take an immediate hit but I think it would bounce back to epic numbers within 2 years because there simply won’t be enough people alive and equipped and skilled left to damage the herd . To me the biggest issue is other humans . During the depression EVERYONE knew how to hunt and people had skills to survive even if they worked an office job. People weren’t near as reliant on grocery stores. So of course the animal population took a hit. Don’t forget about the huge abundance of squirrels and rabbits and other small game ……it doesn’t have to just be deer

    • Cavepainter March 29, 2021 at 9:44 am #

      Funny, family member and a close friend both declare they will not discuss politics but both have yard sign that reads “No human is illegal” and other Left slogans.

      • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 9:54 am #

        Here in North Florida, “Blue” yard signs that sprung up – “Hate has no home here”, indicating the virtue-signaling useful idiots that voted for Biden – have all disappeared. Out of embarrassment one would guess.

        These people are so fucked up, The inference was that if you did not have such a sign in your yard, that hate certainly had a home at your house. Did I mention that these people are fucked up?

        • thirdcoastlegend March 29, 2021 at 11:04 am #

          Ron-

          At least the immediate visual pollution is gone in your area.

          In these parts there are still upper-middle class areas with several Burn Loot Murder signs along the roadway that visually pollute my drive to a great nature reserve in this area.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 11:42 am #

            Tacky irony, from the people who all believe in the Green New Deal.

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 12:43 pm #

            Yep TCL, the visual pollution gone – the invisible blue pollution remains.

            Have cousins – better than upper-middle class, by virtue of sucking up to a 101 year old great aunt who married well, was widowed young, but worked hard, lived well within her means, saved and invested, building millions in wealth (concepts completely foreign to my cousins), passing it to them – that are very visual & vocal supporters of BLM, but are also apologetic for their “white privilege”, failing to understand how that wealth was built.

            Famous virtual-signalers – you may see them in your nature preserve with a BLM bumper sticker – they’re very crunchy and they’ll be the ones dressed head-to-toe in Patagonia gear.

          • messianicdruid March 29, 2021 at 12:45 pm #

            I want to see more NO FEAR LIVES HERE yard signs.

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 1:03 pm #

            Perfect Druid – here’s another suggestion “Help Eradicate Blue Cancer”, blue bow & all.

          • abbybwood March 29, 2021 at 1:18 pm #

            I was watching the Lionel Nation livestream this morning and he mentioned that his hero is now Mohammed Anwar, the 66 year old Pakistani immigrant Uber Eats driver who was killed by two “teen girls” in D.C. during a planned carjacking.

            Lionel was wondering, as am I, had the Uber driver been Black and the teen girls white, would the race of the girls be listed therefore making this a white supremacy hate crime?

            I guess the race of the perps if they are teens is not mentionable in D.C.?

            It was interesting though when I typed into the Google bar, “two Black teen girls carjack and kill 66 year old Pakistani Uber driver in D.C.” all the articles about it came up.

            Mohammed Anwar: 2021’s George Floyd?

        • hortonz March 29, 2021 at 11:12 am #

          Up here in Canada the national media and proxies acting on behalf of the Chinese government have whipped up progressives with reports of Anti-Asian hate. The hashtag #StopAsianHate has caught on like a virus with the left and if the CCP-backed national fraternal organizations are to be believed there are more Asian hate crimes per capita in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Even our idiot leader Justin Trudeau has got into the act promising to make reparations for all decades of anti-Asian discrimination. Apparently none of these progressives seem to care that the price of gas is heading to new historic highs, or that Canada has fallen to 55th place on the global vaccination list or that a housing crises brought on by our own government’s money printing has driven the price of homes beyond the reach of anyone who isn’t a hedge fund manager or Hong Kong billionaire ex-pat. Have a great Monday morning everyone,

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 11:44 am #

            They’re trying to get it going here in the US, too. Notice most of these social justice warrior wokiness goes global pretty quickly? Campaigns created and distributed world-wide within a matter of hours or days?

          • messianicdruid March 29, 2021 at 12:53 pm #

            Back when I was pretty green [ out of date metaphor alert ] young army volunteer sent to Ft Lewis, I happened thru SeaTac and heard unknown languages over the speakers while riding from my gate. Being from Muskogee I expected Spanish, but turned out to be Chinese maybe Japanese, I wouldnt swear either way. Lots of vacationers

        • Opie March 29, 2021 at 11:42 am #

          Let me guess,Gainesville area perhaps. You may guess from my name my location,and you’re right,they are fucked up, also stupid as grandads clawhammer.

          • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 12:26 am #

            Opie – actually an hour & a half east, very near the ocean Crescent Beach in St. John’s County – 10 miles south of St. Augustine proper.

            Very fair guess on Gainesville though – Alachua a blue county by virtue of UF. I graduated UF in the early eighties, and forty years ago, the culture was much different.

            Have two sons going to college in the next 2 years – sad thing is, they’d be 4th generation at UF, but not really sure I want them going there.

            They are resolute in their common sense, conservative views, so that’s no concern, only that they’d be pariahs there now.

            They don’t back down from anything, it’s just tough sometimes, always swimming upstream.

            My guess on your locale is rural N FL, if Alachua, Newberry maybe. If not, Mt. Airy, NC? Tell Aunt Bea I said hello.

          • Islander March 31, 2021 at 8:24 am #

            Ron Anselmo: Crescent Beach, very nice area.
            I love the area around St. Augustine.
            I have friends in South St. Augustine.
            Above the Mangrove Line.
            The beautiful stretches of Atlantic Ocean beaches.

            But I think there are a lot of snowbirds or whatever they are called from the blue North (such as Mass.) in St. Augustine—I expect also in your area. They spend the winter down there.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 12:23 pm #

          Ron,

          LOL! Not sure exactly what you were getting at here, but just let me add that those people are certainly fucked up!

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 12:59 pm #

            D – I was getting at, not only their virtue-signaling, but their ridiculous insinuations. So if they have a yard sign that says, “Murder is wrong”, if I don’t have one in my yard, the inference is that I’m OK with murder. Dumbasses.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 3:23 pm #

            Ron, that’s it exactly.

            The sin of omission. How dare you not virtue signal exactly the same as they do? It’s like basically admitting your pro-murder, a racist, and literal Hitler.

          • Ron Anselmo March 31, 2021 at 2:11 am #

            Mary, have you been talking with some of my neighbors? I haven’t admitted it for the obvious reasons, but nevertheless, they assume it’s so. Sad for them, there’s no vaccine for stupid.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 6:06 pm #

          How can you not hate? Such people are either saints or sickos. And the latter out numbers the former. But in general, I just don’t believe them. They have a lot of hate – for Trump and Whites who don’t follow their cult.

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 11:26 pm #

            Yes Janos, their hate for both is visceral. So bad that they can’t even see how bad Biden, Ho’ Harris and their handlers are screwing everything up. Blind with hate, in addition to ignorance.

          • Wizard of the Saddle April 1, 2021 at 12:28 am #

            Cult is exactly the right word for these drones. Hell, the old Hare Krishna’s from the 1970’s weren’t even as totally brain dead as the Wokesters are.

            When they finally bring on the long dreaded Second Civil War I fully expect that millions of thoroughly disgusted gun owners will declare an open season with no bag limit on these assholes.

          • ThorsHammer April 3, 2021 at 4:23 pm #

            Fortunately there is a cure for Wrong Thought. The Cure has been tested for centuries during the Inquisition and by countless regimes on all sides of various Curtains. It doesn’t work very well for it’s intended purpose but is quite effective in population control.

            So here we go with an American example of Re-Education.

            Clear Water High School—Florida

            “A call for re-education or expulsion of students who fail or refuse to wear a face covering”. (In a state where the Governor never approved a mask mandate and has lifted all previous closures and restrictions,

            https://summit.news/2021/04/01/students-at-florida-high-school-warned-they-will-be-re-educated-if-caught-not-wearing-a-mask/)

            If the term re-education is familiar it usually refers to the methods of compliance in totalitarian regimes like North Korea or the Gulag during Stalinist Soviet Union.

            A few facts for those who spent the past year meditating in a cave and thus have not had their connection to logic permanently severed.

            1- The incidence of death from the Corvid19 virus among school age children is so minute as to resemble that from lighting strike.
            2- Masks have no medical benefit in preventing the transmission of Corvid19. Simple logic. The virus is so small that it passes straight through the openings in all masks . Minus 4x in the case of a perfectly fitted n95 mask to minus 1,000x for a cloth balaclava.

            Wearing a face covering to prevent Corvid19 transmission is about as effective as nailing chicken wire over your windows to keep the mosquitos out. But it certainly works in signaling that you are willing to follow almost any order of the State, whether it be accepting transparent fraud in the place of an election or marching straight over Lemming Cliff into a nuclear fireball because of Putin Bad.

        • Rulo Deschamps March 29, 2021 at 7:06 pm #

          Ron, you must be in a different corner of N FL than me. Where I’m at, there were never any “blue” signs to start with. And dig this: over half of residents still have their “Trump 2020” signage up.

          That’s a strong message right there. “Here’s another one who will not accept the new order of things, who sees the current regime as illegitimate”.

          And they don’t work in the financial sector, or in the “smart” home automation sector, or advertising, or academia. They raise food: cattle and poultry, peanuts, produce. Not sure how those two observations are related, but I think they are.

          • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 12:10 am #

            Rulo, I remember seeing a post of yours, saying you split time in S FL & N FL. We have much in common, I was born & raised in Broward County, when the western half of the county was mainly cattle & citrus groves – familiar also with then agricultural communities of Homestead & western Palm Beach County. All unrecognizable to me now.

            Now live in St. John’s County – generally heaven on earth – and was hoping you might land here – 37K acres under agricultural production of one sort or another. We live on the very eastern coast, 300 yards from the ocean.

            SJC is heavily conservative – about 120K (R) & maybe 35K (D), and as you say, many do not recognize Biden as President and still fly Trump flags.

            There are two small enclaves (the only 2 municipalities in the county) City of St. Augustine proper (pop. 15K) and City of St. Augustine Beach (pop. 8K) – both riddled with blue cancer. The balance of the county, rural & conservative.

            Retired Boomers, riding bikes with matching helmets, going to local farmer’s markets, being seen, being trendy, but looking down on the local farmers – some families here since the 1600’s.

            They all need to go back where they came from, ideologically speaking. Like-minded immigrants welcome as long as we don’t have to hear about how they “do it up north”. If so, I remind them that I-95 North is only about 10 minutes away.

            Travel the N FL backroads occasionally, and would love to see your place. If you favor music, listen to J.J. Grey – some of the best Southern soul music ever – bona fide Florida native with unmatched talent. If you get over to St. Augustine, by all means, look me up – local beer & local lunch on me.

          • Rulo Deschamps March 30, 2021 at 7:30 pm #

            Hello again, Ron. JJ Grey, brilliant. Wife is a FL cracker and into John Prine, Merle Haggard. I come from punk rock, but for a long time now can only tolerate Brahms & Chopin; however, my wife’s tastes are influencing me, and we both liked your suggestion. That road on one of the videos we watched looks just like our country roads that take us home in NCFL.

            We’re a stone’s throw from the banks of the historic Suwannee river. Minutes from a number of breathtaking natural springs. We’ll take your offer seriously, as we’ve heard good things about St John’s but haven’t visited yet. And we offer the same in return. Incl a cabin to crash & some Argie BBQ & wine. I’m sure there’s a way to make contact privately when the time comes.

            SWFL has been our bread and butter for decades, but it’s toast. Gone. Same as what you mention, people from elsewhere pouring in a thousand a minute and bringing their ways and their ideologies without even knowing that you wear light color clothes and a hat in the sun, not black slacks & Gucci & perfume, and never flip flops if you’re in real FL w snakes & fireants, and please know that that fish you’re dining on for top $ as fresh and local is not snook but tilapia from Thailand, by the way. Our clam & oyster farmer friends tell us the stories… nothing you buy is what you think you’re buying nowadays. Above all, the development. Constant and pervasive, maddening and polluting, toxic mushrooms of strip mall and golf, gated community and high rise replacing everything. The groves are but a distant memory, and farming only remains in Immokalee & Homestead, all done by slave, excuse me, migrant labor. Every resource is exhausted except $. There’s always new $ pouring in to ruin the place some more.

            Anyway, we still need the $ that’s here, but our plan is almost complete. It will be hard to start fresh at our age, but we’ll be up North permanently within a year, we hope. Right now we spend a little time there every month and get it ready, make some contacts. One foot in each end of the state right now, hoping reality doesn’t kick me in the balls while spread out in such an uncomfortable position. Meaning things don’t go too crazy this summer and we have time to complete our move. Maybe too much to ask, but if the SHTF we’re ready to move on a moment’s notice. The mega-development of the South will be no place to weather a storm.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:20 am #

        family member and a close friend both declare they will not discuss politics–presumably will not discuss WITH YOU for fear of being outclassed.
        with BLM folks, they will discuss.

      • SW March 29, 2021 at 10:26 am #

        That is correct — “no human is illegal” in their own country.

      • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:09 am #

        We’ve got more than a few of those holier-than-thou signs up here as well. When I see tents popping up on those people’s lawns I’ll actually take that sentiment seriously. Until then, I consider it to be nothing more than more cheap virtue signaling.

        • Ricechex March 29, 2021 at 11:25 am #

          All of those signs are prolific in my neighborhood, and the BLM signs too.

          Indeed they are putting their money where their mouth is now, as this is San Diego and the San Diego Convention Center is now housing those illegal kids you hear about at the border.

          San Diego Unified School District is desperately seeking substitute teachers at $200 a day to work at the Convention Center presumably to “teach” the children.

          One of the largest nonprofit agencies in San Diego got one of the contracts to staff it…..they are hiring 40 full time workers this week, 21 and over, high school diploma, no arrest record, Spanish speaking a plus. $25 per hour.

          All the kids are applying for asylum and curiously, many of the kids will be placed with families and host families, but more will be coming in and they leave.

          • abbybwood March 29, 2021 at 1:24 pm #

            This reminds me of one of President (cough) Biden’s most recent edicts on the border crises: No criminal background checks needed for social workers coming to visit children.

      • Epicur March 29, 2021 at 6:07 pm #

        “No human is illegal”

        I wonder if they would say that after someone broke into their home.

    • Pete March 29, 2021 at 9:52 am #

      Water will be key. 1 week.

    • rainmaker March 29, 2021 at 10:14 am #

      Hey malthuss – do you want a depression era recipe for roasted coon?…

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:55 am #

        roast tofu and wild greens.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:26 am #

      Interestingly, there has been a lunatic veterinarian running around campaigning on killing off all the white-tailed deer to eliminate Lyme disease.

      Many people e that Lyme Disease escaped from a laboratory on an island near Lyme, Connecticut.

      Many communities heavily affected by the tick-borne illness are in favor of hunting and killing off the deer, and many more are in favor of eradicating deer because of the hazard of automobile/deer collisions.

      People move into the areas where the deer are numerous, and then object to the way the animals interfere with their commutes, and also how they come into their yards to forage in times of drought.

      Nelson DeMille wrote a novel which advanced that Plum Island Disease theory.

      He abruptly switched publishers when his The Cuban Affair book came out, he didn’t elaborate but I wondered if he was finally running up against woke media.

      All these things tie in with topics Mr. Kunstler has been writing about.

      Lyme Disease, I used to wonder about that, my New York Senators didn’t get as concerned about an increasing health hazard in my state as they did about Ebola and Zika.

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 10:43 am #

        Does that mean we can eradicate “Legionnaire’s Disease” by killing all members of the American Legion? I sense the left wingers would embrace the idea.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:54 am #

          Haven’t they died off by now?

          BTW, Legionnaire’s Disease still crops up now and then, after all this time, and frequently in the places where you are likely to find all your “public health experts”.

          Hospitals, for instance.

      • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 10:52 am #

        According to this article I read years ago, it’s the people who are the problem and not the deer.

        https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/01/the-lyme-wars

        (Saratoga Springs gets a mention in the first paragraph!)

        “Deer are not Ixodes’s most important host, but they have come to symbolize the spread of Lyme, and represent an ecology that has changed dramatically in the past thirty-five years. “Once you have Lyme disease in the area, and once you start to carve up the forest into little bits, and especially when the fragmentation is done by suburban development, you get an increase in Lyme risk,” Richard Ostfeld told me recently when I met with him at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook, New York. Ostfeld, a senior scientist there, has studied Ixodes for more than a decade.

        “The best host for the tick and pathogens is not deer but white-footed mice,” he said. “And they do beautifully when you chop the forest into bits. They thrive. And competitors do not.”

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:02 am #

          Interesting, we are already “at war” with each other around a disease, just on a smaller scale than with the COVID.

        • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 12:18 pm #

          So after the deer, they can kill all the mice. (Good luck finding them all). Really, the solutions some people come up with. Like worldwide house arrest for healthy people. Since new strains of Covid keep popping up (or so they say) the vaccinations and quarantines can go on until the end of time.

          By the way, GA, are they really limiting foreign travel from the UK to people who have “a good enough reason” to travel abroad?
          https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/its-officially-now-offense-leave-england-other-absurdities

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 1:11 pm #

            Did they suggest killing the mice? I haven’t read the article since 2013 so I can’t comment on whether anyone offered that solution. I certainly don’t recall it. I can’t fault them for coming to a conclusion about the cause of the problem though.

            This seems to me, hm, the same sort of mentality that says because the ‘solutions’ proposed for climate change aren’t practical/feasible etc. etc. that I’m supposed to belief AGW isn’t a thing. My brain can cope with the notion that people chopped up woods to build houses, allowing white-footed mice to thrive and spread Lyme disease, and still believe that the only ‘solution’ is to check yourself over every time you come into the house.

            Since you’ve added an extraneous bit about travel restrictions from England, I assume you’re just in attack mode generally, so I’ll leave you to ask someone English (Slugoon will give you just the diatribe you want). I said quite a lot about Covid restrictions/vaccines and so on on the previous thread, so I’ll give it a miss, thanks.

          • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:03 pm #

            Believe it or not, I was not in “attack mode”. I was wondering if the article cited exaggerated the travel restrictions or not. It’s rare, but slanted reporting has been known to happen with the alt-right news media.

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 6:59 pm #

            Just a couple of points, hm, since I don’t want to get into another long Covid back-and-forth …

            It seems it’s only been since 12 March that UK travellers have been allowed into France (for example) for anything other than what the French consider a very valid reason, so I’m not sure why the UK is to be the particular butt of criticism/sarcasm or whatever on this and related matters. And you need a negative test to get into France. This is an international problem.

            And I’m sure you’re aware that France currently has more people hospitalised and more people on ventilators than at any time since the start of the pandemic. Other countries, e.g. Poland, find themselves in a similar position, with the British (Kent) variant mostly being the cause of the increase in cases.

            I have no solutions to offer for the dual imperatives for countries to manage their hospitals and for people to do whatever they want. No solutions at all.

            Re your article, it’s a bit bitty, but this bit stuck out for me, because it’s typical of the way journos on both or all sides trade in half truths:

            “By the way, these new rules come despite Members of Parliament acknowledging in debate yesterday that 95% of Brits over the age of 60 have been vaccinated.

            This means that the most vulnerable population has been administered a vaccine that they insist is safe and effective.

            So… why the harsh lockdown rules?”

            The number of Brits fully vaccinated is around 3.5 million. It is the number of partially vaccinated Brits that is around 10 times that. The public health authorities famously decided that it would be better if more people had some immunity as quickly as possible than that a smaller number of people had total immunity. Hence most people are like me, my husband and other members of my family (the seniors, anyway) in being only partially vaccinated, with a likely gap of up to 12 weeks between doses. And while I feel better partially vaccinated than not vaccinated at all, I guess maybe that’s at least one reason for the gradual nature of the release from lockdowns.

            Not that I am endorsing anything at all – just sayin …

          • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 9:04 pm #

            Thank you, GA, although your answer was less than crystal clear. I’m not interested in quibbling over how many Brits are fully or partially vaccinated.

            My interest is in the human rights aspect of travel. Here’s how I see it. Maybe I want to go visit Switzerland. The Swiss are under no obligation to let me in. It’s their country; their rules. I’m an outsider.

            But the American authorities sure the hell don’t have the right to keep me here. The Communist countries during the cold war reserved the right to hold their populations in bondage. We condemned it then. I fear we are embracing the concept now. To me that’s a very big step towards a totalitarian dystopia.

            I hope you can see the fundamental difference between denying entry visas to outsiders and forbidding your own citizens to leave.

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 5:35 am #

            But the American authorities sure the hell don’t have the right to keep me here. The Communist countries during the cold war reserved the right to hold their populations in bondage.

            That is quite a poor analogy … you are not being prevented from leaving a country for punitive or political reasons – it’s a public health issue. I appreciate the lunar right doesn’t accept there is a public health issue, but most of the people do.

            It would be good to jump down from the “freedom” high-horse for a while (it doesn’t float anyway), and look at a community-driven public health solution. What real men & women do.

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2021 at 6:07 am #

            I do see the difference, hm, and in principle I quite agree with you, if we take any annoying facts out of the way.

            I’m guessing the annoying facts would include infections people might bring back in with them. I believe there is provision now for people to stay in quarantine hotels when they get back to the UK, at their own expense (as has been the case all along in e.g. Singapore). Previously (i.e. for an entire year) people were just asked to quarantine and many of them didn’t bother, as is the British way, because it wasn’t followed up in any way.

            Anyway, I’m guessing there are enough managed quarantine hotels near airports to cater for those currently able to travel for ‘approved’ reasons, but maybe not enough for the entire population if they decided to all go on holiday at once.

            Just guessing.

          • Slugoon March 30, 2021 at 7:42 am #

            Remind me, what was the point of the vaccines again?

          • hmuller March 30, 2021 at 8:58 am #

            “That is quite a poor analogy … you are not being prevented from leaving a country for punitive or political reasons – it’s a public health issue”.

            Tekapo,

            If I leave the USA, how am I a health problem to American authorities? I may become a health problem for the country I enter, but it’s their decision to let me in or not.

            I wasn’t aware of any clause in the Constitution that says a flu bug terminates our rights and freedoms. Even if everything THEY say about Covid is true (a truth which changes constantly) our rights come from God, not Doctor Faust, I mean Fauci. Infectious diseases were a much bigger problem 100, 200 years ago. But no one imposed defacto martial law on America and threw out the Bill of Rights.

            Shame on you, Tekapo!

            It’s truly sad how many obedient mental zombies will do whatever they are told, believe whatever they are told. Your critical discernment is in deep hibernation or possibly missing entirely.

            But by all means deride us as crazy conspiracy theorists because we see a world run by cynical liars, kleptocrats, psychopaths, and generally villainous pustules of evil..

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2021 at 10:50 am #

            “Remind me, what was the point of the vaccines again?”

            C’mon, Slugoon, I promised hm a diatribe. You’re not even trying!

            Seriously, though, I think I’m far nearer to you than I am to Boris on the ‘have vaccine – will travel’ issue, even if not on other issues. (Maybe you’re too young for that cultural reference. 🙂 )

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Gun_%E2%80%93_Will_Travel

          • Slugoon March 30, 2021 at 12:20 pm #

            As if I’d engage in speculative attacks on my government. No, I’m sitting this one out.

            I don’t think we are too far apart on most things. Apart from the B-word there haven’t been many quarrels.

            And you’re right, I had to follow the link!

          • Islander March 31, 2021 at 8:43 am #

            Yes, that is exactly it. Britain is quickly devolving into a police state. The ghoulishly grinning Tony Blair states: “A vaccine passport will bring you freedom” (paraphrase–very similar words).

            This is a very worthwhile site that I just discovered:
            https://www.ukcolumn.org/

            The three main reporters/presenters are intelligent, no earrings or ridiculous goth clothing, well-spoken and passionate in the best low-key limey way.

            On their newscast yesterday (actually from March 29) they had plenty of into on the spread of the police state in the UK and also on adverse reactions to the mRNA jabs
            . They have a new livestream at 1:00 today there, so that is about now here.
            https://www.ukcolumn.org/

            One of their reporters/analysts is David Scott, of Northern Exposure—excelllent!
            https://www.ukcolumn.org/northern-exposure

            Highly recommended to all who visit here.

        • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 2:35 pm #

          Our nephew in semi-rural Maryland contracted Lyme Disease and it wasn’t nice – quite debilitating, ending a promising sports career. Twenty years later his face still shows slight signs of Bell’s Palsy.

      • beantownbill. March 29, 2021 at 11:02 am #

        Even though I live in a burb near Boston, we have deer on our property. They stroll through our back yard. They ate our arbor vitae.
        But you know what? People here love them. We have to drive carefully because the deer jump suddenly onto the road from the surrounding woods.

        Advocating extermination is such an idiotic idea.

        We have a diverse wildlife here, only a few miles from Boston. There’re also coyotes (very brazen), lots of birds, ‘possums, turtles, groundhogs, snakes and pets like dogs and cats outside, and others I forget. Very pleasant, except for the biggest pests: humans.

        • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 11:49 am #

          Most communities embrace their wildlife, or try to. When it goes south is when some big mouths with money or connections decides to make a stink, then you get what Beryl of Oyl is talking about… it doesn’t take much to get the nature-haters feeling some power, and then the tide turns.

          Communities really need to fight against this. I’m in Boise, and so far, even during unprecedented development (I can’t believe how fast I’m seeing new neighborhoods/subdivisions popping up), the neighbors all appreciate and want to protect the wildlife.

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 9:28 pm #

            I’m in Boise, and so far, even during unprecedented development (I can’t believe how fast I’m seeing new neighborhoods/subdivisions popping up), the neighbors all appreciate and want to protect the wildlife.

            How do all these new residents make a living?

            We stayed at Red Fish Lake Lodge for a few nights – it was lovely.

          • MaryV March 31, 2021 at 6:55 pm #

            People are working remotely, so they move out of their expensive home in CA and buy a much cheaper one here. Probably live off the profit…

            Or they work for themselves, etc.

            California hemhorraged probably millions of people, and a LOT of them are here.

        • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 7:47 pm #

          An enormous Black Bear appeared on my property on Sat., lumbering around like he owned the place, which, in a way, he does.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:21 pm #

            Wow, fantastic!

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 9:25 pm #

            We saw news footage of a black bear yesterday – in some snowy New England neighborhood – strolling on to a rear deck and getting into a nice hit spa. Impressive.

        • Islander March 31, 2021 at 8:51 am #

          Ha ha!
          Me, south of Boston. I live in a tick-infested area but so far (AFAIK) I have dodged the Lyme bullet. Maybe getting so disguested with the Dems that I voted for Trump is a sign of Lyme! Seriously, there are serious hypotheses that the virus or whatever it is escaped from Plum Island. It is such a shame that the name Plum Island no longer refers to beach plums in many people’s minds.

          One of the problems with deer is that their predators have been eliminated—mainly wolves. I don’t think a coyote can take on a deer. Although I hear that some coyotes have interbred with wolves (maybe in New Hampshire?) and so may be working up to going for deer and working their way south, toward Mass. They do keep down the rabbit population. Also I read that because the herd is too big, individuals are small.

          Too many deer is not good for deciduous forests. So there is definitely an imbalance there. So I think it is a good idea to increase the annual take by hunters. The meat can be distributed to elderly or community soup kitchens or kept in a communally supported freezer.

          .

      • rainmaker March 29, 2021 at 11:13 am #

        People move out to farm country where we live, then complain about the way cows smell.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:52 am #

          The government-engineered real estate bubbles exacerbate their at problem.

          We had a lovely small working farm in a suburban area near me.

          A man bought a formerly wooded piece of property across from the farm, and had a mini-villa constructed on it.

          He then took the woman who owned the farm to court over the noise her rooster made, and he won.

          Schoolchildren used to make field trips to that farm, where they learned history and self-reliance lessons.

          • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 12:04 pm #

            I don’t know where “their at” came from, it should be “the”.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 3:26 pm #

            Oh this chaps my hide… so typical too.

      • aibohphobia March 29, 2021 at 4:34 pm #

        Several years ago, there was a suggestion to import packs of wolves into the Baltimore Metro area– but it didn’t get much traction. Shame really–Wolves can solve SO many urban problems. Here’s a link:

        https://www.baltimoresun.com/ph-ho-cf-letters-tschirgi-20150423-story.html

        • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:22 pm #

          All the wolves I’ve known (working with wild animal rescue, etc) are extremely shy of humans.

    • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 10:40 am #

      In that disturbing, post-apocalyptic movie “The Road” people were bar-bee-qued and eaten. I guess they had just about hunted to depletion all the forest critters.

      • Anthea March 29, 2021 at 11:54 am #

        Human prey would be much easier to kill or catch: slower, more stupid, noisier, less elusive, easily tricked.

        • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 12:20 pm #

          You’re right. I’d just put a sign in front of my house, “Mail-in Ballots Available Here”. LOL

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:22 pm #

            LOL!

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:23 pm #

            “Get your free “This House Hates Hate” lawn sign here. Details inside!”

      • Rulo Deschamps March 29, 2021 at 7:31 pm #

        HMuller, thank you (and BornToKill) for the “American Gods” suggestion a couple weeks ago. Reading it now. Very good.

        In “The Road”, a nuclear exchange has happened a few years back. That’s how it begins. A new glacial era has begun caused by the massive amounts of smoke and dust gone into the atmosphere. Vegetation and animal life are extinct, at least in the Northern Hemisphere where the story happens. That’s how I read it.

        Anything by Cormac McCarthy is worth reading. “The Road” is his only dystopian novel, an oddity. He’s an author that uses only the required words, no more, no less. He says more in one sentence than most can in a whole book. “Blood Meridian” is a good place to start.

      • Islander March 31, 2021 at 8:52 am #

        Wouldn’t it be easier to raise chickens for eggs and rabbits for meat than to venture out into the wild with weapons that one barely knows how to use?

    • tahoe1780 March 29, 2021 at 11:04 am #

      Without energy, we become hunters in loincloths chasing rabbits with sticks.

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 12:23 pm #

        It worked for Tarzan, although he liked the airier mode of travel from vine to vine.

      • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 1:59 pm #

        I could see myself in a loin cloth. The rabbits would die laughing and be easier to catch.

      • Ishabaka March 29, 2021 at 3:51 pm #

        The smart ones will rediscover the art of making snares.

      • Rulo Deschamps March 29, 2021 at 7:39 pm #

        You will not catch a jackrabbit chasing it w a stick, guaranteed. But livestock rabbits, like Flemish & New Zealands, are easy to raise and very productive. If you do it right, just a couple bucks and a half dozen females will produce more protein than you know what to do with.

        • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 1:04 am #

          Rulo, do you process your own rabbits?

          • Rulo Deschamps March 30, 2021 at 8:17 pm #

            Yes we do. In new batches we are adding pelt processing and meat preserving w/o freezer (jerky salted rabbit meat… not bad)

        • Islander March 31, 2021 at 8:56 am #

          Exactly! and rabbit stew is really very delicious.
          It is very funny to me to recollect that when I lived in Germany a number of decades ago, a friend of mine who was a traveling salesman for a textile company dreamed of getting out of the rat race by setting up a Kaninchen (rabbit) farm;/operation for raising Kaninchen. You used to seem the dressed hares hanging in the meat stalls on the Viktualienmarkt in Munich. So, definitely part of the European meat offering.

          On hindsight I have to admit that it actually was a great idea! But his wife and everyone else laughed in his face.

    • Ancianoloco March 29, 2021 at 3:14 pm #

      Funny, you mentioned about everything I was about to cover. My father would tell me stories about hunting with his uncles in 1938 Iowa. being born in 1929, that put him at about 8-9 years old. He almost died of starvation in 1933. A lot of people actually did, which history has white-washed pretty nicely. To make a long story short, by the time he was old enough to hunt, even squirrels and rabbits were hard to come by and he didn’t miss when the opportunity presented itself because bullets were unaffordable (that poor). Suffice it to say, the father I came to know could hit a quarter from 50 yards away with his .22. A skill that also served him well in Korea.

      • Rulo Deschamps March 29, 2021 at 7:42 pm #

        Anciano Loco, impressive. I like the .22 LR too, but can barely hit a can from half that distance.

    • john waber March 31, 2021 at 5:07 am #

      people get a solution on this.can get IVM, HCQ, AZI, and many more

      http://www.ziverdokitonline.com, ship worldwide

  2. NickelthroweR March 29, 2021 at 8:54 am #

    Good Morning,

    What Jim meant to say was “Atlas Shrugged for the win!”

    Of all the dystopian futures predicted, it would appear that the winner will be Atlas Shrugged with a bit of Farehneit 451 thrown in as a sick joke.

    • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:01 pm #

      I still think Brave New World has a lot of relevance – at least for the moment. People are being softly lulled into tyranny because it makes life more “convenient” and “safer” for them. And social media and iPhones are Soma. I’m sure the plebs will submit to a fatally intrusive global currency because it makes life so much easier for them.

  3. Bill of Rights March 29, 2021 at 9:14 am #

    Jim, do you think then that a) this is a good time to install solar panels? and b) should a battery be included in case the electrical grid is down for a long time?

    • Rodster March 29, 2021 at 10:05 am #

      Solar panels and batteries all require fossil fuels. You might have them now but will the resources be available in the future for maintenance and repairs?

      • tahoe1780 March 29, 2021 at 10:50 am #

        Don’t forget the inverters. Can be the weak link with the shortest warranty. I wonder how production of them is faring, given the shortage of chips?

        • daytrip March 29, 2021 at 11:32 am #

          You can still have lights and other items run on DC, which still works when the inverter clicks off.

          • feralandroid March 29, 2021 at 12:15 pm #

            I have a freezer that will run on 12volt DC. You can plug a solar panel or battery directly into it.

            It won’t last the entire long emergency, but might make the trip down a little easier.

          • Bill of Rights March 30, 2021 at 9:22 am #

            Thanks for the interesting DC option suggestion.

    • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:02 pm #

      This is starting to sound like one of those Women’s World agony columns! Jim, I think my husband’s playing fast and loose. Will kinky lingerie win him back? Not laughing at your, BoR – it’s been a long day.

  4. thirdcoastlegend March 29, 2021 at 9:22 am #

    “Build back better,” is forced de-industrialization imposed by the Greenie utopians in charge, who are actually watermelons.

    They don’t care if they genocide 90% of the human population, as long as they can flit about in their private jets and Teslas.

    The watermelons and their experts have no real scientific or technical knowledge, so they don’t realize their flitting about requires enormous amounts infrastructure in its own right.

    • Rodster March 29, 2021 at 10:39 am #

      Notice how quiet, Greta Thunberg has gotten since Klaus Schwab is now looking to bring about her dystopian world? She thinks it will usher in a world free of fossil fuels but she along with the other green idiots don’t realize that our current existing world came about because of fossil fuels.

      What she is likely to get is a world where the few left go looking for her and Klaus along with the other WEF members who turned the current world into a nightmare.

      • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 3:28 pm #

        She also got caught having a car full of plastic.

        • Rulo Deschamps March 29, 2021 at 7:49 pm #

          MaryV, I always thought the plastic apocalypse is a problem orders of magnitude bigger than global climate change. Very little is said about it, though.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:26 pm #

            I agree, it’s huge. And in 1 day, all these “green new deal” Dems like Gavin Newsom destroyed a 10-year fight in CA to get rid of plastic bags in stores… without any science backing it up whatsoever. The impact will be huge.

          • tully March 30, 2021 at 6:29 am #

            Agreed. Plastic waste has also struck me as a bigger issue than climate change. Thanks to covid, a year ago most stores banned reusable bags, and coffee places stopped taking reusable cups. With indoor dining banned or reduced, curbside and carry out meals became huge. More styrofoam and plastic waste generated.

            Then add the arrival of sheep droppings everywhere. Pretty sure those things are not biodegradable.

          • Islander March 31, 2021 at 9:00 am #

            Covid19 has basically destroyed the gains made over a decade or more to reduce the plastic and wastage in our daily use.

            Nuts. The amount of plastic debris littering the roadways has now been amplified by throw-away masks.

      • Uncle Bob March 29, 2021 at 4:10 pm #

        Old Klaus should’ve gotten his ass in a major jam with his utterance that “by 2030, you’ll have nothing — and you’ll like it!” Instead, the country that “makes the world safe for democracy” was busy with mental masturbation over ORANGE MAN BAD, social scores proving they’re good people (how ironic, given the “good people hoax,” and “Joe Biden is a genius.”

  5. akmofo March 29, 2021 at 9:26 am #

    What are the big employers in the US?

    1/ Government mafia/do nothing industry
    2/ Weapons industry
    3/ Auto industry
    3/ “Health” industry
    4/ Paper-shuffling insurance/finance industry
    5/ Restaurant industry
    6/ Retail sales industry
    7/ Travel industry

    Do you see a healthy future for any of these with the end of the petrodollar and $800 bil/yr the US spends on the upkeep of globalization? I don’t.

    So what happens next? Countries without oil die off and disappear. That would be mostly Europe Japan China India North Africa Australia.

    • bluekayak March 29, 2021 at 9:57 am #

      Australia has an ass-ton of coal. They’ll be a useful Chinese colony, supplying the Middle Kingdom with fuel, grain and chubby blonde concubines.

      • benr March 29, 2021 at 10:09 am #

        Coal even low Sulphur coal is all but outlawed in the wicked western world.

        • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 10:59 am #

          Even laws will be outlawed in the coming western world.

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 11:00 am #

            By which I mean if there is coal there it will be mined, assuming it can be reached by whatever technology and/or energy is available.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:17 am #

        Ass-ton…is that a metric system valuation?

        I presume it’s roughly equivalent to the American “fuckload”?

        • daytrip March 29, 2021 at 11:36 am #

          It’s part of the new Woke system.

        • Anthea March 29, 2021 at 11:56 am #

          Clearly you don’t know your metric system.

          A fuckload is ten times a shitload.

          A shitload is ten times a buttload.

          • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 1:10 am #

            Yes, yes, but what about an ass-ton? That was the original question.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 3:00 pm #

            Clarification is needed, for sure.

            I’d venture to guess that an ass-ton would be 2,000 shitloads.

        • Uncle Bob March 29, 2021 at 4:22 pm #

          I think so, but both are lesser quantities than a metric fuckton.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:18 am #

        so does UK but are they allowed to mine it?

        • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 10:43 am #

          Yes, but how long do they remain English speaking and are still called the UK? I’m sure Mr Green will be updating us on their defence budget numbers.

          • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:56 am #

            MS Green

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 11:06 am #

            She be in Singapore

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 11:26 am #

            Well, I would, Mr Mofo, but you’ve just asked upthread how long we thought the weapons industry would last, so I’ll wait until you give me figures before I wonder what it is you think the UK’s defence budget (Boris has come over all defence-spendy – have you not been following?) is going to keep people from turning up in small boats in the dead of night to our 18,000 miles of coast. Should we nuke ’em, do you think? Or just conventionally bomb them?

            BTW, it’s Ms Alba to you. 🙂

            I don’t know who Mr Green in but he seems to have got under your skin.

            https://www.gov.uk/government/news/defence-outlines-2030-vision-for-the-armed-forces

            So, while small export businesses are crashing right, left and centre because of Brexit regulations, and we were £2 trillion in debt before Covid – and we’re splurging on HS2 because big shiny project – and we’re getting a third runway at Heathrow to move goods to the other side of the world because we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with our nearest and biggest market – why wouldn’t we have money to spend on ‘defence’?

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 11:54 am #

            Should we nuke ’em, do you think? Or just conventionally bomb them?
            ==

            I would follow Dr Shiva’s whole system health approach and deploy them as slave labour. Saves on the transportations costs and the long distance maritime logistics.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 12:05 pm #

            BTW, it’s Ms Alba to you.
            ==

            I be using the gender neutral from now on. Don’t want to offend my betters. Ok, Green?

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 12:32 pm #

            “Born with the moon in cancer
            Choose her a name she will answer to
            Call her green and the winters cannot fade her … ”

            🙂

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 12:41 pm #

            Applause, applause, life is our cause

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:43 pm #

            Alba: Name of poem?

          • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 2:17 pm #

            it’s a song from Joni Mitchell’s album Blue.

            https://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=146

            She was writing/singing about the baby she had and kept secret. Little girl who was adopted but reappeared in adulthood, I believe.

    • shotho March 29, 2021 at 9:59 am #

      I doubt the human species depends on fossil fuel for its survival.

      • benr March 29, 2021 at 10:08 am #

        At this level of human habitation?
        Last time I looked not a lot of farms use oxen and horse power to pull the plow, plant the fields or even pick most of the crops.
        When is the last time big Aggra used manure instead of petro distillates to fertilize the fields?
        Can you get your avocado/oranges/apples/pears from California or Chile where ever you happen to live right now by horse and buggy?
        Even steam powered supply deliveries stopped using wood to heat the water.
        Most of the world uses petroleum to power the grid and heat/cool their homes.
        Yeah going to be a hungry world when the bullshit renewables all rolled out as the only way to power the world.

        • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:22 am #

          “When is the last time big Aggra used manure instead of petro distillates to fertilize the fields?”

          Take a drive through rural Wisconsin in the early spring and late fall…may not be Big Aggra (great rapper name, btw), but big farms nonetheless. And its…noticecable.

          • abbybwood March 29, 2021 at 1:40 pm #

            I love the smell of manure and farms.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 2:45 pm #

            You get used to it, yes. And it beats having a nearby petroleum refinery by far.

          • Ancianoloco March 29, 2021 at 3:21 pm #

            Cows, in the dairy state??? Astonishing!

        • neurodoc March 29, 2021 at 10:26 am #

          ‘Yeah going to be a hungry world when the bullshit renewables all rolled out as the only way to power the world.’

          I run a small greenhouse with a solar power system. Thought I would look into running my whole house with solar. Brought in a electrical consultant, not a solar sales agent, to assess. He basically told me that with high efficiency panels, we could run the whole house with solar but we would have no yard left at all due to having solar panels all over the roof and the WHOLE YARD (3/4 acre). That tells the story of solar; wind is even less reliable and efficient in most areas. Solar power is a hobby; nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps I could find one of those dilithium crystals they used to talk about on star trek; now that would do the trick!!!

          • oswegatchie March 29, 2021 at 11:40 am #

            I have lived in a truck camper for 3 and 1/2 years. My solar consists of :
            1) 2 Battle Born 100 amp/hr lithium batteries
            2) 1 310 watt solar panel on the roof
            3) a 30 amp Victron charge controller
            4) a 2000 watt inverter

            I have used it that whole time with minimal down time due to low charging. Of course, I winter in the extreme desert Southwest. But….
            I believe the mistake people make with trying to set up a home system is not making any accommodation to cutting back usage. That’s the key, I believe, to getting a feasible working system in place. Sacrifices have to be made.

          • daytrip March 29, 2021 at 11:42 am #

            Depends on where you are located and the sunlight available there. I live off grid in Colorado and so do all my neighbors with the space of half their roof used for panels, the south-facing side, as it were. I have much less than that, but I don’t use much electricity.

          • oswegatchie March 29, 2021 at 11:45 am #

            In response to an above component concerning solar components with no oil or limited energy in general and possible supply issues in the future. We re now considering purchasing a whole new system (somewhat larger) to have in storage for future use when the need to replace comes. SInce they are devaluing the dollar so rapidly, we may as well get something usefull with what we have while there is supply and also while our dollar is still able to buy something valuable.

          • feralandroid March 29, 2021 at 12:21 pm #

            I lived off-grid in Hawaii for 5 years. We just had 24 panels on our garage and 16 batteries. We did have to run the generator a couple times a year when a 2 week storm came through.

            The weak link with using solar on a house are still the batteries. But we were also living a 21st century life. We could have used the 10th of the power if we really wanted to. But we had computers, routers, and TV running all the time.

          • farmgal March 29, 2021 at 2:41 pm #

            @feralandroid Very true about batteries being the weak link. We have had solar at our off grid farm for 11 years and have recently begun to replace the original batteries. Our only problem is running the well pump. We used to have a high amp cranking battery but the locals saw fit to break in and steal the inverter. Generator does the trick for now. Also spot on about making the effort to reduce use. We run lights, computers and tv in the evenings and that’s about it.

          • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 3:20 pm #

            Oswe

            Like a “character” from Bruder’s ‘Nomadland’?

          • Bytes March 29, 2021 at 11:25 pm #

            Unless you are using an abnormal amount of electricity and are located way, way north, what you are saying makes no sense. I have easily covered by electrical load with around half of my roof. I am located in the middle of the country.

          • Redneck Liberal March 31, 2021 at 8:11 pm #

            “Bullshit renewables” – I’m getting tired of all the Cassandras of our energy future. The key element in successful distributed electrical energy systems is battery storage. Lithium-Ion is pretty limited and difficult to manage, especially the end-of-life challenges.

            There’s another answer now – Liquid Metal Batteries:

            https://ambri.com/

            Here’s an interview with one of the main developers (a scientist = magician?):

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRyo0Nr7CrY

            Yes, I believe in ‘magic’, in the Arthur C. Clarke sense.

        • farmgal March 29, 2021 at 2:35 pm #

          It will definitely be a much more seasonal world. But it really hasn’t been that long ago that such was the case. When I was a kid in Atlanta oranges were a treat at Christmas and we weren’t even that far from Florida. In a WMBH every waking moment will be spent in the cultivation of enough calories to last one more day. I see the results of my quarter acre garden each year and marvel that the food produced might last a month or two at the most and that is only for two or us.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:18 am #

        u r delirious.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:23 am #

        Shotho – Historically? No. But as benr points out, historically there have never been 7+ billion souls trying to get by.

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:02 am #

        7.7 billion people now exist. The reason why there are 7.7 billion is oil. If there was no petroleum based world, such as 1880s, there will be 1 billion people able to be supported. We do not even have room in the traditional sense to bury all 6.7 billion folks. The remainder will live at the lifestyle of the 1880s, farming particularly. I do not believe that the people of today, even 1 billion of them can survive. Without the goodness of today’s world, what is the point, anyway?

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 11:08 am #

        shotho,

        If starting tomorrow there were no fossil fuels at all, humanity would not perish. Probably, well over 90% of humans would die off, but our species would survive and enter a kind of “dark ages”.

        But what concerns me now is that for the financial institutions to survive, oil must not get too cheap. So by pure coincidence (we must not be conspiracy theorists) events keep happening to prop up the oil price.

        1) Those technologically savvy Houthi tribesmen launch intermediate range missiles 500 miles into the Saudi capital.

        2) A super container ship gets stuck in the Suez canal.like a fat lady dancing the macarena in a phone booth. (If you’re too young to remember phone booths or the macarena, never mind)

        3) Today, we read the headline “Massive fire engulfs Indonesian oil refinery after explosion”

        I promise you in the days ahead more events will occur which shore up the oil price.

        • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 1:14 am #

          4) Power outage in Texas a few weeks back – shut-in the refineries.

      • Ishabaka March 29, 2021 at 4:02 pm #

        So, “Stunning and brave sex workers”, or “Victims of human trafficking” – which one is it today?

      • wolfbay March 29, 2021 at 6:40 pm #

        There are many nearly failed states around the world. There will be people wanting to migrate until the whole world is equally third world. Human trafficking is a growth industry.

    • RocketDoc March 29, 2021 at 1:45 pm #

      Half of Israel is a desert. Ya’ll cool if your neighbors were chill?

    • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:06 pm #

      All we have as reference is the past. The Roman Empire died because of a loss of centralizing and generally agreed values (sound familiar?) and an increasingly powerful bureaucracy that combined totalitarian instincts with gross incompetence. I think we see there from here. What came afterwards, and is probably our best bet, was a fragmentation into smaller groupings. The only problem is that this kind of metamorphosis is almost never peaceful. I don’t see the NWO psychopaths pulling this off, but their failure will not be peaceful.

      • Ancianoloco March 29, 2021 at 3:27 pm #

        Revolutionary France is a great example of what happens when a small group of “elites” seize power and attempt to govern with their nutty ideas. Yeah, the “woke’ of their time.

      • Rulo Deschamps March 30, 2021 at 8:22 pm #

        Hereward, my son is a smart one, he got a scholarship, and he was telling me the other day of what he’s been studying with a British professor that surely will see his days in academia end soon in view of what he teaches: that every civilization that collapsed got obsessed in the final 50 yrs w sex and gender issues, sexual perversions, etc… all of them, incl Rome…

  6. teddyboy46 March 29, 2021 at 9:57 am #

    We walk merrily down the path to sweet & sour socialism. To give evidence to JHKs predictions. McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendys all accept EBT cards as payment. They have in effect become the cafeteria of the poor who already receive UBI. It is called Welfare and it comes with a host of other programs. SNAP, WIC, ECT.

    In the movie Demolition Man. Taco Bell won the franchise wars. So everyone ate ate Taco Bell for every meal.

    • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:17 am #

      how many federal gibs me dat programs are there? 500?

    • SW March 29, 2021 at 10:33 am #

      And we wonder why children are getting diabetes, high blood pressure and obese at younger and younger ages. Where did we go wrong?!

      From what I’ve been told, these fast food franchises are set up in some cafeterias and all schools I’ve seen have vending machines with soft drinks. Dietitians have known for a long time soft drinks are directly implicated in diabetes.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:57 am #

        Dietitians have known for a long time soft drinks are directly implicated in diabetes.

        How so? I think you are wrong, having spoken to one. the link is not direct. sugar does not cause diabetes.

        • SW March 29, 2021 at 11:17 am #

          “A case-cohort study from 2013 investigating the relationship between sugar-sweetened drinks and diabetes compared data about the soda consumption habits of 11,684 people with type 2 diabetes to those of 15,374 people who did not have diabetes.

          The team found that people who consumed one or more sugar-sweetened drinks every day had a higher risk for diabetes than those who drank less than one a month. Even when energy intake and body mass index (BMI) were accounted for, the high soda drinkers still had a higher risk for type 2 diabetes.”

          https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259604#causes

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:17 am #

          Most soft drinks do not contain what we think of as sugar.

          We are all pretty much aware of the fact that diabetics have to avoid sugar, but from a friend of mine getting that diagnosis I also became aware of just how much diabetics have to watch their consumption of all carbohydrates.

          A low fat, high carbohydrate diet like the government tells you to eat, is not as “healthy” as people think.

          I heard from a relative recently, he just had emergency surgery for his heart.

          He was astonished that he had a condition associated with poor habits, as he eats the right foods, doesn’t smoke, gets plenty of outdoor exercise, and hardly consumes any alcohol.

          I could have told him what the problem was, but he would not have believed me.

        • tahoe1780 March 29, 2021 at 11:24 am #

          Sugar causes high insulin leading to insulin resistance, obesity, metabolic syndrome and….wait for it … diabetes.

          blob:https://www.youtube.com/4c577615-8ac7-45a9-9d94-74df4a70790a

        • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 11:57 am #

          Refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup are two of the very worst things you can put in your body.

          And yes, that plus bad fats and carbos such as in white bread will definitely lead to horrible health issues, including diabetes.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 12:18 pm #

          From my experience, you’re wrong on this one Malthuss.

        • feralandroid March 29, 2021 at 12:28 pm #

          My ex-wife had to see a dietician when she was pregnant with our first son. This dietician was over-weight and telling us how to eat? I have been eating low-carb for 15 years and I am in great shape. I got in a argument with her when she tried to tell me the .gov sponsored food pyramid was the correct way to eat.

          Dieticians are just regurgitating what they learned in government schools.

          • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:09 pm #

            Yep. The word “expert” is becoming a perjorative term. Ask Fauci.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 2:51 pm #

            “This dietician was over-weight and telling us how to eat?”

            Lol. Sounds about right, Kind of like the line of doctors and nurses smoking out the back door at most every clinic in the nation.

            If I’m seeing a dietician and he’s fat…I’m not taking their word for much.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:35 pm #

            They suck.

            Holistic is the way to go. Real nutritionists don’t become doctors. Allopathic medicine is battle ground dressing. It’s not medicine.

            Food is medicine.

          • MaryV April 1, 2021 at 10:27 pm #

            @MrMango – one of my friends on FB just posted, he lost a close friend to the vaxx.

            Said friend got his second jab, got sick, went to sleep, never woke up. He only got it because his doctor talked him into it. Are all these doctors who convince people to get the jab and it kills them even remorseful? In this day and age, I doubt it. They seem to be drug pushers and Big Pharma minions rather than healers.

            The Hyppocratic oath seems to have gone out the window along with their morals.

        • Ancianoloco March 29, 2021 at 3:32 pm #

          Cutting out carbs, especially sugar has reversed my type Ii diabetes completely. But that is just anecdotal evidence. i still feel confident enough not to take you at your word either.

    • NickelthroweR March 29, 2021 at 10:45 am #

      Greetings,

      Back when I was a high school teacher, I had students that ate at Jack in the Box for every meal without exception. French fries and pickles are vegetables so what could go wrong?

      BTW, someone that eats fast food for every mean will soon find themselves on a lifetime (however short that may be) of prescription medications. Luckily, the taxpayer gets to foot that bill.

      Finally, it was common for the welfare moms to give their 6 and 7 year old children Redbull and Donuts before sending them off to school so that the child would be labeled bi-polar, attention deficit or hyperactive. It was not uncommon to walk into a classroom where 80% of the kids were labeled as such and it was a win win for the school because those children were excluded from the standardized testing (at that time), the school received more $$ and the welfare mom received more benefits.

      These are the real crimes against humanity.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:58 am #

        so that the child would be labeled bi-polar, attention deficit or hyperactive. SO THEY GET A FATTER CHECK FOR A DISABLED CHILD.

        • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 12:39 pm #

          When I hear talk of “racial reparations”, I think ‘what the hell!?’ We’ve been paying racial reparations for over 60 years thru many programs, handouts, free food, subsidized housing, special set asides, affirmative action, etc.

          The fruit of all this effort? Prisons stuffed to capacity, no-father wild kids, and ever greater demands for hand-outs. But if you ask Sleepy Joe and Kamala-toe; the only problem is we haven’t done it on a big enough scale yet.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:39 pm #

            Easily a dozen Marshall Plans. Blood will tell. Es la Vida!

          • Ancianoloco March 29, 2021 at 3:37 pm #

            At least $21 trillion by some estimates. Jokes on us. Most of that went to “administrators” much like any new infrastructure bill will line more pockets than actually build things.

          • hmuller March 30, 2021 at 12:40 am #

            “Two teenage girls have been charged with murder after allegedly assaulting a man with a taser and killing him during an attempted car robbery in Washington, D.C., police said last week.”

            The assailants were only 13 and 15 – and you guessed it – black.The victim a 66 yr old Pakistani immigrant and Uber driver. If the killers had been white, this would be called a hate crime. Of course, this crime is getting very little attention. It doesn’t fit the MSM narrative where Neo-Nazi white people are running wild thru the streets of America.

      • daytrip March 29, 2021 at 12:09 pm #

        Well, what do others do? Give the kids Cap’n Crunch for breakfast (pure sugar and milk), send them off to school where they get a nice chocolate milk, and make them sit down for a coupla hours. Not sure how common it is nowadays to get milk at school in the morning, but most “cereal” cannot call itself cereal because that implies that it is grains, when, in reality, it’s mostly sugar. Just type cereal lawsuit into Google and look at the class action lawsuits.

    • Rulo Deschamps March 30, 2021 at 8:25 pm #

      Eugenics, perhaps? McD’s, BK, Wendys use will shorten your life, that’s proven. It’s not even “food” in the way we understand it when we are in the kitchen figuring out what to cook for dinner. It’s grease, salt and sugar combined with flavorings and chemicals to make it addictive.

      • MaryV March 31, 2021 at 11:18 pm #

        Nailed it.

        And the addictive part of it keeps people sick, and dependent on big pharma, to live, eventually. What a racket.

        • Ron Anselmo April 1, 2021 at 1:46 am #

          Mary, the model you & Rulo describe for humans, has been so wildly profitable, that it has been stepped down to domestic pets with the same incredible profits – exact same model.

          Think about it. In the old days, there was no such thing as veterinarians on every corner – only large livestock vets – delivering foals, calves, tending to herd sicknesses, helping maintain herd health, etc.

          Dogs & cats ate table scraps & leftovers, scavenged or hunted their food – no processed pet foods. Enter Purina & Alpo and other processed foods for domestic pets.

          Now they all have sicknesses of one sort or another, enriching the cottage industry of neighborhood vets. In addition, we now have PetMeds delivered by mail & pet health insurance.

          Genius. Predatory & evil, but genius nonetheless.

          • Ron Anselmo April 1, 2021 at 1:54 am #

            Mary, additionally, from a GDP standpoint, neither you, Rulo, nor myself are nearly as economically “valuable” as a diabetic on dialysis.

            Same ol’, same ol’ – follow the money – sickness is valuable (profitable), health & wellness are not.

          • MaryV April 1, 2021 at 12:47 pm #

            Yes, genius… now dogs need specialists because their immune systems are breaking down from running around on RoundUp lawns, much like kids crammed with sugar and fried foods are getting diabetes, etc.

            Predatory and evil as it gets.

          • MaryV April 1, 2021 at 12:49 pm #

            Our health is a threat to the system, that feeds up on illness and demands patients for life, yes.

            Which is why I do my research, and I eat accordingly…

            But our immune system challenges weren’t enough for big pharma, so they got behind the trans agenda – saw great potential there. Surgeries, hormones for life, etc. what a racket. No wonder Gilead donated 4 million to boost the trans agenda!

            And now they have the mother of all profit-making: Covid19 forever. Covid 20, 21, 22, etc. They’ve already nearly doubled their fortunes (Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc.).

  7. shotho March 29, 2021 at 9:58 am #

    Scientism and technology have contributed to bring us to this point. Our faith in these ideas is boundless and every ‘solution’ to this dire forecast is based on more science and technology. These are not the solutions, they are the problem. They have given us a society that is loaded with people who are weak in body and low in character. Now, that is, admittedly, a core condition of humanity,, but history shows that those who can overcome lethargy and dependence are the ones who survive and, even, thrive.

    • Ishabaka March 29, 2021 at 4:07 pm #

      Says the person typing on computer connected to the internet. Darn that doggone science and technology!

      • Rulo Deschamps March 31, 2021 at 4:19 am #

        Ishabaka, I agree with what shotho says here. It seems to me that science & tech has become a form of religion. It can do no wrong. If it can be done, it should be done. Thus, radioactive waste, plastic pollution, a dumbing down of us via “smart” devices, etc.

        Your reaction is fairly typical of those unwilling to question the statu quo re this issue. “Go back to a cave”, in a word. If it only was so easy. Life is rarely black or white. We all have to find the point where we can function in society to some degree without being completely dependent on systems of addiction and control and dependency.

        Yes, we’re reading and writing here, which surely is better than being zombified in front of a TV screen. Yes, most of my reading is via books, but some is done here and in a couple other blogs I follow. There’s many levels of engagement with the way the world works, from the Tibetan lama to the instagram addict.

        I think the question is not whether we are wearing homespun and eating homegrown. The question is if we could. If we can maintain a sliver of independence and know how that we could go back to if we needed to. The idol that “all tech is good tech” rules supreme, and that’s not a good thing. My 2¢.

        • Wizard of the Saddle April 1, 2021 at 11:17 am #

          A sensible response to that cynical critique, and one that I embrace and practice daily.

  8. DrTomSchmidt March 29, 2021 at 9:58 am #

    Amassinfrastructure plan to insulate houses might have been a better use of the$4trillion we blew in Iraq. Building infra to preserve fossil fuels isn’t a bad idea, but we won’t do that.

    • Ishabaka March 29, 2021 at 10:19 am #

      And the best thing about home insulation is that once it’s done, it’s done – less energy is needed to heat/cool the home for as long as the home lasts.

      • DrTomSchmidt March 29, 2021 at 12:57 pm #

        There’s actually a real return on the investment, exactly. But not if oil and natgas are cheap.

  9. bluekayak March 29, 2021 at 10:01 am #

    JHK presumes the national security state will whither and become impotent. I don’t see that. The feds will Sovietize the economy and “liquidate the kulaks” in the process. Energy shortages, if they indeed come to pass, do spell game over for a big chunk of humanity. But there are still a lotta hydrocarbons out there, even if we have to start gasifying coal.

    • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 10:12 am #

      “…lotta hydrocarbons out there…” ~ bluekayak

      At what extraction cost?

      • elysianfield March 29, 2021 at 8:07 pm #

        “At what extraction cost?”

        Ron,
        If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. There are many that can.

        • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 1:22 am #

          Problem is, $70 oil tanks the economy & extractors need $70 oil to survive.

          • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 11:23 am #

            Ron,
            Exactly the point. They can make a profit at a higher cost? The wealthy will still buy. $200 per barrel? $300?

            Fill er up….

          • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 2:38 pm #

            When/if oil is at $200-$300 there will be nowhere safe to drive.

            Someone driving their convertible Lamborghini around on a bright sunny spring day?

            Not happening.

          • Wizard of the Saddle April 1, 2021 at 11:40 am #

            The answer is obvious: When the current F.I.R.E. economy finally collapses as oil rises above $70/barrel and stays there, a new economy will evolve that will fully adapt itself to the new energy reality.

            For most people, this will mean a BIG dial-down of an overly electrified modern lifestyle. Oil will still be produced, but only for more limited uses where higher extraction costs can still be recouped with much higher pricing.

            We will, most likely, move on to a slower and more sustainable lifestyle that may somewhat resemble a Steampunk world but with some residual digital world technology glaze on topography it.

            As a result, mankind will never exhaust all of the world’s petroleum reserves. Most will remain in the ground as the amount we pull out annually consistently drops with every passing year.

            I believe that the think tanks run by all of the political / social / economic elites of this world have already reached this conclusion. This is why they are all busily working to monopolize as much wealth and power as they can so that they and their offspring will be best positioned to survive the worldwide turmoil that humanity must now pass through as we rush headlong into the abyss of a global human population collapse of epic proportions.

            When all is said and done I believe that humanity will be reduced to about 500 million souls total by the time the year 2100 rolls around.

        • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2021 at 1:25 am #

          EROEI approaching 1.

    • NickelthroweR March 29, 2021 at 10:51 am #

      I disagree. You could 100% render the US military impotent if you took away oil and batteries. A bunch of sick obese feminized “victims” is not going to march around on foot doing harm to anyone.

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:20 am #

        It is 1943. FDR’s generals have told him that the US oil industry is incapable of providing enough oil to fuel two theater war. Germany is producing coal gas, to make up the difference that losing the Ploesti oil fields have made. FDR and England too go to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to make a deal. We want their oil, unfettered, and we will defend them from invasion. This was the beginning of the alliance that continues to today. Remember Desert Storm? Why do we back SA over Iran, or at least we did?

        The point is, the folks, even under Trump, that said we were independent under Trump, are foolish. Fracking is break even, any newer technology to remove oil will be a negative economy. The ME will supply us oil forever and at an increasing rate when the fracking starts running out.

        War is do or die. No one will care about how many MPG the military gets. A good sized world war could drop us into the depths of the pit of the Long Emergency. Every single gallon consumed means that it is gone, forever.

        Just like death.

      • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 11:33 am #

        Well, Bedpan Biden is recruiting pregnant women to serve on aircrews, and has ordered maternity flight suits — from China!

        • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:12 pm #

          I don’t know about fossil fuels, but there is something I can predict 100% that has no future: satire.

          • MaryV April 1, 2021 at 10:30 pm #

            The only comedian I know who hasn’t yet caved is Ricky Gervais.

        • Wizard of the Saddle April 1, 2021 at 11:52 am #

          Perhaps Biden has a secret plan to provide in-utero military training to the babies growing in their pregnant Air Force pilot Top Gun mamma’s wombs?

          Think of the great “force multiplier” effect when these newborn, kamikazi, Wokester, Ninja babies are ejected from their combat pilot mamma’s vaginas during mid-flight – plummeting towards the Earth at terminal velocity………raining screaming infantile death from above as they deliver massive dumps of baby poop on the heads of America’s enemies around the globe!

          Pure fucking genius.

          Who knew?

      • benr March 29, 2021 at 1:03 pm #

        Well all the obese Americans could be rendered to make a form of biodiesels in a pinch.
        /Sarcasm off

    • thirdcoastlegend March 29, 2021 at 11:22 am #

      Well, one thing that is working against the controllers’ desire to roll out a massively expanded digital surveillance web tied to vaxports is the growing semiconductor shortage.

      That semiconductor shortage has already idled parts of the auto and smartphone industries. Reportedly, the shortage is worsening. The Suez blockage has not helped, and any conflict in the Western Pacific will only exacerbate things.

      The typical lifespan of a server under average to above average load is only 2 to 3 years prior to replacement. So all these Internet and cloud businesses need to schedule regular replacements while they attempt to expand their platforms.

      So, on top of this, the controllers think they will roll out all these massive new databases that require servers, links between them and existing databases, and additional scanning and tracking devices into the teeth of a growing global semiconductor shortage?

      Sorry, I’m not seeing it.

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:25 pm #

        When is someone going to come out with a no frils car devoid of all these bells and whistles? A blue collar Elon Musk?

        • thirdcoastlegend March 29, 2021 at 12:51 pm #

          Right?

          A simple example of excess technology and parts that are not required are the brake pad wear sensors in modern cars, BMW being the brand I am most familiar with.

          Well, if you look at one of the good YouTube videos about BMW brake pad replacement, you will quickly realize that the brake pad wear sensor system adds over one dozen varied parts to each wheel and wheel well.

          That’s over fifty additional parts per vehicle with all the extra costs, complexity, and potential points of failure those add.

          All that could be removed and replaced with simple, old-school squeal tabs tomorrow.

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 3:15 pm #

            “That’s over fifty additional parts per vehicle with all the extra costs, complexity, and potential points of failure those add.” ~thirdcoastlegend

            There’s your answer – margins much higher & more money made on repairs after market.

            Money on cars is made on 1) dealer financing 2) after market repairs, not on the initial sale.

        • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 3:11 pm #

          Never. See just below.

          • Ron Anselmo March 29, 2021 at 3:12 pm #

            Just above, I mean.

          • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 4:42 pm #

            Mahindra in India is manufacturing jeeps based on a license they bought from Wyllis Motors in 1947. It’s pretty much identical to the original jeeps made for the armed forces in WW2. It was available in the US until recently for off road use only; now, for reasons I know not, it is not available at all. The price I believe was around $15,000 per unit.

            Brh

        • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:17 pm #

          Ever hear of India’s Tata Motors?

          The latest Tata Nano costs a mere $3,338.87. The Nano cut as many costs as it could get away with for that low base price tag. It’s a compact car with four seats and a very simple dashboard.

          See image: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=tata+nano+price

          Of course the car is illegal in the USA due to a few safety and environmental standards not met.

        • Bytes March 29, 2021 at 11:35 pm #

          The best selling EV in China is the GM produced Wuling Mini. Only costs less than 6K. Illegal to sell in the US and probably anywhere but China.

      • benr March 29, 2021 at 4:59 pm #

        My company is on its now fifth year of a four year Dell workstation lease.

        • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:38 pm #

          Yikes.

          Let’s hope the planned obsolescence doesn’t kick in.

        • thirdcoastlegend March 30, 2021 at 9:20 am #

          I hope you have duplicates of all the critical data on tape off-site!

    • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 11:31 am #

      Who are the Kulaks this time around? Us?

      • bluekayak March 29, 2021 at 12:53 pm #

        Working class self-reliant types who just want to be left the frig alone. The yeomanry.

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:21 pm #

        I thought they were loose, breezy trousers?!

        https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kulaks+pants

      • elysianfield March 29, 2021 at 8:09 pm #

        “Who are the Kulaks this time around…?”

        BRH,
        You know.

  10. patrickd March 29, 2021 at 10:10 am #

    Yikes! Things are going down the drain faster than I expected. But, if it means our military can’t murder foreign civilians at the same rate as in the past, then it’s a good thing. I suppose that the vast training of terrorists program will continue at Al-Tanf, as well as the stealing of Syrian oil. Maybe Syria will take courage and start to bomb the convoys of US oil tanker trucks leaving for Iraq… One can hope.

    • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:13 am #

      Things are going down the drain faster than I expected..you had low expectations. with J Biden, USA is finished.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:32 am #

        Would’ve been better off with J Crew. Or J Peterman.

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:24 am #

      In Africa, Mozambique I believe, ISIS is being reborn. Funny how that happens when Biden, the fool, is elected.

      BTW, is there any difference, in the world, between ISIS and the cartels in Mexico? Or the mob? Or the Deep State? Are they all just competing for the spoils of the illicit trades?

  11. malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:16 am #

    BRH,
    Top Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To
    $392,000 In 2019
    Forbes, by Adam Andrzejewski Original Article

    Being a lifeguard in California can be unbelievably lucrative. If we had only known, many of us would have packed our bags and headed west for a career on the California beach. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that lifeguards make a fortune in Los Angeles County.

    Seven lifeguards made more than $300,000 and 82 lifeguards had total earnings that exceed $200,000 in 2019, the latest year available. Fernando Boiteux was the most highly paid and earned $391,971.
    As the “acting chief lifeguard,” he out-earned 1,000 of his peers: salary ($205,619), perks ($60,452), and benefits ($125,900).

    –I knew a lifeguard, lower level, part time, at a school pool. He mentioned the boss just sat at a desk and did the bookings of guards. easiest high paying job.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:28 am #

      My guess is those lifeguard jobs are only open to those who have the right connections.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:41 am #

        Yep. Yaleys. Bonesmen, all.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:25 am #

          Yeah, and the right physiques!

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:28 pm #

          Pretty low achievers with a background like that, though. Maybe they do grooming as well?

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 11:19 am #

        In accordance with today’s prevailing ideology, we must hire lifeguards with due regard for race, ethnicity, and gender identification, etc. And we must never allow white patriarchal constructs – like the ability to swim – stand in the way of hiring the lesbian midget from El Salvador with chronic respiratory illness.

        Equality, diversity, inclusiveness, yeah baby!

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:25 am #

          Swimming is racist.

          • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 12:16 pm #

            I prefer racis’. Got a nice ring to it.

    • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 11:28 am #

      $392,000, wow! That’s almost as much as a retired State of Ct Union honcho gets for a pension. Of course, that’s for the top, well connected Dem Party Activists (who are interested in public service and willing to sacrifice for THE PEOPLE)

      Brh

  12. James Kuehl March 29, 2021 at 10:20 am #

    Kunstler is at his best today, with his rare talent for framing our present predicament in a coherent narrative. We’re like some aging boxer getting pummeled in the middle rounds who failed to recognize the end of the glory days. Next stop is a face-down nap on the canvas. If there were a consensus that globalism is defunct, and our future is smaller and local we’d have a shot at a course change. But the system is geared only for accelerating growth. As Kunstler often points out, reality overrides fantasy and few will adjust without debilitating trauma. There would be cause for optimism if there were evidence of altruism. Based on the track record of human behavior and our inability to overcome tribalism, we are more likely to descend into barbarism and savagery.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:47 am #

      They are counting on that. Better we turn on each other, than on “them”.
      There are so many more of us.

      Years ago, at the height of “the troubles”, I met an Irishman working in this country, and I asked him for his take on that.

      He only said, “when people are very poor, it is very easy to get them to fight”.

    • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 11:08 am #

      James, with all due respect, you’re failing to recognize what’s coming.
      Your future is not smaller and local.
      Not at all.
      “Globalism” has its foot to the metal.

      The higher orders, the higher powers, realize that the future of the planet requires a reset that only a unified approach can bring.

      The borders are open.
      The vaccine passport trumps the national passport.

      A society that must not only obey, but depend, on a central government for safety, income, and treatment, are societies that can be controlled.
      And they must be controlled.

      The US has finally transitioned from a crypto uniparty to a totalitarian uniparty unleashed.

      Not everyone believes it’s salvageable.
      So you’re in good company there.

      With a caveat.
      Bezos, Musk, Branson, et. al, believe your future looks better on a dead rock with an atmosphere of 95% CO2.

      • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:26 am #

        The lines are clearly drawn, that’s for sure! Remains to be seen which side will win.

      • James Kuehl March 29, 2021 at 5:59 pm #

        Right you are, 100th Avatar. We have the throttle wide open. But physics trumps philosophy. Our inability to maintain 8,000-mile supply chains and rapid depletion of raw materials are going to put a stop to our global orgy of consumerism. The US is likely to break up into smaller regional units, as described in “The Nine Nations of North America,” an insightful a 1981 book by Joel Garreau. What today’s power brokers want won’t mean a damn thing when the house of cards they are on collapses.

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:30 am #

      I think you are right about an aging populace losing their drive. I would like to add that the younger folk, who are supposed to be adding energy to the group are lazy, entitled, they think, uneducated, and as a consequence, stupid. They are an addition to the gimme crowd every graduation.

      • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 11:49 am #

        John, are you referring to

        Generation Solipsistic?

        It’s all about them
        You never existed

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:49 pm #

          Wow. Cool word.

          Yes! Each generation takes from the prior. Confrontational!

          Today’s generations seem to have lost the fire though, they want everything handed to them.

      • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:18 pm #

        You mean the kids I see everyday who all wear the standard Woke Drone uniform? Baseball hat, sunglasses, ear buds, phone in hand and of course, our beloved Face Diaper. I’m sure there are great kids out there too, but it’s a lovely, sunny springtime, and the masked kids give me the creeps.

      • SpeedyBB March 30, 2021 at 9:04 am #

        My primary field of interest for the past 60 years has been motorcycling. I watched the rise of the Japanese industry and how it simply took over the market when the British industry went belly-up. Then the Japanese, led by Honda, generated a brand-new market for their products in the early to mid-1960s. Harley was never in play (except to lobby the government to screw around with the Nips).

        In the past couple of decades I’ve noted how the formerly energetic, experimental Japanese companies have become cautious, conservative bean-counters, intent on keeping costs down while generally makng as few (expensive) new models as they can while marketing heavily to their core consumers.

        Now the Chinese have introduced a cheap (and not very fancy) set of electric motorbikes – Sur Ron and Segway (same difference). It’s exactly the sort of move the Japanese made in the 1960s, or the American car industry did in the 1930s.

        How does Japan respond? They have put together a consortium of the Big Four to decide on battery standards. Smart and logical but conservative. When this new bureaucracy figures out standards the various makers may or may not introduce electric models.

        It’s kind of eerie watching Honda / Yamaha / Suzuki / Kawasaki emulate the fossilization of both the British industries and the American “Big Three” auto industry. But it makes sense: the organization has become far more important than the product. It’s making money so screw the consumer. And ignore the competition.

  13. Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:32 am #

    I have forgotten whether I have said this before, but it looks like the places where the locally sourced foods movement really gained traction had the most draconian shutdowns and restrictions, and in some cases even riots.

    Occupancy limits destroy small business.

    • SW March 29, 2021 at 10:37 am #

      You’re definitely correct. The big box stores never shut down but local government made sure those petri-dish small stores locked up.

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 11:28 am #

        Destroy the self-supporting middle class. Make the masses poor and dependent for crumbs from big brother. Gee, could they be that evil? I don’t know; somehow I’ve gotten too dumbed down to see it. I’m used to hearing the truth from Lester Holt.

  14. MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 10:43 am #

    It is amazing how both UBI and reparations (both ridiculous concepts for decades) are now pushing their way into our lives as reality.

    Now they are actually happening, under cover of night at first. In a few years they will be understood by most to be a cornerstone of our society.

    • SW March 29, 2021 at 11:19 am #

      In a few years UBI and ongoing reparations may be the primary source of income for many people. It’s a scary thought but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.

      • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:32 am #

        I just saw another sign up in a local supermarket, urging people not to pay in cash, due to the coin shortage.

        There is no coin shortage.

        • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:19 pm #

          A brain shortage certainly.

          • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 2:54 pm #

            “There is no coin shortage.”

            I know…wtf is up with that? No one can possibly believe that story, but they keep saying it while trying to get us all to go cashless.

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:42 am #

        Over and over, do you think that just printing money and handing it to people will sell itself to the population as legitimate. Will faith in the value of the dollar continue?

        These little experiments, like Stockton, prove nothing, nothing. What is the basis for the dollar? Heck, just skip the money part altogether, open the stores up and just let people come in and take whatever they want directly. It will provide real incentive to the producers to stock the stores. IOW, folks will go to the stores to get stuff that is not there. Remember TP, paper towels and sanitary-wipes.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 12:16 pm #

          The money will be digital and it will be conditional, based on all sorts of performance and allegiance measures. As such, it will hardly be “free.” And rest assured, it will be minimal, with the constant threat of revocation as well.

          • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:37 pm #

            What are folks going to do to “earn” the value of their money? What will give value to people, ego wise, when there is nothing to accomplish?

        • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 12:43 pm #

          How did I get through my entire life without sanitary wipes?

          I mean, really, if ever there was a product that doesn’t need to exist and causes so many problems with the way people don’t dispose of it properly …

          https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-15/what-s-a-fatberg-nyc-goes-to-war-against-flushable-toilet-wipes

          I thought it was just us!

          • benr March 29, 2021 at 1:29 pm #

            Don’t forget spaghetti burgs.
            There are tons of undigested balls of pasta in the sewers per Mike Rowes dirty jobs the episode made top five dirtiest job.

        • abbybwood March 29, 2021 at 2:01 pm #

          You can do that now at some Whole Foods.

          Walk in and get what you want and walk out.

          But you will notice your debit card is $200 lighter when you get home.

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:34 pm #

        It was coming in any case. Industrialism takes jobs. Automation accelerates the trend.

        As said up threat, early and mid industrialism causes a population surge. Now put the two thoughts together – and think.

        It’s either UBI or Oh Calcutta, with the streets littered with the indigent and dying.

        Choose.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:44 pm #

          Y

          You know how you say that Capitalism creates communism as a result.

          Well, UBI will create Oh Calcutta everywhere it touches as the value of the payment falls.

          Capitalism runs out and creates socialism/communism as a remedy to the narrowing of wealth. Socialism/communism creates increasing poverty as the value of the welfare provided drops like a rock.

          Same results.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:36 pm #

            No, because you control the price of necessities. Let men compete for luxuries, positions, and honors – and leave the basics fucking alone.

            Note: I’m not dismissing overpopulation and resource scarcity. That’s a constant and also something Capitalism can’t deal with – or State Capitalism. Both systems are ultimately the same after all.

          • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:32 pm #

            “UBI will create Oh Calcutta everywhere”

            I don’t support Universal Basic Income; but I fail to see how it will lead to a revival of a 50 year old stage production – best known for its naked dancing..

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:39 pm #

        It has been going on for two generations already.

        It has a pretty new name, it used to be called welfare.

        • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 29, 2021 at 1:17 pm #

          Yes, but they’re actually calling it by its name now.

          Is it Oakland (?) that just announced $25,000 handouts to a small number of BIPOC families as a “test run”? The media is actually billing it as a form a reparations. St. Paul is doing something similar. And the taxpayers cover the bill, therefore, de facto reparations.

          And welfare has been around a long time, yes. But now they’re going to take those who ARE working and disincentivize them to do so…take your scraps, buy some weed and Pringles, don’t question authority.

          • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:21 pm #

            This is happening in liberal ‘holes. Maybe, on the brighter side, this and gun control attempts will finally push Red States into secession.

          • abbybwood March 29, 2021 at 3:25 pm #

            I saw today where human trafficking (slavery) has now overtaken illegal drug sales worldwide.

            Use the drugs and you need to buy more. Pick up a young girl from a foreign country, seize her passport and you can make her work and work and work.

            With the little kids who are sexually trafficked they can be “used” over and over and possibly/probably just killed if they become “useless”.

            In this scenario of modern day slavery, who will pay all these slaves from all over the world reparations??

            I feel like putting a sign in my yard “Tired of living in this nightmare”.

          • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 4:22 pm #

            Yeah, that’s what Sleepy Joe’s opening up the border is all about. Biden is complicit.

  15. bukowskisghost March 29, 2021 at 10:46 am #

    How many of Mr Kunstler’s past predictions have come true in the last twenty plus years? Maybe all you Chicken Little’s should live on his exurban farmette. His blog has become one echo chamber with a pissing contest side show. Help your children and grandchildren if any of you grizzly buzzards have any, and help your friends and neighbors as well.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 10:50 am #

      Not sure where your hostility is coming from.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 10:59 am #

        DJIA 3000, peak oil soon[18 years later no crisis] etc.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:25 am #

          History is a long, long time.

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:38 pm #

        He hates this:

        ? The Viking Prayer

        “Lo, there do I see my father.
        Lo, there do I see my mother,
        and my sisters, and my brothers.
        Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
        Back to the beginning!

        Lo, they do call to me.
        They bid me take my place among them,
        In the halls of Valhalla!
        Where the brave may live forever!”

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 11:55 am #

      Quite a bit. Oil is $3 a gallon and going up, inflation has destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar, electric cars are becoming more prevalent but not nearly enough, like he predicted, wind and solar are already being shown to be ineffective and are causing political earthquakes everywhere, there have been pandemics, which he predicted, his predictions on Peak oil were made for the end of the century, not next year, I believe even with fracking, we are seeing the end of cheap oil starting now. I would say that JHK has been right on about just about everything he has said. BTW, with the inflation that has already occurred and will occur with the Biden boys, that the actual value of the markets, taking away inflation, does show significant declines in value through time.

      I will continue reading JHK as a legitimate prophet of what is going on in the future.

      • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 12:19 pm #

        Electric cars are becoming more prevalent but I believe we are putting the cart before the horse. The grid is already stretched to capacity in many areas of the country. What will happen when everybody wants to charge an electric car? They suck up a ton of juice and the present grid will never handle it. If electrics are to be feasible the batteries must be standerdized. Pull into a station and your battery is pulled and a new one is slipped in. Just like filling your tank with gas. Probably even quicker. Long trips no problem. Battery life would be optimized as the charging would be much more controlled. Batteries could be charged close to the electric sources. No transmission losses. Trucks and trains carrying batteries around instead of oil.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:31 pm #

          China’s railroads are being built with electricity. Surprise?

          • daytrip March 29, 2021 at 12:48 pm #

            Yes, much to be learned from the East. At the time, for the price of starting Saturn, GM could have bought Toyota. They would’ve probably run it into the ground, but still!

          • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 5:43 pm #

            Lithium is not a rare earth element and all our trains are already electric. powered by electric traction motors on each axle. The locomotive generates the electricity with a diesel engine.

          • benr March 30, 2021 at 9:19 am #

            @saintelmosfire

            Lithium is everywhere except that it is in trace amounts like gold dust so yes it is actually rare in easy useable to acquire amounts.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:34 pm #

          One major problem

          The rare earths required for the batteries are going to go to peak rare earths, just like oil.

          I am waiting for more info on solid State batteries.

          • benr March 29, 2021 at 1:41 pm #

            Not only are they “rare” but getting to them is every bit as dirty as going after OIL, gold or any other in the ground resource.

          • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 3:25 pm #

            What rare earths are in a battery?

          • benr March 29, 2021 at 5:03 pm #

            @stlemo

            Lithium for one off the top of my head.
            Its demand has gone up its starting to affect people who need to take lithium for mental health issues.

            Rare earth metals and alloys that contain them are used in many devices that people use every day such as computer memory, DVDs, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, catalytic converters, magnets, fluorescent lighting and much more.

            These elements include: Scandium, Yttrium, Lanathanum, Cerium, Praseodymium, Neodymium, Promethium, Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Holmium, Dysprosium, Erbium, Thulium, Ytterbium, Lutetium. Rare earth elements work best when they are added in small doses to composites and alloys.

            Google is such a useful tool.

          • benr March 29, 2021 at 5:06 pm #

            Looks peak lithium mining will happen and be outstripped on demand soon after.

            As you can see, by 2025 swelling lithium demand will most likely outgrow the supply of all the known lithium projec

          • Redneck Liberal March 29, 2021 at 7:05 pm #

            Lithium, for one.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:41 pm #

          Good idea. And as I said above, can we not have cars without computer chips and such? Why not?

          And why have exercise treadmills? Why not hamster wheels for people that generate electricity?

        • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 12:47 pm #

          Still don’t get it. Where does the electricity come from? And the the infrastructure to distribute it? How do the batteries get built and how are their materials sourced?

          Most of the car’s life-cycle energy is embodied in the vehicle itself, the glass, steel, rubber etc. What is powering the factories to mine, refine, manufacture, assemble and transport the car itself?

          It seems to me that the electric vehicle, its power source, the ongoing maintenance requirements and the whole infrastructure (they still run on tarmac roads) are just as dependant on fossil fuels as IC cars. Possibly worse, since it would make more environmental sense to keep an old banger (US: clunker) running on hydrocarbons than scrap it before time and replace it with something new.

          There may be many reasons to prefer electric vehicles but I remain thoroughly unconvinced of the environmental argument.

          • Night Owl March 29, 2021 at 1:34 pm #

            I have seen a number of calculations that show that the current crop of electric vehicles tend to be more environmentally damaging than an average diesel commuter/family vehicle.

            This may change at some point, but the biggest issue will always be the costs of producing the energy, and the costs of both producing and disposing of the batteries.

          • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 7:54 pm #

            The batteries are destroying an area in Canada, I believe.

        • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:24 pm #

          Exactly. That’s always been the key question: where does the leccy come from? In these paranoia-is-truth times that the NWO creeps have known all along that there will never be enough juice to power all those electric vehicles. It’s just their way of making sure the smelly masses stay in one place while they sashay around the planet in their Teslas and converted Lear Jets.

      • Kevvia Knack March 29, 2021 at 7:29 pm #

        Gas is $5.89 a gallon at the Mobil station at LaCienega and Beverly in Los Angeles. High 4s at most other stations though

        • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 7:53 pm #

          Thank the Climate Czar and Sleepy Joe for the $5,89 per gal. gas.

  16. 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 10:47 am #

    You can do magic
    You can have anything that you desire

    Magic is illusion
    Slight of hand

    I believe in it.
    Like global energy demand declining by a record percentage because of the effects of Covid.

    As too have CO2 emissions.

    The planet is in an irreversible death spiral.
    The seas will be dead within 2 decades.
    The farmlands degraded and desertified.
    By 2025 2/3 of planet will be H2O stressed.

    Too many people chasing too few resources.
    Money will be the least of the world’s problems.

    • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 10:51 am #

      Covid is magic

      A desperate attempt at it.

      Reengineered strains every few years?
      More lockdowns, er, planet wide conservation programs?

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 11:00 am #

        I hate to post this but, its for depopulation.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:24 am #

          It’s for both. Lock you down in misery first, then kill you off after they’re tired of torturing you. Or you kill yourself. That’s fine too.

          • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:35 am #

            It’s for so many nefarious purposes, the people in on one subscam have no idea it’s for anything else.

        • Night Owl March 29, 2021 at 3:04 pm #

          Those Georgia Guidestones are starting to make a lot of sense.

          • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 7:55 pm #

            no–they are outdated. with AI they dont need half a billion.

      • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:25 pm #

        Covid IS magic. It cured the common flu and a host of other more deadly diseases. It also killed millions without altering the overall mortality rate. Oh, and it destroyed the economy and democracy too. Far better than pulling rabbits out of a hat.

        • Night Owl March 29, 2021 at 5:07 pm #

          No way, broseph. I was told by the television and some CFN Interweb MDs that the mask was responsible for that.

          The only thing it can’t seem to stop is the Coroneau.

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:00 pm #

      Interesting, your statement is accurate.

      When impossible problems have no solutions, politics and the blame game takes over.

      I have noticed that absolutely no progress has been made against any of the important problems of today. As the situation declines, competition becomes more pronounced, producing the idiotic situations that exist today.

      There are no solutions!!!

    • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:51 pm #

      Yes, if you were of the Elite, you would do the same thing. Late is the Hour!

      We rejected Eugenics because of Hitler, so now an alien form of it, based on money, is being forced on us.

      Strike or be struck. Trump refused to strike – to defend the Republic – so he was struck and the Republic ended.

      A World Made by Hand? Eugenics based on Nature – the usual. You thought you could abrogate Eugenics? Permanently suspend the Laws of Nature? She bats last. “Eugenics” was just working with Her, in a more efficient and compassionate way. But the Christianized softies and sillies were too sentimental to see it. They still need primeval brutality – which they call the Devil. Outsourcing.

      • GreenAlba March 29, 2021 at 2:11 pm #

        I’m guessing one day you’ll just bite the bullet and shuffle off that Catholic carapace that’s holding you back from pure pagan pragmatism.

        Am I turning into Tucson?

        • Hereward the Woke March 29, 2021 at 2:27 pm #

          Upvotes for alluring alliteration. And a rhetorical question to finish! Man Booker prize in the post.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 2:35 pm #

            Hereward the Wake
            Mechanisms
            Born amongst the asteroids, Hereward by name
            A child, he of noble stock, a belter born and raised
            Held up a holy man who chose to flash his wealth around
            But for his crime was exiled, sent out into the wild
            Watch out into the black, Hereward is coming through
            All his hounds at his back, ruin in his wake
            He’ll spare you from his attack, if you’re belt born and bred
            But those born planetside should all fear for their lives
            Watch out into the shade, Hereward is coming through
            Fire up the barricades and sleep by your knife
            No one comes to your aid when you’re stood face to face with
            Hereward the wake
            Along his way he came across a princess duty bound
            And saved her from betrothal to the master of the hounds
            She asked that he would stay a while and she would be his bride
            But he loved his servant Martin, so they left her far behind
            Watch out into the black, Hereward is coming through
            All his hounds at his back, ruin in his wake
            He’ll spare you from his attack, if you’re belt born and bred
            But those born planetside should all fear for their lives
            Watch out into the shade, Hereward is coming through
            Fire up the barricades and sleep by your knife
            No one comes to your aid when you’re stood face to face with
            Hereward the wake
            On every station, men and dogs, they rallied to his band
            They joined him on an asteroid, where they could make their stand
            Outside a treacherous minefield, inside his savage hounds
            They staked their independence from the tyrants planet bound
            Watch out into the black, Hereward is coming through
            All his hounds at his back, ruin in his wake
            He’ll spare you from his attack, if you’re belt born and bred
            But those born planetside should all fear for their lives
            Watch out into the shade, Hereward is coming through
            Fire up the barricades and sleep by your knife
            No one comes to your aid when you’re stood face to face with
            Hereward the wake
            Before too long they were besieged but firmly held their ground
            Until at last a holy man betrayed the safe way down
            Both man and beast fought bravely, though they knew the fight was lost
            They say that Hereward escaped, for his corpse was never found
            Watch out into the black, Hereward is coming through
            All his hounds at his back, ruin in his wake
            He’ll spare you from his attack, if you’re belt born and bred
            But those born planetside should all fear for their lives
            Watch out into the shade, Hereward is coming through
            Fire up the barricades and sleep by your knife
            No one comes to your aid when you’re stood face to face with
            Hereward the wake
            Watch out into the black, Hereward is coming through
            All his hounds at his back, ruin in his wake
            He’ll spare you from his attack, if you’re belt born and bred
            But those born planetside should all fear for their lives
            Watch out into the shade, Hereward is coming through
            Fire up the barricades and sleep by your knife
            No one comes to your aid when you’re stood face to face with
            Hereward the wake
            Also he fought a bear

            Source: Musixmatch

            You must do better, Hereward, with a name like that. Booger men end up in the Bog.

            Also you fought a bear? But Beowulf fought Grendel and tore off his arm.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 2:29 pm #

          Why? The soul exists and has its laws of health. And the body exists with its laws. The Social body depends on the health of both in the aggregate.

          How much I can say in just a few words, eh? Think that’s common or easily attained?

          If you want to hear compassion from a Leader, listen to Hitler tell women why he doesn’t want them in the army. How he has seen too many men destroyed in body or in mind or both. His expletive, Nein, Nein, will haunt you forever.

          We need Mothers for the Fatherland, Alba.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 2:40 pm #

            Substitute plaintive for expletive or plaintive expletive?

  17. ralphm March 29, 2021 at 10:58 am #

    Reminds me of the American health “care” system: The insurance companies pretend to cover us and we pretend we can afford it.

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:03 pm #

      Another impossible problem with no solution. Putting in government controls destroys the good service available in the US,

      So far.

  18. Being Frank March 29, 2021 at 11:00 am #

    Jim, magic is everywhere at the moment

    Over 50 years ago, I calculated that each week I did 500ft.lbs. of physical work and yet at the w/e my hobby (orientering all over the UK) used up 6×10^9 ft.lbs. 500 in/ 6 billion out. Is that magical enough?

    • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 1:03 pm #

      I’m not getting your figures Frank. 500 ft. lb. wouldn’t even get you up one flight of stairs. Do that 10 foot staircase in one second and you’d be putting out about a 1 horsepower.

  19. peter m March 29, 2021 at 11:06 am #

    “MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences. That is, we can “lend” ourselves money (borrow it into existence) without having to worry about paying it back.”

    No, that is not what MT is about. Instead of listening to the so called “critics|” of MT who never seem to actually have read what the theory is about, why not read those who understand nd developed it?

    https://gimms.org.uk/mmtbasics/

    “1) A government with its own currency (eg sterling), its own central bank (eg Bank of England), floating exchange rate, and no foreign currency debt, faces no financial budget constraint at all.”

    2) Such a government faces real and ecological constraints. As a society, we cannot run out of pounds, but we can run out of – or misuse – people, skills, technology, infrastructure, natural and ecological resources. There are limits, but the limits are ‘real’ and not financial. Governments should therefore focus their policies on human and ecological resources, not the deficit.”

    The problem is that the creation of new money was to a large extent transferred from the Government to the banks, and instead the govt. creating money (at volumes that do not cause inflation, i.e. there is still unused labour and economic capacity left) money is created by banks against interest payments.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/the-use-and-abuse-of-mmt.html

    “If governments do not provide enough purchasing power by running budget deficits to enable the economy to grow, the role of providing money and credit will have to be relinquished to banks – at interest, and for purposes that the banks decide on (mainly, loans to buy real estate, stocks and bonds). In this respect banks are competitors with government over who will provide the economy’s money and credit – and for what purposes.”

    • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:17 am #

      Thing is, there’s MMT the academic theory on the one hand, and there’s MMT the way it is and always will be implemented – to favor the already wealthy who control the purse strings. We’ve been implementing it for 40-50 years now. How’s that been working out so far? And even MMT acknowledges that the funny money must be used for productive purposes, rather than just poured into the financial casino economy in bailout after bailout. Therefore, as a practical matter, MMT is less than worthless; it’s actually a perfect recipe for eventual hyperinflation and economic ruin, just as we’re seeing now. There’s no free lunch!

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:56 pm #

        Yes, some men studied Blackjack and learned to count – enabling them to beat the house by a small margin. The Casino’s response? To call them cheaters and ban them. They didn’t cheat, they learned the game. It takes a lot of concentration. Very few are ever going to do it. Their massive profits were safe. But losing even a penny is unbearable to people like this.

        • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 12:58 pm #

          I knew someone taken into the back room and was beaten up.
          i knew someone else who hired [famous casino owners] italian hit man to do a job.

          • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:36 pm #

            I heard Donald Trump once caught Rosie O’Donnell counting cards at the Taj Mahal and had her brutally beaten. Then he peed on her bed. I believe everything Democrats say.

        • Anthea March 29, 2021 at 5:56 pm #

          Blackjack is an amusement, not a productive activity. It can be a very costly amusement. Casinos are providers of this amusement. It is perhaps not a viable economic plan to, by means of the monetary system, make everyone in the world an involuntary participant in a scheme that will beggar them.

          Are such schemes (casino-type enterprises) criminal in nature? I would say no, as long as they are voluntary. When participation becomes involuntary, they are a mechanism to cheat entire populations.

          Your reference to the skill, hard work, and concentration required for such an enterprise is irrelevant to both the Blackjack player (a person who is skilled in a voluntary amusement) and to banking and finance. It takes skill, hard work, and concentration to successfully engage in murder, burglary, robbery, confidence games, drug dealing, human trafficking, etc. Diligence in the pursuit of some activity does not alter the fact that it is criminal activity, or does it mean that the resulting profits are justly earned and deserved.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 9:19 pm #

            Truly the outlook of an ant. You hate those Aesopian grasshoppers.

    • Anthea March 29, 2021 at 5:41 pm #

      “If governments do not provide enough purchasing power…,” etc. This is an absurd on its’ face.

      It is the role of neither the government nor the banks to provide “purchasing power,” nor does either have the ability to do so. The emission of fiat money and credit (and fiat money IS credit; i.e., debt) is NOT the creation of “purchasing power.” In fact, it dilutes purchasing power by the debasement of the currency.

      “Purchasing power” is real wealth created through real productivity: goods and services. Government and banks do no do this, and in fact do the opposite. Both are an economic drain and overhead expense–most of it an unnecessary (to put it mildly) and parasitic drain on and repression of productivity in the form of rentier demands–which merely siphon off a portion of production and transfer it to rentiers as unearned wealth.

      One of the primary tenets of fundamental economics is that when rentier extractions from the productive economy exceed a certain level (the “margin of cultivation”), production ceases. The reason is ceases is because it becomes unprofitable. This should be obvious. No one will go to work every day to grow wheat or bake bread if the entirety of the livelihood they had hoped to thus obtain is confiscated, be it by taxes, interest, rent, or currency devaluation. They find they are working and not making any money, so they go out of business.

      The unbacked emission of money and credit are both, in essence, means of rentier extractions, but of which act to devalue the currency.

  20. Ussi March 29, 2021 at 11:06 am #

    “MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences.”

    That’s an outright lie Kunstler. You should know better.

    There is no economic field more concerned with inflation and the importance of HOW federal funds are spent than MMTers.

    Do yourself a big favor and read (with comprehension) “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton.

    • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 11:21 am #

      In a perfect world Kelton is right. Last time I looked, that’s not the world we’re living in. MMT enables the crooks – who have known all about and been actively practicing MMT for decades now already – to be bigger and better crooks. It’s been a respounding success for that purpose!

      • Ussi March 29, 2021 at 11:53 am #

        We disagree Disaffected. MMT describes how money works whether or not the crooks are in charge or not, wether we are in a perfect world or not.

        In the neoliberal era we’ve been in the ruling class grifters in charge use it to obscenely enrich themselves, wage endless wars and bail out Wall Street infinitely. The bastards do this endlessly while simultaneously cutting any spending on the Common Good (like Healthcare or Education) with the goddamm “how you gonna pay for it” question.

        • Disaffected March 29, 2021 at 12:09 pm #

          We don’t disagree at all. MMT is the best of both worlds for those who know how to use it. All the money they want for their pet projects (all conveniently branded as necessary and essential) and no money whatsoever for those that aren’t. MMT people attempt to remain neutral in these conversations, but since money issuance (or at least the authority for same) is a government function, it’s inherently political, and thus neutrality is not an option. The “how you gonna pay for it” dodge is indeed a convenient ruse, but the fact of the matter is, there is a limit somewhere less than infinity to how much worthless money you can issue. Exactly what that number is might be open to debate, but the fact that it does indeed exist is not. Not to rational people anyway.

          Better to leave MMT out of it altogether then and simply focus on where all that money goes right now. Claw that back and invest it productively and we might get somewhere. Fail to do that – as we most certainly will – and the results will be all too predictable, since it’s already happened many times before.

          • Ussi March 29, 2021 at 5:11 pm #

            Federal spending limits, or rather constraints, have been well defined by MMTers. Those constraints are inflation and the availability of real goods and services.

            If anyone doesn’t believe MMTers on this I suggest they look up the video of Alan Greenspan explaining it to that shitty austerian lickspittle Paul Ryan.

          • Ussi March 29, 2021 at 5:19 pm #

            You are spot on about the critical importance of focusing on where the money is going right now.

            That’s what FDR did and what made him the most popular POTUS ever. What he did, on the back of cheap energy, was usher in the most productive economic run ever raising the quality of life of more Americans than ever.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:12 pm #

          If the crooks are a small percentage of the economy, it can be written off.

          Today, there are just too many crooks, and they are in charge. The Deep State with their globalist ghouls create more dollars to fund the increasing international debt load.

          It will fail, when the defaults start. When?

          When the increasing train of retirees want their money as they age.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 12:58 pm #

          Sounds like a new and improved version of the invisible hand. And those that “believe” in it are jackoffs. There’s no getting around morality and value judgements – and the enforcement thereof.

    • feralandroid March 29, 2021 at 1:06 pm #

      I listened to Kelton on MacroVoices podcast and she said herself that the big problem for MMT is inflation. But she said its not a problem because they will just raise taxes.

      So who are they going to tax and at what rate? If everyone is just getting .gov checks and not producing anything? Right now, over 60% of the population is living off the taxes of the 40% and that includes cap gains from the stock market. And the taxes don’t even cover 50% of .gov spending.

      Its going to end in tears, I’m afraid.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 7:58 pm #

        the debt mney is made by FR. it is mostly not printed.
        when Stocks collapse, it will go into other markets and create more inflation.
        In LA gas is 4.50. now.

    • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 2:09 pm #

      Here come the MMT evangelists, just like on Facebook.

      Swarm, swarm.

    • Amman March 30, 2021 at 4:38 am #

      You are twiddling with theory and accusations while Rome burns.

  21. stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 11:18 am #

    Canal’s open. TP is on the way

    https://www.vesselfinder.com/

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:37 am #

      How do we not know how to do canals anymore?

      • BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 1:12 pm #

        Container ships have grown to gargantuan proportions, BoO.

  22. BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 11:19 am #

    Well, Biden intends to GO BIG in his infrastructure spending, at least $2 trillion. What happened to the Infrastructure schwag George Bush spent, or the Pelosi’s Shovel Ready infracture cash from 12 years ago? The infrastructure seems even more decrepit than it was back then.

    ‘All the big nations are doing this now because they don’t understand that the hyper tech economy is hostage to the deteriorating economies of energy, basically fossil fuel.’ – Jim

    I read every single day in Rueters, the Guardian, Oil Price.com, and so on, that fossil fuels are a relic, no longer necessary, and will be completely gone by 2030. We are assured that the technology exists to make this happen, and a bright, green world awaits, just a few years away.

    Also, it seems like once a week an ‘Battery Breakthrough!’ is announced, a battery that will power a semi truck for 1000 miles, a Tesla 500 miles without recharge, that are cheap and last years, that can store enough energy captured from windmills to light up NYC for a month. Great! Our problems are solved. Then you don’t hear anymore about it, until the next breakthrough is announced.

    Brh

    • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 11:41 am #

      When the solar roof panels started to be a thing, I was surprised to learn that the batteries wear out.

      I started asking a lot of younger people, more into environmental and tech issues than I am, if they were aware of that, and none of them knew that either.

      • oswegatchie March 29, 2021 at 11:58 am #

        I have 2 Battle Born lithiums in my rig. They are supposed to last about 10 years or 5000 cycles. Buy a couple sets of what you need and there’s 20 years coverage.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 29, 2021 at 12:14 pm #

          I think a lot of people were under the impression that solar runs strictly off of sunlight.

          • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 12:55 pm #

            My father-in-law, an educated, well-read, knowledgable ex-company finance director, couldn’t understand why you couldn’t have a street-lamp, say, with a solar panel on it that captures part of the emitted light and in turn powers the lamp. In other words, a perpetual motion machine.

            My explanations around the basic physical laws as to why that couldn’t happen were met with incredulity. Do not underestimate people’s ability to believe in magic (or techno-narcissism as our esteemed host sometimes says).

          • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 12:59 pm #

            slug–we do have similar, in el ay.

          • Redneck Liberal March 29, 2021 at 8:21 pm #

            Slugoon:

            You mean, solar-powered street lamps, like this?

            https://www.intefly.com/product/product_all_In_solar_street_light_inh_series/50W_Ultra_thin_Design_Solar_Street_Light_565934.html

            Sure seems sensible to me, but there’s not much information in the ‘marketing brochure’ about how it performs when light is scarce (British winter, for example).

          • Slugoon March 30, 2021 at 2:20 am #

            No. He (not me) was talking about a light where a solar panel sits under a bulb, so that the solar panel would power the bulb, which would shine on the solar panel, to power the bulb… all without the sun being required. A perpetual motion machine, which I’ll hope you agree is funny for an educated man to believe in.

            Regarding the light you linked to, I always doubt the environmental benefit of such things. How much energy has been expended in its life, all those hours the computers ran in designing it, the workers driving to their office to do so, the extraction of raw materials, the prototypes, the factories making them… surely it’s just better to use the energy to just power a traditional bulb. At least the light would stay on in the winter, too.

            I don’t know if there’s a law that states ‘the more you try to reduce energy usage (by designing new fancy things) the more energy you end up using{, but if there isn’t I’d like to claim it as my own.

          • Redneck Liberal March 31, 2021 at 9:58 pm #

            Ah. That wasn’t clear on first reading…

    • Night Owl March 29, 2021 at 1:30 pm #

      Meanwhile, my C63 gets 7.0 l/100km or about 34 mpg in the combined cycle and it has a thundering V8 with nearly 500 horsepower.

      If I do lots of highway miles (when on vacation, for example), the fuel economy is so good that I forget it is using the stuff.

      That is true progress. 🙂

      • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 5:58 pm #

        Night Owl, wow great gas mileage for an upside down bathtub. Too bad it’s not a pillar less hardtop like my 560SEC. Then you would have a real car.
        https://www.car-revs-daily.com/wp-content/uploads/old/1989-Mercedes-Benz-560SEC-6.0-AMG-Widebody-5-1-1600×954.jpg

        • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 4:56 am #

          Sweet, but more of a land yacht. Not fit for the track or a back road in the Eifel.

          • stelmosfire March 30, 2021 at 7:57 am #

            I was just pokin’ ya Night,. I’ve had of all sorts of Mercedes over the years. Talk about land yachts. I’ve got a 280SEL 4.5 in the garage now. I like the classics.

          • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 9:45 am #

            Oh, I know. I like it. I am a fan of the classics, particularly the late-80s/early 90s stuff. I like the wide look.

            I’d love an ’88 300 CE 6.0.

            The cost of filling it up here in Germany would probably bankrupt me though.

      • elysianfield March 29, 2021 at 8:30 pm #

        “C63 gets 7.0 l/100km or about 34 mpg in the combined cycle and it has a thundering V8 with nearly 500 horsepower.”

        Owl,
        Leave it to those good German boys to violate the laws of physics.

        • RocketDoc March 29, 2021 at 11:28 pm #

          VW already did that with the 40mpg Jetta.

          • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 4:55 am #

            The point being that the C63 has an AMG V8, while the Jetta is the furthest thing from a driver’s car that one can imagine.

          • stelmosfire March 30, 2021 at 8:02 am #

            40MPG wow! My Suburban got 3-4 MPG on the last tankful. Course half of that was backing up so probably more like 6-7 mpg. It was all in low range snow plowing though.

        • elysianfield March 31, 2021 at 11:57 pm #

          And…published Specs:

          Fuel Economy and Real-World MPG
          There’s no difference in EPA fuel economy between the C63 and C63 S, but there are differences among the body styles. The sedan is rated at 18 mpg city and 27 mpg highway ratings. The coupe and cabriolet are both EPA-rated at 17 mpg in the city, but the coupe has a 26-mpg highway rating versus 24 for the convertible.

    • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 4:30 pm #

      You had mentioned my ‘anti semitism’ and Im reluctant to post facts here. Im not sure I want to risk a ban.

  23. avartist March 29, 2021 at 11:40 am #

    The West is destroying itself with the lunacy of woke-ism and over-regulation. This century will be China’s and India’s, lest a war breaks out. Companies fail when management becomes detached from what really goes on on the floor. The same will be true for the USA with a government completely in denial of reality.

    • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 11:59 am #

      It’s reinventing itself.

      To compete with China.

      A hyper-regulated, centralized, top-down authoritarian society with a dollar pegged to whatever the regime dictates.

      With cheap disposable labor pouring in.
      Be it programmers or pro moppers.

      Just like China, the corporations will be inextricably linked with bureaucracy. We already see it here with defense, aeronautic, and now, the tech industry.

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 12:28 pm #

        Did you see that China and Iran have signed an economic pact lasting 25 years.

        Put that together with the Silk Road infrastructure project that China is putting together to connect to Europe, Africa and the ME and I see that the US carrying its $26 trillion debt load cannot compete any more. 2 trillion in infrastructure is a joke, what are they going to do to compete with China who is connecting itself to the world.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:25 pm #

          Guess that attack on Iran is off the table. Sorry Neo. You’re not the One. You too Zio.

          • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 4:28 pm #

            neo? zio?

        • stelmosfire March 29, 2021 at 1:26 pm #

          2 trillion infrastructure work = 500 billion actual stuff done and 1.5 trillion payoffs, permits, useless management etc. etc. Also these greenies would shit if they knew how much CO2 is produced from cement production. They can repave our new roads 3 feet higher. All with bitumen (petroleum). Slo Jo and crew don’t have a clue.

    • cbeard March 29, 2021 at 2:40 pm #

      Go to this link. Maybe China and India won’t be as big as you think. I admit there are cities in the U.S. that are comparable, but China and India still have a long way to go. When war breaks out, depending on where and the scale and if it is a world war then all bets are off.https://thoughtcatalog.com/lorenzo-jensen-iii/2017/07/the-30-shttiest-cities-in-the-world-according-to-30-travelers/

      • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 3:57 pm #

        Wow that’s pretty sobering. I guess I take a lot of granted, that’s for sure.

      • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:23 pm #

        I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion, cbeard. Perhaps these are the future of all cities on all continents in the post-market crash neoFeudalism. Perhaps they are decades ahead of us.

        —-

        Hey @akmofo – Chk out #21!

        “Jerusalem, Egypt”

        That may be the worst published fact-error ever for you, Right?

        • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 5:33 pm #

          21. JERUSALEM, EGYPT
          “Jerusalem. Dirty, broken-down, and too much underlying tension..

          Yup, the high tension just crackles through the air

          https://youtu.be/Kt62vuCC0C8?t=602

          Might be the electricity flowing through them pharaonic pyramids right near by.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 5:57 pm #

            Another high tension dive, the Jerusalem Bazar:

            https://youtu.be/Kg81nU0Vt64

          • elysianfield March 29, 2021 at 8:34 pm #

            “21. JERUSALEM, EGYPT”

            Mofo,
            Reminds me of the old joke…Morrie sees Jacob and waves him over…”Congratulations on the fire says Morrie”… Shhh, says Jacob “…it’s not until tomorrow!”

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 6:54 pm #

            Another tension filled walk in a dirty and unkept Jerusalem

            https://youtu.be/P1HwzAFsMzY

            This one is from today.

        • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:25 pm #

          I was referring to Jerusalem, Egypt instead of the correct Jerusalem, Israel.

          But, thx. This is enjoyable footage of life on the strrets there.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 6:30 pm #

            Yup, I caught that.

            I posted a good travel tour for you at the end of the thread.

      • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 4:49 pm #

        That’s what our big cities are turning into here in the US.

  24. Roundball Shaman March 29, 2021 at 12:23 pm #

    Do You Believe in Magic?

    Having make-believe money works in an economy where we “buy” make-believe goods and services and pay rents and mortgages and invoices on make-believe homes and apartments and service providers and we eat make-believe food to fill our make-believe hunger while drinking make-believe designer coffee to satisfy our make-believe thirst and need for a caffeine fix.

    Even so, what’s a little more Make-Believe on top of a foundation of make-believe, smoke, mirrors, narrative management, propaganda, lies, distortions, omissions, slight-of-hand, tomfoolery, censorship, Karen-ing, shaming, Cancel-ing, and copious amount of horse manure and pasture wreckage and destruction?

    Do you hear it?…

    ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’
    And it’s magic if the music is groovy
    It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
    Do you believe like I believe? Do you believe in magic?’

    • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 1:05 pm #

      How deep does the ‘make believe’ go?

      There’s a story that long ago God tasked his archangels with constructing a physical universe.

      They were unable to do it. Instead, they built a universe where conscious minds experience the perception of a physical universe. But it’s all energetic quantum flux fields creating a delusion in the mind. Sort of like some perfected virtual reality environment, Curiously, both worlds are pixelated with respect to time and space.

      How deep does the ‘make believe’ go?

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:31 pm #

        The Emperor Julian, the leader of the Pagan Renaissance and a sworn enemy of the Christian Cult, tried to rebuild the Temple so as to thwart Christianity. The workers were continually injured and killed by great bolts of electricity flashing about the ruins.

        • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 1:54 pm #

          Julian tried to thwart abrahamic cults infecting the occident.
          The wokesterism movement of his age.

          He failed. And the dark ages fell upon the west.

          Until a few courageous polymaths refused to stop thinking.

          “The end goal of the Cynic is happiness that consists of living in accordance with nature, and not according to the opinions of the multitude”

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:58 pm #

            Celsus on the Gods: These are things that never were but always are.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 2:49 pm #

            “The end goal of the Cynic is happiness that consists of living in accordance with nature, and not accodring to the opinions of the multitude.”

            Brilliant! I have never heard that quote before. That’s me! That quote is me!

            Thank you, 100th Avatar.

          • 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 3:11 pm #

            “The resemblances between the Christians and the New Cynics had already been pointed out by Aristides, and while in Julian’s eyes they were equally impious, he has an additional grievance against the New Cynics in that they brought discredit on philosophy.
            Like the Christians they were unlettered, they were disrespectful to the gods whom Julian was trying to restore, they had flattered and fawned on Constantius, and far from practising the austerities of Diogenes they were no better than parasites on society.”

            The Lightning of Julian’s gods:

            “The gift of the gods sent down to mankind with the glowing flame of fire from the sun through the agency of Prometheus along with the blessings that we owe to Hermes is no other than the bestowal of reason and mind. For Prometheus, the Forethought that guides all things mortal using a fiery breath to serve as an operative cause, gave to all things a share in incorporeal reason. And each thing took what share it could; lifeless bodies only a state of existence; plants received life besides, and animals soul, and man a reasoning soul. Now some think that a single substance is the basis of all these, and others that they differ essentially according to their species. But this question we must not discuss as yet, or rather not at all in the present discourse, and we need only say that whether one regards philosophy, as some people do, as the art of arts and the science of sciences or as an effort to become like God, as far as one may, or whether, as the Pythian oracle said, it means “Know thyself,” will make no difference to my argument. For all these definitions are evidently very closely related to one another.”

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 3:06 pm #

      Sounds like a big bunch of First World Problems … for those with too much time on their hands. Go for a long walk in the park, go fishing, volunteer at a charity, toughen up.

      The poor people of the world (80%) know they live in a real space.

      • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:45 pm #

        The biggest questions man can ask about his universe and himself may seem like a waste of time to you, Tekapo. But that just proves you are a soulless non-character player created and controlled by the Artificial Intelligence (Archons) who run this simulation. Sorry, you’re not real.

        • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:48 pm #

          Tekapo looks as Real to me as do you, hmuller.

          Am I Real?

          • Night Owl March 29, 2021 at 5:03 pm #

            Tekapo is a Media Matters NPC. Whether he qualifies as a human or a bot is a matter of perspective.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:29 pm #

            Thx, Night Owl. I am as disoriented and lost as Alice or Dorothy. I don’t even know what a Media Matters NPC is or does.

          • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 8:11 pm #

            Tekapo is the resident Blue Anon.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 9:04 pm #

            Are you down with Rob Ford nationalism?

            An NPC (or Non Player Character) is a clone or shell of a human being, symbolized by a grey face and a sharp beaky nose, like an angry parrot. Obviously they all believe the same things. All the news media are NPC’s.

            If Rob Ford had invaded America, millions of us would have risen to his standard.

          • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 9:38 pm #

            O. G. Hawkins, I was speaking tongue in cheek. I’m not even sure I’m real, despite Descartes’ famous quotation, which looks like a non-sequitur to me.

            There’s one meme I can’t get out of my head. It’s appeared in TV shows like the Twilight Zone and in many movies (Truman Show, The Matrix).

            That meme – awakening to realize the world around you is a false construct.created to deceive you. You realize you are someone or something else as the amnesia begins to slowly fade away. The enslavers of humanity fear such an awakening more than any simple armed resistance which never questions the metaphysical consensus reality.

          • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 11:03 pm #

            Tekapo is the resident Blue Anon.

            The Blue Badge of Courage! And I believe “Media Matters NPC” means I take daily instructions straight from the commies … I wish I could be so esteemed! But sadly I write all my own material.

          • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 9:48 am #

            O.G. ,

            It is probably better that way, TBH.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 9:06 pm #

          A few examples of NPC’s.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ARpvsAPsg

          It was a meme developed early in the Trump years.

          • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 9:49 am #

            Oh, man. Some Rick Astley, too.

            This video is gold.

  25. MisterBimmler March 29, 2021 at 1:30 pm #

    I don’t like to sound a discordant note just for the heck of it but the Operating System of the USSR was essentially a command economy that was trapped in a war footing it was ill equipped to sustain. When the short lived Republic decided to continue the war against Germany against all reason (let’s all jump off this cliff to make sure the Bank of Englan stays solvent!”) the Bolsheviks took over, promising peace. A war weary public then got years of civil war fomented largely by said BoE as well as American and French financial interests. Russia was then subject to invasions by first Germany then the ‘allies’ including Japan. Then despite desperate deal-making with Hitler and General Tojo, twenty years later, Germany attacked by Germany again. We may be right in saying the Soviet eoonomy was over bureaucratized and badly mismanaged, but they never felt safe switching over to a peacetime economy because they feared the next invasion was always just around the corner. The US has been relentless in its subversion against any country that even goes so far as tro introduce the simplest regulations on US ‘investors’ or reign in the local quisling elites. The genius of Putin and Xi is delivering on promises of stability while keeping the City of London and Wall Street at arm’s length.

    • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 2:38 pm #

      “All wars are bankers’ wars.”

      I am unfamiliar of the Rothschilds’ … er … Bank of England … or do I repeat myself? … angle on the Czar extending WWI but I am most certainly not surprised.

      Can you please provide more detail, Mr B?

      Thx

    • thirdcoastlegend March 29, 2021 at 4:45 pm #

      “….a command economy that was trapped in a war footing it was ill equipped to sustain.”

      Uh, isn’t this basically the USSA now?

      • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:02 pm #

        Yes … but with World Reserve Currency printing press go: “Brrrrrrrrr”

  26. Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 1:56 pm #

    A bit of pushback. Thank God for small mercies.

    https://dailystormer.su/cnn-faces-backlash-after-referring-to-black-car-jacking-that-killed-old-pakistan-guy-as-an-accident/

    We don’t know if it was an accident or if the girl behind the wheel tried to kill him. Or did he grab the wheel and there was a struggle? But the word “accident” puts a bad taste in people’s mouth in on this one. It’s the beginning of trying to go soft on these two delinquents.

    • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 3:33 pm #

      I saw the video, and well after they should have given up (people were videoing them, FFS), the girls kept attacking the guy and trying to take the car.

      Not only was it stupid, it was violent as hell. I don’t think a jury is going to smile on the one who was worried about what happened to her phone while stepping over a twitching, dying man who she just tried to steal a car from.

      I was also really happy to see the backlash against CNN for calling it an ‘accident’.

      And, I still have not seen any article mention the two teens were black.

      • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:14 pm #

        CNN is a joke.

        • MaryV March 29, 2021 at 4:52 pm #

          Beyond a joke. I literally can’t believe anyone watches it and yet…

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:01 pm #

            It’s so much easier than reading and thinking.

      • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 5:48 pm #

        black block jury voting.

  27. gustafson.robert.22 March 29, 2021 at 2:17 pm #

    “Debt only works in youthful growth phases of economic pulsation, when prospects of getting paid back are statistically favorable.”

    Imagine a world in which something this obvious needed to be said… Oh wait, laugh my butt implants off, we livin innit

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 2:55 pm #

      What really makes me cross is that because of huge debt levels – and still a sluggish economy – interest rates are close to zero. Money has become valueless. So those of us who save and which to live off the earnings of capital no longer can do so.

      • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 3:19 pm #

        Interest. Isn’t that part of the reason why there are huge debt levels in the first place?

        You deposit $1000 in a bank and in twelve months they turn it into $1050. You think you’re entitled to that $50. But where did it come from? You didn’t earn it nor create its equivalent value.

        Somewhere along the line the bank has to take that $50, plus a skim for itself, from another party by charging even more interest on a loan or such. That other party in turn recovers it from someone else and so on.

        Creating money out of thin air in the form of interest is why the total debt grows and like a Ponzi scheme, as long as things keep expanding, the debt just moves down the pyramid. Until it doesn’t. Then you don’t get to live off your capital earnings.

        • hmuller March 29, 2021 at 3:56 pm #

          If interest rates were allowed to find their free market level, the whole economic edifice would collapse tomorrow in cascading bankruptcies under higher interest rates.

          Zero and near zero interest rates are the life support by which THEY keep this rotten, corrupt system going a bit longer. By the way, THEY are buying gold and silver with little publicity. THEY know how this ends.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:10 pm #

            Gold, silver, gated communities, hidden infrastructure, Rembrandts, uzis.

            THEY get loaned free US$ and turn it into Real wealth knowing that THEY will be able to easily repay US$-denominated debt once it is completely worthless. Like a snake eating its own tail – an evil self-fulfilling scheme.

            “Things ought to get interesting
            Right about now.”

            – Bob Dylan

          • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 4:52 pm #

            Gold, silver, gated communities, hidden infrastructure, Rembrandts, uzis.

            You forgot bug-out farms in Uruguay and New Zealand.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:59 pm #

            Good point.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 8:46 pm #

            Ammo, Liquor, and Whores

          • stelmosfire March 30, 2021 at 8:11 am #

            Yoh, after the “World Made by Hand ” starts I’m goin’ to open a bar selling my homemade hooch. I’ll be sittin’ in a rocking chair on the front porch with a sawed-off 12 gauge on my lap under the flashing neon. ” St’ Elmos Saloon” “Liquor in the Front, Poker in the rear”

          • stelmosfire March 30, 2021 at 8:15 am #

            Just for El’ I’m going to have a snake dance on the hour.

          • elysianfield March 31, 2021 at 11:49 pm #

            Saint,

            …Do not toy with my emotions….

        • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 4:43 pm #

          Interest. Isn’t that part of the reason why there are huge debt levels in the first place?

          Near zero interest breeds more borrowing, yes.

          You deposit $1000 in a bank and in twelve months they turn it into $1050. You think you’re entitled to that $50. But where did it come from? You didn’t earn it nor create its equivalent value.

          I can’t agree with that theory of money, or how investment works. I worked productively to save that $1,000, and probably paid 25% tax along the way. By forgoing consumption in the present I could live more comfortably in the future.

          I wish to invest it somewhere that pays me 5%, and the party that borrows it from me does something productive or useful with it (builds a plane or a school), and makes 6%.

          How it works … what is the alternative? Long queues for food in communist Romania, or bartering seashells in the South Pacific?

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 4:58 pm #

            Tekapo’s Right. Interest measures the time-value of money. Nixon Admin started this fiat experiment in 1971. It had ups and downs but ran fine until it died in 2008. Everything since 2008 has been completely against nature. Zero interest forever with Quantitative stock & bond inflation.

            They have lost control. Interest rates can never be decided by free market forces. US$ is worthless. Everybody knows that. They are positioning themselves for the post-market crash neoFeudalism. Feudalism with kick-ass technology.

          • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 5:42 pm #

            I think you misunderstand my point, go back to your fractional reserve banking lessons. The fact that you ‘worked productively’ or paid tax is irrelevant. I’m simply pointing out that the charging of interest on loans requires infinite growth to keep repaying those loans, and you can’t have growth without debt, which is why there is massive debt, and why, as hmuller points out, the interest rates are near zero to try and keep the system going a bit longer.

            Tekapo is bemoaning the fact that he can’t live off earnings from his capital and I’m asking why he should expect to.

            OG, things were only running fine until 2008 in the same sense that any Ponzi scheme runs fine until it collapses.

            The alternative was to have never decoupled money, as a medium of exchange, from tangible goods.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 5:59 pm #

            You’ve got me there, Sugoon. Indeed, “any Ponzi scheme runs fine until it collapses.”

            What I meant was that pre-2008, interests rates were still, at least partially, set by market forces while ever since market-determined interest rates would bankrupt the USA Federal Government [like they’re not anyway!].

            You are correct – 1971 through 2008 was hurtling towards this messy train wreck.

          • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 6:18 pm #

            Well ideally they are paying for the use of your money – just as you pay when you take credit. But since all the money is loaned into its very existence, it’s just bullshit on top of bullshit. Interest on Savings accounts is all but gone. Yet they keep charging interest on their end. Interesting, no?

          • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 6:21 pm #

            Yes, the central banks are certainly working overtime now! In the end it won’t matter. The writing is on the wall. Two ways to go broke…

          • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 7:31 pm #

            Tekapo is bemoaning the fact that he can’t live off earnings from his capital and I’m asking why he should expect to.

            Because of the classic reasons: I worked hard all my life and I saved money so that I would have a capital base from which to earn a monthly income in retirement … I am no oligarch – I am like millions of other middle-class who saved for their retirement!

            But the system was premised on “market forces” (along with some regulatory control) that balanced equities, cash, bonds, and property – and all glued together with decent interest rates.

            As it is there are no capital-guaranteed investments anywhere that pay more than about 2.5% – the whole market economy is totally distorted. Geared to (and owned by) the already wealthy.

  28. O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 2:18 pm #

    “The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do. The more layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality they’ve already constructed, the more certain it becomes that they will blow up all the support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe lane to continue running in.”

    I distinctly remember having a discussion with a Bay Street stock analyst with several other Bay Streeters at the table. The topic turned to High Frequency Trading. [HFT deploys faster and faster hardware and software to day-trade by the millisecond the whole time the market (NYSE, Nasdaq, TSX, etc.) is open. This is done to make pennies per share on upside blips while statistically minimizing the downside. The result is a nice daily profit from market movement every day.]

    Everyone at the table was licking their lips at such a wonderful business model. I then explained that stock markets exist to pool-invest capital into capital projects. I even explained its origins: financing potentially lucrative but also expensive and very risky shipping expeditions around Cape Horn from the City of London.

    I then explained that HFT is, therefore, nothing more than leeching the worth of capital from economic productive activities.

    Jaws dropped and there was silence.

    22 years there but I never did fit in on Bay Street.

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 2:50 pm #

      I then explained that stock markets exist to pool-invest capital into capital projects.

      You old-fashioned romantic hippie you! Even uniformed moms & dads out in the vinyl-sided burbs understand the stock-market is a Las Vegas sportsbook – pork bellies rather than Green Bay Packers.

      Speaking of which have there been any really high-profile IPOs in the pandemic era? Where’s Airbnb?

  29. O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 3:57 pm #

    “You old-fashioned romantic hippie you.”

    BINGO! Guilty as charged.

    I have always thought that I made an impression that day with some movers & shakers (I was a over-worked techie merely rubbing elbows with the elite) but now you got me thinking that the jaw-dropping silence maybe was from seeing a live, Real hippie on Bay St. like a wolly mammoth or a Sasquatch.

  30. erik March 29, 2021 at 5:13 pm #

    “Build back better”. I have been amusing myself imagining all of the impractical boondoggle projects that will be proposed and approved by the committee of wokester jokesters who will be in charge of approving which are worthy projects. The title, build back better, says it all, that there will be value judgments made and those judgments will all made to cater to every fruitcake who sneers at the “low brow’ nature of past infrastructure. So, look forward to lots of nutball projects, and, along with that, epic fraud. It will be amusing in a tragicomic way to see how fast all that money will evaporate with nothing worthwhile to show.

    “Never in the field of human endeavor has so much been stolen from so many by so few”

    • Slugoon March 29, 2021 at 6:05 pm #

      Excellent synopsis! Whenever I hear the phrase “build back better” I always think of Prince Harry. That says it all, really.

  31. BackRowHeckler March 29, 2021 at 5:38 pm #

    IOW, a tremendous waste of capital.

    Of course, they’re doing the important work of ‘Saving Planet Earth’, especially as it effects “Black, Brown, Marginalized, and LGBQT communities.

    brh

    • malthuss March 29, 2021 at 5:49 pm #

      Marvel is playing up the loafer-lightened Cap to great effect, as if it’s the first comics company to pander to gays. Which it isn’t. To this day, nothing matches the magnificent poofery of 2010’s Foreskin Man. California-based artist Matthew Hess created that character because, according to a 2011 Vice profile, “gay men love a good foreskin.”
      Foreskin Man traveled the globe fighting doctors, rabbis, African tribal leaders, and Muslim clerics in a never-ending quest to prevent circumcision so that all gays worldwide would have the opportunity to “love a good foreskin.”
      “Gays have more experience with different kinds of penises than heterosexual men,” Hess told Vice. “They’ve seen intact penises in an intimate way so they are one step ahead of the next guy.”
      Or “behind.” Get it?
      Foreskin Man was discontinued after the ADL sounded the alarm over the foreskinverse’s supervillain character “Monster Mohel,” who steals children’s foreskins in a quest to deprive gay Jews of penis pride.
      Now, that was a gay comic!

      • O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:12 pm #

        Yeesh!

      • SpeedyBB March 30, 2021 at 1:20 pm #

        Postwar English music-hall – afternoon performance.

        Tired paunchy comic with songs like “Run Rabbit Run” and naughty humor plays to an audience of plump matrons.

        He whips out a banana and ostentaciously begins to peel it.

        “One skin – two skin – three skin – five skin”.

        An appreciative titter echoes from the ladies in their starched lace bodices.

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 6:54 pm #

      IOW, a tremendous waste of capital.

      Hang on – everyone’s telling us it’s just funny-money – debt created out of thin air for free! Maybe gluten free!

      As someone said up thread, the real limits are human and environmental … the money ain’t the constraining factor. Somebody can’t be right.

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 9:19 pm #

      If I were designing the program, and I didn’t want it to come back and bite me on the butt, I would have categories:

      (1) Genuine urgent physical (worst roads, bridges, ports, runways)
      (2) Genuine environmental (clean up rivers, contamination, preserves, etc)
      (3) Identified economic outcomes (better X here leads to far better Y over there)
      (4) Identified social outcomes (let’s give every school a new gym, because it would be swell)
      (5) Identity Politics (targeted LGBTQI projects, because they’re people too)
      (6) Make-Work on Steroids (create 500 jobs that last until the next election)
      (7) Seriously Political (it’s in a Congressman’s district, so let’s roll!)

      Projects are prioritised from Cat (1) down to Cat (7), but if the past is any guide to future performance, they will in fact be ranked from Cat (7) through to Cat (1).

      • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 10:22 pm #

        The government has never created a legitimate job outside of DC.

        Make work never solved the Depression. WW2 did. An economy needs a reason, a stimulus to grow and create jobs. Everything the Dems do constricts the economy. Taxes, spending on BS projects does not expand anything.

        • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 11:18 pm #

          I wasn’t trying to be very serious in my analysis, JAZ.

  32. O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 5:51 pm #

    The Suez Canal & Montreal …

    https://youtu.be/oTWj26pXgyU

  33. O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 6:10 pm #

    AstraZeneca paused in Canada for anyone younger than 55 …

    https://youtu.be/EzcDQa11QJw

    I’m 56 so I guess it’s ok to have them shoot that shit into me, Right?

    • RocketDoc March 30, 2021 at 8:32 pm #

      I had the flu mist shot up my nose at age 54 and it was recommended for 16-49yo. Gave me a monster cold. Only reason I couldn’t call it the flu was no fever or chills….

  34. O.G. Hawkins March 29, 2021 at 7:19 pm #

    Aylmer, Ontario (2h 17m from Detroit) is having a high-profile mask battle:

    https://youtu.be/dNskfQpjsag

    • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 9:02 pm #

      A good argument to bury your television set at the local garage dump. That town doesn’t look much better.

      • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 9:03 pm #

        garbage

  35. 100th Avatar March 29, 2021 at 7:38 pm #

    “Indeed, a lot of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them.”

    And how we do know them?
    As an option?

    An economical means of travel?
    An affordable means of travel?
    An expectation?
    A right?

    That’s how “we” know them.
    However, a small percentage know it as luxury, not because they cannot afford it, but because they have their own planes, their own drivers. Their own jet-share. And if not, the majordomo only orders 1st class.

    Butiegig is drawing up a mileage tax.
    Driving will soon be a privilege of the wealthy, as certainly will be air travel.
    As certainly is inhabiting Manhattan and downtown San Francisco.
    Getting between the playgrounds of the rich.

    But the rabble are stuck believing privilege is skin color.
    While they are made to be content at home.
    Door-dash and Netflix and tele-work and virtual school.

    Why have that expensive car sitting in your driveway?
    Just order up an uber.
    Freedom dependent upon social credit, and if not, your your ability to run a 1/2 marathon, or ride a few hours on a road bike, or just sit at home, venting on Twatter.

    We will know them as a lost luxury. An expensive once every 5 years kind of splurge. A freedom lost to time.
    Remember the horse you simpleton? Times are changing.
    Remember when you could leave your house?

    Remember when you wanted to?

    Home from nowhere

    to

    Home or nowhere

  36. Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 8:51 pm #

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/28/vaccine-passports-for-work/

    The regime admits the obvious. It’s coming at us like a freight train. “But developing it won’t be easy” the headline says – Oh those poor developers!

    Above all, it must not seem like a Government mandate, a “your papers please”. As Zeke Emmanuel says, It has to be framed as something you can get. Your choice as it were. Indeed Zeke, as it were. You know it’s bad when this guy gets involved.

    For work? For everything. Will they even be willing to deliver food to our door? Travel – why? Everywhere is just more Beast.

  37. KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 9:07 pm #

    One thing people COULD DO is go with the motor scooter option.

    Last time I checked , you can still get a motor scooter for less than 3 thousand dollars. Not uncommonly , for less than 1,500 , and still in decent shape.

    The engineering with motor scooters is so spartan you can fix it yourself with less than a thousand dollars worth of tools. And if you cannot figure out the engineering in a motor scooter , then you are simply hopeless . It isn’t rocket science.

    Because , apparently , motor scooters are so common and so popular in the third world , they must have huge warehouses full of spare parts , and they manufacture the same models for decades on end.
    So , yeah , spare parts , even brand new spare parts , are not a problem.

    I live in a very rural area , which means a trip to pretty much anywhere is a minimum 25 or 30 minute one – way commute.

    Never the less , my fuel bill never exceeds 75 dollars a month , but is usually less than 60 dollars a month.

    Granted , they do have drawbacks.

    Cargo space ? What cargo space ? You will need a backpack.

    And since a motor scooter has trifling horsepower , then if you already weigh 250 lbs then you already have a cargo capacity problem.

    On the other hand , while it sure beats walking , and a bicycle requires being 14 years old or an Olympic athlete , that is , the motor does all the work ,

    never the less , taking a motor scooter anywhere requires roughly as much physical exertion as going for a leisurely one mile walk everyday.

    Which is to say that , even with the motor doing all the work , you will lose weight , you will become hardier.

    Top speed on a motor scooter is usually 65 or 75 mph.

    But that’s like top speed on an automobile being 120 mph.

    It isn’t reality. ( unless you want your car in the shop every three weeks. )

    No , the real average mph on a motor scooter is 35 mph.

    So , a commute of one hour is going to take you three or four on a motor scooter.

    That’s impractical if you live in a genuinely rural area .

    But I doubt many people actually live in the wilderness like I do.

    Finally , if you live in an area where , truth be told , the police are jerks , a motor scooter makes you look like a Third – Worlder or some sort of deviant , and so can draw police attention.

    Which IS STILL a problem even if you are the Virgin Mary.

    —-

    So , cars are for the well – to – do or the spendthrift , and bicycles require Olympic athletes.

    So why isn’t the United States absolutely flooded with motor scooters like so many other countries ?

    Again , like I said , I suspect it is because it makes you LOOK LIKE a Third – Worlder.

    Again , yet another example that America is drowning in the most idiotic ideological bullshit , having nothing to do with reason , or practicality , and late – stage capitalists are apparently just as dismissive of dollars and cents as are Marxist – Leninists.

    Indeed , I suspect, far more so. .

    • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 9:15 pm #

      * Finally , if you live in an area where , truth be told , the police are jerks , a motor scooter makes you look like a Third – Worlder or some sort of deviant , and so can draw police attention.

      Which IS STILL a problem even if you are the Virgin Mary.

      For the record , one of the things I love about the backward , impoverished , wilderness I live in is that the police seem genuinely , actually , quite reasonable.

      I suppose one reason for that is because , while the population is 95 % white , it is also 95 % dirt poor.

      So , yeah , around here if the police hassled all the poor people …… well …… that would simply be impossible.

      • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 9:43 pm #

        American urban planning is a disaster. I live in a city of 200,000 people. That’s the norm in the country. You don’t see this kind of scale in the US. It’s either some rural shithole in the boonies of 10,000 people and no urban density, or some alienating urban monstrosity with a 1,000,000 plus population. Really fscked up. And all because of the automobile.

        • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 9:49 pm #

          Example to emulate:

          https://youtu.be/cby4wegk1Js

          • malthuss March 30, 2021 at 10:15 am #

            Israel sucks on uncle Sams tits.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 10:43 am #

            MaltAss, you don’t?

            What was it that you contributed to your town? Did you contribute your time? Did you contribute your money? Did you organize anything? Did you participate in anything in your town? Did you even vote in the municipal elections? No, you’re just a bum living in an alien landscape. You might as well be living on mars, that how connected you are to where you live.

            What’s your excuse to just plain suck? Again Israel and the Jews are at fault for your pathetic non performance?

        • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 10:02 pm #

          American urban planning is a disaster. I live in a city of 200,000 people. That’s the norm in the country. You don’t see this kind of scale in the US.

          I agree that American devotion to the private car has made many places urban hellscapes, however your assertion can be challenged – there are 300 cities in the US between 100K and 800K.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

          Personally I like about 750,000 or so – big enough to be interesting, with a university or two and a self-sustaining economy. Places of 200,000 are too dominated by the mundanities of life – and have dull shopping precincts. Not always, but often. And young people want to leave as soon as they can.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 10:34 pm #

            In my city, Haifa, we have 3 university campuses, multiple museums, art galleries, multiple sprawling streets with boutiques shops, coffee shops, amazing street food and restaurants that people want to come and enjoy from all over the world.

            The secret is mixed scale buildings and lots pedestrian spaces for people to be. In short, make it human.

            The Technion technology institute in Haifa

            https://youtu.be/387ZBCAJats

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 11:07 pm #

            The Technion International Beach Volleyball Tournament

            https://youtu.be/zGr6Yz_wwfw

            Remember, this is an institution that has produced MULTIPLE Nobel Prize winners in chemistry biology and physics.

          • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 11:27 pm #

            Cities like Haifa are absent from North America – even its closest matches (Santa Barbara, St Petersburg, Savanna, etc) are nowhere nearly as important to the national economy as Haifa is to Israel. Being a tourist city on the Med helps rather a lot.

            Anyway … I was just making the point that there are lot of liveable cities of less than 750K in North America.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 12:15 am #

            You don’t need more than 200,000 for that. Haifa has a sport stadium, bars, dance clubs, shopping malls, pedestrian malls, walking promenades, gorgeous parks, flea markets, food bazaars, surfing clubs, a subway line, a sea port, a rail line, variety of light and heavy industries, high tech industrial parks (IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Philips, Elbit) military bases. But everything is in human proportions. They don’t dominate and satanically distort the human space of the city. There is a harmony there, with large amounts of green space, forests with picnic areas, etc.

            https://youtu.be/bGG52YQMGOU

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 9:13 am #

            LIVING IN A TOWN THAT YOU FEEL IS YOURS !!!

            https://youtu.be/tTsc-ldX7ak?t=448

            Here you’re not an tiny miserable ant slaving and wasting your life for the corporations, or made to feel like an ant whose whole existence and living space is to serve the fascist corporations. Here you are family with everyone else and EVERYTHING belongs to you!

            That’s the difference!

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 10:00 am #

            Haifa Stadium

            https://youtu.be/R8cPPDjNrV4

            A town of just 200,000 where everyone is family and everyone practically knows everyone else.

          • SpeedyBB March 30, 2021 at 1:31 pm #

            I wrote a fun blog for a German-style restaurant in Jakarta for a couple of years, in exchange for grub’n’grog.

            One of my pieces was an advisory, derived from personal travel experience, to try and stick with second- or third-tier cities when visiting another country, particularly for the first time.

            https://www.yaudahbistro.com/blog-updates/traveler/travelers-tip/

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 6:32 pm #

            If you’re a food tourist, Tel Aviv is your spot. But in Haifa we have a sizable community of Lebanese Christian refugees, so we probably have the best falafel humus and shawarma in the country if not the ME. Bambino restaurant is my favorite, but they’re all good, and all within a stone throw of each other in the lower city or downtown Haifa.

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 8:43 pm #

            I wrote a fun blog for a German-style restaurant in Jakarta for a couple of years, in exchange for grub’n’grog.

            Well written, and a fun read. It’s such a hard thing to get really right … many of the smaller cities and towns throughout Italy are beautiful, but at one level, you really shouldn’t miss the stunning beauty of the unique sights in Rome, Venice, etc.

            One compromise is to get in the low season … you might not be able to walk over the Rialto Bridge in the most brilliant sunshine, but on 25 April we couldn’t at all – it was simply packed beyond capacity. Same with Ponte Vecchio in Rome.

            In about 2000 there were confident estimates that tourist numbers would double by 2030 … it’s hard to imagine. JHK notes that there is real likelihood that much infrastructure funding will be blown on physical assets that will not be fit for anything useful by 2030. I trust the fix small rural roads, and not super-size urban freeways.

            I expect huge amounts of tourist investment is being re-thought in the light of Covid-19. The third runway at Heathrow has been scrapped. And I’m pleased I don’t hold any cruise-line shares.

        • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 10:17 pm #

          Not only the automobile.

          Also a result of impoverished city populations caused by uncontrolled illegal immigration. The city governments thrive on these immigrants and try to be a magnet to them, think sanctuary cities. Overgrown cities are killing this country.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 10:48 pm #

            The key driver for all of this nonsense is fascism. The corporations in the US are completely out of control and are dictating the social cultural political and economic agenda. They need to be brought under strict control and be drastically shrank down in size, but I’m sure that’s even possible. They now own everything and everybody.

          • akmofo March 29, 2021 at 10:52 pm #

            but I’m NOT sure that’s even possible

          • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 12:14 am #

            Yeah Akmo, that’s Plutocracy. Fascism is the opposite – the State controlling, guiding, and regulating the Corporations. You don’t get it cuz you don’t to get it.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 1:02 am #

            Yes, Vlad, tell me more about how the fascist aristocracy kept themselves and their financial scams and corruption in check in ancient Rome. Tell me again how many people/slaves voted for this corrupt aristocracy and their gov mafia money to lord over them. Plutocracy is exactly what fascism is.

          • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:36 am #

            Yup, it got away from them in old Rome too. And many of the slaves were from the Levant – Syria, etc. When they won their freedom, they began to gain economic power along with you folks. And of course the Romans themselves like the Greeks before them were really into trade. So it all went bad. Men returning from the Legionary service used to get some acres of land. In other words, they could be someone not just a drunk with a lot of good stories. But the rich bought up all the land and the solider stopped coming home to Rome, intermarrying in the lands in which they served instead. Soon there were very few Romans left in Rome, just the Mob of mongrels from everywhere. How like our cities today, eh?

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 7:37 am #

            Funny how it always goes bad. Funny how it always involves imperialism tyranny and depraved thieving from others until there is nothing more to thieve and the system eats itself.

            It never occurs to that this whole process is built into the system you advocate. What was the first thing the Nazis did? They stole everything they could from the Jews. Then they invaded and stole from Europe. Then they invaded and stole from Russia and the Middle East.

            Everything that you advocate for is just thievery tyranny and mass murder.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 7:47 am #

            It never occurs to you that this whole process is built into the system

          • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 11:14 am #

            :
            “It never occurs to that this whole process is built into the system you advocate. What was the first thing the Nazis did? They stole everything they could from the Jews. Then they invaded and stole from Europe. Then they invaded and stole from Russia and the Middle East.”

            Mofo,
            …The first thing the Jews did? They stole everything they could from the Palestinians…Then they invaded the Gaza Strip….

            Of course, the Nazi’s didn’t have a book giving them the moral authority….

            You need Mo Wisdom, Mofo.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 11:31 am #

            Lame humor, Elysia. Really lame.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 11:39 am #

            Nesher Park, Haifa.

            https://youtu.be/QsiX_wPWdYI

            Pine forest planted by Israelis. Enjoyed by everyone.

          • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:30 pm #

            That the collective Israeli genome is the being used as a template for the Covid vaccine suggest two lines of thought:

            That Israel is as you say, a high trust society. And th compliant to authority. That’s why it was picked and the people abused and betrayed.

            Secondly, a significant percentage of the Global Elite are of Jewish descent and thus they wanted a template that matched themselves. But obviously they don’t care much about the Jewish people per se – since this is a vast experiment. At this point they would seem to be more alligned with their non-Jewish Elite brethren, the Satanists and the Masons.

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 6:21 pm #

            The very first to be vaxxxed in the country was our Prime Minister and all members of Parliament including the Arab ones.

          • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 8:55 pm #

            “Lame humor, Elysia. Really lame.”

            Mofo,
            Not Humor…History.

            Your own statement paraphrased, and you cannot own up to the obvious?

          • akmofo March 30, 2021 at 10:18 pm #

            It’s not history. It’s false propaganda. There is not a single home in Israel where a Jew resides from which a non-Jew was expelled from. Not one!

            Everything that we have, we built ourselves from nothing and complete desolation. If it wasn’t for us there would be no jobs for the foreign Arab migrants that were propagandized by the Vatican to call themselves Palistani, a word they can’t even pronounce in Arabic because the letter P does not exist in Arabic. These people don’t even intermarry with each other because they are all strangers to each other, strangers from different clans and different countries.

            But good that you found a noble calling at your late age to get up in the morning for. You certainly don’t give a shit about anything else. Anyhow, I’m glad it’s not just lame humour.
            I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings later on when you be rewarded for your noble actions by God, whether you believe in him or in Caesar-Jebus and his Vatican Greek statues.

          • elysianfield March 31, 2021 at 11:36 am #

            “There is not a single home in Israel where a Jew resides from which a non-Jew was expelled from. Not one!”

            Well, Mofo, can we then agree that there are no Nazi’s living in homes stolen in Poland, or Russia? Or any land resided upon?

            Cool.

            Regarding my eventual comeuppance, I am beginning to lean towards “The Great JUJU under the Sea”.

            Praise Him.

          • akmofo March 31, 2021 at 12:24 pm #

            Sure, Elysia, in your reptilian greed you were racing to take over Russia and the ME. You lost and were repelled back to Germany.

            How does that compare to our situation in Israel? It’s been over 140 years of Zionist Israeli resettlement of Israel. Everything that was built in Israel was built by our hands with our toil and knowhow.

            Your Vatican Jihadistani pirates will eventually fade from the scene. Their usefulness has been outlived. Arabs are getting wise and immune to your Vatican propaganda incitement and are getting in line to establish diplomatic economic and military ties with Israel. Soon there will be a rail link from the Gulf through Saudia to Israel and the Med, bypassing and supplanting the Suez. Trade traffic from India and China will pass through that rail line. Your made up Paliwood propaganda narrative will be dropped like a hot potato, along with your FAKE NEWS outlets that promoted this Vatican propaganda. They are already dying, having lost all credibility.

      • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 11:16 am #

        “police seem genuinely , actually , quite reasonable.”

        Kesa,
        Consider that the majority are, if allowed to be.

      • GreenAlba April 1, 2021 at 6:56 am #

        “Finally , if you live in an area where , truth be told , the police are jerks , a motor scooter makes you look like a Third – Worlder or some sort of deviant , and so can draw police attention.”

        Mine didn’t, thankfully.

        https://cdn.globalauctionplatform.com/5ec981b4-85fd-4e1e-a233-aa4e00a24f45/9ac6c021-39aa-4454-b827-aae2011b6d92/468×382.jpg

        Yamaha Passola, 49cc, £340 new in 1983.

        I had the basket and the box, so with backpack and a decent-sized bag between my feet I could do a reasonable shop for a family of four. I don’t suppose the bag between the feet would have got police approval on safety grounds, but I never had any problems.

        It was really not good at holding the road if it was icy though. Had it for about five years and it was quicker than walking to/from bus stops. These days I’m much nearer the bus stops.

        But even now I think it’s cute.

        https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/granny-driving-scooter-watercolor-illustration-600w-1189143109.jpg

    • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 9:22 pm #

      Why so rural? Cheaper or because you hate people or both?

      You must have guns too! If Rob Ford’s brother makes a bid for the throne, can we count on you?

      • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 10:04 pm #

        My parents were an interracial couple , both from the South , in the 1960’s.

        Though not Communist or atheist , or even left – leaning , they went to live and work in the Soviet Bloc.

        Does that give you some hints about their personalities ?

        When they came back to the U.S. we lived in a city the first five years .

        After that , though , in the most rural , out – of – the – way places my parents could find ( could find in the east at least. ) . Deliberately so.

        My parents are Back – to – the – Land types.

        Somewhere in my parents house is an Issue No. 1 , Volume No. 1 , of The Mother Earth News.

        Or my parents are Doomsday — preppers.

        However you want to look at it.

        ( From my own experience , Left – wing and Right – wing are more fluid or interchangeable than is advertised. )

        In my own life I have been back and forth from wilderness to city , but got used to the wilderness in the process.

        And now , yes , in old age I prefer trees and cows as neighbors.

        Perhaps a good easy way , though simplistic , to understand my outlook is to watch the movie , ” Jeremiah Johnson , ” or , ” Dances with Wolves. ”

        As far as people go ? Well , as I think I have said before , where I live today , ” The Andy Griffith Show ” is reality , not just TV bullshit.

        Hey , 15 years ago I would not have believed that myself. But that is the reality here.

        No . I have no guns.

        I suppose that sounds paradoxical , or unbelievable , considering I advocate handing out AK – 47’s to 12 year olds ?

        My thinking on it is that you can falsely paint me as a monster , you can manufacture evidence to ” prove ” I’m a monster , but at least I know damn well that I don’t even have a Blunderbuss.

        And in this police state pretending to be something else that is the most you can do ; Satisfy your own conscience.

        • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 10:26 pm #

          Besides , I really doubt I could shoot anyone anyway.

          Not because I ‘m such a wonderful person either. You already know better than that.

          A few times in my life I have seen violence. The real thing.

          It isn’t pretty at all.

          I have some inkling why some people who come back from war don’t want to talk about it AT ALL.

          It bothers you a hell of a lot , even just to see it.

          Like Nietzsche said , ( paraphrasing )

          The abyss looks into you , too.

        • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 11:24 pm #

          I met a guy yesterday who was strictly Mayberry RFD. They exist. One must respect the true goodness and of course, realize that there is hypocrisy and human lusts and weaknesses lying beneath the veneer as well. But that’s too negative – underneath the persona or veneer is real goodness too, not just ugliness. So I’m fine with people putting their best foot forward, that’s good for a nation and culture.

          Of course his consensus reality is too narrow for me. But that’s even more true for Liberals and Libertines. One bookstore I go into sometimes (while waiting for the bus) is all Liberal women and one or two gay men. Saccharine and pastel consciousness needless to say. Everything must be Perfect. I caught the clerk looking in horror at some blemishes on my hands….

          • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 12:18 am #

            My all time favorite song , and my all time favorite music video.

            My guess is that at least 6,000 of the views of this video are mine. Lol.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xud3fRg2XFQ

            Trivial stuff.

            But Because I seem to interest you so much.

          • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:37 am #

            She cares for him in her own way – a little. He’s an accoutrement to her life, like her brand name handbag.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2021 at 4:23 am #

            I was in a club once, in Ft Lauderdale, me and my shipmates when the Doobie Bros. came in, it must have been after one of their concerts. Of course all the girls in the place immediately flocked around them at the bar. They turned out to be pretty good guys, buying rounds of drinks for everybody, didn’t act like big Rock Stars like one would expect.

        • Epicur March 30, 2021 at 10:32 am #

          “I’m a monster…”

          Dealing with reality will do that to you.

          ” who falls in
          love with the God is washed clean
          Of death desired and of death dreaded.

          … he is monstrous, but not
          To the measure of the God…. ”

          https://allpoetry.com/Birth-Dues

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 9:40 pm #

      I live in a very rural area , which means a trip to pretty much anywhere is a minimum 25 or 30 minute one – way commute.

      I love the country, but can’t stand all the driving, which is why we have never lived out in a rural area.

      About 3-5 miles from town, far enough out for a bit of greenery, but near shopping, and a 15-minute train or bus into the center if I want it. Hardly need to use a car. Very nice.

      Some form of souped-up EV golf cart would suit me better than a motor scooter.

      • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 10:34 pm #

        ” Some form of souped-up EV golf cart would suit me better than a motor scooter. ”

        Actually I like golf carts too.

        But that’s another essay.

  38. Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 9:14 pm #

    https://www.amren.com/news/2021/03/she-brought-diverse-skin-tones-emoji-to-the-iphone-now-shes-suing-apple/

    Emoji race war. POC emojis are attacking yellow Chinese emojis.

    • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 9:36 pm #

      If we are going to have knock – down drag – out fights about trivial shit ,

      then why not go back to woefully impractical and archaic warfare ?

      That is , go back to really pretty and colorful uniforms. Flags flying . white gloves.

      12 year old drummers.

      Pikes and matchlocks , and officers carry utterly useless swords because their job actually is to manage and lead after all.

      Of course its best to stage that kind of war in manicured cow pastures , so typically the only civilian casualties are chickens and cows.

      ( And horses of course. Horses and 12 year old musicians ? Well , we gotta abuse somebody right ? )

      And no more conscription , or the entire civilian population being a target. The only people who need fight in these wars being the crazy or desperate folks that volunteer for that sort of thing.

      How about going back to trial by ordeal , for those actually crazy enough or stupid enough to seriously buy that shit .

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 11:43 pm #

        But still leading, not pushing like officers do now. Alexander the Great would fight in the thick of battle, of course surrounded by his picked men but still it’s something. He despised Darius for running from him. He wouldn’t marry into his family since he was afraid the cowardice might be congenital.

        Yes, we must bring back dueling. Assholes. might check their assholery if they could be called on it.

  39. JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 10:08 pm #

    Well, we are about to be duped as a population by the Biden gang.

    Biden is trying to get the governors to put mask laws on everybody again because another surge is coming. The CDC director is echoing him along with Fauci.

    This is a blatant LIE! Tekapo, you should be ashamed of this blatant grab for power.

    I just reviewed the forty eight states new cases and with the exception of about four or five east coast states plus Michigan, the rates are level or declining. You can probably guess number one, New York. The southern states where the rules are lifted are the best, we have states with zero new cases daily.

    It is amazing me that the Dem scumbags in DC cannot let this huge control item go. They will be shoving Covid down our throats for awhile yet trying to create the Uniparty.

    These people lie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their entire protocol and program is based on falsehoods.

    Patriot Party, where are you?

    • JohnAZ March 29, 2021 at 10:11 pm #

      And by the way, all you folks that try to equate the GOP with the Dem scumbags, there is almost no GOP influence in DC right now and yet the Dem lies and falsehoods continue, their entire program of power is based on Bulls*&t. Watch the border, they are even blocking our own senators from observing the fiasco going on there.

      • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 10:53 pm #

        And by the way, all you folks that try to equate the GOP with the Dem scumbags, there is almost no GOP influence in DC right now

        So a legislation-blocking 50 Senate seats, and a super-majority on the Supreme Court … these are chopped liver?

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 3:13 am #

          What legislation?

          The House presents a Ult Left agenda to the process that cannot pass the bipartisan 60 point.

          So the Dictator writes an Executive Order instead.

          Remember when Trump did it. The ink was not dry on the order before a federal judge cancelled it. If the GOP had any real influence anywhere, why aren’t the EOs by Biden being cancelled out?

          Reb states are trying to stop the Leftward plunge but not much so far.

          The Supreme Court is a joke, the super majority that Trump wanted disappeared with his presidency. They just wink and smile at Biden’s actions. Their handling of the election fraud possibility was atrocious and really shows the totality of the GOP demise.

          Not one affidavit was investigated, of thousands.

          Gotta hand it to the Biden gang, they are in control.

          Control by liars and cheats, a good descriptor of where this country is right now.

      • Yohannon March 29, 2021 at 11:52 pm #

        Does the existence of Tekapo, a Communist who practiced Capitalism and is fine with it, weaken or strengthen my argument that the two are in reality One system?

        He understand Us and American History far better than you or Tucker do. He knows America was founded by Whites for Whites. He sees the same facts as White Nationalists do – and interprets them differently ( completely negatively). He hates us for not disavowing our Tradition and Nation.

        He will always be frustrated because the Corporations and Banks that funded Communism will never relinquish control and become egalitarian. The “State” will never fade away as per Marx into a multi brown/grey skinned paradise where everyone looks like Kamala Harris. That’s happening for the hoi polloi but not for them. Woe to Tek and his peeps if they push the issue.

    • Tekapo March 29, 2021 at 10:46 pm #

      This is a blatant LIE! Tekapo, you should be ashamed of this blatant grab for power.

      Hey JAZ … why target me? I haven’t mentioned Covid-19 numbers or politics hardly ever!

      But since you implicate me as a perp – my view is that there is NO politician or party that wants to keep the mask / lockdown / pandemic thing going one day longer than they have to, because there is NO political upside.

      And all the conspiracy theories about social control and population control are horseradish.

      I heard a funny joke about Ted Cruz and the boys going down the Rio Grande, “Hey, they’ve remade Deliverance, but this time they put all the inbred hillbillies in the boat!”.

      Who said lefties have no sense of humor 🙂

      • hmuller March 30, 2021 at 12:18 am #

        “Who said lefties have no sense of humor”

        Anyone who watches late night TV comedians and their angry political manifestos presented as “entertainment”.

        You think Ted Cruz is white trash and Hunter Biden with his crack pipe and teenage whore is not?

        Finally, you know nothing about conspiracy theories or horseradish.

        • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 1:41 am #

          Finally, you know nothing about conspiracy theories or horseradish.

          I at least know I am very allergic to both. 🙂

        • Raindogs March 30, 2021 at 2:37 am #

          Both can certainly be true numbnuts.

          • benr March 30, 2021 at 12:54 pm #

            Why its even true of you seadolt.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 3:24 am #

        The battle is between state and federal control of the populace. The Dems want central control. The tenth amendment blocks that. Which is when they get around to it, that amendment will be endangered also.

        The media has destroyed the function of the press, thus its freedom is gone. Freedom of speech is a joke thanks to cancel culture. Freedom of assembly and protest is now confined to rioting. The second amendment is under assault.

        The right to vote is being destroyed by ballot stuffing enabled by untraceable mail in ballots.

        The destitute of other nations is becoming America’s mainstream.

        Yes, America is coming to an end, with nary a whimper.

  40. KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 11:01 pm #

    ” The government has never created a legitimate job outside of DC. ”

    I think that is absolutely true.

    But I also suspect it has a hell of a lot to do with culture , and philosophy , not really so much to do with what is claimed as practicality or good sense , and not at all patriotic.

    For example , I think we could build , maintain , and keep clean a good number of our roads with simple manual labor.

    Far more wheelbarrows and hoes , fewer trucks and such.

    But that would mean a very large menial workforce , being paid a wage that actually pays the grocery bill.

    Somewhere along the way , though , America went from being a mass of lower middle class and very proud of it ,

    to now the ideal is Nero or Caligula. ( But not described that way of course. )

    I doubt the average American is really that lazy.

    I think it is much more that they fear — for good reason — that getting your hands dirty is shameful.

    Because it IS seen as such.

    And as far as practicality goes ;

    We have to compete —- with Chinese concentration camp labor.

    I WOULD be all for competition , supply and demand , and Free Trade , except it doesn’t fucking exist.

    The Bolsheviks had to isolate themselves from the rest of the world because their system is fundamentally evil.

    But I am afraid that a system which is fundamentally good has the exact same problem.

    ” Come out from among them , and be ye separate . ”

    That would be the better , or the true , patriotism.

    • volodya March 29, 2021 at 11:47 pm #

      You’re right, the average American is not lazy, does not need replacement by docile, desperate, semi-literate, cheap foreign labor. Especially illegal foreign labor.

      The system as the great thinkers thought it up on behalf of billionaire Oligarchs does not work, cannot work and cannot be fixed. The world as the theorists envisaged does not exist except in economics text books.

      There are many of us whose intelligence isn’t expressed in cleverness with words or mathematical symbols but rather in manipulating tools and making those tools do their bidding. These people may not be articulate but they’re intelligent in ways the alleged and self-proclaimed intelligentsia have no clue about.

      • malthuss March 30, 2021 at 10:17 am #

        robots, 3d printing. workers?????

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 3:32 am #

      Labor is dollars, wealth is labor. Wealth is profit, and profit is the mechanism that enables growth and increasing capital. Increasing capital means higher interest rates and dividends. More return on dollars invested creates wealth. Wealth should not be just bid up with federal printed money, it needs to be earned with performance.

      All things that have been destroyed in this fiscal fiasco the US has become. 2008 s performance in the real estate slot machine was just the start.

    • messianicdruid March 30, 2021 at 10:41 am #

      kesaanna said, “The Bolsheviks had to isolate themselves from the rest of the world because their system is fundamentally evil.”

      How do parasites maintain themselves separated from their prey? Bloodsuckers.

  41. volodya March 29, 2021 at 11:08 pm #

    Yep, there’s the problem with depleting oil, and also its inconvenient placement in some dusty locales run by some bearded and robed fellas with some truly retrograde ideas. But we have other problems, mainly those of our own making, for example, a multi-decade head-long charge away from reason and common sense.

    And not only that but a whole-hearted embrace of the most howling fool-assery, some truly preposterous notions dressed up with jargon and abstruse terminology to sound like wisdom. Apparently the smartest among us forgot that if something sounds like gobbledegook, then that’s what it really is.

    Every day you can see folly coming from the bastions of what we laughingly refer to as “higher education”, which by any realistic assessment don’t produce anything resembling “education” never mind “higher”. One outcome was this stretch of sheer lunacy where the “elite” consensus – with academic backing – was that financial markets needed de-regulation.

    So, Horn-dog Bill saw to it, that is, when he could find the time, when he could get away from indulging a sharp and refined (sarcasm) taste for sin, listening to a small coterie representing views of monied interests.

    Well, Wall Street had its way, Wall Street has been having it way for a long time now, having bought and paid for those same bastions previously referred to and also both factions of the ruling Party. And, lest Republicans think that we don’t know, it was largely their thinking, if you can call it that, that underpinned much of this foolhardiness. So far be it from Dubya to get in the way.

    And so Wall Street insisted on playing Russian Roulette. Despite warnings that those pistols had real ammo, Wall Street kept at it. Inevitably, Wall Street blew its brains out. Remember?

    And then Barry and his administration, also in tight with Wall Streeters, came running, putting Wall Street into intensive care, finding no lack of time nor money.

    Nor lack of justifications either for turning a blind-eye to the most egregious criminality no matter the abundance of evidence. “Too big to jail” they said. Me, in my touching innocence, thought “too big to NOT jail”. Then Barry O hired Mary Jo. Truly remarkable, this astounding silliness, a real side-splitter, hiring former counsel for Wall Street financial firms as regulator of those same firms. You could be forgiven for thinking, what’s next, mob lawyers as police commissioners?

    You don’t have to look too hard. The ruinous results are right under your nose, and if you can’t see it, then you’re willfully blind, or maybe in the pay of those same monied interests. I think it’s trite but true, that old saying, people won’t see things if their paycheck depends on their not seeing them.

    • KesaAnna March 29, 2021 at 11:26 pm #

      “Too big to jail” they said. Me, in my touching innocence, thought “too big to NOT jail”.

      My favorite English king was Richard III.

      Not because he was a wonderful person , apparently he was anything but.

      But because he actually went out on a battlefield , and got himself actually killed.

      In many ways I do not think we have progressed at all , but have shockingly regressed.

      • volodya March 29, 2021 at 11:32 pm #

        They found his remains under a parking lot not long ago and identified them using DNA, carbon dating etc. The last English king to die in battle. Shockingly regressed is right and in many ways. I think that 20,000 years ago the average hunter had a far larger repertoire of skills and knowledge than the average person has got nowadays.

  42. restless94110 March 29, 2021 at 11:29 pm #

    While much of what you have written is likely to come to pass, you are either misstating or misunderstanding MMT.

    The US has NOT had MMT at all in no way–so far.

    MMT is the theory that a country with its own sovereign currency can supply money TO THE PEOPLE in order to JUMPSTART money VELOCITY. The people, who need money to live, spend that money on goods and services, which promotes job growth, commerce, and thus GOOSES the economy. There are other aspects to it regarding debt, which answers any other issues raised by those who have no idea what they are talking about.

    Go to Ellen Brown’s Web of Debt blog for all you need to know about MMT.

    What you think is MMT is when a government that has its own sovereign currency (the US), prints up a bunch of money and gives it to banks, who then loan it at zero interest to a few rich people. All that gets you is stagnation, increased disparity, and asset bubbles.

    That is NOT MMT THEORY. Please educate yourself. Thanks.

    • volodya March 29, 2021 at 11:38 pm #

      And keeps Chinese factories humming. Chinese workers, and especially their billionaire CCP masters, send their most humble thanks.

    • hmuller March 30, 2021 at 12:11 am #

      Print money and hand it out to banks and billionaires; you get asset price inflation.

      Print money and hand it out to ordinary people; you get consumer price inflation.

      Our “leaders” seem intent on doing both.

      Restless, if you think prosperity issues from a printing press, you are in good company with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina, Weimar Germany, Paul Krugman and all his faithful cats.

      I know, I know, we are the stupid ones. But there’s such a thing as being educated to the point of losing all common sense.

    • Disaffected March 30, 2021 at 7:58 am #

      Once again, what a government could do in theory is all well and nice. University curricula and small fortunes of student debt are built on it. What governments actually do with those theories is entirely another. What you see all around you in the actual world in which you live is an example of the latter. The former, alas, still exists only in textbooks and in the students’ bank accounts, or lack thereof. You’re welcome.

  43. KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 12:54 am #

    In a lighter vein ,

    A hit from the year I came to the United States.

    I really do think times were better then .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4b3w6a9cSk

    • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 1:49 am #

      They certainly were good … but that could be a function of our being 45 years younger than we are now?

      • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 2:14 am #

        One reason I will never understand , ” non – religious ” ;

        Life must be lived forward , but can only be appreciated or understood backwards.

        And youth is wasted on the young.

        When you have the means , you don’t know.

        When you know , you don’t have the means.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 12:06 pm #

        Very good observation. I wonder what the effect that all this Deep State BS is having on the folks that are 45 years younger now.

        I do not think they are very happy. Their discord comes from forty years of Liberal Deep State governance and not from four years of Orangeman trying to give economic power back to them.

  44. KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 2:09 am #

    ” She cares for him in her own way – a little. He’s an accoutrement to her life, like her brand name handbag. ”

    Well …… that’s one way of looking at it. 🙁

    A friend of mine who actually saw my house said it looked like a museum.

    I used my last stimulus check , the 6oo dollar one , to buy the complete Brownie Girl Scout uniform of the 1970’s.

    The whole thing ; Beanie , orange tie , blouse , jumper , knee socks , button – down sweater , alternate shorts or slacks.

    And because I had to buy everything in pieces , I wound up with five beanies , and two jumpers , and three blouses. 😛

    I was never in the Brownies ; too old when I got here.

    But the year after I came to America , I went to Girl Scout camp for two weeks.

    Saw Brownie uniforms there. Prettiest uniform ever.

    Anyways , the point being I tend to prefer hoarders.

    People that hang on to stuff , tend to hang on to people.

    An alternate theory / and way of looking at it.

  45. Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 2:27 am #

    Read “The Creature from Jekyll Island”. The Banks took over our money system generations ago. In a deeps sense, we lost the Republic then and there. Since then it has just been a matter of time until the process was complete. Instead of printing our money *backed by gold and silver), the Banks loan it to us and then charge interest on it. By definition, we can never pay back the debt since it is greater than the money supply. Where do they get the money? They create it our of nothing, in blasphemous imitation of God. The notes inscribed with “In God We Trust” is the purest mockery. It’s like buying a Monopoly Game for twenty bucks and being able to use all the thousands of dollars of game money inside as real money – except more so.

    *Note: The part about being backed by gold and silver is in the Constitution. Many have qualms about this as it is not necessary and gives financial speculators another “in” to the most fundamental part of our economy. The Nazis hand no gold or silver, it being all stolen by the Allies after WW1. Yet they created an economic miracle nonetheless. How? By the most fundamental capital: brains and brawn united in a great purpose, the resurrection of Germany. What they didn’t have, they bartered for directly without the usurious interference of the International Bankers.

    • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 3:42 am #

      In simple terms , given a choice between American / British Plutocratic social Darwinism , Bolshevik Equality of the lowest denominator social Darwinism , or National Socialst racial Social Darwinism , I would pick the last one.

      Why would a mixed – race girl pick racial Social Darwinism ?

      As I have said before , I strongly suspect that , like Bonapartism , the NSDAP would not have long out – lived its rock star.

      In the meantime though , perhaps , the original fundamental premises of Volksgemeinshaft , and a strong animus against interest slavery , would have reasserted themselves and taken hold.

      And we ALL would have been better off.

      ( Except maybe Jews and Gypsies. )

      And as I have said , the best outcome for East Asia would have been a strong Japan.

      Germany couldn’t have done much about that , and the Japanese had already gone a long way toward fucking themselves , but with a real loser in Europe , perhaps the U.S. would have backed off in Asia .

      Africa ? Already seriously fucked anyway on account of colonialism.

      Primarily the fault of the British and French . But since they have to be covered for , that is white – washed.
      Not on account of racism actually , but on account of needing to make the Western Allied narrative look good , when it’s actually fucking awful.

      Pretty much the same story in the Middle East as applies to Africa.

      Central and South America ?

      100 years of the United States playing pirates and off – shoring the plantation economy.

      On second thought , it woulda been better if we won Jutland in 1916.

      • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 11:01 am #

        “Africa ? Already seriously fucked anyway on account of colonialism.”

        Kesa,
        Yeah…seriously fucked on account of…colonialism…yeah.

        That
        Does
        Fit
        The
        Narrative

        • benr March 30, 2021 at 12:47 pm #

          Africa was fucked before COLONIAL expansionism and will be fucked long after every resource is depleted and the animals are all dead.
          China is the next colonial power exploiting the resources of Africa and the people.

      • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 12:40 pm #

        Makes sense. The Pope Pius during the time of the Confederacy preferred the South to the North – privately admitting as much to Jefferson David in correspondence. Not that he endorsed slavery, but that it was a known evil and probably coming to an end in any case. But the horror of Yankee Industrialism was without measure.

        Africa? As if Africa was great or much of anything before White colonialism? Anything good anyway. That part doesn’t make sense.

    • tucsonspur March 30, 2021 at 5:34 am #

      It’s a great book about the Fed’s beginnings at the J.P. Morgan resort on Jekyll Island. Paul Warburg, with connections to the Rothschilds, was there, along with five others who the author says represented 25% of the world’s wealth.

      As the book says, Warburg’s simple plan, in certain ways, got the American people to work for Wall Street.

      Also, Warburg’s brother Max was financial advisor to the Kaiser and became Director of the Reichsbank.

      As an aside, there’s a great picture of the Russian ship ‘Osliaba’ and its crew, dispatched by Alexander II to Alexandria, Virginia to help the Union blockade the South.

    • malthuss March 30, 2021 at 10:21 am #

      Those shrewd people. making trillions and hiding it.

  46. Pucker March 30, 2021 at 3:07 am #

    Trump said that one of his greatest accomplishments as President was to eliminate all of the safety protocols and legal checks and balances imposed on vaccine development to ensure that vaccines are safe and effective before being administered to the public.

    Almost 90% of Democrats are fervent advocates for Trump’s rushed, experimental Covid 19 vaccines.

    New and Improved

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/new-covid-vaccines-needed-within-year-say-scientists

    • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 3:24 am #

      When repubs like something Lefty , alarm bells should go off.

      When Lefties like something Capitalist / war hawk / “patriotic ” , alarm bells should go off.

    • Pucker March 30, 2021 at 4:23 am #

      “Also concerning is the fact that more than 20 European countries have halted use of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine due to a possible link to blood clot disorders and strokes. Even the New York Times has questioned if the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a viable candidate, particularly for Africa. According to a Times article from February, South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical trial volunteers from mild or moderate illness.”

      • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 12:42 pm #

        There are also gearing up mRNA malaria shot for Africa, etc. As Blondie says, One way or another they’re gonna get ya.

  47. SoftStarLight March 30, 2021 at 3:28 am #

    I do believe in Magic. Although real Magic is actually more a matter of intricate math, elaborate formulas, and the precise reading of rhythms. Rather than throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks. It takes a lot of time and dedication. Perhaps there isn’t generally the attention span for such things among most people. And unfortunately it sounds like the super important are particularly bereft of attentiveness. And historical perspective. And empathy. And common sense? If only we had Magic. Its all about the Mechanics it seems in the current order. At least from my view. A tweak here and a fix there and the gigantc machine will just keep humming right along goes the theory. Except that theory never really pans out in the arena called real life. A fix just creates a new problem that needs fixin. Now that Math is racist how much of a leap will it be to the conclusion that money is racist? Or perhaps that is already a thing. No doubt its distribution is and they are gonna fix that! But even if the hypertech society can be maintained in a physics type sense will the apparent prevailing superstitions of the day allow such an outcome? Deconstruction is the downhill side. Once it snowballs and accelerates its an avalanche. Is that really what all of these do gooder enlightened souls want? How will they be able to monitor everyone’s thoughts and words to ensure a safe, anti-racist, non binary, non thinking, ultra vaccinated new normal?

    • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 3:48 am #

      Here’s a variation for you , since I’m on a musical nostalgia kick .

      I think it fits you , anyway.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-Z3BAW7o3c

      And that’s it for this evening. Gotta go do other stuff.

      • SoftStarLight March 30, 2021 at 11:03 am #

        One of my most favorite songs in the whole wide universe! Here is another one of my favorites I would like to share since we are on the topic. It’s from around the same general era. But I still haven’t made up my mind yet which is my favorite lol. 😉

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH_YbBHVF4g

        • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:36 pm #

          I have that “album”. More hits per square inch than any other ever.

          The question for you: Do you want to do magic or be magic?

        • GreenAlba March 31, 2021 at 9:07 am #

          I remember that song but never paid it any attention.

          Now that I’ve looked up the lyrics I have to agree with the comments underneath!

    • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 12:45 pm #

      Perhaps by making it impossible for us to think bad thoughts, or pretty much any thoughts except the ones they pump into our heads with the nano-particle antenna.

      • SoftStarLight March 30, 2021 at 5:11 pm #

        Ah sort of like once they have access they can wipe the hard drive. That would make sense if their goal is to change vaccine recipients into obedient drones. That way even if the system crashes and doesn’t work anymore the damage is already done and the drones won’t suddenly become independent thinkers. I was thinking maybe that is another reason that they are going to keep making or trying to make people take the vaccines as different ones roll out. Because they are actually like software updates or maybe they are even adding new hardware with each shot. Maybe its transhumanism undercover and under the radar..for most you know.

        • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 5:53 pm #

          I’d guess cumulative hardware. The fine tuning or updates will come later.

  48. BackRowHeckler March 30, 2021 at 4:08 am #

    How’s the Chauvin trial going, so far? No, I didn’t watch Day 1, as I find televised court proceedings pretty boring. Besides, I had work to do out in the woodlot, which today was not easy due to high winds and biting cold. At any rate, according to network news, the whole world is hoping and expecting a guilty verdict. David Muir from ABC suggested that the trial is just a formality, a nicety; everybody knows Chauvin is a racist and guilty of murdering St. George, the Gentle Giant. There’s the video of Chauvin kneeling on St. George’s neck for nearly 9 minutes, what more do you need to see? Yes, the entire elite class is agitating for a guilty verdict, as well as the menacing rabble already gathering in the streets. Mayors and police chiefs are hoping for a guilty verdict too but for a different reason. You know what it is, I don’t have to spell it out. Well, jury trials are tricky. Some comrades say the fix is in, Chauvin needs to get convicted regardless of guilt or innocence, that this is just a show trial with a predetermined verdict like the Soviet show trials in Moscow in 1937, only diff being our court has a jury, which gives the whole proceeding an aura of legitimacy. Well, an acquittal will set off more intense rioting and looting, if there’s anything left to loot. Are sneaker stores stocked back up after the looting from last year? Cities will burn, let the lefty sh#tholes burn. I’m worried the mobs will head out here into the rural areas. We saw some of that last year. And they have allies here too; I still see BLM lawn signs posted out front of the larger, more stately homes down on Main Street. As if that’s gonna save them when Homey shows up.

    Brh

    • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 5:08 am #

      On second thought , I’ll make one more comment.

      ONCE AGAIN I’m reminded of the movie , ” To Kill a Mockingbird ”

      At the end of the movie , the lawyers nine year old son Jim , Bob Yule ( the bad guy ) and Bo Radley get into some kind of altercation nobody sees , but the result of which is that Bob Yule winds up stabbed to death with his own knife.

      So , afterward , the lawyer Atticus Finch is saying , ” Well I suppose it will have to go before the Magistrate , and Jim will need a lawyer , and …. ”

      And the sheriff interrupts him.

      Are you nuts ?

      You want to send a 9 year old boy who never meant any harm through the criminal justice wringer ?

      Or , alternatively , a mental defective , but good – hearted soul , who never did anybody any harm ?

      No.

      Bod Yule fell on his knife , and that’s that.

      Now to this case —

      I’m no fan of the police , but it really doesn’t look to me like the cop intended murder.

      And the way I hear it , this Floyd character could just as well have dropped dead five minutes later.

      Whatever happened to the old idea ; ” Shit happens. ” ?

      • KesaAnna March 30, 2021 at 5:26 am #

        It all kinda reminds me of Jonestown Guyana on the large scale.

        All these , ” Make Love , Not War ” Hippie types turned into witch – hunting totalitarians.

      • tucsonspur March 30, 2021 at 5:43 am #

        I can just hear the Defense in closing. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please, if nothing else remember this, Shit Happens!’

        Or, maybe something like, ‘If it’s shit, you must acquit!’

        • benr March 30, 2021 at 8:56 am #

          Or how about “If HE was a piece of shit, you must acquit”

      • Epicur March 30, 2021 at 10:01 am #

        “Whatever happened to the old idea ; ‘ Shit happens. ‘ ?”

        It was exchanged for the widespread delusion that shit ain’t supposed to happen, and further, when shit does happen it is the fault of “society”.

        We will keep running with that delusion until enough damage is done that we shitcan it.

      • elysianfield March 30, 2021 at 10:55 am #

        “Whatever happened to the old idea ; ” Shit happens. ” ?”

        Kesa,

        It
        Doesn’t
        Fit
        The
        Narrative.

    • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:38 pm #

      Thwack’s threat was hidden under the homey and hokey, Dance with the one that brought ya.

  49. Raindogs March 30, 2021 at 5:30 am #

    Everything I don’t agree with is just one big PsyOp.

    Everything is sullied and corrupt save one Donald J Trump.

    • benr March 30, 2021 at 8:07 am #

      Well at least you know reality now.
      Congrats on joining the human race instead of being an angry demented fool.
      What meds did they put you on to get you out of that horrible angry window licking head space you have been in for decades?

      OOps I see now that was you weak attempt at sarcasm.
      Seek medication for what ails you.

  50. benr March 30, 2021 at 8:05 am #

    Speaking of magic it looks like the American left will have the Orangeman bad o focus on again.

    https://www.oann.com/president-trump-launches-website-to-advance-america-first-agenda/

    Proving he ain’t gone away.
    Four years of actual chaos under Biden which the media will do its best to cover up compared to four years of anything to make Trump look bad what a stark contrast in realities.

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 12:01 pm #

      The real problem here is the total domination of the communication and entertainment world by the Left. The country has lurched Left because it is all the people hear and see, Democratic Deep State propaganda. It is constant, every hour of the day, 24/7.

      The Left has used the Chinese approach, insert bad apples and watch the barrel rot from within. It has worked well.

      You watch those arrogant SOBs on CNN and MSNBC lie and you want to do them bodily harm.

      • benr March 30, 2021 at 3:01 pm #

        I don’t watch that trash because the Teevee bears the brunt of my rage.
        As far as GBH goes they are not worth the time or hassle.

  51. Disaffected March 30, 2021 at 8:07 am #

    Looks like the CDC Director is letting us know ahead of time that they plan on releasing a new, more virulent strain of whatever they’ve cooked up at Ft Detrick to kill off a few more people and make the rest scared as shit. Nice to see that good manners and style haven’t gone completely out of fashion these days. Mask lovers, relax and rejoice, you’ll be wearing these things for the rest of your lives. I imagine they’ll come up with surgically implanted filtration devices eventually to go with the daily vaccinations and individual isolation cells. But don’t worry, they’ll deduct it from your UBI, so you’ll never see an inconvenient bill for any of it. Thank god for that at least!

    https://www.foxnews.com/health/cdc-director-covid-induced-impending-doom-rise-cases-hospitalizations

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 8:51 am #

      Yep, her melodramatic performance was laid on a tad thick.

      Since when do doctors tell people to be afraid of next year’s cold?

      Since 2020.

    • stelmosfire March 30, 2021 at 9:03 am #

      As The Fly said, “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–hMJPUBwMc

  52. MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 9:14 am #

    “A man who was among onlookers shouting at a Minneapolis police officer to get off George Floyd last May was to continue testifying Tuesday, a day after he described seeing Floyd struggle for air and his eyes rolling back into his head, saying he saw Floyd “slowly fade away … like a fish in a bag.

    What in the hell kind of an analogy is that?

    Not sure what that is supposed to make me envision. Apparently, a fish…in…a bag? For some reason?

    • gustafson.robert.22 March 30, 2021 at 3:13 pm #

      There I was, choking for air, fighting fatal suffocation like a fish in a bag… except no water in that fish’s bag, just air, which I desperately need right now, coincidentally…

      ha-ha

  53. friartuck March 30, 2021 at 9:15 am #

    Don’t you wish Rush was still alive ?

    He’d tell us what to do, broadcasting from his G4 in mid flight while schlepping down to the DR with a bottle full of Viagra and gett’n ready for some more latin teen poontang.

    • Pucker March 30, 2021 at 9:32 am #

      Was Rush Limbaugh frequenting the Dominican Republic, or Haiti?

      • benr March 30, 2021 at 10:06 am #

        Its been reported he liked the Viking club,

        • Pucker March 30, 2021 at 10:07 am #

          What is the “Viking Club”?

          • malthuss March 30, 2021 at 11:41 am #

            Viking Club – Wikipedia
            Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Clubhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Club
            The Viking Club was a club for philologists and historians specializing in Germanic and Scandinavian studies. It was founded by E.V. Gordon and J. R. R. Tolkien when the two were professors at Leeds University in the 1920s.
            Home | Moline Vikings Club

          • benr March 30, 2021 at 12:43 pm #

            High end erotic club on the Island of Dominica.

            You asked so I actually looked it up having never been curious wowsers some of them young ladies are drop dead gorgeous.

            https://vikingsexoticresort.com/

          • Yohannon March 30, 2021 at 1:44 pm #

            “You don’t need to be extremely wealthy but you must have a desire to experience only the best in life and committed to dating some of Europe’s most beautiful escort models.”

            This is perfect for me. I’m not extremely wealthy, I have the desire, and I am committed to “dating” some of Europe’s most beautiful escort models. I will convert them to White Nationalism with hypnotic suggestions while they are in the throes of passion.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2021 at 2:29 pm #

            If that’s the case, at least they’re female and over the age of 21.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 7:45 pm #

            Yoho, you stud! You are like 007.

  54. Pucker March 30, 2021 at 9:31 am #

    Trump said that one of his biggest accomplishments as President was to repeal the rigorous FDA clinical trial safeguards originally put in place to ensure vaccine safety and efficacy so that drug companies can rashly and recklessly rush through half ass dodgy vaccines to experiment on the population as guinea pigs without any liability. Trump said that he doesn’t think that it’s fair that the MSM didn’t give him any credit for this and that Biden is getting all of the credit for the potentially dangerous, half-ass vaccines. 90% of Democrats support Trump’s much ballyhooed Covid 19 vaccines.

  55. Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 10:12 am #

    Astra Zeneca renames its poison.

    https://www.rt.com/news/519574-astrazeneca-name-change-vaccine-vaxzevria/

    LOL.

    • GreenAlba March 30, 2021 at 11:32 am #

      “However, it’s not clear whether the ‘Vaxzevria’ name change was motivated by the bad publicity, as the trademark application for the drug dates back to December.

      Right, so in fact it’s perfectly clear, not ‘not clear’. Given that the drug wasn’t approved till the end of December and no members of the public had even tried it when the application was made to call it ‘Vaxzevria’

      Perhaps they could have been more honest and just said it had been, you know, ‘named’, ‘Astra Zenica Covid 19 Vaccine’ being more of a working title than a name.

      Journalism. LOL.

      • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 3:55 pm #

        Vaxzevria

        What a truly dreadful tongue-twister! Sounds like a beach resort in Albania.

        These drug companies can afford professional PR hacks, who would come up with something with a bit of zing … “Covakilla” maybe.

        It looks like they just give a bunch of junior chemists a carton of beer to go have a brain-storming session.

        • GreenAlba March 30, 2021 at 6:42 pm #

          It’s a pretty awful name but the fact remains it’s not a name change. It’s the name they applied for around the time it was approved.

          Nobody calls a medication ‘GlaxoSmithKline Breast Cancer Remedy’ or Hoffman LaRoche Diabetes Medicine’ except when it’s still in development/trials.

          The ‘article’ was a non-article, based on a dishonest insinuation.

          If they’d wanted to simply write an article about a tiny number of people getting a very rare kind of blood clot, they’d have found themselves in more demanding territory involving mentioning how many people have died from blood clots with actual Covid. Which would have meant adding lots of zeros.

          So they did some half-baked ‘journalism’ instead.

      • Night Owl March 30, 2021 at 4:02 pm #

        Why is it currently banned in over 20 countries?

        Name change appropriate.

        LOL.

    • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 6:51 pm #

      Can you imagine? Canada bans AstraZeneca for people 55 & under. I turned 56 in February. It’s unsafe for people born in 1966 to take it but fine for us 1965ers!

      You can’t make this shit up!

      • Night Owl March 31, 2021 at 6:15 pm #

        Nah, man. It is good for you. The name change was all part of the plan and no one of any age needs to worry about this fine product that was not all all rushed to the market and does not at all not protect you for a disease that is mildly dangerous at best.

        • GreenAlba April 2, 2021 at 9:27 am #

          So many straw men there you could fill a barn.

          It’s not a name change. It’s getting its name, applied for in December before anyone beyond trial volunteers had even had it.

          And by the way there are only two possibilities for anyone reading that sentence I quoted – which is deceit on legs – and not picking up the deceit, because it isn’t even internally consistent. One is exceedingly low IQ and the other is bad faith, visible from another universe to the same degree that theirs is.

          I don’t care if Astra Zenica’s vaccine is taken off the market and fed to Martians. I don’t have shares in it and I didn’t develop it. But I wouldn’t want to be you. Because there’s probably no cure for what ails you.

          “Mildly dangerous at best.” “At best …”

          “I’m straight as an arrow.”

          Yeah …

  56. messianicdruid March 30, 2021 at 10:56 am #

    “Three men in Michigan who were arrested by the FBI as “Domestic Terrorists” and accused of planning to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmere, are free today after a Judge DISMISSED the charges against them.

    It turned out that the ring leader in the alleged plot to kidnap wretched Governor Gretchen Whitmer was an FBI informant who was planted into the group and was the one who pushed the entire plan.”

    Another shameful episode of mattoids.

    https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/remember-those-domestic-terrorists-in-plot-to-kidnap-michigan-governor-charges-dismissed

    • SoftStarLight March 30, 2021 at 11:32 am #

      Well it seems like basically most things are schemes, rackets, and industries. So if following that line of thinking to its logical conclusions it would seem as if the FBI, or law enforcement, may have an incentive to generate law breaking to reinforce and create a need for law enforcement. Perhaps this was one of Gretchen’s schemes? She appears to enjoy tyrannical absolute authority so why not build reasons to consolidate? But in a way too I don’t think all Mattoids are equal. If you look back through the pages of history you will likely find that whole nations have followed Mattoids off cliffs. And Mattoids have served up lots of kool aid that lots of people did drink happily and enthusiastically. So who really should feel shame?

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 12:30 pm #

        “Perhaps this was one of Gretchen’s schemes?”

        Wouldn’t be surprised.

        Kind of like an up and coming rapper trying to go to jail to get street cred for the future.

        Except in her case it would be to make herself a victim forever…and, importantly, she was able to “overcome” the horrific terror plotted against her. By herself and our very own FBI.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 2:08 pm #

        Narcissism and the unquenchable lust for power are legitimate APA diagnoses.

        They ARE crazy.

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 2:09 pm #

          Gretchen looks evil! Anyone contesting what she says better watch their six.

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 12:07 pm #

      I’m shocked.

    • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 6:53 pm #

      Hey MD. We were gonna talk about:

      “A 16 hear-old Sioux boy in 1522 had a feeling of being alive that you & I can’t possibly imagine.”

      • messianicdruid March 30, 2021 at 8:13 pm #

        I know a guy, I should say I know about a guy, that lives a pretty remote lifestyle. He showed us you could eat those little three-sided seeds of sticker bushes that grow out here on the Great Plains.

        Got me to thinking about the proposal, years ago, of rounding up a big chunk of the Lousiana Purchase and turning it into a tech free wilderness.

        Then your idea about the young fellows outlook and my alleged lack of imagination took over.

  57. 100th Avatar March 30, 2021 at 11:01 am #

    World made by hand.

    Let me show you the world at hand:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/global-treaty-needed-to-protect-states-from-pandemics-say-world-leaders

    A new era!

    Solidarity!

    An end to isolationism!

    I know the plan
    Why don’t you?

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 11:48 am #

      The plan?

      Will that pandemic plan fall into the domain of the WHO?

      You know?

      WHO is in the pocket of the Chinese?

      WHO produces BS for the world on the origin of Covid and shoves it down the throat of the world?

      WHO is now being funded again by the US in spite of being an enemy of this country and an advocate for the globalist community? Thank you Biden gang.

      WHO?

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 12:49 pm #

        Are you blaming this on Pete Townshend?

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 2:05 pm #

          Ha!

          WHO?

          Wrong WHO!

        • Disaffected March 30, 2021 at 2:57 pm #

          That fucking Daltrey had a hand in this as well! And don’t even get me started on that damn Entwistle!

          • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 6:21 pm #

            I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
            Take a bow for the new revolution
            Smile and grin at the change all around
            Pick up my guitar and play
            Just like yesterday
            Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
            We don’t get fooled again

    • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2021 at 12:20 pm #

      Sounds like a plan Bedpan Biden/Heels Up Harris might be down for.

      It’s almost a waste of time mentioning Sleepy Joe at this point; he’s not in control anything, even his own faculties, and all signs point to him getting the hook by Memorial Day.

      We got played.

      Brh

      • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 6:58 pm #

        “Weekend at Biden’s”

        They’ll keep that charade going for as long as they like. Harris will become POTUS at a time of their choosing.

        What makes you think before Memorial Day, brh?

  58. JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 12:46 pm #

    To Tekapo

    It has been said many times that the Democratic Party has deserted its moderate base over the past forty years and now represents the Progressives and crazy anarchists. Do you agree? Do you agree with the neo liberal crowd that the US should exist under one man rule? Do you think the Constitution should be scrapped and a Uniparty form of socialistic government should be installed? I know you side with the current PTB that want this level of power.

    And if you agree with this, why? Do you hate your own independence from those trying to control your life? Make your case, please.

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2021 at 12:47 pm #

      And yes, I am sorta targeting you to try to understand why half this country has gone insane.

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 1:39 pm #

      John – If other long-time posters are correct, he doesn’t live in the US. I believe New Zealand…

      So he couldn’t give half a shit about American freedoms. But he sure likes to talk turkey for some reason.

      • benr March 30, 2021 at 5:28 pm #

        He likes flapping his gums and trolling which is why he is on his 20th name.

    • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 4:54 pm #

      And yes, I am sorta targeting you to try to understand why half this country has gone insane.

      LOL – I should put that on my résumé, or perhaps my gravestone!

      I hold these truths to be self-evident:

      1. I am a firm centrist (a moderate leftie)
      2. Which means capitalism requires a LOT of controlling
      3. Republicans only care about the rich and eliminating any controls
      4. They care about money and power more than the country
      5. They win elections by owning the rural base, and cheating in cities
      6. They are in-your-face racist and don’t apologise for it
      7. OTOH, the Democrats are schizophrenic and incoherent, with disunited factions
      8. They should get 80% of the vote but barely make 50%, and why?
      9. They are as dependent on big corporate money as the GOP are
      10. They are extremely conservative compared to almost all social democratic | labor parties in other democracies
      11. The US is immensely complicated by the African-American history and legacy, and more recently, Latinx immigration.

      But mostly I don’t see a huge difference between the two parties – there are differences, but not a yawning civil-war gulf. The political system is a thing to behold! Something that inefficient, unworkable, and prone to corruption – is either the greatness of America, or an unending tragedy.

      I disliked Donald Trump intensely, and have little time for Joe Biden (he is a hack with baggage, and too old). I think any one of Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, or indeed Kamala Harris, would be a far better President than either of them.

      There is strong federal structure, and it’s been there a long time – call it the unelected “Deep State” if you wish, but I don’t buy most of the conspiracies that are ascribed tp it … I certainly don’t believe stuff without substantial evidence, and nor do I believe it is a pro-Democratic cabal.

      That is ludicrous …it has been working for the capitalist class – the corporations and the elite – for generations, especially through the Cold War. Pockets of it might have been anti-Trump (not without cause), but that did not and does not make it pro-Democrat.

      And globalism isn’t a conspiracy – it is how capitalism works! The same forces sent jobs from Gary Indiana to Guangdong.

      And to the crucial issue – there are tens and tens of millions of people out there (a lot of them young) who can’t get a job, or won’t ever get a job. Not many people love working 48 weeks a year for 45 years, but we do it because we want to live in some comfort, want to keep our minds occupied and challenged, and we wish to contribute.

      How people can lived in mired poverty, for years, even generations, and not be bored and angry – is totally outside my experience and understanding … I’m white, educated, middle-class and motivated.

      I agree that the “gimme” culture and uncontrolled immigration are huge issues, and getting worse. JHK cautions every week or two how the superstructure cannot support the American economy (and society) for much longer. It is burdened by debt, hyper-complexity, energy prices, and resource crises.

      I won’t attack the victims, but I don’t have any answers (and Trump didn’t either), and nor are they problems caused or owned by the Dems … I think that is unsupportable.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder March 30, 2021 at 5:05 pm #

        Very “moderate leftie” viewpoints, indeed.

        Lol.

        • hmuller March 30, 2021 at 5:37 pm #

          Tekapo might be a “centrist” on a university faculty. He doesn’t really recognize how the world’s elite (Globalists) are the enemies of humanity. The deep state are their enforcers, herding us into our slave camps of intellectual and spiritual destitution. The MSM is Joseph Goebbels telling us how our lives just keep getting better. And “ignore that man behind the curtain.”

          All is a tissue of lies and bullshit. But anyone questioning the official narrative and thinking for himself is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. Better to believe, obey, and comply like Tekapo.

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 6:04 pm #

            All is a tissue of lies and bullshit. But anyone questioning the official narrative and thinking for himself is dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. Better to believe, obey, and comply like Tekapo.

            I obey and comply for the same reason as I expect 90% of the posters on here do – I’m comfortable, and I did pretty-well out of the system, can enjoy well-funded free time, and if it were not for the plague, indulge myself in more travel.

            But I do not “believe” at all. I agree with you – the ideological structures of the capitalist state are enormous, and serve their purposes well. The MSM has done it for a century, and more lately so has film, television, and now the Internet.

            And of course I agree that the global elites are in it for the prestige, power, and wealth – they will crush the working class for as much as they can, while sending their jobs to China or Bangladesh. But the Republicans are the unashamed party of these elites, not the Dems.

            If the working class gets sufficiently motivated they can throw off their chains – and it can go two ways – towards fascism or socialism … I would prefer the latter myself.

            But what I do find puzzling is that so many posters are really angry at the global elites but can’t bring themselves to take the next mental step – it requires a revolution through class struggle.

            It’s not all that rallying around the flag, hyper-patriotism, and constitution stuff – that is dodging the issue, and letting the real enemy right off the hook.

          • O.G. Hawkins March 30, 2021 at 6:08 pm #

            You had me until the last sentence. Believe, obey and comply is a horrible waste of a life, imho. Better to be crucified for The Truth than to be corn-syrup fed and comfy on the couch, imho.

          • Tekapo March 30, 2021 at 6:27 pm #

            Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) shows us how political bullshit never ends:

            “Happy to announce that NC-11 was awarded grants from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

            Appalachian Mountain Community Health Centers was given $2,458,000
            Western North Carolina Community Health Services Inc. was given $4,622,375
            Bakersville Community Medical Clinic Inc. was given $1,771,125
            Blue Ridge Community Health Services Inc. was given $10,473,250

            Proud to see tax-payer dollars returned to NC-11. “

            A pity he failed to mention that he voted AGAINST the Stimulus Bill – if it were left to Republicans these community organisations wouldn’t have received a nickel.

            Not much shame in the GOP, and they treat the rubes like idiots.