JHK’s Three-Act Play
“Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into….”
— Oliver Hardy
If ever such a thing was, the stage is set this Monday and Tuesday for a rush to the exits in financial markets as the world prepares for the US central bank to take one baby step out of the corner it’s in. Everybody can see Janet Yellen standing naked in that corner — more like a box canyon — and it’s not a pretty sight. Despite her well-broadcasted insistence that the economic skies are blue, storm clouds scud through every realm and quarter. Equities barfed nearly four percent just last week, credit is crumbling (nobody wants to lend), junk bonds are tanking (as defaults loom), currencies all around the world are crashing, hedge funds can’t give investors their money back, “liquidity” is AWOL (no buyers for janky securities), commodities are in freefall, oil is going so deep into the sub-basement of value that the industry may never recover, international trade is evaporating, the president is doing everything possible in Syria to start World War Three, and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart.
Folks who didn’t go to cash a month ago must be hyperventilating today.
But the mundane truth probably is that events have finally caught up with the structural distortions of a financial world running on illusion. To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and economic winter is finally upon us. All the world ‘round, people borrowed too much to buy stuff and now they’re all borrowed out and stuffed up. Welcome to the successor to the global economy: the yard sale economy, with all the previously-bought stuff going back into circulation on its way to the dump.
A generous view of the American predicament might suppose that the unfortunate empire of lies constructed over the last several decades was no more than a desperate attempt to preserve our manifold mis-investments and bad choices. The odious Trump has made such a splash by pointing to a few of them, for instance, gifting US industrial production to the slave-labor nations, at the expense of American workers not fortunate enough to work in Goldman Sachs’s CDO boiler rooms. Readers know I don’t relish the prospect of Trump in the White House. What I don’t hear anyone asking: is he the best we can come up with under the circumstances? Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.
The class of people who formerly trafficked in political ideas have been too busy celebrating the wondrous valor of transgender. Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments. Contrary to current appearances, the election year is hardly over. There is still time for events to steer history in another direction.
Mrs. Yellen and her cortege of necromancers may just lose their nerve and twiddle their thumbs come Wednesday. If they actually make the bold leap to raise the fed funds rate one measly quarter of a percent, they might finally succeed in blowing up a banking system that deserves all the carnage that comes its way. There is something in the air like a gigantic static charge, longing for release.
Coming in 2016
World Made By Hand 4 (and final)
The third World Made By Hand novel
!! Is available !!
(The Fourth and final is complete
and in production for May 2016 publication)
“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist
My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books…
or Amazon…
Also: Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author
Bargain Price $3.99
Amazon Kindle …or … Barnes & Noble Nook …or… Kobo
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
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Paintings from the 2023 Season
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The Great Slow-Mo Train Wreck of 2016 is now underway…headed your way at a rail crossing in a town near you. Get off the tracks! -Sticks
It was announced this morning that the President was to meet with his military advisers at the pentagon. The stated reason: they were discuss what to do regarding ISIS.
Maybe.
Late last week Putin issued two orders. The first was to his forces deployed in Syria: “If anything looks the least bit offensive, recursively attack and destroy it!” The second was to his strategic nuclear forces: “Go to the highest alert level!” The response: “70% of our strategic assets are new and 95% are ready to fire on 20 seconds notice.”
Call me stupid but my guess is that meeting may have something to do with those two orders.
Incredible the monumentally trivial stuff with which we occupy ourselves when we are virtually blind to the most catastrophic threats. Fwiw you might want to make a call to your representatives if that is in fact what they are.
Sleep tight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-new-nuclear-arms-race/2015/12/11/83445bc0-a021-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html
People I know who are paying attention to Yellen and the Fed are also concerned. While I was lecturing on the relationship between energy price and the U.S. economy last week, the subject of raising the overnight rate came up. The person raising the topic was quite aware that the Fed might be taking away the punch bowl too soon and starting a recession the old-fashioned way, instead of waiting until oil prices rose high enough to suck money out of the consumer economy, which has been correlated with recessions since U.S. oil production peaked in 1971. Wow, an economic contraction that isn’t an oil shock–I barely remember any of those.
Trump is indeed odious–the f-word has been applied to him, and I don’t mean the one for sexual intercourse. However, people are still capable of laughing at him, as the Darth Trump attests. In that video, he’s more gauche than sinister.
As for “something in the air like a gigantic static charge, longing for release,” a lot of that anxiety has gone into Americans are buying more guns in response to terror and mass shooting. Black Friday set a record for background checks related to firearms sales. Happy Holidays and be careful when you open that present!
Don’t pay attention to this chartist obsession with Yellen and the Fed.
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out would be a better use of time. When the financial hammer drops and smashes every-bodies piggy bank it will happen when those with the biggest piggy banks, piggy banks which are too big to smash are ready to take all the spilled coins from the smashed piggy banks into their slots, not before.
A crash won’t happen when it makes sense or is logical. It will happen when it happens and when it does the richest among us will benefit from it. Is that not the lesson of the last several years?
Speculation like resistance, is pointless.
You’re wise beyond your dog years!
Um, speculation may be pointless, but resistance is futile. One must always strive to keep one’s movie references canon, IMO. 😉
Of course there are those who say resistance is fertile. That remains to be seen…
But fertility is pointless, so . . . ?
Higher interest rates are needed and healthy.
To distort the bond market in fashion as currently observed eliminates the needed feedback signal in the economy to steer decision making.
This is, we explained to the communists, what accounted for their failure. Now we do it ourselves.
Buy oil stocks at an opportune time. You will not be sorry.
To repeat what was written yesterday to a sparse Sunday afternoon audience:
Things seem to be taking a decidedly ominous turn with the crashing of crude prices (and other indicators) as pointed out by Q. on Friday.*
Time to hunker down CFN shitizens!
-Sticks
*Keep blowing sunshine and soap bubbles if you must Ms. wpa_ccc, but history will not call this train wreck Obama’s economic miracle.
clivemaund.com, Sun,13 Dec 2015:
“How low could the market drop? – before reading on you might want to make sure you are sat down, perhaps with a stiff drink. We’ll see just how far it could fall on the long-term 20-year chart for the Dow Jones Industrials. On this chart we see that after a long bull market phase from the 2009 low, the market has risen to the top of a gigantic bullhorn pattern. If it turns lower here, which it certainly appears to be doing, it could conceivably drop all the way across the bullhorn, back to the lower boundary in the 6000 area. I know – it doesn’t seem possible, just too far-fetched, right? – WRONG!! – with a brutal depression almost upon us caused by the rapidly accelerating implosion of the bankrupt fiat money system after over 40 years of excess after the abolition of the gold standard by Richard Nixon, culminating in the vertical blow-off move of recent years, as the entrenched beneficiaries of this system played the last cards in their hand, these hyper-leveraged markets could now collapse in one of the biggest self-feeding liquidations in history. Whether it will drop back as far as 6000 I don’t know, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility – and it will seem a lot more possible to you as you read on and witness the carnage that is already underway elsewhere.”
Yep – it’s all the fault of that Keynsian liberal Dick Nixon!
As you know, Nixon didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to close the gold window. He was trying to arrest a disastrous outflow of U.S. gold reserves caused by the prolific government spending for “guns and butter” during the 1960s resulting from Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” social programs (War on Poverty, etc.) NASA and financing the Vietnam War. (Obviously, Nixon didn’t help matters when it was his turn at the helm; continuation of Vietnam War, War on Drugs, etc.) -Sticks
I was just listening to Bart Sibrel and he compared our addiction to the Apollo moon landings to Santa Claus. He compared it to an infected limb, and that unless we amputate it, the body America will die. I believe he is right. 9/11 is proof that America will believe anything the government tells it, no matter how ludicrous. One lie makes the next lie easier to swallow. Without a doubt, the government’s ability to lie began with Santa Claus. Remember how you felt when you first realized Santa Claus was fake? It is such a sinister conspiracy, the mind reels. The most treasured memories Americans have are based on a lie. What does that tell you?
Nixion wasn’t stupid, he knew that the real solution was to devalue the dollar, but he also knew the resulting rescission (possibly depression) would have killed his re-election regardless of how many plumbers he had on the job.
“As you know, Nixon didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to close the gold window.” – Sticks
Actually, he was forced to close the gold window because of the recycling of petro-dollars and the demand of central banks turning in dollars and demanding gold at $35/oz when gold was $43 on world markets. Charles de Gaulle of France was at the front of the line at the gold window in the New York Fed. Revenge, I suppose, for the good ol’ USA showing the Frenchies how to wage war in Vietnam.
You nailed it Pogo. -Sticks
(Now we just refuse to give them their own gold when they ask for it, supposedly stored in the vault under the Fed bank in NYC.)
Pogo, you remember de Gaulle sent his own ships to make the pick-up. It wasn’t good enough to just move their pallets of gold to the “French” storage area of the vault as we did for the Germans and other allies. -Sticks
~Sticks
I tried to get back yesterday but the site was incommunicado.
Thanks for reminding me about the Pres. de Gaulle sending his ships to grab the gold.
I also recall that after we foolishly took over for the French in Indochina, that the French merchant ships were still sailing into the port of Hanoi. Our buddies the Frenchies!
My Uncle Charles waded ashore at Normandy Beach to save the sorry French asses that totally caved and quavered in their boots when the Nazis invaded their hallowed land. Excuse me for barfing at their arrogance.
Probably going to be another “Lucy” moment. The football of a tiny interest bump will be pulled away and the band will play on for a few more months.
Re: Commodity Prices
“Commodity markets are in a parlous state, as is made plain by the long-term CRB index chart, which is at multi-decade lows. IF YOU EVER NEEDED PROOF OF THE GATHERING FORCES OF DEPRESSION, THIS IS IT.” (Emphasis mine.)
“Congratulations are in order for the CRB Commodity Index which succeeded in dropping to an all-time (at least since 1980) low last week. This chart (Long-Term CRB) certainly suggests that any talk of an economic recovery is baseless.”
clivemaund.com, 13 Dec 2015
“Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.”
Yes, there is. His name is Bernie Sanders. He is leading by 10 points in New Hampshire. Trump is leading by 10 points in New Hampshire. Sanders got 20 seconds of ABC news coverage to 81 minutes for Trump. So much for the idea of a “liberal” press.
sanders is just another cornucopian… sorry.
Sanders is a professional politician – an ear tickler. He wants to strengthen the car infrastructure. Is that what we need for our future, more car traveling? No, it’s not. If he isn’t saying that the US is a rogue, criminal nation, then he’s delusional and a more-of-the-same candidate. He’s a schmuck.
Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.
I asked a variety of this question Saturday night. Why is it in a land of hundreds of millions are only idiots and dolts allowed to be president?
Not that it matters, America has deep structural problems born from a lack of vision and a festering moral bankruptcy regarding the rights of our fellows and those less fortunate. We are going down and the only question is when.
Concerning this brouhaha about equities and investments. It does not send us all rushing for the financial exits because quite a few of us are poor. We have debt, not money.
We have no money and while there will be a strong taste of shit for us in the American sandwich in the months and years to come basically we, the vast majority, are screwed and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.
Apathy born of powerlessness rules the day. The static charge in the air will simply dissipate because most of us don’t have a whole lot to loose. A nation drowning in debt will not a high voltage spark make.
We can’t protest because news won’t cover it unless coverage fits with the national agenda and makes a tool of us. Our political machinery is broken and controlled by those without any clues, they have only money, so they can’t possibly understand that American problems are structural and can’t be fixed because they themselves are the problem.
K-Dog,
Remember the maxim about that American shit sandwich:
“The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.”
Regarding the “politcal machinery;” it is not controlled by the clueless as you say, rather it is controlled by those who have most of the clues, pass-keys, passwords, megayachts, personal jets, private islands (with palm trees) and they made the structural problems so the hoi polloi could be easily manipulated and controlled.
And Jim’s visual about Yellen being, ahem, naked, is a miserable way to start my week.
Good points, It depends on which side of the fence you are on. Are you a hungry wild hoi polloi rabbit looking through a wire fence at delicacies in a garden you will never munch on? Are you an English angora bunny with free run of the oasis munching on whatever you wish without care or worry. It depends on your perspective and on your definition of clueless.
I’ll keep my personal definition of clueless but I’ll remember that from other perspectives what I consider clueless is the craven wisdom of poltroons.
K-dog,
Yes, you and pequiste have seized on the crux of the matter: to have or to want. That is about to become very important.
But on a specific note of concern, namely:
“What I don’t hear anyone asking: is he the best we can come up with under the circumstances? Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.” -JHK
Well now, K-dog, it was apparently not asked by *anyone of consequence and influence*, because you and I have brought this up as a point of alarmed amusement. I think it may have disappeared under the usual avalanche of distraction and distortion. Which brings us around (boringly; once again) to the purpose of deliberate distraction and the application of unicorn farts. Here’s my final conclusion:
It’s to make us all less resilient and more dependent on the Big White Chief in Washington. If you haven’t prepared yourself for any-fucking-thing, you will enslave yourself to any asswipe that can provide for your next bellyfull! I really do think it’s that simple, and it’s why I absolutely despise cornucopian bullshittery. It’s designed to make us pushovers and easily-managed herds.
(Gotta get those bumper stickers made up for us Duh-mericans: Trump! The President America Deserves!) 😉
Where’s the like button?
“We have debt, not money”.
Well said, true for me. I’m sure there is going to be a major adjustment to the US economy. I don’t really want it to happen because I think many will be hurt, and the government may become more repressive. But, I know not wanting it to happen ain’t gonna stop it from happening.
I am thinking of the current crop of GOP Presidential candidates and one takeaway from what they say is more military spending, more direct military action. Only Rand Paul comes to mind as challenging Idiot Rubio on military spending. I’m not a Paul fan, but I’m glad one of the candidates think about the debt military build-up brings.
Anyone worth their salt couldn’t bear to be president. What a life!!!
Supposedly in charge but actually doing the bidding of the eminences grige in Washington.
Look at Obama. After all the rhetoric, almost his first act was to appoint Larry Summers as Treasury sec. I then knew he was a lame duck.
What I didn’t realise until lately it was all crafted from well before he got into the Oval office, so he wasn’t a lame duck so much as a crafty manipulator stocking up favours for a cushy post pres future etc.
Unfortunately for him, and don’t even mention how unfortunate for us, the economy just might blow up in everyone’s face. Once you understand how money works [hint; not at all like the mainstream believes] the future looks like a long period of stagflation and then civilization will collapse.
The collapse actually began in 1971 with the loss of the gold standard and the shift into resource deficit. Now energy is less and less effective, credit is less and less effective. Demographically we are all over the hill and not spending. This is not going away. It is permanent and no more boom times will happen.
Obama’s a great example. I knew he was a figurehead in May 2008, when I read that he had gathered more in Wall Street contributions than either McCain (the Republican) or Hillary Clinton (the sitting Senator from New York and spouse of the, until then, President most slavishly attentive to Finance in the history of the Republic).
At that point, May 2008, most Americans were still wondering if we would have a recession. I knew we were already in one and heading for a collapse, but whenever I said so, everyone said I had “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” hated America and capitalism, and so on.
Then in September, 2008, both McCain and Obama promised that, if elected, they would appoint as Secretary of the Treasury one Timothy F. Geithner.
If that didn’t tell everyone who was who and what was what, there’s no hope.
I love JHK’s brilliant word-smithing, but Jim’s problem is he’s a statist; he bemoans the stupidity of politicians as if leadership wasn’t empty suits jerking to the commands of our invisible owners.
Saw a sign the other day. “Dear GOP: Your problem isn’t Trump, it’s pissed off voters.”
I’m suspicious of Trump, but at least he’s stirring the shitpot. Somebody has to.
The middle class (which is another way of saying white wage workers) is now a minority. Politicians have spent years supporting every other minority, including the 1%, against the middle. We’re ready for somebody to represent us, instead of vilifying us.
To Trump we are losers, wage slaves. To Sanders we are a valued working class, and Sanders knows his labor history.
Sanders may know his labor history, but he doesn’t know crap about economics. If you raise the minimum wage to $15/hr, then you will have to raise everyone’s wage. Take the guy who has been with a small company for 10 years and finally doubled his wage from a $7.50 start to $15. The only fair thing to do would be to raise him to $22.50, if the company can even stay in business. And the ripple effect would cause huge inflation, greater unemployment, and a ruined economy.
“and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart.”
If that’s the case then I’m getting the hammer ready:
http://americareforged.blogspot.com/
“..and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart.”
That would be a great Christmas present for the entire planet.
“..and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments.”
The political class, nor about anybody else for that matter– understands the institutional shell games on Wall Street with their “credit default swaps” & “derivatives”. The financial system has more in common today with astrology than it does with statistics or mathematics.
Kunstler writes: ” Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality? Apparently not.”
Sure there is – Bernie Sanders who teamed up with Ron Paul to get the first audit ever of the Fed after the 2008 bailout which he opposed.
Who opposed Iraq, Libya and Syrian interventions by Bush and then Obama. Who wants to reinstitute Glass-Steagal and break up the too big to fail banks. Who has proposed a carbon tax to be refunded to all non-wealthy taxpayers. And wants to restore our Rail system…
Why Jim Kunstler chooses to ignore Bernie is a mystery as he is usually not bamboozled by the Corporate Media Yahoos or the Obamabots who keep saying he has no chance…
Jeremy Corbyn’s chances were rated at 200 to 1 and he is now UK Labor leader and speaking against the endless Wars creating the refugee problem, supporting the restoration of Britain’s Rail system privatized and decimated years ago by Thatcher, and supporting in general the Green Transition we need.
Why Kunstler is getting sucked into the sideshow of racist attempts to divide us all rather than focus on the main issues of Peak Oil, Climate Change and a more just system yanked from the grips of the banksters is baffling…
I ignore Bernie because he is a dogmatic redistributionist and I don’t believe we can withstand much more of that in either direction — up to the .1 percent or down to the moiling underclasses.
So you just ignore Bernie’s proposals to rollback the financialism accounting for 35% of Corporate profits, restore Rail, institute a carbon tax, enact campaign finance reform, rollback at least some of the endless Wars?
And what is wrong with “redistributionism”?
Look what happened after FDR when the “redistributionism” resulted in the GI Bill sending millions to college, Midwest cities had a new middle class from union factory jobs.
Granted the US elite goosed the economy with Military Keynesianism and Auto Addiction, 2 of the major problems we face confronting Peak Oil and Climate Change.
But any other candidates will represent more of the same.
Furthermore I think a revival of the working class and Main Street will help resolve the suicidal funk of the former working classes now
out of decent jobs but still mesmerized by the American Dream of instant wealth
Kunstler is showing his colours more and more. “Folks who didn’t go to cash a month ago must be hyperventilating today.” Unlike himself, I’m sure — meaning that his agenda is to protect what’s his. He talks a good game about the economy being a collection of swindles, but on the subject of the huge and growing number of people excluded even from the swindle, he has nothing to say.
What can he suggest? Close the border? No more refugees?
Less tax? More tax?
Well said, orbit7er! Bernie Sanders is voicing solutions to problems discussed for years now on CFN. The refusal of corporate media to even let him talk is telling.
Sander’s own principled stand in refusing SuperPacs, refusing money from billionaires, means he will not be owned by Democrats or Republicans. While strategically running as a Democrat, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He is Independent. Sanders has both the knowledge and the experience to make change happen.
“…to make change happen…” Hmmm. Where have we heard that before?
Substitute “lack of knowledge” and “scant experience” and we have rewound back about 8 years when an unknown first term senator surfed the zeitgeist into the most grandiose example of the Peter Principle for all time. “To make change happen.” That’s a hoot! Maybe there are no solutions. Just problems.
Until Bernie turns on Hillary he is merely another fraud. This time with gray hair.
As Celente says, show biz for ugly people.
“Show biz for ugly people.” I love it!
Oh, no! Sounds as though JHK, like much of America over 60, has been brainwashed by bill o’reilly and fox.
If I was a bankster sitting on top of a fortune stolen by means of financial trickery I would applaud your position, Jim.
“They’ve stolen it – let them keep it.”
Even if taking those ill-gotten gains back only amounts to a drop in the bucket of this nation’s financial problem, it is the essential prerequisite to restoring any perception of fairness and honesty in the relationship between the financial sphere and the 99+ per cent.
Without that, we’re just waiting for the peasants to reach a point of sufficient outrage that they see no alternative to storming the barricades.
Since the Reagan administration this nation’s wealth has been redistributed to such an extent that over ninety per cent is now in the accounts of the .1 per cent.
And now James Howard Kunstler does not support Bernie Sanders because Bernie would intend to redistribute some of that money back down the food chain again.
Go figure.
What redistribution where? We have had too much of it you say. Did I miss out and not get my share of dog biscuits? What redistribution? The rich have not paid their share of taxes for years.
When capital gains are taxed at a higher rate than income earned by WORKING perhaps there might be enough redistribution. Is the black man laughing all the way to the bank? I know our host knows better, he says it is because they can’t talk right and use the wrong words. Is health care affordable to the average American? It would be if we had redistribution but we don’t. Instead we have manditory insurance payments so everybody pays their own way. We don’t have socialized medicine. All Obama has given us is more rules to follow so the rich can get richer.
Did Kunstler say we have had enough redistribution because he wanted to stir the pot? I think so or our host is not aware that there has been a redistribution going on for years now marked by those with the most vacuuming up the assets of everyone else. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We have a negative Robin Hood thing going on here. The income gap widens and if that is the kind of redistribution we have had quite enough of I will agree, but I know that is not what our host means.
Kunstlers kind of redistribution would forgive the student loans of college graduates who now make more than 100 K a year as a starting wage. Kunstler it appears wants to redistribute into the pockets of rich white people from the pockets of people who wear clown clothes of all colors. People who think making five-teen bucks an hour is a good wage. Some people who though they might wear clown clothes and are inked over half their body are honest and kind.
I will agree that ‘redistribution’ will not solve America’s problems. America has problems that can’t be solved by such trivial and easy solutions To solve America’s problems we do need a redistribution.
We need a redistribution of political power.
We might even need a revolution to put thins right because no where in our present system does anyone stand up who can lead America to a better future. The only answer the present system offeres is an expression of ever more greed.
I would say Bernie is an exception but I think if he made it close to the Oval Office he would be taken out. Taken out by the same people who bring us some of America’s ‘terrorist’ incidents. The deep state.
I agree.
I’m in the same camp, orbit.
Guessing JHK would say our predicament is much too severe for Bernie to solve. But Bernie is BY FAR the best–I would say only–option.
And he offers much of what people like about Trump (not controlled by big money, unafraid to speak the truth and challenge the status quo, etc), but is so much more tactful with substance-based ideas and specifics.
He’s so Ralph Nader. They even look alike.
No, they don’t.
With one critical difference; Sanders is solidly in the vain of the liberal congenital apologist wimp.
chipshot – Our predicament is not only “much too severe for Bernie to solve,” but it is too intractable for ANYONE to solve. Not even The Donald could make America great again.
“Why Kunstler is getting sucked into the sideshow of racist attempts to divide us all rather than focus on the main issues of Peak Oil, Climate Change and a more just system yanked from the grips of the banksters is baffling…”
I’ve been a devoted listener of the Kunstlercast, and a paying customer of his books, for some years now, but Kunstler is losing me for this very reason. To wit:
“Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments.”
Artificial grievance, he calls it. As if, say, the Black Lives Matter movement was complaining about the service at a restaurant in hopes that they could skate on the bill. When what they’re actually complaining about is that, like the Catholic church protecting pedophile priests, police agencies in America make a practice of helping their officers get away with homicide. Eric Garner, choked to death on a sidewalk in broad daylight over some loosies. Freddie Gray, trussed up and given a “rough ride” in a police van that ended up breaking his neck. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice, shot over a toy gun. The list goes on and on. And it’s always the responsibility of the victim, not of the men we delegate to commit our violence for us.
Peter Gabriel called it: “The outside world is black and white / With only one colour dead.” Kunstler can think what he likes about, say, equal rights for gay and transgender people. But for a so-called social critic to be all but openly hoping for an economic disaster so he can be spared the sound of people complaining about being murdered by the police?
Smarten up, Kunstler. There is no excuse for this kind of obtuseness.
How much more effective could the BLM movement have been, if they hadn’t tried to pretend that law enforcement overreach wasn’t something that just happened to black men because white people are racist? I have given example after example of white people, usually young men, being victimized in the exact same manner, but it never seems to sink in that this is not a racial issue.
I don’t think that’s the purpose of the BLM group, to solve a problem. I think the purpose is to divide people along racial lines, so they won’t join together to look for their real enemies.
If “it never seems to sink in that this is not a racial issue” (meaning police violence in the USA), that’s because it is, in fact, a racial issue.
# of people per capita killed by law enforcement in the USA in 2014, by race:
– Whites: 2.24 people per million
– Hispanic/Latino: 2.66 people per million
– African-American: 5.55 people per million
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States,_2014
Let’s be clear, this is not that infamous canard, “black-on-black violence”. This is people killed by law enforcement officers, period.
Want to blame the victims and say criminal blacks are making their choices? Look at *unarmed* people who were killed by law enforcement officers so far in 2015.
– White people killed by police: 15% were unarmed
– Hispanics/Latinos killed by police: 25% were unarmed
– African Americans killed by police: 32% were unarmed
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/black-americans-killed-by-police-analysis
Justice may be blind, but in America, she ain’t colour-blind.
Elrond,
Your post reeks of misplaced outrage. Almost one million sworn police, 340 million citizens, perhaps a billion contacts a month, and you have been swayed by the media to think that there is no justice for the blacks. 1 million blacks in prison? Do you have any idea what goes on in “Urban areas”? No, you have no idea. How many blacks in prison are there only for minor offenses? Damn few…but you have never read a rap sheet, so you have no idea what the minor offences are, or how many or how often arrested and released. Ever watch the news clips of protesting blacks using a bull horn 6″ from the face of a patrolman on line, screaming invective? Spitting? Cursing your mother, and describing what they would like to do to her? Just begging to promote an “incident”… Of course you haven’t. You are a tool of the media, and you have drunk the Kool Aid,
It would be great if you would gain some real-world experience before making such claims as “justice is not color blind,” With millions of contacts daily, law enforcement has shot a small number of blacks in questionable circumstances, occasionally prosecutable. The media has whipped this country, not to mention the blacks, into a frenzy…and it will not end well.
Statistics don’t lie. The fact is America is the prison capital of the world, and their prisoner of choice is the black and brown man. America needs to get rid of half their police force and close half their prisons. They need to reduce government jobs by half. Especially states like Louisiana. You are 5 times more likely to be in prison in Louisiana than in Maine. Statistics don’t lie. You may not like the story they tell, but it is what it is.
“Statistics don’t lie.”
Wolfie,
I have to contain my first impulse to question your statement with a common, but off color, and oft used incredulity (Are you Fucking Kidding Me?). Numbers may be absolute, and accurately gathered. The devil is in divining the implications they may suggest.
Consider the disproportionate number of blacks in prison today…what are the reasons this could exist? You could say that the one million+ people in law enforcement are racist, and target the blacks. This begs the question of how racists are identified, recruited, hired and nurtured by the departments…bet that would be another story.
To suggest other possible reasons for the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, one could consider the root causes of crime….
What are generally considered conditions that exacerbate criminal behavior?
Poverty is not, in itself, a causal factor, but it is certainly peripheral to the issue.
Growing up in single parent households with a lack of effective guidance…again oft mentioned as contributory.
Growing up in a culture that does not promote education or civility as positive attributes.
Growing up in a culture of victimhood, where every child is reminded, on his mother’s knee, that the white man is the devil.
growing up in neighborhoods that are rife with narcotics, gang activities, with failing schools and declining infrastructure.
Effective male role-models often absent, leaving only pimps, criminals, sports figures and the occasional president as potential goal setters.
Is it not remotely possible Blacks get arrested disproportionately to other races because…they are involved in a lot of crime? Because the ghetto is a “target rich” environment, where crime is rampant? Criminal activity abounds? (Most sane people would avoid these places, calling them “dangerous”…they are).
Wolfie, If you were a policeman in an all-black environment, where you never saw white people, how would you manifest your supposed racial pre-disposition? How would you choose your victims? Do you target bible-carrying, skittle-eating, gentle giants, or do you arrest the predators that make the decent people in the ghetto fear for their lives and property? Statistics may not lie, but do not let the media do your thinking for you…I think you know better.
Peter Gabriel sang ‘Biko’. He didnt sing about the million? killed by Blacks since Mandela took over SA.
What million? Where does that number come from? Who were the people killed? Did every last one of them die in police custody, like Steve Biko did? Try to keep in mind, the topic is police violence. Police. Violence.
How many people have been killed in South Africa since Mandela was elected President in 1994? According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 16,259 murders were recorded in South Africa as recently as 2012 (making that country’s per-capita murder rate 11th in the world). Let’s imagine that the number of people killed per year for the past 21 years in South Africa is similar. 16,259*21 = 341,439. That leaves you to account for over 650,000 people you say were killed (by Blacks!). And again, how many were killed by police? What have you got?
What million? Where does that number come from? – Elrond questioning Malthuss
===============
Elrond, you obviously are not familiar with the Malthuss Modus Operandi in which he tosses out a number hyperbolically and covers his ass by inserting a question mark after it…… rather than Googling up some actual data like you did. There’s nothing like a big round number to grab attention.
Would you care to be a tad more specific on Mr. K’s race baiting.
The moment of truth is here. Oh-la-be-Oh-la-ba life goes on Ahhh! Oh-la-la-la life goes on.
Do you not think that it is time to PERSONALLY become self sufficient within walking distance? Replies to this blogsite are full of extraneous comments, but there is precious little information here that relates to potential SOLUTIONS to some of the problems discussed herein. We are living the solution here in Costa Rica. Anybody interested?
The US needs to re-localize its economy once again. This means a variety of things. I think its more than appropriate to use anti-trust laws to break up big box retailers who monopolize large areas of a many different jobs which could be done by dozens of small businesses; pharmacies, mechanics shops, grocers, general stores, photographers, boutique shops, etc. The main goal behind this is to recreate the entrepreneurial class on the local level once again.
Another aspect of relocalization also is in energy & how communities get their power. So industries should be developed to the environmental opportunities present in an area. So, for example, in windy areas like the Dakotas, manufacturing and local employment have an opportunity for wind power.
It’s quite simple really. Tariffs. Tariffs to compete with countries that have indentured servitude and/or slave labor, tariffs to compete with countries that have state provided health care and social care. Tariffs to compete with countries that have lax environmental laws. Tariffs to compete with countries that export child labor snd do on and so on…
Ah yes, the dreaded T word – ignored for generations now. It is the great nation builder and preserver, which is why the Left hates it. The Right hates it because it cuts into profits. They want the freedom to throw America under the bus whenever convenient in negotiation.
Trump is the only one talking about them, though he uses the more acceptable term, “trade balances”. This means Trump is not a Conservative nor a Capitalist, but a Nationalist.
Perhaps JHK does not like Trump because for him it is like looking into a mirror (except for the hair part). Trump will be like a Brahma bull on acid let loose in a China shop–He is the Man!
And a CIVIC nationalist at that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIsvW0D8bJk
A National Socialist…?
Trump is like every other politician. Promising the world with no intention of delivering anything. When he gets to Washington he’ll be shown the real Zaprudar film and the real film record of 9/11 and he’ll fall in line with the rest of them. It’s all just a show.
U.S. elites don’t want to “compete” with countries that have indentured servitude. They want to “join” them.
https://commonbond.co/investors
Lend money to a “highly creditworthy” grad student, then earn a “competitive financial return” by claiming a portion of their future income. If they don’t actually call it indenture, it’s a distinction without a difference.
Indeed, in a world of WTO and free-trade, you can ONLY join them.
I’m not persuaded that living in Central America is without hazard — for instance, confiscation of property, for starters. The rule of law is fragile there, though it might seem safe for now.
I agree re. Central America’s fragile state of the Rule of Law—even Larry’s Costa Rica, which is the least Third World-ish country of Central America. I’ve been there twice, and have a friend who’s lived there for many years. The native Ticos are accomodating, but don’t especially like all these Americans down there. Like a lot of places, public servants are not paid enough and rely on bribes to boost their take-home pay. They tried to crack down on this by increasing penalties for taking bribes 3-4 years ago; not sure if it’s been effective. I was there shortly after the new laws were passed, and we were stopped on the highway by the police, who in a very friendly but not-so-subtle manner asked for the equivalent of $40 US in place of not writing us a speeding ticket. (We paid, and were soon on our way). Surely there would be even more of this as things get stressed socially and economically? Or will Costa Rica be largely immune? True, most people there (except the US & European transplants) are used to a much lower standard of living.
Should have written: …”in place of writing us a speeding ticket.”
THE THIRD WORLD WILL LIKELY REMAIN SO.
If it’s lucky.
Yes I would like more info about the Costa Rican attempt to repurpose banana Rails to passenger service. My family visited a few years ago and we were very impressed with Costa Rica’s true respect for the Environment with 30% of it protected Parks and Wilderness areas. Of course Costa Rica has no military which has enabled it to avoid military coups since 1948 and everywhere we went we saw not great wealth but modest houses all with electricity, schools and of course the obligatory public soccer field. As people told us affordable BECAUSE Costa Rica does not waste money on any military.
But the achilles heel when we visited was the total lack of any Rail – San Jose was a traffic auto addiction disaster!
Now I have read articles that Costa Rica has begun running some passenger Rail. Any updates on that?
Shhhhh. Keep it up Larry. What do you want to have everybody come down there and bring this mess with them if it isn’t already there since CR pretty much depends on China and The U.S for just about everything. Not to worry the illusion is soon to collapse and then we will get to start a new one hoping that those behind the curtain won’t beat us to it. Not likely though they have been running the show to long just to give in. Things are going to get interesting every where. Jason
Probably not! In the absence of agency, the next best thing is cynical marination in feckless complaint. I am reminded of the words of Wendell Berry in a recent essay about the sheer schizophrenia that permeates the public discourse around climate change, for example:
“Oh, oh, oh,” cry the funerary experts, looking ahead through their black veils. “Life as we know it soon will end. If the governments don’t stop us, we’re going to destroy the world. The time is coming when we will have to do something to save the world. The time is coming when it will be too late to save the world. Oh, oh, oh.” If that is the way our minds are afflicted, we and our world are dead already. The present is going by and we are not in it. Maybe when the present is past, we will enjoy sitting in dark rooms and looking at pictures of it, even as the present keeps arriving in our absence.
” There is still time for events to steer history in another direction.” Kunstler, you have finally come over to the light side. Glad to have you.
And, in return, I mention that the main topic at the Saturday night party in East Hampton was transgenarism and the ‘specrum of gender’. I managed to stay out of the discussion by finishing off my hosts’ Chivis.
And here it is right in front of me, Danny; just now getting around reading the NYT Sunday Edition, front page above the centerfold. There are events swirling around I hear snippets of going about my business, existential events, a NKorea hydrogen bomb, ISIS plans to take out Chicago, Putin referring once again to Russia’s nuclear arsenal, but this major front page NYT story is about some dude looking for the inner women and preparing to get his schlong lopped off to help along his journey. I’m probably not going to read the ‘whole story’, why bother? but its is probably the reason behind the conversation at the holiday party in The Hamptons.
brh
You subscribe… thus you subscribe.
did you take a week off?
“oil is going so deep into the sub-basement of value that the industry may never recover”
I think that this is indeed the Saudi plan: break the frackers, damage the multinationals, and make it impossible to finance new production without a nation-state backing the play.
I think that conditions finally came together for the Saudi’s a year and a half ago. Perhaps they were tired of shouldering the burden of production cuts when other OPEC nations cheated on their quotas. Perhaps they saw the vulnerability of the frackers in depletion numbers (high) and profitability (low). Perhaps they did not relish free competition. Perhaps they disliked the threat of competition with renewables and coal. And then, an opportunity to bring OPEC into line, break the frackers, and damage the competition.
An interesting fact about oil production is that it takes time to discover an oilfield, time to develop an oilfield, and time to build the infrastructure to move the oil. The International Energy Agency, if I remember correctly, published an analysis which required an investment of $1.5T each and every year, in order to ensure an adequate supply of oil.
Since the Saudi’s have sure intelligence about the global banking industry (they own a slice of a major bank), they know the financial climate with respect to energy investment. They know the factors governing investment in oil, gas, coal, and renewables.
With a two year hiatus, oil production will take decades of heavy investment to recover a reasonable balance of supply and demand. And where will that investment come from in a depression? A little inter-governmental co-operation through a chastened OPEC will take care of any vestigial free market pricing.
And then there is Russia, waiting for the Western banking system to choke on its derivatives, triggered by falling commodities and any financial hiccup whatsoever.
Looks like the chess players are going to win. Oh well, we’ll get Trump, though insurance won’t cover it. He is a pre-existing condition.
I agree with the earlier assertion that the oligarchs have a well-rehearsed plan in place for what they want to happen WTSHTF. In 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession they have managed to make it so. How long they can continue to manage reality: who knows?
I disagree with his later assertion that we poor people are apathetic because we don’t have much left to lose. Most Americans are apathetic because they are stupid and have been successfully distracted by bread & circuses. But some of us, including I daresay most CFN readers, understand that we have a great deal to lose and seem to be about to lose it all.
American businesses, including the one that produces electricity for my home, all operate on a business model that requires running at about 110% to stay afloat. If a small minority of us citizens have paid off our debts and stockpiled cash so that we can continue to pay our electric bill, that doesn’t mean the power company will keep our lights on by operating at 20% capacity. The same is true for pretty much any supplier or service you rely upon.
Whether your auguries are market charts or chicken entrails, it’s gonna happen sooner or later, and we’re already well past sooner.
Americans are powerless, and that’s it. When the so called fourth estate ceases to be a voice of the people and the fears, struggles, and realities that they face, then reality is ignored. When the fourth estate pushes the ideas, interests, and agendas of the modern 1% aristocracy you can be sure that the injustices that allow them to transfer wealth are not going to get traction. When you still have a job, a home, a sofa, pizza delivery and the internet… why complain?
“When the so called fourth estate ceases to be a voice of the people and the fears, struggles, and realities that they face, then reality is ignored.” – Frankiti
Toward the end of last week’s comments, Mister Darling and I had a discussion about the demise of newspapers and I included this:
“In 1841, Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all”.
You want the truth? The truth as I see it is that we no longer have “truth” and wouldn’t recognized it if we did. Maybe historians of the future (assuming there are any) will ascertain that the wheels came off when the fourth estate lost out to the magic of Internet “news” generated by hordes of the unwashed
I don’t agree with you about the internet. I think that Frank got it right, and I think that it began long ago.
Acutall, sauerkraut, I LOVE the Internet and is where I go to for all news. But at the same time, I believe we need large news organizations, the AP, API, Reuters, BBC, etc. And they can’t exist without “newspapers” paying for their stories. Without cash paying customers, the newspapers (NY Times, WaPost, etc.) can’t survive. A downward spiral.
Americans need to be coddled in a protective bubble. They have grown squishy and have squishy first-world concerns like 4G wireless and 4K ultra high-def wrap-around TVs and Star Wars sequels not sucking and the cheating Patriots not winning a bowl for supers. Everyone wins with distractions and not poking at the bubble. Comfortable people have no need to challenge the status quo. Comfortable people feel confident enough to spend discretional income, if they have it or not. It keeps the wheel turning… the media is programming that keeps the wheel turning. Its consumption programming with snippets of news, not the other way around.
it’s, it’s, it’s
You give the Saudis far too much credit. They aren’t that good at playing the long game.
The house of Saud has set up a welfare state based entirely on oil revenue. Add in their little adventure in Yemen and they have quite high income requirements. Their budget was planned on $100+ oil. When the crash started, they did what any reactionary organization would do, they tried to make up the lost income by selling more.
All the oil producing states are caught in this trap, although I’m a bit surprised the Iranians fell into it, they usually play the long game a little better than the Arabs do.
Perhaps, Steve, but where oil is concerned they buy advice, and they can afford the best.
Have you ever seen photos of that crude control centre? Looks like a NASA over-the-top dream. Would their policy be less well advised? Perhaps. But perhaps not.
…is he the best we can come up with under the circumstances? Is there not one decent, capable, eligible adult out there in America who can string two coherent thoughts together that comport with reality?
A good and valid, though probably rhetorical question. What we are offered now is what those who rule over us gave us following the last time the “worst president we ever had” left office, which was an actor, an entertainer. Bread & circuses, works every time. Being schooled by the nation’s finest school for leadership (at the time) I can competently assure you that America has NO decent, capable adult leadership out there whatsoever. Even those with whom I was trained who reached the pinnacles of success have been sent packing to save their pensions or stayed silent to save their paychecks. All that is left is the other group of sellouts, grifters, and prostitutes that populate the halls of power in government, finance and the corporate worlds. There will be no salvation, there will be no recovery. There will only be the steady, slow decay of the diseased carcass of a failed experiment in self rule which is America.
Walter,
Excellent post. We cannot hope for salvation. The best we could hope for would be a benign dictatorship, and that only to offer a modicum of order (and that is not a recommendation). Empires throughout history can be seen as representing bell curves, and I cannot think of a single instance where a culture, on the extreme right of the curve, returned to its pinnacle in less than multiple generations. I will vote for Sanders or a combination involving Elizabeth Warren, although I would expect no substantive corrections that would arrest our slide to cultural and national entropy.
As a contemporary of our host used to say…”you’ve paid for the ticket, now take the ride…. HST
Here’s my point about Sanders: I’m not a Socialist, and don’t support it. However, if our system works the way it is supposed to, electing a president who considers himself a Socialist, but was elected as a Democrat, does not automatically turn the nation into a socialist system.
Last evening, I read a remark that was attributed to Gore Vidal, he said that the Republican Party wants Socialism for the wealthy and a free market economy for the poor. Supposedly he said that way back in the sixties. I think today both parties (there aren’t really two) want the same thing.
And that’s Plutocracy not Fascism, right? Fascism is Nationalism and that means Trump. If you want the Nation State, you need borders and an end to needless immigration.
Plato explained this stuff 2500 years ago….democracy is a foul form of governance…mob rule lite. The masses of asses demand liars, criminals, grifters, perverts…they won’t accept anything better. Imagine an election contest offering a pedophile, a cannibal, and an honest hard working realistic atheist…….
NSA, Moses learned this very truth at Mt Sinai. By popular acclaim the people chose the golden calf. So much for democracy and the “noble” will of the people.
via Bloomberg Financial TV: “If Fed officials don’t do it this time, they’ll look stupid,” said Ken Peng, a strategist at Citigroup, Inc. in Hong Kong. “The things that are causing the market to behave this way aren’t going to be resolved if they hold off another month or two.”
It had to do with the fragile popularity of the Vietnam War. Neither Johnson nor Nixon wanted to pay for it with massive taxes because that would pop the popularity bubble, and both wanted to continue the war. The only alternative was to go off the gold standard. Interestingly, we nevertheless lost the war, and then later, the economy too.
They also learned that they could not use a draft any longer for their canon fodder for the endless “limited wars”. If we had a draft and actually followed the constitution instead of having an imperial presidency these endless losing interventions would be difficult if not impossible.
I’ll take this opportunity to toot my own horn: months ago on this very comment section I predicted the triumph of Trump. As JHK points out, he’s the best of a bad lot. Trump understands the weaknesses in the culture and exploits them. His main strength as a leader is his complete disdain for ideology – his manifest lack of belief in anything beyond the logistical solutions demanded by the immediate problem – whatever that problem may be….This is not so bad.
He is not dogmatic, but heuristic. He epitomizes reductionism. Straight to the ugly point.
Removing material via carving is definitely reductive as opposed to modelling in clay/bronze sculpture which is additive. And direct carving, which works without a preconceived image such as a plaster cast a la improvisational jazz, might be though of as “heuristic” . Indeed, in direct carving, the process of removing material offers up spontaneous form suggestion, not unlike the fleeting invocations seen in “cloud images”.
But just because it’s a direct search doesn’t imply the result will be good. In fact, the end result might really be an “ugly point” as you type. The great difficulty in reductive carving is the ability to ‘see around the corner’ and attempt to envision that which is only visible after the fact of removed material. Thus, the great danger is inadvertently removing material which only later one discovers they need. This mistake is termed “undercutting” too soon.
The antidote to the fatal mistake of undercutting resides in the methodological approach. The great direct carver does not make emphatic and bombastic declarations before he understands what resides around the blind corner; instead he proceeds with polite proposals and feels his way carefully around the currently blind corner in order to best avoid the fatal mistake of undercutting material that one will actually need later.
In that regard, reductive sculpture is all about ICE. Only when one is certain and has arrived at a safer stage in the reductive process do they proceed with the declarative passion of FIRE.
It’s not hard to guess which element Trump embodies and well in advance of actually ‘understanding the possibilities of the material.
^The Sculpting Metaphor of Politics^
I suppose undercutting is the point. The system needs to be irreparably damaged. Trump is the perfect candidate for this. We’re not looking for a savior, we’re looking for the right wrench to throw into the evil machine.
The system needs to be irreparably damaged. Trump is the perfect candidate for this. We’re not looking for a savior, we’re looking for the right wrench to throw into the evil machine. – Frankiti
==============
You make an excellent point, Frank. And for the job of wrench we don’t need the politician who can string two coherent thoughts together that JHK (and I) would prefer.
Is this a convoluted way of advocating for Hillary?
He said wrench, not wench.
The American populace is now learning the limitations of our style of politics in solving real problems. Conversely, our politics does an admirable job of addressing the challenges of synthetic problems, such as the “challenges” of transgenderism, and the like. Why is that so? Because our style of politics handles the settling of issues as though the bargaining process. In other words, the objective is seen as coming up with a solution where all stakeholders “get a piece of the the pie”, thus leading to an agreement, Unfortunately, there are two intrinsic problems with this strategy. Because it makes “the deal” the primary objective, all stakeholders are invited to become wheeler-dealers. (Does this sound vaguely familiar?) Secondly, the process ignores the fact that the resulting “deal” may not comport with the possibilities provided by reality, which, dooms it to failure. From my perspective, politics should be reserved for identifying approaches to handling problems where the correct approach is not demonstrably knowable through earnest, and honest analysis. Politics should be only for addressing issues where there is no “correct” resolution. Politics,has been perverted into a form of perverse deal-making. Unsurprisingly, this has made politics a ripe target for exploitation, corruption, subterfuge leading to the inability to differentiate fantasy from reality.
Good post.
You are right, American politics is akin to a patient checking into a hospital for an angioplasty and settling for an Incan tattoo and a pierced nostril! American politics has mutated into a state of retardation that defies reason. It has become similar to an opening for a structural engineer having candidates tested for their tap dancing abilities and choosing the winner on this performance alone. Elected American representatives are in charge of a huge and powerful military, yet the majority of them have NO military experience or expertise. They are charged with building and maintaining America’s infrastructure yet they could not even build their own shed. They are tasked with regulating America’s banking and financial industries, yet the only thing they know about money is how to take it without earning it. The “pool” of possible representatives is actually a cesspool of talentless schmucks, sellout, liars and cowards. What value could they possibly have when there was work to be done? This nation is doomed because it is controlled and lead by scum, plain and simple.
Trump is America’s Robespierre. The catalyst for a sea-change. As Buchanan so aptly put it, Trump is bringing down the fourth estate as Robespierre took down the aristocracy and the church. The media is dependent on a system that feeds them billions in campaign ad revenue from the campaigners and the 1%ers that control them. They decide your leader. Our culture, our thoughts, our manners, our fears are all dictated by the media in today’s America. Trump is a necessary evil, history is cyclical and it has its demands.
But Trump is part of the 1%. He is part of the billionaire club that has picked our leaders for us. Now why would he go and destroy the very system that has provided him with his wealth and power?
A: b/c he is a true patriot
B: b/c he wants to create an even more authoritarian system that redistributes wealth upwards
C: b/c he is a complete buffoon who has no idea what the hell is going on and is just in it for the brand building and deal making he can do after the election
Trump is old school NY. He mad money throwing elbows and getting dirty. He resents the financiers… the guys that gave him or denied him loans, always has. They make money playing games. He builds. He’s driven to put them in check, the role reversal.
Trump made most of his money by inheriting it. And is real estate project success is mixed at best.
Shhhh.. shhhh, keep your ignorance quiet. By some account he inherited between $40 million to $60 million. He is now worth between $4 to $6 billion. Now, I’m no Edward Jones financial adviser, but I’d say that is a pretty good return on investment. Perhaps his end will come, like your post peak crisis. Mr. Applewhite.
Deny Trump and someone worse will arise. The current Elite have to go. They can go easily, allowed to keep their ill gotten gains, or they can go down hard. Trump is obviously very soft compared to what is possible. By calling him what he isn’t, people are invoking the very doom they fear.
If the current elite have to go, then that means he must go as well. He is part of the elite. He hasn’t all of the sudden found religion and understands that his business actions, campaign contributions, and lobbying over the decades have created the very mess that he is now deciding to fix by “mak[ing] America great again”.
He is not genuine and he is not serious.
If you are looking for genuine and serious, you have most definitely arrived at the wrong place. Let me guess, Bernie cares?
Well in all honesty, I think Bernie is a bit more sincere since he’s been singing from the same hymn book for decades. The problem with him is that he is a cornucopian. The problem for his campaign is that his policy prescriptions are about half a century too late to make any sort of positive impact and are framed by the paradigm of infinite growth is possible on a finite planet.
Bernie’s problem is that he’s a mush. An old-fashioned dyed in the wool mush with his quixotic quest to take down banks and corporations with his lance crafted by government regulations and tempered through rounds of congressional capitulations, in other words a dull, mushy, stick… that will never, ever, pierce the armor of his demons. He’s a fool bringing a lot of naive Sanchos on his errand.
I hate it when you make more sense than anyone else on the board. It’s a sign that we’re in for a very rough ride.
“Trump is America’s Robespierre.”
Never forget what happened to Robespierre at the of the terror, he got a ride on the cart to madam guillotine.
Trump is the only one capable of smashing the pernicious PC code, which is used as a distraction and cover for so much that is wrong in America.
Nobody else was going to break through the establishment oligarchy. Bobby Jindal, to me, had some pretty good qualities. He never stood a chance.
I really don’t see the Fed raising the Fed funds target rate this week. I think the most probable scenario is that they maintain ZIRP but state that the economy is heading in the right direction and maybe we will do a rate increase in 3 to 6 months. Basically what they have been saying for years now.
Of course there will be a couple of dissenters on the FOMC that will say we need to raise and should have raised this time b/c of of [insert cherry picked data points showing a very rosy economic picture].
I think they would be foolish and/or suicidal to raise the rate and believe it or not, I think a few of them on the FOMC do realize just how fragile the zombie global economy is and how reliant it is on the ZIRP IV drip, ECB QE, etc. Now of course I could be wrong and they may all be a bunch of complete capitalist ideologues who finally decide to pull the ZIRP IV b/c “the market will fix itself”.
A couple of other interesting but low probability scenarios I see happening at one of these FOMC meetings in the near term:
– FOMC determines that global economy is already in the early stages of a nasty downturn and simply raises rates so that it will go ahead and speed up the recession and serve as an excuse to the cause of the recession (not limits to growth or asset bubbles but…it was the blockheaded fed!!, etc.). Then they have something to do to “fix the economy” again…lower rates! yay!!
– FOMC determines that the global economy is on the verge of a nasty downturn but determines that they knife can be caught in time… continuance of ZIRP coupled with a new round of QE. I think the probability of this scenario increases dramatically as we get closer to the end of the European Central Bank’s QE program. That program is slated to end in September 2016, so I would expect the QE baton to be handed to another central bank. Probably the Fed’s turn by this point. This is assuming that the lights are still on in the OECD nations and WWIII has not broken out.
Anyways…that’s what I think…enjoy your week everyone!
I’ve been hearing recently about some sort of ‘fiduciary rule’ coming out of the Department of Labor. I hope I didn’t mention it before, but it seems like the government is trying to stamp out financial thoughts being expressed that the government doesn’t want expressed. Under the proposed rule, someone like Suze Orman could be penalized for disseminating wrong advice even free of charge, if that person makes a living at all from financial advice. The government would be the sole determiner of whether the advice or opinions were right or wrong.
There are people like Dave Ramsey out there who tell people use cash, don’t use credit, don’t take out car loans, etc., which in today’s world is radically counter-culture. He could theoretically be charged with a crime for some of the statements he makes on his radio show. Interesting.
My senator, Chuck Schumer, is out there right now telling us he’s going to save us from the student loan debt collection scammers, when he is one of the enablers of that scam. The government wants us in debt, wants to bring in more and more people to get them signed up for debt, and doesn’t want you to even THINK that there could be another way to live.
Trump has been under attack for wanting to stop the immigration of Muslims. None of the political class had a problem with slaughtering tens of thousands of Muslims but apparently we can’t insult them by not allowing them into the U.S. https://youtu.be/294B1wA6GXA
You can slaughter them if you call them the right name, like ‘insurgents’. Trump, who by the way didn’t suggest a permanent ban, should have just come up with a PC euphemism for what he was trying to accomplish, like a temporary pause in immigration by individuals potentially exposed to “radicalization’, until we have a vaccine for that.
Yes, Trump is very soft and lenient compared to what needs must be. Islam has been at war with the West for 1500 years. Letting them in was an act of madness at the popular level and malice at the higher. Hopefully Trump’s temporary ban is just window dressing for a permanent one. The only alternative to separation is war to the death.
Yes I remember now. They have been bringing freedom and democracy to us for 1500. Just recently they invaded us because they thought we had WMD, Weapons of Mass Derision. They did let us put purple dye on our finger tips after we voted at gunpoint. 1,000,000 of our people dead. 500,00 children. OH WHEN WILL THE ISLAMIC HORDE LEAVE????
Twas for oil me boy, the life blood of this here economy. And the numbers of dead you quoted were all sacrificed on the altar of our economy. Bush/Cheney, no more than minions serving their master
Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. You are often a very silly person. Very often in fact.
Hillary
You Go Girl—
Can’t wait!
If she were a man, there wouldn’t even be a discussion about her qualifications…
Obama is hated because he is black,
Hillary, because she is a woman…
She is tough and intelligent…
and so it goes…
Seek help.
Thanks, Jim, for making me picture Janet Yellen naked. I will never get over it.
the voice doesn’t help much either.
Hello Cfn folks, I noted Mr. Kunstler’s query,…. about if anyone had asked themselves if Trump was the best we can do, and I have to say I have asked myself that question a while back. I am still asking myself that question “somewhat” . Identity politics is weakening our nation. The “political class” seems to foster and even “groom” clicks …… It seems the Democrats and Republicans have been stuck in Junior High or Middle School mode for some time and chose their special click members to see who can “one up” the other. On the Democrat side….we have more Hispanics…,African Americans, Neo Liberal Whites that are connected to “Do Gooder” organizations that cover for a lack of real wage and job strength in general for Americans,…AND lets not forget State and Federal workers who depend on taxes for their raises. Also there are those who know some Democratic politician that has promised to espouse their demographic group’s vested interests .Refugees , CAIR, etc. Also there is Planned Parenthood. On the Republican side we have Evangelicals, the Heritage group, the Koch brothers, the Charter Schools groups , anti abortion groups ,Healthcare Corporations and all their Unions of doctor ‘s offices bill collectors that want to keep their jobs. I am SURE this is not a compete line-up for either side of the political aisle . Both sides are lined up to vote their pocketbook more than their conscience. There are groups that have felt bullied and rejected and /or felt left out of the two clicks for some time….they don’t even seem to be considered to be the “chips’ that are important at the Table in the casino to” stack up” when the political class plays the big stakes every four years . These people are quite often blue collar workers abandoned in the rust belt ,,, or coal miners in Appalachia laid off … or minimum wage waiters and college grads who got griffed with student loans for useless degrees NOW being asked to foot the bill also to save health ins as we know it with bad HMO type plans on the Marketplace site. I might include small to medium size business owners with this group. These people are often car mechanics, welders , artists, musicians, small farmers, and even teachers . They are Vets too. Quite a number are working class whites but the group might still include some of races and walks of life that have been “led on” and abandoned by the parties that they thought would help them years …and I mean years…ago. Instead…they were put in neat little boxes and told to wait until everything would be “made up” to them. Well. Lets face it . That ain’t ever gonna happen.with our current political system. Disenfranchised people are the “class” rejects turning to Trump. They have no real safety net and have hardly got a break from either Party. They are middle class people that got to live some while there was still a “crust of bread and such'” shared with them courtesy of peak everything. Now they must pay off their credit cards. I hope Ms. Yellen understands how BAD it really is out there. If she raises the interest rate 0.10% A Quarter of 1% is too much. She should be extremely cautious! Anyway,I diverge…At least Trump was the first to give these people the DIGNITY of validating their feelings and validating their real concerns for American’s safety. I don’t think the other candidates should try to do that now …as they will look like copycats and panderers.that can’t think for themselves or see the “HUGE” picture. As for Hillary …I am afraid she strikes me as a kind of “bubble girl” It has more to do with “class” than with her experience. How many of the young people killed in France were the “bubble” class children of French Socialists? Darn it…..somebody needs to protect these people .
Clearly, homogeneity is strength and diversity is weakness. Real nations, nations with a future, are homogenous. America has no future per se at all. Identity politics have triumphed as is natural. America will split along ethnic lines. The White part will be or at least could be a continuation of America. America was always White or nothing at all.
Clearly, homogeneity is strength and diversity is weakness. –Janos
Clearly, Janos? Not so clear to me. Nor would it be to you… if you were familiar with decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers showing that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.
Just think about it, Janos. Isn’t it obvious that a group of people with diverse individual expertise would be better than a homogeneous group at solving complex, nonroutine problems? It is less obvious that social diversity should work in the same way—yet the science shows that it does. Your bigotry is getting in the way of accepting not-so-obvious truth that science has discovered: Social diversity is strength.
Diversity is strength not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort. Diversity is hard work, but very rewarding.
Yes, it’s amazing though what those pasty racists accomplished before they got enriched by darkies. Soon everyone will be a coolie or a pauper. Equality at last. And give it another two generations, and all the coolies will be brown. Oh Bliss! Oh Happy Day! Oh Liberation! Diversity at last!
Science classifies all people, black, white, red ,yellow and everyone in between as homo sapiens. Now do you want to argue with science Janos? Or maybe you’re a science unto yourself. All the brilliant scientific minds down through the ages, devoted to unraveling the mysteries of the universe and life on earth can’t contend with the one Colossal mind of Janos Skorenzy(queue angelic choir)
So all breeds of dogs are the same, they’re all just “dogs”? And all types of cars are the same, they’re all just “cars”? See how the uncritical use of language has betrayed you? Until your intelligence rises above words to the level of concepts, you will continue to struggle and have to look up to me high above you. Only from the conceptual level can one use words consciously, choosing them as a craftsman does the right tool. How can you do that when your consciousness is stuck AT the level of words themselves?
Yes and your mind has betrayed you
“…you will continue to struggle and have to look up to me high above you”.
Actually Janos if you are female, as I suspect you are, I don’t mind being on the bottom:)
You are at the Piaget’s stage of concrete operational. You can analyze things but not ideas. Notice how you didn’t even try to refute what I said, but instead just offered insults and vulgarity. Ad Hominem: school yard tactics that befit your mental age.
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm
what part of homo sapien don’t you understand. what next? People with mustaches(women included) are inferior to people without. I didn’t refute your argument because hating people is a waste of time
I guess all those black slaves were just a mirage, hey?
America was always multi-ethnic, including multi-racial. So nice to see you drop the mask of patriotism and reveal the seditionist beneath.
Well obviously bringing them here was a mistake, both technically and morally. Many great Americans have said as much – and that they should be sent back.
sedition? or segregation?
Hows this for a guilt trip–Janos, check this,
http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-south-africa-murders-crime-statistics-20150929-story.html
Leftist attacked by -guess who?– and girl has Che on shirt,
http://www.latimes.com/world/great-reads/la-fg-c1-south-africa-white-privilege-20151211-story.html
Ok Janos, you like to compare ethnic groups to different species, here’s an analogy that actually works. If a farmer plants a crop of a single species it’s called a monoculture and it’s like an all-you-can-eat restaurant for insects and disease. Nature doesn’t plant monocultures because of this vulnerability. In nature diversity makes life more resilient.
Exactly. I’m for diversity as my previous example of watercolors on a palette clearly illustrates. Thus Whites should have their own nations just like everyone else does.
New machines at my library that allow you to check out your own books. I love it of course, misanthrope that I am. Like Bukowski, I experience empty elevators as a thing of beauty. Strangely I notice far fewer people working behind the desk. Could it be that the new machines have put people out of work? I’d be willing to vote against this despite my personal feelings. How many people are willing to vote against their inclinations and personal interests? And how wise Oregon is by not letting people pump their own gas. Ridiculous? Of course, but there you are. It’s either that or pay people to sit at home – or let them starve on the street.
And how wise Oregon is by not letting people pump their own gas. Ridiculous?
================
In New Joisey we don’t pump our own gas. That work is reserved for Pakistanis and Indians (dot, not feather).
We kind of knew there weren’t a lot of Cherokees running around NJ. (People, not Jeeps.) Still, dot not feather was funny. -Sticks
The credit for “dot not feather” goes to Malthuss. Although, I have no idea who he may have picked it up from.
There you have it, Janos. While machines do more, people can do less. As Galbraith pointed out, we have solved the production problem, but we are like cavemen when it comes to the distribution problem.
You ask, “How many people are willing to vote against their inclinations and personal interests?” Reminds me of the Scots toast:
Here’s to us!
Who’s like us?
Damn few!
And the’re all dead!
(translated from the Scots)
As I write this on Monday afternoon, the U.S. stock markets stand essentially unchanged from Friday.
So much for JHK’s Meltdown Prediction of the Week. Surpise, surprise, he’s over-reacted once again. Although I will give Kunstler credit for correctly predicting 27 of the last two financial convulsions.
“America has deep structural problems born from a lack of vision and a festering moral bankruptcy regarding the rights of our fellows and those less fortunate.” – K-Dog
Great comment, Keith! Getting to the root of the issue is most important. I’ve been talking about this stuff for years.
Despite some wacko opinions about fake moon landings, the last application of national vision was the Apollo Program. JFK masterfully sold it to the American public as a noble quest, even though the whole idea was political, in that we had to maintain American prestige in the face of Russian advances in space. I wonder if we would have ever initiated space exploration if there was no cold war.
Continuing in this vein, we’ve been morally bankrupt for a very long time, going back to our country’s origins. Our poor treatment of Native Americans, and the continuation of Black slavery after our founding was reprehensible. Our moral turpitude increased when a group of rapacious financiers steered the Federal Reserve system into existence a hundred years ago. Socialism for the wealthy has only gotten greater since then (e.g., the TBTF bailout). Compare the effect of QE benefits on the wealthy against the effects of the throwaway socialistic benefits for the poor, and you can see who is really important in today’s society.
Socialism by fiat is just plain immoral. it is wrong to force people to give their assets to others. If Americans don’t want to voluntarily help the more unfortunate, maybe our country isn’t worth saving.
This is why I’d never vote for Bernie. To me, he is immoral for wanting to take people’s wealth and give it away to others. If the rich gained their wealth through illegality and thievery, then prosecute them to the full extent of the law, and then take away ALL their ill-gotten gains through penalties.
You have to admit that a lot of “people’s wealth” is gained through this system which is deeply flawed — it allows insane amounts of wealth accumulate to a very few people. That may not be illegal, but legality is a measure of limited use. We do need to keep improving our laws (and get them out of the hands of the existing oligarchy) to manage the inherent failures of our late-stage capitalism.
The point of civilized society is not to allow massive wealth to rest with a few. The moral response to the inequalities generated by our system is to claw back some of that wealth and put it to use addressing the major issues brought about by our capitalistic “success:” environmental damage, lack of affordable housing, dealing with mental illness outside of the prison system, energy intensive settlement patterns, etc.
Thank you,
If we were a country where rich men lived like kings ruling over vast estates of serfs with the power of life and death over their subjects redistribution by confiscation would be appropriate. We are not that country.
Redistribution via a progressive tax system where one keeps what they already have and redistribution is ‘earned’ through work and paying taxes is what America needs.
Bombastic Jim!!
“Gray skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face.”
“To me, he is immoral for wanting to take people’s wealth and give it away to others.” –Beantown
A budget is a moral document. Right now we are throwing half our budget down a militarism rathole. I would much rather have a Bernie Sanders type solution: reprioritize and increase taxes on the wealthy … not to willy nilly give money away but to rationally determine where there is the most need (infrastructure, defense, etc.) and allocate based upon need instead of automatically increasing the defense budget every year and good luck to the rest of the country.
“Redistribute” from the few to benefit the many. It is investment that benefits everyone, including businesses, not a “give away” from one person’s pocket to another.
Beantown, federal tax money is building a bridge nearby. (Thanks to CFN taxpayers for paying into the federal budget.) We needed that bridge because the old one was literally losing chunks of concrete from age. Taking citizens’ wealth to invest in infrastructure for the benefit of all is the definition of a rational and civilized society.
I do not agree that citizens know how to spend their money better than the government. Citizens would never have replaced that bridge that cost millions of dollars (finishing on time and under budget). At least I’ve never heard of a private citizen coming forward to spend millions of dollars to replace a non-toll bridge used by everyone. That bridge is a social investment best realized by government.
Efficient government is needed. Citizens keeping their own wealth and allowing decay of the bridges, schools, the electrical grid, libraries, water purification plants, etc. is the way to anarchy. Taxation is the price of civilization.
I do not agree that citizens know how to spend their money better than the government. – wpa
============
Well there you have it people. He can’t state it much clearer than that.
I think you implying more than wpa is saying. They aren’t necessarily saying that the government knows how to spend it any better…the current federal budget is a great example of that.
And to back up wpa’s statement about citizens not knowing how to spend their money well: just look at all the plastic crap made in china that people don’t need but buy anyway with money they don’t have.
At this point in time, neither the government nor the vast majority of the citizenry have no clue what is going on and how to allocate funds to deal with it.
Yep. And a nation with garages and storage sheds full of cheap junk never used is the proof that citizens do not know how to manage their wealth.
And it’s the drive of busybodies like you to “fix” the behavior of those shitizens that really scares me. “YOU WILL OBEY, YOU WILL OBEY!”
You don’t trust people to spend their own money wisely but you trust them to elect politicians who will spend their money wisely for them. WOW, that’s rich.
The question remains: who pays for the bridge?
Don’t trust anyone, Q. Don’t pay your taxes. Keep all your money for yourself. You know how to invest it and make it grow. But then don’t complain about ignorant hooligans who don’t know how to read, write, or cipher. There won’t be money for schools. Don’t complain when the water coming out of your tap is undrinkable. There won’t be money for water purification. Don’t complain if you get food poisoning and find yourself with diarrhea and vomiting simultaneously because the bottled water you buy is contaminated. There won’t be money for FDA activities. Etc. Defund government completely (except for armies and bombs and guns and bullets) You and your conservative kind are truly egoistic. You have all the perks of civilization but you bitch about how much it costs you in taxes. Those of the greatest generation would spit on you.
Ah, the bridge. So is that, “what’s it all about, Alphie?”
Aye sticks you got it! What do we have for him bob?
But back to the bridge. Our tax dollars at work right? Like wpa said,”Taking citizens’ wealth to invest in infrastructure for the benefit of all is the definition of a rational and civilized society” I mean what’s the argument here?
“And it’s the drive of busybodies like you to “fix” the behavior of those shitizens that really scares me”
I thought wpa was just giving his opinion, like the rest of us.
All I can say don’t be scared, everything’s going to be ok.
If you want taxation, you can have taxation. BUT…who determines which projects are desirable, and that’s the rub. When lots of money is involved, corruption is soon to follow. The one major thing I’ve learned in all my years in the world is that people want your money – as much of it as possible.
Bernie Sanders wants to increase taxes on the wealthy. Who is it that determined the wealthy-not wealthy line? Who has the right to decide how to spend the money? Congress? Gee, they are so unbiased and honest. Tell me Congressmen spend non-military funds wisely as it is.
Yeah, I agree with you to a point about military spending. We do need some sort of military, but not to the extent where we use it the way we do now.
Taxation is not the price of civilization, it’s an unfortunate and undesirable by-product.
Who is it that determined the wealthy-not wealthy line?
——————-
Who? The same kinds of people who make those determinations now: civil servants and elected officials. I know you are not vested in the process, so you can live in your libertarian wonderland and snipe from the sidelines. But those who believe in political activism vote to elect representatives who make decisions.
In some states there are ballot initiatives and citizens can put an issue up to the vote of the entire electorate (i.e., those who are not so jaded that all they can say is “not a dime’s worth of difference” and refuse to vote… based on some kind of imaginary principle).
Decisions are going to be made… you should be thankful you have the opportunity and freedom to provide input and influence outcomes. But libertarians just sneer from the high parts of their ivory towers and cry that all are corrupt and want to keep as much of their money as possible because how can you trust how others will make determinations, like who is wealthy and who is not. Funny they don’t seem to have any problem deciding who is poor.
http://www.sghs.org/fullpanel/uploads/files/2016-federal-poverty-level-chart–002-.pdf
“you can live in your libertarian wonderland and snipe from the sidelines. But those who believe in political activism vote to elect representatives who make decisions.
“Those who believe in political activism.”
Elitist idealists such as yourself?
It’s a question of scale and at 300 million plus the task is insurmountable. You cannot get even your typical HOA to agree on anything and those types qualify as politically active.
Good luck moving the needle.
BTW I agree with you on a bunch of issues — DOD spending for example — and I think there is consonance, a moment , where the radical left meets the radical right, but dammit, don’t tell me what to believe and stick to what counts.
Beans,
Your post is an excellent argument for NOT having a professional political and bureaucratic class. We’ll only realize this when there are no longer enough goodies to go around… much to our regret. (You’ve seen ’em fighting over scraps of food in refugee camps; that’s the current trajectory of the future.)
Ps. If you haven’t already, forget about this asoka-like person’s view on *anything*; those views are designed to stop thought and thwart any movement toward resiliency. (IOW, designed to support and recommend the status quo that got us into these serious pickles and predicaments. *That* right there is a suicidal path.)
Need proof the guv is the ultimate idiot? They take your tax dollars and send them over to wpasoka, the resident cfn freeloading commie parasite……
nsa,
Since wpasoka is a stalking horse for the circular firing squad that got us into these various “fine messes”, I’m not so sure your label is fitting. (Working for the Ministry of Propaganda is a emotionally taxing and thankless task. Listen to the Donna Summer hit, “She Works Hard for the Money” and shed a tiny tear….. then forget about it. 😉 wpasoka is a hardcore particle and propagator of the problem.)
“Not with a bang but a whimper….” as I see it. The Aladdin’s lamp of monetary largess supports it all. Apocalypse Now was years ago and here we are still Waiting for Godot. I’d like to defend globalism, transnationalism, and multicultural diversity as good ideas that just missed their wave. Nothing wrong with international understanding and cultural appreciation but that was then and in another country and besides the wench is dead. There are now 3 classes in America: those with money, serious money, and no money. In America the latter is 80% of the population, the money class is the 15-18% and the remainder 2-5% have the serious money. As a member of the money class–a relatively powerless minority, I can feel the hot breath of class warfare: the redistributionists in favor of the 80% and the elite looking out for the 2%. We are the new “middle class” that appear to be paying the bill. Naturally it’s the money that is the problem–we have created too much of it. Money trashes the natural world by commodifying or financializing everything. Every tree a board at Home Depot, every fish pet food. How can we get to the Goldilocks amount of it? No one will say that we are all playing musical chairs for keeps so the music will not end. That’s why the wizard wanted the lamp…
Hitchens thinks the same about Trump:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/12/goodbye-christianity-hello-multicultural-wasteland.html
‘Trump is a symptom, not a diseas; the disease is the death of real political conservatism’
Sean, Sentiments similar to those of the post up-thread early in the day, a sign spotted by CFN shitizen Whoopdy-Do:
“Dear GOP: Your problem isn’t Trump, it’s pissed off voters.”
-Sticks
P.S. I did read your links to Peter Hitchens blog. The part that got to me the most were his comments about his Iranian friend Jason Rezaian, who was his guide and interpreter when he visited Persia years ago, now being held as an apparent political prisoner “in a nameless dungeon” and “now sentenced to a secret punishment” resulting from “a closed trial” by “Iran’s secret state.”
No, I don’t think the solution is the neo-con, Project For A New American Century (P-NAC) approach of bombing them, invading them, installing a puppet leader more to our liking, killing a million or so Iranian civilians in the process as “collateral damage” and milking our U.S. Treasury a few hundred billions of dollars to feed the military-industrial complex.
Which once again begs the weekly question, “WHERE IN THE WORLD IS VICTORIA KAGAN NOODLEMAN NULAND?” Watch her carefully–wherever she goes, trouble (and John F. Kerry) are soon to follow!
‘Which once again begs the weekly question’
I won’t let others get all the pedant fun so I’ll pass on something I once read about this expression. Ever since I have written ‘raise the question’ or something like that.
Begging the question is apparently a logical fallacy. There’s an entry in Wiki but this site seems to be easy to understand:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
What it is is a circular argument which can be subtle.
Easy example:
God must exist.
How do you know?
Because the Bible says so.
Why should I read the Bible?
Because the Bible was written by God.
Hard one:
‘If such actions were not illegal then they would not be prohibited by the law.’
That one wrecked my head trying to work it out.
And this is what he thinks of the French regional elections, again down to the rejection of sane, sensible, conservative policies:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/12/frances-new-maginot-line-cannot-hold-indefinitely.html
Buy oil stocks at an opportune time. You will not be sorry. – 439
===================
The problem with your advice, 439, is the phrase “opportune time.” When that opportune time arrives, let me know.
We should all show up at Jim’s place. Kind of a pot luck affair, everyone bring a dish to pass. We’ll have to figure who’s who by their vitriol. It’ll be fun. Might be a good idea to leave the firearms at home
so now we learn that immigration officials wouldn’t look at the butchering jihadi muslims’ who slaughtered 14 in CA, at their fb posts, which touted isis and killing in 2013-15, because it would be ’embarrassing’ to the administration:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/14/report-immigration-officials-blocked-reviewing-visa-applicants-social-media-posts/
it’s time for that tree of liberty to be watered mightily.
these are the same PC insane folks who data mine everything being said by americans, while purposely ignoring radical muslims’ FB posts on what their intentions are to do harm.
As a result, 14 americans got shot and killed. hundreds could have died.
liberalism is a mental disorder of the highest sort.
http://www.shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015.
It ain’t the Muslims ya have to fear flo-nase. It’s your fellow american
I looked at the link. Where’s the racial breakdown? How many were gang related? Drugs? Organized crime? Etc.
I suspect these weren’t suburbanites shooting their neighbors.
Introducing another high-risk group, Islamic extremists slipping in under the cover of waves of unvetted Muslim refugees isn’t sensible immigration policy. Immigration is a privilege, not a right. Let’s sort them out. That’s OUR right.
That’s what it’s all about, Alphie.
-Sticks
My friend we have killers within and without. The human heart is capable of love as well as hate, political boundaries notwithstanding. Muslims don’t have a corner on the market
fuck you n your guilt trip.
If I were you I would feel guilty Malthuss for only using two brain cells to write that response. Of course if you used any more than that you’d be into uncharted territory
Leading Causes of Death
Heart disease: 611,105
Cancer: 584,881
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
Alzheimer’s disease: 84,767
Diabetes: 75,578
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149
White citizen terrorists: 21
Self-radicalized Wahhabists: 14
And to think this used to be the land of the free and the home of the BRAVE. Now all turned into cowards looking for quick fixes, jonesing to ban and deport non-white, non-Christians.
You could put up a chart like that for cannabis. You are excruciatingly right. We’re afraid of exactly what we should not be afraid of, and perfectly fine with things that should terrify us. Why? Elimination of sugar from the diet would cut cancer and heart disease at least in half. Dietary supplements would take care of the other half. But we won’t do it. Why? It is easier to think our government has it under control, is doing what it can to protect the health and welfare of its citizens, and governs for the common good.
And unless you believe in World Trade Center false flag conspiracy theories, 2800 killed in the WTC attacks. Of course, we won’t count the Paris attack, the London(?) subway attack, the 1972 Israeli Olympic team attack, the Jerusalem stabbings and many others because they weren’t Americans.
In fact, there are many, many ways to die, so it is a little disingenuous to say we ought to ignore one form and be afraid of another, just based on numbers. Unfortunately, death is inevitable. I’m not so much afraid to die than being amazed that the universe can go on without me. Hmm… If a tree falls In the woods and nobody’s there to see it… If I’m dead, does the universe really go on?
30,000 Americans are killed every year by gun violence. That’s 10 9/11’s annually. If I were to list every single event like you just did we’d be here quite awhile. Statistics don’t lie. You have ALOT more to fear from your fellow American than you do from your distant Muslim.
I can accepting being killed for my wallet, or for selling my drugs on someone else’s turf, or for flying the wrong colors, or by a random psychopath, but not by a religious believer… no, that’s absurd.
Anybody see a pattern? Muzzie-in-chief and the wasp menopausal witch support the muzzie brotherhood in egypt….the muzzie terrorists in libya (after sodomizing to death the head of state)…..the muzzie terrorists in syria…..the muzzie terrorists in albania against the serbs……the muzzie terrorists in the usa (workplace violence). Must all be a coincidence……..
By the looks of it, WW111 might ignite in the Bosphurus, those historic straits that link Europe and Asia, a fight between two ancient enemies, Turkey and Russia, Byzantine vs Ottomans, a hatred that has been smoldering since the Crimean War in the 1850s. The question is, will the US. a NATO ally, come to Turkey’s aid? Another question, can Russia get Constantinople back from the Turks who stole it 500 years ago, and return it to its founders and rightful owners, Byzantine Orthodox Christians?
brh
“WW111 might ignite”
And what are your criteria? When do we know WW111 is going strong?
You won’t find out about it reading the New York Times, that’s for certain, unless it somehow can be linked with climate change, gun control, or transvestites.
Much was made of the Times running an anti gun op ed on its front page a few weeks ago “the first time in 100 years”, as if anybody outside Manhattan gives a sh-t what NYU faggots and self absorbed ivy league PC elitists with their heads up their ass have to say about anything.
brh
Those of the greatest generation would spit on you. – wpa
===============
That’s harsh. I must have touched a nerve.
I’m of the generation who remember and honor Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Matilda Rabinowitz, Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, and Jessie Ashley. You were a white male DoD bean counter who plays the markets to make money. You wouldn’t understand.
Who are those Broads?
do they work down at the Brothel?
brh
Bukowskisghost,
Read an interview with bukowski wherein the self proclaimed poet laureate of las angeles told this story. Late in his career, he suffered a severe case of writer’s block and could not crank out product as before but needed the money…..so he hired on several talented grad students from UCLA to mimic his style and fed them lots of booze and raw whores….and published their output as his own. The la times literary critic reviewed this stuff and declared that bukowski had never been better…….
Getting back to Jim’s main points this week:
– End The Fed! The evil scumbag banksters have had their way for much too long and also roasted the goose that laid the golden eggs (plus they made some awful fois gras and served it in The Hamptons, Georgetown, Boca Raton, Vail, and Silicon Valley and a few other Bubbleland areas. Hope they choke on it and die.
– They don’t call Economics “The Dismal Science” for nothing. It’s dismal if you are not in the Bubbleland enclaves and science which is a hieratic activity to the lumpenproletariat.
– As for the availability of a responsible, mature, adult with commensurate intelligence, integrity, patriotism, etc., etc. and experience to be the President of the United States…well let me assure all of you about the short theatrical screening that happens before anyone gets anywhere close to the position.
– An invitation to a small intimate “fundraiser” is proffered to the candidate. The amount suggested to be gained is unimaginable (some say 10 billion dollars) The invite is eagerly accepted. The soiree is held in a fortified, undisclosed location (with security that make the Bilderberg meeting look like the European Union.)
There is all manner of dining, dancing, courtesans and any other pleasure imaginable. During the ” port and Punch cigars” portion of the agenda, the candidate is brought to the in-palace theatre. The candidate is told it’s a very short and informative presentation. After viewing the Zapruder film, the candidate is asked if there are any questions. End of story.
– It’s always all about the money in Capitalism unfettered, isn’t it? Hence the power of the Banksters over just about everything. Disgusting.
– Terminate the God damned demonic Federal Reserve now.
“We should all show up at Jim’s place. Kind of a pot luck affair, everyone bring a dish to pass. We’ll have to figure who’s who by their vitriol. It’ll be fun. Might be a good idea to leave the firearms at home”–Alphie
I’ll be the one surrounded by women. Speaking of which, are there any women posters here on CFN; is there even one female poster?
Beryl of Oil outted herself as female last week. I know she’s beautiful from her posts. We haven’t heard from barbieisbest for weeks. I thought wpa_ccc was female but many oldtimers here insist I’m wrong. Not many for sure. Mostly men talking to men, just like Ashley Madison. Janos has a good memory. Maybe he’ll identify others. -Sticks
How are so sure Janos is male? Could be derived from Jan or Jane.
are there any women posters here on CFN – Buck
===============
What ever happened to San Jose Mom, for example?
And the woman going about the world on sailing yachts? She had some interesting perspectives and expressed herself well.
Abbysbooks? A wide-eyed Liberal whose shit didn’t stink but whose saving grace was her admiration for David Foster Wallace.
Jackie Blue? A sad woman in a bad marriage.
Myrtle May (who would be about 90 now if still among the quick)? I may not have her name exactly right.
Well, we’ve still got the androgynous wpa-ccc.
Yes, I recall all of those names and my entire post was basically in jest.
Jackie Blue. As I recall she a had a thing for a poster named “Cash” After one post in which “Cash” self identified as an unbuttoned shirt, gold chain wearing, “Italian Stallion” type from Canada, well, Jackie was all over him. embarrassingly so, as I recall.
Probably feeling like a little “Play Misty For Me” dynamic was brewing up, “Cash” gave her a little head fake and left, never to be read again. Diito for Jackie who must have lost interest with the other bland white guys here on CFN.
Who you callin’ a bland white guy!
“Who you callin’ a bland white guy!’
Dannyboy,
Who, in your admittedly upscale NY neighborhood, would be considered otherwise?
elysianfield,
I would certainly not include neighborhood women in that generalization. Then there’s children, black men, Latinos, etc.
But I know that you prefer things simple and wrong.
Dannyboy,
” would certainly not include neighborhood women in that generalization. Then there’s children, black men, Latinos, etc.
But I know that you prefer things simple and wrong.”
Yesss, I prefer things very, very simple, and very, very literal. Argumentum ad Absurdum.
elysianfield,
Your need to generalize situations in order to simplify and make sense of your experience is not uncommon on this site.
It is just lazy, that’s all. You must understand that the tens of thousands of people living in my neighborhood are not all the same.
Or do you?
Dannyboy,
I would expect that the “tens of thousands” of your neighbors are not the same as my dozen or so neighbors on “main street”. I will accept your criticism that my thought process is becoming lazy…considering that my original post was meant to be a humorous aside, I did not expect it to be vigorously vetted.
elysianfield,
Thank you for your explanation and your humor. No furthur vetting forthcoming.
Cash was a bean counter. His wife was Asian, Chinese I believe. He once quoted her as having used the phrase “la la land.” I replied, “no Cash, she would have said ‘rah rah rand.'” He showed her my reply and she laughed.
http://www.infowars.com/transgender-father-abandons-7-children-to-become-6-year-old-girl/
Is this the end? No just the beginning of the end. We are now in the whirlpool going down into the cosmic sewer of existence. Will there be monsters? Yes, just look in the mirror of your brother’s face.
You can be sure wpa will be perfectly OK with this Stefonknee Wolschtt character.
On three…
One, Two, Three…
Yawwwnn.
“… The one, who is able to wage war, conquers an enemy army without fighting; takes enemy’s Fortresses without siege… He keeps all intact and that challenges the power … this is usually a strategic attack”
Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Chinese authorities have begun to implement one of its main long-term political attitudes – the transformation of the Yuan into a reserve currency of the post-crisis world, where China again will fix its role as the largest economy (as it was before the beginning of the 19th century).
These actions in the financial sector are carried out with the participation of the Rothschild-Zvikov financial group leading its policies in Southeast Asia through the largest global bank HSBC, but not only.
The Financial Group puts under its control exchange rates, global reserves of precious metals, precious stones, various pyramid schemes, as well as “reserves” in the form of illegal drugs, but it is aware of “heresy of unlimited and unsecured interest rate” and is now in a position to advance.
They are betting on sudden state default on US dollar accounts and a reset of virtual wealth and debt, and revaluation of the wealth in ounces of gold.
Asia they see as a relatively prosperous area. China is to supply their rapidly increasing bank with gold reserves.
So in 2008, the year China was assembled a special group of experts, which recommended an increase in Chinese gold reserves to 6000 tonnes in the next 3-5 years and possibly up to 10,000 tonnes in 8-10 years. At the same time China is one of the world’s major buyers of bank gold, carefully hiding their gold reserves.
In light of what is happening with the world’s current reserve currency du jour I doubt the Chinese have any grand aspirations to replace the $USD with the Yuan. The Triffin dilemma is alive and well and I doubt the Chinese are blind to it. When the $USD experiences hyperinflation I am confident that the last thing any nation will desire is to issue the world’s new reserve currency.
The bizarre economic paradigm of the post WW2 era and it’s massive mal-investment will finally be seen clearly by all who choose to look. The obvious problem is the world’s largest debtor currency being considered as the # 1 savings vehicle in the world for 50 + years. How can it be that we have been fooled into saving in a medium that must necessarily be devalued by the central bank that issues said medium.
The Chinese are accumulating gold because they fully understand where their dollar reserves are headed. Following their lead is the best we can do. Those who save in debt will be hurt as the dollar based system implodes. Save in unambiguous wealth.
Sorry, but The Triffin dilemma appears to me just a clever designed propaganda hoax.
When one of your greatest Presidents, FDR, was confiscating private gold in 1933, he already knew where he’d be taking the dollar – the primary world trade currency and he knew it would give the United States a great advantage in developing, and, probably deservingly so, given that it would act as a great facilitator of world trade and development.
The original Bretton Woods before 1971 was one of the best systems in the history of humankind – fixed (or almost fixed) currency exchange rates, clear and straightforward rules that everybody could follow, low extraction of wealth from productive economy by speculative capital.
FDR is probably turning in his grave now by the mess it was all turned to by greedy sons-of-bitches.
So now, somebody got to take a lead in restoring the law and order to the world of international trade and finance.
And remember, saving is just secondary function of money, its primary function is trade.
“Money” has 3 functions (the primacy depends on the needs of the user). Unit of account, medium of exchange, store of value. Is it not apparent that there is a conflict between a medium that people save in (long term) and measure debt in? Debtors need the medium to lose value while savers require a stable to rising value.
Theoretically, people should save not in “money”, but in active assets.
LAND! It’s the only thing that’ll still be here when the dust settles
Cash dollars circulating outside of United States have distinct serial numbers, which would allow US to “shut the door” not just to Muslim immigrants, but to “foreign” cash dollars attempting to enter the country in case of emergency.
Large amount of excellent-quality counterfeit dollars circulating outside of US and most likely produced by CIA labs, not only finance various “color revolutions”, but could be used as a pretext to declare all dollars with “foreign” serial numbers as counterfeit.
Double-purpose factory burned to the ground in Tushino, Moscow
Warehouse with household chemical products and three five-storey administrative building burned down in the territory of the Tushino engineering plant, the area of the fire was 15 thousand square meters.
http://ria.ru/incidents/20151211/1340084406.html
That was what is called in Russia a “mail-box” (classified production) plant producing the engine’s parts for Russian jets. Definitely sabotage. We are already at war and all “incidents” like attack in Paris, San Bernardino, and fire in Tushino should be first considered from that angle.
Bill Still: ISIS Killing Children With Disabilities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycq85M4TJbw
DAESH is following Nazi Action T4 Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4
It is not about religion, it is Nazi ideology.
It’s time for Congress to declare war on ISIS
After the terror in Paris, most Democrats and Republicans agree America should end the Islamic State. So one might think Congress would get around to actually declaring war against the proto-state.
http://nypost.com/2015/11/28/its-time-for-congress-to-declare-war-on-isis/
Official declaration of war means the activation of “Trading with enemy Act of 1917” and those who are now in the United States surreptitiously helping DAESH will be the customers of the Act, which provides as awards imprisonment as a minimum.
The precedents in 1917 and 1943 indicate that the law is retroactive, which, as you know, should worry Hillary Clinton a lot.
“The class of people who formerly trafficked in political ideas have been too busy celebrating the wondrous valor of transgender. Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, ”
Jim you keep getting closer to the answer, but apparently you want the wheels to come off? We need to get Congress to pass my Natural Marriage and Reproduction Act that rules out transgender reproduction, ends same sex marriage, and preserves everyone’s equal reproductive rights.
OMG, here we go AGAIN !!
Until we pass the law, we are going to need to pass the law. Why do you insist that we let transgender women gestate babies?
“Why do you insist that we let transgender women gestate babies?” –John Howard
The answer is in your Natural Marriage and Reproduction Act legislation: “preserves everyone’s equal reproductive rights.”
Men, women, and transgender should all have equal rights regarding gestation/reproduction. As you say: EVERYONE’S
Everyone has a right to procreate as the sex their body was born most likely able to. No one has a right to procreate as the other sex.
Male pregnancy is a stupid, useless, unethical, and deeply depressing idea. Men are not women.
Q, he’s a troll, stop paying attention.
I’ve been saying this for 10 years, but that doesn’t make someone a troll. Does it?
“No one has a right to procreate as the other sex.”
Yes, they do, guaranteed by this nation’s founding documents. If God fucked up your sex, then you have the right to change your sex. If you are unhappy with the sexual anatomy you have, you have the right to seek happiness by changing it. You have the right to the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed, in writing.
He’s b-a-a-a-a-a-c-k!
well nice to see sweden reaping what it sowed, just another in a long line of steps toward fullblown anarchy and destruction, courtesy of YouKnowWhatReligion:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/626885/Islamic-State-ISIS-letters-Sweden-convert-Islam-decapitated-murder-jihadi-Syria
cue wpa, who’ll say it’s just a few…….statistically insignificant, like the 19 statistically insignificant ones who killed 2,996 in the twin towers.
applause for merkel, obama, hollande, sweden, denmark, france….let ’em all in, slaughter everywhere, bomb threats everywhere, lockdowns everywhere, everyone scared everywhere
liberalism is, yes it truly is, a mental illness that’s apparently incurable
The cure is banning male pregnancy, voiding gay marriages, protecting natural reproduction rights.
If God fucked up your sex, then you have the right to change your sex. If God was not able to get your gender correctly aligned with your sex, if you are unhappy with the sexual anatomy you have, you have the right to seek happiness by changing it. You have the right to the pursuit of happiness, period, guaranteed, in writing.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the sexual anatomy which has connected him or her with another, and to assume the anatomy of the other sex, a decent respect is due.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life (with gender/sex harmony), Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I bet you also think everyone has a right to American citizenship.
No one has a right to reproduce offspring with someone of the same sex. It is not going to be allowed, it is crazy to think we will allow men to gestate a baby. Why should we?
This line of crap-tastic speculation and panic in the face of *nothing*, makes the interlocutors appear ‘sincere’, but that’s about it. If you’re not thinking holistically in these times of severe predicaments, then this lack of peripheral vision is guaranteed to get you blindsided.
‘Might want to re-read this part:
“The class of people who formerly trafficked in political ideas have been too busy celebrating the wondrous valor of transgender. Well, now the wheels are going to come off the things that actually matter, such as being able to get food and pay the rent, and might perforce shove aside the neurotic preoccupations with race, gender, privilege, and artificial grievance that have bamboozled vast swathes of citizens wasting a generation of political capital on phantoms and figments.” — JHK
(Sorry if you don’t understand it; I can’t help with that, though I thought JHK’s viewpoint on these matters was pretty clearly expressed here. Perhaps you don’t agree with his opinion? If that be the case, then that would put you squarely in the “bamboozled” camp. lol)
CFNers! This is your chance not just to be an idle observer, but to do something!
Call you Senator and Representative and demand their support for the President by declaring war on ISIS!
Protect your children and grandchildren!
I don’t see how that will improve my safety.
Calling them and getting them to end same sex marriage and ban transgender reproduction will improve my safety.
Under no circumstance will the US Congress, or Barry O. for that matter, make any such sort of pronouncement against those nice Yzlamik State people. Can’t hurt their feelings now can we.
NWO has been working overtime to git er done! (Chaos for stability)
Besides, it’s just biziness you understand. Darn good biziness too. Just ask the Erdogan family, the House of Saud, General Dynamics, or those Rothschild associated folks, amongst a host of others – damn profitable biziness too.
Now just go back to that TV and get real scared cause there is a threat against the entire L.A. School District. ANd don’t hurt anyones feelings or expect those Washington D.C. politicians to do anything about it other than to do nothing.
“Can’t hurt their feelings now can we.”
Feelings?
Memo to Pequiste: BHO Drones Murder Human Beings.
http://drones.pitchinteractive.com
A drone is nothing but a nuisance to those Yzlamik State partyers. They are not signatories to any agreements on warfighting ( Geneva Conventions.) They are not even a state; just a proto-state of terrorists and territory. (We, the good ol’ USA, on the other hand, are a full fledged state, signatory to most Laws of War conventions, and still do a fine job of terrorizing certain people, places and things. That discussion is for another day however. )
London, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo. The great warriors, Harris, Lemay, Kesselring and others,
show how it is supposed to be done. Annihilation works wonders.
Kill them until they exist no more. They will stop then. The Yzlamik State goat-fuckers need to be exterminated with extreme prejudice.
BHO is best at playing basketball and golf and not hurting peoples feelings.
Enemy is within, but it must be defeated by Constitutional means!
Call on Congress to declare war on DAESH!
typical Kunstler hyperbole crap. The oil industry is going to the sub basement of value? That sure is a long long way from the conclusion he reached in all his books that we are soon going to run out of the precious stuff. Kunstler is obviously in the business of doomsday.
welcome to the Island of Dr. Moreau
Ben Carson calls for declaration of war against Islamic State
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/15/ben-carson-calls-declaration-war-against-islamic-s/
Donald Trump said the U.S. should declare war on the Islamic State, following in the footsteps of French President Francois Hollande after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-on-if-u.s.-should-declare-war-on-isis-why-not/article/2576911
Jeb Bush Says U.S. ‘Should Declare War’ in Fight Against Islamic State – NYTimes
Hillary Clinton: No War On Islamic State (breitbart)
Join Ben and Donald and Jeb, call your reps to declare war on the Islamic State!
That issue will show who’s on your side and who’s against!
I am with Obama. He wants a formal declaration of war. He is acting illegally right now because Congress refuses to declare war as the Constitution says is their duty.
Obama Calls on Congress to Formally Declare War on ISIS in Oval Office Address
http://www.newsweek.com/address-obama-vows-overcome-terrorist-threat-401796
Tim Kaine, possible Hillary running mate, is madder than ever Congress hasn’t declared war on ISIS
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/12/14/the-daily-202-tim-kaine-possible-hillary-running-mate-is-madder-than-ever-congress-hasnt-declared-war-on-isis/
Any declaration of war should include the requirement that Senators and Representatives send their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, into combat roles, not desk jobs, and they should be sent first. Then they can start sending other people’s children into the maw of the war machine.
Apparently you are not aware that all those politicians’ kids and grandkids are medically ineligible for combat due to flat feet. Yep, every last one of them have flat feet.
corr:
‘has’ flat feet.
ATTENTION GUN OWNERS: super muzzie nigger and his commie cunt pals coming for you next. FAA by edict now demands registration of ALL RC MODEL AIRPLANES (fixed wing and drone) under penalty of up to $27,500 and even incarceration. This kind of arbitrary lunacy is unfathomable in a “free” society. RC models are toys enjoyed by millions of kids from 9 to 90. Let’s see if the sheeple comply…..
Would you be willing to defend your country against a foreign invasion?
Putin Throws Down the Gauntlet
That’s all Putin is doing in Syria. He’s just preempting the tidal wave of jihadis that’ll be coming his way once the current fracas is over. He figures it’s better to exterminate these US-backed maniacs in Syria now than face them in Chechnya, St Petersburg and Moscow sometime in the future. Can you blame him? After all, if Washington’s strategy works in Syria, then you can bet they’ll try the same thing in Beirut, Tehran and Moscow.
So what choice does Putin have?
None. He has no choice. His back is against the wall. He has to fight. No one in Washington seems to get this. They think Putin can throw in the towel and call it “quits” at the first sign of getting bogged down.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/15/putin-gives-kerry-a-chance-to-pull-back-from-the-brink/
“Any declaration of war should include the requirement that Senators and Representatives send their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, into combat roles, not desk jobs, and they should be sent first. Then they can start sending other people’s children into the maw of the war machine.” — wpa
Don’t you worry. Most important battles of that war will be fought in the court rooms and Senate hearings. Flat foot not important. But definitely better than blood on American streets.
huffington post:
The truth is that Muslim Americans are not only integrating into U.S. society, but are actually more opposed to violence and more tolerant in many ways than many other Americans.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH”
(b-i-g breath)
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
yes, they are known for their tolerance, everywhere they are on the planet are places known for tolerance and their opposition to violence.
Time to quarantine off the vile mideast so the inbred insane muzzie cultists stay over there and revel in their own advanced societies…..clit cutting, head chopping, woman hating, honor killing, fag murdering, infidel slaughtering, cousin marrying, wildlife exterminating, adulterer stoning.
Let’s stop all those activities, nsa, including genital mutilation, which I assume you oppose, though it happens every day in America.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/circumcision_2013/Circumcision_2013.htm#table
Congrats…..you finally got something right. Us white guys need everything we were born with…….
though it happens every day in America. – wpa
===============
It happens every day in America but not to females. We males can take it because we’re tough and because we’re too young and stupid to complain.
As you probably know the guy in the Jewish religion who performs the circumcision is called a “mohel.” The job pays very little but he gets a lot of tips. ;o) ;o)
Yeah, those are all bad extreme cultural beliefs that violate basic human rights. But there is a huge rational middle ground between religious fundamentalism and gay marriage and transgender reproduction.
The “(b-i-g breath)” between the two large spasms of laughter is very funny.
“Muslim Americans … are actually more opposed to violence and more tolerant in many ways than many other Americans.”
It it true that Muslims are nonviolent and more tolerant, and the small number of Muslims who own guns, compared to Christian Americans, reflects Muslim aversion to violence.
Gun ownership is seen as a central part of American identity for a large number of Americans and NRA members. Muslims should all be armed, so Muslims will become more American and not seen as the “other.”
Nonviolent Muslims are Nonviolent Gun Owners
https://blindfaithblindfolly.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/non-violent-muslims-and-non-violent-gun-owners/
Think the Quran teaches hate
Keywords
Burn hell punish
Torture
Bible 1261
Quran 621
Fear terror
Horrify terrify.
Bible 1156
Quran 183
Anger hate slave
Despite wrath
Oppressed violence
Bible 3445
Quran 85
Destroy murder
Kill slay.
Bible 2025
Quran 185
Total hate words:
Bible 10,007
Quran 1,148
Keywords
Forgive hope
Mercy reward.
Bible 696.
Quran 1843
Muslims throw gays off buildings. They stone fornicators. Death penalty! Those things should not be capital crimes!
What’s their position on transgenders?
Depends, I hear Iran is the world leader in sex change surgery, because it is a solution for being homosexual, because sex change surgery isn’t prohibited in the Koran, so that makes it the only way to avoid being thrown off buildings.
But I think Sunni Muslims don’t consider the Koran to be the only word, and don’t approve of sex change surgery.
But as Van Gogh wrote, “the Bible is Christ” however twisting the path to the ‘other slope of the mountain’ as in the New Testament. What is the New Testament equivalent in the Quran?
Ah Vincent–has it ever been stated more beautifully?
“But the consolation of that deeply saddening Bible, which arouses our despair and indignation, which seriously offends us and thoroughly confuses us with its pettiness and infectious foolishness—the consolation it contains like a stone inside a hard rind and bitter pulp, is Christ.”
Isn’t the Bible a much bigger book?
While I’m here, do you believe in global warming?
Whites create. Blacks destroy.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/we-wuz-kangsafrocentrism-and-the-collapse-of-white-civilizations-from-egypt-to-atlanta
Texas plumber: I didn’t sell my truck to ISIS
When Houston-area plumbing company owner Mark Oberholtzer sold his truck to a local dealer in October of 2013, he had no idea it would wind up on Syria’s front lines being used by ISIS fighters — with his plumbing company name and phone number still on the side.
“You know, it hurts my feelings, that anyone could possibly thing that we were connected to terrorism in any way,” Oberholtzer told CBS News.
He says he was assured by the dealership that it would remove his information before selling the truck. But there it was in the photo — which then went viral.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-plumber-i-didnt-sell-my-truck-to-isis/
Still not convinced that “Trading With Enemy Act” needs to be activated as soon as possible in US?
GOP Debates: if you are for WWIII – you have your pick of candidates
Kasich: Punch Russians in the nose
Christie: Shoot Down Russian Warplanes
Carly Fiorina: Now is not the time to be talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She, like Christie, advocates a no-fly zone over Syria:
I know Vladimir Putin. He respects strength. He lied to our president’s face; didn’t bother to tell him about warplanes and troops going into Syria. We need to speak to him from a position of strength.
So as commander in chief, I will not speak to him until we’ve set up that no-fly zone; until we’ve gathered our Sunni-Arab allies and begun to deny ISIS territory; until I’ve called the supreme leader of Iran and told him new deal — new deal. We, the United States of America, are going to cut off the money flow, which we can do; which we don’t need anyone’s permission or collaboration to do.
What’s up with American females? They appear to be the biggest warmongers.
“Did you take a week Off?” — Malthus
Nah, last week I had another stint with that millwright, job lasted 4 days. So my shift ends at the printing plant at 5 am and this guy likes to be on the road at 7 am, doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.
We were in this old Machine Tool shop in Meriden dismantling and moving out ancient machinery which looks to be from the 1940s and 50s. This stuff is not being scrapped, however, but being moved to Asia and put back into service, Pakistan I think. I like to look at the name plates on these machines which give company name, place and date of manufacture, Bridgeport, CT 1947, Yonkers, NY 1943, Brooklyn, 1944 etc. It seems like I’ve got a front row seat to the de-industrialization of the United States.
My friend paid me $600 cash and said he’d call me again sometime in February.
brh
” It seems like I’ve got a front row seat to the de-industrialization of the United States.”
But isn’t that “de-industrialization” the result of capitalism’s “invisible hand”? And something you strongly support?
Capitalism without conscious is simply cannibalism. And yet the political party./deology that you champion are unconscionable capitalists thru and thru. And you fully support them despite their false proclamations of economic conservatism; after all they never met a war or defense contract they opposed.
So when you dismantle those beautiful machines that represent the best of romantic industrialized America, have an an honest moment of realization that the ideology you strongly support is indeed a wrecking crew, for this nation and others.
If slave labor is capitalism, then yes.
How about Socialist slave labor, in the Gulag, and today in brutal forced work camps in China and NKorea?
brh
Not to mention the Nazi Labor Camps, which existed, and were adjutant too, the Extermination Camps.
There’s your National Socialist ‘preservation of the nation’.
vrh
Exactly. Capitalism builds nations and then just as quickly destroys them. It’s focus is never nationalism, but just self interest. National Socialism – which includes Capitalism btw, is always focused on the preservation of the nation.
So- for a buck, you help with the ‘creative destruction’ [of USA].
Heard a great one the other night on the news: California has twice the national rate of TB because of all the “international travelers”!
Illegal aliens are now tourists, making the Federal Government into a tourist agency.
Malth, these plants we go into have been closed a long time. If this machinery wasn’t being sold overseas it would just be scrapped. So I’m happy to see it being put back into service, if not here, then somewhere else.
Buck, heavy industry has faded away in not just free market economies, but in socialist and communist economies as well. It lasted about 1 century, 1870-1970, a pretty good run, before it began to fade. I remember in the 1970s huge steel plants closing in W Virginia and Penn., but also massive shipyards shutting down at Gdansk, Poland and in Belfast Northern Ireland, just to name a few. Its time had come, that’s all.
brh
Why the horrible passivity? Why not see it as treason? Or do you imagine America can continue without industry? Who says profit has to be the only consideration? If those people want to do industry elsewhere, good riddance. Support other people who do business here – and shun those who betrayed us by going overseas.
By your attitude, you are denying the ideal of Localism and trying to prop up the old (and vicious) paradigm.
Its not treason.
That’s how markets work.
The market should serve man not man the market. There’s no absolute reason Industry had to move overseas, except profit. Can’t you realize that some things are more important than profit?
They want to do business overseas? Then treat them like foreigners and make them pay tariffs – and wait in line behind American made products. Worse, it puts Americans out of work and is a huge factor in the fall of the American Nation. How can you not see this?
News from the currency front
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on Monday announced plans to reform the RMB exchange rate in the domestic market, according to Finanz.ru.
Chinese authorities have decided to abandon the peg of the Yuan to the dollar, replacing it with a basket of 13 currencies.
The dollar’s share in it is 26.4%, the euro – 21.39%, Japanese yen – 14.68%. In addition, the basket will include Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore dollar, British pound, Swiss franc, Thai baht, Malaysian ringgit, and – with a share of 4.36% – the Russian ruble.
Goldman Sachs analysts have seen in the decision of the NSC signal the likelihood of further devaluation of the Yuan: Chinese currency to the dollar has fallen to a maximum value from the beginning of the 1990s, but to the basket – this movement is not so great.
Analysts do not rule out that this way Beijing can thwart the Fed to raise rates on Wednesday.
“Chinese authorities have decided to abandon the peg of the Yuan to the dollar, replacing it with a basket of 13 currencies.”
This is the beginning of the end of “cheap” goods from China.
All currencies in the “Chinese” basket, except for Swiss franc, are falling against US Dollar. So will Yuan. Goods stay cheap for now.
A.Brodsky. First impressions of GOP debates
1. CNN Moderators cowardly tried to put down Ben Carson (14 minute tape 4 and the beginning tape 5). Apparently this is due to the fact that Carson announced his withdrawal from Republican Party if Trump is removed from the primaries. This solidarity makes the two outsiders and the leaders of the presidential race (Trump and Carson) invulnerable, and before you can put down Trump you need to put down Carson.
2. Kasich, Christie, Rubio, Fiorina and Bush (that is, all establishment candidates except Cruz) want to impose a no-fly zone over Syria and are ready to shoot down Russian planes, and I got the impression that they rest assured that, contrary to the statements of professionals in the United States, Russia is unable to shoot down American planes, bomb the US air-fields and sink US aircraft carriers.
3. Chris Christie stated that he wants to establish a no-fly zone over Syria, and will shoot down Russian planes, and Rand Paul said frankly on the basis of this speech, that Chris Christie is the candidate for those who want to see firsthand the third world war. And he wanted to say very clearly that this war would be nuclear and US Homeland would suffer nuclear blows. But he didn’t say that. The taboo is firmly in place. (1:50 of tape 7)
4. Fiorina pretends to be a kuku and wants to add to a nuclear war with Russia, a nuclear war with China and North Korea. But it is all politics, an attempt to be more bloodthirsty than Hillary Clinton, same as Kasich desire to overthrow Assad and to “break the Russian’s nose” (14 minute tape 6) is really acquired the character of the idea-fix and it is rather clinical than political.
5. Rand Paul is the only one who presented his point of view as it should be presented by a future president, not somebody who’s engaged in a show business. In particular, he said that the most important issue is fundamentally important issue for America, not just for the election campaign: an issue about the failure of the policy of “regime-change”, that it was a mistake from the beginning. (10 minute tape 6)
6. Trump and Ted Cruz are clearly and openly conspired to support each other, cursing just for show, to the point that Trump right in the debate confirmed his desire to invite Ted Cruz as Vice President in the event if he is nominated. Carson also somehow is present in this combination, it is likely he got some offer and asked for time to think, and for now trying not really get into a fight, repeating his previous arguments, although in previous debates has proved to be a fighter.
And standing behind all that is the Bush clan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDYsSPM5g24
your leftist government protecting americans:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/15/30-immigrants-admitted-u-s-recently-implicated-terrorism/
so, they wont use facebook posts openly stating support for ISIS and terrorism to keep out terrorist muslims, because they would hurt obama politically, and they openly let in terrorists with their non-existent vetting
yeah, the left – and many despicable personages on the right – could care less about your life and the life of your kids.
votes are everything, power.
they are drunk with it, and it’s only going to get worse.
thank god americans have a 2nd amendment.
“i personally own no guns and would never buy one, i’m against gun ownership and think they should all be taken away to protect the citizenry, we would all be safer”
Terrorists (most of whom are native-born citizens) are also thankful for the 2nd amendment.
“And standing behind all that is the Bush clan.”
Yes, and Trump is going to learn the hard way the difference between being rich and being wealthy. Trump is going to be taken down by the Bush dynasty.
Bush clan is behind Trump – at least it appears that way. Jeb’s playing along with Trump against other establishment candidates, who appears to be in the Hillary’s camp.
Just an impression.
So far only Jeb and Trump voiced opinion that Hillary will be taken off the race. I am sure that Obama is with them on that and he needs Congress help to enact “Trading With Enemy Act”.
Fighting ISIS is not so much military issue as political.
Russians could bomb all they want out of DAESH in Syria, but as long as supply lines and financial streams stay open, they’ll be able to easily restore their strength using millions of potential Muslim recruits duped by Wahhabi madrassas funded by Saudi and Qatari money.
And if you listen to GOP debates, the issue of those madrassas was brought up as “Radical Islamist Schools” without mentioning Saudi Arabia or Qatar, of course. They replace word “Wahhabi” with “Radical”, which means nothing.
These lies got to stop, or America is going to get 911 on a nuclear scale. The DAESH facilitators needs to be taken out in US.
Mrs. Yellen and her cortege of necromancers may just lose their nerve and twiddle their thumbs come Wednesday. If they actually make the bold leap to raise the fed funds rate one measly quarter of a percent, they might finally succeed in blowing up a banking system that deserves all the carnage that comes its way. There is something in the air like a gigantic static charge, longing for release. –JHK
Well, Mrs. Yellen did raise the interest rates. How long do we have to wait for “the carnage”?
The Obama economic recovery is so strong that Mrs. Yellen needed to hike interest to try to cool down the economy, the same Obama economic recovery JHK denies has happened, and insists will never happen. Events are at once overtaking JHK predictions and proving them wrong.
Well, Mrs. Yellen did raise the interest rates — wpa
The events that are now unfolding, enjoyable to read about in historical novels: surviving global crises in real time is exciting, but quite troublesome.
MISTER KUNSTLER starts off the weekly installment with an up-to-the-minute look at global enterprise factors leading up Wednesday’s Big Reveal: ‘The Fed’ – *Will They or Won’t They?*
And now of course we know the answer:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35117405
Whether they did/did not has been a moot point since Commercial Demand collapsed a year ago [*]. Personally I lost no sleep, but I did take very careful note of who got huffy about the issue and how and *why* they did… *V-e-r-y* revealing. “Can’t be too careful about your company” as the saying goes.
Have a Happy!
— — —
[*] re: commodity, retail & shipping stats
Maybe the collapse of junk bonds signals a return to reality.
Will the Fed let Darwin do his work unimpeded and let him deselect the manifestly unfit? How many banks and businesses are just carcasses waiting for a ride to the garbage dump?
Will we do it? Or will we do what Japan did for 25 years and let the un-dead stagger along, never doing the necessary euthanizing?
Well, Yellen raised a quarter point. Some guys say that even a rise of a quarter point means a withdrawal of hundreds of billions of liquidity from financial markets. I wonder, do they know what they’re talking about? Or are they just talking their book?
Now, I wipe my ass with financial ratios but I just read that the S&P is sitting at 21 times earnings. They say it’s a bit high. Some say it’s a lot high. Numbers like this are meaningless to me but others attach a great deal of import.
So what about these stock prices? If the raison d’etre of the Fed funny money regime was to prop up asset prices, wouldn’t you just see stock prices as misinformation?
What does “earnings” mean? Given Fed price distortion and falsification, is an earnings number worth a damn? How do you correct for the effect of Fed induced speculative fever (or the opposite) in a company’s inputs? Is there a financial statement that you can trust?
“…will we do what Japan did for 25 years and let the un-dead stagger along, never doing the necessary euthanizing?”
V.,
Since the US govt. has been using Japan as its own little test-lab country since [just a tad before] the end of WW2, I do believe you’ve answered your own question. Let the “staggering” continue!
I sit conscious of my breathing and my surroundings. Fedpocalypse has arrived interest rates have been raised and zombies are not roaming the streets.
Due to our host actually making a successful prediction I’d have expected something to happen. Perhaps there will be a new star in the sky tonight to usher in the new age.
A star not for Fedpocalypse but to signify Kunstlercantpredictshitpocalyapse. It is the end of an era, a new dawn brings a new day of Kunstler actually being able to predict something and get the timing right.
Everybody sing!
“This is the dawning of the age of …
Better show our host some respect. He may banish you to the dog pound. Ruff, ruff times ahead! -Sticks
@ Pogo:
Re | “[Actually], sauerkraut, I LOVE the Internet and is where I go to for all news. But at the same time, I believe we need large news organizations, the AP, API, Reuters, BBC, etc. And they can’t exist without “newspapers” paying for their stories. Without cash paying customers, the newspapers (NY Times, WaPost, etc.) can’t survive. A downward spiral.”-p.
I agree with the statement “we need large news organizations” – insofar as we need news organizations that have the resources, training, quality control reporting the news fearlessly and faithfully – but that’s not something we seem to have ever gotten. For as long as the ‘Fourth Estate’ has had the power to sway votes, it has been captured by the fewest with the most to lose – if/when their hold on the political process is challenged.
What we got instead were news organizations that reported AS LONG AS that news didn’t clash with the official narrative, or discomfited them in some vague way. Stories were and are suppressed, delayed or buried outright. One very recent, critical example:
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/05/14/nytimes-wiretapping-delay
The bottom-line is that the New York Times sat on the warrantless-wiretapping story for a year so that Bush Jr. could get reelected, and the NYT could keep sending reporters to the Whitehouse Press Room to get their lips loaded.
There’s no more damning an example of how failed the MSM is than that. None is needed [*]. The NYT could have corrected a great wrong, scooped everyone and changed the course of history, and when it mattered most they refused to do their duty as professionals as citizens and as decent people. Case closed.
What happened next? Well the problem did not go away, it got worse until it placed everything else in jeopardy. A few years later a young man decided that his nation had the right know and decide about it for themselves [**]., and he did not take it straight to the NYT – they had shown themselves to be unreliable and unworthy. Instead he searched until he found a team of renegades and outsiders – Poitras, Greenwald & Gellman – to twist the arms necessary to get *any* MSM news organization to act in the spirit and letter of their professed mission statements.
And by the way, Mr. Snowden was very reluctant about involving the big news orgs knowing what he did about them. He took some convincing:
“But Snowden felt that in the moment that the New York Times had showed that it would blink and defer to authority, to what he sees as the national security state, when confronted with a decision on whether to publish something so dire, and I think this underscores, you know, why this matters.”-folkenflik.
Yeah sure, it would be great to live in a better world where journalists were allowed to do their jobs and we weren’t forced to dig through the internet, cross-referencing, parsing, fact-checking every source to get an idea of what’s really happening, but that’s not the one we live in.
If there are ‘benefits’ to witnessing a system collapse, one of them is watching the masks come off and seeing who everyone really is…
Cheers!
— — —
[*] There are so many more supporting examples & this is by no means an isolated incident, but there’s a one-link/comment cap in effect apparently.
[**] Naïve and fool-hardy, but also in this case effective and ultimately heroic.
Very good, MD. Your post hearkens back to JHK’s missive of last week, but well it should. When an entire society is stitched and cobbled together as a massive tower of lies, and these lies are willingly promoted by the press, how does one know what is true and what isn’t? As you’ve noted if we do some digging, there are nuggets to be found, but rarely in proper context or of-a-piece. Reading between the lines of ‘official pronouncements’ provides for some reasonable speculations, but that’s about all from our newspapers-of-record. (The record stinks, BTW.)
Mister Darling, you make some very good points. The link to the WBUR (Boston) web site story about the NY Times was well worth reading and raises lots of questions.
The idea of a pure and unadulterated “Fourth Estate” is obviously a fantasy. The people out in the swaps collecting the news, the editors and all the sundry personnel involved in getting the newspaper or weekly news magazine out to the news stands (whether print or Internet), are not the ones making the major decisions. Those decisions are made, more and more, by the Rupert Murdoch’s and Sumner Redstone’s of the world. There has always been an incestuous relationship of the Fourth Estate with the other three.
Rupert Murdoch now owns the venerable National Geographic magazine. What next? Koch brothers control the content of PBS to a large degree. Think they want accurate, unbiased reporting of climate science?
“We are the Hollow Men, we are the Stuffed Men, leaning together, headpiece stuffed with straw…”
and the straw is “news” and “information”
all is illusion…a matrix
The Syrian mess. “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into….”
The Saudis announced the creation of the Islamic military coalition of 34 countries.
3rd coalition (!) on the one hand complicates the situation, but on the other hand we see as a conflict continues to being structured and each country wanders into a coalition of interests:
a) Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Iraq, part of Syrian Kurds
b) United States, France, Britain, Germany, Iraq, Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian Free Army and part of the “moderate factions. (Plus there is cooperation with Turkey and part of the Gulf monarchies).
c) Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan + United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Turkey, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Djibouti, Senegal, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Gabon, Guinea, Palestine, the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros Côte d’Ivoire, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Maldives, Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Yemen, Uganda.
d) Caliphate plus joined him radical Islamist groups throughout Middle East.
e) Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and a dozen different groups that operate independently of the Caliphate, not among the “moderate”, but have relations with Saudi coalition.
f) And apart stands Turkey, which can not define their role in what is happening at the moment and nibbles with Russia, and with one of the American satellites.
http://media.cagle.com/73/2013/06/30/133902_600.jpg
Over 150 Saudi-Led Forces Killed in Yemeni Army’s Missile Attack near Bab al-Mandeb
The Yemeni forces missiles hit the Saudi-led coalition’s command headquarters in Sha’ab al-Jen region near Bab al-Mandeb, killing over 150 coalition servicemen, including 23 Saudi troops, 9 UAE officers and soldiers, seven Moroccan officers and 42 Blackwater troops.
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940923000602
Russia finally started fight in ME for real?
War is Boring
Russia is bringing its big guns to Syria. Literally.
The Russian army is literally bringing its big guns to the war in Syria. U.S. military analysts said the decision to add artillery to the battlefield indicates a number of key developments, including the Kremlin’s growing influence in planning and executing Syrian military operations.
The Russian decision to move artillery to the front lines is a newer development. Officially, Moscow denies that it has ground forces engaged in military operations in Syria.
There’s certainly Russian influence within the Syrian army … and lots of guns.
http://theweek.com/articles/593126/russia-bringing-big-guns-syria-literally
Syria regime, allies recapture key airbase near Damascus
Damascus (AFP) – Syrian troops recaptured a military airport and nearby town east of Damascus on Monday, more than three years after they were overrun by rebel groups, a military source said.
“The Syrian army has taken full control of the town of Marj al-Sultan and its airport in Eastern Ghouta,” a rebel bastion east of the capital, the military source said.
http://news.yahoo.com/syria-regime-allies-recapture-key-airbase-near-damascus-155432260.html
Russia bombs 24/7: Turkmen groups in Latakia on the verge of collapse
The Syrian army could break through to areas controlled by Kurdish militias PYD. In this case, the opposition has completely lost control over the entire length of the border with Turkey (911 km) – except for the section of approximately 90 km, which is controlled by ISIS.
http://postskriptum.org/2015/12/15/latakia-46/
Secret weapon, which was to force Russia to surrender its Syrian positions, is the Deity of the second coming in the last 15 years. This Deity is oil below $40 as Viagra and crazy erection of dollar above 70 rubles.
This is war, and the low price of oil is an analog of the nuclear bombing, for which all reserves have been mobilized by the West, if not the last, then certainly on the verge of exhaustion.
Kerry and Nuland in Moscow: Has the U.S. Ended Its Opposition to Democracy in Syria?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/kerry-and-nuland-in-moscow-has-the-u-s-ended-its-opposition-to-democracy-in-syria/5496127
The geopolitical instability in the world can be very dangerous for the US economy during the FED policy of raising the interest rate, so apparently some compromise regarding “temporary” staying of Assad in power in Syria was reached during the visit of Kerry and Nuland to Moscow.
Given that Kerry’s visit practically coincided with the decision by FED to raise interest rate, It turns out that Kerry did came with a message from the FED.
FITM,
…And we wonder how them neo-cons know every move and utterance that the State Dept. makes…
Here’s a nice pic of Kerry and his neo-con handler in Moscow. …Were I on the other side of the table from this scheming bitch, I wouldn’t believe a word that came out of either of these lying pie-holes. I’m thinking that the Russkies are showing incredible restraint by not throwing the witch into the deepest, darkest hole available as a preface to that Lethal Weapon “diplomatic immunity” moment. (Article with lots of interesting tidbits follows.)
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/326139-kerry-putin-syria-moscow/
Kerry having a good time in Moscow while waiting for Putin appointment.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kerry+shopps+arbat&rlz=1C2KMZB_enDO581DO581&biw=1309&bih=705&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt27j0kePJAhUENSYKHUL7CVYQ_AUIBygC&dpr=1.1#imgrc=IW700o37L9l2nM%3A
Finca, Ozone,
Thanks for answering my ongoing question–“Where in the world is Victoria KAGAN Noodleman Nuland?”
Before this meeting, she was recently spotted in “Soviet” Georgia, NOT the state with the city I lived in for 25 years of my life–Atlanta. Might be a clue to what she and “watermelon-head” Kerry are up to. Stay tuned for further developments.
Sticks-of-TNT
Over oysters, white wine and vodka toasts of Na zdrovyeh!, we reminisced a little about our Moscow adventures and then got down to business. I handed Steve a mock press release from the Russian Central Bank, something I had written earlier and used in a few articles and lectures. It said that Russia was moving its gold to Switzerland and starting a new bank in London. The bank would issue a new form of gold-backed currency supported by gold in the Swiss vaults. Initially Russia would own all of the new currency. But everyone would be free to deposit gold and receive similar currency. It had other technical features to make the plan feasible, such as lending and clearing facilities. The kicker was that, from now on, any Russian exports of oil or natural gas would have to be paid for in the new currency. U.S. dollars would no longer be welcome.
“Jim, I’m worried about you—you’re starting to think like a Russian,” Steve said.
“Coming from you, that’s high praise,” I replied.
“Why are you using Switzerland and London in this?”
“No one trusts the Russians not to steal the gold,” I said. “But they trust the Swiss and Brits, so if you do everything under their legal systems, people won’t be afraid to deposit gold.”
“Right. Russia has been looking for a way out of the dollar system for years. They try to play by our rules and get screwed every time,” said Steve. “This is perfect for them.”
http://www.riosmauricio.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Rickards_Currency_Wars.pdf
When reading just substitute Switzerland with Hong Kong. You are welcome.
Big econ news today is not the measly .25 Fed interest rate, but the US Congress voting to permit domestically produced oil to be sold overseas on the world market for the first time since 1974.
Who’s going to buy it, tho?
For you gold bugs, an oz of gold could fall under $1000 per ounce sometime early next year.
brh
I am interested in Gold Price. How low will it go?
I am listening to ‘You tube, Tom Cloud.’
‘3 in 4 big companies have moved out of USA, up from 50%.’
JHK does nt want video links.
Putin about emergence of ISIS
At the time, entered Iraq, destroyed the country (good or bad – does not matter), there was a vacuum. Then there appeared the elements related to oil smuggling. And this situation has evolved over the years. After all, a business was created, trafficking on a large, commercial scale. Then, in order to protect the smuggling and illegal exports, a military force was needed. It is very good to use the Islamic factor to attract cannon fodder under Islamic slogans, which are really just playing the game related to economic interests. So, this is how, in my opinion, ultimately emerged ISIS.
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50971
Putin emphasize the need for US to enact “Trading With Enemy Act”.
FITM,
I fear that you may be engaging in some wishful thinking here. As ISIS (or whatever they’re being called *this* week) is a cat’s-paw of the neo-cons, war will not be declared upon them and the Trading With the Enemy Act will therefor not come into play. These are the wages of playing a deadly two-faced game where the truth of who-works-for-whom can never be revealed for fear of ropes and lampposts. When the curtain is about to be flung back, burn the papers, delete the e-mails, wipe the fingerprints off of all surfaces and lie, baby, lie.
Let’s wait and see what Trump, that industrial bulldozer crushing the political correctness under its heavy trucks, will have to say about it.
I have my hopes…
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/bulldozer-industrial-equipment-21408965.jpg
…Meanwhile, the DoD has suddenly become very concerned about that pesky ‘collateral damage’ stuff. What, no wedding party targets?
https://www.rt.com/news/326249-isis-us-media-centers/
“Pharmaceutical boss Martin Shkreli, who sparked outrage after hiking up the price of an established medicine, has been arrested on separate fraud charges.
He is accused of fraud relating to a drug company he previously headed, Retrophin, and a hedge fund, MSNB Capital Management, where he was a fund manager.
He is currently chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
Mr Shkreli was arrested by the FBI.
He was arrested in Manhattan, New York, accused of illegally using Retrophin assets to pay off debts after MSMB lost millions of dollars, reports Reuters news agency.
In September he was lambasted after hiking up the price of popular medicine Daraprim by 5,000% – from $13.50 to $750 – prompting unfavourable reaction on social media”…Posted on the BBC site this AM.
Perhaps there is a God after all….
Martin Shkreli: “I’ll show up with $2 million bail money no fucking problem.”
Announced yesterday the Fed cycle of raising the basic interest rate should contribute to the growth of the dollar against other currencies, the creation of the world’s dollar deficit and ensure the flow of any available funds into dollars around the world.
Any financial speculator, any industrial capitalist or simple private investor must have an understanding that his salvation only in dollars and in dollars alone.
The fact that after a long period the Fed went to such a move indicates that essentially begins a final period of the global financial system as we know it. This step will certainly, although not immediately, cause very significant problems for the United States.
And first of all in Europe, the largest US vassal market. The following year, in Europe, we’ll see a lot of very interesting events. Including the beginning of the most important of them – the collapse of the EU debt market.
We see an attempt to create an alternative world currency based on the gold Yuan, or at least the final stage of preparation to that.
The show begins. And no one will be able to experience it in a comfortable chair, watching the events on television and staying away from what is happening. It will be a fascinating, although very painful spectacle.
and were [adjutant too] – BRH
==============
and were [adjacent to]
Q, I meant ‘adjutant’. Extermination and Labor Camps worked together, the death camps being the senior partner.
Gold down $25 per oz just today, so perhaps we won’t have to wait til next year to see gold slip under $1000. It could happen next week. Oil below $35 per barrel.
I saw read this fact in a new bio of George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, talking about the economics of the depression years. Price of a barrel of oil in early 1934: 43 cents.
brh
As an Army officer, I held the headquarters staff position of “adjutant” which indicated a representative “on behalf” of the commander. Your use of the word is “curious”. Are you also standing by “too”, too? -Sticks
No. I retract that. Q was right all along.
I’ll say it again, this is a blog, not a term paper at MIT. Typos, wrong words, abstruse sentences etc, anything goes here IMO.
Besides, I was enlisted, not an officer. You’ll have to cut me some slack.
brh
You’re a good man & your term paper comments are valid. I enjoy reading your posts however they’re worded. And brh is my favorite “handle” on this blog. -Sticks
I have looked at DOW chart, since 2008.
A JOKE.
A guy decided to charge the price of an HIV drug from 13.50 a pill to 700. And that’s fine, right BHR? Just the market, right? It’s his decision, right? The idea of social responsibility is just old fashioned nonsense. Of course since you believe in old fashioned nonsense like Patriotism and Valor, one would think you’d be open to this too. Apparently not.
That guy just got arrested.
So now you agree that the Market is not the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong? Seriously, you’re not very philosophically developed in that your ideas don’t form a coherent whole. A classic American weakness. In the end it will just be you and Jim Webb in a foxhole calling each other buddy. In his book, he endorsed some communalism or local type socialism. Maybe he can get you to change your mind.
Bill Still: UPS keeps “trucking” in Syrian “refugees”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_U-72o4j0Y
Interesting piece of investigative journalism. Bill thinks that Obama’s behind that, I doubt it – some other people may be involved.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has actually forced an audit of the Federal Reserve. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who can deal with the Fedpocalypse.
ABC gave 20 seconds of coverage to Bernie Sanders one week, when Trump got 81 minutes of coverage, because Trump is corporate-media friendly. Bernie Sanders is critical of corporate media.
The progressive political advocacy group Democracy for America backed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Democratic presidential bid on Thursday, in the organization’s first presidential primary endorsement since former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) founded it in 2004.
Sanders earned the endorsement after receiving 87.9 percent of the votes cast by DFA members nationwide over a nine-day voting period. No Democratic candidate was able to clear the 66.7 percent supermajority needed to earn the DFA endorsement ahead of the 2008 presidential election.
Bernie Sanders has now been endorsed by the Communication Workers of America and will intensify ground work in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has received donations from 2 MILLION citizens. Bernie Sanders has refused contributions from billionaires and does not have a SuperPac.
Bernie Sanders is honest, transparent, and is not owned by special interests.
A few Showbiz Salaries, per year:
Judge Judy, $30 million
Dr Phil, $75 million
Howard Stern, $90 million
And Donald Trump stands at Armageddon, battling for the Lord.
brh
Market. It’s not rational or good in the larger sense, but it’s what you people have bowed down to as an Idol for generations. You’re not going become an Iconoclast now, are you? What will the neighbors think?
Hillary for no reason, no reason at all, has decided to assure respectable audience, that she had no horns!!!
As she said, looking at the rape-death of Gaddafi, WOW!!! This is promising to be the most bizarre presidential elections in the modern history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AibIEg5KwDE
DOW chart, ……….. A JOKE.
==================
OK, I’ll bite, why is it a joke?
My question is directed to Malthuss.
As USA is destroyed, during worst economic problems, DOW goes 7000-18000.
During TARP, QE, ZIRP.
Some one is pushing markets to go sky high.
All hail Lord Trump. Make ready. The King is coming.
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/12/its-time-for-the-other-13-candidates-to-drop-out/
Yes, I liked Trump saying we need to spend trillions of dollars to rebuild our infrastructure. Big government can do it, once we decide to spend the money. Trump’s plans are for big government to build big walls, to deport big numbers of Mexicans, to ban big numbers of Muslims, etc.
Of course Big Government. He’s a Nationalist for Pete’s sake. A Fascist. The Mexican prisoners will do slave labor building the Great Wall of Trump. They have a debt to American they have to work off.
Well, Mrs. Yellen did raise the interest rates. How long do we have to wait for “the carnage”? – wpa
=================
Until January 8, 2016 at 2:58 PM.
And when that date passes, you will choose another. I have been waiting 45 years for the so-called “collapse” … it’s all just doomster porn. Malthus is 249 years old and he is still wrong.
Malthus wrote: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.”
Resource consumption is not a zero sum game. If I am eating food that I have produced, that food is not being taken from anyone who otherwise would have eaten it; there is no external cost to my consumption. Similarly if I engage in a trade I have produced a good or service and exchange it for something someone else has produced; again there is no external cost.
The reality is that our living standards have increased dramatically over the past one hundred years over a wide variety of indicators; at the same time we have experienced massive population growth.
Likewise, today’s currency is electrons not gold … and we have an infinite supply. QE, extend and pretend, etc. can go on and on and on … the fiat money in electronic form will last forever.
So, I do not believe your date, Q. and I am partying in my adobe mud hut like it’s 1999.
Chris Christie said: “When I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan, I say to him: “You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight…”
King Hussein will say: “Thank you, but I’ve been dead since 1999.”
When you have to deal with ghosts… Who ya gonna call: Chris Christie! Why do they even allow idiots like Christie on the stage?
” Why do they even allow idiots like Christie on the stage?”
Wpac,
Even worse, no one…no other candidate, no moderator, corrected him….
“The market should serve man not man the market. There’s no absolute reason Industry had to move overseas, except profit. Can’t you realize that some things are more important than profit?
They want to do business overseas? Then treat them like foreigners and make them pay tariffs – and wait in line behind American made products. Worse, it puts Americans out of work and is a huge factor in the fall of the American Nation. How can you not see this?” –Janos
Bravo and well stated!
Janos, what you are talking about is offshoring. Offshoring is not new, nor is it inherently good or bad. It is a business model that is a product of world competition, and it has existed in America since Colonial times.
Offshoring has no “bad guy” in the sense that there are not evil executives in smoke-filled corporate boardrooms scheming on how to fire American workers. But neither are these same executives overly concerned if American jobs are lost due to global competition. Their concern is about making money, and it always will be.
It’s inherently bad. We should try to keep our industry here in America. If they insist on going, then they should pay the price for their betrayal. Patriotism is not just a matter of “politics” after all – as if such a thing can be separated from economics.
What WPA rationalizes above is exactly the mindset of cannibalistic capitalism. He is espousing the ethos of ‘the market for it’s own sake’ as if human beings are not relevant in the overall societal equation– as you rightly assert. Moreover, it’s a self-perpetuating dynamic–“What else can our company do; the competition is doing the same”– that justifies an inherently bad impetus: the non consideration of human beings/fellow countrymen. Or as WPA wrote ‘not overly concerned if American jobs are lost due to global competition.’ So there needs to be oversight as you mention and yet the GOP/WPA types oppose tariffs etc.
Game,set, match to Janos. WPA, back to the losers court with a racket not so broad and clumsy.
BERNIE SANDERS: In the 1950s, what state in this country had the lowest paid white workers?
…
Mississippi.
What did the whole system tell these white workers, who were the lowest-paid white workers in the U.S. — in other words, these workers were being exploited.
What they said is, you can go over to that water fountain and take a drink, and this black guy can’t. You can go to this bathroom, you can go to this restaurant — Man, you got it good!
Meanwhile, we’re paying you nothing.
So you divided blacks from white, in that case, whites from blacks.
It is what they always do.
And then they go, you see that woman over there? An uppity woman wants your job, man.
You’re not gonna let that woman take your job, you’ve got to divide from her.
And that guy’s gay over there, you gotta hate him, he’s going to destroy your marriage because he’s gay, gotta hate him.
Oh, and there’s a guy who talks with a Mexican accent, a little bit Spanish. You’re supposed to hate him.
That has been what the ruling class has done over and over again. Why?
Because they understand that when we come together, if we fight for decent wages, for education for your kids, the right to Social Security, we win. If they divide us, they win.
Nice speech but too bad it doesn’t seem to work that way. It seems socialism has some built in limits. For example, the hard working union construction man in America never did embrace the notion of his taxes paying for the education, medical care and food for a families that entered the country illegally.
In fact, if one looks closely and honestly, one will notice that the demise of unions correspond with the rise of cheap illegal/imported labor. Duh.
But of course you somehow come to the conclusion that working class Americans should lionize ‘scabs’ lowering their wages. Or that struggling Americans should eagerly fork over hard earned tax money to pay for illegal immigrant Juan and his families health care and education.
In other words, you’re completely delusional because a significant portion of the populace does not want to finance unlimited immigration in the form of lower wages and social service tax money.
A far more honest and intelligent argument could be made that illegal immigration is the death of socialism.
And BTW, sport, ‘the guy who talks with a Mexican accent’ typically is not the least bit interested in economic justice for all; he is too busy undercutting the prices of native born Americans trying to eke out a living.
Russia and the United States are willing to take a course of rapprochement. First of all, in the joint fight against terrorism. These are the results of the meeting of Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry. The talks were held on the initiative of the American side, and lasted for three and a half hours.
And the first reaction to this meeting has already been voiced by Russian MFA Spokesman Maria Zakharova: “Kerry has publicly rejected the US policy of isolation against Russia,” – she said.
Russia and the US agreed to act jointly in Syria. And the views of the two countries to resolve the Syrian conflict are now closer than ever.
“The focus was the advancing of Syrian settlement in conjunction with the activation of the fight against terrorism. ISIS, Al-Nusra and other terrorist groups are a common threat to all of us, for all of humanity. And we confirmed today resolve to eradicate this evil“- said the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov.
However, for parties to come to a compromise, someone had to change the position on the Syrian issue. The common sense took the upper hand. Americans no longer require the immediate resignation of Bashar al-Assad. And recognizes the right of Syrians themselves to decide how to go on living.
“Today, we focus not on our differences, and not on what can be done immediately against Assad. We are focused on the political process in which Syrians themselves can decide the fate of their country,” – said US Secretary of State John Kerry.
http://ren.tv/novosti/2015-12-16/stalo-izvestno-zachem-kerri-na-samom-dele-priletal-v-moskvu
muslims beat gay man to death in sweden. what a surprise:
http://www.infowars.com/sweden-muslim-migrants-batter-gay-man-to-death-wrap-snake-around-his-neck/
“we need to take in more muslims, many more, and give up our national sovereignty in this respect, and disarm the population so everyone is safer, much safer”
A.Brodsky: Is Trump heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
In the United States in front of our eyes the Red Project raises its head, and the leader of this is de facto multibillionaire and most likely the next US president Donald Trump.
I recall in this regard that the Western Red Project is not only Karl Marx and Henri de Saint-Simon, it is primarily Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And the fact that it is the Republican Party that puts forward Donald Trump as one of its candidates is a sign of recovery of the American political system that for too long was ill with reverse sociology.
Indeed the Republican Party initially is the party of abolitionists and of Abraham Lincoln, and the Democratic Party – oh and alas! with all my love for the Southern culture and the Confederates – is the party of slaveholders and Black Project in its pure form.
And Bernie Sanders is not a socialist, but a National Socialist because of his support for Hillary Clinton, who is not a politician or even a human, but an idea. But the position of Bernie Sanders is very simple and humane, and I would even say decent – the welfare of American workers, and the fact that it brings death and destruction, personified by Hillary Clinton, to the rest of the countries and cultures, he does not know or wants to know – it is the very sociology, which brought to power the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1932.
And the fact that Putin’s words about Trump is a positive factor in political campaign in the United States, and that the IMF suddenly recognizes the sovereign nature of Ukrainian debt to Russia, and what Putin said that Assad and bases in Syria are not insurmountable barrier in establishing cooperation with the United States (not just in Syria, but in the world), followed by the onset of Syrian troops almost to the stage of prosecution of the retreating enemy – all this suggests that a set of statements was made suddenly after talks with Kerry, who apparently brought the proposal from the Fed that is much more extensive than anybody could have imagined just a few days ago.
And this proposal blurs the line between policy domestic and policy foreign, as we return to Yalta of 1945 and Paris of 1972, when Nixon was going to return to a policy of cooperation with Russia, but was derailed by “Deep Throat” Hillary Clinton and instead the world returned to Potsdam.
“The only common denominator left is the adult population, which numbers 255 million by headcount and 510 billion by standard work-year hours count. Over and against that, the US economy is currently utilizing about 250 billion labor hours annually according to the BLS.”
The above by David Stockman, in a 17 December blog. He cautions that this does not mean 50% unemployment. The numbers, however, should be interesting to the readership when ruminating over the macro economic issues in our economy, or in debate over immigration policies.
BeantownBill recently asked, as has Q, who knows how to spend the citizens’ money better than the citizens. When it comes to funding the big spending projects (like the military), it turns out Congress decides and knows better how to decide about spending your money than you do. How many bridges or brigades have you funded recently? Here is how it works in actual practice: compromise, as we saw this week:
Republicans and Democrats came together Friday to pass a sweeping, $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep the government funded until October.
The so-called omnibus bill, a year-end spending bill that incorporates legislation from the 12 appropriations subcommittees, was the product of months of negotiations between party leaders and nearly a year of work from appropriators.
I don’t think anyone here on CFN would know how to spend $1.1 Trillion, but 12 appropriations subcommittees working for twelve months do know how to efficiently spend government money. They fought right down to the wire on things like how many “pay-fors” should be allowed for the sick 9/11 first responders who are literally dying every day. Thanks to the efforts of Daily Show John Stewart, the funding was included in the omnibus bill.
Paul “Pork Rind” Ryan is essentially the bagman for the grotesque welfare state. For freeloading parasites like WPA, Rind is mammon, raining down free money on every worthless piece of shit in the country…… and there are a lot of them.
“raining down free money on every worthless piece of shit in the country” — nsa
For 14 years Republicans have denied “free money” to care for the first responders who worked to save lives during the 9/11 terrorist attack. They would have denied them again this year if John Stewart had not shamed them into funding health care for the 9/11 police and firefighters who are still alive.
Meanwhile, three weeks after your prediction, the UUP “dollar express” is still in the red. I guess it takes more than three weeks for the dollar express train to get rolling. Q said you were right to recommend buying high. The credibility of both of you is zilch. The numbers don’t lie.
May I ask in what outstanding, no doubt, creative activity you personally are engaged in?
“muslims beat gay man to death in sweden. what a surprise” –fodase
Yes, it is a surprise… given there are 1.6 Billion Muslims who are not beating on gay people. That is why a few people calling themselves Muslims make the news.
Compare that to Christian persecution of gays. Christians regularly refer to “Homosexual Perversion,” and equate homosexuals with serial killers, rapists, and child molesters. Christians have publicly equated gays with alcoholics, drug users, liars, and thieves and remind us that gays are coming after your children and your grandchildren and that sexually transmitted diseases are God’s punishment for homosexuality. Christians also try to institutionalize their prejudice.
“A Christian Californian lawyer has proposed a bill which would make it legal to murder gay people using ‘bullets in the head or any other convenient method’. Anyone who ‘touches another person of the same gender for sexual gratification’ would get the death penalty – administered either by state executioners, or members of the public.
Attorney Matthew McLaughlin’s Sodomite Suppression Act would also make it an offence to campaign for gay rights, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.”
There are no Muslim countries in the Americas. They are mostly Catholic countries. But more than 1,350 transgender and gender-diverse people have been murdered by Christians in Central and South America since 2008.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documented 770 killings and seriously violent attacks against LGBT persons between Jan. 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014, including 594 hate-related killings of LGBTI people in Brazil.
There are five Muslim countries where being gay is not a crime. What do they have in common? None of them were colonized by the British Empire.
Many countries in the Global South, whether Muslim or otherwise, are generally using colonial laws that pre-date their local penal codes to criminalize romantic love between consenting same-sex couples. Whether in West Africa, or Southeast Asia, in the heart of Europe or the Middle East. The conversation on gay rights is not as clean cut as you might have imagined it to be, fodase.
“Is Trump heir to Franklin Delano Roosevelt?”
Ever wondered, how would somebody of FDR statue and, no doubt significant political shrewdness, conduct his Presidential campaign in our era of FaceBook selfies, 150 gender identities and severe censorship of “Political Correctness” dominated the “Free Press”?
Trump was pressed on his support for Putin by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” Friday:
“I mean, also it’s a person that kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?” Scarborough asked Trump.
“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader. You know, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said.
Scarborough responded by pressing Trump again on the killing of journalists in Russia, saying “but again, [Putin] kills journalists that don’t agree with him. ”
Trump, again, seemed unfazed.
“I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe…There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity and that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me the question. You asked me a different question. So that’s fine,” he said.
Scarborough, saying he was confused, asked Trump again whether he condemned Putin’s killing of journalists.
“Oh sure, absolutely,” Trump said.
Yes Joe, there is evidently plenty of stupidity in folks like yourself.
If Trump makes it to general election, I make a pledge that I am going to vote for the first time in 25 years of being US citizen.
Can you cast a vote from St Petersburg?
brh
Of course, all I need to do is obtain the absentee ballot from local American consulate – it is absolutely legal.
Buck, you’re right about the effect of illegal foreign labor. You’re also correct that the illegal Latino immigrant, being minimally educated and barely literate and coming out of Hispanic countries run by Hispanic elites whose modus operandi is ruthless exploitation, doesn’t give a damn about the interests of the American working class. The Latino has his own worries.
The Latino may or may not be aware that his working for crap wages props up the American Oligarch. Maybe the Latino doesn’t care because, regardless, it’s better than the thieves and murderers back home.
So you have guys like Ted Cruz saying there’s no way he would give legal status. What a stunner that is. Cruz looks after the Oligarch, and for the Oligarch, there’s nothing better than the fearful, paperless Latino.
Would it be better with a Democrat administration? Picture this, President Hillary and both houses of Congress run by Democrats. What would they do about millions of illegals?
Well, the Oligarchs buy and sell American politicians like cattle regardless of party affiliation, so expect that Oligarch interests would be well looked after.
How? By putting in place an onerous, years long, virtually impossible path to citizenship. Or putting in place an easier path to “guest worker” status, thus formalizing the presence of a permanent underclass.
Legalizing the illegal is the Oligarch method, so a legal and permanent underclass would be just what the doctor ordered. Wouldn’t it? If you can’t offshore industry to slave-wage regimes, then you ONSHORE the slave-wage worker.
Either way, no matter who runs the govt, no matter who runs Congress, this thing isn’t going away.
Outstanding post Voloyoda.
Many people are still dismissive of Trump’s chances but I’m not so sure. There are a lot of people on the left who are also fed up with unlimited immigration and probably because they have seen and felt the results. For example, the down-on their-luck, native born America standing in ridiculously long lines of undocumented workers/immigrants and enveloped by aural atmosphere of spoken Spanish. The native born America might get some help is they can stand the endless wait behind recent arrivals feeding at the American taxpayer trough. Or they might just say, “fuck this” and walk away, letting the chips fall where they may.
Enter Trump. If he can marry the economic populist message with the anti-immigration message he may be a very potent candidate in the upcoming election. Those casually dismissing him really don’t have a clue and probably predicted that Dems would hold onto the Senate in 2014. People like WPA, in other words.
And BTW, I am not being “mercurial” or suffering from ideological schizophrenia. I am simply opining based upon my own empirical perceptive ability. As opposed to rationally declaring, as in ‘the way things’ should be, or even more arrogantly, ‘the way things are’.
Thomas Frank’s book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” asks why ordinary Main-street Americans vote against their own economic self-interest time and time again. Especially in the Deep South and Western Red States.
It’s an interesting question with myriad answers no doubt, but candidate like Trump can potentially begin to inject an economic populist message into the collective GOP psyche that has been under the influence of right-wing talk radio for over twenty years now.
But no progressive agenda will be possible if unlimited illegal immigrants are allowed to benefit from native American taxpayer funding. That is simply not going to happen and will it not happen if the message is spoken by a “librul”. No, the message will have to come from somebody like Trump.
He has been making some populist whisperings,but it remains to be seen if he will take advantage of ‘the biggest electoral opportunity’ I believe I have ever seen. After all, as you so rightly observe, TPTB certainly do not want this message to spread. But once it does spread it will be unstoppable. And if Trump is the “fire” the American electorate is the “wind”. And more and more are starting to breathe life into that fire named Trump.
At any rate, he should not be underestimated, IMO.
At some point in the near future ISIS Militia might run up against units of the United States Armed Forces, and it probably won’t be a friendly encounter. By that time Infantry, Airborne, Artillery as well as Marines will have integrated eager young ladies into their ranks, if Sec of Defense Carter can be believed. It will be interesting to see how this works out. When it comes to POWs I’m certain ISIS will respect the letter and spirit of International law and the Geneva Convention, and will refrain from cutting off heads, gang raping, and enslaving (the two female US captives in the 1st gulf war were raped by Iraqi Army soldiers with the consent of their officers). I think we can trust these Gentlemen ISIS Militia Fighters to act honorably with our young American girls and treat them with the utmost respect and consideration that they deserve, because, after all, they are ‘breaking down barriers’ and ‘making history’.
brh
Rape-fests, no way, no how. Utmost respect no doubt.
BRH, you’re such a chucklehead.
Is that like a Chowderhead?
brh
The new policy is insane. I can picture Obama’s daughters Sasha & Malia registering for the draft. Their father is such an incredible douchebag. So is Defense Sec’y Ashton Carter. Janos is right–we’re circling the drain. -Sticks
Buck and Janos, the reason we have the Fed doing what it’s doing with money supply and QE and all that, is because the Oligarch class managed to suppress world wide demand via offshoring. They killed the US middle class by moving all those jobs to China because the Chinese worker makes a buck an hour.
The problem is this: the Chinese worker makes a buck an hour. So who’s going to buy? The unemployed US worker? Or the buck an hour Chinese worker? The answer is neither one.
This is one big reason the world is in the mess it’s in now. They say there’s stagnant or declining demand. I mean, what did these geniuses think would happen?
The Fed is trying to fix this real-world economic phenomenon via monetary means. It won’t work. The business model of offshoring can’t work. Trying to make it work via international trade agreements can’t work. Playing with the money supply won’t make it work. Maybe we should tell Yellen.
Great point again Voloyda. So why did collective America–mostly the GOP–dismiss Henry Ford’s common sense proclamation: ‘ I will pay my workers well enough that they can buy my products’ ?
Too many Americans thought and still think they can escape the downward spiral.
Yes, whatever else they are, illegals are also scabs. Big Labor has sold out just like big everything else. An engine only can work when the explosion is controlled and contained. Otherwise it’s just destructive. Opening the borders creates an exploded economy.
But the UAW and other big unions back open borders, as well as environmental orgs such as Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy. That’s certainly not the GOP.
That other nite on C2C George Nourey had a guest author who has written a book about ‘income inequality’, who sounded like a Bernie Sanders supporter. Of all the reasons he gave, he didn’t mention once 3rd world immigration as a cause for low wages (which led me to believe the guy had an unspoken agenda)
It was the fault of the ‘Oligarchs’, similar to what some here say.
brh
Obviously the Extra Terrestrials are now spreading PC too. Many of them always were Communists. But yes, one expects better from C2C.
“The Fed is trying to fix this real-world economic phenomenon via monetary means. It won’t work. ” — Volodya
What in the hell do you know what exactly the FED is doing by raising interest rate?
All they do is turning on the “dollar vacuum cleaner” to suck the liquidity in from the rest of the world.
And yeas, it does present certain danger to American economy, it was a weighted risk-reward decision and the last minute final go-ahead came from Moscow’s Kerry meeting.
Even Rush has given up on the Republican Party. It’s just an echo chamber of the Democrats. The Republicans gave them everything they wanted on the budget without even fighting. They said “they were out of time” – even though they control the House. Ridiculous. They are just voting their class interests – which are the same as the class interests of the Democrats.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/12/17/gop_sells_america_down_the_river
Because Paul Ryan is a stupid midwestern Irish catholic who, being over his stupid head and knowing it, decides the safest and smartest play is to make it all work. People complain that the parties work hand-in-hand, then have the audacity to complain when factions try to put the free-for-all to a halt. Dear American idiot; no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too…
Yup….tweedledum and tweedledee.
Dow down 300.
So it begins.
On a brighter note there haven’t been any terror attacks in the west for about 3 weeks. In Germany Muslim immigration has topped 1 million for 2015, the number Jean Raspail gave for bringing down France in ‘The Camp of the Saints’. In all the news reports I’ve watched on that situation I haven’t heard ‘The Camp of the Saints’ mentioned once.
I wonder why that is?
Last week in Hartford after another mid morning street gundown an anti-violence event was planned at city hall. Bad Idea. It hardly had begun when a man began staggering around spurting blood, quietly the victim of a stabbing. He collapsed in a heap. Then shots rang out nearby; a man down, shot numerous time in the ‘lower torso’. Needless to say, that was the end of the ‘anti violence rally’. The next day the police raided a city apt and found 8 dug up corpses from a cemetery up in Worcester, Mass; the guy who dug them up claims to be a Santaria High Priest and said he needed the corpses for religious ceremony. He’s pleading not guilty. This in a city where the jet engine, the wasp rotary aircraft engine, the electric car, the bicycle, the automatic screw machine, the pump shotgun, the revolver, the typewriter and the machine tool industry was invented, Mark Twain wrote is best novels, and Frederick Law Olmsted roamed as a boy.
Civilization is going down, and I don’t know how much lower it can go.
brh
Oh, c’mon: much lower. Think Zimbabwe. Of course the question then becomes one of definition – is it still civilization? Or closer to home: is Detroit still part of America or Western Civilization in reality, leaving aside conventional assumptions?
Of course you’re right, Janos.
I recently read John Sweeney’s ‘Inside North Korea’. That place is pretty bad. Travel writer Paul Theroux claims Angola is the worst place he’s seen; it couldn’t be any worse and still call yourself part of human civilization.
NKorea isn’t hopeless, however; get rid of Young Kim and Japan, China and SKorea could come in and at least get the starving people some food to eat, and put an end to the penal colonies.
brh
Putin: there is a third party involved in stolen oil trade in Syria
Next, they needed to protect delivery routes. We began attacking their convoys. Now, we can see that they are splitting up with five, six, ten, fifteen trucks hitting the roads after dark.
However, another flow, the bulk of the truck fleet, is headed for Iraq, and across Iraq through Iraqi Kurdistan. In one place there – I will ask the Defence Ministry to show this picture – we spotted 11,000 oil trucks. Just think of it – 11,000 oil trucks in one place. Unbelievable.
Whether there is a third party involved is anyone’s guess, but a scenario whereby these moves were never agreed with anyone is quite likely.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50971
And who that third part just might be capable of pulling so much strings with Iraqi government and who is so preoccupied with lowering oil prices to punish Russia?
To put it plainly, is it a far stretch to assume that the whole ISIL/ISIS/DAESH operation is just a private security guard company that was hired by Bastinda-related circles to protect illegal oil smuggling operation on a large geopolitical scale?
Two birds with one stone: make some quick buck and lower the oil price on the world markets.
” the whole ISIL/ISIS/DAESH operation is just a private security guard company that was hired by Bastinda-related circles”
Just as I suspected… DAESH is composed of private security guard company employees posing as fake Muslims.
Can’t fit a tin hat on me, that’s directly coming from Kremlin.
Where is investigative journalism when you definitely need one?
Obviously, Putin is going to milk the piquant situation to all that it’s worth – he can’t resist his KGB training.
I hope that explains it for you why Kerry was strolling Moscow’s streets for hours waiting for Putin to grant him appointment, and then had to give away the house, the ranch, the horses and some more….
DNC WAR
SANDERS DATA GRAB
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-dnc_56745288e4b014efe0d54ad7
Why it reminds me of 1972 break-in at DNC headquarters? What was the name of that hotel?
Ah, yes, Watergate!
We gonna need a shitload of popcorn for that one!
Get the story straight, finca. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, he is an independent. Bernie Sanders is suing the Democrats.
WASHINGTON — The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sued the Democratic National Committee on Friday, alleging that the campaign was sustaining “substantial financial, reputational and political injury” as a result of the DNC suspending its access to its national voter file.
Shhhhh!
Although wpasoka is trying their hardest NOT to address this in their triumphal march to the Total State Toady, it pops up, ready to bring an acceleration to dissolution. (There’s a reason these things are kept vewy, vewy qwi-at….)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-18/congress-just-passed-second-patriot-act-and-nobody-noticed-how-cisa-became-law
wpasoka’s beloved paymasters, hard at work, spending your tax dollars in a way that benefits the commonweal the vewy, vewy bestest!
(Bend over and spread ’em to receive your ‘benefit’, Consumer.)
Ozone, as long as monied interests are allowed to effectively control government policy, you can definitely expect more corruption.
That is why we need an INDEPENDENT SOCIALIST candidate to be elected. By coincidence, we have the option to vote for Bernie Sanders who will go after the corruption of the 1% whether they be Republican or Democrat.
Independent National Socialist, Bernie-F35-Sanders, Senator from Lockheed Martin. Hail to the chief!
Wow! Clean miss, wpasoka! I’m sorry, I no longer have the patience or the give-a-shit to skip down your perfumed detour. (Commonly known as, “the garden path”.)
“I no longer have the patience…”
Good, Ozone. Though patience will be a definite virtue for surviving the coming economic collapse. Good luck to you.
Ps. I had forgotten to ask: Are you feeling safer, or are you getting an anxious inkling that you’d better STFU and keep you ‘views’ to yourself… lest some decidedly ‘inconvenient’ coincidences land on your doorstep like a flock of unfriendly flying monkeys? (K-dog is exempt from the survey due to previous visitation from the witches minions. They’ve also been know to carry voracious legions of fleas; a discomfort as well as a worry.)
You are wasting bandwidth, Ozone, but I would never tell you to STFU. We still have the 1st amendment… and the 2nd.
“Get the story straight, finca. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, he is an independent. Bernie Sanders is suing the Democrats.” == wpa
So, wpa, who’s gonna be a Deep Throat that time around?
Finca, you are using the wrong historical precedent. There was no hotel. There was no break-in. There is just the Democrats trying to bring Bernie Sanders down by denying him access… to benefit Hillary. So Bernie Sanders is suing the DNC.
Who sued in Watergate? What independent socialist was being harmed in Watergate? You are mixed up and you are using the wrong historical example.
Wpa, correct me if I am wrong, but I have an impression that Hillary aint coming in one piece from that one.
It would be a Poetic Justice – she started her career in the other Watergate by denying President Nixon his attorneys with the help of fraudulent legal brief.
After all, she is only one in the race who knows what the Nuclear Triad is, she even gets wet down there when she say it – N-u-c-l-e-a-r T-r-i-a-d, how sweet.
“The DNC has alleged that staffers from Sanders’ campaign viewed, downloaded and exported confidential data from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s voter file after they discovered a breach in the database, which is maintained by the committee and rented out to the campaigns. The breach, which on Wednesday made Clinton’s proprietary voter data visible to others through a bug in code,”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-dnc_56745288e4b014efe0d54ad7
“Hacking in” is 21-century equivalent of breaking in of 1970s.
“The DNC has alleged …”
Anybody can allege anything. Why isn’t the DNC suing Bernie Sanders instead of the other way around? Bernie has standing.
Quite frankly, beats the shit outta me. That story is somewhat mysterious. Let’s give it a couple of weeks, see how it evolves (or die out).
But, of course, Hillary would admit to nothing, even if her hands and face was smeared in stolen oil.
When will you learn that WPA is a multi-avatar troll?
Paul Ryan is a dimwit midwestern Irish catholic charlatan who, being over his stupid head and knowing it, decides the safest and smartest play is to make it all work. People complain that the parties work hand-in-hand, then have the audacity to complain when factions try to put the free-for-all to a halt. Dear American idiot; no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too
Do you prefer a very dumb mulatto? Sold as a Black leader?
Hope and change and a muslim call to prayer?
BERNIE SANDERS VICTORIOUS
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (INDEPENDENT-VT.) presidential campaign will regain access to the Democratic National Committee’s national voter file under a deal reached late Friday, hours after Sanders sued the DNC.
The DNC, which suspended Sanders’ access to the data after a campaign worker accessed confidential voter information from rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week, will lift the ban effective on Saturday, according to statements from Sanders and the DNC.
The deal was reached hours after the Sanders campaign accused the DNC in a lawsuit of causing it “substantial financial, reputational and political injury” with the suspension. Friday night’s agreement doesn’t end the lawsuit, according to a Sanders aide.
In a complaint filed in federal district court in Washington, lawyers for the Sanders campaign alleged that the DNC “failed to implement reasonable data security measures,” which led to “the inadvertent disclosure” this week of confidential voter information from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The campaign is asking the court to order an “immediate restoration” of its access to the voter data system, in keeping with an agreement it signed in October with the DNC.
U.N. Security Council Endorses Roadmap For Peace In Syria [Written by Lavrov/Putin]
The resolution makes no mention of the future role of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The draft resolution, obtained by The Associated Press, requests that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convene representatives of the Syrian government and opposition “to engage in formal negotiations on a political transition process on an urgent basis, with a target of early January 2016 for the initiation of talks.”
Within six months, the process should establish “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” with U.N.-supervised “free and fair elections” to be held within 18 months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/united-nations-syria-peace-process_56747c8ce4b06fa6887d7740
And “free and fair elections” will be won hands-down by Bashar Assad since he’s the only one protects Syrian people from swarm of friggin terrorists unleashed by the West over the last 5 years.
US spending bill lifts 40-year ban on crude oil exports
The move is part of a $1.1 trillion spending bill approved by the Senate on Friday that will fund the US government until 2016.
US oil producers will now be able to sell crude to the already saturated international market.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35136831
Return of the export of American oil and gas – it is actually a recognition of the termination of the scheme “dollars out of the printing press in exchange for oil” i.e. the end of the petrodollar in its pure form.
According to uber muzzie kenyan hussein, false flag 911 was just an egregious case of “workplace violence”……
US are going to sell oil to Europe (cutting off the traditional ways of delivery). Not necessarily their own. Besides buying the oil in the Western hemisphere, they’ll buy somewhere in the East, where still exist reliable way to monitor delivery with US Navy. Based on the volume of their own and European production, their own needs and the minimum needs of Europe.
To this end, States need to cut Europeans from Russian and Asian oil and from oil in the Western hemisphere. The plan was gigantic and has been almost successfully executed, until the Syrian fiasco.
That’s why they’re so mad at Putin who obviously has his own ideas regarding the world oil trade.
Far stretched, but still plausible scenario: Trump gets the White House in 2016, cuts a deal with Putin on joint control of the world oil/gas sales, Russian Central Bank gets a blocking stake in Federal Reserve, and on par will issue dual, hard-linked world currencies – Dollar and Ruble.
Would be interesting to see under what sauce that will be presented in MSM media to a wondering Western public.
“Trump gets the White House in 2016,” –fodase
Lol… Trump can’t even get Iowa. Demographics.
I said, “Far stretched, but still plausible scenario”. Nobody’s got the friggin crystal ball.
Demographics. == wpa
Voting Machines (and Demographics) == finca
Population is mad as hell == finca
“Population is mad as hell == finca”
Finca, the facts say the population supports Bernie Sanders.
Trump has taken in 73,942 contributions, a total that surpasses several of GOP rivals.
Bernie Sanders has taken in more than 2,000,000 contributions, a total that surpasses all the other candidates combined.
Again you mislead. Iowa is heavily evangelical and has almost no bearing on who the ultimate GOP nominee will be. For example, Santorum and Huckabee won Iowa and soon flamed out.
More and more it looks as if Trump will be the GOP nominee. In the latest polls that came out yesterday, Trump is only one percentage point below the magic mark of 40.(And Jeb! now hovers at 3 percent!)
So come general election time can Trump win Iowa? I would not bet against him; after all, Iowa just elected ultra conservative Joni Ernst in the 2014 midterms.
And oh by the way WPA, now might be a good time to remind the CFN readers that you predicted the Dems would retain the Senate in the 2014 midterms. To put it kindly, when it comes to politics you have no idea what you’re talking about. Indeed, your constant harping on Bernie Sanders puts an explanation point on the aforementioned. Sanders has very little chance of going anywhere beyond a moment of glory in the New Hampshire primary; come Super Tuesday he will be nothing but a small historical footnote in the larger scheme of the 2016 election. He is down by twenty six points or so in the national aggregate polling. And don’t make me cite Florida or South Carolina or any number of other states where Sanders has no chance of victory.
Get a grip on reality and let go of the infantile and absurd ‘Victorious Sanders’ hyperbole: You’re making a fool of yourself.
Ozone, if people trouble themselves to look through the pages of history, they can learn a great deal. Like about “flocks of unfriendly flying monkeys” that you referenced. Those damned “flying monkeys”.
Just ask the Argentines. They’ll tell you. There was a time when they were ruled by very bad people (they still are mind you but it used to be much worse). And the bad people used to employ “flying monkeys” to do dirty work for them. Exceedingly dirty work. Like making people disappear. Thousands of them.
You know, the “flying monkeys” used to ransack houses of people they were told to not like, and look through those little black books of telephone numbers to see who their friends were. So the “flying monkeys” would also visit the friends and make them disappear too and would make whole networks of people disappear based on not much more than the contents of little black books.
I’m acquainted with a chap from those environs whose friend somehow caught the attention of the “flying monkeys” and was made to “disappear”. And this acquaintance of mine knew that, before long, because his telephone number was in his friend’s little black book, he too would get a “flying monkey” visit and he could also very easily go poof never to be seen again.
Now, this acquaintance of mine is pretty much apolitical as far as I can see and he just wants to be left alone to live and make a living. Apolitical or no, a notation in his disappeared friend’s notebook was all the “flying monkeys” needed.
Long story short, my acquaintance is safe and sound, having made an escape and is now well away from all that “flying monkey” business. No dummy that guy, he knows that, while history doesn’t repeat, it sure as hell rhymes and he doesn’t take for granted that what happened before won’t happen again.
Thank you for sticking with me in this long post. There’s two points to all this. The first is that “flying monkey”-ism happens all over the world. If people think it can’t happen here, they should think again. I’m sure you’ve heard of Joe McCarthy who did his “flying monkey” thing in full public view. And then there’s the “flying monkeys” that greased JFK and his bro’ because they refused to take a hint and stick to screwing debutantes.
But I’m also sure that those millennials you see grinning like chimps at their devices and who scoff at the notion of privacy haven’t heard of Joe and Jack and Bobby and don’t give a damn and roll their eyes at all that boring, old-fogey stuff. But maybe they should get serious. There’s more important things than the latest Kardashian sexcapade.
The second point is that history shows that there are no guarantees. No matter how ruthless the ruling powers (think Romania and East Germany and Czarist and Stalinist Russia), the wheels of history turn. No ruling clique, no regime, is unassailable IOW and, those that think they are, should think again. Especially if they employ “flying monkeys”. PARTICULARLY if they employ “flying monkeys”. Because there’s nothing that undermines a regime’s legitimacy than its “flying monkeys”. They tend to seriously piss people off. How many times have we seen this?
Now, the people that think they’re aligning themselves with an impregnable power for the sake of a paycheck or career should maybe think long and hard about accepting that money, especially if it’s for doing dirty deeds. Like being a “flying monkey”. Or even slightly oily deeds. Records, like little black telephone books or payroll records, have a funny way of persisting and getting found especially after a regime change or even after an election. And people have a way of spilling the beans about who they worked with and who did what and to whom. And how many times have we seen that?
See, “flying monkey”-ism isn’t the sole preserve of one side of a political divide because “flying monkey”-ism tends to beget more “flying monkey”-ism, but from the opposing side. I would urge not only the “flying monkeys” to cease and desist but also their employers. Nothing good comes of it, not least for the ruling regime, and if you want to maintain an unjust grip on power and wealth, learn to be nicer to people and at least spread some of that loot. You can make an ungodly pile of money but don’t be too damn greedy because other people need to make a living too. You’d think you don’t need to tell people this, but sadly, you do. I mean, how much money can some syphilitic dictator spend, how many mistresses can he screw, how many diamonds do his hideous, anorexic, pill popping wife and daughter actually need, how many fast cars does that diseased, useless tit of a son have to drive?
Sorry for the long post.
NKorea has the fiercest ‘Flying Monkeys’. They will swoop down upon you and scoop you up at the slightest provocation, a wrong look, a frown, putting your hand on your belly if you’re starving to death, not bowing deeply enough before a statue of Dear Leader, not keeping a portrait of Dear Leader properly dusted inside your home … just to name a few.
There are still a few American Lefties around who say good things about NKorea — Obama friend Bill Ayers is one — but you notice they don’t got there to live, or even visit. No, they steer clear of the last pure Communist State and praise it from afar.
The ‘Flying Monkeys’ in the Wizard of Oz used to scare the sh-t out of me when I was a little kid. I used to wonder about those monkeys; where did they come from? Can they talk? Back in the day I didn’t know anything about metaphor or allegory. Frank Baum had quite an imagination!
brh
“NKorea has the fiercest ‘Flying Monkeys’.” –brh
brh, have you seen the movie Sicario starring Emily Blunt?
Bob Scheer [or sheer] of NPR and LA Times, did go there.
Like a blind turned around Sampson, you are trying to hold up the pillars of the crumbling Temple of Leftism: McCarthy was right about everything, only wrong in underestimating the extent of Communist infiltration.
Of course legitimate governments don’t have to kill large numbers of their own people, just an occasional traitor or two. But getting to a place of legitimacy – as in the American Revolution? Different story. And of course the Tyrants use that fact and try to cover themselves by talking about “permanent revolution” as Mao did.
“Population is mad as hell == finca”
Finca, the facts say the population supports Bernie Sanders.
Trump has taken in 73,942 contributions, a total that surpasses several of GOP rivals.
Bernie Sanders has taken in more than 2,000,000 small contributions, a total number of contributors that surpasses all the other candidates combined. Others may have money. Bernie has the population of voters and the one with the most electoral votes wins.
Give it a rest. The legions of freeloaders won’t vote for your humorless commie jew butt boy when they have available a real rug munching wasp witch with a muzzie husband (huma)……
2,000,000 is bigger than 73,942. It is a fact.
Bush spent $60 million on ads only to see his support drop. Fact.
Big boys cannot buy election; the people support Bernie Sanders.
And when it comes to politics,you should also give it a rest, NSA,
An assignment for you: Why do reptilian brain Middle East lunatics fire their rifles into the sky when protesting? Do those bullets not descend back down to the ground, potentially harming the shooters?
I took a liberty to check with Russian net on that “burning” question, here’s what I’ve found:
When shooting vertically up bullets of different weights and shapes (9 mm and 30 caliber) come back and hit the ground (or your skull) at 45 meters/second. Large bullet bounces off the skull, small bullet pierces the skin, but does not harm the bones.
Smaller bullet rises to 1.5 km, the large just above 2 km. Time to fall between 30 and 60 seconds.
FinCal,
Apparently Russian skulls are thicker than the rest of humanity:
A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders.[4] In Puerto Rico, about two people die and about 25 more are injured each year from celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve, the CDC says.[5] Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.[6]:
The possession of firearms in Russia is traditionally extremely limited and the study I came across on the Russian net is probably more of theoretical rather than statistical nature.
In US and, especially in Latin countries, people are much more fond of their firearms: it is not such an uncommon scene on the Island when a guy with a gun haphazardly stuck in his belt comes to a cashier window at the local bank just to do his routine transaction.
BRH, you know, I suspect that the ferocity of repression in a place like North Korea is the inverse of the stability of the regime. Or the inverse of its grip on power. Otherwise, why the need for all that murder and abuse?
Well, I also suspect that when the wheels of history turn in that place what the regime imposed it will get back with compound rates of interest. The retribution on the flying monkeys and the monkey masters will be hideous.
The stories that you hear out of that place are all alike. All the escapees all sing the same song. I mean, they can’t feed the people there yet they demand the most nauseating displays of obsequiousness and submission. And the abuse that people endure is terrible. Fear keeps them in line.
People do what they have to do to survive. But when there’s nothing to lose, there’s nothing to lose and then again, people do what they have to do to survive.
If I was a betting man I would bet that Kid Kimchee and his closest minions delude themselves as to the state of things in the countryside. The Kid may suspect plots and conspiracies among the ruling class but not a popular uprising. That will undoubtedly be the end of that regime. Because, if an uprising happens, my bet is that somebody from the intelligentsia will get in front of the parade.
I severely doubt that the North Korean soldier will happily level his rifle against his homeboys. The opposite in fact, the officer that gives the order to shoot better watch out as he will be the one the soldier boy shoots.
Well said, V. It can’t happen soon enough.
WPA, I haven’t seen ‘Sicario’, but now its on my list.
brh
Good, I am sure you will enjoy it.
About the Red, White and Black Projects
It is all about dualistic anthropology, which Tertullian described while fighting the heresy of Marcion.
According to this ideology, humanity is split into purely biologically supermen, or if you prefer, the Titans and “just people”. And the Red Project suggests to the rest of humanity to give the Titans a kick in the ass, including destroying them as a class, while the White Project calls on the Titans to take care of the rest of humanity, feed them on time and stroke them on the head, and the Black Project suggests that the Titans treat the rest of humanity as animals that could be killed just for a lack of usefulness.
Once again, not for the threat to the Titans, for example, by virtue of belonging to the Red or White projects, but just for the lack of utility.
All these projects have roots in the past – for example, Red is associated with the Essenes of the Dead Sea, and the White and Black projects with the Punic wars.
And over 1,000 years, these hidden projects determined culture and politics in the world, periodically appearing on the surface.
One such moment of truth was the Second World War, when Hitler personified the Black Project, Churchill the White Project and Roosevelt the Red.
Stalin was a part of the Red project insofar as the red Soviet Union itself was the embodiment of ideology imported from the West.
Moreover, after the US mid-term elections of 2014, Angela Merkel accession to the leading role in a Black project previously headed by Hillary Clinton becomes almost inevitable, and then the Jews all over the world must go and watch the movie “Europa, Europa.”
The question of the big NSDAP revanche has turned to an open stage, and this is good, because Ukraine has shown that the latent form of the Nazi Party is far more dangerous.
During the WWII, when Stalin realized that the Soviet Union was winning the war without the help of Western Red and White projects, he began to replace Communism International with Orthodox International.
It made the White and Black projects unite against the Red, which led to the assassination of Roosevelt and provoked a confrontation between the United States, Britain with the Soviet Union in Greece, which actually was the cause of the Cold War.
Also, when the game entered the money of ODESSA, which helped to legalize the union of black and white projects, there was a worldwide pro-Nazi coup in the anti-Hitler coalition.
In the US, it was the reign of McCarthyism and Truman Presidency, in Great Britain the reign of Clement Attlee, and in the USSR a coup by Khrushchev.
But the Korean War led to the collapse of Truman and McCarthy in the US followed by crumbling of pro-Nazi regimes in all other countries.
President Obama spoke about the possibility of the use of ground forces of the US Army to fight against the Islamic State, which excludes the use of NATO forces in Ukraine. And in this he has the support of the American people, who in all polls showed a very low priority in the eyes of American voters for notorious “suffering of Ukraine under the Russian boot”.
And it goes with a very low popularity of the idea of the conflict with Russia, despite the best efforts of the media. That is the Clinton’s propaganda machine has malfunctioned, and yet it seemed all-powerful, after it managed just in a few months to bulldoze the reputation of President Bush, under whose leadership the United States had just defeated Iraq virtually with no losses and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
But that’s not all. I want to specifically focus on President Obama’s speech on the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I am very sorry, but the US president cannot ignore 25 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as he in this speech cannot fail to mention Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine.
CAN NOT!
Even if he secretly wants to hang Poroshenko and impale Yatsenyuk.
But what he says at the intersection of that duty and his desire is undoubtedly a masterpiece of the art of diplomacy.
I even find it difficult to translate it into Russian. Certainly this is not a call to Europeans to unite in the face of the Russian threat. If desired, it could be interpreted as a call to rally around Russia in the campaign against Nazism.
Which leads to reflections on the theme of who is actually financing the anti-American campaign in Russia?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/07/statement-president-25th-anniversary-fall-berlin-wall
America abandons control of the IMF
As part of a large domestic deal between the “isolationists” (a group of Obama) and radicals (“the crazies” – Clinton, neocons, Biden …) we have a watershed event – America abandons control of the IMF.
The change of control has been identified by the G20 in 2010, but over the last 5 years, the US Congress blocked this international deal under which Obama signed twice – in 2010 and 2015.
Official Statement of the IMF: http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2015/pr15573.htm
In brief translation from IMF-speak to English: “Hooray! We are happy! Farewell, you bastards! Hello, freedom!”
Neo-cons would not have been the neo-cons, if they wouldn’t find “the maid” for Lagarde, and, apparently, they will do everything that she could not remain the head of independent from Washington IMF:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-17/imf-s-lagarde-to-face-trial-for-tapie-case-mediapart-reports
Changes in the management of the Fund and the distribution of votes do not occur simultaneously, the result is obvious: in the not too distant future, the debtor of the IMF, such as Greece and Ukraine will have to please not only the Washington officials, but also representatives of the BRICS, which collectively (by the amount of votes) may block any Fund solutions.
I wonder, have the Putin’s discovery of 11,000 oil trucks in Iraq engaged in the illegal oil smuggling, contributed to resolution of the IMF hurdle?
We might be getting a shot at new Yalta – after the US Presidential elections.
Hopefully, it will be followed by the surge in economy, like it happened after 1945.
US and Russia co-sponsor Security Council Resolution 2253 – Trading With Enemy Act on International level?
Resolution 2253, prepared jointly by Russia and the United States, was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on December 17.
The resolution 2253 consists of the 99 regulatory items, plus extensive reasoning and applications, in fact, constitutes a mechanism of global financial control.
Especially when you consider that end customers who illegally exported oil and cultural property from Iraq, Syria and other places out of ISIS and Al-Qaeda controlled territories, are primarily globalist banksters.
http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12168.doc.htm
Geopolitics are way too complicated for my own simple, straightforward mind to even bother speculating on. We are hard-wired to look for patterns in order to make sense of the world, but too often this leads to just plain confusion, like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
Ok. Just a round peg into a round hole: we aint gonna have nucelar war, it appears. We were pretty close tho in July 2014 – around that MH17 flight downed over Ukraine.
Looks like we gonna negotiate.
Who says Blacks don’t like Trump? Diamond and Silk say they do. You think Blacks are going to vote for a White Bitch? Or a weakling like Jeb or a nerd like Carson or a dweeb like Rand Paul? They like Trump’s bluster. They want the natural man – the Strong Man. Everyone is getting on the Trump Train. He is the great Unifier. Get on before it leaves the station and you get left behind. The Train has no breaks but at least we’re all together (on the Train that is, not all in the same compartments). We are as separate like fingers but together we make a fist.
https://www.yahoo.com/katiecouric/stump-for-trump-girls-on-putin-debates-and-the-160318825.html
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2015/12/blacks-in-atlanta-vote-to-empower-black.html
French nationals break eggs on their faces to protest Muslim terror. Totally confused losers, no better than Liberal Americans.
http://www.dailystormer.com/multiracial-france-opposes-isis-by-smashing-eggs-on-own-faces/
http://www.wvwnews.net/content/index.php?/news_story/breaking_17_black_thugs_arrested_for_burning_white_girl_alive…crickets_from_controlled_media.html
The horror. Who loosed them to walk amongst us?
Don’t expect any breathless MSM, CNN wall to wall coverage on this one.
In fact, don’t expect any coverage at all.
A little research reveals this is being spun as a case of domestic violence, like the terrorist massacre in San Berdoo was a matter of ‘gun control’. The political left and the MSM, joined at the hip, a bunch of lying, mendacious pieces of sh-t.
Incidentally, Jessica Chambers wasn’t just doused with gasoline and set on fire, she was forced to drink gasoline as well, and burned from the inside out.
brh
Ponder that fact for a few moments CFNers.
White Europeans.
http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_45.html
The african race is vile and stupid beyond comprehension i.e. the ideal democrat demographic……
The Bernie Sanders campaign announced Sunday that it “reached a major milestone in grassroots financial support” during the third Democratic presidential debate.
A statement posted on its website says the campaign has now received over 2.3 million contributions. That means Sanders now holds the record for highest number of contributions for a White House bid, breaking the record held by President Barack Obama in 2011.
The statement adds that “grassroots supporters flooded” the campaign site during the debate, with the average contribution amount being below $25.
Last week, when his campaign surpassed the 2 million contribution mark, the Vermont senator praised the “People Power” supporting his campaign, saying, “You can’t level the playing field with Wall Street banks and billionaires by taking their money.”
College kids are backing Sanders, voting for free tuition, free beer, free ass, free reefer, and dismissal of college loans.
brh