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The big question for the year 2020 is simple: can America get its mind right?

If the answer is no, we may not have much chance of continuing as a peaceful, functioning country. The era of the long emergency, as I call it, is of a piece with Strauss and Howe’s figurative winter in their Fourth Turning view of history playing out in generational cycles analogous to seasons of the year. Whatever you call it, the current disposition of things has had a harsh effect on our collective psychology. It has made an unusually large cohort of Americans functionally insane, believing in demons, hobgoblins, and phantoms, subscribing to theories that, in previous eras, children would laugh at, while contesting obvious realities and provoking grave political hazard.

The madness is distributed over many realms of American life, with the common denominator of a thinking class fallen into disordered thinking. The disorder is led by the information media and higher education with their crypto-Gnostic agendas for transforming human nature to heal the world (in theory). It includes a grab-bag of delusions and deliberate mind-fucks ranging from the morbid obsession with Russian interference in our affairs, to the crusade against free speech on campus, to the worship of sexual perversity (e.g. the Transsexual Reading Hour), to the campaigns against whiteness and maleness, to the incursions of woke-ness in the corporate workplace, to the cynical machinations of economists, bankers, and politicians in manipulating financial appearances, to the effort to divorce reality from truth as a general proposition.

These diseases of mind and culture are synergized by an aroused political ethos that says the ends justify the means, so that bad faith and knowing dishonesty become the main tools of political endeavor. Hence, a venerable institution such as The New York Times can turn from its mission of strictly pursuing news and be enlisted as the public relations service for rogue government agencies seeking to overthrow a president under false pretenses. The overall effect is of a march into a new totalitarianism, garnished with epic mendacity and malevolence. Since when in the USA was it okay for political “radicals” to team up with government surveillance jocks to persecute their political enemies?

This naturally leads to the question: what drove the American thinking class insane? I maintain that it comes from the massive anxiety generated by the long emergency we’ve entered — the free-floating fear that we’ve run out the clock on our current way of life, that the systems we depend on for our high standard of living have entered the failure zone; specifically, the fears over our energy supply, dwindling natural resources, broken resource supply lines, runaway debt, population overshoot, the collapsing middle-class, the closing of horizons and prospects for young people, the stolen autonomy of people crushed by out-of-scale organizations (government, WalMart, ConAgra), the corrosion of relations between men and women (and of family life especially), the frequent mass murders in schools, churches, and public places, the destruction of ecosystems and species, the uncertainty about climate change, and the pervasive, entropic ugliness of the suburban human habitat that drives so much social dysfunction. You get it? There’s a lot to worry about, much of it quite existential. The more strenuously we fail to confront and engage with these problems, the crazier we get.

Much of the “social justice” discontent arises from the obvious and grotesque income inequality of our time accompanied by the loss of meaningful work and the social roles that go with that. But quite a bit of extra tension comes from the shame and disappointment over the failure of the long civil rights campaign to correct the racial inequalities in American life — everything from attempts at school integration to affirmative action (by any name) to “multiculturalism” to the latest innovations in “diversity and inclusion.” In short, too many black Americans are still failing to thrive in this land despite fifty years of expensive government programs and educational experiments galore, and there are few explanations left to account for that failure, which includes black-led cities in ruin and high rates of black violent crime. This quandary harrows the thinking class and drives them ever deeper into their crypto-Gnostic fantasies about changing human nature to heal the world. The net result is that race relations are worse and more fraught than they were in 1950. And the outcome is so embarrassing that the thinking class avoids facing it at all costs (despite bad faith calls for “an honest conversation about race” that is, in actuality, unwelcome).

Our country is caught in a matrix of self-destructive rackets and the common denominator is the immersive dishonesty we have given ourselves permission to practice. In ethics and daily conduct, we’re nothing like the country that came out of World War Two. Our national maxim these days is anything goes and nothing matters. That’s a poor platform for navigating through life on earth. After a decades-long clamor for “hope and change,” that’s one big thing we don’t talk about changing, and apparently have no hope for changing. America has got to get its mind right about lying to itself.

This is a forecast, after all, and I’m going to try to be as concise as possible on the particulars, which we’ll now turn to. Forecasts, you understand, are like jazz, an improvisational connecting of dots at a certain moment in time… or throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if anything sticks.

Election 2020

There’s an excellent chance that the Democratic Party will be in such disarray by summertime, that it may break apart into a radical-Wokester faction and a rump “moderate” faction. That would make the election somewhat like the 1860 contest on the eve of the first Civil War. The current crop of leading candidates — Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg — all look to me like horses that ain’t gonna finish. Michael Bloomberg could end up leader of the rump moderates, propelled by his inexhaustible bank account, but I doubt his appeal to the racial minorities and the new millennial voters Democrats depend on. I’m not sure he’s left with much else.

I’m convinced that Joe Biden is in still in the contest solely to avoid investigation. He’s already obviously not wholly sound of mind, and he’s not even in the White House yet. Think of how Bob Mueller looked testifying in congress six months ago, and imagine Uncle Joe in the White House Situation Room. The record of grift from Uncle Joe’s Veep days is vibrantly nauseating, and embarrassingly on-the-record in video and in bank statements. Similarly, for Elizabeth Warren: there are too many video recordings of her lying about herself. She’d never overcome an opponent’s political ad campaign replaying them daily. I’m sorry, but despite the crypto-Gnostic wish by many Thinking Class-niks to make the marginal seem normal, I doubt the voters want to see Mayor Pete in the White House with a “First Husband.” Bernie Sanders has a shot of leading a radical faction this time — if he can overcome the hacks in the DNC — and only a dim shot at winning the general election. This overview leaves a pretty big crack in the door for Hillary Clinton to ride into a hung convention in Milwaukee on a paper mache white horse and try to “rescue” the party. I believe she’d be laughed out of the hall, making for a humiliating final scene in her accursed career.

One other possibility is that a figure currently off the game-board somehow flies in to lead the Democratic Party, but it’s impossible to state who that black swan character might be. That could also be something like a “smoke-filled room” scenario of a nominating convention, like the one that picked Warren Harding a hundred years before: the party poohbahs get together and just ram their decision down the delegates throats. I’d assign a 20 percent chance to that outcome.

Whatever you think of his style, manner, and policies, Donald Trump has one outstanding quality: resilience. As David Collum has remarked, Mr. Trump is anti-fragile (in the Nassim Taleb sense). The more he is antagonized, the stronger he seems to get. His weak spot is his ownership of the economy and the financial markets that are supposed to serve it. His destiny, which I described in blogs three years ago, is to be the guy left holding the bag when things economic start cracking up — a situation I’ll describe in its own category below. The odds are not so good that the status quo of an ever-rising stock market will hold up until next November. And if it goes south in a hard way, that will certainly work against his reelection. It could also be the one thing that would permit the Democratic Party to stay glued together — but implies that a shake-up in markets and banks would have to happen by early summer, before the conventions.

Meanwhile, the attempts at impeachment have a peevish Lilliputian flavor. Keeping it up —bringing a threatened second or third bill of impeachment with extra charges — will only reinforce Mr. Trump’s anti-fragility. Second to the economic issues is the question whether the firm of Barr & Durham will manage to pin some criminal responsibility on the people who undertook the RussiaGate coup against Mr. Trump — a ghastly mis-use of government power now celebrated by Democrats, who, you might recall, used to be against police states. A series of perp walks by the likes of Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and others could finally burst the bubble of credulity that the Mueller face-plant and the damning Horowitz report failed to achieve among the True Believers of Rachel Maddow. Of course, this matter has even greater significance for correcting the meta-problem of America chronically lying to itself. RussiaGate and its spinoffs was such a gargantuan edifice of malicious dishonesty that it must be deconstructed in the courts, or the mental health of the nation may not recover. It is the key to ending the regime of anything goes and nothing matters. Bottom line: if the markets or the value of the dollar don’t crash, Mr. Trump will be reelected.

However, I expect that his rivals will resort to Lawfare tactics to tie up the election process in a paralyzing tangle of litigation that would impede or deny a peaceful resolution of the outcome. These tactics may provoke the president to declare some extraordinary measures to overcome this climactic act of “Resistance” — perhaps a period of martial law while the results are re-tabulated. Yes, it could get that extreme.

Economy and Its Accessories

The shale oil “miracle” was a financial stunt using debt to provide the illusion that the nation’s energy supply was safe and assured long-term. It’s been an impressive stunt, for sure, with production nearing 13 million barrels-a-day now, but it is foundering on its Ponzi business model — the producers just can’t make money at it, and they’ve spent ten years proving that it’s a foolish play for investors. The result will be dwindling investment in an endeavor that requires constant re-investment. Which means that 2020 is the year that shale oil de-miracle-izes and production falls. The bankruptcies have only just begun.

The economy is really just a function of energy inputs, and these must be inputs that make economic sense — that don’t cost more than whatever they return. All our banking and finance arrangements depend on that. If energy inputs decline, or the cost in energy exceeds the value of net energy you get, then debts of every kind can no longer be repaid and the whole system implodes. From there the question is whether collapse is slow or fast. My guess is that it may start slowly and then accelerate rapidly to critical — and the process has already begun.

As a result of this energy dynamic, we’re seeing a generalized contraction in economic activity and growth worldwide, expressed in standards of living that will fall going forward. The effects in America are already obvious and discouraging: the struggling middle-class, people living paycheck-to-paycheck, people unable to buy cars or pay to fix them. The hope was that America might reindustrialize (some version of MAGA) while the “emerging” economies kept producing stuff as the “engines” of the global economy: China, India, Korea, Brazil, Mexico and others. These places saw standards of living rise dramatically the past thirty years. Reversing that trend will be a trauma. These emerging economies are topping off and heading down because of the same basic energy dynamics which affect the whole world: running out of affordable energy, oil especially. The likely result will be political instability within China, and the rest — already manifest — and some of that disorder may be projected outward at economic rivals.

Europe has experienced plenty of blowback from its contracting standard-of-living as expressed in the Yellow Vest disruptions in France, the Brexit nervous breakdown, the gathering power of nationalist political movements in many nations, and the ongoing refugee crisis (largely economic refugees from failing third world places). The European banks, led by the sickest of them all, Deutsche Bank, suffer from a crushing burden of bad derivative obligations that are liable to sink them in 2020, and then there will be a scramble for survival in Euroland, with the recent refugees caught in the middle. I think we will see the first attempts to expel them as financial chaos spreads, violence erupts, and nationalism rises.

The “solution” to the quandary of contraction since 2008 has been for central banks to “create” mountains of fresh “money” to provide the illusion that debts can be repaid (and fresh loans generated) when reality clearly refutes that. All that money “printing” has only deformed banking relations and the behavior of markets — the most obvious symptoms being asset inflation (stocks, bonds, real estate), the quashing of price discovery (the chief function of markets), and zero interest rates (which makes the operations of banking insane).

The bankers will continue to do “whatever it takes” to try to keep the game going, but they’ve run out of actual mojo to get it done. Interest rates can barely go any lower. The amount of money “printing” needed to sustain the illusion of a functioning, rational system grows ever larger. In the six weeks just before-and-after Christmas, the Federal Reserve is expected to pump $500 billion into the banks to stabilize asset prices. How long can they keep doing that?

Eventually, either asset prices fall (perhaps crash), or the increasingly desperate measures needed to prop them up will degrade the value of money itself. The catch is, that might not happen everywhere at once. For instance, China’s banking system, like Europe’s, is ripe for a convulsion, which would send money fleeing for perceived safety (while it can) into America’s markets, temporarily pumping up the Dow, the S & P, and US Treasury bonds even while other big nations crash. But US banks have the same disease and those birds of disorder will eventually roost here, too.

Also, the method of distributing fresh central bank money-from-thin-air will likely change going forward. The public will surely revolt at another bankster bailout. Instead, the folks-in-charge will turn to “Peoples’ QE,” otherwise known as “helicopter money” (as in dropping cash from choppers), or Modern Monetary Theory (MMT — print money until the cows come home), featuring “Guaranteed Basic Income.” The tensions in the contraction trap we’re in are such that disequilibrium in the debt markets can only play out in a hard default or a softer attempt to inflate currencies. Inflation could keep stock markets afloat and allow continued debt repayment (“servicing”) in currencies of declining value — a process that is never really manageable in history, always gets out-of-hand, and leads quickly to political mayhem. Remember, there are two ways of going broke: having no money, and having plenty of money that is worthless.

The elements of this financial psychodrama will meld into the US election politics of 2020 as the Left turns to increasingly promises of “free” money and “free” services (medicine, education) to panicked voters who can no longer afford the American Dream standard-of-living. Tremors emanating from the seized-up Repo markets (Repo = repurchase of collateral for overnight loans) the past three months suggest that some major US banks and insurance companies have entered their own zones of criticality. I’m doubtful that any ploy can fend off major financial instability before the end of 2020, but if the US does become a refuge for money from elsewhere in the world, that could stave off the arrival of crisis until summer.

The idea that a roaring stock market signifies a “great” economy is especially fallacious with all the ongoing market interventions and manipulations of the past decade. All it really signifies is how swindles, frauds, and rackets have taken the place of the industrial production of yesteryear, and that’s not a very sound basis for an economy. I don’t think there are any real prospects of getting back to the industrial might of yore. We’ll surely have to make things in the times ahead, and produce our bread by some means, but it’ll be a very different model of production, at a much more modest scale. When standards-of-living fall, they’ll eventually land somewhere. We just don’t know where that landing place is yet.

Relations with Other Lands

The RussiaGate hysteria worked effectively the past three years to obstruct the chance for repairing relations between our countries. That and the earlier idiotic 2014 intervention in Ukraine under Mr. Obama, which prompted Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbass. All of that was unnecessary and was carried off just because we were determined to cram Ukraine into NATO — or, at least, not let it join the Russia-centric Customs Union. In the process, we left Ukraine badly damaged. Can we please stop creating more damage? They have always been Russia’s stepchild and always will be. Can we get our American mind right on that?

I suspect Mr. Trump would still like to rectify the situation, especially our relations with Russia. We have some outstanding interests in common, starting with a wish to discourage Islamic maniacs from blowing things up and cutting people’s heads off. How about we try cooperating to manage that problem? Russia is not our economic rival. Vast as its land-mass is, Russia’s economy is not much bigger than the economy of Texas. They possess a very potent nuclear arsenal, with new hypersonic delivery systems that were probably developed to temper our paranoid narratives about them since 2016. War is not an option.

There’s a fair chance in 2020 that Mr. Trump may find an opening to reduce tensions between the US and Russia, even if he is being repeatedly impeached and the S & P index falls by half. Ukraine itself may be a hopeless basket case, its destiny: to become a quasi-medieval agricultural backwater. Anyway, it’s really none of our business, any more than the occupation of Afghanistan was, or the intervention in Iraq was, or Vietnam before that. For starters, though, can we just agree that going to war with Russia is not a good idea and stop militating for it? Liberals used to blame the Military-Industrial Complex for thumping the war drum. Now they’re doing it.

Further temptations to intervene in foreign lands will only accelerate the bankruptcy of the USA and drive a quicker, more dramatic journey down to a much lower standard-of-living. Anyway, with all the other elements of the long emergency proceeding, the trend in 2020 will be for nations to be preoccupied with their own business, and if it doesn’t work out at a national level it might lead to more breakaway regions attempting self-government. Catalan is still burbling away, Italy still has a north/south problem, Scotland still has a mind to dissociate from the UK. Contraction, or de-growth, or declining prosperity — however you want to say it — goes hand-in-hand with a smaller scale of management. Bigness itself is going out.

It’s worth considering this, though: I remember the USA being a pretty sane nation. If things can get this bad in America, with all these political hallucinations, don’t you think they can get bad in other places, too? China is entering a traumatic squeeze with the end of its thirty-year growth spurt. What if China gets as crazy as we are? What if the USA goes from being Number One customer to Demon Ghost Dragon from the Underworld in their scheme of things? (Anybody remember the cultural revolution of the 1960s? That was communist Wokesterism on methedrine.) When the going gets tough in China, the government cracks down. And when that doesn’t work, China historically cracks up into some kind of civil war. The action in Hong Kong this past year may be a preview of coming attractions for Beijing or Shanghai. For 2020, I predict turmoil in China as banks fail, companies go under, and factories shut down — but falling short of an uprising against the Xi Jinping regime. It will make China appear very crazy. We will have to tread carefully around them. Please, no naval hijinks in the Straits of Taiwan….

I pretty much covered Europe in the Economics section. The main warning for Europe 2020 is that the international rules-based liberal order of the West was made possible in a post-war world by decades of rising energy inputs and rising prosperity. As that reverses, the assumptions behind that order will cease to hold it together. The formation of a new set of operating principles will probably entail a period of disorder, perhaps long in duration.

Israel and Iran seem to be cruisin’ for a bruising,’ which probably won’t work out so well for Iran. Something will happen in 2020 between them and the US will manage to stay out of it. A fast, sharp conflict could set the stage for the Iranian people to finally throw off the yoke of their mullahs. This may be accompanied by a widespread anti-jihad movement (an Islamic peace movement) across the Middle East and North Africa — a recognition that Jihad is working only to destabilize one country after another and make their lives worse. Israel will restart talks with its antagonists in Gaza and the West Bank. The talks will be arduous but promising and little will be resolved through 2020.

India and Pakistan cooled their jets during the economic topping off period of the past ten years, avoiding a major war, including a nuclear exchange. That could change tragically in 2020 as global prosperity reverses and all the other long emergency pressures pile on these two, struggling, way-overpopulated countries. The damage would be awesome, perhaps terrifying enough to persuade people in other lands to just take the economic losses and do their best to downscale rationally.

Japan’s drift toward the eventual fate of neo-medievalism speeds up in 2020 as financial infection spreads from China’s failing banks. Emperor Naruhito issues a royal memorandum acknowledging that Japan’s dependence on imported oil must end and they will embrace de-growth hoping to return to an Edo-level of pre-industrial civilization. This will be an even more positive example to other nations to start making similar plans. Of course, it will provoke bitter political opposition. The best ideas always do.

Latin America is coming off more than a decade of relative peace, except for Venezuela, which lately just whirls around the drain without any fanfare. Argentina underperforms in grand style, but can’t seem get to a critical threshold of collapse. What’s her secret? Lately a revolution (possibly CIA-backed) overthrew President Evo Morales of Bolivia, supposedly to allow the US access to its lithium resources. More dramatic action erupts up in Mexico in 2020 where civil war breaks out. The US dispatches regular army troops as refuges try to flee north in epic numbers. We create a designated “safe zone” fifty miles below the border to contain the human flood. Mr. Trump is vilified for setting up humanitarian refugee camps there. But throughout the year he refuses an outright military intervention between the warring factions.

Culture War, Wokesterism, and the Battle for Hearts and Minds

One might suppose that the crypto-Gnostic Wokesters had carried their lunacy far enough in 2019 with the Tranny Reading Hours, the firings of distinguished faculty who insist that biological reality means two sexes, and much much more. It was also the year of The New York Times’s “1619 Project,” a pseudo grad-school-style attempt to rewrite US history as entirely inspired by racism. And then there’s Greta growling “How dare you” at the world with that spittly grimace of pubescent moral superiority. Who of right mind in this land is not sick of this fucking nonsense?

By 2020 Wokesterism has shot its wad and the Wokesters are banished to a windowless room in the sub-basement of America’s soul where they can shout at the walls, point their fingers, grimace spittlingly, and issue anathemas that no one will listen to. And when they’re out of gas, they can kick back and read the only book in the room: Mercy, by Andrea Dworkin.

And then, one fine spring morning, after everyone else has given up on it, Donald Trump, social media troll-of-trolls, the Golden Golem of Greatness himself, rises in his pajamas and tweets that, at long, long last, he has finally got “woke,” changed his name to Donatella, and declared his personal pronoun to be “you’all.”

All right, that’s probably expecting too much, but personally I believe the Wokester act is on the run. Even some true believers are looking worn out from their exertions. Anyway, these incidents of public madness always burn out. A curious feature will be an utter lack of remorse when it’s all over. Instead, we’ll get amnesia, and then it’s off to the next phase of history.

There you have the Forecast 2020. We all know it’s an exercise in futility, but it’s one of those unavoidable rituals of human existence. Good luck to all! You may be interested in my forthcoming book, out in March, which is a deep-dive update of where we’re at and a series of portraits of interesting people leading alt-lifestyles in these uncertain times.


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

712 Responses to “Forecast 2020 — Whirlin’ and Swirlin’”

  1. Brabantian December 30, 2019 at 10:17 am #

    A USA situation that seems imminently explosive but rather under the radar –

    Is in the January potentially violent stand-off between Virginia gun owners – the white guys who live in most of the state geographically –

    And the new Democratic state legislature under a Democratic governor, voted-in by the new minorities in the urban areas, the ‘woke’ Democrats saying they are ready to make many firearms illegal, and then use the full force of the state to confiscate the weapons

    On the other side, most of the counties in the state, inhabited by the heritage America good ol’ boys, have declared themselves ‘Second Amendment Constitutional sanctuaries’, with a readiness to oppose any ‘null and void’ laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor

    This ‘gun sanctuary’ movement is supported by many of the local law enforcement sheriffs in Virginia, some of whom saying they are ready to ‘deputise’ masses of citizens just like in the old West

    The pro-gun people are also in fact the bulk of the membership of the state National Guard, whom the gun-grabbing governor thinks will follow his orders to shoot Virginians and take their guns

    Talk of USA civil war – the ‘boogaloo’ as they say – is increasing, not only in Virginia, but around the USA … People are feeling that now, when the guns and ammo are maximally in private hands, is the time to have the showdown

    White men in the USA often feel they are a dying, beleaguered, threatened people … in other words, that they have little to loose by standing their ground, shooting and dying … and that maybe this gun-grab by suddenly-in-power Virginia ‘woke’ Democrats, is the signal, that the time is now

    We even just had that white-haired senior citizen in Texas, carrying a concealed handgun, just kill the shooter engaged in a church massacre, with a spectacular head-shot from quite a distance down the church aisle … praise for the ‘heroic boomer with a handgun’ is all over the ‘interwebz’ today

    Funny linguistically how the 1980s ‘Breakdancing 2 – Electric Boogaloo’ gave birth to the notion of ‘Civil War 2 – Citizen Boogaloo’

    • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 12:37 pm #

      Two points.
      1) It seems to me the MSM has a policy directive to avoid talking about situations where a responsible citizen with a gun stops the bad guy and protects the unarmed people.
      2) Are middle class white people with guns the big danger to law and order or is it urban young black men?

    • sophia December 30, 2019 at 7:09 pm #

      Why do you emphasize white guys? Doesn’t Virginia have a lot of blacks? Don’t they care about the 2nd amendment?

      I also don’t get how a bunch of people in a state can vote to confiscate guns. The 2nd amendment doesn’t allow for that, does it?

      • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:09 pm #

        “I also don’t get how a bunch of people in a state can vote to confiscate guns…”

        Sophia,

        It is referred to as the tyranny of the majority.

        • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 11:15 pm #

          What majority? It was a bunch of politicians in the state legislature and the governor. There was no popular referendum on the issue, nor will there be. The globalist gun grabbers know they’d lose.

          • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 12:17 am #

            ” a bunch of politicians…”

            hmuller,
            Yes, democratically elected politicians…..

            By a majority of voters.

            Those elected think they have a mandate.

          • lbs December 31, 2019 at 9:24 am #

            Interesting parallel between wokesterism and the Cultural Revolution of China.

        • Majella December 31, 2019 at 12:35 am #

          ‘Tyranny of the Majority’ aka democracy.
          As Churchill said ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for the rest’.

          Don’t worry – the SCOTUS will quash anything that fucks with the sacred Constitution at the local level. Lucky for you, it’s not a hallowed ‘States’ Rights ’ issue like whether someone can refuse to make a wedding cake for a same sex marriage…

          • hmuller December 31, 2019 at 12:54 am #

            Majella, do you believe that a baker should be compelled to work to create a customized gay wedding cake, let’s say a baker whose religious beliefs classify same sex relationships and marriage as a sin? I have a problem with forced labor.

            But I believe a same sex couple is entitled to buy a wedding cake already made, sitting in the display case, and offered to the general public for sale.

            But it’s one of those issues with little practical importance. How many same sex weddings have gone cake-less due to some narrow minded baker? For every baker who won’t make the cake, there are 10 willing to do so. So compelling that one baker to surrender his belief system is more a case of power flexing by those who want to impose their agenda onto everyone’s life.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

            The fiends choose Christian Bakers in order to ruin them – no doubt becoming the toast of their community for doing so. Not Muslim or Orthodox Jewish bakeries either. What utter bigots. Imagine all the guests laughing at the reception – the joy of the new couple founded upon ruined lives. Compare that to traditional cultures who had and have huge weddings, feeding the poor for miles around.

        • sophia January 1, 2020 at 8:23 pm #

          Hmm, a simple answer. I don’t buy it. Can’t be that a majority in one state can just do away with the constitution.

          • Ishabaka January 3, 2020 at 8:56 am #

            Many states have guns laws that are far more restrictive than federal laws. California is a prime example. It’s illegal to buy an AR15 in California for example, while buying an AR15 is not illegal per federal law. The Supreme Court hasn’t come down on states’ restrictive gun laws.

        • jgalt January 13, 2020 at 12:06 pm #

          Or, more properly, the tyranny of the minority, as they do not have the support of the majority for actions against the 2nd Amendment. Yet, they charge on ignoring the wishes of the majority and very possibly causing an explosion of violence beyond that occurring in the cities from criminals, whom they have no intention of reigning in.

    • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 4:23 pm #

      Maybe if the NatGuard were really oath keepers, they might collect a record of the public pronouncements of the guv’s public promises of treason against the 2nd Amendment and the VA equiv. Then erect a gallows – without a trap – and immediately try him and hang him in a courts martial for treason. ‘A crime wider than simple murder’.

      Then lock the legislators in and ask how many want to join the guv. Alternately, they can vote to irrevocably “not infringe” on any 2nd issues. Clinton Rules. That would send the maximum message … everywhere. To be promptly distorted and reversed by the worm-tongue lying medias.

      These will soon be life-or-death issues, and the guv has publicly expressed that his life is NOT worth the 25cent bullets he wants to deprive us of.

  2. Epicur December 30, 2019 at 10:23 am #

    “The disorder is led by the information media and higher education with their crypto-Gnostic agendas for transforming human nature to heal the world (in theory).”

    Spot on diagnosis.

    And the same goes for the analysis of the underlying dynamics in the rest of the post.

    One of your best, Mr. K., but there is one feature of the (admittedly distant) future that you rarely, if ever, touch, i.e. what happens when the State(s) face the horrible truth that their non-productive populations are a detriment to the health of the State(s)? It is easy to see that a world made by hand will not support 8 (or 11) billion people. The trip to a sustainable level will be interesting to say the least.

    Admittedly that’s too far out for old farts like us to worry about, but I worry for my grandchildren.

    • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 2:36 pm #

      Isn’t the bottom line of the last Econ para is a subtle reference to his books:   A World Made By Hand.  Or perhaps the Druid’s Retrotopia?

  3. Anon1970 December 30, 2019 at 10:25 am #

    The city of Baltimore recorded its 343rd homicide of the year on Sunday. On a per capita basis, it is the city’s highest yearly homicide rate in its history, with two days to go in 2019. In 2018, only St. Louis had a higher homicide rate than Baltimore. In 2018, St. Louis ranked 15 and Baltimore was #23 on a Wikipedia list of the 50 most deadly cities in the world, ranked by murders per 100,000 population. Detroit and New Orleans also made the list.

    Instead of trying to police the entire world, maybe the US should do a better job of policing its cities at home.

    • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:12 am #

      And maybe we should try to have that honest conversation about Race? Every city you mention is a Black dominated city. Why is rampant violent crime often associated with a high population of Blacks? This despite the trillions that have been spent on trying to mainstream them and actually to promote them over other people, particularly Whites. Blacks are favored in every area and aspect of American life by force of law now and yet this is reality. The simple truth is that violent crime in all the cities you mention would dramatically decrease the very minute the Black populations living there were no longer present.

      • Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 11:29 am #

        Speaking of honesty, race, and crime- the Trayvon Martin case comes to mind.
        How many people are aware of what happened there? I know I wasn’t, but it was known to some at the time that there was actually an impostor witness who took the stand.
        If some people knew that, how do those in the MSM who heavily over-reported this story, Andrea Mitchell for instance, justify their failure to mention this fact?
        A fake witness, in a court of law. This blows my mind.
        You have to ask why, and the only answer that makes sense is that the entirety of the media were willing accomplices in the Obama goal of getting the races fighting.
        Remember, the NYT even made George Zimmerman an honorary white man for purposes of narrative building.

        • Daddyotis December 30, 2019 at 11:47 am #

          The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America.

          You are correct. There was blatant witness tampering…to the degree that a fake witness made testimony in a court of law. This has been deep-sixed by TPTB. It never happened as far as 99% of America is concerned.

          Don’t try to look up the movie on Netflix either. They’re too busy pushing their made-for-the-masses production “Rest In Power: the Trayvon Martin Story”. From the title, you can likely guess that it won’t be addressing the fake witness issue

        • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:51 am #

          Yes, I do recall this travesty of justice. I also thought that Obama was attempting to get the races to clash in order to create a situation in which he could declare Martial Law and suspend the Constitution at the time. Since he didn’t do that I assume now that the entire George Zimmerman narrative was created simply to continue the long game of scapegoating Whites for all of society’s ills. This is all part of White Genocide and The Great Replacement. And yes, this is why the concept of a White Hispanic came into existence. To serve the propaganda machine.

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 1:35 pm #

            Surely if you can have a white Jesus and a white Mohammed, you have to allow the concept of a white Hispanic? 🙂

          • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:23 pm #

            To Green Alba below: Nice non-sequitur. What the hell does the race of fantasy beings have to do with anything?

          • fugeguy December 30, 2019 at 6:11 pm #

            GA,

            I know in your world view you are being funny (snarky) or whatever.

            But this has crossed a line into intentional sabotage of our nation.

            How many intentional hate crime made up schemes have we had in the last 20 years? Two many to count. I’ve been living in Chi town the last year and a half and crying race and faking discrimination is a lifestyle. The dips3it from the crap fox show is just the most notable example.

            So it seems whitey didn’t invent lying and BS. Or racism for that matter.

            fg

          • Majella December 30, 2019 at 6:39 pm #

            Ancianoloco:
            GA’s remark was fully ‘sequitur’ if you’ve been keeping up with SSL’s fantasies of a White Jesus (many references down the threads) and her recent doubling down that now includes Mohammed as an acceptably ‘white’ human.

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 7:57 pm #

            Ancianoloco and Fujeguy

            Sorry you haven’t been paying attention. It’s what you might call an in-joke. As Majella says, white Jesus and white Mohammed are a thing, according to SSL. White Mohammed just on the last thread. It’s a big deal for her that Jesus was white. Allegedly.

            My view on ‘white Hispanics’ is neither here nor there. Nor is my view on how many Hispanics you have generally in your country (I have repeatedly confirmed my belief in your right to strict border controls).

            It’s just that great big fat inconsistencies jump out at me in things people say, especially when those things are ridiculous.

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 8:02 pm #

            Apologies for misspelling your name there, fugeguy.

          • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:27 pm #

            “Surely if you can have a white Jesus and a white Mohammed…”

            Alba,
            Jesus was white. We know this because of all the pictures of him that exist. Mohammed? Hard to say…pic’s of him are generally unavailable.

            Regarding “Surley”…any pics? So that we might…you know…know her.

            I would suggest you have a well developed sense of humor as you persist in this line of questioning…..

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 12:23 am #

            EF!
            “ Alba,
            Jesus was white. We know this because of all the pictures of him that exist. Mohammed? Hard to say…pic’s of him are generally unavailable.”

            Until now, your penchant for irony or satire had eluded me! Congratulations! Unless of course you have a photograph (aside from the Turin Shroud, of course)!

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 12:43 am #

            That’s all just plain nuts.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 2:22 am #

            And of course you brought this up as a deflection from the topic at hand. No matter the fact that Muslims say they dye their hair with henna so that they can have red hair like Muhammad had. Perhaps you should question Muslims about this particular belief and practice? But in regards to White Hispanic. Here in the states those categories are usually always distinct. My point, which you ignored, is that the term White Hispanic was used so that Whiteness itself could be attached to the Trayvon Martin case. George Zimmerman looks Hispanic and identifies as such. So why was it so important to the media for White to be part of the equation? Narrative, Ideology, and the ends justify the means in their book undoubtedly. If the media really wanted peace and racial harmony then Zimmerman would have simply been identfied as Hispanic for starters. The White label was brought in specifically to elicit a violent reaction from Blacks.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 5:47 am #

            “And of course you brought this up as a deflection from the topic at hand. ”

            No I didn’t. Sorry to disappoint you. I brought it up because the big fat inconsistency leapt out at me and struck me as amusing. And it’s the season to be jolly.

            If Semites are white then Hispanics can be white. It’s not my claim. I’d never heard of the concept of ‘white Hispanic’ until I read it on here and I still claim, as I always have, that you are entitled to decide who enters your country. And I don’t care about the ethnicity of the person who shot Trayvon Martin.

            So quit telling me why I say things. If you stopped saying daft things like Jesus was white, you wouldn’t lay yourself open to the odd harmless joke.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 11:16 am #

            So you deny now that Semites are broadly classified as Caucasians? Let alone the fact that we are speaking of Semites who existed over 2,000 years ago prior to the population shifts brought on by the spread of Islam. Since fair hair and eye colors are still relatively frequent in ocurrence in the Levant even after substantial genetic infusion of South Arabian genes I find it very likely that Jesus was indeed a White man. Why are you so convinced otherwise when you have no tangible evidence to support your assertion?

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 2:17 pm #

            “I find it very likely that Jesus was indeed a White man. ”

            Then you disagree with the general view, which suggests wishful thinking comes into the equation.

            What you should be concerned about is why it matters to you. If Jesus had made his appearance in what is now Somalia, rather than Judea, would what he said have been less true for you? Would his divinity be less divine for you?

            And given that you believe in people staying within the ‘lines God created for them’ (whatever the heck those are – and your antecedents certainly didn’t stay within theirs), you should be pleased that they didn’t, otherwise the whole Jesus story wouldn’t have been exported and you’d still be dancing heathenly round a Maypole.

            You believe he’s coming back. If he comes back black as night, will you kneel? I asked you that before, and your chum, but have still to get a reply.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 5:16 pm #

            Galilee was an ethnic hodgepodge – including a Gaulic or Celtic remnant. Roman sources describe Jesus as fair, with reddish hair.

          • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

            “If Jesus had made his appearance in what is now Somalia, rather than Judea, would what he said have been less true for you….”

            Alba,
            Considering that Africans of that particular location and era did not have the…how shall we put it…advantage of the written word, how would we know? Word of mouth, handed down over 100 generations might tend to lose panache…gravitas…or the mantle of sacred luster( If you will).

            Jesus of Mogadishu? Maybe. The Great JuJu Under The Sea? without question.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 10:47 pm #

            So because my view diverges from the general one you think wishful thinking must be involved? Interesting. Well since Jesus did not appear in Somalia and is not a Somali I am clearly not the only one engaging in wishful thinking.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 7:25 am #

            EF

            Most of the people who passed on the original stories of Jesus couldn’t write either.

            My point is SSL’s hypocrisy. She chooses white supremacy over Jesus. And by inference, God.

            She claims that it doesn’t matter because Jesus didn’t actually come as a sub-Saharan African. But, in the terms of the myth itself, he could come back as one now. I’ve asked her (and the organ grinder) repeatedly if he did would they kneel before him.

            They can’t answer. Won’t answer. And you know why as well as I do. Hierarchy of values, with Christianity not, it would appear, at the top. If I were still a Christian, in the metaphysical sense, his colour wouldn’t matter to me.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 7:26 am #

            A poor attempt at deflection, SSL. But I feel for your dilemma.

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 1:48 pm #

            It’s not within your purview to speak for how I think or feel but I’m flattered to see that you have taken the liberty to do so. It’s not a deflection of any sort. You brought up a hypothetical Somali Jesus and I referred to that as wishful thinking. And here you say you feel for my dilemma and yet you characterize my dilemma as a White Supremacist dilemma so I guess it’s good to know that you empathize with that which you rail against so vehemently. And actually, how dare you insinuate that I am such a shallow person that if the Lord Himself incarnated as a Black Man that I would deny Him. I tire of your relentless aspersions against me. And even if Jesus were Black that doesn’t change the clear message of the scriptures that God created the races and nations for their distinct times and places. And it wouldn’t change the commandment to take care of your family and tribe first and foremost. But again, this is all myth to you so ultimately what is your point?

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 2:23 pm #

            SSL, you really need to switch on that sarcasm detector of yours occasionally. It would save words.

            But I’m delighted to know that you would kneel before Somali Jesus, should he come back as such. Or Chaz from Tchad. I don’t know why you didn’t say that the first time.

            I wonder if your accomplice feels the same way. It would be a wonderful and healing thing to behold anyway.

            I must have missed the commandment about taking care of your family and tribe first and foremost. It wasn’t mentioned in the version I was taught. Honouring your father and mother, yes, but putting your tribe before everyone else?

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0heq4hsFmkE

            Beautiful, isn’t it?

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

            “And even if Jesus were Black that doesn’t change the clear message of the scriptures that God created the races and nations for their distinct times and places. ”

            And even you know, in your heart of hearts, that all the races come from the same place.

            And that your antecedents didn’t stay within the lines you imagine God drew for them or you wouldn’t be where you are now.

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 1:26 pm #

            Yes Alba, thank you for affirming that the Lord created all of the nations and that all will bow to Him in the end. That includes you as well which you also know in your heart of hearts.

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

            You don’t give up with your presumptuous lecturing, do you, SSL?

            You go on endlessly about ‘lines’ you imagine ‘God’ drew, yet you never think it’s a problem that your ancestors got right out of their imagined lines and left you to be born in another people’s country. Grow up, for goodness’ sake.

          • Majella January 3, 2020 at 1:30 am #

            SSL:
            “ It’s not within your purview to speak for how I think or feel”

            Really. REALLY? I cannot recall how often you’ve told Alba & me what we ‘actually’ think. Generally you ‘feel’ that we ARE actually ‘racists’ (under your bullshit ‘compassionate racist meme) but just haven’t figured it out yet.

            Seriously, have you studied your own posts at all? They often start with some what you’re really saying is…’ followed by a bunch of wishful thinking baloney to complete a long, basically incoherent (but grammatically perfect) blurb for your very own ‘Audience of One’.

            Occasionally, Skorenzy will stoop to tickle your ego-needs and wax lyrical about your looming ‘goddess’ status. It’s amusing to watch you lap it up.

      • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 11:58 am #

        White people live paycheck-to-paycheck with a political understanding of our world that resembles a child’s belief in the tooth fairy. Five percent of white people have any savings but ‘everything from attempts at school integration to affirmative action (by any name) to “multiculturalism” to the latest innovations in “diversity and inclusion.’ you claim has been tried. You should hold tattooed pinks to the same standard.

        I’ll call your bullshit. By your logic you have tar baby being fifty years old and five years old at the same time. For fifty years you claim the same horse has been led to water and refused to drink. I say there are people who get it and people who don’t. It has nothing to do with color. Some are winners and some are losers and it is a racist that lumps a whole group together. As for people who don’t get it Jim, I’m afraid I have to tell you. Sometimes you are clueless.

        • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 11:59 am #

          And cruel but I am sure you would deny it.

          • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 12:10 pm #

            “a racist that lumps a whole group together.”

            “White people live paycheck-to-paycheck with a political understanding of our world that resembles a child’s belief in the tooth fairy. Five percent of white people have any savings but ‘everything from attempts at school integration to affirmative action (by any name) to “multiculturalism” to the latest innovations in “diversity and inclusion.’ you claim has been tried. You should hold tattooed pinks to the same standard.”

          • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

            Nice try SSL but now I call your bullshit, with facts.

            Most Americans Lack Savings Click Here

            That link was posted here las week and not by me. Now try and try and figure out what ‘RC’ might stand for.

          • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

            I’ll agree that having less than $20K in the kitty is not the same thing as having no savings at all.

            But to a person who saves it is.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 30, 2019 at 12:57 pm #

            You missed her point, namely that you are an Anti-White racist, even though White yourself. How fucked up is that? Very.

            You stereotyped an entire group after saying that people who do that are racist. Check it, mate. And Checkmate.

        • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:20 pm #

          Your belief in your own superiority reeks of cluelessness. Can’t you save your “truth” for the Huff Post and all the 5 year-olds there?

        • GhostOfHam December 30, 2019 at 5:30 pm #

          I love Jim’s fiction, but Jim has been possessed by his own antipodal demons, Strauss and Howe. His noodles are about right some of the time. His combinations of words remain witty, so I continue to read it.

          Anyway, all of us are in mostly not acting under common law. Most of us were born under and continue to act as voluntary 14th amendment citizen-slaves under administrative admiralty law, promulgated and inculcated by that family and relations of incorporated Washington. You and I have pledged allegiance to it.

          Do you think YOU are “The People”? Do you think the constitution was specifically created for you?

          That’s how it’s all putting us under so much stress. You think you are under one law, but you are actually acting in another.

          42 U.S. Code, 1981(a)
          (a) Statement of equal rights
          All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, AND SHALL BE SUBJECT TO LIKE PUNISHMENT, PAINS, PENALTIES, TAXES, LICENSES, AND EXACTIONS OF EVERY KIND, AND TO NO OTHER.

          Also, head on over to Jasun Horsley’s site. Listen to the podcasts and read his essays. After you do so, can you really say that the traumas we live with are just an unfortunate series of cyclical historical accidents?

        • debt December 30, 2019 at 7:58 pm #

          You’re rolling in it again, Dog-dude. I’m not sure where to even begin. A dog that needs to virtue signal… Now, how about that honest conversation about race?

      • Anon1970 December 30, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

        I agree with your observations.

      • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 7:56 pm #

        About $12 trillion spent since ’65 in an attempt to ‘even the score’s. Money down a rathole.

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 12:40 am #

        SSL – really, given your oft-expressed views on Blacks, Browns, Muslims and anyone else who doesn’t fit your rainbows & unicorns ideal society (under President for Life Skorenzy), I doubt you’d have much to contribute to that ‘honest conversation’, even if it was on offer.

        You even start your statement with a question…hardly declarative.

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 2:40 am #

          Yes, its a rhetorical question. What are my oft expressed views of Blacks, Browns, Muslims? I have mentioned what are in my view negative and positive traits before. What? You really think I believe Whites don’t have negative qualities? But bottom line, I have always said that each group deserves their own autonomy and homeland. I actually believe in diversity. Unlike people who believe diversity means diverse groups merge into one generic, standardized, Borg Race guided by a ruthlessly politically correct, Progressive Hive Mind.

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 3:56 am #

            SSL
            “ What are my oft expressed views of Blacks, Browns, Muslims? I”

            Seriously? Okay – I explain your views as they appear to people outside your whammy:

            “They can fuck off,”

            You can TRY to massage that into a “Oh, I’m all for diversity’ & ‘homeland ‘ bullshit all you like, but it’s plain racist. Stop kidding yourself it’s otherwise or that your Borg Mensch, Skorenzy, will reward you with Star Trek medals & long deep kisses.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 11:04 am #

            “They can fuck off” just doesn’t do justice to my viewpoints. Majella, you just don’t have a real understanding of what racism is. You think its a bad thing to be racist. I’m not surprised given your complete submersion in Wokesterism. Chica, racism is very normal. Of course there are healthy and unhealthy expressions just like anything else. To want the best for one’s race, including the space and resources needed to live is just normal. To be proud of one’s race is normal. Why does this bother you so much? I am beginning to think you may not be a big fan of diversity after all. Perhaps your view of the future of humanity resembles the South Park episode which showed the future of the human race. A generic, caramel colored, totally uniform race lacking any diversity at all and all speaking one language. A boring world in other words.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:22 pm #

            Borg kisses much sweeter than wine. And gold medals from which she can forge steel.

            Maj, we serve the Rainbow not you. Oh, the diversity of colors, each in its place. And sure, they merge into each other. I never claimed otherwise. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist as themselves: each in its purity can be defined as a certain frequency of light, a median in the spectrum. And there are higher colors we cannot see yet, our eyes not yet evolved enough to bear the beauty of the ultra-ultra violet. Only Sunny can see them….

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 7:50 pm #

            What a beautiful response. Majella, surely you prefer a world of many colors? I can’t imagine that you only prefer gray.

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

        @SSL

        I’m not sure what “honesty” has to do with understanding and wisdom, but it sure makes for an effective but probably disingenuous lead-in for a pushing a personal cognitive agenda.

        I have a theory. It is that black people and white people occupy the same ecological niche, a situation in nature that leads to varying degrees of competition dependent upon the particular set of complex conditions. Guess who established in the very beginning the competitive advantage. If you disagree then explain the nature of existence in the United States for all races in your own terms.

        In answer to your question, “why…?”, I would offer the obvious and simple observation by Gerald Celente; “When people have nothing to lose, they lose it.”

        This shit ain’t rocket science and it’s seldom the malarkey excreted by white people and black people alike. The inference and the more common outright declaration of the existence of evil are a sad expression of ignorance by poor white and black trash-thinkers.

        Of course, I could be wrong and I sure don’t claim to be right; I’m just tired of stories that are riddled with contradictions [aka illogical], of which virtually the entire comment section hereabouts seems to be comprised.

        imho

        ~toktomi~

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 9:36 pm #

          Yes, the racial situation in the US is obviously not ideal. History is what it is. Life is competition and conflict. And there are good and bad choices. Realizing that we cannot change the past or the laws of nature the most humane option for all parties is that each race have its own country. The powers that be however benefit from the way things are now so you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for my preferred solution. Social breakdown and escalating conflicts between groups over dwindling resources and space is more likely.

    • Daddyotis December 30, 2019 at 11:18 am #

      The clear reason that Baltimore’s murder rate has spiked in recent years is the city’s police’ response to being universally maligned and overly-scrutinized in the wake of the rise of BLM. Certainly there was some very real malfeasance on the part of some police officers’ conduct, and these instances should be responded to in kind. However, the point here is that, looking through the eyes of a Baltimore (or any big city’s) police officer, in the wake of being constantly placed under a microscope and facing potential firing or worse for making the slightest misstep, it is obvious that they are backing off in their enforcement efforts and the criminal element clearly senses this.

      • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 12:19 pm #

        Apparently there are elected officials in Seattle who are proposing that the PD be eliminated. This appeared as a story in the NYPost a few days ago. They’re saying the police are irredeemable and akin to the Klan. Purportedly, crime will disappear and any conflicts and violence would be handled by social workers — strategically deployed thru out the city — and the convening of ‘Peace Circles’ where any transgressions can be dealt with.

        I sh#t you not, CFNers.

        Brh

        • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 12:33 pm #

          Brh

          I wish you would leave a link. I do have esoteric knowledge about the situation and I need a link to sort out your delightful hyperbole from what I know.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 30, 2019 at 12:58 pm #

            Go to a Demonstration and read the signs. Check. Checkmate in one more post.

          • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

            K-Dog

            12/28/19

            Christopher Rufo

            ‘The Dangerous New Idea Inspiring Criminal Justice Activists’

            nypost.com

            Brh

          • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 3:39 pm #

            The article centered around Shaun Scott who tried to get elected using the race card. I’m glad he lost. Much ado about nothing.

            I am aware of issues the Mayor is having with SPD.

            People who squawk about police brutality here need to spend some time in LA. Being told to move before you get thumped is not police brutality. Show a Seattle police officer respect and you will get respect in return. Ask for trouble and you are likely to get it. The police job in Seattle is to allow everybody to go about their business in peace as long as they don’t bother other people. They have a mission statement.

          • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:26 pm #

            May we have a link to your “esoteric knowledge” please?

          • K-Dog December 30, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

            If esoteric knowledge had a link it would be on the dark web. Then if I gave it to you it would not be esoteric. So no can do.

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:12 am #

            Skorenzy

            “ Go to a Demonstration and read the signs.”

            Wow…I know how creative you are in your arguments, but offering what Demi signs say as ‘evidence’? I’d actually be quite interested in Nightowl’s take on this one.

            And declaring ‘checkmate’ still requires a concession, don’t get ahead of yourself!

          • Tate December 31, 2019 at 3:36 pm #

            The article mentioned three proponents of the proposal to abolish cops. I googled all three of them. All three are Negroes. Who coulda node?

          • Tate January 1, 2020 at 4:54 pm #

            Funny how easy it was to identify them as Negroes just by their pictures. Because race is merely a social construct according to K-dog, don’t you know.

          • Majella January 2, 2020 at 7:57 pm #

            hm

            No, identifying ones race by photo is a process fraught with risk.

            In your case (and many others hereabouts & in the WH), the place you go to in your mind when you see a photo of a black person is what is objectionable.

            That base perception then colours all your thoughts and dealing with that black person (if you just can’t avoid dealing with one on a personal level). It determines your actions, expectations & reactions.

            That’s okay if the person in question turns out to be an arsehole, but that can’t be judged by what information you get from an image. And THAT Image is framed as well: is it a graduation pic, a marriage, or a mugshot?

        • Epicur December 30, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

          More popcorn ordered.

        • fugeguy December 30, 2019 at 6:29 pm #

          How many generations have the leftists controlled Seattle?

          Who are they blaming for their results these days?

          • David Webb December 31, 2019 at 8:59 pm #

            Besides the cops? Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and of course Donald Trump. Which reminds me, it’s been at least a week since Wa State AG Bob Ferguson has sued Donald Trump.

        • sophia December 30, 2019 at 7:20 pm #

          It’s things like that which would bring on vigilante justice.

          • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 7:52 pm #

            Absent the police, there would be a definite power vacuum on the streets, most likely filled by gangs.

            I can only imagine what these ‘Peace Circles’ are all about.

            Brh

          • Majella January 2, 2020 at 8:00 pm #

            Marlin

            I can’t resist -Sorry- but about all I can about that one is

            “‘No shit, Sherlock?”

        • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:33 pm #

          BRH,
          This emasculation or removal of the police department was a constant mantra in the Peoples Republics of Berkeley, in the mid to late 60’s….

          It would be an interesting, albeit short, bit of street theatre if they attempted this in Seattle.

        • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 1:44 pm #

          @BRH

          OMG! Like the rich and almost rich are going to disband their security forces [aka law enforcement]…

          jesus h. bullcrap on the pump handle, Clancy, people will repeat anything, i swear

          Christine Gregoire said one time during some very tense budgetary times in WA, when education, child care, etc were being thrown under the bus, to the effect, “you’re not going to touch my state police.” – and the privileged breathed the proverbial combined sigh of relief

          if not pertinent to anything in the Universe, it’s at least thought provoking; kind of like Grand Theft Auto

          or so it seems to…

          ~toktomi~

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:07 am #

        ‘Homicide -Life on the Streets’….’The Wire’ – both gritty portrayals of reality in Baltimore, and NOT what you imagine from reading agended websites.

    • snagglepuss December 30, 2019 at 11:20 am #

      With 800 military bases in more than 150 countries around the world one imagines some money could be saved to apply to policing at home.

      A wonderful analysis JHK, including your fifth major paragraph on ‘social justice’ which is as courageous as it is accurate.
      For the record, Crimea was part of Russia before Krushchev gave it away in 1954. Some say he may have been drunk when he did so. A good documentary which can be found on YouTube is ‘Ukraine on Fire’. Sheds a lot of light on what happened recently in Ukraine.
      Thank you, Jim. You are a gem.

      • abbybwood December 30, 2019 at 11:49 am #

        William Engdahl posted an article detailing leaked memos from George Soros regarding his corrupt financial dealings in Ukraine.

        I wondered at the time of the U.S. orchestrated coup there why on Earth American citizens were being placed in high government positions in Ukraine:

        http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52773.htm

        And all of this is just the tip of the criminal iceberg.

        Imagine what the American people would do if we had a REAL Constitutional Department of Justice with serious prosecutions of the elite criminals going down?!

        I am afraid, considering Barr even bought into the “Epstein committed suicide” B.S., that we will see no true justice in our lifetimes.

        This is beyond depressing.

      • Anon1970 December 30, 2019 at 1:41 pm #

        Krushchev did not “give Ukraine away”. In 1954, both Russia and Ukraine were part of the USSR. Until recently, there was no land link between Crimea and Russia so it would have been easier administratively to have Crimea be part of Ukraine than part of Russia.

        • snagglepuss December 30, 2019 at 5:04 pm #

          I did not post that he gave Ukraine away. See the reference to Crimea and you can google the facts. You would be well served to view the documentary ‘Ukraine on Fire’. Strap yourself in for truth.

    • Minnie Van Horne December 30, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

      Apparently when the data is examined, if one could remove the violent gun-related crime committed by POCs, the United States would have statistical parity with Switzerland in this rather important social metric.

      Imagine life in central Detroit or Baltimore being no more threatening than a stroll through Geneva or Lausanne.

      Maybe Mr. Kunstler will turn out to be right about the President building refugee settlements 50 miles south of the US border next year. At least this may cut down on new arrivals by members of MS-13.

      As for reforming the peeps who currently make our cities war zones, we will likely continue to indulge in magical thinking, as we have for several decades now.

      • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:43 pm #

        “As for reforming the peeps”

        Minnie,
        Reprise our Hosts mention of 50 years and treasure spent.

        Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it….

        All manner of half-assed programs have been found wanting. The only paradigm that was proven successful by actual experience to keep an unruly, poorly civilized element of the population in check was the…

        I won’t tell you, but I might leave a Klu….

        (This is in no way a recommendation, but rather an observation….)

        • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:17 am #

          EF

          Cheap shot. – and your disavowal rings extremely hollow. And you know it….

          I can’t begin to describe the disgust that post engenders in me, and, I’m guessing, quite a number of others hereabouts.

          • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 10:16 pm #

            Majella,
            Consider that the terrorist tactics dung the 20th century, by the clan, were successful, but at an unacceptable cost.

            Considering the rehabilitation of the culture in question. Rehabilitation requires a desire to do so on the part of the minor culture.. Lack of that desire requires force to be successful…midnight basketball an African American President, and diversity hiring notwithstanding…..as might full segregation require force.

            Better minds than yours or mine have attempted to mitigate this issue. Are not several Trillions of dollars and three generations of well-meaning programs enough? Do we have resources to continue in this unproductive vein?

            I do not understand the reference to a cheap shot…nor do I understand your disgust.

            Please enlighten me.

            Please.

          • Majella January 1, 2020 at 8:58 pm #

            EF

            Please – you’ll need a define ‘successful’.

            Also the description of “ …an unruly, poorly civilized element of the population” to my mind describes the white supremacists who wreaked mayhem – as you correctly describe it, ‘terrorism’ – more accurately than the first & second generation of post-slavery dirt-poor share-croppers that you think ‘needed to be kept in check’

            Then your hollow disavowal of the KKK after you’d written above.

            It’s beyond me that you cannot see just how racist this post was.

          • Majella January 1, 2020 at 9:29 pm #

            Turns out I was wrong – none disgusted enough to call you out on it. Being in a minority of one doesn’t make one wrong, though.

          • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 10:14 pm #

            Majella,
            Well, apparently we have different views on what is racist, and what is not.

            Let me begin. A “racist” is a person that will make value judgments of one person differently than another based solely by race, without consideration for the character of either.

            You will notice that jokes involving race, speaking generally of stereotypes, and cultural observations do not apply.

            I am prepared to defend my definition

            Your turn.

            Oh, and what is a “hollow disavowal” Must there be drama? Virtue signaling? Blood?

          • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 10:27 pm #

            Majella,
            Successful in that it kept what can only be defined as a corrosive culture within the bounds of propriety.

          • Majella January 2, 2020 at 12:56 am #

            EF

            You’ll notice that I didn’t call YOU a racist – I referred only to your post and what it expressed.

            As to your definition of ‘racism’ – in my view it requires no correction, explanation or nuance. Our definitions are identical, which is why I can’t see that you can’t see it, yet.

          • devon44 January 3, 2020 at 11:07 am #

            Christ. It’s impossible to have a real conversation with a blue Kool Aid drinker. All they do is try to police your language and talk about how your words make them feel bad. It’s impossible to communicate in this way.

        • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 9:00 am #

          “The only paradigm that was proven successful…”

          If you haven’t read “A Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark you might find it interesting. He explores the domestication (my term) of the population of Britain in the Middle Ages. While most of his thesis concerns differential economic success, he does touch on the effect of certain more drastic measures to remove the less self restrained from the gene pool.

          Very controversial, and most of academia reacted with the same disgust as Majella, plus the usual mobbing and name-calling.

          I recall from studies of history elsewhere one of the early kings being lauded for raising the age limit for eligibility for the noose to 15 years of age – an enlightened, progressive move if there ever was one.

        • Minnie Van Horne December 31, 2019 at 9:48 am #

          Elysianfield,
          A Klu…hmm. Say, you must be a friend of my third cousin Jasper. He’s a lovely fellow, but you must tell him Minnie is very, very peeved with him because he never calls, not even at Christmas!

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:25 pm #

          Discretion is the better part of valor, eh? We need a new Clan or Clans. Secret ones that speak Gaelic or Basque – that cannot be infiltrated. No mail order applications!

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

        @MVH

        “…the peeps who currently make our cities war zones…”

        Well, as long as you and I are the good guys and those assholes are the bad guys, we can be certain of where the problem lays even if we can’t eliminate them just yet, eh?

        more rocket science

        i think

        ~toktomi~

        ps it’s satire or sarcasm, minnie; take your pick

    • 100th Avatar December 30, 2019 at 5:33 pm #

      Tijuana had 2,700 “reported” murders.

      Huge swaths of Central America and southern North America are plagued by violent crime and murder.

      In these places, the elite and wealthy live in protected oases surrounded by gang controlled hovels and shantytowns.

      As the wealth disparity continues in the US, Brazil’s present will be our near future.

      Many US cities and localities are unable to enforce let alone prosecute, let alone incarcerate many crimes. There are simply too many.

      The US has failed to enforce immigration law violations, there are simply too many, and so many that the public sentiment has turned.

      The momentum gained from a damaged state transitioning to failed is unstoppable.

      It’s just a matter of time. Choose your favela wisely.

      • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 9:19 am #

        “It’s just a matter of time. ”

        IMO, the only thing that can, and likely will, prevent your version of the future is a sufficient reduction in population. Whether or not that reduction is attained relatively peacefully is the real question – I am doubtful.

        Barring nuclear war or Disease X (possibly a weapon of war) the future could certainly look like your version.

        • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 2:03 pm #

          @Epicur

          plan B

          GRID DOWN

          “…’night, Grace.”

          ~toktomi~

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 1:57 pm #

        @100

        hear, hear

        but immigration is a drop in the bucket full of more nastiness than can be conceived by the common mind

        so says

        ~toktomi~

    • Ishabaka January 3, 2020 at 9:23 am #

      Baltimore, and her mayor, made it VERY CLEAR that it did not want to be policed in the 2015 riots. Since, then, the police have wisely followed a “hands off” policy. The citizens of Baltimore are getting exactly what they asked for.

  4. sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 11:03 am #

    No mention of the word ‘faith’ in your blog Jim. Without faith and belief in some Higher Creative Power(s) at work behind-the-scenes, guiding the destiny and welfare of this planet there is nothing for us but anxiety, pessimism, and despair. If such be the case I would just as soon pull the plug on my computer and retire to a monastery to spend the remainder of my days in solitude communing with nature…

    • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:23 am #

      But remember the lesson that Christ taught us SBS. We must take up the burden of our cross and go forth into the world. We should not retreat from the world as Christ did not retreat. The cold, harsh, and cruel world needs more and not less inspiration. Therefore retreating to a monastery may serve to heal the Self but will do little to go toward healing the world.

      • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 11:26 am #

        I meant if I didn’t have faith I would so retire. I’m still in the game because of my faith…

        • RIB December 30, 2019 at 11:58 am #

          I am too, my friend

        • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

          So people without faith retire to monasteries? I’m confused.

        • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 1:10 pm #

          “I meant if I didn’t have faith I would so retire. I’m still in the game because of my faith…”

          That may be true for you SBS. I’m still in the game despite having let go of mine. People are not all the same, and we don’t all need a divine nudge to make us want good things for people and for the incredible planetary habitat on which we all depend.

          • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 2:58 pm #

            I think the divine nudge, in your case Alba, is more on an unconscious level. You just call it something else…

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 8:04 pm #

            If you say so, sunburst. 🙂

      • Janos Skorenzy December 30, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

        Not necessarily. The monasteries of the Dark Ages after the Fall of Rome became seats of learning and culture – and the monks went forth to teach and heal.

        The science fiction classic, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” projects the same paradigm into the coming dark age.

        • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

          Sounds like a good read, I’ll check it out…

          • SW December 30, 2019 at 3:58 pm #

            Another good read is The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner written in the early 70s. He was British but this novel is set in Colorado and is about the effects of pollution, describes people living in gated communities with private guards, and the rich buying their food from high-end specialty markets. He stated in an interview when asked about some of the situations (which seemed at the time far-fetched) that everyone of them had come from an item he’d seen in a newspaper. He only projected them into the future and expanded them.

    • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

      I should also say faith in a Higher Power and Providence, if it is genuine, has its roots in direct personal experience (some form of objective contact with transcendental realities, or experience of higher states of consciousness). Faith not rooted in direct personal experience is at best dogma…

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:20 am #

        Like LSD?

    • zekesdad December 30, 2019 at 12:32 pm #

      I seems that you have no real understanding of people who spend their lives in monasteries. They spend their days communing with God, not nature. They worship the creator not his creation.

      • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 12:42 pm #

        There is no dichotomy between God and nature. Communing with nature can bring us to the realization of the holiness of all things, and thus closer to God and transcendental realities…

        • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 12:50 pm #

          Communing with nature can get you poison ivy, bee stings, bug bites, etc. God made a rough world.

          • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

            Yes there is a downside to everything in this world it seems, but why consistently focus upon it? Why not accent the positive over the negative?

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 1:14 pm #

            “Communing with nature can get you poison ivy, bee stings, bug bites, etc. ”

            Just as well I don’t share your gaslighting tendencies, hm, or I’d be speculating on your anger and bitterness!

            Bad Christmas? 🙂

            I hope we (you and I) may have a better New Year.

          • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 3:17 pm #

            I see “gaslighting” has replaced “spurious” as the word of the month. I can’t wait to see what next month will hold.

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 8:06 pm #

            No, hm. Gaslighting is a very specific tactic, in which you indulged quite shamelessly on the previous thread.

            And here was I trying to be nice to you in a seasonal manner. 🙂

          • hmuller December 30, 2019 at 11:29 pm #

            GA, accusing me of gaslighting is your version of being nice? Any time I use a little humor, you say I’m gaslighting. I’m not sure you define the term the same way I do. Here’s an online definition

            “gaslighting” – manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.

            I must be Hannibal Lecter if my words are so sly and powerful I can get people to question their own sanity. Oh, how I wish.

            I’m really not angry or bitter, but your stalking me, popping up from around corners and whispering “gaslighting” is beginning to make me concerned for your mental well-being.

            Ok , how’s that for an example? LOL

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:23 am #

            Yeah. GA!

            It sounds like hmuller is feeling what it’s like to be ‘gaslit’!

            Quit it, you minx!

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 5:59 am #

            “GA, accusing me of gaslighting is your version of being nice? ”

            Stop pretending to miss the point, hm.

            Being nice was wishing that you and I would have a better year. And the smiley.

            Gaslighting (a word our host has used a number of times himself, in fact rather more often that I have) means in this case, as in popular parlance, replying to a post that has no emotional content by making up nonsense about the emotional state of the person making the post. It’s very well known that this tactic is a favourite used by men against women. Not entirely, but mostly.

            As in ‘it’s all in your mind’, it’s a fantasy of yours’, ‘you’re crazy’ (said every cheating man ever for example).

            Or, in this case, you are ‘angry and bitter’.

            Deal with the post the next time.

            All I did this time was turn your gaslighting exactly back on you, to make a point. Get over yourself, hm.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 6:02 am #

            ” but your stalking me, ”

            Funniest bit yet, since you jumped on a post that was nothing whatever to do with you, to put in your gaslighting tuppence-worth.

            Now, maybe back to that better new year?

          • hmuller December 31, 2019 at 7:52 am #

            OK GA, I see there’s a subtle difference in degree between our definitions of “gaslighting”. But I don’t see how my comment about the bug bites met your criteria. I wasn’t referencing sunburst’s emotional state at all. But never mind; it’s not important.

            Congratulations on your new leader. Boris and Donald are like twins separated at birth; together again at last.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 8:15 am #

            “But I don’t see how my comment about the bug bites met your criteria. I wasn’t referencing sunburst’s emotional state at all. But never mind; it’s not important.”

            It was nothing to do with sunburst’s emotional state – or sunburst at all. He mentioned communing with nature and you responded with a total downer about bug bites etc. That amused me because you’d made a totally nonsensical comment about me having a bad Christmas because ‘my comments were full of anger and bitterness’, which was, I repeat, tripe, as nothing I actually said demonstrated either of those emotions.

            I was merely sending a joke back in your direction about whoever or whatever might have pissed in your cornflakes over Christmas to give you such a bleak view of ‘communing with nature’.

            It seems to me that this is all self-evident, but clearly it wasn’t to you. Fine.

            As you say, none of it important. I hope you had a good Christmas and hope you have an equally good Hogmanay (in Scotland it is technically not appropriate to wish people a Happy New Year until after ‘the bells’).

            Since ’tis still the season to be jolly, I don’t feel the need to respond to your extraneous barb about the Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and hope we may YET have a less fraught conversation in the new year, when I also hope you and your friend will have stopped flinging calumnious insults in my direction about being paid to be here.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 8:59 am #

            The ‘the’ before Tweedledum is an editing error, not an extrapolation from ‘the Donald’. 🙂

          • hmuller December 31, 2019 at 1:19 pm #

            Ga, did you just wish me many hogs? That’s sweet.. And may your table be piled high with haggis.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 2:00 pm #

            I merely wished you a pleasant evening on this passing over into 2020, hm. I meant it. I don’t think my husband is into haggis – we’re just being boring and having a chicken for dinner while Princes St prepares for its superlative international partying without us. The dog will in any case need to be intensively calmed during the fireworks as she tries to escape by digging through the floor to the Antipodes.

            I count my blessings, one being that WhatsApp bizarrely lets me talk to my daughter in Singapore (where it’s already 2020) at no charge whatsoever and with no advertisements. This is a small mercy in a mercenary society.

            I’ll try to insinuate a haggis into the proceedings on 25th Jan., although I’m not big on that celebration either. I like the earthy wisdom of some of his poems though.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 30, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

          Yes, surely such Beauty is no accident – nor the ability to recognize and commune with it. Glory to the Maker and his Works!

          • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 11:17 am #

            he made darkies?

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:31 pm #

            Oh yes! The better to highlight our glory!

            As Whitman said in his “Leaves of Grass”, they too will Attain someday. If we still exist, we’ll be ever further along as well. What are the Stars but the campfires of those who have gone before as the Indians say?

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 10:44 am #

            “Oh yes! The better to highlight our glory!”

            Got a citation for that?

      • sophia December 30, 2019 at 7:27 pm #

        The creation IS the creator. The universe is the body of God.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 12:39 am #

          The body of God. Exactly. Now what about the mind, heart, and soul?

          Pantheism – God is incarnate in the universe AS the universe. As Santayana said, the universe gains nothing by calling it big names and god is utterly diminished. And what of the faithful? If the universe was so great, there would have been no need for a religion to begin with. The universe isn’t great. Watch animal shows on TV or go out and watch the bitter struggle for survival in the jungle you call your lawn. Insect hunts insect. Ants go to war against other ants. Wasps raid bee hives and the workers die defending their home. Etc.

          PanENtheism: God is incarnate as the the universe but is also transcendental. Now we are cooking with gas….

          • sophia January 1, 2020 at 8:52 pm #

            Janos,

            I think I am a panentheist. Everything comes from God. There can not be anything which is separate from God. God created the universe but from what? From himself. There is no other answer.
            A human being has a body, and that body has a subtle energy field which is the consciousness and the life force. The life force energy of God is the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit. God’s body is the physical universe. It doesn’t make the universe great per se any more than your fingernails are your greatness. The subtle energies of God pervade the universe and fill all things. There is no emptiness, no vacuum. It is filled with energy.
            God has a mind. Christianity calls if the Word.
            I differentiate between soul and spirit. With humans, it is our souls which are sick. Christianity aims at soul purification.

        • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 3:07 am #

          The creation is only possible because of the creator, and the creator preceded the creation. I agree with you in the sense that the universe reflects or is a projection of the creator and is thus a part of the creator. But the creation is transitory too. Governed by the natural laws and cycles of birth, life, and death. The creator supersedes the universe and is above the cycles and seasons of the finite universe. All creation will eventually dissolve and pass away but the creator was before all of this and will be here forever more.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 8:04 am #

            Who made the creator?

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 10:38 am #

            Didn’t you say that we should embrace the mystery on the last thread? Well this would be the time no? Some things are left to mystery and thus faith. Similar to the leap of faith you have made to conclude that there is no deity or deities. As you have asked me who made the creator, I ask you who made the big bang?

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:33 pm #

            A Master speaks.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:34 pm #

            Alba: Even Aristotle talked of an Unmoved Mover.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 1:40 pm #

            Seems to me you can pick and choose, SSL. You castigate people for lack of faith when it’s not lack of faith at all, it’s just that they don’t accept your story, having spent twice your lifetime thinking about it. I don’t have a story to offer you. I’m way more content with the mystery and the wonder than you are.

            I don’t know that any consciousness made the big bang or that there was any consciousness before or a long time after the big bang. But I know that talking about a creator makes no real sense unless you can explain how the creator was created or created itself (out of what?).

            So yes, embrace the mystery and stop telling people the world will never sort itself out unless it embraces your truth, which is just a stab in the dark.

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 1:48 pm #

            “Alba: Even Aristotle talked of an Unmoved Mover.”

            I know, Janos. I studied political philosophy, among other political disciplines, as an undergraduate and we became mildly acquainted, although it was a l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g time ago.

            People have talked of a lot of things. Aristotle didn’t have the answer any more than you do. Maybe there’s no answer. Maybe there isn’t even a question.

            I prefer to concentrate on the practical: main aim minimising distress and suffering, because I can see that with my own eyes, and maintaining a planetary home we can live on, whoever is left of us. Let the mystery take care of itself.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 5:33 pm #

            We need the Mystery – even to make the world a better place. How else will people be willing to deny themselves and voluntarily make the necessary sacrifices. The Great Pyramid was built by volunteers and a small corps of professional builders for example.

            You don’t? Perhaps, but that just means you a blue egg or an odd duck. As our Washington said, only highly educated people, strangely formed, can be good without the belief in God.

          • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 7:20 pm #

            Yes we do need the mystery. And we need to be part of something greater than ourselves. Most people do that is. And those who don’t either don’t have the capacity for it or have transcended the need for it. If there is no greater meaning to life besides pursuing one’s on needs and will and that worldview is fully embraced then it seems to be a recipe for anarchy and little cooperation. Since the beginning all societies have searched for answers and meaning. Thus you have culture and religion. You’re denying the existence of this natural desire for answers to the mysteries of life that is within human nature. And nature abhors vaccums so various groups are going to be asserting that their answers and reasons are the closest to the truth. Again, human nature.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 8:13 am #

            Why are the two of you pretending to be dense? I embrace the mystery. The mystery is wonderful. I am part of something bigger than me – how could I not be?

            Your insistence on your own rightness and everyone else’s wrongness is rather sad. And small.

            GA: I prefer to concentrate on the practical: main aim minimising distress and suffering, because I can see that with my own eyes, and maintaining a planetary home we can live on, whoever is left of us.

            SSL:If there is no greater meaning to life besides pursuing one’s on needs and will and that worldview is fully embraced then it seems to be a recipe for anarchy and little cooperation.

            I guess you just can’t read the words you see in front of you. I wasn’t talking about my distress and suffering, but those of that entire entity which is greater than me.

            Do you want a badge or something?

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 1:09 pm #

            No, you think that life and consciousness are just dead matter. How boring and sad. And yes, it is a mystery (small m) how anyone could think this way. I suppose trying to get in with the right people explains it. And that means believing whatever the BBC says.

            Poor JK, eh? She tried to be too cool for school by revisioning her characters as gay. Probably would have made Harry into Dumbledore’s catamite in time – but her time has run out. She ran afoul the Gnostics by defending a woman who said there were just two sexes. Now she has been labeled a “terf” or trans-exclusionary radical feminist – an enemy of the people.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

            Janos

            Why do you get so desperate you talk nonsense that’s all over the shop?

            “So, you think that life and consciousness are just dead matter. How boring and sad.”

            No, just foolish. Which is why I don’t think any such thing. How could life and consciousness be dead matter? What does that even mean?

            “I suppose trying to get in with the right people explains it. And that means believing whatever the BBC says.”

            Getting in with the right people? What mad fantasies go on in that head of yours, really? And who do you imagine would give a flying fuck what I think anyway? Discussing reality with you is like knitting fog.

            Leaving aside the fact that you are not a fly on my wall and have no idea what I watch or what I read, why would you think the BBC has a position on the finer points of consciousness? Is that position bolstered by its inclusion of the long-running ‘Songs of Praise’ in its schedule, along with The Moral Maze? Or is the BBC just confused?

            JK doesn’t seem like poor anything to me. She seems like a very decent person, from the little I’ve seen. She appears to be pretty grounded and is rather more enlightened than you are on the biological reality of homosexuality. Perhaps she has a real but unremarkable gay family member somewhere like quite a few of us.

            Including a number of well known previously anti-gay Republicans who were led to revise their views when family found its rightful place above bigotry. Even including Newt Gingrich!

            JK isn’t daft. She knows there’s no contradiction whatsoever between accepting that homosexuality is perfectly normal for a small percentage of the population, and standing up for someone’s right to say that they don’t consider a transwoman the same as a biological woman or a transman the same as a biological man. Germaine Greer thinks exactly the same.

            If it weren’t that the idea of having anything to do with Twitter strikes me as insanity, I’d have been tempted to sign up to give her my support.

            Your desperation is showing in your need to incorporate all your multi-directed arrows in one big mish-mash of an ‘attack’.

            Poor lad.

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 2:17 pm #

            Alba who is trying to tell whom who is right here? You jumped into the conversation abruptly asking me who made the creator. No one was asserting to you a specific view or belief. You jumped into the conversation to request what my belief was. And yet you accuse me and Janos of asserting that our views are the correct ones. And yet, I see none if that here. Just an exchange of views on a topic which we all know you despise. No one is seeking approval or a badge. The more interesting question for me is why it upsets you so that we have views different from yours? And what makes you think we are not also very much interested in eliminating as much of the suffering and distress around us as we can? Why would we not be interested in maintaining our planetary home? The assumptions and presumptions are dizzying.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

            SSL, I ignore 99% of your comments. The pair of you wax lyrical on your pet subject endlessly without me making the slightest comment or wanting to.

            So I added ‘who made the creator?’ to the conversation in entirely logical fashion – so what? It’s a point that’s been made many times. It’s part of the conversation, whether you like it or not.

            “Why would we not be interested in maintaining our planetary home?”

            Where did I say you wouldn’t be?

            “The assumptions and presumptions are dizzying.”

            Really, my presumptions are dizzying but you can cope with Janos telling me what I believe, including that life and consciousness are just ‘dead matter’? Why don’t you challenge him when he says things like that?

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

            And it’s not a topic I ‘despise’. I find it fascinating and have spent a whole lot of time reading around it. I continue to do so.

            Here’s the one I’m reading now – I’d recommend it to anyone like yourself who likes to impose a reductionist view of life on anyone who doesn’t believe in deities.

            Raymond Tallis is a gem. And a gerontologist. There’s a consciousness that’s the polar opposite of ‘dead matter’.

            https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/mystery-of-being-human-raymond-tallis-essays-nhs-review

            And if you’re as interested in the whole healthcare quagmire as anyone living in the US should be, I can heartily recommend Hippocratic Oath: Medicine and its Discontents as well.

          • sophia January 1, 2020 at 8:56 pm #

            SSL,

            I agree with all you say. All material things pass away. But just as we reincarnate, God will renew or make anew a body when this universe dissipates. As above, so below. Yes, the creator supersedes the physical universe.

          • sophia January 1, 2020 at 9:03 pm #

            GA,

            The fact that something exists needs explanation. It’s impossible for a physical universe to create itself. For matter to pop into existence from a state of true nothingness. The question of who created God is a nonquestion. God is obviously in a different category than atoms and molecules, which cannot create themselves. Who created the Big Bang is exactly the right question.
            God exists in an uncreated state because that is the only logical answer to the arisal of the universe. God is self existent. The self existent is its own category. Not easy to understand of course, but it is the only answer.

          • sophia January 1, 2020 at 9:11 pm #

            Green Alba,

            I wonder if you understand why he says your view is that your consciousness is dead matter. If there is nothing transcendent, if all your consciousness is gone with the body, then your consciousness is just a temporary flux of atoms. Some atheist materialist types indeed consider the consciousness to be a delusion, because it does not persist but is just a phenomenon of energy and chemicals and atoms. That is not what in philosophy is called real.

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 7:25 am #

            sophia

            I know it is difficult for religious people not to patronise non-religious people, who just ‘can’t see’, but I wonder how you think throwing in ‘not easy to understand’ and ‘I wonder if you understand why he says your view is that your consciousness is dead matter’ come over? I was a Christian for almost twice as long as SSL has been alive. I’ve recently read a few books by people who have travelled the same path as I have – good people, not nasty cynics. They include the former Bishop of Edinburgh. They’re not stupid.

            Re your first post, the God proposition is a theory. I’m not even saying your theory is wrong, but it’s just a theory, and there are other theories, put forward by cleverer people than you and I, to whom you’d be unlikely to use the phrases above.

            https://www.livescience.com/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

            Some people need certainty. Others of us spend our lives reconciling our ‘wish for certainty with our other instinctive or well thought-out beliefs (that there exists neither certainty in all things nor security in anything, pretty much).

            As I say, I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that your theory competes with other theories. Ya’ pays yer money…

            Regarding the Biblical God, again, it’s a matter of choice. Those who find it a comfort are as well embracing what they find there; those who find it a source of fear or who just come to a conclusion of sincere disbelief may choose to leave the metaphysical bits alone and take other things from it, like human wisdom, poetry and even ritual.

            The remainder of your second post would be better aimed at someone who’s inclined towards ‘scientism’ rather than ‘science’, which wouldn’t be me. Aimed at me it is merely a straw man.

            I’d recommend Tallis to you too, sophia. It would help get you out of the mindset where the opposite of God has to be materialism and atoms.

          • sophia January 2, 2020 at 12:14 pm #

            Oh, Green Alba,

            I nearly lost the whole answer I wrote to you and when I got it back and posted it, it went to the bottom somewhere. Which is just as well as I only get 3 iterations of the reply button.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

      @sunburst

      ya, good luck with that sh/\t

      ~toktomi~

  5. Ron Anselmo December 30, 2019 at 11:04 am #

    Jim – Thanks for the commentary, this past year, and thoughts on the year ahead. Your work is always thought-provoking and always appreciated. Wishing you continued success in all your endeavors in the year ahead.

    All the best,

    Ron

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    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  6. wet dog December 30, 2019 at 11:05 am #

    “Where anything goes and nothing matters.”

    The recent tagline from all the spam LinkedIn emails I get is:
    “It’s not What you know, it’s Who you know.”

    Doesn’t that sum up the phoniness of this entire US culture. It’s not your knowledge and skills, it’s not working in a meritocracy, it’s all about ass-kissing. No wonder our products and services are so dismal.

    Thanks, Jim, for the forecast. I can hardly disagree with any of it – how long can the money printing keep this delusion running? One request: how about a review of the Joker film? It brought up the topics you often speak about, specifically the alienation of people in this society we’ve produced. I think it touched a cord with the masses, this sense of alienation and abandonment, lack of family, cohesion, trust among people. The problem is, the movie showed there may be no solution to this, except riots and implosion.

    Ok, I have to take care of my ducks. They’re the most sane people I know.

    Dog– I did see “The Joker” movie a month ago. It was unsparingly dark, impressively so, depicting the qualities of American life that are making us collectively insane. For sure not a feel-good flick. But suited perfectly for this time and place. — JHK Admin

    • benr December 30, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      I have seen that ass kissing meme play out personally.
      I’m an IT guy contractor with 16 years helping people out.
      Never said no to anyone always fixed everything that comes along.
      New girl comes in kisses ass for two years gets hired from a contracting status to a high paying job with benefits and retirement.
      Almost walked out the door the day after they hired her.
      This women lied on her time sheet and her experience as well as treated anyone who could not help her get hired on like crap but management needed help she dropped everything and everyone to assist them.
      Some people play the game and others like me just show up do the job and go home.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 30, 2019 at 2:51 pm #

        Sometimes it’s figuring out the rules of the game, Ben, and whether you want to play. I recall the quote: you can choose to be somebody, or do something. She chose to be somebody. You chose to do something.

      • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

        Better hope she doesn’t become a manager. Or, rather, the classic female manager.

        Your days of putting in honest time and then clocking off will likely be numbered — unless you change your mind about playing the game.

        • benr December 31, 2019 at 10:09 am #

          Ah you got the rub on how she was hired.
          By a queer women pretending to be a man whom she flirted with for some two years. I suspect this lady actually dawns a pair of rubber nuts underneath her pants suit.

          This manager hates men and does not pretend to be fair.
          One of the absolute worst managers I have had the misfortune to fall under.
          Our first meeting with her she threw the door open and stalked in upon witnessing this I literally started laughing at her as she walked in. I couldn’t help myself it was so comical.
          To say that started a bad relationship would be an understatement.
          Lucky for me every IT person they hire to replace someone who leaves is even more lazy and incompetent than the last which over all makes me look pretty good.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 2:12 pm #

      @wet dog

      I LUV movies.

      Joker, a lot of hoopla over nothing, being drug out by the ho’s of Tinseltown. It might resonate with the recent or soon-to-be have-nots but for the rest of us, it’s just the way shit is, business as usual.

      And then there is the impossible-to-watch Jaoquin plus that nerve-grating cough-laugh that he was made to repeat throughout the movie.

      Grade: D-; pile of crap

      ~toktomi~

    • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 9:02 am #

      As many would attest to, the funny thing about the Linked-in tagline is that most of the people in one’s LI network are not people one even knows.

  7. Daddyotis December 30, 2019 at 11:06 am #

    “Our country is caught in a matrix of self-destructive rackets and the common denominator is the immersive dishonesty we have given ourselves permission to practice. In ethics and daily conduct, we’re nothing like the country that came out of World War Two. Our national maxim these days is anything goes and nothing matters.“

    Bingo! If anything has been consistent and unchanging in your year’s worth of commentary, Jim, it’s been the ethos above. I always wonder as I get older and my society becomes more obscenely ridiculous and depraved whether I’m just falling into the “old-fogey-ism” that has plagued every generation before me: that I’ve lost pace with society’s progression and start making comments like “Back when I was a boy, things were better”, and “This county’s going to hell in a handbasket”, and “Your grandfather would be turning over in his grave if he heard the music kids these days are listening to”.

    Is it just the usual generational grumps I’m feeling, or is this the real thing: have we finally reached peak insanity? I hesitate to claim the latter, but it is difficult for me to imagine a culture becoming more whackadoodle (sorry,…meant progressive). I love reading Jim’s take on the state of things on CFN, as I do believe he’s got it dialed in. In the meantime, I’ll pass my time observing the 4th turning in real time.

    • Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

      I know what you mean, Dad.
      But then I look at what young people’s lives are like today, and I just don’t see them as having the opportunities or enjoyment of life that we had. I’m not talking about money.

      Are kids these days even listening to music?
      I have nothing against the various genres of pop, I am not stuck in the past that way, but it seems to me what we have today is corporate stars singing formulaic, synthetic imitation music. I turn on the radio, and I hear old stuff, or some new stuff where you can’t even recognize the artist.

      • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

        There are plenty of good, honest and very talented artists out there in all genres of music. The problem is that they do not fit in with the agenda pushed by the money power.

        • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 9:06 am #

          Most don’t. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid the ones that are pushed.

    • abbybwood December 30, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

      I am afraid it is worse than peak insanity.

      We are also witnessing peak stupidity and a complete lack of intellectual curiosity in society.

      Have you ordered anything lately at a restaurant, especially to take out?

      Large shake ordered, small shake delivered. Extra ketchup ordered, no ketchup. I went back into the place to make things right and the guy looked at me like he was stoned. I’m not kidding. (He probably was).

      The stupid is everywhere here (L.A.). Driving, supermarkets, department stores. Half the time if I am in a place like Macy’s it is such a ghost town I find myself calling, “Does anybody work here?!”

      On the phone the stupid is off the hook. (No pun).

      Lots of blank stares and “Huh’s??” in our collective futures I’m afraid.

      • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 12:30 pm #

        Abby

        Go to a Chinese Restaurant. They usually get the order right.

      • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:41 pm #

        Welcome to Costco, I love you -Idiocracy

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:27 am #

        Abby – you have such terrible First World problems!

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

        @abby

        Yup, looks like insanity to me.

        But it is nowhere near “peak”. It will get worse before it blows.

        The only critical thing that has “peaked” is global industrial economic growth [and of course, the energy that fueled it]. Decomposition is a stinky process unless it occurs instantaneously in which case it is hot and loud.

        maybe

        ~toktomi~

    • Anon1970 December 30, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

      Re: Daddyotis When I was a boy, the US government staged a witch hunt against its gay employees (under a 1953 Eisenhower Executive Order), there was no Medicare for seniors and people simply lived shorter lives. Some people were better off financially and others were worse off.

      At a time when it seems that the US is going off the rails, I need to remind myself that I am in my 15th year of a financially secure retirement. Now in my early 70’s, I have already outlived my father by two decades.

      • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:43 pm #

        I’m sure that is a great comfort to 20-somethings.

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 2:26 pm #

        @anon

        “financially secure retirement”

        That is so cute! Kids say the darndest things.

        don’t we?

        ~toktomi~

  8. newworld December 30, 2019 at 11:09 am #

    Collapse of the American Empire, and I’ve been ready to move on since 1989 and Bush’s war against a CIA installed stooge in Panama.

    This from a man of pre-Rev. War founding American stock and all that baggage, sorry to all you Johnny and Jill come latelys and your efforts to liberate yourself with American Dream Hopium.

    • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:31 am #

      Well you know we were never intended to be an empire anyway. That is what the Pilgrims were escaping from in the first place. Just imagine if we stuck with the Puritan model of small, self governing, agricultural villages to this very day. But instead we collectively choose the path of empire and so we reap the consequences of empire. To date, history has taught us that all empires die.

      • abbybwood December 30, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

        Can’t recall which of the Founders said it, but the advice of taking care of ourselves and trading with others but to NOT make any tangling alliances obviously fell on deaf ears.

        • Majella December 30, 2019 at 6:57 pm #

          Monroe.

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

          Washington’s Farewell Address. Adams also. Surely many others followed these giants as well.

      • DrTomSchmidt December 30, 2019 at 2:54 pm #

        WE chose none of that, SSL. The empire option was never put to a vote, like in a New England Town Meeting. One are born to empire, some choose empire, and some have empire thrust upon them. Thank the two Roosevelts, especially Teddy with his war on Spain,for the thrusting.

      • Ancianoloco December 30, 2019 at 5:48 pm #

        And who can deny the righteousness of their witch trials? God, I miss the good old days!

  9. malthuss December 30, 2019 at 11:23 am #

    Long ago, [2005?] Jim predicted that the DJIA would sink from 10000
    to 3000 in that year. [I forget the exact numbers].

    He and I underestimated the Fed, the Banks and the system [its rigged].

    DJIA TO THE MOON.

    • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 11:25 am #

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

    • Epicur December 30, 2019 at 11:50 am #

      The questions in my mind are:

      1. Do enough of the FEDsters think the Republic can survive another recession that they would dare pull away the punch bowl for a while?

      or 2. Do they know the Republic cannot survive and are waiting to time the collapse and subsequent Emergency declaration? (very doubtful in my mind)

      If not 1 or 2, then as you say – To the moon!! And we will go broke Mr. K’s second way, having lots of worthless money.

      • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 12:01 pm #

        Gosh, #1–do they want it to survive or destroy it? Only they know.
        One op about Mr Trump is that he is piling on debt in order to destroy the fed.

        • abbybwood December 30, 2019 at 12:17 pm #

          It’s not just Trump.

          Practically the entire Congress just passed Trump’s spending bill with an extra $35 billion thrown in for the military and “Space Force”. All of this with millions of Americans literally starving and cold and hundreds of thousands homeless.

          The Democrats will impeach Trump on a purely partisan level (after Nadler warned with the Clinton impeachment that that should NEVER be done!), but then the Democrats will trip over themselves to approve a monster budget that cut food stamps and continued the illegal spying and secret FISA warrants against American citizens.

          It is no wonder that Congress has a 17% “approval” rating!

          • zekesdad December 30, 2019 at 12:46 pm #

            “..millions of Americans literally starving..” Where would that be? In this country there are multiple federal nutrition programs, not to mention state and local programs, food banks, religious charities, etc. Yes, Trump is (or has) cut back on the food stamp program, but for able bodied, childless people. This is at a time of record low unemployment, where companies are going to prisons to recruit soon to be released inmates. Can you actually name someone in America who has died of starvation in the last 50 years? Yes, there are millions of Americans cold and homeless, but the vast majority of them are some combination of mentally ill, drug addicted, or alcoholic. In the past, they were placed in state hospitals or similar institutions, often against their will, as they were deemed a danger to themselves and others. The blame lies with the people who thought such a solution violated such people’s “rights”.

          • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 1:11 pm #

            Millions??? of Americans literally on the street or sleeping in cars and shelters.

          • capt spaulding December 30, 2019 at 1:24 pm #

            You don’t understand, Abbybwood, the Space Force is necessary to keep out illegal aliens.

          • abbybwood December 30, 2019 at 3:02 pm #

            Okay, I over-stated my position.

            I should have said millions of Americans, including children, are “food deprived”:

            https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts

            All I know is that for a child to go to bed hungry, that hurts everyone.

          • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 6:15 pm #

            Captain, the Space Force was created in response the the establishment of a Russian Space Force in 2015. China will be creating a similar organization, most likely based in Greenland, which they will be occupying soon enough (a great vantage point from which to observe Russia, the US, Germany and the UK)

            BRH

          • Majella December 31, 2019 at 1:36 am #

            BRH
            No, it was created when the words, inexplicably, passed through Himself’s super-stable-genius brain when he was ad-libbing in a tv speech. It was in his adderol- induced sniffing period. We all watched it happen:

            https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kna3YYX7XeE

          • benr December 31, 2019 at 10:13 am #

            @majella

            Adderall induced sniffing period?

            Are you sure the President is sniffing Adderall?
            He is notoriously anti-drug and drink.
            Might it not be hay fever?
            A slight cold?
            Of course yourself can’t get past your utter hate of the man so everything must be the worst possible explanation for his behavior and quirks.

          • sophia January 2, 2020 at 3:25 pm #

            Abbeywood,

            There is absolutely no place in the U.S. where a child goes to bed hungry unless the parent(s) are beyond neglectful. Literally taking the food stamp money and trading it for money or drugs or alcohol, maybe cigarettes.

            My brother was homeless on the streets of Los Angeles for several years and he said food was never a problem.

      • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:55 pm #

        Epicur,

        or3. Maybe they know something we don’t. It amuses me to have people mention how stupid the financial people at the National or Global level seem to be. Economics at the FED level might be equated to Quantum Physics…where our perceptions are grounded in classical physics.

        Makes no sense, but the economy and society keeps on ticking.

        There are known unknowns, but they are not nearly as damning as the unknown unknowns…(paraphrased).

        • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 10:11 am #

          “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

          Maybe. I know the world is not a simple place, but we have gotten ourselves in about as simple a binary choice as the world ever presents – either they keep “creating” “money” or they don’t.

          There are all sorts of complex paths that flow from either of those decisions, but first that decision must be made.

          If they keep funding the present scheme (and stay on that path) then it will take some exogenous event or a system breakdown to derail the stock market.

          I don’t think they are stupid, they’re just trapped.

          • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 10:25 pm #

            Perhaps. I believe the lynchpin of the current process is our military keeping other countries in line and their required spending US dollars for energy… providing object lessons to those leaders who would like to consider alternatives.

            I believe further that the game can continue only so long as the US dollar is the World’s Reserve Currency. The day that strangle-hold is broken, life will change in America, and not for the better.

          • Epicur January 1, 2020 at 10:40 am #

            “I believe further that the game can continue only so long as the US dollar is the World’s Reserve Currency. The day that strangle-hold is broken, life will change in America, and not for the better.”

            I would call the abandonment of the US$ an exogenous event, something the FED cannot control.

            We are morphing into MMT, or pure fiat money in place of the charade of selling debt instruments. Whether the world will keep accepting US$ after we do depends on a lot of things, including the “object lessons” you speak of. But the world needs a reserve currency IF the global system is to be maintained, so it will be hard to abandon the $.

            Eventually, I expect the world to break into trading blocs – maybe with fuzzy boundaries, but alignments along the boundaries of strategic necessity.

          • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

            “so it will be hard to abandon the $.”

            Epicur,
            Perhaps this is what is counted upon to keep our economy from Weimar-type issues.

            And it seems to be working….

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 12:17 pm #

            “And it seems to be working….”

            Cynic that I am (How about that, both a Cynic and an Epicurean?), I think they will keep things cobbled together as long as the Big Banks (TBTF) keep making profit. When the important people (whoever they are) stop getting their share off the flow of funds, the plug will be pulled, but not until.

            Barring population winnowing war or black swan type events.

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 3:59 pm #

            John Mauldin argues that we are already entering a crisis.

            https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/prelude-to-crisis

            If they stop funding the debt will they continue to hold dollars?

  10. venuspluto67 December 30, 2019 at 11:27 am #

    Just one quick comment: We “Bernie Bros” aren’t really into the whole Wokesterism thing. In fact, pretty much all the hysterical behavior on what passes for the left in this country is coming from Hillary Clinton’s partisans, whether it’s SJW-ism, the faux-resistance and associated impeachment dramas, or calling everybody a Nazi. If Bernie would have become president in 2017, we would be on a much better footing to face the Long Emergency.

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    • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:38 am #

      If Bernie would support a border wall and limiting immigration I would definitely consider giving him my vote. Short of those things, I cannot do it. Given his current stated policy position on the matter I cannot see how we would be on better footing if Bernie were President as he would allow millions and millions of new people into the country which is only going to exacerbate our resource consumption and environmental problems as well as put more strain on our infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc.

      • Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 11:49 am #

        Bernie didn’t care about the people at the Mexican border, as Senator from Vermont. He also favored Second Amendment rights, as every good Leftist should.
        He only got into the swing of giving Americans the shaft in favor of foreigners after the Democrats rigged the primary against him.
        He is going along to get along.

        • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

          And instead of giving Americans the shaft in favor of foreigners after the Democrats rigged the primary against him his support would have been monumental if he had gone in a more Nationalist and anti-Establishment direction and challenged the results. He either missed an opportunity or didn’t really want one IMHO.

          • sophia January 2, 2020 at 3:46 pm #

            I’ve lost respect for him, and Warren as well.

      • Majella January 2, 2020 at 9:07 am #

        That’s a weird position to take : as long as there’s a border wall, you’d suffer all his socialist stuff?

    • Majella December 31, 2019 at 2:00 am #

      100% with you on ALL that, VP!

  11. 4014HAMPHEDGE December 30, 2019 at 11:28 am #

    Checking in with debka.com we see US response to Iranian actions in the Middle East military venues America is at war with Iran, declared by the Persian Empire wannabes 40 years ago when the US Embassy was taken hostage. Carte4r’s suicide mission to rescue the hostages set in motion the Reagan era.

    Without full blown regime change and new direction, Iran is on course for eventual elimination of their nuclear program, with associated removal of their military machine. Israel will take some heavy hits along the way, resulting in vastly expanded borders in line with metes & bounds described in O.T. books of Genesis & Joshua.

    Americans need to expect concomitant Fifth Column Muslim activities up to and including Sovereign State (Asian?) alliances bringing troposphere Nuclear detonations resulting in impacts to food distribution, as transport, tricked up with mucho electronic wizardry, stalls. Rails will help prevent complete starvation, but lacking all due haste adoption and rebuild of food district rail branch lines by some of the 500 plus US Billionaires, this new decade will witness unprecedented USA human dieback.

    Primer for this saga is seen in William Forstchen’s “ONE SECOND AFTER”. Cannibalism is not pretty.

    • SoftStarLight December 30, 2019 at 11:41 am #

      I’m glad that you mention it because the Jihadis do dream about destroying the West with EMPs, among other methods of course….

    • Daddyotis December 30, 2019 at 11:50 am #

      One Second After is (in my opinion) one of the best books written on EMP SHTF scenarios. Highly recommend!

    • Bill7 January 1, 2020 at 12:40 am #

      Can you tell me what language it is that you’re trying to comment in,
      so I might try better to understand?

      Near-gibberish, AFAICS.

  12. Jeremy December 30, 2019 at 11:33 am #

    Just returned to the UK after 10 days in the Boston area visiting the in-laws with family in tow.

    I imagine it’s what visiting Holland in late 1636, right before the bursting of the Tulip Bubble, would have felt like. I have never experienced such a self-satisfied aura of affluence anywhere, ever – and that includes living in Sonoma County during the Great Housing Bubble of 2000-08.

    Large fancy homes, huge shinny new cars, happy shoppers everywhere, cheap gas, restaurants full of diners. The rental prices of downtown apartments ($3500+ pm for a 2 bed!) and homes for sale prices were enough to make your eyes water.

    And everyone was just so smart for having “made” soooo much money over the past 10 years. Heck – GOOG is up 100% ytd. don’t ya know!

    The bi-coastal US is in a league of its own – here in Europe we are well into collapse.

    As my very aware host remarked – “That’s what comes with the seignorage afforded to reserve currency status.”

    Guess what’s next? – https://tinyurl.com/hwlq7zz

    Good luck my lovable, clueless US friends – 2020 is going to be a doozy. A Year of Rage – https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/

    • DrTomSchmidt December 30, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

      Brilliance is leverage in a rising market. It’s insane what property prices in NY and Boston are doing.

      I dined in London, world capital of insane prices, in 2017, and was struck that dining out in London was cheaper than NYC. I thought at first that health care was the difference, but it becomes obvious that asset inflation drives rents, which drives restaurant prices. I recently dined out in a poorer part of Florida, and got to pay from 10-20$ per entree. Youre lucky to be under $30 now in NYC, and a few places have gone to having $40 entrees.

      • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 3:23 pm #

        In my experience being in the US and Germany, the US is much cheaper for dining out.

        Where Americans get hit is the price of rental housing in semi-desirable to desirable areas, as well as the cost of food in the supermarket.

        When I lived in DC, the cost to rent a 2 bdrm. apartment in a decent area was near or over 2k a month. Here it is about 1400-1500, and the price for the States is from over 10 years ago.

    • RIB December 30, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

      Recall 2008: For the first time in U.S. history, there were no legal repercussions emanating from financial collapse. Unprecedented malfeasance, yet no accountability. Why? Because this ossified society reached the existential conclusion that their dream for the future was too big to fail. They were not willing to reform embedded corruption. So, they turned a blind eye and assumed this next round would all blow up on the next generation. A cynical bet with a lit fuse now set to explode in their faces.

      From A Year Of Rage: I see no blame was placed on the Magic Negro and his cronies…just more “Orangeman bad.”

      • SW December 30, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

        Not only no legal repercussions but actual rewards for malfeasance and unethical behavior. But the high rollers stayed in charge and bought more politicians. Stock buybacks with no new factories but lots of new Airstreams has set us up for what’s coming next. Here’s a quote from an article I read this morning you might be interested in:

        “It’s not just the magnitude of debt, but the haste with which it’s being amassed. In a new study, the World Bank looks at the four most notable borrowing-binge episodes involving 100 countries since 1970. They include Latin America in the 1980s, Asia in the 1990s and the subprime fiasco of the 2000s. Those three, of course, ended in tears and financial ruin.”

        https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2020/12/30/the-250-trillion-burden-weighing-on-the-global-economy-in-2020/#5700025782e5

    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:28 pm #

      It sounds much like DC. I’ll be going back to the States for the first time in years in a few months.

      Can’t say I notice much in the way of collapse here in Germany though.

  13. Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 11:33 am #

    I confess reading that this morning made my brain hurt.
    A summary of the whole state of the world. Ouch.
    Not saying it wasn’t excellent, maybe it was a little too much for me in its excellence.

    • elysianfield December 30, 2019 at 11:58 pm #

      “Not saying it wasn’t excellent, maybe it was a little too much for me in its excellence.”

      Beryl,
      Comfort yourself in that it was excellent….

  14. Epicur December 30, 2019 at 11:34 am #

    “However, I expect that his rivals will resort to Lawfare tactics to tie up the election process in a paralyzing tangle of litigation that would impede or deny a peaceful resolution of the outcome. These tactics may provoke the president to declare some extraordinary measures to overcome this climactic act of “Resistance” — perhaps a period of martial law while the results are re-tabulated. Yes, it could get that extreme.”

    As much as I would be entertained by watching a circular firing squad in DC, I think the copious abundance (I know, that’s redumbnant) of dirty hands up there creates a strong impulse for “cooler heads” (Hah!) to prevail and a cease fire to prevent a really entertaining body count – after the election.

    They’re all in the same club, most of them, anyway, and we’re not in it.

  15. Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 11:36 am #

    Speaking of what’s going on in France, two things I know.
    Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, and Notre Dame Cathedral did not spontaneously combust.

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    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:32 pm #

      At least they are rebuilding it with a wooden roof in the original form.

      That proposal submitted for the modern design is exactly the sort of monstrosity I expected to see standing atop tent-lined streets.

      Luckily, France hasn’t submitted fully to the Macaroon.

    • capt spaulding December 30, 2019 at 7:36 pm #

      I don’t know what to think about your Epstein or Notre Dame theories, Beryl, I’m still trying to figure who is secretly controlling the Illuminati.

      • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 6:24 am #

        Trump and Putin surely know. When do we see your evidence?

        • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 10:09 am #

          Huh, I make a joke about the Illuminati, and all you can say is where’s the evidence? You really were toilet trained at gunpoint, weren’t you? That’s about the most constipated sense of humor I’ve ever seen. Perfect for a conservative though.

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 10:20 am #

            I was highlighting your favorite conspiracy theory.

            I am no conservative. Green party member who moved to Europe. Exactly the kind of person your type would want to snark with, if I hated Trump.

          • Majella January 2, 2020 at 9:14 am #

            Capt’s ‘favorite’ conspiracy theory? He’s right – you have zero sense o humor.

          • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 3:27 pm #

            My 10th grade drama teacher told me I should go into stand-up.

            I suppose humor is in the eye of the beholder, and not all beholders are smart.

  16. Frank December 30, 2019 at 11:40 am #

    Thanks James, Good recap.
    Happy New Year to you.
    I am looking forward to your new book.
    Frank

  17. Beryl of Oyl December 30, 2019 at 11:44 am #

    Here’s a conspiracy theory- the guy who held on to a tape for eleven years, until he found a use for it, to attempt to influence an election, has CIA ties.
    Billy Bush claimed later to be embarrassed by his own behavior. So why did he hang on to the tape?
    Why did an “entertainment” program even hire a Bush in the first place?

    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:34 pm #

      The tape didn’t matter anyways. Trump pointing out that sluts let you one them for an opp. at fleeting fame.

      Heck, this was standard fare even in the local DC “progressive” hard-left indie/punk rock scene I was active in.

      They are called groupies.

      • Majella December 30, 2019 at 9:31 pm #

        Ah. THERE you are!

        • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 8:47 am #

          I see a little of St Augustine in Nightowl the Younger.

          Give me continence, oh Lord, but not yet. 🙂

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 6:14 am #

            Sluts exist, it is true.

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 8:15 am #

            As long as you don’t consider a man can be better than the ‘slut’ he uses, we’re not even arguing, Nightowl.

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 8:39 am #

            It’s none of my business, quite honestly.

          • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 11:16 am #

            Good call.

  18. erik December 30, 2019 at 11:48 am #

    Not a bad analysis all in all. I like the part about the country going bust “slowly at first, then fast” the way people go bankrupt.

    I’d have left off some of the dramatic predictions like war between Iran and Israel with the Iranian populace throwing off the Mullahs.I think that is BS with a good dose of neocon fantasies about the people throwing off a regime because of externally imposed hardships. History tends to show that dog ain’t gonna hunt.
    And the Mexican civil war…Doesn’t seem likely. You’ve made too many concrete predictions over the years that didn’t come to fruition. Maybe you should restrain yourself so you don’t come off meshugana….

  19. Walter B December 30, 2019 at 11:57 am #

    A quick review seems to indicate that you have hit all the bases and are headed for home Jim, well done. You understand, it is evident, that the Federal Reserve can continue to print all the fiat currency it cares to for as long as it wants to but that sooner or later, other countries will stop exchanging the stuff we need for those worthless green toilet paper rolls. That is when it gets interesting, unless of course the Chinese are stocking up on aircraft carriers and carrier busting cruise missiles to help us fend off invading alien fleets from space. Sooner or later things will change and I figure that its sort of like going to the doctor on a regular basis as opposed to only every twenty years or so. I have known quite a few people in my day that never went to the doctor and when they finally did were diagnosed with late stage cancer or something or the sort and died within three months. If you ask me, America has been skipping out on its wellcare visits far too long and is severely overdue for some serious bad consequences. Happy New Year James, keep up the good work!

  20. DrTomSchmidt December 30, 2019 at 11:57 am #

    “the free-floating fear that we’ve run out the clock on our current way of life, that the systems we depend on for our high standard of living have entered the failure zone; specifically, the fears over our energy supply…”

    That really is the fundamental reality of the age, JHK. You can run a usury-based economy with exponential growth on claims of real wealth (interest) only if there’s exponential growth somewhere to offset it. We had that in energy until 1973 or so, and stalled; first taking wealth from the working class, next the lower middle class, and now coming for the middle middle class. Oh, won’t it be fun to see the insufferable Professional Managerial Class also take a hit? (well, no; but it will be some rough justice.)

    Now we face declining real energy inputs overall, as we have faced declining per-capita energy inputs for years. One way to make people feel better about this is to get them to think they’re sacrificing energy usage to offset climate change; in point of fact per-capita carbon emissions are going to drop because we simply don’t have the cheap oil to generate a lot of them.

    Do we prefer living in a poorer but more honest world or a “richer” fantasyland? We soon won’t have that second option, only a poorer fantasyland.

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  21. BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

    Wow, much to digest here.

    A book to look forward too. Jim, you’re a writing machine!

    Brh

    • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      My copy of A Christmas Orphan just arrived today, following someone’s hearty recommendation a couple of threads ago. It’s short, so can be fitted in before the season is over. Looking forward to it.

      • James Kuehl December 30, 2019 at 4:31 pm #

        Here’s hoping you enjoy it as much as I did, GreenAlba. After reading it myself it became a gift to my daughter who is not a big reader. Short stories demand exceptional writing skill. There’s no time to waste. Every sentence has to advance the narrative. This one’s a gem.

        • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 6:35 pm #

          An interesting novel that flows well and keeps a reader’s attention is far more challenging to write, IMO.

          I have a background in magazines and publishing and can recall that many of the writers I worked with over the years said the same.

          • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 8:23 pm #

            Yeah, me too, Nightowl. My authors used to say the same thing – keeping the reader just as gripped by the sarcomatoid carcinoma on page 500 as they were by the glioblastoma on page 2 is a real challenge. 🙂

            Just as well JHK can write long and short, eh?

        • GreenAlba December 30, 2019 at 8:14 pm #

          Thanks, James – I take it you were the person who recommended it earlier.

  22. Tate December 30, 2019 at 12:34 pm #

    “The madness is distributed over many realms of American life, with the common denominator of a thinking class fallen into disordered thinking… It includes a grab-bag of delusions and deliberate mind-fucks ranging from the morbid obsession with Russian interference in our affairs, to the crusade against free speech on campus, to the worship of sexual perversity (e.g. the Transsexual Reading Hour), to the campaigns against whiteness and maleness, to the incursions of woke-ness in the corporate workplace, to the cynical machinations of economists, bankers, and politicians in manipulating financial appearances, to the effort to divorce reality from truth as a general proposition.”

    At least one glaring omission (probably others) :

    A sovereign nation can exist with open borders.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 12:50 am #

      Yes, just so. An engine can only work because the explosion is contained and thus the work of moving the piston is enabled. Uncontrolled explosions are destructive and useless.

      Nothing in our System can really work because it’s not self contained anymore. Of course it should relate to the outside world (as in trade, travel, etc) but not BE the outside world.

      • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

        A nation with open borders is like a person living without an immune system. A fatal diagnoses.

  23. JohnAZ December 30, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

    Happy New Year, everyone.

    Just thinking about the resource limitations looming in the future. Water, oil, gas, and would like to add one.

    Space here on Earth. Space to live, space to farm, space to create energy, and more important than these, space to dump our garbage and trash. I keep hearing stories about the abundance of plastic waste from the Arctic to the Antarctic in all our oceans. Sea life is being clobbered by eating the waste. Recycling is too efficient, we do not need all our waste to recycle, and so it gets dumped into the great garbage can of the sea. The oceans are nearing saturation, so add on the destruction of the seas as another catastrophe awaiting us.

    So we have pollution of the land by real estate development and fracking, pollution of the air by carcinogenic toxic hydrocarbons, and pollution of the oceans as we take out the trash. Maybe all of this is a way for nature to cull down the human population.

    No one wants to talk about the no.1, the basic problem is all these discussions. Greta and AOC are afraid to mention there is only one thing that will fix the almost saturated with filth situation we face today.

    Reduce the population. Penalize people for having more than two kids.

    All of you AGW folks, the only thing that will resolve the problem is fewer folks breathing, eating, farting, and burning stuff.

    Volunteers for euthanasia to solve the problems, the line forms to the Left.

    • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 12:55 pm #

      JAZ

      what difference would it make?

      2 million people immigrate into the USA every year. At any rate, whites are having less than 2 kids on the average already. We’re not even having enough kids to replace ourselves.

      Brh

      • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

        60? million legal abortions.

    • Epicur December 30, 2019 at 2:05 pm #

      The population issue will not really bite until the credit expansion ends.

      In the current credit environment the excess population is serving a “purpose” by consuming. Their consumption being financed by credit expansion, and which serves to line the pockets of those who get money by taking a cut off the flow (finance, insurance, rentiers, lawyers, and never forget the “leisure and entertainment” industry).

      When the “churn” created by expanding credit comes to an end, then the people at the top will start complaining about useless eaters, but not until.

      • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 5:12 pm #

        G R O W T H…At all and any cost.

        Thats why merika needs them immigrants.

    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:37 pm #

      That is indeed the inescapable end game. A death of sorts. Everything in balance.

      As I posted last time around, whatever created this world had a sense of humor.

      The only escape is to eventually, literally escape.

      • 100th Avatar December 30, 2019 at 7:29 pm #

        Winning in life is knowing when you are ready to fold.
        There’s only so much of this pointlessness that a sane individual can endure, or laugh at.

        • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 2:42 pm #

          @100th

          ain’t no healthy survival gene in Nature that knows when to fold until that very last nano-moment

          Never say die.
          None get out alive.
          But never make it easy for ’em or for it.

          That ain’t “winning” yer talkin about. You are talking about violating the #1 Basic Tenet of Life: The meaning of life is very simple. It is simply staying alive.

          maybe

          ~toktomi~

    • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

      Not quite. Immigration is the only real source of population growth in Western countries. Bring immigration to an end and you immediately reduce the pressures of growth in America and Europe. White populations need to grow actually if we are to even maintain meager societies. All the major population growth now John is in Africa and it is massive. And then there is India. If people wanted to do anything of value in this regard then again all immigration in Western countries would have to end completely and your child limit policies would have to be enforced in the Black and Brown countries. None of this will ever be done voluntarily. Thus War, Strife, and Suffering are coming to do the job for us.

  24. jordy December 30, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

    Great article as always!

  25. wpa_ccc December 30, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

    Great news that Japan will be showing the way out via voluntary contraction. Also looking forward to the new book.

    Two differences: economy will not collapse in 2020 yet Trump will not be re-elected. The economy did not stop Democratic wins in 2018 and 2019.

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    • Billy Hill December 30, 2019 at 1:57 pm #

      Trump will be re-elected and then demand re-counts and investigations into voter fraud claiming that his margin of victory should have been much larger.

    • DrTomSchmidt December 30, 2019 at 3:07 pm #

      Trump REALLY motivates people who oppose him to get out and vote. He has done to Republicans what Obama did to Democrats, with the disastrous 2014 election the cherry on top. I recall that Obama cost the Dems something like 3000 legislative seats between Congress, state houses, and local elections.

      Near me, the county executive elected as a Rep in 2009 was removed in 2017, as anti-Trump voters vented their fury on the nearest Rep. Trump only draws out his supporters in 2020; expect 2022 to be an EPIC repudiation of Republicans in Congress.

      That’s assuming Trump gives his supporters (who don’t own stocks or care about the Dow) a reason to turn out and vote for him. If not, it will be a Dem wipeout, with Republicans losing the Senate, too.

  26. axisboldaslove December 30, 2019 at 1:38 pm #

    The new year’s Forecast- my favorite JHK post each year. Nicely done, Jim!

  27. benr December 30, 2019 at 1:51 pm #

    Greetings,

    I just drove coast to coast across America and did I see the sites!
    Gas was on average a dollar cheaper everywhere outside of Kommiefornia.
    New cars everywhere and the Starbucks were universally packed!
    Texas is covered in windmills for power generation.
    It was weird driving at night with all the blinking red lights, blinking in unison like some huge alien ship was taking over.

    Tennessee had the worst drivers I have ever seen anywhere.

    Virginia the state I visited for a week is a buzz with Gun rights advocates standing up militias and my son in Law was open carrying everywhere we went.

    Dead squished Deer in every state, all over the roads and a black bear in Virginia, no one drives the speed limit anywhere in America and doing so got you tail gated and cursed at.
    Driving was a white knuckle experience which left my poor wife with ptsd.
    It was freezing everywhere thank god for my heated seats!
    The one standard thing I noticed was everywhere was busy and looked like life was pretty good except Mississippi and El Paso God what shit holes.

    • Billy Hill December 30, 2019 at 2:02 pm #

      “Dead squished deer…”

      20-30 years ago one did not see such.

      We could feed the hungry, reduce auto insurance rates, and possibly even spare my Sisyphian attempts at landscaping.

      Next up: squirrels.

      • Daddyotis December 30, 2019 at 3:11 pm #

        Billy: don’t knock squirrels until you’ve tasted slow-cooked grey squirrel stew 🙂

    • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 3:27 pm #

      Good report Benr.

      • benr December 31, 2019 at 10:19 am #

        Something of note.
        I was stationed at Norfolk Naval base going through an an/sps-49 Radar “C” school back in the early 90’s and had a chance to surf Virginia beach and I can attest the water levels look exactly the same as they did over 20 years ago.
        I mean the beach looks exactly the same down by 1st street using the jetty as a marker.

        If you are curious as to what the piece of equipment is.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SPS-49

        This was a pain in the ass to solo fix and do PMS on.

    • voight-kampff December 31, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

      Here’s the image:
      http://www.simonstalenhag.se/bilderbig/whatnowtowerstothesky_1920.jpg

      Btw, check out the whole gallery
      http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

    • axisboldaslove December 31, 2019 at 4:37 pm #

      “Kommiefornia”, LOL benr.

      Some here might want to come to El Dorado county, CA- it’s a haven for closed minded Californian anti-progressive Trumpites. They might love it! Maybe I can trade places with someone here, assuming they live in some place where that rare bird, the rational thinking human being, can be found.

  28. sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 2:16 pm #

    As I see it, to be mired in pessimism and cynicism and to consistently see the downside of things is to be drawn into a descending cycle of despair which ultimately will end in a return to barbarism. This is because those mired in pessimism and cynicism have unwittingly bought into the failed status quo, and are thus rendered incapable of making a creative response to the challenges we face. They have, in other words, undercut their ability to bring something new into existence, a new way of seeing or doing which could positively transform the existing status quo and move it in a more life-affirming direction…

    • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

      True creativity is predicated on a refusal to accept the status quo at face value, and to see in every challenge the possibility for renewal…

    • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 4:39 pm #

      For every negative in life there is a positive, and for every positive there is a negative. It’s much easier to see the negative stuff because it’s right there on the surface. To find the positive we need to do a little more digging, which is basically what the creative process is: drawing out the silver lining woven into every cloud.

      • Cavepainter December 30, 2019 at 8:18 pm #

        Oh please, no more of these secular equivalents of the Biblical
        Rapture coming to save us from our human folly, we’re up against the physical limits. TSHTF is uncoiling.

        • sunburstsoldier December 30, 2019 at 10:10 pm #

          Only human creativity (channeling the Divine Plan) can “save us from our human folly”, but for that creativity to be operative there must be absolute faith in the possibility of societal renewal and a progressive return to sustainability…

          • GreenAlba December 31, 2019 at 8:40 am #

            There can be no long-term sustainability until the population is a fraction of what it is now. Does the divine plan have anything to say about which of our children and grandchildren deserve not to make the short list? (I don’t include myself – at my age any pleading would be in bad taste.)

            And what will the left-behind do with the billions of bodies to avoid epidemics of nasty diseases – given doctors will be among the recipients of the ‘you’re fired’ commandment?

      • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:05 pm #

        @sunbursts

        without getting into the inherent contradictions of your proposition, let me just say…

        WRONG ! 🙂

        That you have created a story that ends happily for you and yours only is PA THET IC ! Sad little sunburns.

        imho

        ~toktomi~

  29. Vlad the Impaler December 30, 2019 at 3:17 pm #

    A very impressive and perceptive summation of our sad human condition Mr. Kunstler ! The sad state of our culture, economy, political situation was laid out forcefully. Before we can hope to cure our collective diseased state of mind we have to describe the problems. Yours is a good start.

  30. Ishabaka December 30, 2019 at 4:03 pm #

    And 2016 finds Donatella Trump in drag chest plumped with hormones like an all-American synthetic pullet, in the Trump Presidential Library and Casino, reading to the Obama grandchildren……

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  31. KappaJoe December 30, 2019 at 4:05 pm #

    The ends justify the means.

    The trouble with this hoary chestnut is that, unless time stops, the ends are always, at best, temporary, even if achieved. Thus, the only constant would seem to be ever increasingly nefarious means.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:10 pm #

      @KappaJoe

      An original thought or are we pulling from an extensive reading list ?

      Tricky cognition either way, quite uncommon among the common comments hereabouts.

      maybe

      ~toktomi~

      • KappaJoe December 31, 2019 at 4:05 pm #

        Hi tok,

        I’ve pondered that aphorism on and off for years as it’s often couched in a kind of potentially abusive righteousness: “As long as we get what we want, how we get it doesn’t matter.”

        The reaction against this immoral process is perhaps the basis of forming a rights- and law-based constitutional republic in the first place, a well-reasoned and (hopefully) durable set of rules that would keep the never-ending, self-serving “means” at bay.

        Unfortunately, as Lysander Spooner pointed out years ago, the Constitution is apparently flawed, as it either allows for its own corruption or is powerless to stop it. Again, further proof there are no true ends, even positive ends, only continuous means.

        In current the political millieu, I feel this is exactly the battle originalist constitutionalists are fighting for (constitutional rule of law) and against (using any means necessary to achieve and exercise unlimited power).

        • Bill7 January 1, 2020 at 2:16 am #

          Good to see this comment. Thank you.

  32. SW December 30, 2019 at 4:58 pm #

    I have to say Our Little Greta is perfect for this moment in history. Charmless, sullen, entitled and with no intention of acknowledging that every person ever born had to face an imperfect world not of their making, she is Time’s Person of the Year. She will join Sarah Palin on the list of the Formerly Famous very soon.

    • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 12:07 am #

      “Formerly Famous very soon.”

      SW,
      Or soon to hear of the unholy coupling of little Greta and David Hogg….

      • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 8:26 am #

        I saw her on something a day or two ago (a rarity for me). She said she was looking forward to going back to school and not having to be a climate figurehead any more. She’s drawn more attention to the issue than anyone else for a while, so feels she’s done her bit.

        Her father also appeared and said they had opposed her campaigning aspirations at the start. But now he has to admit it’s done her a world of good, in opening up her Asperger’s world and making her a fuller, happier person.

        I wouldn’t know where the truth lies. I’m not as presumptuous as a whole lot of posters on here.

        It would be nice if it could have led to a mature, adult conversation about the realities of energy availability. At the same time I suspect real knowledge of the truth would not lead to anything good. A paradox, like so much in life.

        • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 1:39 pm #

          “It would be nice if it could have led to a mature, adult conversation about the realities of energy availability. ”

          Alba,
          This site, our host, provides for that conversation. We do not need, nor will suffer, a pre-pubescent child to shame or embarrass us with senseless drivel.

          You an I agree on many things. Climate is changing. Humans may be in part causal.

          Our only point of contention is the degree to which Humans are causal. You suggest humans are the primary cause, I suggest human activity secondary to other inputs real and unknown.

          On the subject of energy availability, we have no issue.

          • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 1:41 pm #

            Alba,
            And I would further wish you a Happy New Year. I, myself, at an advanced age, can only hope for for one that has the requisite 365 days….

          • GreenAlba January 1, 2020 at 5:27 pm #

            Thank you, EF. Happy New Year to you too. I hope you get 365 days and many returns yet of those 365 days. And I hope your wife has as good a year as she can too.

            As for Greta, she’s hardly pre-pubescent. And think of what Joan of Arc was doing at her age. 🙂

            I’d cut her a bit of slack. If the SHTF traumatically rather than progressively, she may not see 25, along with many others of her cohort.

          • Majella January 2, 2020 at 9:19 am #

            EF
            I don’t recall ANY of Greta’s posts! Did I miss them?

  33. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 5:04 pm #

    I hope that Bill Cosby had a Merry Christmas in prison and that no one tried to stab him. Cosby is a victim of the #MeToo Movement.

    Cosby is a bit crazy, but not out-of-touch with Reality like the current crop of “Wokesters”.

    • malthuss December 30, 2019 at 5:13 pm #

      So many black men imprisoned.

      • elysianfield December 31, 2019 at 12:08 am #

        Malthuss

        And for so many reasons.

        Most of them good.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:21 pm #

      @Pucker

      I was thinking the other day about the newly minted disgusting men of America and wondering how in the hell that I got swept up in believing anything offered up by the media outlets of this country [shame on me] and wondering what in the hell could the REAL story be.

      But I immediately dropped the whole inquiry

      because I don’t care and I sure as hell don’t bother to read much of anything from MSM sources. Literally, nothing reported by the MSM matters to anything in the entire Universe [influence? – perhaps; matter? – never].

      It’s all devised, generated, and presented to make you crazy.
      Walk Away.

      maybe

      ~toktomi~

  34. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 5:27 pm #

    Matt Taibbi the other day was spinning the usual story about how the Afghanistan War is just another example of American good intentions, but fatal naivety in another War-Gone-Bad. I try to not fall into the mental trap of thinking that we’re the Good Guys, just fatally naive syndrome. I tend to assume nefariousness on both sides. It looks like the Afghanistan Papers were released as early as 2011. That’s 8 years ago. So for at least 8 years we’ve known that according to the US Army’s own counterinsurgency doctrine that the Afghanistan War is going nowhere. So what gives? It looks like the Afghanistan War is basically a billing opportunity for US military contractors to churn fees? Do you remember the character Milo in the book “Catch 22” who was paid by the Germans to bomb his own airfield? That may basically be the war in Afghanistan? I wouldn’t be surprised if at some level, probably through the Saudi’s and/ or the Pakistani’s, we’re funding the “Enemy”? Many years ago, a former US government official explained to me how a major US government department works over a lunch of tandoori chicken: “If you want to keep the money flow’n, then keep the problem go’n.” He said that, in fact, the particular US government would actually try to exacerbate problems before the funding cycle anticipating that the US Congress would throw more money at them. The US government is NOT about solving problems.

    “If you want to keep the money flow’n, then keep the problem go’n.”

    Lenny Flank
    The Afghanistan Papers: A Selection of Leaked US Military Field Reports From the Afghan War

    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:41 pm #

      I am sure the intentions were good for all of the 7 countries on the PNAC list.

      Good intentions about what to do with their oil and which no-bid contracts to hand out to Halliburton and co.

  35. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

    It’s a bit weird that everyone assumes that since Jeffrey Epstein is dead (dubious assumption) that the case is now over. Why? There’s a whole cast of dubious weirdo co-conspirators involved in Epstein’s crimes still alive and walking around, including Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Kevin Spacey, etc. Just because one bank robber is killed doesn’t automatically mean that the other bank robbers are off-the-hook. What gives?

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

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    • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 5:43 pm #

      Fun fact: three of Kevin Spacey’s accusers have mysteriously died in 2019.

      Just a coincidence I am sure.

      • Pucker December 30, 2019 at 6:16 pm #

        Jeffrey Epstein put all of his money in an irrevocable trust just 2 days before his “Suicide”. Not just the cameras in Epstein’s jail cell, but also other external jail cameras malfunctioned at the time of Epstein’s “suicide”. Former C..IA employee, Attorney General, Bill Barr: “It was just a series of very unfortunate coincidences.”

        Epstein may have just walked out of the jail?

        • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 6:26 pm #

          No idea, but the corporate media wants us to forget it ever happened, like so many other happenings.

          Next up at 10, an “analysis” of Trump’s tweets!

          • Pucker December 30, 2019 at 6:32 pm #

            Epstein transferred his money into an Irrevocable Trust just 2 days before his “Suicide”.

            It takes a while to draft the trust document and to set up an Irrevocable US Trust. It’s not something that you do in a day. It takes weeks and requires the collaboration of the Settlor/ Grantor, the Trust lawyer, the Trustee’s lawyer, beneficiary, etc.

          • Nightowl December 30, 2019 at 6:41 pm #

            And WTC 1,2,and 7 fell at or very near free-fall speed, yet some people think a fire took down a skyscraper in 7 seconds.

            Yes, they believe that a fire instantaneously pulverized hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete and structural steel in an instant, allowing a collapse mimicking that of dropping a ball to the ground with no resistance other than air.

            The corporate media has the megaphone and they aren’t going to hand it back willingly. So what are you gonna do?

          • capt spaulding December 30, 2019 at 8:27 pm #

            A JFK conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. When he arrives at the Pearly Gates, God is there to receive him. “Welcome. You are permitted to ask me one question, which I will answer truthfully. Without hesitating, the conspiracy theorist asks, “Who really shot Kennedy?” God replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There were no accomplices. He acted alone.” The conspiracy theorist pauses, thinks for a minute, then says “Shit! This goes up higher than I thought!”

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 6:13 am #

            It clearly goes all the way to Putin

          • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 11:19 am #

            Prove it.

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 1:50 pm #

            That would be your job. Any evidence for us yet?

    • Pucker December 30, 2019 at 5:56 pm #

      Many of Epstein’s teenage girls, including Virginia Roberts, withdrew from the hard work of providing sex services by moving up the organization hierarchy by becoming recruiters of new teenage girls. Are these girls also guilty parties? At some level, these girls are also culpable because they knew that Epstein was recruiting underage girls for prostitution, and these girl recruiters, in some cases, were deliberately misleading the new girls as to what was expected of them. In fact, Epstein consistently informed the teenage recruiter girls to inform the newly recruited teenage girls as to what was expected of them to avoid misunderstandings. It is interesting that Epstein found no shortage of White teenage girls from “good” Palm Beach high schools willing to work as “Massueses” for rich old white blokes to make big money. In many cases, these girls’ stories that they didn’t know beforehand what was going on are not believable, particularly since Epstein consistently instructed the recruiters to inform the new girls what was expected of them. Moreover, it doesn’t look like Epstein “forced” the girls, rather he just offered them more money for additional services, which many girls refused. Of course, Epstein was still a “Sleeze-Ball”.

      Dylan Howard and 2 more
      Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:20 am #

        All true. It’s the world’s oldest profession. White Women project all of their evil onto White Men. We’re their niggers. Blacks do the same. We’re their niggers too. Other groups have learned to do the same since “we” accept it and give them what they want. We also throw other White Men under the bus in order to get in good with the our overlords.

        • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:27 pm #

          @js

          “All true.”

          Ain’t it wonderful how truth is knowable?

          Now, if we could just get a bit of agreement on what it is that we “KNOW”.

          Kids, these days…

          I guess.

          ~toktomi~

  36. shrbri December 30, 2019 at 6:15 pm #

    So depressing to see a mind as sharp as Kunstler’s (when applied to our built environment) shrivel up and decay into a Trump loving empty vessel. Trump’s great strength is “resilience” — what the hell kind of lame-ass analysis is this? I’m no fan of Biden or Clinton, but for fuck’s sake, James, Trump is an absolute embodiment of everything you claim to hate — including shitty, ugly buildings. God, what happened to you? I guess you feel so personally threatened by identity politics — so fragile as a white man, that you can’t see beyond your own little hurt feelings to look at Trump with any kind of objectivity. Sad, dude. Sad.

    • 100th Avatar December 30, 2019 at 7:27 pm #

      What sad logic.

      So if he enumerated the flaws and negative attributes of Trump you’d be fine. Because that would be “objective”. But since he rightly remarked on Trump’s “resilience” he is sad?
      Personally, I wouldn’t describe it as his resilience, but the resilience of what little law and order we have left during a bureaucratic entrenched (deep state), media, and partisan waged overthrow.

      JHK only always adds the caveat that he dislikesTrump and is a registered Democrat before his going off on his defense of the office of the presidency and the rule of law during this coup d’état manufactured by a warring gang Democrats.

      As someone that dislikes the entire lot of politicians in this dreadful county I can still “objectively” state the traits that make members from either gang formidable.

      Is that not what objectivity is you bleeding imbecile?

      His ability to not allow his dislike of a man that makes “shitty, ugly buildings” ignore a sustained hysteria manufactured by a Democratic Party now in bed with the media corporations, the FBI, and the CIA.

      Times may a change, but deep seated values do not.

      • Walter B December 30, 2019 at 9:43 pm #

        My guess Avatar is that whiny is one of those “my way or the highway” Barney kids that got trophies just for showing up and was coddled into believing that the universe circled about them. Many of us find it to be more than a little bit admirable that while our host certainly does not care for, like or even slightly admire DJT, he remains appalled by the shit hole treatment that our president is receiving by the scum that is trying so hard to overthrow him. Jim would have had the same reaction to those birthers that refused for some time to accept Barry O as a real US citizen. Of course clowns like shrbri cannot understand such concepts because they lack reading comprehension, caring for anyone but themselves, or even the very basics of common human decency. Ignore them and perhaps they will go away.

  37. pogohere December 30, 2019 at 6:15 pm #

    “Vast as its land-mass is, Russia’s economy is not much bigger than the economy of Texas.”

    Back to the economic gym, Jim:

    What does Russia produce as of the end of 2017?

    #1 http://thesaker.is/what-does-russia-produce-1/
    #2 http://thesaker.is/what-does-russia-produce-2/
    #3 http://thesaker.is/what-does-russia-produce-3/
    #4 http://thesaker.is/made-in-russia-sitrep-iv/
    #5 http://thesaker.is/made-in-russia-v-sitrep/
    #6 http://thesaker.is/made-in-russia-vi-sitrep/
    #7 http://thesaker.is/made-in-russia-vii-september-1-15-2017/
    #8 http://thesaker.is/made-in-russia-viii/

    • ellipsis December 30, 2019 at 9:17 pm #

      Much of Russia’s economic activity is either under reported or not reported at all (local economies are usually like that), while much of the US’s is grossly inflated (the entire FIRE sector). The entire term ‘economic activity’ has become nothing more than a cudgel for globalist capitalist apologists to beat their opponents with, becoming little more than propaganda – like most things in the US dominated west these days – in the process.

      • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 10:52 am #

        fire?

        • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 9:38 pm #

          “fire?”

          Finance, Insurance, Real estate, Insurance.

          • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 9:40 pm #

            Rats, I need an edit button.

            Finance Insurance Real Estate.

    • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 3:14 pm #

      I wonder how the Russians live on $30k per capita GDP when it takes us in ‘Murika $60k? I guess it’s expensive to live in the Imperial City!

  38. Majella December 30, 2019 at 8:50 pm #

    Here’s the *Kiss of Death*, delivered by none other than Mr Tariff Trade Wars himself, Peter Navarro – in typical Trump style, one of the LESST qualified Cabinet members;

    https://youtu.be/lNp0P9DgaJ4

    Here’s the actual on this monkey:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etkd57lPfPU

  39. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 8:56 pm #

    “… the frequent mass murders in schools, churches, and public places, the destruction of ecosystems and species, the uncertainty about climate change, and the pervasive, entropic ugliness of the suburban human habitat that drives so much social dysfunction. You get it? There’s a lot to worry about, much of it quite existential. The more strenuously we fail to confront and engage with these problems, the crazier we get.”

    I would also add to the litany of neuroses: Runaway Technology.

    • ellipsis December 30, 2019 at 9:06 pm #

      Good point. Technology is being used as a balm of sorts to mask the insanity for the time being (admittedly, it does cast quite a spell!), while also ramping up the stupidity exponentially all along the way. Twixt the proverbial rock and a hard place, we are.

      • 100th Avatar December 30, 2019 at 9:27 pm #

        It’s the closest we’ve come to immersive escapism.
        Parallel lives via avatars.
        Fictionalized/dramatized lives via social media.

        Turn on, tune in, drop out.

        It’s ever growing popularity and all encompassing presence is inversely proportionate to what we (don’t) find on offer in our “real lives”, our meat sack lives, stuck in dead end places not worth caring about.

        The proverbial ether.
        Life is better in there.

        • ellipsis December 30, 2019 at 10:38 pm #

          Goods points as well. A virtual full time 60’s psychedelia, with infinitely better drugs available on the side as well, just in case the totally immersive electronic media experience still leaves you lacking.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:31 pm #

      @pucker

      Runaway AI, perhaps but Runaway Technology in general, not so much unless yer talkin about the steam engine.

      maybe

      ~toktomi~

  40. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

    “I doubt the voters want to see Mayor Pete in the White House with a “First Husband.”

    On his Twitter account, Chasten Buttigieg refers to himself as “Chaz 10”, and declares that his mentor and favorite book is “Harry Potter”. Chaz literally looks like a 12 year old Harry Potter. True Story….

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    • ellipsis December 30, 2019 at 10:40 pm #

      Almost hope the Buttgigger gets the nomination, just so we can listen to Trump lay into him in earnest. I know there’s certain parts of this country for sure that he’d be smart to just avoid campaigning in altogether.

  41. Pucker December 30, 2019 at 9:40 pm #

    “ What if China gets as crazy as we are? What if the USA goes from being Number One customer to Demon Ghost Dragon from the Underworld in their scheme of things? (Anybody remember the cultural revolution of the 1960s? That was communist Wokesterism on methedrine.) ”

    The Chinese are high IQ, bat shit crazy, superstitious Marxists who worship technology, money, and raw power and who have the pedal-to-the-Metal on Artificial Technology weapons development and mass surveillance.

    But they do have the quickest delivery service for ordering food online via your Smartphone App….

    • ellipsis December 30, 2019 at 10:43 pm #

      Over three times as many people. What could possibly go wrong? Even the little hairless ball sack Truman was smart enough not to fuck with China when MacArthur went on his little rampage. Wonder if Bolton is related?

      • BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 11:14 pm #

        It’s more than 3X as many in Chinese thinking, E.

        Chinese are racist as hell, and to them the 200 million or so white Americans … are the only true American people. The other 130 million non whites here they don’t consider American. On the question of Chinese people living in the US, when the say “Am I Chinese or am I American?”, their answer is, ‘Look in the mirror.’

        Brh

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:27 am #

          They say. I say. But what do you say?

          Btw, you weren’t wrong to get out….

          https://www.barnhardt.biz/2019/12/27/satanic-taunting-ill-not-rule-it-out/

          • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 9:34 am #

            I’m not Catholic, Janos, but Protestant.

            You know the big white meeting halls on the town green in our New England villages, the ones that a few years back began prominently displaying multi colored ‘Gay Pride’ flags on the side of the church. That’s the one.

            Brh

          • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 11:20 am #

            AB is great about some things and awful on others.
            she says we who see the chemtrails are nuts.

            no she is a fool, in that regard.

          • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 11:25 am #

            you made a comment about chinese people and mirrors…Ive spent 10? minutes looking for it.

            where is it?

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:54 pm #

            And mirrors? I don’t think so. Unless it was one from last week which was deleted. I started raving about Chinese people being served first in Chinese restaurants and how inspiring it was….!

  42. BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 10:43 pm #

    At the summit meeting in Moscow

    President Pete: “Commissar Putin, President Xi, meet my husband Chas 10”.

    Jingjang Xi and Vlad Putin clear their throats, and exchange side glances. A pregnant silence hangs in the air.

    Brh

    • Pucker December 30, 2019 at 11:56 pm #

      From some of the suggestive photos posted on Chaz Buttigieg’s Twitter account, it looks like Chaz may have been having extramarital homosexual affairs behind Pete’s back on the campaign trail?

      • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:32 pm #

        Well then, I’ll bet he draws a ringing endorsement from Ol’ BillJeff himself, for sure! And who knows, possibly even a discrete solicitation as well? The mind boggles!

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 6:55 pm #

        Phew! Pete would be really worried if it was a HETEROSEXUAL affair, I’m sure!

        But, really? I know you’re the resident joker, Pucker, but do you have to traffic is such unseemly gossip?

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 10:04 am #

      Putin: For my American comrades’ comfort, a separate lavatory has been designated for your use. [Barely suppressed laughter is heard in the background.] We hope that ‘zhe’ will find it suitable for your use. Is that the correct usage? I must admit, we Russians have little practical experience in this area, so perhaps you will explain it to me later? The world – or should I say primarily the United States? – appears to have changed dramatically from the days of my youth. [More muffled laughter is heard.]

  43. BackRowHeckler December 30, 2019 at 10:49 pm #

    Right then and there Putin and Xi decide America is finished as an adversary. They no longer have to take seriously anything coming from Washington.

    Brh

    • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 9:54 am #

      Just think about any Islamic country, especially Iran.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 1:50 pm #

      You give America too much credit. That decision was made several years back already.

      • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 3:21 pm #

        Deliberately too. Seems like both the C_A and the KGB had and executed plans to contaminate, corrupt and destroy ‘Murikan “culture” (such as it was) shortly after WWII. Did they succeed?

  44. amb December 30, 2019 at 11:27 pm #

    We need a Trump on steroids 10X… more economic nationalism, deregulation and personal liberties than you could imagine… 5,000 cabinet and hierarchy gov workers that are 100% with this leader’s agenda… an external tribunal of some sort to purge the gov of corrupt actors and corruption… an external tribunal to remove all redundancy and non-essential agencies and workers and streamline and reduce the government down to a sane size… the abolition of the 17 intelligence agencies with 1-3 new non-corrupt ones put in their place… in order to just BEGIN to turn this country around. I’d go for a benevolent dictator to take over and clean this whole mess up and then resume the basic American gov model that our Founders created (slightly modernized).

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 1:53 pm #

      Nice sentiment, but far too late for all that now. When the house is rotten with termites and rot it’s too late for even wholesale repairs. Time to burn it down and build a new one.

  45. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 12:18 am #

    At one point, Virginia Roberts had a miscarriage, so she must have been trying to get pregnant? Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislain Maxwell offered Virginia Roberts a house and $200,000 bucks a month to have a baby. They must have known that she was trying to get knocked up? Virginia Roberts left after she turned 18 years old, and Epstein lost interest in her. Weirdo’s…. Trump’s Mar el Lago resort is in Palm Beach, Florida, and Trump moved in the same elite social circle as Epstein. Trump and Epstein were friends for a while, but none of the girls claim that Trump was sexually involved with them. Virginia Roberts was recruited by Epstein from Trump’s Mar el Lago resort.

    George Carlin: “It’s a Big Club, and you and I are not in it. You and I are not in the Big Club.”

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    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:28 pm #

      I think Trump’s more interested in women from the trophy aspect; something to show off and increase his social standing. I seriously doubt the sex aspect has ever been a big deal for him at all. Possibly not at all. From the looks of him now, his last sexual encounter was likely several decades back at least.

      • Majella December 31, 2019 at 7:00 pm #

        How old is Baron Barron?

  46. Sosodef December 31, 2019 at 1:55 am #

    I forecast Living in the Long Emergency will he burned burned burned because Russian talking points or some shit- keep up the great work JK!

  47. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 3:58 am #

    Chaz Buttigieg claims that when he gave his consent to Pete for Pete to run for POTUS that he told Pete: “I’m not going to pretend that I’m something that I’m not.” What do you suppose that Chaz meant by this statement?

    “Former Vice President Joe Biden was interrupted by a series of hecklers calling him “creepy” and a “pervert” during a campaign event in Milford, N.H., on Sunday night. “

    • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

      How will they handle Booty Gig – Sodomite in Chief?

  48. Yukon Tom December 31, 2019 at 4:40 am #

    A few points regarding world politics.

    The Russian economy measured in PPP is about the same size as Germany, and is one of the few countries in the world that are self sufficient (thanks to sanctions).

    A war between Iran and Israel wont happen. Israel would cease to exist. Missile technology has seen to that. Israel would be see missiles arriving from Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and Yemen. Just the actions of Yemen taking out a large chunk of Saudi oil production with a drone missile attack should put this idea to rest. Israel will continue to be belligerent and try to provoke but Iran has ignored these provocations. Israel will continue to try to drag Uncle Samuel into a war but the Generals realise now that they can’t win and would suffer losses that would lead to a severe reckoning back home. Too many US personal within easy reach of Iran’s military.

    Bolivia was a violent coup, as was Ukraine, Brazil to name just a few most recently. This is what happens when Uncle Sam spreads democracy to the world. Iran had democracy back in the 50’s, until Kermit Roosevelt led a coup to install the puppet Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Iranians learnt their lesson about US embassy’s and the CIA planning counter revolutions from them. (Kermit-puppet couldn’t resist)

    China a counter revolution. I don’t think so. Hong Kong is just another colour revolution playing out and the Chinese citizens see it for what it is have no liking to return to the century of humiliation with the Opium Wars. Hong Kong’s economy and politics are a local matter and the corruption of both has been exposed. Nobody in China wants that. I’m sure China will be hurt when the western economy implodes, but China has been preparing for that day with the One Belt One Road busy diversifying its economy across the world. One should hope that China doesn’t seek revenge for that century of shame the west put it through.

    • toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:36 pm #

      @Tom

      Except that all modern national economies are growth based and all will die having peaked in growth.

      THE FATE of virtually all humans is baked into this fossil fuel fantasy.

      maybe

      ~toktomi~

  49. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 5:33 am #

    It hasn’t been addressed here, but what’s going on down in NYC and outlying suburbs with these attacks on Jewish people by mostly blacks who appear to call themselves ‘Black Israelites’? There was the machete assault the other night at the home of a Rabbi north of the city, and last week at a deli in Jersey City killing 5 people. So I live close enough to NYC to get local news coming out of there, and reports of elderly local Jewish people being attacked on the streets of their neighborhoods just going about their business, cold cocked, while anti semitic statement being shouted at them, and left bleeding on the sidewalk. In one way it seems to be a continuation of the ‘knockout game’, and ‘Polar Bear Hunting’ from a few years ago. The mayor is blaming it on President Trump, but his own anti police rhetoric and actions haven’t helped matters any. In fact DiBlassio got himself elected by campaigning against the police. NY has always been a hard place but whoever’s thought we’d see anything like this. (In the Bronx a few days ago a man was beat to death on the street for one dollar) Well, Jewish New Yorkers are going to have to organize and protect themselves. I have this book here ‘Tommy Gun Winter’, about Jewish gangsters in Boston in the 30s. Some tough hombres there, not the type to stand by as their elderly grandparents were beaten up on the streets. Here we are 8 decades on, and it looks like another Tommy Gun Winter may be in order.

    Brh

    • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 10:57 am #

      attacked by their pets.
      chickens home to roost.

      like in Europe, when the jews opened the flood gates. or hell gates.
      tough shit.

      I SAW THIS
      If Virginia is anything like NJ or Seattle, clamping down on single family homes is going to affect brown people (South Asians) more than whites.
      Whites rarely have kids these days, so they don’t need the yard. Pajeets, on the other hand, pop out kids like breeding sows, and they love nothing more than to turn peaceful suburbs into slightly cleaner versions of India.
      It’s like the left refuses to acknowledge the existence of Asian people and their interests.
      We are getting a major mosque, the first one in miles and miles. The people complaining on NextDoor.com are Chinese, Koreans and Hispanics. I guess the whites don’t feel comfortable enough to voice concerns, but the ‘minorities’ are none too happy with a massive mosque going up in the area.

      You need to get out– don’t wait. My Father and us experienced this in the 60s– all white Irish, Italian Jewish neighborhood. My Father had worked double Factory shifts and paid off the 2 bedroom house– like all in the neighborhood the yard etc. were kept immaculate. Overnight the Jews sold out without a for sale sign to “Africans”– how they pulled this off…but they did….
      My Father had no experience with black people (Jews either unfortunately for him) as in Ireland at that time they didn’t exist (now a good part of Somalia has been moved there due to a Jewish Government Official–true fact, look it up)

      AND THIS

      What is the role of Chabad Lubavitch in all of this? Could you please elaborate!
      Those are the ones pushing end times prophecy i believe.
      Pushing to hasten the coming of moshiach, they’re from the Ukraine.
      They come to visit presidents and hope to get / sign the noahide laws into legislation.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 1:42 pm #

        Ok Malth, I’m talking about people stabbed in their own homes during worship. You’re talking about something else.

        Brh

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

          Check this little monster out:

          https://www.pacificpundit.com/2019/12/29/nbc-daily-beast-erin-biba-tweets-deletes-that-anti-semitic-attack-in-new-york-is-complicated/

          It’s “complicated” because it was done by a Black and doesn’t fit the narrative. She reiterates the narrative that Blacks and Jews have to work together against Whites. So much for her as a “fact checker”. One of most dishonest faces I’ve ever seen – right up there with Scott Pelley.

          She’s gotten so much heat for this nonsense that she deleted the tweet and then shut down her account.

          • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 2:46 pm #

            Ok, so she’s an idiot.

            That kind of nonsense isn’t going to keep anybody from being hacked up with a machete or sucker punched on the street. It’s pretty clear ‘Hate has no home here’ rallies in Washington Square Park ain’t gonna get the job done. That’s the kind of thinking that got the 18 yo Barnard college girl hacked up last week in Morningside Park.

            Brh

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

      Well, Jewish New Yorkers are going to have to organize and protect themselves.

      Seriously? They’ve already got Wall Street and Madison Ave and they pretty much own all the valuable residential and commercial real estate. I’m sure they regard a few paltry street attacks as merely the cost of doing business for the few among their ranks who can’t afford protection services. Maybe they can request their Mossad buddies to hang out and clean up the problem. Of course, being Jews, it will no doubt come with a price tag attached. But that just goes without saying…

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:01 pm #

        They have their own “Ronin” called the Shomrim.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

        E. I don’t think the elderly people being pounded in the streets of Brooklyn have much to do with Wall Street or Madison Avenue. Most are ordinary citizens going about their business in neighborhoods they have lived in all their lives.

        Brh

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 5:13 pm #

          Regardless, with few exceptions, they still support the same ruthless Zionist pigs. Likewise, those same Zionist pigs could damn sure protect them if they felt it was in any way their best interests. Their best interests being money and the accrual of obscene amounts via legalized theft, they’ve wisely chosen not to.

        • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 8:53 pm #

          Well, all I can say is the seething hatred on the streets of NYC — woke paradise and lefty utopia — is monumental.

  50. Yukon Tom December 31, 2019 at 6:49 am #

    Hey Jim, you might want to do a revision on the geopolitical side of things. Iraqi demonstrators have just invaded the US embassy in Baghdad. Hostages anyone? Funny, not ha ha for a sitting President if history repeats itself, this time a Democrat taking the presidency and definitely a farce of epic proportions in the making. Karl is proven right again!

    Oh yea, there were 79 Iraqi military personal killed in the latest USAF attack purportedly on Hashd al-Shaabi Kataeb Hezbollah which directly led to this demonstration. Of the dead only 9 were with Kataeb Hezbollah. The rest were with the Iraqi army and police forces. Kataeb Hezbollah is under the command of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. These soldiers were stationed at the border hunting down ISIS. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the rocket attack that killed one US contractor and injured several US and Iraqi soldiers.

    This one strike has united Iraq. A protest against the “Great Satan” will be across the three divides of Iraq, Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Thanks Donald. A stopped clock is right once and a while. This just might be the silver bullet for the Democrats, and they get to hold the bag when the economy implodes. Lucky them. And we get to see the domino effect as the US starts to exit the Middle East. Next goodbye to US troops in Syria. Bibi will not be happy, but he has so much on his plate at the moment, trying to stay out of jail and all.

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    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 2:00 pm #

      All part of the process for the MIC. Stirring up shit in the ME is just good business, so some occasional blowback is always welcomed as the future business opportunity that it is.

  51. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 7:01 am #

    Well, the new decade is starting off with a bang. No, really, I’m not being hyperbolic. The US embassy in Iraq is under assault by pro Iranian mobs as I write this. The place appears to be on fire. Its DeJa Vu all over again. If you recall it was exactly 40 years ago that the US embassy was overrun. Almost to the day.

    Brh

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 2:03 pm #

      After only 19 years it’s so great to see that we’ve finally made the place “safe for democracy,” ain’t it? Wasn’t it Rummy himself who said it was “messy?” Wonder what that old fuck is doing these days? Dying miserably, one would hope.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:04 pm #

      It was 40 years ago today
      That Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.

      I have warned you that the Mahdi is here and that the Black Flag of Jihad will be planted in the sacred soil of Palestine, have I not?

      The Black Flag may have been the inspiration for the secular pirate flag, the Jolly Roger.

  52. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:23 am #

    There is an Epoch Times F..a Lu…n Go…ng publication entitled “The Ultimate Objective of Com…unism”. The author(s) says that the Chinese Com…munist Elite is “Morally Degenerate” (Daode Baihuai) and claims that their evil goal is to obliterate traditional Chinese culture, which, they claim is a gift from the gods. They claim that the Pa…rty is basically at its core “Hate”.

    I think that one might be able to make a similar argument about our Western Elite today? Our Elite seems rather morally degenerate?

    • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:33 am #

      Sometimes, I wonder to what extent Russia’s Great and Glorious traditional culture is responsible for Russia vomiting up Soviet Com…munism?

    • Yukon Tom December 31, 2019 at 7:59 am #

      Lots of self projection going on over there at Epoch Times. Falun Gong is funded by the US government. You know, that “Freedom and Democracy” they are famous for. NOT.

      • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 8:12 am #

        They seem well-funded, but I have no doubt that the horror of the human live organ harvesting is real. Their Chinese books are quite good, particularly about the machinations of internal Chinese politics.

        • Yukon Tom December 31, 2019 at 8:26 am #

          Seems like you are projecting what the MEK in Albania and areas under control of the terrorists in Syria and a few other actors in the ME onto China. No credible evidence

  53. Yukon Tom December 31, 2019 at 8:11 am #

    Communism is a Western Europe thing. Mostly rural societies like Russia conservative weren’t expected to lead the vanguard. “Probably one of those fixed points in time” as Dr. Who would say. A fluke. Lenin being transported across in a sealed train carriage from Switzerland to Petrograd by Germany so as to cause Russia to drop out of WWl allowing Germany to concentrate on the Western front. Fatigue of war, the total ineptness of the Provisional Government that succeeded Tsar Nicholas ll .

    • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 8:46 am #

      The West, particularly the importation of Com…munism, really fucked up China.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:08 pm #

      Guess you never heard of Chairman Mao. But I agree they have made it their own. And Mao will be revisioned as just another Emperor. They were far too racist and nationalistic to ever be really good Communists – and that’s a good thing.

  54. lbs December 31, 2019 at 9:05 am #

    As to what drove the thinking class insane, I do not believe it is anxiety about the Long Emergency. The thinking class does not care about peak oil, they believe it will be solved by tech gizmos.

    I don’t know what drove them insane but I suspect a good part of it is simply the guilt of living in the human society that has produced the most material abundance and comfort, especially when much of the human race does not enjoy that same luxury.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 10:07 am #

      The rapidly approaching population and resource bottleneck will solve most of our current problems for the handful who make it through. For a time, anyway.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:14 pm #

      Yes, and thus they especially hate poor Whites since we always hate those whom we have wronged. Tucker put this forward as one motive for mass immigration: the Elite can feel better about themselves since they are really helping these people.

      And since they are killing the middle class, the number of Whites they hate is constantly growing. The solution? More Indian immigration to replace them!

      • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:05 pm #

        To be fair, whites don’t do ‘poor’ well at all. Watching poor white trash deal with their daily travails is a lesson in self-loathing and degradation. I’m sure poor blacks would chime in and claim the same and they’d probably be correct, but it’s a shameful thing to observe up close all the same.

        The sad thing is, it’s self-reinforcing, as you’ve said. The elite observe the whole process and use it as justification for ever more of their loot and plunder policies, and so it goes all the way to the bottom, acquiring a peculiarly “virtuous” patina in the process. Vicious cycle indeed!

        • Tate January 1, 2020 at 5:17 pm #

          “To be fair, whites don’t do ‘poor’ well at all…”

          I’m not so sure about that. Also, are you directly observing this or just making inferences based on the edited MSM slant on their lives?

          Look to the purveyors of cheap processed foods & addictive drugs to understand the source of the difficulties of those poor folk.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 12:14 am #

        At one point we did. Some of the old Depression photos show both suffering and great character and dignity. Ditto earlier photos on the Western frontier.

        But now they have been corrupted like the rest of us – even before the corruption of poverty conquers them. Or they’re born into it.

  55. lbs December 31, 2019 at 9:25 am #

    Interesting parallel between wokesterism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

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    • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 9:46 am #

      Yeah, we have our own Red Guard here right on campus, with the same self righteous fanaticism as their 60s mentors in China. They have the zeal and ardor of their Chinese spiritual Comrades, but so far haven’t really gone in for the hardcore violence and bloodshed it takes to overturn civilization in the name of REVOLUTION. They look to Bernie Sandals for guidance and leadership.

      Hostis Humani Generis ( enemies of the human race) is the watchword for these anti world thugs, which basically is what the global warming hoax is all about. Soon enough they’ll be getting around to the necessity of ‘population reduction’ in order to cool the planet, and guess what population they’ll want reduced?

      Brh

      • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 10:56 am #

        The global warming hoax is not a matter of whether the planet is warming, short term monitoring has affirmed that, melting ice has affirmed that.

        So it is warming.

        Where is the work being done to figure out what to do about it?

        Alternate energy sources, a joke, 200 million years of energy accumulation will never be replaced by a bunch of windmills and solar panels.

        If we started today with a politically competent plan to reduce fossil fuels, even assuming it would make a difference, it will take 30 to 50 years to implement the world wide changes needed. Well, CFNers, what doe JHK say about what is going to happen in the next fifty years. Peak oil! So the real story is what do we do to change things in time for the massive changes heading our direction anyway. These depletion changes ARE going to happen, period.

        So? Where is the plan being developed on how to make the energy generation a function of real time solar capture rather than long, long term energy capture? Easy answer, no where. Madrid was such a failure and has set the realistic effort back a decade.

        First question, who? Who is responsible to put up the bucks required to finance the changeover?

        An example. We want to change the world, not just the US, to driving electric cars. Step one, feasibility study, what do we need to do it? Al least ten times more electrical generation capability than now. World wide, and all alternative sources. Assume 50% of it could be done with wind, solar, water or geothermal. Nuclear becomes the primary. How many new nuclear plants have been built in the last fifty years? We better get started soon. But no, we have to impeach the President first.

        Once we have some one working on the cars, trucks, trains and planes being converted, let us talk about the electrification of heating the homes of the world. Another 10x need for electricity. Better plan on lots more windmills etc and Nuke plants.

        Hey, Nuke plants? First order problem, what to do with the waste? Already a problem, multiply it by 20. And do not forget failure rates. There is such a consequence for nuclear failure, and we are not very good at perfection for anything.

        The reason nothing is happening about AGW, warming, pollution, trash disposal, is because it is so overwhelming that it is more politically expedient to ignore it and plan for a miracle to happen. Trump is number one on this list, but it is prevalent everywhere. People talk a big story until they have to face the consequence of change. So the political reflection of the people is going to do what it does so well anyway,

        NOTHING!

        In conclusion, nothing of major consequence is going to happen to resolve the problem. Smart folks are already trying to relocate and become farmers. Nope, not a solution, they are going to come and get you. Some development work will be grudgingly funded to try to turn on more lights, furnaces and transportation but remember there is very little money available.

        The end result will occur when 1973 starts again after fracking starts to abate. Each year will see more and more impact. We have already seen the Yellow Jackets in France reacting to higher oil prices, people in the ME reacting to oil price increases. This will only increase.

        OAC et als ideas about what needs to happen are accurate in projecting the impact of what the GND is going to do. It is too painful to be politically realistic. So with everyone fighting to retain their power base, nothing will get done.

        Not that simple!! The resource limitations coming ensure that the effects of the GND are going to happen. Whether we like it or not.

        The planet is definitely going to get warmer alright. And not just from Fossil fuels.

        So, bottom line, how do we adapt to the GND when and how it happens. Forget the elite, they are no help, they will be run over when the time comes. Who is responsible, DJT, IPCC, the World councils on AGW, Greta Thunberg?

        It is going to be survival on the local level! Feudalism.

        • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 11:00 am #

          CHEMTRAILS and 5g

        • beantownbill. December 31, 2019 at 12:55 pm #

          The issue is not the lack of energy – we have enough energy available to last us indefinitely. No, the issue is lack of fossil fuel energy. Soon, the EROEI will be infinitesimal or negative.

          What an intelligent and wise species would do is put in a concerted effort to develop ALL available sources of energy, not just solar panels and windmills. We’ll get a working fusion reactor some day, but in the meantime we could develop thorium reactors; we can make large solar satellites that beam down direct solar energy via microwave; we can get organics via asteroid mining; we can increase battery storage by a factor of 10 or more. In the meantime we could husband our remaining resources until these other options come on-line.

          Yes, getting these new sources seem far-fetched. But what are our alternatives? To wimp out, close our eyes and pull the blankets up over our heads? To give up and live small, ultimately dying out like a fading white dwarf star? It’s very defeatist to think that way. Or we could be bold, make grand plans, and if we fail, we could say we gave it a try, and go down knowing we made a noble effort.

          I know JHK is being very realistic. It’s true we are at a tipping point. Homo Sapiens, however, historically has taken chances. Coming down from the trees in the savannah was one big, dangerous gamble. I think there must have been a group of our ancestors that said it’s suicide to leave the protection of the trees, don’t go!

          • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 2:16 pm #

            Bill

            Our politicos ARE wimps, as well as most of our elites. High tech is not going to manufacture new land space, garbage space, new oceans, fresh water, oil. A big part of TLE was showing no matter how much real time energy is utilized, it cannot get close to what energy return we get from oil and natural gas. That is the real problem.

            Also, all your suggestions of what can be done. Who is going to pay for it? Who are going to make the big plans? Who is going to stop the nation to nation bickering that is stopping progress now? Madrid was a fiasco!

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

            Did you read Jerry Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer? They fought off the Cannibal/Black Gang/Eco thug alliance. The free shit army moved on to destroy the nuclear power plant. A vote was made as to whether they should defend it or not. Most didn’t want to. A few raged that they didn’t want their children’s children to be awarded prizes for best rat hunter as had just been given out. A small party left the Valley to fight them….

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:22 pm #

            A fair summary. Sorry – GND? Probably something I should know.

            Don’t worry – Sunny’s scripture the Urantia Book predicts a new energy to be discovered. I’ll get on it once we solve the Racial problem….

          • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

            Janos

            Yes, I read it twice. Once in a while, I refer to it. A perfect narrative on what could happen With a major dislocation. It is also a huge argument for the separation of the ethnic groups during a catastrophe, White vs, Black vs. Brown etc. You noticed that there was not a consideration of a return to modern day, just acceptance of what had happened. Senator Jellison’s enclave was the start of a feudal city-State.

            Good read for anyone.

            GND. AOC et al. Green New Deal. How to get to zero fossil fuels in ten years. Totally discredited.

        • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 3:50 pm #

          Maybe our rulers can install rockets on the earth to push us away from the sun! LOL. Just in time for the next ice age. Globull Warmism is just a religious death cult trying to seed the Globull Tax Farm for some new revenoo.

        • Tate January 1, 2020 at 5:22 pm #

          Can you please stop using abbreviations, JohnAZ. It’s too much effort to learn your alphabet soup terminology

      • Majella January 2, 2020 at 7:45 pm #

        Nasty little smear there, BRH. First you point & raspberry some people with a ‘wokesterist’ accusation (which may well be accurate, but not unknown for your interpretative assessments), then you slip in a little dubh regarding Sanders. Please find anything he’s said or written that has ever promoted violent revolution. ASAP, okay?

        • Majella January 2, 2020 at 7:47 pm #

          Oh. It appears that post is not in the right place. Refers to BRH & Red Army fanatics taking a university nearby…dang, those progressives are EVERYWHERE!

  56. volodya December 31, 2019 at 10:08 am #

    This story of civilizational decline is in part a story of the road to Hell and what it’s paved with. And the paving stones we’re walking on depend in parton where we’re at geographically. Europe, including Russia, engulfed itself in multi-generational madness with its wholehearted embrace of various isms, fascism and communism chief among them, and proceeded to self-immolate in two gigantic wars, with revolutions and catastrophic blood-lettings in between. So much for the superiority of the White race. 

    The folk on the other end of the Eurasian land-mass are no better, Japan deciding it’s the done thing to send its army onto the mainland to kill fifteen or twenty million people and then to bomb Pearl Harbor. Such was its hubris that it couldn’t conceive of American aircraft getting to the main Japanese islands and doing a number on them, demolishing hundreds of square miles of urban areas, killing maybe a million civilians, tens of thousands at a go, and that was before the nukes. 

    And then there’s China with its own brands of lunacy, bred in societal insularity, disdaining the barbaric outer world, but then descending to worse barbarisms than those of the barbarians it disdained. 

    As for the New World, well what can you say? Failed states, failing states, its academies, as far from  bastions of reason and learning and civilization as they can be, incubators for the most preposterous propositions, the crazier the concept, the farther removed from reality the ideology, the greater the renown for it and its creator. 

    The north end of it has its own legacy of blood, the USA embroiled in a 150 year Cold War between its main constituent parts, North and South, part of the historical imprint on culture and society of that most odious of human institutions that was the most proximate cause of the disagreement between them. And let’s not forget the origin of this enterprise, the root of it the greatest heist in human history, the conquest of the Americas from the original owners. Not a great start for the country considering itself the indispensable nation. 

    So here we are in the societal and economic wreckage of the 20th Century. And what was the road to Hell paved with? Not just good intentions, but bad ones, mainly bad ones, the paving stones we’re currently laying down as bad as the ones of our forefathers. The best thing you can say is that we’ve hardly heard a peep from Germany or Japan since 1945. I guess that has to count for progress. And that particular ism that defined and defiled decades of the previous century, notwithstanding the insistence of our most – cough – educated, is nowhere to be found. Do people learn from history? Maybe sometimes we do.That has to count for something too.   

    • malthuss December 31, 2019 at 11:01 am #

      genius writings…you know too much.

    • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 11:08 am #

      V

      Maybe sometimes we do.

      I think you are an optomist.

      Even God has been fed up in the past with Mankind and allowed us to self immolate ourselves. Do not blame any of this on God, we are our own destroyers throughout history. Do not expect God to intervene, when he gave us the right to free choice, the ball was handed to us.

      We are at an extinction crisis now. We have been given the power of reasoning by God to handle our problems and adapt. I am not optimistic.

    • Cavepainter December 31, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

      “conquest of the Americas from the original owners”; oh, so you believe that had the native Americans been better weaponized, greater in number and applied different tactics rather than those accustomed in perpetual tribal wars, then today there’d be European reservations instead of that for native Americans? Perfect example of how history itself has been made a political prisoner of partisan narrative.

      • volodya December 31, 2019 at 12:16 pm #

        Nobody’s justifying perpetual tribal wars. Do we try to justify the butchery of Poland by Germany and Russia in WW2? Whether it’s Poland or the Americas, a heist is a heist and a lot of people suffered and died.The origins of this exceptional and indispensable place are pretty ugly. You can’t just paint that over.

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 2:17 pm #

          Oh, but paint it over we must! Our own exceptional Exceptionalism demands it!

        • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:35 pm #

          So Palestine too, right Sport?

          We won this Land fairly, by dint of combat.

          • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 5:22 pm #

            And we’ll lose it again by those same means. Although the means of combat have been largely redefined in the interim. The most delicious irony is that we’ll be defeated on the very terms (financial and productivity) that we ourselves brought to prominence during the heady days of the latter half of the 20th century. The “New American Century” ain’t gonna look anything like what we imagined it would back when a certain group of Zionist thugs first coined the term back in the quaint old ’90’s. Unfortunately, most Americans are still not smart enough to realize that yet.

          • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 5:46 pm #

            Yes, we made Capitalism our be all and end all – and then another People who were better at it took over our Nation. There are Whites who can give them a run for their money in the money making department – and typically they are allied with them. Competition is for the dummies. Cooperation is the name of the game here as in most other places.

          • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:56 pm #

            I’d go so far as to say it’s no longer “our” nation at all. It belongs to them now; lock, stock, and barrel.

          • Tate January 1, 2020 at 5:35 pm #

            “I’d go so far as to say it’s no longer “our” nation at all. It belongs to them now; lock, stock, and barrel.”

            That’s why, when our melanin-enriched brethren think of the White Oppressor, they’re usually thinking of the people wearing the little hats, usually in the landlord role. That’s why race relations have always been better in the South on a day-to-day basis. Fewer little hat wearers.

            Of course, Hollywood has retconned the populace into believing the exact opposite. And who owns Hollywood lock, stock & barrel?

            A bit off-topic, the ADL was founded to defend a pencil factory manager against charges of raping & murdering an actual White girl in Atlanta, GA. The evidence was overwhelming of his guilt.

        • sophia May 25, 2020 at 8:29 pm #

          I don’t know. How widespread was the torture of the losers in Native American culture? How many had slavery?

      • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:38 pm #

        The Indians gloried in War, at least many of the larger Tribes and Cultures. Even the Hopi, “the People of Peace” weren’t pacifists. They had a Cult of Warriors and would even leave their cliffside dwellings to fight in the field on occasion if they knew an enemy was approaching.

        At times the defeated the Apaches and even drove the Spanish out for decades.

        Perhaps peace is over-rated? What to do with with the Spartan in all of us during “peace”? Watch the movies “Purge” and “Fight Club” for two different visions of how to handle this dilemma.

    • volodya December 31, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

      Maltuss and John AZ

      I suppose it’s too much to be an optimist. The current disposition of things can’t continue and there’s no chance of it being fixed and what takes its place has to comport with basic natural law. And something will take its place. I guess that’s as optimistic as we can get. I’ve moaned about this before and I guess it’s a frivolity compared to what JHK was talking about in his previous post, that being finding a place in a productive ecosystem with a way forward and a worthwhile life, but to me this music is the best of what our civilization created:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZScHWV9LtU  

      And it just irks me that it’s disappearing. I think that music has to be a big part of a healthy culture. It used to be Jews but now it’s basically people of Asian descent that are carrying it. I know Asian people and music lessons for violin or piano was a big part of their childhood. Not so with me and most kids I grew up with and I think even less so now. 

      But, as you can see from that vid, the concert hall is in a small city in Poland and most of the musicians are European. I guess the hope is that even if we’re too debauched and debased and depraved on this side of the waters, there’s others that still have some collective will to live, and even if we don’t see fit to preserve our best achievements, somebody else will. 

      • beantownbill. December 31, 2019 at 1:43 pm #

        Thanks so much for this video. I loved it. If I ever could believe in a higher power, it/he/she had or have a hand in creating this exquisite piece of music. And Soyoung Yoon just sent shivers up my neck. I could observe her forever. If I was only 40 or 50 years younger!

        This is a perfect example of why we cannot let our civilization disintegrate into dust.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 5:49 pm #

      vol,

      There’s a good argument to be made that all of the ills you described above can be ascribed to a single simple cause: over population. It’s the ill of ills and is well known to cause madness in all animal populations it afflicts. If that’s the case, expect things to get much, much worse all the way down the chute. The 20th century is pretty much the worldwide textbook example of a human population in massive overshoot, with the effects amplified the most exactly where we’d expect them to be: the (now formerly) industrial countries of the west.

      With third world populations many times larger than our own rapidly industrializing now, expect the madness to multiply hand in hand with the populations exponentially. I’d put our chances at surviving the 21’st century in a form any way resembling our current state of affairs (mass consumerism with an underlying industrial base located somewhere) at less than 10%. And that’s being extremely optimistic. The youngsters being born right now, and who would in normal times be expected to see this century through, will be the ones who have to deal with it. Wish them luck!

  57. 100th Avatar December 31, 2019 at 11:35 am #

    It’s election year, and Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s most generous donor, needs his Iran war.

    $750M embassy. Should be fine, no?

    Iraqis angry that Iraqis were bombed in Iraq without Iraqi approval. And they’re unhappy.
    Who’d a thunk?

    Americans swallowed yellow cake before Iraq 2, Russiagate coup, so why not Iraq 3? These dummies will believe anything.

    The neocons’ Wolfowitz Doctrine is still sitting in the third drawer of the Oval Office desk. Just had to blow off a little dust… and Bolton mustache hairs.

    America may not be the great satan, but they are the Great Simpletons. Never able to know when they’re being lied to, manipulated, exploited, put under the heel, or marched to their death by the MIC.

    Can’t even feel sorry for them. Not worth caring about

    • Epicur December 31, 2019 at 1:36 pm #

      “Iraqis angry that Iraqis were bombed in Iraq without Iraqi approval.”

      The way the world has been for the last few centuries I don’t think the Iraqis have had much to be happy about. Our foolish error was involving ourselves and giving them something to focus their anger on.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

        Read ‘War in the Garden of Eden’, by Kermit Roosevelt, about his time in Iraq with the British army in 1915-1916. Roadside bombs, assassinations, beheadings … just like now, nothing has changed.

        Brh

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 2:15 pm #

      That’s our America alright. The Izzy’s little lapdog since 1948.

    • Janos Skorenzy December 31, 2019 at 2:45 pm #

      Looks like the Forecast is wrong about America staying out….

      • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

        My question has always been, if you are going to waste money and blood on a geopolitical site, why do you just turn it back over to the idiots that caused the problem in the first place.

        Turn these places into administrative and military outposts of the US when you have beaten them down and keep them that way.

        We did it with Germany and Japan and should have with Korea, VietNam, Iraq, Iran, Syria. Imagine the world today if these areas were stabilized.

        I realize I am leaving Russia and China out of the mix, but maybe those conflicts would not have occurred. Maybe?

        Or just stay the hell out of everyone’s business, let them duke it out locally and figure out how to solve our own problems.

        I suppose we can thank the Deep State for this.

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:14 pm #

          Not enough money in the world for all of that. Never mind the political will. Besides, Rome already tried all that extend the empire until breaks shit way back in the day, and we know how all that turned out.

          But the real point of being there in the first place was simply to extract the natural resources, better to expend them later on meaningless wars to begin the next round of resource rape, while making a handful of our species obscenely rich in the process. Same as it ever was.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 1:34 am #

          There’s no way we were ever going to take oil from the Arabs and not cut them in on it. Ditto anywhere else. You’ll find out when the Reds starting cutting off the power to the cities during the coming Civil War. Infrastructure means vulnerability – especially the kind that is flammable and travels in above ground pipes!

          And who are the guys who work with power? With water? Grow the food and transport it? Thas right – the Deplorables. War game it all you want – you’re going to lose, gang green (green being the new red but not the conservative red which was made up by the mindfuckers at the Tavistock Institute. The Communists should be the reds, right?) And green also standing for money, the money behind the greens and the old reds.

          Your view of the World is the same as the British East India Company – the guys who tried to force Opium on the Chinese when they said no to it. And you’re a Christian too, right? Don’t tell me, Prosperity Gospel, right? Just like Trump!

  58. SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 11:39 am #

    On a lighter note :-). So they say hindsight is 2020. Does this mean we can finally affirm the gripping love story woven into the plot of American Psycho?

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 2:13 pm #

      You old sentimentalist, you!

      • SoftStarLight December 31, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

        Lol well it is there if you look. I just happened to notice that’s all.

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:39 pm #

          Don’t tell me, you’re watching it today, aren’t you? Do tell details!

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 3:03 pm #

            No I didn’t watch it yesterday but the movie happened to come up in a conversation recently so I was thinking about it. Patrick’s “feelings” for Jean were the only thing that made him human. Well some people would say. And ultimately, Jean was the only person he ever really saw as human. That’s why he told her to leave his apartment the night he had asked her out to dinner. He admitted he was afraid he couldn’t control himself and would hurt her. That was as human as he could get. And then remember when Jean found his notebook with all the gory doodles and she realized he was a maniac and her dreams were crushed. That was a difficult moment and I did cry with her lol.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 4:22 pm #

            He wasn’t a freak – he just had a freak “on his back”. This was the compassionate assessment in the book/movie “Red Dragon” of the Red Dragon killer.

            He was getting involved with a blind girl who really liked him. The detective used these words to make her feel better. We’re all really good way up high. As Sunny says, the Sun is always shining up there….

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 12:49 pm #

            And the Devil was once an Angel of Light and the Son of the Dawn. Perhaps characters like Patrick Bateman and Francis Dolarhyde are manifestations of that true darkness. I have’t seen Red Dragon but at the end of American Psycho Patrick Bateman seems to indicate such a darkness, as well as an awareness of eventual judgement.

            https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=__BBylQ6srM

  59. capt spaulding December 31, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

    Since the subject is forecasts, there is an interesting article in the Atlantic on what the intelligence agencies thought 2020 would look like. What they got right, and what they got wrong. Interesting.

  60. toktomi December 31, 2019 at 3:44 pm #

    … and 345 comments thusfar, but yet, not a single word about Nature’s Prime Directive, survival – unless you consider the few observations and warnings about the terminal nature of industrial human society.

    ~toktomi~

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    • axisboldaslove December 31, 2019 at 4:40 pm #

      Survival only happens when an individual wants to live. Our species is suicidal. Reminds me of that Pearl Jam song, “World Wide Suicide”. It’s true.

      • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:20 pm #

        Sounds like a catchy tune, LOL!

  61. BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

    Who’s going to be in Times Square tonight watching the ball drop?

    You gotta be f#kkin crazy going down there.

    Sure the NYPD will be out, deployed 40,000 strong. Don’t make a wrong move you’ll find yourself face down on the pavement with the cuffs being thrown on.

    10,000 predators circulating thru the seething crowd and on the perimeters, picking off stragglers. Its not a place for the weak or uninitiated. You need to be able to fight your way out, if necessary.

    Happy New Year CFNers.

    Brh

    • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 5:48 pm #

      And you get to stand up in a cage for hours, not being able to leave. All to watch a ball drop for ten seconds.

      ??? And these folks are voters. Maybe that explains a lot.

    • roccofire December 31, 2019 at 6:02 pm #

      When I was young, and before 911, we all went down there, oh Lord the mass of humanity, the drunken fights, and falling, dodging flying items, a massive army of police. Incredible too see, just once and when you are young.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:20 pm #

      Is it just me, or have the traditional college football bowl games totally lost their allure, or what? Other than some of the BCS games, the rest are just plain flat and meaningless. Another relic of my 20th century youth soon to be rendered obsolete. Chalk it up to over saturation, I guess.

      • BackRowHeckler December 31, 2019 at 8:44 pm #

        40 bowl games now, even teams with losing records are getting in.

        The Clemson — Ohio State game was one for the ages tho.

        brh

    • tucsonspur December 31, 2019 at 7:19 pm #

      “New York, New York, it’s a helluva town, the Bronx is up and the Battery’s down….”

      City of my Birth. City of Superlatives. (ha, ha)

      “On the day I was born
      The nurses all gathered ’round
      And they gazed in wide wonder
      At the joy they had found
      The head nurse spoke up
      And she said ‘leave this one alone’
      She could tell right away
      That I was bad to the bone

      Bad to the bone
      Bad to the bone
      B-B-B-B-Bad to the bone
      B-B-B-B-Bad
      B-B-B-B-Bad
      Bad to the bone”

      Happy New Year Everyone!

  62. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 6:27 pm #

    Happy New Year!

    Remember the Rule on the Frontier when confronting the Huckpapa and the Lakota: It’s the women’s job to mutilate the survivors after the warriors scalp you alive. So, Please: Save the last bullet for yourself. Anyway: It beats the Helloutuva a life in a nursing home.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:38 pm #

      Three words: inert gas asphyxiation. If someone brings kits to market, invest EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT, while of course setting aside a kit or two for you and yours as well. You won’t be sorry.

      • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:00 pm #

        They did Timothy McVeigh by “Lethal Injection”. Jeffrey Epstein may have just walked out of jail, and he may be kick’n it in the Caribbean with a new passport and a “New Look”?

        “ Nitrogen asphyxiation has been suggested by a number of lawmakers and other advocates as a more humane way to carry out capital punishment. In April 2015, the Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill authorizing nitrogen asphyxiation as an alternative execution method in cases where the state’s preferred method of lethal injection was not available as an option.[5][6] In March 2018, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced a switch to nitrogen gas as the primary method of execution.[7]”

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:36 pm #

          The cost savings being the salable point. Funny that in this case cost efficient also turns out to be most humane as well. I’m sure they’ll find a way to fuck it up.

          There’s rumors out there that McVeigh was given a similar last minute reprieve for his part as CIA patsy in OKC, but my money’s on him being offed right there to end it. Although, he might have been/probably was led to believe that he’d be saved at the last minute for his efforts. He had not enough, yet too many secrets to save his ass in the end, not to mention which the whole false flag thing was still in its relatively exploratory days then. My haven’t we advanced since then?

        • benr January 2, 2020 at 10:54 am #

          Firing squad makes more sense and is far cheaper.

  63. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 6:34 pm #

    People get very upset when I mention the book “The Afghanistan Papers”. Great: 18 years in an endless quagmire, and you can’t talk about it. Fantastic…. Total mental breakdown….

    • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 6:46 pm #

      JHK is Right: If the Americans can’t get their minds right, then the country is Fucked….

      18 years in Afghanistan, and you can’t talk about it. You gotta be shit’n me….

      • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 6:51 pm #

        I think that a huge swath of the Americans are on pharmaceutical mind control drugs, like Prozac, which I think are designed for people to avoid having to resolve sharp emotional conflicts? Over a long period of time, you could end up with a Brain Fucked population. I mean: People are crazy enough in a natural state, but you could end up with a large segment of the population that is literally homicidal, particularly if the pharmaceuticals got cut off suddenly….

        Holy Shit Balls….

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:12 pm #

          All very true. All of which makes this story ring truer and truer every day:

          http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/inside-the-lc-the-strange-but-mostly-true-story-of-laurel-canyon-and-the-birth-of-the-hippie-generation-part-ii/

          WARNING!!! Don’t go to this site if you don’t wish to have your paradigms seriously disrupted! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

          http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 11:45 am #

            Phew!

            I read the 1st five chapters. My head is spinning, keeping all the names straight.

            A few years ago a book came out about the music scene in Woodstock, NY — the town, not the concert site about 50 miles away — some of the same people mentioned in ‘The Canyon’, taking place about the same time, seemed not as tragic and f#kkd up as events in Cal, altho Woodstock had its share of ODs, vehicular death and lunacy too.

            Brh

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 11:49 am #

            And that’s the first I ever heard of ‘Vito and the Freaks’.

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 12:29 pm #

            One thing that wasn’t mentioned, when talking about Charles Manson, was Manson’s link to gangster Alvin Karpis, a member of Ma Barker’s gang in the 1930s. Manson befriended Karpis at the State Prison in Washington State, and it was Karpis who taught Charlie how to play guitar.

            Karpis had Lithuainian roots, just like Vito, founder of ‘Vito and the Freaks’.

            It’s a tangled web of people and events, a peculiarly American story, with an ending at once tragic and blood soaked.

            Brh

        • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 9:04 pm #

          Pucker

          Kids too. If you are not a perfect kid, you get drugged. Pharma has this country buffaloed, along with the MDs.

          “If the pharmaceuticals got cut off suddenly”

          Ha! Why do you think the users are fighting the wall so much? You do not think it is for those poor Latins?

          Used to be that folks with messed up wiring in their heads were institutionalized. Now, the MDs put drugs in them and let them go. A bomb ready to go off.

        • benr January 2, 2020 at 10:55 am #

          I would suggest the SSRI’s help at first but as the dosage goes up they cause more issues than they help.
          Most of the mass shooters are hopped up on very high levels of them.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

      Hey! We ‘Muricans love sending “our boys (and girls, and zhes)” off to die in desolate hellholes for no discernible reason whatsoever, as long as they were stupid to enough to volunteer for it anyway, and a motherfucker or two back here could make a buck off it in the process. We’ll send mom and pop a flag and a plaque or something, maybe even bury their sorry ass if we can find any of the body parts, and mutter some platitudes over their grave before we kick dirt on ’em, and call it a day. Plus memorial flyovers at all the football games! Now doesn’t that make it all seem better? I know I get a hard-on just thinking about it!

      • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:03 pm #

        Insane….

        And the Marvel Comic propaganda movies appeal to the white teenage male regressed desire to be a “Hero”. Very manipulative, almost psychopathic….

        • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:08 pm #

          The Epic Hero Myth was baked into our national psyche right from the start, and we’ve been living the nightmare of misinterpreting ever since.

          • K-Dog December 31, 2019 at 7:13 pm #

            Tie me to the mast.

          • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 8:54 pm #

            You’ll be a pitiful howling mess as we sink beneath the waves!

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 2:04 am #

            Washington was 6’4 and could broad jump twenty feet. A famous Indian fighter, he could take a man’s head off with one swing of his sword. A real hero, not like the later boy scout stuff about him.

            If you don’t think boys need this, you don’t know much about human development.

            The real crap is the Marlboro Man Mythology, that individuals and individualists won the West and not Militias, Posses, and of course, the United States Cavalry.

            America would have been great even if we had stayed British. But the Indians needed to be conquered, pacified, and dispossessed. Any one who says differently is simply the enemy within.

          • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 6:22 am #

            Rumor has it George Washington also drove a Canyonero, equipped with an internal combustion V8 of his own design.

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 9:35 pm #

            Canyonero

            Isn’t Krusty the Klown the spokesman for the Canyonero 4WD Motor Company?

          • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 4:17 am #

            Whoa, Canyonero! Whoa!

      • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 9:06 pm #

        How come it seems that where we go to fight, it involves oil #1 or drugs#2?

  64. K-Dog December 31, 2019 at 7:11 pm #

    Happy New Year from Chasing The Squirrel.

    I remembered I added a blank page into my website so any content dropped in it would magically appear on the top of my articles. I tested it with a Mark Twain quote. It worked, and then I sort of forgot about it.

    Then I ran across a new year video feed an hour ago and said I wish I could just drop that embed code onto my website with an easy thump of a paw…………….

    Then I remembered I could. So I did.

    Happy New Yeareverybody.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:20 pm #

      K-Pup,

      If it was me, I’d ditch that black background in the interests of increased visual clarity for old and young viewers alike. No reason to give new readers a reason right off the git go to ignore your scribblings, now is there? But granted, I’m not a dog, so your/their mileage might vary.

      And oh yeah, Welcome To The Machine yourself, you old fucking hound dog, you!

  65. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:13 pm #

    “ The overall effect is of a march into a new totalitarianism, garnished with epic mendacity and malevolence.”

    This is an outcome that it would be extremely advisable to try to avoid at all costs. Trust me on this one….

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    • K-Dog December 31, 2019 at 7:17 pm #

      The brakes are not working. It appears the outcome is impossible to avoid. I wish it weren’t so….

      • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:24 pm #

        Totalitarianism, when it shows it’s ugly face in earnest, is always embraced. It’s never even a factor of avoiding it. History has taught us that much repeatedly and definitively.

    • JohnAZ December 31, 2019 at 9:07 pm #

      Pucker

      With a vast majority toned down on drugs, who cares?

  66. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 7:45 pm #

    “Bad Choices” tend to be “Easy Choices”, right?

    Americans love making “Easy Choices”.

    And “Easy Choices” tend to be the “Bad Choices”….

    The Easiest way to construct a “Bad Choice” is by adding a huge amount of Bad Faith and Mendacity, and in this way the Society can create a big steaming pile of “Bad Choices” and walk right into a horror show of Tota…litar…ianism….

    Do you remember those “Fad Diet” crappy tasting artificial milk shakes that tasted like shit, but promised the consumer that the path to a Hollywood Body is through drinking an endless river of chocolate milk shakes? Utopia…. Water board a big fat person with chocolate milk shake….

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 7:59 pm #

      LOL! That’s pretty good! You need to focus group the idea and market it post haste while the idea is hot! Get you a fucking NYC Jew banker with dollar signs in his eyes to put up the startup money. Call it the Slimfast Waterboard Diet (TM), with that same Special Forces moron that pitches the Tac Light and Tac Glasses doing the spot. You’ll have fat, cottage cheese thigh housewives from coast to coast signing over their bank accounts/inheritances to you in no time!

  67. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 8:27 pm #

    Didn’t Spock once using his Vulcan ESP catch Sulu trying to spike Spock’s beverage with a knock out drug so that Sulu could then suck Spock’s cock? Sulu wanted to turn Spock into a queer. Spock then set his Fazer on stun and shot Sulu in his balls and then banged Sulu’s head against the floor 3 times. Sulu and Spock were at loggerheads because of Sulu’s homosexuality. Spock could never retire from Starfleet to cash in by helping his dad, Sarok, dole out Federation Aid on Vulcan to his friends because Spock feared pay back by Sulu’s Homo gang.

    • ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 8:52 pm #

      You’re imagination continues to amaze, my friend! The sad thing is, it’s increasingly not just your imagination anymore, is it?

  68. ellipsis December 31, 2019 at 8:50 pm #

    For those imbibing tonight and looking to minimize the mental and physical damage to start 2020, may I suggest the following:

    Clear spirits are the best option. My personal favorite is the old standby, the Bloody Mary, with an additional common sense ingredient: olive oil. Add the olive oil in the bottom of the glass first with the vodka (1/4 cup yields 5% ABV in 16 oz, 1/3 cup 6.7%, and 1/2 cup a whopping 10%, so easy does it!), give it a stir, add some lemon pepper salt, then add the tomato or V8 juice. Give it another stir and enjoy.

    Eat light on the carbs and proteins, but relatively heavy on the fats (see the olive oil above) to moderate the alcohol absorption and minimize the caloric impact. Nice, big, green leafy salads with high fat creamy/oily dressings are ideal. Straight up olive oil and seasoned salt with a spritz of lemon is great.

    Some nutritional supplements are your friend. Of course, a good B and C Vitamin Stress Complex beforehand should go without saying, but if you have these on hand, your liver and brain will love you for it too:

    N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC), 500 MG
    Milk Thistle Extract (Silymarin), 500-1000 Mg

    If you’re going to imbibe heavily, take two of each before hand and two more before retiring. Then take two more in the morning with two eggs for breakfast and another Bloody Mary sans the alcohol to wash it down.

    Finally, remember that alcohol and acetaminophen (Tylenol) DON’T MIX! Just DON’T DO IT! If you’ve totally fucked the dog (sorry K-Pup!) and wake up miserable, remember that WATER is your best friend at that point. Lots and lots of PURE WATER, with nothing more than a spritz of lemon if you must.

  69. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 9:04 pm #

    Jeffrey Epstein was a Big Transhumanist. He had made arrangements to freeze his head and his penis to be thawed out in the future and reanimated. True Story….

    Epstein was Big Buddies with Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, the British Media tycoon Robert Maxwell, Bill Gates, numerous MIT and Harvard academics and Nobel Prize winners, Ehud Barak, and Simon Peres, that Saudi arms merchant and drug dealer, and, at one time, Trump. Epstein was a college drop out who cultivated “Authority” by offering Authority figures philanthropic “donations”, rides on his flashy private plane dubbed “The Lolita Express”, and White teenage prostitutes. He then video taped them and had the girls report back their particular sexual fetishes. Weird….

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  70. Luhrenloup December 31, 2019 at 9:06 pm #

    I, more and more, see the emptiness of political discourse. 99% of it is about murder and mayhem, fools and knaves. On some level, I believe it evolves, but very slowly, hundreds of years. At present it is so incredibly ugly and vicious that it diminishes my life listening to or reading about it. So I’m cutting down. Everything I give my attention to feeds it. My New Year’s resolution is to keep away from anything whose theme is on the matter of “whites” or “blacks.”

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    • Pucker December 31, 2019 at 9:42 pm #

      That actually may be a Very Good Rule?: Turn it off whenever you hear either the word “White” or “Black”….

    • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 4:18 pm #

      Yes, abandon the field so the Enemy can defame us with no resistance whatsoever. Think how bad it will get after that.

      Americans are good at getting everything wrong, or at least the important stuff.

      • Luhrenloup January 1, 2020 at 5:08 pm #

        “Whites” and Blacks’ is a product exploited by venues like the NY Times. If you buy it, the orders for it multiply. After enough people ignore it. Its production is scaled back.

  71. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 9:23 pm #

    Do you remember what happened at Chernobyl when the Ukrainian government cut back on paying the salaries of the engineers working in the nuclear power plant, and the engineers starting to avoid their job duties and started moonlighting taking second and third jobs to make ends meet?

    I wonder what would happen if they let the maintenance and infrastructure go-all-to-Hell at a popular amusement park, like Six Flags?

    Everyone thinks that Runaway Technology will save us. Do you remember the movie “West World”?

    What about defective Runaway Technology? Or, Runaway Technology that is not properly maintained? Or, because of Runaway Technology, the technology is quickly made obsolete and there are no longer spare parts or the engineers’ brains can’t keep up with it and they have to rely on Algorithms to maintain it? Total Clusterfuck….

  72. Pucker December 31, 2019 at 9:47 pm #

    I wonder to what extent people, particularly young people, make Bad Choices”, such as having a baby in straitened circumstances, or joining the military and going to war, etc., in order to basically hold society and their parents emotionally hostage? People learn to become a basket case or a “Victim” in order to receive some emotional or financial reward?

  73. malthuss December 31, 2019 at 9:51 pm #

    Stab and murder a white girl….. all suspects released.

    Stab and attempt to murder a Jew?
    NOTE: No description of who the perp is. Can we guess?

    https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/suspect-in-custody-after-5-stabbed-at-rabbis-home-in-new-york-officials-say/ar-BBYqNwD?li=AAggNb9

  74. malthuss December 31, 2019 at 10:05 pm #

    Hundreds of people queued to be ‘cleansed’ by guinea pigs in a bizarre ritual ahead of New Year’s Eve.

    Spiritual well-wishers in Lima, Peru, lined the streets as they waited to meet shaman Maria Ramos in a bid to cure and prevent diseases ahead of 2020.

    Locals attended the Feria de los Deseos, also known as the ‘Fare of Wishes’, on Monday.

    Huge crowds of residents patiently waited to be greeted by Maria, who uses rare guinea pigs during the ceremony.

  75. Bill7 January 1, 2020 at 12:49 am #

    Wonder whatever happened to Ol’Scratch- I miss his comments.

    Still look for those from Walter B; DrTomS; GreenAlba; sometimes
    Janos “CIA”? Skorenzy; K-dog, who still puts up the good fight..
    most of the rest feels like [the horrible] ZeroHedge comments section.

    As for Mr. Kunstler’s framing on po’ little 100-nuke Israel v
    Iran, we will see… WRT the former, Animal Mother’s framing: “you’re
    fresh out of friends..” comes to mind. OK with me.

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    • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 1:07 am #

      One time a huge Black Guy, big as a house and crazy as a bedbug was coming down the street towards me. I tensed, but then relaxed as he shouted, “I’m CIA just like he is”. We were on the same team! I didn’t have to respond since he didn’t say it to me, but rather to himself or whatever invisible entity he was talking to.

      Puck: Remember Gary 7 who beamed through the depths of space and time to save 1960’s Earth from a nuclear missile catastrophe? In the process, “hooking up” with a confused, but groovy hippie chick? Spock tried the old Vulcan neck pinch on him but it didn’t work and Gary threw Spock across the room.

      • Pucker January 1, 2020 at 3:34 am #

        Was that from the third season of the original Star Trek series? The Chinese fake DVD shop several years ago only had the first 2 seasons. Now, I’m afraid to run up to China again since there’s no rule of law and given the dubious political situation I don’t want to be disappeared.

        They’ve been throwing naked teenagers off of buildings in Hong Kong claiming suicide. I saw one dead corpse in the street. Who jumps off of a building naked?

        The world is going Nuts.

        • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 3:29 pm #

          “Who jumps off of a building naked? ”

          Puck,
          Well, protestors in Hong Kong, apparently….

      • malthuss January 1, 2020 at 11:51 am #

        I saw a Black woman who,liked like a giant ape. 6 foot + and 300? 500? pounds..and not that fat.

        White women that size are usually severely obese.
        Asian gals, never seen one like that.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

          Dangerous? I saw one like that too and she had prison written all over her. Very dangerous person.

    • Walter B January 1, 2020 at 1:44 am #

      Yes I miss Scratch as well. You know, if any of us go down with physical problems or even death, how many of those that know and care for us will come here to announce our demise to our CFN brothers and sisters? Not many I think. This thought saddens me sometimes what with being in the zone and all, so we had best enjoy each other while we still have us all.

      As far as Israel is concerned, we must all keep in mind that the Lord God Jehovah’s nation of Israel is in no way the same entity as the nation state of Israel that rules in the Middle East today. They are two distinctly different entities and will be dealt with completely differently by God when He sees fit to do so.

      • Bill7 January 1, 2020 at 1:55 am #

        A worthwhile thought. The latter entity is one I’m very concerned about, because it seems to me that the rest of the world is somehow being held hostage to its whims and desires, as the
        self-appointed ‘chosen ones’; and I don’t see that ending well,
        for anyone.

  76. Bill7 January 1, 2020 at 2:20 am #

    BTW- What does “crypto-gnostic” mean? I have no clue.

    • Epicur January 1, 2020 at 9:31 am #

      Gnosis means knowledge. The Gnostics were a sect of Christians who believed they had secret knowledge given by Jesus to certain of his apostles that effectively gave them the keys to the kingdom and the right to rule after the apocalypse.

      Crypto means hidden or concealed.

      So my guess is that a crypto-gnostic thinks he has special knowledge that gives him the right to rule over people, BUT he keeps that belief in his own special position a secret by pretending to believe in democracy.

      • Epicur January 1, 2020 at 9:36 am #

        The “pretending to believe in democracy” part is more of my opinion, an emendment, than part of the attempt at definition.

        • Epicur January 1, 2020 at 9:46 am #

          It appears that “crypto-gnostic” is a term that our host has coined.

          Well done. If it takes hold we should remember that we saw it here first.

  77. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 5:04 am #

    In case you know of anyone who has been sexually abused, or who thinks that they may have been sexually abused, or who thinks that they will be sexually abused in the future by Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Sulu, or Joe Biden, please call now. Thank you

    “ Victims’ voices, including the many voices of Epstein’s alleged victims must be heard. To that end I want to say to anyone who was watching this or hearing about our prosecution, if you believe you are a victim of this man Jeffrey Epstein. Or you have evidence or information leading to the conduct alleged in the indictment unsealed today, we want to hear from you. Please call. 1-800-CALL FBI, that’s 1-800-CALL FBI.“

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  78. KesaAnna January 1, 2020 at 5:31 am #

    Well ……… I’l lspeak again of the giant pink elephant in the room.

    Schools , daycare centers , and battalions of social workers and police not withstanding ,

    A family is still the basic and fundamental unit for rearing a child into an adult , today , no less than 500 , or 5 ,000 years ago.

    Never the less , you think it quite reasonable that when JUST TWO people

    ( and presumably two people who do actually have a lot in common . For example , you actually rarely see Burger King cashiers shacking up with lawyers . Regardless of all the egalitarian rhetoric , cross – class fraternization in marriage or in sex remains the distinct exception . )

    ON ONE ACRE , in ONE HOUSE , cannot or will not restrain their temper , cannot or will not compromise , then they should part company and divorce.

    But you think it totally unacceptable and irrational that millions of people , and involving millions of acres , and millions of households , should be compelled to stay .

  79. Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 6:03 am #

    Appears the Ukraine case is going to get blown wide open.

    This is going to be epic.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=292&v=T3dilVeCiQc&feature=emb_logo

    • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 11:36 am #

      My brother in law tells me that Rudy & Trump are gonna expose the whole Ukraine situation. But first Rudy has to finish helping OJ find the real killer.

      • Nightowl January 1, 2020 at 1:53 pm #

        Is Jill Stein still a Russian agent, too?

        Fill us in on the details, Captain.

        • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 8:02 pm #

          Who is Jill Stein, and why should I care?

          • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 3:39 pm #

            Rekt.

    • Majella January 3, 2020 at 12:05 pm #

      All that clip is evidence of is that Rudy’s fantasy life continues to expand.

  80. KesaAnna January 1, 2020 at 6:25 am #

    ” People who squawk about police brutality here need to spend some time in LA. Being told to move before you get thumped is not police brutality. Show a Seattle police officer respect and you will get respect in return. Ask for trouble and you are likely to get it. The police job in Seattle is to allow everybody to go about their business in peace as long as they don’t bother other people. ”

    True story about the Old South ;

    The police used to take off their hats , walk softly up to a white persons house , knock politely , and whatever the subject of their being there was , the subsequent discussion included a lot of , ” please ” , ” I’m sorry to bother you “. And , ” May I … ”

    Why so solicitous ?

    Because white people not uncommonly beat the fucking shit out of the police.

    What sucked was that the same circumstance did not apply to black people.

    The great improvement of the past 60 years has been , not to extend the same circumstance to blacks ,

    but , instead , to extend the circumstance of blacks then to everyone else now.

    and , yes , you call that an improvement.

    the difference between a contemporary American and a contemporary North Korean ?

    The American actually believes his own daffy propaganda.

    ” Why do you emphasize white guys? Doesn’t Virginia have a lot of blacks? Don’t they care about the 2nd amendment? ”

    Here’s how it works ;

    white people who are familiar with the above history and circumstances , and who have the cheek to point it out , simply aren’t quoted , or are methodically and doggedly ignored.

    Because the upshot of that history and those circumstances is that it makes contemporary white people look like the boot – licking pussy house n—-rs they are.

    Black people who are familiar with the above history and circumstances , and who have the cheek to say forthrightly that they should have that too , simply aren’t quoted , or are methodically and doggedly ignored.

    Because the upshot of that history and those circumstances is that it makes contemporary white people look like the boot – licking pussy house n—-rs they are ,

    and makes blacks look even dumber and lower for subscribing to that ludicrous house n—-r crap themselves when they , even more than whites , should know better.

    The vast majority conspire to conceal an idiotic power lust . Idiotic because not a damn bit of any of that power will ever be yours.

    White or black , the paymasters of the police are never going to let you in their country club. You are all n—-rs to them.

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    • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 9:51 pm #

      “Because white people not uncommonly beat the fucking shit out of the police.”

      Kesa,
      Perhaps in the DDR?

      I lived in the South in 1960…neither saw nor heard of anything of the sort.

      Not even mentioned in jest.

      Ever.

  81. KesaAnna January 1, 2020 at 7:39 am #

    ” BTW- What does “crypto-gnostic” mean? ”

    it’s a case of going well out of his way to not say what he means.

    • capt spaulding January 1, 2020 at 11:46 am #

      I believe crypto means having a secret attachment or alliance to something, as well as having some meaning with regards to codes.

  82. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 9:02 am #

    Trump’s personal “fixer”, Michael Cohen, and Jeffrey Epstein were both tied to a company called “Reporty” (later renamed “Carbyne”) that makes a spy App called Smart911 that can basically use your Smartphone to spy on you remotely. Later, Ehud Barak bought a big stake in the company using money fronted to Ehud Barak by Epstein. Carbyne is now based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

    Apparently, Epstein is not an unusual figure, and these pedophile spy honey traps go way back (at least to the J. Edgar Hoover era and probably centuries before?) with many Epstein-type characters existing before Epstein. It looks like pedophilia (male and female kids) has always been a facet of Elite culture. It looks like the Bush family was involved in an orphanage called “Covenant House”.

    Apparently, one of the detectives, named “Dougan”, involved in the first Palm Beach Epstein investigation that later got buried by Acosta ( who later became Trump’s Labor Secretary) ran off with a big chunk of Epstein’s blackmail DVD’s and got asylum in Russia, so the Russians now have some of Epstein’s treasure trove.

    It looks like the “Elite” is a rather small, incestuous circle of rich, powerful, perverts? It makes you wonder what other weird shit the Elite is into? Cannibalism?

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  83. malthuss January 1, 2020 at 11:52 am #

    IS 2020 THE YEAR OF DJIA COLLAPSE AND USA FINANCIAL COLLAPSE?

    Please tell me.

    • Epicur January 1, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

      “Please tell me.”

      No.

      Which is not to say it will be calm and peaceful.

      We are in a trap where the FED has no choice but to keep creating “money”, so that’s what they will do. At some point they will need a crisis to justify MMT, but not yet. There are too many other things that must happen first.

      “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” especially this nation. The natural resources, infrastructure, and workforce provide a foundation under the financial system.

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 2:03 pm #

        In other words, no Nations just like the Communists and International Capitalists want. They’re the real lovers of Mankind and Freedom, right?

        There’s a great deal of stupidity in this nation.

  84. Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 2:05 pm #

    https://national-justice.com/money-and-minds-behind-drag-queen-story-hour

    The usual suspects guiding and financing the idiotic leftist Librarians. Legions of clueless Cat Ladies eager to be lead and willing to let the ruthless ones hide behind them.

    • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

      Not too many people read books anymore, the original purpose of lending libraries (as they were called) has been lost.

      Maybe it’s just coincidence, but saw my first drag Queen in about 20 years in the local town library, a husky kid of about 20 dressed up like a girl, talking on his cellphone in a falsetto voice that would sometime change to baritone. I mentioned the last transvestite in town was this dude who called himself Candy, was found off an entrance ramp on I-84, throat slit, quite dead. The murder remains unsolved. It’s not a healthy lifestyle IMHO.

      BRH

      • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 2:43 pm #

        In other words, it doesn’t really matter since no one reads books anymore. And it’s the Drag Queens themselves who are responsible in any case.

        Good deflection. Amateur, but still solid. “Keep it simple” is often a winner.

        • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

          He even mentions “I-84”! Now that’s quintessential American talk. Why not throw in some baseball lingo and scores too?

          “The kid talked in both baritone and falsetto – a pitcher and a catcher.”

          • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 3:10 pm #

            American talk

            Where are you Janos?

            Malthus says eastern Europe or Russia

            Brh

          • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

            BRH,
            Where is Janos?

            Where is “Q”?

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 4:01 pm #

            “Drag Queen Story Hour is just another arrow in the quiver of the same wealthy, Jewish elites who are systematically flooding America with 3rd world refugees, censoring speech, chipping away at the Constitution, racially attacking white Americans in the media, and smashing the building block of Western civilization: the traditional family.”

            Their propaganda is also thoroughly imbedded in online content, most anything you stream, tv, etc. It’s not just books by any means. And don’t forget that this slime is being spread throughout the schools. So like, what’s Russia got to do with it?

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 4:15 pm #

            Yeah, and am I CIA too like Bill7 suggested? I mean what kind of freak opposes the dispossession of his own people and the de- facto destruction of their nation? A crazy, bad one, perhaps a “Russian” as Malthus and BRH put forward.

          • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 4:41 pm #

            Malthuss and Brh?! I thought they are America Firsters?! Well if that is what being Russian means then I should change my name to Natasha and put in my application for asylum to the Kremlin like ASAP :-).

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 5:29 pm #

            I don’t what the hell they are. But you do you. You’d make a great Russian. Or what the hell, dye your hair black and go Russian Tartar. Wear a babushka. With a name like Natasha you can’t go wrong.

            Maybe this will give some clues into who and what these gentlemen are.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jIBZjL8G5s

          • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 11:43 am #

            Lol that was one of SNL’s better skits. All that knowledge used for blurting out the names of highways, driving routes, and name dropping! I’ve dyed my hair black twice. I loved it and would probably do it again though I’ve had my hair its natural blond color for a few years now.

        • BackRowHeckler January 1, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

          Elysian, Q is in New Jersey, in the Shadow of Rutgers U.

          He often takes long breaks from this board.

          • elysianfield January 2, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

            BRH,
            Well, at his august age, I would opine that a long break might become infinitely longer….

          • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 6:33 pm #

            I’ve thought about that E. But he’s robust enough to still be motorcycling around the country.

            Another possibility is he p#ssed Jim off once too many times and got banned permanently, which I suspect is what happened with Snacks, Finca, Sea Wolf, Asoka and possibly old scratch.

            Brh

          • Majella January 3, 2020 at 12:23 pm #

            Yes, BRH. ‘The Case of Disappearing Posters’ has crossed my mind from time to time recently too. However, while JHK has the sole right of admission, he has usually mentioned when someone was finally defenestrated…

  85. sunburstsoldier January 1, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

    Faith and ideals are the most objective realities. When we fail to realize this we surrender our freedom to mechanical causation.

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    • sunburstsoldier January 1, 2020 at 3:04 pm #

      WHAT SHOULD BE is more real and objective than WHAT IS…

      • SoftStarLight January 1, 2020 at 4:27 pm #

        With all due respect tell that to someone in chronic pain or someone living under an interstate overpass. Struggle, want, and pain are inescapable aspects of life. For many rather than for few sadly enough. As it was written so that even Christ suffered. This also is objective and real. And that doesn’t negate the reality of ideals and the blessings of faith. But what is is as real and objective as what should be. IMO.

        • sunburstsoldier January 1, 2020 at 5:18 pm #

          I’ve lived in chronic pain my entire life. Still, if we believe WHAT IS is more real and objective than WHAT SHOULD BE we have surrendered our creative freedom to mechanical causation; whether such mechanical causation be expressed as the aches and pains of a chronic illness, or the discomfort of living under a freeway underpass.

          • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 5:32 pm #

            A challenging Teaching – but I get it.

          • Tate January 1, 2020 at 6:10 pm #

            In Las Vegas there are thousands of homeless people living under freeway underpasses & in storm tunnels. What does ‘freedom’ mean to them, creative or otherwise? Most of them are American citizens who can’t even vote. Most of us voters consider the privilege no more than a conversational topic among intimates.

          • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 7:31 am #

            SBS

            Psychic pain, or real physical pain?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 1, 2020 at 5:37 pm #

          These things are the waves, but the Ocean still is. The weather, but the Sun is still shining. To get more specific, Plato said things exist in their perfect form already, we just need to actualize them here on Earth.

          Or the Sufis: the gardens here below are but a pale reflection of the Garden that awaits the Faithful.

          Obviously someone who doesn’t deal well with the waves is not being very creative, not trying to actualize the perfection. Either that or they are very advanced and on a different kind of spiritual path: one that seeks God without trying to bring that down to other people – or even themselves at the level of the body. Some of them might do so later though, once stabilized in their Vision.

          • sunburstsoldier January 1, 2020 at 8:48 pm #

            Yes. WHAT SHOULD BE is actually WHAT REALLY IS — the Wholeness which lies beyond the appearance of fragmentation, the Unity which lies beyond the experience of separation, the Harmony which lies beyond the illusion of discord, and the hidden Order which lies beyond the sensation of chaos. When we limit our vision to the surface of the ocean we witness only the turbulence of wind and wave, however when we learn to peer into the ocean’s depth we come to the understanding all is, in truth, calm and quiescent…

        • Majella January 3, 2020 at 12:25 pm #

          Back-linking to your earlier post about the agenda imbedded in the media, you may be too young to have come across this pointed illustration of statement:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnNDkHb0MU

  86. KesaAnna January 1, 2020 at 3:17 pm #

    ” Please call. 1-800-CALL FBI, that’s 1-800-CALL FBI.“

    In this case I don’t know whether you are being satirical or serious.

    From 1924 until 1973 ( ? ) the head of the FBI was a man who was as queer as a four dollar bill.

    Note , this was at a time when , to put it simply , homosexuality was a felony in many states , and a felony in the U.S. Armed Forces.

    I point this out not to take a swipe at homosexuals , but to point out that at the same time that thousands ( ? ) were doing hard time , or generally having their lives ruined on account of their demographic , our top cop was himself a part of that demographic.

    Note also the time span. This guy endured in office nearly 50 years.

    President Truman said that it was on account of the fact that no sooner had Hoover gotten his hands on this then obscure office in the Treasury department , than he began using it to amass dossiers on hundreds and even thousands of people . He had the dirt on the greatest of nabobs , and he had the dirt on people you have never heard of .

    In other words , in plain language , and far more telling than the homosexual thing ,

    our top cop was a full – time blackmailer.

    Well , we all know that politicians are pathological liars , and Truman was a Democrat , and a lefty.

    The trouble is , or so I think , is that another president , a Republican , and a right – winger , Richard Nixon , made the exact same claim about Hoover.

    ” It’s not a healthy lifestyle IMHO. ”

    Far more troubling I think than the de-stigmitzation of homosexuality or transexuality has been the de- stigmatization of blackmail.

    Completely unremarked , because both sides of the political spectrum self – destructively think they can use it to benefit their side.

    They really should read Faust.

    • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 3:23 pm #

      “I do not understand the reference to a cheap shot…nor do I understand your disgust.

      Please enlighten me.

      Please.”

      Majella,
      My request of you was not rhetorical. I REALLY do not see the “cheap shot”, nor the content that would engender your disgust. One could consider that the actions of the Klan would be disgusting, but a neutral observation? Am I to avoid making the observation, or should I have beaten my chest, rent my hair, gnashed my teeth in agony over the injustice.?

      I would also invite anyone in the readership to explain the above points…if you were disgusted over presenting the observation in question, I would like to know it.

      • KesaAnna January 1, 2020 at 4:35 pm #

        I only chuckled a bit.

        Near as I can tell , the reality was that the KKK only existed for a maximum of 5 years. It came into existence to fight the northern military occupation , and to impress upon the idiot northerners that though they could win the war militarily , they could never control Dog Patch Georgia after dark , or really anywhere except where one of their bluecoat hirelings was physically standing.

        When that had been successfully accomplished — and it was . As I have pointed out before , while the U.S. government won the war , they flatly lost the peace. — as I said , it disbanded .
        After an existence of only about 5 years maximum.

        The KKK was re -founded as a political party in 1919 ,

        and enjoyed its greatest political success……..

        ……. in Michigan an Oregon.

        it was never but a negligible presence in the actual South.

        — Like the police used to be largely a negligible joke in the South ,

        and both for the same basic reason ;

        Empowered self – respecting people tend to do a generally ok job of managing their own affairs.

        JHK once pointed out , rightly , that the sub – text of comic book super heroes is the implication that the average , ordinary person is a contemptibly helpless equivalent of a 5 year old.

        So it is the same in this case.

        the sub – text of the comic book uber – omnipotent Klan is the implication that the average , ordinary person was a contemptibly helpless equivalent of a 5 year old.

        Just like the sub – text of the comic book uber – omnipotent police is the implication that the average , ordinary person is a contemptibly helpless equivalent of a 5 year old.

        The reality was that for nearly 100 years most of the South got along well enough with one policeman in a second – hand car and no radio for an average of 50 square miles.

        And the Klan was largely a bit like Dragons and faireys and goblins ; you heard a lot about such , but when was the last time you actually saw one ?

        But , ok , let’s pretend for the sake of argument that the Klan as commonly portrayed actually existed.

        That very existence would flatly undercut the narrative that without the police to hold our hands we would drown.

        No fucking way could such a Klan have ever existed if that were remotely true.

        So , yes , I chuckled a little.

        Right – wingers , no less than left – wingers , you would think , would avoid the KKK trope like a plague if they had a lick of sense.

        • elysianfield January 1, 2020 at 6:35 pm #

          Kesa,
          The KKK trope did not have to exist in overwhelming numbers…only the specter, the vague threat of terror, was enough. The KKK issue describes a mindset, just like the Nazi issue is today but a weaponized mindset…and applied with unseemly abandon.

          Any issue of violence visited upon the blacks in the deep south carried that mantle, true or not. When you were small, you must have feared the boogey-man…and yet you deny generations of blacks living in the segregated South their own, personal bete noire.

          “Empowered self – respecting people tend to do a generally ok job of managing their own affairs…”

          Yes, they do. It is the believed un-endowered non-self-respecting ones that were the proposed targets of violence, and the threats of violence…if not actually involved in the imagined outrage, then suspected.

          The Southern policeman, in the 40’s and beyond were poorly paid, many poorly educated, and many unprofessional, by today’s standards. If the Clan existed contrary to what you believe, some, or many, police might have been complicit

          Sooo…you believe that the KKK had little to do with the cultural defense of the Segregationist Old South. I tend to think otherwise.

      • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 4:13 am #

        The issue is IQ and, with that, reading comprehension

        Witness my comment on sluts earlier in the thread. I made no mention of partaking myself, but it was, ofc, used to smear me.

        • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 5:21 am #

          Sense of humour bypass, Nightowl?

          Re your subsequent comment, it always amuses me when men use the word sluts, with the implicit suggestion that the men who make use of them (if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be sluts, right? And I don’t mean you) are somehow better than them. Being a logical soul I’ve just never got this bizarre assumption. It works with prostitutes, porn ‘actresses’ etc. too. People (men) like to look down on other people (women) they can simultaneously shag/jerk off to and oddly remain better than. That’s why you used the word ‘sluts’ in the first place, but just for the women, not for the partakers who possibly didn’t include you, ever.

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 10:51 am #

            “Being a logical soul I’ve just never got this bizarre assumption.”

            From “The Devil’s Dictionary”:
            “ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.”

            Relatively greater promiscuity in males of most species is normal because of reasons explained by evolutionary psychology (you are probably aware of that). It has to do with parental investment, I can cite more scientific evidence, but you probably don’t need it.

            Like the man said, “to be abnormal is to be detested”. That is one of the less pleasant, but universal, aspects of human societies (all of them), but it is how we create the conformity that supports society (our most powerful weapon).

            Living in Scotland, you may not be aware of “The Devil’s Dictionary”, but might enjoy it. Here is the letter “A”:

            https://americanliterature.com/author/ambrose-bierce/book/the-devils-dictionary/a

            😉

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 2:14 pm #

            Thank you, Epicur. I am aware of the evolutionary aspects of the issue and almost expected exactly this comeback. But just as I don’t expect to hear violent criminals in court to plead ‘Couldn’t help it, m’lud, it’s my evolutionary burden that caused me to beat that guy to a pulp outside the pub’, I expect rational men to eschew cheap pop evolutionary theory to excuse their prejudices.

            The man who makes use of the woman he looks down on achieves her level, wherever he thinks that is.

          • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 3:32 pm #

            Were you a slut, Green?

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 3:33 pm #

            “The man who makes use of the woman he looks down on achieves her level, wherever he thinks that is.”

            Without a doubt. As I said, an unpleasant aspect.

            “But just as I don’t expect to hear violent criminals in court to plead ‘Couldn’t help it, m’lud, it’s my evolutionary burden that caused me to beat that guy to a pulp outside the pub’, I expect rational men to eschew cheap pop evolutionary theory to excuse their prejudices.”

            I expect that you know such defenses have been made, even for murder, and hope that you know that I am not offering an “excuse”, but an explanation.

            I am not of the school of thought that man in a state of nature is a noble savage.

        • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 5:26 am #

          Here’s how it works, Nightowl, for the less snowflakey. You add a smiley and it means there’s a measure of humour involved.

          Hard to understand, I realise. It’s that, you know, reading comprehension thing. It includes non-verbal signals. Well known ones in this instance.

        • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 5:28 am #

          On the multiple occasions when I’ve been seriously smeared on here, there were no smileys. No humour. Get the difference?

    • Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 4:14 pm #

      “The beginnings of wisdom is to call thing by their true names.”

      Deep State. Intelligence Community. Etc. I refer to all of them and others as “The Blackmail State” whenever I can.

      • Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 4:11 am #

        That is a great quote. Particularly considering the modern Progger tendency to play with language when confronted with truth.

  87. wwg1wga January 1, 2020 at 4:08 pm #

    The GIFT of selflessness…

    http://www.got-truth.com/docs/The%20GIFT%20of%20selflessness.pdf

    Q.

  88. Wxtwxtr January 1, 2020 at 4:18 pm #

    Jim, Happy New Year! And thanks for all your hard work and insight throughout the last year. Am enjoying your “word-smith-ery” more as you skewer the “poly-tick-al” circus rather than the (doomed) economy. Please keep it up.

    In your 4th para question, aren’t all of your points merely effects? The end game of a century of Gatto’s Underground History? And on a more recent development, the conclusion in an interview with Duke Pesta? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDu9Q5fH4Xk
    The effects of a system deliberately installed to drive collective America insane and neuter it as a world hegemon?

  89. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 5:10 pm #

    I wonder what the Russians did with the Epstein blackmail files given to them by Dougan?

    The Chinese will have a lot of salacious video footage of Chinese and foreign businessmen in Chinese hotels. But it probably wouldn’t work on their Chinese wives, most of whom would likely retort: “So?! What do you expect? My Husband is a businessman. It’s part of his job. As long as he brings home the bacon and gives me face, I’ll look the other way and no one cares.”

    Trump owns all of those hotels, casinos, and condos. Trump may have been running his own sex surveillance operation, which may explain the dearth of similar salacious dirt on Trump? There was one Jane Doe who filed an ostensibly Epstein-related legal claim against Trump for “rape” when she was 13 years old, but it looks bogus as the investigative reporter couldn’t confirm the existence of the girl and none of Epstein’s other girls had ever heard of her. They think that it was another Clinton attempted botched smear of Trump. These are the weirdo’s who run everything. Joe Biden looks a bit “Creepy”.

    “Apparently, one of the detectives, named “Dougan”, involved in the first Palm Beach Epstein investigation that later got buried by Acosta ( who later became Trump’s Labor Secretary) ran off with a big chunk of Epstein’s blackmail DVD’s and got asylum in Russia, so the Russians now have some of Epstein’s treasure trove. “

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  90. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 5:30 pm #

    The other thing that I can’t figure out about the Epstein case is why these powerful politicians, business men, British Royalty, and Ivy League academics kept frequenting Epstein’s Manhattan condo, Palm Springs “Sugar Shack”, and his private Caribbean Island sex temple when in many cases they knew that their sexual escapades with underage girls were being video recorded by Epstein? Who would do this? The Chinese Elite basically do the same thing in their sex hotels in China. Maybe it’s a mutual protection racket?: Epstein meets their need to satisfy an irresistible itch that their money can’t ordinarily satisfy on the open market, and they agree to Epstein’s blackmail as long as Epstein keeps their secret? Weird…. I wonder how a subset of the Elite satisfy even darker urges, such as lust for even younger kids, or even Ted Bundy-type sadistic sex murder? At one point, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein offered Virginia Roberts a house and $200,000 bucks a month to have a baby. I wonder why Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein wanted a baby? Bat shit crazy…. Holy Shit balls….

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    • Pucker January 1, 2020 at 5:38 pm #

      Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein recruited White gifts from 14 to 17 years of age. It looks like when Virginia Roberts turned 18, Epstein didn’t want her anymore, and she moved on after rejecting their offer for the baby. There may have been some kind of hush-money arrangement as Virginia Roberts moved to Thailand ostensibly to study professional massage, which is not a believable story.

    • Tate January 1, 2020 at 6:31 pm #

      “The other thing that I can’t figure out about the Epstein case is why these powerful politicians, business men, British Royalty, and Ivy League academics kept frequenting Epstein’s Manhattan condo, Palm Springs “Sugar Shack”, and his private Caribbean Island sex temple when in many cases they knew that their sexual escapades with underage girls were being video recorded by Epstein?”

      The simplest answer is we over-estimate the power these people actually have. The reason they have much less power than we assign credit to them is that the average member of the elite has already been compromised many times over so what’s one more compromising situation? The Surveillance state is in charge, period.

      • Pucker January 1, 2020 at 6:58 pm #

        I always thought that it is bizarre that basically all of these extremely compromised US politicians and others in the Establishment are largely exempt from the US government security clearance system while the average lowly government schmuck has to answer stupid questions about what he and his neighbors do with their dicks. Why create a security system in which the people in the most sensitive positions can run amok and sell secrets and influence for money and benefits? It’s like they willfully create a loophole the size of Texas that they can then monopolize? Like the Ukraine/ foreign Aid scam in which the politicians give money to corrupt foreign governments in exchange apparently for kickbacks?

  91. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 6:13 pm #

    Jeffrey Epstein ordinarily flew “The Lolita Express” into Teeterboro Airport, which is closest to his Manhattan condo. However, on rare occasions, Epstein would land “The Lolita Express” at the Westchester County, New York airport, which is much closer to where Bill Clinton lives and is the Bush family’s “Old Stomping Grounds”. I’ve flown out of that small airport, which has many flights to Florida and probably to Palm Beach. Palm Beach looks like a haven for the Elite. Epstein’s Palm Beach sugar shack is approximate to Trump’s Mar A Lago Resort.
    Weirdo’s….

    Dylan Howard and 2 more
    Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  92. aibohphobia January 1, 2020 at 7:55 pm #

    Happy New Year to JMG & all!
    My area of rural Canada had a series of power failures, the last of which lasted from about 3 PM on 12/31/19 to 10 AM on 1/1/20.–So I got a taste of things to come. No lights anywhere in sight, snow and rain bucketing down. I had an emergency radio, but the local stations were offline. No power.
    There was, of course, no local wi-fi available. The local 4G network functioned until about 9 PM, but it went down after that, so no cellphone service, and no cellphone-based-services available either.

    It occurred to me that this is what things might look like in the event of an EMP attack. The media goes away, and news is slow to propagate…

    We read books by candlelight and flashlight. Getting dinner depended on the gas barbecue working. Staying warm depended on the gas line to the house working. How many days would my batteries last? Perhaps 5.
    So I’m looking forward to reading your book on ‘Living in the Long Emergency.’

    If this was not your experience on New Years’ Eve, I wonder whether it will be more common experience on Dec 31, 2029…

  93. aibohphobia January 1, 2020 at 8:05 pm #

    Speaking of censorship and paranoia–
    A week or so ago, I played the YouTube of “Putin” by Randy Newman. Someone commented that “You make Putin sound like a Disney Villain.”
    I posted a comment that included the line, “Whatever else you think of him, Putin has worked very hard to promote the interests of his own country–Something everyone would like to see in the leadership of their own country….”

    Immediately after hitting the “Submit” button, the mildly positive comment about Putin appeared in strikeout text.

    I did something else for an hour or so, and checked it again. My entire comment had been deleted.

    SO– it looks like at least some clients of YouTube are using computer tools to censor postings. Maybe it was because I’m posting from a foreign country, eh?

    • malthuss January 1, 2020 at 8:49 pm #

      color us surprised..leftist censors.

  94. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 9:04 pm #

    Jeffrey Epstein would often quip that he felt like “Gulliver, a giant amongst little people.”

    I wonder how common this sentiment is amongst the Elite?

    Epstein was very adept a getting people to like him. The curious exception were the prisoners and the prison guards in the Manhattan Correctional Center who hated Epstein much more than the other prisoners. I wonder why this is? I doubt that it was anti-Semiticism.

  95. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 9:14 pm #

    I wonder if the Intelligence Agencies have yet developed a Lethal Fart?

    It seems that each of the respective Intelligence Agencies have a preferred trademark method of assassination. For example, the Russians like to poison people. The Israeli’s like to shoot people. The Saudi’s like to strangle people to death. The Americans like to bore people to death with inane TV, endless political campaigns, and absurd Political Correctness.

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  96. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 9:24 pm #

    I wonder what would happen if one drove by an American Mental Hospital on New Year’s Eve and tossed a big Reality B..omb over the Wall and it exploded spraying its devastating blast of Reality causing devastation and mayhem amongst the mentally panicked and terror stricken mental patients left screaming, screaming for more pharmaceutical drugs, more TV, more TV sports, more Marvel cartoon hero movies, more CNN, more Rachel Maddow, more processed fast food calories and high fructose corn syrup, more Political Correctness, more free stuff from the politicians, more rabid denunciations of Russians, more colonies on Mars…More…More…More….

  97. PeteAtomic January 1, 2020 at 9:45 pm #

    thanks for your time and energy to think on and write about all this, Jim.

    I hope for the future the opportunity for people to be challenged to create their own local economies & societies if cascading institutional collapse really falls hard on the US. If this decentralization can happen relatively peacefully without too much identarianism from both the Left and the Right, then good. We need a neo-civic sense that is based on smaller-population community units & a strong support for individual entrepreneurs within these communities. The enemy is monopolism.

  98. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 11:31 pm #

    Colonel Stanislav Petrov

    What if a crazy homeless person in Seattle living along the Burke Gilman Trail and who smells like urine uses his laptop at the local Jack in the Box to hack into the Russian Air Defense Forces Command to make it look like hundreds of American missiles are headed towards Russia?

  99. Pucker January 1, 2020 at 11:53 pm #

    I’m trying to come up with an accurate description of the American “Family”. Anything come to mind? George HW Bush and Barbara Bush were involved with the “Covenant House” orphanage, which may have involved pedophilia?

    In the high school prep school Andover library, there’s a 3 foot tall statue of George HW Bush in his WWII flight suit with a big beaming face. The school logo is an owl, and there are stuffed owls everywhere like Norman Bates parlor in the movie “Psycho”.

    “George H. W. Bush knew that better than anyone else. For a good part of the Cold War he had helped make American policy toward the Soviet Union, often holding positions of the utmost responsibility. Born in June 1924 to the family of a US senator in the American Northeast, the young Bush joined the US Navy on hearing the news about Pearl Harbor, postponing his studies at Yale. At the age of nineteen, he became the youngest naval aviator in the American forces and flew fifty-eight combat missions in the course of the war. In January 1945, while on leave from his duties in the Pacific, he married the nineteen-year-old Barbara Pierce, who became the mother of his six children. Their first child, the future US president George Walker Bush, was born in 1946, while George senior was studying economics at Yale. After completing the four-year program in two and a half years, the elder Bush, unexpectedly for a man of his origins and upbringing, moved his family to Texas to start a career in the oil business. By the time he turned to politics in the mid-1960s, he was already the millionaire president of an oil company specializing in offshore drilling.“

    Serhii Plokhy
    The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

  100. Tate January 2, 2020 at 12:37 am #

    Detroit Chief Vows To Find Suspects Who Blocked Highway To Do Donuts

    by
    Tom Gantert

    Car that spun donuts in middle of a highway had covered its license plates with an obscene message to Detroit police.

    Detroit, MI – A car that did donuts in the middle of a busy highway that was captured in a video that went viral covered its license plate with an obscene message to the Detroit Police Department.

    And the city’s chief of police warned the culprits that his police officers will find the vehicle and seize it and turn it into a police vehicle, according to the Detroit Free Press.

    A large, organized group stopped traffic on I-94 for about 15 minutes on Sunday in Detroit [my emphasis] to make space for a Camero to spin around in circles, according to the Detroit Free Press.

    “They’re covering their license plates with a message to the DPD,” said Detroit Police Chief James Craig, according to the Detroit Free Press. “I’m not going to tell you what that message is, but the message is despicable. Here’s my message to them: We are going to find you, and when we do, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to seize your vehicle. In fact, my plan with the Challenger is we’re going to keep it, we’re going to seize it and we’re going to convert it into a police car.”

    Craig continued: “You can go ahead and cover your license plates. We are going to come after you. That is a promise I’m making and the men and women of this department.”

    Police have a suspect in custody who was involved in stopping the traffic on I-94 but wasn’t in the car that spun around in circles, the Detroit Free Press reported.

    Police have a good lead on the red or orange colored Camaro, according to Chief Craig. Police know that the person driving the Camaro lives outside the city. Other police agencies are working on locating people who were involved in the incident, the Detroit Free Press reported.

    [Tate: Is it just me or does the bolded passage say anything about the perpetrators?]

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    • PeteAtomic January 2, 2020 at 11:55 am #

      sounds like somebody has been listening to too many Dead Milkmen songs there lol

  101. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 12:49 am #

    The Com….munist Chinese played Kissinger and George HW Bush “like a fiddle.” It’s amazing in retrospect.

    “ With his patron out of office in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Bush found himself in the role of chief architect of the US-Chinese rapprochement initiated by Nixon. He spent fourteen months as head of the US liaison office in Beijing, helping to build an alliance then aimed primarily against the USSR. In 1976, Bush returned to Washington to head the Central Intelligence Agency, where he presided over US covert operations in Angola directed against the Cuban-backed government of Angola’s first president, Agostinho Neto. As director of the Council on Foreign Relations between 1977 and 1979, Bush witnessed from the front row the deterioration of Soviet-American relations during the last years of Jimmy Carter’s administration.”

    Serhii Plokhy
    The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union

  102. Majella January 2, 2020 at 1:06 am #

    Hey Marlin

    Have you caught up with Australia’s current woes?

    The sh*t is getting real, with thousands of people’s lives destroyed and/disrupted.

    New Zealand’s getting ready for the premier 1st Worlders become climate refugees. I guess it needs a wall?

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 7:53 am #

      Majella

      I have in front of me a book ‘A Pirate of Exquisite Mind’, Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer; The Life of William Dampier,

      In 1699 Dampier set sail on a voyage of scientific discovery to New Holland, now Australia. Europeans had discovered and visited Australia before the English — Portugese and the Dutch — but this was the first expidition that wasn’t about gold or spices. In his journal Dampier notes the EXTREME HEAT of Australia, and this is a man who had travelled extensively in the Caribbean and the coast of SAmerica. My point: Australia has always been hot in the summer. It’s almost laughable to use events like wildfires to prove a political point about climate change when there’s so much information available about conditions in previous decades and centuries, and ignoring all other possible causes that don’t fit with the agenda.

      Another example is Polar Bears. I still see ads imploring the plight of Polar Bears due to melting ice in the arctic. But a quick check reveals there are currently about 30,000 polar bears in the world, up from an estimated 6000 in 1967. And when I check temps at the poles they range from -10°F to -80°F. Who’s bullsh#tting who here?

      Brh

      The whole thing is a lefty scam cooked up after communism collapsed around 1990, another way to extort the West.

      • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 8:00 am #

        ” It’s almost laughable to use events like wildfires to prove a political point about climate change when there’s so much information available about conditions in previous decades and centuries, and ignoring all other possible causes that don’t fit with the agenda.”

        Unless you provide some actual data, brh, your point isn’t even a point. My daughter’s just back from Singapore, visiting her sister. It was hot. It was hot in the 17th century too. Data, brh, data…

        The current and recent droughts in Australia are breaking records. As are the intensity, number and uncontrollability of the wildfires.

        ‘There have always been wildfires’ is Year 6 stuff. Not even.

        And it’s not a political point. It’s a scientific point. A political point would be what do do about it, if anything.

        But you have a good point about the data you didn’t include. Climate scientists are currently mining and collating a treasure trove of old but discrete weather bulletins from ships and suchlike over the centuries. There’s tons of it and it all adds to the picture.

        • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 8:16 am #

          Science?

          Its anti science and anti western civilization

          Essentially telling us we will have to return to a sort of stone age existence to cool the earth.

          On campus now ‘Divestment’ from oil companies is the rage, with the goal of what? Shut them down? Put them out of business? Connecticut was essentially deforested by 1880, merely 250 years after the English showed up. There is one small stand of old growth forest out in Kent, Ct, about 5 acres. I visited it last summer. If you look at photos from the 1890s this place was wide open and treeless. Now there’s trees everywhere. On my own property I have 3 acres of maples, oaks and apple trees (from an orchard that was here) It wasn’t until a RR bridge across the Hudson River was built in the 1840s and shipments of coal were brought in from Penn to run industry and heat homes and we no longer had to rely on hardwood trees that the forests grew back. But let political meddling by lefties drive up up the price and availability of No. 2 heating oil, you’ll see these forests stripped clean again. Men are not going to stand by and watch their families freeze to death.

          Brh

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

            brh

            You are confusing two issues. And your conclusion makes no real sense.

            You are arguing about the response to the fact of climate change. Argue away. What are you going to do when there’s no more oil – shout down an empty oil well about what men are not going to stand by and do? Good luck with that.

          • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 1:52 pm #

            GA

            It’s the Oil Question that brings most of us to this site. For now there seems to be enough to keep the show going. It appears it will be a few decades before oil shortages begin showing up.

            I pay attention to what Climate alarmist say, Joe Biden for example, who just yesterday stated he wouldn’t be adverse to jailing oil company execs for ‘climate crimes’. And its a goddam lie that fossil fuel generators and transportation can be replaced by wind power and solar panels. Wind was abandoned 175 years ago as a source of energy, and electric cars lost in the competition with gasoline powered autos by at least 1915. Maybe if the alarmists stopped trying to bullsh#t us I’d believe a little of what they are claiming.

            It reminds me of what I’ve read about the 1930s, the whole intellectual class in the UK and US enamored with Communism and worshipping Joe Stalin, from Hemingway to Katherine Hepburn, Erskine Caldwell to Fredrick March, almost every actor, poet, movie director, author, and college prof praising Bolshevism and proclaiming a bright future under the red banner. And those who didn’t buy into it, who had their doubts, were knuckle draggers, fascists, morons, unenlightened, backward deplorables, if you will.

            Brh

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 2:21 pm #

            You’re still arguing about the response to the problem of climate change, brh, not achieving anything in your existential struggle against the science of the situation. And I’m not Joe Biden. Or Alexandria what’s her name. Or Greta.

            And it wouldn’t matter if even Trump suddenly manifested a massive volte-face and started jailing climate deniers – none of it changes the evidence on AGW.

        • stelmosfire January 2, 2020 at 9:37 am #

          Happy New Year GA, I am by no means a climate expert but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last summer. Anyway David Collum, who JHK has featured on his podcast, writes an excellent “Year in Review” every year. Check it out. It is lengthy but you can skip right to his Climate change section. I would be interested in your thoughts or rebuttal on his very well made points. Link:
          https://www.peakprosperity.com/2019-year-in-review-part-1/#climate

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 12:44 pm #

            Happy New Year, likewise, StE. I trudged through the entirety of this article a week or so ago, not just the climate bit (I thought I was never going to get there). I really don’t want to have to trudge through it again (I do remember the author said if he had to make a bet he’d bet on AGW).

            Which particular position do you hold that you want a rebuttal to:

            (1) The atmosphere isn’t warming and the polar ice isn’t melting;

            (2) The atmosphere is warming and the polar ice is melting, but there isn’t overwhelming evidence that the main driver is anthropogenic CO2; maybe it’s the sun?

            (3) The atmosphere is warming; the polar ice is melting; the evidence is overwhelming that the main driver is anthropogenic CO2… but the proposals for dealing with this are unacceptable/naive/pointless/worse than the original problem/not necessary because the oil and coal is going to run out anyway?

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

            To be honest, StE – and I may retract this some time – but in this particular instant, having got up early today and cooked a second Christmas dinner for the absentees returned home, done the presents, got the visitors out the door to go home, and done the washing up… I don’t care 🙂

            Really, I don’t care. I don’t think anyone can accuse me of not trying to stand up for the science on this point, so the fact that it doesn’t make a whit of difference to anyone just points to a fact that we all know about people’s reluctance to change their minds, no matter what evidence you provide them with.

            So, in this particular instant, tired as I am, I don’t even feel guilty about saying I don’t care. Really. And I’m one of those guilt-trip people who can made to feel guilty about pretty much anything. Blame it on my upbringing.

            It’s quite liberating. 🙂

    • stelmosfire January 2, 2020 at 11:24 am #

      Majella “The shit is getting real” sure it is real, always has been and tragic too. So far (2019) in total NSW, has lost 10,000,000 acres (5% of area) with 15 fatalities. In 1871 our state of Michigan lost 3,000,000 acres(5% of area) on a SINGLE DAY! Oct.8. with uncounted hundreds dead. Also the date of the Great Chicago Fire. Causes are dry conditions caused by drought and high winds, so yes “The shit is getting real”. Nothing really new here except now people know ahead of time to get the “Fuck outta’ Dodge.”

  103. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 3:06 am #

    Meltdown

    Afghanistan Papers

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7avVECAlA

  104. Nightowl January 2, 2020 at 4:07 am #

    Pulled from Jeff Carlson’s feed:

    Great thread on the hot water John Brennan is in. His e-mail was hacked by a 15-year-old kid, and there are some very juicy items here.

    https://twitter.com/ThunderB/status/1212436552070111232

  105. BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 8:02 am #

    Bernie Sandals is cleaning up on the campaign trail, raking in big bucks. He might win.

    Could there be any better news than that?

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    • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

      Bernie Sanders stands for socialism, and government control harboring on Soviet style Communism.

      Trump will run on lower taxes, less and disseminated government, and appealing to the working Middle class.

      We will definitely get an idea where the US is demographically.

      • Majella January 2, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

        “Bernie Sanders stands for socialism, and government control harboring on Soviet style Communism.”

        JohnAZ – that is simply not true. It is, at best, a hyperbolic criticism of something you refuse to understand and at worst, simply a smear.

        The ‘demographics’ of the US currently shows a continuing majority of US voters being PRO Universal Health Care:

        https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx

        “Trump will run on lower taxes, less and disseminated government, and appealing to the working Middle class.”

        Perhaps, but are you aware of the number of people in the ‘working/middle class’ that saw tax RISES as a result of his last “Billionaire Giveaway”?

        https://www.thebalance.com/trump-s-tax-plan-how-it-affects-you-4113968

        ‘It eliminates personal exemptions. Before the Act, taxpayers subtracted $4,150 from income for each person claimed. As a result, some families with many children will pay higher taxes despite the Act’s increased standard deductions.

        The Act eliminates most itemized deductions. That includes moving expenses, except for active-duty members of the military. Those paying alimony can no longer deduct it while those receiving it can.8? This change is effective for divorces signed in 2018.”

        Add to this the huge environmental damage that will result from the relentless deregulation and you have a shit-storm brewing.

  106. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 8:27 am #

    I owe my life to Stan-the-Man Petrov. He’s literally a Russian Richard Jewell.

    The Russian bloke Stan-the-Man Petrov has done more for me than the Democratic Party.

    Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: ?????????? ??????????? ???????; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonelof the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm,[1]and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol,[2] is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.[3]

  107. malthuss January 2, 2020 at 11:11 am #

    89 of our Senators and Congress hold dual citizenship citizenship with Israel.

  108. trypillian January 2, 2020 at 11:33 am #

    It is wrong to say Ukraine is ruled by Russia ‘in the past and always will be’. FYI Kyiv was founded in 500 AD whilst Moscow was founded in 1200 AD. Ukraine was a mentor to Russia in every way; government, religion, education, commerce and culture. The criminal mafia economy of Russia today holds Ukraine hostage. The USA now really is in the same boat as Ukraine. The new overlords being the military industrial complex courtesy of the shadow government and deep state. As far as being an ‘agricultural backwater’, this should be a compliment as putting food on the table is noble given the future ‘world made by hand’ at the end of the long emergency. JHK has his own vegetable garden so to put down the largest European nation which has the richest soil on earth is a non-sequitur. The distinct Ukrainian spirit and soul is alive and well, always was and always will be, in spite of the Russian syndicate.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

      Britain gave birth to America – only to be exceeded by America. It is obviously the same in this case. Google Huntington’s line. Western Ukraine looks to the West and Eastern Ukraine to Russia. There is no reason Ukraine should be one country. They should split just as the Czecks and the Slovaks did.

  109. sophia January 2, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

    Green Alba,

    I absolutely did not mean to be patronizing. I also see you have thought about these things more than I expected. Look, the concept of things that do not persist in their essence as being ‘not real’ is something that took most of my life to understand, and I think most people don’t understand it. Don’t take offense, none is meant. To discuss ideas a bit of groundwork is needed. That is why I wanted to clarify if you understood why someone would say a materialist believes their consciousness is not really alive. And, when it comes to God, and discussing God and souls, I feel only love.

    I in no way accuse materialists of being cynical or nasty people. It has been my experience that they are at least average, probably well above average in compassion and conscientiousness. It matters not much what you believe in my view of things as we are all here to learn whatever we need to, and while at some point it probably does matter, and is more joyous, it doesn’t alter the progress of your soul, at least not by much.

    It’s not strange or rare for people once religious to become atheists. I do consider that sad, because as Greer says ( a very interesting point to ponder) the opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea.

    I don’t really have a high opinion of Hawking. You’ve linked a couple of long things. I will read them if it is necessary to the conversation, but what I would like is for you to say what you think the gist of it is. I’d like to know about how you came to drop your belief.

    I certainly would use those phrases on them if it seemed appropriate! You think because they are famous it means they can’t be ignorant of something? In fact, if you take Dawkins – I consider him an intellectual lightweight with little philosophical talent. In fact, a pattern I see often is that someone gives up on religion, let’s say Christianity, usually at a young age and often because they are turned off by some things. Fair enough! But it leaves many of them with arguments that I see as very much in the beginner’s realm. They have left off their pondering too early to have gained much…ah, wisdom or something like that. Dawkins is squarely in that camp, and quite a few better intellects in the atheist realm said his book was an embarrassment.

    I only ‘sort of’ believe in the Biblical God, and definitely not the Old Testament entity, whom I consider an imposter. I agree that a huge motivator for taking on a faith is the desire for certainty. Which can be a cop out.
    It is not my mindset that the opposite of God is materialism. But I’d like to know more about your take on that. It is for many people, and you used some of their phrasing, but I am glad to see that is not the case with you.

    You may also have assumed that I am of a particular religious faith but that is not so. So one of those turn offs is this pressure to gain ‘salvation’ through belief or what have you. I am completely free of such notions.

    • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

      She was born in a Christian home so she was Christian as long as it was “cool” to be so in her millieu. When it became cool to not be a Christian, she ceased to be a Christian. When it became cool to be an atheist or whatever she is, she did that.

      If we were to take over, she would become what we are. Such is Woman….

      They are naturally closer to Matter, Instinct, and basic Unconsciousness. You “feel” they are higher. Of course you do!

      • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:06 pm #

        You are an ignorant pain in the arse, Skorenzy. With some unfortunate male faults added in for good measure.

        It was never ‘cool’ in my milieu to be Christian. We were old-fashioned Scottish Presbyterian imports to a pretty much indifferent and not very religious industrial north of England. None of my school friends went to church. None of my student friends in the south of England went to church. The family I lodged with when I first went down to the south of England didn’t go to church and my lifelong friends I subsequently shared a house with and whom I see still to this day, despite us all living in different countries, didn’t go to church. My ex-husband didn’t go to church. My current husband doesn’t go to church. Stepping mentally outside of the bubble was what did it for me, and opening my mind to ideas I’d rather not have had to open it to.

        You are a presumptuous ignoramus, and there’s really no cure for that, whatever milieu you live in.

        • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

          I did make friends with a fervent Pentecostalist while I was a student. She was slightly nuts.

          She got in touch again years later through Friends Reunited and dropped me like a hot potato when I reluctantly admitted, after a few emails, that I’d stopped going to church.

          People like that don’t want your friendship unless it serves their other purposes. A waste of a person’s time.

          Churchgoing/Christianity in the UK has NEVER been ‘cool’ in my lifetime. The US is a different country, and quite anomalous among developed nations.

          • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

            Probably a lot to do with the ‘exceptionalism’ thing.

          • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

            GA

            Maybe Islam will be what’s ‘Cool’ in the UK.

            Drop a prayer rug down, face east, answerthe call to prayer, get used to it before it becomes mandatory. What can it hurt?

            Brh

      • sophia January 2, 2020 at 6:27 pm #

        By we, you mean men? I feel women are higher than what? Men? Nature?

        • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2020 at 7:48 pm #

          You really don’t remember saying how you “felt” this was the case? Even though you admitted that all the evidence was for the contrary, namely male superiority?

          We had an argument about it, one that I won. But what’s the point of my victory over you if you don’t even remember it? It’s like fighting a bowl of jello. It’s not fair….

          • sophia January 2, 2020 at 8:58 pm #

            Sorry. I don’t recall the details. I agree that men are far more active, interactive with the environment and generally do more impressive things. I think women’s talents are harder to pinpoint because the comparison is with things that men do.
            I can’t agree with one sex being superior to the other. I don’t think that is how things work.

    • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:40 pm #

      sophia

      I’m happy for you to believe whatever you believe. And I accept that you didn’t mean to be patronising.

      As I said to StE I’ve had a long day and I’m not up to writing my metaphysical life story. But I didn’t truly drop my religious beliefs entirely until around a decade ago, after a lifetime of trying to believe what I was brought up to believe, despite the great big obvious gaping holes.

      I have little time for the smug and pompous Dawkins – my opinion of him isn’t much different from yours, although his knowledge of biology is way beyond mine.

      I am an everyday nobody when it comes to philosophising. I would recommend someone much more eloquent than I could be if you want an idea of how such trajectories can go (which has nothing whatever to do with the utterly idiotic nincompoopery just projected by the Skorenzy character, whose struggle with his competing Weltanshauungen are a hoot to me, after the decades I have spent thinking about such things with rather more depth than his dumb, self-aggrandising projection of ‘how women think’. (I dare to hope that, since you once described yourself as a feminist, you don’t accept this kind of superficial and ignorant tripe whose only agenda is pathetic gender bashing, born out of who knows what disappointments in life).

      One of my favourite (short) books on the subject is ‘Looking into the distance: the human search for meaning. by Dr Richard Holloway, the erstwhile (Anglican/Episcopalian) Bishop of Edinburgh. He went through a slow process of shedding his religious faith, but what started it off was the difficulty of reconciling his rational consideration of homosexuality with the church’s then (as he saw it) utterly irrational view of it (he’s a married, family man himself). Once you start to find holes, the holes get bigger. But he’s not at all a Dawkins type – and the reason I like his book is because I can relate so well to how he moved very gradually from believing to not believing. He’s a prolific author, and has spent a lot of time writing about ethics and morals in a life without deities.

      I’ve also recently read a fair chunk of Dan Barker’s book, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists’. (It could be shorter!) It’s a totally different take on the issue since Dan Barker wasn’t at all like the gentle, cerebral Richard Holloway – he was immersed in the whole born-again thing (he want to Mexico as a young firebrand preacher to convert the Catholics to Christianity!!!) and claims he has ‘felt’ what Christians of the ‘personal experience’ variety claim to feel, and says if he so chose he could summon up those ‘feelings’ again.

      Again, it was one idea (not the same one) that opened a hole in his unthinking certainty, until bit by bit, more holes appeared and the thing unravelled for good.

      I spent years reading Christian apologetics – now I’m catching up with the other side of the equation, and it’s very interesting.

      That will have to do for now – maybe another time. 🙂

      • GreenAlba January 2, 2020 at 1:49 pm #

        Apologies for not closing the italics after the book title – fatigue is closing in!

      • sophia January 2, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

        Hi Green Alba,

        I am surprised if I described myself as a feminist. I am perhaps one of my own stripe, but I have become more and more turned off to standard feminism and generally would not describe myself as such.

        So you have described two different ex-Christian authors who have seen through the holes in their belief system and while I certainly admire it when a person can (finally) do that, and in fact often wonder how people of faith can miss that (it almost seems like a case of arrested development), it nonetheless fits the pattern I mentioned. Someone is a believer and then switches to atheism, rather than seeing that human beings like to manufacture belief structures which of course have many fallacies. Then they decide there is no God, no soul, and nothing to reality but what meets their eye. Because the Bible or their faith has errors, throw out the whole thing. They even fail to think about other humans on this planet than those of their own faith. Although, to be fair, that is the juncture at which some people do indeed change faiths rather than throw out everything but the molecules.

        I hope we can continue the conversation, and it is past midnight in the UK so I’ll come looking for you and remind you to read my reply, but any answer should be in the new blog post.

    • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 2:44 pm #

      “…definitely not the Old Testament entity, whom I consider an imposter.”

      Sophia, If I may intrude on your exchange with GA:

      When considering the nature of the Old Testament entity, one might (should, IMO) consider that the people who conceived of him/it were likely within the cultural memory of actual events like the destruction of cities by extraterrestrial bolides (as recalled in the tales of Sodom and Gomorrah) or in encounters with large impacts that had worldwide effects like the Younger Dryas event. Archaeology is providing evidence to support both of these, though they are not yet accepted as “proven”.

      It has long been calculated that the comet Encke broke up within the last 40,000 years (at most) and is possible that this breakup had effects like the above and more. The “Tunguska Event” was likely from an Encke fragment.

      If one admits this possibility, and the psychology of pre-technical people, then the nature of the “Old Testament entity” acquires a great deal more basis in logic. I do not argue that there is a “God” hurling stones at us, but that this is not an unreasonable conclusion for pre-technical people to accept and record as among the most important kind of knowledge about the nature of the world.

      I do argue that knowledge that this is the nature of the universe we inhabit is meaningful.

      • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 3:30 pm #

        Very interesting! So the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah could have been the result of a comet strike that caused the Younger Dryas big freeze?! That is an interesting theory. Well some people say the Sphinx is much older than the generally accepted range of 4,500 to 8,000 years ago. The Younger Dryas event occurred about 12,500 years ago. I think it’s very possible that some of the cities and settlements referenced in the Old Testament could have been that old or even older.

        • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 4:05 pm #

          Check out the Exodus versus the Thera volcano explosion as an explanation of the plagues.

          Why not natural events for the Bible explanation. It is all God.

          • sophia January 2, 2020 at 7:40 pm #

            John AZ,

            I am sure that natural events and scriptures about them are intertwined.

        • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 5:46 pm #

          “So the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah could have been the result of a comet strike that caused the Younger Dryas big freeze?!”

          No, they were (hypothetically or theoretically) two separate events. My point is that the events happened within the time of cultural memory of humans.

          The Younger Dryas event is more controversial, but is also getting the most evidence gathered. It is pretty easy to get info by searching for that.

          The Sodom and Gomorrah event is hypothetically an event that happened more recently. A city is being excavated northeast of the Dead Sea where an airburst is believed to have leveled it and at the same time sucked salt up and deposited in the area so that it could not be farmed for a few centuries.

          Will look for the article.

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 5:51 pm #

            “Exploding meteor may have wiped out communities near Dead Sea 3,700 years ago ”

            “A meteor that exploded in the air near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago may have wiped out communities, killed tens of thousands of people, and provided the kernel of truth to an old Bible story. The area is in modern-day Jordan, in a 25 km wide circular plain called Middle Ghor. Most of the evidence for this event comes from archaeological evidence excavated at the Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam located in that area, which some scholars say is the city of Sodom from the Bible.”

            https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2018/12/exploding-meteor-may-have-wiped-out.html

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 6:06 pm #

            Also

            “A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

            https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2010/12/flashback-asteroid-destroyed-sodom-and.html

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 6:12 pm #

            If that stuff interests you, you should really read up on this:

            https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-Victor-Clube/dp/0876633793

            The calculations that Encke broke up within 40,000 years were made in the 1940s, before all the impact stuff became popular, then people like Clube and Napier started connecting dots.

          • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 6:26 pm #

            The Comet Encke material is not tin-foil hat stuff, nor are Clube and Napier. One may disagree with the theories, which are just theories, but there is a lot of hard data behind them.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Encke

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Clube

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Napier_%28astronomer%29

          • Janos Skorenzy January 2, 2020 at 7:53 pm #

            And at the very moment the men of Sodom went to lay hands on the Angels, a flash of natural lightening occurred – no doubt caused by the comet – that blinded them.

            No need for miracles – just a God who is playing really good pool and planned out his game billions of years ago.

            If they Sodomite Perverts had controlled themselves or taken Lot’s daughters as was offered, this wouldn’t have happened? How’s that? It was never a possibility since God knew how gay and perverted they would be. Thus the comet strike was planned from the very beginning.

      • sophia January 2, 2020 at 7:38 pm #

        Epicur,

        That might explain Zeus, who had his thunderbolts. In fact, I believe that to be the case. How that relates to the detailed immorality of Yahweh, I am not sure.

    • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 4:02 pm #

      I agree with you, re the “old” God and the “new” one.

      The old one used a single family to bring Himself into contact with Man. He favored the Hebrews but did not interfere with Man’s free choice. His method of discipline was awesome, if Man became a lost cause, the elements,, the Four Horsemen, did him in, over and over. God must have infinite patience as Man as a whole has always trended toward evil.

      Jesus died to give us grace, a free ticket into Heaven if we did as Jesus taught. The New Testament is very different, He has given Man the responsibility to control evil himself. No Laws other than put God first in your life, and be good to your fellow man. No destruction, no Sodom, no floods.

      IMHO, same God, different Man. As Man has progressed, the interface with God has changed. Like a school kid whose ability to learn changes with time.

      I do think the Christ is our last update. We either pass or fail based on His Word. It is up to us.

      • sophia January 2, 2020 at 7:51 pm #

        John AZ,

        Well! I disagree with just everything you write so I don’t know where to begin. When people speak as you do, I see it as making excuses for the inexcusable as well as the illogical. But if a person wants badly enough to believe a certain way, it is not difficult to construct a structure that seems to make some sense of it. Since it is Thursday night, I shan’t go deep in, but if you want to, I am game.

        On the other hand, if it works for you, perhaps I should leave well enough alone. If it helps you be a better person and you are satisfied with it, why mess with success?

  110. malthuss January 2, 2020 at 12:47 pm #

    What are you going to do when there’s no more oil –
    He wont live to see the end of oil, will he?

    Others can use coal. I guess.

    what do you suggest?

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    • elysianfield January 2, 2020 at 2:34 pm #

      “what do you suggest?”

      Malthuss,
      I suggest that there will NEVER be a time with no oil. There will be times of unaffordable oil. There will be times where it might be difficult to acquire. There may be times when oil is synthetically produced, as the Germans did in WWII.

      There will ALWAYS be oil…just maybe none for you.

      • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 4:07 pm #

        German oil came from coal. I wonder how dirty that process was?

      • Night Owl January 29, 2021 at 10:56 am #

        Elysian — yep.

    • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 2:53 pm #

      If technological society survives, and I think it likely, then I think we will develop the ability to digest cellulose, as termites and cattle do, but more efficiently. This will make sustainable liquid fuels abundant and affordable. We can already mimic this digestion to some degree, just not efficiently yet.

      I do not think this will forestall Armageddon (if it is coming). Imagine a world with 300 million well-armed Muslims whose major product has just become worthless, collapsing their economies.

      • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 3:17 pm #

        Well there are roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. That’s about 22% of the world’s human population. Given their high fertility rate Muslims are likely to make up more than one third of the world’s population by the end of this century. And those are just projections. So the idea of a force of 300 million well armed Muslims could already be a possibility in the right circumstances. And so Armageddon may be lurking right around the corner. And if their Mahdi really does walk among them now then it’s basically a sure thing.

        • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 5:58 pm #

          Wait till they take down France and the UK, and get control of those countries nuclear arsenals. That’s the goal, IMHO.

          It’s a Camp of Saints scenario, playing out before our very eyes, a slow motion disaster, and the end civilization.

          Brh

        • malthuss January 2, 2020 at 6:11 pm #

          Africans…100 million to a billion, now.
          to how many in yr later life?

      • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 4:08 pm #

        Plus a whole lot of methane as a by product.

  111. malthuss January 2, 2020 at 1:03 pm #

    climate change, nature is ever in flux. who created this absurd term, climate change

    • SoftStarLight January 2, 2020 at 2:58 pm #

      It’s a meaningless term too since climate has always and will always change. Otherwise it is generally a reference to the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the orthodoxy, or at least one of them, of this age. If you want to be anybody you better not be a climate change denier!

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 6:08 pm #

      Pete Seeger

      After his beloved Soviet Union collapsed around 1989.

      That’s who.

  112. volodya January 2, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

    There’s been a lot of writing and talk these past fifty years about the many facets of the debauching, debasement and defilement of the West, whether it’s financial or economic or behavioral. Among the western intelligentsia it’s considered immoral to demand that prospective migrants enter by the legal process required by the country they’d like to reside in. Now, paperless immigrants are portrayed in the media as heroic, and never mind the obvious agenda of the monied elite: low wages. Does anyone in his right mind really believe that illegals should be let alone because they do the work that spoiled Americans are unwilling to do? What if you hear that New Orleans was largely rebuilt by illegals in construction trades? Are we to believe that bona fide Americans no longer want to work in construction?

    But this devaluation of legal citizenship is just one example. There are many that come as a consequence of that most execrable of isms, neo-liberalism, all of which point to the most obvious underpinning of this whole enterprise: the de-braining of the West. 
    We really have given up thinking. Even the most elementary connecting of adjacent dots is too much. How could this happen? For one, the neo-liberal project requires it, to lose one’s rational self in fog-banks of irrationality and misinformation, to give up the least mental exertion, the better to accept the most preposterous precepts. 

    No really, how does a presidential candidate like the stumbling, fumbling, mumbling, bumbling Biden get taken seriously when day-in and day-out he does the batty King Theoden thing? It’s not just Biden, you get bubbleheads like AOC (and I don’t give a shit that she has a degree but yeah, I’d boff her in a New York minute) drawing parallels between detentions at the Mexican border and concentration camps, presumably so that people, in their enfeebled state, would connect them Nazi-ism. That’s bad enough but in a country that hadn’t given up reasonable and rational thought, she should have gotten laughed out of town. But she didn’t. How did Cortez get through this nonsense? I’ll tell you, she’s pretty, with those big, beautiful eyes, the dazzling smile that promises unspeakable carnal delights. And she can dance. And she has a nice bum. So doesn’t this illustrate the point? 

    But it don’t stop there. If only. There was Rachel Dolezal showing us new and exciting ways to bullshit. But was it really all that new? Maybe others before her carved out a piece of the  pie by lying like hell about their race. Why did Liz Warren lie about her race, long-ago telling howlers about her background, lies that should have shut down her candidacy? Contemptible, riding on the backs of people that suffered mightily. Somehow Warren survived it and it’s a tetch puzzling as to how this can possibly be. 

    Or maybe it isn’t puzzling, brains benumbed by social media, hobbled by the ministrations of armies of edu-crats whose sole function it was to ensure the non-functioning of their young charges, and then the disabling effects of college. And then there was Maddow and O Donnell and Woodruff. And they’re still around too. 

    • volodya January 2, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

      typo: connect them to Nazi-ism

    • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 4:17 pm #

      V

      The de-emphasis of American citizenship is not surprising from a political group. The Liberal presence for the last half century has wanted the US to be minimized in favor of an international presence.

      Trump is a nationalist, America First. No wonder they want him gone.

  113. K-Dog January 2, 2020 at 2:14 pm #

    A paragraph from Al Jazeera

    “The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into the United States, has gone largely unnoticed. In letters to Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, more than 100 members of Congress have repeatedly warned about the deteriorating security situation in Honduras, especially since the 2009 military coup that ousted the country’s democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. As Honduran scholar Dana Frank points out in Foreign Affairs, the U.S.-backed post-coup government “rewarded coup loyalists with top ministries,” opening the door for further “violence and anarchy.””

    Since ‘hairy legs’ will soon be bait and switched out for the flying reptile the quote above is relevant; but I posted it as background to the interview I dropped onto my own website on my bulletin board section. The same section I used for fireworks New Years Eve.Click Here. Enjoy. The interview is with the democratically elected president who got ousted in Hillary’s coup.

  114. malthuss January 2, 2020 at 6:10 pm #

    NATURAL NEWS
    political gain.
    Insane Belief #4: A human baby that’s born alive isn’t really “alive” until the mother decides she wants to keep it

    According to the same lunatic Leftists who have decided that men can somehow become women by wishing for a sex change, human babies that are born alive and healthy aren’t really “alive” until the mother decides she wants to keep that baby. Until that moment comes, the mother, the doctor and apparently anyone in the room with a baseball bat can legally murder that child in the name of “progressivism,” Leftists insist.

    This is the new culture of the mainstream Left: Infanticide and violence against human babies. Celebrated and applauded by all Democrats.

    And they justify it all by claiming that Trump is bad, therefore murdering babies makes it all even, somehow.

    Yes, it’s insane, but this is how the Left thinks. And it brings up the question: If these people are willing to murder their own children, do you really think they will hesitate to murder their political opponents if given the opportunity?

    Keep that in mind the next time some baby-killing Governor (Northam, anyone?) announces he’s coming for your guns. Heck, they probably need your guns to help them execute all the children they plan to kill in the hospitals, while Michelle Wolf celebrates how killing babies makes her feel “like God.

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 6:21 pm #

      Lunatic leftists?

      What your describing there is the official policy of the distinguished Governors of Virginia and New York.

      Brh

  115. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 6:20 pm #

    “Can America get its mind right?”

    The “Afghanistan Papers” have been published and no one talks about them. An 18 year old war that no one talks about. Instead, we get a circus show impeachment shit show. I wonder if we’re witnessing societal mental collapse as a symptom of a general Collapse? Not a good sign….

    Afghanistan Papers

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7avVECAlA

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/veterans-reaction/

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    • Epicur January 2, 2020 at 6:40 pm #

      As far as I’m concerned the Afghan venture was a cock-up from the start. I’d be more disturbed to find out they WEREN’T lying. That would be like their believing in the tooth fairy.

      • Pucker January 2, 2020 at 6:55 pm #

        It seems that many of these blokes rotate back from Afghanistan and literally pretend that the fiasco is something that it’s really not. People thank them “for their service.”

        And they have these military sponsored football games dressed in camouflage. And they act like heroes.

        It’s really mentally Whacked Out….

        • Pucker January 2, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

          Everyone else also pretends during these Military sponsored football games even though they don’t believe in it. They just Conform, like the Non-Believers who nevertheless raised their arms and shouted: “Seig Heil!”

          Sick….

    • JohnAZ January 2, 2020 at 8:13 pm #

      The A Papers are a critique of the Deep State, specifically the MIC.

      Gee, I wonder why the press does not cover the story.

  116. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 6:40 pm #

    Well, Looking on The Bright Side: At least, The Right Brain Sense of Humor still functions in a combat zone. At least, you can still tell jokes….

    George Carlin: “When you’re born into this life, you’re given a ticket to the Freak Show. If you’re born in America, you’re given a front row seat.”

    “A lot of our mission prep was not in alignment with what the reality was on the ground. Each member of the team was provided a set of hip waders for walking through marshes. There are no marshes. We brought a chain saw for logging projects, but there were no trees to cut down.”

    — David Bentley, 41, Army combat medic, Konar province, 2009-2010

    “They were telling us to go into the villages and ask them, where is the Taliban? And the first time we asked the question, they were like, ‘Oh yes, I’m Taliban.’ And we were like, ‘Uh, do we shoot this guy? He just admitted he’s Taliban.’ So we asked the [interpreter], and he said Taliban means student. They’re all students out here! So that was confusing.”

    — Jonathan Rosario, 31, Army infantryman, Kandahar province, 2009-2010

    • Pucker January 2, 2020 at 6:48 pm #

      While all of this nonsense was going on in Afghanistan, Jeffrey Epstein was entertaining high powered US, Israeli, British, Saudi politicians, academics, and British Royalty with underaged White teenage prostitutes, all while literally imagining himself as “Gulliver amongst the little people.”

      No shit….

      You can’t make this up….

      It’s like the Holocaust to the extent that it’s so insane that no one could make it up, so it has to be True….

      Insane….

    • Pucker January 2, 2020 at 8:31 pm #

      “A lot of our mission prep was not in alignment with what the reality was on the ground. “

      “…not in alignment with reality…”

      Maybe what the Americans need now is a Chiropractor to give their Minds a big Reality Adjustment and to pop their minds back into shape?

      Holy Shit Balls…

  117. capt spaulding January 2, 2020 at 8:37 pm #

    Australia appears to be on the path to burn itself up. The firefighters predict that this weekend will be a blast furnace. It will be interesting down the road, if the intense drought they are experiencing turns out to be one of the effects of climate change. I think that Australia has been described as the driest inhabited continent, not sure, I could be wrong.

    It makes me wonder about the potential for extended periods of drought in the southwestern US. That, along with a rise in sea level, could cause a lot of problems on both coasts. It remains to be seen, however I would not invest in beachfront property anytime in the near future. Buying prospective shoreline property in Nebraska might pay some dividends, however. It never hurts to look to the future. Just like some years in the past, I had the foresight to invest in a factory that makes lead based paint, which is exported to Chinese toy manufacturers. Like the Republicans say: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

    • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 9:07 pm #

      Obama and John Kerry invested in beachfront property, on Martha’s Vineyard. Between the two they spent about $30 million. Joe Biden, who just yesterday threatened to jail oil company executives, built a swanky beachfront mansion in Delaware. Those gentlemen don’t seem to be worried about sea level rise, Captain.

      Brh

      • capt spaulding January 2, 2020 at 10:04 pm #

        Once again BRH, you failed to see the humor in what I wrote. I’ll admit that there are many others better enabled than I am to advance the cause of humor, however there are some here who get my jokes. That you are not among their number holds no surprise for me. It is the lack of imagination in your posts that suggests to me that you are incapable of appreciating my sallies into humor, poor though they may well be.

        You come off as a rather unimaginative pedantic individual who might better be involved in something more productive such as calculating the full value of Pi. In hopes of encouraging you in such activities, I will now quietly withdraw.

        • BackRowHeckler January 2, 2020 at 10:30 pm #

          Goddamit Captain, write better jokes!

          I like to laugh.

          On the other hand, I am, after all, the Back Row Heckler.

          Bane of stand up comedians everywhere.

          Brh

  118. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 9:29 pm #

    “They were telling us to go into the villages and ask them, where is the Taliban? And the first time we asked the question, they were like, ‘Oh yes, I’m Taliban.’ And we were like, ‘Uh, do we shoot this guy? He just admitted he’s Taliban.’ So we asked the [interpreter], and he said Taliban means student. They’re all students out here! So that was confusing.”
    — Jonathan Rosario, 31, Army infantryman, Kandahar province, 2009-2010

    In many cases, the US soldiers have probably shot a bunch of people by mistake?

    If I found myself on the jury, I think that I’d find myself at a total loss as to how to confront the Tragedy. I probably in good faith could not conclude that it was a reasonable mistake in judgment?

    • Pucker January 2, 2020 at 9:38 pm #

      Infantryman Jonathan Rosario has a Twitter account:

      https://mobile.twitter.com/j_rosario86

      Here is how he advertises himself:

      “Jonathan Rosario
      @j_rosario86
      Fitness Addict, U.S. Army ( Infantry), Entrepenuer, IT Nerd, Health Freak. Failure is not an option, Success is a Mindset. FOCUS !!!!!”

      At least, he has a very positive Left Brain attitude…. Holy Shit Balls!

  119. Epicur January 2, 2020 at 9:47 pm #

    Speaking of Black Swan events, the head of the Quds (Qods) forces and the head of the Badr brigades both went to claim their 72 virgins after a reported airstrike by the US.

    I bet JHK is busy with a re-write or addendum for tomorrow right now.

  120. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 9:53 pm #

    That’s another one of those post-Vietnam War era 1970’s bumper stickers that sticks in my mind: “Kill ‘Em All and let God Sort ‘Em Out.”

    I’d find myself as a kid in the 1970’s riding in the front seat of my parents car driving to the KMart to buy some inane crap and at the stop light in front there’d be a pick up truck with a bumper sticker that read: “Kill ‘Em All and let God Sort ‘Em Out.”

    As much as I hate to admit it, Americans are not the sharpest pencils in the box.

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  121. Pucker January 2, 2020 at 11:00 pm #

    According to one of the “Afghanistan Papers”, one USAID project in Afghanistan was to teach the Pashtun about the virtues of “Juicing”. It seems that the Afghans grow root vegetables, and the Americans thought that it’d be a great idea to teach the Afghans how to use electric juicers (like the “Magic Bullet” juicer) to juice the root vegetables.

    I think that one bloke on this website (K-Dog?) once said that you can add Weed to the mix when using the “Magic Bullet” to make smoothies? The Afghans grow a lot of Weed and Opium. You could export packaged Afghan Weed and Opium vegetable root beverages to the Americans. The Americans would love it.

    • Pucker January 3, 2020 at 1:40 am #

      Have a brainstorming session serving beer and pizza in the politically correct American societal mental hospital and see what ideas emerge?

  122. Pucker January 3, 2020 at 12:06 am #

    Does this story make sense? It sounds suspicious. How would they be able to connect so quickly what would look at first like flu to this market? Maybe they are releasing a deadly virus to impose Martial Law?

    http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=214971

  123. Pucker January 3, 2020 at 2:10 am #

    “Chaz 10” is obviously insane….

    Chasten Buttigieg
    @Chas10Buttigieg
    ·
    13h
    Got a minute?
    Great.
    Put a good song on.
    One that makes you feel really great about life or this moment or yourself.
    Turn it up.
    Louder.
    Swipe out of Twitter.
    Dance, shimmy – whatever makes you smile or takes your mind off the silly.
    Celebrate your awesomeness.
    That’s it.

    • Pucker January 3, 2020 at 3:09 am #

      Chaz 10 is a “Self-made Man”, like Epstein and “El Chapo”?

  124. tucsonspur January 3, 2020 at 3:06 am #

    Whirlin’ and Swirlin’ to the world’s chaotic refrain
    Spinnin’ the globe into the future domain
    Diocletian’s Palace and Gobekli Tepe spun out of stone
    Along with the threads that cover my bones.

    Whirlin’ and Twirlin’ at a death defying pace
    Spinnin’ the tale of the whole human race.
    Swirlin’ the Knight and Spinnin’the Knave
    Turning them all from cradle to grave.

    • tucsonspur January 3, 2020 at 5:52 am #

      into stone, not out of

  125. tucsonspur January 3, 2020 at 3:36 am #

    Why not start the new year with some poetry, if not instead of politics, at least in addition to it? Politics, another necessary evil, can wither the soul and make you a mean and nasty pile of caustic cynicism.

    Something for Winter: (and other places)

    “Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
    We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh.
    But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window
    We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house,

    We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees
    So graceful. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost
    With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and southwestern corners,
    We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. “Snowbound,” we say. We speak of the poet

    Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the mountains of the western province, the kingdom
    Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months
    Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs
    In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives
    Which have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme.

    We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh.
    For a while we close the immense index of images that is our lives—for instance,
    The child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico sitting naked in 1966 outside his family’s hut,
    Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day,
    We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability.

    No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will never
    Know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The machine,
    Like an immense clanking vibrating shuddering unnameable contraption as big as a house, as big as the whole town,
    May break through and lurch into our valley at any moment, at any moment.

    Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.

    Hayden Carruth, “The Curtain” from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995. Copyright © 1996 by Hayden Carruth.

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    • BackRowHeckler January 3, 2020 at 5:12 am #

      Hayden Carruth, local boy made good. (Woodbury, CT)

      Nice way to end up the week, my Southwest friend.

      Brh

      • tucsonspur January 3, 2020 at 5:57 am #

        Thank you, my Yankee Nutmegger.

  126. messianicdruid January 3, 2020 at 8:53 am #

    Have any of the diversionists heard of something called a ” kinsman redeemer ” ?

    Israelites are redeemed, everyone else is saved.

  127. KesaAnna January 3, 2020 at 9:36 am #

    ” Sooo…you believe that the KKK had little to do with the cultural defense of the Segregationist Old South. I tend to think otherwise. ”

    Yes , I’ll stick by that statement.

    As I said further up the page , generally , the average white person in the old South was a hard character , very much on their dignity , someone that you — or the government too — would think twice about crossing .

    It so happens that by , ” Old South ” I’m NOT referring to ancient history .

    As I said before , I only arrived here in 1975 , But this general mindset , this general worldview ,was still very much in evidence at that time .

    And I suppose I particularly noted its disappearance , ( I must speak in general terms , between 1970 – 1985.

    A radical change took place , and by 1985 it was gone. )

    because I admired it , was impressed by it.

    As much as I loved , and still love , my old country , it has been very dismaying to see what , for lack of a better term , I will call the “europeanization ” of America , and particularly the South .

    Particularly dismaying I suppose , because while you never miss a chance to kick us , even now 30 years later , the fact is you have become just like us.

    You would think that you could give us credit , or at the very least dispense with the bullshit critiques.

    Unfortunately to spell out what mindset or worldview I’m talking about would really require a wall of text.

    So I’ll just reference a single song .

    Race , or the KKK is never mentioned.

    The female / feminist cant is for these purposes irrelevant and misleading , and likewise the sex stuff is irrelevant and misleading.

    I would ask you instead to focus solely on the general mindset , the general attitude , the general worldview expressed in the song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08QH3rVqokw

    My family is none of the states fucking business ?

    The very idea now is subversive and deviant , threatening.

    — Among white people . Were you cowed by the KKK ?

    Only the feminist cant and the sex stuff wouldn’t be , except really only then in empty rhetoric. In real life / in practice you wouldn’t dare.

    As I said , in 1975 the attitude was ubiquitous.

    Today , the very song itself is archaic.

  128. wolfie52 January 3, 2020 at 8:06 pm #

    Wow, I haven’t read Kunstler in about 2 years, thought I would check in. Amazing that he still has any followers,with him being so wrong, AGAIN. (Read his “predictions” going back as far as you want).

    What surprises me is he seems to be an (witting or unwitting) agent of Russia now. There is AMPLE evidence that Trump broke the law (bribery) in the case of Ukraine. You cannot accept that from a US President. And to say the “Dems” are trying to usurp Trump from his “rightfully won place” without justification is ABSURD. 1) He lost the popular vote 2) We would still get Pence! 3) He has been SO CORRUPT that there are probably 100 counts of impeachment that could be brought. Russia doesn’t have to be an enemy, but it DOES NOT HAVE OUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND!

    If JHK would read he would learn about the sordid history of Trump with organized crime and doing (or trying) business with Russians WHO ARE EXPERTS IN MANIPULATION for decades. Either JHK is an idiot who cannot see the truth or perhaps he has actually been “manipulated” by Russia. This is their MO.

    I remember reading about people called “cranks” in the 1800’s. They would print pamphlets and speak on street corners about stupid shit that makes no sense. People would laugh or ignore them. But today they write “blogs” and idiots believe them. #sad

    • DrGonzo January 16, 2020 at 9:03 pm #

      Hah! Thanks Wolfie for injecting a little reality into the weird Trump/Kunstler alternative view of the universe inwhich paranoia, pending apocalypse, and old white guy privilege panic prevails.

    • Night Owl January 29, 2021 at 10:53 am #

      Russia Foil.

      Right on time.

  129. DrGonzo January 16, 2020 at 8:59 pm #

    All you have to do is read JHK’s end-of-the-world predictions for 2019 (and 2018 and 2017 and 2016 and 2015 and 2014 and 2013), and compare them to what actually went down, to confirm that you’ll have better luck forecasting what happens in 2020 by just consulting an Eight-Ball.

    “The outlook is hazy”.

  130. fredluis01 January 28, 2020 at 7:29 pm #

    This is a well-thought of piece that made it easy for people to understand the whole point. remodeling

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  131. malthuss April 3, 2020 at 10:05 am #

    what a difference 3 months makes.

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  136. Jaurice November 17, 2021 at 8:48 am #

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