JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page
The metaphysical question, what does Russia want, is sounding a lot like the cosmic conundrum posed by Sigmund Freud: What do women want? Is Vladimir Putin transitioning to “become” a woman? It seems like the hormones are getting to him. One day he’s got a crush on Donald Trump, the next day he’s mashed on Bernie Sanders. At least according to America’s Intel Community. Or was that just Rep. Adam Schiff’s spin on the sigint served up to his House Intel Committee by one Shelby Pierson, “a senior intelligence official responsible for overseeing the issues of election interference,” as The New York Times described her. It looked, for a moment, like Mr. Schiff was trying to tee up a new killer-diller impeachment shot. But as usual with Mr. Schiff, the ploy went all Acme on him and blew up in his face.
Amazing how quickly the narrative flip-flopped, though, by whatever supernatural means the news media employs these days — Ouija boards, astral vision, virtual warping, metapotence, psionic equilibrium distortion, consort with the ghost of Allen Dulles…. One might deduce that the Democratic Party nomenklatura realized in a flash of insight that Russia’s affections were far more useful applied to Mr. Sanders than Mr. Trump, whose status among the Dems these days ranks as “worse than Satan.” Not much to work with there.
They’ve been struggling to find some means to stuff Bernie into the memory hole. They tried hauling Michael Bloomberg onstage to call Bernie a communist. That bombed (along with Mr. Bloomberg altogether). Everybody already knows Bernie spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union waiting on line with the new missus for tin plates of kohlrabi soup. Sunday night, they duped Bernie onto a 60-Minutes workout, with Anderson Cooper playing inquisitor. Andy put the screws to him on the question as to how America will pay for all the free stuff Bernie proffers. The answers were embarrassingly inconclusive and nobody cared, perhaps because nobody believes it anyway, not even the most righteous Bernie Bros.
If nothing else, Bernie’s timing on free this-and-that couldn’t be worse from the vantage of history. Government health care and tuition-free college worked in some nations in the decades after the Second World War because of a steadily rising global GDP, which itself was pegged to a reliable and affordable fossil fuel supply. That’s over. The shale oil “miracle” has bamboozled the public for ten years. It was a great stunt, but that’s all it was, and it’s going to wither now for a lack of available capital, and there isn’t any combo of alt energy thingies to take its place. Neither the Woke half of America nor the MAGA half groks this situation. The money’s not there. And a lot of things that pretend to be money are figments of the banking-and-finance industry, soon to melt away.
And now the Corona virus steps onstage to ramify that situation, beginning with a virtual shut-down of the excessively complex, over-engineered, just-in-time global economy. Things are not being produced and supply lines are shutting down. Car-makers outside China have a couple of weeks before their production lines halt for a lack of parts. But, of course, every other industry will have similar problems and stoppages. Many working Americans are barely getting by from one paycheck to the next. How many missed paychecks will it take for genuine hunger to kick in and desperation with it? We don’t know because the US news media has been busy conjuring the many loves of Vlad Putin.
This is getting serious now. Some of you may have noticed this morning that the stock indexes are heading into the worst open in years. Today, Mr. Market woke up, like Rip Van Winkle, and discovered that the world changed while he was sleeping. There’s a fair chance that the conditions of daily life in America will deteriorate sharply in the months ahead. We’ve been remote-viewing the empty streets of Wuhan and other Chinese cities since January, thinking it was like one of our cable-network horror shows. It’s not inconceivable that an American city, or more than one, will be subject to quarantine, or that a whole lot of people just won’t leave their houses for a period of time. Will the truckers still truck things that people need? We don’t know. How do you hold a political convention in a situation like that, or even an election?
The situation in China may be too far gone already. The country’s finances were a gigantic game of pretend. In the old Soviet Union, beloved by Bernie, the joke was, “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work” — not a great formula for enduring prosperity. In China, the updated joke was “we pretend to make loans, and you pretend to pay them back.” The China boom was a lot like the shale oil “miracle.” They were both great stunts. They produced a lot of stuff by borrowing from the future. Now we have all that stuff and we have to maintain it, keep it running, borrow more money to make that happen… and suddenly, that’s no longer plausible. The entire industrialized world has fallen for the debt stunt. Observers have been waiting to see what would finally provoke the unwinding of massive false promises. Looks like the wait is over.
* * *
CFN Literary Bonus:
A Poem for Bernie
by Peter A. Golden
I remember you, Bernie Sanders, before you fled north to that Eden where skis and Birkenstocks blossom on the trees.
We had left the Fillmore that New Year’s Eve, heads full of noise and smoke, still dancing in the icy moonlight on Second Avenue, where old Jews, broken from the sweatshops, had once crowded into Yiddish theaters.
Steam fogged the bright windows of the deli, and inside the fragrance of pickles and smoked meats was as thick as perfume in a bordello.
How crowded it was! Hash-heads devouring Danish with corned beef, while lovers, brains tinted pink and blue with acid, counted the holes in the matzoh balls.
But you, Bernie, were not among them. You were in the back room, a starry-eyed Menshevik debating a Bolshevik with big yellow teeth and jellied calves feet in his mouth, and I prayed for you Bernie, prayed that Stalin wouldn’t emerge from the grave to plant an ice axe in your head.
And now here you are again, shining like a lava lamp in the Trumpian darkness, a white-haired, arm-waving sage, singing old songs to youngsters who never heard them, songs without meaning or music, offering up sugar-spun wishes like cotton candy.
Oh, the beauty, you say, when we are wrapped in the loving arms of government. Who could doubt a faceless bureaucrat would love you less than the silent God? So I am listening to you Bernie, remembering seaside summers and ice skating on a Norman Rockwell pond, because I also love the dream of an America that never was and never will be.
This blog is sponsored this week by McAlvany ICA. To learn more visit: //icagoldcompany.com/
Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition
A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster
Three Teenagers who bring him down
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!
Great Winter Reading!
New Paintings by JHK 2016 — 2017
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
   |
|
|
|
 |
 |
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
| Book 1: |
Book 2: |
Book 3: |
Book 4: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
My first thought when I heard the fairy tale that Russia was backing Bernie and wanted him to be President was — Vlad wants universal health care for all Americans? student loan forgiveness? affordable insulin? free university educations for all? What a nice man he must be! Such a joke. Do the people who put out this nonsense ever think it through to its logical conclusion?!
Of course they think it through. The obvious lying is a feature, not a bug. To quote Dalrymple:
“When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”
DrTom, I suspect Theodore Dalrymple seldom if ever considers some of his own cherished narratives being effectively challenged from the left. Or if he ever does, no doubt a quick sherry or two helps to calm his mind.
Perhaps.
It is a superb quote, if a bit fragile,
what would those ‘cherished naratives’ be, and how would they be effectively challenged from the left?
Dr Tom
Yes, that’s a perfect portrait of both political bodies at present – the craven GOP has had to swallow & assimilate the most OBVIOUS lies, and they cannot deny it…on the DNC side, there’s probably many who really don’t know they’re being lied to.
It’s a lie Kunstler will gladly spread. Kunstler is angered that everyone should have healthcare because he has it. Kunstler is not concerned about the trillion and a half added to the national debt to finance tax breaks for those that least need it. He’s just concerned a poor kid in some podunk town might get an education for free. Socialism for the rich is Kunstlers cup of tea.
Wow, did you just get lost coming out of Rachel Maddow’s dressing room? Poor dear.
Look at it this way, if you are someone who has always wondered how propaganda was so effective at different points in history, you now have a front row seat for an object lesson of sorts.
The masses are often asses it would seem.
@Nightowl
Of course the masses are asses.
That’s why the truly educated [and I’m not talking about a state University degree] disdain us so much. We are fucking morons.
~toktomi~
Sounds like learned helplessness to me.
No offense, but speak for yourself.
“That’s why the truly educated [and I’m not talking about a state University degree]”
Toktomi
Oh yeah? Well…we’re good people too….
@Daddyotis
Nope. Slept through physics classes.
Humans do not believe based on evidence. Humans believe most often what supports their preconceived beliefs and emotional needs. Intellect is a conversational anomaly enabled by the ability of speech. It was an evolutionary miracle that enabled the sharing of stories which ultimately got a lot of shit built, but it contributed virtually nothing to wisdom.
Just watch how many people will stop their cars dead in the middle of a street or a highway blocking untold amounts of traffic, consideration for others and safety be damned, cuz they want to and they can. That is not logic or intellect; that is pure emotional selfishness.
I want it to be so and therefore, I believe it to be so.
I just made all that shit up. You would be an idiot to believe it.
But you’ld be an even bigger idiot to disbelieve it.
But I could be wrong.
~toktomi~
“Nope. Slept through physics classes.”
Toktomi,
Well, I didn’t, and escaped only by the skin of my teeth…lowest grade received in four years…C-….
..and at a State University, at that….
Sounds like you’re still lost in Mitch McConnell’s ass, where the aroma is just like home for you. Let’s ask where’s Kunstler’s wondering about where the money came from to destroy, invade, then attempt to rebuild Iraq. Toss in the countless dollars that will support the veterans who are permanently disabled, our “wounded warriors.” Wounded and killed for a lie. Kunstler is not a moral man. But than, neither are you.
Its not that far fetched. In fact, its a lot like the Saul Alinski teachings which encourage overburdening our systems with huge DEBT to break us financially. Open borders with unlimited immigrants, free healthcare, education and housing to said illegals, etc. Exactly what Bernie is preaching. Who says Putin wouldn’t like Bernie in the WH?
@SW
Oh, dear, this is the first that I’ve heard of Russia’s alleged involvement with Sanders.
My first thought is, who is Bernie Sanders and why would anyone be paying attention to this shit?
It is the nearly the end of the world as we know it and virtually everybody is frozen, staring into the headlights.
Jesus H. Phuquing Christ on crutch, Papa Smurf, they’re all going to get run over!
~toktomi~
Indeed, if Team Bernie/Vlad are against corporate socialism and socialism for the Common Good (healthcare/education) then what exactly is the problem?
Our course our host answers “The money isn’t there”. Au Contraire Mssr. Kunstler, the money is always there, what’s not always there are the real resources and labor to use that money on.
In the areas of education and healthcare there are ample supplies of unused resources and labor that could be used to improve and uplift our Nation significantly.
The Dow Jones is down 750 points at open. Indeed, this might be the beginning; about time.
Buy the dip. The Fed and all the central banks aren’t going to die here with some interest rates positive. This is not yet their Waterloo. When that comes, yes.
Agreed. The Fed has not yet begun to prevaricate.
The Federal Reserve began its spree in 1995, twenty five years ago. It, and all the central banks of the world, can only hold the line for a finite amount of time. They will, of course, pull out all the stops if it looks like this is true debt revulsion, but will it be enough to work again. Time will tell.
Rates are already negative in Europe & Japan…
DJIA is part of clown world.
They were both great stunts. They produced a lot of stuff by borrowing from the future. Now we have all that stuff and we have to maintain it, keep if running, borrow more money to make that happen… and suddenly, that’s no longer plausible.
Yes, but the net result of fracking is hydrocarbons that have been burnt. China, at least,has built some very expensive and very extensive high speed rail that can run on electricity. We are still VERY oil-dependent for transport.
When the debt bubble collapses, there will be a hell of a lot of useful built infrastructure over there. Here? Not so much.
Dr. Tom– The electricity for their trains comes from somewhere. Even nuclear power plants basically depend on fossil fuels to keep running. It’s not as simple as you propose…. — JHK
I did what I could to explain Peak Oil to someone. She replied, farmers can go organic.
meanwhile, NYC,
New York City plans to purge DNA crime records due to disparate impact.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/23/pro-crime-lobby-looking-to-take-yet-another-policing-tool-away-from-nypd/
Bob Barrows, NYPD director of legal operations,
said the deletions are necessary because
“We don’t want to saturate the database.”
–saturate the database??????
–saturate the database??????
with the wrong kind of people???
They’ve got the coal, and the chutzpah to use it, JHK. We have a rail infrastructure that underperforms Bolivia, as you used to say, and that underperforms the USA of 90 years ago.
Neither country will prosper, but we are looking at a steeper fall because we chose frack over track.
We will need frack plus track plus wind plus solar plus the ME plus horses plus VEnezuela plus algae plus biofuels plus plus to keep things going with a growing population. We will need it all.
The GND, Greta, OAC, Bernie, Bloomberg etc are the greatest con job in history. People are not going to starve themselves for the elimination of Fossil fuels, ever.
We better start worrying about what happens when the supply dries up.
The growing population is the biggest problem. If man doesn’t solve that one, mother nature will, by disease, starvation, pestilence. Humans by warfare, genocide and the like.
“In total I gave birth 44 times.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCz-ZNRA_o
Good point. Lefties are oblivious to the fact that when peak oil hits, we will burn every stinking pound of coal left in the earth that we can get out hands on. All the best intentioned environmental regulations will vanish into he blink of an eye. Those can only exist in a rich economy. When people are struggling to survive, nothing else matters.
Transportation as a Service? The Future of Transportation 2020 Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y916mxoio0E&feature=youtu.be
You made a statement in one of your books that the light rail builders should build a pathway for the horses that will pull the light rail cars when the oil is too expensive. That picture has haunted me.
There has been a precipitous decline in the horse population since farming became more automated in the 30’s. I’ve seen Amish using horses in the field in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Southern Minnesota, but, unless you’re driving through the country, where you might see a couple of them grazing in a field, the sight of a horse is a rare thing. We aren’t going to have horse power very soon.
They’re really not very efficient compared to fossil fuels, or battery power. One reason for the starvation seen in Germany in WW1 was that horses were used for military transport and unable to plow fields and grow food. With oil-powered transport in WW2, food was still not plentiful but not in chronic short supply like WW1.
Come on folks.
You are assuming the existence of cheap oil. What happens when it is gone?
Horses will be much better than walking or plowing by hand.
Not so much, John. Each horse requires about 2 acres of grazing land that cannot be used to feed humans (leave aside fields to cut hay for winter.)
You can find interesting stuff on the web. According to this:
https://www.greenlivingjournal.com/page.php?p=9108
You can plow maybe 2 acres a day with those horses. So, over two weeks’ planting season, 28 acres, with 4 acres given over to grazing.
Contrast the Electric Ox:
https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/solar-powered-electric-tractors-zmaz02amzgoe
“The 790-pound tractor-no oil, gas, engines, transmissions, belts and pulleyswill turn inside an aisle 10 feet wide, will tow up to 6 tons of wheeled cargo, and is available with either a 36-volt or 48-volt battery pack. The manufacturer says the 36-volt tractor is equivalent to an 18 horsepower to 20 horsepower gas tractor and provides five hours of mowing/sweeping or 12 hours of towing at a top speed of 5 mph. The 48-volt tractor increases the overall speed and power by 30 percent and run times by 20 percent to 25 percent.”
18-20 HP means it provides the traction power of 18-20 horses, so long as you get sunlight.
John, horses are, of course, better than nothing. My point is that they are currently fairly rare. The advent of motorized vehicles caused a precipitous crash in their population. Though I believe mares are or were used in the production of birth control pills, I’m not sure this is still the case. Most stallions are gelded these days. How long do you think it would take to breed up a population sufficient to our work and transportation needs? My Norwegian great grandfather had two mares he kept to draw the plow. I suppose they drew the wagon too, for forays into town and to church. Every winter he lent them out to a logging company, who returned them bred every spring, as rent. Twins are rare in horses, and one mare usually produces one foal each year.
Horses? They’re too high maintenance.
I believe that JHK said that the future belongs to mules, not horses.
Oxen? Water buffalo? Indian elephants?
Right. That’s why the world made by hand will never happen any more than the techno narcissist utopia will.
Okay – I admit to bewilderment. I’ve searched the net and tried to figure out how this could be so:
“Even nuclear power plants basically depend on fossil fuels to keep running”
Unless you’re referring to the fossil fuels required in the construction and the transport of fuels (and waste), this one beats me.
Nuclear power plants need water pumps circulating even when the plant is off line or the core over heats and Fukishima happens.
So you need generators in case of massive power outage which typically run on diesel.
Thanks, benr.
ok, you asked for it. 🙂
“to keep running” – somebody around here needs to focus. single-investment inputs don’t really contribute much to the ongoing resource/energy requirements.
however, i feel confident that if we dove into it then we would find a litany of ongoing resource/energy inputs that are fossil fueled.
to kick off this treasure hunt, i would offer my suspicion that nobody is volunteering time, equipment, manpower [if you don’t like the word, manpower then just substitute any synonym of your choice and then, fuck off], and opium den time to get the nuclear fuel produced, transported [in and maybe out], and stored very long term. it sounds like a very fossil-fuel intense input. wouldn’t you agree?
~toktomi~:)
What JHK said below, but mostly – nobody’s getting on the goddam trains. High speed tin cans of death? Anybody? Bueller?
I’m having directional issues, JKH is above, not below.
But the future of public transportation does not look bright. The second my town gets Corona they’d better shut down the buses. And even if this virus goes away (ha!) all kinds of Bad People now are thinking about how well this works, how hard it is to trace, and how the various types of social dysfunctions actually make things worse …we’ll be seeing more of this kind of thing from now on. Bioscares will be the new normal. Public spaces, concerts, conventions, hotels, resorts, mass transit, and dense housing will all be getting a giant side-eye from people who like being alive.
As if the threat of public shootings hadn’t done that already.
I am wondering what they intend to do with that Corona plagued Princess Cruise ship off the coast of Japan?
It can never be adequately cleaned, especially all the air filtration systems. etc.
No one in his/her right mind would ever want to deliberately walk on board that floating Petrie dish.
Probably the best idea would be to sink her out in the Pacific??
Abby, agree. In one forum I wrote that keeping people on that ship would eventually infect everyone on that ship as they share the stale air in the ship just like the stale air in the cabins of airliners. Half the times I fly I get a head cold.
Abbywood
Here is a really frustrating thing.
We do not know how long these viruses stay viable, do they ever die? We do not really understand where they come from or how they mutate to form new generations. If you start scrapping stuff to get rid of viruses, better scrap every building in existence, every car, every plane, every house for all forms viruses or mold or fungus or bacteria. Stop wearing clothes, do not eat, or drink anything non-alcoholic. Remember that booze of all sorts was originally a way of drinking water that was sanitary.
We live in a cloud of organisms. The idea that hand washing is going to control this cloud is ludicrous.
Like every other disease, esp. flu, eat right, stay clean, wash hands, stop shaking hands and fist bump, minimize touching your face and get a flu shot. Bolster your immune system, it is your protection. The world is a filthy place and just full of bugs that want to eat you.
if it is anchored uninhabited somewhere warm , would not any remaining virus die out fairly soon in the absence of any hosts?
I think it would be extremely hard to return a car culture like ours to trains. Telecommuting – if even that remains an option in the near future – seems far more likely. Working in person – especially in the corporate world – is mostly geared for the bosses to keep an eye on everybody. Take away the commute times and all the misc bullshit of a typical office day and I’ll bet most people could get as much actual work done in 6 hours from home as they do typically in 10 or more now. Although admittedly, most of the “work” in corporate life anymore is actually just wasting time to get through the day.
“Although admittedly, most of the “work” in corporate life anymore is actually just wasting time to get through the day.”
Yeah, that’s another feature of Post-WW2 wealth. We had so much of it we could fritter it away on becoming wildly overstocked with Professional Managerial class types. Those people created more slots for those people, to the point where doing ANYthing requires “wetting the beak” of any number of people who don’t build, don’t grow, and don’t produce anything.
Dr., that’s a very valid observation that often gets overlooked.
Tom, agree. A case in point is that it took the city of Colorado Springs TEN years to replace the coffee shop on top of Pikes Peak. There are so many stake-holders to please and so many legal, financial, political and environmental hoops to jump through that it took this long to do a simple job.
In the good old days we built the Pentagon in 18 months, start to finish.
https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/pentagon
And then we destroyed a big chunk of the Pentagon which contained some ‘inconvenient truths’ in mere seconds on 9/11. Who says we’re not efficient!
@zetatai
Couldn’t “we” just use a paper shredder?
I should’ve put the “we” in quotes, too … I borrowed it in reference to ‘My Point of View’s comment. But, hey, “we’re” all in this together, right? Los Americanos, one big happy family!
Paper shredder? Such small-time tactics might have actually been investigated, with the possibility of “someone” being held responsible… totally unacceptable!
the rails would be much safer with a wider wheel base.
Not yet. Look at Europe where the price of energy is three times here. Trains are big time. They will return here also, when the oil gets expensive.
This is an indicator of a huge weakness of our capitalism, short term only thinking. Our government should be strategizing long term goals and using our corporations to achieve them.
Hmmm, anybody remember NASA?
Yes, but Europe is highly compact. Germany has 80M people in a space the size of Montana which has but 1M people.
The best way to get around Germany is by train. The airport in Frankfurt has two levels of trains underneath it, one for local trains and one for the inter-city trains.
The only place we have that works for trains are our coastal corridors and a few city-pairs.
We destroyed much of the German, French and Japanese railway systems in WW-2 and they got the “luxury” of rebuilding largely from scratch. We ran our railroads into the ground during WW-2 and the government walked away from them after the war. In the 1950s Ike used taxpayer money to build a highway system that put most eastern railroads into bankruptcy.
We are our own worst enemy with our lack of national planning and laissez faire white knuckle anything goes capitalism. To this day we do not have either a National Transportation Plan or a National Energy Plan. We have no way to allocate resources for our infrastructure and our corporations have no map for planning their investments and are left to bribe congress for handouts.
When I did planning for the Army we planners had a mantra that “Failure to plan was a plan to fail.” We believed in the Rule of the 7 Ps: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.
“We are our own worst enemy with our lack of national planning and laissez-faire white knuckle anything goes capitalism. To this day we do not have either a National Transportation Plan or a National Energy Plan. We have no way to allocate resources for our infrastructure and our corporations have no map for planning their investments and are left to bribe congress for handouts.”
Your solution sure smells like ‘socialism’…!
You are 100% correct.
The government cannot even do the things right it should do.
The last time I took a train, it was expensive, slow, and inconvenient.
For starters.
I wouldn’t take a train any distance again.
Many parts of Europe are similar.
Here in Germany, if one has a car, it gets a workout, despite what some would have you believe. Most suburbs here are almost entirely car focused.
The cities are where most of the train action happens, but I personally can’t stand them, and when I was in the city, I biked it everywhere within a radius of 10 miles.
They’re full on the Northeast Corridor where they’re competitive, due to security theater padding expected flight times to near train travel times, and horrific traffic near NYC, DC, and Boston making buses and cars unusable for people whose travel requires a reliable time component.
You wouldn’t go by train NY-DC because the flight will take maybe 3 hours total, while the train is six or 7. You wouldn’t go by plane NY-PHL because the train would beat it. What we failed to do was extend the city-pairs where the train beats the car or the plane. In China, NY-BOS distances might cost 1 hour by rail; even Italy covers that distance in 1:39.
Now we are probably stuck.
In a few places, passenger rail in the US makes sense. If we had the corridors established, or at least had a more draconian eminent domain system, there would be passenger rail in some more places, but still not in most of the country.
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
-Country Joe McDonald
They’ve got the coal, and the chutzpah to use it, JHK. We have a rail infrastructure that underperforms Bolivia, as you used to say, and that underperforms the USA of 90 years ago.
Neither country will prosper, but we are looking at a steeper fall because we chose frack over track.
Kindly delete this doubled comment.
Trains are beyond worthless in most parts of the US. The only stuff they haul around here is frac sand. People need cars (trucks) to survive.
The hey day of rail coincided with The Horse. No longer an option.
Watch the main freight lines. Coal, oil, containers chemicals are all big time users of trains. Union Pacific has a hard time keeping up with demand.
Freight rail is arguably a much more important infrastructure than passenger rail, and the US is considered to have one of the world’s best.
Faux News : Bernie Sanders has no chance of presiding without kissing akmofo’s @$$.
He’s married to the Pope and some hideous bucktooth redhead facsimile thereof, so I know exactly what to expect from that Vatican manikin and antiJew. I also know who would vote for someone like that, and that’s the new communists mushroomed by the red ideologists in ROME and their “higher education” subsidiaries peppered throughout the country. Them Vatican commies is you, messiah druid, so let me guess who you’d be voting for, and tell me I’m wrong. Of-course, I’m not wrong!
I’m not voting at all. Suck an egg.
Good. Now my Zionist plans to conquer the world can proceed as planned.
While you project your horse puckey on everyone else.
I’m just repeating youz constant and never ending charge, and we’ll pretend that you’re too stupid perceive simple satire.
Satire from a bad fig, no way. Typology or satire, DAMFINO…
You do not vote, one of Bernie’s Communist nuts votes counts.
Reagan’s quote this morning is appropriate.
I never appreciated my own freedom more than when I watched you losing yours.
Since there are a few old democrats, dare I call them Woodie Guthrie folks that will abandon the party with lights on but nobody home, and the choice of akmofo will be reselected for another nine, thirteen or seventeen years.
Akmofo
Question me an answer.
What is going on with American Jewry?
One of my best friends is Jewish and he cannot give me an answer.
Why are a majority of Jews Democrats when the Democrats are anti-Israel? Bernie is an anti-Semite.
Why are a huge component of the pro-Israel group here Christians, I think we know this answer.
Israel is surrounded by people that want to kill Jews and push Israel into the Med. Gee, I wonder why they are conservative and defensive. If Israel was like its neighbors, they would push Gaza and Hezbollah right into the Med.
Is American Jewry, schizo?
Not schizo, but loyal to the point of absurdity. Jews have long memories. We remember those that helped us and those that did not. We remember for thousands and thousands of years.
You can see this today with Iran. Hezbollah is Iran. Israel is very careful as to how it treats Iran and Iranians. Israel continuously reaches out to the Iranian people and hopefully the Islamic regime in Iran will be overturned by the people.
Same with the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party continues in its Jihadi-Commie march, I think what you will see is that Jewish donors will start backing off sponsoring the Democratic Party. Eventually, if this continues, the Democratic Party will lose the Jewish vote as well. It’s a process, and we’re in the middle of it. I’m holding hope that this Commie-Jihadi craze is a temporary one. We’re starting to see hope with our Arab neighbors, so I think we just need to be patient:
https://youtu.be/YEukdVw2hR8
.
“Why are a huge component of the pro-Israel group here Christians, I think we know this answer.”
Dispensationalism?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Search+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.gods-kingdom-ministries.net+Dispensationalism+&ia=web
Look up the Rapture.
Are you talking about that little feature of Darbyism that encourages church people to sit on their hands and allow God’s enemies to change what we have come to call civilization, giving free reign to law breakers and thieves, while their children become pimps and prostitutes to the beast?
I believe in the Rupture.
Ah, yes – Barr & Pompey both hold to these nut-job religious beliefs including being ‘instruments’ in bringing on the ‘second coming’. How does akmofo view these people?
Bernie is an anti-Semite. –proof?
https://apnews.com/88519b3806497d02619e710e91bc4ed8
Starvation in South America.
Because of our sanctions. https://venezuelanalysis.com/video/13244
do they have any money to pay for imports?
No. US economic sanctions have seen to that…
It feels like “Sweeps Week” (I wonder, do they still have those?) in America these days. Lots of story lines coming together all at once: peak Russian hysteria, peak Chinese pandemia, peak Jackass Party meltdown, peak finance, and of course peak Trump (although, just when you think he’s peaked, he out-Trumps himself again!). But I think Jim sums it all up quite nicely here. I’m sure most of the world thinks things are falling apart all of a sudden; but we, the readers of this blog, know it’s actually been falling apart for quite some time now. Oh well. Should make for a most interesting 2020, no matter how it all turns out. Something tells me there will no longer be any other kind in any of our collective futures.
I’m concerned that somebody (maybe the Chinese when they have nothing left to lose) will start flinging nukes.
Should knock out the Coronavirus anyway, eh? I’ve always counted on the fact that the nukes would eventually be slung around anyway. Why else build them if we don’t intend to use them?
“This is getting serious now. Some of you may have noticed this morning that the stock indexes are heading into the worst open in years……”
yeah, we shall see… there will certainly be very tumultuous times ahead for America, it is inevitable.
The most important thing is how communities & individuals react and respond to the inevitability…there is an analogy about people who are undergoing mental health crises that their situations are like a bottle of shook-up pop..ready to explode. I think there are many people whose reactions will be just that– an explosion– if things like the Walmart supply chain is seriously disrupted.
It’ll probably just rebound tomorrow, or the next day as it usually does. What will get my attention if the DOW plunges around ten percent in a week, and then keeps going downward from that point forward.
Yea, it’ll only take 85 billion today, then 115 billion next monday, then, well you get the idea.
@PeteAtomic
“The most important thing now is how [people]… respond”.
What? Why?
Do you think any more than possibly a few percent of the masses are going to survive longer term?
This is going to be a massive human die-off. Take vote on that!
~toktomi~
“Observers have been waiting to see what would finally provoke the unwinding of massive false promises. Looks like the wait is over.”
I think we’ll get one more (short) cycle as they roll out full blown fiat with MMT, but it won’t take long for that flower to wilt.
That reminds me, I need to check on my bugout hole and make sure the trailer ain’t leaking.
No leaks so far. Thanks for the heads up on the visit. : )
If nothing else, Bernie’s timing on free this-and-that couldn’t be worse from the vantage of history. Government health care and tuition-free college worked in some nations in the decades after the Second World War because of a steadily rising global GDP, which itself was pegged to a reliable and affordable fossil fuel supply. That’s over.
A National Health Scheme saves you money, it doesn’t cost the earth. And while free tertiary education tends to favour the middle class, it’s still better than accepting the racket that higher education has become.
A national health scheme can be funded through a tax levy on middle and upper incomes (in Australia the rate is 2% for incomes between $20K and $90K), and so can free higher education.
Both can be adequately funded if you tax the rich, and slash the humongous “defence” budget (it’s really an offensive budget).
So I disagree with James in key ways … this is precisely the right time for big arm-waving reforms … if you have the political clout to force through Congress the means by which they can be paid for.
But I do agree with James that there are multiple crunches afoot (energy, pandemics, finance, trade, debt, and over-complexity), and it is high time everyone simplifies their lives – both at the individual and the national level. Pay down debt.
The Australian stock exchange is going to open in seven hours – what hit will we take? Our exposure to China is enormous. But where is the middle-class retiree supposed to park their wealth and feel secure while earning say 4%?
The world has gone to shite in my lifetime.
unless the universities are teaching farming it seems like a great waste of money. How about free land for those who want to start a family farm.
Lots of things are useful skills, in addition to farming – but I agree that ‘free tertiary education’ should b focused on critical skills.
And land reform would be a great idea … and even a re-run of the hippie collectives – perhaps managed a bit better than by the Bolshies or Californians. (No jokes about tautologies required!).
Where?
Oh, yeah, new land in the northern latitudes becoming unfrozen by global warming!
Ever driven coast to coast?
There are areas in this country where you won’t see another person for hours.
@benr
I am intimately familiar with a many areas like you mention, room for millions and millions of more people as long as they don’t require food or water.
The habitats that were historically supportive of human settlement are eminently discernible; they’re now infested with human pests. The wastelands still abound.
I don’t understand your point.
~toktomi~
All it takes is the will to do something and it will get done.
We have the water it falls from the sky now just find a way to store it and pipe it.
We pay farmers not to grow food.
Our farmers can grow enough to make biodiesel and feed America its the actual electricity that might be at issue.
If enough money is shoveled at the people who figure out how to make water, food and fuel it will happen.
@benr
No Energy Required!
Just Add Will Power!
Get Yours Today!
~toktomi~
FREE land? Real estate in the USA is always subject to the local taxing authorities.
I had a talk with a woman who owns a lot of open land, suitable for keeping horses, which she does, also presumably good farmland.
She’s up in Mr. Kunstler’s neck of the woods.
Our talk was about a man running for office who was wanting to do something about high property taxes, and she wanted to know if I was going to vote for him.
I live in a city with high taxes, but what she paid for empty dirt was shocking to me.
There are actually some places in Alaska with no property taxes.
The universities are mostly about creating jobs for do-little administrators, now. You could cut about 90% of admin budget and not affect teaching quality at all, except for the need to Comply with Federal Regulations.
Speaking of do-little administrators why do we need 3141 county governments which were set up when there were little or no communications other than letter-mail and only a few dirt paths?
Why does El Paso County in CO need SEVENTEEN school boards for a population of 650K while Fairfax County in VA has ONE school board for a population twice that size and delivers one of the top ten school systems in the nation?
Corporate staffs are often lean.
State and local governments are often not.
Maybe Russia (if it really is involved) does not want Bernie to WIN, they just want him to RUN, so that Donald Trump gets re-elected. You know that if Bernie runs, every single Republican political ad will beat the “S” word to death. (That would be Socialism.)
Media clone.
Why would Russia want Trump to be elected, and not some socialist crackpot from the Left?
How can Russia get more leverage on the US, Trump or someone who considers Fidel Castro a hero?
Hmmm.
Media clone!
Why would Russia want Trump to be elected, and not some socialist crackpot from the Left?
Because Russia owns Trump I expect, and none of the Dems, including Bernie. As LBJ said about some on-side tinpot dictator, “He might be a bastard, but he’s our bastard!”.
Is it Mueller Time again, Cargill?
They’ll beat the S word to death, but it doesn’t work any more. Trump was elected from the right because he promised in some way to wrench back privileges from the Professional Managerial class and restore some wealth (and more importantly dignity) to the working class, especially the white working class. The 2017 tax cut essentially cut hundreds of billions in corporate taxes that were then spent on stock market buybacks, enriching the PMC, yet again, except this time instead of increasing corporate borrowing they had the Treasury increase borrowing to fund the buybacks.
Bernie seems serious in wrenching wealth from the PMC to return to the working class. As Trump asked black voters in 2016, what do they have to lose?
Bernie seems serious in wrenching wealth from the PMC to return to the working class.
==
That’s insane thinking. One would think that even useful idiots would eventually learn their lesson, but I guess not.
The only thing Bernie is set to accomplish is enlarging the gov mafia bureaucracy. We know who are the main beneficiaries of this bureaucracy by simply looking at the richest counties in the country and their connections to the gov mafia agencies. It’s no coincidence that the overwhelming majority in these richest counties are Roman Catholic. Bernie is just going to add more to their ranks. That’s what he’s there for. A gov mafia plant from day one.
I don’t get all the Russia obsession.
The Russians have a cratering population, but vast natural resources, especially gas that Europe will be starving for in a decade or two.
The moves in the Caucuses and Ukraine are about protecting their flank, not gobbling up the world. The Baltic states have something to fear, but that’s a flank protecting move also.
The Russians cannot fight a big war, but they don’t need to. They just need to play the long game and they are doing it pretty well for the crappy hand they have (they have nothing but natural gas and some nukes).
Why are we so obsessed? Who in the hell wants to be in charge of Europe while it is circling the drain? I’m sure the Russians will love bleeding Europe, but they don’t want to own it, and they sure as hell don’t need a war.
I don’t get all the Russia obsession.
The country might be a basket-case overall, but most of the wealth is owned by a small elite of extremely unpleasant and ruthless oligarchs – and these toads want investment opportunities overseas, and even at home. Plus serious money-laundering.
This makes them attractive contacts for those wanting to get to those funds, or even invest in Russia (and its satellites), and are happy to do it all under the table.
That’s why Russia can be obsessed over – birds of a feather with a serious slice of America’s elite. Just ask the GOP and NRA.
“Socialism” is not as dirty & scary as the GOP et al believe.
Socialism is the stepping stone to communism. Karl Marx
Communism equals mass murder every damn time over 100 million murdered and that is the truth the only movement to have murdered more people over time is Islamism which murdered that many in India alone.
All “democratic” political orders tend to decay towards oligarchy, socialism is just the fast lane. The larger and more complex they are the faster they decay.
“Communist” parties in the world tend to be among the stronger more persistent* oligarchies. Communism is usually instant oligarchy, but it seems to attract larger number of useful idiots than other forms.
* not to say they last forever.
The problem with “socialism” (and it’s hard to see Bernie as one) – is not that it wishes to redistribute wealth and services in a much better way, it is that it tends to involve a larger bureaucracy, a bigger spend, and inevitable inefficiencies and unfair outcomes.
There is no chance the US will go rogue and become anything even remotely Communist – that is a nonsense call – just getting a 10% redistribution will have all the flat-earthers and anti-government populists out on the streets with pitchforks, sadly.
Millions upon millions of people will vote against their own best interests – and the MSM will play a big role in that happening. To call outfits like the main TV channels, or CNN/MSNBC as lefty is pretty ridiculous.
Despite all their anti-Trump opinions, they are still very conservative, and very supportive of the status quo. It’s hard to see Bernie getting very far in this race.
That’s a god thing Bernie is a moron.
Bernie is a symptom, not the disease, as is also true of Trump.
Bernie has never renounced Communism. His outrage at the mention of this is simply bullshit. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. The S word is thus a lie.
So many people here who get the vapors over the S word are like children who believe in the boogey man. You already have a quality of life that depends on socialism. How many here receive socialism security checks and have the health looked after because you receive “commie care”. Grow up people!
“Crooked Donald Trump, the erstwhile failed gambling czar and corporate welfare king, is assailing Bernie Sanders for his “radical socialism.” How ludicrous given Trump’s three-year giveaway of taxpayer assets and authorities to giant corporations – a perfect portrait of crony capitalism.
Others are joining the socialist labeling bandwagon, including corporatist right wing radio talk show blowhards, themselves freeloaders, profitably using the public airwaves. This pack includes Lloyd Blankfein, former lawbreaking chairman of Goldman Sachs.
Bernie knows, of course, how to rebut this distorted interpretation of “democratic socialism.” But will his rebuttals be enough given that the Biden-Bloomberg-Klobuchar wing of the Democratic Party is determined to label Bernie “unelectable” against the boastful Don the Con?
Some suggestions for Bernie and others to use in this upcoming back and forth on “democratic socialism” vs. “corporate socialism” of the super-rich corporations:
Go after the corporate socialists who have invited Wall Street and Big Business to socialize the means of government against the peoples’ necessities and freedoms. It is a government of, by, and for the dominant corporations. Such private power dominating our government in so many reported ways was called “fascism” in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a formal message to Congress. This is a fertile field for taking the offensive.
“Democratic socialism is a political force in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, sometimes Canada, and others. In these places, it means all the people in those countries get their taxes returned in the form of improved livelihoods, economic security, and peace of mind. Democratic socialism means better pay, universal healthcare, pensions, day care, family sick leave, vacations, tuition-free higher education, robust public transit and parks, and many other amenities backed by stronger unions, denied the American people in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Since World War II, the European political movements were led by “social democratic” parties.
Back to our country. Corporatists and right-wing Wall Street Democrats are inferring that “democratic socialism” is un-American, ruinous for our economy. These demonizers argue that a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” is a sure loser in the election against Donald Trump – a self-enriching crook, outlaw, boastful, savage sexual predator, bigot/racist in his policies, inciter of violence, and a serial, delusionary liar. Trump, the Electoral College-selected tool of the super-rich and corporate powers should be easy to defeat given his disgraceful presidency.
The American people of all backgrounds like their public libraries, public local control water works, municipal fire departments, police precincts, and public schools. They seem okay with government highways, bridges, public transit, and want their taxes spent to repair and upgrade these vital pieces of our infrastructure. Taxpayer’s don’t want our commonwealth being owned by tax-escaping, gouging corporations.
There are over 1,000 municipal public utilities providing electricity. The “Red” states of Tennessee and Alabama would fight any corporatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which 87 years ago, brought electricity to a large poor region that the private electric companies didn’t think was profitable enough.
The unfairly maligned Veterans Administration brought free hospitals and health care to millions of veterans. Millions of Americans are favorably disposed to life-saving Medicare and Medicaid and are economically saved by Social Security and unemployment compensation. Hey! There must be a lot of “democratic socialists” out there in “blue” and “red” states. New Hampshirites are mostly okay with state-owned, revenue-producing, hard-liquor retail stores.
At a meeting long ago with top medical officials at the Walter Reed Army hospital, I was told that after learning the second leading cause of hospitalization for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam was malaria, the U.S. Army asked the drug companies to develop remedies. The negative response was that developing medicines to deal with malaria wasn’t profitable enough. In response, the Pentagon brought together skilled doctors and scientists and started its own “drug company” inside Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals. For less than 10 percent of what the big drug companies say it costs, our government developed three out of four of the leading anti-malarial drugs in the world and made them available everywhere without any patents producing big pharma-like profits.
If the political and corporate Trumpsters and the Clintonite Democrats snort at all this, tell them that they do agree on one thing. Those in both these camps have been eager to have collapsing capitalism, as during the 2008 Wall Street dive, always saved by reliable socialism – aka – trillions of taxpayer dollars via Washington, D.C. funding the bailout of the reckless bankers and speculators.”
Your long piece is in quote marks … are you going to attribute it to somebody?
I agree with you that lots of people will embrace Bernie’s very mild form of “Socialism”, and it’s not the 1950s any more, but the mainstream (ie centre-right) media will still crucify him.
Socialism was voted in in the 1950s in mono-ethnic societies. Or forced upon some, like China and Cuba. The time to make the USA a social democratic republic has passed. Bernie doesn’t seem to realize this.
The alternative we seem to be heading for is Brazil. Brrr.
The time to make the USA a social democratic republic has passed.
Some might argue that it’s the future comrade … Marx envisaged that the socialist revolution required a fully functioning capitalist era first. Perhaps Russia, China and Cuba all went too early.
Evidently you didn’t read the article. We are already a social democratic republic. Very little emphasis on democratic.
Cargill (and anyone else)
Highlight any meaningful string of words and google search and the source will magically appear.
I posted it this way to forestall the usual brainless ad hominem retorts so many disagreeable people here are always quick to throw up as chaff.
Ralph Nader is the author. Does that change the truth of the words somehow to anyone?
It’s normal courtesy to cite the author if words are not original, but I understand your desire to wear a flak-jacket on this forum – there are a lot of people here who are too angry (and too self-righteous) to play nice.
I admire Ralph Nader – heard him speak once at a conference in Sydney in the 1970s. His early work was required reading at design school. Buckminster Fuller and Ian McHarg spoke at the same event.
It’s a pity that Nader ran for office, and deflected Centre-Left votes. But it wasn’t really his fault … it’s caused by a very unfair FPTP voting system.
And I agree with everything he says about corporate-welfare socialism (aka gouging of taxpayers).
Yes, EvelynV – wasn’t that already posted on a recent thread?
I love political doggerel.
“Socialism–that’s what it’s about,”
Said the voter, who was filled with doubt.
“You can vote it in.
It’s easy as sin.
But you have to shoot your way out.”
Evelyn I think I can sum up your long post with this: In the US we have socialism that benefits the wealthy and rapacious capitalism for the rest.
In America, corporations successfully privatize the profits, and socialize the losses, exactly as they did in 2008. Anybody remember that?
Hear! Hear!!
Applause!!!
Any post that is still whining about the electoral college really indicates the poster is so partisan as to not being worth listening to. You would think the Reps instituted the electoral college just to turn the election. Amazing you even think there is any relevance to bringing it up.
Evelyn, thank you for that posting, it is spot on and saves me the trouble trying to voice the same thoughts.
The right likes to paint Europe as failed socialist states, yadda yadda yadda, but they aren’t. Case in point is Finland, which is actually a capitalist paradise. If anything thinks not, do read this insightful article in the N Y Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/finland-socialism-capitalism.html?searchResultPosition=6
The true definition of Socialism is “government control of the means of production” and we are not doing that here and no one is proposing that the government take over thousands of hospitals via eminent domain or confiscation. All Bernie wants is a single payer system to cut out the middleman who’s taking 25% off the top for their own greed. No one wants to take over Apple, or Ford, or Kroger but we need to get all of corporate America OUT of the business of running health care operations for their employees. Medicare overhead is 5%, insurance companies are at 20-25% off the top. The money is already there to pay for single payer for everyone, we just have to take it back from the insurance companies.
I don’t think the time has passed, I think it’s finally here for healthcare and education. The corporate world has ripped us off long enough for insurance and “training” that leaves kids with tons of student debt and a useless certificate. For-profit hospitals are fine, but we do not need for-profit insurers to act as middle man between the patient and the medical providers. The government, at 5% overhead, is the right entity to pay the doctors and hospitals.
California once provided free tuition for generations of its citizens and now it has the 5th largest economy in the world; Silicon Valley is the goose that lays our golden eggs; the output of California farms and wineries are stocked coast to coast. Yet some fools still like to make fun of our most successful state. We can’t afford the ignorance of not educating our people to compete in the global economy.
We are not military dictatorships like the USSR, Cuba, China, N. Korea, et al, thus comparisons to them are a poor argument, but that’s all the right like to blow smoke about. We will be capitalists and compete like hell, but healthcare, education, infrastructures, defense and a few other topics are squarely in the government lane and are no cause for fear of the S word.
Anderson did one useful thing for his corporate masters, He got Bernie to reiterate his praise for Fidel Castro, ahead of the Florida Primary.
Younger Cubans in Florida don’t hate Castro as much as their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. The anti-Castro vote is not nearly as big as it used to be.
Fidel was a dirty rat in many ways, but he got the Mafia out of Cuba and stop them from turning Cuban girls into prostitutes for fat “Ugly Americans” to victimize on vacation.
He got healthcare for his people and to this day the rate of infant mortality in Cuba is far less than here.
He took back the sugar industry from foreign owners who had turned Cuba into a colonial state. We ended our colonial experience with England, and Cuba deserved to stop being milked to death by colonialists.
After WW-2 the Europeans gave up colonial empires in Africa, India and Asia but we thought we could keep setting up banana republics in colonial fashion.
Obama did the right thing trying to end our embargo with Cuba. We need to engage with them, change them to being allies, open them up to proper investment and modernization where our corporations get a fair shot at making a buck with Cuban partners.
We drove Castro into the hands of the Soviets, a strategic error; we needed to bend him to our will by dumping dictator Batista and setting up a more humane government in Cuba. We blew it Fidel in Cuba. We blew it with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. We blew it with the Shan in Iran.
We drove Castro into the hands of the Soviets,–baaa…birds of a red feather flock together.
WSJ insists Fidel kept his millions in swiss banc or bancs.
Castro was worth about $5 billion, kept it stashed in Switzerland yes, but in Spain as well. Have you ever seen a pic of the Yacht his grandson cruises the world on? It’s pretty swanky, I’ll tell you what. Why not? Castro was a lawyer who always had an eye out for The Main Chance. Its human nature. What would be surprising is if he had left his family poverty stricken and bereft. No, above all, Fidel Castro took care of himself, and his relatives. Just as an example, when he or any of his family got sick, do you think they subjected themselves to the sh#tty Cuban medical system. Hell no! They went to Spainm where hospitals are first rate.
Brh
Yea that health care is so great Cuba has the worlds highest abortion rates hurray for Cuban health care the very gem of the world they make VA care look first world and top notch.
Having been to Cuba I can tell you tourists get one form of it and Cubans a whole other!
Not too worry, we are assured every single day in publications like The Guardian and Washington Post, that western civilization no longer has any need for ‘fossil fuels’, they are being propped up by President Trump, and the US can easily be run on free energy’ produced by renewables (solar panels and windmills) Apparently only troglodytes and sycophants bought off by Exxon don’t see it. Indeed, two communities in the US — Tacoma Park, Maryland and Berkeley, Cal, have banned the use of oil, natgas and coal going into the future. Gas stations will have to be demolished, oil burning heating units removed, and gas stoves switched to electric (which will be free, incidentally) Those esteemed communities are run by powerful ‘Climate Councils’ who have the authority to boss people around, like little Politbureaus.
Brh
One question to these communities?
Where are you going to get your electricity, out of thin air?
Evidence of the Stupidification of America.
Now you see the real purpose of the Climate Change schemers.
There’s a lot of money to be made in selling those new items that were previously not needed.
The countries with the free college strictly limit who goes on to college.
In this country, that wouldn’t work, as it is elitist to not recognize every student as above average.
Despite the free education in some European countries, students still come to this country in droves.
Not just Europe.
Governmental stratification of people is what most of our immigrants are here.
Why can’t people just realize that when you get free stuff from anyone in power, you are giving them control over you?
Free college? Government control of higher education.
Free health care? Government control of health care
Ban fossil fuel? Government control of energy production, what little exists.
Wall Street regulation? Government control of the house of cards.
Right there the government controls the majority of our economy.
That is Communism, folks!!!
Worked so well in Russia and Cuba!!
We definitely want this corrupted piece of trash we call the Deep State to be running our lives.
They are doing so well with our electoral process.
We definitely want this corrupted piece of trash we call the Deep State to be running our lives.
I suspect you’re getting your states and deep states a bit confused here. You need to understand that government is organised the way it is to protect the privileged few and build their wealth, just as the FF laid out.
One should be complaining about how much government largesse benefits the wealthy and the owners of capital – you are entitled to the ‘freedom’ to be outrageously ripped off by the 1%.
And perhaps you could volunteer to only travel in a 737-MAX – checked by Boeing themselves (they own the FAA – that is the real Deep State at work).
You know a lot about us for someone living in ‘Australia’, ahhahahahahaha.
Knowledge is everywhere.
Yeah, it’s weird, huh, Marlin, given that a considerable number of Americans know LESS about their own country than foreigners. Even less know of anything about anywhere else, outside of the USA.
JohnAZ,
Excepting out your reference to banning fossil fuels (which has nothing to do with Communism- in fact the Communist countries were/are among the most polluted), you have not described Communism.
You have described Canada.
Canada has universal healthcare. And while college isn’t free, it is heavily subsidized, and thus affordable for working and middle class kids without saddling them with massive debts.
I pay my taxes. I travel every day on federally funded highways. My kids attend a solid public school. When I travel for work I am grateful that the airlines are subject to stringent safety regulations. My parents are on Medicare. I cherish my and my kids’ liberty and none of this makes me feel any less free.
I am also on the management team of a startup. My company and each employee collectively pay $20K+ in healthcare premiums annually to cover each employee with dependents. That is before thousands in co-pays, out of network costs and denied coverage issues. In addition, we have to employ someone to dedicate time to managing our health benefits, we have to pay fees to a benefits administrator, and we wear liability if we screw any of this up.
A few weeks ago my wife spent hours on the phone fighting with a Phillipines-based insurance company employee after they rejected reimbursement for an expensive procedure for one of my kids on the grounds that it wasn’t medically necessary, even though her doctor certified that it was. The insurance company refuses to show us the relevant provision in our policy without a formal written request. I expect that we will eventually prevail but this is the game – this is how insurance companies make money, ie by denying payouts.
If Medicare is extended to the general public, all of the aforesaid costs and liability will go away. Our taxes will go up meaningfully but that will be more than offset by the elimination of the costs we are bearing now. Part of the reason for this is that the insurance companies skim 25-30% of our premiums off the top and out of the system.
I think I will feel a bit more free when I have more money in my pocket, my company doesn’t have to spend time and resources on healthcare benefits, my kids and I don’t have to take fear of losing healthcare into account in making work and career decisions, and my family doesn’t have to spend time battling our insurance company.
If you like, you can drop the label of “Communism” on a system that exists in just about every other advanced democracy, and even though in the US doctors practices, hospitals and pharma would all remain private – ie only the billing would be socialized. But it isn’t Communism. It is common sense.
Well explained Hapman. This is one of Sander’s main arguments for M4A, too. However, unfortunately he doesn’t seem to be communicating this aspect effectively enough as yet – though the Culinary Union members got it, even if their union-fees-funded ‘leadership’ didn’t.
Majella,
Sanders is right on the merits on this issue, but unfortunately I don’t see him getting it through the Senate, even with a Democratic majority. And even if he were somehow to get it through the Senate, as long as our Supreme Court has at least five movement conservatives (as it does now), the court would likely find a reason to overturn it.
If Sanders gets the nomination, you will see Trumpublican, Fox News and talk radio ginned-up hysteria about Medicare for All that will make the Obamacare fight (Death Panels!!!!) look quaint and JohnAz’s terror of government control and communism look reasoned.
So I fear the best we can hope for, at least for a while, is an administration that is set on keeping Obamacare intact and regulating the insurance companies and hospitals into better behavior. In other words, trying to make our awful system a bit less awful and keep our pockets from being a bit less picked.
Probably a very realistic assessment of the final outcome, but if he were to win the Presidency, at least the ‘people’ will have spoken loudly. The Obstructionists are not invincible either. Public pressure can move needles and political mountains.
So right, Beryl. My sister is hosting a Chinese ‘high school’ student who is here to attend university (high school is to learn English through immersion) since she was rejected from her one-time-only shot at enrollment back home! Her rich mommy, a doctor, sent her here to get the degree she was not allowed in China.
Apparently, this is a common practice since you only get one opportunity to apply under their system.
Another function of Chinese school is a very LONG day they start at 6 am and go to almost mid night Monday through Saturday.
I hosted many a Chinese kid for a couple of years.
Lets just say after hosting near a dozen of them I stopped worrying about China as a threat they have zero common sense and are even more entitled and spoiled than American Kids.
notable quote,
as it is elitist to not recognize every student as above average.
In New Haven, in ‘The Hood’, near Yale — where the biggest worry is Climate Change, perfect example of Diversity on Sunday, in fact we had a Diversity trifecta: one guy shot, one gal run down with a car, one guy stabbed. Western Civ needs a lifeline, its circling the drain. Help us, please!
Brh
We had one young woman stab another over some perceived slight, at a mall near me.
These people can’t really be considered underclass anymore, they have the means to get dressed up and go shopping.
Something I’ve noticed, where you see expensive, tax-exempt institutions of higher education present, which we always hear are “good for” the community, they areas around them tend to become rotting, crime-infested slums.
Giving college students the right to vote in the municipalities they attend school in, only seems to have exacerbated the problem.
Western Civ needs a lifeline, its circling the drain. Help us, please!
Western Civ is doing rather nicely in countries not called the USA.
Too bad we’re the only part of western civ that counts for anything, otherwise, why would you, an Australian (haha) post on this site?
LOL. You can only dream!
There is a lot of ‘civilisation’ outside the US, and a lot of it counts for a great deal. But if you’re brought up to salute the stars & stripes, and learn the in-field fly rule, then having any understanding of, or appreciation for, any other country is strictly verboten, it seems.
It’s no wonder you’re in such a mess.
*grin*
Fidel wasn’t so bad … at least compared to the alternative sleaze-bags.
The mafia owned Havana in 1959.
and now the mafia owns all of the US
Cuba had higher per-capita income in 1958 than Japan. Care to reconsider?
income and QOL are 2 different things.
Japan had a civilization while Cuba had a clash of cultures.
Name any country in the world. If the US threw as much at them as it did at Cuba to undermine their survival they would be as bad or worse off. Castro’s goal was to provide health care and education to his people. The US’s goal was to do whatever it took to make Cubans so miserable they would blame their own gov’t.
The US is a wicked influence thanks mostly to the greed of corporations. The ideals and principles of the great leaders who have occasionally come along in our history have been submerged by the tide of self serving amorality of the unseen cretins who seize control of the levers of power.
There are a lot of dupes hanging out on this forum but you are the tiny tip of an iceberg.
The money’s not there.
Why does this bull get repeated over and over again. Even a fucking poor country like Portugal where I reside has single payer healthcare, with pensioners paying absolute, zilch nada, nix…The drugs are also cheap for members of the plan – which is about every portuguese, you have the choice of visiting a private doctor and pay extra if you are in a hurry (cheap for 75€ the first visit, 35€ each subsequent one) but hospitals are government run and work as well as in Canada which also has—just wait for it: single payer health care.
Why is that lie regurgitated over and over? Studies show that a single payer plan is actually cheaper than the fucked up system the US now – and they are welcome to a substandard care system that might work for those who have more money than they know what to do with.
“There are other feasible systems [besides single payer] — particularly Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland — that do it another way but achieve universal coverage, have significantly lower costs than the United States, and have high rates of public satisfaction,” he said. “That could be achieved [in the U.S.] without doing what happens when we go for the whole thing, which is burning down the house.”
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/how-realistic-is-a-single-payer-health-care-system-in-the-u-s/
“What do these findings mean?
There is near-consensus in these analyses that single-payer would reduce health expenditures while providing high-quality insurance to all US residents.
To achieve net savings, single-payer plans rely on simplified billing and negotiated drug price reductions, as well as global budgets to control spending growth over time.
Replacing private insurers with a public system is expected to achieve lower net healthcare costs.”
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003013
“The average American pays a whopping $2,497 per year in administrative costs — which fund insurer overhead and salaries of administrative workers as well as executive pay packages and growing profits — compared to $551 per person per year in Canada, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last month. The study estimated that cutting administrative costs to Canadian levels could save more than $600 billion per year.”
https://www.salon.com/2020/02/15/american-health-care-system-costs-four-times-more-than-canadas-single-payer-system/
So Mr. Kuenstler – why continue with piling on BS, despite you actually should know better – and maybe deep down, very deep down know??
Just check and weep to see what company the US keeps – as the supposedly richest country in the world. What is fucking wrong with US citizens to swallow this crap of non-affordability??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care
Peter m —
I wonder what Portugal spends on its navy and air force… on support for the lame, halt, and feckless? Also note the scale issue. Portugal is a nation of 10 million. USA: 360 million.
Thank you Jim. I always bring up the population of the United States when people casually throw around Medicare for All.
….and we also do not have a singular culture as those Skandinavian countries do. But, of course those countries are in the process of losing said culture. I think they’re also starting to have troubles with their single payer health deliver systems as a result. It will only get worse. Oh, and throw in low birth rate and aging population to boot.
its not how many we now have, its how many more
its not how many we now have, its how many more USA
will accept, have, let in..whatever.
400-500k anchor babies last year.
why compare the size of the country – do you really think universal healthcare is not scalable? What about China that has some sort of basic universal healthcare with roughly five times the US population?
Compare the GDP.
And of course – if you prefer to spend your countries money on weapons and roughly a thousand outposts controlling the barbarians in the name of the US oligarchy.
That should be your bone of contention to gnaw on, the fact that those expenditures for an oversized military take the funds away both from socially stabilizing measures like healthcare, cheap and affordable education, and an infrastructure that works.
You also do not address that part of the vast cost that make the present universal healthcare mess in the USA unaffordable is the high cost of admin and of course the freewheeling profit taking on the backs of patients.
It is sad to see when comparing the countries on the map I linked to that the USA compares most favourably in their non- universal healthcare with countries of the equatorial African belt. Be proud.
To be fair, JHK has been consistent in calling out the healthcare racket and the education ‘delivery’ racket for a long time.
Col. Smedley Butler called out the war racket in the 1930s, but few Americans care to read his words or to protest the cynical outcome you’ve described.
Here it is (for free)…
https://www.academia.edu/13529283/War_Is_A_Racket_by_Major_General_Smedley_Butler_1935_
i agree – of course the money (wealth / wherewithal) is there to run a decent health and education system.
It is its brutal malapportionment that is the issue, along with a hollowed out progressive tax system. A large percentage of $$ lines the pockets of the already rich, and vast sums are wasted maintaining a military threat in 150 countries.
But so many people think these things are natural, immutable, the will of god, and the essence of freedom. Daring to question – daring to tax properly – this is Socialism! Nay – Communism! Just ask the cowboys spouting such stuff on here each and every day …
It’s wonderful in Portugal, that’s why all the young people are leaving.
The communists say we will be like Sweden and Denmark, not like Cuba or Venezuela. Ok: get used to 35hr wait to see a doctor in emergency room like in Sweden. People screaming in halls. Earn $2500/month in Sweden, pay $1700 of it in income taxes. And add to that a 25% sales tax.
“Just add facts! Makes its own sauce!”
https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-their-government-spending/
Them facts from your site you cite:
“Denmark’s top marginal effective income tax rate is 60.4 percent. Sweden’s is 56.4 percent. Norway’s top marginal tax rate is 39 percent… All three countries have VAT rates of 25 percent.”
As to how they spend it. They spend it very poorly and very wastefully on illegal migrants/refugees and deadwood bureaucracy. The system is overburdened and will collapse when revenues from hydrocarbon resources will dry up. Maybe even sooner.
Take any line from anywhere out of its context and you can dress it up to look like something else.
The more relevant question is what the taxpayers get for their impost, and it’s plenty.
“They spend it very poorly and very wastefully…”. An opinion, and, I’ll hazard a guess, completely uninformed. Luckily, your opinion is of little consequence.
The population of Sweden (assuming it’s Sweden your taking a dump on – it’s not clear) is currently 10.9 million. Of that total, 1.95m are ‘utlandsk’ or foreign-born, roughly 17%.
Of that 1.95m, there are very few (if any) ‘illegals’. They are accepted refugees seeking shelter from war. Lately, the majority have come from the Levant and the Horn of Africa. Previous large influxes occurred in the 1990s with refugees from the collapsing Yugoslavia.
Are you just a heartless bastard?
You also baldly make the incorrect statement that one might earn $2,500 and pay $1,700 in tax. That’s an overall rate of 68%.
In the case of Sweden, the top tax rate (56.9%) is payable once the taxpayer is earning more than 1.5 times the average income – and ONLY on that excess, not the whole lot – I’m sure you know how marginal tax rates work.
The average gross income in Sweden is SEK 513,000 which is (currently) $USD 64,970. If the taxpayer earns more than 1.5 times this ($US 97,455) then the highest rate of 56.9% kicks in.
So, if income is $US $120,000, the lower rates are paid up to $97,455. This leaves $20,545 which would be taxed at 56.9%, or $11,690 in additional tax. Even in the US, $97,000 isn’t too bad a salary.
Are you just a heartless bastard?
==
I am. I don’t give a shit about Sweden. They could disappear into a new self created Pakiland for all I care. They and most all of Europe.
The numbers I posted are taken straight out of a tweet by a Swede. You have issues as to their veracity, take them up with him/her. To me, the numbers are close enough, as far as I can tell. Like I said, I don’t give a shit about any of these people. They stopped existing in my universe already a long time ago.
What I do care about, is the poisonous commie trash you insist on bringing with you. You are an idiot and a clown and a pernicious one at that. You like communists so much, vote with your feet and move to any one of their commie paradises.
You dislike Americans and want to destroy their country, at least be honest in your declaration of enmity. Don’t be a commie worm, it’s disgusting and despicable.
Mr. Heartless Bastard
You repeat a tweet from an anonymous Swede without attribution, you own the disinformation and so bear the critique.
As for the rest of your lunatic tirade – it’s confusing – are you Israeli or American? Hard to tell.
I don’t ‘hate’ America and I’m certainly no communist – in either the true sense of the word or the in the warped and distorted sense you (and others hereabouts) apply it.
Your ‘ad homs’ are getting tiresome and serve only to illustrate how rabid your world-view is. The ‘disgusting’ and ‘despicable’ labels apply more aptly to the quivering mess of conflicting conspiracy theory fantasies you trade in.
If, as you say, “the money is not there”, then pray, tell us where Congress seems to have no problem finding around $800 BILLION every year for the military and “Space Force” etc?
Maybe it is time to close all the 600? bases we currently support all over the world and to bring all the troops home from the places we are not wanted (like Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan)? That would be billions saved to be spent on healthcare, trade tech schools, college, infrastructure etc.
No, $800 BILLION every year in income goes to gov mafia employees. Only in this case, the hardware produced also allows for maintaining global trade routes and the supreme currency of the world — the $US dollar.
Subsidizing monopolies like healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc., only adds thousands of percentages to their costs.
I think a very good program that the US can copy from Israel is the new arrangement the Israeli government has with the private sector. Specifically, all the new ports, roads, bridges, tunnels, subways, rail-lines, are build and operated by private hands for a period of 25 years. After which time, these assets are transferred to the government, and the government then sells these assets or leases these assets for maintenance services. This way monopolies are avoided. The German and French build and maintain the Jerusalem rail lines. The Chinese built two Sea Ports and Subway lines in Tel Aviv, local Israeli contraction companies build the roads. People will pay toll fees to use these infrastructure, but they are not taxed for building the infrastructure. After 25 years when the assets are transferred or “nationalized”, the governments actually makes money on these assets, and thus can afford to reduce taxes on people. It’s a win-win for all. People get the infrastructure they want, but are not forced to pay crazy money for it. Every project has a duplicate so that monopolies are avoided as much as possible.
This arrangement also eliminates the risk to the taxpayers. If the infrastructure project is a loser, the loses are absorbed by the private companies involved, and not by the tax payers.
“Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.”. It sucks being the biggest kid on the block
Abbybwood:
From thebalance.com – very interesting detailed breakdown of where the budget goes:
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-military-budget-components-challenges-growth-3306320#defense-department-base-budget
And this is enlightening…
“Three Ways DoD Tries to Save Money, But Congress Won’t Let It
The Defense Department knows it needs to become more efficient. It now spends a third of its budget on personnel and maintenance.7? That will rise to 100% by 2024, thanks to retirement and medical costs. That leaves no funds for procurement, research, and development, construction or housing. These necessary support programs now take up more than a third of DoD’s budget.
How could the DoD become more efficient? First, it needs to reduce its civilian workforce instead of resorting to hiring freezes and unpaid furloughs. The civilian workforce grew by 100,000 in the last decade,
Second, it must reduce pay and benefits costs for each soldier. Instead, it plans to raise both.
Third, and most important, it should close unneeded military bases.8? By its own estimates, the DoD is operating with 21% excess capacity in all its facilities.
Congress won’t allow DoD to close bases. The Bi-Partisan Budget Act of 2013 blocked future military base closings. Few elected officials are willing to risk losing local jobs caused by base closures in their states. Instead, the Pentagon will need to reduce the number of soldiers so it can afford the benefits of bases.
Congress is also reluctant to allow DoD to cut other costs, like military health benefits and the growth of military pay. Sequestration cut defense spending by $487 billion over 10 years. Many in Congress said the cuts jeopardize national security.9? They are concerned about a cutback of about 100,000 troops, closure of domestic military bases, and termination of some weapons systems. All of those cuts cost jobs and revenue in their districts. That’s why lawmakers added $180 billion to the limits imposed by sequestration for FY 2018 and FY 2019
At the same time, U.S. military spending is greater than those of the next 10 largest government expenditures combined.10? In 2018, it was three times more than China’s military budget of $250 billion and 10 times bigger than Russia’s budget of just $61.4 billion.11″?
”
“
I was in the Navy during the base and realignment move under Bill Clinton.
It was a political goat fuck if I ever saw one.
They kept Great Lakes open a falling apart cesspool and closed Orlando down it was all about money not about common sense.
There’s a lot of stuff nobody believes, not if they’re being honest, but being honest can carry great personal cost, because if you’re being honest, you’re confronting people around you with realities that nobody can be honest about.
You gonna tell your boss and co-workers and friends that they’re full of shit? You’re telling them exactly that when you speak an unspeakable truth, one that they themselves are unwilling to think about let alone utter.
Lies abound, not least from the centers of finance where bullshit about damn near everything is the stock-in-trade, but also from great centers of learning where excursions into the unreal are the mark of the deep intellect, and especially in the political realm.
So Bernie’s astoundingly full of shit about all that free stuff he’s promising? Of course he is, astoundingly so, but then so are the unworkable arrangements that he’s promising to unwind.
Is free college do-able? There’s no such thing as “free”, so the answer is unequivocally no. But, the system as it is, just isn’t do-able either. It’s an in-your-face scam in so many ways, from racial preferences in admissions, to out-and-out admissions fraud, to affirmative action for kids of wealthy donors and alumni, to preposterous yearly tuition and the unrepayable debt that results.
Is all this sustainable? What about costs of medical insurance and medical care? What Bernie proposes may be no less absurd than what he wants to replace, but you hope he moves the needle in some direction of workability.
What Bernie faces is the same problem that Trump faces; he has no Deep State allies, people that see things as he does, people with the same values and priorities. And so this Deep State, as sure as you were born, will obstruct and deflect and mire in red-tape each and every directive he gives.
Are trade and investment arrangements with China workable? Of course not, they’re nonsensical. Bernie agrees with Trump on this, but Bernie as much as Trump will need foot-soldiers in the bureaucratic apparatus to back him up and do his bidding on this and many other matters.
And what are the odds of his finding enough such people? One or two doesn’t do it, he needs an army, grads from schools of the real, practical people from many walks of life.
There are monied interests, “vampire squid” as Taibbi calls them, that have a strangle-hold on the levers of government. What this means is that people like Bernie and Trump can say what they like, and they find that Harry Truman was right, they give orders and then nothing happens.
Don’t look for help from the “influential” or pundits or academics, they’re either all fully invested in the status quo or simply bought and paid for, nor from the existing nomenklatura. Vested interests will stoutly resist, the Fed and Treasury will huff and puff, and with their dying breath will insist that TINA.
What brings this whole mess down? Nothing but the fact that it’s a mess, that all the money that the Fed conjures has no reality, that Wall Street wealth is illusory and based in illogic given the simple logic that there’s always two sides to a trade and so the gain of one party is a cost to the other, that energy-dense oil is running down, along with many other reality-based forces.
Our college education system was very affordable in the US before the Federal Government took over the student loan program. Let’s see, I think Obama did that didn’t he? Yes, I believe so. But Clinton could’ve easily done the same thing. Or either of the Bush’s. They’re all of the same feather. Party label be damned.
It still wasn’t that bad when I went. The trick was to go to a state school.
The truth is, legislators are always going to keep college out of reach for some part of the population. Here in Germany, they do it by sorting people early on and putting them on a track for a trade school.
I don’t see why trades are viewed as something lesser. A good roofer, electrician, etc., is hard to find.
Yeah, good points Nightowl.
State College was the way to go, and probably still is.
And I’ve encouraged the youngsters in my own family to learn trades, and for the most part they have heeded my advice.
Brh
They got the bastard:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/harvey-weinstein-found-guilty-in-landmark-supernumbermetoo-moment/ar-BB10k0F1?ocid=spartanntp
I thought he would walk.
I noticed the celebrity women who came out in support of that Two Front Door woman and her ridiculous story, were unusually quiet during the trial.
I’m sorry. While Harvey Weinstein is indeed a bastard, his accusers knew exactly what they signed on for and used him as shamefully as he used them, for advancement in their careers. The casting couch has been around as long as Hollywood. Those women knew the score and were prepared to pay the price. They have no cause for complaint. I’m willing to bet there are scores of women who endured his no doubt revolting attentions out there wisely keeping quiet. It doesn’t reflect any better on them than it does on him.
I might not be PC but in general I agree. And has he always been that corpulent and decrepit looking?
Of course not.
Google ‘young Harvey Weinstein’ and you be the judge. First image is a pudgy looking high school kid, second is a pudgy -looking 30 y/o. So, yeah, I’d say so. If he wasn’t rich & powerful, he’d have been an ‘Incel’
I agree draupnir.
I doubt that was the case for all of them. There is a tape of him pressuring one for sex at an interview, and she sounds very uncomfortable.
Consider what state some of them are in when arriving in Hollywood. They are often needy and had shit parents. Not all but many. This is particularly the case with Brian Singer pedo collective (on which there is a great documentary).
Many Americans have a tendency to think everyone has an “angle” in situations like this. It simply isn’t so.
The Casting Couch is as old as Hollywood, which, incidentally, opened for film making in 1917.
I’m sure many of them were uncomfortable. That’s besides the point. Surely, they did their due diligence. They couldn’t have obtained an interview immediately after falling off the back of the turnip truck, and women talk.
The point is that you personally can’t determine if they are knowingly using him and entering into the situation willingly.
Clearly, they claim not to be. And it would appear sufficient evidence has been provided to the court.
He claims it was consensual. I do think they were coerced, but only by their own ambition. Why else would they fall on their knees and worship at the shrine of Harvey Weinstein? I’d bet many of them paid someone else in the same coin just for the introduction.
I find it odd many on this board defend Bill Clinton for the very acts Mr. Weinstein was accused of.
Benr – who has ever defended Slick Willy hereabouts, for sexual misconduct? I think you’re confusing the position that his IMPEACHMENT was a joke because, in the end, that was all Starr could pin on him.
@draupnir
In your postulate there resides a sliver of logic. But that minority logic is inconsequential to the overriding logic that explains the abusive power that dominated weak and vulnerable individuals.
Swallowing his cum cannot ever be construed as of using him.
There are gauntlets everywhere that must be run to survive. To defend the keepers of these gauntlets is disgusting in my eyes.
It is during moments like this that I almost yield to a compulsion to point out the individual cognitive wasteland that could come up with such a notion. I will behave myself except to say that I am thoroughly repulsed.
~toktomi~
Precisely. The abuse of power is the point. The system itself is the problem.
Everybody pays, in one way or another. How much depends on how much one wants a thing and how far one is willing to go to acquire it. That’s the way of the world as it has always, always been. One of the constants is that while the world may change, people don’t.
There are many attractive women out there who do not have the luxury of connections or position, who are, perhaps from disadvantaged backgrounds, who, perhaps have little to set them apart from the thousands of others they’re competing against. The positions they aim for are highly coveted. They want them badly and are acutely aware of the woman crowding behind them, anxious and willing to pay the price. So they make the choice: either walk out of the office of the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world, or accede to his request. For the lucky few, it’s a no-brainer. They get a boost up and find it a small price to pay. The gatekeepers you speak of are a part of the human condition. They are all over the place. The repugnance you feel would be better aimed at big business monopolies, where it wouldn’t be detrimental to the aspirations of disadvantaged young women.
So why do Canadians come to the US and Mexico to get medical care especially surgeries.
Because people with money do not want to wait the exorbitant times it takes to get elective procedures in government controlled health care.
We have lots of snowbirds here in Phoenix from Canada that schedule health care procedures when they get here because they have to wait too long.
Getting everyone on healthcare is a noble cause, but at what price? Americans are notorious for not wanting to put up with governmental BS.
JohnAZ
The New Zealand experience (which I believe is duplicated in Australia & the UK, at least) is that, while there’s the single-payer universal healthcare delivery system that is simply excellent when providing acute treatment (which is usually for conditions that are life-threatening or may result in significant disablement), it IS slower with elective treatments such as hips, hernias, and so on, which can impact on life’s enjoyment through chronic pain and reduced mobility.
In order to avoid that wait, the private insurance option is available – but the private system does NOT provide acute treatment. So everyone is entitled to and pays taxes for the public health system.
If the option of private care for quicker treatment is taken, that’s an additional cost (and not deductible).
This is, in my view, where Sanders’ plan is vulnerable. While I agree that the M4A shouldn’t just be ‘the public option’, it seems entirely proper to allow those who wish to hold private cover to do so – but not along with a dispensation of their obligation to contribute to the public system.
Thus, a ‘private option’ is born, but even those so insured under it still have access to the acute services provided by the public system.
Yes – similar in Australia.
And to prevent back-end distortion, where older and sicker people take out private health insurance later in life, there is a substantial life-long rebate (about 30%) if you join a private health scheme before you turn 30-35. So I pay about $A350.00 per month for private cover, instead of $A500.00.
And everyone pays the 2% general levy – whether you have private cover or not. If you go to a hospital you do not have to declare that you have private cover everyone is treated the same.
Of course in some parts of the country there are no private hospitals and other high-end services, so it’s less useful to have private cover, however it’s also good for dental, optical, rehab, scans, etc..
Same with schools – a big proportion of Australians attend non-state schools, and pay fees (sometimes very high fees), but they receive no tax rebate for this – they can’t duck paying for the state education that is open to all.
Yep – tautness! It’s not rocket science…
Argh! “Fairness” – predictive text can be a bitch.
There’s some radical Leftist type challenging Nancy Pelosi for her seat in Congress. What’s different about this particular guy from the others we have been hearing from, is he is actually AGAINST the surveillance state.
That’s not really different, it’s more of a throwback to what the Left used to say they believed.
Since Nancy’s district is showing some of the worst cracks in the civilization she’s been busy destroying, it will be interesting to see who’s side will prevail.
Sweden’s cradle to grave social system isn’t what it used to be.
More grave and less cradle?
Cancer patient lay in the emergency room for 30 hours – died three days later
https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/cancersjuke-roger-lag-30-timmar-pa-akuten-dog-tre-dagar-senare/
The European model — Sweden, Christopher Caldwell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLNmDOe9IF4
So, Majella, do I despise both sides equally?
Right now, the greater measure of my contempt goes to the Democrat side in part for what our esteemed host rightly deems sedition, but more than that, for the laughably incompetent job they’ve done of it.
True-believing Republicans do still exist, it’s just that their party apparatus got taken over by Trump. And what a joke that is. So I can imagine Paul Ryan and Mitt commiserating, Mitt still incandescent that it’s Trump in the big chair, otherwise, why the vote to convict? It sure as hell wasn’t on the merits of the case, no, it was green-eyed envy, poisonous over his own loss. Yep, there’s Mitt and Paul seething that there’s still so much left to do, so many pension funds left to plunder, so many small cash deposits to scoff from the undeserving.
So it’s true, there are hold-outs, but other than those guys like Paul and Mitt and maybe Jeff Flake, I picture Republicanism as a senile old man, ticking down the clock, sitting, farting, drooling, lost in the 1955 of the mind.
As for robbing every buck left in every widow’s and orphan’s bank account, that’s now for the Establishment Democrats, the Party of the Billionaire.
But there’s another Democratic Party, one with a fair bit of energy and malice, one that you hope calves off from the Establishment Party. It’s a party of the young after all, you know, all those Bernie Bros, notwithstanding the fact of its ideological piss and vinegar coming from an old man that probably has trouble taking a leak.
Bernie has two parties to fight, one “Republican” at least in name, and the other – Democrat – that can’t abide his very existence. Do you think that the Iowa vote wasn’t bent? I think that when they saw that Bernie was winning, the software suddenly developed “problems”. They sand-bagged him once and, the liberal leopard not easily changing its institutional spots, will try again. What remains to be seen is whether women, and Hispanics and non-Whites and Blacks especially, wake up to the con.
True-believing Republicans do still exist, it’s just that their party apparatus got taken over by Trump.
I can’t believe a word of that. The Republican Party went crazy far-right some decades ago – even before the Tea Party and Evangelista forces emerged.
Trump is a product of that process – it produced him – he didn’t take it over by stealing it from ‘honourable’ Republicans … because they no longer exist in the party.
Trumpism is an expression of populism within the ranks of Republican party voters. Their needs still unsatisfied as Trump ignores his base. Lucy pulls the football again & Charlie Brown falls on his ass.
I don’t disagree … but Republicans in power (not voters) have produced Trump and backed Trump – at least until he proves to be a net liability.
I just don’t believe there is a ‘normal’ Republican Party any more – that will be reverted to post-Trump. The party has been infiltrated and taken over almost totally by various stripes of extremist body-snatchers.
Establishment Republicans (#NeverTrump) fought tooth & nail to keep Trump out of office. What planet are you from?
Also, clarify what you mean by “extremist body snatcher”?
When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be in jackboots. It will be in Nike sneakers and wearing red hats…….Germany lost the second world war, and fascism won it.
Nike sneakers, Captain? You mean the company Colin Kaepernick shills for? When Breadine Bernies form of Marxism comes to America, what will it be wearing? Birkenstocks? Dressed in drag? Mao jackets?
Brh
Sorry BRH, you’ve got me confused with somebody who gives a shit about all that socialist bullshit. I just don’t like totalitarian pricks like Trump. That goes for the commie rats too. Fuck ’em all, and you too, as far as that goes.
@Spaulding
So you say but your posts show something far different.
What you don’t like about Trump is he takes charge, fights back, and most of all turned his back on the rotted corpse that is the current democrat party..
Trump made substantial donations to Democrats for many years, until about 2010 to be exact. He was also a registered Dem for nearly a decade.
Facts are easy to find, Cargill.
Facts don’t matter only what his handlers tell him to mouth breath all over his screen as a he spews his diatribes all over here.
It’s a sign of maturity and intellect to argue the facts rather than descend to ad hominem attack all the time.
The Republican Party is beholden to the Trump base – but willingly and enthusiastically. Not only are many of the elected types bent that way in any case, but they desperately need the Trump “base” to have any chance of election or re-election.
They know they don’t have the reasonable | rational 60% plus who dislike Trump and want him defeated, so they cling to Trump’s coattails as a last act of self-abasement.
They don’t like Trump, or respect him – but they fear crossing him. It’s how kings and dictators turn people craven.
Plus all sorts of shenanigans are going on, apart from massive pro-GOP gerrymanders, and Trump’s dedication to cheating. There are all sorts of voter suppression tactics in place – aided and abetted by the GOP’s partisan mates on the Supreme Court.
Having said that – there are some complaints from the voting activist side that I find a bit odd. In Australia, you register once – just once in your lifetime – to vote at federal, state, and local elections.
This is mostly done when you turn 18, a ritual of growing up, a bit like getting a driver’s licence, or having your first legal alcohol.
If you aren’t born in Australia, you need to demonstrate that you are a citizen, provide a permanent address in a particular district, and add other obviously relevant details – but it’s not particularly complicated.
Whenever you change address over the years, then you just submit your new address, and you are moved to a new electoral roll. Not hard.
So I don’t know why voter activists find all this all too onerous, and anti-minority. I think same-day | election-day enrolment (for example) is a bit too much to expect.
However I think GOP cutting polling booths and pre-polling in minority districts is particularly nasty.
Indeed, Cargill.
Tell us more about the “Dumpster” as you so maturely refer to the individual about whom you can’t seem to find any actual facts on to support your imaginative claims.
@Cargill
And yet you resort to all sorts of attacks President Trump.
Seems the rules only count when people are attacking you ridiculous pompous arrogant posts.
I have yet to see a well reasoned post from you about anything to do with America and our elected President.
Sincerely go fsck yourself.
I know that stuff – it’s just not particularly relevant to the point that I’m making: that Trump isn’t an aberration or a one-off – he is the embodiment of the current Republican Party machine.
V –
Okay, perhaps not ‘equally’ and not ‘both sides’ because as you rightly point out, there are three sides, in fact.
But we see eye to eye on who these real dangers are – the Trump-mutant GOP, the old-school GOP, and the execrable DNC establishment.
I’m an old-timey socialist, coming as I do from New Zealand, and brought up in a large family with a father who worked in a government job (driving locomotives on the govt-owned railway), a Catholic upbringing of the Irish flavour, while my mother’s family, Presbyterian and of Scots extraction, tended to feel the same way when it came to social issues and fairness.
So, I’m a firm Bernie supporter. It may be all quite futile. He may be snookered at every turn by TPTB and he may be swindled out of the nomination. But who would dare to argue that that is a reason not to at least TRY?
He’s still saying “I’ll support whoever the nominee is” and that’s the ‘right’ political thing to say, right now. However, I’m pretty sure he’d struggle to support a nominee that is not a clear frontrunner – i.e. him.
I’m hoping, in the event of his being blatantly cheated out of a popular nomination, he DOES say ‘screw you guys’ and runs 3rd party. He probably won’t win but he’ll smash whatever deadbeat shill the DNC offers ‘the people’…drive the crucial fatal stake through its icy-blue heart.
hmmm
https://banned.video/watch?id=5e4c3c3d058b9e0025dac94b
https://banned.video/watch?id=5e53057701ef5f002468aeff
Both videos well worth watching!
Ah. Why am I not surprised? benr, you (as perhaps one of the lest articulate posters here) get your ‘facts’ from Infowars? Go figure.
The first video with the young woman, who’d suffered ‘abuse’ at the hands of Bernie supporters, quite rightly didn’t place the blame on Sanders himself. You won’t find Bernie standing in front of a crowd yelling at a protestor and inviting his followers to ‘kick the bum out!’ That’s Himself’s sole domain. Wear your MAGA hat with pride!
Least articulate pfft says the self professed school marm that moved to a country whose people and government she incessantly attacks. Unlike you I work for a living and lead a very busy life most of my posts take less than a minute to bang out.
You how ever do get the gist of them so they work.
As far as Bernie the communist how do youknow what Bernie would do given the reigns of power?
I will tell you let the cullings begin he has had people in his circle spout off about re-education camps and gulogs.
You’ve got ‘Janos Syndrome’ developing – you get angry and just make stuff up, then do an ‘ad hom’ to cover for the fact you cannot address the point being made.
No matter how long you have to post, you could at least (as you have occasionally in the past) take another couple of seconds and punctuate it – even if only in the most rudimentary way – so it’s a little easier to understand without having to decipher it.
Look around Majella the truth is the truth simply because you have not bumbled into it does not make it an untruth.
I simply hate communists with a purple passion and anything that reeks of it.
Your hero Bernie is a piece of crap commie loving scum bag and anyone who supports him is a fool or a commie themselves.
Majella, like he said, his posts take less than a minute to “bang out”, which is probably exactly how long he took to think about it too. People like him are too busy to read or think or learn to punctuate, but not too busy to have an opinion. And the best part is that it looks good when posted on the internet, typewritten, instead of being written on butcher paper with a crayon, which is where it belongs
@Spaulding
ROTFLOL
Another commie loving douche pops off what’s wrong sunshine the truth cut to close to your own errant ridiculous belief system?
Well benr, I daresay I gunned more commies down from the door of a slick than you ever dreamed of. And I DO love commies, dead ones that is. My guess is that you have a lot in common with president bone spur, who was a chickenshit mother fucker who ducked the war behind a phony deferment. gutless patriots like you make me laugh.
@spaulding
Standard keyboard warrior don’t believe a thing you post since you are defending commies on this board and come off as far left as stalin or mao.
It’s a complete waste of time getting into pissing contests with people like you, and I blame myself for letting it happen. I should know better by now. Time to go read a book, maybe something like The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, since you so cleverly caught me out.
the Trump-mutant GOP, the old-school GOP
When did we last see any meaningful action from the old-school types? They seem to be extinct (or at least very dormant) in the current cycle or three.
One Mitt swallow does not a summer make!
Majella, fascinating glimpse into life down-under (or up-over, depending on your spatial orientation, the cosmos not having an “up-down” after all). In this neck of the woods most guys of the pre-war generation worked in local plants and mills including my father and relatives. They were old enough to have gone through the Great Depression and WW2, some old enough to have had a go in WW1 also. But then came post-WW2 prosperity and for some decades everyone was flush, at least until they started off-shoring and then the place went down the drain.
My child-hood surroundings reflected the ideological biases of pre-war and war-time Europe, and also those on this side of the pond, growing up likely as immersive in the thinking of the times as your own up-bringing. And there’s no way to prettify it so I won’t try. Europe, after all, was a head-busting place, Fascist vs Communist vs Socialist but given the catastrophic economic failures of the 1920s and 30s, people wanted an alternative to what was manifestly not working. From what I heard from the locals, the Depression was an ugly time over here also, ordinary people in really rough shape.
Right now we’re in another era of capitalist failure, the evidence for that failure right under our noses, so I’m not buying the sunshine that statistical agencies are trying to blow up our ass. I’m not inclined to commit body and soul to one ideology or the other, having seen up-close the disaster of one in our modern era, and having heard from people that went through it, the calamity of the alternatives in different countries, whether in Europe or Asia.
So, what to do, what to do? I think that the post-war era won’t be recreated, the factories not coming back from China and Mexico, tariffs probably of little effect. I think that it will be a process of feeling our way through the dark, creating a future by solving one problem at a time.
For example, and this sounds boring and mundane, but plates nowadays are made in China. But if trade with China dries up, where do we get plates? Well, we make them here. But how do we do that, having forgotten how? We’ll have to bloody well figure it out. So, one problem at a time.
If Bernie scales what the PTB are trying to portray as an unclimbable electoral rock-face, he will face Deep State opposition orders of magnitude more implacable and more ruthless than what faces Trump, Bernie after all of an ideological bent far more hostile to the PTB than Trump’s. IF he scales it, IF he doesn’t have a “heart attack”. Big “ifs”.
IF he wins, IF he survives a term in the White House, he MAY move the needle a bit.
V
Your experience of the negative effects of various political systems is likely to be much more personal than mine. Mine has been entirely satisfactory through my growing years in Aotearoa (till age 33).
I get your banal example entirely (plates!) but I don’t share your fear that such technologies are lost to us, or would be in some dystopian future. Mass production might be a challenge but that will be dependent on energy availability, accessibility and affordability.
As for Bernie Sanders Herculean Task, you’re absolutely right. The shock to TPTB can be seen in shocked faces of almost every ‘Never Trumper’ conservative hired by MSNBC.
But that’s no reason not to try! It was people-power that brought down the Berlin Wall and within months the whole Soviet apparatus. The result was chaotic and, arguably, didn’t necessarily work out that well for Joe Average Eastern European (at least in the short run).
Bernie actually WINNING the White House, would be the start of a whole new battle, but if he has a serious mandate – including, I’ll predict, a good slew of current MAGA hat wearers – who actually knows how far it can go? I’d like to find out.
Probably all the way to a civil war.
Yes, no reason to not try. People say the individual doesn’t matter. I never bought that. Just look at the change in the landscape with Bernie and Trump. That the political and economic system couldn’t go on unchanged was pretty much obvious, but who would have thought five years ago that things would look like this? I mean, Donald J Trump?
You bring up the overturning of the Soviet apparatus. It’s a great example because in the 1970s it looked like the Iron Curtain really was made of iron, that the Cold War would go on and on.
It’s that nasty trickster that runs this fold of the cosmos that spat out Donald, probably for his own amusement, just to see what we’d do. But there was a political constituency left wide open by both mainstream parties. Somebody would clue in, if not Trump, then someone else. And you’re right about the maga hat wearers.
Pelosi is getting up there in age, at some point she’ll have to step aside. I know it’s hard to tell by looking at her because of the multiple facelifts. Its interesting to note that she has escaped any opprobrium from the social disaster SF has become … apparently the diseased streets and tens of thousands of illegals in the City is nobodies fault, except perhaps, President Trumps, who knows?
Brh
Members of Congress (Senate and House) are hardly responsible individually for the conditions on city streets. That’s what state, county, and metro governance is there for …
Your ignorance about US polity is showing.
Federal grants and other moneys are regularly shuttled to the constituencies of the federal reps. Pelosi does not give a damn about her district. Just like most of the Deep Staters.
This is ingenuous. Of course federal moneys are distributed to the district of members – since everyone lives in a district.
The degree to which members lobby for more funds or more specific grants for their district probably relates mostly to how close the vote is likely to be, and other political factors. It works the same for both sides of the aisle.
But by far it is state, county, and city taxes / budgets that are going to determine the quality and quantity of services on the streets.
And to call Nancy Pelosi a “Deep Stater” is laughable indeed.
Firstly, the term Deep State is properly used to describe perpetual power held by unelected people and unaccountable institutions, not politicians.
Secondly, the Deep State has for decades (centuries) protected the interests of wealth and privilege, and definitely not the Democratic Party or the working class. Just because some institutions are (very correctly) critical of Trump doesn’t change their overall long game one bit.
And thirdly, using the term in such a loose and lazy manner deprives it of ant meaning or punch; it just becomes a desultory term for anybody and everybody whose politics you don’t agree with.
Buddy, 80 this spring is not getting up there it is over the hill.
push up them daisies, nan.
“What do women want?”
Yezhov was popular with the chicks because he could dance the Gopak. Can you get down to the Gopak?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WBrmIKf_PEM
Yezhov was 4′ 8″ tall.
They called him “The Bloody Dwarf”.
Did he dance with midgets? I can’t see him taking the lead on the dancefloor with a 6 ft Russian broad named Donata. Then again, Comrade Stalin did like a good joke, ‘specially a practical joke.
Brh
“a 6 ft Russian broad named Donata…”
BRH,
Do Nata?…Sheeit, she do everything!!
Good day, everyone. Today I did something a little different because I had too much to say in response to today’s post, so I posted my remarks on my own blog instead. Here’s a taste:
“I’m already on record as identifying the prevailing mood at CFN as mandatory nihilism. Why, you might ask, would someone come back again and again to imbibe that product? Yet this attitude is not only characteristic of the political right but growing rapidly, as the YouTuber Three Arrows observed last week. From him, I learned that the Germans have anticipated me by coining the word Zweckpessimismus, meaning intentional or studied pessimism. Kunstler’s world view, and that of the bulk of his readership it seems (at least the ones motivated to comment on his blog), now lies pinned under glass. Maybe he ought to consider rebranding.”
I do run off at the mouth sometimes, so caveat lector. Anyway, here’s the link. Cheers!
Why would anyone be optimistic watching as society disintegrates?
@Tate
Nineteen years of collecting sky pieces and attempting to show them to family members only to become totally persona non grata virtually in my own home has brought me to the belief that most of us are not wired to be able to contemplate our own demise as a reality.
Kathy McMahon coined the term Panglossian Disorder for the affliction. The words, “solution”, “mitigation”, “resilience” and others are commonly used by the afflicted.
~toktomi~
Panglossian Disorder: “The neurotic tendency toward extreme optimism in the face of likely cultural and planetary collapse.”
Tate, why would anyone be fatalistic watching as society disintegrates? The social fabric that exists now is a thing of inestimable value. (Just think how much of that value was extracted from the earth and its ecosphere, which can never be done a second time.) What is there to do except to preserve what we can, while we can?
It’s not ‘optimism’, it’s triage. And we don’t have much time. Are you a man, or are you a mouse?
Thanks, Elrond. Possibly too many ‘home truths’ for you to post much of that here.
I found the closing remark most interesting, where you argue that doing whatever is possible NOW to set up a system that works for people may well mitigate our future outcomes in our (the little guys) favour:
“The payoff will be that when the shit hits the fan, we may actually come out the other side retaining some of the material gains of the Industrial Revolution for the good of everyone, instead of recreating medieval inequality on a vastly impoverished planet.”
Having an opulent minority continue to collect rents when resource constraints bring an end to growth will be intolerable and best handled in a Bernie future.
Right you are, K-Dog. Exponential economic growth can only ever be an episode in history, not a permanent fact of life. But whatever form the next stage in history takes, the winners will be those who are able to best organize to take advantage of whatever non-fossil energy sources there are, and produce an economic surplus. I see no reason why that surplus should be monopolized by a parasitic overclass, then or now.
The American zeitgeist is to give elite morons who have too much power for their money ever more and more and more and more until they themselves have nothing for themselves. It comes from everyone in America thinking they are all embarrassed billionaires and that by rewarding sociopathic greed their own greed will be rewarded in a karmic payoff.
America the stupid.
Just visited your blog for the first time. Good stuff.
Thank you, EvelynV. I appreciate it.
Facts About The HellHole Cargill Lives In:
https://matadornetwork.com/abroad/7-uncomfortable-truths-living-australia/
Of the list only one is even close to truthful: that we do have high rates of skin cancer (not that surprising – we’re very tropical / sub-tropical).
I would improve the breadth and depth of my reading, if I were you comrade!
matadornetwork.com – click-bait central…what a load of codswallop.
RIB
How does that in any way bear on the obvious and often demonstrated fact that Cargill himself has immensely greater perspicacity than the pipsqueak critic and deplorable thinker YOU are?
“It’s not inconceivable that an American city, or more than one, will be subject to quarantine”
I immediately recalled the human feces on the streets of San Francisco.
They love Trump in India.
We’ll be selling them all the coal they need. That’s part of the deal.
Indian consumption of coal is prodigious.
Brh
@BRH
Were you watching the Oscars when you supposed to be studying again?
~toktomi~
LoL
Yes, but was Himself given a tour of the slums of Bombay? Talk about faeces in the street, Happy Motorist.
https://www.google.com/search?q=india+pollution+in+slums&sxsrf=ALeKk03cGu9g9sNyy0SG9sA-W_ZB_gXzXw:1582838441223&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimmZrY1PLnAhXzX3wKHXLUCdYQ_AUoAXoECA0QAw&biw=1920&bih=937
Cuba with snow, how pleasant, and will make for a great trick of surviving winter on beans. Here is how to kill off Sandermania amongst the lumpen socialist outcasts he attracts, tell them Cubans lost weight after the USSR fell. Do any of you think that the corpulent women who flock to his movement are willing to diet under any conditions voluntarily?
We are all bellowing our frustrations under the high heels of the %1 who are scamming the zero percent FED bucks/Globaloney arbitrage.
So it’s time to end the American Empire and go our separate ways.
Hey Janos
If you have a genuine interest in the goings-on in Aotearoa between Maori & Moriori, you can invest 15 minutes at this podcast to get the facts from a Moriori in 2020.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018735038/setting-aside-the-moriori-myth
Bloomberg is entering the race for Hillary, and he doesn’t intend to win the Presidency or even the nomination. His entry will help split the delegate vote at the Democrat Convention in July to help ensure no candidate has a 51% majority, thus forcing a brokered convention. Bloomberg is merely acting as the Man Behind the Curtain as in “The Wizard of OZ”.
At some point Hillary will have entered the race and with the party bosses’ help and the Super Delegates 2nd round vote at the convention, she walks away with the nomination again.
The primaries/caucuses and the convention is not necessarily a “fair” process, it’s how a “political machine” works their convention to deliver what the political bosses believe to be their best candidate to beat the rival party’s candidate.
There is NO WAY the Democrat Party allows Bernie Sanders to be the Democrat nominee… just as in the 2016 Democrat Convention. Don’t kid yourself, the Clinton political machinery is still very much in control of the DNC and the Democrat Party.
Also, Hillary is releasing her HULU biography during/right after Super Tuesday.
Agreed. Bernie supporters are gonna ‘Feel the Bern’ even more painfully this time. Serves him right for running with the Jackasses after they kicked him in the head in 2016.
Is there any chance If Sanders gets hosed out of the nomination in Milwaukee at the convention next july, he runs on his own as a 3rd party socialist candidate?
I love with when races have stalking horses
red hair giants?
She simply refuses to believe that her adopted people genocided an ancient race of White People – the natives of New Zealand – despite the overwhelming evidence. It’s always the BBC with this breed. The telly tells them what is true.
Did they also eat them? Why wouldn’t they? They were cannibals after all and there wasn’t much meat in old New Zelaland, little game and no domesticated animals. So people become the game.
“She simply refuses to believe…” your bullshit.
What ‘overwhelming evidence’? The interwebz reference you offered is a crappy little nut-job site, expounding on all things ‘hidden by the Powers that Be’. Just the usual tinfoil hat crap.
As to meat, the Maori ate a lot of bird (moa were pretty sizable – https://www.wikiwand.com/ro/Moa ) and kaimoana (seafood).
Once again you highlight your utter ignorance. At least you’re consistent.
..and you seem to actually BELIEVE that there was a ‘white race’ in Aotearoa.
Why are you so desperate to believe this nonsense? Do you think there would be some cultural or biological connection between these mythical people at the bottom of the South Pacific and YOUR particularly shallow gene pool?
I remember when JHK predicted the oil peak in 2005. 15 years later still no acknowledgment of that grand miscalculation. Instead he’s shifted gears to attacking Bernie and anyone who wants to continue to improve civilization. IT CAN’T BE DONE, WHERE’S THE OIL TO DO IT?
All the free stuff Bernie proffers? How do we afford all the “free” stuff we already have like free police, free military, free k-12, free roads, free farm subsidies, etc…???
As a free thinker, I used to enjoy reading JHK for some different perspectives, now I come here occasionally and come away with the same thought every time…. he’s out of touch and has a fatalistic worldview, he must fantasize about his fairy tail “world made by hand”.
“Free police, free military, free k-12, free roads, free farm subsidies, etc… All those “free things” come from taxation in one form or another, dumbkorf. You’ve got such an open mind that your brains fell out long ago. As an example, who pays the salaries of the faculty that work at a “free” university? Oh wait. They must work for “free’, right?
RIB, Thank you for explaining it. Taxation, who would have thought? I was jabbing at that expression of “free stuff” that’s being thrown around now by the detractors who use it as discrediting terminology. Obviously we know it’s not “free” but it should be re-framed as “free of profiting middlemen and CEO’s”.
How dare there be a bean counter that says how money should be spent and gasp responsible for it.
Darn CEO’S!
How dare anyone work for living and profit from it we know Bernie sure has not worked in 80 years!
Hell he may be the only person in history booted out of a hippie commune for being all mouth and zero action.
You come off even more naïve and foolish with each post.
doxrides
bendover comes in a close second to RIB for being a shitty incoherent poster often unable to make his garbled thinking understandable.
Criticism from those two should be regarded as high praise.
@evelyn
Says the biggest commie douche on the board.
bentover
Iff what you said was true I’d not only be the biggest, I’d be the only.
In case you were cutting classes that day, a universal statement about a null set is always true.
You all but stump for it.
So own it why be so silly over it?
We all see what an obnoxious bore you really are.
Evie: Ok, I’ll accept your nomenclature (though mine was fine) of good parasites that help the host and bad ones that hurt or kill it. Now given your relentless hatred of the United States, which kind are you?
“a universal statement about a null set is always true.”
Ev,
Yes, and absolutes are rarely true….
Janos
I love the United States. I’m currently reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin, before that George Washington, and before that Theordore Roosevelt.
When I discover what truly great people they were and how fortunate this country was for them to have come along when they did it causes me intense anguish to consider the horrible people who are in charge today: Politically and beyond that the terrible ones who have brought and are continuing to bring us as a people down to a level where much further beyond that history will someday look back on us as having been taken over by the worst force in the history of the modern world.
As bad as many presidents have been, Trump is the absolute nadir so far: Reagan was bad, Bush jr once stood as the absolute worse beyond whom it could get no worse, then the nearly illiterate, lying, cheating, corrupt whore fucker came along and knocked the bottom clean out of the bucket and now the bottom still remains a frightening mystery.
Stuff your “country hating” platitudes back up your ass and ask yourself how the same question.
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
EvelynV
Thank you for a reasoned expose in very succinct language.
I hope it gets a few responses.
JHK is more right than you think. The massive fracturing of shale formations was a more or less unknown technology in 2005. The peak oil forecasts were about conventional oil production. Shale did change that….but only very temporarily.
it takes a year or 3 to write and publish a book, back then.
Checked my copy..printed or Copyright 2005.
@doxrides
Actually, my dear, James was, as were most, late in their predictions of [the effects] of peak oil. The Real Energy Bitch landed in the early 70’s with the US oil peak.
For a free explanation of what was really Peak Work rather than Peak Oil, pm me at toktomi at gmail. Otherwise, flail on and continue to clutch at the illusion that oil production with an ERoEI in the realm of 1 or even less somehow disproves a very simple but solid theory which is supported by troves of empirical evidence. It’s a common bias of some who have never understood the concept.
And don’t even think about uttering the “frack” word cuz that would just be rectally imprudent.
~toktomi~
This is the third coronavirus pandemic of the past 18 years. To say we “didn’t see it coming” is a bit naive.
You are right to sound the alarm. We should be spending much human capital now getting a handle on these viruses, developing pan-virus vaccine technology that is quick reacting. So far, all any of the world’s governments have ever done is ignore the outbreaks, make excuses, follow really stupid quarantine policies that do not work, and hope the virus becomes ineffective, Heck, we do not even understand why they infections go away.
Watch out if Trump gets interested in the epidemiology of viruses. We might get some action on the virus front.
Sorry, JohnAZ. If it can’t be monetized, why would Himself give a toss about ‘epidemiology’?
(“It’s too big a word, lots of wasted letters! I like words that have only a few letters…all my best words only have a few letters…)
Maybe to prevent his own from getting the disease.
If by ‘his own’ you mean Himself & Ivanka, then maybe. I’m guessing there’s few others he would give a shit about.
Russia Hoax 2.0 is simply getting ahead of their severe trouncing come November. With Bernie as the lead, it’s looking to be a foregone conclusion.
Of course, The Russians will be only one of a panoply of excuses, if Hillary’s multiple laundry lists of excuses are any guide. It’s now an oldie but a goodie, yet with a ready (though decidedly diminishing) audience eager to lap it up.
The brilliant, morally superior Dems inability to field a mainstream candidate will not be their fault! Oh, no – it has to be due to (imaginary) external forces, never their atrocious ideas and underhanded methods.
Repeatedly blaming others for their failings makes the Dems out to be either insane or helpless children, not a good look for the other half of the so-called ruling class.
The Dems to be insane or helpless children
Yup!
Reading about the glory of European socialism on this blog.
How come one of the US’s biggest problems is keeping out all the people of the world that socialist countries have failed?
So they do not bring in their rotten political sense to infect this country.
Sorta like what California is doing in Arizona and Texas. A lot of Arizonans think the Wall should run north and south as well as East and west.
As you know, I don’t believe in coincidence. We have to ask what really changed over the weekend? I think it’s the headline news concerning Bernie that is really driving the markets down.
This is scary:
https://youtu.be/2ptOAi5Dez4
What’s so scary about David Doel?
It’s the analysis provided and the repercussions thereof.
The Communist takeover of the Democratic Party is now unstoppable. The analog is that of the lightning quick fall of France to the Nazis in the summer of 1940, with the French Generals calling Churchill to say: ‘It’s over.’
If I’m correct this will get very ugly very fast.
It’s one guy with a cellphone camera & an internet connection. He’s got about as much influence as you have, posting here…that is, nil. Chill!
Wwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhattttttttttttttt?!!
What does the analysis of another which I personally find abhorrent to do with my personal “influence”, Jelly? Can you explain this? I was trying to correctly ascertain possible current events, but to you that translates as “influence”. Influence over what, over who? Again, please explain how and why?
But is this why you’re here, Jelly? Because you believe you have “influence” over people, here? Over a possible dozen social miscreants, to lead your virtual commie revolution? Are you really that mentally deranged?
And if I recall correctly, most of your MSM commie “influencers” completely misdiagnose current events, completely all of the time. And for that, they will soon all be gone.
But don’t think I do not understand you, Jelly. I understand you perfectly. For you, it’s not about figuring out reality, it’s about creating your virtual reality, and selling that lie to advance your Satanic commie agenda.
You slipped, Jelly, and you projected your crooked intentions on me. And Jelly, you great “influencer” you, telling people to chill, Jelly, you better not make this a habit outside this keyboard world, or you’d have your teeth knocked out before you know it, you sporting a pussy or not.
@akmofo
Yes Majella is a shill for Communism light.
As are a disturbing number of posters on this site.
All pretending to be cerebral while exposing extreme ignorance on the nature of Communism light.
It’s a kind of dumb ass “hipsterism” that needs to be clocked on the face wherever it’s met.
Akmofo
You’re in the Chris Matthews Catastrophizer’s Club. Crappy company – James Carville, he & you.
Throwing your virtual weight around in here is very impressive! No doubt, being an arrogant Israeli arsehole, you’re just as impressive in a bar fight. I’ve met a few Israeli men in my travels…couldn’t find one that wasn’t an arrogant prick, and misogynist to boot. Talk about a sense of entitlement!
As to baseless accusations as to my political position, fuck off. You’re in the real nut-job raving loony wing of conspiracy theorists and you have zero credibility.
Benr – I see you’ve take my advice and used some punctuation! Well done! You’re still posting bullshit and ‘ad Homs’ but at least I can now read them in one glance (and waste less time on them). Thanks!
“Misogynist”? I’ve never been called that, and actually had look up the word. Thank you for expanding my vocabulary.
No, I treat you as an equal, pussy Jelly. I am as gender blind as I am color blind. But what I’m not blind to is commie trash like yourself polluting our culture.
Btw, we Israeli misogynists all look after the kids in the playground when mom is too tired after work, and we cook dinner for the family while she takes a nap. But don’t let that come in between another bullshit commie narrative you commie trash like to manufacture.
As to baseless accusations as to my political position, fuck off. You’re in the real nut-job raving loony wing of conspiracy theorists and you have zero credibility.
==
When commie trash tells you to chill as the country is in the process of a real commie takeover with the stock market in a tailspin as result, you don’t have to guess very hard as to the political intentions of that commie trash.
“When commie trash tells you to chill as the country is in the process of a real commie takeover with the stock market in a tailspin as result, you don’t have to guess very hard as to the political intentions of that commie trash.”
Man, your meds seem to be wearing off.
Firstly, ‘commie trash’ is just your twisted opinion and is incorrect (on both points).
Secondly, the country is NOT in the process of a ‘real commie takeover’ You’re just so angry and full of bullshit, but I’m sure YOU believe it.
Thirdly, the stock market’s current volatility is all about the emerging trade effects of Covid-19, not because Bernie Sanders hit almost 50% of the Democratic vote in the Nevada primary.
I’ll suggest it again – just chill.
@majella
No your 50% wrong it is actually both business does not want commie breadline Bernie.
He is a mouth breathing moron of the lowest sort the epitome f hucksterism and grifter hell his horrid wife destroyed a college with her scams.
How someone who pretends to be as intelligent as you could fall for his line of tripe is beyond words.
Hate Trump but he is doing what he was put in office to do.
Bernie will destroy the economy and devastate the middle class.
@akmofo
coincidence | the simultaneous occurrence of multiple events or conditions
eg. the generation of heat and light by a fire
That truly is unbelievable. I can understand your incertitude.
~toktomi~
Incertitude? Not really.
The more you learn the more you will realize how correct I am. Here’s another example of “coincidence” in our staged theater and the gov mafia commie grooming machine:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1232196978345496576
White Socialism is one thing. The Socialism of the Blacks and Browns is quite another. Race is the operative factor as usual. And yes, of course Whites can blow it too with a bad system like Russian Communism. But Blacks and Browns always blow it and a good system won’t help them unless administered by Whites. In other words, unless they are ruled by Whites. Race is the controlling factor.
Socialism didn’t destroy other large Midwestern Cities. Thus it didn’t destroy Detroit either – the Blacks did.
Janos,
Could you say that Socialism DID destroy the cities? Socialism being the policy, while Blacks are the instrument of that policy? Not Blacks in an absolute sense, but as a primary example?
Harvey Weinstein?
Judge Napolitano correctly stated that the verdicts were a victory for the defense and a loss by the government.
He will die in prison but the government could not prove predation or one of the first degree rape cases. WTF, so to speak.
How many other moguls in Hollywood have been doing the same thing for generations? When are their trials? How many rich leading men have been getting away with predation for generations?
There have been actresses that have said they avoided the casting couch and been very successful. What is their secret?
Girls have been taught by their mothers for generation how to recognize sexual sleaze bags and how to avoid them. The key word being avoid.
No where else does the saying, “An ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure” have more meaning.
Hollywood is sick with its own egotistical image. Scum bags like Weinstein flock to Hollywood. Maybe girls and women might think about avoiding the place.
Normally I think you’re a right-wing nut-fudge loony on just about every topic imaginable, John, but I must concede on this one you’re pretty close to the money.
Weinstein is a total crap-bag, but so are the dozens of young women who shagged him to get ahead. That’s Hollywood.
Yet the left revers Bill Clinton who by all accounts was just as sleazy!
Every bit as predatory!
They even get mad about him being impeached for lying about his cigar hiding ways.
The shame of it all.
One rule for people they like and the book thrown at them for people they don’t like.
” Heck, we do not even understand why the infections go away. ”
At least according to the books I’ve read , a hundred years later we still don’t know why Spanish flu became virulent , or why it went not – so – virulent , except to say ; That seems to happen.
it strikes me as in the category of intelligent AI ,
making Mars profitable , and flying cars.
That is ,
it strikes me as in the category of intelligent AI ,
making Mars profitable , and flying cars ,
to think we can lick any problem if we throw enough money and brains at it.
It isn’t necessarily so.
Indeed , I would argue that certainly one big reason we are in the fix we are in is because our technological and bureaucratic fixes either DIDN’T fix the problems , or created equally intractable new problems.
Sort of like ; How do you fix the problem of spears ? With muskets.
How do you fix the problem of muskets ? With machine guns .
And so on , until now we have arrived at the point where our military fix poisons its own makers and users.
Very good point! Virus aren’t really alive. Nor or they dead. They are unlike any living thing on Earth and yet they are more numerous than all living things on Earth.
SSL
Viruses are pieces of RNA. They attack cells by boring in and taking over the nucleus, scissoring up the genetic materials to clone themselves. Then the cell explodes and spreads out all the new viruses to infect more cells.
The living dead, just like zombies.
Hmmm, so the world is actually already overrun by zombies then!
Great insight. Guess people really knew what they were doing when they watched The Walking Dead. Or were the Elite getting us ready for the new paradigm – assuaging the remnants of their conscience?
Cooking lobsters
‘In China, the updated joke was “we pretend to make loans, and you pretend to pay them back.”’
And that differs from what we in the western world do… how?
@JHK
“now the Corona virus steps onstage… with a virtual shut-down of the… global economy”
So some have been saying.
For example:
“Whether the virus is real or not is irrelevant. Either way they will use it as an excuse to collapse supply lines and the world economic system.” [http://82.221.129.208/]
It is, to my way of thinking, the most plausible story afloat thus far for explaining the totally bizarre set of data points [as reported] surrounding this situation. Not even goofy US national politics are outshining this little hustle for over-propagandized nonsense.
Like I’ve said 6.37926 bazillion times, take ’em down when energy stores are at a minimum. For humanity, that is in the springtime after the winter draw-down of food stocks. Don’t let ’em get the seed in.
Yes, this is probably the eve of the massive human die-off – brought to you by industrial greed and the consequent overshoot with the kick-off ceremonies to be attended by a very elite guest list.
I don’t have a story for what the escapades of politicians as reported hereabouts have to do with life and the future of the human species. My grown kids still play online video games as their escapism of choice. I search for clues of the anointed hour, and for the first time in 19+ years they are beginning to accrue.
The demon or convergence point for anyone who harbors fantasies of longer term survival will be the implementation of martial law. “Say good night, Gracie.”
How’s Tulsi doing? 🙂
~toktomi~
With the Corona Virus and Carnival converging I can’t help but think of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. The actions of Prince Prospero and his court sound quite familiar. Understandable as their wish may have been they trusted that they could avoid the visitation of the Red Death pestilence in secluded luxury and revelry. But unbeknownst to Prince Prospero or his nobles, the Red Death had in fact entered the abbey as a costumed guest at their masquerade ball. The Red Death was dressed like, well, death. An insulted and angered Prince Prospero pursued the “guest” and attempted to stab “it” with a dagger only to let out a cry of horror and die on the spot just from “seeing” the true nature of the Red Death. When the revelers pulled the “guest’s” costume off they realized their was no guest at all. Then everyone contracted the Red Death and died. The arrogance is astounding. Even now they are crafting reasons for a rally. They’ll say a vaccine is around the corner. Maybe there will be good news? Or maybe the upbeat angle in this case is a masquerade?
Some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues.
I love that song. Really, I love pretty much every Journey song.
Hey SSL
WOW. I found that very powerful.
Sorry for being such a B. to you in the pst.
Thank you. I am a big fan of Poe and it seemed like the time was right.
Apparently we don’t need oil anymore.
That’s what I take out of the report Sanders released yesterday on where he would get the roughly $100 trillion to pay for his proposed agenda.
1) Strip oil giants of their assets, including pursuing criminal charges against oil company executives. Then shut down Exxon, Sunoco etc.
2) Relieve the US Navy from their mission to protect and keep open shipping lanes worldwide. Apparently we would cede that responsibility to the UK, Russia, maybe China. Or just let piracy run amok, who knows.
Sanders doesn’t say where the energy will come from to run the US. I’m assuming windmills and solar panels, but maybe he knows of an energy source that has remained secret to the rest of us.
Sounds like an election winning plan amongst a large part of the body politic, including many here.
Brh
brh
“Apparently we would cede that responsibility to the UK, Russia, maybe China. ”
The UK? Haha. I think we’ve got two aircraft carriers. If they’re finished. And our best minds will be busy for the next 20 years pursuing various holy grails, like a trade deal with Tuvalu, a third runway at Heathrow to import soya from the razed Amazonian rainforest for our unicorn farms, HS2 so that business persons from London can get to Birmingham in time for a slightly earlier breakfast meeting, while their more northerly compatriots see yet another cancelled local train make them late for work, and a Boris Bridge* from Scotland to Northern Ireland that might be able to stay open 6 months of the year if it doesn’t collapse on top of a million tonnes of WWII ordnance in the Beaufort Dyke. And assuming either NI or Scotland is still in the UK by the time it’s finished.
I love being governed by optimists.
* It won’t be built, because it’s nuts. As erstwhile Mayor of London, HIs Nibs already threw away £40m of public money on a non-existent ‘garden bridge’ which only had to go from London to London (across the Thames, which is singularly unlike the Irish Sea even without the Beaufort Dyke and its radioactive and biological time bombs).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4032629.stm
Funny how the powers that be like to dump their shite up here. Our northerly granite topography was suggested for civil nuclear waste repositories at one time too, rather than the Home Counties. ‘North Britain’ counts as ‘away’, seemingly.
Maybe I could turn into a Scots Nat, but I’m saved by looking at Nicola Sturgeon and her predecessor, Alex Salmond (currently having his slightly more modest Weinstein moment – always a shame when they let power go to their head via their todger). And by being able to count.
So no, brh, don’t count on us – we’re busy. 🙂
Well, you had a great Navy at one time, the greatest!
Chinese Navy ships have a regular presence in the Caribbean now and in many other places thru out the world. Maybe the Chinese will step up, funded as they are by the unlimited assets of CALpers.
Brh
“Well, you had a great Navy at one time, the greatest!”
Yep, the oak forests of Olde England were leveraged to take over two thirds of the world and nick their stuff.
Maybe this time you can leverage the BBC and its many walking talking oak stumps for half the world, and maybe trade your way to prosperity and innovation? Just a virtual whisper to “influence” your version of Orange Hair Man Bad.
Just remember that the European colonial period took the world from the Stone Age to modernity. Was that a bad thing?
JAZ,
The “Stone Age” was an Enlightened Age. It was the time Moses and the TaNAKh. We actually were in the sinister vise of the Vatican Dark Ages before we managed to free yourselves and the world from its ignorance.
Defeating Deep Rooted Evil Requires Revolutionary Thought — Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
https://youtu.be/-HE-F7sFrig
No, it requires revolutionary action.
So give your home to some Pakis right of the boat. Put your money where your mouth is.
Leaving aside that ‘putting my money where my mouth is’ has no meaning in this context, do draw us a map of the sea route taken by those Pakistanis ‘just off the boat’. I know it’s difficult to differentiate between one group of brown people and another, and why they may be where they may be, but try anyway.
The Pakistanis I have come across serve me in their shops, drive me in the occasional taxi and read the news or report it on location. The more aspirational ones are often to be found in the professions of law and medicine. If I spent more time in hospitals they might treat me for my maladies. But none has ever asked me for my home. The’re pretty good at acquiring their own. The older generations tend to help the younger generations in such ventures, and the younger generations look after them in their dotage. They quite often see property as being a family enterprise. And quite a few of them end up owning more and renting it out. So no, they don’t need mine.
*They’re* pretty good…
akmofo, you need to get over this obsession you have with the BBC. It’s one news outlet and general programme producer among many in the UK and it’s not the centre of public attention that it used to be when it was considered a public service broadcaster, especially among the younger generation.
If people prefer to get their news filtered via Rupert Murdoch they are free to do so. Of the TV offering, I prefer Channel 4 News, but I get information from wherever I choose, including most of my information on American political affairs on here, where I listen to everyone’s take, even yours.
Good. Get rid of them. They’re not needed. Why subsidize these commies and their political activism? Same with the Universities. Cut all their funding. Let there be a real competition for services ideas and mindshare.
It seems you’re not at all afraid of losing your home to mass migration of foreigners, but you are afraid of losing your precious BBC which encourages this madness. Maybe it’s because unlike your neighborhood your neighbors and your country, the BBC is your real home? A virtual reality to escape to from the real world outside?
I’m sorry to be so harsh. It’s because I care. You are a good soul, Mrs Green, I can sense this even through the interweb. You deserve better for yourself. But you have to learn to fight for it. This flame needs to come from your inside. This flame died out in you, and I’m just trying to throw some sparks your way.
Mr Mofo
Still the obsession with the BBC. You seem to think you have some kind of virtual link to my viewing and reading habits. Why is that? You will find, if you check, that elysianfield (for example) quotes the BBC website way more than I ever do.
The BBC will, in the course of time, become a subscription service like any other, and since you claim to believe in a proliferation of information sources, that should be enough for you.
“It’s because I care.”
Elsewhere on this thread you claimed to be almost psychopathic regarding other countries than your own. I would suggest you care about dogmas and ideologies more than people, but I may be wrong.
On another matter, you go on endlessly about ‘commie’ this and ‘commie’ that – usually linked bizarrely to the Vatican. Do you consider American subs to Israel ‘commie’? And, if so, do you relentlessly lobby your representatives to refuse them? Or indeed pay them back so that you can hold your head high?
that should be enough for you
==
No, that’s not enough. They should not be getting any money from the government. ZERO!
In fact, they should be made to pay compensation to the public for all the money they forcibly stole from the public over the many decades. They should be forced to sell all their media assets, declare bankruptcy, and return all the proceeds to the public from whom they took it from!
On another matter
==
I don’t follow what you’re trying to say.
I would suggest you care about dogmas and ideologies more than people, but I may be wrong.
==
Dogmas and ideologies don’t exist in a vacuum. People that adhere to malignant dogmas and ideologies should be made to bare the consequences. If you don’t support such malignant dogmas and ideologies, walk away from them, stop giving them legitimacy, and you will find out very quickly that I’ll welcome you with enthusiasm and friendship. It’s not that hard to comprehend, Mrs Green.
“No, that’s not enough. They should not be getting any money from the government. ZERO!”
They won’t be if they’re a subscription service, will they?
“I don’t follow what you’re trying to say.”
I meant subsidies, sorry, perhaps you thought I meant submarines. 🙂 My fault for the abbreviation. But you do receive defence subsidies from the US. Doesn’t getting free stuff from another country count as ‘commie’ in your book?
But you do receive defence subsidies from the US.
==
Israel does NOT receive subsidies from the US. Israel and Egypt receive military hardware from the US, as stipulated by their 1979 Peace Accords. Israel receives about 10% more than Egypt as compensation for the giving up the Sinai and the large Oil and Gas production Israel developed there and which it was made to give up to Egypt.
The US very astutely figured out that it was MUCH cheaper to keep the sides from warring with each other, than having the Suez Canal closed. The military hardware that Israel and Egypt receive is really a subsidy to the US defense manufacturers, who are guaranteed a sale of their product(s) by the US government.
But I bet none of this was ever elucidated by the commie BBC to its audience and so, per usual, they remain ignorant of the truth.
They won’t be if they’re a subscription service, will they?
==
Why? They can be both, and likely will be.
“But I bet none of this was ever elucidated by the commie BBC to its audience and so, per usual, they remain ignorant of the truth.”
Mr Mofo
Still the obsession with the BBC. Do you have any idea how many TV channels are available to the average Brit?
I don’t personally recall seeing anything on TV at all about US aid to Israel. I’ve read plenty about it on this website though and I doubt those who mentioned it saw it on the BBC. I guess it must be another facet of that Vatican thingy, which gets everywhere.
Not a thingy, but a matrix of conspiracy, Mrs Green. You’re quite right that it’s not just the BBC, but the whole catalogue of propaganda outlets in existence, practically without exception. Without exception! Think about that. Now you start to understand why I think what I think. It’s not coincidence that they are all on the same page with the same deliberately false and made up narrative. It means that the propaganda all originates at the same source, and that the seemingly diverse political views of all these propaganda outlets are just a false and orchestrated political Hegelian dialectic to manoeuvre us as a culture and a society in a direction already predetermined and scripted decades and even centuries earlier.
So what do we have. We have a complete matrix of seemingly independent propaganda outlets who, all in unison, broadcast staged false scripted malicious anti-Israel propaganda incitement, and have done so on a daily basis for decades and decades, as though Israel and Jews are the only and most significant topic in existence.
While at the same time these propaganda outlets completely ignore and coverup horrendous Vatican scandals, and completely obscure the Vatican’s political power political contacts political connections and political agenda, as though the Vatican is the least significant topic in existence. When on the very rare occasion they did report on the Vatican, it was some official ceremony, and always in the most reverent glowing and uncritical slobber possible.
That’s not coincidence. It’s not coincidence that the propaganda outlets are all so hostile to Israel and the Israeli narrative, that they hold Israel to the highest scrutiny with the most malicious and selective double standard, and at the same time they deliberately hide the Vatican from public scrutiny. Knowing the Vatican’s extremely hostile political position against Israel, and its long history of vile and barbaric actions and war against the Jewish people, I made the connection that I did.
And then the thread of history became coherent and clear to me. I gained a perspective that explained everything, and a door opened for me to look into a hidden and obscured world very few are aware of and would think to look into. The world of the Vatican Medusa and its million and one tentacles. The more I looked and the more I learned, the more the connections to the Vatican revealed themselves, and it confirmed the connections that I made between the Vatican and Israel, and the Vatican and world events, past and present.
I would say current RC scandals have had lots of publicity, Mr Mofo. And I recall how much bandwidth was taken up with the ‘God’s Banker’ scandal in 1982 (perhaps you weren’t born yet!) and the books that followed. It inspired my mother, who didn’t read an awful lot other than the Bible, related literature, and the daily newspaper, to read a book about it, in a spirit of true schadenfreude, being a righteous Prod whose dad had been an Orangeman in Northern Ireland.
Elsewhere, one of the most popular theories seems to be that all mainstream media are controlled by your lot, rather than the Vatican.
What do to in the conspiracy theory wars? I just keep my mind and eyes open, and bear in mind personal biases (including my mother’s and yours).
Ok, so you say you remember one incident from 1982, and afterwards for the next 40 years there was nothing to critically report on? Nothing to obsess on day in and day out for years and decades running like the “Zionist occupation and oppression of Palis”? Can you even answer something like that with straight face?!
What, Vatican pederasty doesn’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican drug running doesn’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican human and sex trafficking doesn’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican money laundering and racketeering doesn’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican political peddling doesn’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican connected organizations and Jesuit agents don’t exist in Europe and elsewhere? Vatican social and political agendas are completely innocuous and don’t deserve scrutiny? Man and woman from all over the world of extreme political position and influence being awarded Vatican Honors Medals and Titles are of no interest to the public?
What you saying, Mrs Green, there’s no story there, nothing to see there? Move along! Is that it? Can you even say that with a straight face?!!
Akfomo
I realize you’re using a little hyperbole, but the Old Testament was written long after the stone age … you know that … with a level of literacy unmatched until Shakespeare showed up 2500 years later.
Yup, Bronze Age, 3500 years ago.
Re Shakespeare. Good read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22404538-shakespeare-s-secret-messiah
BRH
Good post.
Do I smell the globalists behind this Bernie upsurge? It is their agenda, the downsizing of America in the world, that Bernie espouses.
Have the globalists already downsized Russia in the 90’s, with America’s help. Does Putin realize who the real enemy is?
Do the globalist elements of our Deep State go after Russia because they do not want a resurgence?
Is China next? How much of the globalist takeover is acknowledged by the international PTB and is part of the shenanigans we see.
The Globalist group have loads of money and are the financial elite that have no national allegiance. To them, the world is a chess board. They will just keep coming back to attack nations. They cannot tolerate superpowers that dilute their power. They have no military power so they overpower via subterfuge.
This sounds pretty conspiratorial, I know, but it answers a few questions about what we are witnessing today.
Trump is these people’s biggest nightmare. Is his “friendship” with other superpower leaders an indicator of his awareness of the Globalists influence? Is he the Globalists worst enemy or part of the crowd? For the nation’s sake, I hope it is the former.
Not to worry. HRC and Bloomy (her political instincts riding on his money) already have a handle on all this. Neither Trump or Bernie pose any kind of threat, present appearances notwithstanding. And Trump is going to be so fucked once he gets shat out back into the private sector, where executive privilege no longer applies. Proper fucked! Bernie they’ll probably just let die in peace, provided he goes away quietly. As he always does.
Hey Malthus
Were you at Kobe’s memorial at Staples Center in LA yesterday?
Or did you skip it?
“Magic” Johnson was diagnosed with HIV about 30 years ago, but he’s still above ground, so you never know.
Brh
matthusS
It is Black History month.
I saw next month is Womens History and Asian history.
Im not into pro sports. I barely knew who Kobe was.
You gotta beef with Kobe?
I don’t RIB. I think he was a decent guy. There were some harsh things said on this site when he was killed, but not by me.
It’s all about “Administration”.
Meanwhile, back in the US, the CDC has given the order NOT to test anyone with Covid 19 symptoms unless the subject has either recently come from China or has had contact with a known, confirmed carrier of the virus. In other words, the Americans are willfully NOT testing. The virus will quickly spiral out of control in the US. They’re all insane. I guess that it’s such a Clusterfuck that they can’t face Reality? Many people live paycheck to paycheck, and they might literally starve if work shuts down for a couple of months? The stock market is the sole measure of well-being. Brain fucked….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d1jPhLD-hpg
Is that Han Chinese or Mandarin? You know there aren’t even English subtitles on the video don’t you :-)? I heard the same thing last night. And testing is one of the most critical activities that can be undertaken if you are seriously trying to get the infection controlled. The US’ handling of the entire outbreak at this point is inept if you want to be kind and consider that people are making honest but really terrible mistakes. Otherwise its hard not to think that some are willfully ignoring the danger for whatever their reasons. I’m sure theories abound. I agree with you. If large parts of the country go on lockdown and people can’t make it to work its going to get really bad really quick since most families have no savings. How come we aren’t hearing officials talking about that likelihood and preparing now?
Again, I will say,
If influenza is three times more dangerous than Corona virus, why do we not react to influenza with all the attention we are giving Corona?
Why are we not quarantining everything every year when we move indoors out of the cold? Why the sudden interest in Corona or SAR or MERs? Why are they different?
Society accepts flu as a natural occurrence every year, they accept the deaths of thousands of folks as Nature’s way. And it is right, it is. Nature is very unkind, culling out the weak. Flu kills the weak immune systems of our species.
I really do not understand the governmental reactions to These weird viruses. Why the quarantines? They never work. The viruses follow the same pattern every time. They show up, increase rapidly, beat all human attempts to contain them, then subside quickly. We do not even understand why?
Put some international money into figuring out viruses. What stops them? One theory is the susceptibility to colds, flus etc. increases when the body’s respiratory immune response is compromised by low humidity by being inside during the winter.
IMHO, the Diamond Princess reaction was FUBAR. When I was in the Navy and we went to sea, all the cold and flu disappeared in two weeks. Even in the closed environment of a ship. Without the constant exposure to new bugs, the old bugs ran their courses and disappeared.
The Diamond Princess should have been anchored out in Yokohama, and the virus left to run its course. The people infected should be cared for as needed, maybe on shore in isolated health facilities. The weak would’ve died, they did anyway, the sick would recover, and the ship would have stopped producing new cases in about two weeks to a month. The hysteria was totally unnecessary.
Can you imagine the stock market plunging 1000 points, world quarantine attempts going insane because 34000 people died from the flu? Guess what, it happens every year.
Stupidification!!!
So JohnAZ what you are hinting at is that this is something far far worse and they are trying to keep it hidden?
Or in other words, “like hell this is the same as flu!!”
By gov’t reactions to weird viruses did you mean like Tuberculosis, Small Pox, Polio and so on?
TB is bacterial, but yes you are right on the other two.
Both had the same problem for humans, they persisted multigenerationally. They did not disappear as fast as they came on. It was worth spending resources to eradicate them.
We do not even know what is going to happen down the road with Corona 19. That is what panics everyone. Other Coronas though have shown high initial infection, then drop offs to insignificance. That is what stops the efforts to crush them.
Just like the flu and colds.
Far, far worse? No, I do not say that is the case. I do say, we do not even know.
SSL – Fat bastard has already proclaimed the US has it well under control. He says there is nothing to see here, just keep on walking.
He’s got his tiny little hands full making America great again, he doesn’t have time to worry about every time someone comes down with the sniffles…or whatever. Besides at least half the sick ones will be democrats, illegal aliens, or traitorous republicans so look at the bright side.
Your name calling is as obnoxious as it always is.
However, you are right. We do not understand this virus enough to make a statement like Trump has. The WH has requested a billion dollars to “fight” the virus. By the time it gets approved, the virus will probably be subsiding and the money will go elsewhere.
she/it is always obnoxious and ill tempered why would anything change?
I agree with you Evelyn. I can’t believe he said that we have everything under control. A bridge too far for me since we don’t even know the true extent of infections here in the US. It’s really hard to believe the CDCs numbers.
Remember that carriers of this virus may never show signs or symptoms. Everyone on earth may end up having to face this virus, and every other virus that gets cooked up. Survival depends on your immune system.
Remember why the Europeans had no problem taking over The America’s. They killed 95% of the native population without firing a shot.
Their weapon, the Smallpox virus.
The Native Hawaiians were decimated by missionaries coming ashore.
Their weapon, measles virus.
Both inadvertent but deadly.
Why? Testing would fall under the rubric of socialism, unless all those tested agreed to pay the freight, which would probably be considerable and would likely discourage them from being tested in the first place. But relax. The market will handle this, just like it does everything else. Yes, some will likely die, but they’ll likely be useless eaters anyway. We’re all better off if they’re dead, even if they happen to be us.
You sound callous, but you are right.
Do the world governments need crises to keep us all occupied?
A medical form of Wag the Dog?
JAZ,
Not just occupied, but quarantined as well. Guess why we don’t see the protests in HK? Same in Wuhan. The biggest mass protest against the commie gov mafia in China were in Wuhan, in a country where you get shot dead for such.
Soon the same in Iran, France, Italy,..
No protest, no people in the street, no food, and no medicine.
Biological warfare against the population yearning to be free. Been going on for millennia.
China is putting recovered patients back in quarantine in Wuhan. This supports the idea that was floating around in late January that people who have had symptoms resolve and who seem to be over the infection are still actually carrying significant virus load and can potentially be contagious. Still not an answered question as to how long the virus persists both in the body and in the environment.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/02/24/china-requarantines-cured-coronavirus-patients/
Yup, we understand nothing. And we are spending so much on trying to contain it, that we are not finding out how to control its life cycle.
Vaccines are currently our only control, yet we do not allow their development because the bug subsides after awhile and we go off to other things.
Humans need to crush viruses as they are getting more effective at infecting us. Maybe all that is needed is universal humidification systems to stop dry respiratory systems? It is pathetic that we do not even know this much.
WHO will investigate Coronas life cycle, length of time a person can infect others, how many carriers never show symptoms, etc. more than likely, by the time some answers show up, the virus will subside and humanity will go on to other priorities.
Remember polio? It went on for two generations. Medicine went after it and killed it with vaccines. It was a virus spread in swimming pools.
Michael Bloomberg wants to help humanity, let him fund an international effort to clobber virus propagation. Or Trump!
The are animals that don’t get cancer, the most deadly of viral infections. Find out why, and you have your “vaccine”.
There!
If you have the magic answer then why not share?
Akmofo
Reading the Old Testament, the Hebrews were God’s instructions to the world about hygiene and control of the resident “bug” population. Much of Mosaic law deals with hygiene and cleanliness, and in a very “dirty” world, the Hebrews prospered.
I did.
JAZ
To their credit, I believe Bloomberg, Steyer, BillGates, the Kochs etc do donate large sums of $$$ to vaccines, medical research, hospitals and funds to distribute medication and all that. Probably in the billions.
Another theory is that the immune system does not form a “memory” to Co19 and thus people can be re-infected.
If so, vaccines that expose the immune response are worthless.
Like HIV, which has never had a vaccine per se, the remedy will have to be something that removes the viruses ability to invade cells.
Mr. Spock: “Fire Fazers at the Coronavirus, Mr. Sulu! You Fuck’n Homo!”
Didn’t Trump recently give Rush Limbaugh the Congressional Medal of Honor?
Many years ago, Rush Limbaugh would do a skit during his radio show in which he’d play the recording of a loud vacuum cleaner in the background and then Rush would start streaming pretending that he was a fetus being aborted. What a strange country….
Part of our charm, don’t ya think? Here in the US we can’t help but do EVERYTHING BIGGER! WE’RE LIKE THE DIPSHIT INTERNET COMMENTERS WHO TYPE EVERYTHING WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON!!!
Try Presidential Medal of Freedom, dipshit. The CMOH is a military decoration, the highest medal of valor there is. Figures you wouldn’t know that.
Correction:
Didn’t Trump recently give Rush Limbaugh the Congressional Medal of Freedom?
Many years ago, Rush Limbaugh would do a skit during his radio show in which he’d play the recording of a loud vacuum cleaner in the background and then Rush would start streaming pretending that he was a fetus being aborted. What a strange country….
Pucker, your trivial error entirely forgivable and understandable.
RIB’s ludicrous fu%kup not so much.
BTW, China is already starting to take down some of its quarantines because the virus is past peak. Two months from now,
What virus?
It will become endemic and ignored most of the time like influenza or colds.
Right now it is picking off the genetically susceptible, of which there are quite a few as it is a novel virus.
After it weeds those out of the herd the rest of us will ignore it.
Yup!
Unless it persists multi year or multi generational.
Then a Dr. Salk or Sabin will crush it.
It will be “same thing only different” each year. Like colds and flu, they mutate too fast for a vaccine to remain effective. That’s why they have to make a new flu vaccine every year about 6 months ahead of the season, and sometimes they guess wrong about which virus is going to be the biggest threat.
There are people working on a “universal” flu vaccine, but not having much luck. Viruses are too much a part of life to get rid of all of them.
Or unless it was engineered and never leaves the body. You’re leaving that possibility (probability?) out.
Janos,
Most viruses run the course and leave the body, but There are many viruses that don’t leave the body, ex..Herpes, Hepatitis, and Chickenpox which runs it’s course but then lies dormant in the body and can come out as Shingles later in life, to name a few..
Here is another interesting item.
Things like viruses and mosquitos are genetic material modifiers, meaning the adaptability required for species resilience may be a result of these vectors.
Also, some of the gene changing therapies are carried into cells by guess what, viruses.
But John, you and Lily didn’t address Janos’ proposal that the virus could be engineered. I think it is very possible too. If by chance it is, could it therefore behave differently than what we commonly understand of viruses in general? I would imagine it would be possible.
SSL
What difference whether Man or God Creates the virus mutation?
We need to be able to manipulate our reaction to viral change to stop it early in its tracks. That is where money needs to go.
The rest of our reactions are meaningless. This virus, because we have no effective prevention or treatment options, will just run its course, kill a percentage of people, sicken many others and disappear. We will treat the symptoms as we do with all viruses.
That “us” makes you sound pretty optimistic, Epicur.
Might as well be.
My family history does not include much evidence of cytokine storms. Susceptibility to them seems genetic.
Of course I may be dead in a few weeks.
Back during one of the last episodes I met a man whose daughter went from sniffles to dead in two days. If I had anything like that in my family history I would be concerned.
Here in the US our doctors are learning how to deal with cytokine storms, but JUST learning.
Terrible way to go drowning in your own phlegm.
“Terrible way to go drowning in your own phlegm.”
Yeah, I had pretty severe asthma as a child, pneumonia a couple of times – don’t want to go back to that.
Maybe I am a candidate for “weeding out”. As long as it doesn’t go after one of my kids or grandchild –
Que sera, sera! /Barney Fife
Just in case I sound hopelessly fatalistic and passive – I have bought Vitamins D and C and am taking extra care to get sunshine when I can (I live in the south), and advise same to others.
I’m looking forward to sunning tomorrow when the clouds clear.
While I don’t know if it really works you might also consider colloidal silver just don’t turn yourself blue.
Well, I’m happy to report that this new article does not find asthma to be a risk factor.
“Conclusion: Detailed clinical investigation of 140 hospitalized COVID-19 cases suggest eosinopenia together with lymphopenia may be a potential indicator for diagnosis. Allergic diseases, asthma and COPD are not risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Elder age, high number of comorbidities and more prominent laboratory abnormalities were associated with severe patients.”
Just thought I’d report that in case there were any asthmatics out there who had read my speculation.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/all.14238
benr
Why so specific, I can’t think of anyone’s phlegm it wouldn’t be terrible to go down in.
I’d be willing to make you a bet you’d sure as hell rather go down in your own than Hillary Clinton’s or even Donald Trump’s…well maybe not Trump’s apparently but say Mitch Oconnel’s.
@evelynv
Drowned as in filled your lungs not fell into a pond of the stuff silly human but thanks for the laugh.
Do you believe anything that the CCP is saying? It’s very difficult to. The death rate in Iran and Italy tells a different story than the numbers in China. China may just be desperate to get their economy back online. What’s going to happen when the economy restarts and then a secondary outbreak occurs. If their numbers are remotely close to reality then no enough people got it to start building herd immunity in the first place.
They’re lying, butchering kleptocrats. The truth comes out because as you say, the mortality rate in other places tells a vastly different story. Only the CCP could make the beards running Iran look good.
If they think we did it, they let loose with their nukes.
Some say that they struck us first with that synthetic form of heroin that is so dangerous.
Is that fentanyl? That was definitely a psychological attack. Is that what it would be? And many fell prey to it but we should never have trusted them the way we have with anything, including almost all of our economy!
For sure most of the developed world is going to be desperate for China to get their production lines back on line. As has already been pointed out, much of all world production relies on the products China supplies. Once the spigots get turned off in this country the squealing begins in earnest. If the pandemic (not yet officially declared) breaks out here as well, think of Hudson’s famous lament in Aliens.
http://tinyurl.com/y8um3wr
Iran, and other ME states have notoriously high rates of Vitamin D deficiency. Oddly enough, covering up women, isn’t good for them.
The Weinstein Verdict Effectively Makes Heterosexual Sex Illegal in America
Andrew Anglin
Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape on Monday, based on the years-old accusations of women who admitted to having consensual sexual relationships with him.
Weinstein is himself an irrelevant detail here. What matters is the implications of this.
These women had no evidence of any struggle. They did not report the alleged crimes until years afterward. Conversely, Weinstein himself had a digital record of friendly communications with these women, which in some cases lasted years after the alleged rapes took place. One of the main accusers openly referred to Weinstein as a “causal boyfriend” for years after the rape, and went to comfort him after his mother died.
But what the court decided is that the word of women might as well be the word of God, and the only thing that matters is how they feel. If after a sexual encounter takes place, they decide they feel bad about it, the man has to go to prison.
We are now in a situation where any man can be convicted of rape for any sex act based purely on the allegations of a woman the man engaged in sex with.
What this means is that all of the sex is illegal, as all of it can be prosecuted as rape. You can think of this like the speed limit. Most of the time if you go above the speed limit, you don’t have to pay a ticket. But at any time when you are driving above the speed limit, you can be pulled over and forced to pay a ticket.
I like to give life advice to men. But I am struggling with what advice I can possibly give about this.
Right now, I want you to check the statute of limitations on rape in every state you’ve had sex in. Now, understand that if any woman you had sex with within those limits decides this afternoon that she wants to call the cops and have you put in prison, she can do so.
Do you trust every woman you’ve ever had sex with with the ability to throw you in prison, with no consequences at all for herself?
If you do not, then you may already have a problem. Because with the Weinstein case, the floodgates have been opened. Every woman in America was just sent a very clear message: “if there is any sexual experience you have ever had which you currently feel did not meet your expectations, you can send the man you had sex with to prison.”
It isn’t just me saying this – legal experts are coming out of the woodwork to announce that America is now dealing with an entirely new definition of “consent.”
The Wrap:
The convicted mogul’s criminal trial, in all its surprises and disappointments, could indelibly shape how sex crimes are prosecuted and how sexual assault survivors are treated in the court of law moving forward, legal experts observing the trial told TheWrap.
“The fact that this case was brought forward and that it resulted in a conviction does suggest that we’re in the midst of real cultural change and progress around correcting our biases about sexual assault and sexual assault survivors (and) how they behave,” Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney, said. “This Weinstein verdict will be a moment in that trajectory, but this is not the end point.”
Mark Geragos, a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney who has represented figures like Michael Jackson, told TheWrap that Monday’s verdict may have “moved the ball on how to define consent in a legal sense.”
For that reason, the case may have a wider impact. “Clearly this is a more expansive view of legal liability in a seemingly consensual act,” Geragos said. “To me, it’s what I think they were trying to do and they were successful.”
…
And with this evolving understanding of consent and the complexities of sexual assault, Tuerkheimer said she believed Weinstein’s conviction would lead to more “complicated” cases like his making it to the courtroom. “That is a movement in the right direction if we see more accountability for sexual assault,” she said.
So what should be done?
Probably, men should simply stop having sex. I just don’t have any idea what else I can say about this. You have to trust that every woman you have sex with will not, in the next 10 to 20 years, ever have a bad feeling towards you. How many women can you trust that far?
Imagine also that even if your relationship with the woman was perfect, once she reaches a certain age, where she can no longer attract men, she may decide to punish men from her past for wrathful rather than revenge purposes. If you are successful, or become successful later on in life, she may simply become jealous, and decide to have you sent to prison based on those feelings.
Women can feel any feelings, and they will act on these feelings. Right now, an entire army of lawyers are rubbing their hands and assembling. They are going to form new nonprofit organizations that pay the legal fees of women who want to punish men. Women’s therapists and church clergy will also be involved in this program. Basically, the conviction of Harvey Weinstein created an entire new industry.
On the “10 to 20 years” part, it should be noted that there is currently a move to remove the statute of limitations from all sex crimes in every state, and yes, that will be applied retroactively. So it is likely that the statute of limitations is not even relevant.
I suppose we can wait and see the numbers of women who begin taking advantage of this opportunity to punish men.
But at this current time, I cannot advise anyone to have sex in the United States, at all.
We need solutions to the woman problem and we need them quickly. But I do not know what they are.
JS: Yes, this may be a game changer. Hell hath no fury like a woman growing old. Tempt not thy sister. I was walking past an ice skating rink, enjoying the divine grace of a beautiful girl skimming the earth. A gigantic female blob was approaching from the other direction, watching me watch. If she could have destroyed me, she would have.
Outstanding post, Janos. Lots of women are going to say, nah, I would never do that. They are not the ones you have to worry about.
Do you think that we will ever hear about a man being raped by a woman going to trial? It does happen.
Maybe this insanity along with the LBGTQ folks are Mother Nature’s answer to overpopulation.
Not funny!
Janos
Your absurd proposition would be a good thing, right? The world is already over populated enough and all the immigrants to this country would be a good thing to keep our population from dying up when old cronies like you begin their dirt naps?
But until then, for you own piece if mind, I’d suggest you only share your viagra with your best fishing or golf buddies. Although judging from the piecemeal encyclopedia you’ve been struggling to submit on this website I’m fearful you never leave the basement where you are holed up.
Hmmm, maybe there can be like one page contracts and both parties have to sign on the dotted line lol. And the contracts have to be legal and able to be held up in a court. That way there is no getting around it. Or wow even better. Maybe have an app where both parties log consent. Electronic signature, time stamp, and even photos with thumbs up. 🙂
Sounds good, SSL.
Used to be there were social codes that protected women, taught to sons by fathers and daughters by mothers. Chivalry, men protect women, women did not get themselves into a danger zone.
It is so easy to say that it ought to be 100% safe for women in the presence of men, but reality denies that statement.
If a woman’s goal is to prevent sexual attack, stay away from strange men, quit picking up guys, be modest and not forward, etc.
Otherwise, someday, somewhere some jerk is gonna get you.
Just like a auto accident, prevent the accident because having to fix your car is a pain.
Ought to be’s are a poor substitute for caution.
Men, I do not know what happened to you. Women’s lib destroy your protective feeling about women? That is your primary job in life, to protect your wife and family.
If sexual responsibility is the victim of Hugh Hefner’s sexual revolution, it would have been better that he was never born.
Why put it on women? Make men wear burkas. The burkas would be used to hide locked chastity belts on the men. Only women would have keys. If a woman complained about having had sex, it would be on her (or other women) cuz only women have keys.
Actually that idea is old fashion and crazy. The mechanisms would be electronic and only women would know the passwords. If some man’s chastity belt was opened it could easily be determined what women used the password so obviously if she’d utilized it some time, she’d have a much harder time in court proving she hadn’t consented to do it with some guy. And the guy she accused would be able to use whoever it was who unlocked his thing as a defense or at least call her as a witness.
All women would have the password (one for all of us?) to all men? So no male consent?
I don’t like the idea of you having my password. Or wearing a burka when pants would do just as well.
Janos
I don’t care what you like. My women my rules. Women would have to apply for your password, that would be for your own protection.
No, pants would not do just as well. Not need for us to have to look at the disgusting lumps your packages could make. I know, I know your little package wouldn’t make much of a lump but the need to avoid a bad precedent overrides your situation.
Outstanding post, Janos, taking misogynistic paranoia to whole new levels, one conspiracy theory at a time.
Why don’t you just advocate for the whole hog: make it illegal for all women to testify against any male they have had sex with. Since we all know how deceitful, emotional, and irrational they are.
It is going to get the point a signed contract will need to be drawn up for all consensual sex.
Progressivism and liberalism has even destroyed sex now.
As Chesterton said, someday even the statement, “The grass is green” would be a cause for drawn swords.
I see that Lori Loughlin, and her husband, designer Mossimo Gianulli, are in the market looking for two people to serve prison time in their place, for bribing both of their daughter’s way into college. They are reportedly willing to pay up to $200,000 per person, more if they have to serve more than two years.
Apparently Lori Loughlin rejected a plea deal and has been slapped with new charges that technically could put her behind bars for 50 years.
In court cases around here I’ve seen murderers get released from jail in 15 years.
She had a relatively successful showbiz career and there seems to be many people who would relish seeing her in jail, just like Martha Stewart getting locked up made them happy. And I think prosecutors really enjoy going after these people who are wealthy and vulnerable at the same time.
Brh
some murderers get less than 10 years served, yes?
OJ walked and he clearly was guilty.
stats–
FACT #31: The rate at which Blacks commit murder is thirteen times that of Whites; Rape and assault, ten times. These figures, as given by the F.B.I. reports, vary somewhat from year to year but fairly represent the trend for the past decade. (27) (6) (13)
FACT #32: According to the justice Dept, 1 in every 4 Black males between the ages of 20 and 29 is currently in prison or on probation or parole. (32) (6) (3)
FACT #33: Though only 12 % of the U.S. population, Blacks commit more than half of all rapes and robberies and 60 % of all murders in the U.S. (32) (27) (6)
FACT #34: Approximately 50 % of all Black males will be arrested and charged with a serious felony during their lifetime. (27)
FACT #35: A Black person is 56 TIMES more likely to attack a White person than vice versa. (3) (32)
FACT #36: Black rapists choose White victims over half (54.9 %) of the time, 30× as often as Whites choose Blacks. (2) (32) (28)
FACT #37: The annual report from the Department of justice shows that when Whites commit violence they do it to Blacks 2.4 % of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose White victims MORE THAN HALF the time. (3)
FACT #38: In New York City, any White is over 300 TIMES MORE LIKELY to be assaulted by a gang of Blacks than is a Black by a gang of Whites. (32)
FACT #39: Many people argue that high Black incarceration rates show that police center enforcement at Black crimes and ignore white-collar crimes. However, Blacks commit a disproportionate number of white-collar of fenses as well. In 1990, Blacks were nearly 3 times as likely to be arrested for forgery, counterfeiting, and embezzlement as Whites. (32) (6)
FACT #40: Many people believe that crime is a product of poverty and lack of “advantages.” However, the District of Columbia, which enjoys the highest average annual salaries and is second only to Alaska in personal income per capita, leads the nation in just about every category of crime including murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and vehicle theft. D.C. also has the country’s strictest gun control, highest police costs per capita, highest ration of police and correctional of ficers per citizen, and highest rate of incarceration. Its permanent population is over 80 % Black. West Virginia, which has the nation’s lowest crime rate, suffers from chronic poverty and has the highest unemployment in the U.S. It also has the fewest police per capita. West Virginia is over 96 % White. (33)
Is this possible?
George Bush got his undeserving deserter coke snorting son into Harvard without sanction. I’d favor lightening up on any folks who after all were only attempting to do their best for their offspring.
That is the second thing I agree with you on today! Maybe it is the end of the world?
I’d favor lightening up on any folks who after all were only attempting to do their best for their offspring.
How far do we take this shaky moral relativism? Is it okay to steal a BMW so your kids have something nice to drive? Is it okay hijack a plane to take them for a holiday in Tahiti?
Cargill, no but maybe a used VW or something.
Just kidding.
By “lightening up” I didn’t mean punishment free. But not making them spend prison time.
A financial sanction and/or public service, but no crucifixion, burning at the stake, public lashing, or working on the chain gang.
Save that kind of harshness for the bankers et al who screwed the public so badly we are all living at a lower standard of living as a consequence.
Why so harsh on the parents when the schools that accepted the bribes go scott free?
I am in favor of some serious community service at homeless shelters and picking up trash on the side of the road verses jail time for crimes such as this.
Jails is expensive and a waste of time for people like that.
How ever making the front page of the local news paper and getting ribbed in the local news for serving your 1,000 hours of service to the community would be far more painful.
benr, I take back every unkind thing I said about you but I don’t expect you to do the same.
Oh, the beauty, you say, when we are wrapped in the loving arms of government. Who could doubt a faceless bureaucrat would love you less than the silent God? So I am listening to you Bernie, remembering seaside summers and ice skating on a Norman Rockwell pond, because I also love the dream of an America that never was and never will be
If is a very bad thing to forget about possibilities. It is also brain dead to imagine salvation coming from a benevolent overlord because that is what must happen if government can never have loving arms.
Well, ladies and germs;
The BBC, this AM, reports that the US CDC has stated that the spread of the Kung Flu to the US, is to be considered a “given”…not if but when.
Consider the ramifications when the bug enters our…less than well served population of homeless, ghetto denizens, and elementary school children (who, if you are observant, are rarely without some pathology or otherwise….).
I would suggest your loins be braced…
Haven’t heard from our Chinese friend Onehunglo…maybe he be hangin’ with the Chinese equivalent of Elvis?
…Oh, so solly….
I just heard that the CDC is saying that the public needs to prepared for severe disruptions to daily life!
Other, not otherwise.
Every thing you own, came by truck. When the trucks stop moving food and other merchandise the game is over , that may happen soon.Failure to prepare on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on behalf of the government. They will be overcome with the ongoing emergency. Prepare to take care of yourselves, while you still can, time is running out
Not only that.
The really intelligent people who have set up manufacturing and just in time inventory control for this country have really screwed us to the wall.
Ships carrying parts for next month’s assembly are in limbo on what to do with them. Here is a killer, maybe literally. Meds made in China since the outbreak plus an incubation period are suspect.
This country’s elite are hopefully going to take a big hit for this supply fiasco. We need to manufacture here!!
Period!
I would go one step further and manufacture and grow locally as well.
All the fuel is wasted in transport.
Uhh, yeah. For example;
https://www.ebay.com/usr/elysianfield%21
Excellent!
Or imagine if we had ever gone to war with China? Or maybe we already are?
The Fools believed that Capitalism would solve everything. As if freedom came that cheap or that culture wasn’t upstream from economics or that Christ’s Kingdom was of this world.
And let’s face it: you fall into the above at least partially and at times, completely – as when you lambaste government, saying it can’t do anything well. Fuck the Post Office, right Sport? A hundred and more years of fine service? Fuck the US Marines too? Should be private, right, Sport? There are countless things that cannot be privatized yet must be done. It costs a lot to have a viable Nation. Capitalists don’t want to pay it? Of course not, why would they? Thus they should never be allowed anywhere near power.
The RussiaGate and now the Bernie-as-Putin-Stooge shows are a bit like Stalin’s Moscow Show Trials? They don’t care if it’s true or not….
“ However, there was severe doubt among many of the journalists, exacerbated by the NKVD’s comical blunders: the court heard how Trotsky’s son, Sedov, ordered the assassinations in a meeting at the Hotel Bristol in Denmark—yet it emerged that the hotel had been demolished in 1917. “What the devil did you need the hotel for?” Stalin is said to have shouted. “You ought to have said ‘railway station.’ The station is always there.”14 This show had a wider cast than the players actually onstage because others were carefully implicated, raising the prospect of other famous “terrorists” appearing in later trials.”
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Simon Sebag Montefiore
What do you suppose that Stalin meant by this statement?: “A man may be physically brave but a political coward,” he said.”
“ The bullets, with their noses crushed, were dug out of the skulls, wiped clean of blood and pearly brain matter, and handed to Yagoda, probably still warm. No wonder Vyshinsky found these events sickening. Yagoda labelled the bullets “Zinoviev” and “Kamenev” and treasured these macabre but sacred relics, taking them home to be kept proudly with his collection of erotica and ladies’ stockings.94 The bodies were cremated. Stalin was always fascinated by the conduct of his enemies at the supreme moment, enjoying their humiliation and destruction: “A man may be physically brave but a political coward,” he said.”
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knee Slapper
Do you remember when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughed hysterically when she recounted Kaddafi’s murder?
“ Stalin was always fascinated by the conduct of his enemies at the supreme moment, enjoying their humiliation and destruction: “A man may be physically brave but a political coward,” he said. Weeks later, at a dinner to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, Pauker, Stalin’s comedian, acted the death and pleadings of Zinoviev. To the raucous guffaws of the Vozhd and Yezhov, plump, corseted and shiny-pated Pauker was dragged back into the room by two friends playing the role of guards. There he performed Zinoviev’s cries of “For God’s sake call Stalin” but improvised another ingredient. Pauker, a Jew himself, specialised in telling Stalin Jewish jokes in the appropriate accent with much rolling of “R”s and cringing. Now he combined the two, depicting Zinoviev raising his hands to the Heavens and weeping. “Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”95 Stalin laughed so much that Pauker repeated it. Stalin was almost sick with merriment and waved at Pauker to stop.3”
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Pauker was related to Stalin if I’m not mistaken. An in law or something.
Not long after the event you describe, Stalin had Pauker unceremoniously dragged into the basement of the Lubyanka … and shot.
Brh
The odd thing about Karl Pauker, as head of Stalin’s personal security detail, he was for years Stalin’s closest associate. But he knew too much, and he had to go, like hundreds of thousands of others. And at the same time, the 1930s, the cream of American society were singing the praises of Comrade Stalin, in Hollywood, in Manhattan salons, at the University of Chicago … one can picture Hollywood luminaries at the glittering Malibu mansion of actor Joseph March … Catherine Hepburn, Jonathan Trumbo, Hemingway, Louis Blomberg, Spencer Tracy, Lloyd Bridges … all the lefties and fellow travelers of the day, drinking a hearty champaigne toast to the health of Comrade Stalin, on the same night the Great Leader is signing the death warrants of 30 or 40 thousands kulaks.
brh
The Communist takeover of the Democratic Party is now unstoppable.
LOL … paranoia runs amok!
And I think it’s the other way around, comrade. It’s the Republican Party that’s been taken over by the Russkis – the Orange One Himself, and his cohorts, Moscow Mitch, half their elected politicians, and most of the NRA. Sad.
Would it also be paranoia to perceive you as Majella or Asoka or as your other 1001 incarnations? And would that too be misogynist of me?
Here we go…”these ‘handles’ as various guises for some paid shill’ trope” again.
*yawn*
You are a fool to believe this, or maybe you do not live here.
A fish doesn’t know it lives in water, and that there is a whole world of pain just above the surface.
Cargill, encourage their madness. They bark up the wrong tree. Let them.
For a start, I’ve been my own person (and Cargill – here and elsewhere) for going on 20 years, so we can put that one to bed..
And I’m not a communist, or even a very rigorous socialist – as John Kenneth Galbraith argued, the Centre-Left is the right position to occupy.
But my main point is a semantic one – to throw around epithets such as “Communist”, “Deep Staters”, even “Socialism” is plainly ridiculous in the American context. The Democratic Party is no more “Communist” than the Republican Party is.
To argue for tax reform – with the rich paying a greater share that they can more than easily afford – and also wage reform, is not a sign of some Bolshevik takeover … it is perfectly valid political position, and one that might have resonance in November.
Quite rightly, the working class (and middle class) are totally sick of the rampages of Republican-led theft of the wealth of the country. Wages are stagnant, under-employment is chronic, widespread, and seemingly intractable.
A couple of years ago, we chatted to a bright but tired receptionist at a holiday lodge next to Glacier NP in Montana. She was doing the graveyard shift for $7.95/hour. The day-staff earned just $7.25/hour. She lived 40 miles away in a trailer, and had two young kids.
People in Australia in such a position would probably earn more like $25/hour plus penalty payments – and the places that employ them don’t go broke. They also have a national health scheme.
These things are possible and achievable – it takes political will, and for millions of people to vote in their own economic self-interest. It has nothing to do with “Communism” and other ridiculous labels. It has nothing to do with ‘freedom’ – or the crazy culture wars that seem to consume so many people.
But my main point is a semantic one – to throw around epithets such as “Communist”, “Deep Staters”, even “Socialism” is plainly ridiculous in the American context.
==
No, it’s not! We have a commie running for President and his competitors in the Democratic Party are not far behind.
To learn a professional skill in college takes two years and $20,000. Sometimes even one year in college, or even a special program in high school. I don’t want to hear sob stories about graveyard shifts for $7.95/hour. That’s complete nonsense sold to idiots.
Yes, here you go.
https://study.com/articles/Casino_Dealer_Career_Information_for_Becoming_a_Casino_Dealer.html
We have a commie running for President and his competitors in the Democratic Party are not far behind.
Can you name one policy of Bernie Sanders that would qualify for “commie”? I can’t think of anything he advocates that is much left of centre, if at all. He would be Centre-Right in most other modern nations.
Arguing for a single-desk national health scheme does not a “commie” make, comrade. Lots of healthy capitalist countries have such a thing. It works too.
Go where, K-Dog? Pick an education that pays. Pick an education that you enjoy. If you enjoy it you’ll be good at it and the money will come. There are plenty of choices out there. There are also plenty of losers that can’t make that simple decision. It’s no one’s fault but their own.
Arguing for a single-desk national health scheme does not a “commie” make, comrade. Lots of healthy capitalist countries have such a thing. It works too.
==
Well Comrade, I have news for you. It is communism. And no, it does not work. These programs bankrupt societies. The only variable is at what rate do they enter certain bankruptcy.
I don’t want to hear sob stories about graveyard shifts for $7.95/hour.
The story was to illustrate that unskilled jobs (not that being a receptionist doesn’t require quite a few skills) can be quite well paid without sending companies and countries broke.
In fact a lot of studies show that paying the least-skilled layers a decent wage is actually economically beneficial to everyone overall
But I guess you can’t handle the truth about what is really happening out there. And of course you want to blame the victim Very typical Republican / Far Right responses … so you haven’t let us down.
No one owes you ANYTHING! Not me, not some guy running his company, and not the government. You are not entitled to ANYTHING! You are not entitled to a job. You are not entitled to education. You are not entitled to a paycheck. You are not entitled to any services.
You think you are entitled! And because of what exactly are you entitled? Because you are communist parasite? And all the rest are supposed to put up with you parasites?
In other words, Society as a game of musical chairs. The losers lose everything and end up on the street. And it’s their fault for losing even though the game demands that almost everyone must lose.
This is the kind of thinking that doesn’t belong in Politics or Planning. It’s just Libertarian Agitprop.
Janos,
How come the losers are always the losers? It doesn’t matter where you to put them, they always end up at the bottom, and the same with the winners who end up at the top. And don’t tell it’s a Jewish conspiracy, because the Chinese passed you by, the Koreans passed you by, the Indians passed you by, the Pakis passed you by, the Iranians passed you by, the Russians passed you by, and on and on its goes. And all of them came to the US with nothing and within a generation they are already ahead. How do you explain that?
Well many minorities groups do get Government subsidies – don’t know about the Pakis. But sure – they have virtues we have lost. We’re far too individualistic now. And yes: the strongest and most daring come here first. But to that I give a big SO WHAT? My point: What kind of society demands its citizens compete with desperate third worlders? I answer: One that doesn’t give a shit about them and is destined for the scrap heap of history. Ultimately, you can only compete with coolies by turning White Americans into coolies themselves. And that’s fine with our Demonic Elite and of course, with you as well.
What kind of society demands its citizens compete with desperate third worlders?
==
That’s not a society I subscribe to. It’s ok to trade with others. It’s not ok to import or subsume them. But then the US is not, and never was a normal country. It was born an EMPIRE from day one. That’s what it is. That’s what you picked, and really what you’re all about. So don’t whine about.
I hear you, but arguing about ‘those’ words just fuel a fire. Which is fine if you are not getting burned. All ‘they’ have is a litany of hate and fear. ‘They’ don’t have issues and have even forgotten what issues are or that they need them. They are apes thumping their chest. There may be a chance that the American people have had enough of their bullshit and they will burn. I hope so.
But arguing issues of fairness never got anywhere here and it has been tried for years. Arguing issues on lines of survival will travel better, but it still won’t be an easy go. This week the American Craftsman pot called the Norman Rockwell kettle black. What will our endless summer bring?
But arguing issues of fairness never got anywhere here and it has been tried for years. Arguing issues on lines of survival will travel better, but it still won’t be an easy go.
Fair enough – but I wish they would discuss survival in a post-cheap oil world … the basis of the former JHK website, and why I wound up here initially.
Yet it all seems about “survival” of some weird version of White Americana – but I think that horse has bolted. But mostly it is the complete disdain for the working class out in all those struggling states that I find most remarkable.
They speak as if they come from the millionaire class exclusively – or is their self-hatred of mainstream America so great that they lather Trump against their own interests? Beats me.
What will our endless summer bring?
your bernie Bros getting hammered by the MPD for one thing
after Breadline Bernie gets hosed out of the nomination by the DNC, and they take to the streets.
They speak as if they come from the millionaire class exclusively – or is their self-hatred of mainstream America so great that they lather Trump against their own interests?
The roots are deep and go back to the green scare.
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/about/
From the American government perspective discussion of survival in a post-cheap oil world is synonymous with radical environmentalism.
Ii is ironic but I actually make things more clear here by saying you really don’t need any more explanation than I have given.
Comprende?
K-Dog
There’s a controversial programme in the UK called ‘Prevent’, which is supposed to identify would-be extremists before they get too radicalised. It was started to look out for Jihadists, principally, and probably a few alt-right dingbats too.
But under Boris and our new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, it now includes environmental activists, who are categorised as potential terrorists. Teachers are supposed to look out for anyone too keen on environmentalism. What can you say?
Alba: What’s a Cargill? Is it a thing o’er there, cross the pond(s)?
Janos: What’s a search engine? Is it a thing o’er there, cross the pond(s)?
Janos:
“The name means ‘The Stony Stream’ or possibly ‘The Stream on the Stony Hill’, the name being extremely popular in certain areas, an example being Auchmithie in Angus in 1859 when 123 out of 375 adults were called Cargill!”
I come from Dunedin, NZ (Gaelic for ‘Edinburgh of the South’), founded in 1848 by a couple of boatloads of dour Scots protestants. One of the first civic leaders was William Cargill. The local mountain is named Mt Cargill, the remains of a cast extinct volcano. Not that you could possibly care.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mt+cargill&sxsrf=ALeKk00uxqrKJ_OURDhc3uwh96F2z47-9Q:1582840486962&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=eqAn9DwCYAUAUM%253A%252CBeM49nAC1L-YqM%252C%252Fm%252F06zsq5&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kR3oc7UgdDj4vuMuLdZlycY-3dC3Q&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWptin3PLnAhUF93MBHanuACkQ_B0wHXoECAsQAw#imgrc=wkeVN5-fgiJLzM
“
Everyone is a “Russian agent” or a Nazi now.
I love it.
Deep thoughts with Cargill.
Come on and STIR IT UP!
http://www.got-truth.com/docs/Come%20on%20and%20STIR%20IT%20UP.pdf
Oh, the beauty, you say, when we are wrapped in the loving arms of government.
Yes! My family is enjoying the government’s loving embrace through its provision of Medicare, TRICARE, Medicaid, unemployment compensations, deposit insurance, Social Security, etc.
Guess we didn’t see that coming. I certainly didn’t see it coming. At one time I didn’t even believe it would exist when needed, but government came through and fulfilled its promises, just as it did with the GI Bill, Works Progress Administrations, Civilian Conservation Corps, etc.
When citizens are in need, government is supportive. We need bigger government programs, paid for by the rich, to eliminate the wealth gap and wealth inequality: free health care, free education, free child care and early education for all, etc.
That is why I support President Sanders.
Cradle to grave, uh-huh.
Luckily the vast majority of Americans do not buy this tripe.
For the thousandths time, there is not enough money in the world to support all this free stuff. Tax the rich! Tax the corporations. Wealth tax.
All mottos of have nots trying to steal from the haves.
Watch what happens when the millennials get some capital put together and start to protect it from the wealth stealers.
Democrats will disappear.
“All mottos of have nots trying to steal from the haves.”
Take back what is rightfully ours.
What is rightfully yours?
Asoka, your cats?
You mean your cats are getting the GI Bill and Medicare?
WTF are you talking about, Little Jane?
brh
“That is why I support President Sanders.”
WPA,
…a bit premature.
bicycling? hitching?
But Austin wrote in April: “Badness exists, sure, but even that’s quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.”
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the brutal attack that ended their lives, as well as the lives of two other foreign bicyclists. A car swerved to hit a group of seven bicyclists; assailants then jumped from the car and stabbed the bikers with knives. Three of the bicyclists survived the attack, which the State Department condemned as “senseless.”
Asia
ISIS Claims Responsibility For Deadly Attack On Cyclists In Tajikistan
On social media, friends, family and fellow bike travelers have mourned the deaths of Austin and Geoghegan — and celebrated their lives.
“We will forever be inspired by their kindness and open mindedness and their happiness,” wrote “a_bicyclette_,” a couple who have been biking around the world since December 2016 and met up with Austin and Geoghegan shortly before the attack that took their lives.
Sanders says in the report he released yesterday that by the end of his first term “all energy will be free,except for administrative costs.”
End of his first term? By the end of his second term he’ll be 90 for krissake!
brh
Sanders says in the report he released yesterday that by the end of his first term “all energy will be free,except for administrative costs.”
Good grief – did he really say that?
Free energy is the last thing the planet needs. Energy should be sold at the real cost of production – including all environmental and climate change costs – no discount.
Hey Cargill, WTF gives?
I’m reading the Australian govt is turning down visa applications of white South African farmers trying to escape the bloody hellhole they find themselves living in. The’re looking for a lifeline but you’re giving them the back of your hand. There are still about 4.5 million Boers and Afrikkaners remaining. Do you think you could help them out, before the real genocide starts? At any rate, the new owners of the country inherited a relatively intact system for producing and transmitting electrical power — the best in Africa — but there hasn’t been any maintenance done on it since about 1992, and it has fallen apart. Rolling brownouts and blackouts that last for weeks are now the norm. i don’t know, maybe thay thought electricity was some sort of juju magic that just appeared out of thin air. The same thing has happened to the countries’ reservoirs and water delivery system. SA is sinking to its African mean; the problem is like I say there are 4.5 million whites trapped there. Will Australia and New Zealand open their hearts to them, or is it only Muslims, Chinese and Hindus you let in now?
brh
I’m not going to spin it – a lot of post-colonial countries in Africa have gone to shit. Maybe it really does take centuries and centuries of civilisation (industrial, cultural, democratic) before this stuff has a chance to work.
There are already a lot of white South Africans who have moved to Australia, and apart from their dreadful poxy cross Boer-English accents, they become fantastic citizens.
I’m not sure if we could easily or readily absorb a further 4.5 million punters, but if they are under genuine threat (loss of livelihood, loss of property, loss of life) – then I think we should give it a shot.
We do have a pretty multicultural immigration policy, that’s for sure, but I think (without seeing the stats) there is probably still a majority arriving from Europe.
Marlin
New Zealand still welcomes any SA citizen seeking to enter, as long as they meet the criteria. At the last census (2013) there were only 54,500 – odd SA-born citizens. That will have risen for sure since, but they’re not hammering on the gates or screaming ‘refugee!!!’ status currently.
As far as the water problems go in SA, last year the Israeli govt offered to come in and help — after all Israelis have some expertise in that field with some of the best hydro engineers in the world — but the ANC said no, stay out. And Israel had offered their help as a show of friendship.
You and I are never going to understand how politics fucks everything up that is rational.
No worry, Cargill.
This man makes up stuff to get elected so fast. He and Warren are the epitome of Alice in Wonderland techniques of trying to buy votes. Of all the Dems, they are not just bad choices, they are dangerous to the country.
Nothing wrong with being a change agent, but these two are traitors to what this country stands for. Tens of thousands of veterans died or were maimed to protect this country from people just like these.
You areLeft, okay. Just vote for someone over there that is not a Communist.
Nothing wrong with being a change agent, but these two are traitors to what this country stands for. Tens of thousands of veterans died or were maimed to protect this country from people just like these.
Yeah well …. I am rather sceptical when anyone wraps themselves in the flag, in order to name-call their perceived political enemies. What is one person’s traitor is often another person’s freedom fighter.
I’m not a Bernie Believer, nor do I particularly like Elizabeth Warren, but I certainly don’t think either of them is even remotely a “commie”, and nor are they disloyal to their country.
If I had a vote, not sure what I would do – probably hope for a Pete-Amy or Amy-Pete ticket, rather than any of the old crowd, but even so it’s a pretty week option.
” I love the United States. I’m currently reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin, before that George Washington, and before that Theordore Roosevelt.
When I discover what truly great people they were …. ”
Benjamin Franklin’s older brother , and his son , both disowned him.
Historians , because they care more about being popular , and paying the grocery bill the easy way , try to make out this is because Franklin’s older brother and son were assholes. It’s a fucking lie.
Benjamin Franklin used people like toilet paper , and who would experience that , appreciate that , and know that better than his brother and son ?
Read what they said about the rotten son of a bitch .
On the other hand , for people to describe total assholes as “great” is hardly unusual or uncommon.
For perhaps an example maybe easier to research , check out the evil little plot that cock sucker orchestrated to destroy the life of Thomas Hutchinson .
KesaAnna, maybe you could give me a cliff notes summary about BF and Thomas Hutchinson.
Just did a quick Wikipedia lookup on Hutchinson and come away thinking your indictment of BF seems a bit of a reach.
Hutchinson was apparently a devout Royalist and supported British efforts to impose taxation that eventually inspired the Revolution. I was a minority of colonialists at the time who were willing to take up arms against the British.
I have quite a bit further to go in the book I’m reading but seems like Franklin might have been entitled to regard Hutchinson as the enemy.
KesaAnna
Wow! I truly do appreciate you suggesting I look further into Ben Franklin. I haven’t finished the biography yet and have sensed now and then he may have had a darker side than I’ve read about so far.
I know he wasn’t someone you would want to have to compete against because he was definitely crafty.
“….is their self-hatred of mainstream America so great that they lather Trump against their own interests? ”
I’m no fan of the United States , and I have been saying for years that , near as I can tell , the definition of American nationalism is ;
You hate your country more than I do.
” Why don’t you just advocate for the whole hog: make it illegal for all women to testify against any male they have had sex with. ”
Except for the ” All ” – part , that’s already the case.
A 12 year old girl , who has already had three sex partners by the way , invites a 16 year old boy to have sex with her .
He does .
Somebody talks.
Our 16 year old boy is charged with statutory rape.
( Do I have to point out that there is only a four year age difference here, and it is debatable whether the 16 year old is meaningfully more mature than the 12 year old ? )
Even though our 12 year old girl is perfectly willing to testify in court that the sex was her idea , that she seduced him ,
our 16 year old boy is still toast.
Because the 12 year old girl will not be allowed to testify in his defense.
Why not ?
She would testify that she consented. The law says she can’t consent. So she cannot testify .
Even though , err , she would testify to a truth known to all BUT the jury…..
OK , but our wonderful prosecutor and his police pals will point out the actual facts to the jury anyway ?
Nope.
They will stand there with a straight face and swear on the Bible to a narrative that paints the whole encounter as a violent assault.
The jury just met the 16 year old boy five minutes ago , and it’s not like they get to have a heart to heart talk with the boy , or with his “victim.”
The 16 year old is an unknown figure on the other side of the room.
And they will never even see the 12 year old “victim. ”
The prosecution will keep her out of the courtroom just in case she throws an indignant temper tantrum and tells the jury the truth anyway.
People are not allowed to testify to truths all the fucking time.
And yes , sometimes the people who are not allowed to testify to the truth are poor , black , and female , and who have no vested interest in the thing , but only want to help someone else.
But it isn’t politically expedient , so fuck them . And fuck the truth too.
Just substitute Kesa Anna for Janos, right Cargill?
Cargill
February 25, 2020 at 3:54 pm #
Outstanding post, Janos, taking misogynistic paranoia to whole new levels, one conspiracy theory at a time.
Why don’t you just advocate for the whole hog: make it illegal for all women to testify against any male they have had sex with. Since we all know how deceitful, emotional, and irrational they are.
Hey – I love to see you re-posting my posts … do I get a bunch of “likes”? Do I get to be an influencer? Can I monetise this thing somehow?
What is a 16 yo boy doing having sex with a 12 yo girl anyway? That’s ridiculous to claim that he is the innocent party, even if she consented. Get a grip.
Are you denying the possibility of there being a 12 yo girl having what it takes to arouse a 16 yo boy?
The same compulsion that drives fully mature men to destroy their marriages and families and sometimes careers because of the irresistibility of the hormonally amplified passion that sexy females can produce – it is asking a lot to ask an adolescent boy to eschew.
Not all 12 year old girls are dainty blossoms, naive and innocent. When I was 12 and you were 16 I’ll bet I could have fooled you with a fake orgasm or two.
Ah, yes. The 12-year-old hussie.
I have heard it all now.
Hey now.
Girls mature today much younger than two generations ago. 9 years old happens.
Now put the hormones of a woman into the body of a child and what happens. Do not be naive.
And women are not the sweet little things sexually that men’s chivalry have made them out to be.
Several of my neighbors have 12- and 13-year-old daughters.
They may act out the hussie/slut programming they see across various media, but they are mentally children.
See below, dickhead
In other news, The Footstool nearly lets it slip that he “bought” 21 seats in the House.
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1232481060211937280
Democracy, kids.
Uh oh! Mr. Markets is throwing a fit demanding government free stuff (testing, quarantines, vaccines, etc.) to stop Mr. Coronavirus from upsetting the party. Unfortunately, Mr. Government says we have no money and Mr. President says we don’t need it anyway! “Besides, you said we were evil,” Mr. Government added. Mr. Markets replied, “OK, we’ll take care of it eventually. There might be some minor disruptions in the mean time, but of course those will all be factored into asset prices, so all is well.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/coronavirus-latest-updates.html
In related news, Mr. President proclaimed that Mr. Coronavirus “will go away.” Based on the fact that no testing is taking place, Mr. Press was incredulous and Mr. CDC disagreed altogether.
“We have very few people with it,” Trump told reporters during a press conference in New Delhi Tuesday. “The people are getting better, they’re all getting better…I think that the whole situation will start working out,” Trump said.
To hedge his bet, Mr. President asked Mr. Congress for an extra $1.25B from “existing funding” just in case. No word on what that “existing funding” might be, but since Mr. Pentagon’s not howling bloody murder, one surmises that it’s not coming from there.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/484552-trump-says-coronavirus-under-control-in-us
The stats on the virus show it to be dangerous for folks over 80. In other words, it is similar to many other flus. It is nowhere near as deadly as SARS or MERS.
The media is very excited about it ofc, and it would appear the time to politicize it has arrived.
Wash your hands, avoid public transportation for a while, and ignore it. Not much else you can do anyways.
False! Yes, the virus is a greater danger (presumably) to the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. But this disease has killed healthy young and middle aged adults as well. It has already been proved that overall, yes, this disease is more deadly than SARS. It may not be as deadly as MERS but that is still an open case since the virus is still fairly brand new on the scene and we have not seen it run its course or what mutations will bring. The disease to be more lethal in Iran and Italy right now. But China has never been honest with their numbers and we are never really going to know what truly happened in China. But they are treating it like some totally fatal hemorrhagic fever with their extreme measures. Why waste the time and energy for something that is similar to the flu? It makes no sense.
In China, the government is recommending that people stay five feet from each other until it abates.
One good piece of advice.
BTW, if this distance is critical to stopping transmission, is it any wonder it spreads so fast in urban environments.
See also, overpopulation and it’s control.
China is wielding people into their homes and clearing out whole cities. The virus is aerosolized according to the Chinese. Standing five feet away is meaningless with aerosols.
That’s as good advice as any, Nighowl.
Bernie Sanders now advocates minority owned weed dispensaries with federal dollars used as loans to start them up.
Because well we all know black and Mexicans are good at no other business right Bernie!
How out of touch with reality is this 80 year old fool?
Speaking of fools Fauxcahantus just doubled down on her I was fired for being pregnant story!
Was there a Democrat on that stage last night not exhibiting dementia?
I hate when Conservatives do this. Racial stereotypes often have a touch, if not more, of truth to them. Statistically speaking Bernie has a point. Blacks and Mexicans love to toke up. It’s a stereotype for a reason. Yeah, many Whites have caught up and being a Wigger is super dope in today’s “culture”. But it is what it is.
Do what make fun of ridiculous positions based on stereotypes?
If a Conservative said what Bernie Sanders is pushing they would be crucified!
Of course they would. By their own party.
That’s not the basis of the argument though, SSL. It is in fact this – Yes, blacks & latinos have been running the illicit trade in cannabis since forever and have been involved in the production as well, including developing new strains. The price they have paid for this is disproportionate imprisonment and all the nasty stuff that attaches to ex-cons.
Now, as cannabis becomes legal in more and more states, the middle-class white cohort is moving in – hipster hairdos and exotic edibles and all – and the ‘traditional’ distributors are being deliberately squeezed out, by local regulatory requirements and the access to capital needed to set up.
And what’s most ironic? Try being a ‘convicted drug felon’ (caught in possession of an ounce of weed in 1992, while black) and applying for a loan to set up a dispensary?
Watched the Dem debate last night. Ha! What a group of children.
Bloomberg looked very solemn, the rest ripped each other up.
Bloomberg is an enigma. I keep trying to find differences between him and Trump in 2015 and am not coming up with much. Those two running against each other will bring out all the “there is no difference” folks.
Both are competitive business men. Both believe that a good economy raises all boats. Both have mixed dogmas politically. Both have flipped between parties. Both believe that results and not politics are most important. Both are products of NYC, both want out of NYC because the urban environment is so vile. Both hate the Deep State and will try to override it to get things done. Progressives better fear Bloomberg, he will not sign up to much you espouse.
Anyone know if Bloomberg plays golf?
There is a huge difference.
Bloomberg is a control freak and thinks he knows whats best for you.
Take the soft drink nonsense.
Or his anti gun stance.
Those two issues alone make him a no go.
Seriously!!!!???? Wtf John? Bloomberg is pure out and out Globalist all the way. He wants open borders and the entire third and fourth world moved here to America basically. The fact that you say you see no difference just proves how Trump has moved so far away from his original platform.
SSL
What these politicos say to appease the extremists during primary season is anyone’s guess.
Bloomberg hates Trump. He will do whatever needed to beat him in November.
So?
So does Romney. He says he is GOP. So is Flake (my worst vote ever). Kasich, the Bushes?
My point is there is more distance philosophically between elements inside the parties than between them.
Do you really think Bloomberg is a globalist, in cahoots with Soros et al when his capital and businesses are in the US? Is he a Sinophile? What is his opinion on Israel? Will he support job creation activity to the detriment of government control? Is he a socialist? How much activity has he conducted with Eastern Europe and Russia? How differently will he feel about the gun situation when he is facing middle America rather than NYC?
Do we know? How differently will he handle the Deep State thanTrump if he is elected? I would say we do not really know.
Benr
Both are control freaks. Both think they know better than the Deep State how to run the country.
Both may be right!