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Unfortunately for the nation, the RussiaGate fiasco is only half over. There is just too much documented official turpitude on the public record for the authorities to answer for and the institutional damage runs too deep. Act One, the Mueller investigation, was a 22-month circle-jerk of prosecutorial misconduct and media malfeasance. Act Two will be the circular firing squad of former officials assassinating each other’s character to desperately avoid prosecution.

In the meantime, there is the nation’s business which has been hopelessly burdened by an hallucinatory overlay of Wokester idiocy emanating from the campuses, so that even in the absence of the Mueller distraction every organized endeavor in this land from-sea-to-shining-sea is paralyzed by race-and-gender hustles. Next up: a national debate over reparations for slavery in the never-ending quest to monetize moral posturing. Won’t that be a mighty string of knots to untangle? Who qualifies, exactly? What about the indigenous people whose lands were overrun? And what about the Japanese interned in 1941? And what about women prevented from earning salaries all those lost decades of housewifery? And what about the brown people from many lands whose families did not come here until slavery was a long time gone? Do Silicon Valley engineers from India, and thoracic surgeons from the Philippines have to pay up for the sins of Whitey?

That circus won’t stop until America gets whapped upside the head by economic reality and, really, who is paying attention to that? The shale oil “miracle” has put even the superstars of economic commentary to sleep, though the quandary in plain sight is that the mighty flow of shale oil doesn’t pencil out as a money-making enterprise, and the whole project is destined to fall part even more rapidly than in the decade since it was ramped up. When the private oil companies finally sink into bankruptcy, the obvious “solution” will be to nationalize the industry — a giant step toward destroying the dollar and whatever residual value the industry might have had.

After a month-long case of influenza around Christmas time, the financial markets recovered and are once again demonstrating that they only go up — in defiance of the laws of physics, which actually do apply to markets and economies. It’s a fantastic stunt of computer algo math and misplaced faith in magic, and when it all blows up, as it must, it will make all the other delusions spinning in American life look like mere passing impure thoughts. The notional wealth involved — which is to say, the wealth of nations — has two ways to evaporate: either the stocks, bonds, and other derivatives lose their value, or the money that they represent loses its value. In either case the wealth will be gone and America will be left with the sad recognition that it is broke both privately and publicly.

In the background lay the ticking time bombs of health care, college loan debt, and pension funds. These are rackets and Ponzi schemes. Before we get to Medicare-for-all, I’d like to see congress pass one simple law requiring all medical service “providers” in the land to publicly post the price of all their services, from the cost of heart transplants down to those $90 Tylenols they dispense. Let’s see how that affects the lawless hocus-pocus of insurance companies “negotiating” their payments with the medical corporatocracy before we go whole-hog for a nationalized health service. The colleges have already destroyed themselves intellectually, and thereby the value of their overpriced credentialing services. The smaller colleges are already folding, and many more will follow now until higher education becomes a boutique industry.

The pension funds are truly big, ominous bombs, because when they fail, they will set up unresolvable fiscal problems that will turn ugly and political. Even if the federal government attempts some kind of “one-time” bail-out, it will not solve the embedded Ponzi problem of a system that has to pay off an ever-expanding pool of claims with an ever-diminishing stream of revenue. It will only be another swipe of the blade cutting off the legs of the US dollar so that it in the end every pensioner will receive his-or-her promised payout in dollars that are increasingly worthless. We may even discover that the opioid epidemic has been the only thing keeping the immiserated denizens of Flyover-land from resorting to violent insurrection.

These internal problems of the USA point in the direction of states and whole regions stealthily seceding from a federal system that can’t run itself competently at scale anymore. The process has already begun in such acts of defiance as “sanctuary states” and the burgeoning marijuana industry. Unlike the calamity of 1861, though, there may be no way to even attempt to hold the old Union together, even by force. Instead, as is the case with all foundering empires, the end will be a sickening slide into a new and strange disposition of things. One of the last successful acts of the American empire may be to send the RussiaGate instigators to jail.


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825 Responses to “Ominous Tendings in the Nervous Here and Now”

  1. shotho April 22, 2019 at 10:08 am #

    The federal government and its central bank will do it can to keep the various and sundry ‘enterprises’ afloat, including the oil industry. And the social control mechanisms are well in place to prevent any civil unrest, such as secession.
    But, it’s also true, that at some point, forces of dissolution tend to gain momentum.

    • Ol' Scratch April 22, 2019 at 10:21 am #

      Barring outright collapse, secession will likely have to wait until the millenials come of age. But I think it will be largely a fait accompli by then.

      • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:32 am #

        It already is look at how out of touch with reality people are in major cities in California and new York they have almost nothing in common with people in the fly over states.
        At least for now since the Californians/New Yorkers are fleeing the declining Socialist mess and infecting everywhere else with the disease if liberalism and the excuse given…to expensive.
        These idiots flee their Socialist utopia because they don’t want to pay for it and then vote in the same type of idiots and nightmare Ponzi tax schemes and laws.
        I drove into Idaho last year and was met with a lot of welcome to our state spend your money now go home discussions the funny part about it I am more conservative then most of the people I had this discussion with.

        • OccamsBeard April 22, 2019 at 11:42 am #

          It’s true – California and New York have lost all relationship to the rest of the country – and this is definitely a force of dissolution.

          TraffickingInDivinity.com

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 11:51 am #

            O Rose thou art sick.
            The invisible worm,
            That flies in the night
            In the howling storm:
            Has found out thy bed
            Of crimson joy:
            And his dark secret love
            Does thy life destroy.

        • gonetohell April 22, 2019 at 5:35 pm #

          Well, it is rather evident from your sentencing that you’re an avid Trump supporter. And someone likely to visit Idaho on a regular basis. Howard Kunstler, and all old white man suffering some form of dementia, appreciate your support. They just can’t remember why.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:13 pm #

            That all you got?
            Poor guy who cares it’s a message board not a college report!
            From the looks of your post I would say you live in a glass house and should not cast stones.

          • Ishabaka April 23, 2019 at 6:29 am #

            Ageism, racism, ableism all in one sentence – bravo! I’m glad you’re learning valuable skills in college, but, just so you know; the plural of “man” is “men”.

          • fugeguy April 23, 2019 at 9:04 am #

            I doubt the individual in question is familiar with either term.

          • gonetohell April 23, 2019 at 5:09 pm #

            And I’d bet you are VERY familiar with both forms of the word.

          • fugeguy April 24, 2019 at 8:58 am #

            So what you are saying is that you are homophobic…interesting

    • Neon Vincent April 22, 2019 at 10:23 am #

      Happy Earth Day! One of the ways the government is trying to keep the oil industry afloat is the EPA relaxing fuel efficiency standards so that Americans burn more oil, exactly what we don’t need to do.

      Our host mentioned “the burgeoning marijuana industry” as an example of stealth succession from the system. That reminds me that Saturday was the first 4/20 since recreational marijuana became legal in Michigan. Not only is the state adjusting to the change, but at least one member of its Congressional delegation is calling for it to become legal nationwide. I expect she’ll eventually get her way.

      • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:27 am #

        Yes weed will be legal how else can they manage to get people to go along with all the nonsense.
        Pass the bong and cheesy doodles and go back to sleep.

        • gonetohell April 22, 2019 at 6:02 pm #

          Right. Centuries of Alcohol consumption has no part to play in this self medicating to which you refer. At least weed has medicinal value. Alcohol is pure poison to the body, as witnessed by the body’s propensity to vomit it out after consumption.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:14 pm #

            Over consumption and now we all know why you are so venomous.

        • gonetohell April 23, 2019 at 5:16 pm #

          Shouldn’t first concern be fixing your own lameness?

          • benr April 24, 2019 at 10:18 am #

            Peaking of lame I see you put the bong down long enough to form a semi-coherent thought.
            Bully for you!

          • gonetohell April 24, 2019 at 10:31 am #

            And as witnessed by your post, it’s evident you have yet to let go of the bong.

          • benr April 25, 2019 at 6:47 pm #

            @gonetoseed
            Nope I may one of the last people under the age of sixty to have never even tried it.
            Never could get past the stink or how people like you behave while under the influence of the weed.

      • K-Dog April 22, 2019 at 11:24 am #

        Happy E day to you my fellow Motie. Sadly the only shovel Trump wants to be photographed holding today is gold plated and he is wearing a construction hat.

        • K-Dog April 22, 2019 at 11:34 am #

          Thanks for showing up before I did today so I could respond to you. Fellow members of the green need to help each other out.

          Meaning our names are greenish and if you click on them you link to our websites. We each have our own.

    • TPTB-USA April 22, 2019 at 10:42 am #

      “The federal government and its central bank will do (what) it can to keep the various and sundry ‘enterprises’ afloat, …”

      After 230 years, we don’t even know what the rules are, much less what they even should be.
      Is Mueller report a ‘final determination’ or an ‘impeachment referral?’
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEURuWFdVJw

      My thoughts are that the DC job is to tackle the tasks for which there are no answers.
      Honduran migrants deported from the U.S. often face a grim fate
      https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/honduran-migrants-deported-from-the-u-s-often-face-a-grim-fate

      But when I see the DC crowd cleaning their own house, and doing their own chores, I question why I should have to foot the bill?
      Mark Levin blasts Mueller report as ‘impeachment’ manual for House Dems and media
      https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mark-levin-on-the-greatest-scandal-in-american-history

      shotho, It doesn’t look like they are fit for the job.

      My 2 cents is that all hands are need to prop up and repair the facade ASAP, but it is much easier and more fun to engage in a mud throwing contest.

      • TPTB-USA April 22, 2019 at 3:07 pm #

        I don’t normally watch Levin, but he is like a lit firecracker, with what strike me as some valid questions/points/suggestions!

        Above is just the first of 4 segments. The following is all 4.
        https://video.foxnews.com/v/6028589642001/#sp=show-clips

        • gonetohell April 22, 2019 at 6:15 pm #

          Often I am subjected to FOX news at work. The corporation I work for seems to insist it’s commissary TV’s be set for right wing propaganda. When further subjected to watching Levin, I think to myself; what moron could listen to this ranting lunatic and think to themself; Yeah, that sounds right.

          Guess I found one.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:17 pm #

            Yea the truth aka common sense often sounds crazy to someone who can’t hear it through the imperial conditioning of leftist dogma.
            It’s obvious you lean far to the left and want the world to hand you a paycheck and be in lockstep with your errant belief system.

          • lbs April 24, 2019 at 2:46 am #

            Not much of a Levin fan, but the true world class buffoons are found on MSNBC and most of all CNN.

    • Walter B April 22, 2019 at 11:19 am #

      The federal government will always be able to keep it’s corporate master corporations in business by counterfeiting more dollars, but they will never and probably cannot save municipal governments across the land. Our state of New Jersey has 565 municipalities, none of which can print up money, and all of which are having more and more “aid” taken away by our state government. Pretty much all of these municipalities have growing debt and growing expenses are now banging up the taxation machines to their maximum power. Is it not obvious now, with so many New Yorkers running away from their state that the demonic governor has implemented “audits” as means to stop the out flux that we are nearing the edge of the cliff?

      I do believe that the regular people are so close to the brink of personal financial collapse, that coupled with the importation of so many low/ no wages earners, municipal governments in the danger states will soon be unable to pay the bills or collect the taxes. It may take ten years (the incubation period of a municipal bond anticipation note), but it is degrading at the same time that the governments are piling on heavier and heavier loads. It will start small and get big and bad sooner or later because no one is doing anything to stop it.

    • OccamsBeard April 22, 2019 at 11:41 am #

      It’s true – California and New York have lost all relationship to the rest of the country – and this is definitely a force of dissolution.

      TraffickingInDivinity.com

    • fugeguy April 23, 2019 at 9:02 am #

      I doubt the individual in question is familiar with either term.

      • fugeguy April 23, 2019 at 9:03 am #

        wrong spot

        • gonetohell April 23, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

          Would that be your nickname?

  2. DrTomSchmidt April 22, 2019 at 10:09 am #

    Before we get to Medicare-for-all, I’d like to see congress pass one simple law requiring all medical service “providers” in the land to publicly post the price of all their services, from the cost of heart transplants down to those $90 Tylenols they dispense. Let’s see how that affects the lawless hocus-pocus of insurance companies “negotiating” their payments with the medical corporatocracy before we go whole-hog for a nationalized health service.

    Thanks again for saying this, JHK. Until you look at how horrible the system is, you cannot conceive of it. Baby boomers who remember looking for work in the 60s when you didn’t need to plan 3 months to get a job that paid a living wage to buy an affordable house cannot understand the world of 20-somethings now and the Mad-Max job market with “record low” unemployment but increasing numbers of hopeless McJobs.

    In the same way, people who recall the US medical system before Medicare and Medicaid (and, tbh, tax-subsidized employer healthcare, another “benefit” of WW2, like rent control in NYC), like older Boomers, now receiving Medicare, have no conception of what a racket medicine has become.

    • Ol' Scratch April 22, 2019 at 10:17 am #

      I have a pretty good conception. If you have the funds, private cash-only physicians can be the way to go for all the routine stuff. Surprisingly affordable and even more effective in many cases. The cash meter running tends to focus the mind and attention of physician and patient alike.

      • Urinthe Village April 22, 2019 at 11:33 am #

        The problem is not the routine office visits for a cold. The problem is when you need services from a “facility” (imaging center, hospital, outpatient surgery center) or need some new $5,000-$10,000/month medication (just watch your TV to see which meds you are supposed to ‘ask your doctor about’) that the scams kick in. That will go away someday, but don’t expect it too soon. When it does go away, don’t expect to get that MRI you want within the week, or to see that specialist your primary care person referred you to within the year. You can’t provide something that everyone wants for nothing without rationing it somehow. The bought-and-paid-for Congress is not going to move quickly against the interests of Big Pharma and the AHA (lobbying group for the nation’s hospitals). Americans are used to getting what they perceive they “need,” and they get it now, but only because someone is making big $$$ by fulfilling that “need,” which is why there is an MRI on every street corner in nearly every city in the USA (38/million pop) compared to Canada (10/million pop). https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/

        • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 10:49 am #

          Quite true! Now, potentially every office visit generates one or more visits to different offices, which in turn might generate even more. At every one of them the cash register goes ka-ching, ka-ching!

    • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:21 am #

      Lets get real any reparations paid should be paid by the Democrat party and it’s supporters to people who can prove they descended from slaves.
      After all it was Democrats that fought rabidly to hold on to slavery!
      While we are at it they should also pay people who’s families lost relatives in that ridiculous war civil war and last but not least as a form of punishment all Democrat voters and politicians should be exiled to their families home of origin as punishment for their misdeeds and the sins of their fathers.
      Last anyone that takes a monetary compensation for any of the above should also be forced to return to the land of their forefathers.
      Blacks to Africa and whites to Europe.
      Once this is done we will have room to switch out black people for White people in South Africa who are being genocide by that government or it’s inability to protect anyone in that country.
      As someone who’s grandmother was born on the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina I demand reparations for the sins committed by all the Americans alive at the time for the trail of tears but instead of money I want the federal government to enact my demands above.

      /Tongue removed from cheek

      How ridiculous can our country get?
      The past is the past remember it and don’t make the same mistakes again!

      • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

        “The past is the past, remember it and don’t make the same mistakes again”.

        Absolutely true, benr. Ironically, I have been saying that same thing and referencing the Republicans, who deregulated everything and gave huge tax breaks to the Oligarchs under the Bush administration, and wound up driving the country into the ground in 2008.

        They never changed their tune during the recovery period, and show no signs of doing it now either. The old saying I find myself repeating here over and over is: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time”. It’s absolutely true, and yet they appear to be unable to stop chanting the same refrain over and over. Cognitive Dissonance is alive and well.

        I don’t know what you guys are gonna do, but I’m already preparing as best as I can for the coming shitstorm, because it’s guaranteed to happen again. All you need to do is look at the history.

        • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:02 pm #

          But you don’t seem to want to acknowledge that the Democrats are also responsible for so much destruction and disfunction. You’ll gain a clearer picturer once you divest yourself of this error.

          • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

            I’m no particular fan of the Dems either, they’re bought & paid for just like the Republicans. I have a very clear picture of the goings on in Washington DC, and while both are at fault, at this point I feel the Repubs are more at fault, because they are the ones who bad mouth regulation of anything, saying that businesses would regulate themselves, and don’t forget that they were majorities in the house for 6 of those years, majority in the senate for 8 years, along with Bush as president. So who bore most of the blame for the great recession? I would say the Republicans own that one.

            The crazy thing is, I remember telling my wife that I wished the Republicans would win the whole thing, the house, the senate, and the presidency. Then after they wrecked everything, people would see that their policies didn’t work. I was wrong, however, because here they are back again, working their magic. You are also using the old tactic of blaming others to lessen the blame on the ones you support. It’s pretty obvious that you like the Republicans, and haven’t divested yourself of that particular error, either. I say a pox on both their houses.

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

            I don’t like Republicans or Democrats and I have no interest in protecting Republicans from criticism or scrutiny. What Republican policies do I support?

          • 100th Avatar April 22, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

            One must not pick sides you know?

            The 2 party gang system is a broken one.
            Complaining about the failed results from a broken system is..
            irrational.

          • Majella April 22, 2019 at 6:41 pm #

            SSL – “I don’t like Republicans or Democrats and I have no interest in protecting Republicans from criticism or scrutiny. What Republican policies do I support?”

            Huh?

        • Nightowl April 22, 2019 at 4:05 pm #

          If you took the time to learn what neocons and neolibs are, it would improve your understanding dramatically.

          Rep/Dem has no meaning. They are the Uniparty.

    • Elrond Hubbard April 22, 2019 at 10:59 am #

      DrTom, the idea that price transparency alone will (somehow, eventually) enable the US health care system to un-fuck itself is nice, but it’s a myth. For one thing, price transparency has already been mandated. You might want to have a look at what that actually produced:

      https://qz.com/1518545/price-lists-for-the-115-biggest-us-hospitals-new-transparency-law/

      Basically, running health care on a completely marketized, for-profit basis will always result in costs endlessly spiraling upward. Together with this you get all the waste, fraud, and abuse that goes with such a deep and wide revenue stream, and endless economic brutality being visited on ordinary people forced to deal with such a system. The reason why is very easy to understand: There is no such thing as downward pressure on costs, only upward. This will always be true, regardless of efforts to make pricing transparent.

      The logic of the market assumes that supply and demand will always meet each other at a certain point, as mediated by price. However, demand is assumed to be bounded. (Demand means not just what you desire, but what you are ready, willing and able to pay for — or to assume liability for.) I might be willing to pay $1 for a chocolate bar, but not $5, for example. The system is supposed to move until all prices reflect what the traffic will bear. But when it comes to their lives, and the lives of their children, theoretical demand is unbounded and always will be. If my daughter gets cancer, I simply will not modify my behaviour or my expectations based on what they tell me it’s going to cost. I’ll do what I have to and accept whatever burdens are necessary to save her life. If that means being saddled with extraordinary debt, then that’s what will happen. No rational person will decide that it’s just too expensive.

      The price transparency mandate, well-intended as it is, is trying to push back against the basic logic of a system that is irresistible. Pretty much every other developed country has come to grips with the fact that the only solution is to change the system, so as to provide universal coverage while managing demand according to the available resources. Hopefully the USA is also finally coming around to deciding that people are more important than the market, especially when the alternative is to watch the society steadily tear itself to pieces.

      • Urinthe Village April 22, 2019 at 11:45 am #

        Very cogent and concise discussion of the “infinite demand” for healthcare, something you will never hear from a pundit or a politician. I don’t even think they understand it. The other issue involves non-life-and-death scenarios. Is my sore shoulder a “health” problem that should be covered by a national plan? In the US currently it is considered a health problem by most people and their private health plans; you can schedule an appointment with a doctor for anything. Evaluating and treating a sore shoulder can cost thousands of $$$ between x-rays, MRI’s, physical therapy, injections, arthroscopies, etc., all considered “standard of care” in the USA. Ever single human over the age of 50 has a sore shoulder at times. “Healthcare” needs to be defined before it can be rationally discussed, but I’ve never heard that point made by a politician or a pundit.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

        Well said. If you need water, you would give everything you have to get it. Ditto health care. Total extortion.

        Publish the outrageous prices to convince all that can be convinced of the depth of the Medical Industry’s moral depravity – as a way to get Medicare for all pushed through. The parasites will go somewhere else once the outrageous profits are gone. High end medicine can continue for those who can afford it, and research will continue to be lucrative – as it should be. There are very few Madam Curies and Louie Pasteurs after all. Most smart people want renumeration for their efforts and won’t engage without it.

        • Elrond Hubbard April 22, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

          This has always been the biggest thing we agree on, Janos. Good to know that such a thing exists.

        • Walter B April 22, 2019 at 6:40 pm #

          I have always been and remain one who believes that medical treatment Is a service that cannot be “insured”. And it most definitely will collapse once the number of healthy insurees are outnumbered by those who require massive amounts of cash to keep them alive. Diabetics and alcoholics receiving liver transplants and/or dialysis almost never pay for their own treatment, do they? And there are many more conditions that require the infirmed to pay far more than they will ever pay into the system. I do not understand why people cannot comprehend this, why they think there is some magic solution somewhere just waiting to be found. Perhaps the general public’s lack of understanding of mathematics explains it. Oh well, what shall be shall be.

          • Elrond Hubbard April 23, 2019 at 11:50 am #

            Walter B, the issue is less dire than you frame it. The realities become much easier to see once you step outside neoliberal assumptions. I’ll put the case as plainly as I can.

            1. Resources are finite. Therefore, the amount of actual, real resources available is what determines the amount of ‘health care stuff’ available for looking after people’s needs. This is universally true, and I think we agree on this.

            2. Demand for medical care, on the other hand, is theoretically infinite. That is, there’s no upper bound on what people will ask for when it comes to their medical care. The sky’s the limit.

            3. Therefore, the available resources have to be rationed somehow. This follows from #1 and #2, and will be true in any situation. Now the question becomes:

            4. How will resources be rationed? We have two basic models: The way the USA does it (market-driven, neoliberal health care rationed by price), and the way pretty much everyone else does it. To put it succinctly, the way the USA does it is exactly what has led to the giant clusterfuck that exists now. I mean, boom. That’s the situation, and there’s not much more that needs to be said about it.

            So how does everyone else do it? Risk pooling. The expense of caring for the old, sick and hurt will be paid for largely by the young, healthy and intact. This is fine, because all of us get old, get sick, and get hurt sooner or later. This is exactly how insurance works. Only with privatized insurance, you get multiple pools within which every participant has an incentive to free-ride (i.e. not pay in until they have something that needs treatment), and the insurers themselves have *big* incentives to find ways not to pay out. It’s these incentives that put the system in danger of collapse.

            The way to immunize the system against collapse is to abolish those incentives. First, create one pool that everyone is part of. That’s what Medicare is, although limited to people 65 and over. Second, once you’re part of the pool, you always pay in at a set rate. A dollar’s a dollar; it doesn’t care whether it comes out of the pocket marked ‘taxes’ or the pocket marked ‘insurance’, and lord knows you’d be spending it anyway if you’re not young and immortal. Third, care is always free at the point of use. Resources are managed to provide a reasonable standard of care and you never, ever see a goddamn bill, much less face bankruptcy, the loss of your home, etc.. It’s not magic, it’s just getting the job done.

            Obamacare is a brain-damaged, Rube Goldberg version of this idea. What makes Obamacare such a bad contraption is that it’s specifically designed not to fix the incentive problems where they exist; only to slow (not stop, much less reverse) the endless cost spiral of privatized medicine. It’s stupid, and it should be abolished in favour of something that works for everyone, much more cost-effectively.

          • Walter B April 23, 2019 at 8:10 pm #

            Interesting EH and pretty much true as far as I can tell, but the best part IMHO is:

            Obamacare is a brain-damaged, Rube Goldberg version of this idea. What makes Obamacare such a bad contraption is that it’s specifically designed not to fix the incentive problems where they exist; only to slow (not stop, much less reverse) the endless cost spiral of privatized medicine. It’s stupid, and it should be abolished in favour of something that works for everyone, much more cost-effectively.

      • Anon1970 April 22, 2019 at 8:34 pm #

        If you have access to Kaiser health insurance, you should definitely consider it. I signed up for it through work almost 30 years ago and continued with it when I became eligible for Medicare. My maximum out of pocket charges are about $6700 per year, but I have never come close to that. My Kaiser Medicare supplement costs about $100 per month and includes out of country emergency care. There is a definite advantage to having everything under one roof, in a manner of speaking. Medical records are computerized and very little falls through the cracks.

        The Canadian system works very well for people who are related to doctors, are able to navigate the system and can cut into lines. Sometimes people literally die waiting for services. Google Jerry Yanover, who died about a decade ago while waiting for his heart surgery. Yanover was a brilliant political operative for Canada’s Liberal party but was less successful dealing with the country’s medical system.

    • EvelynV April 23, 2019 at 2:38 am #

      And just remember, it is the fucking republican congress who fights to keep the government from trying to reign in the avaricious aspects of the medical racket.

      • benr April 24, 2019 at 10:28 am #

        You seem to have forgotten its the corrupt to the core Democrat party that voted in a flawed, complicated, super expensive and failing Obamacare on a Friday night with zero support from the other side! Obama lied about everything to do with the witholdcare and since it was implemented my families healthcare costs have skyrocketed to well over $800.00 a month!
        The government is part and parcel to the expense just like College loans and every other racket they get their fingers into.
        Anything they touch turns to an expensive pile of bureaucratic crap.
        VA care for all after all ditzy AOC says its great how could she be wrong hopefully she goes in for a colonoscopy soon.
        http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/30/va.hospital.hiv/index.html

        • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 2:31 pm #

          No I haven’t forgotten a damn thing you oaf. Obamacare was the mutated result of having to accept legislation that had to be bent to appease the conservative element of the Democratic party thanks to Republicans refusing to provide any support whatsoever that would have made it possible to have a truly well crafted program. Throw out a small handful of redneck democrats and replace them with an equal number of reasonable and intelligent republicans (I know, oxymoron, I’m just saying) and then a really fine result could have been achieved.

          The prime directive of the republican party as always is party first, country later. Republican motivation was not help accomplish anything that would make Obama look good.

          If I was empress most republican politicians would be tried for treason and once convicted slammed to the wall and bayoneted.

          You assholes have destroyed the US.

          • Urinthe Village April 25, 2019 at 11:37 am #

            “If I was empress most republican politicians would be tried for treason and once convicted slammed to the wall and bayoneted.”

            Impressive exemplar of the current leftist, “feelings-based,” violent, thoughtless, inhuman, indefensible, Stalinesque approach to political disagreement. You should have lived in a time and place where you could see your ideas put into action, like Uganda under Idi Amin. You could probably content your fantasies by watching videos of Castro’s post-revolution executions. (Sorry, no bayoneting there).

          • benr April 25, 2019 at 6:53 pm #

            ROTFLOL
            You must be stoned your ability to obfuscate anything approaching reality is simply amazing.
            You must live in some cloud of serious denial and the same can be said of All DEMOCRATS since the very beginning of time.
            Your side is bereft of any truth or common sense.
            Republicans are bad Democrats are head and shoulders worse and it if came down to a fight your side would be piled up on the side of the road like yesterdays dirty diapers. All your ignorant imbecilic leaders know full well THIS SIMPLE FACT which is why they hate the first and second amendments.
            Your arguments are vapid at best moronic at worst and you show yourself to be not only stupid but seriously deranged.

    • Greg April 23, 2019 at 5:45 pm #

      Dr. Tom,
      I strongly agree with you: price transparency is essential to successful health care reform. Whatever the final shape of that reform, it will be far more feasible and less expensive with price transparency in place.
      Greg

  3. Ol' Scratch April 22, 2019 at 10:13 am #

    Can’t help but wonder if breaking the US up into bite sized – presumably impoverished and defenseless – chunks wasn’t the plan all along. The globalists have pretty much sucked everything dry now anyway other than for the NE corridor, LA, and SF. Might be time for them to move on to greener pastures.

    • DEFCON1 April 22, 2019 at 10:20 am #

      Look for Canada to be ‘annexed’ (one of the Imperium’s favorite nonsense words) in a few decades as the climate change chickens really come home to roost and turn the US Midwest in a mini-Gobi

      This and more merry mix-ups like it are in store as the wheels start to really come off the wagon and make the malfeasance of the current shithead running the show in D.C. seem like a day at the beach.

      • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:25 am #

        Which shithead?
        There are so many to choose from?
        Oddly enough I was discussing what can be done with current technology and there are low/high tech solutions for harvesting water out of the very air no matter how low the actual humidity might be. Water is not that hard to get if you have the tech and the power to push it.

        • RWicks April 22, 2019 at 3:54 pm #

          I just logged into to point out that anybody claiming to harvest water out of the air is misinformed, or deliberately misinforming people. This “technology” is a dehumidifier. That’s all it is, and it’s a very energy intensive process, and it produces a lot of heat to do this.

          The “water from air!” “products” are outright scams. It doesn’t take a lot of work to look up just how much water you can evaporate into a given volume of air. The amount of energy needed to evaporate it is less than the energy to condense it. To use a dehumidifier to condense a 10,000 liters of water in the middle of the country requires more energy than driving it there in a truck.

          I know you haven’t done the math, and you’ve trusted people to be honest, well, they’re not honest. Also, I’m not going to show you the math because it’s a pain to do, and you’ll dismiss it anyhow.

          And in any case, there’s no threat that the Midwest will turn into the Gobi desert either. People worry about Climate Change a lot, but they don’t worry that there’s no model that’s ever been made available to the public, and that all the past 40 years of predictions have turned out to be dead wrong.

          The fact that I see so many scams, and on such tremendously huge scales, tells me we are nearing the end of this particular system in the West. Everything is a fraud. Climate change is a fraud, 1/2 the crap from Silicon Valley is a fraud (remember Solyndra? That was HILARIOUS), our government is a fraud, our media is blatantly obvious propaganda which is yet another fraud, our banking system is a fraud, hey, electric cars are a big fat fraud.

          When the majority of what the majority of people believe is just false, it cannot bode well for the nation. Smart, intelligent people, believed Russia gate was real, and plenty of them still do. Oh well, it was a good nation while it lasted.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 4:32 pm #

            While I agree with most of what you posted there have been some pretty good attempts at making water for arid climates with no to low energy needed.

            https://www.seeker.com/tech/these-technologies-can-harvest-water-from-thin-air

            This is the one I was specifically talking about.

            https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-tower-pulls-drinking-water-out-of-thin-air-180950399/

            And this is the small scale unit I was talking about should you have the tech and power needed. They have plans to ramp these up. The tech is out there what is missing is the requirement to also plant trees around these types of units

            http://ecoloblue.com/index.php

          • RWicks April 22, 2019 at 7:44 pm #

            Why can’t I respond when it’s so many levels in?

            Anyhow benr:

            First one, lab and theory.

            Second one, maybe true, but I’m always suspicious when a “designer” is mentioned. Conditions where it’s shown to be working is in fog, so hardly an arid region anyhow.

            Third one, scam. It’s a dehumidifier, would need a good filter on it. You’d be better off just hooking up a filter to your water supply, and if you don’t like that, a rain barrel

          • benr April 25, 2019 at 6:56 pm #

            @RWicks
            Thanks for the input.
            I still think the ecola blue would work well hooked up to a solar cell and battery storage medium.

      • Ol' Scratch April 22, 2019 at 10:30 am #

        Good point. That would really make the current kerfuffle over a southern border wall look ridiculous in retrospect too. Plowing the tall grass prairies of the great plains (roughly, from the Mississippi / Missouri rivers, west) was a tragic mistake from right the beginning. With the Colorado River and Ogallala Aquifer both being heavily overused already, a day of reckoning is just over the horizon.

      • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 10:47 am #

        >>> Look for Canada to be ‘annexed’

        That will never happen, for the simple reason that it would confer an advantage to Dems looking to expand socialism in the USA.

        More likely in the event of global catastrophy is not the creation of even larger and more unwieldy polities, but the breakup of existing ones. I suspect both Canada and the USA would split up along political fault lines that are visible right now.

      • Father Jack April 22, 2019 at 12:14 pm #

        Annex Canada? Are you kidding? Canada is just waiting for the US to collapse and fracture so they can swoop down and take over! Not.
        Seriously though, there is no question that millions of frightened hungry Americans will flee to the relatively unpopulated lands to the north and there will be bugger-all the Canadians will be able to do to stop them.

        • aibohphobia April 22, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

          It is very unlikely that large numbers of Americans will flood North under any circumstances. Sure, Canada is geographically large, but most of it is, for one reason or another, unusable. For this reason, most of the population is within 100 miles of the US border.
          Also, China (for example) has already bought large amounts of Real Estate in Vancouver. While they would be the ‘bad guys’ if they invaded Oregon or California, they would be the ‘good guys’ if they landed en masse in Vancouver to repel the invasion. Ya gotta protect your investments, after all…

          China (and maybe Russia) would like nothing better than the opportunity to take over a large amount of farm-able land anywhere they can get it, perhaps including the US Pacific Northwest. How better to get there than by coming to Canada’s rescue and invading South along the very numerous, undefended and undefendable flat well-paved routes to the South?

          It would be complete madness for the US to threaten Canada in any way.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 4:50 pm #

            There are more guns in America than people.
            China would be crazy to invade the US.
            WOLVERINES!

          • Father Jack April 24, 2019 at 10:42 am #

            China steps in militarily to protect parts of B.C…..interesting idea, hadn’t thought of that.
            I agree that the U.S.military is unlikely to invade all of Canada, but perhaps strategic parts maybe be considered.
            As usual the details of the scenario of how the US collapses will determine the timing and extent of migrations out of the lower 48 but I have no doubt that millions will be on the move and Canada will be viewed as a safe haven.

      • debt April 22, 2019 at 3:06 pm #

        Nice try Asoka/Janet/Soaker-Hose. “Climate change” – the belief that an incremental increase in co2 will result in an exponential increase in global temperature. It ain’t happening. How’s the weather today in Arlington, Virginia?

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:38 am #

          “the belief that an incremental increase in co2 will result in an exponential increase in global temperature. ”

          Where did you dig that up from? The problem arises really seriously (it’s already arising) with a global average temperature increase beyond 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

          What on earth have you been reading? Were you expecting an extra 10 degrees Celsius in your back yard?

          • debt April 23, 2019 at 11:40 am #

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZlICdawHRA&t=1314s

            Earlier in April the Climate Change Conference was held at Findhorn in Scotland. People flew in from all over the globe to discuss how we can reduce our carbon footprint. I could smell the stench of hypocrisy thousands of miles away out here on the West Coast.

            So riddle me this, Batman. It was a bit warmer during the Roman Empire than it is now. What caused that warming trend? Carbon dioxide? NOT!

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 11:46 am #

            There’s also a time lag of 20 or 30 years between the addition of the extra CO2 emissions and their manifestation in average temperature readings. So nothing that happens emissions-wise in the rest of my life will affect me – what will affect me is already baked in.

            But it’s nice to have some thought for the people who follow us, don’t you think?

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 11:48 am #

            debt

            I don’t remotely admire people flying hundreds or even thousand of miles to AGW conferences. But it doesn’t make a whit of difference to the accuracy of the physics.

            “So riddle me this, Batman. It was a bit warmer during the Roman Empire than it is now. What caused that warming trend? Carbon dioxide? NOT!”

            Why do you think that negates current global warming being anthropogenic?

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 11:55 am #

            It was a bit warmer during the Roman Empire – debt

            =============

            Please give me the starting and ending dates you are using for “the Roman Empire.”

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 11:58 am #

            They should be video-conferencing as I had to do at work. Willingly.

            I once won a competition at work that involved a decent cash prize, along with a return flight to Malta and three nights in a hotel where the commissioning editors and sales folks were having their sales conference and enjoying the junketing – an opportunity they didn’t repeat again. I asked my line manager to discreetly make my excuses without offending anyone because I totally couldn’t justify the flights to myself.

            I’m not a fan of people flying to conferences at all, unless there’s a really good reason for it. Sometimes you really do need the personal touch but climate meetings are not those times.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

            debt

            In the absence of details about dates, I’ll give you some information regarding one of the most often-used denier memes – the mediaeval warming period.

            https://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm

            But here’s one that also came up with regard to Australia and the ‘but Australia’s always been hot’ meme.

            https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=2426

            I like the logical fallacy in there – ‘people died of cancer before cigarettes were invented, so smoking doesn’t cause cancer’.

            Quite.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 12:10 pm #

            average temperature increase beyond 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. – GA

            =============

            Please stop talking in terms of Celsius. We Americans don’t know squat about Celsius… we only know Fahrenheit… just like we only know yards, not meters. We are chauvinists as to our way of measuring things and only OUR way will do.

          • Elrond Hubbard April 23, 2019 at 2:07 pm #

            Likewise, GreenAlba, I refuse to accept that global warming is real until you explain how the melting of the polar ice caps, measured in firkins of ice, relates to sea level rise as measured in furlongs per fortnight.

            Wait, no I don’t. I actually accept the scientific consensus about AGW. Never mind, carry on.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 4:37 pm #

            melting of the polar ice caps, measured in firkins of ice – Elrond

            =============

            We don’t know nothin’ ’bout no fuckin’ firkins neither.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 3:31 pm #

            Q-Shtik

            “Please stop talking in terms of Celsius. We Americans don’t know squat about Celsius… we only know Fahrenheit… just like we only know yards, not meters. We are chauvinists as to our way of measuring things and only OUR way will do.”

            Haha.

            Only just noticed this and it’s been there two days.

            It has always amused me that, while the UK went metric in the 1970’s, the US has chosen to stick with imperial units. You’d think you’d want to shrug off anything to do with your past as a colony.

            And they’re metres. Meters are what you measure things with, like gas, taxi rides or telephone calls 🙂 .

      • Ancianoloco April 22, 2019 at 4:12 pm #

        In the meantime, let the Midwest flooding continue with more rain on the way. I’m sure one day, your religious climate demagoguery will come true.

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:44 am #

          Not sure what you’re saying, Ancianoloco, or if you’re being ironic.

          Are you saying you want more flooding or suggesting that AGW and associated climate change mean there won’t be floods?

          We’re already seeing an increase in floods and their severity, with previously 100-year floods happening much more frequently, and 10-year floods happening every few years.

          What were you expecting with AGW – just the heatwaves and droughts? It’s about volatility, which is what you get it you add energy to the system. So there are likely to be more polar vortices as well (when you’ll be sitting in your house saying ‘I thought they said it was called ‘global warming’ {sigh}.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:46 am #

            *if* you add…

          • debt April 23, 2019 at 3:42 pm #

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

            An enlightening conversation. If you can step aside from your demagoguery.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 3:33 pm #

            Sorry, debt. Got no sound. 🙂

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 3:33 pm #

            Demagoguery, er, I mean science.

          • EvelynV April 26, 2019 at 1:31 am #

            Until now global dimming has restrained global warming to a significant extent. As particulate air pollution diminishes the rate of global warming is going to accelerate.

            https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/global-dimming/

            Way too complex for the cerebrally dimmed boneheads who spend their pathetic lives skulking around on this forum spouting their absurd certainties. Are you reading this benr? Probably too many big words for you to follow along in the documentary but there are pictures.

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 10:46 am #

      Wow. Someone who realizes that this is a globalist conspiracy, better yet Master Plan, to drive the US into second class or even banana republic status. The methodology of infiltration of lower class folks is working extremely well as the instigators, the Democrats, are just soldiers for the globalist neo -Liberals. When Trump turned it around by offering to send the excess illegals to the Democrat sponsored sanctuary areas, the loudest voices of opposition came fro the Blue areas. Talk about hypocrisy.

      Anyway, the infusion and then segregation of ethnic groups in he US, which is Standard Operating Procedure, is going to provide political fodder for the separatists. An extreme test of the unity of the 50 states is coming. Separatist groups such as CAIR and La Raza are going to do what they can to accelerate the process. La Raza , for example, wants the Mexican Cession back, it is a prime goal of its doctrine. How to do it, easy. Keep sending in recruits to overwhelm in shear numbers, everyone else then promote political division at the ballot box.

      There will not be a Great New Civil War. There will be a quiet secession of ethnic areas from the Federal system. What can the Feds do? Nuke ‘em. Nothing! The United States of America is living on borrowed time, which is exactly what it’s worst enemy, the Democratic Party, wants. HRC’s victory in 2016 would have shoved us towards dissolution much faster than what has occurred with Trump. But the Dems still have the Deep State in their control and the slide continues. 2020 will tell the tale, and the people of the US will settle the course of the future.

      What a comforting thought!

  4. JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 10:21 am #

    Seems to me that the Feds will keep everything afloat until the Great Creditor in the sky asks for payment.

    Whoever that is!

  5. John1945 April 22, 2019 at 10:27 am #

    =I’d like to see congress pass one simple law requiring all medical service “providers” in the land to publicly post the price of all their services, =

    Such laws are out there,if you care to dig them up.At your dental office or hospital you may ask for a “fee schedule”.Receptionist will stare at you in wild wonder then will give you some dust-covered booklet.

    If you want to see fair,scientifically calculated prices tell them “I work for Medicare Fraud Strike Force” and ask for “Medicace/Medicaid reimbursement sheet”.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • FincaInTheMountains April 22, 2019 at 10:52 am #

      As far as I know, there are public strict rules of calculating the Medicare reimbursement prices based on the CPT Codes – they vary slightly based on your ZIP code.

      I wonder is there a public web sites that tells you what Medicare is paying for this or that medical procedure – it is not difficult at all to calculate based on publicly available information.

      Unfortunately, it will not tell you how much private insurance companies would pay for the SAME procedure – based on my experience it could be 60% higher than Medicare.

      The actual doctor’s billing goes – usually – at 200% of Medicare price, so uninsured are being billed almost twice the normal amount.

      • John1945 April 22, 2019 at 11:36 am #

        =I wonder is there a public web sites =

        They exist for a very short time then they disappear.Because overbilled patients and their lawyers use this info to sue greedy hospitals.Say,Medicaid reimburses appendectomy to the tune of $3500 but no self-respecting hospital will charge you less than $25K.
        Call it “creative billing practices”

        =Unfortunately, it will not tell you how much private insurance companies would pay=

        Each private insurance company has reimbursement schedule.This info is not classified although not widely publicized.You will not get it from the insurance sales rep peddling health insurance on street corner but anyone working at the office will get it for you-if you know how to ask.

  6. Jeff April 22, 2019 at 10:28 am #

    “Who qualifies, exactly? What about the indigenous people whose lands were overrun? And what about the Japanese interned in 1941?”

    The Japanese can be scratched off the list, thanks to Reagan’s Civil Liberties Act in 1988:

    https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese-internment-redress

  7. malthuss April 22, 2019 at 10:29 am #

    Muslims on the rampage, so what else is new?

    IS FRANCE BURNING?
    One needed the sentience of a rock to be able to ignore the deep symbolism behind the specter of the Notre Dame Cathedral burning last Monday in Paris—here was a presumably ineffable symbol of France, of Europe, and of Christendom that was nearly 1,000 years old, and it was immolating before the world’s eyes. Pundits are straining with every last sphincter muscle to throw cold water on any speculation that the blaze was the result of arson, especially at the hands of Islamists.

    What almost escaped notice entirely is the fact 875 churches were vandalized last year in France, and over 1,000 the year before amid a wave of what’s being dubbed “militant secularism,” possibly because newsmen choke on the words “Islamic extremism.” According to Republicans MP Valerie Boyer, “Every day, at least two churches are profaned.” This includes burglaries and graffiti and smashed glass and feces smeared on walls.

    ?Still, we are counseled not to focus on these anti-Christian attacks because to do so would steal some of the thunder from Jewish victims of all the alleged anti-Semitic attacks raging through France, many of which are presumed not to have actually been committed by Jews.

    / taki mag

    • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:41 am #

      We don’t need recent history to understand the seething hate Mussulman have for anyone of a different faith or even sect just look at history.
      Hell read the book I quoted above written in the late 1800’s.

      • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

        benr

        You can have as much understanding of the seething hate of whomever you like, but it won’t make the slightest difference to what is required in the case of the conflagration in Notre Dame, which is ‘evidence’. It’s a bummer, I know, but there we are.

        Just how much of your own money would you put out to back a court case where you had to persuade an impartial judge and jury of the guilt of The Unknown Muslim with regard to this particular fire with your only evidence the historical hostility of Muslims to Christianity?

        Would you bet your house and all your worldly goods on it? If not, why not?

        Would you accept the level of er…reasoning’ in malthuss’ post in ‘evidence’ to defame your president?

        None of which means it can’t turn out to be arson. I personally think that’s a lot less likely than pretty inexcusable negligence or an unfortunate accident, but my guess is based on nothing of any more substance than your wishful thinking, so we’ll just have to wait and see. And maybe give it rest with the deliberate sectarian pot-stirring in the meantime. No-one wins from that, ever.

        • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

          The rather obvious parallel between this level of ‘argument’, ‘evidence’ or whatever it’s meant to be and what you all claim to be incensed about with regard to Mr Mueller’s (or the Dems’) long and drawn-out attempt to inculpate your president is not lacking in hilarity.

          • debt April 22, 2019 at 4:23 pm #

            The multitudes of Muslims celebrating this online is telling. Any Buddhists celebrating? Jains, Sikhs, Hindus? No, only Muslims. Which points to the complete absurdity of letting in so many of these subhumans.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 6:11 pm #

            “The multitudes of Muslims celebrating this online is telling. ”

            It might be ‘telling’ but it’s not telling you how the fire happened.

            And, while I don’t hear much about Jains, I’ve kinda lost my delusions about Buddhists and Sikhs being paragons of peace and tolerance over the years. I never had any delusions about Hindus.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

          The Muslims are trashing Churches. Everyone knows it except little ol’ you. The last to know much of anything, really.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:07 pm #

            Not even wasting time on you, Janice.

        • benr April 22, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

          Freedom of speech applies even when it lowers to the term hate speech.
          Defame away right or wrong.
          At least malthus is not demanding Sharia law or demanding anything he finds offensive be removed.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:22 pm #

            malthuss isn’t demanding anything, benr. And neither am I.

            He copy pasted a post that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Not because its grammar is lacking, as SSL has ‘deduced’, but because it’s Goebbels-speak.

            I have merely used my own freedom of speech to point that out.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

            And incredibly crude Goebbels-speak at that. Which makes me despair of anyone above 15 who would take it at face value.

            It just goes to show how far standards have fallen.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 2:40 pm #

            @greenalba
            Do you actually have freedom of speech in England?
            By proxy being an apologist for Islam does not make you part of Dar al-islam rather you fit into the category of Dhimmitude and firmly in the other part of the three worlds dar al-harb the land still at war soon to be dar al-sulh.
            If you don’t know these terms you should since England is rolling over to the Islamic version of Reconquista.
            Tell me does England have no go zone yet like France?

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:54 pm #

            benr

            Free speech refers to your right to say what you want without the government being able to bang you up for it. That’s all.

            It doesn’t mean you can write suggestive, fact-free shite and expect people not to comment on it.

            “Tell me does England have no go zone yet like France?”

            What a shame your memory is so short, benr.

            opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/misinformed-expert-or-misinformation-network/

            “Within the Counterjihad movement, the major propagator of the Islamic ‘no go zones’ myth has been the New York based think tank, the Gatestone Institute, an organisation chaired by the Bush era diplomat and foreign policy hardliner, John Bolton.

            “In August 2011, Gatestone published an article by its senior fellow, Soeren Kern, claiming that ‘Islamic extremists’ were creating areas ‘off-limits to non-Muslims’ that functioned ‘as microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law’. It referred to the then 751 ‘Sensitive Urban Zones’ officially designated by the French Government. These neighbourhoods, many of which are located in Greater Paris, are characterised by high proportions of public housing, higher rates of poverty and unemployment, and are inhabited by a high proportion of immigrants and ethnic minorities. Kern claimed in the piece that the French state had ‘lost control’ of such areas, where an ‘estimated 5 million Muslims live’.

            “[T]housands of Muslims,’ in these neighbourhoods, Kern wrote, ‘are closing off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, are closing down local businesses and trapping non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for Friday prayers’. Gatestone’s claims about France’s Sensitive Urban Zones appear to have originated with the influential neoconservative commentator, Daniel Pipes, who in a periodically updated blog first posted in November 2006 wrote of the ‘751 No-Go Zones of France’ with large Muslim populations.

            “Pipes would later travel to several Muslim majority neighbourhoods in Europe, including a number of French suburbs, and having done so expressed regret (in January 2013) at having described them as ‘no-go zones’. In reality, he found such areas were ‘unthreatening, routine places’, ‘very mild, even dull’ compared to impoverished urban neighbourhoods in the United States, ‘buildings are intact, greenery abounds, and order prevails’.

            Fox News had to apologise publicly for spreading the ‘no-go zones thing too. They actually apologised, benr. Google it.

            The thing is, though, we were talking about the fire in Notre Dame.

            The fire in Notre Dame, benr. Are we getting anywhere yet?

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:57 pm #

            “By proxy being an apologist for Islam”

            Calling someone who requires facts and evidence before pronouncing on the cause of a fire in a cathedral does not make anyone an apologist for Islam. I have no time at all for Islam.

            I find your reasoning levels and reading comprehension positively tragic.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:59 pm #

            *Requiring facts and evidence* before pronouncing on the cause of a fire in a cathedral does not make anyone an apologist for Islam.

            Sorry.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 3:08 pm #

            benr

            My italics and bold:

            “…Jewish victims of all the alleged anti-Semitic attacks raging through France, many of which are presumed not to have actually been committed by Jews.”

            Did you like that bit too? He’s cute, this guy, isn’t he?

          • Nightowl April 22, 2019 at 4:13 pm #

            Countering the Gatestone Institute with OpenSociet, er, I mean Opendemocracy.net.

            Um …

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 5:15 pm #

            OK, Nightowl, I hope Fox News will do you.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gorU1WztIGw

            And they only apologised because they had to, otherwise they’d have carried on spouting their no-go-zones crap.

            And people swallow this stuff like it was George’s Marvellous Medicine.

        • Nightowl April 23, 2019 at 3:13 am #

          Didn’t comment on whether no-go zones are real or not. And I don’t watch any corporate media.

          • benr April 24, 2019 at 10:45 am #

            Charlie Hebdo staff and Theo Van Gogh might argue that Fox News saying sorry was a smart thing to do!

    • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

      malthuss

      Back when I was young you could have presented those three paragraphs to an English class of 15-year olds (or younger) in a grammar school and it would have taken them 10 minutes to tear it apart and have a good laugh at the crassness of its manipulative use of the English language to create presumption out of absolutely nothing.

      I don’t think standards are quite so high now among 15-year olds – and presumably among much of the rest of the population either – which might be some sort of excuse for you dumping it on here and thinking it has some sphincter-strainingly tenuous passing acquaintance with anything recognisable as ‘evidence’ of what it would like to have you believe. Obviously it had no challenge in respect of your good self, for reasons that should be obvious.

      I guess these days young first-year Media Studies students would still be able to show it up for what it is in five minutes flat. I’d like to think so, given the derision with which the very existence of their subject of study has been met over the years (even in me). It has to be good for something.

      Perhaps you could get Mr Mueller to try to make something print-worthy out of it?

      • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

        Shoot the messenger, you nasty thing,

        What almost escaped notice entirely is the fact 875 churches were vandalized last year in France,

        • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 12:59 pm #

          And what entirely escaped your notice is that you don’t have the slightest evidence of any of it being anything to do with Muslims.

          I gave you a relevant link last time. Perhaps you could go back and look at it. It’s the one yer man is alluding to above but won’t link to, because the Church historian who wrote it actually has some credibility.

          Messengers have a responsibility for the integrity of their message. Or are you in the habit of shouting ‘fire’ in full theatres?

          I don’t need to lower myself to your level with the unpleasant epithets.

          • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 4:29 pm #

            you don’t have the slightest evidence of any of it being anything to do with Muslims. – GA

            ===============

            You must remember (or take into account) that our founding fathers got away with stating “we hold these truths to be self evident.”

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 6:05 pm #

            Just so the axioms in Mathematics. Or the principles of Logic in Philosophy and every other subject, in fact.

            You have to start somewhere, accept some beginning on Faith and/or because it’s “obvious” to men of sanity and good will.

            and/or – compendium

          • Ricechex April 23, 2019 at 12:44 am #

            GA,
            Of course it has to do with Muslims. Like who else? Its not the Jews or the Asians blowing up the churches. Its not the Filipinos. Its not the Mexicans or the Spaniards. Its not the Swedes. It is not black Americans in the US. It’s not white folks from Europe or US.

            It is Muslims. Muslims blow up churches. They blow up lots of things. That is what they do.

            It is extremely disturbing that you cannot recognize this.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 7:41 am #

            Ricechex

            We are not discussing the blowing up of churches. At least I haven’t at any point.

            We’re discussing the conflagration in Notre Dame Cathedral.

            Then someone gratuitously brought in a statistic about vandalism and theft in French churches. Not blowing up churches. And the brought it up as if it proved something about the conflagration in Notre Dame.

            It’s extremely disturbing that you can’t read what’s written. Tragic, in fact. And dangerous.

            The attack in Sri Lanka, which is not long past a state of civil war, is terrorism – and absolutely mostly like Islamic terrorism. But you have any evidence that either the fire in Notre Dame or the vandalism, theft and graffiti in French churches is the fault of Muslims. No, of course you don’t. You don’t feel the remotest need for it. Just like someone giving credence to a hypothetical charge of rape against Donald Trump might say, ‘yes, but we know what he’s like around women – of course he did it.

            And I think many people from the…ahem…Christian country that the US purports to be have little historical knowledge of the deep-seated contempt in which the Catholic church in France has historically been held by large numbers of its own entirely white and entirely French citizens, due to its historic behaviour and its complicity with a greedy, selfish, cruel and narcissistic ruling class (to varying degrees at varying times).

            Five percent of French people regularly go to church. Compare that with the US. Many of those inclined to vandalism and theft will merely see an unguarded collection box and some saleable trinkets as easy pickings compared to some other things. Some of those delinquent individuals may be Muslims, but they won’t necessarily be doing it because they’re Muslims. And the church historian whose article I linked to blamed the issue on ‘militant secularists’ as well as general petty criminals – and there are way more of those in France than there are in the US, for historical reasons.

            If the ND fire turns out to be arson, and it turns out to be perpetrated by a Muslim, then you’ll be perfectly entitled to complain loudly. Until then there’s this thing called ‘innocent until proven guilty’, which gets bandied about when people find it useful and totally ignored when they don’t.

            But the other effect of spreading this stuff around the internet, in the complete absence of evidence, is that random individual Muslims and random mosques who/which are entirely minding their own private business, get targeted by right-wing extremists. This in its turn creates radicalised Muslims. But the thing is that both the Jihadis and the alt-right desperately want a clash of civilisations at even the most banal level. It’s what they both thrive on. It’s their ‘raison d’être (for your compendium, Q).

            Which is why it’s utterly reprehensible.

            Again, it’s extremely disturbing that you can’t see that.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 7:42 am #

            Sorry, nothing other than ‘Five per cent’ was meant to be bold.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 7:51 am #

            And I’ll remind you, Ricechex, that terrorism (bombs and shootings) in the UK remain dominated historically, in terms of numbers, by the IRA.

            The IRA which was heavily funded by partisan fuckwits in the US, under the auspices of the organisation NORAID.

          • Elrond Hubbard April 23, 2019 at 2:29 pm #

            Janos remains a reliable source of subliminal gross-out comedy. This time it’s axioms of convenience. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: whenever 875 churches in France get vandalized, Muslims are to blame.”

            Why bother with empirical facts when you can declare your prejudices to be tautological? Fortunately, the founding fathers were able to make theirs stick, while Janos is not.

      • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

        The whole grammar thing is just meant to distract from your very important point.

        • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:02 pm #

          SSL

          Please do point out where I said anything about grammar.

          And:

          SoftStarLight
          April 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm #
          Its a very serious proposal by those talking about it and they intend to make it reality. Facts don’t matter. Facts will be pieced together to support whatever decisions they make. Sort of like the way everything else is done in Washington.

          Indeed, SSL. Facts don’t matter one whit.

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:43 pm #

            Well you mentioned a grammar school in your post above and how malthuss’ post would be torn apart so isn’t that bringing grammar up?

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:19 pm #

            Gawd Almighty, SSL. I see now I was right about the reading comprehension levels between then and now. Sorry.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:40 pm #

            I shouldn’t have been mean. You probably didn’t go to a Grammar School 🙂 .

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school

            Grammar Schools were those you used to get into by passing the 11+ exam. in your last year of Primary School. Hence the pupils who were cleverer – principally at English-and-Maths-related activities – went to Grammar School. Nowadays they’re pretty much for the very comfortable in very comfortable neighbourhoods, with a few poorer bright sparks thrown in for good measure. Not so many since their parents can’t afford the personal tutoring that’s involved now for the few worthy Grammar Schools that are left (back in my day we didn’t even get homework from school and we managed fine).

            Hence I meant that a reasonably bright 15-year-old wouldn’t have any trouble recognising propaganda purporting to be information. They would be used to reading a text and teasing out what its purpose was, among other things.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:42 pm #

            ‘Critical reading’ I think they used to call it, if I remember correctly.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 2:47 pm #

            and yet you think the BBC is not just another arm of a co-intel propaganda wing program?
            Comprehension deficit aside really?
            Tin foil hat guys are telling more truths than any of the major fake news propaganda wings.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 3:11 pm #

            benr

            Do point me to anything I’ve ever said that suggests the BBC is entirely bias-free and entirely as independent as it claims.

            I think you’ll find Finca and Elysianfield are far more prone to quoting the BBC than I am.

            You’re getting desperate now.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 3:15 pm #

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDYba0m6ztE

            You might like a bit of humour. Again, can’t hear to check, but I think it’s got a bit of ‘BBC’ and ‘science’ in it for you.

            Dara’s a comedian with a physics degree, BTW.

          • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 1:28 am #

            No Alba no grammar school for me. Just high school :-).

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 6:42 am #

            Mine was a high school too, SSL. Just called itself the ***** ******** High School for Girls’. For girls!! It just happened to be a grammar school according to the provisions of the system.

            And we didn’t do grammar all the time. But we did do a lot in first year to prepare us for learning Latin, 99.9% of which I’ve entirely forgotten.

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

      Those who turn a blind eye will eventually be consumed by the fires of jihad themselves.

      • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

        SSL

        Please stop changing the subject and engaging in presumption without foundation.

        • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:43 pm #

          How did I change the subject?

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:17 pm #

            You changed the subject of the actual cause of an actual fire in an actual cathedral, which is unknown, to your usual rant about jihad. There is, as yet no connection whatsoever. Except in minds that cannot cope with the idea that reality might not fit their beloved narratives.

            It may turn out to have been arson. It may not. It most likely will not. But there is no evidence of any Muslim connection. No evidence. I don’t get how you don’t get that. Did you excuse the innuendo of the whole Mueller inquiry or not? Did you think the Dems were right to pursue their hobby horse just because they wanted it all to be true?

          • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

            8745 churches that she doesnt want to think about.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 5:37 pm #

            Crikey that sure is a lot of churches to think about, malthuss. Maybe they’re breeding.

            On a serious note, could I make a suggestion, perhaps? There seems to be a pattern here. JHK produces a column on any topic and hardly any distance into it up you pop with something about Muslims, or in this case a cathedral fire with no evidence at all of a connection with Muslims but where you keenly desire to make a connection with Muslims. There are a few other people who do it too. But yours are the most random and egregious.

            Now, I don’t have any time for Islam per se. And, like every sane person, I find militant Islam utterly vile and sick.

            But I also generally find the notion of attributing literal truth to ancient holy books – any ancient holy books – concocted by relatively primitive people beyond foolish.That way lies trouble. And sometimes complete madness.

            And I think it would be polite if you didn’t drag this subject into every single thread at the earliest opportunity.

          • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 7:21 pm #

            Wow Alba, they’re coming at you from all sides. You’re holding your own, however. Puts me in mind of Horatius At The Bridge. Well done.

          • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:33 pm #

            Coming at her?
            Holding her own?
            No just trying to understand why someone that appears reasonably intelligent can’t connect the dots that common sense dictates are being scatter shot to the universe.
            Looks like a duck.
            Quacks like a duck.
            Eats like a duck
            Walks like a duck.
            Swims like a duck.
            It must be a chicken huh?

          • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 11:47 pm #

            Now, I don’t have any time for Islam per se. – GA

            ==============

            Both you and Janos enjoy the occasional use of per se and its first cousin as such to lend an air of erudition to whatever point it is that your making. Both are hereby admitted to the compendium.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 6:19 am #

            I’m far from the only one to use per se on here and I don’t think there’s a single thing wrong with it. I suppose you don’t use the abbreviated form of exempli gratia</i or nota bene yourself, Q? Does that make you pretentious? Some Latin, French and German words and phrases, in particular, are utterly accepted into the English language as ‘borrowed words’ and per se is one of them.

            I could use Janos’ other, more annoying version ‘in and of itself’ if you prefer 🙂

            I’m not using it to lend an air of erudition but because it succinctly expresses what I want to express. And you’re implicitly insulting the readership in suggesting they don’t see it as entirely normal too.

            But it’s your compendium so go ahead.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 6:30 am #

            Thank you, Captain. I try. Mostly what I try to combat is people arguing that I’m arguing something I’m not arguing at all. I make no apologies for an education that required clear use of English and an attempt at all times to respond to what something actually says rather than what someone wants to project on to it.

            To read some of the stuff aimed at me, you’d think I loved Jihadists, open borders, attacks on churches, sharia law, endless taxes, mandatory vaccination, unnecessary limitations on civil liberties, weird street gender-bending parties, and a whole lot of other things that I have not one time defended or proposed.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 11:06 am #

            I’m not using it to lend an air of erudition – Green A

            ===========

            Yes, in YOUR case I’m being unfair (I’m less sure about Janos). Your use of per se I’m sure is as natural as breathing… but I will bet big money that not 1 in 10 American citizens, when caught off guard without a dictionary, could define per se or as such.

            Thanks for those two Latin source expressions…I had no idea. I learn new stuff from you almost daily.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 11:18 am #

            Q-Shtik

            A daft story regarding nota bene from my teaching days.

            I was taking a foundation level class (lowest stream, academically) of 15-year-olds (from memory). I wrote some French grammar notes on the blackboard and used ‘N.B.’ before thinking I probably shouldn’t have with that class, although that in itself is patronising – learning is good.

            Pupil 1: What’s ‘N.B.’ mean, Miss?

            Me: It just means take special note. It’s from something
            Latin. Don’t worry about it, it’s just a convention (immediately thought ‘why did I use that word in this class?’).

            Pupil 2: what’s a convention, Miss?

            Pupil 3: is that something you go to, Miss?

            Me: Well, yes, it can be that, but…

            Pupil 4: Is it something nuns go to, Miss?

          • Elrond Hubbard April 23, 2019 at 2:52 pm #

            Never mind these clods, GA. Please carry on using per se or what have you, for as long as you please.

            However, you should be worried if you ever find yourself using the word anent even semi-seriously. Anent is the preposition of choice for the full-of-shit, neckbearded autodidact. It’s a shibboleth perfectly suited for sophomoric YouTube philosophizers with three video views, two of which are their mom.

            In the past hundred years, exactly one writer has employed the word ‘anent’ without subjecting himself to ridicule. That writer is H.P. Lovecraft and he was, dare I say, sui generis. There are no more Lovecrafts and none of us should try.

        • Majella April 23, 2019 at 6:26 pm #

          Green Alba

          Like capt spaulding, I’m impressed with your tenacity in here! You’re constantly fighting against the cascading ignorance of people with minds set in concrete. Horatio, indeed! But I doubt there will ever be a victory in such a battle against fascist, close-minded and ill-informed discourse, not even a Pyhrric one.

  8. Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 10:30 am #

    >>> I’d like to see congress pass one simple law requiring all medical service “providers” in the land to publicly post the price of all their services, from the cost of heart transplants down to those $90 Tylenols they dispense.

    Socialists like Bernie Sanders point to healthcare in the USA as a failure of capitalism, and claim that sustainable socialist-style healthcare for all is possible—even for illegal aliens who have never paid into the system.

    Meanwhile, the reality is that we’ve never had capitalist-style healthcare in the USA. Capitalism requires free markets, and that’s not possible when the value of something is unknown until after consumption. Indeed, markets are the best mechanism we have for determining value.

    Dems want to pursue another 20,000-page legislative boondoggle, instead of implementing a one-page piece of common sense.

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

      And the truth is they really want the diect power to determine who lives and who dies.

      • Majella April 23, 2019 at 6:36 pm #

        Oh no! The ‘Death Panels” of Sarah Palin are revenant!

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:19 am #

          What else is rationed care within the context of a financially strapped, worn, resource starved system? Free, quality healthcare can be achieved the way you want it to be. But it won’t ever be in 2019 open borders USA. The Nordic countries prove that it is achievable but they don’t hide the fact that the taxes required to pay for it are very high. And these are small countries with advanced economies and healthy GDP. Corruption, profiteering and the added complexities of an incohesive society, massive income disparities, and a system that is too big and spread too thin are major roadblocks for establishing a similar healthcare system in the US. Until those issues are addressed any medicare for all type policy can only lead to rationed care and death panels.

          • Majella April 24, 2019 at 9:53 pm #

            SSL: “And the truth is they really want the diect power to determine who lives and who dies.”

            This is simply outrageous bullshit, manufactured and spread over the landscape by nasty-minded neo-fascists (i.e. hard-core Republicans). It’s like the fake “full-term abortion” trope being peddled by the same people.

            As to what n ungodly mess the US has become:

            “Corruption, profiteering and the added complexities of an incohesive society, massive income disparities, and a system that is too big and spread too thin are major roadblocks for establishing a similar healthcare system in the US.”

            Whatever happened to ‘This is the Greatest Country on Earth!”? Sounds like a 3rd world shithole country by THAT description…

            As well, it is defeatist talk, You’re right about the rorts & corruption in the current US healthcare model, but that’s no reason not to at least TRY to bring some sanity & fairness into it.

            After WW2, Britain established its National Health Service:

            https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/nhs-history-pay-healthcare-free/

            It was facing the same sorts of pressures working against it at the time – mainly the reluctance of doctors (and dentists) to becoming “state employees”.

            ‘Between 1946 and its introduction in 1948, the British Medical Association (BMA) mounted a vigorous campaign against this proposed legislation. In one survey of doctors carried out in 1948, the BMA claimed that only 4,734 doctors out of the 45,148 polled, were in favor of a National Health Service”

            The hospitals of the time were sort of ‘for profit’ as well, run as a semi-charity for those poorest and administered by ‘Almonders’ who determined one’s ability to pay. It was crappy but probably still a better system than the current US model.

            It is entirely possible to go to a single-payer healthcare system in the US. It simply needs the words “from age 65” removed from the Medicare legislation.

            Private insurance doesn’t need to be abolished – if you want to keep paying a high premium (higher than the taxes required to fund medicare for you & your family) by all means, go ahead.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 12:55 pm #

      Free Market =Law of the Fish/Jungle = Big Fish eats Little = Oh Calcutta conditions for America.

      Run America like a Business! Means mass starvation and revolution. This guy is the Enemy.

      • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 1:25 pm #

        Free Market = Two guys haggling over the price of a gun.

        National Socialism = Government telling you the price of everything with a gun aimed at your face.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:55 pm #

          Free Market: One guy with bread demanding that people sell themselves into slavery to get some. Hint: The Coat of Many Colors is the Rainbow. And what is Color but the crucifixion of Light? Or the denial of the Same?

          Democracy: A wolf and a herd of sheep with uzis deciding on what’s not for lunch.

          Everything? Not everything. Just essentials. Otherwise, Calcutta/Brazil North.

          • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 2:07 pm #

            >>> Democracy: A wolf and a herd of sheep with uzis

            LOL. Show me any socialist democracy where the “sheep” get Uzi’s. Heck the sheeple in the UK are not even permitted to carry shears…

            >>> Everything? Not everything. Just essentials.

            Just everything that would let you live your life free from government intrusion.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

            Each man alone. Easy pickins for the Boone Pickens or the Bone pickers. Watch Bone Tomahawk. We would have never taken North America from them with your mindset. And now we lose it for the same reason.

            In Contrast, T.S Elliot said:

            Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
            Waited for rain, while the black clouds
            Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
            The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
            Then spoke the thunder
            DA
            Datta: what have we given?
            My friend, blood shaking my heart
            The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
            Which an age of prudence can never retract
            By this, and this only, we have existed
            Which is not to be found in our obituaries
            Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
            Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
            In our empty rooms
            DA
            Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
            Turn in the door once and turn once only
            We think of the key, each in his prison
            Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
            Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
            Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
            DA
            Damyata: The boat responded
            Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
            The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
            Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
            To controlling hands

            I sat upon the shore
            Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
            Shall I at least set my lands in order?
            London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
            Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
            Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
            Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
            These fragments I have shored against my ruins
            Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
            Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
            Shantih shantih shantih

            From What the Thunder said, part of the Waste Land

          • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 2:26 pm #

            Janos you always imply that individual liberty somehow means a nation of loners divided. What you don’t get is that FREE ASSOCIATIONS are stronger than forced ones. Your socialist utopia is just a bunch of citizens going through the motions to avoid being shot by the state. Look what happened to the USSR: no terror, no union.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 6:01 pm #

            Like we have now, right? Lol. Companies that demand Loyalty from their employees but give none in return.

    • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 11:48 pm #

      you’re making

  9. SW April 22, 2019 at 10:31 am #

    While the “best and the brightest” in DC wring their hands and wail about the Russian, the Deplorables are crushed under escalating medical costs. A friend’s son got a prescription for an old antidepressant (Anafranil) that’s been out of patent for years and the co-pay –CO-PAY – was $4300. I guess the Affordable Care Act forgot to make health care affordable. This medication had worked well for him 15 years ago when it was $15/month supply. It seems the corruption in every service is now systemic and institutionalized.

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:49 pm #

      And intentionally in place to transfer any money that peons have to the uber rich. You do have to admit they are good at it. They do this in everyone’s face and there aren’t even peaceful demonstrations in the street. So why should they stop?

      • Majella April 23, 2019 at 6:40 pm #

        Gee, SSL…Bernie would see to it that this blatant theft we at least exposed, if not halted. Your disappointment with Trump may lead you into throwing in with someone who gives a shit about other people.

        On that note re: your disappointment in Trump – if he is, in fact, the GOP candidiate in 2020 (barring impeachment, resignation or assassination) would you hold your nose and vote for him anyway?

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:27 am #

          Bernie is no saint either. He isn’t very charitable. Certainly not as much as Trump is. And he is a millionaire somehow. But time will tell. I am hoping Andrew Yang will run against Trump. But that is a long shot. I certainly will not vote for any open borders advocates.

          • Majella April 24, 2019 at 10:23 pm #

            Bernie isn’t as charitable as Trump? Show me the indicators as to Trump’s charitable works. Bernie wrote a couple of books and they sold well, and his income shot up! Lucky him…but it’s nothing to bash him with.

            “The Sanders gave $18,950 to charity in cash and other gifts in 2018, a little more than half of their $36,300 in giving in 2017. The Sanders gave $10,600 in 2016 but before that, their yearly giving never topped $10,000.”

            Back before 2016, there was only Bernie’s Senate salary of $174,000 & Jane OMear Sanders $160,000 (at least until 2011). Both get Social Security too, I guess.

            How do we know this? from his Tax Returns! If we ever get to see Trump’s taxes, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that he’ll have given NOTHING in the last 10 years. You can count on it.

  10. malthuss April 22, 2019 at 10:32 am #

    Houses were affordable. College was affordable [and students averaged IQ of 110, and were Yts [whiteys]]
    Then Gov showed up. Loan games.

    In the background lay the ticking time bombs of health care, college loan debt, and pension funds.

    Are those 3 time bombs? Or just ways of keeping a sinking boat afloat, for now?

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 2:09 pm #

      I looked up the call for an uprising channel on youtube. Very interesting! Maybe the Notre Dame fire was a ritual. Maybe the Las Vegas massacre was a blood sacrifice. We have never even been given a motive. So many unanswered questions and why?

  11. RB April 22, 2019 at 10:33 am #

    Pick your poison. Personally, I like the superbug scenario whereby hordes of people from all age groups develop infections that are incurable and will have to be cremated by government decree. But, it is exciting to know that the self-driving cars will enable an infected person to drive to the ER. Will a college graduate handle the valet parking? Will parking garages soon be filled up? These are questions that keep me awake. How do you empty a parking garage of abandoned cars?

    I have occasionally read that some of the “wetbacks” and “drybacks” are bringing new infectious diseases with them. TB? Coming to a city near you. But hey, these are our modern values. Come one, come all. It’s enough to make you consume an opioid.

    The shit is piling up in Seattle and San Francisco. You have typhus in LA. Wait for it though, there are grim times ahead and you will hear bells ringing to bring out your dead. The grim reaper will have a job even if college grads don’t.

    The same congress working the Trump issue is the same crew who will solve your health problems.

    • DEFCON1 April 22, 2019 at 10:45 am #

      Climate disaster stands a good chance of releasing old charmers like the bubonic plague and the Spanish Flu. Recently a reindeer thawed out after many years are released anthrax, sickening herds and people alike.

      Add it to the list of coming attractions. It’s ok though – the Koch brothers are getting richer.

      • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 10:53 am #

        As are all the neo-lib rich boys. Do not politicize the Elite, the Left is just as culpable or more so!

      • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:46 pm #

        So its climate disaster and not a warming disaster?

        • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 2:10 pm #

          I think at this stage it’s a basic human psychology disaster.

          But other than that I don’t understand why you keep repeating the AGW/climate change thing as if you don’t understand the difference. Unless you genuinely aren’t able to understand the difference. If I haven’t made it clear enough to you already I can try again.

          But basically all you’re proving is how the disingenuous denier mind works. But we’ve already covered that under the basic human psychology bit. Personality types and such.

          • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 2:33 pm #

            GreenAlba’s been very clear! First it’s gonna get hot, then cold. Or something like that.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 6:30 pm #

            “First it’s gonna get hot, then cold.”

            Yes, that’s fair enough. Thanks, Exscotticus.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 11:51 pm #

          And every day it’s light and then dark. She’s been right about that too. Cycles! Like the ones on Scottish (not English!) washing machines.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 6:09 am #

            Cycles. Yes, indeed, Janos. Glacial periods and interglacials. Except that we’re somewhat buggering up the current interglacial to our own detriment.

            And my washing machine is a Bosch. And my fridge-freezer is a Siemens. Say what you like about the Germans – they make things that work and last. Just as well I won’t need another one for an exceedingly long time.

    • Farmer Joe April 22, 2019 at 11:10 am #

      I heard the other day that there is a serious problem developing with hepatitis A among the homeless in Seattle.

      • BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 1:28 pm #

        Many exotic diseases we thought were eradicated inside the USA are making a vengeful comeback, and we are seeing new and exotic infectious diseases we could never have imagined … coming in from the fetid jungles of Central America to a town near you.

        Typhus in LA. The massive populations living rough on the streets of west coast cities, and defecating on the sidewalks enmasse, are another public health crisis entirely different from unvaccinated illegals coming in across the border. The only similarity is lefty pols endorse both groups and see them as political allies. Who cares about the diseases they are spreading, which is nothing more than a fearmongering right wing talking point.

        Ebola resurgent in the Congo; several dozen Congo citizens detained at the US/Mexico border last week. Don’t be surprised when Ebola breaks out in the Southwest US this summer.

        Brh

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

      In others words, prepare for your demise. Obviously the Elite can’t bother with keeping the population safe from previously eliminated diseases. There is simply too much money to make keeping the doors wide open!

    • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 12:57 pm #

      The self driving cars will be locked with a click of a mouse, becoming prisons and coffins for their occupants. Oh Brave New World!

      • Nightowl April 22, 2019 at 4:20 pm #

        They are already barring people from banking and other services in the States, based on nothing more than social media. In China, a low social credit score gets you barred from nearly everything.

        Why not add cars that won’t start to the mix?

        • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:48 pm #

          Can you site that source for China social media scores?

          • Nightowl April 23, 2019 at 3:21 am #

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SoFe3n5MnU

            Re: Chinese social credit scores and travel bans.

            The social media thing, however, was a reference to the US, where Chase bank has suspended banking for some outspoken Twitter personalities.

      • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 6:03 am #

        “The self driving cars will be locked with a click of a mouse,”

        That can already be done with a normal car. I’m a member of a City Car Club (now run by Entreprise, who I believe are from over your way). I hardly ever use it but I’ve twice locked up a car and signed myself out with my smart card then realised I’ve left something inside. I just need to phone the helpline, tell them what I’ve done and they unlock the car for me there and then, then lock it when I tell them I’m out with my stuff. Magic. Saves me re-reserving it for another 15 mins and paying £1.50 to get my stuff out.

        That’s an interesting thought though, in terms of its implications.

  12. Elrond Hubbard April 22, 2019 at 10:33 am #

    Aimee Therese and Benjamin Studebaker take apart the idea of reparations from the left:

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-libertarian-origins-of-reparations/id1454736929?i=1000430999757

    The concept of reparations here and now, for the descendants of 19th-century slaves, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. First, it’s premised on a highly transactional idea of reparative justice — the idea that there’s a precise dollar amount that somehow exactly extinguishes any and all claims, no matter what those claims consist of. The fact that everything now works according to this kind of market fundamentalism is the main source of the stress that’s pulling American society apart.

    Second, lots of people are going to object to being tasked to fund an economic transfer to a single group. The political right understands this intuitively and see the political uses of that indignation, while liberals keep getting snookered into taking it seriously. As JHK points out, why stop at slavery? Also, shouldn’t anyone descended from an immigrant who arrived in the USA after 1865 be excluded? Exactly how is the degree of responsibility to be quantified: by age, ancestry, blood quantum? (That last is intended as dark humour, BTW.)

    In short, reparations for slavery has never been a serious proposal. It has only ever been a rhetorical tool used by the right to gin up indignation and push their agenda (such as the end of welfare back in the 1990s). The real way to provide ‘reparations’ for past sins is to address the structural problems in society that reflect the legacy of those sins.

    • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:50 am #

      No way to fix any of that in a free will society.
      You are free to work as hard as you like and make as much money as your drive and skill will allow.

      My Grandmothers side (moms)family can trace it’s origin to a Manning that came over on the mayflower and my Dads mom was almost full blood Cherokee and his dad was a Dutchman that helped establish New Amsterdam aka now called New York.
      Neither side ever held slaves or fought for the confederacy they did how ever fight and die to free slaves. My dads side of the family has Served, fought and or died in every war since this country was founded.
      I refuse to pay reparations and the entire idea is ludicrous anyone even mentioning this should be punched in the mouth for the race baiting POS they are.

    • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 10:58 am #

      As minorities are obsessed with their minority-ness, reparations would change nothing. Whatever given would never be enough.

      Many voted for Obama hoping to improve race relations. How did that work out?

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 11:19 am #

      Reparations are a political crock of crap. Caucasians, get your head out of your butts on this one.

      The Blacks sent their own to the New World. Competing dominant tribes sold the losers to slave traders in Africa. The resultant slaves were sent to a new land where they were subjugated for 300 years or so. One consequence was the exposure to the US culture which changed them. An African-American bears no more similarity to an African Black than a Caucasian in the US. The American Black owes their relative positive economic position to their involvement with the common culture of the US. They also owe their freedom to hundreds of thousands whiteys who fought to free them during the civil war. Preservation of the Union was the rallying cry at the beginning of the war, but as things dragged out, it became the elimination of slavery that became number one.

      The Common Culture owes nothing to any ethnic group in the US. Life is competition and always has been. The American experience is one of controlled competition between people while protecting them by the rule of law. And so far, no other form of human governance has gotten even close. Reparations are just another mechanism by the Globalists and their Dem lackeys to stir the racial pot and create hatred between folks in the US to weaken us.

      Blacks, get your heads out of your butts and fight back against these anti-America forces. They do not care for you one whit beyond fooling you for your votes. Think about it, what have the Liberals done for you to improve your lot?

    • elysianfield April 22, 2019 at 11:53 am #

      “The concept of reparations here and now, for the descendants of 19th-century slaves, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

      Elrond,
      You are looking for rational sense? Are you serious? Reparations has nothing to do with “sense”.

      “In short, reparations for slavery has never been a serious proposal.”

      Again, you have never EVER spoken to our dusky brothers about this subject…they are serious.

      “The real way to provide ‘reparations’ for past sins is to address the structural problems in society that reflect the legacy of those sins.”

      Yes!!! Affirmative action, Title 8, SNAP payments along with other transfer payments that have amounted to Trillions in the last 50 years. We need to pass something new…something definitive. How about a Civil Rights Act to set things right?

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

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

        Yeah, I’ve often been amazed at how provincial Liberals are – many don’t really know any minorities, or just the select well behaving few who are high functioning. But even they often hate YT deep in their heart of hearts and identify with their ghetto/barrio brothers.

        • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 4:55 pm #

          I like that you post ‘YT’–I think thats the first you have used that term.
          You mean the Blacks hide a hate for YT. Its not clear from yr post.

      • Elrond Hubbard April 22, 2019 at 1:34 pm #

        Until somebody invents the flux capacitor, we’ll never be able to go back and see what would have happened had none of those policies been implemented, elysianfield. I’ll tell you what would have made a big difference, though: if the New Deal hadn’t depended on support from Dixiecrats back in the 1930s. FDR likely would have preferred all working Americans to benefit from his policies, but his party was also the one that held the white-supremacist portfolio at the time. So, access to federal programs that promoted home ownership and built the middle class was systematically denied to people of colour.

        Those who did try to build equity were frequently subject to predatory lending. For no particular reason, to have dark skin was to be considered a poor credit risk, so banks often wouldn’t lend to them. Instead of traditional mortgages, would-be homeowners were enticed to sign agreements whereby missing even a single payment would see them lose their house and their investment.

        Consequently, African Americans were largely excluded from the opportunity to build wealth via home ownership, during the most prosperous period in American history. The alternative that was afforded to them was the kind of public housing that should need no introduction around here. Contrary to stereotype, black people are neither lazy nor stupid. They saw how opportunities eluded them; they saw how others, who worked no harder than they did and were no more deserving, built generational wealth by moving out to the suburbs while they were left behind in the cities, holding an empty bag. It’s small wonder rioting took hold in those same cities in the late sixties and early seventies.

        • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 3:06 pm #

          Elrond’s class warfare universe.

          Asians were also systematically denied opportunities to “build generational wealth”. Heck, 120k were even interned during WWII—for no other reason than being of Japanese descent.

          Yet look at Asian Americans now. So successful that Harvard has to actively discriminate against them to prevent the entire university from going yellow.

          Now let’s consider blacks. Well they’ve certainly built “generational wealth” too; black-majority cities like Detroit and Baltimore and Memphis abound. But they’re not exactly wealthy as a class, are they?

          Tell us, Elrond, what stops a black kid, living in a black neighborhood, with black teachers, in a black-majority city, in which blacks control the government, from succeeding in school? Racial discrimination?

        • elysianfield April 22, 2019 at 3:12 pm #

          “Those who did try to build equity were frequently subject to predatory lending. For no particular reason, to have dark skin was to be considered a poor credit risk”

          Elrond,
          Historically, they WERE a credit risk. Was it wrong to paint an individual with the same brush as the demographic? Certainly. Was it morally wrong? Yes. Was it a sound business decision, considering the information available? Yes

          “Consequently, African Americans were largely excluded from the opportunity to build wealth via home ownership, during the most prosperous period in American history”

          Elrond, in the late 60’s, in the vast Oakland Ghetto, black home ownership was significant. You seem wedded to that which you read. Better you should have some practical experience in the matter.

          On another note. Is it possible, measured by a percentage, that blacks are where they are because of their corrupt culture?
          The poverty, the incarceration rate, the crime? C’mon, can you give it even a few percent?

          Or are you 100% correct in your worldview…one gained without direct experience? Without argument…without wisdom?

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

      Its a very serious proposal by those talking about it and they intend to make it reality. Facts don’t matter. Facts will be pieced together to support whatever decisions they make. Sort of like the way everything else is done in Washington.

  13. MiddlePeninsula April 22, 2019 at 10:43 am #

    The medical racket is atrocious. I constantly go get injections in my foot and will continue to do so until I go through the protocol. I guess they have to extract the requisite number of $40 co-pays before they’ll do something meaningful.
    Between injections, I’ve considered taking matters into my own hands and cutting the nerve out myself. Indeed, there are numerous videos on it. May work out on a foot, but certainly not a heart bypass. After all, I know my limitations.

  14. Farmer Joe April 22, 2019 at 10:43 am #

    “We may even discover that the opioid epidemic has been the only thing keeping the immiserated denizens of Flyover-land from resorting to violent insurrection.” JHK

    We may also discover that the opioid epidemic has been the only thing keeping the economy and the various tentacles of the government afloat.

    Before anyone calls me paranoid…

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/afghanistan-the-worlds-largest-opium-producer/5596034

    • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:53 am #

      Common knowledge we had federal government employees guarding poppy fields. Some are actually used for legal medications believe it or not.

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 11:30 am #

      Farmer Joe

      Read In the Shadow of a Presidency by Daniel Estulin.

      He identifies the entire drug trade as the monetary element that is keeping the entire world financial Ponzi scheme afloat.

      Imagine, stopping the drug trade stopping the international financial markets. How? By eliminating the liquidity required to pay all the minimum payments that stop the calling in of all those loans.

      Wonder why they want to eliminate Trump. He is the guy that wants to funnel US liquidity into US interests instead of the toxic international schemes.

      Think about it.

      • benr April 22, 2019 at 11:41 am #

        One of the tipping points for the 2008 financial collapse is the fact the federal government started going after banks for laundering drug money from various cartels.

        • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 4:57 pm #

          really? have you read ‘Operation Swordfish’? [book]

          • benr April 23, 2019 at 12:47 pm #

            No.
            Should I?

      • Farmer Joe April 22, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

        It may be that intravenous drug use is part of the evil globalist plan to profit while they depopulate the planet. Get the useless eaters concentrated in unsanitary conditions, get them addicted to narcotics, and milk them dry. Then let nature take its course.

        Okay, now you can call me paranoid.

        • benr April 22, 2019 at 9:54 pm #

          You forgot pump them full of toxins, chloride and sodium fluoride, grow their food in toxic crap, pump em full of cancer viruses and take away needed vitamins. Trashed environment and living spaces.

  15. K-Dog April 22, 2019 at 10:45 am #

    In spite of progress here and there we will probably continued to slide towards some kind of Apocalypse awaiting large catastrophes to awaken us. So I don’t accept any cheap optimism. When somebody tries to convince me that in spite of all the problems that there is a light at the end of the tunnel my instant reply is yes, and it’s probably another train coming towards us.” <– Slavoj Žižek

    Thinking the deep state is going to have to account for Russiagate is wishful thinking. Using technology is not a crime in America and never will be.

    Bedazzeled and pacified; if necessary dogs barking the loudest will be vault seven-ed into silence. America will not care. America does not care where Julian Assange is now. Julian could already be bite sized doggie treats for all we know like Jamal Khashoggi is. Trump was Ok with that, remember?

    Take Russiagate off the news and it will be gone. Out of site and out of mind. Vanished like a Swedish rape victim.

    The link is to my website.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • K-Dog April 22, 2019 at 10:49 am #

      Where I have the Peterson Žižek debate posted.

  16. TiredOfTheTreadmill April 22, 2019 at 10:45 am #

    Everything in this country will be sacrificed to Wall Street and the MIC before the ship goes down. As long as there’s any oil, energy, propaganda media, and any ability to deliver any wealth whatsoever to the upper tiers of this system, the game will continue until it is broken by an unstoppable, unforeseen cause. They will take any wealth possible from the hinterlands and deliver it by horseback if needed to keep the gluttonous MIC and financial sector going. All the while the peons will get red, white and blue smoke blown up their backsides about the patriotism of the whole charade. All the while, they will keep us fighting over the scraps with left/right, capitalism/socialism, black/white, men/women, etc… bullshit debates while the corpse is picked clean. Then, they’ll incite the heavy violence so that we all fight each other over shit that doesn’t matter while the wealthy who have fleeced us watch the show. Wash, rinse, repeat.

    • venuspluto67 April 22, 2019 at 11:19 am #

      Yes, absolutely true. Of course, by then the One Percenters will retreat into fortified compounds blissfully unconcerned with the lingering, unpleasant deaths the “useless eaters” will be dying because by then they will own everything thanks to the schemes to keep the system propped up that are underway right now. But we’ve got to impeach Trumpadumpa, then everything will be just peachy-keen, right? Right??!!

      • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

        The one percenters already live in fortified and walled compounds. They also have armies of private security. They don’t worry about anything now and they won’t be worried then. A Black Swan for them however would be a foreign power that would offer to rescue the masses from the one percenter tyranny by blowing the one percenters away into oblivion. They probably have a contingency plan for this too.

      • TiredOfTheTreadmill April 22, 2019 at 11:24 pm #

        About your mention of the schemes being used to keep this system propped up. I would argue that those behind these schemes are the true dark deep state. Forget Mueller and all this political theater on public display. It’s all just stage magic to help conceal the non-public, real true dark deep state of keeping the money and power flowing the way they want it to flow. And you can be certain the direction of that flow is not downstream.

        Concerning Trump, last I recall he essentially has given the pentagon an open checkbook. Goldman Sachs runs the treasury, yet again. Billionaires have comprised much of his cabinet. What more do people need to see? Impeachment wont do a thing. The system is entrenched and the “useless eaters” readily accept their place. Which goes bavk to my original statement that this system will not change from within.

  17. Ishabaka April 22, 2019 at 11:01 am #

    Re: reparations –
    Will the Obamas be eligible?
    Will billionaire Oprah Winfrey be eligible?
    What percentage of African DNA will qualify you for reparations? 1:1,024th.?
    Has anyone given this any thought?

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 11:32 am #

      Nope!

    • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 11:46 am #

      And what about black slave owners? There were hundreds of them at least. Surely their offspring should not qualify. Although given the logic used by the gimmes, I can see these black slave owners being classified as victims, regardless.

      • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

        “In 1830 there were 3,775 free black people who owned 12,740 black slaves.”

        • CitizenG April 22, 2019 at 12:53 pm #

          Great Scot!! I heard this from a southern historian years ago and even saved the document (about fifty pages) somewhere. It just shows what a different time it truly was and how simple economics ruled the morality or lack thereof. We are the same hypocrites today but in different ways.

      • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:30 pm #

        New Orleans was filled with rich free Blacks that owned slaves. And what of the thousands of White indentured servants? Aren’t their descendants deserving of compensation?

        • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 12:37 pm #

          Weren’t most of the Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution? Should the UK pay reparations?

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:10 pm #

            Well if we wanted to be totally fair then yes the UK would need to pay out. And not just for the Pilgrims but for all subsequent immigrants fleeing persecution too.

          • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

            Hey GreenAlba, gimme my reparations!

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:52 pm #

            Funny you should say that, EF. I almost wrote a post to SSL to suggest she should try that one. Then when she went into ‘wilfully promoting hearsay’ mode on one of her pet subjects of fact-free innuendo I decided not to engage in such humorous pleasantries 🙂 .

            But do feel free. A hard Brexit will quite possibly hasten the break-up of the UK, so I’ll leave it to the English crown to sort you out as appropriate. Not my quarrel.

            I’m wondering, since it’s fashionable today, about going for the descendants of the speculators in the Darien Disaster, out of which came the need for the ‘English Gold’ that bought a country led by greedy fools (how unusual…).

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such_a_Parcel_of_Rogues_in_a_Nation

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7x3u2GHYs

            Sadly, I can’t hear it – still no sound.

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

            The thing about the Pilgrims, though, was that they weren’t exactly fleeing persecution in the way some people like to portray. Many of them just wanted somewhere where they could be a bit more religious-persecution-y themselves.

            https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/

          • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

            Sorry, Exscotticus, called you EF by mistake.

          • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 7:36 pm #

            Interestingly, the Pilgrims fled England to escape religious persecution. Immediately after establishing their settlements, they persecuted anyone who didn’t worship according to THEIR beliefs. Some things never change.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:08 pm #

          Virginia passed a Law outlawing Blacks from owning White slaves – in other words, it might have becoming a thing.

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:35 pm #

            Well you’re right, it probably would have become a thing given enough time. Free Blacks were certainly gaining enough material and social capital to make it so.

          • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 2:20 pm #

            >>> Virginia passed a Law outlawing Blacks from owning White slaves

            That is sooo racist!

          • Nightowl April 23, 2019 at 4:16 pm #

            Highlighting, as usual, that the real issue is class.

    • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 4:59 pm #

      funny.

      My ancestors fought in Revolutionary war and WW1. Do I get $,
      From Blacks who dont show much patriotism.

  18. venuspluto67 April 22, 2019 at 11:09 am #

    The reason the financial markets came bounding back after their holiday near-death experience is pretty simple: The central banks resumed their printed-money buying of equities after a roughly six-month hiatus. And if these markets now start seizing up after a mere three or four months without their printed-money heroin from the central banks, what choice do the fat-cats really have? From here on out, it’s going to be QEverlasting with a fire-hose until the printed-money infusions no longer have their desired effect. I’m guessing this will be when the fracking “bonanza” starts proving to be a lot less of a “bonanza” on account of the geologic constraints of shale-oil as an energy source.

    Of course, this will result in a multiplier effect when the markets finally do unavoidably tank, resulting in an economic crash rather more lethal than the one we would have experienced had we allowed things to take their natural course back in 2016. Think “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”! And JHK is right that when this goes down, concerns such as Donald Trump possibly being too buddy-buddy with Pooty-Wooty-Fresh-And-Fruity will seem positively trivial in comparison.

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 11:46 am #

      The larger the Ponzi balloon is allowed to expand the deeper into the economy the resultant crash will go. QE is the mechanism that the finance world has used to continue the expansion.

      The questions that beg to be answered by everybody.

      Are there limits to how big the expansion will continue before it WILL stop?

      The same question is, how big can the National Debt get before someone starts calling in the chips?

      And most critical to both

      Who or what is the grim reaper that will start the collapse?

      About 90% of all the financial activity going on today is aimed at figuring that out.

      By the way, the grim reaper in the 2008 debacle was the inability of all the ARM mortgagees to pay their monthly payments. Christian Bale’s character in The Big Short actually timed out his short by checking the expiration dates on thousands of ARM mortgages. Think anybody is doing that today?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:23 pm #

        You did this to yourself by letting such second class men – money grubbers – have this much power. You are pinching yourself and then complain about the pain. You go to the Doctor and he finds nothing wrong, except the fact that you are pinching yourself. He suggests you stop. You revile him and keep looking for a doctor who will cure you.

        Such men will never control themselves. It is simply not in their nature. And they have turned the whole system in a vast Cheat, a reflection of their hideous selves. I remind of what Christ did in the Temple. Did He not make a whip of cords and flay them? Did he not overturn their tables, crying out, My House shall be a House of Prayer. You have made it into a den of thieves?

        Can we do less? Or do you consider yourself greater than He because He never heard of Milton Friedman or the Invisible Hand?

        • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 3:49 pm #

          Did He not make a whip…
          Did he not overturn their tables

          ==========

          Into the Biblical section of the compendium

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 5:52 pm #

            And will not this Compendium be a wondrous Book, a Light unto the Nations?

          • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 1:15 am #

            I need a copy as soon as it is available please :-).

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

      So this upcoming financial/economic collapse will be engineered? It seems doubtful that any of it is unplanned.

      • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 7:42 pm #

        It doesn’t have to be engineered. As I explained above, all it requires is to follow the plans to deregulate everything, and things will unravel all by themselves.

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 1:11 am #

          You’re right Captain. Things can be left to unravel on their own once set in motion. Not everything has to be planned.

  19. EvelynV April 22, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

    A lot of verbiage that still leads to only one conclusion.

    Our turn is over, quit worrying about it. We are all gonna die and the big dog on the planet isn’t going to be us any more.

    If you haven’t found out yet, you will – getting old didn’t take nearly as long as you thought it would.

    • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

      Ain’t THAT the truth.

  20. EvelynV April 22, 2019 at 12:02 pm #

    Reparations is one of the stupidest ideas ever. It ranks right up there with devoting massive resources to preparation for war.

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    • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:27 pm #

      The Cherokee tried to keep the Black Freedmen (the descendants of their Black Slaves) out of the Tribe. Their Big Chief said presciently, “Those Freedmen will suck you dry.” The Tribe listened and voted to keep them out. But after a long fight, no doubt with much help from the other the Others, the Blacks have triumphed and are “in”.

      Woe to the Cherokee!

    • capt spaulding April 22, 2019 at 7:47 pm #

      The Aztecs (Mexicans) are still waiting for Spain to fork over some pesos for fucking up their society. Reparations for everybody, and don’t even get me started on what the Spartans owe the Helots.

  21. JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 12:04 pm #

    How the heck can the Left be talking reparations for a slavery situation violently stopped in the 1860’s when we have exactly the same situation going on right now at our southern border. Human trafficking is acknowledged by both sides to be occurring. How is it that reparations are being forwarded by the same political groups that want to keep the border open?

    Huh????

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:20 pm #

      Very good point John. And internationally speaking slavery is still alive and well in Africa and Asia. Arab Muslims are routinely capturing and enslaving Black Africans but aside from complaints by some Christian groups you don’t hear much about it.

    • venuspluto67 April 22, 2019 at 12:26 pm #

      I have a feeling the peeps who are taking this reparations crap seriously are the same ones who are hoarse from screaming “RussiaRussiaRussia” like some kind of post-modern Jan Brady.

      • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

        Marcia Marcia Marcia…why does Marcia get everything :-)????

  22. elysianfield April 22, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    Today is Earth Day! The BBC, this AM, had an article explaining how each of us could “make a difference” to save the Earth. Suggestions include;

    Bring a jar from home instead of using a disposable container for bulk foods.

    Wear used clothes from “vintage shops” such as the Salvation Army.

    Refrain from buying out-of season produce.

    And my personal favorite…using a “menstrual cup” instead of disposable sanitary products. Washable, mini-codpiece that will save thousands of acres of trees a year! CFN ladies…do your part to save the rain forests!

    I personally pledge that, if/when I reach incontinence, I will research purchasing one for myself. Everyone gotta do their part.

    • elysianfield April 22, 2019 at 12:08 pm #

      And…the link;

      https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47990742

    • BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 3:04 pm #

      E.,

      Those suggestions listed above are ‘good first step’ to Save Mother Earth and lower mean ambient temps worldwide by at least 10dF by the year 2030.

      In fact, I would elevate your list to Law, not just suggestions.

      Brh

      • elysianfield April 22, 2019 at 3:23 pm #

        BRH,
        And will we not look fine in our Goodwill duds? Imagine meeting some of our entertainment gods or sports heros while pawing through the used workpants.

        Someone has a plan for us to accept our lower standard of living and ultimate penury…TO SAVE THE EARTH!

        Thank you, sweet Jesus!!!!

      • Farmer Joe April 23, 2019 at 12:11 am #

        This reminds me of the title of a book I read in college.

        “As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial”

        It might be up your alley.

  23. SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 12:07 pm #

    Since we are talking reparations I most certainly hope that we will be discussing reparations for Southern Whites whose land and property was seized by the federal government after the Civil War.

  24. ozone April 22, 2019 at 12:34 pm #

    “Act Two will be the circular firing squad of former officials assassinating each other’s character to desperately avoid prosecution.” — JHK

    From what I’m seeing, I seriously doubt this. Perhaps a gaggle of lower level apparatchiks will get their livelihoods ruined, but the need for a “Russia Done It!” narrative that will ‘unite’ Boobus Americanus against a common enemy looks like the most immediate concern of the string-pullers. Look to what Bag-Boy Barr said [parroted] on the subject of Russian meddling and you’ll get the idea.

    “Next up: a national debate over reparations for slavery in the never-ending quest to monetize moral posturing. Won’t that be a mighty string of knots to untangle?” — JHK

    Unworkable, as you indicate. Guess we’ll have to settle for carefully husbanded grievances and grudges accompanied by much whining, bitching, fist-shaking and spittle-spraying. In other words, “the usual”.

    “That circus won’t stop until America gets whapped upside the head by economic reality and, really, who is paying attention to that? The shale oil “miracle” has put even the superstars of economic commentary to sleep, though the quandary in plain sight is that the mighty flow of shale oil doesn’t pencil out as a money-making enterprise, and the whole project is destined to fall part even more rapidly than in the decade since it was ramped up.” — JHK

    Who’s paying attention? Well, *some* of us (yourself included), but perhaps not enough to make any impact by the withdrawal of our ‘consent’ as signified by profligate wasting of our tiny store of funds.
    Although this article is “opinion” it seems well-researched:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-20/shale-stock-losses-99-its-value-investor-warning-future-industry

  25. CitizenG April 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm #

    I was surfing the web and found this gem.

    In this short video, AOC outlines how she will solve just about all the seemingly hopeless dilemmas that have manifested in the US.

    Enjoy!

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

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    • EvelynV April 22, 2019 at 1:02 pm #

      Absolute confirmation AOC is mentally and personality-wise superior to every single republican in congress. I love that optimistic, perky, young lady. More like her and less of the braindead weak chinned fools like McConnell and there *would* be room for hope.

      • CitizenG April 22, 2019 at 1:14 pm #

        Definitely not the condescending, entitled, petulant, dittzy, entitled, ill-informed, spoiled, arrogant shill, she has shown herself to be in every way.

        • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:18 pm #

          Some people prefer acting to the real thing. But she could be a useful tool as others have pointed out so I have decided to approach her with patience.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:30 pm #

            She is wonderful, completely clueless and thus a Destroyer of what needs must be destroyed. Praise her.

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

            I’m doing my best :-). I took your words to heart when it comes to her.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

            She is so cute with those big eyes! And all her funny faces! They should make an AOC doll. I hope you already have an Anne Coulter doll….

          • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

            Lol I don’t have an Ann Coulture doll but now I want one :-)! I don’t see any AOC dolls on the market yet. Perhaps I need to be doing something different with my spare time ;-).

        • EvelynV April 23, 2019 at 1:47 am #

          Ann Coulter? She isn’t a she, it’s David Bowie in drag.

        • Ricechex April 25, 2019 at 12:40 am #

          LOL. So very true. She is VERY entitled and not the sharpest tool in the shed. I find her quite repulsive.

  26. messianicdruid April 22, 2019 at 12:45 pm #

    They Like to Build Walls

    Would it be okay for the American people to receive stolen INFORMATION from people on the other side of the planet, who have different map lines drawn around them and different labels and make their living in strange ways?

    If we wanted to could we immigrate to somewhere like that? Somewhere people value INFORMATION enough to trade it or even share it. Somewhere Truth is valued over fantasies, or the latest best seller, or movie remake.

    They say candidates cannot receive INfORMATION from ____________ Stolen from ___________ . Who you put in the blanks makes all the difference.
    “Our job is to tell you what to think [ about ].” ] Mika

    Do we start building walls around our friends [ accomplices ] so that information about “$ome” is weaponized while some is deweaponized.

    When I am given information from a source [ for example CFN ] how am I to know sourcing? Who decides where the walls are built ?

    Beware, your vaccinations will not protect you – stay away. We do not have anything for you or want anything from you.
    Do you see where I am going with this? If so please help. This is not a set- up.

    • BornToKillPeace April 24, 2019 at 4:27 pm #

      Reading this pointed me into the similar territory I left my memory of (Vladislav Surkov) Natan Dubovitsky’s short story Without Sky.

  27. budizwiser April 22, 2019 at 1:01 pm #

    JK,

    That circus won’t stop until America gets whapped upside the head by economic reality and, really, who is paying attention to that?

    I guess I am – that’s why I’m trotting out my three little words in dis-honor of “earth” day.

    ———— Discretionary Energy Consumption —————–

    As long as the Circus includes NASCAR, MLB – the NFL and a host of hundreds of other mindless energy-consuming activities/distractions – then there is little hope of mitigating or otherwise preparing for a future devoid of cheap comforts.

    I doubt that many of the asylum/invaders along the southern border wee coming to the US to watch the Cardinals or the Rams.

    A new economic reality is unfolding – but like so much of history – its a very, very long emergency in coming.

  28. BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 1:07 pm #

    $10 trillion in welfare swag since 1965

    Reparations: Paid In Full

    Brh

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

      And what good has it done? The Black community is much worse off today than 60 years ago. They should have said from the outset….this check will LITERALLY replace yo daddy….Now we know how important good daddies really are!!!

  29. mow April 22, 2019 at 1:13 pm #

    Helter Skelter

    • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 1:49 pm #

      Redrum.

      Both Hillary and Obama tweeted their condolences to the “Easter Worshipers” who were blasted in Sri Lanka. Easter Worship is some kind of new religion that no one knows about. The old word, Christian, must not be spoken it seems.

      Pit Bulls are 11% of the dog population but commit 50% of the attacks. What other group does this remind you of? The answer can animal, mineral, vegetable, human, or somewhat human.

      • Walter B April 22, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

        I wonder if those two clowns refer to Muslims as Goat Worshipers? Or perhaps Dumb and Dumber think that churches are places where people go to thank The Easter Bunny for candy. Odds are they do not think at all.

      • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 5:02 pm #

        I read 5% + mixes so maybe 10-20%, especially in the food deserts.

      • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 9:24 pm #

        “Both Hillary and Obama tweeted their condolences to the “Easter Worshipers” ”

        Far be it from me to mitigate anything said by La Clinton but I think this is disingenuous nitpicking. ‘Easter worshippers’ doesn’t mean people worshipping Easter – it just means people worshipping at Easter.

        Just as ‘Christmas shoppers’ doesn’t refer to people buying Christmas just because ‘;food shoppers’ means people buying food.

        There’s enough to criticise both of them for without making something out of nothing.

        • Walter B April 22, 2019 at 10:01 pm #

          But why, when a regular person refers to another human being as a he or a she when that other person prefers to be called something else, is it ok to make such a big deal out of that and yet when BO or HRC do the same, they are given a quick pardon? Perhaps the rules ARE only for the “Little People” after all.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 5:45 am #

            Walter

            I’m not being disingenuous here. I just don’t see the issue. I hear news reports all the time that refer to people attacked while worshipping, whether they’re Christian or Muslim, as ‘worshippers’. Just as people blown up while in a shopping mall might be referred to as ‘shoppers’.

            Worshippers then processed down the aisle….

            Dozens of shoppers ran for cover, screaming, as gunshots were heard in a supermarket in Manchester.

            Try as I might, I’m not seeing anything strange there.

            Did the people themselves complain about being referred to as ‘worshippers’? Because if not, I don’t see the parallel with the ‘he’s and ‘she’s’ you mention. I’m not into that stuff anyway, so I don’t identify with people who go on about how other people should address them. I can cope with ‘he’ or ‘she’ and I’ll use the one you look like or are dressed as, although that would normally be ‘you’ anyway! But I’m fortunate not to be anyone important – or even a Canadian psychology professor – so no-one cares anyway. But I try to be polite to people, just the same.

            I’d make an exception for an obvious, well known celebrity transvestite, of whom I’m aware of two (who I’d know were still very firmly ‘he’, simply because I know who they are) – the moderately annoying Eddie Izzard (comedian) and the delightful Grayson Perry. He’s a sculptor, happily married family man, with an alter ego ‘Claire’ and appears on television in both guises. He has a laid-back psychologist (I think) wife, who takes it all in her stride, which is something I wouldn’t be able to do! Each to their own…

          • Walter B April 23, 2019 at 9:09 am #

            I would not care to make an issue of this either, but for the pomposity exuded by these two particular deranged individuals. I cannot guess what percentage of those who attend church on Easter Sunday are actually Christians who are celebrating what they at least refer to as the Resurrection, but one would think there were at least a lot. When Barry O refers to the Muslims who make the annual journey to Mecca as “vacationers” then I will cut him some slack. As far as Hillary is concerned, for my money that creature is just so foul and so evil that anything she does is offensive for me. I have a long memory and recall all of the damage she has done to America and yes, I am holding a bit of a grudge. Any other human on the planet can use any words they want to describe anything they care to talk about and it is fine with me.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 12:43 pm #

            Haha – yes I think just about everyone on here, regardless of their political preferences, has the same opinion of Hillary.

            What’s amazing is that she seems not to have any idea of how much she is despised.

      • EvelynV April 22, 2019 at 9:38 pm #

        The dems or anybody else should have the responsibility to f&ck up anyone who is as deranged as Trump. Trump is a nightmare come true. All is fair at this point.

        • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 10:18 am #

          >>> The dems… should have the responsibility to f&ck up anyone…

          …they don’t like.

          And that sums up progressive philosophy.

        • BornToKillPeace April 24, 2019 at 4:36 pm #

          EvelynV,
          That is called instituting gangland laws.

      • EvelynV April 22, 2019 at 9:40 pm #

        But strangely, unlike your analogy other pit bulls are not the majority of their victims.

      • Ricechex April 25, 2019 at 12:42 am #

        I heard on NPR a big sob story about the victims in Sri Lanka. So very true and very sad.

        But here is what bothered me:
        It was all about the victims.
        There was nothing about the offenders. They continue to remain invisible which is how power works.

  30. Lynn April 22, 2019 at 2:02 pm #

    As we say here in the south, ‘If at first you don’t secede, try try again.”
    🙂

    Decentralizing power is always a good thing and secession seems to be the most peaceful option possible. As Jefferson said, state government is preferable to federal government, and local government is preferable to state government. …something like that…

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    • EvelynV April 23, 2019 at 2:03 am #

      The Civil war – a good example of the law of unintended consequences. Slaughter hundreds of thousands of the brightest and bravest on both sides but percentage wise much more from the Confederacy because they had a smaller pool to draw from.

      Accordingly, the best of the Southern gene pool was skimmed off, then the dregs that remained infected the South…the stupidest, the most cowardly, the most bigotted.

      And here we are today, the land where Trump is in his element. And the rest of us get taken down because they need us to support their sorry failed mess of a society.

      Thanks a lot Abe, you should have let them kick loose. In time they would have come crawling back.

      • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:38 am #

        Why do you hold a grudge against the South Evelyn? Karma is rough I suppose. Sorry you feel inconvenienced by us and the fact that we didn’t vote the way you expected us to. A small price to pay for the inconveniences dished out to us by the likes of you over the years. At this point we can call it even and move on?

        • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 2:21 pm #

          You asking the question is a good example is why. Even though I just explained it you ask. Thanks to the South we have more Oxycontin addicted, incompetent politician electing, coal burning, evangelical freaks, and just plain ol stupid people who want to solve every imaginary problem with war and simple hatred and bigotry minded solutions than our culture can tolerate much longer. And mainly it is because the stupid decision to confront an overwhelmingly superior political entity that was intent on keeping this country united resulted in you killing off the best of your gene pool back when you used to have some good people. Robert E. Lee was dead set against secession but his loyalty to his state superseded that.

    • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 11:28 am #

      I’ve seen the Left argue for many things, but “live and let live” is not one of them.

  31. Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 2:08 pm #

    Liberals love Capitalism too. They just want it to be responsible. Moreover – and this is no small thing – they love the process, not just the goal. They love their small shops and don’t expect them to become Corporations and themselves billionaires. As such, they are superior to many so called Conservatives who are utterly goal oriented.

    The above mindset is a key essential to National Socialism or any good Order. Joy in Work is very important and it must be encouraged and lauded in all ways. That includes helping young people find it thru vocational counseling, trying different things, etc.

    Only a few can become super rich. And their responsibilities increase accordingly. To whom much is given, by both God (natural gifts) and Society (parents, teachers, infrastructure, employees, etc) Much is asked. Much.

    Elrond knows this, but it’s so much a part of him that he may never have bothered to express it. Too busy with controversies, ones where he’s often wrong. But he’s right about this and since he never mentioned it, I do. Not the National Socialism part of course. That’s all me. Just his version of Socialism, the inferior, fatally flawed Marxism.

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 2:26 pm #

      Thank you for bringing up joy in work. It is almost never talked about in the mainstream. And lots of politically conservative people believe that joy should be derived from work and want lots of small shops and small business owners to flourish. If all of the controversy were removed I am sure we would realize most everyone believes in the same ideals/goals but we believe in different paths to get there.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 2:52 pm #

        I don’t know about that. They want the Kingdom of Heaven without God, right here on Earth. And an Equality that cannot exist without Tyranny since it doesn’t really exist. They’ll make it exist, so they think, arrogant fools that they are.

        And Conservatives want Wealth and the Power that comes from it, without responsibility. And that is nowhere guaranteed and is in no scripture – not even their own.

        Both are going Down to the same place. But up? They don’t have the right maps – neither side.

        You may be right about many conservatives valuing small business. I hope so. Only a few can become big after all. And much is lost when they do – staring with peace of mind in many cases.

        Talked to a retired Pharmacist once: His town was too big for one Pharmacist but not big enough for two. So he was streched thin for decades, always trying to get him family to help even when they didn’t want to. Not enough profit to hire help I guess. None of the kids wanted any part of it so he finally sold it and was glad to be out. He said it was “wonderful” that the big pharmacies now existed and that pharmacists could have a life. So his is part of the Story too. Many kinds of people exist and many economic models must be in play to serve them. But small is good for many, for many reasons, and it should be protected.

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 1:07 am #

          Yes small businesses have their challenges and hardships that is for sure. But you are right about neither side having the right maps to get to the lofty place we would like to see society get to. I didn’t even really know or understand it myself before I met you. I am afraid many people have been kept in the dark and aren’t even aware of the alternative you discuss in terms of National Socialism . It isn’t something you learn about in school. What you do learn about it is negative and makes you feel guilty for wanting to know more. And I had never heard someone talk about beauty, love and politics in the same sentences either and yet I apparently wanted to hear that all along. I suppose because in the end it just seems natural and right. I pray that the gifted and talented among us especially will understand this.

          • EvelynV April 23, 2019 at 2:10 am #

            SSL, if you live in the South odds are, the gifted and talented are in very short supply

    • Exscotticus April 22, 2019 at 3:36 pm #

      >>> They just want it to be responsible.

      Translation: they just want to control the outcome by fiat.

      Liberals: If our favored minorities don’t succeed, we will make them succeed! By redistributing wealth…

      • JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 3:56 pm #

        Friend of mine used to say

        If you took all the money in the country and split it up evenly

        Then come back in twenty years

        It would look just like it does now.

    • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 4:49 pm #

      Joy in Work is very important – Janos

      ==========

      Has a very 1984ish ring to it.

      • GreenAlba April 22, 2019 at 6:01 pm #

        Or earlier.

        Arbeit macht freudig.

        Although that’s making me think of an Australian and a fried egg.

        Hey ho, hey ho, it’s off to work we go…

        There’s a reason why it’s called ‘work’. Some people are lucky. But those who have to break their backs picking cabbages all day know why it’s called ‘work’. And those who have to work in the bowels of the earth.

  32. tucsonspur April 22, 2019 at 2:47 pm #

    Should we call this time the days of unhappy motoring? The wheels may be falling off the nation, but they remain on the automobile.

    It is the age of Autosaurus Destructus:

    The beasts began to multiply, and soon there were more of them than the buffalo and the horses, and they spread far and wide. They were faster than the deer and the mountain lion, and people recklessly used them to kill others.

    People enjoyed riding the docile creatures and went to many distant places in great comfort with hardly a complaint from the beast. Often they would race the beasts for their own pleasure and profit.

    In great numbers, they cut many well worn paths across continents with their endless roaming and herd instinct. At times, people became their slaves, and at other times They were corralled into camps and sold as beasts of burden themselves.

    But they didn’t mind much since the people dug the ground and they were always fed. And sometimes the people went about their own business in the belly of the beast, under its tough outer skin.

    Then one day the food ran out, and the people stampeded in chaos and confusion, unable to feed the beasts and the beasts began to starve. Some could no longer fly. The beasts were abandoned and the people could not move about and would soon die. Some people chose death inside the beast, their skeletons now encaged, partners ’till the bitter end.

    It was a fabulous, fleeting, foolish age, a wonderful, woe begetting, wanton age.
    But it wasn’t really an age, it was more like a moment. It was the Moment that Dinocars Ruined the Earth.

    • Q. Shtik April 22, 2019 at 4:53 pm #

      Very clever Tucson.

      • tucsonspur April 22, 2019 at 5:14 pm #

        Mucho grassy ass.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 12:48 am #

      Like a mere blip on a screen or a quick flash of light.
      Like the blink of an eye.
      A seconds worth of sight.
      The age when the beast of burdens did crawl.
      It came and went so quickly, it is as though it had never been at all.

      • tucsonspur April 23, 2019 at 3:01 am #

        Yes, very nice. And I think time is running out. Of course it’s always running out, unless you never turn the hour glass. But not much time is left for our current way of life. Fifty-seventy five years, if that, is not that long.

        Many profound quotes on time, like this one:

        “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana”.

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:41 am #

          Lol yes very profound indeed. And I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to duck for cover :-).

  33. Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 3:16 pm #

    Maybe Elrond can tell us more about “Ford Nation”. I am frankly intrigued. Could this finally be the long awaited Nerd rebellion? Uniting English and French, American and Canadian, Guys who wear plaid shirts and khakis and lumberjack and jeans, much as depicted in both Twin Peaks and John Water’s movie “Crybaby”?

    We’re going to lose much of America and it would be great if we could pick up Canada to make up for it. United, no one could stand against us.

    I’m “enjoying” (in the Hindu sense) a rare detente with Elrond and I intend to make the most of it.

    • Elrond Hubbard April 23, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

      By Ford Nation, you’re referring to the boob populism that got Doug Ford elected premiere of the province of Ontario, some years after his crackhead brother Rob’s memorable stint as mayor of Toronto (while Doug was also a city councilor).

      ‘Crackhead’ isn’t a gratuitous insult; there’s video. The late Rob Ford was an out-of-control putz that no sensible person would have had around their children, much less elected to office.

      Meanwhile, his surviving brother Doug ushered in his tenure as head of the provincial government by employing a seldom-used, anti-democratic provision of the Canadian constitution to settle an old score and stomp on the democratic process while he was at it. Namely, he rammed through a reduction in the size of Toronto city council, while a municipal election was in progress. Since then he has:

      – tried to appoint buddies of his to high office;
      – promoted ‘buck-a-beer’ and allowing alcohol to be served starting at 9 AM, presumably to reward alcoholics for helping vote him in;
      – instituted cuts to education and public health.

      And so on. Do you really want to know more? There’s a podcast:

      https://www.canadalandshow.com/shows/wag-the-doug/

      It’s true, you don’t normally think of Canadian politics as being entertaining quite like this. Welcome to the distinction between branding and reality! Anyway, I hope it helps.

  34. BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 3:21 pm #

    SJW and BLM protests in New Haven continue.

    But since police shot at two felons who were making their getaway from an armed robbery in Hamden, 3 other people, community members, have been shot, and one stabbed, not by police but by fellow community members.

    Now in suburban Wethersfield, 18 year old Hispanic, after ramming a police car with the stolen car he was driving, shot twice by cops. Protests planned for tonite. But where? On the town green? At the local shopping center? The High School? The problem is there’s no downtown urban center to set on fire and smash up in a town like Wethersfield. What you’ll see is 50 protesters chanting slogans and carrying signs right around the corner from a little league baseball game, or a guy cooking steaks on a grill in his backyard. It just aint the same.

    Brh

  35. BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 4:50 pm #

    Meanwhile, today, in NYC …

    The distinguished Mayor, in order to implement the New Green Deal, announced he is banning all new contruction using glass, steel and concrete within city limits. Also announced was a plan for NYC to run on 100% renewable energy by 2025.

    I sh-t you not CFners, just heard it on WCBS radio out of Manhattan. Look it up …

    Brh

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    • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 5:04 pm #

      Civil war. Imam Barry almost achieved this. Ferguson etc.

      • Majella April 22, 2019 at 6:45 pm #

        Oh, the old Obama trope lives on…

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-cZG81-MPQ

        Cognitive dissonance is such a sad mental illness.

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:35 am #

          If ay had a son he d look a lot like St trayvon.

          • Majella April 23, 2019 at 7:18 pm #

            Huh? Nonsense…

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:37 am #

          What if D Trump behaved like Imam Barry?

          He with a wife named Michael and his muslim faith [verbatim, nitwit].

          • Majella April 23, 2019 at 7:16 pm #

            Jeez! is there anything you won’t believe if it fits your narrative? Did man land on the moon in 1969? Are you also a Flat Earther?

    • tucsonspur April 22, 2019 at 5:30 pm #

      Wants to make the GND ‘come alive’. I wonder about the concrete. He just might have second thoughts on a new pair of shoes.

    • malthuss April 22, 2019 at 5:34 pm #

      Along the way, Buttigieg, a military veteran, Rhodes scholar and gay millennial leader, has been the subject of glowing media profiles.

      Some Washington insiders have compared his political skills to former President Obama.

      He’s accumulated an army of experienced fundraisers since announcing an impressive first-quarter haul of $7 million, underscored by five former Obama administration diplomats who told The Hill on Friday they’d raise money for his campaign.

      The former ambassadors raised millions of dollars for the Obama-Biden campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

      • BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 5:51 pm #

        Besides pounding butts his father was a noted Marxist intellectual. That’s up there pretty high on the Dem pantheon, however, Buttgieg may be perceived as ‘too white’ to get the nomination. If I was advising him I would suggest he change his name from ‘Peter’ to ‘Pedro’, like Beto has done; this might put him over the top.

        Brh

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:38 am #

          funny. ……………and have a mulatto x lesbian wife? triad.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 12:35 am #

      So what building materials will be used in new construction? Maybe its code meaning no new construction at all. And since nothing can ever run on 100% renewable power then NYC get ready for rolling blackouts!

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:55 am #

      who will be there? the tax base eroded. I read the city itself is now 85%
      ‘minority’–minority now majority.

  36. aibohphobia April 22, 2019 at 4:50 pm #

    Everybody’s ancestors did something bad to someone–

    Whites should pay blacks reparations because of slavery;

    Blacks should pay Jewish people because everyone knows that the Egyptians were Black, and the Egyptians enslaved the Jews at the time of the Pharaohs.

    Italians should pay reparations to the rest of Europe because they are descended from the Romans, who enslaved the rest of Europe. Don’t forget the Carthaginians–The Italians owe the Tunisians and Libyans big-time.

    Jewish people should pay the descendants of the Canaanites because they committed genocide on their way into the Holy Land under Moses.

    Palestinians and Israelis need to pay each other, constantly.

    The Aztecs owe the Toltecs, and the Toltecs owe the Phoenicians–
    And the Phoenecians owe the Egyptians big-time, so maybe the Egyptians can use their payments from the Phoenicians to pay off the Israelis.

    To further complicate matters, it can be mathematically and even genetically proven that you, I and everyone is a direct descendant of everyone who lived more than 1000 years ago– or something like that.

    https://www.popsci.com/descended-from-royalty

    So we really all owe everyone else, and everyone owes us.

    • tucsonspur April 22, 2019 at 5:49 pm #

      And don’t forget, the Russians owe the Lithuanians. Also, a direct descendant of Someone, not everyone. And you don’t need math or genetics to prove it, we’re here aren’t we?

      ‘I owe, I owe, so it’s off to work I go’.

    • Like religion, ethnicity will probably retrench against the genetic maelstrom engulfing it.

      There will be genomic deniers.

  37. malthuss April 22, 2019 at 5:08 pm #

    There are more guns in America than people.
    China would be crazy to invade the US.
    WOLVERINES!

    Whats that about Generals fighting the last war?
    Wars of the future will be biological?
    G5?
    Sounds that are so loud that they kill?
    Weather wars?
    chemtrails?

    • 100th Avatar April 22, 2019 at 5:38 pm #

      “Instead, as is the case with all foundering empires, the end will be a sickening slide into a new and strange disposition of things.”

      The US has been lurching down the slide for some time now, albeit like a husky kid with sweaty thighs. Slowly with many distressing noises.

      New and strange, or strange and amplified?
      Media bias. Runaway political correctness. Victimhood. Self-defeating.
      Greed as success. Fake it ’til you make it. Partisanship. Gangland political parties. Loss of sovereignty. Loss of a country.

      Again, happening for some time, and snowballing ever more, exponentially, until we’re all buried by our own culture of bullsh*t.

      • tucsonspur April 22, 2019 at 5:59 pm #

        And I bet that husky kid isn’t wearing trousers. Nice image. Picture and sound. Slow and distressing. The kid is sweating the slide.

      • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:54 am #

        buried? in plastic. alarming how much disposable plastic I see.
        compared to 30 years ago.

    • BackRowHeckler April 22, 2019 at 9:37 pm #

      As part of my wholly unscientific, purely anecdotal investigation into climate change, I’m marking the day the last frost of the winter season occurs in this valley in Northwest-Central CT. English people first showed up here in 1639; there are no official weather records from then but the first settlers were middle and upper middle class Puritans from Essex County, and extremely literate, they kept diaries noting important events in their lives, and the last frost signified the date when seeds could be put in the ground. In 1656 Simeon Hart (ancestor of poet Hart Crane) noted in his diary the final frost of the season occured on May 12. We’ll see where it falls this year. Last year it was on May 13. By all accounts it should be moving in the other direction.

      I listen the NPR program ‘Echo Shock’, every guest it seems has written an apocalyptic climate change report, and in the interview quotes a dozen or so other previous apocalyptic climate change reports, all saying the same thing: we’re doomed.

      brh

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 11:32 pm #

        Colder than Boston if my memory serves. May 3rd there. The Sea determines so much of the weather of eastern New England. You may be near what Don Kent called the Worcester Corridor spreading thru east central Ma to southern NH and maybe your area in CT. Far enough from the ocean to have a continental climate (snow that doesn’t change to rain, tornadoes, etc) but still close enough to feel to get hit by the big coastal storms.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 12:29 am #

      I notice now that before we have a big storm they are massively spraying chemtrails. We had really bad thunderstorms last Thursday and on Wednesday of last week the sky was criss-crossed with chemtrails. Same thing not this past Saturday but the Saturday before. Severe thunderstorms with massive winds. And on that Thursday and Friday before there were major chemtrails all over the sky. They are geoengineering these storms it seems like.

      • benr April 23, 2019 at 2:28 pm #

        Harp as well.
        Even Obama admitted to geo-engineering yet some still call it tin foil hat area of discussion.

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:10 am #

          Supposedly HAARP was shuttered in 2013 but many people believe the military and black ops still experiment with it and perhaps control weather patterns with it.

          • BornToKillPeace April 24, 2019 at 6:22 pm #

            Chemtrails, HAARP, and the Full Spectrum Dominance of Planet Earth – Elana Freeland

    • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 10:34 am #

      A lot of yahoos with guns does not a coherent fighting force make. Not that the Chinese are likely to invade. That’s simply not how war is conducted these days, other than when the US invades some third world Shitholistan for propaganda purposes of course. The Chinese pretty much own the place already. Why would they want to destroy it?

      • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:50 am #

        Good point. They depend on us to buy all of the cheap products they make too.

      • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

        Thing is Scratch, if Cal secedes from the US as they have threatened to do, it will be a ripe plum to be picked by a combined Mexican/Chinese invasion force moving north from the Baja Peninsula.

        They realized this threat duing the O admin which is why they developed the Drag Queen Division (the Fighting Trannys, battle flag: ruby slippers on a velvet background, sparks coming off of them) and stationed it in San Fran. The final stand of independent Cal will be made by the Fighting Trannys on the Golden Gate Bridge as advanced scouts of Chinese Elite Marines manuever to secure entance to this last bastion of resistance before Mexican Army Divisions reclaim San Francisco for Azatlan.

        Brh

  38. Chris at Fernglade Farm April 22, 2019 at 7:26 pm #

    Hi Jim,

    Maybe. Your pension funds absorb a lot of the excess money supply and channel the stuff into abstract financial products (which are extraordinarily difficult to value at the best of times and is also a practice that may be cheered on in speculative times). It may well be a racket, but it does have the interesting side effect of dampening official inflation figures as it pulls money out of the hands of people who might otherwise spend it on real world goods and services. This game could go on for a while yet, and I’d keep a sharp eye out for calls to increase the amounts directed into such schemes.

    Cheers

    Chris

  39. Pucker April 22, 2019 at 7:39 pm #

    Please kindly enumerate The Blessings of Liberty.

    https://www.humanitiestexas.org/exhibitions/list/by-title/blessings-liberty-us-constitution

  40. JohnAZ April 22, 2019 at 7:45 pm #

    Here is a question for the group

    Dem congressmen are talking the responsibility of oversight of the executive branch by congress. I understand the need for this. But does that mean that Congress can use the power to harass the personal affairs of the president or any other folks in the executive branch. If you give that power to Congress, to just plain harass anyone on a personal basis, no one at that level will ever qualify to be president. Official business is always subject to review, but personal business such as income tax returns, should not be. Am I wrong?

    This applies to Dems as well as GOP. If a Dem is elected, they will be just as subject to oversight as GOP. I think this crosses a boundary on privacy.

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    • Walter B April 22, 2019 at 9:57 pm #

      John, does it really matter what any of the corrupt congress, the corrupt senate, the corrupt executive, or the corrupt judicial system do considering that they are all corrupt? The system is so bad that good and decent people cannot even look at it anymore much less get involved with any of it and change it. Crap in crap out, it is the rule of the dogs, no not you K Hound.

      • K-Dog April 23, 2019 at 2:01 am #

        I appreciate the disclaimer. Thanks.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 12:21 am #

      Wouldn’t someone as high profiile as DJT already have been in trouble with the IRS if there were major irregularities with his taxes? All members of Congress probably use every tax loophole they can anyway like most rich people do. They have the best lawyers including tax lawyers so they can use the laws and loopholes to their advantage. It isn’t against the law so why are people shocked that those with money and the means work the system to their advantage anyway?

      • Majella April 24, 2019 at 10:34 pm #

        Read “Perfectly Legal” by David Cay Johnston for the answer to your question. You may well be very surprised at just how the ‘high profile’ elite avoids being audited. (Surely, NO-ONE believes that Trump is STILL undergoing an audit?)

  41. Pucker April 22, 2019 at 7:49 pm #

    Liberty is the Sword and the Olive Branch?

    Will you fight for Liberty?

  42. 100th Avatar April 22, 2019 at 8:34 pm #

    Earth Day

    A planet stealthily seceding from human control

  43. How come alarmism hasn’t caught on for PFCs?

    https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/22/708863848/scientists-dig-into-hard-questions-about-the-fluorinated-pollutants-known-as-pfa

    Why isn’t there large, organized pushback against these government-funded and academic researchers?

    Why is there no PFC denialism?

    These are scientists, and their research is published. It shouldn’t take long to figure out where they massaged their data.

    Or perhaps the spin machine has prepared and is waiting to pounce as soon as public ire or knowledge arises.

    How do you spin the fact that humans have poisoned their environments with a pervasive, persistent poison into a campaign based on stopping any further harm it causes, when the harm is only now just beginning to be estimated and recognized?

    • 100th Avatar April 22, 2019 at 9:43 pm #

      The genie is out of the bottle.

      Ultimately, people when given the choice, will elect to buy a Teflon pan than have to the apply a little elbow grease during cleanup of their enameled cast iron omelet pan.

      What will kill us all is laziness. One way or another.

  44. Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 9:48 pm #

    https://summit.news/2019/04/17/french-journalist-two-churches-in-france-are-vandalized-every-day-and-no-one-gives-a-fck/

    Some people are incapable of ever admitting they are wrong about anything. To avoid looking ridiculous, they use the passage of time, the fallibility of human memory (not the least of which being their own), and assiduous reinterpretation of their own previous statements.

    • benr April 22, 2019 at 10:08 pm #

      Try as you might some refuse to believe their is a muslim problem in the west until they go on a car burning jag in their neighborhood for a coupe of months and the media calls it youths to this day!
      The French government will never admit it was what we all knew it was out of fear more rioting will ensue.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 11:46 pm #

        It’s so sad that the French spurned the Man who could have save them, Jean Le Pen. What a wonderful Old Man! How few could enjoy being lionized in this manner the way he does, so gracefully, and with such aplomb. We can only pray that his younger daughter, who walked the Pilgrimage to Notre Dame every year, will turn into another Marianne, or better yet, another Maid.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9UayOfF204

        Hopefully France will reject Democracy before it is too late. That would be a profound statement and gift to the world, since it did so much to bring it to the fore to begin with.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 12:05 am #

      Even more alarming is the apparent lack of concern from Church officials including the Pope. Inaction is action. Why would they be complicit in the destruction of these symbols of Western culture and spirituality with their silence? I’m not Catholic and I have a feeling Pope Francis isn’t either. Most churches have been infiltrated by subversives like most Western institutions. Much of our destruction is an inside job. Complicit loners or fifth columns or both.

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:40 am #

      3

  45. beantownbill. April 22, 2019 at 10:38 pm #

    When I read progressives’ statements as reported in the media, I cringe. But if I go beyond my political emotionalism, I can understand why left-wingers say what they say. I believe they recognize our current problems, and their political beliefs reflect their concerns. This is the beginning of positive change, even though they are going to extremes in their methodology.

    The entire green movement is a reflection of their worry about the future. Putting time constraints on a lot of the issues is politically naive and impractical. The world won’t end in 12 years. What’s needed is the beginning of a dialogue between differing philosophies to resolve the issues. We don’t have to like each other, but we have to work together.

    Banning gas vehicles within the next several years is not a solution, but recognizing and bringing to light that cheap oil is disappearing, and we have to address this, is progress. Right now the average American does not realize this fact. If this subject was continually pounded into us by the media like they do other things, then the citizenry might demand something realistic be done.

    Many here believe there’s something called the Deep State which really runs things. I’ve known there’s unwritten agendas since I’ve graduated college and had to enter the real world. But I question whether there’s a formal group plotting to take over the world. I do believe there’s many groups of wealthy people who have the same values, so to the average person it seems like the whole thing is planned out; I don’t think so.

    It’s just sad to me that we cannot get to the table to work out our differences. Not energy, climate change, nor dishonest politicians are the main issue – inability to get along is.

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    • Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 11:48 pm #

      Yes, no doubt that is why the Elite regularly meet in secret conclaves throughout the World – to talk about nothing. And all the Western Nations except Israel having their borders thrown open – just a coincidence, right?

    • SoftStarLight April 22, 2019 at 11:49 pm #

      I agree with much of what you say Bill but human nature is what it is. I am not sure it is possible that everyone comes to the table to work out their differences in good faith. Some individuals naturally are inclined to take power. And others naturally are inclined to follow the leader. We are social animals. And thus the reason for all of the sheeple references and jokes as most people generally follow the lead of the shepherds. That is why enlightened shepherds are needed and why dishonest politicians and a dishonest system in general are major challenges. I also believe there are organized groups of Elites with specific agendas and they are working to fully realize their plans. There are several factions that have conflicting agendas in some cases. But secret societies are very real and are already in many ways in control of world events IMO.

      • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:59 am #

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q2l5Pd9vBo

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 11:53 am #

          Thank you for sharing. Now I understand more of what you meant when you said that the economy never really recovered after 2008. I feel like there are too many abandoned businesses and houses in the areas I travel to most frequently as well. I think the economy is not doing good at all except for those who play the stock market.

          • Majella April 25, 2019 at 7:10 pm #

            But the Great & Glorious Leader, DJT, says it’s going GANGBUSTERS! What…is he lying? or is he just stupid?

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:42 am #

      When you read Janos statements , do you cringe?

      [sorry, could not resist].

    • Walter B April 23, 2019 at 10:38 am #

      “But I question whether there’s a formal group plotting to take over the world.”

      They are not plotting to take over the world Bill, for they already rule it! What they are doing is talking to one another, making deals, and sharing information on how they can keep us little people in line, maintain the power they hold, and pass it on to their heirs. This story line has been playing out since the very first civilizations were formed.

    • benr April 23, 2019 at 2:35 pm #

      So you don’t believe there are steering committees like the CFR aka Council on Foreign relations, Bilderberger meetings, trilateral commission, PNAC AKA project for a new American century, Free masons, skull and bones, better business groups, my god there are so many that meet in secret to push agendas and narratives.

  46. Janos Skorenzy April 22, 2019 at 11:59 pm #

    Well here’s one who paid the price:

    Breitbart:

    The wealthiest man in Denmark is suffering a loss greater than any amount of money can remedy. Anders Holch Povlsen, 46, lost three of his four children in the Islamic terror attack in Sri Lanka.

    Povlsen has a net worth of $5.7 billion, according to Bloomberg.

    Jesper Stukier, communications manager for Povlsen’s wholesale fashion business Bestseller, confirmed to the Associated Press that three of his children had been killed in the attack that killed almost 300 people in churches and hotels and left hundreds wounded.

    “We have no further comment and we ask that the family’s privacy is respected at this time,” Stukier said.

    “He declined to comment on the identity of the children or whether other members of the family had been visiting Sri Lanka,” Bloomberg reported.

    JS: I suppose there must be a few billionaires that don’t subscribe to the madness. But probably mostly in places other than Europe. And certainly not in the Fashion industry in Northern Europe. So shadenfreude away…..

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:43 am #

      He is the biggest land owner, in some country.

      I read of another Billionaire [German?] who killed himself. Jumped in front of a train.

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:52 am #

      https://www.thetoptens.com/women-leaders-history/

      its a joke.

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 1:18 am #

      Did you know that W Buffett gave billion+ to abortion?
      he is for depopulation. [at least thats my understanding].

      https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/buffett-continues-to-bankroll-abortion-providers-with-215-million-in-2015

      He loaned a few dollars to his only daughter, they asked for repayment and is very cheap.

      His Ex worked for snivel rites [or rights] in San Fran. I guess Omaha was too hick for her.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:48 am #

      Wow that is truly horrendous!!!!! Sad for anyone no matter their economic or financial status. I wonder if Mr. Povlsen was stereotypically PC as one might imagine, and if so, has anything changed for him in that regard.

      On a side note, I heard this morning that the Sri Lankan authorities were tipped off ten days before the attack that Islamic militants were planning to attack Christian and Catholic targets…and the authorities did nothing with that information.

      • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

        I heard (from the police themselves) that the information was far too general and vague and not in any way helpful in preventing any actual atrocities.

        Just for the sake of argument, let’s say there were 1000 targets. What exactly would you like them to have done, other than advise people not to go to church at Easter?

        The IRA used to give ‘warnings’ sometimes. Sometimes it meant people could get out of an area before a bomb went off. Other times they left a second bomb where they thought the people would run to from the first explosion.

        But 3600 people died over the duration of ‘the troubles’ anyway, so there was no real intention to save lives on any scale.

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:14 am #

          Well I guess they could have at least informed the public that there were threats made that churches could be attacked. It may have saved some lives. Sometimes being too cautious is a good thing.

  47. malthuss April 23, 2019 at 12:51 am #

    benr April 22, 2019 at 9:33 pm #

    Coming at her?
    Holding her own?
    No just trying to understand why someone that appears reasonably intelligent can’t connect the dots that common sense dictates are being scatter shot to the universe.
    Looks like a duck.
    Quacks like a duck.
    Eats like a duck
    Walks like a duck.
    Swims like a duck.
    It must be a chicken huh?

    The old Gal needs to be slashed with Occams razor.
    She is CFNs Thatcher. Or Angela.
    https://www.thetoptens.com/women-leaders-history/

    Alba, I did mistype. I meant 875 desecrations reported, in just 365 daze.

    [yes, daze].

  48. Ricechex April 23, 2019 at 12:57 am #

    Muslims are the new poster child for the Democratics, ummm Progressives. Muslims are being glorified and victimized all at the same time. Definite power play as victims are glorified. I happened to be looking for a second job at Community College and when I went to this website I was astounded at what I saw.

    Southwestern Community College is located in a predominately Mexican locale, but yet the pics show that Muslims are the desired demographic. Front page and center. Multiple pics.

    https://www.swccd.edu/

    • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 1:02 am #

      I checked. They offer the site in 10 or 11 languages. How dumb.
      If student cant speaka da english, how they getta edumacation there?

      where is san yasidro? I check.

      • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 1:04 am #

        SAN DIEGO

        • benr April 23, 2019 at 2:39 pm #

          Yea my neck of the woods we have several large mosques in the area one of them actually had two of the 9-11 attackers that attended it and lived in Clairemont.
          I used to drive by it everyday going to and from work.
          Friday afternoons are a nightmare now with all the friday people at worship.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 1:47 am #

      I am noticing more Muslims in advertisements everywhere now and they always have to make sure the hijab is front and center. Amazing how a culture that has become so hostile to religion, epecially its own native religion, so openly embraces primitive expressions of religion resembling the 7th century.

      • Ricechex April 23, 2019 at 2:14 am #

        Last year, 9/11 I was listening to NPR (which I do even though it it totally biased) and on that day….there were multiple stories (continuous) about the plight of the Muslims since 9/11. I didn’t hear anything about Fallen Heroes or the dead from the attack on the Towers. The stories were of the poor victimized Muslims that had to contend with “racism.” Sympathy pieces on 9/11 for Muslims. Unbelievable.

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:52 am #

          Not ‘unbelievable’ –just typical spin from ‘them’–Amy (((Goodman))) she made Mumia a hero.

          I forget some of the other ones names.
          The guy who was on left-right-center. He or his folks went to North Korea. Robert (((Scheer))).

          He, I believe is mentioned in one of Ann Coulters books. He went to NK, loved the place.

      • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 8:07 am #

        SSL

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_headcovering

        “Christian head covering and hair covering is the veiling of the head by women in a variety of Christian traditions. Some Christian women, based on historic Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Methodist teaching, wear the head covering in public worship (though some women belonging to these traditions may also choose to wear the head covering outside of church),[1] while others, especially Anabaptist Christians, believe women should wear head coverings all the time.[2]

        The practice of Christian headcovering was inspired by a traditional interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 in the Christian Bible.[3] Although the head covering was practiced by most Christian women until the latter part of the 20th century,[4] it is now a minority practice among contemporary Christians in the West, though it continues to be the normal practice in other parts of the world, such as Russia, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, and South Korea.

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 8:18 am #

          I know it’s mostly (but absolutely not entirely) in church – my own mother wouldn’t go into church without a hat – but it’s still a symbol of a ‘primitive expression of religion’, and this time dating from the first century AD, not the seventh.

          • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:34 am #

            I actually don’t believe it is a primitive expression of religion. After all, in many Christian traditions the hair is to be covered when going into church, however it is not necessarily required to wear for simply going in to public places in general. Clearly there are denominations that embrace wearing a head covering at all times. But that basically came to an end centuries ago, at least in Europe and the US. Would you be ok if we brought it back completely and you started seeing head coverings all the time in advertisements, the news and on TV shows? The hijab represents something completely different. First of all it is mandatory for anyone who is a real Muslim. There is no way around it. And secondly, many Muslim women wear the full burqa which is intended to make women “disappear” altogether. Do you understand that difference?

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:55 am #

            “The hijab represents something completely different. First of all it is mandatory for anyone who is a real Muslim. ”

            No it isn’t. Not remotely.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:58 am #

            But why is it to be covered in church? It’s just a different variation of the same idea. I can’t see how ‘God’ could be offended by the sight of hair he allegedly designed in church if he isn’t offended by it out on the pavement – or that the sight of my middle-aged mother’s hair was going to inflame passions in men in the pews behind. So it’s just anachronistic nonsense from Corinthians.

          • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 11:25 am #

            Sorry Alba it is true. Muslim women MUST cover their hair at all times in public and around men who they are not related to. It is a fact. Now, are their women who do not abide by that? Sure are. Especially in non-Muslim countries. And guess what. They are not considered Muslims they are considered heretics by other Muslims. The whole idea of covering your hair when going in to Church is simply about respect and reverence. It is also not something enforced by men who will beat you with sticks if you refuse to follow the tradition.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 12:46 pm #

            So it’s just anachronistic nonsense from Corinthians. – GA

            ===========

            Just about everything that comes under the heading of religion becomes nonsense when you really think about it. Read up on the wearing of yarmulkes by orthodox Jewish men……… and don’t even get me started on what you must NOT do on Shabbos, i.e. the long and ridiculous list of activities that are classified as work, like throwing a light switch, or tearing off toilet paper from the roll to wipe your ass.

            Not to pick exclusively on the Jews……….. the backstory to EVERY religion is beyond absurd.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 1:05 pm #

            “Sorry Alba it is true. Muslim women MUST cover their hair at all times in public and around men who they are not related to. It is a fact. ”

            I’m sorry but you’re wrong. It is not obligatory in every Muslim country. And it’s certainly not enforced in non-Muslim countries, no matter how much unofficial pressure is put on women. Muslim countries vary as to how much pressure is put on women to wear a headdress.

            I have actually worked with a number of Muslim women. All practising and none wearing a hijab.

            Even on TV we have one well-known reporter (Ch. 4 News) who chooses to wear a hijab and others who choose not to. Likewise throughout the media. Their prominent status doesn’t seem to make them worry about repercussions.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headscarf_rights_in_Turkey

            Just a tiny example.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 1:08 pm #

            And there are heaps of Muslim women doctors – some wear the hijab but most don’t dress any differently from their colleagues.

          • EvelynV April 26, 2019 at 1:52 am #

            As usual, SSL is on her ass when it comes to blurbing whatever facts she thinks she knows. She is an unwitting victim of her own bigotry and ignorance. Or should I have called it her pigotry?

        • Ricechex April 25, 2019 at 1:06 am #

          Have at it GA—see your Muslim DR wearing a hijab. Best of luck to you. I would NEVER trust a Muslim for my health care. They would be more likely to throw me over the cliff.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 3:55 pm #

            Do people really talk like this in the US? It’s no wonder your society is in the state it’s in. I don’t happen to have a Muslim doctor, but if I found myself in hospital I’d be very happy to know that everyone there was fully qualified and experienced. There are many Asian surgical specialists who are real aces.

  49. Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 1:13 am #

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/news/george-zimmerman-banned-from-tinder-203341904.html

    They can’t stand that the Hero slipped through their legal nets. And he’s defeated every vigilante who has gone up against him, including an ex-girlfriend. The Force is strong with this one. So the persecution continues and will never end in this evil land.

    The White Cosmics whom he saved from their burning car wouldn’t even thank him. Who are the racists again? Who are the “good people”? I say George is a King. And the more they pile on the higher he gets.

    We never said only Whites were good. Or that nothing great was ever done by a Non-White. We simply stand for our Rights and for our Tradition – starting with our very Existence. We choose our Own. Properly interpreted (not always done I admit), that doesn’t have to mean hatred of the Other. Men who grow tall can look over their fences and admire the Gardens of the Other. Maybe even do some trading….

    • James Hansen April 23, 2019 at 9:08 am #

      You got to be kidding, Zimmerman is your hero! If he did not have a gun on him he would of just got his ass kicked for accosting Martin and not turned into a celebrity for racist.

      Zimmerman is just a punk who could not defend his self from a 16 year old black kid who weighed 60 pounds less than him. He also has a history of abusing women, if I came across him when I lived in the hood I would of crumpled him up like a tin can.

      • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 10:13 am #

        he would of just got his ass kicked…

        I would of crumpled him up like a tin can. – Hansen

        =======

        OMG, please make him stop… I’m going to tear my hair out.

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:16 am #

          I would of written so sooner if I knew it got to you so much lol :-P.

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:17 am #

          But you are working on the Compendium so I will be as nice as possible since it will prove to be a Light to the Nations.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 1:37 pm #

            So sweet. Like an ice cream cone with a dagger hidden within. Enjoy but don’t bite down, Q.

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:52 am #

          Oh dear, Q. But at least you’ve got it off of your chest 🙂 .

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 10:53 am #

            And for free.

        • James Hansen April 23, 2019 at 11:25 am #

          Q, thanks for the corrections, I will make note of them. On the other hand if not for people like me you would have nothing to do!

          • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:46 am #

            On the other hand if not for people like me you would have nothing to do!
            Maybe he would be better off that way.
            George Zimmerman did the right thing.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 4:19 pm #

            On the other hand if not for people like me you would have nothing to do! – J. Hansen

            ===========

            You make a good point – one that many others have made before you. It is more or less, by and large, for the most part the reason for my existence.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 1:23 pm #

        Trayvon was over six feet tall and about 160 pounds. A football player. All muscle. Well on his way to becoming a two hundred pound Black Man like his father in middle age. They develop faster than Whites.

        Zimmerman was a roly poly, out of shape guy. Average sized. He seems a lot healthier since his destruction. In any case, he was on the bottom getting his head pounded in. Trayvon reached for his gun, but Zim trapped his hand and blew him away. Good riddance. Obviously self defense.

        To the extent America has a future, it will be made possible armed civilian patrols, guys like George Zimmerman. That should be obvious too. If it isn’t, it’s because you are holding onto ideology or sentimentality, or Anti-White racism.

        • benr April 24, 2019 at 11:07 am #

          No George did not do the right thing.
          He allowed someone to engage him at close range while strapped with a gun.
          He had no business being out alone wandering a neighborhood looking for trouble.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

            He was on patrol. An amateur I admit. One can hope he would do a better job in the future, but of course he’s been permanently ostracized by “polite” society – bunch of loathsome hypocrites that they are.

            So now he’s just a Super Hero and sign of Contradiction. His older brother is as handsome as a god and speaks like a statesman – but he was not chosen. The Mantle of Greatness fell on the shoulders of roly poly George – and he has carried it magnificently.

          • Q. Shtik April 24, 2019 at 3:38 pm #

            The Mantle of Greatness fell on the shoulders of roly poly George – and he has carried it magnificently. – Janos

            ============

            Why do you put your foot in your mouth like this? You had similarly worded praise for Trump and now you have had to do a slow motion 180.

            George Z. has always struck me as a wannabe cop just itchin for an excuse to shoot somebody.

            Ever since Trayvon, George’s life has been one questionable incident after another.

  50. Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 2:59 am #

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mexican-troops-drew-weapons-on-american-soldiers-on-u-s-side-of-the-border

    Nothing to say Trump? Big mouth?

    I’m so tired of winning….

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    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • tucsonspur April 23, 2019 at 3:14 am #

      Ha Ha. Big mouth. Too mucho winning.

      We need a Bogart or the old man:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OcM23Hbs5U

      • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 4:43 am #

        Bunch of gay caballeros. The real Mexicans are more formidable than that. Of course, we used to be as well. The horror factor is invariably minimal in the old movies. If you look at the old photos, most of the White guys had thousand yard stares. They were terrifying people. The equal of the Indians and Mexicans in savagery. And often smarter of course and better armed.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 9:44 am #

        Notice how Janos, realizing that Trump is in alliance with the World Jewry, had turned on him!

        In Israel, we just saw a coalition of Eastern Orthodox Vikings and Slavs (Putin), Western Orthodox Vikings, Anglo-Saxons and Celts (Trump) with international Jewry (Netanyahu), which the world has not seen since the days of Anacletus II and the laying of first bricks into Notre Dame de Paris!

        And as a result of this union, Muller stopped his investigation, and the Black World Project is raving in impotent rage.

        • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:23 am #

          I know that I turned on Trump once I realized for sure he was very unserious about building the Wall and bringing in a complete moratorium on immigration. That was his biggest betrayals to his base. Then add to it that the Swamp is not getting drained. HRC and her empire of minions is alive and well and no one is in jail. So no Build the Wall and no Lock Her Up. But Israel gets the Golan Heights and has Jerusalem recognized as its capital. So Israel gets more from Trump than his base.

          • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 10:48 am #

            Easy for you to say. Trump for two years literally was struggling for his life and the life of his family.

            Only now he is beginning to assume his presidential powers.

          • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 11:15 am #

            I didn’t vote for Jared Kushner. Nor did I vote for Ivanka. I know that Trump has been persecuted. But that didn’t mean that he had to abandon those who counted on him. He should have never signed that first stupid spending bill that did not include money for the Wall. Persecution didn’t make him sign that bill did it???

          • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 11:39 am #

            Politics is the Art of the Possible.

            Otto von Bismarck

    • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 11:35 am #

      Here’s an alternative take on what those Mexican soldiers were up to.

      >>> Nothing to say Trump? Big mouth?

      How on earth do you imagine that this story works against Trump’s border initiatives? Trump has been claiming that our borders are porous and in need of securing. Does this story prove otherwise?

    • benr April 24, 2019 at 11:10 am #

      Yea that is disgraceful BUT not Trumps fault!
      I blame the infection of liberalism had these troops fought back they would have all been court marshaled and sent to the brig.
      A huge change needs to happen in the military as far as holding people accountable for acts committed while doing their job.
      The military is meant to break shit, blow stuff up and kill the enemy.

    • malthuss April 24, 2019 at 7:40 pm #

      youtube–jeremiah babe channel.

  51. fugeguy April 23, 2019 at 9:13 am #

    The thing that amazes me about RussiaGate is that after being exposed as completely wrong and strongly implicated in making the whole thing up- the guilty parties just keep doubling down.

    Giving the benefit of the doubt (which is truly being kind considering how we are continually subjected to an endless diatribe from these nimrods on how “smart” they are), and assuming this is a mistake. We all make them. Some acknowledge the mistake, try to learn from it and move on.

    Not this cast of characters, oh h3ll no. They just keep making more preposterous and disconnected from reality accusations. The mental gymnastics required to even follow this stupidity is mind boggling.

    I suppose the benefit of having lost of all of ones credibility is that you can say anything about anything. About 90%+ of all news whether politics, sports, business needs to just go away as it adds no value and diminishes the quality of information in the public realm.

    Pox on all.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 9:25 am #

      As I said, the Democratic Party of the United States has turned into a National Socialist Party of Hillary Clinton, and faithfully follows the Goebbels’s principles of propaganda:

      GOEBBELS’ PRINCIPLES OF PROPAGANDA

      1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

      2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
      a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.

      b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.

      c. It must oversee other agencies’ activities which have propaganda consequences

      3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.

      4. Propaganda must affect the enemy’s policy and action.
      a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence

      b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions

      c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself

      d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity

      5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign

      6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

      7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.

      8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.

      9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.

      10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy’s prestige or lends support to the propagandist’s own objective.

      11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.

      12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.

      13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
      a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.

      b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment

      c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness

      14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
      a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses

      b. They must be capable of being easily learned

      c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations

      d. They must be boomerang-proof

      15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.

      16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
      a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat

      b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves

      17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
      a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated

      b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective

      18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

      19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.

      • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 10:27 am #

        That Goebbels was a fun guy, huh?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

          Yeah, so unspeakably evil! What did Saul Alinsky think of him I wonder?

  52. AKlein April 23, 2019 at 9:39 am #

    Let’s cut right to the chase on the healthcare “issue”. By “issue” I mean the untenable costs. For starters, you should be doing all you can to stay healthy. That means giving up behaviors that are unhealthy. Examples? Eating unsafe foods, engaging in unsafe practices, going to unsafe places, etc, etc, etc. But let’s just start with eating unsafe foods. Reputable medical experts estimate that 80% of health problems are avoidable through lifestyle choices, mainly what you eat. So for starters, don’t eat bacon, hotdogs and lunch meats. The IARC/WHO classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco smoking and asbestos.So here’s my advice, cut your probability of health problems by 80% by making intelligent lifestyle choices. Then, realize that the other 20% are the subject to the luck of the draw. Sooner or later, something will kill you. Nobody gets out alive. Accept that fact. If you don’t, then you be held hostage by the fear of dying which will ruin the value of whatever time the Almighty has granted you. And be assured that there are people who will look to help you subjugate yourself to that fear and capitalize on it.

    • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 10:25 am #

      Good points, but SUGAR is far and away public dietary health threat number one, and its nearly impossible to avoid if you eat out or eat any processed foods whatsoever. It’s literally poison to you’re entire endocrine and cardiovascular system.

      More generally, monitor your weight religiously and avoid behaviors and eating patterns that cause you to gain weight. As little as five pounds is a BIG deal! Get ample exercise – but not too much – and consume alcohol (a super-condensed poisonous sugar) in STRICT moderation if you consume it at all.

      The final part – avoiding undue stress at work – is EXTREMELY hard for most people, but keep it in mind constantly and work on it. Consider consuming MUCH less if need be to accommodate a more relaxed life style and less stressful job, and try to avoid poisonous personal relationships.

      In short, recognize American lifestyle disease as the killer that it is and try to avoid it. Whether you live longer or not, you’ll live better for the amount of time you’re here, and in the end, that’s what it’s really all about anyway.

      • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 10:43 am #

        That should be considered a whole new illness – American Lifestyle Disease (ALD). That is genius Ol’ Scratch! When you are getting OLD ALD can take you down that much quicker so you better get serious about it when you are young ;-)!

        • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 11:29 am #

          Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn almost all of this the hard way. But it has been all the more valuable learning them that way. Agreed on ALD. It’s a genuine affliction.

        • ozone April 23, 2019 at 7:19 pm #

          “We’re sorry, but the lifestyle you ordered is no longer in stock.”

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 2:08 am #

            But I was so looking forward to it! Are you sure it isn’t a mistake :-)?

      • elysianfield April 23, 2019 at 11:43 am #

        “In short, recognize American lifestyle disease as the killer that it is and try to avoid it.”

        Nick-O-Demus,
        Sooo, if we avoid sugar, sausages, and bacon we can live forever? The actuarials indicate that the white male in the US lives to…what, 78? If we live on shrubs and avoid alcohol, we might live to 82?

        Is quality of life an issue? End of life years are not considered the best.

        Consider dogs. The high point of their lives is the dinner plate. Feed them well, so they get fat and sleep in the sun, and maybe die a year or two earlier than they might otherwise…who says that a thin dog would be happier overall?

        What you say regarding lifestyle is correct…but at what cost?

        • benr April 23, 2019 at 4:50 pm #

          Exactly give up all the things in life that make life good and bearable then what is the point?
          Have some bacon but not cheap junk bacon get the good stuff.
          Get a nice glass of Whiskey on the rocks and live a little!
          Have a burger and a shake once in awhile!
          Eating Kale, spinach and leafy greens can be hazardous as well in the form of oxalate crystals!

      • AKlein April 24, 2019 at 7:39 am #

        All very good points you make, OS. Looking at the thread that this topic has generated, it may be worthwhile to clarify my position and the rationale of my post. My point is that, as our host JHK has repeated over and over, that Healthcare (note the capitalization) is a big, ugly, mendacious racket. As my grandfather used to say, the best thing you can say about doctors is that you don’t need them. Once you get into the clutches of the Grand Healthcare Racket, you should moo like a cow, because you will quickly become a “cash cow”. If that epithet disagrees with you and you are a corporate type, then let’s just say you will quickly become a “revenue stream”. But my point is, what can we do about it? Well, for one thing, if you actually a lucky to find a reputable, non-grifting physician, then latch onto that person as you would gold. There are still people who actually do care in Healthcare; but just keep in mind that such persons are caring in spite of the system. not because of it. So what else can you do to tilt the odds in you favor? Take it upon yourself to stay healthy to the extent you are able. As some other posters here have written, this is a statistics game; there is no sure way to completely avoid disease. But there are truly certain ways to contract disease! I try to pay attention to the lifestyle advice from smart, articulate people who can cite real scientific evidence regarding healthy/unhealthy behavior. If that means giving up something you like, like hotdogs or bacon – hey, it’s your choice, right? Here’s an apt analogy; We are all born (or most of us) with a pile of chips at our place on the gaming table. How you want to gamble those chips is up to you. You figure your own odds as you see fit. Also, remember that no how well you play, chance dictates that the house will always win! (I.e. you will ultimately die.) Nevertheless, it’s up to you how well you play the game. As the duke said to William Tell when the duke told him to shoot the apple off Tell’s own son’s head – you cannot complain about hard luck when you’ve been made the master of your own fate! (In German, from the play by Schiller, “Man kann nicht klagen ueber harten Spruch, den man zum Meister seines Schicksals macht”). So do whatever suits you regarding your lifestyle choices. But no complaining about hard luck will be entertained!

    • Walter B April 23, 2019 at 10:33 am #

      When it comes to health, there is no substitute for genetics. We have all known healthy 80 year olds that made it that far on diets of meat and beer, and cigarette smokers also, sometimes live into their nineties’. Finding out what works best for us individually is the key to maintaining good health if you are healthy by nature. if you are not, you will always need to have somebody else foot the bill to keep you above the turf. That is what every “healthcare system” relies upon, more healthy than sick customers. That and collection of premiums coupled with denial of services. Who gets what and who does not will never be fairly distributed especially when the geriatrics who rule us get the finest, most expensive care available so that they may avoid the inevitable as long as possible.

      • Ol' Scratch April 23, 2019 at 11:34 am #

        Thing is, you can’t do anything about your genetics, other than modify your lifestyle to minimize and/or capitalize on them. “Cashing in” on favorable genetics by adopting shitty health habits is never a wise choice. The US “healthcare” system should be avoided altogether whenever possible. It’s little more than a drug and procedure racket these days.

        • benr April 23, 2019 at 4:51 pm #

          Tell that to George Burns!
          He did all the stuff that you are not supposed to and lived to be Just over 100!

          • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 8:38 pm #

            Good point Ben.

            actress Catherine Hepburn’s sister was our town librarian. I got to know her well, bibliophile that I am. Anyway, she smoked 2 packs of Lucky Strikes a day — and drank Ballentine Ale — and lived to be almost 90.

            I think the secret was in the Ballentine Ale.

            brh

          • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:51 pm #

            and many have played Russian Roulette and survived.

        • I hope for your sake you have ‘do not resuscitate’ on tattooed across your chest because you are definitely not going to want to wake up in our future.

    • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 10:41 am #

      Whoa! Hold on! Give up Hot Dogs?

      Don’t you think you’re going a bit too far there, AKlien?

      Jim has kicked people off the board for less.

      Brh

      • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 1:06 pm #

        And ‘stop eating bacon’… don’t be ridiculous!

    • chet_the_farmer April 23, 2019 at 11:32 am #

      The costs have nothing to do with the patient. Untenable costs is a result of the medical and insurance industries.
      Nothing a patient does will change the costs of medical services, and that cost is the actual problem.

      You also have to be realistic about ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food. That concept is subjective to the individual, and we do not know that X food caused a malady. We Suspect that X is related to the malady, and it appears that way for a tiny percentage of the population. But no one really knows.

      Smoking is the same way – there is what we are told and there is reality. One thing most people do not know about smoking is that No One can say for sure that smoking caused malady X. If you have lung cancer and smoked, the cancer may be related to smoking. It may be related to genetics, or something in the environment where you work.
      But there are 10’s of thousands of cases of lung cancer for people that never smoked. Conflating smoking with lung cancer is a person-feelings thing. The data will show you that its not a clear correlation.

      The next issue has to do with the information you have about certain foods. Anyone can find a reliable source of info about which foods are good and which are bad, and that info changes a lot over time.
      For a while margarine was considered ‘healthy’ compared to butter, but that was very wrong. Remember when we were told some cooking oils were bad for you? The results are in about a cooking oil and it has more cancer-causing contents that the stuff it replaced. And that cooking oil is still advertised as being the most healthy, when it is very bad for you.
      In the U.S. we have not had a particular ‘food finding’ which has not been debunked or turned out to be false. Never trust anything until you test it for yourself – which most people have no way of doing.

      Lastly, people that do things which are knowingly not good for you don’t appear to be too concerned about dying. They keep on doing things they believe are not good for you.

      You cannot trust the info about your food. It has historically been wrong more than half the time. You should not change your eating habits for the fad of the week, or based on info you read on the internet.

      • “But there are 10’s of thousands of cases of lung cancer for people that never smoked. Conflating smoking with lung cancer is a person-feelings thing. The data will show you that its not a clear correlation.”

        I’m sorry to hear you do not understand the statistical data

        There is a clear correlation.

        Moreover, as a point of philosophy, a characteristic mutation resulting in cancer does has both a statistical probability and a discrete cause. In other words, there is always a chance you won’t get cancer, but when you do it will be THAT puff on THAT cigarette, that did it.

        Smoking Tobacco is just Russian roulette.

  53. wwg1wga April 23, 2019 at 9:43 am #

    My time of year!
    http://www.got-truth.com/docs/Because%20its%20summer.pdf

    #oathkeepers

    Q.

  54. volodya April 23, 2019 at 10:56 am #

    They say it’s different this time. Yeah, it’s always different. But history sure does rhyme even if it doesn’t repeat.

    When Rome lost North African territories to the Vandals, it also lost a good deal of its tax base. And take a guess at what happened.

    Fast forward to late 20th and early 21st Century USA. In history’s most spectacular blunder, the great financiers and academics of the economics – cough – profession thought it was a wonderful idea to send America’s manufacturing backbone to other countries.

    So, under the beneficent gaze of multiple presidential administrations, none of which had the wit to question whether this was a really a good idea, a great portion of American tax-generating capacity went to Mexico and China, the latter of which used this new-found economic might to become a global contender.

    The Romans had the sense to at least TRY to defend the empire’s boundaries and also the empire’s economic basis. Which was not co-incidentally the basis for the rulership of its perfumed classes.

    Not so the perfumed of the USA which, in an epic delusion that they were the world’s shot-callers, figured that the little yellow men of Beijing and Shanghai would do as they were told and co-operate in the scheme to enrich American oligarchs.

    But, not surprisingly, these little yellow men, possessors of a full set of intellectual faculties, had agendas of their own. And so the Chinese gleefully accepted America’s industries, letting American think they were in charge, while providing occasional reminders as to where power actually resided. Hint: not in the CEO suite, not in Washington, not in Manhattan.

    And America, newly bereft of its vast tax-base of industrial workers (who became long-term unemployed) now tries one smoke-and-mirrors solution after another to conceal its enfeeblement, with the results being pretty much what you’d expect; two spectacular financial crises and a steady degradation of government finances.

    Like Rome without its tax generating territories, America without its tax-generating industries will be forced to give up what it no longer has the capacity to maintain. Like its military.

    The question is whether America can defend its territorial integrity under the pressure of southern immigration and the day-by-day disintegration of Washington’s will and ability to govern. As JHK sez, there’s a finger of events pointing to secession.

    Never mind the sanctuary state or marijuana puffery, ambitious and ruthless leaders will fill the area vacated by Washington. There’s no lack of historical examples of local rulers stepping in where imperial authority no longer applies.

    Trump, to his credit, and to the huge discredit of America’s Establishment, recognized the realities of America’s situation.

    • SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 11:13 am #

      You know V I don’t really know that we are an actual country anyway in any true sense of the word anymore. Not only do we not do anything to defend our borders but our “leaders” are allowing the current invasion to unfold without any real deterrents. No one in Washington is going to do a thing to stop the literal transformation of the country via the invasion. And the demographics are shifting quickly with over 100,000 new arrivals coming each month. We can only assume that Washington wants and needs this invasion. Not only can America not defend its territorial integrity but apparently there is no will to do so at the end of the day. At least not among people who could make a difference. If there was we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

      • volodya April 23, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

        America’s “leaders”, or, to put it a different way, its ruling caste, ie a handful of billionaires with an enabling clerisy of government apparatchiks and an academic nomenklatura, figure that no matter what takes shape below them, the ruling caste is invulnerable.

        So, let those semi-literate farmers come across the Rio Grande, they can pick the fruit and the lettuce, and work their fingers literally to the bone in chicken plants, and they won’t complain.

        The demographic supporting this scheme are bi-coastal left-over eaters who figure they’re the cat’s meow by virtue of finding themselves where they were born, in the social class and with the parents who bore them. But, for this group, it wasn’t special talent that got them there, it was blind luck. They don’t seem to realize how precarious their position is. If it behooved the billionaires to move the economic underpinnings of America’s fly-over people to China, they will do the same to anyone.

        But, for that matter, all the people in America that feel they’re impervious to shifting economics and demographics are as vulnerable as anyone else. This goes especially for the ruling caste that sends its reps to Davos to make arrangements to defend their wealth and position. Never mind the Chinese, the folk coming through the southern borders, ostensibly to provide cheap labor, have got underneath them a long history of spectacular civilizational achievements.

        I know I’ve said this before, but people currently in charge in America, largely descendants of northern Europeans that figure they’re racially and biologically superior, fail to understand that two thousand years ago, while their forebears were living in grass huts on the shores of the Baltic or North Sea or the banks of the Thames or the Elbe, the ancestors of the folk they currently look down on as inferior were building towns and cities with pyramids and astronomic observatories and devising unique writing and communication systems. And hydrologic and irrigation systems. In short, these brown skinned farmers that speak either Spanish or unintelligible aboriginal Indian lingos, are not in the slightest the inferiors they’re supposed to be.

        It’s not as if they MIGHT contend for power. They WILL.

        The people currently at the tip of the pyramid may THINK they have nothing to fear but in this they’re much like the Roman aristocracy or aristocracies everywhere and all through history that were blithely assured of their immovability. They all think alike and in this they are dead wrong.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm #

          Funny, they test out at with IQ’s of 85 – no smarter than American mulattoes. And we know how capable they are, right? I mean they built the Egyptian Pyramids, right? And look how they’ve gotten ahead in America! I mean without their help, America would have never gotten to the Moon or won WW2!

          • volodya April 23, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

            Contenders for power:

            I give you AOC as exhibit A.

            I give you Julian Castro as exhibit B.

            This is just the beginning. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure you can come up with others.

            As to keeping a hammer-lock on power by restricting access to Ivy League colleges, especially by Asians ie by alleging deficient personalities, there’s a multitude of great colleges in the USA. I’ve given CalTech as an example that doesn’t have racial quotas. Can you imagine a Hispanic face in the White House? An Asian face?

            The folk on top that figure they’re unassailable, that figure it’ll be their in-group forever calling the shots, are blind to history and to common sense and to simple facts.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 1:29 pm #

            Hint: The White Hispanics are in a different category than the Mestizos and Indios. Race is real after all. The White Hispanics are White and keep the lights on down there. And yeah, they are in deep trouble for the same reasons we are. Argentina for example, allowed in masses of Indios from neighboring countries for the cheap labor. Now the Whites live in gated communities and fear walking out at night. When will we ever learn?

            I’m not talking to you so much since you know all this but have an Agenda and pretend that you don’t.

          • volodya April 23, 2019 at 1:39 pm #

            You know what my agenda is? In general terms, to stop bullshit in its tracks.

            Bullshit, spreading bullshit, believing your own bullshit is all maladaptive, especially believing your own bullshit. It’s one thing to deceive, it’s another order of magnitude to deceive yourself.

            Which is why I raise questions about climate change. There’s a lot that’s unknown about climate change, about what happened in the past, about what’s coming in the future. Settled science? Bullshit. Just like this Russia Collusion bullshit. Pure bullshit.

          • Q. Shtik April 23, 2019 at 4:24 pm #

            Race is real after all. – Janos

            ===========

            This is compendium material… not that I disagree.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 5:33 pm #

            I for one am more than happy for you to believe your own bullshit on climate change, volodya. It seems to be an integral part of your self-image, as it is with so many of the ‘See me – I’m a bullshit-repellent maverick’ brigade. And the last thing we want to do is damage your self-image just to help prevent things from getting any worse than they need to.

            I’m ducking now, obviously, as a big chunk of self-image gets chucked my way, but it won’t be the first or the last.

        • “I know I’ve said this before, but people currently in charge in America, largely descendants of northern Europeans that figure they’re racially and biologically superior, fail to understand that two thousand years ago, while their forebears were living in grass huts on the shores of the Baltic or North Sea or the banks of the Thames or the Elbe…”

          The truth is your stereotypical “blue-blood”‘s so-called “ancestors” lived in mud and stone huts just 100 years ago… America is the least racist country on the planet, and the democracy’s been running largely without gross spillage of blood for 150 years, so… doing OK there.

          Embrace the Suck. I for one, enjoy the local Mayan industry of grinding corn into flat, cylindrical cakes. Even here they produce an abundance of cheap and convenient food.

          Note to Bozo: Mexico already took over and ain’t going anywhere.

          Its capitalism more than anything else which lends invulnerability. Lets say you want Trump’s dollars. He just converts them to Euros. He moves to Switzerland, to Andorra, Malta, the Seychelles.

          Get with the program. Our task is now unity with the Mexicans against the Centroamerican gangs. Lets dispense with the rubric of oppression and tell it like it is: there is no independence from interdependence as far as the hoi polloi are concerned. Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans are one people, one region, against the world.

          Practical advice: start being practical. Get an electric car. A set of white beaters. A mama-cita. And fucking learn to code, because Liz Warren will never be elected.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 12:36 pm #

      Oh come on – they knew what they were doing. At least they ones in the Capstone. Refer to the dollar bill. If you notice, there’s a separation between the Cap and the rest of the Pyramid. Those are the ones “in the Know”. By their own admission, they have no allegiance to any Nation. You need to read Estulin or watch Alex Jones or something. You are Way behind if you don’t know this. Or are you just pandering to us? I mean you folks are a big part of the Pyramid Plan – and have your own ideas about whose going to be on top.

      • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 8:57 pm #

        I thought Alex Jones was quietly recuperating from his self-proclaimed psychosis.

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:52 pm #

          I think he may be worth 60 million dollars.

          he is a front for ZOG.

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 2:11 am #

            What is ZOG?

          • benr April 24, 2019 at 11:17 am #

            Zog = Zionist occupied government.
            Stormfront type speak.
            Alex Jones is hardly a zog front get real.

  55. SoftStarLight April 23, 2019 at 11:04 am #

    I didn’t realize that Easter was a religion with its own specific set of worshippers…

    https://ijr.com/conservatives-call-out-dems-easter-worshippers/

    It is so sad that our civilization is so weakened and sickly that we cannot even honestly discuss our own traditions, let alone say the name of the religion that has been part of our heritage for two thousand years plus now. And it is amazing how so many in the news media worried tremendously about how the death of over three hundred Christians killed brutally by Muslims would affect…Muslims. I mean heaven forbid there could be a backlash that could cause this sacred community to suffer emotional and mental angst. There wasn’t any concern about White people after the Christchurch mosque attack. In fact I bet the media would have enjoyed some sort of revenge attack. And why aren’t world leaders donning crucifixes and Christian garb and identifying with Christians the way they did for Muslims after the Christchurch attack? Remember Jacinda Ardern wearing the hijab? It really makes me wonder if the Elite have already converted to Islam. I wouldn’t be surprised. They are traitors on every other level. Why wouldn’t they sell us out in this way too?

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    • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 12:42 pm #

      I don’t think that’s the Plan. But yeah, as a Plan B, they would do it in a heartbeat.

      I think the Plan is much as that spurious letter by Pike put it: Get Islam and the West to kill each other. Then the Elite come out of their bunkers and rule forever in full Luciferian Glory.

    • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 8:13 pm #

      SSL

      “And it is amazing how so many in the news media worried tremendously about how the death of over three hundred Christians killed brutally by Muslims would affect…Muslims. “

      I think I’d need to do a review of the press before believing that, since I’m seeing nothing like that here. Even on the oh-so-liberal Guardian the headlines are:

      “There are so many bodies – Victims buried as country remains on lockdown.”

      “The victims – more details emerge”.

      “Bombings that killed 320 people have hallmark of ISIS, say security experts.”

      I guess on this occasion we get a pass to accept what the {‘cough’} experts are saying, though.

    • Majella April 25, 2019 at 7:42 pm #

      LOL if you count Jacinidarella Ardern as an ‘elitist’.

      She’s a down-home country girl from Murupara (in the Waikato). Her dad as a cop and her mum a school lunch lady. She graduated from Waikato University with a Masters in Communication Studies & Public Relations, in 2001.

      Hardly an East Coast Brahmin, I guess you’d agree. She has true compassion is all, and led her country through a very dark time. She really is a LEADER, and wouldn’t spend her time tweet-ranting about the shit that went down, unlike Trump.

  56. FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 11:20 am #

    The terror in Sri Lanka bears all hallmarks of modus operandi of the Black World Project:

    to saw the The Grapes of Wrath between the two Abrahamic religions – Christianity and Islam.

    Interestingly, the word liberal in Russia and America has opposite meanings. For example, in the United States, the liberals are credited with the tendency to increase expenditures on the welfare, and in Russia, their love of shock therapy and the introduction of a chargeable payment all the way for the oxygen in the atmosphere.

    In fact, the only point of intersection of Russian and American liberals is the love of the Nazis from the Baltic States to Ukraine.

    Obviously this is due to the fact that the dream of the liberals everywhere is the new Nazi Germany, destroying those whom they consider to be Untermensch.

    Just American liberals go to their dream from Roosevelt America, through turning the welfare into a hopeless trap, and Russian liberals go to Nazism from the USSR through shock therapy and the abolition of electric trains and old-age pensions.

    And they have an appropriate cultural policy, and these books do not suit the US liberals with their anti-Nazi orientation, and not with immorality, as they claim. In short, LiberNazism is the place to be! Black project, screw its mother!

    • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 11:20 am #

      John Steinbeck, “Grapes of Wrath” (1939)

      The writer showed a real human tragedy. He focused the reader’s attention on the Oklahoma family, which left its native lands due to drought, the economic crisis and changes in agriculture. Despite the fact that the literary elite enthusiastically accepted the book, it was officially banned in the United States and publicly condemned.

      • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 5:07 pm #

        About the time Steinbeck’s Okies were headed west to Cal, in the Soviet Union, Kulaks were headed east, at gunpoint, in cattle cars, into the bloody maw of Gulag.

        Brh

      • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 5:31 am #

        ” Despite the fact that the literary elite enthusiastically accepted the book, it was officially banned in the United States and publicly condemned.”

        Really?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath

        “The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was released in 1940.”

        How did they get to make a film in 1940 if the book was banned?

        But thanks for the reminder. I’ve never got round to reading the book, so I’ve just ordered the film in the meantime – I’ll get the book when I have more time.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm #

      Old bitch don’t learn new tricks!

      They are using the same methods they used to initiate the War of the Roses between two Christian parties of York and Lancaster, although of slightly different flavour.

      Only the expulsion of Black Cistercian monks from the Good Old England by Henry the VIII stopped the bloodshed.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 23, 2019 at 12:46 pm #

      ISIS has taken responsibility. Nice try, hater.

    • All I can say is, finc… just stop being Untermensch. Is it so difficult? Try Tony Robbins

  57. Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 12:52 pm #

    Climate change is a lot like the Permian extinction. Settled science? Just look at all the competing theories. And then there’s the latest. This, I guess, replaces this theory. And this one. And a bunch of others. And I bet you thought it was a comet.

    We can’t say for certain what wiped out nearly all life in the past, but we definitely know that anthropogenic climate change will wipe out nearly all life in the future. Because science.

    • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 2:03 pm #

      “we definitely know that anthropogenic climate change will wipe out nearly all life in the future. ”

      Well you might, Exscotticus, but I certainly don’t. There’s a straw man nearby that’s making me sneeze, though.

      Don’t worry Exscotticus. They’re not coming for your car, or your holidays, or any other facet of your lifestyle. Chill…

      • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 2:53 pm #

        Oh so climate change is nothing to worry about after all? Jeez, and all this fuss…

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

          It is, but you personally don’t need to worry, because, like I said, no-one’s coming for your car.

          I can worry if I want to.

          • capt spaulding April 23, 2019 at 8:18 pm #

            Just read this headline, Alba: Exxon Mobil CEO concerned after realizing global warming could end life on Earth before they finish extracting all the oil. “In that case, he sighed, just enjoy the next 20 years as much as you can”.

          • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 8:55 pm #

            Straight from a climate scientist

            He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. “Carbon offsetting? I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you’re offsetting the carbon? You’re probably making matters worse. You’re far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests.”

        • Ricechex April 25, 2019 at 1:28 am #

          Climate change is just a nice way to say population overshoot. No one wants to deal with that or even knows what to do.

      • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 2:57 pm #

        >>> Don’t worry Exscotticus. They’re not coming for your car

        Not yet. Right now they’re merely coming for your skyscraper.

        • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 5:21 pm #

          Hideous things anyway.

          • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 8:27 pm #

            No car, truck, no modern civilization as we know it.
            things delivered by drone and train?

    • Climate change is like an automatic transmission.

      To you, its a black box.

      There is something wrong with it, but you don’t know what. So you take to to the shop.

      The auto transmission repair person diagnoses it and tells you that unless it gets fixed, it will break. There he is behind the counter, in his overalls, oil and grease all over, thick service manuals lying on the table.

      Here is where your logic comes in- your logic is, I’m still not sure- I’ll get a second opinion.

      So you go to another guy, this time, he’s on a website, in a forum. You think he might know so you ask him.

      And you’ll need a third, and a fourth opinion- and find those in various methods and means, maybe even crack a book and stare at fold out diagram of a hydraulic automatic transmission schematic.

      And since you can’t really determine the qualitative or quantitative dimensions of the black box, and you can’t differentiate between the determinations of any of the four sources you interrogated, and you’re using YOUR OWN judgement to accent to any one diagnosis…

      Meanwhile, you’re driving your little shit-box all over town and BOOM! the transmission explodes.

      Here’s your real problem, quite simply. You don’t respect expertise.

      The first guy you talked to gave you a correct diagnosis.

      And unless YOU yourself have expertise in repairing automatic transmissions, the tacit implication is that everything else being equal, you are best suited to following the prescriptions of experts who make these types of diagnoses.

      • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 8:57 pm #

        Show me a single climate scientist that has ever “fixed” a climate. It can be this planet or any other. I’ll give you some time to draw up your list.

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:53 pm #

          AL GORE

        • All of them have played around with “fixing” climate problems if you mean creating a contained atmosphere of gasses and liquids and measured, adjusted, and mathematically modelled temperature fluctuations, under observation, in experiments.

          There is no exceptions I can think of.

          The analogy stands.

          • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 8:50 pm #

            Does it? So when children “play around” with toy cars and engines, that makes them qualified mechanics?

            FACT: the climate is largely a “black box” to scientists as well.

  58. beantownbill. April 23, 2019 at 2:11 pm #

    The vast majority of people believe the Earth is round, but a tiny minority believe it’s flat. We lead our lives based on the assumption it’s round, and our civilization has benefited accordingly. Almost all climate scientists believe we have global warming, and a very small number don’t think so. Yet we haven’t been able to sustain any effort to alleviate this issue.

    So my question is, is a magic percentage necessary before we take action? And if so, what is that percentage. Round-Earthers are well up in the 99th percentile of believers; global-warmers are in the 97th percentile. Is the magic number between 97-99%? If so, we aren’t very far off from being able to remedy the situation.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 2:32 pm #

      It is not about the magic percentage point, or the notorious citation index – it is about the General Crisis of Western Scientific Method that stopped almost all development in Science and Technology since the landing on the Moon in 1968, except for information and communication technologies, which helps control the human masses.

      If our betters are so concerned with Global Weather Changes, why don’t they prove it by initiating large land reclamation projects and selecting new crops, resistant to new weather conditions.

    • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 3:42 pm #

      @beantownbill, if scientists and our leaders truly believe that the end is nigh due to AGW, why are they encouraging more growth? Why aren’t they endorsing the cleanest no-carbon-emissions energy we know of: nuclear power?

      • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 4:03 pm #

        The problem with nuclear power is that we are running out of U 235 and there is a prohibition on U 238/Thorium technologies based on linear particle accelerators.

        Hopefully Trump will be able to lift that prohibition.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 4:28 pm #

        There are security and military implications of such particle accelerators.

        For example, they could be used for detecting even small amounts of radioactive materials being smuggled through the border, for the purpose of building a dirty bomb.

        Such program was successfully tested in the United States in the joint effort with the Russian scientists in early 2000s.

        But, mounted on a big cargo plane, they could from hundreds of miles away, bring any nuclear reactor to a critical mass – the nuclear reactor of American air-carrier, for example, making the entire American air-carrier fleet useless.

        That’s I believe what Putin called “Weapons based on new physical principles”.

        • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 4:42 pm #

          >>> There are security and military implications of such particle accelerators.

          All of which pale in comparison to the end of the world as we know it.

          To claim—as they do—that we have 12 years left, and then fret over the inherent dangers of nuclear power, is just idiotic. The human species will be gone—but at least we avoided another Fukushima!

          To fret over what Russia might do with a particle accelerator when the response will be hydrogen bombs is also idiotic.

          • beantownbill. April 23, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

            I agree.

          • 100th Avatar April 23, 2019 at 9:55 pm #

            The key is leas of the human species.
            With less we can use carbon based fuels, solar, wind, tidal, hydro, etc.

            The problem is the scale.

            With less people we can enjoy living in balance with this planet.

            Stop treating the symptoms

          • Majella April 25, 2019 at 8:55 pm #

            “12 years left” – is this an erroneous belief an ingenuous misunderstanding of what ’12 years’ means?

            Surely, you understand that it refers to having 12 years left to get something done about AGW…it’ll still take a century or more to finish us off, but after 2030, it’s basically too fucking late to do anything about it.

            Nature doesn’t take account of your political views – you’re just as fucked as everyone else.

      • beantownbill. April 23, 2019 at 6:41 pm #

        Because nuclear power is equated with the bomb, the biggest of all bogeymen, IMO.

      • Any specifics ?

        I believe plenty of them are talking about- or will be.

  59. messianicdruid April 23, 2019 at 2:18 pm #

    Btb: Should we build space platforms? Rebuild a water canopy?

    Where is George today?

    • beantownbill. April 23, 2019 at 7:14 pm #

      MD, no on a water canopy – water vapor would increase warming. Space platforms would be very time consuming and expensive. Look, I honestly can’t say with confidence that there will be runaway climate change. I’ve never seen mathematical models that predict a greenhouse effect. Not that they’re not out there, but I don’t have the time or energy to look them up, study them, or be sure I can even figure out the math. I’ve also never studied the assumptions or what the initial boundary conditions of the modeling are.

      I’ve only heard people say, “according to leading climate scientists….”, or others just say there’s no climate change going on, but not discussing the evidence. The devil’s in the details.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

        If there are some accurate scientific assessments of coming changes in climate, as a result, for instance, of the changes in the flow of Gulf Stream as a consequence of Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it would be information of strategic importance which nobody will make public.

        • capt spaulding April 23, 2019 at 8:25 pm #

          Climate change researchers admit that it’s a challenge maintaining the worldwide global warming conspiracy.

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 8:42 pm #

            But they reckon it’s worth it because of all the millions they get in research grants from George Soros.

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 8:30 pm #

          Ice ages? when is the next one?

          • capt spaulding April 23, 2019 at 8:43 pm #

            Well, I was cold this morning, so it’s just a matter of time. Sweet! No more encephalitis!

          • GreenAlba April 23, 2019 at 9:03 pm #

            “Ice ages? when is the next one?”

            Not sure, but I find that you stand there for ages waiting for one, then three come at the same time.

          • Exscotticus April 23, 2019 at 9:06 pm #

            @GreenAlba, funny!

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 2:17 am #

            An ice age is happening now.

        • FincaInTheMountains April 23, 2019 at 8:35 pm #

          What if we’re talking a new Ice Age in all of the Western Europe and much milder climate in Siberia?

          How that would affect the scenarios of a WWIII?

          Just sayin’

        • Ricechex April 25, 2019 at 1:33 am #

          Deepwater Horizon broke my heart. Literally for months as it went on. It will never be made public. We have destroyed the planet in which we live. No amount of controversy will rectify that. We can focus on Trump, or the libs, and none of it will make any difference. We can make nicey nice and call it climate change. There are just too many people destructing everything in their path. It is so so very sad.

          • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 1:09 pm #

            We have destroyed the planet in which we live. – Ricechex

            ==============

            Can anyone guess what word in ^this^ sentence I find mildly, although not entirely, incorrect and therefore annoying? Please don’t answer “Who gives a shit?!”

            I’ll bet Green Alba will spot it immediately.

      • Beantown wants concierge service… can someone explain to this dummy the logic of climate change from first principles, because my fingers are exhausted from all this typing

        • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 8:31 pm #

          Climate change, nature is ever in flux.
          Due to man, AGW and carbon excess.

          Extreme weather events.

        • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 8:55 pm #

          Hey Snacks, Weekly World News is doing a special issue on Climate Change — and the Secret Alien Invasion that has caused it.

          We’re bringing all together — Bigfoot, Batboy, Area 51, the Masons, Sgt. Pepper, the Rosenburgs, Senator McCarthy, the McKinley assasination, the Kennedy assasination, Anton McVeigh, Blue Oyster Cult — you name it, its in there.

          We’ve scooped the NYTs on this one, oh yeah!

          brh

        • beantownbill. April 23, 2019 at 9:09 pm #

          You are speaking in riddles, dummy

  60. pkrugman April 23, 2019 at 7:42 pm #

    Janos: ISIS has taken responsibility.

    DJT: ““You kept hearing it was 90 percent, 92 percent. Now’s it’s 100 percent. … We did that in a much shorter period of time than it was supposed to be.” (Feb. 28, 2019)

    Janos, it is impossible that ISIS carried out any attacks because Trump already declared that his defeat of ISIS “100 percent” and in record time. Greatest president ever. /s

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    • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 9:01 pm #

      Trump said they were defeated in Iraq and Syria.

      ISIS is like lefties. We thought they were dead after the Soviet Union went down, who knew they would they would reappear, vampire like, in American Universities and the Dem party, 20 years later.

      brh

      • pkrugman April 23, 2019 at 11:29 pm #

        And you believed Trump? Just this past week ISIS is active in Iraq and Syria.

        ISIS’ resurgence continues to gain momentum across Iraq and Syria, a new report said Friday. “ISIS is expanding its support zones and scaling up its attack campaign in key cities including Ar-Raqqa City, Mosul, and Fallujah as well as rear areas in Northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan” –NY Post April 19, 2019

        Doesn’t sound like a 100% victory in Iraq and Syria. Trump lies.

        • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 12:05 am #

          “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” — President Barack Obama.

          Do you think Trump’s “lie” matches that one?

          ISIS, or some form of Islamoterrorism, will always exist. The key is to keep them OVER THERE, and not elect them to Congress.

        • benr April 24, 2019 at 11:20 am #

          Just like roaches they scurry away and reform.

    • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 2:17 am #

      Typical Janet BS….we know you love MS-13 so no doubt the mention of ISIS really excited you.

    • Is it April Fool’s Month now??

      • malthuss April 23, 2019 at 11:55 pm #

        I d ask the Israelis. Ask Bibi.

    • BackRowHeckler April 23, 2019 at 11:13 pm #

      The IDF is dug in on the Golan Heights, determined to keep the high ground. Here’s to hoping the settlement of ‘Trump’ is a successful and prosperous one.

      Stateside, the anti Israel organization ‘Code Pink’ has led protests in DC against Israel’s presence on the Golan Heights, which was captured in the 1967 war. The Code Pink shrews would like Israelis pushed off the Heights and return them to Syria, but neither a weakened Syria nor their Code Pink allies have the Divisions to make it happen.

      Meanwhile, settlements, tank battalions and machine gun nests will guarantee Golan Heights remain part of the west, of western civilization.

      brh

  61. Fortress America. Beyond the walls, Fortress Canada, and Fortress Mexico.

    At the extreme, the Door in the Wall to Centroamerica.

    Through this Door pour men, women and children, fleeing demon spawn and all manner of horrors.

    In the Age of Courage the response was clear, Invasion, and Extermination.

    But this is not the Age of Courage.

    It is the Age of Comfort. It is the Age of… somebody to pick my food for me… to make my bed… to sweep my floors…

    Which Roman era was this?

    • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 2:28 am #

      More like an error than an era. No wonder they don’t exist anymore.

  62. FincaInTheMountains April 24, 2019 at 5:48 am #

    Meanwhile, settlements, tank battalions and machine gun nests will guarantee Golan Heights remain part of the west, of western civilization. == brh

    First of all, the Israel is definitely not the part of the “Western Civilization”; it is a civilization of its own.

    And how in your vision of the world, filled with very substantial reserves of ideological explosives left over from the Cold War era, fit the facts that Stalin played a decisive role in creating the state of Israel, Russian Military Police is now patrolling the Syrian side of the Golan Heights and Netanyahu spends more time in Kremlin’s reception-rooms than in his own office?

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-deploy-military-police-golan-heights-ifax-101529184.html

    Apparently, not everyone is satisfied with the prospect of finally ending the Cold War through an Alliance between Trump’s America, Putin’s Russia and Netanyahu’s Israel and the easiest way to undermine this tendency is to provoke a serious deterioration in relations between Russia, US and Israel, drawing them into regional conflicts.

    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 11:33 am #

      “Israel is definitely not part of Western Civ” … — Finca

      Samuel P Huntington, in his Clash of Civilizations, describes Israel as Western Civs last outpost of Europes eastern frontier, existing precariously on the edges of Africa and Asia.

      Brh

  63. FincaInTheMountains April 24, 2019 at 6:10 am #

    Of course, the division of the world into West and East is a convention, but there is still something into it, although it is not worth exaggerating the role of this factor.

    In the Gnostic literature, this topic is not given enough attention; it suffices to recall Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” or Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West”, but one should not forget that this topic for Western Europeans is largely determined by the experience of Crusades and colonialism and for Russia, it means something opposite, and not only for geographic reasons.

    For Russia, the clash of the West and the East means the clash of Western and Eastern Christianity, or rather Catholicism and Orthodoxy, since Western Christianity in fact is the Irish Orthodoxy of St. Patrick.

    In addition, it should be understood that before the Great Schism Rome and the Popes belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire, and in the 10th century from Knut the Great to Wilhelm the Conqueror the people most similar to Russians from a cultural point of view were the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, whose kings and queens constantly married Russian princes and princesses, which was due to both the common religion and the fact that the Anglo-Danish state, like Russia, was an integrative, and not a colonial Empire.

    The fact of the matter is that the conquest of England by William the Bastard was the first Crusade against the Orthodox Christianity inspired by the Papacy, and the conflict between the York and Canterbury departments was in many ways analogous to the conflict between Moscow and Rome.

    This religious duality of the Anglo-Norman monarchy becomes triple if we recall that the Church of England is older than Rome and Constantinople and has its origins in Joseph of Arimathea, and for it the apocryphs such as the Gospel of Peter and Acts of Pilate, which played a huge the role in the formation of European anti-Judaism and the formation of the concept of the Jews as not only the main, but also the only ones responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

    Meanwhile, in Byzantium, these texts were not welcomed, because they downgraded the role of Eastern Christianity in general and the mystical significance of the analogy between the vision of Constantine the Great and the vision of the Apostle Paul, in particular.

    The very vision that allowed him to repent for the Romans and the Empire who crucified Christ, just as St. Paul repented for the Jews shouting “Crucify him, crucify him.”

    • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 7:12 am #

      Just following up on that last idea, Finca.

      I spent decades immersed in very everyday Christianity, as you know. My lot were Presbyterians – basically an offshoot of The Church of Scotland in England. They joined with the Congregationalists when I was still a nipper and became The United Reformed Church.

      They weren’t hard line on anything – just your everyday friendly family church, but with a few extra Scottish ex-pats.

      The thing is, this idea of Christian anti-semitism never even raised its head in church, so it came as quite a shock to me when I was a bit older and discovered it was a thing. Jews were a bit like our ancient cousins to me – I only knew one modern one at that point, who was a lovely girl in my class at school.

      But what I can’t get my head around is that ‘the church’ (I presume we’re really talking about the Catholic church here) could even momentarily entertain the notion that the Jews or anyone should be blamed for crucifying Christ when my understanding was and is that the crucifixion of Christ was a pre-ordained and necessary part of The Plan for purging humanity of its sins. According to the theory, naturally. It just makes no sense. Why weren’t they thanking the Jews for playing their part according to the script? And since, for a long time, the churches contained a large percentage of the educated elite, it’s a wee bit bizarre that no-one noticed this.

      The other one that stares one in the face of course, is the idea that Jesus came from the line of David. So we get (from David onwards) this one begetting that one, and this other one begetting yet another one – right down to Joseph. Who, with spectacular clarity is described as not being Jesus’ dad. They could have made up a lineage that led to Mary, but they couldn’t, because…women.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 24, 2019 at 7:53 am #

        This is rather a complex matter and who am I to cast an opinion on it?

        But what I think that it relates to the concept of repentance in Christianity and the story of two Jewish companions of Christ – Judas, who, like Peter, betrayed Christ, but Peter repented of his treachery and became holy, and Judas preferred to hang himself on an aspen, just not to admit his guilt, his betrayal, and his sin.

        • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 7:59 am #

          “This is rather a complex matter and who am I to cast an opinion on it?”

          Seems to me it’s the only complex matter you don’t want to cast an opinion on, Finca 🙂 .

        • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 12:15 pm #

          You’ve over simplified the story Fincain. One went on to become the tooth fairy, one of the smaller ones joined a leprechaun colony, another had some radical surgery to have his ears elongated and has been the easter bunny ever since. Meanwhile zombie Jesus inspired any number of gory portrayald of what his fate might have been even as of late showing up in Game of Thrones. The weirdest thing is a lot of people actually believe this shit is true. If you are going to go into a fantasy life why not go with something that entitles you to screw dozens of virgins. Playing harps all day like some cockamamie lonesome cowboy in a desert is pretty hokey sounding.

          • elysianfield April 24, 2019 at 4:32 pm #

            “If you are going to go into a fantasy life why not go with something that entitles you to screw dozens of virgins….”

            Evelyn,
            God is Great!

            I can understand the appeal to the males of the faith, but what is offered for the females? Peace and quiet away from the fornicators?

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 4:15 pm #

            EF

            I posted this elsewhere before seeing your post – haven’t been upstream much this week…

            https://www.kansascity.com/living/religion/article10735013.html

            It’s quite funny, but it seems the laydeez aren’t to be left entirely bereft. There may be a few pious George Clooney lookalikes for them.

            I loved the bit where Allah has ensured that the laydeez won’t feel jealous of the Houris.

            But beware of false hopes:

            https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/books.guardianreview5

            They might just get a bowl of 72 raisins.

            Or they might just never be aware of what they were never going to get anyway 🙂 .

      • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 10:09 am #

        >>> My lot were Presbyterians

        I’ve always found the Protestant divisions to be daunting. I doubt most people could tell you the difference between them. Maybe one believes that Christ owned the clothes that he wore, and another doesn’t. Or something like that.

      • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 11:47 am #

        Oh Alba come on! You were the Sunday School teacher. You should know this before I do! Just because God is omnipotent and omnipresent doesn’t negate the individuals’ responsibilities and accountability for ones’ own actions and choices. Therefore the Jews who were crucifying Christ are to blame for what occurred. The Pharisees in particular. Christ made it clear that they were Vipers and the Synagogue of Satan. God used their actions for His own purposes. But that does not somehow mean now that those individuals don’t bear any responsibility for what they did. That is like saying, “Well I threw a banana peel down and a nice lady slipped on it and she had to go to the hospital and while she was there she ended up saving lives by pulling the fire alarm one night when she smelled smoke…I therefore don’t bear any responsibility for throwing the banana peel down…”

        Also, the lineages provided in the Bible are just what the Jews did back then. They were great family historians like the Mormons are. And yes, lineage was traced on the male line. Big woop tee doo!!! Their lineages and histories were important to them. But God had his own plans anyway and Christ wasn’t even really a Jew in that sense. He was simply born into a Jewish culture and society.

        • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 12:29 pm #

          SSL

          In your haste to excuse the inexcusable, you seem to have entirely missed the bit about where anger at some specific Jews ‘who were crucifying Jesus’ some 2000 years ago morphed into er…generalised Christian/Catholic antisemitism. So do please expand.

          “Also, the lineages provided in the Bible are just what the Jews did back then. “

          Sorry, what does that even mean in relation to my actual point? The logical point isn’t to do with the use of the male line – or the love of listing lineages – I asked why it says Jesus is descended from the line of David when he clearly isn’t.

          Your whole post reads like someone running out of breath in their desperation to buttress something up that’s about to fall down on their head.

          The lineage isn’t valid. Or if it is do please explain to me how.

          And Jesus remained a Jew. Paul then reinvented him and invented Christianity.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

            Lies. He said, Soon they will drive you from the Synagogues, or even kill you and call it a good deed.

            Also said that the new Wine must be put in New Wine skins else it would split the old ones. An obvious reference towards the creation of a new religion – a universal one as opposed to one that just catered to one people, the Jews. Remember the Great Commission? Get of your your little leftist hobby horse and try harder.

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:56 pm #

            You should stop projecting and playing games but then again you like to do that so I’ll play along for the fun. My points were very logical and rational to anyone who WANTS to understand. But you don’t. You have already stated that you don’t believe in any religion so how genuine is your desire to understand? It is very simple actually. Jesus (no matter his real origin) was born to Mary and Joseph. Thus if you follow Joseph’s heritage it links back to the House of David. This ultimately links Jesus to the House of David. And notice that back then they referred to peoples’ houses which mean their clan/family, in other words extended families. So if I was “born in the House of David” that doesn’t necessarily mean David is my daddy. Maybe he is my granddaddy. The point is that the reference to Jesus being descended from David is to point out where Jesus fits in within the Jewish community which traced these things and who held this sort of information as highly important. And because Mary and Joseph were not actually Jesus’ biological parents Jesus was not genetically a Jew. Or if he was let me know how to prove that? You don’t like Paul’s teachings so you fancy that he reinvented Jesus. Wow!!!!

          • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 1:00 pm #

            How was Mary not Jesus’ biological parent?

          • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 1:03 pm #

            “You have already stated that you don’t believe in any religion so how genuine is your desire to understand?”

            And why do you think that’s even a logical question? You need to back up what you believe. Not that you ever say ‘I believe’ – you just repeat it as if it were self-evident. What you’re saying is stay out of my safe space.

          • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 1:09 pm #

            Janos

            “Lies. He said, Soon they will drive you from the Synagogues, or even kill you and call it a good deed.”

            You need to do better than that. Who is ‘you’? And who is ‘they’?

            And how does either of them relate to historic overarching antisemitism in the Catholic church?

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:10 pm #

            Again you know the answers to the questions you pose but you don’t like them so you argue with them. That is fine. Lots of people do. And as if I have never gone through doubts? You know better. I am totally cool discussing all of your doubts and atheist ideas and I don’t feel unsafe in any way. I BELIEVE (is that better?) that since the Bible says Mary was a virgin and that basically her body was used to bring Jesus into the world that Jesus is probably not directly her son in the true biological sense. I mean we don’t need to have the birds and the bees conversation to figure it all out right? Joseph didn’t help make Jesus…capiche? It was a miraculous phenomenon IF YOU BELIEVE it anyway which I know you do not.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

            Who is the “they”. Well he was talking about the Jews as in those who follow the Jewish religion. He was telling his followers that they weren’t really part of that anymore, or at least to be ready to leave it soon. And yes I know his early followers were biological Jews. I hope this isn’t too complicated for you….

          • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 1:36 pm #

            “Again you know the answers to the questions you pose but you don’t like them so you argue with them. “

            Please don’t do what Janos does and tell me what I think. It’s annoying.

            “I BELIEVE (is that better?) that since the Bible says Mary was a virgin and that basically her body was used to bring Jesus into the world that Jesus is probably not directly her son in the true biological sense.”

            As regards your theory – interesting. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before.

            And yes it is much better, thank you. Humility is a good thing. In all the decades that I believed in Christianity, not once did I ever speak to other people as if it were self-evident. If you believe something for which there is absolutely no evidence it’s 100% entirely up to you to put your case and not for anyone else to justify their disbelief. Obviously it would be just lovely if those Muslim folks could get that too. I dare to suppose you might even be persuaded to agree in their case.

          • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 1:47 pm #

            Janos

            Let’s recap. So, Catholic antisemitism is based on Jesus telling his followers that ‘they’ (the Jews) would chase ‘you’ = ‘them’ (the Christians) from the synagogues. Centuries and even millennia after the Christians don’t go near synagogues anyway?

            Nope, you’ll need to do better.

            We won’t rush things, though. I wouldn’t want you to get too bogged down before we get on to the implications of ‘love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you’, in relation to those Jews from way back. And certainly not in relation to the ones who had nothing whatever to do with it, then or now.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 5:42 pm #

            You changed the subject. We weren’t talking about “Anti-Semitism” but rather the origins of Christianity. To that end, to counter your Pauline argument, I brought in the words of Christ anent the Jews and the Synagogue as well as the Great Commission – to prove that He knew He was starting a new religion.

            In any case, since you ran from the argument, I can fairly claim victory – again.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 5:36 am #

            No, Janos, you changed the subject.

            This was the subject:

            “But what I can’t get my head around is that ‘the church’ (I presume we’re really talking about the Catholic church here) could even momentarily entertain the notion that the Jews or anyone should be blamed for crucifying Christ when my understanding was and is that the crucifixion of Christ was a pre-ordained and necessary part of The Plan for purging humanity of its sins. According to the theory, naturally. It just makes no sense. Why weren’t they thanking the Jews for playing their part according to the script? “

            So, while it’s interesting to read about the obvious point that people who do things are responsible for what they do (leaving aside God’s overarching plan that included having them do it), you still haven’t explained why the hostility based on those particular individuals morphed into the Catholic church promoting hatred of Jews in general, individual acts of love and heroism in e.g. WWII notwithstanding.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:22 am #

            Well why have some Jews supported hostility to Christians? I suppose this question could be posed in many different ways with many different players. How has the Catholic Church promoted hatred of the Jews? What are these specific anti-Jewish doctrines that you are talking about?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 11:51 am #

            JSS: To which I answered this – focusing on your last sentence, the Paulism:

            ‘Lies. He said, Soon they will drive you from the Synagogues, or even kill you and call it a good deed.

            Also said that the new Wine must be put in New Wine skins else it would split the old ones. An obvious reference towards the creation of a new religion – a universal one as opposed to one that just catered to one people, the Jews. Remember the Great Commission? Get of your your little leftist hobby horse and try harder.’

            JSS: You answered, thus accepting the contract. So in effect, you began to have two somewhat conversations at a time, ours and the one you were having with SSL. This is common in Vietnam, where people don’t even bother looking at each other sometimes when they are speaking.

            All you can see of Christianity is anti-Semitism? Wow, that’s sad and sick. But you certainly are well trained….

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 4:25 pm #

            “All you can see of Christianity is anti-Semitism? Wow, that’s sad and sick. ”

            I don’t know if you’re talking to me because I don’t know who JSS is. But anyway, if it’s me, that’s just another of your ‘in other words’ bits of nonsense.

            I see a huge variety of things in Christianity. I see what Camille Paglia calls a huge and amazing work of art.

            I see projection of a human-formulated code of ethics on to a deity, which was probably entirely innocent (the projection, not the imagined deity) and just an attempt to codify the best of what they thought they should be aiming at in their behaviour and the organisation of their communities, much of it entirely laudable (and pretty universal and unoriginal), some of it misguided, but reflecting the conflicts inherent in humans trying to be ‘good’ but being aware of temptations they know are destructive.

            The antisemitism is just evidence of the widespread lack of logic and the usual tribal nonsense.

          • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 4:26 pm #

            JSS: You answered, thus accepting the contract. – Janos

            ===============

            Janos, please save me the time and effort of figuring out who the fuck JSS is.

  64. K-Dog April 24, 2019 at 9:25 am #

    That circus won’t stop until America gets whapped upside the head by economic reality and, really, who is paying attention to that?

    The first whapp will be ignored. That second….ouch!

    The shale oil “miracle” has put even the superstars of economic commentary to sleep, though the quandary in plain sight is that the mighty flow of shale oil doesn’t pencil out as a money-making enterprise, and the whole project is destined to fall part even more rapidly than in the decade since it was ramped up.

    The black paint on the dog bone tanker cars is still shiny and fresh. I see the mile long wonders parked below the city. I can remember when none were there. Now they sit three abreast, gargantuan snakes stretching out of sight waiting to slither north. Rattlesnake tales of orange diesel pushers sometimes as many as four cars on a train, rest waiting.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • K-Dog April 24, 2019 at 9:26 am #

      The shale oil “miracle” has put even the superstars of economic commentary to sleep, though the quandary in plain sight is that the mighty flow of shale oil doesn’t pencil out as a money-making enterprise, and the whole project is destined to fall part even more rapidly than in the decade since it was ramped up.

      Italics for a quote.

      • K-Dog April 24, 2019 at 9:26 am #

        Plain text for me.

    • GreenAlba April 24, 2019 at 9:45 am #

      Probably a daft question, K-Dog, but why are they going north? Doesn’t oil come south to you from your Canadian cousins?

      • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:43 am #

        That is not a daft question at all and I can’t find much info about it.

        There is a refinery in Anacortes WA but according to one source I found they are not equipped to take oil by rail. That source could easily be dated. The issue of oil trains fell off the radar here in 2014 it seems. What I see is trains going north. If it is Canadian stuff coming down then I’m seeing empty cars going up!

        Perhaps up empty by day and down filled at night? America’s energy revolution!

        • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:45 am #

          I see them in the day. Considering how explosive the stuff is my guess could be a good thing.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:00 pm #

            But in the light of the tried and trusted ‘what goes up must come down’ are we assuming they come back down some other way?

            Or at night perhaps…

            We’re not used to seeing such huge trains here – only in American films. Your description has a slightly sinister feel to it, like the image of the little boy and future killer in ‘A Kiss Before Dying’, watching the Carlsson Copper trains go by the window interminably.

            Not that I’m identifying you with the future psychopath, obviously…

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm #

          “If it is Canadian stuff coming down then I’m seeing empty cars going up!”

          That did occur to me as an explanation!

    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 11:43 am #

      What you describe would cause hardship for a lot of American people, Kdog. But in Seattle, aren’t there thousands of homeless people already living on the streets, defecating on sidewalks, dropping dirty IV needles on the pavement, spreading infectious diseases, and committing crimes. It seems like in your own back yard armageddon has already arrived, Kdog. You don’t have to wait for it.

      Brh

      • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 12:03 pm #

        And kdog, rail isnt the best way to move crude oil, but its being done that way because its become almost impossible to build pipelines due to luddite activity in the courts and on the ground.

        Brh

        • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:46 am #

          There are big mountains in the way too!

      • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:47 am #

        Q:But in Seattle, aren’t there thousands of homeless people already living on the streets, defecating on sidewalks, dropping dirty IV needles on the pavement, spreading infectious diseases, and committing crimes.

        A:No

  65. FincaInTheMountains April 24, 2019 at 9:54 am #

    French firemen extinguish a car or why Notre Dame burned down

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZMr0GU-hvk

    🙂

    • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 11:35 am #

      It’s a miracle the fire didn’t burn the whole cathedral down if these clowns were on the scene.

  66. SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 11:09 am #

    Five year old Landen Hoffman who was thrown from a third floor balcony at the Mall of America is having a miraculous recovery thank God!

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/04/23/test-results-of-child-thrown-off-mall-balcony-are-truly-a-miracle-pastor-says/23716041/

    The perp, Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda is a simian with a history of altercations with the law. No surprise at all. And his lame excuse is that he threw the five year-old boy over the railing because…women didn’t want to talk to him at the mall despite years of him trying to “talk” to women. I’m sure the attempts to talk were more like propositions to hook up. But we can let the experts sort that out. No wonder most reasonable people find it easier and safer to just avoid simians at all times to the greatest extent possible. Even those who will never speak about it and fancy themselves to be open minded and super liberal and loving of all colors and rainbows.

  67. SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 11:27 am #

    Apparently even grandma has had enough of the invasion….

    https://madworldnews.com/cher-leftists-illegals-la/

    I hate legal immigration too and it must be banned. But, if we can just get grandma to see the error of her ways when it comes to illegals that will be one step in the right direction. It’s amazing how enlightened the unenlightened become when they step out of their safe spaces and realize how those that do are rabidly attacked and smeared. Or better yet, when they have to reap the consequences of the policies they say they love. I don’t have any sympathy and am glad grandma has to go through this. Once she is down at the bitter bottom we’ll help her up to the light….Until then it is all very funny and vindicating :-). Now if all of our grandmas and grandpas would wake the fuck up!!!!!

    • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 11:40 am #

      All SJWs love the idea of universal kumbaya—until the associated crime and poverty lands on their doorstep, and human feces fill the streets.

      It’s been entertaining watching municipalities that declared themselves sanctuaries for illegals suddenly backpedal when Trump suggested sending illegals directly to them. They like the idea of open borders—not the actual practice of it.

      I don’t know who first coined the term “virtue signalling” but they nailed it.

      • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 11:51 am #

        It is very comical indeed! And I have to say, that is awesome that Trump even brought that up. But he should fully implement that policy and lets see how long all of these different areas want to remain sanctuaries. I also think we should be forcing everyone who believes in the US being a refugee camp to take refugees into their homes and financially support them without any government aid.

      • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 12:05 pm #

        Too bad you aren’t keeping up you ignorant moron.

        Mayor of Seattle invited them to send all they wanted to to her city.

        • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

          Load em up ship em out and dump in the dump. She should have to have at least a dozen in her own home at her own private expense. Better yet, let’s just revoke her citizenship and deport her!!!!

          • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

            I’m guessing if they decided to accept your suggestion and began looking for the dump to use, where you are sitting there all day like Jabba the Hut could easily be seen as a suitable target zone.

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 12:40 pm #

            Really??? Glad to know we are back in elementary school. No you are lol!!!

            And by the way, my proposal is totally awesome and you know it.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 1:05 pm #

            Evie has regressed to the anal stage, obsessed with piss and shit. Next stop down, the Oral! Those TDS victims who just started screaming when Trump won are at that stage.

          • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:15 pm #

            Oh hell no lol!!!! Like this funny little gal :-).

            https://binged.it/2vgZPqf

        • Q. Shtik April 24, 2019 at 2:49 pm #

          Too bad you aren’t keeping up you ignorant moron. – Eve

          ===========

          Reminds me of the bit on SNL where Dan Aykroyd refers to Jane Curtin as an ignorant slut. I still laugh out loud thinking of it.

        • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 3:46 pm #

          >>> Mayor of Seattle invited them to send all they wanted to to her city.

          More virtue signalling. But I predict if Trump accommodates her request, Seattle will fight it in court. The FULL message the mayor of Seattle communicated was: Yes we’ll accept them all… and the federal government will PAY FOR IT.

          The problem is that Seattle can’t even deal with the homeless they have now. Seattle leaders tried to get Amazon to pay for their socialist policies last year, and Amazon politely told them to choose: Amazon or socialism. Wouldn’t you know that money talks and bullshit walks? Seattle leadership chose Amazon, and the homeless are still homeless.

    • Majella April 25, 2019 at 9:34 pm #

      SSL – “I hate legal immigration too and it must be banned.”

      Are you actually SERIOUS? There’s a recent legal immigrant that you surely approve of – Melania Trump! And she got in on a ‘genius’ visa [EB-1a], and acted as ‘anchor baby’ for her parents’ to climb on the ‘immigration chain’ Trump so loathes. The hypocrisy boggles the mind!

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45137752

  68. volodya April 24, 2019 at 12:07 pm #

    There’s too much official turpitude for any reasonable person to ignore. I mean, anybody but the deliberately blind could see what was afoot. It wasn’t a few operatives going rogue, it was Deep State leadership leading the charge and former capos doing the cheer-leading, all in public, egged on by writers and pundits of the press and commentariat.

    Dissenters and skeptics of the younger generation might have been surprised by the in-your-face-edness of it and the sheer scale but, to older people like me, “in-your-face” is defined by that film clip of Oswald getting whacked in a police station, in police custody, in front of whirring TV cameras, or, to back it up a few frames, JFK in Dealey Plaza, or his bro in the Ambassador Hotel and, if all that wasn’t enough, a laughable commission of inquiry.

    That was the Deep State in those days, when they saw someone they didn’t like, who had the gall to aspire to power, a straightforward immunological response of gunshots and a cover-up. Officialdom lied like hell, main-stream news-rooms went along and middle America went to sleep, narcotized by prosperity, by steaks on the barbeque, by television, tobacco, liquor and pills. It’s well-in-hand said voices you could trust, and so mom and dad, and all right thinking people, stubbed out the last smoke, coughed their lungs out, and hit the hay.

    But that was then, a different time. Nowadays, in comparison, the Deep State is lame, halt, flaccid, they go at it like old people fuck. They couldn’t even get rid of Trump.

    If it was just the Deep State, but it isn’t, flop characterizing wokester thinking, sag that of social justice warriors, no vim, no vigor, and pendulous, like the old trying to bend one in, as futile as asking a basic question about climate change. They may perk up, they may get angry, they may shout, but that’s it, that’s all it is. They can’t act, they can’t think, they don’t want to, they can’t be bothered, they can’t swim against the prevailing current because they haven’t got the energy.

    And so, the drill sergeant shouts as the recruits step off the bus, who are my leaders, leaders step forward. And who steps forward? Old shits, Bernie, Biden, oh yeah and Trump. And ok, to be fair, a fair number of youngsters, but youngsters with a head full of flab. And geriatrics run congress. You want to bet Hillary has another go at it?

    Civilizational senility?

    If this civilizational and institutional droop prevented the removal of Trump, it may also protect the malefactors that tried but failed.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 1:13 pm #

      Yes, all well said. And who has the vigor? The brains? The ideas? The Will to Power? The Alt-Right. The Hispanics have the first and last. The Muslims have all perhaps, except brains. The Chinese have all of the above. The future is probably a battle between them and the Muslims, with the Oceanic Elite trying to play both sides and probably getting reviled and destroyed by both – or having to convert to Islam since you can’t easily convert to being Chinese.

      The Alt-Right is too small and it’s too late in the Day I’m afraid. Maybe in a 2.0 we can emerge, but we’ll have to compete against the Zio Patriots who want to do 1.0 all over again. In other words, they’re Zombies. And the Hispanics and Blacks will have to be dealt with as well.

      • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:31 pm #

        So basically it is an uphill (and I mean steep slope) battle every step of the way for Us. I just don’t know what other choice we have but to fight it all the way or die fighting. Or maybe join a friendly team that will help us but not enslave us? If we have all the right ingredients we do have a fighting chance at least! I saw a video by Lana this morning and she was talking about the will to fight too basically and it is going to come from the younger generations in her estimation. Millennials and Gen Xers need to be doing everything in our power to inform and empower the young ones (Generation Z) coming up. They see through most of the BS anyway since it is so in your face so we have a good starting point with many of them.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 5:48 pm #

          Yes, we’re entering into a time of great tragedy and suffering. But maybe it will wake enough of us in time to stave off extinction. Hopefully a remnant can be saved here and there on this continent.

      • malthuss April 24, 2019 at 1:58 pm #

        Are you poor?
        You mentioned shopping for used clothing.

        You up in Idaho?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 5:46 pm #

          Are you poor? The ultimate crime for both the Left and the Right and the Middle in between! Yet Christ said, blessed are the poor in spirit – not exactly the same as being poor per se, but maybe being poor can help one be poor in spirit? Not always, obviously. Many of the poor are bitter – and I don’t blame them though too much of that can destroy a person.

        • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 1:41 am #

          A bit of a crude question malthuss. I honestly would said how frickin rude – but – I like you so we can stay with crude ok.

          Janos, that full verse is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 80 years of living in poverty is sad, it is tragic, especially when someone is trying to better themself. But 80 years is a flash in light of Eternity. So it is better to be joyous and appreciative for any nice thing that the world does bring for the time is short, as you already know.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 1:13 pm #

            Thank you. Your knowledge of the Bible is a blessing that you bring to this Blog.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 5:13 pm #

            Thank you. You make me want to do better all of the time and I appreciate it more than you know :-).

      • volodya April 24, 2019 at 2:37 pm #

        Every civilization has its time as did ours. We may yet salvage something, like Constantinople and its domains did out of the Roman Empire when Rome collapsed.

        Look at the map of Europe. What you see is the imprint of pre-Roman peoples in European national boundaries. What you’ll likely see in the territorial US after Washington loses its reach, is some aspect of what you now see in Europe.

        What you also likely see for a fair stretch, is some semblance of the old institutions going through the motions, if not in Washington, then in state capitols.

        Some things will disappear, but not everything. Something of what was accomplished will survive, but not all of it.

        The Byzantines spoke Greek but called themselves Roman. Maybe the successors to the US, while not speaking English, and living in a stub of the former USA, will still call themselves American.

        • Ol' Scratch April 24, 2019 at 3:16 pm #

          Thing is, our reign was MUCH shorter – only a century and a half or so if we’re considering our time as a “world power.” We’ll be a mere blip on the historical radar, if that. Not that we’re all that much into legacies anyway. And all that’s assuming we don’t go out with a nuclear bang, which is by no means a safe assumption at this point. I still believe we’ll see a nuclear false flag incident sometime in the near future. Where it goes from there, who knows?

          • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:25 am #

            https://seti.org/drake-equation-index

            It goes to dead air.

          • K-Dog April 25, 2019 at 11:28 am #

            The version as presented is primitive. I’ve refined it.

            The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment that has not been pooch-fucked by overpopulating dogs.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 5:51 pm #

          Ha, clever. They already do. It’s a Latin American word too. Again, you show you are no friend of Caesar. And weren’t talking about “Americans” (a pack of mongrel untermensch), but rather Whites.

        • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 2:38 am #

          Yet, volodya, even after Collapse, there may still be a few good old boys, up in that range of hills known as The Deplorables, frying up pork rinds. Thus, we may rest, assured, that civilization will endure . . .

          Heh.

          Cheers

  69. wm5135 April 24, 2019 at 1:05 pm #

    “That circus won’t stop until America gets whapped upside the head by economic reality and, really, who is paying attention to that? The shale oil “miracle………” JHK

    US to end all waivers for Iranian Oil (started to link to Al Jazeera but did not want to raise the ire of our host)

    GGG and the boys should put down the crack pipe. Maybe after a successful theft of Venezuela but not a second sooner.

    BRH – western civilization? YGTBSM!

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    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 1:22 pm #

      No, wm, lm not sh#ttn ya. Im serious.

      Europe and north america are the best. Israel is a better place to live than Qatar or Egypt. Its so obvious it hardly bears mentioning.

      The west is the best, ha!

      Brh

      • SoftStarLight April 24, 2019 at 1:36 pm #

        Some people will definitely need to pass through fire to understand how good our civilization once was. Some will be burned up completely so they will never know. Those who come out on the other side will likely never disown their own people and culture again. They will learn to be normal again. But the fire is definitely coming and all of these people who want the total collapse of our society will get exactly what they want for better and for worse.

        • Ol' Scratch April 24, 2019 at 3:06 pm #

          Our “society” has already collapsed. What we have now is a bizarre, corporate capitalist, winner take all, fascist militaristic perversion.

        • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 3:31 pm #

          And many, if not most, you and your forum cronies for example, will be too blind to see themselves as part of the element that has led to the spiritual/intellectual/moral/physical downfall you beg for.

          • ozone April 24, 2019 at 9:00 pm #

            EvelynV,
            Not to mention a devolution into a barbaric brutality and savage cruelty by the eradication of empathy. I’ve noted that it’s one of their prime characteristics.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 1:14 am #

            Lol forum cronies? That is amazing to me. Yes, we communicate telepathically and sync our efforts for maximum effect. Definitely! And let me guess Evelyn. You are definitely not part of the problem right? And you say I want a downfall and you are so wrong. I would prefer a re-awakening.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 1:25 am #

            And ozone please stop before you start. You know I am very empathetic and I do not encourage savage barbarity and brutality. Nope, I am a big fan of airing greviances and attempting discussion and negotiation. You are just trying to get me worked up and I am not going to allow that. So I’ll just pretend I only noticed that lighter moment we had up thread.

          • ozone April 25, 2019 at 9:40 am #

            Just to reiterate:
            “And many, if not most, you and your forum cronies for example, will be too blind to see themselves as part of the element that has led to the spiritual/intellectual/moral/physical downfall you beg for.” – Evelyn

            Hmm, guess that was unseen… even as it was seen. Lost and blind in a carefully cultivated weed patch.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:15 am #

            Well then open my eyes and set me free. You say that they, the Elite, powers that be, what have you like to keep this left/right fight going as a big distraction. But your criticisms here are a bit one sided don’t you reckon? I mean you should review Evelyn’s posts. Just as much as you say I am a right-wing fanatic any fair arbiter would come to the conclusion that she is a left-wing fanatic. However, only one side receives condemnation and you side with her. So you see why I remained confused about what you tell me? I mean we all have our biases and all but if you were right in the middle then sometimes you would side with me too, at least that is what it seems like to me. But maybe I am just lost in the weeds after all…

  70. FincaInTheMountains April 24, 2019 at 1:51 pm #

    But the fire is definitely coming and all of these people who want the total collapse of our society will get exactly what they want for better and for worse.

    You are free to predict anything; the main thing is not to put any money on your own prophecies.

    For example, George Friedman in 2009 wrote the book “The Next One Hundred Years,” in which he asserted that in the 2020s, China would simply fall apart, and Russia would follow it by the 2030s.

    The great powers will be the United States, Poland, Turkey and Japan, between which the First Space War will break out in 2050. It will start with the fact that the Japanese will destroy American “combat stars” located on Earth’s orbit from their bases on the Moon, and the Japanese ally Turkey, whose dimensions will have reached the size of the Ottoman Empire, will practically destroy the American ally Poland with its missiles.

    However, the total number of victims of world war will be only 50 thousand people, and by 2052 everything will traditionally end with an American victory.

    As a result, in the world will remain two superpowers – the United States and Poland.

    • Ol' Scratch April 24, 2019 at 3:03 pm #

      Friedman was already wrong in 2009 when he wrote that tripe, as the Third World War was declared in 2001 by the United States in response to its own false flag attack on itself on 9-11. I’d call him an idiot, but that would be belaboring the obvious and needlessly piling on. Turkey and Poland as great world powers? Perhaps he’s just trying to be provocative? The US’ glory years are long past us now. There will be no “New American Century,” unless we’re glorifying our demise now too.

      • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 3:33 pm #

        Thanks for the info. I didn’t realize Friedman was one of the illuminated people who saw the 9/11 attack for what is actually was. I’ll have check him out.

  71. Iananna April 24, 2019 at 3:02 pm #

    Apart from common-or-garden rancid Puritanism and the need for capital to have semi functional assembly-line fodder, I’ve never understood the point of drug prohibition.
    Surely the simple solution to so many problems would be to put oil drums full of Oxycontin of every street corner.
    In a couple of weeks there would be few addicts and the rest of us could get on with life without hindrance.
    Unless there is some prevailing belief that people need to be protected from themselves.

    • Ol' Scratch April 24, 2019 at 3:10 pm #

      To keep prices high, provide fodder for the national police and incarceration state, and to enforce monopolies for the national pharmaceutical medical complex. Illegal drugs are the preferred method for laundering large amounts of dark ops money stolen from the US government before it is legitimized in private hands. Plus, not to be discounted, the big boys just plain like fucking with us.

    • 100th Avatar April 24, 2019 at 3:16 pm #

      Throw the chaff to the wind indeed.

      They’re quitters who can’t accept it.

      Let ’em go.

      • Ol' Scratch April 25, 2019 at 8:20 am #

        Quitting the current system is the only conscionable and heroic thing to do. Most don’t even get a choice in the matter, as the system quits them first.

    • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 6:06 pm #

      @Iananna, if only all substance abuse was a victimless crime. But we know for example that children are often the targets and victims of predatory pushers.

  72. BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 4:28 pm #

    The first warm days of spring have brought bloodshed and mayhem to the nutmeg state. 2 shot to death last nite alone in Hartford, another community member shot this afternoon in New Haven. Oddly enough, the 15 year old kid found full of holes in a crashed car last nite, named Jose, is being described AS A GOOD FATHER.

    While all this nonsense is going on, SJW and BLM types are still protesting two suspects shot by cops while resisting arrest. This all happened within the past week or so. I havent mentioned the stabbings and abandoned cars set on fire on city streets,

    Not long ago good spring weather meant playing ball in the park, working in the garden, dropping a line in the lake. Now it means something else. Its hell on earth.

    Brh

    • This is what you get when you make legal abortions free and legal and culturally acceptable. Their mothers could have been paid not to have kids.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 6:01 pm #

        Yes, that’s what must be done. Did you mean to say having kids out of wedlock? I assume you are for abortion. In any case, both are culturally acceptable and both are horrible. One is as nasty as the day is long and the other is destructive Idiocy, with Christian groups helping animalistic women who can barely speak to have one kid after another on the charity of others. Meanwhile career women have few or none. Dysgenics in action resulting in Devolution. We are Devo.

      • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 6:03 pm #

        >>> Their mothers could have been paid not to have kids.

        Sure and let’s pay criminals to not engage in crime.

      • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 6:46 pm #

        In Ct, abortion is a sacred right, recognized above all others.

        Brh

  73. I’m enjoying this beautiful day, despite the fact my view is disturbed by Homo Obliteratus, mindlessly pushing his electric mower back and forth.

    Its hard to find peace of mind when so many old, white people are suffering the peculiar dementia of “gardening”.

    They repeat an ancient pattern of cultivators of the land, in mimicry, as clueless amateurs. Seeking perhaps a lost childish joy… they seek a long, lost connection to a natural world but all they can do is clumsily hack and slash at it, or on a best case basis, reduce it to an absurd expression of aesthetic preference instead of an abiding respect for its own wisdom.

    Likewise, they wished for the lost joy of movement through the world, through a civic landscape designed for human hearts, but all they can do is stare benumbed behind a windshield, arriving in their time machines, to step out, ever older, ever weaker, ever aged.

    This is not a pretty time to be an American. A generation of suckers who fell for these poisonous behaviors are reaping the burdens of a lifetime of couch sitting, beer swilling, and TV watching, having been bent out of shape by a job they stuck with out of fear of regret, a relationship that soured and died, watching the days and weeks and years go by, greying, ever greying.

    Did you know that, for that cohort who answer that they exercise daily, the most common answer is 70-79? By that time the reaper is at the door- these proud fools never realized that exercise was the ultimate long game.

    The doctors all agree that at any age or condition, putting a man on a treadmill will extend and improve his life.

    Instead these fools believed that swinging a weed whacker- or lying on the couch and paying a Mexican to do the same- was what they were supposed to be doing, even- that it was what they wanted to do.

    All that the living can do is observe the irrational behavior of the living dead- they are far too gone in mind, body and spirit.

    The greatests minds of our generation agree that, for all its destruction, waste, and downright stupidity, “gardening” is at least not worse than what a truly mean, stupid and destructive man could do if his resources were unlimited. So these restrictions- of property and resources- set a natural limit. Still, zoning laws being what they are, I have to live with these destructive, mindless anarchists around me and throughout this quintessential Suburban habitat.

    Such are the thoughts of my TLE-Certified Woke experience on a fine Spring day, just months before the start of the Great Panic.

    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 7:28 pm #

      Not a big fan of electric motors on lawn mowers

      Give me a 6 hp Briggs and Stratton any day, an older model that runs on leaded gasoline.

      Pull the cord and let her rip.

      Brh

      • malthuss April 24, 2019 at 7:45 pm #

        ’15 year old was a good father’–
        One more of your classic posts

        I will see that and raise you with,

        In the 1990s I had a neighbor, She was a mom at 14. Her man would leave the dirty condoms on the ground, off the walkway.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 8:58 pm #

        How about blowers? The ultimate evil. Nothing is more horrible than the sound of a blower. And in contrast, nothing is more pleasant that the sound of a rake. But more: a blower typically blows the crap onto someone else’s property, hopefully the public’s I guess. But this is still morally suspect. A raker picks up what is on his own property.

        • EvelynV April 24, 2019 at 9:50 pm #

          A chainsaw is worse. Most of the time. One neighbor as a blower that sounds like an unmuffled motorcycle engine.

        • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 9:53 pm #

          Things are a plague, should be banned, in fact are banned in towns in SE Ct. I still use a trusty rake, which is no mean feat on 2 acres covered with maple and oak trees.

          Difference is, Briggs and Stratton is 4 cycle, relatively low rpm, producing low decibel throaty sound, blower is 2 stroke, high rpm, blasting out about 140 db, disturbing the whole neighborhood.

          You see them deployed by Salvadoran illegals hired by landscaping contractors, gasiline tanks strapped on their backs like a WW2 flame thrower Marine.

          Brh

    • Exscotticus April 24, 2019 at 8:56 pm #

      >>> despite the fact my view is disturbed by Homo Obliteratus, mindlessly pushing his electric mower back and forth.

      White people problems?

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 12:51 am #

      You do realize how much privilege your wokester self is emanating at this particular point right? Your big beef is with old White people gardening in their yards? Wow lol you are consummed with the struggle I see :-). And I thought I had it rough because I feel like I have to have pepper spray and a taser with me just to do something simple like go to the grocery store.

    • budizwiser April 25, 2019 at 9:03 am #

      This is not a pretty time to be an American. A generation of suckers who fell for these poisonous behaviors are reaping the burdens of a lifetime of couch sitting, beer swilling, and TV watching, having been bent out of shape by a job they stuck with out of fear of regret, a relationship that soured and died, watching the days and weeks and years go by, greying, ever greying.

      Clearly, humanity has reached the pinnacle of mindful, virtuous existence – I experience this bliss often – as neighbors compete with ever longer regimens of leaf/dust blowing.

      One must rise early – if you want to hear a bird chirp or breeze in a tree.

  74. Pucker April 24, 2019 at 7:19 pm #

    “in the nervous here and now”

    I have a feeling that going forward that generally it with be psychologically discomfiting and troubling to live around most common People given the ubiquitous angst in society? It may be like living amongst people mentally covered in hives scratching themselves? You don’t want to find yourself in Sartre’s play “No Exit”….

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    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 7:24 pm #

      You mean when S writes

      “Hell is other people”?

      He might have been on to something there.

      Brh

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 12:36 am #

      If this angst is ubiquitous then would it not be an issue for uncommon people too?

  75. Pucker April 24, 2019 at 7:29 pm #

    Most people seem to be trying hard to distract themselves with the trivial rather than drinking from the dangerous Well of Liberty.

    The Blessings of Liberty is a Well that you drink from. One can only draw water from the Well of Liberty without Fear. Thrust your Gladio sword deep between the ribs of anyone who pisses in the Well of Liberty.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 24, 2019 at 9:00 pm #

      Glad to!

  76. stelmosfire April 24, 2019 at 8:34 pm #

    So I filled up a helium tank today for the welding outfit. 40 cu. ft. The price was $140 bucks. I almost shit. Last year it was I think 50 bucks. Who knew there was a helium shortage? Hard times are here for an industrial gas. We are in decline.

    • elysianfield April 24, 2019 at 10:55 pm #

      Saint,
      Helium? I stick, mig, tig, braze, silver solder, etc. Where do you use helium?

    • Helium is a fossil element. There are a few sources of underground trapped Helium in the US. They were all tapped and going to extinction as of 5-10 years ago when I read up on it.

      In the interest of resource extraction, it was subsidized and literally given away for nearly nothing. 1000s of years of helium was pumped out of the ground and found its way into the atmosphere in a multitude of stupid and disingenuous ways, mostly from a global trash industry as balloons. Just the other day a bunch was wrapped around the neighborhood electrical lines. Dancing on the end of string from a Real Estate Agent’s billboard. A frequent find miles from nowhere in our national monuments, or washed up on beaches in the stomachs of dead whales. “Get well soon.”

      Not just exploited by business, the stuff was subsidized. Given away. Encouraged, even, to be depleted. Meanwhile there was some outcry from industries like advanced medicine who use the rare element for some technologies, or aerospace.

      So I’m not surprised to learn its price has risen. Another irreplaceable resource, frittered away.

      “The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children … ” Pretty good analysis except for the maudlin complaint about the thrills of little children.

  77. pkrugman April 24, 2019 at 9:23 pm #

    Steele dossier pee tape validated by Russian who had the tapes, according to Bloomberg News. Rtskhiladze (who is an American-Georgian citizen) will testify to House Intelligence Committee.

    Rtskhiladze tells Cohen: “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.”

    Flow? Icky yellow flow Trump paid prostitutes in Moscow to produce.

    • BackRowHeckler April 24, 2019 at 9:55 pm #

      My God, Little Jane, give it up.

      • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 12:24 am #

        I know really. As if we are supposed to believe these people care about morality whatsoever. Isn’t what goes on between consenting adults supposed to be free from criticism and moral judgement no matter what? Wasn’t it ok for Bill Clinton to do what he did in the Oval Office with Monica because they were both consenting adults? And weren’t those who criticized Bill considered prudes and puritans or something? So why should there be any outrage about Trump with prositutes? It’s all faux outrage by Alinskyites and very lame and see through.

        • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 2:27 am #

          Alinsky indeed. But it is also Bolshevistic-style polemic. These people are stuck, not merely on a single track, but on a monorail. Something worked in the 1920s, so keep pushing it a hundred years on. This is their view of progress.

          Cheers

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:06 am #

            It would be awesome if they understood that there really is no such thing as progress at all, but I know that is asking way too much.

  78. 100th Avatar April 24, 2019 at 9:43 pm #

    Obama, Clinton Inc., and the DNC are desperate to get Biden into office before the other shoe drops. The privilege of the great white dope. Having dutifully served and co-conspired with the aforementioned in the greatest crime in the history of American governance.
    Pushing him past the women, the Hispanics, the gays, the blacks, the Jew, because all that diversity BS falls by the wayside when privileged peoples asses are on the line.

    Hypocrites. Ever any doubt?

    • 100th Avatar April 24, 2019 at 9:51 pm #

      Because running gives one an escape.
      Running for president gives one the ability to brush aside investigations and charges as “dirty campaign politics”.

      They forced him to run. He had to run. Any attack on them is an attack on his campaign and can be spun as meddling with a campaign… a crime no less. The irony.
      Dirty campaign politics as sword and shield.

      The useful and programmed idiots will take the bait. As they always do.

      People used to learn perspective, independent thinking, deviations from norms and groupthink.

      Not in today’s world.

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 12:12 am #

      Is this the shoe drop you speak of?

      https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-24/will-assange-team-trump-bury-deep-state-once-and-all

    • Nightowl April 25, 2019 at 9:42 am #

      Great comment. That is exactly why he is running, despite his extremely disturbing behaviors and the Ukraine corruption. They are desperate.

    • Tate April 25, 2019 at 6:03 pm #

      Maybe. Imputing to the Dems that much foresight may be a stretch but it would effect that end.

      • Nightowl April 26, 2019 at 4:37 am #

        If you consider the foresight involved in trying to rig an election using almost the entire MSM, major social media and search engine companies, and then weaponising the FBI and DOJ as well as foreign intelligence agencies to spy on and set up the incoming president, then perhaps the Biden thing doesn’t seem much of a stretch at all.

  79. KesaAnna April 25, 2019 at 12:29 am #

    ” If you believe something for which there is absolutely no evidence it’s 100% entirely up to you to put your case and not for anyone else to justify their disbelief. ”

    My evidence is that for 30 , 000 to 50,000 years religion and family is how people muddled through , if not well.

    The secular state — SORT OF — only appears on the scene , for us to apply our yardsticks to , 5,000 years ago.

    For most of that 5,000 years the secular state was very like a plague of locusts , or the outbreak of a disease ; something very unpleasant that shows up once in awhile bringing little but grief.

    It was a mercenary army , and a small group of mafia – like fat cats , at a distance. And thank God they were at a distance most of the time too.

    — I threw in the , ” sort of ” because in actuality the secular state has only played any significant role in daily life for barely 200 years , and then primarily in a few locales , not in most.

    And what is the evidence of that 200 years ?

    I think it is fair to say that the audience of Clusterfuck Nation consists to the 90% degree NOT of religious fundamentalists.

    But their Armageddon – speak strikes me as more heartfelt , and I dare say more immediately believable , than some dubious interpretation of Biblical prognostications.

    that is , the secularists and atheists themselves are not generally claiming that everything has turned out leaping unicorns and rainbows , but , rather , have turned out catastrophically.

    World – ending catastrophe ;

    In a mere 200 years.

    That’s quite a trick. ^-^

    Even after 200 years , what outfits like FEMA and UNICEF are still primarily good at is holding press conferences .

    I’m quite confident in venturing that , without religious charities , instead of a thousand or so people starving to death every day , it would easily be several million people starving to death every single day.

    I strongly suspect , too , that the majority of CFNers would be in no position to afford internet access , among other things , if not for the largess of old school family and religious notions of charity and obligation that they do not credit .

    And that’s my evidence .

    As for evidence the other way , I don’t think I have to check in to this site every week , or hold my breath , in anticipation of getting a credible answer to questions like ;

    How do you define progress exactly when your own claim is that ultimately and invariably the outcome for all and sundry is extinction , non -existence , the absence of consciousness ?

    I have only asked that one about a dozen times , and the question is flatly fucking dodged a dozen times.

    Just like it was 200 times before in 200 other venues.

    No , the only evidence I see is you would prefer to play Grand Inquisitor instead of playing the role of defendant.

    Clap …. clap ….. clap …… yawn.

    I think you folks generally have a very curious way of defining ” religion ” and of defining , ” belief ” and, “disbelief “.

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    • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 2:20 am #

      The secular state is as easily self-admiring as any religion has ever been. And, mostly, it has been about redistribution of power: away from the Church to the State.

      At times, that power redistribution has not been a bad thing. However, there have also been times when the State, attempting to itself become a Church, became instead a horrifying entity.

      IMO, the State enjoyed a bit of good fortune about the time they started to more firmly separate themselves from the Church. Because that was the time the Science made stunning progress on the topics of sanitation, hygiene, and identification and treatment of diseases. That last bit was genuine progress, and the State took the credit. People looked up, nodded, and thought, “this is good”.

      Today, the sense of basic progress is gone, the notions of those who call themselves “progressive” notwithstanding. With that sense of basic progress gone, they now tilt at intersectional windmills … with, of course, nothing of value to show in return.

      Without that feeling of basic progress, more people are questioning the self-attributed sanctity of the secular State — more people want genuine transparency and accountability in exchange for the State’s monopoly on power.

      Unless the State can urge Science to pull another huge rabbit out of the hat — a display of genuine progress like the conquest of the old diseases … the State’s domination of the social narrative will wither.

      Cheers

    • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:03 am #

      “Clap …. clap ….. clap …… yawn.”

      Just what I thought, Kesa.

      Thanks for your exposé on the secular state, about which I said precisely nothing.

      The secular state isn’t a state where nobody believes in God – it’s one where no set of individuals believing in God (or opportunistically claiming to) has power over all the others who don’t, or who worship their God in a different way, based on the authority they claim through their faith. The secular state doesn’t require you to be irreligious. A specific secular state might do that, but that would be because it’s particular kind of secular state, just as there are different kinds of religious states with different kinds and levels of authoritarianism, bigotry or brutality (e.g. Brunei which has passed laws to allow it to stone homosexuals to death).

      This is what a secular state is there to prevent or counteract:

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/

      From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.” ”

      But you know all this and I know you know all this, so you won’t need to call me a condescending bitch again to make your point.

      There are lots of specific secular states on which my opinion wouldn’t be a million miles from yours – that’s an entirely different matter. And I agree that families have been the basis of everything, since forever. Even in China where people historically didn’t believe in God. Even in times when people worshipped rivers and sun-gods and tree spirits. Again, not the issue in hand.

      But, like I said, I wasn’t talking about states at all or politics at all. And the fact that a society might run more smoothly when every single person in it believes that a spirit popped an embryo into a virgin human female and that the resulting ‘divine’ human was observed to die, come alive again, and float upwards into the clouds towards ‘heaven’ doesn’t make that any more of an idea that you can criticise anyone at all for not believing.

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:07 am #

        Incidentally, the family in high-religiosity America has absolutely nothing to teach the family in highly secular France, where only 5% of the population goes regularly to church. Nothing at all.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:47 am #

          I should have said ‘highly non-religious France’ since both countries are technically secular – the US just happens to be highly religious.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:05 am #

            A minaret coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Enjoy!

            https://www.newswars.com/islamic-minaret-should-replace-notre-dame-spire-says-architecture-expert/

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 2:05 pm #

            There’s a completely unterrifying mosque round the corner from my street already. It looks like a shop. I walk past it practically ever day but it’s closed every day but Friday.

            Your logic (one man puts out an idea = it’s going to happen not only there but right near you too) is, as ever, faultless.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 5:10 pm #

            Yes the logical law of cascades. Thank you for seeing the sheer brilliance of my logic :-).

        • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:04 am #

          Enjoy secular France for the short remainder of time it has left before Islamic Sharia law is formally established and codified into law.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 11:30 am #

            Thank you, SSL. I wonder how long I’ve got. I wonder which will come first, codified sharia law or the next ice age. Quandaries, eh…

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:54 am #

            Sharia would be my first concern if I were you. But who knows, experts have found that major global climate changes have occurred within a few short years in the past so that could easily happen again.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 1:59 pm #

            OK, thanks. I’ll try to divide my worries equally. You’ll be OK in Louisiana for a while, obviously, but it you’re losing a football pitch worth of land to to the sea every hour and a half, it may not be the glaciers you need worry about.

            BTW the Muslim population here is 1.4%. Clearly you’ve done the maths an’ all, but I’ve probably got a few weeks more than they have in England.

            But then we’ll get the glaciers first.

            Like I said, quandaries eh…

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 5:08 pm #

            And since you don’t know much about Louisiana you don’t really know that much of the land loss on the coasts are due in large part to all of the levee systems that have been built up along all of the rivers here which has drastically altered the dispersion of sediments which build up the coastal marshes. The sediments no longer build up those marshes in most cases so naturally erosion is going crazy. A good ice age would drop sea levels and Louisiana would happily gain some extra real estate currently underwater.

            And as far as the small percentage of Muslims. You should count yourself as fortunate. But you think they are fab so I am sure you are wanting a few more to pepper your neighborhood with. Believe it or not you would prefer me as a neighbor since I enjoy keeping my spaces organized and clean. And just imagine that. I could easily bring you sweet tea and Mississippi Mud Cake to smooth over any disagreements. At least I wouldn’t be thinking of out voting and out populating you all the time.

          • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 6:16 pm #

            Clearly you’ve done the maths an’ all – GA

            =============

            Interesting again. Over here we would have used the singular.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:39 pm #

            I do know that, SSL, it’s all in the article that advised me about the speed of land loss.

            https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/01/louisianas-disappearing-coast

            I mentioned it before and specifically said it wasn’t all to do with sea level rise. You assume too much. I didn’t say it was to do with sea level rise in my post above either.

            And I don’t think my Muslim neighbours are ‘fab’.Why the constant need for exaggeration? I just think they are people. People who concern themselves with the same things as the rest of us, like their kids getting on at school and getting decent jobs.

            I hardly ever see them, apart from those who serve in shops, a handful chatting outside the mosque on a Friday, someone pushing a pram, or the very friendly portly chap a few doors away who couldn’t be nicer and always gives me a big beaming smile if he’s around his front door when I pass. Really, SSL, try to think of them as people. What would Jesus do?

            I have no reason to want more. I don’t concern myself with other people’s house purchases.

            But Mississippi mud cake is good. Over-cleanliness is not particularly valuable, however and can lead to neurosis 🙂 .

            Muslims are pretty obsessed with cleanliness, BTW. It’s a religious thing.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

            Perhaps we would too, Q, if the word was mathematic and not mathematics!

            We also don’t put full stops after abbreviations that end with the last letter of the full word. Hence:

            Dr not Dr.
            Mr not Mr.
            St not St.

            But

            Prof. not Prof

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:44 pm #

            Oops. Unintended bold after the ‘s’!

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:53 pm #

            So:

            maths

            but

            math.

          • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 11:29 pm #

            We also don’t put full stops after abbreviations that end with the last letter of the full word. – GA

            =============

            How interesting! I did not know that.

          • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 7:10 am #

            It’s probably logical, in that the full stop indicates truncation, with the rest of the word still to come. But Dr for Doctor doesn’t have anything else following the ‘r’ so you are fine with Dr, but otherwise it would be logical to have D’r, possibly, but we didn’t go down that road, thankfully!

    • FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 6:38 am #

      To begin with, the normal state of Christians in this world is martyrdom, so those who are going to peacefully go to church under the protection of democratic laws are just flying over the cuckoo’s nest.

      And the only thing that to some extent alleviates this situation is the Christian state, which seeks support from the Church despite the fact that any state in this world is based on violence and therefore cannot be truly Christian.

      Therefore, the Christian state is a paradox, or rather, a miracle that God performs in the name of some mission, for example, preaching the Good News (Gospel) to all nations, so that every people and every person can make their choice and choose either salvation or eternal fire.

      And such a state is called the Empire because the Christian state cannot be built on a national basis, as the Church “has no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all”.

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:16 am #

        “the Christian state, which seeks support from the Church”

        Having worked in the ‘Rates’ department in another area (rates = what they used to call the local (now ‘Council’) tax on householders, whether or not you own your house’) I know how much tax the churches save through their charity status. But I don’t mind financially supporting them one little bit. I collected for years for Christian Aid and I still happily donate to them since I believe the amount that disappears in ‘administration’ is laudably lower than in many other charities.

        Nor do I even mind that much the fact that there are a bunch of august clerics sitting in the Upper House in Westminster, as part of the the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. And yes, that extra ‘the’ is part of their Lordships’ designation.

        Not that I wouldn’t prefer to have an elected second chamber, but I’ll live and let live for as long as the English remain partial to their aristocratic and clerical anachronisms. There are worse things to worry about.

        “To begin with, the normal state of Christians in this world is martyrdom, so those who are going to peacefully go to church under the protection of democratic laws are just flying over the cuckoo’s nest.”

        Well indeed, theoretically, Finca, although I obviously no longer share the beliefs for which they may be martyred. When I was a student, I was friendly for a time with a young evangelical student of the Pentecostal persuasion, who used to pass on to me various ‘witnessing’ tales spirited out of the USSR about persecuted evangelical churches where people were beaten up or even killed occasionally by special police squads for meeting clandestinely in improvised ‘churches’.

        One felt they almost welcomed the persecution – it fed their faith.

        “Therefore, the Christian state is a paradox, or rather, a miracle that God performs…

        On that one, Finca, we will just have to politely agree to disagree, as we have so many times in the past. 🙂

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:31 am #

          *as part of the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal…

          That wasn’t the extra ‘the’ I was referring to – it was the one in the middle!

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:35 am #

          And the House of Lords is merely a scrutinising Chamber and only slows down legislation and attempts to improve on it. If necessary it can be told to piss off by the other House, and if they’re really pissed off they can abolish it.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:50 am #

          And the interesting bit about Germany:

          “Taxpayers, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant or members of other tax-collecting communities, pay an amount equal to between 8% (in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) and 9% (in the rest of the country) of their income tax to the church or other community to which they belong.” (Wiki)

          So it’s hardly just a case of the State looking for help from the Church (wherever it does).

        • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 12:00 pm #

          And Muslims are even more into martyrdom. They should be thanking us for inspiring them to kill themselves in order to kill us – thus gaining paradise, right?

          Your own logic anent Christianity applied to Islam. Christ did say somewhere that the Son of Mon must be betrayed but woe to the betrayer. Can’t remember it any better than that or in which Gospel or Gospels it appears.

          The Coptic Church has Pontius Pilate in their list of martyrs. Apparently he converted at some point and paid the ultimate price thus gaining Paradise, even as did the Good Thief. As it stands now, you will go the way of the Bad Thief.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 1:41 pm #

            “And Muslims are even more into martyrdom. They should be thanking us for inspiring them to kill themselves in order to kill us – thus gaining paradise, right?”

            No, they should cop on to themselves generally.

            Have a read of this nonsense – it’s worse than your dusky maidens and green drinks. It’s the detail that makes it so mind-bogglingly insane. Who in the world dreams up this stuff?

            https://www.kansascity.com/living/religion/article10735013.html

      • capt spaulding April 25, 2019 at 2:23 pm #

        Circumcision is the way to go, there’s no getting around it.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 6:54 pm #

          Now you’re just showing off, captain 🙂

    • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 11:15 am #

      No , the only evidence I see is you would prefer to play Grand Inquisitor instead of playing the role of defendant.

      I only respond to presumptuous statements based on no evidence whatsoever. I don’t want to ‘play’ anything.

      Grand Inquisitors do very bad things to you even if you’re minding your own business if you don’t believe what you’re meant to believe (the museum of torture in Carcassonne still has the instruments. I only observed a few through the window but I recall one long pointy metal thing like a traffic cone that women were forced to er…sit on.) That’s what happened to those playing the role of defendant. Only they weren’t playing roles.

      I’m exchanging views on a forum. We’ll all go away and have a coffee or supper and no-one will be any the worse. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so you will be reinforced in your beliefs. Which is good, for you, I’d have thought.

      I don’t have discussions like this in real life. What people I know or meet believe is their own business and they extend me the same courtesy. On this forum, though, some people choose to make it everyone else’s business too. Nobody makes them.

      BTW, you made a very presumptuous statement during your last tirade. You asked how I knew Hitler didn’t have a last-minute conversion and go to ‘heaven’. Bizarrely I recall having an almost identical discussion with some Quaker friends years ago when I still believed a version of what you do. We all agreed we couldn’t live with the thought of anyone enduring for eternity the hell that we all believed man had invented. Even Hitler. We’d have wanted him to be presented with what he was and what he’d done and have to confront it for what it was in the light of full knowledge. That would be enough punishment for anyone. You can wish indescribable eternal suffering on whomever you like.

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 11:18 am #

        Sorry, meant to say the presumptuous bit of your statement was your assertion that I’d probably be disappointed/furious or whatever if Hitler escaped the eternal flames.

        You know so little about people yet you just presume.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 12:06 pm #

        Agree. The doctrine of Eternal Hell is monstrous. And Agree: the internet allows for conversations that are difficult to have in regular space.

        Even your Lenin or Stalin will someday be Saints – as are all people in Paradise. We will loll on Satin cushion, served foaming green drinks by eternal dark eyed maidens, who are both virtuous and wanton simultaneously. We will pluck the Apples of Knowledge from the Trees of Good and Evil and come to no harm, gravity all nonsense now. And the Conversation will go on and on and on – when we aren’t in the Pleasure Groves with the Dark Eyed Ones.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 1:20 pm #

          My Lenin or Stalin? My eyes just rolled all by themselves there.

    • elysianfield April 25, 2019 at 5:29 pm #

      “How do you define progress exactly when your own claim is that ultimately and invariably the outcome for all and sundry is extinction , non -existence , the absence of consciousness ? ”

      Kesa,
      I would define “progress” relative to the topic at hand, and whatever that topic may be can be measured from the status quo of any timeline you care to offer.

  80. stelmosfire April 25, 2019 at 7:50 am #

    A little funny for our “Beeches” overseas:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g

    • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 8:43 am #

      Yep, if Ecuador’s whoring for an IMF loan, the UK will be whoring for a trade deal. Not only will we buy your chlorinated chickens, and beef full of George’s Marvellous Medicine but we’ll get down on all fours and beg you for them. And here, take these hospitals too…

      Although the fact remains – as I understand it – that the UK has promised not to extradite him to any country that still has the death penalty, so not sure how that will pan out stateside.

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 9:08 am #

        I suppose this is the moment where I should remind myself about how many times we were promised that the UK wasn’t colluding in any way with extraordinary rendition and third party torture for the CIA. Hmmmm….

  81. Tate April 25, 2019 at 9:34 am #

    from Reuters, 25 April 2019

    SUNLAND PARK, N.M., April 24 (Reuters) – The leader of an armed militia that spent two months rounding up migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border before he was arrested on federal weapons charges was hospitalized after a jailhouse attack, his lawyer and authorities said on Wednesday.

    Larry Hopkins, 69, whose group of self-styled citizen border cops drew condemnation from civil liberties advocates, suffered broken ribs in the beating by fellow inmates on Tuesday at the Dona Ana County Detention Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, according to his attorney, Kelly O’Connell.

    Hopkins was arrested on Saturday by the FBI on an outstanding warrant accusing him of being a felon in illegal possession of firearms, a charge dating back to a 2017 search of his home.

    The detention facility, about 200 miles south of Albuquerque, confirmed that Hopkins was “the alleged victim” of a Tuesday night attack and said the incident was under investigation.

    “Hopkins was given medical attention for non life-threatening injuries,” county spokeswoman Kelly Jameson said in an email. She later told Reuters that Hopkins had been transferred from the jail on Wednesday and turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service.

    She said Hopkins was beaten by three other inmates in the jail’s television viewing room, and no weapons were found. Jameson said she had no information on what precipitated the violence.

    The attack occurred the same day that Hopkins’ United Constitutional Patriots group abandoned its encampment in Sunland Park, New Mexico, where they had spent two months patrolling a 5-mile stretch of the border and said they detained thousands of migrants they caught trying to cross into the United States.

    The American Civil Liberties Union last week denounced the UCP as group of “fascist” vigilantes impersonating law enforcement to essentially kidnap Central American families seeking asylum.

    New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, ordered an investigation of the group. UCP members insisted they were acting at the behest of U.S. Border Patrol agents.

    O’Connell, who said on Wednesday he had spoken with Hopkins by phone, questioned the jail’s ability to protect a “very high-profile” inmate, but said he did not know why Hopkins was targeted. A UCP spokesman, Jim Benvie, said he believed it was because of Hopkins’ activity at the border.

    “They put him in a pod cell with a group of people, and they had just got done watching the article about the ACLU writing about him being racist, and as a result of that he was attacked,” Benvie said in a video posted online.

    Hopkins was being held without bail pending a detention hearing set for Monday in Albuquerque.

    Benvie said the UCP was moving to another campsite in a couple of days and would continue to support the U.S. Border Patrol, which has said it does not support private citizens acting as law enforcement.

    • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 10:26 am #

      Message delivered: stop these activities or you’ll be next.

      No bail?! The guy’s 69 and was arrested for “being a felon in illegal possession of firearms”. Meaning they raided his home and found his wife’s firearms in their home. They never found a firearm on his person. He wasn’t caught carrying or using one.

      Meanwhile, for the sake of comparison, this man is accused of raping three children, and was released on 10k bail twice by the same judge.

      Clearly this is a message designed to discourage others from engaging in border security. The man was separated from his family—exactly what we don’t do to illegals.

      • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 10:57 am #

        Yes, basically the message appears to be that foreign nationals have more rights on US soil than citizens who were born here and have paid taxes all of their lives.

        • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 1:04 pm #

          But here’s some good news…

          Massachusetts judge who helped illegal immigrant escape ICE arrest indicted

          • BackRowHeckler April 25, 2019 at 2:35 pm #

            That is good news, Ex.

            Thanks for posting it..

            Brh

        • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 3:46 pm #

          I assume browns beat him.

          • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 4:18 pm #

            That was my assumption to. And I mean in Arizona and just considering that foreign nationals make up a large percentage of the prison population the odds are pretty good that the beaters are indeed Brown.

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 10:51 am #

      Unfortunately but very intentionally the US has no control of its own “border”. International crime syndicates and the Mexican military control it. There is just way too much money to make in human trafficking and slavery to do anything about it. Isn’t it funny how we are supposed to be a government of the people, for the people and by the people. But really its more like it’s a government for special interest groups and foreign national occupiers. Anyone who does anything to preserve the country they thought we were supposed to be will have the full weight of the government thrown against them and at least half of the citizenry will support their persecution very eagerly and joyfully.

      http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-masked-heavily-armed-men-escort-migrants-across-az-border/

      • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 12:24 pm #

        Yes, we have reached the End of our Ways. We must jettison the Walking White Dead or we will share their fate. And I don’t think it can be done politically. And a coup seems unlikely as they have saddled the military with Traitors and Trannies. Patriots don’t rise up in the ranks apparently. So we are left hoping for an Act of God or a “Madman” who perpetrates an EMP. We will be saved by catastrophe or not at all I’m afraid. How horrible. But Americans slept when they could have fought and this is the result. When the Feds used bayonets on White Americans protesting forced bussing in Little Rock, We should have gone on strike and shut America down until change was effected.

        • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 4:01 pm #

          The Walking White Dead. I absolutely love it. They are weapons of mass destruction. So rather than WMDs we face WWDs. And WWDs although zombified can function as IEDs in the battlefield. But yes, and EMP could wipe out the WWDs.

  82. volodya April 25, 2019 at 11:17 am #

    Montsegur,

    However, there have also been times when the State, attempting to itself become a Church, became instead a horrifying entity. – Mont

    You bet, and its ideologues worse than the Inquisitors of old, and adherents every bit as murderous (aided by modern technology) as the ethnic-religion cleansers of olden days.

    And you look at the einsatzgruppen and communist political commissars and the NKVD and you wonder who was worse as you hear arguments on both sides. On this side of the pond I met old guys that bemoaned the passing of those days, a time when they were young and had a cause. They were maybe not deep-thinkers, but head-busters who fought tooth and nail for their secular church.

    The point is that there wasn’t just a few of them, given the scale of what happened in the 1940s. When people are suffering it’s not hard to get them to rally round a cause, especially if you’re promising relief. Come up with some coherent-sounding ideas, an ideology of class or national interest, spice it with historical grievance.

    What so-called progressives are doing, in their own interest and in service of their oligarchic pay-masters, is creating fertile economic and societal conditions for just such a thing, where people are desperate to make a living, who are looked down on and who are day-in- and day-out insulted by said “progressives”. And they’re looking for a leader and solutions and a cause to coalesce around, or in other words, the creation of an alternative “church” to go to, the same as the National Socialists did in the 1930s.

    Progressives, besides delivering everything except actual progress as you said in your post, apparently ignorant of history and human nature and the daily needs of people, for example, to eat and for a place to live and for some discernible path in life, are doing their damndest deliver a wide swathe of the country, and not just in the USA, into the arms of the man with a plan and a helping hand.

    Lenin was such a man and so was Hitler. Needless to say, Trump is no such thing, as verbally and intellectually incoherent as he is, having little of the necessary leadership qualities or vision or self-discipline. The great thinkers along the coast mutter darkly about the death of democracy under a Trumpian regime. What a joke. But Trump uttered words that were previously unutterable and look at what happened.

    But I digress: it’s hard to know what turn events will take because when you’re living in what eventually becomes history, it’s easy to see the trees but not necessarily the forest. So that’s not to say we’ll see a recreation of either nazi-sim or communism. It could be something else completely, ie a bearded man with a plan, touting writings in an alien script as the book of the down-trodden, accusing Christian churches of giving all aid short of help, of being in league with Establishment powers.

    I know, it sounds unlikely, but so was Hitler and the National Socialists from the perspective of let’s say the year 1900. And so was Lenin. Self-belief is a force multiplier as somebody said on this site not long ago, and if those beards have nothing else, they have that.

    Expect the expected but especially the unexpected.

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 11:37 am #

      For instance a new transnational movement based on White racial identity and destiny. A savior doesn’t necessarily need to be confined to one nation or set of nations. The historical West appears to be eager to die. So after a period of mourning one must say, “ok then, die already”. What replaces it will either be life-affirming and natural or it will be altogether foreign and new. Either way, the cancerous rot that is our current “institutions”, including most churches, should be swept away into the dustbin of history if reformation is impossible which it appears to be. Remember, at least half of the populations of Western countries vigorously support the total demise of the historical West, its institutions, and its native populations.

      • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 11:40 am #

        Remember, at least half of the populations of Western countries vigorously support the total demise of the historical West, its institutions, and its native populations.

        IMO, the leadership classes of Europe have had a death wish since at least 1914.

        Unfortunately, their peoples are pulled along on that awful trajectory whether or not they wish to perish as well.

        Cheers

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

        “For instance a new transnational movement based on White racial identity and destiny. “

        If you don’t believe in progress, what is destiny?

        I don’t ‘believe’ in progress, by the way. I observe it and celebrate it when it’s a genuine help to human wellbeing, but I’m perfectly aware it’s not inevitable and it could disappear tomorrow, just like that lovely clean water that comes out of my taps.

        One excellent type of ‘progress’ would be getting people to be aware of that. Just that the fact that water comes out your taps today doesn’t mean it always will would be a start. And that there’s no water fairy, but there are a lot of people who spend time every day down stinky sewers dealing with what you poop out without the slightest thought. And designing and building new ones, of course. That’s progress too, just as much as the Victorian ones were. For as long as they last.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 12:54 pm #

          I think I’m developing an obsession with the back end of the capitalist production system, whether its fatbergs or landfill mountains.

          • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 3:47 pm #

            and what of Communism?
            slave labor and dachas.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 4:41 pm #

            malthuss

            I sometimes wonder if you follow some kind of stream of consciousness technique in your posts.

          • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 9:44 pm #

            Green Alba..lets ‘talk’ tomorrow. USSR–slave labor and nice houses [dachas] for the 5% who join the party.

        • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 3:59 pm #

          Destiny can be either good or bad. Fate is what it is. The idea of progress though has positive connotations because it is an idea and not reality so it can always be thought of as something positive. The real world has positive and negative, forward and backward. The real world toggles. Ideas have the luxury of being linear. Does this help you?

          Ancient civilizations like Rome developed advanced systems of infrastructure. Those systems broke down and disappeared mostly in the Dark Ages. Now we have advanced systems of infrastructure once again…as you said…for as long as they last. I am grateful for them each and every day they are here.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 5:10 pm #

            Obviously ‘progress’ has positive connotations, but not because it is an idea and not reality, but because that’s what the word suggests!

            It is both an idea and a reality – perhaps you’re confusing ‘progress’ with a belief in its inevitability, which is something else.

            You’re possibly mixing it up with political terms, such as progressivism which aren’t particularly rigorous in their definition anyway.

            Progress is entirely real. The fact that your boys aren’t going to die of diphtheria or smallpox is absolutely progress and absolutely real. The fact that that particular progress may come to an end doesn’t make it any less ‘progress’. Progress that stops and starts or stops altogether is/was still progress.

            Personally I entirely approve of progress, but that’s a tautological statement anyway. If something simply morphs into something else, e.g. technology aiding production but making people’s lives worse, then we’re only talking about ‘progress’ in one sense but its opposite in another.

            So I don’t think we’re fundamentally disagreeing – it’s just about how you use the word!

        • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 5:20 pm #

          just like that lovely clean water that comes out of my taps.

          the fact that water comes out your tapstoday… – GA

          ===========

          Interesting. Granted, any home worth its salt will have more than one tap yet over here we would speak of water coming out of our tap while over your way it’s apparently always pluralized.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 5:46 pm #

            I thought you called it a faucet 🙂 .

      • volodya April 25, 2019 at 12:23 pm #

        As long as progressive ignoramuses piss on Whites as the worst of the worst, when we’re nothing of the sort, progressives beg for the formation of exactly what you’re saying, a movement of Whites, for Whites.

        I agree with Mont. It really does look like a leadership death wish since about 1914. I can understand a multi-national cultural reckoning after the bloodletting of the Great War, some tumult, a real movement of dissenters and a re-examination of assumptions and values. I’ve read that the world’s great religions came about as a result of the great destructive power of iron weapons. People were disgusted with the warfare and mayhem. I could understand something of that sort post-1918.

        I suppose I get National Socialism to some extent, as a reform movement to re-set the clocks, to stop the economic predation on Germany especially when it’s not clear to me that Germany bore special responsibility for WW1. I suppose that latter point is debatable.

        I suppose that it all looks different in hindsight but I don’t get what followed, all of which looked suicidal, be it from Nazi Germany, or the USSR, or western academies.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 12:33 pm #

          Thus the Conspiratorial View of History is the correct one – in this case at least. The Hidden Power dictated most of the 20th Century. Can they bring it home now? Create the Luciferian Global State of 500 million people – none of whom can venture into the King’s forest?

          Nothing is more stupid than believing that America won the war. Or Britain. Their descents began immediately. They lost just as surely as did Germany.

    • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 11:48 am #

      Progressives, besides delivering everything except actual progress as you said in your post, apparently ignorant of history

      volodya, you bet. They glibly take credit for the great advances of the past … advances that took place in political environments quite a bit more conservative than modern-day Europe or the USA.

      And then they push rot like Fukuyama’s “The End of History”. Well, of course. They genuinely believe they are the best that humanity has ever been, and notwithstanding that they label themselves “progressive”, they see no need to improve personally, or as a group.

      One sees no need to improve when one believes one has already attained perfection.

      Another political movement that clings to its notions like members of a cult. The incredible damage they have already brought about still has a long way to go before it plays out.

      Cheers

      • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 12:09 pm #

        montsegur

        What I remember about The End of History was people looking at it with enormous scepticism even when it first came out – and long before it became as good an analysis as ‘it’ll all be over by Christmas’.

        • montsegur April 25, 2019 at 12:22 pm #

          GreenAlba, at the time I was perplexed by Fukuyama’s notion. There was frankly no good reason why history should have “ended” at that point … in fact, all the indicators were that the forces that ultimately “make” history were about to take new directions in the wake of the collapse of the Cold War power structures.

          Cheers

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 12:48 pm #

            montsegur

            I never actually read it, but I was aware of its thesis, as it was discussed a lot at the time. I think over this way people saw a bit of Disney-type happy-ever-after-ness in its proposition – a very American view on things.

            Also, from over here, it just looked like the winners of the Cold War patting themselves on the back and concluding that they won because they were righteous. And their economic system was righteous and wise and now everyone could see that and would fall in line. And that because they were righteous, fortune would continue to smile on them. They’d taught the world to sing…

            Not that I’m defending what went on on the other side of the Iron Curtain in any way.

            But I’m a bit of a catastrophist anyway, so I’m never one to count chickens too soon. In my mind they’re already being eaten by foxes!

    • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 12:17 pm #

      He indicated yesterday that he hopes Hispanic speaking “Americans” win….

      People in Latin America consider themselves Americans, by which they mean something completely different. And if allowed, Mexicans will change the National Anthem – as they did a few years ago.

      • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 3:48 pm #

        l change the National Anthem – as they did a few years ago.

        from what to what?

  83. BackRowHeckler April 25, 2019 at 12:34 pm #

    We’re in a quandry here in Ct.

    Concerning police shooting at 3 suspected felons last week, in two separate incidents, one of whom died (the one in the stolen car) all cops involved are so called minorities.

    Protesters aren’t sure where to direct their rage. Its not good optics when SJW Yalies who can afford tuituon and R&B that approaches $100,000 per year, at a press conference, demand the firing of two young black cops who earn at best $45,000 per year. It might be construed as racist, elitist, and condescending.

    Brh

  84. The New York Times reports 35,898 unaccompanied children intercepted in the first half of 2019 so far. 50,036 was the total last year. Peak illegal brats was 2014 with 68,500.

    In a country where you will have your kids taken from you and charged with a crime for leaving them in a parking lot to go shopping for 15 minutes, we are delivering these kids, at great expenditure of time and effort, back to their families. No problemo. We understand. Not abandonment or child endangerment. Just a logistics issue. Mas o menos.

    Word is on the street in Tegucigalpa: Border Patrol will take care of your kids, they will call the number written on their shoes. They will deliver the kids to the families. No problemo.

    A few tens of thousands here, a few tens of thousands there, pretty soon you’re talking real numbers.

    We’re taking everybody in. Everybody. Just spend the rest of your family’s capital so when you get here you are legitimately destitute.

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  85. Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 1:09 pm #

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/biden-campaign-video-announcement.html

    A declaration of War against White Nationalists and by extension any who advocate for White Rights. He savages Trump who in a rare mood, said that there were good people on both sides at Chalottesville.

    Ozone, any thoughts or do just want to admit you were wrong now?

    • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 1:19 pm #

      good people on both sides at Chalottesville. – Janos

      =============

      …home of a particular kind of onion. 😉

      • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 3:49 pm #

        nice catch.

    • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 3:47 pm #

      The War on YT is obligatory. Join it or be crushed. Ethno masochistic Whites are some of the most formidable fighters in this cause and it appears that Uncle Joe is ready to take up arms. What does he have left to lose really? In the scheme of things he is not long for this world anyway.

  86. messianicdruid April 25, 2019 at 1:16 pm #

    GA asked,“Why weren’t they thanking the Jews for playing their part according to the script?”

    I thank you for playing your part [ asking questions ] as well.

    “They could have made up a lineage that led to Mary, but they couldn’t, because…women.”

    The genealogy in Matt. 1:1f is traced through Joseph, Jesus’ legal (though not natural) father, and it establishes His claim and right to the throne of David (v. 6). The genealogy in Luke 3:23-38 is evidently that of Mary, though some believe it is also Joseph’s, by assuming that Matthan (Matt 1:15) and Matthat (Luke 3:24) were the same person and Jacob (Matt 1:16) and Eli (Luke 3:23) were brothers (one being Joseph’s father and the other his uncle). See note on Luke 3:23.

    Many conservative scholars have taken this view because of the many differences in the names between the two accounts. The biggest difference is that after David, many of the names are different. It would seem best to explain the difference by viewing Luke’s genealogy as tracing the physical ancestors of Christ through Mary, while Matthew’s genealogy traces the kingly line of Christ through Joseph.”

    https://bible.org/question/mary’s-lineage-one-gospels

    • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 1:35 pm #

      Thank you MD!

    • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 10:34 pm #

      The genealogy in Matt. 1:1f is traced through Joseph, Jesus’ legal (though not natural) father, etc. etc. etc. etc. – messianicdruid

      =============

      Will someone please explain to me: what is the purpose of acquiring extensive knowledge of the Bible? Will Messi or any of the others on this blog who regularly quote from the Bible have a leg up into heaven as a result? (Ya gotta admit though, it is so cool how they pull chapter and verse numbers right out of their heads. It’s like Jeopardy!)

      Just consider how many versions and translations there are of this “holy book.” What would Akmofo have to say about Messi’s interpretations? Here we are 2000 years after the fact discussing Joseph’s relationship to his son. Here’s what I believe: the Joseph and Mary of myth had sex the old fashion way (probably doggy-style) and had a son. If it wasn’t Joseph who did the deed, Mary’s got some ‘splainin to do.

      I often receive emails trying to entice me into getting an advanced degree in Biblical studies. This has to be a sick joke! Who programmed that marketing algorithm? I’d sooner go for a doctorate in gender studies.

  87. FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 1:17 pm #

    Tom Fitton: Obama White House is Implicated in Hillary Clinton Email Scandal!

    Tom Fitton appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network to discuss the discovery of Clinton emails in the Obama White House.

    https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/in-the-news/tom-fitton-obama-white-house-is-implicated-in-hillary-clinton-email-scandal/

    We are moving very close to testing my theory that Hillary Clinton overthrew Obama in June of 2016 – probably by taking hostages Obama’s girls.

  88. JohnAZ April 25, 2019 at 1:25 pm #

    Someone announced that the Russian meddling was mostly comprised of buying big chunks of social media and spreading disinformation on both sides trying to upset the entire electoral process. Right out of Muellers report.

    Question one

    So? Is it the job of Facebook et al to censure content for political leanings? Do the Russians have a right to publish their ideals in American press and publications? Is this a big nothing sandwich? How much censuring should be allowed against American institutions that the cry baby of the moment brings up. Can a single party control the social media? Maybe!

    Question 2

    What advantage did Putin have favoring Trump? Trump was making deals with Russian elements right up to where he announced. So was HRC and her crowd. So was Exxon Mobil. If anything the election of Trump has worsened the business relationships between the two countries.

    The real villain here is the Deep State trying to control every element of the American political process, then changing it to a socialistic government control polity. Socialism will turn the US into a hum drum mediocre country, which is exactly what the globalists want in their quest for power.

    A party needs to arise countering the Deep State federalism rather than Dems. vs. GOP. Trump must be getting pooped from fighting the jerks on his own.

    Want proof of the Dem control of everything, look at the media. 92% negative reporting of Trump and his base. Just a little one sided.

    • FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 1:32 pm #

      The real villain here is the Deep State

      The USA is de facto captured by the Islamic State (ISIS) and the leader of this state is uncontrollably strives to establish her power de jure.

      As you understand, the European Union has long been captured by the Middle Eastern ODESSA, which is the core of the Islamic State (ISIS), and I wrote about it several times.

    • Farmer Joe April 25, 2019 at 3:21 pm #

      Using the evidence brought to light by the Mueller report you could make a better argument that Rush Limbaugh got Trump elected.

      • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm #

        The fact is that Russian ads targeted both Trump and Hillary.

        The fact is that the entire nation went red in 2016. Not just POTUS, but Congress, governors, etc. And Russia didn’t have ads for all that.

        Liberals just can’t accept that they were conned by the media into believing Trump had virtually no chance. Because to accept that means they aren’t the intelligentsia they believe themselves to be.

    • Reading Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile is like having someone upgrade your brain… Recommended

  89. islander800 April 25, 2019 at 1:37 pm #

    All very nice, Jim, but what are your thoughts about the coming apocalypse that will render all of this irrelevant? I’m talking about the madness of Pompeo and Bolton pushing Trump into war with Iran.

    This coming conflict could well be the last one. Think tank gaming scenarios in Washington reportedly end an Iran-American war with all-out thermonuclear war between Russia and America in the majority of runs. Needless to say, all of the petty concerns outlined above will mean nothing when we’re all dead in a radioactive wasteland.

    Pompeo, along with Bolton, is, literally, insane. He thinks the U.S. can do whatever the hell it pleases without any consequences regarding Iran. Does he not think Russia, a sworn ally of Iran, or China, likewise, will just stand back and do nothing? At the very least, all oil exports from the Persian Gulf will cease as Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz (they’ve already threatened it in response to Trump’s illegal sanctions on all oil exports from Iran). That will cause an immediate world oil crisis, prices likely will spike well north of $200/barrel and gas lines will appear again, if not rationing, for $6.00/gallon gasoline. What do people think that will do to the American and world economy?

    No, forget all the chattering about irrelevancies like Russiagate or political correctness on campuses. This is an existential crisis that could see us all dead before the next presidential election. And no one is doing a damn thing about it. Ominous trending in the nervous here and now indeed.

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    • FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 1:50 pm #

      The Iranian question will be answered in the framework of Alliance of Putin’s Russia, Trump’s America and Netanyahu’s Israel.

      Iran must abandon its rhetoric of destroying the Israel and establish normal diplomatic relationship with the Jewish State.

      • SoftStarLight April 25, 2019 at 3:38 pm #

        So basically become a Zionist…or else! MAGA is really MIGA. So the question now becomes, was MAGA really always MIGA?

        • malthuss April 25, 2019 at 3:50 pm #

          ZOG

          Or as one reactionary schooled you, ‘Stormfront’ talk.

          • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 5:18 pm #

            And here was I thinking it was a planet.

            https://www.tonybarrell.com/planet-zog-cosmic-truth/

            ”And far-right nutjobs still peddle an old conspiracy theory about a Zionist Occupied Government, which is abbreviated to ZOG”

            Aahhh…

          • FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 5:24 pm #

            Exactly.

            They are constantly waving the Jews as a red rag in front of the stupid bull’s nose in order to divert bull’s attention and deal a mortal blow.

    • JohnAZ April 25, 2019 at 4:33 pm #

      Iran considers us the empowering force for their two real enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Therefore we are bad guys too.

      Iran is a theocracy, and a Shia theocracy. They are much closer to fundamentalist Islam than the Sunnis in SA. They are the source of a lot of the fundamentalist forces around the world. They are independent of the world for their economic needs especially fossil fuels. And they act like it. Sanctions just bounce off. Their allies are our foes.

      They are dangerous as can be. They are still trying to develop a nuke. Why? To hit the US, no. To hit Israel? Maybe, but boy will they pay the price as Israel can take care of itself nuke wise. MAD. So why?

      Saudi Arabia and control of the oil in the Middle East. SA has always countered Iran in the oil wars in OPEC. SA is dependent on us for their defense against Iran and the Shias. Strategically, nothing would do more damage than destruction of the SA oil terminals and the Straits of Hormuz. And if you want to do the job right, you do it with nukes to make them unusable forever.

      Israel is Europe, the West, in the ME. The only relatively non-theocratic and non-Islamic country there. The theocracy in Iran hates their presence in Israel. But history shows that Israel will give what the get, so it is no win. Will Iran take the chance, unknown but IMHO, unlikely. If Iran wants to control the Middle East without being destroyed doing it, attack the oil.

      • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 6:09 pm #

        >>> So why?

        Good question. They’re the ultimate weapon you can’t use under any circumstance. Plus Iran already enjoys all the tangible benefits of nuclear energy.

        I used to think nations with nukes enjoyed relative immunity from superpower shitfuckery. But for example Pakistan has nukes, and it sure didn’t stop us from doing what needed to be done after 9/11. Didn’t stop us from landing helos in Abbottabad and taking out Osama and company.

        Far from being able to use nukes, a nation is lucky if it can protect its own borders with walls and fences without worldwide condemnation.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 25, 2019 at 6:14 pm #

        ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are all Sunni. And the Sunni and the Shia hate each other and seldom ally, even against us. You really don’t get it – and what you do get is secondary or often simply wrong.

        Erdogan, “There is no radial Islam, there is just Islam”. But, but, but – individuals vary in their degree of piety, just like here or anywhere else. Isn’t that simpler? Try it and see how much clarity it allows. George Bush came out with this hokum about peaceful Islam after 9/11. What a piece of crap he is.

    • Silliest analysis of the situation I’ve ever read. On every point. I don’t even know where to start.

      Just get a subscription to The New York Times.

      Either way the US – Israel alliance has never been stronger. With Biden in office Bibi’s got major back up. So Hawk is the posture.

  90. stelmosfire April 25, 2019 at 3:55 pm #

    So “Charlie stole the handle and the train just just won’t slow down.” Played by the best thing to come out of Scotland since single malt, but my history is wanting.. 1972 and history repeats itself. What is old is new again.I must of seen these guys 10 times in the ’70’s. We have been in collapse for what? 1000 years?

    • BackRowHeckler April 25, 2019 at 4:43 pm #

      Hey Stelmose,

      As a professional fireman, what are your thoughts on the Notre Dame fire?

      Just an old structure whos time had finally come, like what happens every once in awhile in these old cities in the northeast? Or something more sinister?

      Brh

      • Churches burn. Why? Because they’re empty 95% of the time and since no one is inside there is no reason to risk accidents fighting them.

        Plus, you always have some atheist firefighters, and they probably move slower than usual when fighting these kinds of fires.

        • GreenAlba April 25, 2019 at 7:41 pm #

          That’s a bit of a slander, Snacks. Those firefighters had to combat a fire in a very high building with limited access to the outside at the place where the actual fire was and saved 80% of its ancient artefacts while an inferno was raging above their heads.

          And you’ve clearly never seen the queues of tourists that snake around Notre Dame. It doesn’t spend much time empty. They let people in in limited numbers at a time or it would be swamped.

          But things happen when renovation projects are in progress. This happened not long after it had emptied for the evening.

          It didn’t take much for Windsor Castle to go up in flames.

      • stelmosfire April 26, 2019 at 8:14 am #

        Like they said, probably electrical. It always is when they don’t have a clue as to how ignition started. I think the FF’s made a heroic effort and succeeded with a great stop in the nave roof and keeping the flames from consuming the interior of the bell towers which I believe were probably also framed with wood. I’ve been in 200 YO structures and the wood is so dry you could light a timber with a match. As would be expected the fire quickly vented itself and that helped with slowing propagation I read the response was delayed and that did not help. After the fire, I was on line and read about the cathedrals which burnt and were rebuilt after WWII. It is fascinating. They will be rebuilt with modern materials as most of the destroyed framing is not even visible, so why make it historically accurate? $5,000,000,000.00 estimate seems way overblown.

    • Q. Shtik April 25, 2019 at 10:45 pm #

      I must of seen these guys – St elmo

      =============

      groan!

      • stelmosfire April 26, 2019 at 7:59 am #

        Should have been “Must have seen?” I guess. As GA would say, ” keep your bloody arse out of it!” :0)

        • Q. Shtik April 26, 2019 at 2:45 pm #

          Yes, or must’ve.

  91. volodya April 25, 2019 at 3:59 pm #

    The idiocies of the intellectual class, especially that of the wokesters, are voluminous and varied and would require a herculean effort to properly study and classify and to provide comment.

    Why bother? It would be for our successors, for people who might have the time and inclination to study the societal pathologies of our era.

    Think of something like a Justinian’s Code, a massive multi-year effort to distill centuries of Roman law and legal commentary, but in this case, to do the same for the lunacies inflicted by the leading lights of our time. A catalog of insanity you might call it, with somebody, maybe a group of the still functionally sane, providing analysis and commentary, maybe historical context.

    Some of the craziest shit I’ve heard comes in calling a certain segment of the wealthy managerial class “anywhere people”, people that can supposedly go anyplace they please, anywhere on earth, so powerful their intellect, so great their adaptability.

    You might call Carlos Ghosn the exemplar of the “anywhere”.

    Carlos is somebody of indeterminate ethnicity and nationality, living here, living there, flying hither and yon, managing a multi-national business empire. Oooh, so exciting, don’t you think? I think so. Don’t you wish you were Carlos? I sure do.

    But this “anywhere” stuff falls on its face on multiple levels, chipping its teeth on the hard edges of human reality. First is that these so-called “anywhere” places are only those places with people that speak English, that abide by certain norms and rules of conduct, mostly found in certain select national capitols or financial centers.

    Which means that “anywhere” ain’t just “anywhere”. “Anywhere” ain’t for example, where you don’t dare transgress tribal sensibilities, where people don’t speak English, where women can’t dress as they like, where the norms of “liberal” western societies do not apply. And this is most of the world. In short, these “anywhere people” cannot go anywhere, they, like most everyone else, are functionally limited to small geographic locales.

    Where is Carlos by the way? Oh yeah, last I heard he was in the clink, waiting for word from a Japanese court as to bail conditions, accused of a multitude of financial transgressions. I heard last night they set bail at 4 billion bucks.

    See, that’s the other thing. The way I see it, Carlos mostly transgressed by stepping out of line with Japanese notions of where they and their companies fit in the inter-national pecking order. Subsume Nissan into a global Renault-run automotive empire? This sounds like typical “anywhere” thinking. But the people that call the shots in Japan are no way, shape or form, “anywhere” people, and when they saw what was afoot, they tossed Carlos in the slammer, accusing him of stuff that could result in a long prison sentence.

    “Anywhere” is as full of shit a concept as I’ve heard, and Carlos sitting in a Japanese jail is an example of a full of shit concept running headlong into the brick wall of national and ethnic reality.

    The Japanese made an example of Carlos. But, regrettably, the lesson of Carlos probably won’t sink in such is the self-image of omnipotence of the “anywheres”.

    • A feverish interpretation of vague goings-on.

      Still, a welcome respite to another rendition of “Blame da left”.

      • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 6:17 pm #

        “Blame da left” is a welcome respite from “it’s Trump’s fault”.

        • Reminds me of a fight between a lawn mower and a weed whacker… as far as criticism goes. Nobody cares, Nobody wants, just shut the hell up.

          Meanwhile Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Antifragile is impressive. Anyone who finds and shares words that mean things that, in real life we can’t recognize but can learn to use, is a useful author- and probably a great instructor.

          https://engineering.nyu.edu/faculty/nassim-nicholas-taleb

          • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 7:48 pm #

            This coming from the guy…

            >>> despite the fact my view is disturbed by Homo Obliteratus, mindlessly pushing his electric mower back and forth.

            …who thrilled us with tales of his neighbor’s yard work.

            Please use more lawn care metaphors. We’re so enjoying them.

          • Nightowl April 26, 2019 at 5:04 am #

            Lawn care and gardening is for sad gammon.

            The modern wokester man is childless, pays 4x the national rent to live on a city street caked in human feces, and reads the New York Times.

            Should you challenge him intellectually he will cut you down with snark. Beware, simpleton.

    • montsegur April 26, 2019 at 12:51 am #

      “Anywhere” is as full of shit a concept as I’ve heard, and Carlos sitting in a Japanese jail is an example of a full of shit concept running headlong into the brick wall of national and ethnic reality.

      volodya, well written. This “anywhere” that you mention is another one of the fake constructs that are pushed by the progs as evidence as to how superior their way of life is, and why it must become the way of life for everyone.

      Unfortunate are those who believe these tales, for they expose themselves to brutal encounters with reality.

      “Globalism” is another fake construct. What happened to Carlos is exceptional, because his ilk can afford the armies of lawyers and accountants necessary to smooth over the “anywhere” lifestyle.

      I have lived as an expatriate … and, as an average person doing so, it is clear national systems are arranged to disadvantage those residents who are not citizens. When one doesn’t have the luxury of an accounting and legal staff to sort the issues, it is apparent the world is not at all “global”. The borders are real and the tribal regions are real. That certain politicians prefer to act as if this is not so is more a testament to dysfunctional governance that it is a reflection of political, financial, and social reality.

      Cheers

  92. FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 5:14 pm #

    So basically become a Zionist…or else! == SSL

    If you haven’t noticed, we are in the middle of the war, and if Trump had lost his battle to Mueller, American people would pay a heavy price – US would have been completely captured by the Islamic State and its Supreme Leader, Hillary Clinton.

    She would’ve finally realized her plans of importing 60,000 Syrian fighters, trained in urban warfare.

  93. FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 5:31 pm #

    And remember, ever since the Jews were hunting the Nazis after the WWII, they have the best intelligence network inside the Black Project, better than anybody else.

  94. Enjoyed full page expose of China’s state run Telco and unofficial spy agency Huawei’s inroad into Ecuador’s heading-to-Chavez style dysto-republic.

    Guess who else is a customer for these domestic surveillance providers? Germany.

    Unbelievable.

    Meanwhile a 9-year old girl had to cry in front of European Parliament to bring awareness to climate change.

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  95. Pucker April 25, 2019 at 6:46 pm #

    After the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and overthrew the Khmer Rouge and liberated the Tuol Sleng prison and torture chamber in Phnom Penh, many years later they apprehended the Commandant of Tuol Sleng named “Duch” working for an American Christian Evangelical NGO in Western Cambodia. Duch had become a “Born Again Christian”, like Ernest Angley. They estimate that Duch tortured and murdered 18,000 people over a 4 year period. Before getting into the Maoist Communist Social Justice Warrior racket, Duch was a high school teacher.

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

  96. Pucker April 25, 2019 at 7:03 pm #

    It’d be “Really Weird” to teach Law in a Law faculty in Cambodia. The Khmer students would probably try to bribe you as the teacher in order to get the test answers before the test and to pass the class as they had always done their entire lives and as the Khmer people have been doing for the past 1,000 years. When you declined to take their money and then subsequently gave them a failing grade, they’d then probably give you death threats, and if you didn’t Get-With-the-Program, they’d hurl a grenade through your office window? Weird….

    • Pucker April 25, 2019 at 7:06 pm #

      Similarly, the American educational system has seemingly taught minority groups that the path to social advancement is through Social Justice Warrior bluster, dishonest, and coercion.

      • I don’t think you have a finger on a pulse here.

        SJW is a media construct. SJW Warriors on in situ are Yalies, Berkeletys, etc.’

        If only you could find your way into a local college social studies program… reporting from the front, you’d see your purple haired young enemies, and have to interact with them… Quelle horror…
        you’ll find that, in reality, your graven enemies don’t exist. It was Fox News blowing smoke up your ass all along.

        And then you’ll be smoking blunts listening to Jazz music with a group of hipsters wondering what happened to the revolution…

        Maybe the grass on the other side really is greener

        • BackRowHeckler April 25, 2019 at 8:15 pm #

          That’s an interesting post, Snacks, very descriptive.

          Yet there are a few sites out there that say different, for one, The College Fix. There’s also the daily political nonsense coming out of Yale, Williams, Trinity and so on, every day.

          SJWs are real, with an unhealthy obsession with ‘Racism’ and ‘Genderism’ that beggars common sense. It appears to be a form of mental illness.

          Brh

        • Pucker April 25, 2019 at 8:31 pm #

          The Social Justice Warriors are not about ideas; they are about coercion.

          As Dr. King said: the End is prescient in the Means.

        • Exscotticus April 25, 2019 at 8:51 pm #

          >>> If only you could find your way into a local college social studies program… reporting from the front, you’d see your purple haired young enemies, and have to interact with them…

          I have done just that—and recently, too.

          All were self-hating whites. All were steeped in “critical race theory”. All believed in “white privilege” and similar concepts. And—punchline—these were techie STEM types. So not even the lost causes you’d expect from the humanities.

  97. pkrugman April 25, 2019 at 8:04 pm #

    1. A truck of TVs is hijacked.

    2. Your son meets with the hijackers.

    3. Your campaign manager shares route information with them.

    4. You are recorded on video saying, “I love truck hijacking.”

    5. The TVs are in your house.

    Happy No Collusion Day.

    • BackRowHeckler April 25, 2019 at 8:17 pm #

      Little Jane, did Jim not kick you out?

      Brh

  98. FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 9:02 pm #

    Churches burn. Why? Because they’re empty 95% == SnackPack

    The hatred of Christians, which Islamic State (ISIS) and other fellows of the Gulf monarchies show, proves that they are not Muslims at all, but Shaitans and lawbreakers who reject all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, outside of which talking about Sharia is like discussing Koran with a drunk in the gateway.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaitan

    And the Islamists do just that, scolding the Prophet’s companions in an indecent way, killing imams and exterminating the people of the Book – Jews and Christians.

    All this is nonsense, that Islam is a religion of peace; Islam is a very militant religion, which demands from Muslims a merciless war with pagans and forbids obedience to them, even when the Force is not on the side of Muslims.

    But for a Muslim to submit to a Christian sovereign, if he lives on the territory of a Christian state and is a citizen of this state, this is not a right, but a duty, which is directly related to the Christian principle “For there is no authority except by God.” (Romans 13:1)

    Including Muslims MUST Fight against Muslims who invade the territory of this state and protect their fellow Christians from them.

    And the current cruelty of jihad is due to the fact that devout Muslims came to the conclusion that Christianity degenerated into some semi-pagan, semi-Gnostic rubbish, one of which is atheism.

    So everything is exactly upside down and the absence of Orthodox Christian culture among present-day Europeans and Russians provokes a conflict with Muslims, and does not soothe it.

    • As an observer, I have my opinions on why you see things that way, but my personal viewpoint is as an American.

      A policy of moderate, secular modernism is burdened by the presence of special interests like religious organizations who strain to claw back the gains of modernity in science and reason. This includes the ingress of religious cult believers. Here, increasing under Trump, still.

      The only solution is to keep them suppressed and improve education. Here, weakened under Trump with DeVos.

      Trump himself? Some say he’s the 2nd coming.

      • FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 10:28 pm #

        policy of moderate, secular modernism

        What’s that? A policy of severe gender confusion?

      • Nightowl April 26, 2019 at 5:12 am #

        Some also say he is Hitler. I read it in the New York Times.

  99. Temperate climes:

    Everything is just fine…

    Meanwhile, in tropical climes:

    Massive losses in the Amazon – Around 12 million hectares of forest in the world’s tropical regions were lost in 2018, equivalent to 30 football fields per minute. ” source: BBC News

    30 football fields per minute.

    Forest fires globally as clearing for so-called “slash and burn agriculture” all clearly observable by Satellite.

    When will the US find it to be in their interest to have “The Lungs of the Earth” working to provide oxygen and pull carbon out of the atmosphere?

    I suppose maybe 10% of the resources committed to protecting helpless muslim peasants could be put to effective and immediate use. Perhaps a Bolsonaro opportunity for ball-swinging with pal Trump?

    Bolsonaro’s regime is already failing, being ground into the relentless chaos of Brazilian politics.

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  100. FincaInTheMountains April 25, 2019 at 10:43 pm #

    the gains of modernity in science and reason Snack Pack

    As a result of the seizure of science by the West, scientific research is actively diverted into the sphere of the Useless.

    Probably, real research is being conducted, but in limited quantities, in isolated places and specifically for elite use. Such studies they do not advertise. The main mass of Western scientific thought is shifting more and more obstinately toward the illusory.

    Grants in the form of fertilizing and stimulants are generously scattered in strictly defined areas. Hot, stormy streams of gender studies, global warming and other similar things are created and maintained artificially.

    These streams, according to the plan of Western designers of the Future, should carry along the strictly defined lines of thought the entire world science. With the help of such a mechanism, entire areas are deleted from the field of scientific research. They become invisible.

    And mainly from the sphere of application of the scientific talent they want to remove research aimed at solving the real problems of mankind.

    Well, for example, huge resources are spent on global warming research, but they don’t go to major land reclamation projects and not to breed resistant crops, but instead promote various large and small scarecrows.

    • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 4:50 am #

      FInca

      Well, for example, huge resources are spent on global warming research, but they don’t go to major land reclamation projects and not to breed resistant crops,

      Regarding research into resilient crops, I just put in a simple Google search.

      The first screen’s worth of titles:

      Biologist’s research could lead to more resilient crops – Phys.org

      New biochemical pathway that may develop more resilient crop varieties

      Stress resilience in crop plants: strategic thinking to address local food production problems

      Targeting carbon for crop yield and drought resilience – NCBI

      Smart crops getting more from less – ICRISAT

      Resilience in Agriculture through Crop Diversification: Adaptive
      Management for Environmental Change

      Plant resilience is becoming the new standard – HortiNext

      Crops such as rice, wheat and soybeans could be adapted to better survive dry environments

      Scientists aim to develop drought-resistant crops using genetic engineering

      Climate Change Resilient Cropping – Tweed Forum

      These genetic ‘goggles’ could help us engineer wildly resilient crops.

      It’s almost literally endless.

      Why do people persist in making stuff up? It’s not like it’s even difficult to check.

      But no, they’re all researching global warming and doing nothing useful because blah blah research grants blah blah political correctness blah blah global fantasy blah blah global hoax blah blah…

      • FincaInTheMountains April 26, 2019 at 6:02 am #

        Just following some of your links:

        Synthetic hexaploid wheat (SHW) is an artificially created hexaploid wheat that represents a wider genetic basis because of the introduction of additional genetic resources from tetraploid and diploid relatives of wheat. With no significant reproduction barrier, SHW lines are useful in introducing agronomically needed traits into common wheat from wild genetic resources.

        https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095809917303880

        You misread me – I was talking about the crop selection process, NOT production of Genetically Modified Organisms, which , I am sure, is funded just fine.

        Here is an example of a guy who worked in crop selection – a much more lengthy and expensive process compared to genetic engineering:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vladimirovich_Michurin

        • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 6:55 am #

          Thanks, Finca.

          Here is a tiny selection that aren’t all about genetic modification (tiny because it’s only a small selection from Science Direct, not a full search):

          https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/field-crops-research/vol/152/suppl/C

          Although I’m not aware of any actual evidence that genetic modification has caused any problems, even though the EU has always been against it. Something I’d need to look into. I didn’t like the sound of it myself to start with. I don’t like the whole patenting scam, obviously, with food crops, with everything being Monsanto-ised.

          Some of these look like crop selection to me, although I’ve not looked closely. They’re mostly about resilience of e.g. wheat crops in sodden conditions. There’s been a fair bit of that in the UK in the last decade or two.

  101. Pucker April 26, 2019 at 3:05 am #

    Support this Jesus World Outreach
    Time is running out; Jesus is coming soon. If you are not a partner in this Jesus World Outreach, become one today and send in your financial help each month. Every month that you sponsor this mighty outreach, you will receive a GIANT Little Book filled with things the Lord has given me to bless people. It is my gift to all my monthly sponsors. The book of the month for April is The Power of His Resurrection.

    Yours for souls,
    Ernest Angley

    • Pucker April 26, 2019 at 3:15 am #

      Why is supporting Reverend Angley’s “Jesus World Outreach” a sine qua non for the End of the World Apocalypse and the Coming of Jesus? I don’t get it….

      • Pucker April 26, 2019 at 7:29 am #

        At first, I thought that maybe the idea was that one can hedge or insure against the Apocalypse (Rapture) by giving Reverend Angley money, but that doesn’t work since the Evangelical Christians WANT the Apocalypse to happen so that God will Rapture their asses out of here. Right?

        • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 7:54 am #

          You can’t take it with you, Pucker. Maybe he tells them that.

        • Pucker April 26, 2019 at 9:29 am #

          Perhaps rather than an hedge or insurance against the Apocalypse, it’s basically Reverend Angley extorting money from his followers?: “Give me your money and I’ll put in a good word for you so that you get Raptured to Heaven, but if you don’t, I’ll black ball you with Jesus.”

          Maybe it’s a “Shake Down”?

          • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 10:01 am #

            “Perhaps rather than an hedge or insurance against the Apocalypse, it’s basically Reverend Angley extorting money from his followers?”

            Yep.

          • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 10:02 am #

            Maybe extorting is a bit strong. A fool and his money etc. etc.

  102. Pucker April 26, 2019 at 3:34 am #

    Where-the-Hell does this fall in reference to the Centralized Power Axis?

    https://www.cbsnews.com/video/extended-interview-presidential-candidate-pete-buttigieg-and-husband-chasten/

    • Pucker April 26, 2019 at 7:18 am #

      Gay blokes seem very angry and bitter….

      • Pucker April 26, 2019 at 7:22 am #

        During the interview, Chasten let’s it slip out that he was sexually abused by one of his teachers. Chasten, Pete, and the gay interviewer then laugh about it and then do a retake.

  103. FincaInTheMountains April 26, 2019 at 6:27 am #

    production of Genetically Modified Organisms == finca

    All the same, damn nasty stuff – evolutionary genetics.

    It seems that some scientists terribly want the direct ancestor of man to be something vile.

    The usual chimpanzee does not satisfy them from this point of view, and Darwin’s theory continues to attract all sorts of misanthropes with the possibility of further development in this direction:

    Humans evolved after a female chimpanzee mated with a pig’: Extraordinary claim made by American geneticist

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2515969/Humans-evolved-female-chimpanzee-mated-pig-Extraordinary-claim-American-geneticist.html

    I especially like the result of this cross-breeding presented in this article:

    https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/krasarbi4/12778233/60634/60634_300.jpg

    • GreenAlba April 26, 2019 at 6:58 am #

      Miss Piggy? 🙂

  104. pkrugman April 26, 2019 at 9:08 am #

    THE TRAGEDY OF THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

    Ecologist Garrett Hardin was a racist. His “science” was flawed.

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  105. Greyson November 27, 2020 at 6:10 am #

    It is conceivable to treat, including genuine sicknesses, with the assistance of medications produced using the cannabis plant, researchers expressed. Furthermore, they submitted important logical reports. What’s more, unfamiliar visitors shared their experience – how in different nations they figured out how to assess the recuperating characteristics of hemp and put them on the security of individuals’ wellbeing and life (you can read more imn https://cbdoiler.net/nuleaf-naturals-review/ ).

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