JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
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The net effect of all the lying propaganda laid on the public by the people running things lo these many recent years is a peculiar inertia that makes us seemingly impervious to gross political shocks. Momentous things happen and almost instantly get swallowed up by time, as by some voracious cosmic amoeba that thrives on human malignancy. Case in point: the multiple suicide of several giant banks just days ago that prompted “Joe Biden” to nationalize the US banking system.
As if all the operations around finance in this land were not already unsound and degenerate enough, the alleged president just cancelled moral hazard altogether. It’s now official: from here forward there will be no consequences for banking fraud, poor decision-making, fiduciary recklessness, self-dealing, or any of the other risks attendant to the handling of other people’s money. Bailing out the Silicon Valley Bank and Barney Frank’s deluxe Signature Bank means that the government will now have to bail out every bank every time something goes wrong.
The trouble, of course, is that the government doesn’t have the means to bail out every bank. Its only resort is to ask the Federal Reserve to summon new money from a magic ether where the illusion of wealth is conjured to paper-over ever greater fissures in the splintering matrix of racketeering that America has become. That will quickly translate into US dollars losing value, that is, accelerating inflation, which is how nature punishes you when your government lies and pretends that it has a bad situation well-in-hand.
Be advised: the situation is not in-hand and is going to get a whole lot worse as new and subsidiary shocks thunder through the weeks and months ahead, until the whole wicked business blows. Likewise, the reactions of our government will only get more tragi-comically pathetic. The harder this gang of feckless, wannabe control freaks pretends to control events, the faster events spin out of control.
Money dies when it loses its direct connection to the generation of wealth from the real things of this earth: fuels, crops, metals, materials, labor, and the value-added products made from them. Since that divorce has already happened, the need arises for something else that can function as money (a store of wealth, an index of value, and a medium of exchange). The government will pretend that a Central Bank Digital Currency is that something else. Since banking is now nationalized by the Federal Reserve backstopping everything and everybody, then theoretically all the wealth of the nation is under its command. That would be another illusion.
This CBDC would not be “money” representing wealth because America’s wealth is going, going, gone, pissed away, falling apart, de-laminating, oxidizing, rusting in the rain, going up in a vapor. Think of all those mortgaged cars on the road racking up the mileage until they’re worthless and all those mortgaged suburban houses built out of particle-board and vinyl smeared all over the landscape, decomposing into their constituent chemicals — over time, a dead loss. And that’s what’s left of our American Dream: coldcocked by entropy and, by extension, the laws of the universe. The CBDC would just be a computerized tracking apparatus for zombies lurching pointlessly around that dead zone… a final insult. The CBDC is already DOA, only the CB doesn’t know it.
One big mistake so many commentators and observers are making takes us back to the matter of cancelled moral hazard, and of consequence in general: it is the failure to appreciate how much disorder will manifest from the farrago of mindfuckery and misconduct we’ve been subjected to. By which I mean things stop working, including the elemental things like your ability to get food, fix whatever breaks, and keep the lights on.
The potential disorder is why our government will probably not be able to fix itself. The disorder may go on for quite a while, but eventually the survivors will synergetically fix their circumstances themselves working in-step with the emergent mandates of reality. Having lived through a reality-optional period of history, it will come as an ecstatic shock to learn that the world requires us to pay attention to what is really happening and to act accordingly. We’ll find ways to get food, make some things work, and shine some lights in the darkness, if perhaps not by means we’re familiar with now.
In the meantime, expect more disordering tragi-comedy from the “Joe Biden” led psychotic regime ruling over us with its drag queen commissars, lawless Lawfare vandals, race hustlers, agents provocateurs, informers, censors, prosecutors, inquisitors, jailers, and propagandists — the worst collection of imbeciles, grifters, and villains ever assembled into political party.
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Kind of feels like the genie’s out of the bottle with this one. It’s fitting that it’s all blowing up under the uhhh leadership of Team Drag Queen. Perfect, really.
Huh, what a shock it’ll be when men wearing high heels, dresses & make up will no longer be recognized as legitimate women. That’s gonna shake up a lot of people, specially ones who have staked their entire careers on it.
You just have to look to the north in Canada. The regime here is in with the CCP, rigging our elections. The PM appoints a family friend to investigate his wrongdoings. Jeez, I wonder how that will go.
I have been following Jim for 10+ years now and he gives my family hope, a future, steadiness, preparedness. I try to wake others up, but, we all know how that goes….
Privatizing profit while socializing loss.
Its all that matters, nuclear annihilation is just so passe’ obviously.
Plus your crazy president wants to destroy Europe.
Europe doesn’t need any help destroying itself. Those f@ckers in the EU leadership are doing a bang-up job all by their lonesome.
Blowing up their pipelines was a major step, doncha think?
More surprises coming.
The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire – on YTube.
How America Embraced Offshore Finance
An excellent presentation, that. I watched it twice a few years ago and perhaps will again as it presents the truth of the plutocracy ruling über alles about as starkly as can be.
Von mises stated years ago that one can either voluntarily refrain from further inflationary policies or subject the currency to ruinous market destruction.
I can only reflect on Volkers policies 40 years ago that chosen option #1. Of course we had around $1T in public debt, dwarfed by capital assets and production (GDP).
Today, we are following all prior empires that over reached for the stars. There will be no retreat, only further doubling down
Such is the case when the parasites burn it all down while heading out the rear door.
More like reached for the cash, but points taken.
Volker chose option #1 and the human misery it led to was ruinous to many societies, not just ours.
But hey! He fixed inflation! Not.
You got it James, it IS a total Clusterfuck and it is only going to get worse as all of the cash that controls the herd is funneled into one big shit pot so that CBDC can be begged for and thrust upon the witless worms.
I am currently enjoying my 69th birthday with my lovely wife in Monticello, probably not far from you at the Inn at Lake Joseph so I will leave my comments at this and add a heartfelt thank you once again.
Oops, just looked at the map. Guess we won’t be meeting for lunch anyway, you are way up there.
Happy Birthday, Walter! I hope you have beautiful weather for your romantic celebration 🙂
Happy Birthday, Walter. Enjoy your celebration.
Happiest of birthdays, Walter, enjoy your celebration!
Party like it’s 2099, Sir Walter! But hey, keep an eye out for Q. and Peter while you’re out there celebrating. They’re planning an epic bender after Princeton beat Arizona last night in the NCAA tourney. Hate to see those two miscreants get caught up in too much trouble. No telling where they might turn up.
Conagratulations on your birthday—
and congratulations, too, for having a lovely wife to celebrate it with!!
Everyone already forgot about the PPP loans and their aftermath.
Go ahead, Google your business owning friend who bought the new beach house. See what he qualified for.
No strings attached.
Perfect, because if one pulls the string there is nothing till unravel.
Poof
The clowns that are being gone after for those “loans” haven’t forgotten. I know of a number of them that are actively being molested by the government for repayment. It was a trap.
PPP loans, when properly administered, gave legitimate businesses enough to survive the foolishness. It was the least they could do. Of course, like any government program, it was massively abused. It may take years, but a lot of that money will be clawed back with much gnashing of teeth.
Bugatti? Nah, you kept it discreet. Corvette?
One thing that was made clear to me after many years in elected office and in business is that as our population decays, fewer and fewer people are able to manage other people’s money without turning greedy and/or stupid leading to theft, fraud, and corruption. Getting away with crime is possible in many areas, but screwing with other people’s money will get you dead or incarcerated quickly. Unless of course you are Joe Biden or the Clintons.
or Bankman Fried
I was encouraged, via email, to apply for one of those, and I don’t employ so much as a research assistant. Not being overburdened with scruples, I do admit to considering it.
My only wish is that the internet stays up and functioning long enough for me to see how our tranny army fares against China, Russia, N. Korea and Iran at the same time. It will be Biblical.
Shored up with the newly “arrived” millions of Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan conscripts. They are taking a page from the Civil War when immigrants were thrown right into the Union Army. Promise of Citizenship to an un-civilization.
That is my theory also, Connie.
They aren’t bringing 7 million young men over the border for nothing.
I’ve always thought those military-aged immigrant men would be recruited to subdue the American people, when everything collapases.
In Mexico, the government is pretty much owned by the drug cartels–or at least the distinction between the two is blurry.
Want to know who will take over the US when things get disordered? Ask yourself who has the money, the guns, and the hardened fighters.
Once they put them through military training, they can use them for anything.
I’m thinking they’ll have trouble paying them. This makes me think they they will not work for the US military, but will be self-employed.
In spending a lot of time thinking about the invasion, and how China Joe is not only stopping it, but actually encouraging it, I arrived at a different reason. In addition to the possible, maybe probable, millions in bribes from the cartels to allow them to dominate the border, China Joe and the Biden mafia likely intend to use the mostly military-aged men in the 5 million, thus far, illegals he has allowed in, as additional storm troopers ala antifa and blm on behalf of the Demoncrap Party. In other words, to fight and kill Americans in the likely event of disorder and even revolt from the masses against this traitorous bunch. These invaders have no interest in fighting Chinese, or Russian, or any other nation’s military, only in getting freebee’s from our marxist and woke government, and maybe citizenship and even American’s property in return.
@ jgalt:
Yup. That’s who will control the major cities. But it won’t be long till the cities run out of food. So they’ll go where the food is.
This could be a little problematic. Realistically, “where the food is” is mostly on big corporate farms or in CAFOs. You can just steal the chickens and run–at least not if you want to eat tomorrow, instead of just today. They’d have to take over these operations somehow. There is more than one way to do this. The sensible thing to do would be to tax them, both in chickens (and eggs) and in some form of currency that was worth something (problematic). So, what do the have that is tradable and has some value? No use trying to sell chickens and eggs to the urban hordes; they won’t have any money.
Answer: kids and pretty women.
Oops! “You can’t just steal the chickens and run.”
Nickel-
Haven’t you seen the new US Army recruiting ad begging Whites to join up and go die in more useless imperial wars?
It’s on YouTube. I’m surprised they’ve left the comments turned on because they are priceless.
I need to go have a look and add to the “priceless” comments. At the end of the day, I do not see a desire among young white males to go off and get themselves killed for a government that despises them. Frankly, I’m waiting for the day when China demands that we hand over our entire political class for their crimes against humanity and I’m not going to do anything to prevent it. Hell, I hope they televise the punishment.
Yep, the comments made my day. And they were mostly from vets with generations of service in the family. The neocons can get their kids to fight and die – if they have any.
Are Sean Penn’s kids going? How about all the other celebrities?
How about the neocons? Kagan, Kristol, Nuland, Max Boot, Bolton? How about Romney and his clan? He has to have kids and grandkids in the hundreds. Surely one of them… How about Graham? He doesn’t have kids, well because, but surely he has a nephew he can pursuade?
I’m sure if the celebrities and politicians and Hollyweirdos are so staunchly in favor of this war that they are pushing their children to go serve over in Ukraine. Who doesn’t want to be on the verge of WWIII to protect the investments of Hunter the Big Guy?
I went to look, but I just saw one with a black narrator. Is that the one?
Paula-
You found it!
thirdcoastlegend,
i went to look, too and I can’t find it.
I did however watch one recruitment video about Emma With Two Moms. She’s in the army now. I also watched a video entitled “Why Nobody is Joining the Military Anymore”. The narrator even mentioned the Emma recruitment ad and said it was a bust (no pun intended) as far as raising recruitment numbers.
Both were very enlightening. The comments were turned off though.
mrs-
Try searching YT for, “US Army Recruitment 2023.”
The clip should appear on the official US Army channel.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Those comments are quite illuminating!
As much as I’m glad that young men are saying GFY to a woke, psychotic army, I can also see a new rainbow army that would happily turn their guns on Americans.
Of course, the Chinese would blow through them like a paper wall.
Jack-
I think our good ol’ boys would do just fine with a Woke military, if they could ever get organized.
Not at the same time.
The US is still formidible. BRICS+ will take things slow, one item at a time. Ukraine now, Taiwan next, then.
Biden knows, and does not care. His priorities lie with global issues and the “Family”. The people of the US do not enter his or his subordinate’s decision making. The best example is the Border. Myorkas is a stooge to Biden, lying constantly about conditions there. They will not compromise to do anything that would close the border to the cartels. That is because the US government has been recruited by the cartels, like the Mexican government. Best guess is that the cartels are no longer just Mexican but a fully integrated unit of the BRICS+ coilition. I would like to see if La Raza isn’t a unit of the cartels.
You can guess… or you can know that the cartels are part of one big happy CIA-DEA-FBI family. The unwritten but oh-so-codified parts of the NAFTA “miracle.”
Remember the “Contras” from the 1980s? That was Elliot Abram’s purview. Not so funny how that bad penny and Bolton showed up again during “Let the MAGA Times roll.” Along with old CIA lawyer Bill Barr, the guy who got them pardoned for their sins under St Ronald.
See, they never went nor go away, they were just buried seamlessly into the rich (but filthy) carpet that the Beltway provides for its “Dirty Deeds, Done dirt Cheap” cockroach neocon gang.
Now what their association is with the Chicoms (you said BRICS+) is indeed open for scrutiny, but real question is are they part and parcel of the Bush Crime Family vying for favor vs the Biden Crime Family, or are they all just part of one. Big. Happy. Family?
I choose the latter.
Nailed it, Dave.
Yep, Dave, spot on there. Ronnie Raygun, of infamous memory.
Speaking of carpet, forget truth bullets, Dave is dropping truth carpet-bombs, clearing the forest canopy growing up from the swamp.
Every single one of these creatures has a backstory that the MSM willfully ignores, willfully excludes (by design) from explanations of the plot. As if they would ever expose it.
And forget John Q. Far too lazy and disinterested.
Nuland & Kagan Inc. are merely one more example of swamp creatures that were closer to dad but who are now embraced by mom in the big happy crime family. But yeah, a career government employee, politician, lawyer, former military man is going to end it… because, well, because he sent a plane to a Brahmin resort town
Is it BRIC or BRICS or is S.Africa’s imminent demise more planted propaganda?
What are you talking about? I haven’t seen any propaganda about S. Africa.
Their power grid on the verge of collapse. I believe Revolver was running a Twitter feed of an Afrikaaner citizen patrol. Documenting system failure
How can they have CBDC without electricity. Doh!
The S. Africa government is extremely corrupt. After Mandela died they instituted reverse apartheid and replaced experienced whites with uneducated blacks. Easy to do because it buys the vote-by-tribe block. They simply cannot manage a modern technological society. Same thing in Zimbabwe and spreading to Namibia. China is all over the place buying up resources and yoking them with debt for grandiose projects which they cannot afford.
WTF ÷ AHA = RUE
“Right upper extremity”?
What can I say?
I love your essays, Jim.
Not so much essays as Intel Reports, and far more valuable since the ClintonCrimeNetwork, NoBrainChannel, and MindlessShitNothingButCrap propaganda propagators spew nothing but “disinformation” and bullshit.
you left out the CommercialsNothingButCommercials, channel.
How can there be moral hazard when there is no personal responsibility or integrity? Please America: Just elect Ron DeSantis and get your mojo back. And get the fuck out of Ukraine, bring home your military base personnel and belongings, and let someone else be the world’s policeman. over & out.
DeSantis?! Yeah, please elect another career politician.
People who think(?) like you ARE the problem.
Elect another politician, and another, and another, and a lawyer, and a lawyer, and a politician… ad nauseam
You just described a desire for Trump or another just like him. Remember the rallies? Trump declared was on the media and the rest of the Swamp. It is mindboggling that after being elected he was basicallt cancelled by the Deep State, who is everywhere. Millions of jobs are dependent of the machinations of the Feds so their dominance is understood. That does not mention the Gimmes, increasing every yesr that depend on the clowns for sustanence
Last night Tucker had on James O’Leary – Mr Wonderful – successful businessman and tv star. His take? Fuck these little, dying zombie banks. Who needs them? Get big or get out. In other words, he’s completely on board with the Agenda.
Trump is another big is everything type. He’s the last guy we should be needing at this point. But he may the only one who will avoid nuclear war. One is reminded of Ronald Regan – a disaster in so many ways, but he kept us out of war. Unlike Wilson and FDR who promised to do so.
I’m not for Trump. He did his part: exposed the uniparty and deep state.
Then he sank in the swamp with more than a little help from his son-in-law who tactically married-in, as they are want to do.
But we do need another non-politician, another non-lawyer.
We need a leader with no fealty to the Cosplay racket of D’s and R’s.
Yeah, another politician who will make vast promises and then when in the position of power raise his middle finger to the ones who were gullible enough to swallow his/her lies.
No politician will fix this mess. Divine intervention is the only way out of this now. The rot, filth, corruption runs too deep.
DeSantis won’t get anything done.
Agreed, Connie. However, I suspect there is one candidate who will wipe the floor in 2024: Dominion. Until something is done about voter fraud, voting is pointless.
Another Dominion win is definitely what I’d bet on. It’s got the biggest winning streak in history.
@Connie—a military intel lawyer who had lots of time to speculate on his career path while stationed in Guantanamo.
So he’s offered up as the Prince. A contrarian making his bones “fighting D.C., THE SWAMP!, vaccine mandates, and federal overreach.” That’s all well and good, a breath of fresh air for the nation, “standing his ground…” A limited hangout to perception’s perfection.
All that ends the moment he takes office. Nobody gets anywhere politically in this country if they are not backed by ‘Those Who Decide” such things.
Period.
I’m astounded that this simple and proven formula is so shopworn yet unacknowledged by otherwise seeming adults.
Just another carrot on a stick, a bait and switch, a phantom Savior.
“You’re in Good Hands with….”
Amen!!!!!!!!!!
Can I get a witness?!!!
Testify! Testify Brother Dave for you have seen the light
Yes fellas, that’s true. Agreed. I still voted for him here in FL for the vaxx stance, no mandates. And getting the US out of Ukie noises is right, but yes, another politician…
DeSantis is not perfect, far from it. He would be, however, far better than Biden.
I am still surprised that more Republican governors did not pay better attention to what DeSantis was doing down in Florida and strategize on how to implement some of it in their states. Some of what DeSantis did was completely unique to Florida. Few governors had the option of advertising their open ports to shipping customers parked off the California coast for weeks at a time. And few governors had the option of overturning a company like Disney’s special tax status. But any governor could have taken a stand on lockdowns, emergency powers, mandates, school boards, etc.
And shipping illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard! I forgot that one. A classic.
Classic what though?
Political stunt.
Got attention of the dupes, that’s for sure
Yeah it’s sad that people are so desperate for a good leader they think a political stunt shows some sort of good leadership.
Ay yi yi.
Classic illustration of the hypocrisy. Many people need to see this for themselves. They can’t be told by the red-pilled. And to see that the sanctimonious, oh-so-virtuous, liberals of MV are fine with dumping thousands, if not millions, of illegal aliens all over this country, but CAN’T STAND the idea of having any dropped off near their precious homes is very illustrative.
This little political stunt as you call it also removed the latest batch of illegal aliens from Florida, where they were being systematically dumped. Back to my original point, what if every red state governor jumped on the bandwagon and started doing this?
Political inflections points have to start somewhere. And they can start with one action of one man. But others have to be willing to back him up.
I’m no DeSantis cheerleader. There’s no one remotely perfect to choose from. I’d prefer Trump, in a second term, free from the constraints of having to run for re-election. But I’ll be damned if I discount the governor who stood up the most and said out loud on national TV, “Not here, not while I”m governor.”
You can swill your negative bullshit at some other commenter.
Def. of “stunt”:
” an unusual feat or act performed or undertaken chiefly to gain attention or publicity”
I think the Vineyard “stunt” was pretty damned good.
But why should we accept the “political stunt” framing?
How about “object lesson”?
Merriam-Webster again:
“1: a lesson in which a material object is made the basis of instruction
2 : something that teaches by exemplifying a principle in concrete form”
Works for me.
Of course the liberals’ brains are impenetrable for new ideas, not to mention lessons. If they did glimpse a lesson in there, they will not admit to it.
The outrage! The outrage!
But a lot of normies got the point loud and clear.
I can only hope that this new bill in Texas succeeds—to stop the invasion of migrants at along the border (i.e., not at legal entry points) in its tracks.
Mrs. Vaj,
what has he done to curb illegal immigration to his state?
No driver’s licenses?
No public benefits?
No school enrollment?
No work?
No bank accounts?
No, he’s done nothing with cajones, but bill his taxpayers to run busses and planes for a few weeks to get on the boob tube.
A stunt for sure. But the fact that MV kicked them all out within 2 days proved his point.
Dupes?
Thanks Islander and Mr. Mango. You get my small point. Which is that the stunt proved a very large point and opened the door to an object lesson.
What is the lesson Ms. Vaj?
Call out the “other” party’s absurdity, hypocrisy without offering a solution.
That’s called politics dummy.
Point fingers, make headlines, but in the end nothing has changed.
No solution.
This country deserves the “leadership” it falls for
The lesson (IMHO):
The so-called “stunt” shone a light on the hypocrisy of the unthinking but virtue-signaling well-off thinking that communities in Texas and elsewhere on the border can and should absorb the stresses of dealing with hordes of migrants.
It also shone a light on the practice of sluicing migrants into the interior of the country, which I think many people are unaware of.
Haven’t busloads of migrants been sent to Washington, DC, and NYC? And the structures to “welcome” them and “integrate” them simply broke down.
PS. Of course the “stunt” played out in black and white, so to speak.
The “gray area” fact is that there are also a lot of illegals on Martha’s Vineyard. One difference, though, is that one is hardly “allowed” to openly discuss the problems thus created.
DeSantis tricking the airport at Martha’s Vineyard into allowing the planeload of illegals to land was genius and I’ll always love him for it. And Greg Abbot busing thousands to NY and a special one to Kamal’s house on Christmas Eve — what could be more perfect? Both are doing as good a job as possible within their own states –not perfect–but one whole helluva lot better than NY, California, Oregon to name a few. And both are the only two states with homestead laws where creditors cannot force you to sell your home if you file for bankruptcy.
I hope both stay put and continue to create safe havens within the US. There is no hope to undo the corruption in DC and any politician with even a little integrity will be ground up and spit out. As in A World Made by Hand, it’s at the local level regeneration is possible.
Again, where is the substance?
Did Abbot declare an invasion?
No, no he didn’t.
That would take sincerity.
What has he done to make his state less hospitable for illegals?
Employer sanctions?
no, nada.
Connie —
Abbot’s done what he could do and got as many border patrol as he’s able to. Texas does not have its own army and the federal government has downplayed this crisis for over two years. Just this week the Democrats REFUSED to go to El Paso with their Republican peers b/c “they didn’t want to participate in a partisan photo-op” or some such cowardly nonsense. 185,000 illegals cross the long border every month and without a concerted effort by the federal government to put a stop to this, there’s little Abbot can do but try to call attention to it by staging, what you call, “stunts.”
@SW
In old Mejico they have a saying.
Roughly translated:
“chu layv dee food out and los gatos weeel coam”
Florida and Texas have left the food out, and the cats keep on coming.
If you can’t make a life here, you ain’t going to come.
You don’t need walls, patrols, armies.
You need pelotas.
Why thank you, Connie, for making my point for me.
Pelotas (balls) is exactly what is lacking in the Biden WH and the refusal of the Democrats to address this invasion. And it actually has been called an invasion but that made no impression on Kamla, Joe or any member of Congress or the Senate. Sanctuary cities are ubiquitous in the northeast and California but not Texas.
Holding facilities in Texas and other border states are completely overwhelmed and particularly since December, this hasn’t eased up. They’re released b/c there’s no place to put them. I agree it’s up to employers not to hire illegals but that practice is so big now that enforcement is all but impossible.
wrong again SW
Texas can officially declare an invasion.
Officially, legally, but Abbott’s wheelchair seems to be stuck spinning in circles.
And you’re missing the bigger point. They are released because they are not being removed or repelled back to Mexico and they cut detention money on purpose.
learn spanish and learn the art of mordida. it’s your future
SW,
Agreed and thank you. I’ll take delicious irony periodically to break up the mendacity of “we’re all screwed all the time”.
Our southern border is open because too many of our politicians want it open (D and R). Abbot doesn’t, but, as you say, he may not have the tools and authority to close it. A bit of what Arizona put up has actually been taken down. It’s only 1950 miles in length for crying out loud.
There’s a whole lot of noise around this issue. If the border were closed, we could sort through the noise. The steps to do so are not complicated. But getting it done it not simple.
1. Put up walls, where geographically feasible. Put up fences where it makes sense.
2. Use imaging to root out the tunnels.
3. Staff this department properly.
4. Deploy technology, including drones, to supplement manpower.
5. Send anyone arrested back to the US consulate in the arrestee’s home country.
6. Quit advertising the benefits available to those sneaking in.
This will stop the influx. This will stop the caravans. Then we can properly address political asylum, visas for migrant workers, visas for tech workers, the impact this will have on minimum wage, and everything else it touches.
Mrs. Vaj:
wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
all wrong think non-solutions.
People come here to get a better life.
Make it not better.
Make it impossible.
No home, no school, no job, no benefits, employer sanctions.
Walls, drones, tunnel detection are symptom treating.
You know who makes money off of treating symptoms:
government contractors!
I’ll build your walls, drones, towers, tunnel detection equipment, helicopters, planes, detention centers…
How #ucking original!
Massachusetts also has a homestead law that protects home owners from their homes’ being seized to pay off debts—unless they have unpaid property tax.
SW,
Spanish from South American sources? Pelotas and bolas for balls is mostly from there, I believe. At least Argentina. Huevos too, and the Mex use huevos as well… cojones is the Tex Mex term, maybe?
Cojones is what they use in California also.
Abbot’s taken to bussing them deeper in to America – which is what the Establishment wants in any case.
Peebes is right: We’re not serious about stopping it. If we were, we would have done so already. Remember: half way thru his term, Trump said, I want these people here because the economy is so good. Utter fatuity.
With that kind of attitude, why bother with a wall? If you have no inner wall, an outer one isn’t going to do much of anything.
Shipping the illegals to sanctuary cities was most important for the response of the mayor of Washington, DC,
“This is not according to the plan for these people”.
Say what? Then what is the plan? Personally, I think we should focus on that.
Noem did a lot of good in South Dakota, but got much less national recognition since her state is less populous and wealthy.
The little national recognition she did get from the crud media was negative to prop up the coof hysteria.
Plus conservatives crapped on her over some tranny issue.
She was going to sell out girls’ sports.
Yes, she ruined herself with that, calling into question both her judgement and integrity.
Even if she has no integrity, it was a bad call, ruining her “brand”.
Agreed. I wonder if South Dakota’s population numbers will increase? Florida’s sure did. Both are states that don’t have personal income tax. Both have fairly conservative governors. One state obviously has a warmer climate than the other, lol.
I spent several years researching what state to buy my land in. I did not choose South Dakota, but it was on the short list.
@ mrs_saj:
South Dakota has a very sparse population for a reason. Winters are very harsh, tending to hover around -20°–though it often gets much colder. There are often very heavy snowstorms, where you’d have snow up to the roofline. Winters are long; summers are short. Daylength is short all year round, which is depressing.
The principle economic activity is farming and ranching, with more farming in the north: corn, wheat, and soybeans. There is a lot of beef production on large ranches, and some wool production. The soil is mostly very poor in the southern part. It looks to me like ranching would be really tough. You don’t see much in the way of lush grasslands, just endless miles of scrub. There’s also some tourism, of course, and recreational fishing, and some timber production.
You can drive down I-90 for many miles and see nothing but scrub, and with no sign of any habitation, or even another car on the road.
Anyway…. I’m not sure what a person would do for a living there, and the climate is not very inviting for older retired people.
Personally, I think Missouri is a good choice. The soil is pretty good in most areas, and there is a lot of farming. Land is relatively cheap, so we have some pretty significant Amish settlement. (If you a looking for a good place to buy land, look where the Amish are settling.)
Some Missouri counties have no building codes. You almost have to shop by county–which is probably true everywhere.
We have winter here, and sometimes they can be harsh, but usually winters are bearable.
Mostly, Missouri is very conservative, if you stay away from the cities. Southern Missouri is very scenic, with many attractions.
Anthea,
Thanks! You are a veritable state geographer! Missouri is a wonderful state and was on the short list, too.
I sold my rentals, did a 1031 exchange, and aged about 3 years in the 45 days you’re allowed to identify your short list of purchase candidates.
I closed on my acreage in the Midwest in the allowed 180 days. It was such a relief. Since then I’ve had the property surveyed. And I have plans to put in a fish pond.
My research was a multi-year project.
Well said @Anthea, good summary of why South Dakota is sparsely populated.
Florida’s popularity in particular, and the appeal of the US South in general, is predicated on reasonably priced electrical power.
The stifling heat and humidity are unbearable. That’s why the South need slavery to run. Before slavery, they had tried indentured servitude with the Irish in the Caribbean. It failed, not because the Irish resisted, but because many of them fell ill and died of malaria plus the hard physical work in the heat.
The sickle cell that causes sickle cell anemia in some African Americans also increases their resistance to malaria…
A/C transformed Florida from a steam tropical area to a vacation area first, and retirement area next, for people who had acquired the financial means to indulge in these things. They earned that money in the North, the industrial revolution created a lot of wealth, and required a lot of labor, which was provided by European immigrants.
The rest of the south benefited from Uncle Sam and the military industrial complex. The warmer, sunnier, cheaper South is just a better place to train and house soldiers and pilots. The taxes to pay for most of this came mostly from the wealthy North.
In a “World Made by Hand”, without A/C, it’s much harder to survive in the South, even if it is warmer in winter.
In any case, while I enjoyed “A World Made by Hand”, I’ve forgotten many details. However, I don’t think that will be a plausible solution for many people.
And I think, if our currently moderately dysfunctional society degrades and literally becomes a clusterfuck nation, if will be a very violent, dangerous place, and self-sufficient settlements, farms, and towns may not be able to fend off assaults from armed bands, or worse, the state.
Most of the state governments are beholding to the Deep State even if they are Red. Texas is another exception, so is S. Dakota and Wyoming. Politicians have no guts. Trump did until they trapped him in DC.
beholden
Behold the grammar Nazi! Sieg Hiel! Or is it Heil? Look it up for me and let me know.
Q, we are beholden to you for keeping our language from the slippery slope of sloppiness. Without you we would be holding a mess o’ pottage with a side o’ word salad. Salud!
DeSantis actually spoke to Birx himself, did not care for the fact that she had no science or reason or logic a-tall to back her voodoo policies, and decided then and there he wasn’t going to follow any more of that destructive horse manure one more minute.
Birx and Fauci, both well known for incompetence, continued to issue “white papers” from their sinecure at the covid task force, bashing DeSantis for going against the guidance they made up.
BTW, here’s the exact moment when these two fiends from Hades slipped their little experiment by the POTUS.
He should have knocked their heads together, but he didn’t.
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1636446103293001731?s=20
Beryl-
Great find.
Note that the Feds just regurgitated their demand to close down all social venues again a day or two ago.
Unless you are the Republican governor of a state like Vermont who shamelessly lost control of both legislative houses and has sent the state on a wokey path to Hell. One of the early victories of the marxists was to sign over the voter rolls to ERIC, which made darn sure there were enough out of state students and zombie voters on the rolls. So now the tiny state has an $8B (!!) budget supported by $4B in local taxes while the $4B in Fed plague money is about to expire next year. There are absolutely no plans to cut any state government budget. In the face of the looming fiscal tsunami they are just planning more programs and tax increases.
People will vote with their feet.
And don’t forget, or overlook, the 29 biological research labs that we were running. Might be good to see what the Russians captured in those labs, and where the research was headed. Doubtless, the research was obscenely evil and destructive, or else those labs would have been in the U.S. and not hidden from the pubic.
The Russians reported it, but the Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda ignored it.
This guy put it on his blog.
//vk.com/@739151204-biolab-july-7
And we have many bioweapons labs in the US, as well as around the world.
Lyme disease escaped from Paris Island and anthrax was spread deliberately.
Personally, I think that SARS 2 escaped from Fort Dietrick, not the Wuhan lab, but every single lab is illegal under the treaty the US signed in 1972, against biological and chemical warfare.
We are run by psychopathic criminals, who scoff at laws and morals.
Great post today, Jim.
Thank you for mentioning moral hazard.
the alleged president just cancelled moral hazard altogether. It’s now official: from here forward there will be no consequences for banking fraud, poor decision-making, fiduciary recklessness, self-dealing, or any of the other risks attendant to the handling other people’s money.
I also want to include the moral hazard of managing one’s OWN money recklessly. Apparently, far too many people think nothing of plunking down very large deposits into financial institutions that tell you in ALL CAPS that your deposits are only FDIC insured up to $250,000 per account holder. Not only that, but hundreds of millions of Americans are “managing” their own money without really noticing that inflation, which has always existed, has kicked up like one off-the-charts sandstorm that isn’t being covered by any meteorologist in the land. This sandstorm is getting into the all the machinery of our economy and things are breaking down. The oblivious are buying their lattes, having their spring breaks, redecorating their homes, etc., etc. while the value of money is shrinking on a daily basis as it continues to its final resting place.
Are the common folk thinking about other stores of value? That $8 latte is not worth much after you drink it. Neither is that spring break trip that you can’t remember much of. Are the everyman and everywoman talking about precious metals? Are they doing research on holding another currency? Those millionaires who had way too much money deposited in SVB, are they considering buying farmland?
You mentioned that Money dies when it loses its direct connection to the generation of wealth from the real things of this earth: fuels, crops, metals, materials, labor, and the value-added products made from them. Thanks for that. A couple months ago, it was recommended on this site (by hmuller, I think) to go read up on Weimar Germany. I did. I bought and read When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson. I wrote up a five page summary on the book and gave it to my husband. I’ve made two changes to our finances since reading the book. I highly recommend the book. It’s an illuminating read that is beginning to rhyme with current events.
When the original US dollar is dead, nobody overseas will be interested in trading stuff for any of our “new” dollars. They will only trade with us for “real things of this earth”. What that means is we’ll be cut off from access to all imported goods, including imported petroleum.
In my area there was relative peace and quiet here as a child in the 50’s. I could ride my bicycle around safely because there wasn’t much traffic. Most homes only had one car in the driveway because dad drove it work and mom was home taking care of business, including raising her own kids and managing her own household – a full time job if it was done right. Today, if I go outside I hear a constant low rumble of cars and traffic everywhere, coupled with frequent bursts of annoying racket made by cars and motorcycles having been modified specifically in order to make noise – yeah – loud pipes save lives eh?
Peace and quiet will return to my area post Biden, as soon as a couple of years have passed from now. Legions of assholes and 4 wheeled morons will be forced to park their vehicles. For a while, fuel thefts will be rampant and people will be shooting and clubbing each other to death fighting over the remaining and rationed scraps of fuel available. There will be a short zombie period with very dangerous feral humans running around. But without fuel, they won’t be running all that far away from their home bases. Soon after that, lack of car parts and mechanics to fix them will turn all these vehicles into scrap iron, and the new bicycle and small displacement motorbike culture will emerge out of the ashes of the former car culture. People everywhere will become tough and trim, the obese people will just be a memory. Home gardens will be a primary food source, and large cities just a memory. Once again the streets will be safe for children to both play in as well as ride bikes on. There won’t be nearly as many people around either. During the worst parts of the crisis, it will be impossible to bury all the dead and many bodies will be eaten by scavenging coyotes, which are now everywhere. For the first time ever, I’m waking up in the middle of the night – as are my neighbors – to the very loud howling racket of a pack of coyotes moving through this town’s “greenbelt area”. People are getting upset here about their pets dissapearing. If we do succeed in provoking a world war with Russia and China, the coyotes are gonna be fat and sassy here, snacking on both humans *and* their pets. What wonderful experiences are in store for us! It’s all good!
c’mon, don’t sugar coat it, say what you really see.
Damn! Man, that is one depressing post. I hope and pray that you are wrong.
On the flip side, I believe it needs to happen and I hope I can survive what is coming in order to live in the world that comes after.
Question is, how long?
“Man, that is one depressing post.”
Are you joking? A World Made by Bikers? Wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’ll take it over what we have.
Devil’s Diciples to the south of me
Vigilantes to the north
Here I am, stuck in the middle…
It’s the getting to that world that is depressing. Like I said, I would like to live to see what the world after this collapse will be like to live in.
In my Hometown Helena, the 1st celebration of spring was the H.S. “Vigilante Parade”. Cowboys, Injuns, horses, wagons, floats with mining cars, scaffolds with some fools neck in the noose, stagecoach robberies, cemeteries, school marms, shotgun weddings with a very pregnant bride. It was a different time.
Last time I came down with motorcycle fever a couple decades ago I was looking to purchase a Honda Blackbird. After test riding a used one I realized that bike would have been a bad idea for me. It was way too powerful and too heavy for my skill level at that time. And now I’m really too old for one of those. Nowadays I piddle around on a few aging small displacement dirt/street bikes.
But I digress. Anyone interested in visuals of what things might look like here in the future go to “Itchy Boots” you tube channel and watch a new video of her ongoing trip exploring Morocco. The video is called “This is a serious problem with my motorcycle”. The street scenes are fascinating. You’ll see very little traffic, and about every other randomly parked vehicle on the streets is a shell that is obviously being used as a source of parts. And at least half of all the city traffic consists of motorcycles and bicycles.
Norally had a spill in the desert and had damaged her bike and couldn’t continue far without repairs. She arrived at a motorcycle shop, and instead of having to wait weeks for Honda parts to arrive, the guys at this shop actually fabricated on site what she needed. The made a new chainguard and repaired her bent up shifter pedal. They also fixed the broken airbox on her bike that holds the air filter in place. The plastic box was a critical item for riding in the Sahara. Otherwise sand would have been getting sucked into the engine. They fixed that by mixing up some fiberglass resin and made a fiberglass patch for a permanent repair. Try and find a Honda dealer in the US that will do this for you and all on the same day!
Around here, you’d have to make an appointment and wait many days for the new parts to arrive. No way a dealer here is going to take the trouble to build or repair broken parts for you. The shop was ramshackle, dirty, and junky looking by our standards, yet the mechanics there were top notch and very friendly. They also spoke English. The video has some fantastic scenery displayed and is very interesting.
I welcome bicycles and gardening.
Not the zombie hordes, however.
pick up a couple extra tubes and tires.
Great idea.
Nature doesn’t care what you want. If you get one, you’ll get the other.
The Chinese were big gardeners. The Boise river used to flood and thus fertilize the land – like the Yellow river back home. Or the Nile of Egypt. So they knew how to take advantage of this gift.
Chinden is a combination of the words, Chinese and garden.
MQ,
I prefer the first two as well, but I think we will get all three.
Agreed. I already see the zombie horde amassing, in the wokies jabbed to the gills and on automatic pilot doing the bidding of the deep state through their command centers (MSNBC, NPR, PBS, CNN, Twitter, etc.)
I get some of these predictions from Dimitri Orlov when he compares Russia’s collapse with the oncoming US collapse. In Soviet Russia many/most city people still had private garden plots outside the cities, and during Soviet Russia’s collapse period, they still had their gardens as well as access to public transportation to get there. Unlike the US, they already had their skills and their garden plots ready for action when food in grocery stores was in limited supply. Russia never developed an automobile culture like ours, so they didn’t experience much of a transportation crisis. Our public transportation is very limited.
I also got the image of dangerous and homeless feral humans running around everywhere from Orlov. Soviet Russia had government owned housing everywhere, and people simply stayed where they were post collapse. There was no government, no bankers, and no cops around to evict them from their homes. In the US when people can’t afford rent and house payments, what is going to happen? Will they be allowed to stay where they are? We’ll find out. One utterly ludicrous situation we might see here is million dollar plus mansions literally falling apart from disrepair with yards turning into tall grass and weeds because the owners can’t afford landscapers and repairs. Also we might see these formerly expensive meadow mansions being taken apart by scrappers looking for materials to build small shacks and hovels for themselves.
The motorbike and bicycle culture is something I saw first hand in the mid 50’s in Germany. The country’s large cities had been destroyed by warfare and most people were too poor to afford automobiles. I absolutely had a blast as a six year old with a new bicycle. I could go anywhere I wanted as long as my legs could keep the pedals pumping. Todays six year olds live in captivity and cannot go anywhere without an adult tagging along. As far as I’m concerned that’s basically institutionalize child abuse. I’m super happy I was born in the late 40’s instead of now.
One more observation. Buttwipes everywhere including Repubs like Lindsay Graham, Hannity, etc. think that another world war in order to “keep the world safe for democracy” is a good idea. Fine! Look at our domestic situation here during WWII – victory gardens and food and fuel rationing is how we got by 75 years ago. We’ll have the very same conditions here again, only this time nobody knows how to garden nor have they any garden plots ready for production. Anyone who has a big home garden knows fer damn sure that you can’t grow stuff on suburban soil that has only a few inches of topsoil in place for growing a lawn. Gardens need at least a foot or two of good rich earth with plenty of compost mixed in. Chemical fertilizers might not be available. Most of y’all are gonna be shit outa luck with your sudden decisions to try and grow food in your back yards. It just won’t work. So what will you be eating? Bugs? Bark? Wild asparagus? Squirrels and groundhogs? Good luck with that!
In the Midwest tho, the suburbs are generally on lots with excellent soil. If only those majestic trees weren’t shading the yard..
My biggest gripe, or rather one of many, with how the suburbs are laid out, and JHK has made this point a long time ago, is that the streets are too wide. If only they were — gasp! — one-laners, and all that space were green, it woulda been a whole different ballgame.
How hard is it / will it be, to retrofit those increasingly wrong-way roads, into Victory Lane Gardens?
Not to mention, that that’s what would get the neighbors on the same team, would be working together out in their front “lawns.”
And that, is the upside to losing all of our old growth Red Oak, more sun for the veggies
“Not to mention, that that’s what would get the neighbors on the same team, would be working together out in their front “lawns.”
Kumbaya, m’lord, Kumbaya….
Yeah, one of the things I noticed a long time ago when visiting the Midwest was how the soil there looked much darker and more loose than the soil here in the Southeast which is mostly red clay with a thin layer of good topsoil. The red clay is great for building dirt tracks for racing cars. It’s very poor for trying to grow stuff. JHK predicts a big southern exodus after air conditioning becomes unavailable. I know what that’s like, my childhood home didn’t have ac, just a few electric fans. It gets difficult to sleep a night without at least a fan blowing in your room. Sleep becomes easy only when you are so tired from physical labor during the day that it won’t matter.
First, the road bed would have to be removed, which can be quite deep. Second, Americans for the most part are fat and lazy. To expect them to get out there and till the soil is a pipe dream extraordinaire.
“Lead from the front!” should be our war cry! Congress critters, judges, and our illustrious Prez and his staff should be deployed to the frontlines of the Ukraine meatgrinder ASAP! Thar’s some change we could believe in!
Yes, during the Depression many people in the cities just went back home to the family farm to ride it out. Those farms are long gone now.
People enjoy making fun of the Amish but, to anyone who’s paying attention, they look smarter every day. They still have everything that the rest of us have lost, particularly the skills and knowledge necessary to live in a simpler world. They also have a stable society that has retained its homogeneity without having needed to fend off incursions from the outside. Their way of life doesn’t hold any appeal for the parasites and grifters who thrive in the wider society.
Soon it will be,
” I remember those trees, they look different now, and Andersons place was just over there.
I shot my first Buck next to that Aspen. It all looks so different now.
The first time I touched a boob,…it all looks so different now…”.
In re; the Amish being model citizens and a pathway out of our turpitude.
Genetics teaches us that, once a population is no further than 2nd cousins apart,…. (mutations), remember this;
Mama Nature always bats last… bad eyes, bad teeth, predisposition towards -…..fill in the blank.
Still births?, cross-species?, offspring with un-identifiable traits?…feathers,? beaks? gender dysphoria?
The Amish are a peasant breed. But solid at that level and hence invaluable since we’ll going back to it.
Wow the Amish of Pennsylvania! They will become the slaves of Black gangs unless a stronger force intervenes.
Amish are dangerously inbred, with lots of children with Down’s Syndrome, among other inherited conditions.
They are also much more dependent on trade with “the English,” and also on technology, that is generally admitted. But they could probably go back to a “world made by hand” subsistence lifestyle much more easily and comfortably than most of the rest of us could.
Woodchuck,
Thanks so much for the self-righteous, repetitious rants!
They really rock!
As ever, the snobbery.
We live in a small village (6,000 pop.) Our half acre is probably the most productive plot in the area. I’ve been ‘building the soils’ for 20 yrs. strawberries, raspberries, 3 Honeycrisp apples, asparagus, spuds, beans, peas, tomatoes, cukes, habaneros, groundcherries, tobacco, butternut squash, giant pumpkins (for the G-kidz) and someday we may not be able to get to WM for analgesics so, a handful of Papaver somniferum varieties. We have a private backyard. Everything we do in the front yard is for the neighbors, everything we do in the backyard is for us.
My dad had a huge raspberry patch, and one of the chores we disliked was taking care of them, weeding, mulching, etc. He had access to unlimited amounts of rotten sawdust and used that for mulch. We hated the raspberry chores but loved to eat them when ripe and especially liked homemade raspberry ice cream. I complained so much about the hand cranked ice cream maker that he did get us an electric one.
I don’t know of anyone around here growing their own tobacco, but given the astronomical prices on cigarettes if I were a smoker I’d certainly try growing my own tobacco. Out of curiosity some years ago I obtained opium poppy seeds on ebay and grew some. It’s perfectly ok to grow opium poppies, but the very minute you slice up the pods to get the white opium stuff to leak out you’ve just become a felon. I can’t figure out why opiate addicts everywhere don’t grow their own in their back yards. Smoking opium is safe, you adjust the dose as you go along, smoking until to get the high you want and then stop there. It’s still a loser thing to do of course and you’ll certainly get addicted with regular use. However, a person capable of making wise decisions can use the stuff on the rare occasions it’s needed for medical purposes. One side effect of opiates that’s also bad is constipation. Back before nanny government existed, opiates could be purchased by anyone at a local apothecary. I’ve tried having a strawberry patch but the bermuda grass that’s everywhere here invades and ruins it.
@ Woodchuck:
I tried growing Papaver somniferum last year, but without much success. I think they must need good garden soil, and I don’t have room for them in the garden. You are not the only one who is concerned about analgesics in the days to come.
Woodchuck Anthea, I have landscape fabric between the rows of Raspberries, I then put mulch on top, -no weeds.
in re: Papaver cultivation, yep not illegal to cultivate, illegal to harvest other than for the seeds.
Anthea, when you scatter the seeds, don’t cover them, they need direct sunlight to germinate. The ground here is still frozen and snow covered but spring is in the air. Vernal Equinox is tomorrow (20th) that’s when I sow. Pap S. is a tough botanical, it’ll grow anywhere, look to Afghanistan (where all the smack for E. European junkies comes from). It’s a self seeding plant, I’ve had it growing out of nothing but rocks
Woodchuck,
Agreed that our international trade will wither up and die unless we have actual goods to trade. Many countries are already inching towards the exits with regard to US treasuries and have been for years. Some countries have also been bolstering their gold reserves. China, Russia, and Turkey come to mind.
Your World Made By Hand mini-prequel is well written. I’ve commented before that I wish JHK would write a prequel to his four part series. No one can actually predict the time line or all the details, but the overarching themes are clear and you have captured them well: less energy, less food, some people prepared better than others, and desperate people will do evil things.
BRICS+ basically owns access to the world’s stores of resources. China controls a large portion of the rare earths that our wonderful president needs for his transportation conversions.
Woodchuck, you are an optimist. The cities are were population growth is happening, and the people settling there are NOT model citizens. The Gimmes want their stuff and has been shown repeatedly, the Law makes no difference to them. This country is going to deteriorate to city state status like the end of the middle ages. Local control will prevail then regional warfare will begin.
Think it cannot happen?
Ukraine, Balkans, Mexico, Venezuela are a few good examples. When the common culture and the common good disappear, cohesion does also. We are at the beginning of that nightmare.
Add in a couple of reactor core melt downs and it won’t be middle ages, it’ll be stone age.
Ukraine and the Balkans are what happens when outsiders meddle and create a mess, especially in areas that have seen many migrations or invasions.
Over the past 600 years, Ukraine was over run by Sweden, Poland, then Russia, then France, Russia, Germany, Russia/USSR.
Before that, the Mongols and Ottoman Turks had appeared. And before that, ancestors of the Ukrainians and Russians. The Ukranians and Russians are very similar. I think Kiev predates Moscow.
The Balkans are similar. Slavic migrations, kingdoms, as well as friction between the different Slavic groups, and the native Greeks in the south, followed by a harsh Turkish invasion and occupation of ALL of them, Greek and Slavs, followed by Austrian occupation.
When you say “Balkans”, I presume you mean Yugoslavia. Well, that was the key border between the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Austria-Hungary Empire. And these two empires created the conditions which have led to conflict in Yugoslavia, a conflict the US and EU wrongly exacerbated and got involved in.
Serbia was wronged in the 1990s because of the US. But this time around, the USA’s friends in “Ukraine” are getting hammered, and the US is going to lose its not-so-little proxy war.
I don’t know enough about Mexican or Venezuelan history to comment.
The US has no such experience of having outsiders conquer it and meddle. Indeed the “Americans” are the conquerors here!
The natives have been long vanquished.
The Confederacy was occupied by the Union for 20 years vs 100 or 200; compared to being overrun or occupied by Turks or Mongols, the losing side in the War of Northern Aggression had a walk in the park, and other than civil rights for African Americans, they had all made up 30 years later, during the Spanish-American war, and before that, during the wars against the Native Americans.
The US is going to be the first society to willingly IMPORT invaders, and the latest society to discard conventional morality.
When the pie is growing, you can party it up and try doing stuff like that. From 1890 to 1929, the pie was exploding, and America imported immigrants–until 1924, when the natives said ENOUGH–but they had to pull their weight and adapt to WASP America.
But when the pie is shrinking, you are just adding fuel to the upcoming explosion by bringing in aliens who can’t or won’t adapt and need lots of care and feeding…
I’ve a brother living in Bucharest, Romania a few miles to the Uke. frontier. He tells me the dogs in the Ukraine are “well larded” this winter.
as a child in the 50’s
What are you, 90 years old? Kidding haha, good post.
In this suburb coyotes have been decimating the local pet population for at least a decade.
Small Dog — Missing! plz call! signs were everywhere, on telephone polls etc.
Small dog on a leash is called trolling for mountain lions.
LOL! Here kitty kitty!
Disaffected, 2 true stories from my home range.
Little kid 11-12 yrs. rides his sled down to the bus stop, parks his sled but doesn’t get on the bus or show up at school. His mom gets a call from school so, she walks down to the stop and sees the blood, drag marks and footprints of a large cat. Thereafter, every cat within 20 miles had a bounty.
I was mashing with some pretty young thing in her car. She was behind the wheel, me in passenger seat. I came up for air at the exact moment that a big cat jumped out of the dumpster across the street. Cat had a front quarter of a deer.
I’m having more problems with neighborhood dogs than with the coyotes. I’ve been trying to put some lead shot in their butts rather than dig a hole.
get a dog whistle or a very quiet hyper velocity pellet gun. They’ll respond to either.
get a dog whistle or a very quiet hyper velocity pellet gun. They’ll respond to either.
whoops, sorry for the DP.
Where do you live, that has roving packs of coyotes?
Why don’t the men take care of this problem?
It’s probably against the law. We’re you always pro-second amendment? Always against the very concept of racism too?
One female jogger was killed by coyotes, perhaps the bigger Eastern type that has bred with wolves and/or dogs.
Dark days are coming, Islander. Beware the moors. and the Moors.
Jar MUS ek
(MUS = Making Up Shit)
You ain’t kiddin’, Janos. Warn’t a jogger but a folk singer.
[cascade of muffled laughter]
Now wait a gosh-darn minute y’all, stop y’alls snickerin’ and hootin’. Nuthin’ wrong with folk singers. Well nothin’ worth killin’ them fur.
Canuck woman, so no way she could have gone waltzing through a wilderness properlly armed.
‘Mitchell’s mother issued a statement saying that her daughter would not have wanted her death to result in the extermination of the coyotes: “We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature’s fold — it’s the wildlife’s terrain,” she wrote. “When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor’s voice say, ‘Please don’t, this is their space.’ She wouldn’t have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own.”[18]’
Sounds reasonable enough. CLICK, LOCK’N’LOAD.
Shoot a coyote here in city limits and the noise will bring a bunch of cops your way. Claiming you had to shoot a coyote won’t keep you from getting arrested if they catch you with a rifle after people have called them about gunshots.
Islander is wrong so very often, but her snobbery keeps her from ever repenting.
Woodchuck, there are hyper-velocity sound suppressed pellet rifles. .22 and .177. a very nice piece will cost you around $150. practice until you have it dialed-in at 40 yards.
Here’s the secret with coyotes, gut shoot ’em so they die someplace else. A pellet going 1400 fps will punch right through that belly skin. I have a “Black Lightening” .177, it’ll go thru a 5/8″ piece of plywood, the first time I used plywood to hang my targets, when I went to hang a new target I saw my pellets had continued their journey into my neighbors yard…whoops..my bad. Don’t tell anybody..
There was a pack of them in my town (not this town).
I know I have mentioned this here, so . . .
They would trot across my property in the early a.m. to get to a pond. I didn’t think anything of them, actually.
I was away for two years, ans when I came back, they were gone. A posse of some kind decided to eliminate them. Gone.
That is what I was referring to.
so many dumb comments. Especially the one about the Second Amendment. Jar-MUS-ek has no idea of what I think of the Second Amendment. Like he has not idea what I think of any version of marxism. Or anything else.
As for “snobbery,” Jarek is the biggest snob on this blog, obviously.
That is why from now on, if I refer to him at all, it will be as MUS—Makes Up Shit.
Even though my story was confirmed by another poster?
In other words, you don’t really care about the truth, do you?
I am not sure that “moral hazard” is the lens with which to view SVB. Because, the shareholders of the bank, and the bond-holders got wiped out.
And while ordinary people can keep their deposits less than $250,000 without any problem – heck most Americans can’t get their hands on $500 in an emergency and live pay check to paycheck – there are other entities for whom that is not possible. Such as, the payroll companies.
Let them lose their cash, and people don’t get paychecks.
And here is another take. If everyone were to manage things as to keep their deposits less than $250,000 – and every bank defaults – then wouldn’t you be covering everyone’s deposit anyway???
Maybe we should try this – raise the FDIC limits to say $500,000 or $1,000,000. Cover that, and any funds in trust where the recipients/beneficiaries are less than that limit. That would cover the employees.
Penny D,
Unfortunately, if people ignore the $250k rule, they will ignore the $500k rule or whatever number you want to make it. If the rule isn’t going to be enforced then there’s no point in having it.
Let the rich fucks take a haircut, they deserve it.
Of course it won’t work out that way.
The poor will be scalped – even beheaded – as always.
One of the depositors in SVB had $400 million in their account. To bail out these huge sums will bankrupt the FDIC eventually if it hasn’t already.
Michael Hudson has this to say:
“It would be wrong to think of this as a “bank run” much less as a panic. The depositors were not irrational or falling subject to “the madness of crowds” in withdrawing their money. The banks simply were too selfish. And as they withdrew their deposits, banks had to sell off their portfolio of securities – including the long-term securities held by SVB.
President Biden is trying to confuse voters by assuring them that the “rescue” of uninsured wealthy SVB depositors is not a bailout. But of course it is a bailout. What he meant was that bank stockholders were not bailed out. But its large uninsured depositors were saved from losing a single penny, despite the fact that they did not qualify for safety, and in fact had jointly talked among themselves and decided to jump ship and cause the bank collapse.”
Once upon a time, during my brief tenure as a moderator on the now-sadly-defunct Vineyard of the Saker blog, I had the opportunity – no, the obligation – to to review and permit, or not-permit – a comment by Michael Hudson. I reviewed it, thought about it, then approved it.
The Power!.
I think Michael Hudson understands economics better than anyone I have read. I do think he could use a good proof-reader however… (Listening Dr. Hudson?)
And I need some, graduate-level, tutoring.
@ Blackbird:
A lot of bloggers could fix their problems with the English language just by working their way through a Perrin-Smith 8th-grade grammer book. (The old grammer books taught the same thing from 7th grade to 11th grade, in hopes that repitition would cause the material to eventually sink in.)
For punctuation (a big problem with most bloggers), there is a section in Chicago Manual of Style on the proper use of commas.
These guys really wouldn’t need much more than that.
It would help if someone would tell them that a modifier (word or phrase) should be right next to the word modified, if possible.
And somebody should tell Karl Denninger that hyphens are not to be flung around randomly.
Yes. This is an example of bad capitalism, where bad management is rewarded by being bailed out, over and over. Good capitalism would let banking clowns like SVB just go away and anyone hurt would have to take their lumps. A wiser class of investors would emerge, guaranteed. American business, like everything else has been a victim of the Dems stupidification program. How else to take over everything?
Bad capitalism breeds gimmes, Good capitalism breeds entrepenuers.
The question is whether bad capitalism inevitably morphs into bad capitalism as capitalists accrue wealth and convert that into political power. That question has long been relevant before the current batch of Dems, who are just the last in a long line of shameless grifters from both parties.
The question is whether good capitalism…
Sans a strong moral ethos as enforced by Enforcers, yes it will morph.
Greed is now good. Greedy people should be terrified of not only saying that, but being recognized as that.
In good Civilizations, the Vineyard (the spiritual aspect) influences the Market. In bad ones, it’s the opposite.
So the best thing we can do now for ourselves is to buy as much things of value that we can like food, water shelter, warm clothes and such before the dollar goes Weimar. Problem is a lot of us buy shit we don’t need with money we don’t have and then we take years paying it back when all the while inflation is on it’s way to the Moon.
Land.
You don’t buy food, you grow it.
You grow some food, yes.
In reality, most people aren’t going to become farmers. First there is not enough land, and second learning to farm takes time and lots of effort.
No one is going to beat the looming digital plantation and food-hub dystopia alone.
Those who see have to pool their skills and form communities.
I agree, we don’t get out of this alone.
Neither do we get out of it without returning to the land.
Yes, but what does that mean.
The key point is that the system that will replace the current one will be run by the same criminals, with the exception that you will be a full-on slave if you join them.
At its core, the issue is about creating a society that provides an alternative. Technology is not going away, nor should it. The battle is how technology is used.
You cannot stop progress. But you can stop tyrants.
@ Night Owl:
Sadly, many of our “farmers” don’t know how to farm, other than to grow government-subsidized corn and beans using million-dollar machinery–most of which is to either converted to ethanol or fed to the hogs.
I think the way it worked in the old days was that some of the kids on the family farm started businesses in town, and some stayed on the farm. Someone ran the produce store in town. Someone ran the still out in the woods.
People just figured something out. When I was a kid, there was on old lady who owned a floor loom. You could take your old clothes to her, and she would make you a rag rug. As a sideline, the same old lady would pierce your ears.
Join Costco and live. Costco will be the basis of a new America. Those who won’t join, won’t eat.
And those who join will sacrifice their birthright for a can of beans.
Read your Bible Jars.
Yeah bird,
a bowl of lentils
I shop there sometimes.
During the lockdown a gal told me she saw someone run over by carts as the floodgate opened and the horde rushed in.
mrs_sag — Moral hazard is (to me) a term that hides the truth that if we’re reckless and irresponsible then we have to face disastrous consequences that our own actions created. The fact that politicans and talking heads use this term instead of the straight-forward there are real consequences in the real world that you can’t escape if no one is there to bail you out.
SW,
I agree. And I know different people can tailor the definition of a word based on their experience with it. And I am not talking about “trans women are women” kind of thing. But I wanted to broaden JHK’s judgement of how people are managing other’s money to include how we are all managing our own money. The bank did a shitty job, no doubt. But those depositors made a choice, too.
A few places I’ve encountered the issue of moral hazard (not personally, but politically) is in the 08-09 mess where some people were making strategic decisions to default on their mortgages, even if they could continue to pay them, while others soldiered on with payments on a house that was underwater. Another example is Biden’s plan to forgive some student loan debt (capped at $10k, I think). But what about the kids who sucked it up and paid their loans off? Right or wrong, I relate moral hazard partially with rewarding bad behavior.
Thank you for mentioning OUR role in all this, Mrs S. It’s easy to blame Big Gubmint – and boy, do they deserve it – but no-one put a gun to our heads and ordered us to max out on credit cards and buy all the white goods crap that The Jones next door have. Most people would think it’s Cambodia Year Zero if they have to give up Starbucks.
HTW,
What you are suggesting is that the vast majority of our citizens are not inured to adversity.
In this you would be correct. Any reference to historical precedent will not be accurate when describing a civilization where a poor person in this country is one who is driving a 8 year old car with spinners and never known real hunger. How they will react can only be suggested.
I suggest…not well.
I’ve lived in poverty my entire life, mocked by “liberals” such as those who post here. My level of inurement is off the charts.
Jarek,
I envision the perpetually impoverished student.
Jarek- One of the reasons I follow this blog is to read your comments. I see the world in much the same way you do, and in some ways not. Smart people who have endured poverty frequently resent our system because they perceive it to be unfair, that they are not rewarded given how gifted they are. The prototypical archetype is the middle class college professor who likes to pontificate about an ideal world that he envisions. These “experts,” as Thomas Sowell has argued, are one of the biggest problems we have. They are blind to reality, as our host points out. The whole country is being run like a college campus by these people, where everything is a fantasy and paid for by someone else. No wonder they hate capitalism because they don’t get their hands dirty and they don’t understand wealth creation. I’m no fan of central planning in any form because it destroys capital and thus wealth creation, and it always leads to the loss of human freedom and dignity. Our model is failing because of cronyism and nepotism, not capitalism, which accepts and demands failure, toughens a society. And it’s also failing because of unbridled individualism, which undermines cohesion, as well as diversity, which creates friction and breeds cultural Marxism, fomented by the power-mad experts. Our collapse will end very badly. I’m glad you’re inured.
Once the Capitalist ideal of money as the only thing prevails, the society is doomed. Even people who think they’re socialists have contempt for the poor.
Virtue becomes virtue display only. Capitalism must neve be allowed to develop fully. It must always be kept immature, at middle size. Grow big? Congratulations – you’ve just joined the government.
Or if you refuse, you can be watched and regulated to the nth degree. Taxed into oblivion. Or retire. Sell. Leave with your winnings. But in no sense will big business be allowed to do as they please. Profit mongering and high culture do not go together. And ultimately it destroys the nation itself.
Vlad,
poverty is a relative concept. A rich man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.
So a mindful, spiritual, scorning of riches poor man, is in fact rich.
If, and only if, the poverty is voluntary, accepted and embraced.
Yes, it is so. But my acceptance isn’t perfect, and that is suffering in itself.
Hereward,
Thomas J. Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door was published in 1996. That’s the year I first read it. He forever dispelled the appeal of Keeping Up With the Joneses for me. LIving in a self-imposed environment of scarcity (not third world) and saving an above average sized portion of your income is worth its own rewards in financial flexibility later. This isn’t a book for someone living in poverty, but someone who can do sensible belt-tightening for a long term goal.
And boy are you right about Big Gubmint deserving their slice of the blame. None of us are at fault for zero interest rates, out of control deficit spending, etc, etc. We just need to best manage that which we have control over.
Thank you for that book suggestion !
It’s said that “Money makes the world go ‘round”. Things are spinning so fast now, all we’re left with is a nauseating vertigo in the middle of a madhouse. I doubt it can be remedied in what time I have left. The only thing missing at this point is an EMP or a mushroom cloud.
Nauseating vertigo is right, Izzy,
That first sentence is perfect. That’s exactly how I feel.
Bear in mind that a large segment of the population has no frame of reference and does not know it isn’t supposed to be like this.
Most of us were raised in the current system and know nothing else. I am one of those poor schleps. I know this system is all wrong. I feel it in my gut. I know there are a handful of scum taking all of my wealth. I know we weren’t made to live this way. I feel it deep down, balls to brain.
What frustrates me is I don’t know what to do about it. Vote? Yeah, that’ll work. Write my Congressman? Yeah, get a pre-printed form letter with an unrelated reply? Not pay my taxes? End up in prison. Become a prepper? Don’t have the money to do that. I just sent Uncle Same $6,000.00 after maximum withholdings. Take my guns and rise up in rebellion? My .22 won’t do much against an Apache gunship.
So what do I do? What do any of us do? The system is collapsing but, like a cornered deer, it is still extremely powerful and dangerous. Especially for the quiet little guy who just wants to live out is life in quiet peace. I have absolutely no recourse against leviathan. None.
“So what do I do?”
Resist: no tax, no vax.
Then they rob you, then they kill you.
Free at last!
You find a community of like-minded people. That’s the start.
Why did Mormons join America – spiritually speaking?
When Mitt heard that God had changed his mind on Blacks, he pulled over to the side of the road and wept. Then he went right out and got himself one!
At least you’re supposed to keepa year’s supply of food on hand. That’s something.
Do you have a year’s supply of food on-hand?
I can eat my totally awesome kickass chili for the next 6 months.
If you don’t stop misunderestimatin’ me it’s gonna go hard on you.
Ditto Jars, fuckin’ ditto.
Weehawken, NJ July 4. Sticks and stones and ad hominems.
I tried so hard to help you…
I invented something I’m going to call a sling. You get a size D bra, put a stone in one of the cups, whirl it around your head, and let loose.
Boy are you are for a “braining” the next time we meet.
Yes Jars, I will attempt to stuff your branes back into their brain box once you bust open your head with an oversized bra.
I am a humanitarian at heart, after all.
You can be so profoundly funny sometimes. Mitt Romney indeed.
Tanks. But with Mitt, it’s easy. He is just so grotesque.
Jarek, the Romneys are all grotesque. There was a parody built around automaker & politician George, who built those charming Thalidomide-styled cars in the ’60s, and the family got extremely offended.
If you don’t want to be pointed out as a figure-of-fun, then stop acting so, well, grotesquely.
I don’t think there’s anything we can do. We are like cattle on the range, who thought we were free to do anything we wanted while the grass grew, but now the herders are rounding us up for slaughter.
As the stampede grows, we try to get out of the herd, but that’s when you see the herders coming after you. And then you try to point them out to the others, but, you know, you only have hooves.
OK, my analogy has broken down, but we are doomed, imo.
Your analogy is perfect.
We are the dead
We shouldn’t have listened to Marx or the Marxists or the Marxist Feminists.
@ Cankerpuss:
What do you do?
I guess it depends on your circumstances. I also think it depends on what you want to do. Most people’s decisions about careers or what they otherwise want to do with their lives is based on the list they were provided in grade school. So it’s, so I want to be a fireman, a cowboy, a doctor, or an insurance agent? Nobody asks you what you want to do and be; they ask you which of their pre-determined choices you’d accept.
If I were choosing, the most basic choice I’d make is to live in a rural area and own at least a little bit of land. It sees to me that doing just that one thing solves a lot of problems, over time. It leads to things like friends and community, and makes you want to do other things, like keep chickens.
Not everyone can do this, but I think most people could. Where there’s a will, there’s usually a way. If you’re married, you might not be able to talk your spouse into moving to BFE, so there’s not always a way.
I think the most important thing of all is always to do your best to be a good person. If you can’t do anything else, you can do that–and it’s quite a challenge. Treat others with kindness, offer encouragement, offer help. Avoid the ten million ways you could be an asshole. This is really a LOT.
Deep thoughts, Canker. All true.
“So what do I do?” – there’s a lot you can do. Be Here Now is the first, perhaps. Be aware, nimble, think for yourself, meditate, practice gratefulness every hour.
Once you’re aligned with reality and with yourself, be the best version of yourself, which includes kindness towards others if they deserve it, in ways small and large. Generosity builds friendships, and we’ll all need friends going forward, we always do but more in hard times.
One more thing is to banish the fear of Leviathan and their servants. Your mind and your soul are yours. Your life can be over any minute, and that’s fine. They can kill you, but they can’t possibly stop you from living the time you have left in accordance to your beliefs.
If you are good, you’ll make things better around you, and you have a good chance to go to a good place after death, well not “you” as the ego will be gone… and that’s part of the blessing.
@ Rulo Deschamps:
People forget that they can, to a great extent, decide what their very small corner of the world will be like.
Gimmes!
The proverbial frog in hot water.
Let’s not forget that the biggest of the “Gimmies” are the ultra-rich, bankers, and corporations.
Privatize the profits.
Socialize the costs.
All done with the full co-operation of our elected officials.
“All done with the full co-operation of our elected officials.”
And our brainwashed citizens…
It’s good business – and John Az likes good business. Why would anyone do anything if it didn’t make money? Isn’t that good? And therefore aren’t those who make the most the best people? Shouldn’t they be in charge? Do you want some loser in charge? Do you not like people? People who like people are the luckiest people!
People who need people are the stupidest of people… – Johnny Rotten
@ JohnAZ:
I think Jarek is once again reminding us that he is among the “gimme” class. The idea of people working for money to provide for themselves and their families is anathema to him. He thinks other people should work to support him. (He obviously won’t work to support himself.)
That’s a really, really great point and so true
A Peculiar Inertia
———————————————-
Lisa: [speaking]
Hey, Springfield! Are you suffering from the heartbreak of … monster-itis? Then take a tip from Mr. Paul Anka!
Paul Anka: [singing and playing electronic keyboard]
To stop those monsters, one-two-three,
Here’s a fresh new way that’s trouble-free,
It’s got Paul Anka’s guarantee … [winks]
Lisa:
Guarantee void in Tennessee.
Paul Anka and Lisa:
Just don’t look! Just don’t look! [repeat several times]
Aftermath
People immediately started looking away from the monsters and toward Anka and Lisa as they sang the song. By the third time they sang “Just don’t look! Just don’t look!” most of the monsters had collapsed and died. Lard Lad, however, was still alive and tempting Homer with his giant donut. Homer needed extra persuasion to make him stop looking at Lard Lad, but when he finally did, Lard Lad collapsed and died along with the other monsters.
Lisa Simpson, (I’d waited decades for her to come of age…) is dead to me.
Paul Anka sez Thankershane for the mention.
The ancient gods were alive only as long as we believed in them – “looked” at them.
When we looked elsewhere, they withered and died.
The analogy of America as the Titanic is completely insufficient. The Captain of the Titanic was sober.
A better analogy is a Roman orgy at the end of the Western Imperial age, around 400 c.e. Everything is falling apart, yet the deranged elites are still partying like its 99 c.e. with grandiosity, and pomposity.
Great time to start growing your own vegetables & food stuffs as Joe Biden & his “gang of juveniles” (thanks to Alexander Mercouris) including Yellen & Powell cast the US into a Venezuelan-style future.
Inflation is about to skyrocket. Hang on. We haven’t seen anything yet.
What is the Underclass of the US? By Underclass I mean the lowest stratum of US society– the unemployed, the very poor. Is it in reality around 30%? I don’t think that is too high. Maybe that number is too low. What is the reaction of these people when SNAP benefits have been cut back, yet inflation is much higher before the pandemic?
I don’t see how this summer doesn’t get really, really unstable. All it is gonna take is one member of a particular ethnic group getting shot by a police officer, and there’ll be widespread urban chaos.
Christianity brought down the Romans
A mind virus from the middle east
This was debauchery of the people
History brought down the Romans just like it will everyone else. People are monkeys, and if they are not raised with a good religion, then they are even worse monkeys.
Remember Moses? He goes away for a few days to get the Commandments and the Hebrews are drunk and having orgies around the Golden Calf.
That is where all people end up – drunk and having orgies. Just give it time.
No, I don’t remember Moses
Oh, then that’s the problem! You need to refresh your memory! Look up Golden Calf on Wiki. There is a lot to the story.
I don’t live near Amish
Now we have drugs.
Yeah, but it took 400 years to bring the Romans down. I fear this collapse is engineered to take a very long time. It won’t be fast like others on this thread, and JHK, claim.
Canker,
I think I have claimed it will be fast on this blog before. Of course I could be wrong. The digitalization of everything is what I am looking at. A financial analyst talking about Silicon Valley Bank spoke of the bank runs of old and how people would line up outside of banks. And a few people did line up outside of SVB. But something like $42B of deposits were removed in less than one business day! And its because people can bank by phone. So the bank run happened extraordinarily fast. This doesn’t apply to all things of course. Tankers and cargo ships still have to travel from point A to point B. But things like interest rates and exchange rates can change with the click of a button. SNAP benefits can be increased (or turned off) with the click of a button.
I really don’t know. It’s a good reference to know that it took the Romans 400 years to corkscrew themselves into the ground. The vaxxes (usually) don’t kill people immediately; they seem to be engineered for a slower, multi-phased kill.
I think it’s been in the works for around 120 years already, so there’s that.
And things do move faster these days, due to tech. But we’ll see.
Give it time? We’re already there.
Seen Hwood and TikTok lately?
And then rebuilt the West. Will our mind viruses of Feminism, Marxism, Trannyism, and Capitalism do likewise?
Marxist-Communism, and capitalism at least offer societal organizing principles. However flawed.
In a World Made by Hand- type society, a form of Feudalism is perhaps the most practical.
Sorry Janos, not Fascism haha
No, they tear down true culture and create anti-life. What a fool you are!
Fascism just means (real) Nationalism – not the Ronald McDonald-Reagan shit. You wouldn’t like it. Too much like Putin’s Russia. You just want to make money and retire to Florida.
Underclass, count them, they live on the streets. Visit California, the bellweather of the Libs.
When I mention that SNAP was cut nationwide, that is topical & real. It just happened.
Things will be tougher for working class people. They are the people I have empathy for. They work one or more jobs, do what is right for their families, aren’t committing crimes, and still lead pretty miserable lives. Some of them are bright people, many of them are not. However, they are honest, and hard working.
“learning to code” isn’t the right answer. Or, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.”
We are gonna need new institutions to provide support and services for people.
One example. Health Care. How about health care associations. A large number of working class people associate together to split health care costs, working with free clinics, NPs and PAs, and urgent care clinics. For younger, healthier people you could put a HSA option in this. ? I don’t know.
Bigger point being, new forms are needed, and not just in health care. Across the board.
I used to argue with two of my co-workers. They were far right and I was far left. One a doctor, one a nurse.
Then, at different times, they both came up to me and said “You are right, Paula. This for-profit health care system is ridiculous and has to go. Nationalize the whole thing, and take the profit out of it”.
Well, I had actually been one of those Medicare-for-all people, but I changed my mind when they said that.
No point in having the government pour money into a for-profit system. You only get graft and racketeering. We can see that in the “health care” system and in the MIC.
So just nationalize the whole damn thing. No profiteering at all, not the hospitals, nor the clinics, nor the medical appliance industry, and especially not Big Pharma.
Young people don’t usually need health care anyway. It turns out that the whole Well Baby Checkup, where they pump them with toxic vaccines, is a scam.
Hospital childbirth is dangerous.
Transing children is criminal, or should be. If we had any sense as a society it would be banned.
All that most people need is sutures when they lacerate themselves, or splints when they break bones, or patching up when they crash their cars (probably the most common reason to show up in the ER, but soon to be rectified by lack of gas).
Most of the long term metabolic problems caused by too much food and not enough exercise will soon be gone also, but we could still have the occasional diabetic or renal failure that could be dealt with far more cheaply than now.
A few decades ago, as you can remember and attest to, there may have been homeless people here or there. They tended to be seriously mentally ill, or people who enjoyed a gypsy type life. But they were a limited number.
Then in US, a number of city blocks or small sections were inhabited by the acute mentally ill and serious drug addicts.
Now, large parts of the core of many cities don’t only have the “traditional” demographics of what used to make up the homeless, but also people who simply cannot afford to pay rent, even though they are working full time.
So, we are at a tipping point in places like California.
If you read about the conspiracy of the Titanic, and that it wasn’t the Titanic that sunk, but rather its sister ship, the analogy is much more accurate.
Pete, spot on.
30% of people I know can only afford to fill a quarter of their tank at a time.
“the worst collection of imbeciles, grifters, and villains ever assembled into political party.”
So true, Mr. Kunstler. However, let me offer just a little more. Change “political party” to “political partIES.”
The Republican scum to pretend to be the noble opposition but NEVER deliver on anything. They might bitch and moan and give some lip service to their constituents but in the end the Republican filth do nothing.
Perhaps Mr. Kunstler is referring to the Uniparty of filthy elite, self serving, greedy douchebags that run this pathetic excuse of a country.
Excellent article….as usual. But, I am still waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Seems to be kicked down the road yet again. The longer this goes on the more I am believing this is engineered to be a very slow and deliberate decline. As if the people won’t notice.
I have noticed.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans –
When you buy a Republican, he stays bought.
Because Democrats give it out for free.
Trannies in the military was the tell for anyone paying attention
At this point, the parasites’ backslapping guffaws & pure enjoyment watching the effects of their intentional destruction coming to fruition is quite obvious
Look who is NOT playing that game: Russia, China, Iran. Serious people playing for keeps.
I truly believe the Finks, et al think they can recreate their 500 year old Reich in any of those countries to start the game all over again with a fresh clean start
Comment
Mc Carthy fired off the Capitol videos to Tucker at great risk to himself.
We need more McCarthys and less Pences and McConnells.
Jan. 6 could be a real strike against the Deep State unless the MSM squelches it. Watch for Trump and DeSantis to utilize the obvious BS generated by the Dems in the House. Hopefully, the final nail in Cheney’s coffin will be driven in.
No more Bushes, no more Cheneys, thank you.
I think Bushy should hold a special ceremonial place in the hierarchy, if only for the comedic relief. Advancing age and senility should only heighten the effect.
JohnAZ,
It’s analogous to Musk dumping the Twitter files into the public forum. Imperfect people doing a good deed. I did not like McCarthy for the Speaker job. But I can acknowledge my appreciation for his action.
I hope this habit of good deeds catches on.
The Idiots give the Globalists plausible deniability. See? It’s just incompetence, not a planned destruction.
Just like the “Nazis” in Ukraine give the real Elite plausible deniability.
A poor comparison.
Those tuned in enough to know that there are quite a few Nazis doing Z’s fighting also know that Z is simply a cat’s paw for the banks and technocrats.
The idiots you refer to don’t even know there are globalists.
Well the incompetence is real, so people see the truth there. What they don’t realize is that it’s being used by people higher up the Pyramid whom they don’t see.
Similarly, the Cos players may think they’re Nazis, have the uniforms and whatnot, but the real Nazi party wouldn’t have been so stupid as to fight for International Banking. They were against that, I remind you.
The sign might say Luigis, the waiters, cooks, and manager may be Italian – but if it serves Chinese food it’s not an Italian restaurant. The definition of restaurant being an establishment that cooks, sells, and serves meals and an Italian restaurant, one that cooks, sells, and serves Italian meals.
They had no issue with international banking. They had an issue with Jews in international banking.
No, they banned Masonry, the Gentile Internationalists as well.
Oh WOW, how profound…the old restaurant parable.
So ok, find fault with it. Don’t just say “the old parable”. That doesn’t disprove it, you vicious old fool.
Unfortunately, there is a need to overhaul Medicare/Medicaid before we can even BEGIN to get this thing under control. That is to say, serious reduction of benefits. Otherwise, hyperinflation is just around the corner. A few more bank bailouts is chicken feed compared to that. I speak as a senior myself. Sacrifice is required or “this sucker is going down” (Shrub)
My youngest daughter lives in England and according to her the NIH is in bad shape too but at least it’s not bankrupting people and the cost of medication is low for the patients. Medicare/Medicaid incentivizes costly treatments and medications — watch the medication ads on the evening news and see who the models are in the ads. When the overhaul begins there will be a storm of criticism of “racism” and “targeting the most vulnerable”.
I hope there’s a House investigation not only into the lies about the pandemic, suppression of free speech of qualified doctors, and all the abuses of power that we’re still seeing (Biden says the emergency will be over in May!) but also exactly how much did all this cost us?
The NHS doesn’t bankrupt people individually; it bankrupts them collectively. Britain can no longer afford such a service.
Bingo! And wages are low and cost of living is high. They live about 40 minutes from London and a round trip ticket on the train is about 20 dollars and now the cost of energy is going to make everything even more costly.
You put your finger on it. I’m generally in favor of a market economy, but maybe the pharma industry needs to be nationalized? Also, take those ads off the TV, they[re really annoying. If they can do it for ciggies & booze, they can do it for Repoxflo (TM).
So many people I know take 6 to 12 medications per day, and have such a hard time paying for it all, even with aid programs and whatnot.
How did we get here? 6 to 12 pharma products a day?
Bad food, lots of chemicals, additives, screens to the tune of many hours a day, stress and anxiety, addictions, alienation from Nature, from themselves.
Tate
Some time ago, the question of how many countries allow pharmaceuticals to be advertised on television was asked.
At the time, 2 countries allowed it, the US and New Zealand. I don’t know if that remains.
US Big Pharma has infiltrated the NHS and every other western-oriented country’s social-medicare systems. Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, all of them. They’ve all been under incessant attack by lobbyists and other infiltrators.
Dave’s got a magazine of truth bullets, and Dave’s got a drum magazine
One thing that would help with all healthcare. Quit going to the doctor or the ER for viruses, colds, flu and yes Covid. Medicine, as evidenced by the insanity surrounding Covid , has no answer for virus attacks. Quite the contrary two things came out of medicines reaction to Covid, they killed thousands with their respirators and two, they have created more antibiotic resistant germs by prescribing antibiotics for viral disease to keep ignorant patients mouths shut.
If people were educated to care for themselves with virus infections, Medicare would be just fine.
Well, I think they’re succeeding there. I certainly don’t plan to visit my primary care doc anymore for anything less than life threatening.
“Unfortunately, there is a need to overhaul Medicare/Medicaid before we can even BEGIN to get this thing under control.”
They are working on that problem. The solution is called “Covid”.
BB and his cheerful black thoughts!
Maybe. Covid or a future iteration.
Eat drink & be merry is the only antidote. I’m not saying ignore reality. On the contrary, know the bad shit, and still plant the seed and enjoy the moment.
That, or reach for the pills and the bottle. Which will not help at all.
There’s a bird around here that’s always singing, “cheer cheer cheer”. That ain’t me. But I do like having that bird, and the others – well, most of ’em – around.
Even though the sky may be falling upon our heads, and the ground collapsing beneath our feet, there is still a lot to enjoy and be thankful for.
Indeed.
I enjoyed and was thankful for the recent massive tribe of vultures who decided to park and have their mating season in my woods, for about a week.
The wife and I joked, “they’re waiting for us to drop dead” and drop dead we will, hoy, mañana or next year, and it would be an honor to be reintegrated to Nature as sustenance for these large, repugnant birds.
Repugnant but of positive significance to us: in Uxmal, Mexico, one of the largest and most impressive archeological sites documenting the magical, bloody time of the Mayans, and devoid of the masses of tourists in Chichen Itza, we found a small temple, full of carved skulls and half eaten by the jungle, and a couple of “zopilotes” followed us, observed us as we observed them, and generally gave us a good vibe despite their ugliness.
We’re still together, happy together, so they were a good omen, as I’m sure your “cheer, cheer” birds are for you as well.
Cheers!
Positive people make my ass twitch….
Just kidding.
Tate, that will never happen. None of the spineless idiots in the Government have any desire to take on that monster and the States themselves are too corrupt to come together and exercise a “convention of states.” We are hosed.
Get your barter kit put together. Get lots of booze, drugs, pornography, feminine products, diapers, baby formula, cigarettes and whatever else you can think the idiot masses will want to trade for. Hyper inflation is coming. $31 trillion and counting? There’s no way out of this mess without it.
If society becomes cashless, how will you make a profit on that stuff? More likely, someone will know you have it and come steal it from you.
The same with gardens. Gonna sit on yo porch all day and night with a shotgun? Or yo gonna get yoself a real dog, not those little yappers?
The Food Coops need to arm up and not let anyone in who isn’t a member.
That is why there will have to be a parallel society.
The Rockefeller Foundation/WEF technotards know this, ofc, as in their writings they make many references to those living on the outer edges of their digital plantation.
The question is how big is the parallel society, and can the technotards actually dominate it?
airtight-sealed tobacco and long-life antibiotics.
I grow some tobacco for myself. I can do without a lot of things, but not tobacco.
I think wartime stories from somewhere-or-other inspired the memory of “tobacco better than money”. Drinkers can be weaned off alcohol a lot easier than nicotine fiends can be convinced to abstain.
Tomorrow is the advent of Ramadhan, a.k.a. “bad-breath month”. It is so amusing to see the Muslims, wobbling around in a daze (particularly during the first week, before their bodies adjust to fasting).
When the sun sets, WOW. Before taking a drink of water or a nibble of anything they claw out a ciggie and take that sweet, sweet drag.
Talk about addiction.
Exactly how do you know Medicare is going to accelerate inflation? In what? medical costs? Drug prices?
@ workingclasshero:
The ticker guy (at tickerforum, which is dot org) has written a number of articles about the size of Medicare and Medicaid unfunded liabilities. These dwarf everything else in the federal budget. They are the proverbial elephant in the room.
Sensibly, tickerguy’s solution is wring all the fraud out of the medical system. That is THE reason for the insane cost of these programs.
In Karl’s opinion, Social Security is only slightly insolvent and could easily be made solvent with a few tweaks.
My view is that we should go back to the system of medical care we had in 1955: no governent involvement at all. Some employers provided insurance coverage for catastrophic care, but that was about it. As a result, medical care was so cheap that almost everyone could pay for doctor visits and prescription drugs out-of-pocket. There were also a lot of charity hospitals.
Also, medical insurance did exist in the old days. There were various social organizations that negotiated with doctors to provide coverage for routine doctor visits for their members–that is, for all care typically provided by general practitioners. This was known as “the lodge trade.” The cost of this coverage was very low, and the AMA made a vendetta of destroying this system. If you would like a detailed discussion of how this worked, read “Secret Handshakes,” by John Michael Greer (the Archdruid).
Back in the day, people did not run to the doctor for every sniffle, splinter, or skinned knee. Home nursing care for childhood diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox was well known, so no one took their kids to the doctor for these, either. They did not want to be laughed out of the waiting room.
I can read charts. Yes, I can see into the future. Spooky.
Got some extra $$ laying around? Buy some bicycles, they’re cheap now but, they won’t be ere long.
Funny you mention that since I’m actually looking at folding bicycles from Montague since I have an unbroken bike path from my humble abode to work.
smart move, buy extra parts while China is still in business.
Car parts are already in demand, I am guessing that’s why the uptick in car and trailer theft here in Boise.
Lawn guy got in a crash with some teen who was speeding through a parking lot. He said the parts to fix his SUV might take a year!
Buy generic stuff, a headlight assembly for a 2020 Lexus ain’t going to happen.
You will be fine w/ one headlight on a 2006 Colrolla, it’s an insert, not an assembly.
Good Luck
If I may chime in here with some experience …
I live in a country with many bad roads, including arteries where the pavement is rippled, cracked or festooned with big, deep potholes.
I would thus recommend a sturdy mountain bike, with good fat tires, over a road or gravel bike, with the skinnier ones. If you are commuting it makes sense to cough up a couple of thousand clams and purchase a carbon fiber or lightweight aluminum bike. Even if you are not faced with steep climbs weight makes a big difference in energy expenditure.
29-inch wheels make for great riding, on any surface.
Purchase the bike where you plan to service it. Talk to the service team. Are they happy fellows, joking and hanging loose? Or are they under pressure to sell, sell, sell (like some motorcycle or car dealers)? I always show up with a bag of apples or another present for the service guys. I also slip them five when I get my bike back. Makes a big diff.
Never park your bike where it is out of sight. Thieves will wrestle locks loose or cut cables. Or they’ll just steal your wheels off your bike and leave the frame. Bear in mind the junkie mantra: “Cell phone ~ laptop computer ~ fancy bicycle = smack”.
If my place of employment forbade bringing a bike inside, I would even consider renting storeroom space from a nearby shop or market.
For folding bikes (I’ve had three) try to get a bike with the largest wheels possible. Much safer and less unpleasant on the bumps. I had a Dahon Matrix with 26-inch wheels. At 15kg it was a chore to lug up stairs but very smooth and safe on the roads.
Always wear headgear, plastic glasses or goggles and footwear. There is no such thing as a “minor head injury” or “slight concussion”. Symptoms may loom up weeks or months later, and there’s nothing the can be done about it.
As a former motorcyclist and racer, I fell in love with hydraulic disc brakes on a mountain bike the first time I tried them.
Speedy,
good tips all.
My strategy though has been to toss every bike I see on the curb or the dumpster in the bed of my truck, amass a pile and then cannibalize and fix 2 or 3 serviceable if ugly bikes to be available at all times.
All my bike stock came from wealthy South FL. Now I’m in North FL, much poorer, and you don’t see bikes with minor issues just discarded.
I have one, but it was only $600 (new) and it’s not probably built to last like say a Canondale or something like that. So I am going to definitely invest in one of those (or even better, one that has electric options) in the near future.
About a decade ago I had a silver Cannondale F4 with an SRAM drivetrain and HeadShok. I converted the hydraulic disc brakes to mechanical after the hydraulic system started leaking.
Really a sharp bike that rode well in a variety of conditions.
Always wondered about those hydraulic brakes on bikes. Seems like a whole lot of needless risk to assume there, for marginal benefits. Not something easily user maintained or fixed properly either, I imagine.
Dis-
You nailed it.
I had two pretty nice hardtail mountain bikes with hydraulic disc brakes from Shimano and both setups were fiddly in terms of maintenance and reliability. They just can’t make the components that beefy at a bike part-sized scale.
That was the motivating factor to change the Cannondale over to mechanical discs. Those offered improved stopping power, yet setting them up and dialing them in was similar to old-school cantilever brakes.
I did the changeover in my living room on a bike stand with basic bike tools. It took me an afternoon and a couple beers to do the discs, calipers, cables, and brake levers. The trickiest part was figuring out the correct discs and calipers to order so I could swap them right onto the wheels, fork, and frame.
I maintain my hydraulic disc brakes on my Cannondale Habit with no issues.
Bike wrenching isn’t that hard if you have the right tools and some experience.
“…or even better, one that has electric options…”
Yes, and you can recharge your electric bicycle – by hooking it up to your bicycle-powered recharging station!
You won’t be violating the Laws of Thermodynamics – but you may be ticketed anyway.
Why not a bike that runs on coal? Just keep the coal in the basket and drop pieces in as needed. Or nuclear? Split atoms to boil water and cycle to the co-op.
We need to quit looking for the easy way out.
Yeah, technology is bad. Back to ten thousand BC like Gustaph wants. Even they used sticks and stones to hurt people….
Did I say that?
No…
In fact I said – on Monday’s blog (I think) – that I don’t want to have to sacrifice the technological advances of the last few hundred years.
But sure Jars, send me on to the cattle cars.
Such an awesome recruiter for your cause.
We need to become Long Horns, cattle that could survive on the range without aid.
No cattle cars for you. Walk, you lazy kine.
I’m a goddamn bison, you feral steer.
But join the herd and we will look out for you.
Aurochs arise!
allanimalfacts.com/aurochs/
Better yet, why not a bike that runs on magical thinking?.. Genius!! Magical thinking is real!!!
Nah, go straight for wheelbarrows. A form of transport and wallet all in one.
Djdja mean “money and manure” travel hand-n-hand?
Walmart is losing 2X more to theft than ever before.
Do your Xmas shoplifting early for the best selection.
Target is closing some stores in dangerous areas now.
If anyone had been watching closely, they would have seen that both Target and Walmart were interested in building up their online business at the expense of their stores, for some time now.
The crime is the excuse, not the reason.
the local WM has over 30 designated parking spots for “buy online and pick up here”. We’re just a po-dunk village of 7,000 but we’re crossroads for autobahns NS & EW.
Get ready fpr the commies to start shrieking about, “retail deserts.”
The Target on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach has always smelled like piss. I gotta assume the night shift walks around urinating on everything.
Hopefully this is one of the stores “targeted” for closure. I’d recommend burning it down, if not for the toxic plume… Maybe Burn, Loot, and Murder will torch it this summer – or next…
BB, tasty MILF’s and girls showing a lot of skin at the T’s of Fort Myers and Cape Coral is what I recall. I was younger then and really paid attention – now I’m old and the siren songs of the flesh have no hold on me anymore (yeah right)
Going there for a pack of underwear and some socks always turned into a safari into air conditioned paradise, full of angelic creatures strutting their stuff.
The local Super Walmart close to me was just overhauled but it won’t solve the problem of theft. In the entire store are just a few real people at registers and the rest are self-checkout with a couple of elderly employees supervising five or six registers. There’s almost no one out in the store doing anything but pushing big carts for pickup orders.
These stores have brought it on themselves by trying to get by with a minimal staff that’s poorly trained and know they’re expendable — why should they stop a shoplifter and risk getting injured?
Walmart…
“Back when I was a tornado…”
Evidence of the Gimme class asserting itself. They absolutely believe they are owed everything.
California is going down if Newsom puts reparations into place. Emigration will skyrocket. Remember UBI? The government is just going to take care of everyone. Think it cannot be? It was an issue in the 2020 Dem primaries.
Kbird, you responded to me last time saying you are proud of your job and love it.
Then why the hell do you support the Gimme causes of the Dems? It is destroying this country.
California has been “going down” for decades now but the lunatics in Sacramento keep spending spending spending. When is that State actually going to go down? I’m starting to think it won’t. Like the USA, it is a slow decline, so slow that most lame brained Americans won’t even notice.
Even worse than outrageous spending, Cal. is dismantling its energy grid. LA will be closing its last baseload electricity generating plant by 2025. After that, all bets are off.
There are too many people in California. The state has mostly been ruined by overpopulation.
Everyone can just go back to where they came from and the place can become a desert again.
“Overpopulation”
Based on what.
I’ll wait.
Evidence of too many people are the continual mudslides and forest fires destroying towns and suburbs where nothing should have been built.
And having huge populations which depend on other states for their water.
And having roaming brown-and-blackouts constantly all summer because the electric grid is overtaxed.
Sounds like evidence of ineptitude.
Paula D. will not answer, ofc.
She fears debate.
You don’t debate. You make unfounded dumbass assertions and repeat them ad nauseum.
When my great-grandmother moved to LA there were 50,000 people there.
Now there are 3,849,297, and that is just in LA. There are 18 million in the greater LA area, not counting San Diego.
Humans have sprawled like cancer cells from San Diego to Santa Barbara, overrunning all the hills and valleys in between.
The traffic is constant, the air is unbreathable, the lines are never-ending and the crush is soul destroying.
California population was 1,400,000 people. Now it is almost 40 million.
You can pretend that that is not overpopulated, I don’t care. There is nothing to debate, it just is.
You are not living in reality if you think it is pleasant to be smashed into a desert with 18 million other people.
So California is overpopulated based on what?
Paula, Mary,
this particular poster’s modus operandi is the one liner challenging those who don’t agree with his cornucopian, techno-cult opinion to give him proof the Earth is overtaxed, overexploited, over polluted, and yes, overpopulated.
Many contributors here including myself make an effort to bring facts and weave a narrative. Nobody’s afraid of debate here. He keeps the “prove it” line going as long as he can, then he calls you a bitch from another continent, uncalled for, unprovoked insults that don’t belong in a civilized conversation.
Night Owl, or foul fowl, is an imbecile, a bully, a troll, or all three. He’s unworthy of engagement. He’s also a braggart, and a ghoul who has expressed death wishes towards the vaccinated. Silly drunks are OK in my book, but he’s an angry drunk, to be avoided.
Not afraid at all to debate micro plastics and chemicals now present in mothers’ milk, or clean freshwater sources being on the brink, or resource wars. Just have better things to do than to humor a psychopath and keyboard warrior.
You are right, Rulo. From now on, my stock answer to him will be “Fuck off”, but I won’t bother typing it out and cluttering the thread.
He’ll just have to learn to say it to himself whenever he directs one of his dumbass one line assertions at me.
You couldn’t live up to the inhumane ideals of Communism, but you didn’t have the integrity to stop believing it and promulgating it.
The disease of extraverts: They can’t/won’t delete or update their files. And are able to live with astounding contradictions because of their lack of self knowledge.
Paula D. runs away again.
No surprise.
The “Gimme Class”: the uber-rich, the bankers, the transnational corporations.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Like one of the Koch brothers said when he was asked why he was ripping off the poorest of the poor on an OK reservation,
“I want it all”.
These people should not be able to cross the street without fear.
BB, great answer!
JohnAZ.
I wonder whether you might eschew the term “gimme class” and
“the Gimmes” for a few weeks.
Maybe just one week?
Islander,
or, as bird suggests, focus less on the masses getting some peanuts for food assistance or medical care, and let’s talk about the massive transfers of wealth towards the pharma lobby, finance, arms manufacturers, “too big to fail” and so on.
Gimme class. Gimme a break.
It is easy to hate on poor people. The ones that disappear [ gone to Croatan ] are the ones with a little more honor and have collapsed early, having done their best to exhaust the ability of the goobermint to hide its theft. Saving coins to use as arr owheads and planting seeds.
Rulo,
yes.
I find the constant reference to “gimmes” “penetrant” (German). Kind of obnoxious. Very derisory and kind of removed from reality.
“farrago”
There’s always a new word to learn.
Yeah, I had to look it up too. Our host has a Thesaurus in his head. I still like to learn new words and JHK doesn’t disappoint.
The only thing the government (both Dems and Republicans) seem to be able to do is throw money at a problem, stand in front of a TV camera and declare it “solved.”
How is forgiving millions in student debt going to solve the real problem with universities? The cost of tuition has exploded along with the ridiculous number of administrators. And anyone can get a college degree and graduate knowing nothing and be qualified to do nothing. And it’s only going to get worse with more and more online degrees.
The Dems want to keep the capital flow going into their propaganda factories, the university system. They are taking our tax dollars and handing it to the educator/indoctrinators.
Yep, and buy votes and loyalty for years to come by dangling the carrot of even more forgiveness in the future.
They destroyed the unions in the 80s and then convinced the population that only the college-educated deserve a living wage.
It wasn’t irrational for a couple of generations to go to college to try to win the staying-housed lottery.
Then when that didn’t work they were sneered at “Why didn’t you get a STEM degree instead of a liberal arts degree”.
And then when they got a STEM degree they were not hired because H1B visa workers work cheaper. Then they got sneered at again “You think a lousy bachelor’s degree guarantees you a job? Get a Master’s, sucker”.
“Or go be a nurse, but not an ADN nurse, oh no. Obamacare put an end to that. You have to go into debt for a BSN instead”.
But they are figuring it out now. Nothing will stop the slide to the bottom of the American working class.
Tradesmen can make a killing. There was never a need to go to college and there still isn’t.
My cousin from Upstate NY renovates and flips houses up and down the East Coast and has more money than he knows what to do with.
Some of us went into tech or other areas and would lose 20 years of our experience if we didn’t return to college and get a degree. It’s a huge scam, but it’s very hard to start over in a new career mid-life. That being said, I kinda wish I had not returned to college and found a way to tough it out.
But I might think differently 5 years from now.
Same as my BFF at work. They promoted him to management and then told him he had to get a BSN to keep the job. He hated school plus he was almost 60, so why spend 4 years to get a degree and then retire?
So he tried to go back to the ER, but they wouldn’t let him come back. Then he tried to get another job at another hospital, but they’re all owned by the same corporation around here.
So he killed himself.
I blame them.
It isn’t really a scam on the whole. It depends on where you go to school and what you do with it.
And if you do not go to school, you can do all kinds of other things.
In the end, one does have a choice. The scam is parents who do not help their children.
Here in Germany, there are different tracks early on, depending on whether one is more suited for academia or a trade.
Some Germans call this system a scam, too. And I would argue they are more correct, as the system judges aptitude based almost entirely on standardized testing.
The last part should read “on standardized testing that locks them into one path or the other.”
In this respect, the US system is not so bad.
NO:
The American system does not lock one in to a certain track at an early age, which is a plus.
But it seems to me that a plus of the German system (as I saw it many years ago) is that those who do not follow the academic track actually do or can get an excellent education and training in the vocational field they choose.
The US system is horrible. It was bad, but with the advent of CRT and wokeism, it’s really REALLY bad.
Tuition is off the charts, and young kids go into mega-debt without being able to qualify for the jobs they were promised they’d get with a degree.
Because now, for many jobs, you not only need the degree, but some years of “agency” experience.
They are hiding the fact that there just aren’t that many professional jobs.
There is no plus to the German system in this regard.
The system filters students into vocational or academic tracks at an early age based on standardized testing.
And there is a strong stigma against going the vocational route.
SUCH a scam. Thanks, Paula, that’s spot on.
Sounds like a company issue to me.
It’s truly not. As someone who has been in the job market for a few years now, watching the trends, I can assure you it is the biggest scam ever what companies and universities pull.
Like I said above, some of it is to obfuscate that there just aren’t as many jobs as they claim there are.
Night Owl can’t imagine ANY system other than the one we have now. Not really. He sees some of the problems, but he’s against any solution except going back to the 90’s or something. But the System always moves forward, absorbing smaller companies and nations. It never goes backwards. It will continue to do until it crashes or is defeated in war. The wisest course for Russia and China is just hold us off until we collapse.
Then the will do their own versions of the same thing, perhaps in a saner fashion, perhaps not.
I see, Jarek.
If that were the case I would be on board with the unprovable overpopulation fantasies proposed by you, Paula D., and Rulo.
I see great potential in the future, but I am not a doomsdayer playing into the hands of the WEF types.
You are always free to provide hard evidence for your fantastic claims of catastrophic resource depletion, global warming, and planetary carrying capacity.
I will say that I respect you more than softies Rulo for example. You at least have the balls to respond with something relatively coherent, regardless of our disagreements.
😀
Great piece today, Jim. Spot on as always.
I see future society dividing itself between people who can do the physical and mental work, and the lazy fucks brought up on screens and addicted to substances who can’t fend for themselves. They may go extinct.
The problem is that most of the people who can fend for themselves are us older generation(s), and that doesn’t bode well for the future of humans. However, I am certain that the NEWEST generation, being born now, is not going to be raised on screens and pampered. So perhaps there is hope there. We can teach them, and they can carry on.
Technology is only so powerful. I was in awe of the things I heard DARPA was capable of; but then I look around and see how inept most tech is, when you boil it down. Bottom line, you unplug it and that’s the end of it. So why are we so afraid of it?
Mary, the power merchants support the lazy fucks and penalize the ambitious folks. The lazy fucks are the majority in the country right now. Something has to change the demographics and right now the Deep State has eveything in place to just keep “breeding” lazy fucks.
First they came for the poor and I said, “Fuck ’em, they’re lazy”.
Then they came for the newer poor and I said, “Fuck ’em, they’re lazy.”
Then they came for me, and I realized I’m the newest poor.
“Then they came for me…”
Bird,
…Fuck you, you’re lazy….
ely, is that an agreement, or an insult?
I think a joke.
I just wrote a comment about that, BB. I agree completely.
Bird,
Never an insult…rather the obvious progression of your comment.
I agree lazy fucks are in charge. Until their support system crashes.
Granted, it looks imminent but it might take a long time. Still, they won’t be able to survive without their pampering. At least most.
So many of the new graduates think they’re going to become ultra rich working in finance. A really nice neighborhood kid who helped me with some yard work when he was in high school, told me he was majoring in business. He was an honor student in a magnet h.s. and plenty smart enough to actually learn something useful like engineering.
That told me a lot about the values that these kids are immersed in when even a good one like Nate wants to make lots of money.
SW-
Under the current fiat regime there is a huge advantage for individuals and firms to position themselves as close to the source of money creation as possible.
The problem is that it’s debatable how much longer the current fiat system will last.
Many thought it was all over in 2008, yet they’ve kicked the can for another 15 years.
I thought that, we’d likely be better off now if it had. However the ‘we’ in the current situation don’t matter.
After WW1 there was a depression. It gets glossed over a lot, as far as I can tell. Part of the reason: nothing was done to ‘fix’ it. It ran about a 6 month course, done and gone
I used to advise kids – after learning from my own mistakes – to make as much money as they can, as fast as they can. Wealth (and the power it buys) are all that matter in this sick world.
Then I started advising them, learn to farm, raise livestock, and marry an Amish girl.
Now… 2 bullets – ’cause you’re gonna chicken out on the first one.
I was sitting at my sister-in-law’s house and started going off on the scam that is college today.
I said that I tried to tell my kids not to bother, but they didn’t listen.
She had a young man painting her kitchen. He had been quiet, but then he spoke up “I’m listening”.
OK, then. I hope I saved him from $60,000 in debt, with no hope of paying it off.
I think we need to return state colleges to what they were supposed to be.
Scrapping higher education for all but a few Americans is not a good place for our country to be, long term.
Yeah, the states cut funding to the colleges more and more, causing the banks and the colleges to collude to sell the students into debt servitude.
But I still don’t think everyone needs a college degree. College should only be for those who are qualified and motivated.
We need to have jobs at living wage for everyone else. AND we need cheap housing.
Remember that song “Trailers for rent”? Two hours of pushing broom bought an 8×10 4 bit (50 cents) room.
Then they tore down the cheap housing, and now we have millions of people sleeping on the streets or in their cars.
Beryl, most people can’t be educated. Look at how dumb all these college graduates are.
Paula: King of the Road. The most radical Socialism ever preached in America was that of National Socialist, Huey Long and his “every man a king”.
SW,
It’s a moral victory that he didn’t say “social media influencer”.
The propaganda being rained upon kids today is enough to indoctrinate almost anyone, no matter how gifted. Two parents with highly tuned bullshit detectors is an absolute requirement for saving a kid from the deluge.
Graduations are approaching and I am still performing my annual ritual of writing a check, wrapping two finance books, and customizing a letter for the graduate. Blackbird, I have not changed my message over time to the extent that you have and I am disgusted with myself about it.
“…I am disgusted with myself…”
Don’t be. You may have a shred of humanity left.
mrs_saj — You make a valid point and I’m embarrassed I forgot there’s a swamp even lower than Wall Street.
A young woman who was a bridesmaid in my oldest daughter’s wedding is now an influencer (a career in which anyone can be an immediate expert) and I took a look at her TikTok thing. All she does is change outfits and make recommendations where to buy this overpriced crap. And I guess they pay her a commission or something. It’s ridiculous.
Blackbird — Your advice to kids makes sense.
“Your advice to kids makes sense.”
I wish it didn’t.
The parents? Piers Morgan to Ben Shapiro: I don’t see the big deal about gay marriage. Two people of either sex can do just as good as a man and a woman.
Ben Shapiro: No they can’t. A child has a right to a parent of both sexes.
Reproduction is a heterosexual act.
We are all conceived as female, explains why males have nipples but no milk.
“I see future society dividing itself between people who can do the physical and mental work, and the lazy fucks brought up on screens and addicted to substances who can’t fend for themselves. They may go extinct.”
Mary,
They may, indeed. But they will try to take you with them.
The weak will attempt to drop their TV’s on the strong from three stories up.
I told Blackbird that the Up is America’s Crimea. But he won’t listen. Enemy soldier are now pouring across the Northern Border too.
What’s the “Up” Jars? Do you mean the “UP” (upper peninsula)?
“But he won’t listen.” Seems to me you are the one who isn’t listening – not to me anyway.
The UP is where my great-grandmother moved from, back a hundred years ago, when California was the place she wanted to be.
Happy St. Patty’s Day, BTW.
Should we be concerned that this was show on my news feed as “dropping fast”?
https://tinyurl.com/35e4vhha
“Strong as hell, Jack!”
-The Biden
“shown”
I knew some barrel racers who competed up in that area (from the painting).
What a sport.
“Barrel racing”, like over Niagara Falls?
The first person to – successfully – do that was 63-year-old schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor, from Bay City, MI, on October 24, 1901.
That’s the kinda women we raise up here. Yeah, go ahead and fuck with us…
Well, hell, ain’t that impressive?
And that’s just the beginning…
The Saginaw Bay area – as far as I can tell – is pretty much the center of the universe.
There is persuasive evidence that the comet/meteorite/whatever that ended the last glaciation (not the “last” ice age because we are still in it) hit, and created, the Saginaw Bay.
And then there is ? and the Mysterians the Mexican garage band (the first band to be called “punk”) who topped the charts in the last week of October 1966 with 96 Tears. We (the worst band that ever was) were going to be the warm up act on their revival tour – before we imploded. (You’re welcome!)
But yeah, it’s pretty much been downhill from there…
Too many teardrops for one heart to be cryin’
Too many teardrops for one heart to carry on.
Amazing song.
I appreciate it more all the time.
I love Michigan. I stayed the weekend in Saugatuck (sp?) once. It was so lovely.
I have family there near Lake M.
Wanna really fall in live with Michigan? Follow the Lake Michigan coast up to Sleeping Bear Dunes. Then take the ferry from Leland to South Manitou Island.
Four hundred foot tall sand dunes on the west side. Five hundred year old white cedars (tallest in the world!) just inside. Doomed homesteads of Danish apple farmers.
Go kite-sailing – on acid! – around the island.
The UP is – some of it anyway – an amazing wilderness. Presque Isle River, Pictured Rocks…
But steer away from the east side of the lower peninsula, you may become a nihilist.
Uh oh:
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”?
For what? Giving props to a ground-breaking band?
(Probably the YouTube link…)
Sorry, I got sloppy…
In case that post doesn’t make it through moderation, and I don’t make it back:
For those of you who had the misfortune to grow up outside the rust belt:
youtube.com/watch?v=bOCOMYGIfUQ
? and the Mysterians were like the godfather to later Michigan punk bands (before anybody knew what punk was) like The Stooges (best American band ever), MC5 (a bunch of black-worshipping commies), and Grand Funk Railroad (alright, not punk, but ok for their time…).
If the Bastards hadn’t imploded, you’d never have heard of Ted Nugent, Madonna, or the White Stripes…
You’re welcome.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
If it keeps the trolls away, then fine, I’ll show my papers.
Yup, Saugatuck, you got the spelling right.
I was there doing a photoshoot on August 22. Did we pass each other?
Probably not. I think I’d have recognized you…
“Best American band ever”
~~ better than ‘Death Cab for Cutie’?
You would have had to use a time machine, as my visit was back in the 1990s.
The Mysterians were a race of Japanese looking aliens from another planet. It was a Japanese movie….
The Japanese made the worst science fiction, ever, of any time or place. And they will never be surpassed in this.
Hell’s Belles.
So you’ve known some Bay County girls…
How low can you go…?
https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.UVpTokMgL-LRM5in_E8JkwHaE8&pid=Api&P=0
Oh, now wonder you want to leave. One nice girl is worth a thousand “you go girls”.
Huh?
You and me: Weehawken NJ, July 4, sticks and stones – and maybe a few words.
I’m sorry it has to end this way.
Death is the ultimate trip. Do you believe in God, Mandrake?
Of course Jars. This world we live in is no accident. I say that as a “scientist”.
But whose God? Up this way, Gitchee Manitou holds sway.
Is he the ones who lives in the big lake Gitchee Goumi? Cthulhu’s cousin?
I was speaking of Geist. All the gods are just forms of that One.
The Hindu gods are jobs or “posts” with qualified souls being appointed to them when the old soul moves up the ladder.
Gitchee is probably just an elemental or the soul of some great chief or shaman who decided to hang around.
I think “Gitchee Manitou” is, like “Jehovah”, “Yahweh”, “Allah”, and the others, an unfortunate attempt to put a human face on “the life force” or whatever you want to call it.
Put a face on “God” and all you have done is to create a comic book character, which you then endow with attributes of your choosing.
I don’t think that “God” can be known, understood, or even effectively talked about – or for that matter talked to.
You give Geist a face and thus you can commune with him or her. The path of Wisdom sans form is for the very, very few.
You are High Priest of Israel and you know not these things? It’s the a,b,c’s of Brahm Vidya, the Holy Science.
Blackbird, We’re almost neighbors.
You have my sympathy…
I live in Paradise, you’re on the other side of the swamp.
The Fed needs to unveil the hitherto unknown WTF program to insure the solvency of SV Bank.
I had the most interesting exchange with a neighbor this week. He said “One of my golf buddies had to be rushed into the emergency room over the weekend with his heart racing. He had just seen his cardiologist a few weeks before and everything was fine, but now he has been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Isn’t that the craziest thing? Y’know, you never used to hear anything about anyone getting atrial fib, and now I hear about it all the time.”
Atrial fibrillation is a result of defective “wiring” in the heart.
A big cause is inflammation. Nuff said.
The Vax! Suddenly we’ve stopped talking about it. No longer polite to do so? Our own version of political correctness?
@Jarek, They’ve piled so many outrages one upon another that we don’t have the time or energy to address all of them anymore, so we’re just stirring the container and picking out what has floated momentarily to the top. All of them deserve emergency status, but I can only keep a limited number of emergencies in consciousness at once.
piglet,
good description
Yes, wearing us down is part of the plan. Blitzkreig.
Anxiety? We are all under great anxiety. Our society is in the shitter and swirling fast. We all know it. We all feel it. We all sense it. Then along comes the covid debacle and the vaccine campaign and that sends our anxiety into over drive (did mine). Off to the doc to get more pharma chemicals to put into our bodies to cure the anxiety the ungodly ones are causing. It’s all a racket. Every single aspect of this society is a racket, put in place to make a few people extremely and ungodly wealthy. The rest of us in slavery purgatory.
We have so many reasons to be collapsing these days, yes. Anxiety, depression, clotshot, poisoned air water and soil, record unemployment and layoffs, crazy satanic worshippers trying to herd us into 15 minute cities and stack ’em & pack ’em residences, and civil unrest.
And of course driving us nuts with what they’ve done to our culture.
Xttps://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/british-airways-pilot-collapses-and-dies-suddenly-before-flight/
Single pilot commercial aircraft coming soon.
How many will fall from the sky before it can’t be ignored?
trains and planes as modes of transport are taking a big hit.
My neighbor (60 years old) just had open heart surgery (suddenly) and the dude is super jabbed up AND claims to have had Covid twice.
There is no learnin’ ’em.
Ladies I know you are going to like this one. Macron in France tried to copy our government and bestow dictator powers on himself because of a financial ’emergency’ or something; he decided he could enact pension reforms all by himself sans the legislature.
Electricians and gas workers warned him he would be in the dark if he did not stop what he was doing, and then the electricians shut off the power to his official residence.
I definitely like that one, Beryl. Thanks for reporting that! I had been following the protests somewhat but hadn’t seen that.
Absolutely lovely!
The electricians should have wired up his throne…
“Sparky” Macron!
That was my next thought – lol.
Wonderful.
How part of the US’s Color Revolution was funded.
$60 billion to BLM:
http://www.domigood.com/2023/03/amid-banking-crisis-with-segment-rated.html
I think we discussed this before. I checked BLM’s site in 2020 and it still hadn’t filed for nonprofit status (after 6 years) so they didn’t have to reveal their funding sources or amounts.
No wonder its secret-holders are buying mansions in expensive areas of Los Angeles.
$60 billion to BLM.
~40 million blacks in the US.
$1,500 per black citizen.
Any black folks seen even a scrap of your share? Didn’t think so.
Move to San Francisco, $5 million per head! Possibly a bounty on white scalps too.
How many $Billion to theUkraine?
Time for some “mostly peaceful” conflagrations…
Blackbird,
I think the San Francisco thing also includes Basic Income for the next 200 years. Its so off-the-planet, I’m not even sure what to say.
I know what to say: “Fuck yeah!” California here I come!
Oh yeah, I’m gonna start “identifying” as black, ex-slave even!
California Dreamin’. Too bad about Mama Cass, huh?
She bought the ticket, she took the ride.
I reserve my tears for their kids who didn’t know what they’d been sold into.
Probably, the plan is that the $5 million will be worth about $500 in nearly worthless dollars, and the UBI will be worth about $4.95 a month.
If this scheme actually passes, we should probably take it as a sign that a complete collapse of the dollar will follow soon.
Take the weight, pay the freight.
Mr Kunstler talks about no consequences like it just arrived on the scene. It’s quite simple. There are zero consequences for those in power. The power structure always wins, that’s why mega wealthy people support both sides of a conflict.Ain’t nothin’ new here.
There are 2 sides? There is only 1 side.
We ain’t on it
There are 2 sides? There is only 1 side.
We ain’t on it
I feel I must point out that this makes no sense.
If there is only 1 side, we must all be on it.
Try again.
Who said you’re on it?
You ain’t on there side man.
You under it
Man, you don’t even know down from up let alone side vs side.
this jive hookiechookie thankin he be cleva
This Cargill doesn’t understand my point.
You’ve been embarrassing yourself nicely today. Well done, sir.
SECOND DIMENSION SURFACE TRANSPORT LOGISTICS
Bone weary from decades pleading for breadbasket district rail lines replacement, this cat situates with rails and loading spurs nearby. Famine Hedge is requisite with dictators’ EMP threats. See Peter Vincent Pry: “EMP Threat Assessment”. The Mexican & Central American cartels know how to prepare, and have engaged ISIS journeymen for details on Cannibalism. 911DAY changed the New Yotk skyline, a harbinger… Previous posts by this writer have blueprinted railway matrix reformation. The Webmeister has info.
It comes down to the Biblical: The “Great Tree Sheltering Many” in Daniel Chapter 4 verse 15 is nearly destroyed, barely preserved by roots bound with bands of Iron & Bronze. Of more personal concern to Americans is Deuteronomy Chapter 28 vv 14/15 divide. –Turn back on God and embrace immorality, Stir well!
WTH? This reads like a conspiracy post from a J. Peterman catalog.
“He cut a swashbuckling figure in the rail-yard outside of East Palestine, in between deep drags from a perfectly rolled cigarillo, he and the boys from Aleppo took turns loosening lug nuts on the rail wheels. It’s never all work and no play for this rake, Turkish coffee in demitasse in between tugs on the wrench before boarding a boxcar headed south. Where to? Sinaloa, Santa Tecla? No matter the destination, his classic American selvedge denim Yardmaster pants will get him there cooly through the chaos”
“…a conspiracy post from a J. Peterman catalog.”
You’ll always be Burma to me…
Yes! Thanks, @Blackbird!
Connie,
Nice.
“I, too, once fell under the spell of opium. It was 1979. I was traveling the Yangtze in search of a Mongolian horsehair vest…”
that actor was perfect
This is a beautiful yet comical piece of prose.
A master class.
Here’s exquisite ad copy from a present day product:
“The Counterfeit Mailbag.
I borrowed the original from a friend, a retired mailman who, like thousands before him, was kind enough to test it out on the tree-lined streets of small towns everywhere. Before we were born.
It’s simply perfect as a device for carrying important ideas and feelings back and forth. And the same as with those old and scarce and beautiful mailbags, people will look forward to seeing what you’ve got inside.
The Counterfeit Mailbag (No. 1005). Containing one vast, unzippered pocket, and another zippered. Shoulder strap and handle. Strong, soft leather that will only get better. Imported.
Size: 15” long x 7” wide x 12-1/2” tall.
How to take care of the Mailbag.
?The first scratch will kill you, but in fact, it’s the first step in the right direction: patina.
So the sooner it gets scratched, nicked, bumped, dug, hit, squeezed, dropped, bent, folded, and rained on, the better. Really.
When you receive your mailbag, it’s so fiercely new looking I’m almost ashamed of it. But there’s no choice. It would cost too much to pre-age each mailbag before sending it out to a customer. (Antiques cost more than new, for a reason.)
Here’s my recipe for “accelerating” the aging process. First, spend one day (the day you get it) the way it is. Brand new. Then, the next day, scratch it all over with your fingernails. Lightly. This will horrify you, at first. Then, spray-mist it with plain water, lightly. Let it dry. The scratches will lose their rawness. They will look old. Repeat this treatment as often as you can stand to; once a week for 5 weeks. Then once a year. (Clean mailbag with plain water only. Not petrochemicals, not oils, not detergents, not mystery solvents, not leather “cremes.” It will do just fine with plain water and will outlast both of us.)”
Great work Elaine.
I’ve got a Filson duffle and a leather garment bag, they’re both beat to shit but I get compliments from people who know what a million miles looks like.
The staff at Radisson Moscow were kind enough to laminate their business card back to back with one of mine.
These days I don’t leave the valley.
@JHK
“nationalize[d] the US banking system”?
I don’t get that from the FDIC taking control of a couple of banks. What am I missing?
“the government will now have to bail out every bank every time something goes wrong” Please, Rush, enough with the non sequiturs.
“government doesn’t have the means” and probably never has had the means. How does a $Trillion+ annual budget compare to an entity that can digitally print that figure into existence overnight?
“Be advised: the situation is [well] in-hand and is going to get a whole lot worse as new and subsidiary shocks thunder through the weeks and months ahead, until the whole wicked business blows.”
“We’ll find ways”. Who are these “we”, white man? Check out your old college, Population Dynamics 101 course notes. Overshoot and die-off don’t work quite like that in the norm apparently.
I could be wrong.
~toktomi~
Yeah, I don’t see “nationalization” yet. Or ever.
Drag queen commissars? You’re a homophobe?
AID666 — Naw, I just don’t like being hectored by the mentally ill. — JHK Admin.
Try again.
Hahahahahaha, smacked by the master.
I choose “social distancing,” the “reasonable detachment” of inhumanism, not Man anymore, but Not-Man. I withdraw from it all, the grand illusion, the cherished delusions, the empire of spectacle and simulation, the kakistocracy of dunces, dunces fronting Absolutist Capitalism, totalitarian democracy — call it Behemoth, the coupling of Leviathan and Big Business, core companies at the apex of the capitalist economy.
Elull: “A modern State can function only if the citizens [so-called] give it their support, and that support can be obtained only if privatization is erased.” So, I abstain; I will not resign my Being — activity in religious politics (politics of politics) is not my duty.
Well, ladies and germs;
Fred is up! What he has to say is not complimentary.
https://fredoneverything.org/to-hell-with-ukraine/
That sounds like Donald Trump, back in the coming down the escalator days.
Weird that there are no homeless in Mexico. There were.
I remember when I was a kid in the 60s we took a trip to Mexico and I was shocked at the homeless beggars on the streets.
We didn’t have that in the US at that time.
Then came the 80s. And now we have homeless beggars and Mexico doesn’t.
I kind of get this feeling that SVB and Signature are like BLM. They are inside operators aligned with the current Biden regime.
They take the fall to signal a weak bank system to the Public in an attempt to stop Powell from raising rates. The Regime’s key tactic is demoralization so they want the idea of a bank run to cool the economy* and make Powell stop. At the very least get the Public upset and scream at Congress to make him stop.
He won’t though (see Luongo). Propping up some banks to prevent consolidation is a good thing because Yellen & Co. want that for CBDC. Fed is trying to maintain some diversity and bring down the Davos crowd that has infiltrated the system.
Not saying we don’t have economic problems but I also don’t think everything crumbles down to pieces all at once either. As some things go away other things will grow. That’s how it works.
*not happening soon. The demographics are the issue. Lots of gaps left from Boomer retirees. I am now hearing of people in my age range getting great job offers. The “Big” layoffs were all the Tech companies (again aligned with the Regime) who aren’t known for their honesty in anything an likely had lots of ghost workers to “layoff,”
I happened to see that Vladimir Putin is wanted by The Hague for war crimes against children.
It’s always “for the children”, isn’t it?
I see a lot of crimes against children, but Putin isn’t among those who should be arrested for them.
What an absolute joke.
If only he was gelding them and giving them heart conditions via mRNA side effect.
There’s a Nobel waiting for him for that
Good point.
The children who have been killed for 9 years by the nazis in Kiev don’t count.
The ICC is a joke. You can plainly see that they are controlled by the US with this stunt.
What about the 250,000 dead Iraqi children who Madeline Albright said were “worth it”?
What about the thousands more killed since then? What about the children of Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya, Yemen?
What a farce.
In other news they also called in the army to slap down farmers protesting Rutte and co. stealing their farms to create WEF food hubs.
I’m not vaccinated, had covid last winter and I was pretty sick. I am 74 years old, but didn’t go to the doctor because of all the awful stories I’ve read about respirators and treatments that caused death. I made it through the virus or whatever it is, with one side affect, I lost my hair. After a few months it grew back very curly and thick. Anyway, since then I’ve been working on building my immune system up with drinking a locally made concoction of elderberry, ginger and maple syrup liquid. In the morning I take a lemon, ginger and garlic drink, that I made from blending lemons (rind and all), 2 inches of ginger root and 8 cloves of garlic. The drink is a bit acidic but I take it. In the afternoon I eat a couple of Tablespoons of sauerkraut. Most of what I’ve been taking is to keep my heart healthy. And to stay away from the doctor.
I’ve been reading book after book on natural herb remedies and plan on gardening to include some of these plants.
I joined a canning group and people in that group actually post finds from garage sales where they scooped up a number of jars. They don’t throw away their leftovers. They can them for a later day..
I’m trying to say, that there are things we can do to prepare. Buy and save seeds. Eat microgreens. Condition our bodies for less and sometimes that less can be better for us.
@Itzybytz, I too plan to grow more herbs this year. I’ve grown the usual culinary herbs in the past but I’m looking into more medicinal herbs to see what might be helpful, especially as supplements have become much more expensive and will likely be difficult to get in future. Let us know what you discover that’s helpful. I’m going to be making my own sauerkraut too, which is a simple thing anyone can make cheaply and should be a staple.
Rowdy, I read you lose all the natural goodness if you can sauerkraut, but it keeps for 9 months in the refrigerator. We’ve grown hops for the fun of it and last year I was directed to the Homesteading Family on utube. And they used the hops as a topical for pain. Say if you wrench something, give it a little spray. So we made a tincture. Shoved a bunch in a jar and poured vodka on it. Kept it in a dark room and shake, shake, shake for 3 months. My brother in law puts it on his knees and it helps relieve the pain. He asked for more to help his brother. It is in the cannabis family and if taken under your tongue, supposed to help with sleep. I think, what works for some may not work for others and all of these herbal books and websites cover their butts by saying “don’t stop getting medical care”.
But you are right to avoid medical doctors, itzy. It sounds like you’re doing well.
Paula, I did have to go to the dentist, because a cap fell off my tooth. And my blood pressure was 112 over 61. And usually dentists make me nervous. I suffered from high anxiety, and that seems to be gone. I’d go back to get tested at the doctors but they always want me to take this test and that test. The testing goes on and on. And I just refuse. And yes, I think I’m doing well. Just have to read up on what’s good for selective memory, haha.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, is my motto.
All that testing they do, they’re bound to find something they can push a pill on you for.
Paula,
My motto is; “If it ain;t broke, fix it until it is….”
You must be a doctor.
“You must be a doctor.”
Paula,
No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once….
@ Rowdypiglet:
There are common weeds that are good medicinals. One that I didn’t know about until about a year ago is Spanish needle, or Bidens pilosa. The seeds look like little black needles. In the fall your dog will be covered with them, and so will you, if you walk around in the brush.
It has many medicinal uses, despite being a noxious weed. The stuff grows everywhere around here.
@Anthea, Bidens pilosa isn’t found up here in the freezing North where I live, although we do have some good medicinal plants that are native to the area. Many of them look quite similar to plants that are dangerous or toxic. I’m always afraid to gather anything in the vast woods around us unless I’m absolutely sure it is what I think it is. I may be overly careful, but I’m still alive so there’s something to be said for it.
Well done, Itzy. Yes, lots of things we can do. Learning all about nutrition is like money in the bank.
“The net effect of all the lying propaganda laid on the public by the people running things lo these many recent years is a peculiar inertia that makes us seemingly impervious to gross political shocks.”
Governments and Corporations (and some Religions) simply cannot exist without a laying down a continuous foundation and sewer-flow of lying propaganda. That is the source of their power. That is the source of their control over people and things. That is how they keep their own worker-bees in line.
Has there ever been any Government (etc.) that has been founded and sustained by truth? Don’t wade through thousands of years of Earth history because the answer to that is…NEVER. Because it CAN’T BE.
If you told the truth about things, you would have no ‘legitimacy’. And without ‘Legitimacy’ you would have no power. And without power… you simply do not exist as a Government.
“It’s now official: from here forward there will be no consequences for banking fraud, poor decision-making, fiduciary recklessness, self-dealing, or any of the other risks attendant to the handling of other people’s money.”
Why should the Financial Branch be any different from any other branch of ‘Our Leadership Class!’. For when one is a part of that high-exalted group of every special humans… there ARE NO CONSEQUENCES FOR ANYTHING. For this aspect of things… go ahead and look at thousands of years of Earth’s history. That absence of accountability is also a necessary built-in feature to Our Leadership Classes. For again, They would cease to exist if there were such accountability and actual consequences to their actions.
“… psychotic regime ruling over us with its drag queen commissars, lawless Lawfare vandals, race hustlers, agents provocateurs, informers, censors, prosecutors, inquisitors, jailers, and propagandists — the worst collection of imbeciles, grifters, and villains ever assembled into political party.”
‘Round these parts here in The Indispensable Nation… it’s go big or go home. Or… Sinning with impunity and giddy glee one might call it.
Get Out Of Jail cards for everyone!… except We the People.
Speaking of lying propaganda, anyone been to the Antifa website (antifa.com) lately?
That one never gets old!
How can a mere idea have an official website, one is left to wonder.
The official website of Joe Bidet.
SVB+FTX+SBF=WTF, where WTF=Welcome To Florida
Speaking from personal experience I take it, lo’ t? How’s that car port insurance scam thing you’ve got going on working out? I imagine that Cuban house boy skim is cutting into you’re margins quite a bit. Might be time to send some of them back across the water.
Everything transpiring is happening on purpose. Those people who promised years ago the “remake the country” will do so. And they will cause millions of deaths, but they don’t care. In fact, they hope that happens because they hate us.
The evil are running things and are making damn sure that they take out as many as they can. They feed on death, destruction is their aim.
@ ATM:
I don’t pretend to know anything about the long-term plan for the US, but I think there are multiple levels of players. I think most members of the political class, and some people in finance and the corporatocracy are really just in it for the looting. In other words, their masters (whoever controls them) have offered them a nice salary plus “all you can steal.” I suspect most of these people don’t think any further ahead than that. Somebody wants the nation and the currency destroyed. The looters are simply their willing tools, and I suspect that they will get thrown under the bus by the real “Big Guys”: “Sure, we’ll let you steal ass much money as you want, but oops! All that money is now worthless.”
Are Joe or Hunter Biden or Sam Bankman-Fried or Zelensky the type of people who invest in productive enterprises, or who would even know how th run them?
I’m not even sure that the real “Big Guys” know what they have unleashed and plan to unleash. Too much hubris, and probably very little understanding of anything outside their stratospheric existences. I also suspect that some of their buddies, who they think have their backs, are instead sharpening knives for their backs. I don’t think their plans will go as planned.
It befuddles me incessantly how the proclamations and machinations of government and corporate entities are interpreted by the masses so literally and at face value.
Humans are very complex creatures and their training and conditioning require subtle measures. What appears to be transpiring is not what is actually transpiring. “They” are not so superficial as to be literal, ya knuckleheads!
I could be wrong; carry on with your fruit loops.
~toktomi~
toktomi: “It befuddles me incessantly how the proclamations and machinations of government and corporate entities are interpreted by the masses so literally and at face value.”
This is the thing about all this that is the LEAST bit puzzling to me. Lots of people never get over their Daddy/Mommy Complex.
And what is that? Wanting to earn Daddy-and-Mommy’s approval, love, and attention. So you obey without question because that’s what They want you to do… you Believe without question and Follow Orders… and you have convinced yourself that you must do this or somehow wither away and perish.
And the Masses simply shift their Daddy/Mommy approval seeking to Government and ‘Authority’..who are themselves always positioning themselves as ‘Knowing What’s Best!’ for you and always looking out to be your protector and Guider.
Which is of course complete and utter Bullshhi….
NGO × WEF + WHO ÷ ( NATO x BRICS) x DAVOS = NWO
Is this the new algebra?
Common Core is a real bitch.
When I saw my first day of Calc II that all the problems had Greek symbols with no numbers at all, I cut the class and went straight to the registrar and dropped the class. One of the better decisions in my collegiate “career.”
and villains ever assembled into [a] political party.
The traditional way that the US deals with economic collapse is to start a war.
Expect that soon.
Back in 2002, we were subjected to endless propaganda about WMD, with demands from Cheney, et. al., that Hussein allow inspectors into various places, even though Scott Ritter was testifying that Iraq’s WMD had already been demolished.
I watched the charade going on the TV and such, while my co-workers were being shipped off to Kuwait, for months and months.
So what am I going to believe- my ruling overlords or my own eyes?
Now Monkey Werz is telling me that the US is shipping soldiers and equipment to Europe, while my ruling overlords insist that those plucky Ukrainians (now down to teenagers and women) can fight off the Russkies all by themselves.
Yeah, no. They are lying. They are going to get involved Over There, again.
Let’s you and him fight has its limits, so the US is going to go for broke.
They really, really want Russia’s land and resources.
@Paula
I suspect war as an economic stimulus was effective back when the energy supplies would support it. That does not appear to be case in these end times. It appears that a much more self-destructive economic strategy is in play, monetization. ~ Printing money to extend for just a bit longer, until the last preparations are completed, the life of a dying global economy.
“come on, all you big strong men. uncle sam needs your help again…
no need to wonder why. we’re all gonna die.”
~toktomi~
Russia still has energy. Therefore the US will not stop until they get it.
Can anyone suggest a rationale for why Bitcoin was so strong today, up more than 8%?
Q,
They are speculating when and how the music will stop.
Musical chairs.
They want your money?
dummies running for cover… or into the trap
@Q
If I had to guess, based on some of the short-term patterns that I’ve observed in the past for the likes of oil and precious metals, I would say the daily fluctuations, being dictated within specific long term trend boundaries, are at the discretion of the coders and are merely their little self-entertaining games to fend off the boredom.
Oh, but that would have been before the algorithms were implemented to perform that task. “Never Mind!”
Where, might I ask, is your head? This shit ain’t checkers, son; this is 14-dimensional chess. Parochial cause-and-effect relationships no longer exist in the machinations of industrial human society.
I could be wrong.
~toktomi~
“(…) I would say the daily fluctuations, being dictated within specific long term trend boundaries, are at the discretion of the coders and are merely their little self-entertaining games to fend off the boredom.’
yes, toktomi, that is a valid hypothesis in a post reality world where screens show tickers supposed to represent reality, only they don’t.
Because the “coders” you mention, and their masters, are shooting fish in a barrel, as they have every means to tweak the tickers onscreen.
Another hypothesis is that they do what they do not for entertainment but profit… profit on the way up, on the way down, and when nothing moves.
Then, convert the pixels into real things: fisheries, mansions, topsoil, Monets, yachts, land in Paraguay, harems in Qatar, soccer players, chateaus in Provence, industrial agriculture, McDonalds…
Dear
SantaJoe Biden,Being as the guvmint is so flush with cash it can bail out banks. Ensuring all bank deposits when they fail now as you do. Could I have a little bling for a new furnace and water heater please.
I want to get back to intellectually masturbating into the void. Entertaining all the bots on my globe who make me think a few people actually read what I am writing.
Thank you so much,
K-Dog
In the parlance of your Oregonian ilk, “I see you, Dog.”
So now the ICC, a puppet of the US, has decided that moving children out of a war zone is a “war crime”. They prefer to have the children blown to bits or burned to death or poisoned by depleted uranium.
Moving them out of the path of harm interferes with the propaganda value of showing dead children and blaming it on Russia.
So they have to switch to blaming live children on Russia, instead.
Although the US is not a party to the ICC, the ICC has clearly been a puppet kangaroo court of the US since it was created in 1998, basically to prosecute unruly African leaders.
If they cared about “the children” they would have prosecuted Madeline Albright for smugly proclaiming the deaths of 250,000 Iraqi children “worth it”.
The kangaroo court of the ICC was surpassed only by the ICTY, The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was formed in 1993, specifically for the upcoming “war crimes” of Milosevich, et. al
His trial was a farce and a travesty, right up until they killed him in prison.
Who forms a court specifically for one country, to prosecute crimes that have not yet been committed?
The USA does.
So I guess this means that Vlad won’t be coming over for dinner again anytime soon?
I figure this “war criminal” BS comes out today because XI is headed to see Vlad in a few days. They,re trying to intimidate XI. If he helps Russia he’ll be dealing with a “war criminal”.
Very astute point.
@Mary
Yes, very ass toot. Oh! sorry, you said astute. My error.
“They,re trying to intimidate XI.”
SMH, but thanks for the comic relief, y’all.
Sounds, to me, like fourth-graders discussing sex.
“Got Milk?” [hint: “to got” is not a synonym for “to have”; it’s ALL part of our destructive programming.]
staring into the headlights… Look away.
~toktomi~
Neither Xi nor Putin seem to be the types to be intimidated, least of all by Biden and his assorted NATO lackeys. War Criminal is just another western label, worth about as much as the US Dollar soon will be.
Dis,
as another poster wrote upthread, I think those two, and many other state actors (India, Brasil) have chosen the path of letting the US self destruct without escalating. The hope being that WW3 can be avoided if its main instigator, US, shoots itself in the foot during its temper tantrum.
They are hoping for a multipolar world to emerge without Graham or Bolton blowing it to bits before it can do that.
Xi is an enigma, but Putin is an impressive leader. Not the “being intimidated” type. Extremely well read and intelligent, too. Ruthless – participated in false flags killing innocent Russians, ordered journalists murdered.
The Saudi young leader is a cunning snake, filthy rich and of no scruples, betting all sides, ready to go with the winner.
Think about how pathetic this actually is.
Good lord, they are desperate.
Paula,
I saw a headline to that effect in the NYT.
But they used the phrase “World Court.”
Namely:
“A World Court Accuses Putin of War Crimes”
You can actually read most of the story here (on the left):
httpX://www.frontpages.com/the-new-york-times/
What makes it ridiculous is that the USA has not signed on the ICC.
Why however not???? I wonder . . .
The rest of the front page is ludicrous. I mean, the choice of stories for the front page of the NYT. Like the one about “open her [fish] tanks.”
Islander, it is my guess that they are trying to legitimize the ICC, a fairly new (1998) tribunal, by calling it by the name of the actual World Court, which was formed back in 1947 or so. That is also why they put it in the Hague, so that people would be confused.
The actual World Court, the International Court of Justice, is not for persecuting targeted leaders, it is a way that nations can get justice for actual war crimes, at least in theory- nation to nation.
For instance, the World Court back in 1986 found the US guilty of breaking international law in its attack on the people of Nicaragua, which including mining its harbors, which led to damaging ships, including a Swedish ship.
The US, of course, ignored the ruling, and the judgement.
Either Russia or Germany could bring the US to the actual World Court for the mining of the pipelines, but who knows if the ICJ of today is non-corrupt.
I would doubt it. Every other institution has been deeply corrupted, so why not the World Court?
Have you noticed that no one ever “knocks down” a 2-point shot in basketball? That term is only ever used in relation to a 3-point shot. I wonder why.
Shut up.
LOL!
Why is there score inflation in Basketball and Football?
Basketball, maybe makes sense because free-throws are 1 point each, but in Throwball it makes little sense beyond li’l penis syndrome.
Need big score for big men!
35-21 sounds so much more macho than 7-3
I dunno, Q., but these boys need to go back to shooting 2’s. Their accuracy from 3’s is atrocious.
And Purdue goes home. Two Jersey teams moving on, Q.!
What about the brackets and March Madness?
Q,
since you’re interested in the intersectionality (hip word!) of sport + words, and not knowing anything about basketball, I bring to your attention another peculiarity of that section of Venn’s diagram, albeit focused on another sport: soccer football.
Born in England, all possible plays, moves, penalties and positions in the sport are English words, leagues all over the world have to respect that nomenclature in the original language, or used to for at least a hundred years.
Leagues and fans all over the world, through soccer, incorporate and cannibalize English words into their own languages. Argentina did it too.
Take the “foul,” that is, an infraction to the rules, be it touching the ball with your hands if you’re not the goalkeeper or mowing down a talented forward about to score with a criminal bone breaking tackle.
Over time, that become adapted, and migrated from the fans and presenters to general use within the Castilian language (Spanish, I mean), and referring not just to fútbol but to life in general. The verb is “faulear” (yo fauleo, tu fauleas, el faulea), and you are “fauleado” when a partner cheats on you, when the government raises taxes, etc.
This is all utterly useless knowledge, taking up space in the limited cranial RAM capacity which should rightly be stacked with Marcus Aurelius and Popular Mechanics, the useful stuff.
WEF+UN+WHO=NWO
We can stop this.
As soon as we invent time travel, someone needs to go back and assassinate Ol’ Woody Wilson, the progenitor for most of this shit.
It’s too bad Aaron Burr wasn’t precognitive. He could have fragged Alexander Hamilton on the way to Quebec, back in ’75.
1875? Did they have fragmentation grenades back then?
Zaz, you poor devil. You must be a product of the US educational system.
1775. The invasion of Canada by the colonial rebels. If you saw Burr in 1875, it’s only because he – and apparently you too – stole my time machine.
Grenades (charged with gunpowder) have been around for about a thousand years. The Byzantines had Greek fire grenades as early as the eighth century.
Fragging: the deliberate killing of a fellow soldier – usually a superior. The term was coined during the Vietnam War, when fragging was a very popular form of recreation – and yes, fragmentation grenades were frequently used. However, fragging was popular long before that. Fragging is as old as war.
I thought 1775 was written, but what’s a hundred years more or less? As for ‘fragged’ as a term, would it come specifically from that kind of grenade, though? Vietnam?
In any case, thanks for the ‘refresher’ and your effort behind it.
Unsure about yours but much of my sunny-days governpimp-approved curriculum schooling was spent rotting away indoors within four walls in an institution, listening to some authority figure up front drone on and on about relatively ‘nothing’ (so to speak). All the while I looked outside at the sky, clouds, birds, trees, sun and so on, often day-dreaming.
Unsure we were taught the aforementioned anyway, but I’m here in that other open-air prison, so-called ‘Canada’.
“U.K. – As Andrew Bridgen speaks about vaccine harms and excess deaths, most MPs left the chamber.
But watch closely, those MPs who remained …. were told to leave!
This is not democracy, it’s totalitarian fear. We must end this”
https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1636806700287008768?cxt=HHwWgICxibLBjbctAAAA
Look at these fascists.
I saw that earlier on Mike Yeadon’s Telegram channel. The full speech is here (it’s been taken down from YouTube apparently):
rumble.com/v2dkod8-andrew-bridgen-mp-efficacy-of-the-mrna-covid-booster-17-march-2023-full-add.html
I’ve sent it, along with the close-up of the opening seconds), to my MP (who is also Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and doubtless smelling the possibility of becoming the real thing at the next election) and asked him to please find out the reasons for his colleagues’ behaviour and get back to me, pointing out that Mr Bridgen is a scientist, unlike most of his colleagues in Parliament. I also asked him to find out why his colleagues are afraid of listening to scientific evidence.
Finally I pointed out that 321,000 people have already seen this footage and that he should be assured that it will very shortly be seen all around the world, as has previous footage of Mr Bridgen’s treatment by his colleagues in the House.
BTW I came across this hit piece on Andrew B. from January in the Graun. It’s worth a look, it’s so evil.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/13/andrew-brigden-andrew-tate-online-safety-bill
I’d be very interested to hear what (if any) kind of answer you receive, GA.
Do keep us posted.
I got a reply in 5 minutes. He must be working late – it’s quarter to midnight here!
“It was the end of day adjournment debate on a sorting Friday. Adjournment debates are with the back bench member and the duty minister.
“I don’t know if or why government MPs left but I suspect many members left to go home.”
I replied immediately to say that people were clearly instructed to leave that that is what I would like clarification of.
No idea what a ‘sorting Friday’ is!
😀
It’s even later here and I am sipping on a Pax Bräu and reading CFN.
First bit of quiet time all week.
Santé!
Second reply:
“They weren’t told to leave. The PPS to the minister tapped him on the shoulder. He then got up and walked across the chamber to say something to an opposition MP as everyone else was leaving.
“Everyone left because the business was finished.”
Sounds to me like politician-speak.
Stubbe’s Dark Chocolate Beer Truffle
——
“…I am sipping on a Pax Bräu…” ~ Night Owl
——
Is that German beer?
I generally dislike beer, except, for some reason, German beer, or at least some varieties.
Also, I used to be a regular customer for their dark chocolate truffles (the one with the beer in it was my fave), here:
——
“On May 9, 1845 Johannes Heinrich Petrus Stubbe established Stubbe Chocolates in the northern German city of Meppen, laying the foundation for six generations of chocolate making. In 1989 Heinrich Josef Stubbe started a new chapter in the family business by moving the company to Canada. Today he, his son, Daniel, and his daughter, Anna continue their family’s passion with boutique shops in Ottawa, Toronto, and Kanata.
At the Stubbe Chocolates shops we invite you to experience truffles, tortes, pastries, and sweets all created on the premises according to the high standards of the German Konditorei.“
A micro/craft brewery in the Rhön.
I have a stash of the Szechuan Brauspezialität. It is quite the concoction.
https://pax-braeu.de/produkt/from-asia-with-love-szechuan-style/
Looks delish.
I’m also in the middle of another correspondence with him about related stuff, so he will be mightily pissed off.
I have another query to send him about his party leader Kier Starmer in this interview.
Check out the question 32 minutes in re Davos:
youtube.com/watch?v=hDVXMhhsXlo
These people need to be up against a wall for treason.
Get ’em!
Better install a door cam, GA. Won’t be long before the authorities pay a visit.
Haha. If I go quiet you’ll know it’s one of two possibilities, Disaffected. 🙂
You’re a one-woman army, GA.
Well done.
Can you send copies of your letters to the local papers?
The local papers wouldn’t print them, islander – they’re owned by the same people as the national papers.
I’m so impressed at all your efforts to inform your government reps, pathetic as they are, GA.
Yes, I also will be interested to see if you hear back.
My guess? Standard generic obnoxious form letter….
Gold jumps $70 today, closing in on $2000 per oz.!
Picked up a copy of General Heinz Guderian’s ‘Panzer Commander’ (Goodwill, .99, like new), strange reading about fighting on the Dneiper, around Kiev & Kharkov, Sevastopol, Mariapol, Odessa, Crimean Peninsula & the Black Sea all those years ago, and here we are again.