JHK’s Three-Act Play
N othing is stable, nothing is straightforward, everything is fixed, and nothing is fixed. O nation of busboys and WalMart greeters, awake and sing!
Can an empire founder on sheer credulousness? After last Friday’s jobs report, I think so. For a culture that luxuriates in statistical analysis (and the false idea that if you measure enough things, you can control them), it is rather amazing that we absolutely don’t care whether the measurements are truthful or not. Hence, an economist (sic) such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times might ask himself how it is that Zero Interest Rate Policy only trickles down to places where hamburgers are sold. PK was at it again in his Monday column, yammering about “rapid job growth,” “partying like it was 1995.” Wise men like him are pounding this country down a rat hole faster than you can say Romulus Augustulus.
Apparently the US Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the job bloodbath in the oil industry, especially over in Frackville where the latest western phenomenon is the ghost man-camp (along with ghost pole dancing parlors). It’s a veritable hemorrhagic fever of job layoff announcements: 9,000 here, 7,000, there, thousands of thousands everywhere — Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes — like an Ebola ward in the oil services sector. Not to mention the cliff-drop of capital expenditure, meaning even steeper job losses ahead, Casey Jones. But nobody notices, I guess because they’re out at Ruby Tuesdays eating things bigger than their heads. Are the portions getting smaller, or are their heads shrinking?
Finance is complicated, but not as complex as the wizards employed in it would have you believe. They would have you think it is an order of magnitude more abstruse and recondite than particle physics, when, in fact, it is often not much more than a Three Card Monte switcheroo. The whole ZIRP and QE game, for instance, can be boiled down to a basic wish to get something for nothing, that is, prosperity where nothing of value is created. Now, that’s not so hard to understand, is it? Until the economics wardrobe team comes in and dresses it up in martingales and bumrolls of metaphysics and you end up in a contango of mystification.
More galling and worrisome, though, is the failure of anyone even remotely in authority to stand up and publically object to the tidal wave of lies washing over this dying polity, actually killing it softly with truthinesslessness. The code of anything goes and nothing matters is turning lethal and the more it is kept swaddled in lies, the more perverse, surprising, and destructive the damage will be. The more our leaders lie about misbehavior in banking — including especially the actions of the Federal Reserve — the worse will be the instability in currencies. The more central bankers intervene in price discovery mechanisms, the more unable to reflect reality all markets will become. The more that the US BLS lies about the employment picture in America, the worse will be the eventual wrath of citizens who can’t get paid enough to heat their houses and feed their children.
An economist (sic) named Richard Duncan last week proposed the interesting theory that Quantitative Easing can go on virtually forever in an endless chain of self-canceling debt. Government spends money it doesn’t have and cannot raise, issues bonds to “investors,” buys its own bonds and stashes them in a storage vault so deep that the sun will not shine on them until it becomes a blue dwarf — long after the cockroaches have taken charge of Earthly affairs. Duncan forgets one detail: consequences. The consequence of this behavior will not be eternal virtual prosperity, but rather a wrecked accounting system for the operations of civilized human life. We’ve stepped across the event horizon of that consequence, but we just don’t know it yet. My bet is that we start feeling the effects sooner rather than later and when it is finally felt, all the Kardashian videos in this universe and a trillion universes like it will not avail to distract us from the flow of our own blood.
Note: JHK’s 2014 Garden Report is finally up
The new World Made By Hand novel
!! Is now available !!
“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist
My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books…
or Amazon…
Also: Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author
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Amazon Kindle …or … Barnes & Noble Nook …or… Kobo
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
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Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
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Yep, America is many things, but one thing it is for certain amongst the many other things is a nation by and for not the people but rather by and for the special interests and those special interests represent the oligarchic elite.
Jumping The Monkey
“America is…a nation by and for not the people but rather by and for..the oligarchic elite.”
That’s one of the reasons I decided last week that it was time for a Scott Walker label on my blog. The Governor of Wisconsin has been effectively carrying out the policies of at least one faction of the oligarchic elite for the past four years, busting unions, lowering taxes on the wealthy, and opposing sustainable infrastructure such as high-speed rail that could interfere with the profits of the fossil fuel industry. As a result, the Koch Brothers and others of like mind are supporting him and he’s now one of the leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination more than a year out. The good news is that he and Rand “Aqua Buddha” Paul are the best bet on the Republican side to stop a Bush-Clinton match-up next year. The bad news is that he’s much more conservative than Jeb Bush. As for the label, I decided on “Total Recall.” I think it will get a lot of use over the next year or two.
The layoffs in the oil patch that our host remarked upon may not have been reflected in the job numbers, probably because the extraction sector is so small both as a source of employment and as a sector of the economy compared to FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) and because the effects have yet to ripple through the economy, but there are other signs of economic rot out there. One of them is zombie real estate, which consists of all the foreclosed and abandoned homes that the banks have left to rot, dragging the rest of the surrounding neighborhoods down with them. The housing bust may be over, but its corpses still need to be buried.
I agree with gryffyn, below that the “sics” are hilarious,
in an altogether great post!
Vincent, great post too, but, not being a scholar of Ayn’s namesake, I’m puzzled by the “Aqua Buddha” reference. WTH does that mean??
Also, all of us need to be careful and not omit the one- and two-letter words that make our language work, like “a”, “is”, and “an”, It takes a village to preserve the English language, Q, and, the Universe willing and the creek don’t rise, I hope to be part of that village.
Those of you who use voice recognition software ought to be shaking in your breeches! Oops, that should be britches.
From the Sprawl Capital of the known Universe, Des Moines, Iowa
Rand Paul – his first name is actually short for Randal – was accused of belong to a strange cult in college which worshiped Buddha underwater by his political enemies in 2010, but this helped him more than hurt him because his enemies looked foolish and churlish questioning his religious beliefs.
Sergei–
Thanks for the information.
I just looked up “credulousness” in my Merriam-Webster Unabridged 2nd Edition (1956–the good one) and find that the difference in meaning between that and “credulity” is so subtle that I will have to wait until morning and some good strong coffee to puzzle it out. (Will keep you posted.)
As for “truthinesslessness”, well, that’s for sure gold medal material in next year’s Neologism Olympics.
A 2014 study by the Young Invincibles, a nonpartisan education and economic opportunity advocacy group, found an African-American college graduate has the same job prospects as a white high-school dropout or a white person with a prison record. The study attributed the gap to racial discrimination.
According to this result, the unemployment rate would be 14.3%. This is figured by calculating (10,000/(10,000+60,000)) = 14.3%. The 40,000 people who aren’t classified in the labor force are not involved in the calculation, even though this number likely includes those who need work and would gladly take a job if offered one.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Here is a timeless book that can help. Remember, tobacco companies can’t force you to smoke and lying scum sucking government bean counters and politicians can’t make you stupid. Stupidity can be a personal choice.
The coffee was strong, but it was not enough to enable me to get the difference in meaning between ‘credulousness” and “credulity”. They both mean readiness to believe in anything, including lies.
As to Jim’s question: Can an empire founder on sheer credulousness? Yes, and there is way too much evidence of that right here in Iowa, where our caucuses play a major role in deciding who our nation’s candidates for president will be.
Except for a tiny minority, Iowan’s believe the lie that throwing away that which is good means we are making progress.
We are throwing away relatively minor things–like the ability to do cursive handwriting–and major things, including our rich land, and the genetic integrity of life itself. With our massive plantings of GMO corn and soybeans, Iowa is very likely the most genetically-engineered place on Earth.
All this is progress. That’s the lie that the majority believe.
Yes, empires most certainly can founder on such credulousness.
Scott WalKKKer is the American Hitler that Mr. Kunstler has been warning us about.
“Corn Pone Nazism” will be more of a meme than a man. Yes there will be a “Dear Leader” front man or two leading the marketing charge, but the pogrom will be and is much larger than that this time. Which is fortunate, because there’s a lot more redundant people of all ethnic stripes to get rid of this time as well.
And you’re on record supporting White Genocide. As the Chinese Classics say, a gentleman (interpreted loosely in your case) may have to leave suddenly several times in his life so he should travel light.
I hear Ecuador is very nice but Paraguay is probably safer.
LOL! Thus saith Janos, usurper of words and intentions! You’re a case Janos! Of what, I’m still not sure. But you’re a case nonetheless!
Nazi? Some people like to throw the word ‘Nazi’ around. He wasn’t in the Choom Gang, he wasn’t at Woodstock III, he wasn’t at the Stonewall Riots; that makes him a Nazi.
brh
Some people? Like so many on the right too – including yourself.
Book ‘im, Janos!
The list is long.Scott will have to keep people in their place to win first prize in that club. He does have a great start. What scares me is the under radar 18 – 26 year olds home schooled and ready to burst forth and burn the land for White Jesus.
High speed rail is not ‘sustainable’. Sustainable activities include living in mud huts and working with hand tools, not building with steel and travelling at the speed of sound…
Sorry but you are helping destroy the meaning of the word.
When gas is at 4$ a gallon, no one will notice…because it rose only 3 cents a month.
Oh…and then there’s the war that’s not costing us anything because it’s happening across the world so why would we need to fund homeland security?
“The consequence of this behavior will not be eternal virtual prosperity, but rather a wrecked accounting system for the operations of civilized human life.”
Perhaps the emergence of organizations such as the likes of ISIL suggests that it’s no longer necessary to have workable accounting systems?
Yesterday on the AP wire:
“Developers are proposing to build the nation’s biggest shopping mall in northwestern Miami-Dade County. The Miami Herald reported on Saturday that Canadian company Triple Five wants to develop the mega mall. Triple 5 opened the Mall of America, currently the nation’s largest shopping mall, in Minnesota in 1992. The company says the new mall, named American Dream Miami, will be even larger. The $4 billion entertainment and shopping complex will include an artificial ski slope, a lake with submarine rides, Legoland park, water park, sea lion show, indoor gardens and miniature golf course, among other attractions.”
Like civilization, or at least a form of it that we’re comfortable with, the era of large-scale single-use developments isn’t going to last much longer. Most of these sorts of things are based on the assumption that people will continue to be able to drive around. Rising energy costs will eventually cut into this enough to compromise the financials to the point where bankruptcy is unavoidable. Gigantism: it’s been observed that things get their largest at about the same moment the environmental conditions that allowed their kind to exist in the first place disappear. In this case the environmental conditions are economic and because they were brought about by an over-extended dose of QE, an illusion. I doubt the development will positively cash flow long enough for any of the current the investors and lenders to recover a significant portion of their capital.
http://www.thesisa.org
Abiotic Oil – A gnawing thorn in the side to those of us who like to plan for the waning of fossil fuels, and a resumption of a more sensible relationship between humans and the planet. On an old Q&A Kunstlercast, Jim referred to the abiogenisis theorists as “idiots” I believe… I hope they are. But if they are correct, its bad news for those of us who want time to run out on this industrial madness. A poem, not very good perhaps:
https://subversesjournal.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/unless-oil-is-abiotic/
Abiotic oil, like Martian oil, is inaccessible by any means available today, so it really doesn’t matter whether it exists or not.
Well, it takes a lot of Snake Oil to extract Abiotic Oil!!! A low EROI indeed!
Abiotic Oil?
Haha hahahahahahahahahah hahahahahahahahahah hahahaha. ,!!
@jeremy
I lived in Santa Clarita just North of Los Angeles and let me tell you something about oil it does in fact return.
The oil pumps all but went dry in the area and after they stopped pumping for fourty years the natural seeps are all returning.
Once the meme of shale oil ends, the next big thing will be the conversion of organic materials into oil. There’s plenty of carbon around.
I don’t believe the abiotic oil promise either, but to call it “bad news” if it were possible is just malevolent on your part. The whole idea of millions of lives perishing is bad news? Maybe and you’ll be lucky to be one of them.
“The whole idea of millions of lives perishing is bad news?”
So we should just hope to continue on this destructive path? Millions of people will perish regardless, once mother nature decides it’s time.
Oil is a fluid that migrates through the mantel – it percolates upwards (like a brazil nut) over millions of years from whence it came to where it shall congregate lying in wait for the smart species up above to extract it by drilling through the salt dome or other similarly impermeable geologic layers.
The point I’m trying to drive home is … it matters not at all the origin of oil, be it organic or abiotic, for if it is abiotic, it the smart species won’t be getting any of it for a few more millions of years until it at last has once again gathered beneath its cathedrals of salt and stone.
If the Planet is alive as the Gaists say, why does it have to be “abiotic”? Why shouldn’t oil be produced as needed, just as our bodies produce blood? Needed by the Earth that is, not us. We would bleed our mother dry to play Nintendo.
Great column today. You had me laughing from the first (sic).
On a positive note, job loss in the frack fields may result in fewer exploding oil trains. I get to watch these bombs on wheels rock and roll through my town at more than twice their supposedly safe crash-tested speed of 15 mph. Saturday another wreck in Canada with thirty-some cars derailed, an untold number burning and some in the water. Barely reported in MSM…ho hum.
Gryffy
My neighbors have been astounded to see oil tanker cars running on off-peak hours even on my Commuter Rail line right through very densely populated towns….
I have spotted these same oil tankers myself – rather shocked as I thought only passenger trains ran on my Rail line.
These trains are coming out of Alberta, Montana and North Dakota and travel throughout the continent. Like Nader’s Corvairs they are unsafe at any speed. Bakken crude is gassy, rich in propane, ethane and natural gas. After the wreck in WV some CSX crew were overheard discussing the fact that the tank cars are often under-filled and sway from side to side as the crude sloshes around inside.
Yahoo!! 47 degrees today. If it was not for the oil trains I would freeze . I burned $700 worth last month in NE. . I do burn wood but it does not cut it with the Ol’ Lady. She likes it warm. I told her to put on some long underwear. I have been outdoors and wearing it since DEC. The Long Emergency begins.
that’s New England, not Nebraska
Coldest Feb. in 180 years according to the records in these parts.
Over 60 degrees here in the southern Appalachian mountains and the snow is going fast. As I replied to Janos below, I have no problem with safe, degassed oil trains. We are on the CSX mainline between the midwest and the Virginia coast. Most of our traffic is mile-long coal trains going to power plants and I accept them too as I like having electricity.
I’m sure you know there are multi-fuel furnaces and boilers that would heat your whole house with wood and use the oil for backup.
Gryf, go one night without heating your place and see the future. You’ll be begging for not only oil, but coal and nuclear as well. You people have no sense of priorities at all.
Janos, I actually burn wood which I cut on my sustainable tree farm, so no brass ring for you dude.
I have no objection to oil trains per se, except the ones that blow up at any speed over 15 mph. The Bakken crude could be de-gassed and be much safer but that requires investment and the oil boys
prefer shipping cheap and dirty.
Gryffn: that’s a sustainable lifestyle, but only for a human population that is a tiny fraction of what it is today. If most people today relied on wood heat it would wipe out the remaining forests in s short order.
What’s clear is that Progress has stalled. One by one, the people have abandoned faith in it for the very simple reason that they are making no progress.
True capitalism is an information-discovery mechanism. Profit is the signal that a business is serving an unserved need. But there is economic profit derived from serving human needs, and there is political profit obtained by placing oneself at the top of a very large pyramid and mulcting the wealth of billions.
Such is what our elite has done since World War Two. We could escape the consequences of this as we enjoyed the immense profits of EROEI in conventional oil wells. Since 1973, first the lower classes and now the middle classes have gained no ground, as those EROEI profits are no longer found in sufficient quantities in the USA.
There is good news in this. We have used economic capital to make up for the immense deficit in social capital engendered by the destruction of walkable communities by the isolating automobile. Economic capital depletes with use, but social capital cumulates with use. The future looks poorer, but if it is a time spent putting on musical performances like JHK a describes happening upstate, we will likely neither notice nor care. We will die younger, but at home surrounded by friends and family.
Yes, the price of oil, adjusted for inflation, from later 1800s to 2005 averages about $20/bbl. Since then, it’s …
doubled … then
tripled … no, not quite
quadrupled … and then some!
This means it costs four to five times as much to build the infrastructure on which our car driving culture is based!
Not doable. Anyone see the 60 Minutes bridge repair episode from last year – Pittsburgh has hundreds of failing bridges to cry a river over! It’s all falling apart and we can’t even spend the few billion bucks to fix things up, but we can wage a war in Iraq for $4 billion bucks a month! Wow!! How fucked up is it all, really?!?
Hey we will import chinese labor and steel to do a real bang up job and then be forced to replace it all when they use sub standard building techniques and materials.
“. . . . prosperity where nothing of value is added. Now, that’s not so hard to understand, is it?” NO!
Richard Duncan??
The delusion that the US is “self-sufficient” in energy even as it imports 40% of its oil and awash in oil has washed over even the liberal punditry. Last week I tuned into Bill Maher, fierce progressive critic and comic commentator on the US who spouted the non-sense to his panel that since the US was already “energy independent” and awash in oil that we did not need to be concerned with the endless Wars in the Middle East! As much as I appreciate the investigations and coverage of Democracynow, I have never heard Amy Goodman or Democracynow talk about the reality of Peak Oil and Limits to growth. Auto sales dipped slightly, our highways in the Northeast are riddled with potholes from another Polar Vortex winter but the addiction to “Happy Motoring” keeps humming along. There was another report from one of those financial wizards that the record amount of subprime auto loans are nothing to worry about!
As to potholes and highways, a few weeks ago there was a 41 car smashup on the $2.5 Billion asphalt widening of the New Jersey Turnpike by Gov Christie as apparently the Governor’s minions did not hire the 21 people needed to clear all the new asphalt of snow.
Then last week there were 12 cars grievously injured by a huge pothole in the very expensive NJ Turnpike!
Meanwhile except for Christie’s preemptive cancellation of all NJ Transit train service for the blizzard which missed New Jersey, my Hoboken trains continue to operate right on time through every snowstorm. Last week I was the only one of 5 to make it to my office as my train was right ontime coming in and also right on time returning home. Another of the advantages of a properly operated and maintained Rail system is the ability to plow right through the snow.
Despite probably spending another $70 Million on highway snow removal for NJ state highways and of course the $3 million per year to hire 21 more people to plow the expanded asphalt of the NJ Turnpike, Christie’s minions are proposing an $80 million cut in NJ Transit.
It appears even in New Jersey with existing Rails, largely unused in their capacity and 1,000 miles of Rail in a state more densely populated than China, that our so-called leaders can see no further than the campaign contributions of the auto pavers, sprawl Realtors, and the vast empire of Auto Addiction.
Bill sold out to the neoliberal orthodoxy years ago. I used to think he was at least funny, but now he’s just sanctimonious.
Well Bill Maher is still far from neoliberal – he was vociferous in saying that “SOCIALISM” from the 50’s into the 70’s with 90% taxes on the rich, unions, the GI Bill for college education etc was responsible for the middle class buildout. Unfortunately many progressives harking back to the New Deal and Keynesian economics refuse to see the reality of Limits to Growth and Climate Change (actually a part of the classic “Limits to Growth” simulation model) in the 21st Century. As Naomi Klein, Richard Heinberg and others point out, many progressives are as deluded as conservative global warming deniers by thinking we can continue the rampant material economic growth of the past just with renewable energy.
It cannot happen…
It seems Bill Maher is in this very herd of progressive Peak Oil/Limits to growth deniers…
Progressives and neo-liberals are mostly indistinguishable. So much hot air, so little substance.
Tyler Durden: You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
Yeah, DA – “New Rules” is still pretty funny most of the time, but as an interviewer or moderator of his panel, he’s incapable of being receptive of anything that challenges his own beliefs. Did you see a while back when he had the doctor on who had written a book on the history and need for vaccinations? Bill kept insisting that he wasn’t anti-science, but couldn’t let go of the fact that this year’s flu vaccine has only 23% effectiveness against the current strain of influenza. No matter how much the doctor tried to point out that even at 23%, it would save thousands of lives and millions of dollars, Mahar was having none of it. He just shut him down.
When it comes to interviews, he’s no KMO.
Haven’t watched Bill for quite some time, but I hear your points. He’s every bit as dismissive as the conservative pundits he constantly derides. Alas, (neo-)liberalism has (quite predictably) turned into an orthodoxy in it’s own right. So much noise, so little effect.
A side effect of long-term psilocybin use is becoming an arrogant, uber-left douchebag coupled with ironic delusions of one being a “libertarian”.
How’s the saying go? Lies, damn lies, and statistics. That’s all we’ve got left these days. How long can the lies go on with no underlying economy or purpose (other than continuing to concentrate the growing stocks of increasingly worthless paper “assets” in the hands of the few) to support them? Remains to be seen…
Good to see a tip of the hat to Clifford Odets and AWAKE AND SING. WAITING FOR LEFTY would be my choice here in Illinois where our new governor has declared war on unions as has our neighbor “beam me up Scotty” Walker to the north.
Funny how labor is so easily vilified by the men in the expensive suits and seven figure salaries, isn’t it? The timelessly successful strategy of beggar thy neighbor continues to win the day, as the working class continues their fanatical devotion to their corporate masters at the expense of their own. One thing’s for sure, no one can say that they didn’t do it to themselves.
Short, sweet and true!
When a union makes it so expensive that a company has trouble making profits what good is a union?
I have seen several unions that destroyed their own jobs through greed.
Crown cork and seal busted their union after an earthquake in Sylmar cracked the foundation in their building and gave them an excuse to get out from under the contract and move.
The perks of my father in law that worked at the company as a union spokeman was nothing short of crazy $30 bucks in hour in the mid 80’s to drive a forklift with a mandatory 12 week vacation every five years. Crazy shifts that amounted to a three day work week and tons of double time pay. When he lost the job he never really recovered since he had no real skills beyond forklift driving. He wound up working as an under paid security guard. He had awesome work ethic something I have not seen in any other person younger than him. RIP he identified who he was by the job he held and it eventually killed him not having a job.
And are the same terms on the table for the CEO, CFO, COO and the rest of their lackey staff? It continually amazes me at how easily labor knuckles under and licks the boots of their masters. Greed? Wake up and smell the coffee!
The labor-management conundrum is more complex than simply the black-and-white issue of ‘who’s the greediest’.
As the power of Big Labor peaked in the ’50s and ’60s it became ever more apparent that domestically manufactured products were getting shoddier by the year. “Never buy a car made on Monday” was a common quip, and it was normal for a new car buyer to drive directly from the show room to a reliable mechanic to have his car ‘tightened up’.
European autos -notably VWs, Renaults, Fiats as well as sportier models – began to show up on America’s streets, first in trickles, then in droves. US drivers increasingly preferred the cost and maintenance advantages of the imports.
In electronics, imports from such European firms as Telefunken, Braun and Siemens so outclassed their domestic counterparts that they became common in American homes and businesses. The Japanese contribution to this market followed a few years later and is, as they say, history.
A Forbes Magazine article in 1969 blamed American industry’s quality control problems on management, noting that while 80% of Europe’s top management was drawn from the engineering and production sectors, American industry routinely drew it top brass from marketing and finance. The article failed to contrast the poisonous relations between US labor and management to the more cooperative arrangements that prevailed in Europe and Asia.
In fact, many of the more powerful unions had taken on a…well, a form or management xenophobia, complete with songs, slogans, regalia, bumper stickers, add campaigns and the like. Union members were no longer ‘workers’, rather they became ‘brothers’ of ‘The Fraternal Order of This-That-or-the-Other’. Union hostility toward management was over-the-top,and too often wage demands were clearly excessive.
There were even gestapo-like squads of ‘union organizers’ staffed by well-spoken bullies who would routinely try to intimidate small business owners into accepting unionization, or, at the very least, buying only union label materials…I know; I owned one of those small businesses. My three employees decided against unionizing the shop. [Can you imagine? – three fucking employees!]
I’ll not even go into the corruption and various behind-the-scenes deals made by union leaders and corporate bosses – millions that changed hand and never profited a single worker. I’ll simply close by saying that the American public was ripe for change, and Ronald Reagan (and company) did nothing more than ride the prevailing anti-union wave to its logical and sad end. Entire industries vanished from the American scene.
There’s always plenty of greed to go around.
And then we have this “Alice in Wonderland” impact of QE and money-printing noted in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/business/dealbook/in-europe-bond-yields-and-interest-rates-go-through-the-looking-glass.html
In Europe, Bond Yields and Interest Rates Go Through the Looking Glass
By DANNY HAKIM and PETER EAVISFEB. 27, 2015
HVIDOVRE, Denmark — At first, Eva Christiansen barely noticed the number. Her bank called to say that Ms. Christiansen, a 36-year-old entrepreneur here, had been approved for a small-business loan. She whooped. She danced. A friend took pictures.
“I think I was so happy I got the loan, I didn’t hear everything he said,” she recalled.
And then she was told again about her interest rate. It was -0.0172 percent — less than zero. While there would be fees to pay, the bank would also pay interest to her. It was just a little over $1 a month, but still.
These are strange times for European borrowers, as if a wormhole has opened up to a parallel universe where the usual rules of financial gravity are suspended. Investors lent Germany nearly $4 billion this week, knowing they would not be fully repaid. Bonds issued by the Swiss candy maker Nestlé recently traded in the market for more than they will ever be worth.
Maximilian Zimmerer, the chief investment officer of Allianz.E.C.B. Stimulus Plan Sends Some Investments ReelingFEB. 26, 2015
Such topsy-turvy deals reflect the dark outlook for the region’s economy, as policy makers do whatever they can to revive growth, even taking interest rates below zero to encourage borrowing (and spending). In this environment, the simplest of banking tasks have become a curiosity……
Thanks for the B. Kliban reference, Jim. He would surely point out at this sorry juncture that the cockroaches already have taken charge of earthly affairs.
I just hope Jimbo lives long enough to see his malevolent predictions
come true. He deserves to see the US of A go down in a bloodbath that will make the sack of Rome by the Visigoths seem a Sunday school picnic.
What a peculiar wish. Are you wishing Jim longevity, wishing to punish him for being prescient about America’s future, or wishing that we all suffer such a future?
Numerous empires in history have suffered catastrophic collapses for being no more feckless than our leaders. Were the few who foresaw the events that were to come “malevolent?”
I regard those who assure the collapse of the American Empire by denying the possibility of collapse or its observable causes as being indistinguishable from malevolent in their effect. Or does Patriotism absolve those people of their complicity?
J.K. Galbraith had it right when he dubbed economists who rely on econometrics with his stroke-of-genius-neologism; “economeretricians.” But “truthinesslessness” isn’t bad either. Both seem to apply to the current state of affairs.
Economics has been elevated – or lowered, depending on one’s viewpoint – to the art of magic. I agree with Jim that economics is complicated, but understandable. Now, anyone reading the latest economic tomes needs an advanced degree in philosophy to untangle the twisted logic contained therein.
To me, real economics is based on some self-evident principles: TANSTAAFL (actions have consequences), utility, and balance (you can’t spend more than you earn, unless the money is used to create more production). Sadly, the law of supply and demand has been twisted by advanced techniques of advertising. And we have run into the limits of endless growth. Hence the mess we’re in.
Darn I hate showing my ignorance, but TANSTAAFL ???
‘There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.’
Don’t feel bad – I had to look it up the first time I saw it myself.
Nailed it. I heard the hosannas about the (alleged) 5.5% unemployment rate, but this statistic is has been so parsed, filleted, and engineered that it has as much basis in reality as the Koch brothers do to environmental sterwardship. Based on what I see, job creation is confined to the jobs with no future. Perfectly fine if you want to live in your parents basement the rest of your life, but the chances are that dear old Mom and Pop are also teetering on the precipice because of mortgage refinances that have leached whatever equity they had in the ancestral homestead. The jobs that built the middle class are gone, gone, gone and with both parties relentlessly shilling for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot famously described will now orient to the east rather than the south. Sad to say, this is as good as it’s gonna get. Look into the future with the right sort of eyes and you’ll consider blindness a blessing.
It makes me wonder how much longer the mass delusion can sustain itself. A tipping point is inevitable and probably sooner rather than later. With our economy increasingly held together with duct tape and wishful thinking, the masters of the universe will find it increasingly difficult to convince us that black is white. While their abilities of prestidigitation can produce some grudging admiration (for its brazenness and chutzpah, if nothing else), you can only juggle the flaming chainsaws for so long. When it gets ugly (and it will), all the carefully constructed statistics and honey-throated shills for the plutocrats aren’t going to be able to resurrect the myth.
We can only pray that the ultimate Liberal Bugaboo turns out to be true: that a great Corn Pone Nazi Leader arises, unites the people, forms a third party, and takes over. Obviously this is the real reason for mass immigration: that the people can never be united ever again.
Be careful what you wish for, Janos. You just might get a cornpone Churchill instead.
So which side is more evil the Kock Brothers lefturds are always meely mouthing about or the prince of darkness who really has hurt entire countries little Georgie Soros. Gimme the Kock brothers Soros would pry the gold out of the deads teeth.
Maintaining the status quo power structure has become ingrained in the very fabric of the societal institutions. Truth has been hollowed out to make room for beliefs which are only limited by imagination. We stand paralyzed in hope,the greatest of evils since it prolongs the torments of man. The very foundation of existence is balance,a truth that’s been realized for millennia. Things enter a state of high entropy ,before collapse. Economists call it volatility , and yes you might even make a buck and that’s got to be crucial.
Bob,
I like your description of our present status quo. I think you and Mr. Kunstler are getting close to the truth but the following quote better fits our present circumstance:
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call … The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling
JHK-
Well done. I think part of Krugman’s problem is an inability to divorce himself from the past. So, if Keynesian policies extricated us from the Depression once, they will do so again. Therefore, he engages in a song and dance to prove his own beliefs. Conversely, the free-market types point to the Reagan/Thatcher revolution as overcoming the malaise of the 70s, and figure doubling down on that approach will restore growth. Hence both camps have a vested interest in “cooking the books” to prove their own ideologies are correct.
So the stats we are fed by the government are, well in the vernacular, bullshit, and everyone knows it. Just yesterday, two different folks, one a self-employed gym owner, and the other a union activist confessed to me that although the unemployment rate was 5.5%, it “didn’t feel like it”. Another 1 point drop and we will technically be at full employment. A fully employed nation of part-time burger flippers and kiosk attendants at the hotels, car-rentals, and airports. It reminds me of the story D. Orlov told about an old man feeding copies of Pravda to his goats. Dmitry reflected that he would feed his goats the Wall Street Journal.
An Italian business man I knew jokingly once told me “It’s not the number, it’s the column you put it in.” So the gov’t and the corporate sector change the methodologies to achieve the outcome they want. (strip out discouraged workers to depress the unemployment rate, mark to accounting to make the banks look solvent).
As far as our “leaders”, they can’t tell the truth. For to do so would expose that the Globalist Emperor has no clothes. In the Depression, we were still well to the left of the resource/pollution sink curves. In the late 70s, we were slightly to the left. Now the global system has hit the brick wall of the Limits to Growth. But it can’t be publically admitted, for that risks undermining the entire belief system this culture has constructed since the Industrial Revolution.
The massive cognitive disconnect this engenders is why you have delusions such as “abiotic oil” or “climate change is fake because it’s in conflict with the Noah story” or “we’ll run Industrial Civilization on solar” being taken seriously. It is also why the scientific method is under assault. Because the science clearly points out that economic ideology fails in the face of geology, ecology, chemistry, and physics.
“The more that the US BLS lies about the employment picture in America, the worse will be the eventual wrath of citizens who can’t get paid enough to heat their houses and feed their children.”
You betcha’! Chris Hedges pointed out that the social movements of the left, and the possibility for real change, served as the pressure relief valve for the working class. Now that the Dems, Move-on, Greenpeace, the AFL-CIO, etc. have been solidly co-opted, the politicians are bought and paid for, and petitioning your government for a redress of grievances has been safely relegated to “free-speech zones” (on pain of billy club, tear-gas, and pepper spray- not to mention getting fired for showing up at a protest) where they can have no effect, the safety valve is plugged. The explosion, when it comes, will be a doozie, rife with conspiracy and misdiagnosis.
‘part of Krugman’s problem is an inability to divorce himself from the past. ‘
HE AND PEOPLE LIKE HIM GET PAID TO LIE.
He wrote that ‘TARP or QE [I have forgotten which] wasnt enough’.
Well with three rounds of giveaways to the banksters maybe PK is satisfied.
Yes, remember when Ben Shalom Bernanke was called before the Senate? He wasn’t scared, just annoyed and nervous as he hemmed and hawed, finally admitting he had no idea where hundreds of billions of dollars went or why – just that they were sent to European Banks. Like a hardened schoolboy, he knew nothing really bad was going to happen to him, just an unpleasant ritual to be endured. No doubt the senior Senators knew the same. A big show for the hoi polloi.
Just as our money get loaned into existence (and must be paid back with interest), perhaps the Rothschild Bank loans our money into existence? And the Bernanke payout was just the sheep being sheared. Out of illusion, they get real resources. In the end they will control all.
Or this GEM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGdS63iSN1c
Have you ever seen eyes that reptilian, souless, lifeless?
Well Jim, the goofballs in charge keep doing the same things, so you keep saying the same things.
But you do it so adroitly.
“if you measure enough things, you can control them”
Brilliant. And believe it or not, smart economists (they do exist!) know that this phenomenon occurs.
I just wish we had more smart economists. If we did, something like QE would never have happened save as a last-ditch Hail-Mary pass.
Why can’t more “smart people” see that QE will lead to hyperinflation, once the dollar collapses as a trusted currency? I cannot get any economist I know to answer that question. They think the world cannot get along without the dollar.
That collapse will come as soon as oil spikes again, which it will even if fracking gets more economically viable. The world economy may well go down over ISIS and disruptions over there.
Out of all that financial chicanery I would be interested in just 3 numbers: US current annualized trade deficit, how much FED had to print new money to refinance maturing US debt and how much they had to print to finance current budget deficit.
When Paul Krugman compares today’s situation to 1995, he, being typical American exceptionalist, conveniently forgets about drastic differences between the year 1995 and 2015 – back then American Empire ruled the day, Russia was just a pliable raw material colony, American manufacture was not yet 99.9% outsourced to China (that started happening in 1999 with China getting most favorable trade status).
Now half of the world is in open revolt against the Empire of Chaos, instead of buying US T-bills the leading BRICS Nations are dumping it and it is no really clear (except perhaps to Putin intelligence) how much reserve of strength American dollar still has, e.g. how much time till he leading economies of China, Russia and India will refuse to sell their resources and products in exchange for US Dollar and instead demand their National currencies through the BRICS bank settlement mechanism that goes live by the end of this year.
Judging by Putin behavior, it is obviously not a decade, not even 5 years. Perhaps 1 or 2? I don’t really know. But I am 100% sure that there are accurate estimates by various American, Chinese and Russian “think tanklands” of that time under different plausible scenarios.
America desperately needs a regime change in Moscow to prolong Paul Krugman’s happy “goldilocks” days.
What America has is fertile soul we can literally feed the world.
Now we just need to go back to the old way of growing crops using animal dung heirloom seeds and crop rotation.
“…the sun will not shine on them until it becomes a blue dwarf.”
I just can’t leave that error alone. The Sun will never become a blue dwarf. In fact, there is probably no such thing. The Sun will one day swell into a red giant, and then it will shrink to a white dwarf, which will gradually cool off.
The Blue Man is the trickster in Hopi Mythology. And in Hindu mythology, the Dwarf is the symbol of the stunted soul, the ordinary state of consciousness. So perhaps the creative unconscious took over and put these two together.
Quantum, I read the “blue” dwarf mention as a sly reference to the black and blue or white and gold dress internet rage last week. You know James can be so clever.
Good parody this week, Jim. Indeed, hidden in the “great employment report” last week was the news that the vast majority of jobs went to waiters/waitresses and bartenders. Wow, dontcha know, Jim, that if you go to these restaurants and eat ’til you look like a 300-pound Alabama girl that you’ll be propping up our entire economy[sic]!!
Truly, Pravda circa 1965 has nothin’ on the panglosses known as the news media who only see blue sky in a nation of “hospitality workers”. Sometimes they’ll let the notion creep in that Europe is suffering but that’s only to glorify our jury-rigged numbers.
Those jobs have part of their wages paid directly by the customers. Interesting.
Indeed they do. They’re called TIPS. Now every restaurant in California has a tip jar at the cash register as well. Do they want we customers to go back and put money in the dishwasher and busboys tip jar as well.
I mean, truly, I feel for these minwage workers but we customers aren’t too rich these days either and it just seems like anybody that provides a service to us wants two or three “tips”.
As an IT guy that provides a “service” I have often threatened a tip jar.
That’s the thing with event horizons, you can’t tell that you just stepped across one. You only realize it later on. I mean, how could you tell that you just crossed the line?
When credit cards started coming into wide circulation over fifty years ago, simultaneously, the something-for-nothing mentality started growing roots. Was the latter a consequence of the former? At this point, does it matter?
Pulling out plastic at the store was hip, it was cool, it made every bozo feel like a somebody. You got what you wanted, you got it NOW.
And, most importantly, because people are herd animals, everybody was getting one. So how could you go without?
Did we see the seeds of disaster being sown? Did it feel like an event horizon in 1965? Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe in 1965 there was still time to reverse course.
No matter, wherever we draw the line, one step at a time, we made our way towards the point of no return.
Some people could see through the growing cloud of dust and gas of an imploding economy. Sadly, most people couldn’t. Do you know why? The PHD maroons making policy and Nobel Prize baffoons were all telling us, no worries, see, all that mayhem is just a phase, creative destruction, everything will get better. They had studies, statistics, all of them proved it.
By now it should be obvious, they were all trying to convince us of nonsense. You remember, shareholder value, free markets, get government out of the way, free trade, all that shit…
So, the inevitable question, liars lying in service of what interest? Shouldn’t be hard to see. Ask yourself: cui bonoed?
And now? Now we’re past the point of no return. That’s what it means to cross an event horizon. The black hole economy is sucking everything towards that naked singularity of inevitability at the center of it. That should be obvious too. TARP and QE1 and QE2 they say, then ZIRP and NIRP … these are the swirling shards.
The consolation? All those maroons and baffoons and those black-guards who paid them, are all going with us. We get shredded but so will they. They think they’ll come out the other side. But, as history shows, that’s a highly dubious proposition.
Always enjoy your posts, Volodya.
Yes indeed a lot of people bought with plastic and not a small amount paid them off every month in order to up their credit score so they could finance cars and houses. And from 1965 to say, 85 or 90, a lot of financed houses were bought and paid for. Not a bad feeling for the typical American, mailing in that last house payment.
So while I agree with you about the murkiness of event horizons, a lot of people are not going to agree with you about the ‘evils of plastic’ because it augmented their step up into property ownership: The “American Dream” if you will.
Of course the fly in that ointment is the evisceration of good middle class jobs that started in about 1980 by you know who. Compounding that was the importation of cheap illegal labor along with the pandering for their vote by the opposition party.
And the young? Apparently they don’t care; ‘they’re driving Cadillac’s in their dreams’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-6TGjIZxek
Buck,
After moving to pastoral South East Pennsylvania I spent last fall/winter working in a warehouse. A warehouse that sells BS made in China trinkets to post menopausal haus fraus….Grr. The blasted song you linked to was on constant rotation on the communal radio. If I never hear that “song” I will die a happy man.
Sir Lord Baltimore,
I agree; it’s a hideous song. But it sort of typifies an apathetic outlook of at least some younger folk I have met.
Interesting screen name. Can you track outlaws over the hard rocks of the desert ? 🙂
Buck,
No. The only thing I am tracking these days is my blood pressure! Ha! My screen name is a nod to where I grew up. Also, a nod to the superb early 70s hard rock band “Sir Lord Baltimore”. If you are into that sorta thing check them out.
Hello V,
re | “When credit cards started coming into wide circulation over fifty years ago, simultaneously, the something-for-nothing mentality started growing roots. Was the latter a consequence of the former? At this point, does it matter?
Pulling out plastic at the store was hip, it was cool, it made every bozo feel like a somebody. You got what you wanted, you got it NOW.”-vol’.
Yes indeedy… 1968 was the year that Diner’s Club and American Express rolled out their ‘credit-cards for everyone’ program in eanest… Which was in-synch with the sort of economic-assassination companies like MAIN and Bechtel Engineering had been assisting the finance sector with overseas, for some time…
Except that this time, the target wasn’t some struggling 3rd-world country (like Indonesia, Ecuador, Panama or Chile) but the “Great Whites” of the American economic landscape: The Solid ‘middle of the Middle’-class…
And they never saw it coming. The rest (as they say) is History.
Chip-Cheerio!
😉
Credit cards did, indeed, come into being in the mid-1960s but they didn’t lead to ubiquitous credit buying until the 1980s. In the 1960s and 1970s if someone had $300 on their Sears bill they were freaking out. Now the average household has $8500 in credit card debt.
In the 1990s was when credit really went “viral”. Now it seems like half the people in line at Starbucks to buy a $2.75 frappuccino pays with a credit card holding up the line an extra 30 seconds per person or more.
I’m one of those dinosaurs that has never paid a restaurant, pub, or cafe bill with anything but cash and boy-oh-boy do the workers at those registers appreciate that. I’m outta the way in 20 seconds especially because I help them give back even change (like giving them $11.45 for a $6.45 bill). Of course, another thing that makes us dinosaurs dinosaurs is that we actually think about expediting our transaction out of consideration to other people. Now narcissism in the new “realpolitik”.
Therian. I set out my shingle as a bartender for a number of years. It is amazing how the use of credit/debit cards will gum up the works on a busy night. I wish there were more “dinosaurs” roaming the tar pits that I have worked.
A famous preacher in Chicago once proclaimed ‘America’s chickens have come home to roost”. Remember that? It wasn’t really widely covered in the MSM for obvious reasons. Well, Chicago’s chickens have come home to roost anyway, with $50 billion in pension liabilities on the books but only $50 in the bank to cover them. The unholy alliance between Public sector unions and Democratic City Bosses, really a tremendous swindle where the unions back Dem Pols for re election and once in office the pols greenlight sweetheart contracts, has come to an end. How could it not? It lasted about 6 decades. Several dozen City of Chicago retirees pull in $250,000 per year, and thousands more over $100,000 per year. This is obviously unsustainable in the 3rd world city Chicago has become. Its really one of the greatest scams in the history of the world. I think it easily qualifies to fall under JHK’s truthinesslessness category, no?
brh
Howdy Marlin, I get a city pension, 47K a year, I spent 33 years suckin; smoke and scrapin’ blood and brains, All my joints ache. Some city workers earned their keep. How would you like to pull bodies, snake shit pipes, or empty maggot filled barrels in 95 degree heat. It is the high-ups that should be kicked to the curb. Sorry for the rant.
A while back, a man wrote a letter to the Schenectady paper about that, the pension system that rewarded some way out of proportion and ruined it for everybody. I’m going to have to look that up.
On bitter cold nights recently, I’ve noticed water department employees working out in the streets near my house. I don’t really begrudge them a good living. It is those above them, who don’t do their jobs to see that we don’t have a system creating minor emergencies on a routine basis, that are the problem.
Try Cod Liver Oil to lubricate your joints. And don’t forget the vodka and raw onions. You will do the Dance of the Cossacks or at least the danse macabre.
Thanks for the job you did stelmosfire. Wish you the best.
“Oh…and then there’s the war that’s not costing us anything because it’s happening across the world so why would we need to fund homeland security?”
About that name, Homeland Security, a little troubling in and of itself, ‘ya think, as it was used at the time of the Third Reich. “Homeland”. Sends chills down the spine, at least this spine. There aren’t many who can use the term “homeland”.
“Wise men like him are pounding this country down a rat hole faster than you can say Romulus Augustulus”. And we’re all gonna get biggus dickkus, one way or the other, if we haven’t already. Feeling A bit bawdy today?!?!?
Gotta see Pay to Play on Free Speech TV! Education for millenials, how it was all set up nice and tidy since the early 70’s. Real education for any person. Gotta see as well, Fall and Winter on Free Speech TV, tomorrow.
Yes, JHK, statistics are abused. The problem is that, as a subject, statistics is really, really hard. Further, statistics is based on measurement, and measurement too is really, really hard; what is worse, it is rarely, rarely studied. A BS in statistics is scarcely an introduction to the depths and the issues.
That fact doesn’t stop anybody with half a brain and a tenth of an education from thinking that he knows everything he needs to know, and ploughing full ahead into a contradiction. Sadly, in my opinion, almost all mainstream economics does not constitute even a tenth of an education – it is little more than an apology for the status quo.
As for economics and the status quo, I dare say that if I am missing something, I’ll bet it is not as significant as the absence of real mathematics (i.e. advanced courses taught by a math department) and real statistics (taught by a statistics department) from an economics curriculum.
Stephen Jay Gould was considered the height of scientific orthodoxy by the popular media, but a drooling Marxist Moron by actual psychologists who study human intelligence.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-mismeasures-of-gould
Nice link Janos,thanks.
“Can an empire be founded on sheer credulousness?”
I think that may be behind the latest craziness foisted on the world. I’m referring to the woman at Planet Fitness who had her membership revoked for being ‘judgmental’ when she complained about a man walking in on her in the women’s locker room, when she was getting dressed. All of a sudden, we all have to think that a man who puts on leggings to work out becomes female, and is therefore entitled to go shower with the ladies.
I can’t really believe there is that much support for the ‘rights’ of a few oddballs over the rights of women, I think it must be a test to see whether the people are ready to accept the concept that government does your thinking for you now, as it is done in Cuba, for instance.
Another example of truthinessless – does anyone else not believe that Hillary Clinton conceived of and execute the server in her basement plot herself? Did she squeeze in a few computer courses while she was working as a US Senator? Using private email, yes, but the technical aspect, no, that came from somewhere else, and was obviously planned and carried out by others.
I heard a Hispanic priest say “luckiness”. I hear you say “credulousness”.
The more ridiculous the dogma is, the more a person has to degrade themselves to say it – thus the more loyalty they prove in the saying of it. And once a person has said such things, to whom else can they ever turn? They are owned by the State they have sold their souls to.
Trust me it’s not that tough to load and configure an Exchange server and depending on the load it really doesn’t take that much cpu power, ram and hard drive space as long as you are not hosting 1,000 of people.
Reuters: China’s international payments system ready, could launch by end-2015
HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s long-awaited international payment system to process cross-border yuan transactions is ready, and may be launched as early as September or October, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The launch of the China International Payment System (CIPS) will remove one of the biggest hurdles to internationalizing the yuan and should greatly increase global usage of the Chinese currency by cutting transaction costs and processing times.
http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN0M50BV20150309
Well, a lot of things points to end of 2015.
Hi James,
Must say I love your work. I’m a colleague of Eric Garland’s and desperately wish I had coined the phrase “Clusterfuck Nation,” as nothing could be a more accurate personification of the real state of affairs. Kudos to you for coming up with that one!
Suffice it to say, I follow the Economic/Unemployment situation closely and have published a few articles with Garland about how distorted the picture really is using the BLS and Census Bureau data itself! hmm guess what folks (?) when you dig into the DOL DB it doesn’t match the top level BS. Imagine that….
I recently crafted a piece on this phenomenon with full credit to you for the Clusterfuck Nation part…
IS UNEMPLOYMENT IS DROPPING IN OUR CLUSTERFUCK NATION?
(ONLY WITH COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF STATISTICAL MANIPULATION)
by Monica Nixon
For the last six years since the grand crash of 2008 where a bunch of supposedly savvy investment banks headed by the likes of Lloyd “I’m Doing God’s Work” Blankfein blew up the financial universe and passed their magnanimous losses onto the sovereign nations of the world, we’ve all been incessantly propagandized that we are in a recovery. However, and to borrow from the brilliant James Howard Kunstler, we live in Clusterfuck nation now and I’d have to say the unemployment statistics wielded as proof of this “recovery” are the biggest manipulated clusterfuck ever.
Want to understand what a lie they really are? Well, let’s dig in shall we? The devil is always in the details…..
REAL UNEMPLOYMENT IS AT LEAST 23% WHEN YOU FACTOR IN DEMOGRAPHICS THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES OUT
o On Jan 9th, 2015, the US government announced that the unemployment rate was 5.6% (U-3). But wait, the U-3 rate doesn’t include short -term discouraged workers- those who haven’t looked for a job in the last 4 weeks but that have looked in the last year. When those folks are incorporated, as they are in the broader measure U-6 rate, the unemployment rate DOUBLES to 11.2%.
o Now you might ask, what about long term discouraged workers, those that have been discouraged for over a year? Well, prior to 1994, the BLS used to count those folks as unemployed but now they just drop them off into the Not in Labor Force cateogry! Add them back in as John Williams of ShadowStats does and viola! REAL UNEMPLOYMENT IS AT LEAST 23%. See here: http://www.shadowstats.com/
EVEN ACCORDING TO THE BLS, THERE HASN’T BEEN ANY NET NEW JOBS SINCE 2007!
• In 2007, there were 146M people with a job in this country. In 2014, there were 146M with a job in this country. Honeychild, that’s NET ZERO jobs! All we have done is spent 7 years getting back to the level of employment we had back then BUT WAIT we’ve had 14M new entrants since 2008! Do you know where they are?
ALMOST ALL THE NEW ENTRANTS SINCE 08’ HAVE BEEN DROPPED INTO THE NOT IN LABOR FORCE CATEGORY TO KEEP THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE LOW! NEARLY 2x AS MANY DROPPED OFF AS ANYBODY WHO GOT A JOB
• From 2008-2014 the civilian labor force increased by 14M from 233M to 247M BUT the government dropped 13M during that time into the not in labor force category! The NILF went from 79M to 92M! That’s almost ALL of the new entrants being dropped off! You think only 1M of these kids need to work? Really how many 18-24 year olds do you that can afford to be retired? Right, fucking ZERO.
• Putting all this in context, the government will try and tell you they’ve put 7M people back to work since 2009 when those with a job dropped to 139M. But as illustrated above, these aren’t net new jobs we are only back at the level of employment we had in 2007 (146m) in 2014. BUT we’ve had 14M new entrants since 2008 of which almost all have been classified out of existence which just so happens to be nearly twice the 7m people that supposedly went back to work! YAY US! See here for the table to illustrate all of the above: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat01.htm
OH AND DON’T OVERLOOK THAT THE NEW REPLACEMENT JOBS ARE POVERTY LEVEL AND OVER 4X MORE PT JOBS ARE BEING CREATED THAN ANY FULL TIME JOBS
• Sub $13.33 an hr. jobs have comprised the largest portion of these supposedly new jobs since 2009.
• Over 2/3 of these new jobs pay less than $20 an hr.
• We are still showing significant losses in the $20-32 an hr category.
• Interestingly, notice nobody will never show you losses in jobs that paid over $32 an hr. You know, like jobs for highly experienced professionals in their peak earnings years who were making $100K-$125K or more? I’m sure there is a reason, and that’s because exactly zero of them have come back. I think my friends and I can firmly attest to that. See here: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Reports/Low-Wage-Recovery-Industry-Employment-Wages-2014-Report.pdf?nocdn=1
• As to the fact that ever so many of these jobs are also part time, here is a chart for 2013, illustrating that for every one full time job created there were 4.3 Part time jobs! http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/05/part-time-jobs-account-for-97-of-2013-job-growth/
AS IF ALL OF THE ABOVE AREN’T BAD ENOUGH, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF THESE SUPPOSED JOBS DON’T EVEN EXIST?
• Right now, more businesses are closing their doors in America than any being created according to the Census Bureau. They stipulate that 470K firms are closing per year vs. 400K opening. Now, it would be hard to believe then that there would be any net job additions. That said, the BLS tries to account for this in what they refer to as Birth Death modeling adjustments. David Stockman stipulates that the BLS model has actually overestimated job additions by around 3.6M since 2009 ! See here: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/rx-for-wall-street-propaganda-some-facts-about-phantom-jobs-dividend-cuts-and-overvalued-stocks/
In summary, we’ve had no net jobs since 2007, some of those supposed jobs may not exist at all if not for BLS statistical tinkering, more folks have been put in the not in labor force category by a factor of almost 2x than anybody that went back to work, the vast majority of what new jobs there have been are poverty level part time gigs and real unemployment is at least 23%. Kunstler is right, CLUSTERFUCK NATION INDEED……..
And… I couldn’t agree more with JHK this fine & Marveous Monday.
re | “The more that the US BLS lies about the employment picture in America, the worse will be the eventual wrath of citizens who can’t get paid enough to heat their houses and feed their children.”-J H K.
This is the part where it gets *personal* for most Americans (and co-suffrants of similar shenanigans across the water): the in-your-face falsehoods that mock the day-to-day reality that working (or aspiring-to-work) people know about.
Of course, JHK;s not the only one periodically ‘venting spleen’ on the BLS’s overt BS. There’s always Chuck Butler:
http://www.dailypfennig.com/2015/03/09/dollar-goes-moon-shot/
Take-Away Quote:
“First of all, the BLS (oh the words that some people have come up with for B.L.S.) said that 295,000 jobs were created in February. So, In 2014, when we had a snow-filled winter, and the data all was weak, it was blamed on the bad weather. And now in 2015, when here in the U.S. it has been another snow filled, bad weather winter, we’ve had back-to-back months of 245,000 and 295,000 jobs created. supposedly.. Maybe it wasn’t “bad weather” that caused the weak numbers in 2014, eh?
I traded emails with a longtime Pfennig reader on Friday, expressing my disgust with the fact that it has been a year filled with more business deaths than births, but the BLS continues to add jobs using their Birth/ Death Model. In February it was 132,000.. Given that we know that there are more deaths than births these days, shouldn’t that have been a -132,000. And if so, then we’d be talking about 32,000 new jobs created, which is still probably bloated.
My friend Dennis Miller of Miller’s Money, a Casey Research letter, sent me a rant from somebody he reads that I wish I could replicate, for it goes through every number with facts, not surveys that are hedonically adjusted. I’m going to borrow some of that here: Since 2008 we’ve added 3 million jobs, while 13 million people have supposedly left the workforce (yes a lot of baby boomers in there, but not 13 million) and the unemployment rates is supposedly lower today than it was in 2008. The working age population is up by 16 million, we only have 3 million more jobs, but the unemployment rate has fallen.
So, in the end, because I really didn’t mean to spend all day on this. Here’s something to think about. I’ve been telling you over and over again that the economic data has been weak here in the U.S. But let’s get a quick overview just to refresh our memories. What we have here is an economy that’s losing energy jobs left and right and by the truckload each month, we’ve seen manufacturing new orders decline for 6 straight months, we have corporate profits falling, real median household income sitting at 1989 levels, and 80% of all economic reports miss to the downside, and yet. We’re told that 295,000 jobs were created in February…”- CB.
Just a little crispy data-based ‘fat’ to chew on while we watch the frost settle…
Cheers!
Also, MD, this business about “250,000 jobs created” last month, aren’t they being sopped up by the 2.5 million immigrants who come into the US each year? Is “job creation” keeping up with population growth thru this massive immigration from the 3rd world?
I’m not trying to be provocative. I really don’t know how immigration figures in, ‘specially at the numbers we have now.
brh
Mexicans El Norte have larger families than those who stay in Mexico.
The population of USA is growing by 3? million a year?
The jobs are not here for them.
sorry.
here,
True unemployment rate between 30 and 40%.
50% of all jobs pay slave-wages. hence,50 million people of food stamps. 50 million people uninsured.
No increase in wage buying power for FORTY-FIVE years (since 1968).
$25,000 average credit card debt for each family.
One TRILLION dollars student loan debt.
850 BILLION dollar credit card debt.
60 MILLION U.S. jobs automated since 1964.
100 MILLION more U.S. jobs to be automated by 2050 A.D
The push for $15 dollar an hour burger flipping jobs will push that figure to a sooner date.
The one person running 4 or 5 automated self checkout lines will be a massive reality soon enough.
Is that why I see planes spraying skies over USA?
I think Government statistics are meant for entertainment purposes only these days. They know that the true believers, like wpa_ccc will swallow them whole no matter what, and the rest of us will ignore them altogether. We live in two countries now. The “official” version which everyone but the lambs knows is total bullshit, and the real version, where literally anything goes if you can get away with it. And the big boys and girls definitely are getting away with it.
WTH needs the truth. This is America for chrissakes.
Jim,
The BLS actually prints things like Workforce Participation rates going back as far as you want to but the media NEVER report that which is publicly available. They also print the U6 unemployment rate but the media ONLY give the U3 unemployment rate. True, the BLS is complicit to a degree because if you work 5 hours you’re counted as an employed person but you’re really only 12.5% of one employed person.
The BLS hides critical data but they reveal SOME critical data that the media never, ever quote.
Hello Therian,
re | “The BLS hides critical data but they reveal SOME critical data that the media never, ever quote.”-th.
This is true. It is also true that MSM cherry-picks the data that the BLS publishes. . .
On the other hand; the BLS continues to apply the Birth/Death adjustment when it has published a statement acknowledging that the model is ridicoulously flawed, *and* the BLS routinely publishes two reports: one puffed-up with the ‘birth/death model’ jobs added in and a second ‘revised’ report with it taken out.
So the upshot is that th BLS is complicit. It’s doing just enough revising and retracting to maintain the thinnest possible veneer of deniability.
They’re liars, basically. By their own admission.
Rarely do they ever report the revised numbers.
Something I have pointed out to every libtard who supports the resident turd in the WH.
Even in the great socialist state of Kalifornia the Obamlamer stickers are getting more rare then a dodo and the only people still flying them are middle age white women and men in ponytails driving a toyota prius.
An excellent historical overview and counterpoint to this weeks poetic rant on monetary deception and racketeering, is availble courtesy of the Corbett Report; ”Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJeemTQ7Vk
On economist Duncan. He is wrong that all governments can simply have their central bank monetize the sovereign debt. Only some can. Russia can’t. Greece can’t nor can any other EU member because they don’t have a real central bank anymore, Only the ECB which by the way excluded Greece from their QE. Argentina nor South Africa can either.
Only the favored nations can monetize. Currently anyway. Ad infinitum is another question. A question we will see answered eventually. I expect the final spasm of Fed QE will be stupendous and the last nations allowed QE will be those that speak English as the primary language, and Japan I suppose.
On China I just don’t know.
I was just thinking about that new laser weapon the Pentagon demonstrated last week to destroy a truck’s engine from a mile … perhaps it’s the planned China or ISIS weapon – use it as a scythe to mow down the advancing horde …
Peeking out a porthole? Bye-bye eyes (and brain)!
Peeking out a crack? Bye-bye eyes!
Is there a crack? Mighty hot it’s getting in here!
Maybe not? Mirrors as an effective countermeasure?
Shine the lethal rays right on back!
Hell, even use a cheap Piezo mounted mirror array, mounted on vehicles and effectively turn the tables in a flash!
Oh well. Let’s nuke ’em – what we wanted to do anyway.
JHK inexplicably ignores that there’s a flip side to the 45 record that he plays over and over, “Hemorrhaging Jobs in the Oil Patch.” Namely, the fact that we’ve currently got a GLUT of oil available on the market (!) that has collapsed global oil prices (!) making gasoline cheaper for American consumers than its been for years (!). If he can’t grasp the significance of cheap gas as a stimulant to the U.S. economic system, such as it is, he’s even more clueless than I thought.
Will cheap gas last forever? Of course not. Are we headed for an unhappy global rendezvous with peak oil? Of course. And sooner than most people think.
But if there’s one thing the events of the last 12 months have shown us, it’s that we’re NOT THERE YET. If we were, gas prices would be scurrying up, not down. Duh.
And they are gas in San Diego has surged over a dollar in thirty days it now stands around $3.35 to $3.65 a gallon on it’s way up to $5 this summer. Then around the next election cycle it will magically fall to below three and after it will; probably hit $5.50 or so and the next year it will be $6 as Obama said his energy policies will cause energy prices to skyrocket.
High prices lead to temporary consumer demand destruction, which leads to lower prices, which leads to both temporary and in some cases permanent supply destruction (bankrupt firms). And as the easy to access oil runs out, suppliers’ investment costs go up, meaning new investment will have a higher hurdle rate to get approved (which depends on higher prices), and so it goes. Throw in economic time lags and related economic events and factors, and the oil business (which effectively means ALL business) ain’t half as attractive as it used to be. And getting less so all the time. At some point in the near future it won’t be a question of whether we’ve run out of oil, it’ll be who can afford to extract what’s left?
QE and other mechanisms of self-cancelling debt, along with high-stakes high-risk gambling, can go on until the BRICS (mainly Russia & China) throw our worthless paper dollars into our collective western face while facing down the world’s most powerfully overrated military through their superior strategy and motivation. The elites are exceptionally foolish and overconfident that they can win proxy wars, such as they are demonstrating in Ukraine and elsewhere. We have yet to experience the full measure of both geopolitical and environmental blowback.
http://youtu.be/qGGabrorRS8
do you have one of those machines that produces a thousand barrels a day?
Amazing collection of conspiracy theory comments this week. JHK, supposedly against conspiracy theorists, has become one.
Y’all can be pretty paranoid, saying the government is lying with statistics, cookin’ the books, etc. and talking about how bad things are, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
The economic recovery is real and the dollar is strong. I know this from recent travels overseas.
If you want to climb the Eiffel Tower or explore the Greek Isles, now is the time to do it. I am getting more local currency for my US dollars than ever before. The dollar has increased in value over the last year relative to European currencies, including the euro. You can get a bigger bang from your bucks in Europe. Costs of hotel rooms are down across Europe. Airbnb is often cheaper than hotels.
So I don’t know why y’all are complaining. Except that you always complain and think doom is just around the corner.
Week after week for fifteen years now on CFN, the end is near (“just around the corner”), the end is coming, the sky is falling, peak oil, the Fed, QE, fiat dollars, hyperinflation, economic collapse, blah, blah, blah.
Instead the dollar is stronger, not weaker.
wpa_ccc are you high?
I suggest you study the Weimar republic and then get back to us.
Endless printing be it actual printing press or the mighty 0’s and 1’s of electronic currency eventually cause run away inflation.
On March 9th, 2015, forty-seven United States Senators committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.
At a time when the United States government is attempting to reach a potential nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, 47 Senators saw fit to instead issue a condescending letter to the Iranian government stating that any agreement brokered by our President would not be upheld once the president leaves office.
This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/file-charges-against-47-us-senators-violation-logan-act-attempting-undermine-nuclear-agreement/NKQnpJS9
The euro weanies spit in your food everywhere you turistas go….you’ll get the “ranch dressing” whether you order it or not. Enjoy your commodity travel experience……
Good thing I never go to that side of the Pond. 🙂
I travel all over our decaying country but not outside of it. Mr. NSA, there are a few of us who are not europhiles (the cultural legacy from the 16th-19th centuries, yes, but not the current denizens).
I’ve often wondered about the intellectual reputation of Europeans given that most of their cars suck, their software industry is nearly nonexistent, and their EU Constitution is 855 pages of legal drivel while ours is 16 pages. They’re living off of their glorious past.
As for travel to Europe, if you have ANY kind of electronics, it’s 50-50 that it will be stolen during your visit. Have a nice day.
Actually that only happens in a couple of countries and most often to ugly Americans.
If you are respectful usually you are treated in kind.
The laws are what they say they are.
Odd and here i thought the Senate had last say on treaties silly me.
Oh wait.
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Treaties.htm
n March 9th, 2015, forty-seven United States Senators committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.
Not sure how that’s a “negotiation,” wpa. Sounds more like an ultimatum or a simple statement of fact to me. Pretty ballsy too. Gotta hand it to the neo-crazies, they don’t take no shit. Try to imagine a group of Dems stepping out of line like that?
nsa: “The euro weanies spit in your food everywhere you turistas go”
All you have to do is avoid restaurants and go where the locals go: farmers’ markets and grocery stores where you can buy foods cheaper. Buy foods that are wrapped and packaged in such a way that spit is not an issue.
Works in Asia, South America, and Europe because people everywhere buy produce in open air markets and in grocery stores.
Who on earth travels so that they can cook in their hotel room? The whole point of a nice vacation is to be freed from the tedium of daily life which includes cooking and cleanup afterward. So when you are a “turista” to you eat all your meals IN???
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2015/03/c-k-michaelson-american-economy.html
Our country is bankrupt and is borrowing more money than ever, at lower rates than ever. In some cases, lenders are now paying debtors to borrow their money.
This is the polar opposite of how a money system should work. Lenders should demand high rates from high risk borrowers, instead they are having to pay to loan out their money!! The world has truly gone mad.
Truthinesslessness, newspeak, whatever you wish to call it.
Therian, think outside the box… and don’t go to tourist restaurants.
“Based on the lavish menu of items that Pam Tobey and Rick Durham dined on during an independent trip to Reykjavik, Iceland, you’d think a hearty chunk of their budget was spent on food. Think lamb pate, cod in mustard sauce, salmon with brown bread, and skyr (the national cheese).
You might be surprised to hear, then, that during their five-day jaunt through one of Europe’s most expensive cities, they only ate in a restaurant once. Otherwise, they bought ingredients from little stores and cobbled together their own meals.
“Half the fun of our overseas travel is exploring local markets and groceries,” says Tobey, a graphic designer in Washington D.C. Not to mention that frequenting local markets is the number-one way to save money on food while traveling.
If you’re willing to map out an eating plan that includes buying provisions at grocery stores and following some of our other tips, you can save a good chunk of change on your travels, and still eat well.”
Apparently you don’t read posts that you reply to very thoroughly because I said: 1) I don’t go to Europe any more, and 2) Hypothetically, if I’m on vacation in Europe (or anywhere else) why would I want to cook my own food because then it’s not a vacation. I have no idea what this has to do with “out of the box” thinking. If making your vacation tedious by shopping and cooking all the time is your idea of a vacation, terrific, but don’t elevate the idea to “thinking outside of the box.
IN YOUR OPINION “half the fun of overseas travel is exploring local markets and groceries”. In your opinion!! In MY opinion 95% of the “fun” is spending a maximum amount of time meeting the local people and NOT being in a kitchen. But it’s just my OPINION and I don’t claim it’s either inside or outside of any “box”.
kahunabear: “This is the polar opposite of how a money system should work.”
But it is working and has been for years. Most rich-economy central bankers began printing money to buy assets during the Great Recession, and a few, like the Bank of Japan, are still at it.
Quantitative easing works, in spite of all the ranting on CFN and false predictions of hyperinflation and false references to the Weimar Republic.
Of course, there will always be those who say “it works, until it doesn’t” but they are proved wrong year after year and begin to look like silly conspiracy theorists, or bad economists crying wolf year after year.
QE’s a one way street that once you go down you dare not ever turn back. It “works” by reinflating false value that’s leaked out of the system, giving the illusion that nothing’s changed. Since it’s essentially masked bad debt and destroyed value, no immediate apparent price inflation occurs, but that’s illusory too. You still have too much money chasing too few goods, except now the money sits in some bank vault or rich investor’s bank account, or more likely, stock portfolio. Think the DJIA sits at 18K without all this funny money propping it up? Of course not. But that money’s long since exited the “real” economy. It’s pure speculative Monopoly scrip now, to be wagered in the high stakes game of international finance, the consequences of which will be the same as it always is.
Sooner or later enough of those bets will go bad in such a combination to start yet another tsunami roaring through the global system, and since the US Gov has doubled down and agreed to backstop all this foolishness, a whole lot of people who earned real money from the real economy will lose everything they have. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because QE doesn’t cause immediate pain that’s it’s not wholly destructive. It’s nothing more than a classic perpetual motion machine dressed up in financial clothing trotted out for the final phases of what is the greatest worldwide financial ponzi scheme in history.
And I might add, the mythical inflation we don’t see is actually hiding in plain sight in the form of higher house prices, new car prices, and of course all forms of financial valuations, including healthcare insurance rates for services most of us will never see. Commodity prices have been minimized by global labor arbitrage (raping labor globally), but they’re rising slowly but steadily too. And yes, all this will work until it won’t, at which point we’ll have a repeat of 2008 on a much larger and grander scale.
The Fed and all of the heavily indebted city/county/state/federal governments cannot afford deflation because then they’d be paying the debt back in more expensive dollars. However, with median wages during Obama’s six plus years down in inflation-adjusted terms, it is well nigh impossible to sustain even small inflation on GOODS (furniture, appliances, clothing, gasoline, electronic gadgetry, houseware, etc. etc.).
As far as the dollar is concerned, that danger is overblown because of the global “race to the bottom” which is occurring because no country wants their exports to be expensive. They want their consumers to buy, buy, buy too but it, too, will not happen because of the global concentration of wealth (which we instigated with the various QEs because printed money doesn’t go to the 99 percenters).
Since the QE game, nominally, appears to be “working” (i.e., the Western world has not yet gone Mad Max), they will play this game right up to infinite debt. I believe the game-stopper will be civil disorder around the world as the middle class becomes the lower middle class and, eventually, a gigantic lower class. I believe we’re not very far from increasing crime, civil disorder, and local government collapses but your guess is as good of mine as to whether this happens next year, 2020, or 2025.
The Fed and all of the heavily indebted city/county/state/federal governments cannot afford deflation because then they’d be paying the debt back in more expensive dollars
Exactly! Deflation in a debt based economy is anathema. Although economic expansion via debt inflation is neat and orderly, economic contraction through deflation and debt default is decidedly not. The coming deflation, whenever it comes (and it will come), will be made all the worse by the extend and pretend measures that have gotten us to where we are today. Debt inflation, just like the technologies that allow us to overpopulate, are totally illusory “goods.” They buy short term false prosperity at the expense of our long term survival. The end will not be pretty.
The fact that the US is now considering the advantages of a global war with Russia should tell you how desperate things are behind the scenes. No rational government would consider such a thing were there not very real concerns behind the scenes about resource shortages.
As Martin Armstrong asks: why then do they bother collecting taxes from us?
That’s always been my question as well. Since debts apparently don’t matter and lower taxes are always good, why not eliminate taxes altogether for the working class – anyone with an income < $100K or so) – and lower them drastically on everyone else?
Because anyone with a brain would quickly realize the stimulus effect would be one time and temporary, and after everyone adjusted to the new normal, things would go right back to the way they were again. Debt can absorb any amount of economic foolishness you throw at it and come right back for more, which is why nothing short of a global reset will ever fix the current system. The only thing that remains to be seen is who will set the terms of that reset when it happens, and we all know the answer to that question already. The people who hold the debt at the expense of those who owe it.
I don’t take issue with that one bit. It has and will continue to work until it doesn’t. It has worked for at least 30 years or so. But the ponzi is starting to show its colors with thing like negative rates and exponentially more dollars printed. It looks long in the tooth. However, I have zero doubt QE4 will be unleashed to resounding cheers at the first sign of trouble.
According to German Ambassador to the United States Peter Wittig, Barack Obama rejected the idea of arms supplies to Ukraine after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, February 9, 2015.
On March 7, US authorities postponed the decision to send US troops to train Ukrainian military.
The Novorossian Army is about 35,000 strong, it takes around 600 tons of supplies daily, which got to come from Russia,
How come US do not have objective satellite evidence of the supplies on such a massive scale?
The are news of new Electronic Suppression Weapons system capable of blanketing large territory with hundred miles radius – rendering missile’s targeting system as well as satellite surveillance useless deployed by Russians in Eastern Ukraine.
If that’s true. most of the advanced American “smart” weaponry will become useless pile of junk.
Continuing concentration of US troops in the Baltic bridgehead
Washington sends about three thousand troops as well as a large amount of military equipment in the Baltic countries. This was reported by the US Defense Department.
As reported by RIA Novosti, the Pentagon will send in the Baltic region about 750 pieces of military equipment, including tanks, helicopters and artillery. The first batch of these weapons arrived in Riga on March 9.
750 pieces of military equipment – this is only one case, and only officially announced. Previously there were reports of some not very large supplies, technology, arrived at the parade in Narva, just 20 miles from the Russian border.
Not unlike Hitler was pulling troops to the borders of the USSR in 1940 – 41 – some for R&R, some for “regrouping”, some for “exercises”.
If you compare the 4 largest European army, the figures may shock (in comparison with the Russian Federation):
United Kingdom – 227 tanks Challenger 2, 1,260 APCs units
Germany – 332 tanks Leopard 2A6, 1,529 APCs units
France – 254 tanks Leclerc, 3,129 APCs units
Italy – 200 tanks C1 Ariete, 898 APCs units
Russian Federation – 20,550 tanks, 32,000 APCs units
However, direct comparison of numbers gives very little. It is necessary to take into account the technical characteristics, the degree of combat readiness, reliability of engineering support, tactics, use, crew training, the level of maintenance of equipment, supplies to the army, the interaction of all kinds of divisions and many other factors.
In this regard, Russia has a full order of magnitude advantage against a demilitarized, non-motivated and poorly prepared Europe.
I dunno, Jim, but me thinks your weekly musings are getting a bit shorter lately ’cause your prognostications about the impending global collapse aren’t coming true.
Maybe you’ll be right, maybe you won’t? I drive to work every day (I guess that you don’t because you are a stay-at-home blogger) and I see the world whizzing about doing its thing – making useful widgets, people taking their dog to the groomer, couples vacationing, farmers farming, etc, etc… and I cannot imagine anything substantially different going on in 5 or 25 years from now. Your schtick is waning. As a former reporter why not travel yourself to Frackville and see for yourself what is going on there and report back to us? That would at least break the monotony of your ‘sky is falling’ memes.
Your imagination is lacking.
Nope. I have as wild an imagination as JHK and probably even you…
DA’s words “And yes, all this will work until it won’t, at which point we’ll have a repeat of 2008 on a much larger and grander scale.”
You might be right and if this happens, I and countless others, will pick up the pieces (cheap assets at bargain prices) and the FED will give us TARP 2.0, rinse and repeat.
I think we have to make it to TARP 3.0 though before the masses truly revolt. Maybe then we’ll be rebuilding a “World made by Hand”.
Maybe so, but I think everyone realizes that TARP and QE can’t be repeated forever. The mathematics alone will eventually break down, but more importantly, the underlying real assets that money supposedly represents simply won’t be there. All any of this does is pull forward future consumption, which won’t be there for our heirs. Although if you’re of a mind that we’re not likely to have any heirs anyway, you might well conclude “what the hell, spend it while we’ve got it!” I think that’s the point we’re at now.
Debt can absorb any amount of economic foolishness you throw at it and come right back for more
—————-
Y’all talk about “debt” as if it was real… instead of abstract. If it was real it could not be forgiven, defaulted upon, or made to disappear. What is even funnier is how you make dire predictions and wring your hands over something so abstract. Take’s all kinds.
Debt obligations are real and have real consequences in a financial interconnected and dependent economy. I take it you’ve segued to the virtual universe already? Good luck with that.
How well do you think you’d cope tomorrow morning if you woke up to find that the entire economic system had collapsed and that all the commodities you relied on to survive were no longer available at any price because they were no longer being produced and delivered? Yeah, barter would work for a few weeks for some people based on stuff already on hand, but for the rest of us it would be Wild, Wild, West Motherf***ers!
Debt obligations are real and have real consequences in a financially interconnected and dependent economy. I take it you’ve segued to the virtual universe already? Good luck with that.
How well do you think you’d cope tomorrow morning if you woke up to find that the entire economic system had collapsed and that all the commodities you relied on to survive were no longer available at any price because they were no longer being produced and delivered? Yeah, barter would work for a few weeks for some people based on stuff already on hand, but for the rest of us it would be Wild, Wild, West Motherf***ers!
Given that I live in an area of the country less harder hit economically than most, you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But, as I’ve said before, I make economic conclusions based on what I see around me. Anecdotal evidence isn’t considered scientific, but since we’re talking economics, I think personal observation can be important.
Here is what I see around Boston:
I personally don’t see a lot of unemployment here in the burbs. I can’t speak for the city. I don’t see a lot of adult children living with their parents.
I do see inflation, however. My wife and I like to eat healthy, so we eat home a lot, eat fruits and vegetables and buy most of our food at Whole Foods. In the recent past our order usually ran $70 or less for 2 bags of groceries. Now, it costs us around $100 per bag, and food orders often run over $200. This is a big difference.
I buy contact lens solution for my eyes. A 2-pack of 16 oz. at BJ’s Wholesale Club cost me $16.99 up until a couple of years ago. Now I pay $20.99; but it’s even worse because the manufacturer has shrunk the bottle size to hold only 14 oz. To go to any play costs over $100 per ticket, and forget about pro sports tickets. When I was 12 years old, I paid $.50 for a bleacher seat at Fenway Park. I could always take the train in on the day of the game and buy tickets at the Fenway ticket office. Today, you can’t get in for under $100 a ticket bought well in advance through a ticket agency (scalper). What’s a man to do if he wants to take in a game with his 2 kids? Pay $300+ for tickets, $35 for parking and another $100 for food? I know I’m sounding like an old geezer, saying ” Well, back in my day….”, but tell me there’s no inflation.
On the plus side, the price of gasoline has gone down, although it’s steadily rising again, and after paying around $2/gal it’s now $2.49. It doesn’t affect me much because my Prius get over 50 mpg and my last fill-up cost me a whopping $16.
Keep in mind, Boston is a financial, insurance, elite education, and technology hub. Lot’s of new economy money floating in Boston among the well to do. As you note, a lot of the inflation is hidden from the lower classes these days (pro sports ticket prices, etc.), simply because they no longer can afford to consider it in the first place. Switch to TV instead and find that cable and satellite TV subscription rates have gone up enormously too, although big screen TVs produced in third world sweat shops (and marked up tremendously for sale in the US) are, granted, cheaper than ever.
DA: Switch to TV instead and find that cable and satellite TV subscription rates have gone up enormously
—————-
More nonsense. You can now get basic channels cheaper than ever. Mine is $7 a month (I negotiated a permanent rate with Comcast for 42 channels)
Must be terrible to live in fear of “debt” and “inflation” … I once paid over $100/month for a “bundle”. … No more.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/05/cut-your-cable-costs-with-a-basic-cable-tv-package/index.htm
My aren’t you the negotiator! You must be so proud!
“An economist (sic) named Richard Duncan last week proposed the interesting theory that Quantitative Easing can go on virtually forever in an endless chain of self-canceling debt. ”
You’re a little behind the curve here Jim. This idea isn’t novel, there is a whole bunch of alchemist economists who have developed an entire school of thought on this. They call it MMT (Modern monetary theory) which states basically that since states can print money they can never be bankrupt. Sounds insane to me, but the evidence of the last eight years seems to at least suggest I’m wrong.
How depressing is that? Imagine a world where these fuckers successful exempt themselves from consequence and effectively become something indistinguishable from gods. And they call us “doomers”?
They call it MMT (Modern monetary theory) which states basically that since states can print money they can never be bankrupt.
To be fair, a slight correction is due: They call it MMT (Modern monetary theory) which states basically that since sovereign nation states can print money they can never be bankrupt.
In modern parlance, that means only a handful of nations: the USA, the EU, GB, Russia, and China qualify. [This list is probably not exhaustive and I’m admittedly shooting from the hip, but it includes all the major players.] Of these, the US dollar, as the global reserve currency and the one in which all oil transactions are denominated is BY FAR the most important.
I’ve hashed it out with the MMT knuckleheads more times than I can recount over on Naked Capitalism, a veritable cauldron of this kind of fairytale thinking, and came away concluding that yes indeed, Americans do really believe in magic pixie dust.
Can the US Treasury issue debt as money stacked to the moon in Fed Reserve $100 notes from here to infinity? Of course it can. And it most definitely will if we grant them our permission. But will any of that cure our underlying problem, which is that we’re running out of real natural resources that actually sustain actual human beings and the environment that sustains them? Of course not.
Which is the basic disconnect that all the fools that imagine that money can cure our ills ignore. Money is (ideally) merely the abstract representation of real world resources. Inflate it, as we have been for quite some time now, and it will tell you a false story that will lead you to make foolish decisions. Deflate it again, as would be happening right now if not for Federal Reserve intervention, and it would tell you a far more uglier truth. And as ol’ Col Jessup might say, we simply can’t HANDLE the truth!
Buck, thanks for the nice compliment.
I agree, simultaneously importing millions of illegal immigrants and exporting millions of jobs is a wage and job killer.
Most importantly, it’s a bottom line blessing for the oligarch class, which is the whole point. At least temporarily. But it’s national and economic suicide in the longer run as we’re seeing day-by-day.
Mister Darling, oligarchs and governing circles lie like hell and don’t care because they have national institutions fully on their side. It’s the mockery that’s hard to take, the sneering challenge, like that from any schoolyard bully: what are you gonna do about it?
And this gum-flappery we see from statistical agencies and their cheer-leaders (like on this site) reminds you of communist era propaganda.
Of course, back then behind the Iron Curtain, nobody was fooled, least of all the shleps lining up for bread.
How much force would the Communist Party inflict to shut people up? We have a pretty good idea. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap, no shortage of bullies acting out psychopathic fantasies with the sanction of the state, the state feeling secure because it had bullies as back up.
Given that, here too, we have these farcical lies, there’s an inevitable question: what about enforcement actions here?
We have some idea thanks to guys like Snowden. Establishment apologists can say what they like about this callow and impudent 29 year old outrageously defying duly constituted authority, authority that the apologists say was operating legally and in our best interest.
I wonder if the apologists are getting paid a lot. Have the apologists not taken the measure of their employers? Willful blindness maybe, because, as sure as night follows day, they will be abandoned. Because when the sinkhole opens, and their master ignores their plea for help as he surely will, will the money have been worth it?
Maybe, in the fullness of time, the apologists will recant, maybe in the light of having been betrayed. How likely is that?
For now, it sure is nice to know what the NSA is up to, isn’t it.
Found this the other day while fucking around on Google Maps. World’s deepest diamond mine, which just so happens to be located in Siberia. But indicative of the global economic crater we’re digging me thinks.
One Gaping Maw
Maybe so, but I think everyone realizes that TARP and QE can’t be repeated forever.
TARP is over — it has been for a while now. QE, in America at least, has pretty much run its course. So, you’re right in a sense — it hasn’t lasted forever, but what makes you think something else won’t be contrived to take its place? Why do you rule that out? I think the magic can go on much longer than anyone here thinks or believes. Nothing drastic will happen in your lifetime, I promise you. There will be no prominent, distinguishable collapse. The decline will be imperceptible because it will happen at such a slow pace people will become easily conditioned and desensitized to the altered reality. In fact, that’s already happening — every day, right under our noses. There’s no use worrying about it. The sky is not falling — it’s settling in perpetuity. Let the clouds embrace you in blissful obscurity. There is no clarity in the fog of reluctant collapse. Gray’s the way.
You are correct. The names will change, but the underlying point will remain the same: to sustain the unsustainable. It’s already gone on for much longer than most thought possible, so yes, a tip of the hat is certainly due. But no, there’s still no perpetual motion machine, financial or otherwise. Nothing’s different this time except the size and the scope of the con. And yes, possibly the ingenuity of the con men, who are now aided by super computers.
Greer agrees with you too, sort of. There may or may not be an actual “societal collapse” per se, although collapse is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly if you’re one of the people made redundant with no way of supporting you and yours your opinion might be different. I think we here in the west just think it can’t happen to us, but I think a lot of us are going to be wrong about that.
But once again, you’re probably right. Worrying about it is probably counterproductive. I have a friend that believes the best course of action right now is to max out on debt while you still can and let the chips fall where they may later. And he just might be right.
Kunstler mentions James Duncan. Here is a link to an interview with him:
Richard Duncan: QE4? “They’ll have to.” http://youtu.be/E3yZ036QOUE
If there was ever an interview worth listening to, this it. Think of him as Paul Krugman with thruthiness.
V: “importing millions of illegal immigrants and exporting millions of jobs is a wage and job killer.”
Exporting jobs is a job killer. Importing immigrants is not. The data show that immigrants are job creators. You are engaging in truthinesslessness, Volodya.
http://fortune.com/2014/06/02/fortune-500-immigrants/
Well there you have it, cause Fortune says so! Thanks wpa! How could we have missed that?
DA: “My aren’t you the negotiator! You must be so proud!”
I am more proud of pointing out, with logic and data, the falsity of your statements and your worldview.
Very pithy!
“Quantitative Easing can go on virtually forever”
—————
Correct. It is called mathematics. It is abstract, not real.
There is no limit when it comes to numbers.
What are you putting in that Kool Aid today wpa? Or are you working for the Fed now? They’re always looking to hire a few good liars.
Hey, DA, it is nothing personal. I have been at this since the Club of Rome Limits to Growth doomsday predictions in the 1970s.
Chances are you, DA, will collapse and die without ever living to see a credit collapse, a banking collapse, a transportation/distribution system collapse, a peak oil collapse, and any other kind of collapse.
And even if you do live to see a dollar collapse or economic collapse or a general debt default, just like every other country that has defaulted, we will still be here to tell the tale. It won’t be the end of the world. Some will jump out of skyscrapers (those who think money is the be all and end all).
Most of us will just adjust, lower our expectations, rid ourselves of mindless consumerism, reduce our media consumption and our calorie intake, rediscover exercise and spend more quality time with friends in our community… and we will come out healthier for it.
Nothing personal here either. Just fucking with you. But we already have seen a credit collapse in 2008. It was “successfully” papered over to the advantage of the rich and famous for the time being, but we haven’t heard the last of it yet. Me, I’m old and cranky anyway. Might have 20 years left in me if I’m lucky, but I’ve never been lucky before.
But you’re wrong about the Limits to Growth. They’re real, they’re still there, and they will bite sometime this century. Don’t mistake the fact that we’ve been ingenuitive and lucky so far for the idea that we can levitate forever. That’s what got us into this mess and that’s what will make it impossible to get out of once we finally wake up.
Am I “worried” about any of it? Not really. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But it’s going to happen.
“…Might have 20 years left in me if I’m lucky, but I’ve never been lucky before.” — DA
Y’know, I’ve never been “lucky” either, so I’ve had to hoist myself off of my dead ass and *do* stuff. The rose-colored glasses crowd enjoys the sensation of coasting, so they’ll wait around for a savior (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof that will tell ’em what to do and think so they can continue with the coasting.)
We really ought to come up with a catch-phrase for this this group of little lambs, just plump for the shearing when things get squeaky. 😉
**And, nope, I don’t worry a lot either; there’s too much to do to consume my time and energy with this “worry” stuff. (That’s for people who haven’t the wit or imagination to see what needs done and GTF to it, rather than waiting for Homeland Security to make them secure in body and mind.)
I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt these days Ozone. As the Good Lord was allegedly known to say, “forgive them father, they know not what they do.” But I have to admit and agree, the naive belief in all this Homeland Security neo-nazi bullshit has me more than a little puzzled as well. Judged purely as a make work employment program I guess I get it, but beyond that, it’s all just smoke and mirrors.
DA: “What are you putting in that Kool Aid today wpa? Or are you working for the Fed now? They’re always looking to hire a few good liars.”
LOL! DA, all those BLS statistics are lies. Unemployment is through the roof, at least 99%! The U6 figures are a big lie: the Truth is being hidden by THEM (who shall remain nameless because I don’t want to end up in the FEMA camps after they confiscate all my guns. What are they waiting for anyway?). I got laid off from the Fed and am now among the ranks of the 99% unemployed. Don’t you know times are really tough? /sarcasm off
Unemployment stats have been known to be “massaged” for years now wpa. They simply stop counting people who drop out of the workforce, which is what people tend to do after they finally get the message, and then they count every half-assed part time position created for purposes of denying benefits and paying subsistence wages. And after that, I’m sure they simply fudge a number here and there for fun too.
Hey, I work with spreadsheets all day long too, I know just how easy it is. Most managers’ eyes gloss over once we get into the numbers. Make them happy with a few good ones and they’ll seldom complain or question how you got them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers advertised the most jobs in 14 years in January, and more workers quit — both signs of a steadily strengthening job market.
Job openings rose 2.5 percent to nearly 5 million, the most since January 2001, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The number of people who quit their jobs increased 3 percent to 2.8 million, the most in more than six years.
More quits are generally a sign of confidence in the economy, because people typically leave their jobs when they either have another one lined up, often at higher pay, or are optimistic that they can find a new position.
Increased openings are usually followed by stronger job gains. Steady economic growth, powered largely by consumer spending, has boosted businesses’ confidence in the economy and made them more willing to hire.
The figures follow another strong monthly jobs report released Friday. Employers added 295,000 jobs in February, extending a robust streak of hiring that began last year. The number of Americans earning paychecks has jumped nearly 3.3 million in the past year, the best 12-month gain since March 2000.
That gain has helped to sharply lower the U.S. unemployment rate to 5.5 percent from 6.7 percent a year ago.
The figures that were reported Friday are a net figure: Jobs gained minus jobs lost. The data being reported Tuesday are more detailed. They calculate total hires, as well as quits and layoffs.
DA: “Unemployment stats have been known to be “massaged” for years now wpa.”
No, they have not. The BLS is very upfront about who is counted and who is not counted. And there is no conspiracy to “cook the books” (or alter the spread sheets) for political purposes as you conspiracy theorists imagine. The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder—those who have no job and are not looking for one—are counted by the BLS as “not in the labor force.” Many who are not in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force. The BLS knows this, and is not hiding anything from anyone. There is no deception in the BLS statistics. They are transparent. BLS methodology is public, not stealth.
The true believers among us are always so refreshing. Tell me, I’ll bet you teach Sunday School too, don’t you?
As I recall:
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to him belong
They are weak, but he is strong
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
The Bible tells me so
Catchy tune and timeless message. Sing it for us wpa!
DA: “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But it’s going to happen.”
Such faith! Too much magic for me. I cannot make such a statement… with such certainty (with italics yet!). Must be nice to be so certain that you know the future.
Cada loco con su tema, cada monja con su Cura.
Actually, it takes greater belief in magic to believe it’s not going to happen. I think Jim has made that point quite well in one of his books.
DA: “Actually, it takes greater belief in magic to believe it’s not going to happen. I think Jim has made that point quite well in one of his books.”
Actually, I could go back and list dozens of JHK predictions on CFN that have not come true, starting with Dec. 31, 1999… the complete collapse that was going to be caused by Y2K. So the “authority” you rely upon is very weak. As I said: it is more than 45 years later and no doom yet. But you are welcome to continue to be a true believer. You can ignore data. You can call the data “lies.” Just don’t expect gullible followers.
Fair points. Jim takes a lot of heat for his predictions, which if he wanted to claim to be exactly right all the time, he’d be well advised to avoid. But that doesn’t make him wrong about the broader points, and I have to admire him for risking his credibility on the specifics to make a point. But of course the “authority” for the points Jim makes come from many more people than him. Jim is mostly just a smart observer and assimilator of facts. Which are pretty damn compelling once you start researching them for yourself. Obviously, you don’t care to, which is fine. To each his own, as you say. Why don’t you find another blog more agreeable to your viewpoints? Wouldn’t that be easier for all involved?
The Dow has tanked on the fear the Feds will hike interest rates.
Very soon now the Fed will announce it will not be raising interest rates at this time, and the Dow will rally 200-300 points in a single day.
This is the swindle that has been going on for 5-6 years now, illustrative of one of JHKs past blogs, “The Commotion of Money”
brh
Excellent points! And how is all money actually made? On the margins of course. And how are the margins established? Through commotion and doubt. And who establishes the commotion but has no doubt? The established big players who have a controlling interest and stand to benefit. It’s not rocket science, it’s just capitalism at work.
BRH: “The Dow has tanked…”
==========================
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN
July 7, 1986:
DJIA down a record 61.87 points
Sept. 11, 1986
DJIA plummeted a record 86.61 points, or 4.61 percent to 1792.89
1987
October 14 DJIA falls a record 95 points.
October 15 DJIA down 58 points.
October 16 DJIA down a record 108 points.
October 19 DJIA plunges 508 points, a record 22.6 percent one-day drop. Cumulative four-day decline of 769 points.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Feb. 27, 2007: DJIA down 416 points, biggest one-day point loss since 2001
July 26, 2007: DJIA dropped 311.50 points or 2.3 percent
Aug. 9, 2007: DJIA was down 387.18 points or 2.8 percent
Aug. 28, 2007: DJIA closed down 280.28 points or 2.1 percent
PRESIDENT OBAMA TAKES OFFICE IN 2009
Dec. 31, 2009: DJIA rose 59 percent, and finished the year up 19 percent. The Nasdaq increased 79 percent and ended 2009 up 44 percent. The S&P 500 rose 65 percent, finishing the year up 23 percent.
Feb. 1, 2013: DJIA closes above 14,000 points
May 7, 2013: DJIA closes above the 15,000 points
July 11, 2013: DJIA and S&P 500 close at record highs of 15,460 and 1,675, respectively, with the NASDAQ hitting 3,578, its highest level in ten years.
August 1, 2013: The S&P 500 climbed 1.3 percent and closed above 1,700 for the first time, while the DJIA rose 0.8 percent to a record high of 15,628.
Dec. 20, 2013: DJIA and S&P 500 hit record highs of 16,221 and 1,818, respectively.
May 12, 2014: DJIA and S&P 500 hit record highs of 16,695 and 1,897, respectively.
Volatility, our beloved idiot shill. -332 points today.
To people of the reality-based stripe, that’s a very bad portent that reveals the greasy fingerprints of fraud and prostitution.
Hide yourself.
Naw, just the normal capitalists at play. LOL!
The last part is about faux money being pumped into the system.
QE forever when they stop the shoe will drop and so will the the inflated stock market.
Thought-provoking, insightful, at times funny, devoid of divisiveness and spectacularly well written, Jim. Welcome back. I thought the old you was gone.
well folks, it’s all going down as rightly predicted here by many. not long to wait for more collapse to take hold.
fodase
Instead the dollar is stronger, not weaker.
well you can’t deny that. there are a lot of people that have been saying the dollar was like to crash for many years now, but they have all been wrong.
fodase: “there are a lot of people that have been saying the dollar was like to crash for many years now, but they have all been wrong.”
But perhaps everyday that passes with no dollar crash just increases the probability that we are closer to a possible crash, which could be … wait for it … “just around the corner” maybe Sept. 13, 2015.
Or, as some say, “the dollar doesn’t crash, until it does.”
Others say you can’t unlink dollars from gold and print paper fiat money forever without consequences and they talk about the Weimar Republic. (buy wheelbarrows now!) Of course, they could be wrong about that. We learned from Weimar how to prevent another Weimar.
Nobody really knows the future. What we do know is that today the dollar is strong, against all expectations of believers in gold.
Nobody really knows the future. What we do know is that today the dollar is strong, against all expectations of believers in gold.
And so, if I may, the wpa_ccc extrapolation of the future is: since nobody knows the future and the future is apparently bright by your narrow estimation, the future must be bright. Does that about capture it? Welcome to Wall St my friend. You are now a licensed broker of “hope and change.”
You better take a real close look at the Yuan and SDR (special draw rights) as soon as people decide to dump the green back and pay for oil with something else look da fuq out.
Hello volodya & other sane persons,
re | “Mister Darling, oligarchs and governing circles lie like hell and don’t care because they have national institutions fully on their side. It’s the mockery that’s hard to take, the sneering challenge, like that from any schoolyard bully: what are you gonna do about it?
And this gum-flappery we see from statistical agencies and their cheer-leaders (like on this site) reminds you of communist era propaganda.”-v.
Or, of ‘Baghdad Bob’ passionately insisting over the Iraqi airwaves that Saddam had everything under control – even as US tanks rolled into the capital. Personally, I enjoy the dissonance. It just sounds and smells like the end of another corrupt regime to me.
“Given that, here too, we have these farcical lies, there’s an inevitable question: what about enforcement actions here?”-v.
We are seeing repression increasing even as logistical support for it crumbles. ‘Extinction Bursts’ are typical of regimes on their way out. The good news is that that they don’t last long or accomplish much in the strategic sense, because they can’t be sustained. If they could then the regime in question wouldn’t need to take desperate measures, would it?
Regarding pushback against their repression, I doubt anyone could take them apart strategically any faster than they are doing it themselves… On the other hand, enticing them with ‘one last round’ while they trip and flail their way out the back door doesn’t hurt… No need to warn them about watching their step – besides, who can tell them anything anyway? They never listen.
😉
“We have some idea thanks to guys like Snowden…
I wonder if the apologists are getting paid a lot. Have the apologists not taken the measure of their employers? Willful blindness maybe, because, as sure as night follows day, they will be abandoned…. when the sinkhole opens, and their master ignores their plea for help as he surely will, will the money have been worth it?”-v.
The beauty of the Snowden Action was that it didn’t require any any cooperation or input from a broken American system. It yanked the rug out from under the game that an NSA-assisted plutocracy has been running on the rest of the world (especially the ‘developing’ world) for fifty years (to an ever-greater extent) at a critical juncture – which is why so much attention has been focused on the man.
“Maybe, in the fullness of time, the apologists will recant, maybe in the light of having been betrayed. How likely is that?”-v.
Oh, the minions of the failed regime always have a story – my old man told me about the stories he heard; all the ‘reasons’ the ‘explanations’, etc. – in post-Nazi Europe. Very amusing stuff. Even funnier to watch them explain it to the judge…
😉
“For now, it sure is nice to know what the NSA is up to, isn’t it.”-v.
We know that the BRICS-bloc has benefitted. They’re completey over any delusions about what they’re dealing with. Eurasia consolidates, Germany remembers where it’s bread is actually getting buttered, and a multi-polar world gets closer every day.
Radio Free America now up and operating on this channel!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7nd34_radio-nowhere-bruce-springsteen_music
@ DA;
re | “The fact that the US is now considering the advantages of a global war with Russia should tell you how desperate things are behind the scenes. No rational government would consider such a thing were there not very real concerns behind the scenes about resource shortages.”-d.
Well, if you’re an oligarchy that percieves that it has ‘nothing to lose’ (ha!) then you might give it whirl…
DA, You might enjoy this interesting ‘evidence’ of the glorious American economc ‘recovery’;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-10/why-capita-energy-consumption-recession-levels-after-six-years-recovery
Yep. When you actually meaasure the un-gameable numbers, the picture clears up: per-capita energy usage, retail-chain bankruptcy, housing starts, timber demand, the BDI… Basically, just look at all the stuff we use to punch holes through the fog of other propaganda machines.
MD, a fellow puncher of holes in the official story. Word my brother, WORD!
DA: “You are now a licensed broker of “hope and change.”
Thank you, DA. I have been hopeful about our survival since the 70s and we are still here. Hope and change has served me well through the good times and the bad times for five decades.
You’re welcome wpa_ccc And I sincerely hope it continues to serve you well too, even as I’m certain it won’t. But either way, I’m sure we’ll both find out soon enough. In the proverbial “long run,” I, like you, assume that that there must be more to come, but who can be sure about all that, nevermind our place in that purely speculative firmament? Fair to say at this point that I merely assume less than you do in that regard.
While oil world storage is being filled up, is oil going down to $40?
And what about the economic performance of US oil shale companies in a further drop in oil prices?
To a large extent the answer to the riddle was given late February by the meeting of the management of the largest Wall Street banks, representatives of the Treasury with the top management and key stakeholders leading shale oil companies. The meeting was held at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park.
At the meeting particular concern was expressed by the head of Chesapeake Energy, which had the capitalization of 11 billion with total liabilities exceeding 25 billion and the company Continental Resources, the debt which exceeds almost twice its assets.
Representatives of the Treasury and the banks reported that they will maximize their loyalty to shale oil companies, and if necessary to carry out additional lending and restructuring of existing debt, delaying payments by 5-10 years not only of the principal, but also minimal 3.5% interest.
Following the meeting, you can make a clear conclusion that the US leadership and tied to the Fed major banks will lend to US shale oil companies almost for free as long as it is required for the realization of the American political and economic goals, I.e. till the time when it is no longer needed to support very low oil prices, making profitable extraction of oil from shale. Today, it is obvious that the political and economic need to maintain a very low oil prices is associated with attempts of United States to put to its knees Russian and Iranian economy.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1903516.html
How Far Below Zero Can Interest Rates Go?
Several central banks in Europe have ventured past the frontier of conventional monetary policy by pushing some of their policy rates below zero.
This raises two interesting questions. First, how is this possible? And second, will it work?
Evan Soltas, who blogs at economics & thought, says people seem willing to tolerate credit card and related fees of around 2%, and reckons people would tolerate negative interest rates of 3% before switching to cash. The European Central Bank puts the total economic cost of cash at 2.3% of the face value of transactions.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/03/09/how-far-below-zero-can-interest-rates-go/
Professor Katasonov: Negative interest rates is a sign of post-capitalist economy
The FED policy of “quantitative easing” brought many American banks to the point that they were in the red in deposit and lending operations. If US banks earn billions, it is not in the traditional deposit and lending, but in speculation. Many of them are de facto investment banks.
The classical capitalism is characterized by so-called “overproduction of products and commodities” (as Marx wrote in “Capital”), that leads to price deflation. Capitalism of the XXI century (at least in the West) is characterized by the “overproduction of money” that leads to falling price of money.
One cannot but agree with those authors who call this phenomenon the “death of the money.” Dead Man begins to cool down, it manifests in lowering of body temperature – interest rates – and their falling into the negative zone.
The “Money Masters” – the main shareholders of a private corporation under the name “Federal Reserve”, have started planned dismantling of the old model of capitalism and its replacement by the new socio-economic model.
Banks will transform themselves from traditional deposit and lending institutions into centers of control and accounting, but not of the financial flows and financial assets, but labor and production. Or rather – control of human behavior and thoughts. The world will be constructed on the principle of one large barrack, in which the role of money in the traditional sense will be minimized.
The famous German socialist and financier Rudolf Hilferding at the beginning of the last century wrote a book on a post-capitalist model of society – “Finance Capital”. He called such society “organized capitalism” which, in his opinion, will have to have symptoms of socialism (in particular, disappearing of spontaneous development of the economy). Bankers, in his opinion – the main driving force behind the recent history, they provide an evolutionary transition from “wild” capitalism to socialism through a stage of “organized capitalism”.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1903774.html
Finca: “While oil world storage is being filled up, is oil going down to $40?”
Finca, the theory known as “peak oil” would argue against oil going down to $40. Peak oil was proposed for the first time by M.K. Hubbert in the 1950s as a way to describe the production pattern of crude oil.
According to Hubbert, the production curve is “bell shaped” and approximately symmetric. Hubbert’s theory was verified with good approximation for the case of oil production in the United States that peaked in 1971, and is now being applied to the worldwide oil production. It is generally believed that the global peak of oil production (“peak oil”) has already occurred in 2005 or 2006. So we are about ten years post-peak, on the downward slope, which argues against oil going down to $40.
Are you sure, Finca, that oil is going to go down? The easy fruit has been picked. The increased extraction costs argue against oil going down to $40.
Unless, you are saying the supposedly depleted fields/reserves are being replenished by an abiotic process of oil formation. Then it makes sense that oil would go down to $40, $30, $20, and then to $10 a barrel because the supply would be increasing as reserves replenish.
The abiotic oil formation theory undermines the concept of peak oil, i.e. the notion that world oil production is destined to reach a maximum that will be followed by an irreversible decline.
Your price of $40 seems to support abiotic petroleum formation.
Still, I can see your point, Finca, about $40 oil. Oil is cheaper today than it was in 1970. In 1970 a barrel of crude oil averaged about $13 a barrel. Adjusted for inflation, that same barrel of oil should cost about $78 today. Instead, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for April delivery traded at just under $50 a barrel in the noon hour on Friday, March 6, 2015.
“Your price of $40 seems to support abiotic petroleum formation.” –wpa
No. All it supports is manipulation of oil prices by US interests to bring down the economies of the “rebel” countries: Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
It could only work for relatively short period of time in which US is hoping to accomplish “regime change” in one or all of rebel countries.
US have put itself in a Zugzwang by its failing policies in ME, Europe and Pacific.
Zugzwang (German for “compulsion to move”) is a situation found in chess and other games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage because they must make a move when they would prefer to pass and not to move. The fact that the player is compelled to move means that his position will become significantly weaker. A player is said to be “in zugzwang” when any possible move will worsen his position.
US are doomed to continue to play the game at a constant stake increase. And it is not only dictated by economic or foreign policy interests, but also the nature of the internal political struggle in the United States. Next, we probably will see military escalation in Baltic.
US are constantly making mistakes. For instance, they have grossly overestimated the potential of Ukrainian Armed Forces and hastily started the January failed offensive at Debaltosevo, got badly humiliated.
In response to lower oil prices, Russia did what it long planned to do – devaluate in half the Russian currency – so the Russian budget is filled up with even greater rate in rubles then before $100/barrel oil.
So Russian budget could easily cope with lesser dollar intake from oil sales and still fulfill its social obligations, they even indexed the pensions to real inflation now, which is around only 10 – 15%. US hoped to see it at at least 100%.
That is advantage of having a real economy, the luxury US no longer have.
India has opted for Russian fighters
Major deal by India to buy 126 French Rafale fighter jets is at an impasse. Now, India intends to conclude a major contract with Russia for the purchase of fifth generation fighter.
India expects to receive the first aircraft in 36 months after the signing of the contract writes The Times of India.
France has paid dearly for its blind following of US politics and refusing to fulfill its contractual obligation on selling to Russia 2 Mistral helicopter carriers, which have been already paid for.
Volatility, our beloved idiot shill. -332 points today.
To people of the reality-based stripe, that’s a very bad portent that reveals the greasy fingerprints of fraud and prostitution.
Hide yourself.
Shills calling out shills — there’s nothing more pathetic. 332 points on 18,000 is not volatility. Learn some maths. It’s not a material variation.
But even if it was, it shouldn’t concern you unless, of course, you’re a member of the vaunted and infamous 1% — that group that owns all the stocks. Tell me, if the stock market were to drop to zero tomorrow, how does that affect you? It doesn’t affect me in the least, nor does it affect most people. So why the concern for phantom, non-existent volatility in stock valuations?
Here’s a graph for those who are equally concerned about stock valuation volatility. If you’re not a member of the 1%, this shouldn’t be your concern unless you hate to see the rich suffer.
Talk about truthinesslessness, this fawning concern for the wealthy by unwashed plebs just doesn’t add up.
Distribution of U.S. Stock, Bond and Mutual Fund Ownership
WTF?
You’re really grasping at straws these days; things not going so well for your paymasters?
Your accusations are simply more of your muddling misdirections.
US have put itself in a Zugzwang
Russian propagandists are masters of projection, whether they intend it or not. That statement should read as follows:
Russia has put itself in a Zugzwang
This is how I read Russian propaganda for the truth. Just substitute Russia for America (and The West) and it’s a Russian confession. In their zealous and incessant effort to cast blame outward and not inward, they recount and identify their foibles and vulnerability.
When you learn to crack the propaganda code, you see quite clearly Russia is ready to collapse, once again, any day now. It’s wobbling like Boris Yeltsin after an all-nighter.
“Russia has put itself in a Zugzwang” — Cold
Just conduct a small logical experiment. Assume that there is no confrontation in Ukraine or elsewhere and things are going “normal” – more or less as before 2014.
Add to that existing plans of BRICS to either take fair control of the IMF, according to previously signed (but not ratified bu US Congress) agreement, or to put into effect its own alternative – BRICS Development bank and introduce its own trade settlement mechanism not based on US Dollar.
Seems perfectly reasonable, does it not? After all, healthy competition what it is all about. Monopolies are harmful to free trade.
What would happen under those “perfect” conditions giving that FED and ECB prints money like there is no tomorrow? No need to be a rocket scientist.
It is an “open secret” what BRICS want to do. Introduce a simple multi-currency trade settlement system in which the trade deficits will be settled by gold bullion, not by debt paper, held on the deposit by the honest broker and clearing house – BRICS bank, sort of the system world had before 1971.
Anybody will have an open invitation to join.
Assume that there is no confrontation in Ukraine or elsewhere and things are going “normal” – more or less as before 2014.
Your thought experiment falls on its face. Things were not going normal prior to 2014 and the fabricated crisis in Ukraine. What is “normal” anyway? There is no “normal.” “Normal” means different things to different groups of people.
Since 1999, The Kremlin has been formalizing the Kleptocracy that is Russia. It’s now a state-sanctioned and state-run Kleptocracy. Its constitution reads as follows, or if it doesn’t it should:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident — that every man (woman, children and sexual deviants have no rights and are not included) possesses the unalienable right to lie, cheat, steal and murder as he pleases and the state’s first and highest priority is to engender, facilitate and protect that most basic right to plunder.”
Yeah, Cold, I know… When the logic fails, call on emotions…Exactly what American Mass Media is doing.
And so, if I may, the wpa_ccc extrapolation of the future is: since nobody knows the future and the future is apparently bright by your narrow estimation, the future must be bright. Does that about capture it? Welcome to Wall St my friend. You are now a licensed broker of “hope and change.”
i do not understand. why shouldn ‘t it be bright if everything is going okay after some shock in 2008? isn’t a trend a trend until like they said it is not? the dollar is really stronger and everyone said for years it would go overnight to zero and gold would be the only thing to spend.
everyone’s stocks are going up and up, so how is that a hope and change?
i think things mighte eventually collapse, too, but you have to argue against someone who shows a fact with another fact. be fair, i can’t call you a seller of doom and gloom if you show me that there is no more coal left.
When FED keeps printing money and they have nothin’ to buy, where do they go? Used to be US Real Estate and Stock&Bond Market, now it’s mostly Bond&Stock Market. Need to keep boys busy playing with somthin’, or they start breaking things in the house.
what would the boys break in the house? i don’t know what you mean with that one.
Don’t you have kids? You better keep ’em busy with some toys, or they start breaking things. Small will break small things, big kids will break the Nation.
In Washington, madness blooms like flowers in spring.
First it was a breach of custom and protocol with that Netanyahu spectacle.
Now it gets worse. Republican senators sent a letter to Iran saying phooey on these nuclear negotiations. If there’s going to be a deal it has to be a treaty and treaties need the congressional stamp.
To which the President and the Democrats say phooey on that, this is just a political agreement and most international log-rolling doesn’t come up the level of “treaty”.
Republicans say so why is Obama keeping congress in the dark?
How do we see all this? IMO, at best, all this is a thumb in the eye to Obama personally, a president that Republicans dislike and are at odds with policy-wise.
It’s becoming pretty clear, at least to me, that Republicans are refusing to accept Obama’s authority. Why? Obama’s race is a side issue. It’s simply that Red State America does not want to be in the same country as Blue State America. And Obama is not the President of Red State America.
V writes:
“It’s simply that Red State America does not want to be in the same country as Blue State America. And Obama is not the President of Red State America.”
Actually, Red State America only thinks it wants to be separate from Blue State America. But when the Govt dollars from Blue State America stop flowing, those ‘by-their-own-bootstrap’ Red State delusional’s would start to take aim at those that have been the culprits all along: Red State/GOP.
So the higher ups in the GOP really don’t want to divorce Blue State because Red State America is deeply reliant on Govt “handouts”. Thus, the powder keg would be lit and blame would fall squarely on the truly responsible party of outsourcing frauds and phonies. It’s just so much more convenient to just blame it on the black guy as “Southern Man” will “eat anything” including bullshit, to invoke that old TV commercial.
Many tricks in the troll’s trick bag. A shop-worn one though, adopt the mantle of innocent cluelessness.
They got 1 around every corner. Think tank? Master debater in HS/college – why NOT. How about that Pe(e)can Pie one…
@$$-soker still living the black life on the Tejax/Mehico border? Or has he finally gone all-in, Brazilian rainforest-style (rhetorical).
Q’s sure been empty of thought, of late. I wonder, what does he think? The resident racist sure doesn’t have a lack of spam – to be sure.
My thought(s)? We are driving planetary extinction through exponential means (population/extraction/pollution). Anything else *really* need to be said?!?
Just from the news: Alexander Dugin, philosophy prof. of Moscow State University got on the American sanction list.
That should make the guy really happy, finally he got noticed.
https://vk.com/duginag
Here’s a little truth.. Non-partisan poll of likely voters in 2016 reveals the following: (grammar!) 67% of Americans support government regulation of drug prices, 68% polled support college students getting same rate for education loans as big banks, about 1/2 point, 64% want fair trade laws that protect workers and environment, 72% want approval for 401Ks to pay mortgage debt, 53% want a 40 billion a year jobs bill for infrastructure projects, 59% support ending tax loopholes to corporations who send jobs overseas. But, guess what, none of these are going to happen because Republicans won’t have it!! So, keep on voting Republican! Please. As far as Scott Walker for President of my country, the guy doesn’t have a college education. Should someone who does not have a college degree be running our country??!??! Retail managers have to have a college degree for crying out loud! Aside from JHK being a good candidate for the position, I don’t believe Scott Walker is.
Millenials, take notice, and please view the film by Mr. Anderson Fall and Winter. OMG, it is incredible. Nice garden JHK. Keep up the good work. iwaybf
Honestly I see people with PHD’s I wouldn’t trust to be county dog catcher what is a college degree really worth these day’s.
Look at the average college kid they are idiots college appears to be indoctrination centers more than centers of advanced thinking and education.
Gimme someone with common sense and the abilty to hire people for cabinet positions and will actually listen to people who are experts in their fields.
The President needs to be able to present himslef in a cogent manner, not look like a moron, and make reasonable decisions.
Most of all he needs to know how to lead something our current resident in the WH fails at.
Methinks thou hast watcheth too much Thos Hartmann!!! And, he quoted a ton of 52-56% *percentage point differences*, which equivocates to 76-78% IN FAVOR, 22-24% opposed… Your stats above didn’t even come close to that 4::1 differential – heh!
Self-trigger – pelagian, indeed (Thos Merton)!
youtube.com/watch?v=2WXo4ktQrg8
Putin Pulls Out of Post-Cold War Arms Treaty
The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was an agreement signed in 1990 between the 16 North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries and six Warsaw Pact countries. It set caps on the number of soldiers, tanks, artillery pieces and other non-nuclear military assets that could be stationed in Europe.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-pulls-post-cold-war-203200839.html
Russia has about 21,000 tanks, most of them stationed in Urals. Now in response to American possible arms shipments to Ukraine and Latvia, Russia expects to reposition several thousand tanks to its Western border.
Chekhov’s gun
Chekhov’s gun is a dramatic principle which requires that every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed.
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.
Anton Chekhov
I seriously doubt Red State “freeloaders” want to divorce themselves from Blue State largesse:
http://www.selectsmart.com/commentary/indymap.png
I’m doubting the usefulness of this map when it has California seeming like a thriving state. Fact: There are 11 states where there are more people on welfare than working and in the Western USA the members of the Eleven include California, Hawaii, and New Mexico.
Your map also makes New Jersey seem solvent. I agree that many Red states have people that are hoodwinked by Hannity, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh to vote against their own best interests but this map doesn’t express that reality very well.
Better to ask which states will do better when America falls. The criterion will be ratio of people to farm land and agricultural production and of course, racial homogeneity. So called Red States will do far better as the better part of you knows. The person who wrote the above post is not Dr Jekyll but Mr Hyde.
Red is the color of Revolution and Blue the color of Conservatism. How clever of them to reverse the natural color symbolism. And in so doing they reveal themselves: the Liberal Agenda is a rebellion against the natural order.
I would have liked to have been around that afternoon in the summer of 1915, on a Hollywood studio backlot, when John Ford, Charlie Chaplin, Jack London and Wyatt Earp sat around over a bottle of whiskey, shooting the sh-t.
Or in 1885 when Oscar Wilde, on his American tour, spent a convivial evening with Jefferson Davis at his plantation in Mississippi.
brh
Jeff corresponded with one of the Popes. The Pope couldn’t back him politically, but agreed that Yankee Capitalism was an immense and growing evil, that threatened the entire world. How right he was. Of course no doubt you still think the North was right. You will change your opinion when it seems the majority of your cohort is changing or at least the majority of your Fox news opinion makers.
Oil is cheaper today than it was in 1970.
In 1970 a barrel of crude oil averaged about $13 a barrel. Adjusted for inflation, that same barrel of oil should cost about $78 today.
Instead, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for April delivery traded at just under $50 a barrel in the noon hour on Friday, March 6, 2015.
Hello Darkness my old friend.
…And the words of the prophet are, indeed, written on the subway walls….
In no area does truthinesslessness show its face more than on the subject of race. Indeed truthinesslessness, or the organized doctrine of contempt for Truth, was developed in regards to race and then spread to every other area of our common life, especially economics. Let’s untie the knots where they started. This documentary is a fine tool for so doing.
http://www.aconversationaboutrace.com/
Of course economic trickery was nothing new in either Capitalism or Socialism. But the modern PC forms of it came from Cultural Marxism, the same place as the Race Hustle came from.
Black Lies Matter!
“Cultural Marxism”
I’ve got to hand it to you Janos, you’re definitely playing well above your usual game with that one! Playing racism and communism off in one coordinated slur.
Good on you buddy, I think you might have finally realized your fullest potential!
I for one am not looking forward to the next presidential election. It’s shaping up to be one of the most worthless elections in US history, at one of the exact times when the country needs an extremely dynamic leader in the executive.
Plus I don’t even wanna guess what the ‘issues’ are gonna be… emails? benghazi? All the important, future shattering problems and topics are going to be completely ignored in lieu of buzzwords.
Although you’re probably right, it’s too soon to write off the ’16 elections. Many times the early front runner peaks early and then fades. We don’t yet know who the final candidates will be. I don’t have too much faith – if any- in quality presidential candidates winning the election. However, at various times in our past, great leaders emerged when desperately needed.
However, at various times in our past, great leaders emerged when desperately needed.
That’s the story anyway. Most of those “stories” were just that. Conveniently concocted fictions to match the “facts” after the fact. IOW, we won and therefore were “heroic.”
It is not possible for a decent human being to be elected to public office in any social democracy….the masses of asses insist on lying piece of shit frauds promising lots of free stuff, and won’t accept anything better. We here in Ft. Meade and Langley find the charade extremely amusing….and so easy to manipulate.
nsa: “It is not possible for a decent human being to be elected to public office in any social democracy… We here in Ft. Meade and Langley find the charade extremely amusing….and so easy to manipulate.”
Thanks, nsa, for manipulating Barack Hussein Obama into office.
Thanks to Obama I (millions of others) have been able to get the best healthcare insurance of my life at a great price.
Right decent man, that Barack… Nice choice, nsa!
Fox News: Start killing Russians
A military analyst has told Fox News that the only way to turn the tide in conflict in Eastern Ukraine is to “start killing Russians.” The former general alleged there are 12,000 Russian regular troops currently “camped” on Ukrainian territory.
On Tuesday, Fox News Channel aired a segment featuring Robert H. Scales, a former United States Army major general, who shared his own plan to settle the Ukrainian crisis. The recipe is simple: kill the alleged Russian soldiers roaming eastern Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvn3LEx9dhw
“The recipe is simple: kill the alleged Russian soldiers roaming eastern Ukraine.”
“This is nonsense, there are no Russian troops in the east of Ukraine,” Vladimir Putin said.
http://rt.com/news/putin-qa-session-questions-084/
Since Putin denies there are any Russian soldiers in the Ukraine, he cannot protest that Russian soldiers are being killed.
Russian soldiers are expendable anyway. If 12,000 are killed, Putin can send 20,000 more. Kiev can do whatever it wants since Putin has not admitted there are Russian soldiers in the eastern Ukraine.
Nice f*ckin logic, wpa. You are forgetting that the bulk of Novorusian army are the locals – former miners and tractor drivers. Yes, they are trained and armed by Russia, but they are defending their homes and their families from the Nazi.
Besides, what happened to famous American satellite technology – can’t take a single picture of Russian convoys crossing the border, can you? Suck it up.
Constantine Dushenov, director of the analytical think tank “The Orthodox Russia”:
West as a civilization – as a culture that has developed over the last five hundred years, since the beginning of the Age of Discovery, when the West came to the world stage and become a planetary civilization and further strengthens its historical, cultural, geopolitical dominance is incapable of truly peaceful negotiations. When the conquistadors arrived in America, they did not negotiate. When the West started the war with Christianity in itself, there was no an attempt to work out any agreement, there was just a goal to destroy Christianity, which was done with great success. In the West, there is no Christianity now; there is only a pitiful semblance of what Christian culture once was.
West has never tried to negotiate with anybody.
Today, Western civilization is inherently the civilization of Sodom. Their main idea is to put on the same level the good and the evil. This is the idea of universal, devilish, infernal scale.
As for Russia, there are several factors that indicate that Russia recently went into pre-war mobilization.
In September 2013, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced plans to create a National Center for Russian defense management (NCRD), and in December 2014 it started to work.
It is now being called NCRD. When it was first introduced by Shoigu, he said that it would be “Supreme Command Headquarters”. In 1000 years of Russian history, such centers were organized only twice, and both times at the beginning of World Wars.
First time it was formed after the start of WWI. Then it was headed by the Emperor, it became a sovereign structure and received unlimited powers. The second time it happened in a quarter century, on the next day after the beginning of the Great Patriotic War – was formed Command Headquarters, it was headed by Marshal Timoshenko, but on the eighth of July 1941, it has been reformatted to Supreme Command Headquarters, and was headed by Stalin personally.
According to the specs NCRD meets all the criteria of the Supreme Command Headquarters. This is not the center of just defense management, is the control center of the entire military organization of the state, including the economy, mobilization, all law enforcement agencies, the General Staff, etc.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, in his recent speech said that President Putin headed the Military Industrial Commission and transferred control of the Russian entire military industrial complex under his personal control.
Now this is vital because Russia is in a conflict situation. Russia is facing very serious, acute challenges, and the President – the only one who can keep abreast. There is an absolute analogy with Stalin during the World War II.
It is hoped that the conflict to which humanity slips will be cathartic, and people will stop a mad feud with Heaven, and the West will stop its rampant theomachism, which in recent decades has been the main raison d’être of Western civilization.
but they are defending their homes and their families from the Nazi.
But I thought it was the Jews who are running the show in Kiev. How can it be both Nazis and Jews? Have I forgotten a group? Should we throw in homosexuals for good measure? According to Russian propaganda, Kiev is a Western den of iniquity run by an incomprehensible consortium of Jews, Nazis and homosexuals seeking to demoralize and debase the pure Christian essence of Russia.
Russian propaganda is absurdly inconsistent, incoherent and unrelenting. Russians are awkward and transparent in their endeavor to obfuscate. The radical far “Right” and far “Left” in America are the perfect target audience for such crude measures. It’s a perfect complement to their steady diet of high fructose corn pone and soy yogurt.
And for those who think the meddling in Ukraine by America and The West is somehow equivalent with Russia’s meddling, you’re dead wrong and engaging in moral equivalency and conflation. Ukraine is begging for economic and military aid from The West and The West is less than generous. In fact, both Clinton and then Obama had their hand in disarming Ukraine so it could be rendered vulnerable to a revanchist Russia seeking to expand its influence and territory lost during the collapse of the USSR.
Flashback: Senator Obama pushed bill that helped destroy more than 15,000 TONS of ammunition, 400,000 small arms and 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine
Since Putin denies there are any Russian soldiers in the Ukraine, he cannot protest that Russian soldiers are being killed.
All the proof you need right there that this individual is an imposter. What it wants is the exact opposite of the absurdity it disseminates as propaganda.
Ukrainians don’t need the likes of it advocating for it. Using “the Ukraine” is a calling card and indicates what side of the fence you’re on. It’s the same as using Amerika versus America.
A military analyst has told Fox News that the only way to turn the tide in conflict in Eastern Ukraine is to “start killing Russians.”
No, don’t kill them — capture them. Offer ridiculously excessive rewards for the capture of Russian special forces in Ukraine and then once they’re captured hold them up to the world as proof of Russia’ s lies and hypocrisy. Treat them well and give them a chance to defect because you know that if they’re returned to Russia, they’ll be incarcerated and/or executed. If you kill them, it will just further disenchant the Russian public to The West and throw it further into the arms of The Kremlin propaganda machine.
Many times the early front runner peaks early and then fades. We don’t yet know who the final candidates will be.
Jeb Bush is the winner. He is being played as a Dark Horse and will not be the early frontrunner just as was the case with Obama in his first term bid. He was the underdog — the Dark Horse (haha) against Hillary and miraculously beat her out in the primaries.
Go Jeb!
I think so to. Absent any major scandal anyway, and he looks pretty clean in that regard so far.
Yes he loathes the base but thinks he can win without giving them anything. He may well be right. Between the mindless who just vote for R, young independents sick of the Democratic Party, illegals, and general fraud – he may well pull it out. Especially if he goes against Hillary.
Both parties stopped listening to their “base” years ago. It just took us 8 years of the Shrub and 8 years of Obama to figure it out.
Russia’s Remarkable Renaissance
Something remarkable is taking place in Russia, and it’s quite different from what we might expect. Rather than feel humiliated and depressed Russia is undergoing what I would call a kind of renaissance, a rebirth as a nation. This despite or in fact because the West, led by the so-called neo-conservatives in Washington, is trying everything including war on her doorstep in Ukraine, to collapse the Russian economy, humiliate Putin and paint Russians generally as bad. In the process, Russia is discovering positive attributes about her culture, her people, her land that had long been forgotten or suppressed.
As we have earlier detailed, Putin and an increasing number of influential Russian industrialists, some of the same who a few years ago would have fled to their posh London townhouses, have decided to stand and fight for the future of Russia as a sovereign state. Oops! That wasn’t supposed to happen in a world of globalization, of dissolution of the nation-state. National pride was supposed to be a relic like gold. Not in Russia today.
http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/09/russia-s-remarkable-renaissance-2/
FTM, would it be fair to say that the zeitgeist in Russia right now is the polar opposite of that in the US, which, as JHK opines, is pretty much “anything goes and nothing matters“? If so, then the Russians are a fortunate people indeed. This kind of social mood breeds hopefulness, quite the opposite of what we experience here in the US. Unfortunately, our culture (to the extent that it can be called a culture) thrives on hopelessness. In fact, that’s the secret driving force of our madness.
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate”.
Judging by Russian blogosphere, it is quite the opposite of what the American is – it is quite remarkable. Young Russians – in their 30s – apparently are shooting at becoming “the new America”.
I am surprised and somewhat envious, and a little regretful that I’ve left Russia in late 80s.
However, I’m not sure that I would have been able to survive the Russian 90s – I’m more of a technical type of guy, not buy-and-sell type, so, probably it was a good decision at the time – only now I realized how short the life really is.
We’ve apparently bypassed our decadent phase and gone straight to degenerate. Oh well, it was amusing while it lasted.
And this renaissance can be sabotaged by making Russia mongrelized by miscegenation with Chechens and Mongolians. That’s the plan as you laid out a few months ago.
Looks like Archdruid was reading comments this week:
The first news story followed the official announcement that the official unemployment rate here in the United States dropped to 5.5% last month…
This jubilation makes perfect sense so long as you don’t happen to know that the official unemployment rate in the United States doesn’t actually depend on the number of people who are out of work. What it indicates is the percentage of US residents who happen to be receiving unemployment benefits—which, as I think most people know at this point, run out after a certain period. Right now there are a huge number of Americans who exhausted their unemployment benefits a long time ago, can’t find work, and would count as unemployed by any measure except the one used by the US government these days. As far as officialdom is concerned, they are nonpersons in very nearly an Orwellian sense, their existence erased to preserve a politically expedient fiction of prosperity.
What say ye wpa?
Probably the best argument for AGW is that its deniers are so actively in denial. What’s the deal here? If AGW is such a stupid idea, why bother giving it credibility by implementing such foolish measures?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/09/florida-state-most-affected-by-climate-change-reportedly-bans-term-climate-change/
Yes, the Deniers should be sent to FEMA camps. All the good people are in agreement on this.
A little dramatic there, Janos. What’s your stake in it? You an oil magnate or something?
Syria has officially gone medievil….no electricity and 40-50 yr avrg life span. Officially, most nations do not care what happens to that country and the people who still choose to inhabit that space.
A preview of coming attractions here in the USA.
DA and Cold:
John Ellis Bush (aka Jeb) has no chance of gaining widespread Republican acceptance. He was rebuked at this year’s CPAC, when conservatives walked out on his speech.
John Ellis Bush is too liberal on key issues like immigration, abortion, and the Common Core. He is married to a Mexican. He did not serve in the military. A democrat could be nominated with that baggage, but not John Ellis Bush.
John Ellis actually said this: “People of character can be conservative and good people can be liberal”! The Republican Party will not embrace John Ellis’ and his unholy liberal, immigrant-loving miscegenation.
John Ellis Bush is too liberal on key issues like immigration, abortion, and the Common Core. He is married to a Mexican. He did not serve in the military. A democrat could be nominated with that baggage, but not John Ellis Bush.
You might be right about that. I’m not wed to the guy or anything, just personally think he’s the least nutty one of the bunch.
“But I thought it was the Jews who are running the show in Kiev. How can it be both Nazis and Jews? ” — Cold
You know, Cold, beats the shit outta me. But, apparently, that how it goes out there. You have a “healthy” mix of 33% Jews, 33% Homosexuals and 33% Nazis what amounts 125% of moral deviants.
I know my math sucks, but that’s the quasi-reality of Kiev.
My grandma used to say: “Live among Russians, die among Jews”. I never fully understood what the hell she meant by that.
“My grandma used to say: “Live among Russians, die among Jews”. I never fully understood what the hell she meant by that.” Finca Nubloso
Very good advice. You had a wise grandmother.
There is another reason John Ellis will not make it to the White House.
Ask Mika.
Vatican reptiles?
He was rebuked at this year’s CPAC, when conservatives walked out on his speech.
Wait until the 2016 CPAC straw poll. Guess who won the 1999 CPAC straw poll? No, it wasn’t George W. Bush, it was Gary Bauer. Who the hell is/was Gary Bauer? George W. Bush did win it in 2000 though, and Jeb could very well win the CPAC straw poll in 2016 despite this year’s rude and lackluster response. Even if Jeb doesn’t win the CPAC straw poll in 2016, it doesn’t matter. CPAC straw polls, and straw polls in general, are unreliable indicators. Jeb doesn’t represent them (CPAC members), he represents the monied interests. The CPAC folks will have to learn to cotton to him like a husband and wife learn to cotton to one another in an arranged marriage. They’ll learn to love Jeb just as they learned to love W.
And if one thing can possibly unite them, it’s HillBillary running for the Ds. The thought of the Clinton’s inhabiting the White House again is the stuff of conservative nightmares. Hell, if I was going to bother to vote at all, even I would vote for “John Ellis Bush,” as wpa is so fond of calling him.
You’re right. They swallowed hard and accepted Romney last time, and Jeb will likely be a whole lot easier pill to swallow than that.
My grandmother used to say, “plenty to eat in this country.”
only now I realized how short the life really is.
This is superb, by the way. Sometimes, when I’m distracted, I actually think you are/were Russian.
Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case against American general for his call on Fox News to “kill Russians”
With respect to US retired Major General Robert Scales of US Army criminal charges were brought up under the article “Public calls for aggressive war, committed with the use of the mass media.”
http://ria.ru/incidents/20150312/1052246682.html
So much for Obama’s “reset”.
wpa,
Did you get a free Obamaphone also so you can call up when the food stamps are late arriving?
Yes, Jesus H Christ, emails. Sigh.
Those fucking Clintons, it’s always something. Now it’s emails. Not just any old emails but emails of the Secretary of State of these United States of America.
So many questions. Like, wtf, didn’t someone say while she was in office, Hillary sweet-cheeks, you can’t store your digital burblings AS SECRETARY OF FUCKING STATE on a private server? Was everyone over there, including her, totally brain-dead?
Didn’t anyone say to her, if you keep doing this there could be big problems, like fer instance, national security issues with adversarial nation states and, at best Lucy, a whole lotta ‘splainin’ to do?
Who cooked up that Monty Python-ish Ministry of Silly Stories “one device” nonsense? Did she come up with it? Give me strength, what cretins.
More cretinous still, 30,000 emails deleted. Cripes, wouldn’t anyone in his right mind think there’s a fishy-smell problem with this?
Oh, but wait, did Hillary not acknowledge that she DID use multiple devices? Shit, well, have to concoct another fable. Anyone have any ideas? You know, something with the right spice of truthinesslessness.
Hillary Clinton needs to be court-marshal for her grandiose fuckup with “destruction” of Russian class of SLBMs while being the Secretary of State – but “they” can’t talk about that, so expect various “emails” scandals appearing out of nowhere.
The Clintons have made many enemies obviously. Whether their enemies are any better than them is the question. And does this conflict represent a division amongst the Globalist themselves or is just a local power struggle within the Democratic Party?
Don’t forget the sex slave scandal: Bill is friends with Epstein, a convicted pedophile, and has gone with him to “orgy island”. One of Epstein’s victims came forward at an opportune moment to start spilling her guts. Dershowitz was also named. Desrsh was working on Roman Polanski’s pedophile case when he was named. Needless to say, it couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch of people.
They would make an interesting pair for another go-round in the WH, wouldn’t they? The neo-cons would be spitting fire 24/7 and BillHillary would be drinking it all in watching HillBillary twist in the political winds this time. Might make for a fun four years!
the dollar is rising again today, blasting the other currencies. when will the dollar crash?
volodya – good one!
Ask Volodya Putin – he knows
Voldoya Putin – a great name indeed.
no finca, that’s not the reference. volodya, please to tell.
Aggravation of confrontation in the US
First, 150,000 sign treason petition on US Republican letter to Iran including John McCain.
Second, Bill Clinton stated that he believes White House is behind Email Controversy
Third, two drunken Obama Secret Service agents smashed into the White House fence. The incident dates back to March 4 and reported by Wall Street Journal only today. WSJ newspaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has long had sympathy for Hillary Clinton.
Fourth, In Ferguson unknown persons opened fire on the police, two officers wounded
Apparently, the internal struggle in the US is aggravated to the obscene level, and begins to break out from under the carpet, where it is usually hides. There is amazing synchronicity with the events in Russia. Apparently, the whole world begins to enter the final phase of the struggle for the installation of a new order of things.
Yes, apparently the Brotherhood of Shadow has decided that Gotham’s (New York, but symbolizing our entire Civilization) time has come. The balance has to be restored.
Meanwhile back on the Finca:
http://www.dailystormer.com/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-why-was-his-final-book-never-translated-into-english/
Your hands are not clean and never will be, unless you be cleansed by the Water from Above.
Janos, you are way behind and your hatred of Jews is so 20th century. It’s not cool anymore. I told you, switch hating Scientologiests, rumor has it that they’ll be now used instead of Jews.
You see, it takes too long to raise a good hate-deserving Jew – almost 30 years, and the result is not guaranteed – he may, like the rest of us, turn out to be stupid and useless – not a lot, but those things happen – just look at the characters in Kiev.
On the other hand, you take already accomplished individual, apply a little brain-washing technique, and voila – you have a perfect instrument of the Wizards.
So I should believe you over Solzhenitsyn or Dostoyevsky on the Jewish question? I don’t think so….
Why don’t you help translate and disseminate the Book? It would be a fine service to the World.
wpa,
Did you get a free Obamaphone also so you can call up when the food stamps are late arriving?”
————–
Got much more than that, as did my whole multicultural neighborhood, including the whites. Thanks for Obama, nsa. Things are really looking up in employment, housing, etc.
nsa, could you lay off on sending those white Turner Diaries type guys? That sniper you sent to Ferguson to shoot the police was a sick idea. Your TIA is failing and you are exposed for the criminal you are.
Note to brh: Daesh is not invincible. The combined efforts of Iraq, USA, and Iran are degrading and destroying Daesh, just as Obama said, with no US boots on the ground.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi government forces and allied militias took control of the western neighborhoods of Tikrit on Thursday, military officials said, leaving only one area, including a palace complex once used by Saddam Hussein, in the hands of Islamic State militants.
“with no US boots on the ground” — wpa
And no US planes in the sky – ask liberators of Tikrit
You’ll have to excuse wpa. He’s still a naive American idealist.
Finca, isn’t it well past your bedtime? When do you find time to milk the cows, feed the chickens and hogs and tend to the crops? If you keep going at this online pace, soon enough it’ll be FailedFincaInTheMountains and the last thing we need is one less farmer and farm.
Cold and DA:
Regarding John Ellis, it would be great to have another Roman Catholic president, especially one who is inspired by the great Pope Francis.
John Ellis is married to a native-born Mexican, Columba. They have a lovely family and John Ellis is enlightened about the benefits of Mexican immigrants and will support a liberal immigration policy.
John Ellis Bush (aka “Jeb”) supports the Common Core State Standards that Obama, Arne Duncan, and Bill Gates support.
Yes, John Ellis would be a great president. But he won’t be nominated.
I’ll take your word for it wpa, but MY, you’ve really got a hard-on for John Ellis, don’t you? Anything personal we should talk about? Or are you just proving a point on this one?
yes it is fanny to see how republican party is said to be against immigrants (ahem mexicans) when John Ellis is married to one!
whee!
but you know most everyone is nicer when you get to know them (not everyone although).
i once shook mr. bush’s hand before he was president. never see bluer eyes until paul newman.
But he won’t be nominated.
No, he’ll be appointed as all presidents are.
fodase: “but you know most everyone is nicer when you get to know them”
“In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, “A number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker.” “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them”, he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it [the interview]. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?'” “What was her answer?” I wonder. “‘Please,'” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “‘don’t kill me.'” I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.” –Tucker Carlson
“No, he’ll be appointed as all presidents are”
Touché. Even the tree-hugging environmentalists?
“The conservative Club for Growth is readying an attack on John Ellis (“Jeb”) Bush for spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to restore the Florida Everglades, an early indication of how the former governor’s green legacy could haunt him on the road to the White House.”
The GOP thrives on early election season hyperbole. The cattle will all get in line once the big money boys place their bets. Then if HillBillary makes it through the Dem/Fem wickets, it will be game, set, and match for another round of the Bush bunch. Hell, ol’ W will be so tickled for his little brother that he’ll likely go back on the sauce again.
Plus, the independents will eat this up and so too will the soccer moms. Their recycling will be validated by a conservative candidate with conservative family values and not some fetus killer like Hillary.
I think his strongest point is the visuals. He SO looks the part! Looks like almost any mom’s vision of their sweet little innocent 8th grade son frozen in time. The extra weight he’s put on over the years actually acts in his favor. Makes him look like everyman conservative USA. A man you could buy insurance from, or vote for President.
https://www.google.com/search?q=jeb+bush&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS442US442&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=651&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=JCcCVe_fGNeAygTM8YLACg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg
“‘Please,’” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “‘don’t kill me.’”
He had a soft spot for Henry Lee Lucas though. How do you explain that?
Oh Henry!
DA: “The cattle will all get in line once the big money boys place their bets.”
You mean the big money boys still don’t know who to back? First it was Christie… then it was John Ellis… next I expect it will be Walker all the way.
Might be, but the Bush brand definitely carries some weight. They’re a proven commodity at this point, with plenty of familial skin in the game. Since IMO the Prez ain’t actually calling the shots, at least the ones that matter, I think stability, especially in the form of skin in the game, counts for quite a lot. The big money boys want to know that their boy is going to reliably deliver expected results without any hiccups or embarrassing public revelations. Keep in mind as well that a lot of early campaign rhetoric/pledges are assumed to be and are just so much marketing fluff. Colored pennants blowing in the wind over a used car lot if you will.
Bush’s multicultural/immigration bonafides are likely just so much of the same at this point to broaden the Republican appeal in the wake of Obama. Will he ever deliver on any of it? We need only look at Obama for a possible answer there. So many ways he could “disappoint” after being elected that would be totally deniable on his part, and still maintain the status quo. If the hysterical Republican base can hold their nose through their always entertaining primaries, my guess is that John Ellis makes it through to the championship round for the Super Bowl we all expect: the Clinton’s looking to equal the Bush legacy – in the same generation no less! – vs. the Bushes, looking to make it an unprecedented historic Triple Crown. And just imagine the free publicity if daddy HW dies sometime during the process!
DA: “The cattle will all get in line once the big money boys place their bets.”
“The best way to see the threat that Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, poses to Jeb Bush in the Republican presidential race is to look at Mr. Walker’s donors.
They extend far beyond Wisconsin, in large part because of the 2012 recall election that made Mr. Walker a nationwide conservative hero. Many of Mr. Walker’s biggest donors are deeply conservative, giving him an opportunity to emerge as an alternative to the more moderate Mr. Bush. They also include many small-money donors, a group that many national Republicans have struggled to attract.”
Walker’s a polarizing figure with very little track record in a relatively backwater state. He’s the Paul Ryan of this election. And there you go, a fine VP candidate to appease the base.
Cold: “He had a soft spot for Henry Lee Lucas though. How do you explain that?”
Cold, as Rush Limbaugh says, you should leave this game to the professionals. It had nothing to do with Bush having a “soft spot” in his heart. It has to do with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In the Karla Faye Tucker case the board didn’t recommend clemency, so Bush didn’t commute the sentence and she was executed.
For Lucas, he had recanted many confessions, including that for the case that had gotten him the death penalty in the first place. The board recommended commutation. Bush concurred, and Lucas died in prison before he could be retried on capital murder.
Thanks for proving my point. Bush was apathetic when it came to death sentences and clemency. He basically did what they told him to do. Tucker meant no more to him than Lucas or no less.
Still, it doesn’t explain the curious case of Henry Lee Lucas. The Texas Board of Pardons isn’t merciful. Commuting Lucas’s case doesn’t make sense when you consider the history and track record of the Texas Board of Pardons.
Remember The Thin Blue Line? If not for Errol Morris, Randall Dale Adams would have been executed and it was only by the hardest that they relented and released him. The Lucas commutation was uncharacteristic and curious. Your whitewashing of it doesn’t capture the anomalous complexity. But, that’s you.
So Many Randall Dale Adams
In a system that approves of capital punishment what can you expect? Systems aren’t set up to look kindly on individual circumstances. I’d expect nothing less from their administrators.
DA: “Walker’s a polarizing figure with very little track record in a relatively backwater state.”
Whoa, pardner! You are mightily underestimating Walker. What you are saying is a drawback is actually a strength.
Walker is not establishment, like John Ellis Bush. Walker has the virtue of being a polarizing rebel with a genuinely impressive record of winning tight elections without compromising principle or policy… which means he is more likely to win the 30% Tea Party vote. Without that conservative support John Ellis cannot win.
Walker has big money behind him from Republican establishment conservatives and Walker is THE generic union-busting candidate.
It’s even said that Walker is the Republican’s Obama — which means he’ll inspire the base. Unlike recent Republican nominees (McCain and Romney, for example), Walker will dazzle as a campaigner.
So, with Walker and John Ellis Bush splitting the Republican vote, and with the Tea Party refusing to compromise their principles to back John Ellis, the election goes to the Democrat, whoever that may be. With a divided party neither Bush, nor Rand Paul, nor Huckabee, nor Walker could defeat Virginia’s Senator Tim Kaine, for example.
Fair to say you’re a Walker fan boy, eh? Sorry to break it to you old boy, but Walker would GET TROUNCED by HillBillary in the big event. And trust me on this, union busting ain’t got NEARLY the broad based appeal you apparently think it does once the light of day gets shown on it in a national election.
Cold: “Commuting Lucas’s case doesn’t make sense when you consider the history and track record of the Texas Board of Pardons.”
C’mon, Cold. You gonna play, or just mess around? What year was it? 1998, an election year and the safest thing was for Bush to go along with the recommendation.
In the crows come home to roost department:
Manhunt Is Under Way After Police Officers Are Shot in Ferguson
In related farcical comedy:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. denounced the shootings as “heinous and cowardly attacks” that came just as this embattled city was taking “good-faith steps” toward rebuilding trust in law enforcement.
The term “Uncle Tom” comes to mind, but of course that might be too obvious and harsh for tender sensibilities. Apologist for the status quo maybe? Meh… Coward who sold out any scruples he might have had for a place in the machine? Yeah, I think that about sizes it up.
And remind me once again why no one will support the Dems anymore?
He’s an Uncle Tom for NOT supporting the shooting? What a twisted mind you have. In actuality of course he obviously sees Whites as enemies, but he has to play it cool and support the gradual program of White extinction.
You have to learn to recognize your friends Comrade.
Janos: “…support the gradual program of White extinction.”
Janos, demography is destiny, as the next presidential election will demonstrate. With increasing miscegenation and interracial adoption attitudes are already changing and racism is disappearing.
From Pew Research Center’s 2010 report on changing American attitudes toward race and relationships, 93 percent of American 18 to 29 year olds agree with the statement, “I think it is all right for blacks and whites to date each other.”
Even across different races, including white, African, Hispanic and Asian Americans, the acceptance is in the majority.
And according to a Fusion Massive Millennial Poll published on Feb. 4, which surveyed 1,000 people ages 18 to 34 on various issues including dating and race, 54 percent of Millennials reported to have dated outside their race group and 88 percent said they’d be open to dating outside their race group.
Meanwhile, Janos, voter registration of people of color should not be “gradual” …. Millions must be quickly and legally registered this year, to be ready to vote next year. It is the democratic game in action. ACORN is now subterranean but still active among the 99%.
Two demographic groups of voters, Blacks and Hispanics, will decide the next election’s outcome. People of color have the political power now.
Of course, Janos, you do not believe in democracy, so you should not vote.
The importation of vast numbers of 3rd Worlders into America meets the UN’s criterion for genocide. You and Da are genocidal maniacs.
Democracy (for the qualified) is part (and only a part) of the Republican process. I have never said otherwise. Pure Democracy is rule by the mob and was rejected utterly by the Founders. We have (or at least we had or at least we were supposed to have had) a government of Laws not men.
4:30 am? You and wpa couldn’t sleep? Bwahahaha! What a coinkydink.
Does that mean I’m not Mr Kunstler anymore? Or are postulating a triune identity now? Perhaps with Mr Kunstler as God the Father, wpa as the Son, and Janos as the Holy Spirit.
Opening verbal salvos in the coming war between Blacks and Hispanics. Stick and Stones may break bones, but insulting words come first.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/business/media/univision-fires-host-for-comparing-michelle-obama-to-cast-of-planet-of-the-apes.html?_r=0
Insulting Michelle and being fired is an act of solidarity of Latinos with Blacks. Only in your mind, Janos, is there a “war” …
In their book, Black–Latino Relations in U.S. National Politics
Beyond Conflict or Cooperation, Rodney E. Hero and Robert R. Preuhs analyze whether conflict between these two groups is found in national politics.
Based on extensive evidence on the activities of minority advocacy groups in national politics and the behavior of minority members of Congress, the authors find the relationship between the groups is characterized mainly by non-conflict and a considerable degree of independence.
The question of why there appears to be little minority intergroup conflict at the national level of government is also addressed. This is the first systematic study of Black-Latino intergroup relations at the national level of United States politics.
Janos, you are propagating division, hatred, and violence where there is actually cooperation and shared interests.
Black lives matter
White lives matter
Police lives matter, thank goodness the sniper failed.
4:46 am? Are you using meth again?
OMG, brew spewing out each nostril on that 1!
BTW, your poast would be 3:21am (4:21/5:21am mtn/cst?), if you are here on the west coast…
Quit Jonez’in, and pass it already!!!
In a system that approves of capital punishment what can you expect? Systems aren’t set up to look kindly on individual circumstances. I’d expect nothing less from their administrators.
Precisely. By golly, via you and wpa I’m amplifying my point. I expect to see Henry Lee Lucas (there’s that three name designation again) put to death. I don’t expect to see Henry Lee Lucas’s death sentence commuted. As wpa has aptly pointed out, it had nothing to do with GWB — he was just a mindless and apathetic rubber stamp.
Yes, 1998 was an election year which makes the commutation of Lucas’s death sentence all the more curious because Texas governors are judged by how tough on crime and criminals they are. Commuting the death sentence of the most heinous and infamous serial killer in the world is contrary to that image.
As for Walker, I told them if he was to have any chance, which of course I knew he didn’t and know he doesn’t, he has to become a member of the Hair Club for Men. I even offered to introduce him to Sy Sperling, or start a donor fund that would sponsor Bosley hair transplant treatment, but he and his team refused. Their loss. Nobody’s going to appoint a bald or balding president. Ike got in because he was a general and that trumped his baldness and Ford never was appointed — his presidency was just dumb, bald luck (an oxymoron, I know).
Donate To Scott Walker’s Hair Restoration Treatment Plan Today Before It’s Too Late
Jeb has a nice, full head of hair.
Jeb and Walker are essentially tied among GOP voters in the latest Fla polls which is a very bad sign for Bush. And Jeb’s pro-immigration sentiments are a non-starter in the current GOP ideology.
Essentially, Jeb is a time warp and Walker a far more authentic voice for current GOP ideology. And Jeb has not been on the campaign trail for quite a long time in contrast to Walker. Scott Walker has Koch money backing him and the electioneering infrastructure of that organization at his disposal.
The first big primary Bush loses after Iowa–and he will–and the Walker rout will be on. Boiled down, Jeb is simply not extreme enough for the GOP these days. Yes Romney won four years ago, but there was no Scott Walker in the fray at that time. The GOP primary will not be close when all is said and done.
Nice conventional well-thought-out analysis, but it’s wrong. Jeb wins. I will say I told you so when the time comes. For the record, I couldn’t care less who gets appointed. I’m just reporting what I see and I’ve seen.
Yes and millions of Republicans stayed home once Romney became the nominee. He’s not extreme enough either. Republicans have to woo people like me back. That means becoming nativists at the very least.
Romney was a Mormon. That explains part of it.
By the way, going forward all need to be aware the correct spelling of “JEB” is “JEB!” I live in Florida and I know these things. Looking forward to seeing “JEB!” in Spanish.
For reasons known only to psychoanalysts our resident New Dealer refers to JEB! by his full name. Perhaps some sort of defense mechanism against those who refer to Obama as Barrack Hussein Obama?
Whilst you were worried about drunken college on a bus singing racist songs in Oklahoma … (on the news every nite this week)
In Stamford CT a handicapped 52 year old man was beaten do death right on main street right after sundown by gang of Hispanic and Black ‘Youths’, male and female, stomped this dude good then shoved a knife between his ribs to make sure. A robbery? Maybe. Its there for the picken, $17, why not take it? More likely just for the hell of it, with the knowledge ‘the White House got my back’, which is what Ferguson is all about. (which evidently is being cleared of whites at a rapid pace, won’t be many left by the end of the year.) Other local events, 2 brutal home invasions in New Haven, one of which netted 8 firearms and $10,000 in jewelry, and a slit throat in Hartford (proving black lives matter). Most notable of all, not really local tho, the impressive all girl beatdown at a MacDonalds in Brooklyn, really a ghetto ass beating right out in public and caught on video, stomping, kicking in the face, punching and slapping that seemed to go on forever, with nobody intervening. What we are seeing here is the future being played out right in front of our very eyes, more so I believe that the future JHK sketched out for us in Union Grove.
I’m anticipating an interesting summer.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
Re Brooklyn Beat Down et. al. — The proper term du jour is “teen” which, if this usage keeps up, will evolve in much the same way as “gay”.
This is at least the second recorded teen isolated incident at a McDonald’s. Will they begin posting warnings at the door?
As I replied to Janos above, Black Lies Matter.
Hey FP I like the way you characterize the Brooklyn Beatdown (all girl) as an ‘isolated event’.
Its like every massacre, beheading, immolation, bombing etc in the Western Hemisphere, committed by Muslims, is described in the MSM as a ‘lone wolf event’. In other words don’t worry about it, move on, nothing to see here, and get those Islamophobic thought out of your head, you hater.
brh
Teens typically target white people but that is not to be acknowledged in polite company. Or is that politic company?
If not for U of O boorishness the MSM might be raising impolitic questions about the continued revelry in Ferguson, the rule of law, and reality itself.
Isolated incidents or pattern?
Particle or wave?
The beaten Black girl was wearing a Blonde wig. That may have triggered them. Thus the beating is understandable in a deep cultural sense. If you can’t be a Blonde, beat one. And if you can’t beat one, beat someone wearing a Blonde wig.
Hey Marlin, That’s why I say keep on packin’. The problem is the other side packs also, albeit illegally. Only plus side is they can’t hit sh*t with that iron. Then again there will be several of them and only one of you. Carry an extra magazine and I’m not talkin’ about the latest edition of People or Entertainment Weekly.
Imagine allowing Black thugs into the military. Imagine being on a ship with them. The Navy did, but at least the had the integrity to admit it was a mistake after the fact. They don’t have anywhere near such integrity now – and they’ve lowered the standards again.
http://www.amren.com/features/2015/03/race-riot-at-sea/
Whilst you were worried about drunken college on a bus singing racist songs in Oklahoma … (on the news every nite this week)
In Stamford CT a handicapped 52 year old man was beaten do death right on main street right after sundown by gang of Hispanic and Black ‘Youths’, male and female, stomped this dude good then shoved a knife between his ribs to make sure. A robbery? Maybe. Its there for the picken, $17, why not take it? More likely just for the hell of it, with the knowledge ‘the White House got my back’, which is what Ferguson is all about. (which evidently is being cleared of whites at a rapid pace, won’t be many left by the end of the year.) Other local events, 2 brutal home invasions in New Haven, one of which netted 8 firearms and $10,000 in jewelry, and a slit throat in Hartford (proving black lives matter). Most notable of all, not really local tho, the impressive all girl beatdown at a MacDonalds in Brooklyn, really a ghetto ass beating right out in public and caught on video, stomping, kicking in the face, punching and slapping that seemed to go on forever, with nobody intervening. What we are seeing here is the future being played out right in front of our very eyes, more so I believe that the future JHK sketched out for us in Union Grove.
I’m anticipating an interesting summer.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
Note to Jesse “Hymie Town” and Al “Freddies Fashion Mart” Sharpton:
During the 503 days between the Trayvon Martin shooting and the Zimmerman verdict 10,865 blacks were killed by other blacks.
Can either of you name one?
Since Trayvons death and today – how many have been killed by Blacks – here in USA?
“all the Kardashian videos in this universe and a trillion universes like it will not avail to distract us from the flow of our own blood”
Good thing death is like going through a doorway, just hope for quickness.
“The code of anything goes and nothing matters”. It has been the code here for some time. Here’s some truth. Love matters and only it is real. Put that in the collective consciousness and smoke it.
Love matters and …
How very ”60’s”-ish, and so true.
Love matter as does War. Man does not live by bread alone – as long as there IS bread. And there will be no bread without weapons and the ownership of the fields which weapons make possible. In other words, worship the Mighty Dead, the Fallen Heroes to whom you owe everything.
Your whole life and lifestyle was made possible by the conquest of the Indians and the armed White men who did the deed. You owe them their your gratitude and even reverence. Worship the Mighty Dead if you would be in synch with the rest of Humanity. They do, why don’t you?
Janos,
Taking your reasoning and running with it, the entire non-white world lines up at stores to buy things that were just about 100% designed and created by Caucasians. This isn’t “racism”. It’s just fact. I don’t care if you’re talking about your microwave oven, the computer, the radio, television, even modern furniture … are inventions of the dreaded white man.
I have never understood “noble savage worship” or the revisionist history of any peoples. For example, the American Indians were mostly warrior savages broken into hundreds of Indian “nations” most of whom spent much of their North American history fighting turf wars with other tribes.
I have no particular beef with American Indians but I’m not going to stoop to the Liberal party line and go out of my way to portray them as something other than what they actually have been, historically. Mostly, just like Blacks, Mexicans, and Asians, I prefer to live in areas with my own kind. After all, THEY do that and nobody’s calling them “racists”.
Yes, and that’s why Empires don’t last – too much diversity. America only works at all because Whites have been denatured and disempowered. If we get our pride and commonsense back, America is ova, history, or should I say herstory.
Many dynasties have risen and fallen in China, Japan, etc. The Nation goes on because the people are homogenous. When America falls, it’s forever because America is no longer one people, no longer a nation. Hopefully some of the White areas can hold onto something and build for the future. The Black areas will obviously collapse and we’ll be able to pick them up – driving the remaining Blacks out. Next time we’ll have to avoid making the same mistakes.
This is a find from ‘NewsBusters’. And the media claims there is no agenda? In the Media, in schools etc.
Let me tell you about my own experience. I live not far from Mankato, MN. In 1862, the largest mass execution took place. 38 Sioux were hung. About a year ago, my oldest daughter had a class assignment to write about the event. She asked me to help her because I love history. In her history textbook, not a word was mentioned about the Dakota War. Instead, it completely attributed the hangings as the fault of the US government not living by the treaties they signed. Her assignment listed 5 books to “help get her started”. Any guess to what those 5 books had in common? They all accused the US government of not abiding by the treaties of 1851 and 1858, just like her textbook. Only one briefly mentioned the Dakota war.
I took my daughter to the library and we pulled some books on the subject that weren’t written by the “blame America first” crowd. Through these books, she was able to learn that it was not, in fact, the US government who had broken any treaty that led to the hanging of these 38 Sioux. The real history shows that everything started with 4 Dakota Indians who, on a dare, murdered 3 white men, a white woman and a 15 year old girl at their homestead. 44 whites were killed the following day and another 200+ over the course of the next week. Over the next couple of months, 600+ white settlers would be murdered in Minnesota and Iowa, and hundreds of women and children raped, until the warring Dakotas surrendered to the US Army.
339 Sioux were tried and 303 were found guilty. All those found guilty were sentenced to death. One Episcopalian bishop convinced Lincoln to spare all but 39. One of these 39 would be granted a reprieve before the hanging.
My daughter received an “F” by her teacher. When I inquired with the teacher, the reason I was given was that each student was to read their reports aloud in class.
Since there were classmates of her’s that were part Sioux, that would have been offensive, so he did not want her reading it.
Since she was unable to read it in class, she received an F.
I took it up with the principal who agreed with the teacher. I then took it too the school board who were completely apathetic until I mentioned that it was a waste of time and “I may as well take it to Fox News.” They suddenly felt a need to compromise.
We settled for a B since the information was completely accurate and could not be disputed. Being unable to present the truth in the classroom prevented her from receiving an ‘A’.
Now does that sound like a school that can only do so much or does that sound like indoctrination?
UK to join China-backed Asian development bank
Britain said it has sought to become a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), making it the first Western nation to embrace the China-backed institution, but the United States reacted frostily to the development.
The AIIB was launched in Beijing last year to spur investment in Asia in transportation, energy, telecommunications and other infrastructure. Analysts have said it could challenge the Western-dominated World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/13/uk-britain-asia-bank-idUKKBN0M82S720150313
Perfidious Albion is ready to jump the sinking ship.
Is UK broke?
Whats yr take on USAs economic future?
All Western counties are essentially broke, but thanks to rigged international monetary system they are still making it through. It will all depend how much longer the West will be able to sustain the current Bretton Wood system, mostly on the results of American-Russian hybrid war.
Broke? That is but an abstraction, adrift upon an ocean of shared hallucination. Just ask our resident economist wpa-ccc.
We ain’t broke. The Dow went up 290 points yesterday, after the Fed announced it will not be raising interest rates above 0. In a few weeks the Fed will hint, just hint rates might be raised and the Dow will tank about 300 points (like it did earlier in the week). Then the Fed will say the rate hike has been postponed, and Dow will shoot up 290 points, again.
That’s our new national economic model. Pretty clever, huh?
brh
When I say “broke”, I mean real balance of production vs consumption, which in “traditional” monetary system would be reflected in negative overall results.
We have a rigged monetary system. where one nations are printing money in excess of production of real goods and services – so called “developed” nations, and other nations that ALWAYS have a positive trade balance and have positive savings that are accumulated as “reserves” in their respective Central Banks, which are totally “independent” from the needs of local population – so called “developing” nations.
It’s very easy to tell the “developed” nation from the developing – just look at their balance of trade – developing nations always have a positive balance, e.g. they produce more than they consume and developed nations – that are essentially the biggest deadbeats.
Another way of telling “developed” from “developing” nation is take a look at the CB main rate – it is close to zero or negative in the “developed” nation, and above 10 – 15% for developing (also significant is Basel III rule – landing to reserve ratio, very high – 25 and higher – in “developed” and very low – close to 1 – in “developing”).
All this achieved through the mechanisms of IMF and so called “independence” of National banks – independent of the National needs and very dependent on the dictate of the IMF (US essentially).
IMF forces most of the dependent CBs to function in the regime of the “currency board” – they are required to back all their internal cash in circulation by the financial instruments of the “developed” nation – Dollar, Euro, British Pond, which, in turn, are backed by nothing.
All it amounts to essentially colonial re-distribution system, which is one of the biggest causes of current world instability.
Everything else is just elaborate propaganda system designed to confuse the living shit out of everyone.
Interest rates are obviously very important for development. By having much lesser interest rates than the local banks of the “developing” nations, the “developed” nations control the development of their colonies.
For a local businessmen it is much more profitable to borrow in dollars or euros say at 7 – 8% than in local bank at 25 – 30%.
But the foreign banks do not lend for everything. For instance, they do lend to the Island cocoa growers at “low” 7%, but they would never lend for housing mortgages or infrastructure development – the metropoly is interested in cacao for their candy-bars for creative class and fucked-in-the-head Facebook community, but it does not give a flying fuck about the living conditions or the roads they ride on in the colonies.
By doing that, they achieve the actual planning of the “developing” country economy, carefully avoiding letting it to ever develop. Also, of course, they are making nice profits of the difference between the FED lending rate and the rate they lend to foreigners.
So that’s how the modern banking industry actually acts as “Central Planner”
Also, we need to educate ourselves on the role of local colonial oligarchy – why they by default are always “corrupt” and “cleptocratic”, how they steal money from the local budgets and hide it out in the banks of the “developed” countries (London, New York), essentially providing another way of “free financing” for “developed” nations.
It also provide a good way of political control over local elites, because their funds are always under the risk of being frozen under any pretext.
For instance, the threat of freezing the Yanukovich funds in Western bank explains inactivity of local police a year ago during the armed coup in Kiev – otherwise they could have easily overcome the armed hooligans.
I am promoting good Russian cuisine throughout the locals, better quality food with one half of price tag to make.
For now succeeded only with the captive audience – the workers of the Palm feed factory. But they seem to sincerely enjoy it.
Today’s menu – ground meat and rice stuffed green peppers.
Putin dead? No, he’s just had a son.
https://twitter.com/Kabaeva_Russia/status/576371510203518976
Therian: things that were just about 100% designed and created by Caucasians. This isn’t “racism”. It’s just fact. I don’t care if you’re talking about your microwave oven, the computer, the radio, television, even modern furniture … are inventions of the dreaded white man.
To say Caucasians “designed and created 100%” is racist.
American civilization is indebted to African Americans for major inventions: the blood bank, the transistor, the gas mask, clothes dryer, refrigerator, lawn mower, traffic signals, etc.
Here is a list of several thousands inventions patented by African-Americans, with patent numbers included:
Inventions and Patents of African-Americans – 20th Century
http://www.slpl.lib.mo.us/libsrc/inv20.htm
I’m searching around for any scheduled ‘Die Ins’ on college campuses this weekend in New England, you know, for the poor sucker beat to death on Main Street in Stamford the other nite by black and Hispanic ‘teens’. So far I haven’t located any, not even the precious pearls up at Smith in North Hampton, which is surprising because last fall they were staging like 3 per day for Michael Brown, the Gentle Giant, shot to death fighting the cops. It seems these $60,000 per year Ivy Leaguers are very selective when it comes to lying down in the street and stopping traffic; they won’t do it for just anybody. It has to fit the narrative. Apparently some poor sucker beat to death on main street, by a gang of black and hispanic ‘teens’, for the few dollars in his pocket, and maybe just for fun, doesn’t fit the narrative.
Then again, if they staged a ‘Die In’ for every blood soaked, brutal murder in the ‘community’, they’d be on the ground permanently.
brh
So, we got new, made up words now? Hopenesslessness? My sister just made this one up tonite: “Dinkilicious” (be sure to FILTER).
I thought JHK’s blog last week was the best I’ve read in quite a few, and this week’s ain’t so bad, either. And, yes – I’m extremely ***, and actually read it all, every week…
Plz consider the following a peace offering:
youtube.com/watch?v=kHhsmpOzttY
World is entering an acute confrontational phase
It’s very hard to make heads and tails of what is really going on, but apparently the conflict between US, Europe and Russia is entering an acute phase. Some events are still deep under the carpet, some are getting from under.
1. Unprecedented incident with American lawmaker’s letter to Iranian leadership
2. Statements of some mid-level Euro bureaucrats about the necessity of forming European army – independent from NATO (US)
3. German intelligence (BND) is allegedly interrogating a high-level US operative connected with Vanguard Intl who was arrested on Ukrainian-Slovakian border with large quantity of extremely high-quality counterfeit US dollars in regard with his activity on September 11, 2001 connected with demolition of Building 7 in New York. Agent is actively cooperating.
4. Confrontation in Russia since the murder of Nemtsov and arrest of the governor of Kamchatka is at its peak. Putin has allegedly moved his headquarters to new secret facility in Sochi – the place of the Winter Olympic Games. It is also alleged that at least half of 50 billion dollars spent on Olympic construction were actually spent on construction of alternative Supreme Command Headquarters.
We should see some sort of resolution before May 9 – the day of celebration of Russian Victory day against Nazi Germany in 1945. Obama is not coming to Moscow’s celebration; neither do some of the European leaders. Angela Merkel is doing a compromise – she is not coming on May 9, but on May 10.
You lost me with the Building 7 “demolition”. The fall of the building can be explained by physics without demolition. By Occam’s Razor, end of story.
As a matter of rule, I never enter into discussing of “technical details” of the 911 tragedy. I am under firm impression that it still awaits professional forensic investigation – and I am not professional in that area.
However, it does not preclude me from having convictions that destruction of 3 buildings in New York on that tragic day still awaits its day in court of law, may be of Nuremberg statue.
Vietnam said that Russia is a strategic partner, which is why the Vietnamese authorities have decided to refuse the US request to terminate assistance to the Russian Air Force.
Today, Vietnam has made it clear that he would not break with the Russian “strategic partnership.” As stated in an interview with local media, Colonel Le Tkhe Mau, one of the leaders of the Institute of Military Strategy of the Ministry of Defense of Vietnam, such requests may be considered as a US attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of the country. Vietnam itself is able to determine the policy of “interaction with their friends and partners.”
According to British newspaper Daily Mail with a reference to the commander of the US Army in the Pacific General Vincent Brooks, Russian planes carried out “provocative” flights, including around the island of Guam, where there is a large American air base.
Russia in response to installation of American anti-missile defense system on the probable directions of Russian missile strikes against American territory is creating alternative directions of such strikes. It would be impossible/too expensive to protect American homeland from all possible directions.
In addition, Russian Nuclear Submarines in the Arctic are conducting drills of breaking massive volumes of ice using special guided torpedoes for rapid fire positioning. It is practically impossible to detect submarines under massive ice cover.
The Nuclear balance of powers will most likely remain in place and the dreams of American neocons of First Strike capability will just remain dreams for now.
Here’s an update on the mystery surrounding Putin’s whereabouts.
Somebody’s Ringin’ The Bell
Well, may be the closer analogue would be aftermath of 911 and Dick Cheney hiding his ass in “undisclosed location”.
Stick to farming.
Yeah, that’s what my wife keep telling me. Probably, you’re both right.
She’s a saint.
130 people with fake passes tried to penetrate Russian Severomorsk Naval Base
Federal Security Service detained 130 people in one day at a checkpoint in Severomorsk, who tried to penetrate the entrance using fake badges. On Friday, March 13, Tass press service reported according to FSB Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Neither citizenship nor residence of detainees, as well as the purpose for which they were trying to get to Severomorsk, was reported.
Needless to say that Severomorsk is a home base to large number of Russian Nuclear subs.
Apparently, there have been attempts of forceful Russian Final Solution.
http://lenta.ru/news/2015/03/13/severomorsk/
I find it sad that on a blog by JH Kunstler, someone who challenges conventional wisdom on many matters, that most commenters are simply “progressive” political hacks who believe the fairy tales of the left.
I guess they are trying to glom onto Kunstler in order to gain some sort of “street cred” for their views, which are nothing more than the views of the conformist establishment.
You’re right Buck, there’s a lot of crackpottery with respect to secession. I suspect that, if those folk were to get what they’re chasing, they’d be like the dog that caught the car.
It’s not only the US. There’s a lot of ostensibly grown-up places that you’d think would know better.
What does teeny-tiny Scotland think it can do better as an independent country? What’s the point? To be ignored by every other country on the planet? To be an inconsequential pip-squeak in world affairs? If the argument is about money I don’t think the case is remotely made. That oil won’t last forever. And then what? I like to see those proud, kilted, bag piping patriots try to scratch a living off those rocks.
What about the Basques? OK, the Basques say they have historic gripes. So? There isn’t anybody that doesn’t. OK, they’ve been ruled over by Others since the beginning of time. And yeah, there’s that thing about ethnic self determination. And yeah, it’s not just about raw economics.
But can Basque turf sustain life in a reasonable state? Because it’s really nice to not run short of necessities. And to not have to kill or die over getting a fridge for instance.
Would their self contained country, let’s call it Vasconia, be able to provide enough work for its rest-less young? And they can’t blithely assume membership in the EU or assume they’ll have a right to Spanish citizenship or residency.
Same with the Catalans. I think there’s that narcissism of small differences. Yeah, yeah the Castilians are dogs. So what. And Catalans aren’t? They’ve been shitting in the same holes and screwing one another for thousands of years. Do they think Catalan fleas are better? How much difference can there be?
Which brings us to the Red States. Let’s say they caught the car. Who would drive it? Congressional Republicans? Please, those morons, to misquote Michael Gerson, are manifestly unfit to govern. As they’ve proven most lately with this ludicrous letter to Iran.
Now I hear that those dick-heads have – cough – buyer’s remorse. See, they say they were in a rush, they signed the Ayatollah letter without really reading it, because well, they were on their way out the door.
To which I say blow me. Can they really be that stupid? What about other parties at the table? Did they think, I know, they were headed out the door, but did they remember that it’s not just US-Iran? Probably forgot, true to form, the others in the room. You know, non-Mercans. And probably forgot those non-Mercans are nucular armed. Idiots.
So, clue me in, who’d be the modern Jeff Davis? Is there some one with remotely the stature of Robert E Lee?
Not to say that the truncated, non-secessionist United States would be in a better position. Proof? Hillary’s astounding, jaw-dropping lack of judgment with those emails. Now, this is Blue State America’s next contender.
Let’s just leave it at “astounding” and “jaw-dropping” because there aren’t enough four letter words. It’s like Mark Shields said, and I agree with this too, she’s like Michael Jackson with nobody in the entourage that can say to her No Michael, you can’t do that. No Michael, No Michael.
Well, she won’t change. And she’s the only real candidate the Democrats have. At this point she most frighteningly has a very good shot to be Prez.
See, the question in my mind is this, what are the army brass thinking? As one retired general said, this Republican letter is “mutinous”, a major breach. Well, he’s retired. But what do the non-retired brass think? What do they think about all the Washington tom-foolery on so many issues?
How much longer will the generals keep their mouths zipped? How much will they tolerate? When does their patience run out? And then what?
Any secessionist movement in US (and in Russia) should be considered a high treason and dealt with using wartime laws. It could only be profitable to a small clique of local cleptocratic elites and cause enormous suffering to common folks.
Smaller the State-forming entity, easier it falls pray to someone else’s interests.
Just study the results of breakup of the USSR and try not to repeat that.
lsjogren: “I find it sad that on a blog by JH Kunstler, someone who challenges conventional wisdom on many matters, that most commenters are simply “progressive” political hacks who believe the fairy tales of the left.”
Hmmm… Given the amount of discussion this week on peak oil, I would dispute your assertion that “most commenters are simply “progressive” political hacks.”
The impression I have is most commenters want to present themselves (falsely, I believe) as “independents.” Most claim they do not buy into the “red/blue” game, but election day they will vote red anyway. They voted for McCain. “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” McCain could have become president.
Now that the treasonous 47 Republican representatives are getting heat in their home districts, they are coming up with excuses for why they signed the letter supporting the Ayatollah and trashing Obama. McCain’s excuse is precious: a snow storm MADE him sign the letter.
Volodya: “she’s the only real candidate the Democrats have. At this point she most frighteningly has a very good shot to be Prez.”
Volodya, since you are Canadian, you may not recognize some of the potential Democratic presidential candidates. But since no one, not even Hillary Clinton, has announced, they are all possibilities.
You think some of these are long shots? Remember 2007? Had you ever heard of a senator from Illinois, half white, half black, with a Muslim name? Did you think he might become president?
This list is not a cut and paste, it is off the top of my head, and in alphabetical order, here are their names:
Michael Bennet
Joe Biden
Joaquín Castro
Hillary Clinton
Andrew Cuomo
Howard Dean
Al Franken
Kirsten Gillibrand
Al Gore
Tim Kaine
John Kerry
Amy Klobuchar
Jack Markell
Claire McCaskill
Janet Napolitano
Martin O’Malley
Deval Patrick
Kasim Reed
Bernie Sanders (Sanders is Independent but may run as a Democrat).
Brian Schweitzer
Paul Strauss
Mark Warner
Elizabeth Warren
Jim Webb
Ron Wyden
What’s that the Rogues Gallery?
brh: “you know, for the poor sucker beat to death on Main Street in Stamford the other nite by black and Hispanic ‘teens’.”
brh, what those teens did was unexcusable, but I have some questions for you: were these “teens” wearing official government issued uniforms? No. Had they taken an oath to protect and serve the public? No. Had they been trained at taxpayer expense in the use of force? No. Were they receiving salaries from government? No.
If the answer to those questions was yes, then you might see die-ins? Otherwise, you are engaging in a false equivalency.
When officers of the peace systematically harass, arrest, and kill unarmed citizens on the basis of race, that is not justice.
No justice, no peace.
Last week on Long Island black gang banger Sheldon Leftenant shot white police officer Mark Collins during a traffic stop.
PBS News Hour hasn’t picked up on it yet. No riots, no demonstrations, no looting, no lefty street theater, no die ins, no announcements by the President or the Attorney General, no Al Sharpton, no NBC round the clock coverage, no handringing, no nothing so far.
Happy Pi Day!
Pi is abstract. It only exists in our heads, not in nature. Pi cannot be seen, heard, touched, or felt.
Whether negative or positive, numbers are not real (hence endless QE is possible). Has anyone ever seen the square root of a negative one or a negative one, for that matter (-1)? Positive integers are not any more real. Numbers cannot exist in and of themselves. They are not real.
Pi is expressed in numbers. Pi is therefore not real. But since everyone believes in Pi and there is a Pi Day we give it a kind of reality and don’t think much about it. We just use one imaginary thing (numbers) to define another imaginary thing.
apparently, germany is producing excess green power via wind/solar, so they are going to send it to norway, which will use it to pump water to fill massive reservoirs.
then, when germany/UK need extra energy, norway will send them green hydroelectricity back, all via a 900-mile underseas hvdc cable.
the setup is set to provide europe with AT LEAST 25% of the extra energy it will need in coming years.
so, how about that energy descent?
lol, don’t expect this comment to remain for long, i have been banned for posting news that contradicts the loser litany out here that energy is running out.
http://www.sintef.no/home/news-from-gemini.no/norway-is-europes-cheapest-battery/
lol, too easy. wpa_ccc, a shout out to ya brotha.
welles
The Iraqi army took the city of Tikrit under full control
TEHRAN, March 14. Correspondent. Alexander Levchenko TASS. The Iraqi armed forces with the support of Sunni and Shiite militias have established complete control over the city of Tikrit in northern Iraq. This was reported by “Tasneem,” referencing Baghdad Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi.
http://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1828407
Worst case American nightmare – Sunni and Shiite join forces to successfully fight the agent of Empire of Chaos
Yeah pretty amazing. I didn’t see that coming at all. I expected the Shiites to go on the offensive but evidently the Sunnis have seen the light as well. Western influence really is “corrupting”. Starting to see Muslim girls in with head scarfs and tight yoga pants walking little dogs.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/op-ed-calls-on-israel-to-nuke-germany-iran/
When heart does not speak to heart, what is there to say? Jews must learn to love other people.
Basel Bank for International Settlements – “Central Bank of Central banks” – published on its website a report, the essence of which is that low interest rates and the US Federal Reserve policy of quantitative easing led to unprecedented in the history of the saturation of the global economy with American dollars. Never before has the fate of the world depended so much on the US Federal Reserve.
The Boys are up for no good as usual. Do they think that the pig is fat enough for slaughter?
looking forward to gon’ to them Greek islands again this year, mm mmm good, but what a great place, culture, history, food.
huge shrimp, three on a plate is supper enough, plus have yourself a Fix, Alfa or Mythos beer, all very good.
The dollar, even though it will soon be burnt to a crisp overnight, is currently very, very strong, making your trip all the more enjoyable, besides helping the Greeks out a lot.
Think I’ll pick up one of those sterling white houses they have their, beside the oh so blue sea! Nothing like it.
Once there, I can ruminate on the Ukraine, Putin, how the US economy is shot, how a massive dieoff is in the works (how is ebola working out for you guys these days anyway?), how Greece will make the EU go down in flames, how the US is bankrupt.
energy, the original premise of this blog, is now all but forgotten. seems we have plenty of it. we can’t survive $100 oil! we can’t survive $40 oil!
lol, keep ’em coming gals, adds a needed smidgen of levity to the day.
welles
Yeah, pretty good lead article in Review Section of the WSJ today about the future of petroleum. A lot of what the author says about the importance of oil lines up with what JHK has said, also he goes into the laws of thermodynamics and all that, showing fossil fuels are the most efficient energy source, only thing, this guy claims there is enough to last for centuries, even at current rates of consumption.
brh
There is no ‘current rate’. When JHK was writing 12 years ago, that was a BILLION people ago.
In 24 years will Earth have 8.5 billion people? who knows?
Will the Chinese have ‘lifestyles’ with USA type gas use?
Its too hard to tell.
China seeks yuan IMF currency basket role
China is in talks with the International Monetary Fund for the US-based institution to add the yuan to its basket of reserve currencies, a top banking official says, as Beijing seeks a greater global role for the unit.
It hopes the yuan will become part of the IMF’s “special drawing rights” (SDR) assets “in the foreseeable future”, said vice central bank governor Yi Gang.
At present, SDRs are made up of only the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound.
http://www.morgans.com.au/research-and-markets/market-news-and-data/Breaking-News/China-seeks-yuan-IMF-currency-basket-role-S-1351032
Chinese “basket role” is trying to counter the Federal Reserve “basket case”. We are rapidly approaching the point which in topology is described as “Bifurcation Point”.
Where the fuck is Putin????!!!!
Where the fuck is Putin????!!!!
————————
Zed’s dead, baby.
You can be sure that when Vlad comes out of hiding he will be showered in prose stating that certain enemies within have been vanquished. Or as Michael Corleone quipped, ‘all family business settled’.
Right now Vlad is probably sitting in a dark den somewhere watching Brother Fredo paddle out to his death: Pop goes the weasel or so the pro Putin narrative will read.
Fredo Corleone didn’t paddle out to fish on Lake Tahoe — it was a small motor boat and one of Michael’s right-hand men, Al Neri, operated the motor. They traveled out to the center of the lake and Fredo was reciting the Hail Mary as he told Michael Jr., who hje had befriended in later years, he does before he catches a fish. He had just finished this line before the camera panned out and you hear the fatal shot. This scene was juxtaposed against the settling of other scores (Hyman Roth’s assassination, for example) similar to the mass assassination sequence in the first Godfather. Cinematic brilliance.
“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”
The camera doesn’t show Fredo’s execution — you only see the boat leaving the dock and hear him reciting the prayer once the boat has reached its destination and the motor is cut. In fact, you don’t hear the last sentence of the prayer but enough time is allowed for you to complete it, and Catholics know the last line by heart — Lord knows, before you hear the fatal shot. It’s brilliant — “now and at the hour of our death” and it’s at that hour for Fredo so that prayer was perfectly, and unwittingly for Fredo, fitting.
Fredo’s Death
Nice critical analysis there Cold; I had never thought of that scene in that specific way. As for the paddle comment I was thinking of Russia, land of the Olympic ring failure so somehow a paddle felt more analogous than a motor boat. Anyway, my point remains: When Putin resurfaces many will be writing that he is a reinvigorated Michael Corleone who just eliminated his Hyman Roth/ Fredo Corleone enemies. In fact, I am nearly certain that one poster in particular will inundate this site with that very “reporting” 🙂
Hey Kunstler, at some point can you actually give us an approximate date/time that the United States is going to fall apart? You seem to make a lot of vague predictions and they never actually seem to happen…
“Zed’s dead, baby.” — wpa
I doubt it, but we will see next week. Besides, US should be praying this Sunday in Churches for Putin’s well being, ’cause any alternative in Kremlin would be much worse for America.
Whatever you say about Vlad, he’s a cool-headed guy and highly professional political manager who always negotiates first and pulls the trigger later, only if no other options are left.
Rumors of tanks on Moscow’s streets and helicopters over highways are “slightly exaggerated” – talked to friend over there, business as usual.
Have a feeling we will see significant changes in economical and financial wing of the Russian Government, specifically concerning PM A.Medvedev and other “liberal” ministers.
Finca said: However, it does not preclude me from having convictions that destruction of 3 buildings in New York on that tragic day still awaits its day in court of law, may be of Nuremberg statue.
Good point, but I don’t think it’s a statue as much as it’s a jewdishful president.
911 had global implications – it was a crime committed against the entire humanity, not just Americans.
It deserves public international hearings, no statutes of limitations.
“Hey Kunstler, at some point can you actually give us an approximate date/time that the United States is going to fall apart? You seem to make a lot of vague predictions and they never actually seem to happen.”
————
September 13, 2015 … dollar collapse.
Nope.
When people start to vote with their feet, that’s when the system collapses. So long as the slaves are on the Vatican slave plantation(s), propping the Vatican fascists/socialists/communists/etc., the scripted theater and the murderous black comedy continues..
Mika, what are you talking about, The Vatican?
I’ll quote Comrade Stalin, “How many Divisions has the Vatican?”
They don’t have any Divisions. Christians belonging to ancient sects going back to the time of Jesus are being wiped out in Syria and Iraq by ISIS and the Pope isn’t doing a goddam thing about it. Do you think if the Pope and the Vatican had any power they’d let that go on? They’re not doing sh-t, just ignoring the situation and hoping it goes away.
brh
I don’t look at what they say, I look at what they do and who sponsors them into their position to act.
Stalin was a Jesuit priest who studied in a Jesuit monastery. (Same with Hitler, btw). Stalin was their guy. That’s why he destroyed the Orthodox Churches and left the catholic Churches alone. That’s why he left the Vatican alone. The Russian army could have easily destroyed the seriously incompetent American forces in Europe. They didn’t. He didn’t.
Hitler’s task was to destroy Protestant Europe. He got full sponsorship from the Vatican and its subsidiary US fascist mafia for that.
Same story in Syria. All the Christians targeted by the Vatican/CIA mafia via its sponsored militias are the “heretic” Orthodox Christians. Notice the Maronite Catholics are only 15km away in Lebanon and are sitting pretty. Even though Lebanon has no army to speak of. Why is that?
When you start to view history through this perspective it all becomes very clear.
Wherever you look it’s the same story played out. The Mexican Catholics in the Southern US. Serbia vs Croatia. Turkey’s genocides. Egypt’s Copts. And on and on.
It’s the same story everywhere around the globe. The war of predation and genocide on the “heretics”.
“Hey Kunstler, at some point can you actually give us an approximate date/time that the United States is going to fall apart?” — Hamilton
How could anybody give an accurate prediction of such event when we have so many players pursuing their multiple interests.
The problem is, that living in expectation of death is worse than the death itself.
And no, they don’t know when, but if you understand how maco economics works you know it’s a disaster waiting tk.
Oh and btw, not in this interview, even GB wants to do banking w. China.
Note we are wewwy wewwy hurt.
http://kingworldnews.com/eric-sprott-3-14-15/
“Where the fuck is Putin” — Finca
The other plausible explanation of not knowing Putin whereabouts is that Russia went into so called “threat period”, according to Russian military vocabulary “period of gradual or sudden deterioration of the situation, as a rule, immediately preceding the beginning of the war.”
Among other things, the protocol of “threat period” requires covering the trail of Supreme Command – “maskirovka” – confusing potential enemy about the actual location of commanding officers.
We seem to have a massive US armored buildup on Russian western border, including that:
“NATO trains loaded with military armor going eastward through Romania”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sw15QrHcnM
Everyone is asking where Putin is. Has anyone checked to see if Alina Kabayeva is around? That might be why Putin has disappeared.
Rumors galore about Putin having been deposed in a coup.
Hasn’t been seen in more than a week. People out there spouting on this, some pointing the finger at intelligence agency chiefs and army generals.
But others say he’s in Switzerland with his main squeeze who’s there to give birth. Kremlin strenuously denies this.
So, did Vladimir get “the visit”? Or is this all smoke and no fire?
Maybe he’s reading all the shit out there and having a good laugh.
Volodya, one thing is for sure: Putin is no more “invincible” than ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. None of us are.
If Putin was dead, Vietnam would not had the impudence of rejecting American demand to curb cooperation with Russian strategic Air force.
Russian Foreign Office would not unequivocally support Maduro of Venezuela in recent statement in response to Obama’s designation of that Latin American country as threatening American national interests.
We would see a lot of things going quite differently than they are.
Something will clear up by tomorrow.
If Putin wins this round and Kiev falls by summer, we gonna see significant changes everywhere this fall.
As I mentioned this Winter, there is no more room for Two. There can only be One now. Just *One*.
😉
ARCH-TRAITOR TOM COTTON – The novice GOP senator from Arkansas has made his appalling debut by authoring the absurd and stupid letter of the 47 Traitors. Cotton qualifies as a traitor and a felon for his violation of the Logan Act of 1799. His punishment should include being forced to find Iran on a map. His staff has suggested that they regarded the fateful letter as a joke. Cotton reminds us of Nietzsche’s blond beast in the Genealogy of Morals, for whom “murder, arson, rape, and torture” could be seen as fraternity pranks. Here nothing less than nuclear war is at stake.
http://tarpley.net/forty-seven-republican-traitors-drive-us-towards-catastrophic-middle-east-war/
Hello Volodya and CFN!
Nice post and worthy of responding to, as yours typically are. See comments below;
Re |”You’re right Buck, there’s a lot of crackpottery with respect to secession. I suspect that, if those folk were to get what they’re chasing, they’d be like the dog that caught the car.
It’s not only the US. There’s a lot of ostensibly grown-up places that you’d think would know better.”-v.
I’d be inclined to agree with you volodya, if the current state of economic affairs had remained on it’s pre-Banking Act of 1933-dissolution course, but that was in the bag by 1999 – so now we actually have to entertain notions of what a nation looks like if/when it gets downsized (or “right-sized” as the ever-bubbly and optimistic corporate raiders like to put it).
Re | “What does teeny-tiny Scotland think it can do better as an independent country? What’s the point? To be ignored by every other country on the planet? To be an inconsequential pip-squeak in world affairs? If the argument is about money I don’t think the case is remotely made. That oil won’t last forever. And then what? I like to see those proud, kilted, bag piping patriots try to scratch a living off those rocks… What about the Basques? OK, the Basques say they have historic gripes. So? There isn’t anybody that doesn’t. OK, they’ve been ruled over by Others since the beginning of time. And yeah, there’s that thing about ethnic self determination. And yeah, it’s not just about raw economics… But can Basque turf sustain life in a reasonable state? Because it’s really nice to not run short of necessities. And to not have to kill or die over getting a fridge for instance… Would their self contained country, let’s call it Vasconia, be able to provide enough work for its rest-less young? And they can’t blithely assume membership in the EU or assume they’ll have a right to Spanish citizenship or residency… Same with the Catalans. I think there’s that narcissism of small differences. Yeah, yeah the Castilians are dogs. So what. And Catalans aren’t? They’ve been shitting in the same holes and screwing one another for thousands of years. Do they think Catalan fleas are better? How much difference can there be?”-v.
v, starting your argument with an examination of “Vasconia” and Catalunya/-onia is not strong [*]. We have to remember that these are the more economically productive areas of Spain and that they want to break away from the rest of ‘Espania’ for good reason: they’re being held back, dragged down and sucked dry by a southern power elite. This is a legacy of the Spanish Civil War. In Spain’s case it’s as if the Confederacy won the America Civil war and doomed the nation as a whole to economic stagnation, diplomatic irrelevance and a permanent nose-bleed seat in the colosseums of world power.
Re | “Which brings us to the Red States. Let’s say they caught the car. Who would drive it? Congressional Republicans? Please, those morons, to misquote Michael Gerson, are manifestly unfit to govern. As they’ve proven most lately with this ludicrous letter to Iran… Now I hear that those dick-heads have – cough – buyer’s remorse. See, they say they were in a rush, they signed the Ayatollah letter without really reading it, because well, they were on their way out the door… To which I say blow me. Can they really be that stupid? What about other parties at the table? Did they think, I know, they were headed out the door, but did they remember that it’s not just US-Iran? Probably forgot, true to form, the others in the room. You know, non-Mercans. And probably forgot those non-Mercans are nucular armed. Idiots… So, clue me in, who’d be the modern Jeff Davis? Is there some one with remotely the stature of Robert E Lee? … Not to say that the truncated, non-secessionist United States would be in a better position. Proof? Hillary’s astounding, jaw-dropping lack of judgment with those emails. Now, this is Blue State America’s next contender.”-v.
When I need cheering up and I’m working my way down my list of amusing thoughts, the idea of what would happen to the Red States if they managed to stop talking and finally succeed at seceding (in part or whole, and prior to a global collapse) always gives me a chuckle… They would immediatley become the worlds newest ‘developing nation’ – without the untapped natural resources ready for ransacking. Which would leave only the *people* of the south to be exploited by the world’s economically invasive parasites.
Re | “See, the question in my mind is this, what are the army brass thinking? As one retired general said, this Republican letter is “mutinous”, a major breach. Well, he’s retired. But what do the non-retired brass think? What do they think about all the Washington tom-foolery on so many issues? How much longer will the generals keep their mouths zipped? How much will they tolerate? When does their patience run out? And then what?”-v.
Generally, when you assess threats to an organization you need to start with a good hard look at the top echelon – because the people at the top have the least oversight and can do the most damage. In America’s case we have plutocrats seated behind all of *those* people wielding even greater ability to harm, and they are under no scrutiny at all – other than from fellow plutocrats… That’s the (ever more) naked truth of political power in these United States of America.
So, when we use words like “mutinous”,”traitorous” and “treasonous” in this environment even when it clearly applies, don’t expect people to jump up and do something about it with utmost alacrity. Going after traitors to the nation inside the Beltway, is like “handing out speeding tickets at the Indie 500”. You’re talking about an city saturated with people who looked at the reins of power in their hands and immediately thought; “what’s in it for me?”
Regarding a military intervention and “moderation” of our political corruption; once the arresting, subduing and shooting starts, where and when do you stop?
😉
There’s a reason why Americans view American Politics as the “Number One” problem facing the nation. ‘The People’ may not be articulate, but they know a venal pack of parasitic liars when they smell them.
Cheers!
—
[*] Although in Scotland’s case, you may be right under most foreseeable circumstances.
A must-read
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/congress-groveling-before-bibi-worst-since-roman-senate-embraced-caligulas-horse/
David Stockman’s article on Netanyahu’s visit to Congress:
Here’s a little taste.
[Not since a groveling Roman Senate voted to approve Emperor Caligula’s favorite horse, Incitatus, as imperial consul has there been such a embarrassing spectacle.
Like the Roman senators, members of the US Congress were motivated by fear and greed. They know that basic truth of US politics: failure to follow instructions of the mighty Israel lobby means certain loss of your next election, attacks by the media, and the end of your political career…..]
[Just as Caligula reportedly watched the Senate vote from behind a screen, so America’s political Golem, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, watched the Senate proceeds from a balcony perch. Adelson, one of America’s richest men, made his fortune through gambling, something Dr. Johnson aptly called “a tax on fools.”]
…..but lest you think that the Dems are any good get this:
Democrats are now largely owned by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban who calls himself somewhere to the right of the late Ariel Sharon. Saban, a media mogul, recently gave $5-10 million to the Clinton Library and is Hillary’s principal backer.
David Stockman’s article on Netanyahu’s visit to Congress: – BT
================
Stockman did not write the article you linked to. It was written by Eric Margolis and appeared on Stockman’s Contra Corner site.
True enough.
That’s what happens when you discover something while on the phone. Though that was the subject of conversation.
Multitasking is very tempting, but doesn’t work.
“truthinesslessness” – jhk –
Nice word, JHK. And thanks for another week’s work.
It is hard to follow conversations on your comment thread, though.
Disable “linked comments,” and things would improve. Ozone, your thoughts?
At least y’all disabled automatic pagination. That helped. Bitching helps, sometimes.
Until linked comments are disabled, I’ll just wait and read through everything on Sunday night. Not much point in commenting until the linked comments issue is fixed. Nobody’s reading after Monday/Tuesday, anyway, except for the True Believers.
And a few Lunatics.
Oh well.
And wpa/ccc – you are simply and pointlessly nasty. Why do you do this stupid sh*t?
Cold N – If you’re not a US govt. agent, you should be. But if you really are an official paid agent – – – Goddam’! We have a stupid government with low standards for internet operatives.
And welles, were you really banned as contrahend? That’s hard to believe.
Good to see you, beingthere. Thanks for the memories.
I’m out ’till next Sunday. If then.
“True Believers.
And a few Lunatics”
Bwahahaha!!!! *BUSTED*
S4B: “And wpa/ccc – you are simply and pointlessly nasty. Why do you do this stupid sh*t?”
What are you talking about? Can you be more specific? Nasty? WTF?
Suspense is over: Putin at the Constantine Palace, St. Petersburg
The long-awaited appearance of President Vladimir Putin was held in public. At 13 hours 53 minutes on 16 March, he went out to reporters at a meeting with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev.
According to journalists from the presidential pool, waiting for presidents lasted almost for two hours. Scheduled for the afternoon event was postponed repeatedly. Helicopter with Putin in Strelna residents saw at about 13.40 and 13.53 with the Kyrgyz counterpart he entered the hall of negotiations.
http://www.fontanka.ru/2015/03/16/085/
Putin ordered to put Russian Northern Fleet on full alert
According to the of the defense department, to test the readiness almost 40,000 soldiers are involved , more than 55 ships and submarines, 110 aircraft and helicopters. Its main task – to evaluate the possibility of the Northern Fleet to provide military security of the Russian Federation in the Arctic.
Russia, for second year in a row is conducted non-stop military exercises
In parallel US and Russia keep frightening each other with the informational campaigns. In the US, a favorite topic – supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine, which supposedly should dramatically enhance combat capability of the helpless Ukrainian army (according to the principle presenting modern Aegis systems to the Zulus population).
Russia, for its part, fills the media with information on the adoption of cunning electronic warfare systems that could be placed on any wheels or in the cockpit of the helicopter, blinding any electronics within a radius of hundreds of kilometers, destroying any missiles launched in any quantity and perhaps making the bullets fly back.
All this indicates that Washington and Moscow are seriously considering a situation where the army two nuclear superpowers could come into direct contact. On the one hand there is a hasty arms build-up and extension of the troops on the front lines, wherever possible. On the other hand tend to psychologically influence each other in order to break the enemy’s will to resist before the application of weapons.
US to loot $300 billion from Japan QE
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/beware-300-billion-shift-treasuries-043234209.html
Should last US another coupla months. Anybody noticed, that among “reserved currency” countries – US. EU, Japan and UK only UK is not printing the money? Sure hope to jump on the new Chinese bandwagon in the nearest future.
I know exactly what Putin did, while he was not on television. And I will tell you. This is no secret.
Yes, the ‘suspense’ is over;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-16/putin-reappears-puts-40000-troops-full-alert-part-snap-readiness-exercises
Take-away quote from the article:
“After disappearing for ten days from the public’s eye, theories surrounding his absence ranged from the tabloidy (fathering a baby with a Russian gymnast), to the trivial (lower back issues), to the bizarre (another putsch in the Kremlin), to the idiotic (dead).”-zh.
So much for the ‘”zed’s dead” theory. “Idiotic”? Yes, that would be you, RugSoaker-W’Pacc-Sock…
Seeya at the next Go ‘Round!
Cheers!
I heard that Putin uses body doubles, at least four of them, so nobody knows if there is a real Vladimir Putin.
Hey, I’ve got an idea, ‘soaker! (Noooo, it’s not putting on a show in the big barn.)
Why don’t you GFY?