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It was only a few decades ago that Walmart entered the pantheon of American icons, joining motherhood, apple pie, and baseball on the highest tier of the altar. The people were entranced by this behemoth cornucopia of unbelievably cheap stuff packaged in gargantuan quantities. It was something like their participation trophy for the sheer luck of being born in this exceptional land, or having valiantly clawed their way in from wretched places near and far ­— where, increasingly, the mighty stream of magically cheap stuff was manufactured.

The evolving psychology of Walmart-ism had a strangely self-destructive aura about it. Like cargo cultists waiting on a jungle mountaintop, small town Americans prayed and importuned the gods of commerce to bring them a Walmart. Historians of the future, pan-frying ‘possum cutlets over their campfires, will marvel at the potency of their ancestors’ prayers. Every little burg in the USA eventually saw a Walmart UFO land in the cornfield or cow-pasture on the edge of town. Like the space invaders of sci-fi filmdom, Walmart quickly killed off everything else of economic worth around it, and eventually the towns themselves. And that was where things stood as the long emergency commenced in the winter of early 2020, along with the Covid-19 corona virus riding shotgun on the hearse-wagon it rolled in on.

We’re in a liminal, transitional moment of history, like beach-goers gawking at the glassy-green curve of a great wave in the throes of breaking. Such mesmerizing beauty! Alas, most people can’t surf. It looks easy on TV, but you’d be surprised at the conditioning it takes, and Americans are way, way out of condition. (All those tattoos don’t give you an ounce of extra mojo.) And so, in this liminal moment, the people still trudge dutifully to the Walmarts with their dwindling reserves of cash money to get stuff, going through all the devotions that we took for granted before the wave welled up and threatened to break over us.

Which is happening. Despite all the fake-heroic blather from the Federal Reserve, from Nancy Pelosi, from Mr. Trump and Mr. Mnuchin ­— from everybody in charge, to be really fair ­— and in the immortal words of another recent president — this sucker is going down. Specifically, what’s going down is the aggregate of transactions we call “the economy.” Meanwhile, the people in charge struggle to prop up the mere financial indexes that supposedly represent economic activity, but more and more just look like a shadow play on the wall of some special slum where the street-corner economists peddle their crack. Eventually, the people don’t even have money for the crack, and to make matters worse, whatever money actually remains on the street is worthless.

The wave is breaking now, and a lot of things will be smashed under it — are getting smashed as you read. As in any extinction event, it will be the smaller organisms that survive and eventually thrive and that’s how it will go in the next edition of America, whether we remain states united or find ourselves organized differently. Accordingly, the giants must fall. When the communities of America rebuild, it will be the thousands of small activities that matter, because they will entail the rebuilding of social capital as well as exchanges that amount to business. Social capital is exactly what Walmart and things like it killed in every community from sea to shining sea. People stopped doing business with their neighbors. It took a cataclysm for them to finally notice.

If you think Walmart will survive the same cataclysm that’s killing chain-store retail generally, you’re going to be disappointed. Everything about it is over and done, including the Happy Motoring adjunct that allowed the cargo-cultists to haul their booty those many miles home. (And, ironically, it wasn’t the oil issue that determined this, but the end of the financing system that allowed Americans to buy their cars on installment loans, when it ran out of credit-worthy borrowers.) Amazon will be the last giant standing perhaps, but it will go down, too, eventually, on its ridiculous business model, which depends utterly on a doomed trucking system. It will be like the last dinosaur roaring at the dimming sun — while the little proto-mammals skitter to their hidey-holes beneath it.

One thing remains constant: human beings are very adept and resourceful at supplying each other’s needs, which is what business amounts to. Young people, freed from the fate of becoming serfs to corporate giants, can start right now at least imagining what they can do to be useful to others in exchange for a livelihood. The earnest and energetic will find a way to do that at a scale that makes sense when a new order emerges from the wreckage. After a while, it won’t matter much what any government thinks about it, either. Like all the other giants, it will fall, too.


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About James Howard Kunstler

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

539 Responses to “When Giants Fall”

  1. malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:37 am #

    Mall of America can not pay its mortgage,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJTBwH2Grz0

    • RandomMike May 22, 2020 at 10:38 am #

      You’ve seen one, you’ve seen the mall.

      • DrTomSchmidt May 22, 2020 at 12:39 pm #

        Thanks for the laugh!

    • My Point of View May 22, 2020 at 2:58 pm #

      https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/the-mall-of-america-hasnt-paid-its-mortgage-in-two-months.html?&qsearchterm=mall%20of%20america

      You’d think these places would have insurance to cover loss of income — yes, such insurance does exist. Surprised the lenders didn’t require it but then again the lender is a small time amateur (Wells Fargo). Aren’t these big money boys the type who regularly tell Congress, and the rest of us, that they’re the smartest guy in the room?

      The mall is operated by theTriple Five Group, a firm as well known and beloved to Americans as Babe Ruth …. sorry guys, that’s an attempt at sarcasm. The Triple Five Group are exiles from Iran who’ve set up shop in Canada and milk Americans for all they can. More here:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Five_Group

      BOHICA time in America. Bend Over Here It Comes Again.

  2. avartist May 22, 2020 at 9:42 am #

    Well Jim nailed this on. We are now living the Long Emergency. Thanks to Jim’s book I prepared a long time ago.

    • avartist May 22, 2020 at 9:43 am #

      Correction – “Jim nailed this one”

    • erik May 22, 2020 at 10:40 am #

      Jim’s still dreaming about his “World made by Hand” Utopia. Things may change, but that won’t happen. it just won’t unless and until the world envisioned in Stewart’s “Earth Abides” comes to pass.People may reorganize to an extent, but the industrial economy won’t disappear because people when they reorganize will simply not allow that to happen.

      • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 11:03 am #

        I tend to agree. I also think the biggest major change we will see in the next few decades is a massive increase in the gap between the upper and lower economic echelons of society, a massive increase in surveillance, and further centralization of the global economy and those who run it.

        It’s just in the cards.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 11:21 am #

          The massive increase in surveillance is here now, under the guise of a pandemic, and President Trump is totally in line with the globalists on this.
          For some reason he is mesmerized by Dr. Fauci.

          • benr May 22, 2020 at 11:38 am #

            Agreed this tracking mechanism which is already for the most part in place is being rolled out the rest of the way.
            Track trace and database is here to stay.

          • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

            Track trace and database is here to stay.

            Same as it has always been, since about 2001.

          • benr May 22, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

            True but they keep refining it.
            They now by estimates have over a gig of data on just about everyone.
            One of the data centers put in place in rural Utah uses so much water to cool the data center it has affected the ground water in the area and the locals are in up roar over it.

            https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2118801&itype=CMSID

            https://archive.thinkprogress.org/nsa-tries-to-keep-its-water-use-a-secret-but-drought-stricken-utah-isnt-buying-it-da5c80b5d0f4/

          • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

            over a gig of data on just about everyone.

            They have more than a gig on me.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:16 pm #

            All he has to do to “win” is grab Fauci by the lapels and pummel him. This is what all of America longs to see. Those who don’t are by definition, not America.

          • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 1:25 pm #

            Good point on the T&T database, Benr.

          • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 4:38 am #

            Trump is totally in line with the globalists on this.
            For some reason he is mesmerized by Dr. Fauci.</i.

            I don't know what "globalist" shadows you're jumping from this time, but everyone should listen to Dr Fauci, and all the scientists.

            They do know what they're talking about, and they don't have a political agenda … they're just scientists who have data, knowledge, and methodologies … you have none of these things … you only have fear, prejudice, and wild conspiracy nut-fudge.

            I know which model I much prefer. Why don't you just blow away – you're uselessly stupid.

          • livefreeordieca May 26, 2020 at 8:33 pm #

            The little guy must give good head

        • Zoltar May 22, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

          Your statement is typical of expectations at times of cataclysmic change: unimaginative extrapolation from what we’ve already seen. But this isn’t like sitting in water as it gradually gets colder; we’re at the point of phase shift, when it suddenly turns to ice.

        • GrassyCow May 26, 2020 at 10:15 am #

          Um, the “massive” increase has been happening for 20 years now. Where have you been?

      • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 12:14 pm #

        Liebig’s Law of the Minimum will limit reorganization and reorganization will be insufficient to acquire and process tight oil. The resulting starvation will further inhibit reorganization.

  3. K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 9:45 am #

    I enjoyed todays writing and I forgive the optimism. It is easy to fall into. People with a brain, even twisted ones always assume the other guy has one too.

    Young people, freed from the fate of becoming serfs to corporate giants, can start right now at least imagining what they can do to be useful others in exchange for a livelihood.

    Young people don’t know what being a serf is. Instant mobility lets everyone in America cover a geographic range which would define their entire life’s if the Toyota gods did not have ships. Serfs are prisoners of place and the young of America have no place. They are everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Community? Where are the values that define what a community is going to come from? Before isolation was encouraged community was already destroyed. Standing six feet apart when you stare at a phone screen is only different to a space alien watching through an eye in the sky. Surface targets are traveling less and standing apart. Their economy has imploded. Beyond that they note no difference.

    The virus is not making anyone smarter. A new golden age might emerge but no time soon and not from this lot. This lot wands free stuff and they stand on state capital steps with huge guns. They don’t believe in anything and certainly not community. Community means obligations and they don’t have an app for that. They all believe in themselves and their freedoms. Whatever those are.

    • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 9:53 am #

      First people bowled alone. Then they stopped bowling. Then they were gone.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 11:30 am #

        The proliferation of part-time, ‘on-call’ employment put a damper on the idea of a social life.
        People who do not know from one week to the next when, if, our how many hours they will be asked to work, can’t join a club or bowling league or even celebrate holidays with their families.

        I’m realizing from this shut down that a reason so many businesses refuse to schedule part-time workers for set hours, is that they can merely not schedule someone to work and not worry about them being able to claim unemployment compensation.
        At least it looks that way to me.

        • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 5:25 pm #

          There is a reason we have been bombarded with glowing PR about the gig economy, freelancing, and the movement of labor. It is just more rotten fruit from the tree of globalism.

          Don’t start a family — be gay or identify as a unicorn. Live in a pod while we destroy the housing market. Empower yourself by setting your own schedule and gigging for chump change. Hate those who disagree with what your TV told you. Focus on racism, sexism, abortion, and tranny reading hour at your local library. Hate yourself. Eat bugs for the earth. Critical thinking is conspiracy theory. Fear and obey.

          And one day, you are all slaves with low social credit scores wearing face masks and being disposessed of all the things you once thought were your birthright.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:21 pm #

        First people bowled together. That is not only faith, but the simple Truth. Man was never alone, somehow deciding to join into communities for mutual benefit. That’s a false anthropology. He was always in community, albeit small. The small ones joined together for mutual benefit, yes.

        First there is a Mountain. Then there is no Mountain. Then there is.

        • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 1:48 pm #

          Of course they bowled together first. I just skipped ahead to the change.

    • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 11:12 am #

      ‘wands free stuff’ should be ‘wants free stuff’ but wands is almost a happy accident.

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 4:19 pm #

        Yes…had the same thought on reading it.

  4. SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 9:45 am #

    It’s very possible that the whole thing is being played like the scene in Goodfellas with the restaurant and its unfortunate decline at the hands of merciless thugs. Run up the debt, bust out the joint, then get the insurance company to cover the losses on the remaining assets.

    https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/05/the-feds-chair-and-vice-chair-got-rich-at-carlyle-group-a-private-equity-fund-with-a-string-of-bankruptcies-and-job-losses/

    • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 10:06 am #

      And the insurance company is ……..? The NoState Insurance Agency. When payment due exceeds accounts received and only moss covers the losses.

      • SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 10:22 am #

        Yes, if NoState Insurance is the endless QE underwritten by the Federal Government on the backs of the hapless, clueless American sheeple.

  5. izzy May 22, 2020 at 10:10 am #

    And that is probably the best we can hope for.

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  6. shotho May 22, 2020 at 10:13 am #

    Yes, he certainly did, Mr. Avartist. His rhetoric positively soared today. “pan fying possum cutlets over the campfire” has got to be one of the jewels in his crown. Down here in Arkansas, there is a very old tradition that all the politicians have to attend the annual Coon Supper if they want to be taken seriously. Maybe, in our grim future, this idea will take off.

    • James Howard Kunstler May 22, 2020 at 10:21 am #

      “Coon” is racist. You must call it the Ring-tailed Hand-washer!
      –JHK Admin

      • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 11:09 am #

        After you clean up make sure the pan is “Spick” and span.

      • sprawlcapital May 22, 2020 at 11:20 am #

        As many of us know, the ring-tailed hand-washer was featured in one of the World Made by Hand novels. I don’t remember which one; I’ve read them all.

        • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 11:51 am #

          Harows of Spring:

          “We just out for coon,” Seth said, adding, “Ma’am,” and making sure to point the muzzle of his rifle toward the ground.

          “Please don’t use the ‘C’ word in our company.

          “Huh…?”

          “It’s offensive.”

          “Uh… coon?”

          “That’s right.”

          “Oh…it’s the animal, not a person,” Elam tried to explain. “You know, raccoon, ma’am.”

          “First of all, we don’t call it that anymore,” she retorted. “Too much room for misunderstanding and offense. To us it is the ring-tailed hand-washer—”

          • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 11:53 am #

            ‘Harrows of Spring’

            Fixed the spelling but while I’m here this title sure turned out to be ironic!

          • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 3:54 pm #

            ““First of all, we don’t call it that anymore,” she retorted. “Too much room for misunderstanding and offense. To us it is the ring-tailed hand-washer—””

            …Yall shore got a purty mouf….(Oregon edition)

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:24 pm #

          Everyone is united in their hatred of them, but I find them charming, the monkeys of North America. They do take pleasure in destruction and mischief. And as omnivores, they will eat your garden. Alas, one will have to get a dog and/or a shotgun.

          • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 1:53 pm #

            I saw a documentary on them. City ring tailed hand washers have been evolving to be human. In the last hundred years they have changed to a degree that would take 50,000 under other conditions.

            In Germany where they were introduced in the 1930s, sheet metal around downspouts to keep them off roofs has to be continually improved because the hand washers keep getting smarter at figuring out ways to get around it.

          • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:04 am #

            I came back and re-read this. Coons are so common where I live I did not even think to mention I have about seven of them that live in an 80 foot Sequoya tree that I planted in my back yard decades ago.

            About a year ago I was on my way home a quarter mile away and one of these little hummers crossed the road in front of me. For fun I slowed down to take a good look at the bugger. 20 lb civit pussy Vs 3000 lb Mercdes 350E.

            The coon reared up looked at me and took on the pose of a sumo wrestler. I drove away.

            It is a you would have had to have been there sort of thing but I still have private amusement imagining the little shit saying; ‘you want a piece of me, come get it.

          • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:05 am #

            Mercedes

  7. RB May 22, 2020 at 10:17 am #

    I get a bit wearied with the “mom and pop” idea that they held America and its communities together. If they got crushed they deserved it. Recall on payday when theirs was the only game in town and their prices were usury in disguise. You can have that shirt in blue or white or white or blue. We forget that before Walmart, a company called Sears/Roebuck showed up with a catalogue from which you had choice even to buying a house. Montgomery Ward and JC Penny were also in the game crushing M & P. Walmart brought a bigger game to the economic fight but then Amazon showed up and you can order a house from them. Mom and Pop were doomed due to better ideas and consumer demand. I haven’t been to a Walmart for several months and am doing okay. But I’m glad it’s there so I can get my car serviced, eat lunch, get my eyes checked and a haircut, grocery shop, get a new shirt in any color I want and do it under one roof in climate controlled comfort. Mom and Pop are also in the store shopping. They are on the scooters filling their basket.

    • SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 12:02 pm #

      “Mom and pop” may not have been very efficient as an economy but the ecology of anything never really is. This is your argument a disgusting apology and shill for the current ecology of predatory finance. Had finance and economics heretofore been held in check by the same natural forces which regulate, say, the herd numbers of caribou in Finland, or the wolf population in Wyoming then it would never have metastasized into the toxic algal bloom which it has. Human scale, non steroidal economies will return and restore the natural economic balance with those pesky “inefficiencies” recast as purposeful and necessary redundancies, hedge funds and banking cartels be damned to hell.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 12:14 pm #

        I don’t see the disgusting apology. I see some additional facts and personal opinions that flesh out the topic under discussion.

        • SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 12:17 pm #

          “If they got crushed they deserved it….Their prices were usury in disguise.” Yes it’s just an opinion. And a shill for the TBTF mega merchants.

          • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 12:25 pm #

            And that’s your opinion.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:26 pm #

            C’mon Beryl – the person said what they said. No interpretation necessary.

      • RB May 22, 2020 at 10:46 pm #

        Let me just say I am very familiar with the small, agrarian community where everybody knows your name and your business. It was the party line days and the days when black people were still picking cotton. I saw these mom and pop operations. The poor had no means to go anywhere else to shop. Most had no transportation so they walked into town to buy their necessities. It was all cash and there was no competition. Seller’s paradise. I stand by my observations and experience. Ironically, Walmart is being hurt by General Dollar and Dollar General and the other little cheap stuff stores that are popping up like mushrooms. Walmart is what it is. No one has to shop there. So happens I do.

  8. benr May 22, 2020 at 10:18 am #

    Great write up as usual Jim but I will take exception to one part.
    Not everyone can surf.
    Obama body surfs and it is a form of surfing so if you can swim and are comfortable in the water just about anyone can body surf same with boogey boarding.

    Stand up from prone Board surfing you are 100% correct.
    In the 80’s my dad and I surfed a break called Rincon just south of Santa Barbara and an elderly gentleman started surfing in his mid 80’s and went till he was in his mid 90’s. He was never very good but everyone respected Mr. Snodgrass for his age and efforts.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMr9To-bYwU

  9. BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 10:18 am #

    A recent ad in the local paper promoting 10 yrs auto loans (with deferred payments)

    Recurring TV ads feature law firms recruiting clients who have lost elderly loved ones to Covid 19 inside retirement homes, a whole new avenue of potentially lucrative law suits.

    Brh

  10. Robert White May 22, 2020 at 10:22 am #

    Excellent points today, Jim. WallMart utilized scaling of the population to usurp Mom & Pop macroeconomically as widgets were much cheaper if manufactured in China & Mexico given cost per unit sales.

    The financialization brought about via deregulatory framework of a repealed Glass-Steagall Act, and the dark pool derivatives universe inflated as corollary of institutional risk.

    Today, deflation of the dark pool derivatives universe is the systemic leverage that empirically parallels Greenspan’s asset inflation era whereby mean reversion was eliminated via the Greenspan Put culture of continually goosing markets to produce outsized profits for traders with meager talents, and chief executive with no education in mathematics, or calculus.

    Engineered incompetency is now obviously an American institution that sold out America’s talents for a few extra pennies on a stagnated dollar system that fails systematically every seven years via inflation & deflationary trends of macroeconomic behaviour.

    Benoit Mandelbrot departed this world with a warning about decoupling, speculation, & misbehaviour of markets via financial tectonic shifts in planning & bureaucracy that invariably occur due to profit seeking for even greater profits otherwise known as chasing yield.

    The owners of WallMart are greedy people that always want more for less investment as though they assume that continued profit gains are owed to them even if markets have decoupled.

    Addictions researchers have amassed much research into dopaminergic reinforcement via drugs, and money on brain synapses and motivation for profit seeking behaviour. In brief, the owners of WallMart are addicted to profit at an irrationally exuberant level of dysfunction that is the keystone of Wall Street ethos in so far as they are motivated to kill, or they will be killed as Wall Street speculators will replace them with a greater profit seeking enterprise.

    George W. Bush also said that ‘Wall Street got drunk’ post Lehman debacle. The drunken stupor of Wall Street executives is blatantly evident to all throughout the Fractional Reserve Banking System writ large across the entire world.

    Greed & avarice has fundamentally crushed the golden goose that Greenspan intended on squeezing for cash until it died outright. And everyone referred to him as ‘Maestro’ during the asset inflation stage of macro.

    Jeff Bezos & Amazon are merely yet one more variant of Wall Street greed. Their fate is exactly the same as that of WallMart and their chief executive.

    RW

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    • RB May 22, 2020 at 11:51 am #

      I posted the following above.

      “I get a bit wearied with the “mom and pop” idea that they held America and its communities together. If they got crushed they deserved it. Recall on payday when theirs was the only game in town and their prices were usury in disguise. You can have that shirt in blue or white or white or blue. We forget that before Walmart, a company called Sears/Roebuck showed up with a catalogue from which you had choice even to buying a house. Montgomery Ward and JC Penny were also in the game crushing M & P. Walmart brought a bigger game to the economic fight but then Amazon showed up and you can order a house from them. Mom and Pop were doomed due to better ideas and consumer demand. I haven’t been to a Walmart for several months and am doing okay. But I’m glad it’s there so I can get my car serviced, eat lunch, get my eyes checked and a haircut, grocery shop, get a new shirt in any color I want and do it under one roof in climate controlled comfort. Mom and Pop are also in the store shopping. They are on the scooters filling their basket.”

      There is an ongoing myth of some sort of golden age when people were not greedy nor looked after their own self-interest. It is a myth. Greed has always existed. Wealth has never been equal. All men are not created equal nor treated equally. If anything, Walmart leveled the playing field. A set of dishes cost the same regardless of race or financial status.

      • SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 12:36 pm #

        I am not comforted by the reward of a leveled playing field because of what got lost in the process. If people were economically disadvantaged by localized economies we are all now disadvantaged by the globalized economy even if I can by a toaster for 10 cents on the dollar relative to prices 40 years ago. Wal-.Mart and other TBTF mega merchants are not simply the beneficiaries of efficient markets, they are an invasive species with no or few natural predators and thus decimate the indigenous local species called local, organic economies. Further, while it is true that not all men are created equally, that does not apply here for Wal-Mart is not a man. It is an entity, non-human and endowed with ubermensch advantages wrapped in bullshit protectionist legalities. If you don’t see that then perhaps you’ve been socially distanced in your ivory tower even before Covid hit.

        • RB May 22, 2020 at 1:58 pm #

          I was with you until your last sentence, the insult. Was that necessary? Do you feel better for it? Did it help make your point? That is precisely one of the major problems in our society. Lack of discourse without the shit remarks.

          What I see here more and more is disdain for capitalism. Had Sam Walton built a half dozen stores and become well off, we’d all say well done Sam. But, his ideas took off like a working space shuttle. It ballooned and made him and family rich. He is cursed for that. It isn’t Walmart that is the problem. It is envy.

          Walmart met a need among consumers. So did Kmart for a time. The big box stores gave us something the mom and pop and small business couldn’t or wouldn’t. A SHOPPING CART. One of those things a woman could stuff 3 kids in and still buy what she wanted. Sears was late to that game as were the other big box stores. My wife might have bought more at Macys but she couldn’t carry it all.

          It isn’t about too big to fail, it is others being too dumb to survive.

          • SouthernYankee May 22, 2020 at 3:43 pm #

            I’m sorry I put you off by my insult; however the problem isn’t capitalism per se, but capitalism run amok. It’s out of balance with human society. It’s predatory. Yes the Walton’s made a better mouse trap. So what. Does an economic system exist to serve its participants or vice versa (which is what we have today)? And pesonally when I refer to Wal-Mart I do so as a proxy for the Frankenstein economy as a whole (though I didn’t make it the poster child).

            Lastly I’ll say this. If I seem indignant in my remarks, how come you are not more so? Is this blog sight merely a platform for some to have their intellects stroked? Have I been so blind for the last 15+ years that I’ve so badly misinterpreted JHK’s (our host) disgust and revulsion at the state of affairs in America? This is not a time to play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. We are lurching towards civil war and international war and dare I say that maintaining form on this blogsite because someone is so easily offended (by a rather polite insult I might add) is just plain pathetic.

        • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

          Clap, clap, clap

          • Majella May 22, 2020 at 10:32 pm #

            I assume the cheering wasn’t for RB’s objections to mild snark, right?

            So, perhaps it was related to his observation about a coming civil war. I take it you are all for it.

      • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 12:37 pm #

        Shakespeare informs via ‘honey doth confound taste if consumed too much’ in that Romeo & Juliet thingy he wrote. If Wall Street lust for wealth exceeds the taste & palate of Adam Smith’s invisible hand managers it turns out to be a negative reinforcing Hegelian death spiral to insolvency which happens slowly at first and then manifests all of a sudden to reveal a deflationary headwind & environment for Walmart et al.

        RW

        • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 4:58 pm #

          The invisible hand does not exsist.

          • Majella May 22, 2020 at 10:32 pm #

            Who’s the W H Doctor again, HigIQwl?

  11. PeteAtomic May 22, 2020 at 10:22 am #

    Funny you write about Big Box retailing today there Jim. Right before I read your blog here today I was reading this article on Marketwatch:

    “Americans use their $1200 stimulus checks to splurge at Walmart, Target and Best Buy, and this is what they are buying–”

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-spent-their-stimulus-checks-on-discretionary-goods-such-as-bikes-video-games-and-clothes-target-and-walmart-ceos-say-2020-05-20?mod=MW_article_top_stories

    “At Walmart and Target, shoppers bought more TVs, electronics, gaming equipment and apparel. Walmart also saw increased demand for adult-sized bikes.

    At Best Buy, customers used their stimulus checks to buy computing and gaming equipment, Corie Barry, the company’s CEO, said on it Thursday earnings call.

    “Like many other retailers, we saw sales benefit during the last three weeks of the quarter as customers undoubtedly chose to spend some of their government stimulus money on the products and services we provide,” Barry said.”

  12. bluedog May 22, 2020 at 10:26 am #

    And most of the people didn’t even see it coming and its been coming for a long long time,and now the clowns in Washington have run the circus out of town and don’t have a clue as to where it went or how to find it.

    We have the clowns including the oval office playing the blame game to cover up for their dismal handling of the virus,meanwhile China is getting back up to speed,their GDP grew at somewhere between 3,5 and 4% over the first quarter and trade was in the billions,I guess that’s what happens when you have some brains in running the animal farm which we are sorely lacking.!!!

  13. robert magill May 22, 2020 at 10:26 am #

    The last time I looked Walmart had over 400 stores in China and were building more. Buy cheap and then sell cheap in China! They’ll survive.
    Maybe it’s us that won’t?

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 4:12 pm #

      Good point. Another example of a corporation having no loyalty to the nation in which it developed.

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 4:38 pm #

        Capital has no ‘home’.

      • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 5:11 pm #

        Globalism in a nutshell.

  14. MiddlePeninsula May 22, 2020 at 10:29 am #

    Yes indeed, interesting times. Six months ago, I picked this particular moment in time to retire. I finished up my last couple of months teleworking. My car has moved exactly one ten mile trip in six weeks. I am contemplating whether or not we need two vehicles.

    We had two telephone calls with doctors this week. It worked out ok, but I think a video call would have been better. Scaling down our lives in the future may be better, but I am old and content to stay at home. That may not as satisfying for young folks. I’m not sure where exactly we are going, but we are going there nevertheless.

  15. gustafson.robert.22 May 22, 2020 at 10:48 am #

    Maybe its this generation, quarantine babies, who in 20 yrs will reach adulthood just as it finally becomes clear how unsustainable the oil and tech world is

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  16. benr May 22, 2020 at 10:52 am #

    This one is for you backrowheckler

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgcPr_1dapY

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

    • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 12:49 pm #

      Nice Ben, thanks for that.

      Crocs and sharks, both creatures fascinate me.

      Read one place they actually engage in mortal combat occassionally on the North Coast of Australia, two tough hombres vying for top dog (so to speak) in the same territory.

      Brh

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:31 pm #

        I’m fascinated that bears can outrun race horses for a short distance. They don’t look fast but they are. 35-40 mph.

        • Q. Shtik May 22, 2020 at 3:51 pm #

          I’m fascinated that bears can outrun race horses for a short distance. – Janos

          =========

          During the recent NFL Combine Tristan Wirfs, a 6’5″ 320lb offensive lineman ran the 40 yard dash in 4.85 secs.

          • stelmosfire May 22, 2020 at 6:12 pm #

            Average speed 16.87 mph. of course that was from a dead stop. So top speed? who knows. Usain Bolt hits 27+ mph in the hundred meter after he’s rolling. An unknown community member was clocked by cruiser speedometer recently at 35 mph during hot pursuit recently in New Haven and that was while carrying a 35″ flat-screen!

        • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 4:58 pm #

          Bears are the most fearsome killing machines on earth.

          • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 6:30 pm #

            ‘Specially Polar Bears.

          • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 6:43 pm #

            I ain’t gonna lie. I was at the Zoo in Wuppertal recently. They have a gigantic polar bear who usually hangs around outdoors by his pool feasting on fish.

            I tried to walk up to the plate glass window that seperated us in order to get an up-close experience, and I could not do it. Even with the glass.

            The enclosure is set up so you are on the same level surface as one another, and you can be an arms length away with just that piece of glass between you. That fecker was nothing but a hulking godless killing machine.

          • James Kuehl May 22, 2020 at 8:12 pm #

            As far as Polar Bears are concerned, there are only four things: water, ice, other Polar Bears, and food.

          • benr May 23, 2020 at 9:29 am #

            Polar bear liver will kill you with vitamin A poisoning!

  17. SW May 22, 2020 at 10:57 am #

    I remember how little stuff was in my grandparents home when I was growing up yet we were well-fed, healthy, and no one seemed feel like we were poor. We had enough but somewhere along the line, my generation lost sight of the fact that having more doesn’t have to mean a better life. And a lot of the money spent at big box stores is frivolous but marketed as necessities. Example: a young nurse I work with just had a baby and she’s very into everything being natural and organic. I was going to get her a couple dozen cloth diapers but she informed me they had decided to use disposable. She and her BF are on a razor thin budget & I tried to explain this would save her hundreds of dollars in the long run. No dice.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

      She don’t have the time, SW. She has to work. She don’t have a husband after all just a “BF”.

      Think that’s not a difference that makes a difference?

      • SW May 22, 2020 at 2:36 pm #

        Yes, I do think it makes a difference and I wasn’t judging her b/c she wants the convenience of disposables. We’ve all been sucked into the disposable society based on nothing but our own ease and I’m no recycling saint myself. She’s got a baby who’ll be in diapers 2 to 3 years and the cost of disposables could pay for a washer & dryer. How much help the BF is (or if he’s going to stick around for the long haul) — undetermined. No one wants to go back to the days of unwed mothers and their children being treated cruelly but the effects of casual parenting — babyMama or babyDaddy — aren’t turning out so well.

    • Q. Shtik May 22, 2020 at 3:57 pm #

      this would save her hundreds of dollars – SW

      ======

      Wow, HUNDREDS, you say!

      • SW May 22, 2020 at 5:47 pm #

        In our Brave New Broke World “hundreds “ might help out.

      • sophia May 22, 2020 at 6:07 pm #

        Are you genuinely surprised or mocking the reality that for a lot of people hundreds is a lot?

        • SW May 22, 2020 at 7:53 pm #

          No I’m not surprised and I certainly wasn’t mocking her. Disposable is just that — disposable — and the more we’ve relied on these things whether it’s diapers or or anything else, it subtly impoverishes us. We have to keep spending money for the same things over and over again. I’ve been a single mom and I know hundreds is a lot and can make a big difference, especially if this is a constant drip, drip, drip every month.

        • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 11:47 pm #

          Are you genuinely surprised or mocking the reality that for a lot of people hundreds is a lot? – sophia

          =========

          Sophia, I assume your comment was directed to ME, not to SW. If so, MY comment was a bit snarky but was meant to infer that in this day and age ‘hundreds of dollars’ (spread over 3-4 years that a child is shitting and pissing their diaper) is not likely to influence the decision between labor, water, and detergent intensive cloth vs disposable diapers. I suggest it would take ‘thousands of dollars.’

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 9:28 pm #

        Financial snobbery. In America, even Marxists are like this – making their whole ostensible world view and philosophy into a bullshit lie.
        At least Q is consistent, admitting that money is everything and proud of his lifetime earnings.

  18. Loneranger May 22, 2020 at 11:01 am #

    Complaining is a worthless substitute for action.

    • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 11:12 am #

      +1

  19. dah plunge protection team May 22, 2020 at 11:02 am #

    My question is how many Americans actually have a useful skill set that can be marketed? Who can fix a shoe? Who can make pants/shirts/underwear and socks? Sure we have a few plumbers and electricians…. but where are they going to get the wire, the piping. How many of our tradesmen are close to retiring?

    Sure we have a lot of hair dressers and estheticians. But how long is it until we have no clothes left to cover up all the fat, tattoo ridden, pierced, fructose saturated cake wretched bodies?

    • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 11:15 am #

      Long enough not to be fat.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:34 pm #

      I have a bit of fat but no tattoos. And under that, muscles of iron.

    • draupnir May 22, 2020 at 2:07 pm #

      I can knit socks (though I have forgotten how to do a heel, so they’re tube socks). I can sew. However, we don’t make fabric here anymore. All of the mills were disassembled and shipped to china. What they send back is poor quality. Even sewing thread isn’t what it used to be. It’s easily breakable, fuzzy and too frail, lacking a firm twist. I think we’re pretty much doomed to meet our future in ragged Walmart jeans with tears that are no longer fashionable and faded and torn T-shirts advertising sports teams that are no longer extant.

      In the days before machines did such work, clothing was one of the most expensive items belonging to a person and few had more than one set (remember the Ballad of the Harp Weaver). The man-hours involved in production were staggering. Everybody spun, when they were not involved in other chores, Though it was mostly done by woman, men did that work too, in the winter. Weaving of cloth was
      done on a loom standing upright against a wall, from top to bottom. Woolen cloth needed to be felted to firm up the weave, which involved soaking it in tubs of water while woman stamped on it (like making wine). Linen stalks had to be soaked in water and left to rot (I understand the stench was horrendous), before the fibers could be separated, spun and woven.

      Hides can be scraped and softened by chewing, then cured, using the brains of the animal, to make leather.

      I have cast iron cookware. I can bake bread, and though I’ve still got flour, yeast is getting hard to come by, so I’ve made a sour-dough starter and have researched and now am confident I can make hearthcakes, the unleavened bread from the middle ages (one of the things I discovered while looking up other things). Those things turn hard as bricks overnight and stay good for a long time.

    • stelmosfire May 22, 2020 at 7:32 pm #

      But where are they going to get the wire, the piping.? They’ll strip it out of the abandoned buildings of course, that copper stuff will be good for hundreds of years. A cobbler is really almost a lost art, but the dead still have good shoes. I have several pairs of really good boots that will outlive me. My wife has probably a hundred pairs of not very sensible shoes.

  20. robert magill May 22, 2020 at 11:16 am #

    One thing above all else sealed the fate of mom & pop retail was the returns attitude. Bring back anything for refund and you’d think you were taking from their babies. Such kvetching! People grew to love the big box ease of return.

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    • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 11:18 am #

      That’s a very valid point.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:38 pm #

      Yes, people suck so the impersonal becomes very attractive. A couple of very big dominoes right there. And why do they suck? Because not raised in viable families.

  21. Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 11:17 am #

    I noticed a lot of the silly restrictions due to the Chinese virus just so happened to favor the mega businesses over the smaller local ones.
    In fact, the phased re-openings at lower capacity with masks and other nonsense is going to kill off many that attempt to reopen.

    I also notice that some of the states still insisting on keeping the egregious edicts in place, but not for themselves of course, just happen to be the states that bent over backwards to put people already sick with the virus in with the very population that actually needed protecting.
    Was this done out of ignorance? No. Was it done because they needed high death numbers to justify their power grabs? That sounds too horrifying to be true, but criminal acts are often horrifying, and we won’t really know until this is investigated.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:47 pm #

      And it never will be – officially at least. Another great crime seen on the expressway but never heard about again.

    • SW May 22, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

      I went to Home Depot, a big box store and grocery store within the last couple of days and I was the only one there without a mask even though in Texas it’s no longer mandatory. To me, it’s chilling that people in so short a period of time could be brainwashed by the use of relentless reporting of “death tolls”!!! into submission.

      • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 4:08 pm #

        Most people have a fear of death. A fear of the unknown Even religious or spiritual people. So it is one of those very common fears. And like any fear, it can be exploited to modify behavior. And that is what is happening now. Behavior modification. It’s a new step of social engineering and its working well as it always has.

        • SW May 22, 2020 at 5:35 pm #

          And even stronger than the fear of our own death is the death of someone we love.

  22. venuspluto67 May 22, 2020 at 11:19 am #

    Well, since a lot of people are really relying on Walmart and Amazon right now to get many of their essentials, we’ll certainly know it’s “Game Over” when they finally go down!

  23. daytrip May 22, 2020 at 11:19 am #

    https://youtu.be/4-7O3fOXXKo

    Joe Rogan interview with Joel Salatin. Time for local food.

    Catch Mr Rogan before he departs YouTube for Spotify!

  24. James Kuehl May 22, 2020 at 11:20 am #

    Among the more pathetic ideas being tossed around is that we will bring major manufacturing back to America. As if assembly lines full of workers turning wrenches for $30/hour and generous benefits was not an anomaly. What comes next won’t resemble anything most of us alive today have ever experienced.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:50 pm #

      They’ll come back for full the brave new world of full automation. Mechanical people can never be better machines than actual machines. This is what all of industrialism was tending towards – a nightmare. Metropolis does’t need the organics anymore.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 6:24 pm #

          Well there goes my stimulus. Guess the Coon Kits will have to wait.

        • stelmosfire May 22, 2020 at 7:46 pm #

          Brick Dollbanger!! What a great pseudonym. I’m takin’ it for my next trip to Vegas.

          • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 11:09 am #

            Saint,
            I usually use the pseudonym “Peter Perfect”….

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 11:41 pm #

          I wonder if Alba sounds like that Scottish doll….

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

            Nobody in Scotland sounds like that ‘Scottish’ doll. And nobody here calls themselves ‘Harmony’ either.

            Why do the dolls look as if they have rickets? If you can give a doll an orgasm maybe you could give it a Vitamin D receptor?

            I only listened to a minute or two but my favourite bit was where I heard (or maybe read) that some men like them for ‘companionship’.

            Lordy.

            And they used to pity the occasional sad woman you’d see pushing a pram with a lifelike doll-baby in it.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 8:46 am #

            BTW, why is everything about these grotesqueries so lacking in nuance? It’s like a lesson in psychology to test five-year-olds.

            Why is the lady called Harmony, daddy?

            Why, it’s to point out that ‘she’ will agree with everything you say and laugh at all your jokes.

            Jesus. Are men not embarrassed?

          • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 11:12 am #

            “Jesus. Are men not embarrassed?”

            Alba,
            Be content in that you do not know the half of it….

  25. Urinthe Village May 22, 2020 at 11:21 am #

    I think the fallacy in the ‘World Made by Hand’ scenario is that it presumes that all central authority will disappear. While electronic technology will not be distributed as it is now, everything that has been learned about electronics, computing, and surveillance will not be forgotten. Certainly, ships will not be ferrying junk across the oceans for the masses, and much production will be by hand or small local endeavors, but there will be people and organizations that retain the ability to monitor everything who will still want their piece of the action and will want to have ultimate control of all such activities. There will not be a return to a pastoral agrarian economy of the early 1800’s simply because the current economy is obliterated and Happy Motoring becomes impossible. You will not be left alone to manage your own affairs. The people at the top and their muscle will still have gasoline, vehicles, aircraft, and everything else they need to keep track of you and your activities, and who will dispatch goons with bigger and more effective weapons than you to make sure that everything you are doing follows their laws and that taxes are appropriately remitted. It’s pleasant to imagine a simpler existence, but absent an event that physically destroys all current technology, there will continue to be an authority in possession of technology which it will deploy in a manner that serves its interests.

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    • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 12:09 pm #

      How long do you think it will be before independent people figure out that gov mafia pigs are gov mafia pigs and they will not change, and start targeting them were it counts. If you can’t directly confront and kill that thug policeman and his goon employer kill their wives kill their kids kill their mothers kill their friends and so on. That commie judge or politician or corporate shithead or commie Vatican agent or whatever is acting like the commie foreign agent that they are, apply the same prescription outlined above and make sure that their family and friends and their homes are empty of family collaborators and associates. There is going to be terror coming on a scale unimaginable. You already see this in many Arab countries where their thoroughly corrupt societies transitioned from a cold war of slavery taxes to a hot war of blood and revenge. The US is on a similar trajectory. So is the EU. So is China. And so is 90% of the planet where morality fairness and justice are nonexistent.

      Trump and his crew better wake up to this and start acting accordingly. The Obama/Clinton commie mafia should have been rotting in prison and preferably shot dead already long ago. Their infrastructure of China commie agents long ago exposed and dealt with in the same way. The clock is ticking and time is running out.

      • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 12:26 pm #

        I’m a pinko commie bastard too, don’t forget, eh.

        If America wants to kill commies please start with me, thanks.

        RW

        • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 12:32 pm #

          Robert, for people like you it will be the slow roast of the bonfire. You will be disposed of like a martyr, and the fat from your flaming carcass will be used as fuel for the next in line. I hope that satisfies the romantic ending you so desire.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:57 pm #

            Careful – he’s a remote viewer. He’ll see you coming and be ready for you. Wait till he passes out with his nightly glass of Canadian Whiskey.

          • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 2:54 pm #

            I would say that I’ve lived a life analogous to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath already at the age of 60 with no discernible wealth accumulation in my entire lifetime yet I actually worked full time taking care of my elderly parents & their house/land maintenance for 40 years. They stuck me with my Functionally Retarded brother too.

            I was raised in a Dickensian & Hobbesian brute world from inception. No crashing Casino Capitalist world is going to fuel my burning carcass as no fat exists over 60 years of impoverished living whereby even my teeth fell out due to stress.

            I say bring in on, motherfucker. Mike Tyson always did say that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

            And I was raised to literally murder Wall Street due to their operating ethos of business.

            RW

          • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

            Well then, Robert, you might well escape the bonfire as your toothless skull might strike the liking of my Jamaican cousin living next door to you. They enjoy toothless suckdolls like yourself to suck them off, and it won’t be such a change of employment for you either.

          • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

            ” You will be disposed of like a martyr, and the fat from your flaming carcass will be used as fuel for the next in line.”

            Mofo,
            Thank God the Sons of Israel maintained this critical cremation technology…It appears to be lost to Europe.

          • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 4:31 pm #

            I cast your soul into perdition, akmofo.

            A pox on your house, too.

            RW

          • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 5:14 pm #

            Well bubby, ever the romantic I see you prefer the bonfire to your current state of being. Perdition is your life today. You can take it up with your commie God and his holy ghost in the Vatican.

          • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 5:21 pm #

            I wouldn’t worry about that, Ely. The muzzies that were invited to chase out the last Jews from Europe prefer to simply cut your head off. And they will, whether you reject their feelings or not.

          • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 6:59 pm #

            I am a guy that cannot afford teeth, Janos. Moreover, I can’t afford Canadian Club Rye Whiskey if my life depended on it.
            To add to that I am allergic to alcohol, and especially Canadian beer.

            I drink a few foreign beers sometimes during really hot summer nights but never do I drink hard booze like whiskey as that stuff is too strong for me at my age. I’m a two beer guy, Janos. I used to be able to drink a beer an hour in my youth.

            When I took Drugs & Behaviour under Canada’s best known addictions researcher I stopped drinking heavily.

            I’m just a beer & marijuana guy now because I can’t get hashish anymore.

            RW

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 5:00 pm #

        This has been an engaging conversation – on point, erudite, civil and diverse.

        Then you come along with your crazy conspiracy-theory-jag, spraying unfounded venom and promoting murder, and you self-justify with an implication that you represent ‘morality fairness an justice”.

        You offer nothing of credible substance to this forum. You blight it and defecate at will.

        Enough already.

        • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 5:13 pm #

          Malignant personality always blames others as they fail to think introspectively as mature contemplatives.

          RW

        • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 5:58 pm #

          Jelly, it’s no conspiracy theory, it’s facts! The Vatican MSM deliberately hides from people the horrors in Syria Sudan Yemen Libya Iraq Venezuela France Spain etc, because they know full well what I say is true. They know they are next. It’s exactly the same dynamic playing. I’m just the only one here with the honesty and integrity to say the obvious.

          • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 6:03 pm #

            This is what Europe is going to look like:

            https://youtu.be/qp4YV5WJysw

            And the US and China are not far behind.

        • City_of_76 May 22, 2020 at 6:10 pm #

          Attention Mr. Kunstler:

          Please implement a comment function that allows us to block commenters (for instance, https://disqus.com).

          The trolls & nut jobs here have scared away everyone who had anything useful to say. If we could block them, some of us might actually be able to have some quality discussions.

          • Majella May 22, 2020 at 7:23 pm #

            City – my point precisely.

            I, like you probably, was enjoying the depth of discussion among some familiar but rare visitors/commenters.

            Then this all-too-familiar nut-job arrived and pooped all over it, and then started on his usual insane & incessant haranguing of all & sundry. It’s very destructive.

          • benr May 23, 2020 at 9:34 am #

            At times I agree but even the worst have something useful to say.
            I do get sucked in by some of the local village idiots at times but I also use the valid ability of ignore for some.

    • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 12:36 pm #

      Good points UV

      Is the day far off when every Neighborhood Watch Group has their own SWAT, and every small town a Stasi like organization encouraging you to inform on your neighbors (for example, my neighbor Bob is not wearing a mask)

      Brh

      • draupnir May 22, 2020 at 2:27 pm #

        That reminds me of an old joke:

        A group of convicts was being transported to prison in a bus and start talking. They ask each other what they were convicted of.
        One admits he was a rapist. One admits he did murder. One admits to strong-arm robbery. One admits to bilking the elderly out of their life savings. The last, a little guy, admits to tearing the do not remove under penalty of law tag from his mattress, and all the bad guys cringe away in disgust.

    • rainmaker May 22, 2020 at 12:37 pm #

      A person could take down a town electricity grid with ONE match. Have you ever noticed all the dead pine trees near power lines……

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:07 pm #

        it could hardly be coincidence. Providence, Nature and Nature’s God, have vouchsafed to us a kill switch.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 1:53 pm #

      Good point. There won’t be enough for mass production for the hoi polloi, but the Elite will continue to have cars – as will their bully boys.

  26. benr May 22, 2020 at 11:26 am #

    Well folks looks like we are all going to get stimulated again.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/a-second-irs-stimulus-check-is-in-the-works-here-s-where-we-stand-with-round-2/ar-BB142API?ocid=msedgdhp

    What shall we do with the next round?

    • roccofire May 22, 2020 at 11:39 am #

      I am going to invest in our future, our education of the youth, and buy lottery tickets, NYS is broke and needs my help.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 11:50 am #

        Cuomo is trying to get the sports teams to open without opening. He didn’t think this through.

        • Daddyotis May 22, 2020 at 2:25 pm #

          Uh huh. And did you notice that now he’s all hung ho about “legalized marijuana”? Nothing like the smell of potential tax flow to loosen up the ol moral compass. Typical politician 🙂

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:08 pm #

      I’m going to buy kits (baby raccoons) and teach them to be second story “men”.

      • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

        Janos,
        I raised a racoon from a baby. When in adulthood it bit the hell out of me…still have the scars on my left wrist..fangs.

        Currently, I am waging war with the bastards, as they are particularly fond of a Beauty Plum that bears early. They will break the branches, eat the ripe fruit, and throw the not-yet-ripe to the ground. I have now built infernal devices that keep them at bay. No quarter asked…none given.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

          It bit you in anger? What did you do with it? Most people have said otherwise, that they make good pets (aside from the craziness), but that they inadvertently scratch you to pieces with their back legs as youngsters.

          My favorite story: the Coon got into its head that it had to fill the toilet with little stones. To that end, it worked with maniacal energy for hours. Also there’s the shitting in weird places that you can’t get at….

          • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

            Janos,
            Well, Mutt (as he was called) was kept on a chain in our backyard in San Antonio. I gave him an egg to eat…they love eggs. When I next found him, he was hopelessly wrapped up with the chain in a large bush. When trying to free him, he must have figured that I was after his egg (which he had carried into the bush)…he bit the hell out of me.

            Also had a pet alligator at the time…they have no politics, and he/she would bite without seeming reason. They have needle like teeth…hurt like maybe a murder hornet? I have no reference….

          • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 1:01 pm #

            “It bit you in anger?”

            Janos,
            If not anger, then certainly enthusiasm….

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

            EF

            I know how you feel. I once rescued a little lizard from between a cat’s teeth (France – it’s a bit cool for them here), and it bit my finger. No gratitude.

    • draupnir May 22, 2020 at 2:29 pm #

      The same thing I did with the last one. I invested in real things.

    • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 4:13 pm #

      What shall we do with the next round?”

      Purchase another 500 gallons (or so) of diesel in 55 gallon drums….

      I got responsibilities…I got a Dodge to feed….

  27. Soloview May 22, 2020 at 11:27 am #

    When I read Jim’s blog these days, I am often reminded of the prophetic utterances of a literary genius, chronic drunk and whore master extraordinaire, who lived his bohemian nirvana in the Paris garrets of the nineteen thirties. Henry Miller saw the sunset of humanity, the nonsense of modernity, and America’s central role in it. He shocked George Orwell who visited him on his way to fight in Spain, and who could not comprehend how the literary marvel disguised as a pornographer could be so indifferent to the great scourge of fascism, and respond to it by drinking binges and debauchery. Of course, it was the same lifestyle that Orwell practiced himself in the City of Lights just a few years earlier, though with a general socialist outlook. But not Miller. He could not give a damn about the girimacing cretin of Predappio, or the Teppichfresser, or Caudillo the great Impotent. They were just minor temporary distractions from the greater drama of America luring the world into the age of miracles and wonders while destroying the idea of local culture and community life. Miller wrote in his Third or Fourth Day of Spring: “Nobody thinks any more how marvelous it is that the whole world is diseased. No point of reference, no frame of health. God might just as well be typhoid fever. No absolutes. Only light years of deferred progress. When I think of those centuries in which all Europe grappled with the Black Death, I realize how radiant life can be if only we are bitten in the right places! The dance and fever in the midst of that corruption! Europe may never again dance so ecstatically…..Aye, the great sun of syphilis is setting. Low visibility: forecast for the Bronx, for America, for the whole modern world. Low visibility accompanied by great gales of laughter. No new stars on the horizon. Catastrophes…only catastrophes! ……I see America spreading disaster. I see a long night setting in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.”

    • daytrip May 22, 2020 at 12:12 pm #

      The first few paragraphs of “Tropic of Cancer” stand out in my mind, where Miller talks of having no prospects but being the happiest man alive because he is an artist. ” I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

      Thomas Merton in “The Seven Storey Mountain” says a similar thing about his parents, that they were artists so they were in a way above the daily, mundane concerns of most people, though they were still subject to the realities of the world.

      “Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.” Miller. <– I bought a shirt at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur many years ago with the second part of this quote written on the back of it. Great place, Where the redwoods meet the ocean. A long way from a fluorescent-lit Wally World, physically and otherwise.

  28. roccofire May 22, 2020 at 11:36 am #

    Greetings James:

    We are very busy again in the e.d. Car accidents always strong in the spring, have increased more than the usual. The assaults, knifes, gsw, and drugs have returned, and after 40 years in this business, I know believe my hope for a Star Trek world is dead. I agree with most of your article, but the folks will go negative before community returns. I suffered another loss beloved item of my youth. The woke culture killed the basic premise of Star Trek, to advance mentally, and spiritually, to grow as a person, explore yourself and the universe is gone. The new versions of Star Trek on CBS access destroyed Gene Rodenberry visions. Alfred N Neuman is our last hope.

    • roccofire May 22, 2020 at 11:38 am #

      correction Alfred E. Neuman

    • benr May 22, 2020 at 11:48 am #

      Depressing how as knowledge expands the people willing to dip their toes into it that well take the easy way out and choose not to?

    • wet dog May 22, 2020 at 12:50 pm #

      You’re right about the new Star Trek’s complete disregard of Roddenberry’s vision. The positive outlook, the maturing of the human race, was all ditched. The future is a Blade Runner dystopia, everyone cusses, and is so woke that every “leader” is now a woman and the men act like wimps.

      The last good Trek was probably Enterprise – not great, but still generally following the vision of wonder and discovery. People are still looking for that, but Hollywood is so mired in its own filth that they can’t create something positive and decent anymore.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:31 pm #

        Piccard is a like minded disaster. The newest Star Trek, just a nightmare of affirmative action and minority empowerment. Only Black Women can save the galaxy.

        What’s the name of the joke series? The Oreo or something like that? That is actually pretty good, retaining a bit of the spirit of the original though more humorous.

        • malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:32 pm #

          Have you seen, a film where In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.?

          Guess her race. Guess who the haters are.

          https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206634/?

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 10:08 pm #

          Now I remember: the Orville. Check it out if it’s still on. Some thoughtful plots and lots of dumb jokes.

    • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 4:16 pm #

      “The woke culture killed the basic premise of Star Trek, to advance mentally, and spiritually, to grow as a person…”

      Rocco,
      Huh…reaching adult hood killed it for me…or puberty…one or the other….

  29. 100th Avatar May 22, 2020 at 11:43 am #

    Retail, the kind that requires one to give up a portion of their time to drive to a strip-mall to search the big box for what they’re looking for, is dead. This accounts for a majority of the exurban and suburban commercial/shopping districts.

    Outside the milieu of main streets and urban shopping districts most people do not find “shopping” to be an efficient or enjoyable exercise. This is why so many derelict and failing shopping malls are instead looking to bring the neighborhood to the mall with condos and townhomes and apartments where empty parking lots now stand. They are literally looking at making the mall a main street. Who would have imagined?

    Amazon has been long planning its way around dependency upon the trucking and automobile delivery system. Just like Steve Jobs, Bezos knows that most people do not know what they want until you show them. Bezos showed people how absurd, and completely wasteful (time, money, gasoline) driving around town stopping at different stores really is.

    Drone deliveries from aerial and ground based fulfillment centers are one such plan.
    Drone deliveries of modified conex containers from shipping vessels to fulfillment centers will potentially eliminate longshoremen, truckers, and hopefully, vehicular traffic… then there is the future of long-haul drones.

    Your UBI will ensure it.

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 12:01 pm #

      Eventually their technology will be used against them. Just imagine once a devout and obedient jihadi finally gets his or her hands on a nuke or bio weapon. There isn’t anything special about Jeff Bezos’ dreams other than the weight both he and others give them. The pandemic or planned-demic proves that profound disruption can occur quickly and easily. The modern world and modern society is a Destroyer of Souls. It has many friends of convenience but more foes in principal. Fewer and fewer people benefit from the system each and every day. The growing gap between the few rich and the legion poor continues to grow. It’s unsustainable and even machines have shelf lives.

      • 100th Avatar May 22, 2020 at 1:48 pm #

        People still suck on jihadis? You’re so 00’s. Cute

        • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 2:12 pm #

          That was lame. Clearly you didn’t have a thoughtful comeback. Expected and achieved. Thank you.

          • Laundromat Blues May 22, 2020 at 7:44 pm #

            He’s no quipper that’s for sure.

      • SpeedyBB May 25, 2020 at 12:50 pm #

        SSL, I find it amusing to read about the gnuclear gnomes in their missile silos, kids in their 20s tending aging ICBMs, as the military scrambles to replace dowdy 1970s computer technology with updated solid-state stuff. Do these youngsters have the same taste for nuclear Armageddon as a previous generation (mine) of brainwashed Cold Warriors? Will they turn the Launch Key (or whatever has succeeded it) in unison, as demanded – or just say fuck it I’m not going to kill millions for some dumb ideology …

  30. fugeguy May 22, 2020 at 11:58 am #

    “And that was where things stood as the long emergency commenced in the winter of early 2020, along with the Covid-19 corona virus riding shotgun on the hearse-wagon it rolled in on.”

    Yep we are no longer debating if only when. I see a recovery. But it won’t last- 2 or 3 years into Trump’s second term we will have a spectacular global crash. Get your house in order (literally). New roof, alternative heating/ power source. Start growing some food. Get your click click pull on and become skilled at multiple ways to resolve problems… AOC et all will be looking for someone to meet their needs as they are sure (always dangerous) somebody owes them…

    Time is very short…

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    • CancelMyCard May 22, 2020 at 8:07 pm #

      ” But it won’t last- 2 or 3 years into Trump’s second term ”

      What the hell makes you think this sinking Titanic is going to last until 2023 – 2024?

      No way . . . .

      The whole self-destructive collapse that started in early 2020, will

      finally

      plunge off the cliff in early 2021.

      Take that to the bank, my friends.

      Seriously.

  31. Beryl of Oyl May 22, 2020 at 12:10 pm #

    Speaking of vaccines and Kennedys, I was under the impression that President Trump had appointed Bobby Jr. to head some kind of vaccine safety commission.
    I only just found out that yes, he did ask him to head such a group, but it never came to be.
    With all this talk lately of rush job vaccines and Bill Gates, I would have liked to have some sort of counterweight in place.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-kennedy-jr-the-trump-white-house-has-shut-me-out-on-vaccines

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:40 pm #

      Kennedy is a critic. Kushner wants to warp humanity with warp speed in Operation Warp Speed. Trump (just the mouthpiece of the Kushners) is in bed with GlaxoSmithKline.

      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-set-to-name-former-glaxo-exec-as-vaccine-czar-2020-05-13

    • SW May 22, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

      Very few Americans know the story behind the polio vaccine and how a deadly virus SV40 was introduced via the Salk vaccine, the Cutter Pharmaceutical contamination that killed children and the government cover-up of the errors that were made. In their rush to find a vaccine, safety precautions were ignored and not surprisingly, unintended consequences. I’d never heard of any of this until a friend recommended I read The Virus and the Vaccine by Debbie Bookchin.

      I also saw an interview with a young scientist involved in the search for a cover-19 vaccine and he said this would be the first RNA vaccine administered to humans.

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 5:18 pm #

        Hey, SW

        Thanks for introducing that – I just purchased a copy.

        Tell me though – as I have yet to read it – was this SV40 contamination (in the 50s & early 60s – so that’s the vaccine I’ll have received) a cock-up or a conspiracy?

        • SW May 22, 2020 at 5:42 pm #

          Strictly an accident but compounded by a refusal to revisit the data. Sabin warned they were moving too fast but Salk, brilliant but ambitious, ignored him as did the federal government. The book is well documented. SV stands for simian virus. Polio vaccine is made from their kidneys & they knew there were viruses there but thought they were harmless. You’ll find the book most interesting.

        • Laundromat Blues May 22, 2020 at 7:27 pm #

          The adjutant to that is “Doctor Mary’s Monkey.” Alton Oschner is a tragic figure in it. He is so sure the vaccine is safe he gives it to his grandchildren and one dies and the other was paralyzed for life. JFK, Clay Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dave Ferrie. The whole crew in the summer before 11/22/1963 in New Orleans.

        • Laundromat Blues May 22, 2020 at 7:29 pm #

          It’s responsible for the current cancer epidemic. Quite possibly the most diabolical plot in human history.

        • benr May 23, 2020 at 12:23 pm #

          This is a favorite talking point for Alex He who shall not be named and has been for YEARS.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 8:00 pm #

            Yeah, but Alex Jones…his MO is to spin a few facts into a weaponized conspiracy, spew disinformation as far and wide as he possibly can (being why YouTube couldn’t take it any more), rant, rave, blame, accuse, pillory and defame as many people as he can draw into his Ring of Insanity, then cash in.

            The cash-in is when he sells YOU, benr, snake oil supplements and doomer-prep cans of food, because he ‘only has $50 left to carry on the fight!’

            In fact, he’s worth a tad more than either thee or me, benr, at around $10 million (though it’s not clear whether that number is before or after his embarrassingly public divorce).

            https://wealthygorilla.com/alex-jones-net-worth/

          • benr May 25, 2020 at 9:52 am #

            @majella

            Why that is simply the smell of success!
            Why would you hate on the man for being successful?
            While we are on the bend of putting out false data or massaging’s reality lest we forget CNN tells lies all day everyday as do all major media outlets.

  32. RB May 22, 2020 at 12:22 pm #

    Part of the American problem is that we get our knowledge of history from Hollywood movies and of course TV. Any good old days were Happy Days with the Fonzie worshipers. We prefer our myths over truth. The bucolic life was not by choice but by bad luck to be in an impoverished community. Appalachia? West Virginia? Dust Bowl? And if your luck was worse than that you found yourself in a ghetto of some description in some corrupt city. If you were black, you were screwed no matter the location. They still hate you for that too. There has never been a good time to be poor. The thing is, now we are going to have a lot more impoverished people. It’s the “good old days” returning with a vengeance. Hollywood will make it seem okay though.

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

      Sure they will. They will celebrate it most likely as some sort of pinnacle of high civilization. But what will they do when the mestizo masses are breaching their walls or their hired help gets sick of their personal weirdness and inner dictators?

    • malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:33 pm #

      In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.

      ‘CHILDREN OF MEN’

      • Majella May 24, 2020 at 9:10 pm #

        Great movie. To Janos’ eternal disappointment, that pregnant woman was…well, not white.

  33. hugho May 22, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

    WM is the big box that everyone loves to hate. Myself included and it is every bit as evil as Jim says and lordy I pray that someday it will bite the dust. The problem is that it is doing just fine because it services the middle and low classes which is 90% of the country. Nieman Marcus is going down but the way it looks from here, WM will be one of the last to go.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/walmart-reports-earnings-q4-fiscal-2019.html

    • DrGonzo May 22, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

      Walmart has hired 150,000 new workers (“associates”) since the pandemic started. This week they announced plans to hire 50,000 more, as soon as possible

      Mallwart isn’t going to disappear any time soon, sorry to say.

  34. WayfaringStranger May 22, 2020 at 12:56 pm #

    You have the weirdest compulsion.
    After a string of insightful and amazing articles, you just HAVE to let your Snobbery out to play.
    I remember quite clearly when Wal-Mart arrived on the scene, Jobs were hard to come by here in the Rust Belt, by any measure we, the parents of 2 small children, were poor. And there was no indication we’d get ahead any time soon.
    The overwhelming majority of the non-affluent in our town of 13K with children either had extended family that could do free child care, or most often they worked opposite shifts to live at a survival level. Too often renting flats in cut-up older homes.
    The Dad worked days, the Mom worked nights, nobody slept properly and souses left To-Do lists and informative notes to each other about kids, and daily events.
    Spouses rarely saw each other, this was a dumb way to run a family life but you know – China. Everyone was moving business there.
    Wal-marts made the purchase of a few more items possible.
    Did people know it was a crap business model, also dependent on sweatshops? Sure.
    But to blame those people for shopping at Walmart and to describe the local governments as you do for welcoming Wal-Mart is like blaming cola miners for shopping at the company store.
    It wasn’t really a choice.
    WHY do you have to be an a$$hole?
    Joe Biden just can not refrain from intermittently degrading black people, whether it’s his leg hair, roaches, whatever, and you just can not seem to refrain from degrading the working class.
    Cargo-cultists? You really are an ass.

    • WayfaringStranger May 22, 2020 at 1:04 pm #

      …and when you delete that comment, do enjoy the realization that YOU can insult (people like) me, but you’re so very sensitive when it comes to taking what you regularly (and randomly) dish out to readers. I can not insult you back.
      No wonder people like Cargill gravitate to you. He’s a terrible snob too. Both able to maintain position as a direct result of the current system, I might add with little self-awareness. just insight into everyone and everything else.
      Sahib laughs at the native cargo-culters, so very primitive. When will they learn.

      • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 1:57 pm #

        Actually people did have a choice. And they made bad ones.

      • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 1:59 pm #

        And yes JHK can get very pissed off with us but it has been a full week since has deleted anything I wrote.

      • 100th Avatar May 22, 2020 at 2:02 pm #

        I remember my first time visiting a Wal-Mart in suburban Charleston, SC.

        I immediately sensed something amiss. The lighting, the layout, the clientele, the color schemes? It was all very unpleasant. Ugly. The sardonic smiley faces really struck me. I interpreted them as an inside joke. It was mockery. I have yet to visit a place that makes one feel so cheap and worthless. You become inseparable from the wares on display.

        It’s a place for people that don’t care how they’re treated. They just want to save. They want $. The same people that join the military, or local police force. Bare survival.

        • malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:34 pm #

          I have been to one WM. One time. With a pal…it was weird.

      • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 4:23 pm #

        Effendi…

      • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 5:28 am #

        No wonder people like Cargill gravitate to you. He’s a terrible snob too. Both able to maintain position as a direct result of the current system, I might add with little self-awareness. just insight into everyone and everything else.

        I understand why you might think that – but it’s simply not true.

        I “gravitated” to JHK and this website because of a really strong interest in peak oil, peak wealth, peak work, peak water … and much else peak too. An\d a world made by hand.

        We’re allowed to dream aren’t we?

        I have an almost pathological dislike of driving (“happy motoring”), and an almost equally intense dislike for mindless (or status-driven) consumerism.

        We are millionaires in terms of net worth, but our consumption is limited to good fresh food, and (pre-virus) a fair bit of budget travel – we go to Europe frequently, but we use hostels, and trains, and we self-cater. It’s fun.

        I don’t believe JHK is a class snob … he’s just telling it like it is. He is making the very obvious point that the poor American schlob is so addicted to consumerism that they CHEER the arrival of a Wal-Mart! I think this is worthy of being criticised.

        Why didn’t all those poor punters out in Podunk Michigan cut their consumption by at least half, and continue \to use the small stores along Main Street? They could have done that.

        They might have saved their jobs from heading to East Beijing as well. But it’s all to late now, I expect.

    • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 1:09 pm #

      And yet our lowly black cousins on the evolutionary ladder figured out that they can organize and simply loot and burn down The Company Store. And so they did. Soon they will figured out that they can go on to full scale mass rape and pillage expeditions. And so they will.

      Play along to get along will only get you played.

      • K-Dog May 22, 2020 at 2:02 pm #

        Stop with your fantasies about rape and pillage. If you watch the Lion King three times in a row and sing along to the songs you should be good.

        • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 2:38 pm #

          It’s coming. Monkey sees monkey does. Syria Libya Sudan South Africa Spain France Sweden..

          • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 3:40 pm #

            And remember, you’re a White Man in their eyes. Just as we’re Jews to the Arabs. They don’t call our soldiers, Yank or Joe in the Middle East – they call us “The Jews”.

            The comedian Sandra Bernhardt made Liberal audiences howl by saying she was going to get her Black Brothers in NY to rape Sarah Palin. But then her visit to a woman’s shelter in Boston got cancelled by the director who said, Rape is never funny. Bernhardt tried to explain, but nobody was having it. And she never apologized. She is what she is and she got called on it.

          • akmofo May 22, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

            And yet them Arabs keep volunteering to our army in greater and greater numbers. My guess is that many already know your play, and soon them foreign Commie/Nazi educated gangsters and tyrants that you installed over them so as to incite them to mass murder Jews, will be hang as decoration on light poles. And guess who them “Palis” be coming for next? That’s right, the Nazi sponsors that installed Commie/Nazi tyranny over them. And that would be you. God has a sense of humour, but karma does not.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 9:19 pm #

            Maybe they’re learning from you in order to overthrow you. Same thing in France, Germany, etc. You guys are White after all! No smarter than we are….

          • akmofo May 23, 2020 at 12:36 am #

            Overthrow us with what, another Syria another Lebanon another Iraq another Iran another Egypt another Sudan another Yemen? Every one of them wants what they know only Israel offers: real freedom, real fulfillment, real future, real connection to God and the zest and taste of life.

            Contrary to the Vatican staged death cult shows, they all want to live like Israelis and they all want to be Israelis. We have some of them travelling by foot through deserts in the hope of landing a job in an Israeli restaurant and starting a life as Israelis.

            Jihadi-Nazis exist because the Vatican mafia sponsors them. That is how they make a living, as Vatican hired Nazi thugs. It’s a business that pays billions. But those that live under their rule are suffocating in every possible way. Who do you think they really hate? It’s not to Jihadi hospitals that they come for treatment, they come to us. And they come to us even at the cost of shaming and reprisals by their Vatican installed Jihadi-Nazi overlords.

            We all know where the Jihadi-Nazi poison comes from and who keeps it going with billions of Euros. Don’t think they will not take revenge on them Vatican lizards. Europe is going to look like Aleppo.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:38 pm #

            Hatred of the Jews goes back to Mohammad and the Koran. It’s part of Islam. You are making inroads, yes. But the True Believers will ever arise, making Jihad against both the hypocrites and you.

            And the Shia, allied with Russia, still stand strong.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

        People get seduced. I read a great book about an Irish American guy who went to Ireland and bought a Tower to live in. These were used by the villagers to escape from the Vikings during raids. The Viking didn’t feel like waiting around to starve them out and didn’t have any equipment to break them down, so the people who made it in were safe.

        Anyway, he had a great relationship with the locals who called him, “Your Lordship” but underneath the mockery, they did really like him. There was no electricity so the people would just drop in on each other to visit. He could do the same. Once they got electricity and TV all of that broke down. The guy he was closest to, would still invite him in but the TV was always on. He saw him watching the Quiz Shows out of the corner of his eye as he was talking to him.

        The people didn’t know how good they had it until they didn’t have it anymore – if even then.

      • MiddlePeninsula May 23, 2020 at 11:39 am #

        The rape and pillage expeditions will work better if America can be disarmed. Good luck with that. Anyone breaking in my house is going to get either a 9 mm or a .38. I remember the gentleman who had a home invasion with 4 armed perps. He slept with an AR-15. He killed two of them outright and wounded a third. The last one had a moment of clarity and ran off. The homeowner was wounded but lived to fight another day. Someone more versed in firearms than me said it proved that sometimes an assault rifle has its uses despite what the gun control crowd tells you.

    • rainmaker May 22, 2020 at 3:07 pm #

      My stepmom is an old school child of poverty and deprivation. Her idea of the good life now is to be able to go garage-saleing every Friday with a friend, or trips to the casino to flush money down a slot machine. Her home is so crammed with second hand plastic resin gewgews and knick-knacks that when you go there for holiday dinner there is no horizontal surface free to set down your glass, not to mention the layers of dust on everything. It’s all very depressing and claustrophobic. American are all about the accumulation of stuff, mostly cheap garbage destined for the landfill. (Que George Carlin).

    • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 4:34 pm #

      I’ll admit I made a trip to Walmart on Wed, and dutifully covered my face with a camo handkerchief. Really, it’s the only place open, I had no choice. I had a long list to fill (made up by my wife) and I was able to get everything on the list. A gallon of milk was less than $3. 20 lbs charcoal $8. Loaf of bread just a few dollars and so on. Say what you want about Walmart but without it — as things stand now — we would have to go without. Some people might think we should not get what we need at Walmart so we can feel righteous and superior. That’s not me.

      Brh

    • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 4:47 am #

      You have the weirdest compulsion.

      Who are you referring to? Who is the “you”?

    • Figaro May 23, 2020 at 11:06 am #

      As our intellectual betters rub their hands with glee over the coming demise of Walmart, do they ever give a thought to the workers who
      will be jobless and left to depend on public assistance? Whatever else Walmart has done, it’s been a source of employment for tens of thousands whose lack of skills and education leave them with a limited choice of employment. In a country stripped of its manufacturing capabilities, Walmart has meant jobs that have pumped more money
      into local economies than Mom-and-Pop businesses could ever hope
      to do. Does Walmart’s business model offend you? Don’t shop there. No one was ever forced to shop at Walmart at the point of a bayonet.
      The commoners seem to like it, which is probably why our intellectual
      superiors hate it.

  35. wm5135 May 22, 2020 at 1:59 pm #

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s arms control negotiator on Thursday said the United States is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race.

    I’m sure something will trickle down.

    Demonizing a population will falling purchasing power and no other prospects is surely the best means to create a sense of community.

    Pete Atomic – those splurging are just remembering W’s advice to go shopping, – remembering W worked out for Mr. K today

    W was watching a $700 billion stimulus package fail, now we are watching a $7 trillion stimulus fail. Maybe size doesn’t matter

    K-Dog – “Long enough not to be fat.” Sharp as two tacks, one tack could not be that sharp.

    Try to remember something Monday

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  36. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 2:58 pm #

    https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/21/detroit-police-make-arrest-after-nursing-home-assault-video-surfaces/

    Young Black patient put in the same facility with old Whites. What could go wrong? The Black filmed himself beating an old White guy. Trump saw the video and commented on it.

    We’ll never know peace until we get away from these people. They’re not going to forgive us. They don’t care if you weren’t personally involved in slavery either. Neither were they! It’s your fault that they aren’t very human you see…..

    • elysianfield May 22, 2020 at 4:35 pm #

      “They’re not going to forgive us.”

      I would neither ask nor accept forgiveness. You legitimize their terrorism. Criminal acts are criminal acts. Perverse justifications of their hatred is their pathology.

      I understand their hatred. I reject their feelings entirely.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 6:27 pm #

        That’s good. I was talking from a lower platform, that of the “Liberal”.

    • sophia May 22, 2020 at 7:15 pm #

      These two posts are exaggerations. They mostly do not hate us. But now the media agenda is to promote anger and hatred.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:59 pm #

        The Black will be a hero in prison. You simply have no idea, Sophia. They are proud of these shameful acts. That’s why they film themselves and the put it online. It’s not just for the personal pleasure of re-viewing.

        • sophia May 23, 2020 at 8:17 am #

          I understand that there are many low lifes. Not all are like that. The worst element is being encouraged and justified.

          • benr May 23, 2020 at 9:44 am #

            No that is true but a high enough percentage are that the stereotypes turn out to be pretty true over all.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:42 pm #

            “There not all like that” – the fatal Liberal mantra. They’ve been making War against us for generations. They’re not Americans in any real way and they never will be. The Media is lying to you, imagine that! Ditto Academia. You need to wash out your own brain. Flush these lies down the drain.

          • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

            ” Not all are like that”

            Sophia,
            In this you are, of course, correct. But a sizable minority, perhaps even a majority, hold ill feelings…thir culture of victimization assures this.

      • RB May 22, 2020 at 10:57 pm #

        They do hate you. No black person will ever trust a white. Latinos trust neither. Diversity is not a strength and as this country fails, relations will get decidedly worse. Sad but true.

      • benr May 23, 2020 at 9:43 am #

        No you are entirely wrong I have seen and heard the hatred first hand,
        Went to a school where half the kids got bused in from ghetto LA it is actual hatred of white people I saw manifested at every turn and these were High school kids back in the 80’s.
        Long before the fashionable ignorant liberal meme nonsense took hold.

  37. rainmaker May 22, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

    Pier 1 Imports is filing for bankruptcy. I believe that they are having their final clearance sales as soon as they can reopen after the lockdowns. I dragged hubby in a Pier 1 store once. When we exited, empty handed, he pronounced it “a store full of nothing”.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

      Why did you drag him into that emporium of nothingness? To torture him?

    • malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:37 pm #

      amazoned
      wal marted
      china virused

  38. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

    Politico

    Former Vice President Joe Biden told a popular black radio personality Thursday that he “ain’t black” if he was still weighing whether to support President Donald Trump in November’s general election — provoking outrage from the White House’s Republican allies and inducing queasiness among even some Democratic operatives.

    JS: Are Blacks gonna take this insult from old Klan Joe? Is even the weight of Stacy Abrams enough to offset this outrage? Liberals don’t what to think or feel – much less do. They Eunuchs at all levels. Is Tara Reid finally going to give up up on old Gropes?

    • Billy Hill May 22, 2020 at 4:12 pm #

      I think Old White Joe is trying to talk tough-in-your-face like Trump.

      Did he attempt to cop the weird affected black dialect a’la Hilary on the word “ain’t”?

      Stacy Abrams is too strange even for her own people.

      • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

        We must never forget Corn Pop.

      • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 6:41 pm #

        Yes the saga of Corn Pop. I hope the Repubs flog that to death in the next 5 months.

      • benr May 23, 2020 at 9:46 am #

        She is also to bizarre looking to succeed.
        kind of reminds me of the good times mom without the her kind spirit.

  39. My Point of View May 22, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

    “Every little burg in the USA eventually saw a Walmart UFO land in the cornfield or cow-pasture on the edge of town.”

    Except it’s not all that true; far from every little burg. Wal-Mart did kill Main Street but only in a few thousand towns of sufficient size to support Wal-Mart’s investment. Many thousands of small towns in the USA never had a Wal-Mart and now they have lost what used to pass for a small town grocer who was usually a mom and pop local business.

    Sadly, the same is also true for impoverished urban areas where the Wal-Marts and Kroger’s never went in the first place.

    What these thousands of small towns and impoverished urban areas do have is a pestilence of “dollar” stores which killed any remaining tiny grocer who tried to sell decent food. See: See: https://ilsr.org/new-maps-dollar-stores-spread/

    The dollar stores sell garbage items that fuel the spread of obesity and diabetes endemic to these little burgs and urban wastelands. Just check the health stats for WV, MS, much of Dixie, etc, as well as urban ghettos. Check the low education levels also endemic to these areas, be they rural areas full of Palin’s “real Americans” or urban areas full of minorities.

    Where to place the blame? Lots of culprits to go around. Unfettered, hands-off capitalism is one culprit allowing anything goes until it’s a scandal and congress gets off its fat ass to make some half-assed fix. But for my money it’s 50 years of ‘cut my taxes’ and shrink government to where we can drown it in a bathtub. The main culprit in the dumbing down of America is the constant drumbeat that tax money is wasted and we don’t need no edumacation or science; just gimme my guns and bible.

    Be it education, healthcare, infrastructure, general prosperity, personal health, etc, the decline of America walks in lock step with the decline in tax rates.

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 4:23 pm #

      But what about the other side of that? So for instance, the government spends billions and billions of dollars on other countries. All the government does is spend but in the end what is there to show for it? Crumbling infrastructure, declining living standards and life expectancy, and so on and so forth. And look at the state of public education. Even with all of the money that has been shoveled into and the US is far behind other countries. It’s more than just money.

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 5:39 pm #

        SSL – don’t you see, you’ve proved the point being made?

        Aside from resenting any tax $$$ being send offshore as aid ($38 bn 2019 which is a sliver of a percent), the obscene slice for ‘defence’ could surely be more usefully spent on infrastructure?

        • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 5:50 pm #

          Well yeah. I mean that is what is obscene to me. 38 billion is a sliver but that is a whole heck of a lot of money and could rebuild whole neighborhoods and towns. And yeah, we don’t even have a wall but yet they spend all that money droning people in far off places that nobody cares about. So I agree with you.

  40. ricksinger May 22, 2020 at 4:13 pm #

    I appreciate Jim’s reprise of his greatest themes from TLE and LITLE.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  41. BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 4:16 pm #

    A certain ativism is setting in during this 3rd month of lockdown: last week 3 people stabbed in Windsor during a home invasion, last nite 2 people stabbed on the street in Hartford, and just this afternoon, we learn 2 elderly people stabbed in Willington. You really cannot call this reversion to the blade anything but ativistic. Well, at least the gun control people are happy. And the word ‘lockdown’. Solzenitsyn said he knew Russia was in trouble when the argot of the gulag made it’s way into ordinary Russian speech. The language of prison has made its way into ordinary American speech IMHO. Lockdown now, lockdown forever.

    Brh

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 4:30 pm #

      Or is that just the culture of the replacers?

    • tucsonspur May 22, 2020 at 6:27 pm #

      Yes, the beast is chained by ‘frail and fragile bonds’.

      ? atavism

      • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 6:29 pm #

        A return to an ancient or old way, time, thing, etc. I had to look up too :-).

      • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 6:34 pm #

        Oh and yeah duh I forgot. I think ativism is not really a word. I think its supposed to be atavistic.

        • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 7:24 pm #

          Spell check kept going to nativism. I corrected it a few times and finally gave up and took off the ‘n’ and left it at that.

          • Majella May 22, 2020 at 7:29 pm #

            Yep! WeCAN best these robots, Marlin!?

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:53 pm #

          Atavism is the noun – such as a guy who arms reached down to his knees like an ape.

          Atavistic would be the adjective, as in, That guy is very atavistic.

  42. thwack May 22, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

    Self defense attorney Andrew Branca interviewed about the Arbery case.

    Facts and law VS emotion and hysteria:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sieuHViTQ4

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 22, 2020 at 6:24 pm #

      the mcmichaels being out of the car shotgun in hand should be legally enough threat to justify arbury’s approach as a self defense move on his part imo. Probably wont be in georgia but it should.

      • gustafson.robert.22 May 22, 2020 at 6:49 pm #

        i just want them convicted for stupidity and ineptness. literally any outcome but a fatal shot would have been fine with everybody and what result do the mcmichaels get?

      • thwack May 22, 2020 at 8:23 pm #

        the mcmichaels being out of the car shotgun in hand should be legally enough threat to justify arbury’s approach as a self defense move on his part imo.

        *****************

        Nope.

        Georgia is an open carry state. Travis McMichael never pointed the shot gun at Arbery until Arbery did a 90 degree turn at the front of the truck and charged at Travis.

        Arbery gambled an lost. He had many options but chose the worse one. He could have kept running straight ahead, cut left or right before the truck…

        Or

        or

        he could have just stopped running and asked “what do you want?”

        Ive had guns, not pointed at me, but drawn by police officers one time; I simply froze.

        Arbery decided to commit suicide when he charged and at least twice punched a man holding a shot gun; and even after that it took 3 shot gun blasts to reduce him.

        He had a lot of heart.

        He should have been on the Russian front with the Waffen SS.

        But I admit Im bias. If the McMichaels had been my neighbors in 2012 I would still have my 1966 Gibson es 330 that someone GAVE ME.

        Its been 8 years now and I still can’t believe I lost that guitar.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 9:32 pm #

        As a Nord (Skyrim for the Nords!), you do not understand our Culture, Laws, and Folkways.

        They were possibly about to make a citizen’s arrest. All perfectly moral and legal.

        • Majella May 23, 2020 at 2:22 am #

          Translated: “You’re the Wrong White Person”

      • gustafson.robert.22 May 23, 2020 at 12:16 am #

        i get georgia laws will never call being out of the car gun in hand assault, but if these heroes couldnt take down an unarmed charging man without firing a fatal shot they just suck thats all

        • gustafson.robert.22 May 23, 2020 at 1:33 am #

          its just, the fact that they shot him right away…its a punk move. and the law’s going to call arbury’s charge sufficient cause for shooting, and its weak because youve got two armed guys against one unarmed. So arbury doesnt just commit suicide, he also punks them and the law by the fact that they just shot right away

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:44 pm #

            Watch the video again and again. And watch yourself watching the video. Sooner or later, you will see what actually happened and be amazed at how you could have just said what you said.

            You’re pretty far gone but if young, there may be hope for you.

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 23, 2020 at 3:25 pm #

            im not rabid about this arbury thing but the guys made serious mistakes. If you’re going to arrest, arrest. If youre just going to talk, probably do it without the gun, or keep safe distance. They let him just about grab the gun. If you’re just “asking questions” civilly u dont need the shotgun. If youre arresting, you need to do it and expect resistance and do whatever u can to prevent fatality. I think thats pretty basic.

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 23, 2020 at 3:30 pm #

            when the race war is on, the rules ‘ll be different, but its not on atm

  43. capt spaulding May 22, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

    Some of the difficulties we may encounter in this new world we will be living in may take a long time to make them work well. As our population has increased, we have had to get more efficient at providing people with the basics they need to live. Food, for example, is picked in California, and two days later it’s on a shelf in new York City. The same things hold true for many other things we need. Distribution is fast, and efficient for the most part. It’s quite similar to the manufacturing methods used by factories, which involve “Just In Time” manufacturing, ie. getting materials in just hours before it’s needed.

    First world nations have evolved into complex societies in order to provide for their citizens, and like most complicated machines, when they are interrupted, the machine fails. Society depends on efficiency and order, to keep things running smoothly. Anything that interrupts this causes problems. In rush hour, one accident, or failed stoplight can make your 20 minute drive suddenly become an hour and a half slog. Sometimes it doesn’t take much at all.

    Just look at all the problems this pandemic is causing, and no one is sure how it will all work out. It’s just one thing, like a traffic light, but the fact that it throws a hitch in things, causes many unanticipated things to develop. Then add in the chain reaction effect on other things we depend on, and what happens when they fail. The problems multiply.

    The idea of a world made by hand is attractive, but how many people are prepared to live in a world like that? Societies evolve over a period of time in their own way at their own pace. When Henry Ford invented his model T, There were no roads, only wagon trails. It also took a long time for gas stations to pop up everywhere. If you’re driving west, you’d better fill your tank before you leave Minnesota, and venture into South Dakota because if you don’t, you’re gonna have some problems.

    The other problem is that people no longer have the skills that were around in say, 1900. The skills most people had back then have been forgotten. People don’t realize that they learn how to live in the society that is there when they are born. You could no more expect someone from the 14th century to be able to function now, than you could function in the 14th century. How many people can raise and can their own food? Where would you get the jars and lids you need? Who makes them, and can they supply a whole country?

    It could be done of course, but I doubt that it will be very pleasant, and that’s not even taking into account the effects of climate change, which will involve the whole world in ways we can’t imagine. I hate to sound like a doom and gloomer, but it won’t all be rainbows either.

    • dah plunge protection team May 22, 2020 at 6:05 pm #

      I think the 14th century immigrant to the modern age would have no problem figuring things out. (Provided they weren’t speaking Latin)

      As for the modern schmuck going back to the 14th century….. I give him/her two days before being put to death for saying something considered obscene/rude.

      (I’ll add the provisos the person going back, brings no technology/clothing etc. from the future with him/her, and is most likely your average American who knows nothing about European History.)

    • tucsonspur May 22, 2020 at 7:24 pm #

      We’re here now because we didn’t go anywhere else. The mind and hand of man brought us here, with invention after invention, with idea after idea. The modern world’s complicated structure approaches the complexity of the brain itself, and its societies might even be called schizophrenic or psychotic by some.

      Yes, and there are too few of Tom Silva or Norm Abram out there. Raise your own food? Fuggedaboutit! Canned foods first appeared in the early 1800’s. The can opener came in the 1850’s. Invention at a snails pace, but still moving to the X that says ‘you are here’!

      Take guns, as one more example. Hundreds of years to get to the self contained metal cartridge. But now everything is so fast. And much more complicated. Look at our electronic infrastructure, power grid, telecommunications, computers, the internet of things.

      Will we reach the point, as it now so appears, that our brains are unable to control the world they have created? We’ve destroyed the world around us to a large degree, and maybe the world is striking back. The mind, the brain, can no longer take it, and thus it needs to be drugged and tranquilized.

  44. GhostOfHam May 22, 2020 at 5:11 pm #

    Watch this short video while considering “a liminal, transitional moment of history.”

    http://truthstreammedia.com/2020/04/21/the-characteristics-of-an-initiation-ritual/

    It’s good enough for tinfoil-conspiracists and befuddlenuts alike.

    • SoftStarLight May 22, 2020 at 6:31 pm #

      You may laugh but they throw the kitchen sink at you in terms of psychic bombardment. That is part of the plan. Wear you down, demoralize you, and destroy you. And look how good they are doing. Subliminal messages are everywhere all the time, in addition to repetition and ritual.

    • Nightowl May 22, 2020 at 6:34 pm #

      Or just watch this:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DDXG-dHugc

      It contains the answer(s) to the mysterious Coroneau.

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 7:16 pm #

        That puerile video? Again?

        In reply, I’m expecting the masked Pepe thing.

        Yep. You’re a master baiter, alright.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:36 pm #

          It is already a classic. It bears watching many times. Timeless Truth!

          • Majella May 22, 2020 at 10:45 pm #

            Are you learning it by rote?

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 12:07 pm #

            https://news.sky.com/video/coronavirus-donald-trump-seen-wearing-a-mask-11992493

            Trump has injured the narcissist. Orange man cruel.

            Reports have not confirmed whether the President wore a mask because of his low IQ or because of his submissiveness, or even because of his aspiration to look like a Muslim woman. Or perhaps a combination of all three. But we know he’s advised by a bunch of extremely clever people, so perhaps we could ask them.

            But it ‘looked very nice, very nice’, so people can draw conclusions if they wish to. Or they can just conclude that he’s acquired some common sense and that anyone making a face mask the hill they choose to die on when there are real things to worry about, like intrusive databases and China, wouldn’t know a real problem unless it slapped them on the arse.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 12:31 pm #

            Yes. Knew you couldn’t resist. So predictable. Pepe-troll is the perfect avatar for you.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 12:58 pm #

            Majella

            It’s disappointingly repetitive, though, don’t you think? I mean you’d be hoping for more, I don’t know, imagination, from an IQ that high.

            At least there are lots of versions of this one, for when Tweet-to-whoo posts his most childish responses. This one’s rather fetching.

            https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c5/7d/a2/c57da271757930a2506ef56aa7bef976.jpg

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 4:55 pm #

            Alba – I really like “Tweet-to-whoo”!

            Yes, his repetitive ‘LOLZ’ and Pepe-links are sadly disappointing, and tend to indicate either a lack of imagination or a severely limited sense of humour.

            It appears I’m not going to get any gratification in my quest for clarification as to how Dr.Ronny & the Alumni of the National Academy of Science fit into the elite medical team looking after the most powerful idiot on Earth.

            The answer, of course, might require Tweet-to-whoo to admit to a dumb error…and like Himself (whose Golden Sphincter Care campaign could yet get him a cabinet post next term, given our commenter-friend has climbed right up it over late) he’s just too narcissistic to ever admit to it.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 5:44 pm #

            I wouldn’t put any more pressure on him, Majella, or he might totally unwind, in the way I mentioned earlier.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG7JAM6DQnM

      • Majella May 22, 2020 at 7:59 pm #

        Also, have you figured out who the W H Doctor is yet?

        Or has your old alumnus buddy, Dr. Ronny J., been gaslighting you that he’s still in the job?

      • Majella May 23, 2020 at 2:21 am #

        So, who is it, the WH Doctor?

        Is Wikipedia trolling us all? Seeing as how you know so much…and you’ve scoffed at Wiki on more than one occasion, I’d really like you to put me right, and while you’re at it, go edit/i> the incorrect Wiki page. Please!

  45. BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 7:10 pm #

    Another drive by shooting this afternoon, in New Haven, 1 dead, 2 wounded. Pressure is on, blood is flowing. They’d better lift this lockdown pretty quick. Well, check what I said above about atavism, yes, the blade is back in vogue and being employed frequently, but apparently the shooter in NH used an up to date 9mm.

    Brh

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  46. Laundromat Blues May 22, 2020 at 7:13 pm #

    Walmart gave white trash what they wanted, a place to call their own. I had some in-laws once upon a time who went to Walmart every Sunday, rain or shine. It was more of a religious experience than a shopping one. It made them feel smart gettting things so cheap. They never thought how many of their fellow Americans they were putting out of business. Not once.

    • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 7:26 pm #

      White Trash? You mean the people who vote for Trump? Presumably not class acts like yourself, LB?

      • Laundromat Blues May 22, 2020 at 7:35 pm #

        That’s right. White Trash doesn’t care how they get things. Cheat, lie, swindle, steal. They don’t realize how destructive getting things the wrong way is. Buying things from China on the cheap was incredibly destructive to this country and the world. JHK our host says it all the time. The fact that these people all voted for Trump may be the most ironic angle of this tale.

        • CancelMyCard May 22, 2020 at 8:12 pm #

          Well then, by that definition,

          We’ve got Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates,

          Elon Musk, et al, as the top of the heap of

          White Trash.

          No?

          • capt spaulding May 22, 2020 at 9:40 pm #

            Rich white trash is exactly how I’ve heard Trump described. I couldn’t agree more.

          • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 10:11 pm #

            Hey Captain, sir, where do lefties shop? Saks 5th Avenue? Nordstroms? I mean high end, classy lefties, presumably like you, who demand the finer things in life, unlike the white trash you look down upon, who shop at Walmart and vote for Trump?

            Brh

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 2:17 am #

            Good point, CMC. It isn’t just the ‘trailer trash, many of whom simply have no other option.

          • capt spaulding May 23, 2020 at 12:40 pm #

            I seem to have touched a nerve. I was merely referring to Trump’s general conduct in life, you know, like grabbing women’s pussies, and other high class behavior, such as mocking crippled reporters, and so on. Your adoration of Trump does not speak well for you, but once you join the cult, I understand that you are committed.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

            But on the good side, capt s, Trump finally wearing a mask could inspire them too? Nudge theory, or something…

          • Nightowl May 23, 2020 at 5:04 pm #

            The 3-year-old McMedia talking points are re-emerging.

            Not long until the Captain brings up his knowledge of the mysterious Pee Pee Tape Conspiracy.

            So many deep thoughts. Perhaps another piece by the new prog. icon Max Boot will follow.

            Anything is possible.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 5:38 pm #

            Tweet-to-whoo is doubling down – a well-known Dumbass Donny move – on who’s claiming the PeeTapes meme.

            Clearly, unrepentant arrogance out the wazoo. Go for it, Tweety!

            Oh, and if you could just confirm who the W H Doctor is? It’ll only take you a few second. Thanks!

          • capt spaulding May 23, 2020 at 7:36 pm #

            Hey Majella, what’s the difference between a lentil & a chickpea?
            Trump wouldn’t pay $1,000 to have a lentil on his face.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 8:07 pm #

            😉 capt!

    • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:19 pm #

      And if they went to Church, you’d hate them even more. Liberalism is a mental illness in which one hates their own people.

  47. Majella May 22, 2020 at 7:57 pm #

    ” The fact that these people all voted for Trump may be the most ironic angle of this tale.”

    It’s a jubilee of ironies, LB. There’s so many conflicting arguments coming from theTrumpian Cohort, it’s quite dizzying! Very intriguing…

    • CancelMyCard May 22, 2020 at 8:17 pm #

      The whole self-destructive collapse that started in early 2020, will,

      finally,

      plunge off the cliff in early 2021.

      We will pass the Event Horizon in January, and

      drop precipitously from there.

      Take that to the bank, my friends.

      Seriously.

  48. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:28 pm #

    Trump just won the election.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8348973/Donald-Trump-says-designating-churches-essential.html

    He will betray us with forced vaccination in his 2nd term.

    • Robert White May 22, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

      Best case scenario is a vaccine in two years but the probability is low. More accurately we will have to wait up to 8 years for a vaccine.
      Moreover, it takes years to produce billions of vaccine doses even with high production capability.

      Approximating a curative vaccine for the majority of the world’s population will take a decade at best, but we can’t count on even that highly variable variable because of the probability of mutation.

      With Viral Spread now exponentially inundating all sovereign nations with the exception of a few we are bound to be faced with a situation where only pockets of the world are safe zones from this deadly pathogen.

      It was engineered for purposes of disruption of trade and specific economies. Only the country that launched the bioweapon will currently have access to vaccine already in existence.

      RW

      • malthuss May 22, 2020 at 9:41 pm #

        f-ck the China Virus vaccine.

        • Robert White May 23, 2020 at 9:52 pm #

          SARS-2-nCoV-19 is American BSL-4 laboratory manifestation.

          I’m Intel and this is a CIA/USArmy Psyop for absolutely sure 100% positive, I assure you.

          RW

      • sophia May 23, 2020 at 9:20 am #

        But there is a highly effective treatment for the “deadly virus.”
        Hydrochloroquine + zinc.
        We can all relax now.

        • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

          Unless we’ve got lupus. If we’ve got lupus we can worry ourselves sick about what’s going to happen when stocks get low and people who aren’t even sick are using our vital hydroxychloroquine. Before there’s even proof it does anything. And I know you would find that appalling because, like Dr Kendrick, you are appalled by Covid wards with not enough people dying in them.

          And if the ‘deadly virus’ is in quotation marks, you can take ‘hydroxychloroquine’ that’s in quotation marks as well and leave the real stuff for lupus sufferers, until such time as there are stocks for everybody. And some results from the clinical trials.

          Or maybe develop a homeopathic version. That way you can dilute it until there’s nothing there and still charge people twice as much for it. Posh folks can have theirs diluted in Perrier and pay four times as much. Gwynnie can market it. HydroxyGoopoQueen (TM). Anyone can take that, sick or not. It won’t make any difference. At all.

          But there is a highly effective treatment for the “deadly virus.”

          ‘But there is POSSIBLY a highly effective treatment for the (sometimes) deadly virus.’

          There, fixed that for you. I’ll put it back to your version when you’ve explained why two and a half times as many US vets in the US vets hospital died when given HCQ than those who weren’t given it. That shouldn’t take you long, since you’ve obviously looked into it.

          Does it only work in some hospitals and not in others? Curious minds need to know. Then they can head for the hospitals where it works. Fair’s fair. Don’t hide your light under a bushel.

          As a premium, if you can explain it thoroughly and scientifically, I’ll promise never again to remind you that you were taken in by a study that told you 31,000 ‘scientists’ out of 10 million shared your views on AGW. Except that you forgot to mention the 10 million. Because they forgot too. Oops. A bit like not mentioning the patients dying after being treated with HCQ. They were probably inconsequential patients, or something. Or possibly liberals dying deliberately to screw up the research.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 1:20 pm #

            The funny thing is that I know you’ll say the same thing on the next thread, with no caveats of the ‘pending clinical trials’ variety. Or even again on this one. It’s an imperviousness to both scientific scepticism and actual evidence of a level I’ve never come across in anyone before. It’s quite baffling, even if you take ‘American’ out of the equation.

            If it were me, rather than you, you’d be suggesting I was paid to keep repeating it.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 5:05 pm #

            GA

            Assuming as in any sensible state-funded healthcare system, this HCQ is prescription only, there shouldn’t be too much of an issue outside the USA wher sufficient $$$ can get you whatever you want.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 5:32 pm #

            I’m sure that’s the case, Majella. The Medscape article describing the earlier run on HCQ was indeed about the US, as you say. Being able to buy something like that over the counter is a rather concerning idea, but if it gets Darwin Award-y so be it.

        • Nightowl May 23, 2020 at 5:06 pm #

          Try this, friend.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyCyHf7vI00

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 5:49 pm #

            I’ve ordered mine! From . “Keep America Scoured”.

            I see it’s Made in China (check), and at $29.95 a gallon + p&h, there should be a good $28 in each sale for Himself’s campaign.

            Wait-a-minute-buddy!!!! When did his much vaunted self-funding bullshit stop?

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 8:14 pm #

            GA…he’s really losing the plot with this one. The Great Unwinding of which you speak may indeed be upon us.

            He STILL hasn’t figured out who remote-viewed the Pee Tape episode, and STILL can’t clarify for me where his old pal Dr. Ronny fits in anymore.

            I guess, I’ll just have to keep waiting and keep asking. He’s SURE to read one of my posts eventually.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 8:35 am #

            Majella

            Tweet-to-whoo is devious. He plans ahead, while looking over his shoulder.

            When he repeated the notion about the Pee Tapes in relation to captain spaulding it was carefully edited to remove ‘remote-viewed’ and replace it with:

            “Not long until the Captain brings up his knowledge of the mysterious Pee Pee Tape Conspiracy.”

            That was very, very deliberate. He’s covering his feathery back.

            I’ve seen how this one operates.

          • Majella May 24, 2020 at 8:47 pm #

            Hmm…okay. I bow to your more clinical assessment of Tweet-to-Whoo’s deviousness.

            I know he’s just a troll at heart, but I’m wary of ascribing to him ‘great powers’ of scheming such as he ascribes to Himself (as if…). He’s just a bunch of immature LOLZ, in the final analysis.

    • Majella May 22, 2020 at 10:40 pm #

      Most churches are a business, at their heart – and tax-free businesses at that. Of course he’ll see that they are re-opened ASAP. His pal Jim Bakker is STARVING right now.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t383UpoLV5k

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

      • benr May 25, 2020 at 9:57 am #

        Do You Know Someone Suffering From Trump Unacceptance & Resistance Disorder (TURD)?

        TURD is a pattern of pathologically dissociative and psychotic behavior, first observed in the late hours of November 8th 2016, and increasing in severity with passing time.

        Sufferers of TURD often exhibit pronounced cognitive dissonance, sudden bouts of rage, rioting, and uncontrollable crying.

        People with TURD are characterized by a persistent unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is going to Make America Great Again.

  49. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:32 pm #

    Fauci says to go outside but wear masks. How pathetic if people comply. One woman was filmed wearing a mask in the water at the beach.

  50. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 8:49 pm #

    post by Meredith Ethington about the coming CDC guidelines for opening the schools – such as all kids of the age of two must wear masks.

    The CDC has come out with some “considerations” for when schools reopen.

    Y’all. I’m going to be honest. I don’t know if I want my kids to go back to school where they are going to be forced to sit 6 ft apart from friends, eat lunch at their desks, have partitions between them all the time, and no field trips or volunteers.

    I don’t see how sitting in their own little bubble or taped out square or whatever ridiculous contraption they come up with so they don’t have to touch their fellow students is going to be good for our kids.

    In my school district, we have classrooms right now with 36 kids in them. That’s a lot. Yes. I honestly don’t love it. But, it is what we’ve got going on in our district because of funding and enrollment, etc. But, they split up and change teachers, and carry their stuff from room to room. The CDC is recommending against that now. How though? Where will the funding come from? Who is going to pay to make sure kids can stay with one teach all day and sit six feet apart, and not have their desks facing one another?

    There are some things the CDC is suggesting that I just don’t know how school districts could possibly implement. Especially in lower economic areas.

    But, here’s what worries me the most – that we are going to scare our kids. That we will be instilling fear in them forever. Fear of germs. Fear of physical touch. Fear of physical proximity, even.

    All the cleaning that will inevitably be suggested will fall on the students, because let’s be honest teachers have enough to do already. Young kids will be the ones sanitizing every time they touch a desk or a chair or whatever.

    They will be wearing face masks and trying to learn social skills. Tell me how a kid is supposed to learn how to interact with his peers in a hyper controlled environment when he can’t even see their mouth. Face expressions are everything. Smiles comfort.

    Will the teachers look mad all the time to the kids? Because I’ll tell you that when I go out in public and can’t see people’s mouths – everyone just looks ticked all the time. We all have resting bitch face.

    It is suggested that there be announcements over the PA system reminding them about Covid. Reminding them to wash their hands. Trust me CDC, our kids know. THEY KNOW.

    They’ve been watching and worried too. Just like us. They don’t need someone constantly reminding them that covid exists. All they will have to do is look around at their face covered schoolmates and they will remember.

    One way walkways in the hallways?

    I bet library time will be out. No more perusing books at your leisure that everyone else has touched.

    I get that school is supposed to be about learning, but this will feel more like a prison for some kids. What if your friends don’t go to school on the same day as you anymore? What if you only get to see your friend from across the room, with a mask muffling his voice and his face expressions?

    My heart breaks at the thought that this is what I might have to send my kids back to, and honestly I don’t know if I can do it.

    I know some of you will proudly pipe up and say, “This is why I homeschool!”

    Well, that’s great. Not everyone has the mental, or financial capacity to do that. I for one never wanted to homeschool. Never even considered it an option for me.

    But, now? Now school seems like it will be scary for my kids. It won’t be a comfy place anymore that feels welcoming. It will feel sterile, and cold, and impersonal.

    Y’all, I’m worried for the kids. Not just mine. But, all of them that are expected to adjust to this new normal.

    Kids are resilient. But, there’s resiliency that they need to learn, and then there is the kind that doesn’t teach lessons they need. That hardens them. Or scares them. Or makes them worried.

    The kind that causes depression and anxiety.

    I don’t know – I’m thinking out loud and throwing worst case scenarios out there, of course. I know there are good people putting a lot of time and energy and thought into this. But, I know there are a lot of people that will take these recommendations as gospel and that worries me. I don’t want my kid sitting alone in a square on the playground shouting to his friends through a muffled sounding mask.

    I know COVID is serious. I know social distancing is our new normal. Don’t come after me because you think I think it’s a hoax or not a real threat. I know better.

    I was originally thinking maybe kids would just have to go to school with masks and I was trying to prep my kids for that even.

    But school like this? I’m not sure any of us need this kind of resiliency in our lives. Especially not our kids.

    Like this post? Follow Perfection Pending by Meredith Ethington

    JS: It’s time to give up on the schools. Already bad, now they’re going to become completely ridiculous. Home school or Private Schools that don’t follow this crap. Parents have to stop terrifying their kids with this crap.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • 100th Avatar May 22, 2020 at 8:55 pm #

      Get your own blog

      • Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 9:02 pm #

        You have nothing to say, obviously. And that’s perfect since you think life is meaningless, so it fits.

        • 100th Avatar May 23, 2020 at 9:52 am #

          You stoopid and racist.

          Throw-away phrases.
          Meaning of life? What is meaning?
          Meaningless is not the same as non-grasp.
          But you stoopid, well read, but stoopid

          and racist

          • Robert White May 23, 2020 at 12:16 pm #

            Janos is not stupid by any means. He is adroit & well read historically. He does have a tendency to set up straw man arguments, but I’m starting to think that that was his sort of interaction in terms of growing up & interacting with others as a sort of foil in terms of argumentation/debate & discourse.

            Janos is a unique person & personality so I wouldn’t be too harsh via idiosyncratic personal disposition as that is his personality. He is a dear soul and a kind person too.

            Janos just has a funny way about interacting with others as that was probably his own unique position within his family constellation as he developed intellectually.

            In terms of historiography, Janos is a good guy to have around because he is creative and intuitively smart bottom line.

            I enjoy his inputs. I wish Ol’ Scratch would come back to act as a foil for discourse too.

            RW

          • 100th Avatar May 23, 2020 at 2:59 pm #

            There’s a lot of poetry in his hate.

            Charisma goes a long way in the white supremacy world.

            People just eat it up.

          • CancelMyCard May 23, 2020 at 7:37 pm #

            RW and 100th,

            You both made great comments here.

            Bravo.

        • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 12:28 pm #

          Nobody I know has a life that is meaningless. Maybe I’m just lucky. As are they. Even the ones you wouldn’t think were that lucky. Even the ones that didn’t live as long as they might have.

      • Majella May 23, 2020 at 2:05 am #

        Hey, this IS his ‘blog’.

        • CancelMyCard May 23, 2020 at 4:22 pm #

          True dat.

          Janus writes 10 times the word count that JHK puts out with every post.

  51. 100th Avatar May 22, 2020 at 8:54 pm #

    Whatever happened to that nut posting non sequiturs about Russian history? Did his finca wash down the montaña?

    • BackRowHeckler May 22, 2020 at 10:17 pm #

      Jim booted him out. Turns out ‘Finca’ was a team of trolls working for the Internet Research Agency — sponsored by the Russian govt — out of St Petersburg, Russia.

      Vrh

  52. amb May 22, 2020 at 9:14 pm #

    This is a long way off. Our existing systems that make up our economy, no matter how wacko they may be, still have a lot of momentum and are backed by a printing press and credit-issuing complex that can keep pumping for some time to come. If the Trump initiated America First campaign, and the peoples’ awareness of the China threat continues upwards, some supply chains, manufacturing, and business will come back to America, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and S. Korea. This will also put more wind under the wings of our existing system and buy it more time. Also, the economy is not as bad as the MSM/Progressives are making it out to be. Once we get through the lockdown nonsense a reorientation and then an upward trend will begin. Not yet JHK. Not yet.

  53. tucsonspur May 22, 2020 at 9:45 pm #

    This past week or two, a friend of mine and I confronted a number of non mask wearing redneck boneheads. Mostly two or more. We tried talking reasonably and sensibly about wearing the mask, and for the most part we were positively or neutrally responded to.

    On two occasions we got some guff, but responded like a couple of grizzled old bikers should. Fuckers slinked off like a couple of wimps. All air and unaware. Keeping the community safe from the mindless posers and strutters.

    • thwack May 22, 2020 at 11:22 pm #

      did you interact with any Joggers?

      • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 2:01 am #

        No Joggers. Only boneheads and pinheads. You can take the skinheads.

  54. Janos Skorenzy May 22, 2020 at 9:54 pm #

    Lord Sumption speask about the mass hysteria, how the people demand action and how Government eagerly responds – resulting in Tyranny.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHE3OerDKEY

    What a voice. The very sound of reason and restraint and all the things that made Britain great.

    It’s not very dangerous after all. It certainly doesn’t warrant closing everything down. If individuals want to stay home out of fear of the disease, or wear masks outside, that’s their right of course.

    • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:16 am #

      Epidemics always produce this sort of behavior. There is nothing unusual about this at all. While it is true many actors are taking actions which seem baroque. The mentation of others seems stuck in dreams. But the sum of all the efforts in total produces a reaction unfavorable to the virus.

    • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:26 am #

      Lord Sumption is quite the bullshitter. It must piss his kind off to meet rare American yokels like myself who by the luck of a Camelot moment received an American public school education as good or better than their private shit.

      • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 3:34 am #

        A pompous buffoon.

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:49 am #

          & rich don’t forget.

      • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:35 am #

        And Janos, forget about the agreeing with what he said or not. If you can’t admit that Sumtion was blowing snow up your ass you were under his spell.

        The duty of every citizen to evaluate scientific evidence for themselves was a special touch.

        Yes, yes dear boy.

        Cue up dog save de queen. Bom de bomp up – de bomm pup – de bomb de bomb de bomb…….

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:36 am #

          The duty of every citizen to evaluate scientific evidence for themselves was a special touch.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:48 pm #

        After you crash and burn, in the Final Conflict between Evil and Greater Evil, I trust you will vote for Old Gropes! Am I wrong?

    • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 3:33 am #

      Start at about 5:40 in. Then this at about 6:10:

      “….and there’s no particular reason why the scientific nature of the problem should mean that we have to resign our liberty into the hands of scientists.” Then, in contradictory fashion, he goes on to say that we all have critical faculties and that we should use them in a time of panic.

      My critical faculties say listen to the scientists. ‘No particular reason’?
      How about the initial projections with everything being open of about 2-3 million dead?

      So ‘resign’ our fate to the politicians? Notice the casuistic use of the phrase ‘resign our liberty into the hands of scientists’. As if we were going to become slaves forever. How about making some sacrifices for national health and to save lives instead?

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

        Said the guy who wears the same mask over and over again. It’s full of Corona by this point, Tusc. Better to wear you old socks over your face or your underwear.

        You’re not getting it: Power taken is never given back. Distrust of tremendous centralized authority goes back to the founding of America and the Founders themselves. How could you have missed all this?

  55. Walter B May 23, 2020 at 1:06 am #

    Late to the game here tonight Jim but between the impotent prosecutor’s office and the now anxious press, well we have been quite busy here in paradise.

    Our auditor who also does the books for some very substantial East Jersey towns has been telling me horror stories of large malls, hotels and office complexes (work at home anybody?) who have petitioned their municipalities for 40% tax assessment reductions and have been, of course told to go to the devil. I am assured that once the tax courts are finished with these cases, the rate-able reductions will be a minimum of 33%. In one central Jersey town this will reduce the municipality’s taxable assets by $2.5B and if doubling or tripling the homeowner’s property taxes does not fill the budget gaps, well all bets are off.

    What we are about to see in America is a HUGE revenue shortfall by every level of government and anyone who believes that the dipshits at the Federal Reserve can simply print it up and dump it out to save the day, well they are retarded.

    It is upon us. Prepare.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • Majella May 23, 2020 at 2:13 am #

      Walter

      The US local government has been suffering under hugely iniquitous taxation system for generations. The last 30+ years have exposed it, with a shift in ‘neighbourhood’ values, based largely around the way the education system has been funded – or more correctly underfunded.

      There’s a myriad of well-organised systems around the planet that can show how local taxation can be organised to be fairer and achieve the desired outcomes.

      The problem with re-inventing the arrangements to achieve what is needed is the breakdown into partisanship at even the most basic levels of society.

      I have no idea how this could be tackled. But you’re on the frontline…do you have even the seed of a solution?

      • Walter B May 23, 2020 at 11:06 am #

        There is so much greed out there, especially at the upper levels by those who already have so much power that I do not see any change being possible other than collapse. The government zoom meetings and teleconferences are being cut back as time goes on, and I am the only one who has ever asked financial questions and when I do all I get is silence.

        You are right, there are many ways that what we do can be altered, changed, cut back and re-sized, but who is willing to give up their fat paycheck or sweet deals to achieve that? No enough if any I assure you. I will never believe that all of those at the bottom are more expensive to maintain than those few at the top and none of them got to the top by caring more about others than they care about themselves.

        • capt spaulding May 23, 2020 at 12:47 pm #

          Well said, Mr. B.

    • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 2:14 am #

      Thanks Walter, I’ve been wondering about that aspect for some time.
      Media doesn’t want to go there. Even as the covid numbers go up, another lockdown has to be avoided like the plague. Problem is, when the country gets sick enough there won’t be enough workers.

      ICE 9 is on its way.

      • Walter B May 23, 2020 at 11:11 am #

        Our upper level politicians are all sternly warning about a second wave and a big die off, probably in their efforts to acquire larger piles of print and dump cash from the Fed. Those of you that have not had to suffer through listening to Cory Booker rant away on a phone conference should count your blessings. The democrats screech on endlessly and republicans say nothing. At least when it all craps out they can blame it on The Bug and escape the nooses themselves.

    • BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 3:37 am #

      Yeah I was wondering about the ‘American Dream’ mall in E Rutherford, NJ, 3 million sq ft, newly but only partially opened after nearly 20 years of planning and construction, now shut down already. What is the future of a place like that?

      • Walter B May 23, 2020 at 11:11 am #

        It has no future and neither do many NJ cities.

    • Robert White May 23, 2020 at 9:16 am #

      Start smoking weed, Walt.

      RW

      • Walter B May 23, 2020 at 11:17 am #

        Naw RW my lungs are my weakness and my digestive system would not appreciate it either. I am well medicated with my Narragansetts and the occasional Bombay Blu Sapphire gin and tonics.

        • benr May 25, 2020 at 10:00 am #

          Don’t forget the precious lemon squeeze and twist in that Bombay gin and tonic.
          Tonic of choice Schweppes or something else?

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

        Yeah, do Pot Smokers actually think that stuff is good for their lungs? I don’t know if it’s as bad as tobacco, but it can’t be good. Why the classic cough and ironical “smooth too”?

        • Robert White May 23, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

          The human brain/central nervous system is imbued with endogenous [naturally occurring] Nicotinic receptors which become addicted to tobacco via neuronal synaptic excitation & inhibition, but there are no addictive properties in marijuana which is psychoactive via THC only, and not addictive whatsoever.

          Do I think inhalation of pot smoke or cigarette smoke is healthy stuff?

          Hell no, Janos.

          I am a trained graduate of the George Burns Smoking School and do not advise that people try this at home like I do, every day.

          Please leave the smoking to the professionals trained in the art & tradition of smoking by the George Burns School of Smoking directorate.

          RW

          • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 4:20 pm #

            Robert,

            I could do a whole riff on pot smoking and sometime in the near future maybe I will but, for now, I’d like to switch back to something you wrote yesterday and a few other times in the past. Namely, concerning your personal financial poverty and now, in addition, that of your family and a ne’er-do-well brother who (or is it whom?) you have had to care for during your adult life up to the present.

            You are obviously an educated person and, in fact, probably TOO educated and it shows up in your arcane blog comments the meaning of which I suspect not 1 in 20 can grasp except in a general sense and I include myself among the head-scratching 19.

            To top it off you have informed us on more than one occasion that your father is a ‘Chartered Accountant’, a title equivalent to a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) here in ‘the States’ and no mean feat to acquire. I assume your father worked in this field and, unless he was dealt a very bad hand of luck, should have made a decent buck during his working career.

            But there are people who expend a lot of money and energy getting a degree in some field and then not working in that field. One of my kids (Thom) is such a person. It took him six years to get a BS degree in Industrial Design at a respected school that used to be known as the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. That name has morphed a couple of times in the 20 years since Thom graduated.

            But Thom never worked so much as a minute in this field. In stead he worked gig jobs including his present position which became more or less permanent. What he does has the title ‘Standardized Patient.’ If you are/were a regular watcher of the Seinfeld show you might recall a couple of episodes where Cramer and the dwarf actor Danny Woodburn who played Mickey Abbott, and these two got jobs acting out diseases for medical doctors in training. It was hilarious when they got in a battle over which of them was going to get the assignment to portray gonorrhea.

            So, son Thom is a low level actor in the medical field for 10+ years now, rather than an industrial designer. On the side he is studying to become a nurse which is a field that pays pretty well and has many possibilities.

            But I digress… Did your father work as a CA or did he go off on some low paid unrelated tangent?

          • Robert White May 23, 2020 at 6:32 pm #

            My Chartered Accountant father worked 30+ years in Senior Rulings National Revenue CANADA in the Oil, Mines, & Resource Taxation Department of the Government of CANUCKISTAN.

            I was first raised in Toronto when the old man was on Bay Street working for Rio Algom Mines. When I was 11 in 1971 the Trudeau Liberal Government poached him off of Bay Street to work National Revenue CANADA so that Canada would no longer have to fight my father on taxation.

            Governments typically poach CAs off of Bay Street so that they get an upper hand on taxation. Trudeau senior had to hire quite a few CAs back in 1971 I have learned.

            Today, I’m 60 and no longer really useful for much past ruling the entire world. And unfortunately, that gig does not pay well when one runs out of teeth in a government town that pretty much only hires civil servants and people with full sets of teeth.

            Pretty much anyone with a full set of teeth can get ahead of me in life now that optimism has run its course at the ripe old age of 60.

            Being intelligent and well educated does not seem to matter.
            Being a social butterfly does in fact help, but I’m no social butterfly either.

            Suffice to say that my side hustle, if we are to view this like Better Call Saul, is Financial Intelligence. The Government of CANUCKISTAN is the best money manager of the G-7 but they are stuck on the zero bound interest rate wise which renders them incompetent to handle money by my standards of Finance.

            I should have been a drug dealer or Real Estate Agent with a license. I thought I was going to make money somewhere along the line but that never materialized due to familial responsibility in the end analysis.

            My father expressly forbade me to break the law throughout my lifetime too. Drug Dealer was not my High School Counsellor’s recommendation, but that’s where the money was as I was proceeding through the lost years wondering what gig was suitable.

            I was a Painting Contractor until my clients pissed me off too much and I decided never to work for idiot clients ever again.

            Life is not a windfall for some I guess.

            RW

  56. tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 2:24 am #

    You’re welcome on the Echo post, Maj.

    • Majella May 23, 2020 at 4:02 pm #

      Yes, it was great. Then I spent a couple of hours in the Atlantic (much derided rag that some one above explained to me. Funny, couldn’t tell…

  57. K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 3:44 am #

    The funniest thing about about this whole thing is all Trump would have had to do is show is up on TV at the beginning of February wearing a mask. He could have said:

    Masks stop CHINA. CHINA won’t spread if we all wear these and you all can.

    KEEP WORKING

    & make America great, 4 me.

    If you had the nation as top priority it would have been a no-brainer.

    • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 3:57 am #

      And so what? Every single news oulet would have said he was lying to the public, endangering lives, and trafficking in open racism and xenophobia. You act as if the media by and large would support anything he says or this country or actual people who really work. Sincerely that is. They can feign it all day because they are fiends. They would trust Putin and Xi before that. So no that wouldn’t work. Just post Fuck Trump Fuck Trump Fuck Trump and get it over with.

      • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:19 am #

        It would be very hard to make fun of anyone who was wearing a mask telling you that wearing one can save your life or the life of someone you love. SSL, you are off the deep end on this one. Brighten up.

        Number one: The possibility of catching Covid and dying of it is real. If fear of death can be soothed away by a piece of cloth over your face people will put two layers of cloth over their faces. Fear of death and avoidance of pain drives human behavior. If you can’t agree on that don’t waste my time.

        Number two: Beyond the emotional and psychological fact of point one is, science support the wearing of maska. And what kind of science? The kind third graders can understand.

        The only thing Trump had to worry about was Ivanka being overheard in the Blue Room talking to CHINA about delivery of red MAGA masks for Trump rallies. Two for $19.95.

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:20 am #

          Science supports the wearing of masks. Yes it does.

          • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:25 am #

            KDFP

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 4:33 am #

            Hmmmm, yes some science supports it and other science doesn’t. Kinda like religious interpretations if you ask me. But hold up. My point was specifically related to your assertion about Trump and you know if he recommends anything at all, even that the sky is blue it will be mocked. But I don’t worry about the logistics of Trump rallies or merch as I partake in neither.

          • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:59 am #

            SoftStarLight I’m not abbreviating to SSL because you just made a bold face lie.

            some science supports it and other science doesn’t.

            Is not true.

            And for that I’m saying goodbye for the night. I don’t have time for lies. I am up to something and need to get to work.

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

            Are you for sure I’m the one who is off the deep end? And I wasn’t attempting to disturb your work.

            For when you have a minute.

            https://www.livescience.com/are-face-masks-effective-reducing-coronavirus-spread.html

          • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:37 pm #

            “Science supports the wearing of masks…”

            Science, common sense, common decency.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:01 pm #

            And it’s always going to be around from now on so we’ll always be wearing masks from now on. And social distancing. How did we ever get along with out them? If they protect us now, they then we would have protected us then too, right? Think of all the lives that could have been saved all along.

            If they have Ely believing all this, then we’re as good as sunk. Who next? BRH? They’re far more American than I am. If they fall, all is fallen.

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 1:09 pm #

            I don’t believe Brh will fall for it. And now you are an indecent person if you don’t put one on I see so clearly its just going to get worse from here if that keeps up.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:27 pm #

            Have you see this?

            https://www.today.com/style/meet-trikini-bikini-matching-face-mask-t182340

            The cool people are making it cool, from “street” fashion to high end. We’re really at a parting of the ways here. This just isn’t Western Culture anymore, nor anything to do with the American subset thereof, that always focused on individuality and risk taking.

            I’d be willing to allow some amendment to our folk ways, such as wearing a mask if you were sick and had to go out. But basically putting everyone in “purdah” (Muslim feminine seculusion) or permanent seimi-quarantine? I just can’t go for it – “science” be damned.

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

            Yeah isn’t it awful. And the reality is, why would you go to the beach if you are wearing a face mask? You may not be breathing in germs, but if you lay on the sand, bam there’s germs. If you get in the water, germs. I definitely think if someone is sick and they need to go out shopping, etc. then its responsible to others to wear a covering. Especially if one is sneezing and coughing. But as gross as it is, we have to come into contact with viruses, like flu and coronaviruses if there is any hope of building immunity to them. Immunity is necessary for life. As we weaken our immune systems from decreasing our bacterial and viral hosts we will definitely become even more susceptible to get sick more often and with worse outcomes.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 3:47 pm #

            Anyone who’s sick, assuming you mean with Covid symptoms, shouldn’t be in a shop at all. Someone should be doing their shopping, or it should be delivered. Obviously someone will come up with an example of a person so poor, without neighbours, family, friends or even acquaintances for whom this is not possible, just for the sake of argument, but in general that’s the way it should be. It’s only for two weeks not two years.

            And I can’t think why anyone would need to wear a mask on a beach. Masks are recommended particularly for indoor locations where there are people from different households mingling, e.g. shops and public transport. For averagely intelligent people, it’s not that hard to grasp the basics.

            For the less intelligent, some will do dumb things like put a mask on on a beach where there’s no-one anywhere near them. Some other less intelligent ones will repeatedly show the same dumb video clip because they can’t figure out the difference between a shop and a beach. Or a Ford plant in Michigan.

          • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 11:04 am #

            “If they have Ely believing all this, then we’re as good as sunk.”

            Janos,
            It is not a question of believing or otherwise. It is but a small concession. Similar to showing the flag as being patriotic. I do not know for a fact that wearing masks is beneficial to anyone, but, as the mafioso boss said, when questioning whether they should whack Tony the Ant (played by Joe Pesci) in the movie Casino;

            “…Couldn’t hurt.”

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

          Looked at the link: the test for surgical masks was way too small to be meaningful. And the writer doesn’t know that N95 doesn’t stop the virus since it is too small. None of the researchers bothered to tell them this because they don’t want us to know.

          It seems a lot more research has to be done with this. I mean if they want us to wear masks shouldn’t they really have to make their case?

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 1:27 pm #

            I think they should. Plus if it is mandatory to wear a mask to prevent such a deadly disease from spreading then the government should supply each citizen with a mask that is proven to be effective as completely as scientifically possible from spreading even aerosals. In fact, if this is as serious as they say then the fact that they have not done so makes them unethical.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 3:51 pm #

            There are not enough ‘proper’ masks in the world for all the people who would potentially need one under that scenario.

            As Janos never tires of pointing out, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

            “I mean if they want us to wear masks shouldn’t they really have to make their case?”

            Just wear it or don’t wear it, and stop over-thinking it, maybe. You blame people for politicising it, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.

            I’ve spent a fraction of the time wearing one than you have spent talking about it.

          • GreenAlba May 23, 2020 at 4:02 pm #

            *that* not *than*. Don’t want to get Q exercised for nothing.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

            It’s a principle, Alba. But you don’t believe in such things. No forests, just trees. And no trees, just wood.

            As a prepper, I already had a few N95 masks – which I used until i decided that the risk was minimal and that this was a gigantic power grab by the Satanists.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 9:33 pm #

            This why we can’t wears Masks – the Karens make too big a deal about it and would then demand we wear them from then on.

            Safe is a feminine obsession – everyone becoming their child. What man wants to live in such a wretched world ruled by mommy creatures?

          • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 11:35 pm #

            that this was a gigantic power grab by the Satanists. – Janos

            ==========

            Yes, and you’re right, I have to concede, I have a long and deep affiliation with the S. 😉

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 8:24 am #

            “Safe is a feminine obsession ”

            I bet I’ve had a mask on for less time than you.

            And I’ll be on a train to almost the south of England on Wednesday, which I understand is currently some kind of illegal, but I’m not expecting anyone to stop me.

            Whoever said further down that it is the anti-maskers and anti-distancers who appear to be more hysterical got it exactly right.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 10:35 am #

            “Yes, and you’re right, I have to concede, I have a long and deep affiliation with the S”

            Bikers for Beelzebub? I’m sure I’ve seen them. 🙂

    • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:04 am #

      But Trump could not have printed up money and passed it out, more to Wall street than you if he had put on the mask and said just keep working. Perhaps something was going on under his hair after all? Perhaps Trump knows that after the dead die the extra room and orphaned property leads to a prosperity.

      Trump would not have read up on the histories of the black death himself of course. I doubt Trump can read. But Trump is part elephant or broken record in a loop saying the same thing over and over. He could hear something from someone else and latch onto it. Now we get the grief of a Trump obsession that has latched onto the leg of the nation like a pit bull.

      And a Hydroxychloroquine bleach gargle won’t get it off.

      • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 4:24 am #

        But do you really believe that literally so many people will die from covid that it’s going to be Black Death scale? Hospitalizations and deaths are going down. Even in Florida! Just using some critical thinking here. But again why are we dealing with this. Really? You want to slow down carbon building up in that atmosphere then stop the flights that bring diseases in too. Stop anything to do with China altogether. And if we would produce things here we wouldn’t have to ship so much over either.

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:43 am #

          But do you really believe that literally so many people will die from covid that it’s going to be Black Death scale?

          I never said it was. That would be ludicrous. If you want to employ critical thinking contemplate second and third waves.

          Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly.

          Hospitalizations are down? You clearly do not understand how an exponential function works. If hospitalizations are down and a change in social behavior changes the R0 to be significantly greater than one the infection rate can surge right back without any delay at all.

          Hospitalizations are down because responsible behavior has brought them down.

          Do you believe jobs should should be left unfinished SSL? Do you think your men should last longer than two minutes? Does hot water make good tea? You tell me. If I were getting overly excited about hospitalizations being down I would serious check out my thought process.

          My personality does not let me smile too much until a job is done. When a job is done and focus can be relaxed, smile then.

          In the case of COVID smile when it is gone and a system is in place ready for the next bat or pangolin who whats to take the planet back away from us.

          • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 12:52 pm #

            You are so ridiculous sometimes. I was talking about R0 in February. I guess you don’t recall my initial worry about the virus. But seriously, cases and hospitalizations have still been falling in Florida and Georgia for example and those lockdowns, to the extent they had them, ended two weeks ago or so. You need more smiles and you need to relax. It sounds like you are doing everything within your realm to do what is responsible in your eyes so you should be happy about that. And you are probably right about the waves. They have already hinted that they are coming. Natural or predictive programming who knows. I’m sure you do.

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 4:55 am #

          But do you really believe that literally so many people will die from covid that it’s going to be Black Death scale?

          Trump does know about something. Trumps’ money comes from the big deal he claims. But most businesses create profit and that is where their money comes from.

          Big money in modern times is made on a very small margin spread over populations of millions. At the beginning of 2020 never before had margins been so small and volumes so large. Trump going after a tiny slice of prosperity to grab for himself to put in the bank. That is what Trump does. He claims the deal makes his dick hard and money does not matter; but that is no big deal.

          KDog For President

          • BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 7:33 am #

            K-Dog WTF are you talking about? The President doesn’t even accept a paycheck. Speaking of big money the Obamas and Clintons seemed to cash in pretty good after leaving the White House.

            Brh

        • Majella May 23, 2020 at 5:04 am #

          Huh?

    • sophia May 23, 2020 at 9:31 am #

      Except absolutely no country has done that.
      Also, the masks may not help much at all.

  58. Nightowl May 23, 2020 at 8:29 am #

    Problem, reaction, solution.

    Same playbook — over and over and over …

    • Nightowl May 23, 2020 at 8:30 am #

      This was for Janos’s post on Lord Sumption.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:19 pm #

        And he took the charitable pov – that the problem was real at the outset and that the people clamored the Government to protect them. I’m not sure about the first at all as it may have been a planned attack, and here in America at least, many do not welcome Government over-reach.

        In any case, the psychological basics are always there. But is the “problem” a real problem or just an Alinskite framing? Or if objectively real, a treacherous attack against their own people? Or a gross and irresponsible exaggeration of something real even if not planned or created by them?

        • Nightowl May 24, 2020 at 3:11 am #

          A gross, irresponsible exaggeration of something real. That said, I think it has been conclusively shown that it doesn’t have to be real, so long as the McMedia pumps out fear porn and people are kept isolated.

          Which reminds me. We hung out with some friends of ours in Münsterland last weekend. The wife is rather uptight and perfectionistic, but good hearted. She was rather vigilant about distancing and not shaking hands or hugging at the start of the night.

          At one point there were comments from her husband and kids that the virus was perhaps not what we are told. I kept my thoughts to myself, but neither my wife or I said anything contrary.

          At the end of the night, we said goodbye and she began the Covid elbow dance before stopping midway through, looking at me, and saying, “Weißt du was? Das hier ist totaler Blödsinn.” She then gives me a big fat full-on hug, before doing the same with the rest of the fam.

          Underneath it all, no one is really buying this shite.

          • Majella May 24, 2020 at 5:06 am #

            Pleased to know that you can behave like a real person in company, at least.

            Had your friend asked “Wer ist der Arzt des Weißen Hauses?”, what might you have said?

  59. elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

    Some disturbing news;

    Well, those goddamned Canadians are at it again. It has been reported that a common loon wantonly, and with obvious bad intent, attacked one of our precious bald eagles and…stabbed it through the heart, killing it.

    What an obvious metaphor! It shows a poorly concealed contempt and hatred by the Canadians to everything American. Both the Loon and the Bald Eagle are represented on our respective currencies…and the Canadians are seeking hegemony. It would not surprise me to learn that the Canadian Military is massing on our northern border for, perhaps, a military assault on…Detroit.

    Their military adventure will fail, of course, as those lily white bastards have yet to experience combat with the fine Mandingo warriors that Detroit is well known to maintain in their teeming millions. Payback will be a bitch…ehh?

    • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:34 pm #

      And…the link;

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52779727

    • capt spaulding May 23, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

      If they are massing on our borders, it’s to build a wall of their own.

      • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 12:58 pm #

        Captain,
        If that is not their plan currently, it will be after a taste of Detroit….

    • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2020 at 6:24 pm #

      Yes, and they keep sending their arctic cold fronts down here too! Bastards!

  60. Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:47 pm #

    Stat News

    The new coronavirus can likely remain airborne for some time. That doesn’t mean we’re doomed
    By SHARON BEGLEY @sxbegleMARCH 16, 2020

    When a new virus blasts out of the animals that harbored it and into people, experts can usually say, thank goodness it’s not like measles. That virus is more contagious than any others known to science: Each case of measles causes an astronomical 12 to 18 new cases, compared to about six for polio, smallpox, and rubella. Each case of the new coronavirus is estimated to cause two to three others.

    The reason the measles is so, well, viral, is that the microbe is so small and hardy that it is able to stay suspended in the air where an infected person coughed or sneezed for up to two hours, making it one of the only viruses that can exist as a true aerosol.

    Now there are conflicting reports on whether the new coronavirus can. The studies suggesting that it can be aerosolized are only preliminary, and other research contradicts it, finding no aerosolized coronavirus particles in the hospital rooms of Covid-19 patients.

    The weight of the evidence suggests that the new coronavirus can exist as an aerosol — a physics term meaning a liquid or solid (the virus) suspended in a gas (like air) — only under very limited conditions, and that this transmission route is not driving the pandemic. But “limited” conditions does not mean “no” conditions, underlining the need for health care workers to have high levels of personal protection, especially when doing procedures such as intubation that have the greatest chance of creating coronavirus aerosols. “I think the answer will be, aerosolization occurs rarely but not never,” said microbiologist and physician Stanley Perlman of the University of Iowa. “You have to distinguish between what’s possible and what’s actually happening.”

    Related: People ‘shed’ high levels of coronavirus, study finds, but most are likely not infectious after recovery begins
    There are two ways a coronavirus can be transmitted via air.

    In droplet form, the coronavirus is airborne for a few seconds after someone sneezes or coughs. It’s able to travel only a short distance before gravitational forces pull it down. Someone close enough for the virus particles to reach in that brief period can therefore be infected. So can anyone who comes into contact with virus-containing droplets that fall onto a surface. The new coronavirus can survive on surfaces for several hours; hence the importance of hand-washing after touching a surface in a public place.

    An aerosol is a wholly different physical state: Particles are held in the air by physical and chemical forces. Fog is an aerosol; water droplets are suspended in air. The suspended particles remain for hours or more, depending on factors such as heat and humidity. If virus particles, probably on droplets of mucus or saliva, can be suspended in air for more than a few seconds, as the measles virus can, then anyone passing through that pathogenic cloud could become infected.

    There are strong reasons to doubt that the new coronavirus has anything close to that capability.

    “If it could easily exist as an aerosol, we would be seeing much greater levels of transmission,” said epidemiologist Michael LeVasseur of Drexel University. “And we would be seeing a different pattern in who’s getting infected. With droplet spread, it’s mostly to close contacts. But if a virus easily exists as an aerosol, you could get it from people you share an elevator with.”

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that is not happening. Earlier this month, CDC scientists reported that the rate of symptomatic infection among a patient’s household members was 10.5%. The rate among other close contacts was 0.45%. In the case of one particular patient, none of his five household members, although continuously exposed to the patient during the time he was isolated at home, tested positive for the virus.

    We want to hear from you: Are you a health care worker affected by the coronavirus outbreak? Please tell us about your experience.
    Even if the virus infects only a small fraction of those who come into contact with it, the extremely low rate among close contacts and the absence of infections in some household members of patients suggests that it rarely exists as an aerosol in most real-world situations.

    “It’s more evidence that [Covid-19] is predominantly spread through droplets and not as an aerosol,” LeVasseur said.

    Physical evidence bolsters that epidemiological reasoning. When researchers in Singapore tested the air in the rooms of three Covid-19 patients, they found no virus particles on cleaned surfaces or in the air even when they took samples on days the patients were symptomatic and presumably shedding virus into the air, they reported this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the room of the third patient, who shed more virus, virus particles were present on ventilation fans and numerous surfaces — but all air samples were negative.

    That suggests that aerosolized virus particles are, at worst, rare in real-world conditions.

    A study by virologist Ke Lan of Wuhan University and his colleagues found that “rare” does not mean “never,” however. They took 35 air samples at two hospitals as well as public areas in Wuhan, where the Covid-19 outbreak apparently started. They found no coronavirus in intensive care areas where Covid-19 patients were being treated, in general patient rooms, in hallways, or outside the hospitals.

    Related: Coronavirus pandemic forces some research labs to shut down, with uncertain futures for scientific projects
    But coronavirus aerosols were found near patients’ toilets in Wuchang Fangcang Field Hospital. That wasn’t a total shock: Receptors for coronavirus exist not only in the airways but also in the gastrointestinal tract, so cells there can become infected, shedding virus into fecal material. The paper, posted to a preprint site, has not been peer-reviewed.

    “The virus aerosol,” the Wuhan scientists concluded, “is a potential transmission pathway.” Since aerosols can come directly from patients as well as from stirring up droplets that landed on surfaces, “effective sanitization is critical in minimizing aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the Covid-19-causing coronavirus.

    Because real-world studies like these have numerous confounding conditions, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases examined what can happen under controlled lab conditions, although somewhat artificial, worst-case ones.

    NIAID virologist Vincent Munster and his colleagues used a nebulizer — a device that creates an aerosol from liquids — to release samples into the air of both the new coronavirus and the one that caused the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. They reported detecting viable virus ?in aerosols for up to three hours. That compared to the four hours that active virus particles were found on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard, and up to two or three days on plastic and stainless steel.

    Both the Covid-19 and the SARS viruses had an aerosol half-life of 1.1 hours, meaning half the particles drop out of the air after that amount of time, and half of what remains drop out after another 1.1 hours. After a day, roughly nine half-lives, 0.002 (0.2 of 1%) of the original particles remain. As a result, the scientists said, “aerosol … transmission of [the new coronavirus] is plausible, since the virus can remain viable and infectious in aerosols for hours.”

    Scientists not involved in the study raised a couple of concerns: whether the mechanical nebulizer simulates coughs or sneezes, and whether the lab conditions reflect the real world.

    Related: Who is getting sick, and how sick? A breakdown of coronavirus risk by demographic factors
    The NIAID study “is measuring virus under ideal conditions and with a lot of virus,” said microbiologist Benjamin tenOever of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “So their results are all likely to be overestimates. That said, I think those values should at least be used to let people know that things like subway poles can harbor virus for more time than I would have considered possible,” because an aerosol that encounters a solid object can stick to it. “Washing hands is more important than ever.”

    “We’ve seen no evidence that aerosolized virus is the primary transmission risk for everyday people in everyday settings,” said Dylan Morris of Princeton University, a co-author of the study. “One should not rule anything out categorically with a novel, still-poorly-understood virus, [but] based on what we know about coughing and sneezing, one should be cautiously optimistic that aerosolization may not play a big role in everyday transmission.”

    Iowa’s Perlman said the nebulizer may mimic what occurs during procedures such as intubation. That’s why the World Health Organization recommends the use of respirators, gowns, and other extensive protection for medical workers performing such procedures on Covid-19 patients.

    Doctors at Kaiser Permanente in California, in a paper published in JAMA on Friday, also note that while the new coronavirus is “primarily spread by droplets,” certain medical procedures can make it airborne — as an aerosol — and therefore require extra protection for health care workers and, ideally, negative pressure rooms.

    The behavior of the SARS virus during the 2003 epidemic offers some clues about any risk from aerosol forms of its cousin.

    One puzzling outbreak, with 329 cases, occurred at a Hong Kong apartment complex whose residents had not been in close contact with each other. A 2014 analysis concluded that “airborne spread was the most likely explanation, and the SARS coronavirus could have spread over a distance of 200 meters,” or about 600 feet, apparently starting with a SARS patient who had diarrhea.

    The 329 Hong Kong cases, another analysis concluded, suggest that although SARS was primarily spread by droplets, “to a much limited degree [it was also spread] by aerosols.” The aerosolization likely originated “from malfunctioning sewers in the building.”

    The much-discussed hope that warmer, more humid weather will strangle the Covid-19 pandemic may or may not pan out, but there are solid data that it will make a difference to any aerosol transmission. The SARS virus survived better at 30% to 50% relative humidity than at 80%, with a half-life of only three hours rather than 27 hours at 30% humidity. Other research has also found that coronaviruses have much more difficulty existing in aerosol form in warm, humid conditions.

    That reflects the fact that the SARS virus has an “envelope” that falls apart in warmer, more humid conditions. The new coronavirus has a similar envelope.

    The World Health Organization has studied the emerging data on coronavirus aerosols to see if it needs to change its current recommendations, including that that healthy people do not need face masks. “, and healthcare workers should take extra precautions during procedures that can generate aerosols. “From the available studies that we have seen, we are confident that the guidance we have is appropriate,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for the coronavirus response, told reporters on Monday.

    This story has been updated with response from the WHO and calculations.

    JS: Seems like a good article. The aerosol potential of Covid is minimal. The Hysteria is maximal, weaponized by the World Media (Who owns these organs of malice?) WHO says healthy people do not needs masks. The CDC has gone off the reservation it seems. Who is paying them?

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    • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 2:21 pm #

      TL…etc.

    • Majella May 24, 2020 at 7:14 am #

      Skimmed. It reads like…you know…SCIENCE. So I’m not sure what your point here is, Janos. Is it that science is continually learning about Covid-19 and as a result, modifying its recommendations? If so, there’s no news here. Nothing to support your ridiculous stand on masks – a simple and effective REDUCER of transmission.

  61. Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 1:52 pm #

    https://www.businessinsider.com/who-no-need-for-healthy-people-to-wear-face-masks-2020-4

    Sorry Covid Gang, you lose. SSL and I win again. Ely, I grieve for thee. Your fall was to me another Fall of Man.

    BRH stayed strong. He joins the Ape Gang.

    • BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 2:36 pm #

      Vlad

      Recently you had a pretty good post about the rise of ‘Karens’ in the Covid-19 world; they seem to be running the show. So when I go out in world now I wrap a camo handkerchief around my face, not because I think it will protect me from any virus, but to prevent the army of Karens lurking about from busting my balls — kind of like wearing garlic around your neck to ward off vampires.

      (I’m getting ready to switch out my camo handkerchief for a cotton ‘red, white and blue’ one in honor of Memorial Day)

      Brh

    • SoftStarLight May 23, 2020 at 2:45 pm #

      The Ape Gang :-). Is that because they see us as atavistic now? You know I really thought that covid was a much bigger aerosol threat. It just goes to show that many really grave decisions have been made with a lot of unclear information. It is analagous to the Fall. We lost who we were then because of confusion. And here things are now.

      • capt spaulding May 23, 2020 at 3:00 pm #

        Not atavistic, SSL, it’s probably because of that protruding Baboon-like bald red ass. Along with your attitude, of course.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 3:04 pm #

        Well to be fair, and to beat my critics to it, the WHO post was from April 6th. Of course if it was true then, shouldn’t it be true now? Or if they were lying, then are they lying now too? I assume they are in synch with the CDC which is raving about all masks all the time, now.

        But yeah, from the long article I posted, it doesn’t seem too deadly at all, especially if you’re not close to someone who is talking or of course, coughing.

        BRH: That’s unfortunate news. I thought if you just had it down around your throat. I’m going to have to suspend you from the gang (plus your moniker doesn’t really flow with the Angers, Anglin, Elon, Janos, Akmo and Thwack music. But kudos on choosing politically incorrect colors. You can be an auxiliary member.

        • BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 4:52 pm #

          Janos, I should’ve made it clear, out in free air my bandana stays draped around my neck, like Billy the Kid or John Wesley Harden. It’s only when entering a store or other business establishment I pull it up over my face, which is required by law hereabouts.

          I actually witnessed an incident yesterday involving ‘social distancing’ and ‘Karen’s’ effort to enforce the rules. I decided to redeem the garbage bags full of empties in my garage, going back to last Christmas. I loaded them in my truck, drove to the local grocery store. A sign over the redemption center read ‘Capacity 1’, and I was pretty happy the place was empty. After about 15 minutes another guy walked in with a sh#tload of empties, asked me if I minded if he joined me. I said I didn’t care but management might, pointing to the sign: Occupancy 1. Sure enough here comes Karen, telling the dude he’d have to get out. Well he told her to go f#kk herself and kept on feeding plastic bottles into the machine. Karen disappeared and I was finishing up myself, and as I was driving away I could see two police cruisers pulling into the parking lot. It occured to me that in Ct murderers and rapists are being furloughed from prison because of Covid 19, and this poor sucker might get arrested for cashing in bottles.

          Brh

          • stelmosfire May 23, 2020 at 6:48 pm #

            Marlin in these parts many places are not taking returns because of “The Disease”. It is really having a financial impact on the trash pickin’ bicycle guys. For chrissake, how the heck can a man make an honest living these days?

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 4:51 pm #

        Well I really like the phrase, Apes together, strong. And as Q guessed, I sometimes write around phrases or words that I like. They are “seeds” so to speak. It was the title of a review of the last Planet of the Apes movie. The Apes were strong because they stuck and together – and also because they didn’t need modern technology. And sure, part of why I liked it was because of its atavistic quality, much like “the Deplorables”.

        • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 9:09 pm #

          part of why I liked it was because of its atavistic quality – Janos

          ===========

          In this sense you are like our host. You want to turn back the clock to an imagined greater previous period.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 9:15 pm #

            How dare you accuse me like this! You will be in Purgatory until the end of the world, like Jacinta’s (of Fatima) friend – if you are lucky.

          • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 12:26 am #

            Jacinta’s (of Fatima) – Janos

            =======

            Poor kid. Died a month short of 10 years old…of the Spanish Flu, no less. Brain washed into an extreme form of religious fanaticism, no doubt. A Greta-like figure.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 3:23 am #

            Yeah, cuz only religious “fanatics” died of Spanish Flu.

        • SoftStarLight May 24, 2020 at 9:15 pm #

          I like it.

    • Nightowl May 24, 2020 at 2:58 am #

      How can this be? Some doctory people on CFN and the McNews told me I needed one. They told me I was an asymptomatic superspreader.

      This does not add up.

  62. malthuss May 23, 2020 at 5:28 pm #

    Q shtik,

    (Thom) is such a person.[is he the 6’5 or 6’ 6 son?]

    It took him six years [warning 1…did you fund him after year 4?]

    to get a BS degree in Industrial Design [sounds like a legit study]

    at a respected school t [who can fault ya?].

    What exactly does he do now?
    I knew 2 people who worked at a ‘school for indian import MDs, they pretended to be ill. and supposedly all the many many imports got
    their US license to practice.

    How you been to the Stupa lately?

    • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 6:30 pm #

      Q’s money has ruined Thom! Carnegie hated the idea of his children being ruined, vowing not to leave them a penny. Don’t know if he went thru with his threat.

      • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 8:57 pm #

        Q’s money has ruined Thom! – Janos

        =========

        What is your rationale for that offensive remark?

        And please stop imagining I’m loaded to the gills.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 9:22 pm #

          You are always boasting of your stash.

          Thom sounds like a cool guy. What an unusual job! I for one have never heard of them. With his experience, he could try out for crisis actor too. It must be agony for you with your middle class expectations I expect.

          I could hang out with Thom. One n’eer do well to another.

          • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 12:12 am #

            You are always boasting of your stash. – Janos

            ==========

            If you’ve taken it as boasting, I’ve erred in my comments about financial matters.

            And BTW, it’s ne’re do well.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 8:18 am #

            Actually it is ‘ne’er-do-well’, ‘ne’er’ being a contraction of ‘never’.

          • Q. Shtik May 25, 2020 at 12:33 am #

            Actually it is ‘ne’er-do-well’, ‘ne’er’ being a contraction of ‘never’. – GA

            ==========

            You’re right, of course. I DO make a mistake every couple of months or so. 😉

          • Q. Shtik May 25, 2020 at 1:13 am #

            Actually it is ‘ne’er-do-well’, ‘ne’er’ being a contraction of ‘never’. – GA

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

            In my own defense, I did get it right in a comment I posted on 5/23 at 4:20 pm.

  63. tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 5:34 pm #

    ‘Said the guy who wears the same mask over and over again. It’s full of Corona by this point, Tusc. Better to wear you old socks over your face or your underwear.

    You’re not getting it: Power taken is never given back. Distrust of tremendous centralized authority goes back to the founding of America and the Founders themselves. How could you have missed all this?’

    I’d rather some lace panties. Right now I’m trying to form a bra cup into a mask. Some of them are so silky smooth. Thought about using maxi pads but dismissed the bloody idea.

    Nothing was missed, J. I just don’t see this as a power grab. I see it as the most rational step to take considering the nature of the virus and what may happen in the future. As diverse a group as it may be, I still have enough faith that the American people would not stand for any lengthy, freedom depriving type of power grab.

    The anti mask, anti social distancing people actually seem to be the more hysterical. Yes it’s been tough, but nobody is going to the gulag. Nobody was imprisoned in their homes. You could go out to the store, go outside. Reminds me of how soft and spoiled we’ve gotten. How selfish.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

      I was just in a natural market, mask required (so I did), cop at the entrance directing how many go in, and one way pedestrian traffic inside down the aisles.

      So did all that put people at ease? Not that I could see. One woman was waiting behind me in the aisle afraid to pass me – or being polite, assuming that I shared her extremism? I mean six feet means twelve to be polite, right?

      So I got into the spirit by refusing to talk to people since speaking spreads germs. And I don’t like talking with a mask on to begin with. Have you even begun to think about what effect this is going to have on children? It is the most masterful power grab in Human History. They’re going to always be shutting us down, tracking us, and sticking us from now on, mark my words. If you don’t see it now, I trust you will at some point.

      • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 7:05 pm #

        I’ll call ’em graboids and blast ’em like this:

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

      • thwack May 23, 2020 at 7:15 pm #

        Have you even begun to think about what effect this is going to have on children?

        **********************

        Janos, its nothing new. Children have long been socialized about the plague. When I was a child we held hands and ran around and around in a circle singing:

        “Ring around the rosie

        pocket full of posey

        ashes, ashes

        we all fall down!”

        I never knew what it was about; but it was a fun game.

        And then in elementary school we had this game called “cooties”; where we would attempt to get rid of the pathogen by touching someone else, and then they had it and you didn’t…

        So don’t worry man.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:44 pm #

          Why not some kind of Black Klan outfit? Why are ghosts always White? Remember the racism of the ghosts in “The Shining”? Their anger and hatred indicates that Black ghosts are 2nd class citizens up there.

        • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 9:34 am #

          ‘Ashes, ashes’? That’s interesting – different from the ‘English English’ version.

          Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
          A pocket full of posies,
          A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
          We all fall down.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 9:36 am #

            I imagine at the start it was a foil to fear. Sing or laugh about something and you neutralise it.

            Like the ‘dreaded lurgi’.

          • Q. Shtik May 25, 2020 at 1:28 am #

            Like the ‘dreaded lurgi’. – GA

            ===========

            There is no better slang than British slang.

    • thwack May 23, 2020 at 7:20 pm #

      Thought about using maxi pads but dismissed the bloody idea.

      ***************

      lol

      I thought about using some panty hose as a mask?

      They have a small “cotton patch” at the crotch section that will fit over your nose and mouth.

      Unfortunately they are not very durable; so its only good if you wear it all day.

  64. tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

    Bezos trillionaire?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctA3i8UwG3M

  65. BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 5:54 pm #

    Back in ’69 when the HK flu hit, killing 125,000 Americans, Woodstock Music Festival went ahead as planned, and the Mets packing 50,000 fans per game into Shea Stadium. The Knicks and Jets won championships that year as well, the games played to full houses. HK flu was every bit as contagious and deadly as Covid-19, why not the hysterical reaction then, compared to now? What was different?

    Brh

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    • Majella May 23, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

      The interwebz.

    • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

      Human health and happiness are more valued today, as is caring for others. Back in 1969 I drove a death-trap that had lousy brakes, lousy steering, and no seatbelts, you could smoke on aeroplanes and in university lectures, you could drive after a session of beers, etc.

      We probably could have saved a lot of those 125,000 lives with social-distancing back then too.

      Maybe today we’re soft, pampered, privileged, precious, entitled. We “demand” solutions to every little thing that crops up.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 6:18 pm #

        Remember how you used to smoke and loved blowing it in people’s face? Those were the days.

    • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 6:50 pm #

      Here’s the difference Brh:

      I find that the number was around 100,000 killed, and that was over a year’s time, with no shutdowns. We are at that number in about 2.5 months WITH the shutdowns. The scientists predicted that just ‘ripping’ it without any safety measures would eventually result in about 2-3 million deaths here in the US.

      In addition, this virus attacks the lungs and other body organs more virulently than the HK flu.

      Wiki:

      ‘That same month, the virus entered California, carried by returning troops from the Vietnam War, but did not become widespread in the United States until December 1968. Faded ’69-’70.

      In comparison to other pandemics of the 20th century, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate.[9] The disease was allowed to spread through the population without restrictions on economic activity, until a vaccine became available four months after it started.

      The H3N2 virus returned during the following 1969/1970 flu season, resulting in a second, deadlier wave of deaths. It remains in circulation today as a strain of the seasonal flu.’

      This virus has also proven to be more unpredictable, and the way things are going I think that there will be a return in the Fall or earlier. Just like with HK, but deadlier.

      • tucsonspur May 23, 2020 at 7:07 pm #

        The month was September.

      • BackRowHeckler May 23, 2020 at 7:07 pm #

        Well, that explains it pretty clearly, TS.

        And I hadn’t realized a vaccine was developed so quickly. Hopefully a Dr Salk will emerge from all the brilliant scientists out there and come up with a vaccine for Covid-19, soon.

        Brh

      • thwack May 23, 2020 at 8:17 pm #

        “This virus has also proven to be more unpredictable”

        ****************

        The general “rule of thumb” for infectious disease has historically been: “you can be deadly, or infectious; but not both”

        For example, Ebola is deadly; but by the time you are infectuous, you fucking look deadly bleeding out of every hole in your body.

        So Im suspicious of any virus that bucks this trend.

        (that means it was designed in a laboratory)

        • elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 11:24 pm #

          The general “rule of thumb” for infectious disease has historically been: “you can be deadly, or infectious; but not both”

          Thwack,
          Bullshit. No such rule of thumb. Your premise, as is your claim to be black, is both specious and indefensible….

          “(that means it was designed in a laboratory)”

          …(Snort)….

    • malthuss May 23, 2020 at 9:05 pm #

      pLan demic.

  66. Cargill May 23, 2020 at 6:06 pm #

    From today’s essay:

    When the communities of America rebuild, it will be the thousands of small activities that matter, because they will entail the rebuilding of social capital as well as exchanges that amount to business. Social capital is exactly what Walmart and things like it killed in every community from sea to shining sea. People stopped doing business with their neighbors. It took a cataclysm for them to finally notice.

    What I find continually puzzling is that seems to be so many people doing it tough in the US. At a shallow observational level, it seems like there are the super-rich in Sun Valley, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Hamptons, and everyone else in a trailer-park or a plastic-cladded “house” in some dire burb.

    There appears to be no middle class – at least in popular imagery. Of course there must be millions of such people … but they’re not grabbing the headlines, or “leading” the economy.

    By way of contrast, we in the sunny Land Down under are almost entirely “middle class” – certainly in the popular imagination. We feel like we have no-one very rich and no-one very poor – which is of course nonsense – but the numbers at each end of the bell curve are pretty small.

    We have no Wal-Mart, no Amazon, no Starbucks … in fact we don’t have one giant in any category really. Competition is strong and healthy for just about everything. We have a couple of robust competitors to McDonald’s even.

    We have reasonably big companies of course, and they have a nation-wide presence, but they have been here for a very long time – we grew up with them, as did our grandparents.

    People do shop locally as well, and a lot of Australians will pay a little more to do so. Anyway – we are an optimistic, mostly happy country, and there is no talk or doom and gloom in the main.

    Personally I think we are too complacent, with a very heavy reliance on transport fuel for everything, an agricultural sector that is always doing it tough, and a critical shortage of good water. But even with these storm-clouds, we’re a prosperous, positive place.

    We even licked the coronavirus, and hardly mussed our hair doing so.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 6:48 pm #

      Whites are 2nd class citizens there just like they are here – destined to be replaced by those who hate them.

      https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/australia/australia-racism-media-christchurch-attack-intl/index.html

      • thwack May 23, 2020 at 7:03 pm #

        Janos,

        why don’t you deputize some black people to function as honorary white people?

        That way there would be more white people and you could relax a bit and stop whining about “being replaced”

        Just think of me as a different type a cracker; a Graham Cracker if you will…

        • akmofo May 23, 2020 at 7:14 pm #

          Damn it, Wack, I always thought of you as a fire cracker exposing in my anus. Now you want to change to a blanch Graham Cracker. WTF?!!

          • akmofo May 23, 2020 at 7:15 pm #

            fire cracker exploding in my ass

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:36 pm #

          Fuck that – we’re giving you something much better – your own Nation in the Deep South. If I was Black, you’d have my vote for president. But I’s jus White so I can’t vote down thar.

          Please don’t tell me that you’re the kind of Black who doesn’t like other Blacks; who needs (add italics) Whites?

          • Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 11:54 pm #

            who needs (add italics) Whites? – Janos

            =======

            You’re amazing, instead of ‘actually’ adding italics you type (add italics). How lazy can you get? Or do you not know how to do it after all the instructions spelled out here a month or two ago.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 12:26 am #

            Somehow saying “add italics” is more powerful. I don’t understand why but I’m meditating on it.

          • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 9:29 am #

            Maybe it’s because it makes you feel like you’re dictating to your secretary? 🙂

          • Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 7:58 pm #

            That’s good, Alba. By the by, did you check out the Sex Doll article far above? The one featured had a Scottish accent. Do you sound like this per chance?

      • CancelMyCard May 23, 2020 at 7:44 pm #

        “Whites are 2nd class citizens there just like they are here”

        Why can you NOT get your math straight?

        Whites are THIRD class citizens,

        Not 2nd class citizens.

        Janus,

        I would think that you had got that straight by now . . .

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:31 pm #

          You’re right. We’re behind all groups since we aren’t allowed any group rights or advocacy.

          See how smart you can be when you try a little?

          • Cargill May 24, 2020 at 3:04 am #

            We’re behind all groups since we aren’t allowed any group rights or advocacy.

            But you have the presidency, the senate, the house, the bureaucracy, the supreme court, the federal courts, almost all state legislatures, most state governors, most state supreme courts, state county courts, all of Wall Street, all the billionaire plutocrats, and almost all the academy and all the media – all rooting for the white team.

            They have conspired to stop African-Americans getting any money or rights for 400 years, and ditto for Latinos for at least 150 years.

            What else do you want on your side? Just how greedy are you? The white team has 99% of all the advocacy going on in the nation, and have had for centuries.

            And you fret about people wearing a life-saving mask! You’ll never be satisfied.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 8:02 pm #

            As I already said, O Thick Headed One, they don’t represent us in any way. Else why the savage indictments against form of pro-White Organization or Advocacy? Why is there no NAAWP to match the NAACP or the La Raza of the Hispanics?

            Trump won because he pretended to represent us, then simply abandoned us without a second thought. He was the only one who even bother to lie to us. Jeb thought he could win without Whites. Delusional – but that shows how incredibly distasteful they find even the idea of being on our side. So much so that they can’t even bear the idea of pretending to be.

      • Majella May 23, 2020 at 8:26 pm #

        Bullshit…

        Here’s some snaps of the Federal Cabinet – pretty much white and predominately appendages:

        https://www.pm.gov.au/your-government

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

          True – but they don’t identify with us in any way. They certainly don’t identify with ordinary Whites of the lower or middle class.

          We have no representation whatsoever.

          • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 9:12 pm #

            I think all the Labor members who are elected by “the lower or middle class” might rather disagree with you. We do have a genuinely social-democratic major party, and they do have a solid working-class base.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 10:44 pm #

            Labor (or Democrats as we call them here) are for the replacement of the White constituents. Thus they do not represent them in any deep way – and that’s by definition. See the first sentence for clarification if you have forgotten already.

          • Majella May 23, 2020 at 11:36 pm #

            “Labor (or Democrats as we call them here)”

            You have no idea. in both ‘Straya & NZ, the ‘labour’ left parties are screaming radical compared to your Democratic Party. In fact, the ‘right-wing’ major parties down there would be to the left of the Democrats.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 12:21 am #

            I believe you, Maj. As I said, we have no representation as all. These screamers or skraelings have been raised to hate their own people and think replacing them to be the height of virtue. They represent Whites like you – not normal Whites who want the Nation of their birth to continue and to flourish as it was founded with themselves as the population.

          • Cargill May 24, 2020 at 3:31 am #

            JHK’s forum / blog should all be about resource depletion, the role of energy in America’s future, the beauty and ugliness of the American landscape, and the geography of nowhere.

            But instead twice a week we get mired in all this white supremacist shit caused by just two or three maniacs … it’s such a waste of what could be a great forum about really interesting stuff.

          • Majella May 24, 2020 at 5:12 am #

            “They represent Whites like you – not normal Whites who want the Nation of their birth to continue and to flourish as it was founded with themselves as the population.

            There’s your problem, Skorenzy & SSL – you really believe that your perspective is ‘normal’. Sad, indeed, but I guess you have to tell yourselves SOMETHING, to stop going totally ga-ga, right?

        • Majella May 24, 2020 at 10:37 am #

          I should point out that each of these office holders are elected members of parliament as opposed to hand-picked lobbyists such as the Presidential cabinet.

      • Cargill May 23, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

        Whites are 2nd class citizens there [Australia] just like they are here – destined to be replaced by those who hate them.

        This is not connected to the reality … whites in Australia (like in the US) need “support” like the Boston Celtics need elevator shoes.

        Whites aren’t second-class citizens, but white nationalists, white supremacists, and racist xenophobes certainly should be – and mostly are. The former senator quoted in the CNN story) was appointed via a vacancy in 2017, and then booted out in the 2019 election.

        There are tiny far-right movements in Australia (either rural gun-nuts or extreme Christians) – but they have minuscule support electorally. Australia does not like this genotype very much – we’re overwhelmingly a relaxed, liberal people who cluster around the centre. Live and let live.

        And Anning blamed the 50 Muslims killed in Christchurch for getting in the way of a hate-filled white guy who killed them. Blaming the victims in an extreme form, no?

        • Majella May 23, 2020 at 11:38 pm #

          …the 50 Chch Muslims having been murdered by an Australian. Since Port Arthur, it was too difficult to get hold of the weapons of choice in ‘Straya.

  67. thwack May 23, 2020 at 7:56 pm #

    Arbery update.

    OK, so they have charged a 3rd white man (the one who took the video) in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

    Ok, thats all fine and well…

    BUT,

    I see a big problem for the prosecution; and a huge hole for the defense to drive a not guilty truck through, and it goes like this:

    If I was the 3 mens defense attorneys, I would ask the prosecution to indicate the exact point at which the 3 defendants violated a law?

    THE EXACT POINT.

    Is it illegal to chase someone?

    Is it illegal to hold a shot gun in the street WITHOUT POINTING IT AT ANYONE?

    Is it legal to ask a person to stop running?

    Is it legal to shoot a man who assaults you and attempts to take your shot gun?

    I strongly suspect the prosecution has no case but decided to charge the three white men in order to virtue signal to black people that “we care…”

    If Arbery was really in fear for his life, he could have easily cut through the woods between the houses, and the fat old rednecks would not be able to follow in their vehicles; and if they attempted a foot chase, all 3 would have probably had heart attacks…

    Now,

    since the defendants are 3 white men, and the victim is black; the jury can always convict on racism (even if the word is never used)

    But thats a tricky strategy; because it would basically say: “if you are a white person, you are automatically a racist white supremacist”; and I suspect they don’t want to make that precedent?

    The fact the put a black female in charge of the prosecution solidifies my suspicion?

    One thing I suggest everyone do is to run the tape BACKWARDS from the point Arbery is shot; and then try to determine the specific point at which the 3 white men do something unlawful?

    And also ask your self: If I see some man trying to pull your child into a white van;

    can I chase that man?

    Can I get my shot gun?

    Can I say to that man “stop, stop, I want to ask you a question…?

    Because don’t forget, this prosecution is just as much an attack on MEN as it is an attack on white people.

    So if you are a man, you might wanna think twice before you jump on the “Justice for Arbery” bandwagon?

    • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 9:32 pm #

      Curious about this thwack.

      Have you ever prevented something like this from happening? I have. The perp got away but the police showed up after the fact and let me know that if I ever saw the motherfucker again I could do whatever I wanted to him. I was a bit in shock but they gave me a buisness card telling me to just call the number right away.

      About 6 weeks later I saw the motherfucker and gave chase leaving my car in the middle of the road blocking traffic. As soon as he had seen the car he started running and had too much of a head start. I tried anyway and yes I would have taken the motherfucker out.

      So how do I feel about your little dance here?

      You are one of the motherfuckers.

      • thwack May 25, 2020 at 6:54 am #

        what are you trying to say Gay dog?

        My point is that by charging a 3rd man, the state has made getting a conviction of anyone of them more difficult and complex.

        Kinda like when they charged all those officers in the Freddy Gray case. When it came time for trial, nobody could point to an exact act any officer did that was criminal with malice and foresight…

  68. Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 8:59 pm #

    https://www.rt.com/business/489466-billionaires-wealth-growth-pandemic/

    The Plandemic is working very well for those who matter. The Middle Class dies. Potter’s not selling, he’s buying.

    Thank God for Russia and its Fascism.

    • malthuss May 23, 2020 at 9:06 pm #

      Its legal to record on public property. The 3rd man charged…what did he do that is illegal.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 9:11 pm #

        It is said that he blocked the Jogger, “driving” him like cattle to the waiting Ice Bear. In other words, in cahoots somehow with the Father and Son Hillbillies. Perhaps only in an ad hoc sense, but it will suffice. Tomorrow he shall be a grave man. Poor guy is shaking in fear. He’s not going to do well in Prison unless there’s an Aryan Brotherhood chapter there.

        • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 9:43 pm #

          Fair question. All possibilities must be explored. Shaking in fear? If he is not in cahoots he’s nothing to worry about. I’d not put that out there. It makes him look bad and nobody knows what happened yet. The investigation is ongoing.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 10:48 pm #

            Yeah, because Justice is always done. Oh wait, you don’t usually believe that.

            At the Fall, Man lost his natural integrity. Thus we don’t have one personality now, by any number – often not on speaking terms with teach other. Kdog has a “dealing with Janos” personality that doesn’t talk much to his main Social Justice personality.

          • K-Dog May 24, 2020 at 2:19 am #

            Justice is not always done but when the lights get turned on the cockroaches are the ones running for cover.

        • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 10:57 pm #

          Look what they did to Mr Fields in Cville. Railroaded him into prison for trying to get away from an Antifa mob. They tried to do the same to those lacrosse players at Duke. And White cops in the Tawana Brawley case and the Michael Brown case. And of course Mr Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case.

          His fear is understandable on many levels. He’s not nearly as hard a person as the McMichaels either.

    • Cargill May 24, 2020 at 4:04 am #

      Thank God for Russia and its Fascism.

      You’re totally drunk while posting – again.

  69. Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 9:07 pm #

    The Russian National Anthem

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAtz8xWM0w

  70. axisboldaslove May 23, 2020 at 9:09 pm #

    A fine piece of writing, Jim. Mighty fine.

    Our hope now lies in the energy and creativity of those youth who get off FaceBook long enough to put that energy and creativity to work making or doing something useful. Sadly, many other less motivated people will go down with the ship.

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  71. K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 9:17 pm #

    As Dr DeWeert stated, this seems to undermine the conclusion that “cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment”.In fact, if a larger-scale study of this kind yielded similar results, this could be a strong argument for the use of cotton masks by general public in advanced stages of the pandemic.
    I am particularly concerned that the paper might discourage the use of masks by the public. In fact I learned about the study from an article on a Polish news website, which cited the conclusion of the authors together with the erroneous averages.

    You should be ashamed of yourself. You know who you are. Somebody could have been reading who want’s to believe in ineffectiveness so much they could be killing their grandma right now as you read this. And you turned them onto the bullshit which justified their stupidity. Making YOU responsible. You were working the night shift and most people were sleeping. That was a good thing.

    Put on a mask and get to work to make the man rich. What is to figure out? It is what your orange man boss wants after all, so what’s the problem.

    • K-Dog May 23, 2020 at 9:18 pm #

      who wants to believe in ineffectiveness so much they could be killing their grandma right now

      • Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 10:53 pm #

        Did anybody poll the Old Folks as to whether they wanted the America they had always known changed on their behalf – just to give them a few more months or years of life at the expense of the liberty of all?

        Don’t think so!

  72. Janos Skorenzy May 23, 2020 at 11:08 pm #

    Just tried some Gotu Kola. A couple of drops has lit up my brain like a Christmas Tree. Or is it the grain alcohol in the tincture? Am I an Ice bear like the McMichaels? Should I open up a “still”?

    Wonderful taste. My body is more sensitive than usual because of the months long retreat. I hope you all are putting your time to good use like I am. Sometimes I find trouble finding the right word – but I know I have it someplace. This should loosen the stops, grease the skids, and roll away the stone. The brain is an organ like any other and sometimes needs special elixirs.

    Also bought some Gingko Biloba. I’ll try it tomorrow. No problems at the Store or en route – unlike earlier when I got into conflicts with nearly everyone I came across. One Karen stopped on a busy street trying to get me to walk into traffic because of some pedestrian lines on the street. I simply refuse to put myself in danger to fulfill their demented Dream of Nice. I started shaking my head to try to get her to go, but her ego seemed involved and she wouldn’t budge. I’d have been willing to cross if all the other cars (going both ways!) did, but no one else was paying those lines any mind. Finally an accident was almost caused by the car behind her trying to get around her. I immediately started walking to try to defuse the situation. I looked over at her and circled my finger around my head to let her know how fucking crazy she was. She got the message.

    • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 12:02 am #

      Janos,
      Ever listen to “The Bob and Tom Show”? There guest was a Larry King sound alike who was touting Aloe Vera for prostate problems. He further stated that the new Aloe Vera offering contained Gingko Balboa, a memory enhancer.

      He stated that if you take the supplement, you will “Piss like a racehorse and remember every minute of it…”.

      • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 12:55 am #

        you will “Piss like a racehorse and remember every minute – ely

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

        God, I wish I could piss like a race horse!!

      • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 10:56 am #

        Their, of course….

      • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 11:58 pm #

        contained Gingko Balboa – ely

        ===========

        Any relation to Rocky?

  73. elysianfield May 23, 2020 at 11:43 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    I have been giving some thought to the elements of a theme that might become a sequel to “Living in the Long Emergency”. It could be called “Loving in the Long Emergency”. I have been “spitballing”
    a plot and now I can offer it to our Host…no strings attached. It will require “fleshing out”…dialogue, and of course, explosions and car chases…gratuitous or otherwise. The plot;

    Boy meets girl,
    Girl gets boy in pickle,
    Boy gets pickle in girl,
    Hilarity ensues….

    We should do lunch…I’ll have my people contact your people….

  74. Q. Shtik May 23, 2020 at 11:44 pm #

    I’ve spent a fraction of the time wearing one than you have spent talking about it. GA @ 3:51 pm

    and

    *that* not *than*. Don’t want to get Q exercised for nothing. – GA @ 4:02 pm

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

    No, Alb, I think you had it right the first time.

    • GreenAlba May 24, 2020 at 8:42 am #

      We will have to agree to differ, Q. I’m sticking with it!

      I’ve spent a fraction of the time than you have?

      Nah, doesn’t do it for me.

      Swap ‘that’ for ‘which’ and it works fine.

      ‘I’ve spent a fraction of the time which/that you have (spent).’

      My first one was a typo. I type very quickly!

      • david higham May 24, 2020 at 7:06 pm #

        Q is correct.
        if you substitute ‘less’ for ‘a fraction of the’,it becomes clearer.

        I’ve spent less time wearing one than you have spent talking about it.

        • GreenAlba May 25, 2020 at 1:32 pm #

          I fear you are also wrong. We are referring to a fraction of something. What it is a fraction of is the time that I have spent.

          Substituting ‘less’ makes nonsense.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

            Sorry, only ‘that’ was meant to be bold.

          • GreenAlba May 25, 2020 at 1:34 pm #

            Not nonsense but you’ve changed the sentence. A fraction means something.

  75. Janos Skorenzy May 24, 2020 at 12:23 am #

    The Duck Commander weights in on the Situation. His is not a Spirit of Fear or of the perishable flesh for he has put on the full armor of Christ.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxgYaj6HjKc

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    • elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 1:13 am #

      …Send him out so that we might know him….

    • Q. Shtik May 24, 2020 at 1:18 am #

      The Duck Commander weights in on the Situation. – Janos

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

      There are people picked up by men in white lab coats, placed in vans with wire mesh over the windows and carted off to the Greystone Institute for the non-criminally insane, who think much the same as this bearded dude. They sit on the floor of the day room up against a wall endlessly rocking forward and back.

      Imagine if you had to spend a week with this guy. There would be no end to the Bible lessons. I’d never be able to squeeze in a story about the old days playing 8-ball.

      • K-Dog May 24, 2020 at 2:06 am #

        I would just tell him to shut the fuck up. Does he not know god cares about ducks WTF.

  76. elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 1:12 am #

    Regarding testing for the Virus.

    Wife had to go into the hospital yesterday for a test of some sort pending a procedure she will receive Thursday next. Found out that the test was for the Covid Virus…apparently all patients to be operated on are now required to be Covid tested at our regional hospital.

    Interesting thing is that the test requires five days for a determination as to positive or negative result.

    Five days.

    Probably shipped to a central location for testing…This appears to be the current state of the art in Oregon. Five days.

    • K-Dog May 24, 2020 at 1:18 am #

      Five days. A little tidbit of info that nobody wants in their narrative.

  77. Nightowl May 24, 2020 at 2:43 am #

    Joe Biden formally named in criminal case in Ukraine.

    https://twitter.com/ChanelRion/status/1263986371473137664

    Uh, oh. Joe.

    • Nightowl May 24, 2020 at 4:03 am #

      He has been formally named as a perpetrator by a judge.

      The leaked tapes of Biden pressuring Poro., were posted last week.

      Maybe some more boldface type will bolster your claims.

      LOL.

      • Nightowl May 24, 2020 at 4:18 am #

        No boldface this time?

        Aw.

      • Majella May 24, 2020 at 5:22 am #

        Still “LOL”ing it up, I see. Wonderful.

        Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has claimed Russia is behind leaked recordings of him allegedly speaking with former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now the subject of a Senate probe regarding his son Hunter’s business activities in Ukraine during Biden’s time in office.

        The edited recordings appear to be of Biden and Poroshenko speaking to each other, and were leaked by Andrii Derkach—a Ukrainian associate of President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

        Ah…! A Guiliani associate. Well, that makes it insanely credible, right there.

      • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 4:09 am #

        There are two tapes available, Ghoul. That information is found in the initial post.

        Do you speak English natively?

        LOL.

    • Majella May 24, 2020 at 8:00 pm #

      Chanel Ryan – sorry, RION – reporting here…self-confessed Trump -booster and nutjob CT promoter through a most curious medium that she terms ‘political cartoons’, which are certainly not ‘funny’.

      Political cartooning has a long legacy of punching up at the holders of power and using engaging humour to make the point. Her sense of what’s political and of what’s ‘funny’ are both major fails.

      Still – by virtue of her closeness to the W H through her creaking OAN membership of the W H Press Corp, at least she can probably be relied upon to confirm who the W H Doctor currently is…

  78. elysianfield May 24, 2020 at 1:46 pm #

    I know it is Memorial Day Weekend, but this story presented by the BBC, this AM, is especially poignant…a low down, dirty shame.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52663603

    • BackRowHeckler May 24, 2020 at 6:41 pm #

      That is a goddam shame, E. And it’s happening all over the country.

      Round these parts not too many independent bakeries or donut shops left standing even before this Covid pandemic hit. Its Dunkin Donuts or nothin.

      • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 3:58 am #

        The real shame is that businesses like this are closing for a narrative that amounts to a hoax at this point.

        The numbers are so far off from Dr. Faust’s predictions as to be laughable. Germany is more or less “reopening” now. My kid is headed back to the Kita this week, and on Saturday at the optician, my wife was told she didn’t need a mask.

        But who will care, aside from the little people?

        • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:05 am #

          It’s a hoax, now, because the distraction (Obamacare) needs the oxygen and to deflect from Himself’s own egregious errors and cock-ups.

          Are you sure you’re not a paid troll? By the KAG’ Campaign? Are you also supporting Ronny Johnson’s campaign for Congress? You’re such a loyal booster of your alumnus friend, even promoting back into a job from which he was fired for general ‘conduct unbecoming’. Nice work if you can get it!

          • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:30 am #

            Ha! Autocorrect gives me Obamacare – seems like ‘Obamagate’ isn’t quite an actual “thing” I guess.

  79. SoftStarLight May 24, 2020 at 9:53 pm #

    Wow! Fox News is center left and that is scary to these intolerant weirdos!? I would say maybe its finally time to grow up and accept that people have different opinions. But to make a tshirt and promo. It’s really sad honestly.

    • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 3:53 am #

      Fox panders to both the left and right as needed. An intelligent business model, but they are just another McMedia operation.

      This business model does have a silver lining however, in that a few truthtellers get air time, such as Tucker. Tucker has also given air time to Glenn Greenwald, Mat Taibbi, and others who the McMedia would never let near a mic.

      Despite my disdain for Fox during the Shrub years, I have come to realize they are the closest thing the McMedia offers to a balaned network, but it is currently almost entirely financially driven.

      The funny thing is that the other McMedia networks have picked up where Fox left off after Shrub’s reign and now serve up endless fake news to the bovine masses. Though CNN, WP, NYT, and co. have managed to outdo the master.

      • BackRowHeckler May 25, 2020 at 7:49 am #

        Nightowl, in Germany, is there something like our Memorial Day?

        No parade in our town this year, just a ceremony at the Civil War Memorial on the Town Green, which keeps alive an unbroken annual tradition that goes back to 1867.

        Brh

        • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 8:08 am #

          There is Volkstrauertag, which is a day of rememberance for victims of war. But it isn’t exactly the same and no one really pays attention to it.

    • Majella May 25, 2020 at 5:24 am #

      SSL – Fox News is centre Right at best, but Fox Opinion is hard-out Trumpism. In any case, the gentleman subject of the doco (and trailer) died in 2016, so the last four years of clusterfuck horror don’t even come into the equation.

        • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:10 am #

          ****yawn*****

          Haven’t you got ANYTHING NEW? You’re little better than a troll’s joke these days.

      • SoftStarLight May 25, 2020 at 11:27 am #

        And what is hard-out Trumpism in your opinion? To me it certainly is far away from anything I would consider far right. Which is what I imagine you consider Trumpism to be. Trump is an economic nationalist at times when it comes to trade deals. Otherwise to me it seems like the globalist communist project continues forward just fine.

  80. Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 5:15 am #

    Judge Sullivan (in the Flynn case) has now hired an attorney to explain for him his actions in the case. The lawyer has also represented other prominent Coupsters. So turns out he is indeed a Resistbot.

    https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1264466113385160706

    Dis gon’ get gud! 🙂

    Great interview with Flynn’s laywer, Sidney Powell here:

    https://twitter.com/dbongino/status/1264335831252324369

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  81. Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 5:46 am #

    Sindney on Maria:

    https://twitter.com/MazurikL/status/1259825319126749185

    MB: “Do you think this goes all the way to the top to President Obama?”

    SP: “Absolutely.”

    “POTUS wants to know everything we are doing.” — The Stroker to Lisa Page

    #Obamagate

    #Treason

    • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 6:10 am #

      Check this out, too: Kerry is on tape confirming that they were all in on it.

      https://twitter.com/TozyTerry/status/1258960371194396673

      These people are beyond stupid. Openly bragging about a crime in multiple venues.

      • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:32 am #

        You do realise that being ignored by you is a huge victory, don’t you…? 😉

      • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:34 am #

        Ah, right. Himself doesn’t do the same thing? Admitting on MSM tv that he fired Comey to shut down the investigation? That’s what got him the Special Counsel, you do understand that, don’t you?

    • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:13 am #

      Yeah!!! I know!!!

      Biden even talked about the prescribed policy of the Western Alliance and his implementation of it at a videotaped public conference.

      ‘Sonofabitch!’

      I bet Biden can name the WH Doctor…

    • Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:17 am #

      Yep.

      #being POTUS – something your Beloved Leader is patently incapable of being.

      Wasn’t it Himself who has claimed ‘absolute power of the presidency’ ? Who was President when all these alleged treasonous crimes were committed?

      When he loses in November, and refuses to leave because ‘it’s all been rigged’ and he asks his ‘Second Amendment People’ to hit the streets (and die faster than if hit by Covid) you’ll be on his side, won’t you?

      • benr May 25, 2020 at 10:18 am #

        Well we know Someone Suffering From Trump Unacceptance & Resistance Disorder (TURD)?

        TURD is a pattern of pathologically dissociative and psychotic behavior, first observed in the late hours of November 8th 2016, and increasing in severity with passing time.

        Sufferers of TURD often exhibit pronounced cognitive dissonance, sudden bouts of rage, rioting, and uncontrollable crying.

        People with TURD are characterized by a persistent unwillingness to accept that Donald Trump is going to Make America Great Again.

        • SoftStarLight May 25, 2020 at 11:17 am #

          Lol this is good!

          • benr May 25, 2020 at 7:49 pm #

            Wish I had thought it up I saw it elsewhere and stole it.

        • Nightowl May 25, 2020 at 11:43 am #

          LOL.

  82. Majella May 25, 2020 at 6:54 am #

    Someone with a Southern accent talking sense:

    https://youtu.be/suwos5pwiu0

  83. sleek111 May 28, 2020 at 11:01 am #

    “After a while, it won’t matter much what any government thinks about it, either. Like all the other giants, it will fall, too.”

    Mmmmmm……
    best reread “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire”…

    True, gubbernment eventually collapsed but their ruthless LEGIONS returned HOME and began the pillaging of their OWN countrymen…as gubbernment had NO more money with which to pay these nice goys…which forced MUCH of the population (that wanted to stay alive) to vacate their property (farms, homes, etc) and FLEE with only what they could carry with them….so much so that it was the Roman population who WELCOMED the invading HUNS as LIBERATORS.

    Seems like your vision of how things are gonna work out here needs some “refinement”.

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