JHK’s Three-Act Play
I know I’m not the first to point out how Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s brand new Communications Director, is suddenly and eerily carrying on like his namesake, the arch-rascal / buffoon of the Old World Commedia dell’Arte in lashing out at his fellow scamps and bozos in the clown school that the White House has become. Of course, these antics only reflect the astounding violent vulgarity of current US culture in general, especially as it recursively re-amplifies itself in the distorting echo chamber of TV. It’s how we roll nowadays — right up the collective butt-hole of history until some fateful event provokes a last frightful purging of our own bullshit.
Still, it was rather shocking to hear Scaramucci refer to White House Chief of Staff Rance Priebus as “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and Trump ultra-insider Steve Bannon as someone who “enjoys sucking his own cock.” It’s kind of like Paulie Walnuts of “The Sopranos” wandered into the West Wing of “Veep.” Somebody’s gonna get whacked, and it’ll be a laugh-riot when it happens.
We need a little comic relief in these midsummer horse latitudes of the mind as the ill-starred Trump Show appears to enter its ceremonial death dance. There’s also something satisfyingly Napoleonesque about Scaramucci. Here’s a guy who cuts through the odious blubber of US politics right to the bone of things with a flensing blade of profane righteousness. Personally, I’d like to see him take some whacks at a few more deserving targets, and I can even imagine a somewhat farfetched scenario where the little guy shoves Trump out during a concocted national emergency and manages to declare himself First Citizen, or some such innovative title allowing him to run things for a while — say, until the generals toss him out a window. Or maybe he’ll last less than a week in his current position. I would not be surprised, either, if Mr. Bannon beats little Mooch to death with an Oval Office fireplace poker right in front of the Golden Golem of Greatness himself.
The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine — in this case, inexorably toward the restorative medicine of the 25th amendment. There is, after all, that hoary old artifact called the national interest lurking somewhere offstage aside of all this colorful mummery, especially as the Russian Meddling gambit appears to be dribbling away to nothing. It’s more than self-evident that poor Trump is in so far over his head that he’s come down with something like the bends, a debilitating systemic disorder rendering him unfit to execute the powers of office. Decades from now, they’ll say he had “the tweets.”
This is a melodrama of a type the world has seen before in a hundred royal palaces and other centers of mis-rule. The need to get rid of the head of state becomes so painfully self-evident that idle chatter about it ceases and all intention is signaled in mere eye-rolls, sighs, portentous glances, and other fraught devices of body language. That’s what’s going on now in the senate, the agency executive suites, the terraces of Martha’s Vineyard, and surely the hallowed corridors of the White House itself. One way or another, the knives are coming out.
The most economical script would have Trump graciously “resign” and be allowed to return to his familiar money-grubbing activities in real estate, where he can really only do harm to his own bank accounts and family posterity. Or, he could be dragged kicking and screaming from the premises, shall we say, and thrown to the bloodthirsty beasts of Deep State justice. That will not be pretty. Either outcome could provoke a lot of mischief “out there” among those who voted for him.
In any case, I doubt that the polity can take much more of Trump after Labor Day — and I say all this as one who was never part of the so-called “Resistance.” I’m not even very much convinced that getting rid of Trump and installing his stand-in, Mike Pence, will leave the government any less dysfunctional. After all, the nation is riding a larger and scarier arc of history as the techno-industrial fiesta winds down, with all the awfully disruptive consequences that implies. But at least there’s a chance that we might at least face this predicament seriously instead of feeling trapped in some sort of cosmic sitcom in an alternative universe of endless fucking nonsense.
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Still, it was rather shocking to hear Scaramucci refer to White House Chief of Staff Rance Priebus as “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and Trump ultra-insider Steve Bannon as someone “enjoys sucking his own cock.” It’s kind of like Paulie Walnuts of “The Sopranos” wandered into the West Wing of “Veep.” Somebody’s gonna get whacked, and it’ll be a laugh-riot when it happens.
Brilliant Jim! Looks like the thin veneer of DC collegial decorum (aka political bullshit) has finally been dispensed with entirely. Sure hope someone’s been hired to record all this for posterity. This will surely be HBO’s biggest blockbuster yet.
Yes, someday it could result in two HBO mini-series: 1) Death of a Presidency 2) American Civil War Two.
I wonder, will “THEY” remove Trump before or after initiating a financial collapse?
My guess is after. Such buffoonery would be a terrible thing to waste.
I think you’re onto something there. He’s there for the entertainment.
Yep.
As a distant observer, I cannot help but conclude that by creating, then abusing the powers of, the ‘Imperial Presidency’, both LBJ and Nixon shrunk the office to what, for lack of a better term, has become a ‘Master of Ceremonies’. Ford, Carter, [certainly] Reagan, elderBush (‘He’s the kind of guy you appoint to head commissions…’ – RMN), and most of all the bouncy, handsome, fun-loving successors in this latter-day Roman Empire: Clinton, who signed away the farm, Dubya, who wasn’t really interested but hung in there, and smooth-as-satin Obama.
I must of course graciously acknowledge my debt to Gore Vidal, past master of bon mot, who, on live television, said ‘The President is a ceremonial figure, rather like the Queen of England’.
This current clown is more like some peanut-gallery Pinochet, thrust unexpectedly into the office after his duly-elected predecessor unfortunately found himself in the trajectory of some live machine-gun fire. He may not have anticipated or even particularly wanted the job (just the chance to show off) but he’s determined to make his mark. Even if it blows up the joint. Not your first choice for an M/C.
Vidal, as he was most of the time, had it exactly right.
There might be some way to get President Trump out, Jim, but what do you tell the 63 million citizens who voted for him just a short 9 months ago? Your vote doesn’t count? You were idiots for voting for him? A lot of people may not take the news too good, in fact may be rather pissed.
brh
How was it explained last November to the 66 million who voted for “Her” (2.8 million more than the “Golden Golem of Greatness”) and lost anyway? Answer: It’s the Constitution! Sorry!
• Impeachment: Article II, Sec. 4
• Removal for sickness or insanity: Amendment 25
• Electoral College: Article II, Sec. 1
The problem is that Democratic & Green voters tend to be more civilized than many Republican (esp. Trump) voters.
Oh yeah, right, that’s hilarious. Democrat voters are rowdy by proxy; BLM, Antifa, etc. Just cheer them on and sit back sipping your latte.
And I would add: how civilized was it to murder Seth Rich or a host of others one could name? How civilized are the Podesta brothers and their pedophile network when they rape and murder children? Petro isn’t sipping latte; he’s guzzling kool-aid.
“The problem is that Democratic & Green voters tend to be more civilized than many Republican (esp. Trump) voters.”
Two teaspoons to 12 ounces of water. I think you read it backwards.
With the delusional ravings of you three, I can say “case closed.” Ha ha! Awesome!
You people have obviously learned nothing – you simply lack the humility. Trump people have not only been savaged in the media and on the street, but were attacked at their own rallies. And you want to call us rowdy and dangerous? Insanity. You all need to be locked into your urban and coastal enclaves along with your minority allies. We’ll give you rations enough just to survive – and let nature take its course.
Now THAT’S a civilized response: death camps. My point proven again.
Your Bill Ayers said it decades ago about White Americans. Turn about is fair play. And I didn’t say death camps – just being close to your dark gods!
Janos
You are the very epitome of the uninformed, racist assholes who elected this clown. You’re so predictable, it’s just boring now.
So, the shorter answer is “of course your vote doesn’t count — haven’t you read the Constitution?”
Yes, EXACTLY. Thank you Bruce for getting it.
In other words, Illegals and Dead people can vote as long as they vote Democratic.
See what I mean? (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.)
“In other words, Illegals and Dead people can vote as long as they vote Democratic.”
Fake news, my son, unless you have evidence. Remember that stuff – evidence? It used to matter before the assault on rational thinking in the US.
“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
Joseph Goebbels, one of your Hideous Heroes.
If people feel alienated by their lack of education, by comparison with those pesky ‘liberals’, the person with innate intelligence educates him/herself (hint: education is not what’s on Breitbart and Fox), rather than hating those who are more educated. Miners and others in my country used to build and use their own libraries after a hard day’s graft. Because they valued real education, not the verbal diarrhoea that passes for information in the dark recesses of the internet.
Once they’re properly educated (which doesn’t mean indoctrinated in bible college or given a half-hearted, poor-quality education in an underfunded school, they can debate ideas rationally with those they disagree with, instead of throwing in their lot with a moronic, narcissistic demagogue like Trump, who tells them he ‘loves uneducated people’. Of course he does – they can be led by the nose to the ballot box.
Unfortunately the lumpen trumpen have more guns & less impulse control.
The usual suspect RWNJ have pooh-poohed the recent TV series Handmaid’s Tale (though written over 30yrs ago) idea that this country could become a military-theocratic state – with Kelly now in Prince Rebus’ position it would be terribly coincidental when, not if, a religious nutter like Pence (“I don’t think proximity to women other than my wife is right”) slithers behind the desk in the Oval Office.
I think a lot of the shlubs would quite like the idea of complaisant handmaidens.
I sincerely hope that, if the movement to oust Trump gains serious momentum, his millions of gun owning supporters will not just sit on their hands and let it happen. Trump would have already achieved better relations with Russia if the powers-that-be had allowed it. Pence is just a Russia-hating, pro-Middle East wars, pro-all things Israel, traditional GOP “cuckservative.”
instead of feeling trapped in some sort of cosmic sitcom in an alternative universe of endless fucking nonsense.
And this particular one feels like some kind of two-hour “Very Special Episode”!
A Bronx Tale meets The White House.
“Now youz can’t leave.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmHDHwb4vQU
Now just waiting for a real donnybrook to break out at the Capitol to make the transition complete to “real” politics.
I loved the look on their faces when he said that. It was almost as if their dicks became frightened little turtles.
It appears the discourse here is no higher than that in the White House.
Act 3
Scene 3
All of Europe is now linked to Asia courtesy of China and these partnerships are growing daily. A freight car of British goods now leaves London for a direct connection to Beijing. Nowhere in this equation does America feature as all of Europe is rapidly becoming aware. The disengage grows ever stronger and the noise from DC drowns out reality.
USA: exit right!
Small point – there are no British “goods” that China wants – that was the cause of the Opium Wars, the Exchequer was bleeding hard currency (silver) paying for the new craze, tea, but found the only commodity the Chinese wanted, opium.
The One Belt, One Road policy will be entirely one way. At least until the hard currency runs out.
Chlorine washed chicken, anyone? yum-yum
Pence might not be much better, but at least the day-to-day operations of the government will no longer resemble “The Apprentice.” Ironically, it is Trump himself who is likely to hear, “you’re fired.”
Trump’s biggest mistake was in making so many poor appointments from the start. He needs to reset and fire more of his disloyal appointees who do not support his agenda. Next to be fired should be that idiot he installed at the UN – the vacuous Nikki Haley. She has, since day one, blatantly opposed Trump’s stated agenda to pursue better relations with Russia. I don’t understand why she hasn’t been shown the door already. Per a column by Eric Margolis, Haley’s only prior diplomatic experience was as a customer at the International House of Pancakes while she was governor of South Carolina.
Oh, and Jeff Sessions. Trump was right to call him out for recusing himself on the Russia investigation. Sessions’ decision made him look guilty, even if he isn’t, and gave Rosenstein the ammunition he needed to appoint the all-powerful Special Prosecutor – who will not quit until Trump is taken down.
Yay! HIs incompetence is is own demise.
He is poorly equipped by way of experience and temperament to be President and Commander-in-Chief of these United States. Who he appoints has little to do with it. Sessions followed precedent and DOJ policy because he, at least, respects the rule of law.
The Cold War 2.0 just got a lot colder
Russian Federation Foreign Ministry’s statement:
…Therefore, we request that our American counterparts bring the number of diplomatic and technical staff at the US Embassy in Moscow, the consulates general in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok, into strict correspondence with the number of Russian diplomats and technical staff currently working in the United States, until September 1, 2017. This means that the total number of American diplomatic and consular office employees in the Russian Federation must be reduced to 455 people. In the event of further unilateral action on behalf of US officials to reduce the Russian diplomatic mission in the US, we will respond accordingly.
– Starting August 1, the use of all the storage facilities on Dorozhnaya Street in Moscow and the country house in Serebryany Bor will be suspended from use by the US Embassy.
Russia reserves the right to resort to other measures affecting US’ interests on a retaliatory basis.
http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2824435
At least American diplomats got 33 days to get the hell out of Russia, not 72 hours afforded by US administration on December 2016.
Obama is tougher than Putin. That’s why all Putin’s oligarch friends are squealing about Obama’s sanctions. He put a hammerlock on Putin. Obama was not just words… he was deeds. Obama attacked and slowed down those oligarchs who are stealing from the Russian people, then moving the stolen wealth to the west in an attempt to make their theft legitimate.
Back in the USSR
I got the text of the new sanctions law with comments. In the law, I can’t figure out heads from tails yet, but if the comments are correct, then these sanctions practically throw Russia out of the world capitalist system.
After them, you can safely confiscate all American property in Russia, not only public, but also private, as Kudrin’s stash certainly will not be returned and under the circumstances it will not cause the collapse of the dollar or even of the bond market.
In essence, this is a war!
With the same success you can announce the re-creation of the USSR.
And I hope that NATO will be given 72 hours to liberate the occupied territories of the Warsaw Pact countries. The only obstacle is petty-bourgeois instincts (I do not mean the instinct of self-preservation) of the big Russian bourgeoisie, but if we consider that the greater part of the Russian bourgeoisie was actually made in the USSR, then I think they will quickly agree on what this all mean for them and remember in time about the salvation of the plea bargain.
Socialism in this situation arises as a geopolitical and economic necessity, and not the result of political philosophy. Only the idea of the Juche – everything for themselves to produce themselves – in the case of Russia imposed on Putin by the Americans.
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-value-of-everything/#comment-312248
“After [the sanctions are applied], YOU can safely confiscate all American property in Russia, not only public, but also private, as Kudrin’s stash certainly will not be returned and under the circumstances it will not cause the collapse of the dollar or even of the bond market.”
Finca,
I have no idea WTF this means, and who TF is “YOU”?
If a “real” property exists inside a consolidated nation, I have no idea how you’re going to “confiscate” it from outside, much less hold on to it.
Are you still believing that contracts and treaties (corporate and diplomatic) are somehow ironclad and cannot easily be disregarded when they’re found to be inconvenient or *insane*?
(Obviously, I’m not getting your whole thrust here, and Robert McGill’s post above shows the looming realities of *actual* geopolitics that have begun to assert themselves and negate entirely the empty bluster and foolish threat that the American government has made of itself.)
I have no idea WTF this means, and who TF is “YOU”?
Sorry, direct Russian figure of speech translation into English – in this case could be replaced by “one” as in :
After them, ONE can safely confiscate all American property in Russia
If a “real” property exists inside a consolidated nation, I have no idea how you’re going to “confiscate” it from outside, much less hold on to it.
We most likely are talking about voiding the shares of stock in Russian energy companies – such as Gazprom and Rosneft – held by American nationals and funds – especially the Clinton Foundation and reassigning them to Russian government.
Hope that helps.
Finca,
Yes, thanks, that helps a bit. Allow me to try and clarify further:
““After [the sanctions are applied], Russian authorities can safely confiscate all American property in Russia, not only public, but also private, as Kudrin’s stash certainly will not be returned and under the circumstances it will not cause the collapse of the dollar or even of the bond market.”
Would that be closer to your meaning? Makes sense to me.
…And, as to this:
“We most likely are talking about voiding the shares of stock in Russian energy companies – such as Gazprom and Rosneft – held by American nationals and funds – especially the Clinton Foundation and reassigning them to Russian government.”
Disregarding your insistence on the Clinton Project for a moment (please), I’d say, sure, a simple tearing-up of some contracts would be well in order. Investors (no matter their “affiliations”) with cloud-based, scad-zillions of ‘investment loot’ who are looking for the Big Payout without actually doing anything would be better kicked to the curb in favor of putting some exchangable wealth into the hands of the roustabouts and equipment-providing risk-takers that are going to perform the actual mining would be an intelligent move, both politically and for the good of the commonweal. “It ain’t rocket surgery, f’cri-sakes.” — Mookie da Mook
Let’s look at CONgress’ “words and deeds:
“To show you how utterly devious the members of Congress truly are, they named the bill [ H.R. 3364 ] ‘‘Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act’.’ Sounds almost noble, doesn’t it? It’s not noble’ it’s evil.
The Bill is specifically designed to start a war. Worse, the people who wrote and voted for this Bill are, in my opinion, so personally evil, they even inserted restraints in the Bill to prevent our President from negotiating an end to troubles caused by this Bill! ”
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/opinion-editorial/hal-turner-commentary/906-with-russia-sanctions-bill-congress-has-just-begun-world-war-3-the-missiles-will-fly-within-months
Some reporter should bring in a boom box to the next Daily Briefing and the next time Sarah Huckabee starts whining about Russia this and Russia that play “Back in the USSR.”
China and India – populations well over a billion each.
Russia under Putin.
America in decline.
World population untenable.
Many known existential threats – black swans – unknown !
“Limits to Growth” on track.
“Planetary Boundaries” – several already exceeded.
Are we, do you think, in the situation ‘can’t see the woods for the trees’ ??
Manysummits, in Calgary
PS: Common Dreams has lost it – too many third rate articles, by a factor of ten at least – comments almost useless from an interactive perspective.
Well said, Calgary!
Manysummits, in Calgary?
My thoughts exactly.
Trump’s hard core support has dwindled well below the 64 million who voted for him. It is time for reasonable, rational and educated adults to take charge. Hopefully, this farce will be over before someone like General Smedley arrives on the scene.
I know many of the Trump supporters. They are not wavering one iota. If anything, they’ve stiffened their spine.
Everyone at my workplace in San Antonio Texas (12 by my count out of 92) who were forthright Trump supporters have now re-canted. I know because I have personally asked each one, “So, do you still think Trump will make America great again?” Every single person answered with negativity such as “Hell, no.” or “Don’t think so, he just doesn’t really have what it takes.” or “No. I just don’t know how I didn’t notice before what an idiot he is.”
The first two responses from your co-workers probably haven’t changed from before they voted. Many Trump votes were actually “not Hillary” votes. People knew what he was like but the thought of her having “her turn” was too much for most. They knew what she was like, too.
The one who brought these people into the halls of power are the ones who must answer to the American people.
Trump is like Carter in this regard, he has aligned himself with operatives.
What did Carter ever do to you to deserve this insult?
He did not realize who his enemies were. A good man among devils.
Carter loved his enemies … as Jesus Christ taught Carter to do … by Christ’s own example.
“The one who brought these people into the halls of power are the ones who must answer to the American people.
”
This is the most circular sentence on the page. Them being the same people for sure is a nation who will ‘enjoys sucking its own cock.’
As far as there being a backlash returning Trump to his legend in his own mind status and not the bull in the china shop status he has now there won’t be any. WA state voters have voted down many a tax initiative only to see city councils and our state legislature override these mandates and vote in the rejected taxes anyway.
Nothing ever happens.
Remove Trump and introduce a new phone video game to keep everyone distracted at the same time. Poke-de-twitter-man perhaps. Then not only will anybody not care, they won’t even notice a change!
He is a bull in a China Shop. If you turn the American Continent over it would probably say “Made in China.”
Considering the appalling evisceration of American industry, often have I recalled this quote from Lenin: ‘We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.’
Haha, wrong again: this was not uttered by my fellow cigar-lover after all. Boo-hoo: ‘According to the book “They Never Said It”, p. 64, there is no evidence Lenin ever said it”.’
It does however certainly fit the bill, Bill.
In effect, you mean the DNC, for flipping Bernie and the RNC for being spineless fuckwits and allowing this ass-clown to gain such traction.
referring back to sotho: “The one who brought these people into the halls of power are the ones who must answer to the American people.”
It’s not like there was a whole lot of great choices to begin with. I think a lot of people voted for the pile of shit that stank less.
They for sure voted for a pile of shit who thinks his own not only does not stink at all, but actually smells great. A pile who thinks he even pisses perfume.
He’s like that guy in Hemingway’s “The Butterfly and the Tank,” who goes around the bar with a squirt gun full of perfume spraying people until somebody shoots him.
He has a ways to go then. Before they shoot him they have to take him outside and beat him up.
Yeah but they would never have done that to the stinkier pile of shit which was the other option.
This guy is there for the entertainment value only. Nothing substantive will come out of this administration. Nothing. I am finally starting to see the strategy. There is no solution for our problems that are palatable to the powers that be. Health Care costs are growing at 10% a year and GDP is flat. How long before that bankrupts the country? Not more than few years. 10 tops. So parade out a clown and watch the circus while Rome is pissed on by the Colossus of Rhodes while it burns. This country should eliminate the insurance companies, take the profit out of medicine and make it single payer, and become like the rest of the world where healthcare is a right, not the most lucrative legal racket on the planet. That is exactly what they should have done to the tobacco companies.
Throw in a little CEO head chopping while you are at it!
So you are finally beginning to see the strategy. Sorry to break it to you but ‘the guy being there for entertainment value only’ did not start with Trump and is nothing new.
“There is no solution for our problems that are palatable to the powers that be.”
“Congress knows they’ve spent us into Bankruptcy and – as a mathematical certainty – there’s no way to service or get out of the debt they’ve gotten us into. So what they need is “Debt Forgiveness.” But the ONLY way that a sovereign country the size of ours can get debt forgiveness is through WAR.” [ from the above link ]
We owe, we owe, so off to war we go.
The city of Pittsburg has more MRI machines than the country of Canada. What’s wrong with this picture? Up until 1980 healthcare was less than 5% of GDP and now it’s approaching 20%. What’s wrong with that picture? The Healthcare system is broken and cannot be fixed. You cannot put a profit motive in medicine and not create monsters.
Last sentence: truer words were never spoken. If we could just keep you on issues and away from Politics and Religion.
“What’s wrong with that picture?”
Did you hit the wrong REPLY button?
@messianicdruid et al–
I know I brought up this idea before, and that there’s no practical way to implement it because it strips power from the banking industry,
–BUT–
The jubilee year–
Here’s a mechanism for debt forgiveness across the scale;
1) Banking crisis ensues, and the Banksters demand a bailout again, but THIS time;
2) The money is created from thin air again, but instead it is applied to all personal debts.
For example, a midwestern family owes $300,000.00 on their house worth $200K, and has $40,000.00 in credit card debt. $340,000.00 of government funny money is given to this family without incurring any additional tax penalties, etc. If they use it to pay off their debts, the banksters have their money back, and the family is debt-free. SO….
3) The banksters get the money, like they wanted;
4) The family gets debt-free like they wanted.
5) Expand this to everyone in our economy….
The only down side to this is that the Banksters can no longer charge interest because the debts have been paid off.
They can lend it to someone else if anyone is foolish enough to borrow it, but until they do, their bank accounts are full but they are making no interest on their money.
Since we have been operating on funny money since Nixon closed the Gold window anyway, there is literally no obstacle to the creation of as much ‘money’ as is needed to completely pay off everyone’s debts in this manner. We can even throw in a year of free rent for everyone who is poor enough to not even be in debt.
Suppose we have to create a Quadrillion Dollars to do this. What happens to the value of money? It almost instantly becomes worthless.
What then?
WELL… The Banksters will have computers full of these quadrillions of digital dollars that were paid back to them to settle all these debts. These dollars will rapidly become worthless. Too bad. Real people will hold the titles to real property, free and clear.
It will probably be necessary to exchange all the worthless digital greenbacks for new red-backs at a rate of a billion to one perhaps. Hopefully the red-backs will be backed by something real–maybe loaves of bread or something.
What have we accomplished? Really, its the same thing that is going to happen anyway, and soon. We just get the Big Reset all at once without the years of suffering and with less disruption. The Banksters do not even need to get their necks stretched.
If the Trump-ster is going down anyway, and we are all headed into a giant financial paroxysm and possible global war, maybe he could declare all debts erased in this fashion on his way out the door. Highly unlikely I know, but it could work better than the usual Fourth Turning-to-Civil-War that usually happens in these cases.
“The only down side to this is that the Banksters can no longer charge interest because the debts have been paid off.”
Phobia,
That is the downside? What about the moral hazard? What about those stupid fucking people who live debt free? The morons who planned, worked, saved and did without to provide a debt-free existence?
What is it citizen? You lived responsibly? The debt forgiveness, through inflation, has destroyed your savings? Tough Shit…maybe you can borrow your now-debt-free neighbors’ $60,000 Dodge Cummins to move to smaller, more affordable accommodations….
We are already in a twilight zone of moral hazard and have been for some time. What happens to that responsible person who lives within his means when the civil war hits? Moral hazard? You bet! I am not saying it is equable or just. I am saying that the outcome for all but the top 0.1 % is going to be better than the usual path of chaos.
That said, of course there is little chance that any society would ever try thi2s….
Elysian Field
This Jubilee idea has been put out by an Australian economist, Steven Keen (http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/)
In his plan, the moral hazard is dealt with by giving an equal amount of ‘money’ to every one – say $1,000,000. This, if you have no debt,you’re improved by the injection, and if you have debts that exceed the Jubilee, you’re not out of debt but you owe $1 m less.
I’m not targeting you today, seawolf77, but since you mentioned healthcare, I want to re-post my suggested solution. I see spreading these ideas as my little effort to help move forward to some kind of improvement from the status quo:
PREMISE:
Medical service providers are just that, service providers; and in that regard are no different in the market than automobile mechanics whose average income depends on the average income in the workers (their clients) in their society. Every country, though, has figured out some way to pay medical service providers more than car mechanics. That way the poor get some access to the care that only the rich can afford. Calls in the USA for market-based reforms to the health care affordability problem conveniently overlook this basic fact which is not surprising considering the long oligarchic traditions of the USA.
Instead of floundering in our traditional economic cynicism we could undertake simple and effective governmental reforms in order to keep health care spending down to a reasonably low percentage of GDP like every other developed country in the world. No constitutional roadblocks would have to be overcome. Government established systems don’t need to unconstitutionally block medical service providers from contracting with patients in whatever way they wish. Well-structured public systems will just make it unnecessary and uneconomical for them to do so. As the reforms listed below are read, please reserve judgement as to their political viability until you get to the end.
REFORMS:
1. Lower Medicare age to 55. This would most efficiently remove the most difficult to insure group from the reform process faced (as suggested at item #3 below) by the individual states.
2. Simplify the Medicare benefit structure so that there is one simple annual deductible for all parts of Medicare (A,B,and D) based upon an income and asset test; and also re-set the Medicare Part B premium so that it is also income and asset test based.
2.1 This would make the need for Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, and Medicare Prescription Drug plans obsolete; saving the government and consumers hundreds of billions year in and year out.
2.2 Some percentage of current insurance workers could be leased by current insurance companies to the government during a transition phase, while those losing their jobs could get direct transition assistance.
3. For everyone through age 54 each state individually or in concert with other states could adopt some form of the proven models provided by other developed countries. Large states, who have larger populations and economies than many model countries, have the tax base and economies of scale which should make it easier to establish such model systems compared to smaller states. Therefore, if smaller states run into difficulty they should be allowed to join together with other small states, whether regionally proximate or not, to adopt models that work best for them as a group.
FACTORS:
I believe these reforms could be politically viable because they feed into hot button issues of both the right and left. Right wingers in red states would like the individual state control aspect and burn themselves out on pushing for a return to a cash-based system for the poor and concierge plans for the highly paid employees and wealthy individuals which will ultimately prove economically and politically unsustainable compared to the socialistic systems established in the blue states. Left wingers in blue states will jump at the chance to bring forth successful plans and thus help the blue brand and motivate blue voters nationwide. Big health insurance companies would continue to have an advantage over smaller firms as they find a way to profitably downsize to basic employee leasing enterprises that provide administration services to Medicare and the state model plans. They, like all the companies in the healthcare market, would be faced with the need to either adapt or die. I believe the big companies seeing the writing on the wall would actually support the reform process since they would be in the best position to become profitable survivors of the process. Big Pharma…well big pharma would also take a hit, but so be it…they would most likely have to deal with bulk discounted sales to Medicare and the state plans who in turn would have the discounted drugs fulfilled through the existing pharmacy outlets.
So six months after putting a DC Outsider on the Inside it has been determined that we made a big mistake and that what we need to solve the problem is another Insider back at the helm, alright! Perhaps Nancy Pelosi or Diane Feinstein would be the best choices, ya think? Who cares, R or D there all the same anymore and they are all so good at providing for all of our needs with gifts like the Great Free, Obamacare that cannot and will not ever be eliminated because after all, it is perfection and damned near free, right? This nation is now ungovernable and uncontrollable as well. It is a good thing that the general population is not intelligent enough to realize that which will allow it to go on forever or until it falls on its face (or on our faces) and dies.
“Perhaps Nancy Pelosi or Diane Feinstein would be the best choices, ya think? ” –walter b
No. The best choice had the best resume: Hillary. But some ( a minority) preferred Trump, even though he had no experience in governing and no military experience… he lied and conned his way in. But Truth will out. Mueller is a top notch investigator who Trump cannot stop.
Murder as a means to an end, eh? Damn we are doomed.
Let’s let the Awan mystery play out before making any predictions.
Best resume. What? Libya? You are insane.
No, Janet, none of the above. I say go all the way with Mad Maxine Waters for POTUS!
Petro doesn’t like the current legal arrangements that led to President Trump. There seems to be a consensus among Democrats that those rules are unjust and so invalidate Trump’s win.
But even if the rules pass muster, then it was the Russians that got Trump over the top. And if it wasn’t the Russians, then Trump doesn’t belong there anyway because of his attitudinal shortcomings and those of his “base”.
But Trump didn’t get shat out of the deep, racist recesses of the American id. The Democrats and their mouthpieces in the press and the intellectual class in general are unshakeable in their view that what drove Trump voters was racism and misogyny and ignorance. As long as they keep to this view, Democrats will keep losing.
The Republican establishment OTOH think that their base was led astray, that it was a collective failure of character that led to Trump being nominated over the heads of principled conservatives. As long as they keep marketing poppycock ideology they will keep getting un-horsed by people like Trump, or worse.
Both Democrats and Republicans fail to understand that people vote their economic interests. They think that people can be indefinitely distracted by marginal issues like what sex/intersex uses what pissoir. In the meantime, both parties cater to Davos billionaire money interests and ignore those of the broad swathe of the electorate.
So, as much as it’s distasteful to Petro, Trump won fair and square. He won because he outsmarted everyone else. Whereas the Democrat message to the broad interior of the country was “we’re better than you”, Trump’s message was “I’ll fight for you”.
Your statement of people voting their economic interests is so simple, so critical, and so absolutely correct that it amazes me that it could somehow be overlooked, forgotten or ignored by the assholes in charge. The Macondo Oil workers do not give a hot damn about any damage that their work may do to people or the planet because, after all, their paychecks and careers are all that matter to them. The Fukushima nuclear workers could care less either do they and they are even more than willing to climb back into the soup every day till they die because they need the paycheck.
In the end 99.9% of humanity is comprised of sellouts and if you want to own them you simply buy them. Our American politicians have simply become too greedy to cast any pearls to the swine anymore. They want us to sell out for free. I wonder if it will work out for them anyway?
You hit the nail on the head about the oil workers and the nuclear workers. You could extend that to everyone. All the Di Caprios and Al Bores of the world preach climate this or AGW that, but do you see them giving up their lavish lifestyles? Nope, not a bit. Somebody has to do something, but it has to be somebody else. Goes for 99.9% of the people including and especially the wealthy ie the ones that talk the most.
As for the low-downs, they don’t exactly ride private jets to work. For those guys it’s a question of how to make the rent. As you say, they need the paycheck.
“In the end 99.9% of humanity is comprised of sellouts and if you want to own them you simply buy them. Our American politicians have simply become too greedy to cast any pearls to the swine anymore.
Walter,
I think you are being a bit harsh. The reality of living requires people to do that which, otherwise they would not…a man has a responsibility to feed his kids. To use the term “sell-outs” is pejorative, and indicates that a person might have a viable choice between vocations, while still being able to support his family…many times this is not the case. How about 99.9% of humanity is comprised of people living in quiet desperation?
The Term certainly applies, however, to the craven politicians and administrators, who will make a decision based on greed when they have other avenues of survival that do not force a bad choice.
Yes I was too harsh and yes the political scum certainly do deserve all the blame that can be heaped upon them. I am certainly more than my fair share frustrated and it would go a long way to see more humans wake up and speak out about it, so you have indeed help to not only reel me in but give me hope that perhaps someday, the ranks of the Not Gonna Take It Anymores will become large enough to make the scum at the top sit up straight and listen. Thank you.
More like “I’ll fight for you, although I never have and most likely never will.”
I don’t want to see Trump removed. I want to see the people that voted for get what they deserve, and good and hard. That’s the only way some dummies learn.
This guy from the outset was a scam artist and side show barker. His history of fraud and deception was there for all to see. If you wanted to believe his words and ignore the evidence of his actions that’s your problem.
Drain the swamp?. How bout fill it with the most cynical money grubbing creatures you can find. The “Mooch” being the latest example.
Bring about the most beautiful health care system ever? How bout throw all you bums off of Medicaid, you know, you 5.5 million kids with birth defects. You old people with serious health problems. Or let Obamacare die on its own. Doesn’t sound like he cares about the working class poor there.
If you can’t see that Trump has opened the door to let in the most avaricious scum suckers loot the rest of the assets of this country you don’t deserve to be protected from the results of his looting. I feel your pain but I think its the best medicine for you.
As JHK has said a while back, the fact that HRC did not win the election and get handed the biggest shit sandwich in history means that people will not get what they deserve and none of the dummies will learn squat.
Trump the Clown becomes the fall guy, the scapegoat, and the decades of poor decisions and mismanaged/squandered energy wealth that led up to this moment in history will not be held accountable.
We’ll all pretend what follows Trump’s ouster was due to his actions while in office for a short time, just like the GOP wants to blame Obama for the 2009-2010 deficits.
Hey Bill Clinton didn’t know Monica Lewinsky was the devil with the blue dress on. JS
Not all voters vote their economic interests. Many put their religious interests first. And others don’t bother to vote at all. So they have to live with the consequences. I don’t know anyone who was killed or injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I did benefit from the Bush 43 dividend tax cut. My guess is that even most Republicans have few dividend paying shares outside their retirement accounts and would probably have been better off voting for Al Gore instead of for Bush 43.
And we are all paying the price for a health care system whose costs have spiralled out of control.
I listen to the insane political baloney going on in this country, Trump did this, the Dems did that. The GOP just gave up any semblance of credibility with healthcare. I will tell you who is going to win the big contest. Russia! Putin has been playing the system in the US like a maestro. And our lovely pols can only fight amongst themselves. JHK is right on with his predictions for the future, Trump was the hope of the working class of the Midwest but his flame has petered out in the Deep State. Scaramucci is the dying attempt to knock down the opposition with direct confrontation, a method used by many autocrats during history. The situation stays the same, there are no answers, grand schemes that are going to bail us out. Trump was the last hurrah and his star is setting in the west.
Solutions abound, but there is no will to put them into effect.
Too many vested interests. Too much fictitious paper being kited and those kites are tied to kites above them.
The Solutions would require an absolute autocrat in charge. The Rule of Law, as we know it, is dead because the process is hopelessly corrupt and Due Process utterly thwarted. How can such a perverse process create legitimate laws? It can’t.
A strongman who could triage the spoils in accordance to the beneficiaries listed in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. A strongman who determines who gets what after the kites fall and vested interests are stripped of their vests and left naked.
Of course, the weak link is WHO gets to appoint the Strongman.
Centuries ago, kings were vetted and crowned by the religious authority of The Church. When the Church’s authority fell, the power of kings fell. But, the HABITS inherited from Church life created the Rule of Law and the Enlightenment believed that secular authority could be created by the same process used by the Church but, without the clergy’s involvement.
THAT process is DEAD and the corpse is stinking up the place. We Teh Sheeple have lost our way and are nothing but anomic consumers. We’ve lost our authority to choose our guardians.
Where will legitimate authority come from now?
Beta Reticuli?
JimInFla,
You are so right. As Han-Herman Hopp wrote, “Democracy: The God that Failed.” It’s been said that a democracy usually lasts only 200 years before it consumes itself. By that standard, we are way overdue.
The Republican Party had 8 years to come up with a replacement to Obamacare. What did they come up with? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They are not a serious party. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Backrowheckler is right, the election is over and done. Trump’s voting bloc is just too big. Time goes fast so if you don’t like the result, there’s another election in 2020.
The only way you govern is with the acquiescence of the governed. If you get rid of him there better be a more than obvious reason to do it because you otherwise risk insurrection.
Baloney. Republicans put the steroids in obstruction, let them feel the Roid Rage. .
If you are at all interested in obstruction, I dare you to read this:
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/opinion-editorial/hal-turner-commentary/906-with-russia-sanctions-bill-congress-has-just-begun-world-war-3-the-missiles-will-fly-within-months
The big difference in this guy’s premise is Russia is blessed with natural resources, and while the sanctions are tough, they’re not existential as they were to Japan.
What’s baloney about it? Steroids in obstruction? OK, it won’t be Democrats but Republicans that get rid of Trump.
Can’t you see that our current situation is the result of policy decisions made by special interests? It is because of you and me that we are where we are, and our lack of action.
That Anthony Scarramucci, what a stunad.
Sez he “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won’t happen again,”
He needs to watch A Bronx Tale again.
(not remembering Sonny’s sage advice:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBNsXOQ3aZg
The “MOOCH.”
I wonder if we keep missing an important point: the evolution of the media from merely straight reportage to an omnipresent, agenda-driven Industry whose output is controlled by corporate and statist special interests.
I find it hard to believe that past administrations were so much different than the present one. Examples abound, such as the sex addictions of JFK and Bill Clinton, the alcoholism of US Grant, the removal of Grover Cleveland’s jaw, Woodrow Wilson’s incapacitating stroke, FDR’s dalliance and polio-ridden body, suicide in the Truman administration, Warren Harding getting caught having sex in a broom closet, etc.
The difference today is that the media has gotten meaner. Reporters never mentioned JFK’s many rendezvous, for example. Today, if someone in the White House burps, it’s breaking news. Yes, Trump comes across as a buffoon, but a lot of it is because the media portray him as one.
I don’t care if his staff is running around like a bunch of monkeys, I care about what he has done or not done, and my own evaluation of him is based on that. In other words, the message is the medium.
And who owns the Media? Those are not the men who will be blamed for nothing.
Did you see the graphic for CNN?
Gimme a break! WGAS?
The difference today is that journalism used to be dull and informative and is now exciting and entertaining. George Will, Ted Koppel have all made this point. This dates back to the repeal of the Fairness Act in 1987 by “The Gipper,” although by that time his marbles were rolling around in his head and it was probably 41’s doing. This birthed “Rush” and “FOX News.” Serious journalism has vanished. All that’s left is a bunch of hot air and ratings.
Otto von Bismarck: Russians are slow at harnessing, but fast at riding
600 American diplomats will leave Russia, and everyone interprets this statement as a response to the sanctions adopted by the US Senate, but not signed yet by President Trump. In fact, the sanctions adopted by the Senate are an elucidation of Russian patience, or rather why it has expired, and the expulsion of 600 diplomats and the ban on dacha and warehouse is the response to the expulsion of 35 diplomats and arrest of the Russian diplomatic property in the US on December 29, 2016.
The statement is written with great skill in flexible enough expressions, allowing different interpretations, although it is clear that the author of this statement will remain the ultimate interpreter. For example, yesterday the US delivered a preemptive strike, threatening with a response to the response – let’s see how they will respond in this spirit to the proposal to equalize the number of employees in Russia and the United States.
At the same time, the response was made before the signing of the draft law on sanctions by Trump it hints to the US president that this statement does not apply to him personally.
And when the Congress and the Senate decide that they can and must negotiate with Russia, Russians are waiting for him at the negotiating table as if there were no sanctions or, more accurately, he has nothing to do with them and Russia understands that his statement that “sanctions are not strict enough” is aimed at vetoing the bill and trolling, but trolling not Russia, but Clintonoids in the Congress and the US Senate.
Moreover, the statement quite transparently hints that Russia remembers the planned arrest of Russian diplomats as a result of the choice of the time for their expulsion and is ready to get even for it, though it did not happen, however, as well as Russia’s interference in the American elections.
And only at the end is a restriction on the freedom of interpretation a reminder of the principle of reciprocity, which, as I understand it, will henceforth be rigidly maintained.
Jim,
I think everyone has beaten this Trump topic to death. I’m interested in your thoughts about:
1. What’s happening in Saudi Arabia, with a possible very young new leader coming in. It seems the Saudi’s are becoming more of a mess. They can’t even roll over Yemen, and their ISIS boys got whacked by Vlad.
2. The current shale output in the US – will it ever make money, and how fast are the fields being depleted?
3. Observations from your back-woods area on people coping with paying for Obamacare, and all the other high prices of modern living. Are people worried about their “guaranteed” pensions?
4. Your garden. Mine has done well this year.
Obama was even more of an imbecile than Trump, but he was fawned over. Things are really rough in fly-over land, and my friends in the big coastal cities are completely clueless to how bad it is. They think Facebook and TV are reality.
Both Trump and Obama are entertainment distractions for the real looting behind the scenes. As they say, the last act of any government is the looting thereof.
Nothing IMO points to depletion like trying to pull oil out of shale. This is scraping the barrel.
Good point. From what I understand we have a couple of years left. I would say 2019 or 2020.
But you have to assume that this is all hidden from the traders then, right? Going out to the end of 2025 oil futures sell about 15% above today’s spot.
Or are you gobbling up those options? It would seem crazy not to if we are indeed, “so sure”.
“Scraping” shale for oil is only desperate if there isn’t a buck to be made doing it. A lot of folks would scrap it out of their own backsides if they thought they might live to pay another day doing it of course.
There’s always just that tiny little incentive called “greed” thought could be involved.
Consumption is arguably collapsing and will continue to do so if the vision of Jim’s wrecked economies progress into the future either near or far. I think oil is all but a moot point soon.
I once made a small fortune on oil options. I bought call options when oil was selling for $70 a barrel. All of them were in the money at $100 a barrel. When I bought half the analysts predicted oil was going up and the other half said it was going down, and nobody other than the Peak Oil Doomers thought it was going to between $200 and $300 a barrel. It went to $147.
I’d taken a bit of a break from prepping for a few years. Lately I’ve gotten back in the habit, putting some extra food in the pantry, getting a backup supply of water sorted out. Stacking silver, brass and lead. The horizon is looking dark, no time left to waste.
Scaramucci was smart enough to avoid the used car beat and get to Wall Street. Instead of junk cars he could sell junk bonds. He could make Christopher Moltisanti’s pump and dump in the Sopranos look like bump and slump.
Better yet, he could have been Gordon Gecko on steroids. This scurrilous piece of shit, who once declared himself a “walking junk bond”, is dropping eff and other bombs like the hundred dollar bills he dropped at his favorite gin joints.
One can’t help but think that this Italian Sausage would be right at home selling heroin or laundering money through a chain of Long Island and Brooklyn pizza parlors while also spitting on your slice.
He’s half a fag.
Mark Steyn (in for Rush): Eighty Seven percent of our Special Forces are transgender.
Now or when they served? That has not been disclosed. Don’t be impertinent.
Anyone see Al Franken’s book about himself “Lion of the Senate”? Do you not think he’s really serious? If so, the joke’s on you.
Back when I was in the Navy, Admiral Trost cracked the whip and got rid of the druggie culture that arose in the aftermath of Vietnam. Who knows what it is like today?
But, trannies and fags are at 87% now in Spec Forces??? IMO, it doesn’t matter if they are misfits NOW or whether they flipped AFTERWARDS. Only janet would celebrate such depravity.
You must appreciate my transcendental moods. Buddhi Yoga is called for.
I know about Buddhi Yoga but, I have no guidance on how to practice it.
I live in the bowels of White Trash Florida. No ashrams here. Just economic decay and mere existence. I don’t even see the outdoor peddlers of velvet Elvis blankets and Mystical Wolf art anymore.
A few pathetic “yoga studios” can be seen but, they tend to attracts soccer-mom feminists who come to hear about Lakshmi and natter about feminist bullshit.
Check out the Uddhava Gita which is part of the Srimad Bhagavatam and takes places after the Kurukeshetra War, just before Krishna leaves the world. Uddhava is a more advanced disciple than Arjuna, a contemplative as opposed to a warrior.
Also the writing and dialogues of Ramana Maharishi are unsurpassed in the modern era.
THANK YOU!
Already started and loving the Uddhava Gita!
No mention of Transgender ban?
Red Herring.
Is that what you’ll say when Congress bans male pregnancy and voids all same sex marriages? That’s next. Transgenderism will bankrupt the country and is already irreparably harming people and costing us billions.
The cost is irrelevant. The wickedness overrides such Earthly concern.
I don’t care if ZOG has invested billions in paper that is positioned to profit from the incredible social friction caused by trannies, fags, dykes, and other misfits. Let the rent seekers who invested in the decay of the West be accursed.
The government is dysfunctional because it sit atop a country that doesn’t exist. The underlying assumption is ONE nationality. But that isn’t the reality and never has been.
What exists are TWO nationalities – North and South, plus a downtrodden racial minority – Blacks, plus an incursion by impoverished Hispanics encouraged by business interests who want an illegal and marginalized population to work for peanuts.
On top of all of this is an Oligarchical elite that bought out national legislatures. Democrat and Republican go through this North vs South drama while enacting law and policy for the Oligarchs.
Awan Brothers, etc.
From various sources,
The Assistsnt District Attorney for Washington DC. is Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s brother Steven Wasserman…
Which brutal murder?
1.) Seth Conrad Rich
2.) Beranton Whisenant Jr.
3.) Klaus Eberwein
4.) Peter W. Smith
5.) Shawn Lucas (kudos to The Uncannie1 for that reminder!)
6.) Joseph Rago (kudos to Katherine Harvey for that reminder!)
7.) Michael Hastings- Hastings murder is on YouTube & there were witnesses. The car was only going about 40 mph or less. Seth Rich, as stated in a comment by a staff person was surrounded by Law Enf at the DC hosp & no death cert
8.) Johnston Wilson McGill (kudos to TheGaelicgypsy for that reminder!)
9.) Monica Peterson (kudos to Kathleen Henderson and Daniel Robitaille for that reminder!)
10.) Dimitri Noonan (Kudos to Molon Labe for that reminder!)
11.) Victor Thorn
12.) John Ash
Debbie Wasteofahuman Schultz is almost as bad as her mentor, The Queen of Evil herself, (HRC).
Dimitri Noonan, the pilot of the plane where Lynch met with Clinton and overheard the entire conversation. Was kept under guard while set to give an interview to Fox News, ends up dead.
Hello Surfview, what about J.W. McGill ? https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/news/clintons-assistant-j-w-mcgill-found-dead
SurfviewYou forgot the latest one week ago the young journalist that had the goods on Clinton buying Abbott Pharmaceutical. he was 34 years old journalist with the wall street journal
TheGaelicgypsy – Good catch! Johnston Wilson McGill was that heavy-set black doctor that carried the Diazepam and was ready to give HRC a shot at any moment during 2016 is etched in all of our minds. Thank you!
also add Monica Peterson as she was investigating child trafficking and organ harvesting, in Haiti. There are 2 more US Attorneys, in the same Miami US Attorney’s office, that appear to have been murdered or rather are reported as committing suicide, These 2 deaths occurred within 2 months, of US Attorney Beranton Whisenant Jr., in Miami, Florida.
! remember when Huma and her mother were tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and it was refuted on Snopes?
To debunk the evidence, Media Matters pointed to a Snopes.com “fact-check” piece that cited as its sole source… Senator John McCain. This is the same John McCain who met Libyan militia leader Abdelkarim Belhaj, a known al Qaeda associate, and saluted him as “my hero” during a 2011 visit to Benghazi.
.
why would wasserman keep paying Awan?
blackmail?
they were paid over 4 million dollars. (the least of it would be bankruptcy fraud)
how did the other brothers get back to Pakistan, and why did Beranton Whisenant Jr. wash up murdered on a Florida beach?.
Marcus1,
The people that voted Trump have been getting it good and hard for a couple generations. Do you remember the rust belt before it was the rust belt? Do you remember when dads had a job and supported the family and moms stayed home and took care of everyone? I do.
The Intellectual Class has been trying to tell us that it was all an delusion, a TV Ozzie and Harriet fantasy, that such a thing never existed. It was no fantasy, I was there. I saw it.
The reason that Trump is there is because a large proportion of the voters saw the downward direction of the country and other candidates were spilling age-old talking points that had no connection to street-level reality.
Trump’s Republican rivals were more hideous than him. Democrats could have nominated Bernie. They nominated Hillary instead. So who was more hideous, Trump or Hillary?
That Ozzie and Harriet world existed for some and it still does for a few though the minimum it takes to support that lifestyle now is at least 100K.
That world might have lasted for a thousand years but enough was not enough and people wanted more. When they go more they still wanted more. Ever more and more. There was no restraint and the Oz & H world could not handle the ever compounding complexity of consumer products, expectations and greed. Oz & H was a snapshot on a continum, a high point on a downward spiral.
“The people that voted Trump have been getting it good and hard for a couple generations.” Yeah and it’s their own fault. Instead of backing politicians that would have put money into education they listened to con-artists that told them we have to increase the Pentagon budget instead of “socialist” programs like public education. And I’m talking about adult and pragmatic education too.
Coal mining ain’t coming back to PA and WV, the facts tell you this and yet they choose to listen to charlatans that rob them blind and let them fester in their hostile ignorance. There are plenty of high-paying skilled positions in this country going wanting, but where they going to learn those skills?
Now you talk about the Ozzie and Harriet world? Let’s go to a real-world example of today–Germany. Germany has taken in more immigrants per capita in the last 5 years than the US. They have universal health care and more highly paid skilled workers than we do and a lower “real” unemployment rate, without the raw material wealth the US has. How do they do it? Education and proper subsidies to business not just more tax breaks for the ever greedy Oligarchs.
So keep listening to the propaganda that we need more money flowing into the Pentagon to fight more endless wars. And keep that religious belief that all government spending is evil and social programs are communist, because you haven’t learned yet what works and what doesn’t work and this corrupt system has to crash.
“So who was more hideous, Trump or Hillary?” Oh I think Trump is definitely prettier. Probably because he spends more time on his hair. And he’s definitely more entertaining and since our tendency is to entertain ourselves to death, let the games continue.
Germany has committed suicide. Very few of those Muslim men will ever work, indeed what would they do? They were brought in to destroy Western Civilization thru jihad, fast or slow (rape, welfare, etc). But you think it’s great for some reason!
Ditto Coal: Coal is our ace in the hole as long as we can keep people like you from banning it.
…” Instead of backing politicians that would have put money into education …”
Baltimore spends $16K per student and 100% of students at six Baltimore schools failed to achieve minimum proficiency in state math and reading standards.
Think about it. Not too long, or hard, but think about it.
Volodya-
I think you hit the nail on the head. Put some names on those oligarchs, Soros, Rothschild, Rockefeller. Soros has shorted the US economy, Hungary has thrown him out, Israel has repudiated him. Putin threw the Rothschilds out of Russia. I contend that The globalists own the media and large portions of the Deep State. Trump represents the last vestige of the power of the American voter to affect events. If he fails, the bad guys take over.
Saw online: Donald Trump is like if a Yosemite Sam mudflap was a person.
Trump must be saved from himself. We need him, and Republicans must find a way to stabilize the White House.
Amidst all the craziness, let’s not lose sight of what he’s doing or trying to do on immigration, sanctuary cities, border protection, crime, etc.
As I post, he’s on Long Island, addressing the gang problem and the crackdown on MS-13. I know Montauk and Jones Beach well, and to think that this scum could soon wash up on these beaches is intolerable.
Too bad the Repubs can’t see their way to a better health care bill and more taxes on the rich like Bannon proposed, instead of less.
Yeah, Trump is the proverbial bull in the China shop, but just think of what that graceful gazelle gave us, slipping it to us like a comfortable colonoscopy.
With Trump, we just may avoid actually becoming Shitholerica, although we’re awfully close. (Props to Peq.)
“Addressing the gang problem” — tucsonspur
Yep, the same way every president “addresses” the gang problem… with words.
No, he’s not like the wordy Brobama, who couldn’t even slightly quell the carnage in Chicago.
The following from the NYT in June proves that you’re highly inaccurate:
“The arrests came as part of an effort to eradicate gangs that operate across international borders. Called Operation Matador, it includes agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and affiliated Homeland Security investigators, as well as local law enforcement. In addition to the 39 members of MS-13, six members of other violent gangs, such as the Latin Kings and the Sureños, were arrested, officials said. According to the…..”
This for just the previous month.
Trump’s presidency has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
But he still has SOME traction and so can take action, maybe, just maybe, to our satisfaction. Republicans must close the grave. Before he’s in it, of course.
“And who owns the media?” –janos
Sinister insinuation that “Jews” “own” the media…
Yes, there are many individual Jews in positions of influence in Hollywood, in network television, in sports and entertainment, and in many other areas of American public life.
These individuals, who happen to be Jewish, do not act together in any kind of conspiratorial manner. There is no “Jewish control” of any of these areas — or of the many other areas, such as medicine, law, academia, finance — where there are large numbers of individual Jews in high positions.
Many of these individuals are Jewish only in the sense that their parents or grandparents happen to be Jews. They do not live Jewish lives or support Jewish causes. They certainly do not conspire to exercise any sort of “Jewish control” over the areas in which they work.
So, lay off the antisemitism, janos. Please. There is no grand Jewish conspiracy to run the world.
Finally.
Let’s talk for a moment about elephants. In particular the one in the room called “class interest”. Has anyone noticed something the owners of the media have in common? They’re rich and they own the media. That’s the elephant. The fly on the backside of the elephant is that some of them happen to have Jewish ancestry. If there’s a conspiracy afoot could it be the one where rich media owners do what they do to advance their interests and increase their fortunes? You can bet every last one of them is up to that same thing. Is this a plan hatched in secret in smokey backrooms? Do they all dress up in strange ceremonial garb and chant incantations before altars bedecked in severed baby heads? No, they’re just pursuing their interests on their side of the class divide. And some of them happen to be Jewish.
They all support Jewish causes like Israel and mass immigration into the West (not Israel). Gimme a break.
Janet,
Please google the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.
Only janet could say that C-K is not in effect. She would also say that the E.U. welcomed these unfortunate refugees and that the Muslims have ALWAYS been an integral part of Europe’s progress. She might even go so far as to say that Muslim rape of White women is a long-term positive development!
She is hopelessly possessed of a delusional disorder. Anybody who has a giant wall-sized painting of Andrea Dworkin in her office, and teaches Women’s Studies in an Ivy League hell hole, would defend Coudenhove-Kalergi.
In an effort to:
1) Distract the proles (aka. Us) from the oligarchy our government has become and to deflect blame onto the “enemy”.
2) Enrich the weapons manufacturers.
3) Enrich the main stream media with buzzing headline stories.
4) Distract people from the absurdly corrupt elites of the democratic party and push attention away from focusing on reforming it.
5) Feed even more GDP into the Pentagon
6) ect. ect.
Wait! what fact overshadows all of this???
That we can very well end up in a nuclear war with Russia!!!
Is it worth it? Our corporate elites have become outright suicidal with greed and stupidity. To bad they can take us down with them at any moment; I’d say 50/50 the world ends in the next 10 years.
When nuclear weapons are factored in, it doesn’t matter how strong ones military is, even a completely one sided nuclear war with no retaliation would likely kill us all. Oh, but maybe it’ll reverse climate change…
Jesus! And then I watch self satisfied and propagandized morons lap up NY times and squeal about Russia every day still with no proof provided.
I didn’t even get married yet assholes!!!!
“…squeal about Russia every day still with no proof provided.” –Henry
Mueller is not squealing, but he is investigating and developing a case for prosecution of Trump for a number of Trump’s many crimes. I suspect it will be an airtight case with plenty of proof provided … solid irrefutable proof … and Trump cannot do anything to stop Mueller from investigating Trump’s criminal actions.
“4) Distract people from the absurdly corrupt elites of the democratic party and push attention away from focusing on reforming it.”
The unbelievably arrogant corruptness of Hillary and the DNC is hard to imagine. But most people could and that’s one big reason she was dumped.
And now watching the Republicans be so in the bag for the Healthcare Racket that they can’t even repeal Obamacare, well, you have to understand there is no hope left in this country, politically. (and there hasn’t been for a very long time).
Anyone still arguing politics, and trump this, hillary that, has no clue about the huge freight trains of collapse nearing us. Or maybe they do, and need distractions from wetting their panties.
I am fascinated by the belief that at some point the masses will consent to the use of the 25th amendment by the swamp dwellers to remove Trump. Does anyone seriously believe that all the Trump voters will just roll their eyes and tacitly get on with their status quo lives if that happens ??????
I think that is a tremendously naive assumption that will be quickly shown to be foolish thinking. Regardless if it is a coup via the 25th amendment or a special counsel kangaroo court, if Trump is removed you had better know what bolt hole you will be seeking refuge in, because that will be the spark in the magazine.
Most Americans are law abiding and that is the strength of our system, we obey the laws and have peaceful transfers of power. We will work the proper system processes to rid ourselves of Trump’s incompetence and having followed that process this too will be a smooth transition.
I don’t expect anything but a few local lone-wolf disturbances, a clown acting out here or there, quickly dealt with by local police. Should anything larger occur it will be stopped by state police and national guard.
Just what will good old boys out in rural America do…burn down their local grain silos, carpool into Watts to shoot up korean-owned candy stores. Not going to happen despite wishful thinking by some for a conflagration. Civil War Part Deux is not going to happen.
POV,
Well, you know the old saw…”you might not be interested in the civil war, but the civil war is interested in you….”
In the event of interesting times, you don’t have to be proactive…just wait for it…trouble will come to you, Civil war=civil disobedience=anarchy…in the rural areas more so, as the “law enforcement” will be most evident in the urban areas, and other areas of civilian concentrations. You on your own. In the rural areas, as in space, they cannot hear you scream.
Rumors of an American revolution are greatly exaggerated. The Sheep, after bitching and bellyaching for a week or two, can always be relied upon to fall in line. If not, the National Police State will get its fondest wish.
“addressing the gang problem” –tusconspur
Trump needs to worry about the gang in Korea who just launched their second ICBM this month. With each new missile test they become closer to their goal of launching an ICBM into the heartland of America, into places where gangs like MS13 are unheard of.
North Korean hysteria exceeds only Russian hysteria in the good ol’ USA. North Korea hasn’t waged war with another nation since 1953 – can Americans say the same about the USA? North Korea has nukes for the same reason Israel has nukes – so no one will try wiping them off the face of the earth.
I loved the CNN headline about this. It mentioned: North Korea launches second long-range ICBM missile.
Isn’t long-range redundant? Although to be fair, I guess there could be short-range ICBM missiles. Do they even know what ICBM stands for?
“Does anyone seriously believe that all the Trump voters will just roll their eyes and tacitly get on with their status quo lives if that happens ??????” –ragnar
That exactly what will happen. That is all that ever happens. What would you do differently? You gonna start shooting people in your state because Trump is legally removed from office? Remember Trump did not win the popular vote. He lost by three million votes. Trump only won the electoral vote after collusion with Russia. Trump is an illegitimate president… in more ways than one… but the constitution provides remedies.
The absolute, unshakable conviction some folks have that Trump “colluded with Russia” in the face of zero evidence after half the nation has been searching for over 12 months for any evidence of “collusion”, with the zeal of Crusaders searching for the Holy Grail, reminds me of the absolute, unshakable conviction some of my friends have that the US government is keeping alien corpses in Area 51. Who knows, both may be true?!
How much proof do we need?
Trump, coward that he is, begged our mortal enemy Russia, on national TV, to hack Clinton’s campaign and release the emails.
ALL of our intelligence agencies said Russians meddled, to include running fake news websites and bogus facebook postings to sway voters. It worked. We’re going to stop it. Grab a seat, watch us work.
Congress, including the GOP passed strong sanctions to make Russia pay and prevent Trump from lifting sanctions.
This is not over yet. Trump will be ousted. Legally. Count on it.
Get a grip dude.
Why not let go the grip on your dick and respect all 17 of our intel agencies who said Russia was up to its eyeballs in this mess, just as they are known for doing the same in Europe too.
MPOV,
“Take it easy man!!” — Ren Hoek to Stimpson J. Cat
Now who ya gonna b’lieve? (Trust is such a slippery concept these days, as we all know.):
“Clapper and Brennan stated that the report was actually the work of hand-picked analysts from only three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation – under the oversight of the DNI’s office. In other words, there was no consensus among the 17 agencies, a process that would have involved some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a community-wide effort that would have included footnotes citing any dissenting views.
Instead, as Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8, the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community,” the former DNI said.”
C’mon now, Claptrap and “Grampa Amos McCoy” Brennan say it ain’t so… who ya gon’ b’lieve? (It’s a sin to tell a lie to the sacred Senate Judiciary subcommitee… sez so in the Byeball.)
For more info that’ll get one excommunicated from the Church of The Ideologically Pure, see dis:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/01/hillary-clintons-deceptive-blame-shifting/
…But then again, that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to suss out which way the whirlwind will blow the coming firestorm; who will be consumed and why. (Most of the ‘why’ we know already; mark it down as willful fuckwittedness and blind, grasping greed for wealth and power.)
Russia is hardly our mortal enemy.
They are if your I.Q is below the 93rd percentage on the bell curve.
percentile
Damn auto-correction, I had it right the first time.
Seriously, brains playing tricks for social identity reasons are trapped in a cold war that ended years ago because it was socially appropriate to believe Russia was Satan at one time. Social programming often defies basic logic and those who lack nimble minds often will be years or decades behind the times.
Sophia,
Those who run Congress, the MSM, the MIC, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, etc., etc., all know that too. But just like what really happened on 9/11, they can’t let the secret get out. Their livelihood depends on maintaining the sordid, corrupt status quo.
“Legally” just means in accordance with the current rules of the game, which we all know now are purely arbitrary and capricious; so adding “legally” to your assertion is hardly the stamp of imprimatur that you think it is.
Actually it isn’t 17 intel agencies, its only 3!
Yup,
Turns out the Main stream Media lied about it being 17 and then when it was pointed out to the NYT, they quietly put a correction in the bottom of a month old article saying it was only “4”; and they still got it wrong on purpose because it was only 3! You want proof then,
here is klappers testimony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevA1FFfj7s
and a link the the NYT article:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/us/politics/trumps-deflections-and-denials-on-russia-frustrate-even-his-allies.html
Also, It was the FBI, NSA and CIA that claim russia hacked “our” election. Really trustworthy folk; they are the same people that lied about WMDs in Iraq and violate our constitutional rights to privacy on a daily basis among other things.
And in the end it’s foolish to care about if russia “hacked” our election because its not like it is our election. The US has morphed into a corporate oligarchy.
Honestly, the MSM reads like Pravda these days. It’s not surprising that they slowly convince people that russia “hacked” our election by ‘repeating a lie over and over again until it becomes the truth’. No real/substantial proof needed.
PS.
Please follow up on those 2 links.
“What would you do differently? You gonna start shooting people in your state because Trump is legally removed from office?
People….no, politicians…….we will see.
With the tampering that goes on via electronic voting machines, we don’t really know who won the popular vote. I suspect it is just as likely that he did.
Janet,
Take away Mexicali (California) and Trump won by 1.5 million. He allegedly lost Cal by a whopping, (and statistically highly improbable), 4 million – approx. 70 to 30 percent. If Jill Stein was serious about exposing voter fraud, which she obviously was not, she would have contested California instead of a few rust belt states. I wonder how many illegals voted there?
And, please, isn’t it time to stop all this popular vote nonsense? Our Founding Fathers sure got that one right by inserting it into the Constitution. And how, pray tell, did Russia magically cook the books for Trump when voting machines are not connected to the Internet?
By “it,” I meant the Electoral College, of course.
Guess what kiddies, Trump just shit-canned Priebus, the GOP’s very own Casper Milquetoast. Bwahahahahahaha……
Reince Priebus, if you remove the vowels, is RNC PR BS.
Two things about his replacement, General Kelly:
1. He can out cuss Scaramucci ten times over; profanity is a USMC family value.
2. He will enforce a chain of command in the white house and be gatekeeper. Fun to see how that works with mooch trying to go straight in to the oval office. If mooch bad mouths him in the press Kelly will smack his ass into next month.
After what Anthony Scarramucci said about Bannon and the recently departed Reince “Lather & Repeat” Priebus it is clear he’s a wiseguy.
Maybe The Mooch is also a “made man?”
He made it to White House Communications Director after all.
Who’s his rabbi? Jared Kushner??
Good riddance to former RNC chair Priebus. He was undoubtedly a big leaker and a spy for his Wisconsin best buddy Paul Ryan. Another in a series of very bad, disloyal Trump appointments (or were they made by the scheming Pence?).
Is Trump the leader of the GOP?
He is a politician … Trump is a politician … an insider … filling the swamp with people from Goldman Sachs.
Trump is a swamp, and if he tried all day he still couldn’t lead the boy scouts to a latrine.
Bannon, though he briefly was at GS, will be out in a week; GS won’t let him deconstruct a government that lays so many golden eggs.
Trump is helping the MS-13 gang… the Nassau County District Attorney’s office said calls to their Immigrant Affairs Tips Hotline are way down in 2017 because of Trump’s anti-immigrant words.
“Because immigrants are scared to call law enforcement, crimes are going unreported, victims are not getting justice, criminals are going unpunished and we are all less safe,” says Silvia Finkelstein, the office’s director of immigrant affairs.
Gang members don’t disagree.
“They [MS-13] feel like they can do whatever they want, ’cause Trump himself has made everybody fear,” Alex said. “He’s helping them.”
The chaos in Trump’s administration means Republicans are retreating from Trump. That means his legislative agenda is dead as last night’s Republican vote to preserve Obamacare (the 67th pro-Obamacare vote) shows.
Say goodbye to tax reform, say goodbye to employment programs, say goodbye to the wall and stopping immigration, say goodbye to rebuilding the military and rebuilding infrastructure.
Well Ladies and Germs!
The BBC headline reports, this PM, that Prince aided a woman struck by a police van. The rumor that Prince is dead is greatly exaggerated, and oft offered…but there it is in black and white. This gives a lie to Thwack’s assertion that Black people cannot be counted upon to be good Samaritans! Thwack, as usual, misreads black people…his meme is dishonored! His dishonesty exposed!
Correction…
Prince William, not “Prince”…an honest mistake.
I think we are in the twilight of the American Century; that golden period post WWII which started to fall apart after the collapse of the Soviets, and whose coffin nails were firmly planted by The W from 2001- onward with one strategic bungling after the other.
Trump is simply the outcome of the last couple decades. Trump is completely correct in one regard– the “Swamp” of DC is more convoluted & byzantine then any absolute French monarch could have conceived.
The Vox Populi is also correct in this regard. Trump beat a vast amount of government and business insiders to gain the Presidency. This is by no accident. The public is over with the endless intrigues & machinations in DC. However, the problem is that DC isn’t over with the people.
How long will this bloated corpse reign over the People, or as the political genius John Locke would put it– When will the Consent of the Governed be withdrawn?
Yo Pete! The fatal flaw of a bureaucracy built around a transient political leadership class is that the institutional knowledge ALWAYS rests with the bureaucrats. The people that stay and toil on. The people that make things hum. Administrations come and go but the agents, operatives, operators, and analysts stay. The people that actually know how the government works and executes are stuck like chainless anchors. At the bottom and staying put as the ship atop gets tossed In the waves. It takes a few career generations to lose the workers indoctrinated under 8 years of a regime. That means it’s going to be some time before we purge the brainwashed reared under Barry Malfeasance Soetoro.
“You’re a little too worried about what I give you. Worry a little more about what you give me.” -Paulie Gualtieri
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” -JFK.
Dumbed down for the mAsses.
Scarymoochie has finally confirmed what many have been wondering: if Bannon’s c**k is as big as his balls. Indeed.
The Mooch got the job because of “Availability.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3L1Tokh3Pg
That Reince Preibus chap got the boot because I don’t think he ever read Machiavelli.
Was figuring Jim would use the news as another opportunity to bash transgender people and blame Hillary but at least he remains spectacularly wrong on 25th amendment, the new peak oil, while continuing to enable all manner of xenophobes, racists, sycophants and misogynists. Bravo, Jim! Best one yet!
Guess you didn’t get your dose of victimization here. Shucks.
“while continuing to enable all manner of xenophobes, racists, sycophants and misogynists. Bravo, Jim! Best one yet!”
He also enables, yes, even suffers, the pompous, the virtue-signaling, the superficial….
The Black Death haunted Europe for over 300 years between 1350 and 1700. Plagues would sweep across parts of Europe every 10 or 20 years. Superstitious peasants, perhaps influenced by the Old Testament, often blamed Jewish people for the plagues
and massacred Jews in retaliation. During the US Civil War people still believed that diseases were brought about by mists or “miasmas” like Moses’ plague punishing Pharaoh.
It would be a simple matter of dispersing aerosol miasmas over large population centers and blaming it on the “Enemy”?
” Why not let go the grip on your dick and respect all 17 of our intel agencies who said Russia was up to its eyeballs in this mess, ”
Respect ?
How many times have they told me outright that they LIE to me, ” for my own good ” ?
That isn’t respect, that’s demeaningly insulting.
fuck your ” respect ” boot-licker.
Has Dmitry Orlov been able to further develop his theory of the new Supra, part Human (bureaucratic), part machine (AI) “Technosphere”?
No mention of any of that lately on his blog, which is now a pay (donation) site.
But he only charges $1/month, DA. Quite a bargain I’d say.
Agreed!
” I been “schooled” by Kesa? I really don’t know what to say…. ”
You could say that Kesa doesn’t think that and wouldn’t say that.
I have never said, and never in spirit did, doubt your resume or your status .
Only that I doubt it amounts to any sort of trump card.
” Kesa posted nothing that one does not hear in “Intro to Police 1a” at any Junior College ”
Correct ! This isn’t rocket science.
If I know anything “special ” , it is that 30 years ago most law enforcement jobs did’t even require a junior college degree .
And if it requires anything more than a junior college degree now, it is because applications from junior college degree holders have increased 100 % , they can’t be bothered to wade through all that, so they arbitrarily dismiss that education, as you can just as well arbitrarily dismiss any education , and not because things are any more complicated than they were.
” Yet Order in societies were maintained by other means for thousands of years…. ”
Did I say otherwise ?
NO.
I said there either is a fundamental difference between police and the army, or there isn’t.
If not , then nothing has really fundamentally changed in 500 years , not in concept, not in spirit.
And if no real difference, then why especially should we sacrifice ever more of our money , our options, our privileges , to and ever increasingly haughty and secretive military – police club that claims it is special ………because it claims it is special ?
I might add for fun that the lives and statuses of soldiers and police are never cheaper , more expendable, more easily replaced , than in
dictatorships and totalitarian states.
” Armed constables with cars and radios and dash-cams and body-cams and a prison complex with multitudes locked up for decades: IMO say good-bye to all that. ”
I don’t expect to win the argument.
I expect that some day the butchers bill will come due, and we will not be able to pay it.
Then I will “win the argument ” by default.
“I might add for fun that the lives and statuses of soldiers and police are never cheaper , more expendable, more easily replaced , than in
dictatorships and totalitarian states.”
Kesa,
You are correct.
Also understand that most police and military personnel are young, apple-cheeked youth, who, like youth everywhere, suffer from ignorance, lack of life-experience…lack of perspective. They are true believers in their mission…not evil. I remember my youth…there were no gray areas…just black and white. We were fighting the good fight…(sigh).
It was Lincoln’s adoption of fiat money (the “Greenback”) that enabled Lincoln to prosecute the Civil War and to enable the new US Empire (the “Union”). Thus, the key to undermining the Deep State is to dethrone the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, right?
Fiat money, as corrosive as that concept is in and of itself, had been around for some time already anyway. The Greenback was at least interest free, as it was issued by its rightful owner, the US Treasury, rather than the now ubiquitous Federal Reserve, which, in spite of the regal name, is actually a private bank serving private interests. Bramley summarizes the subject pretty well in Chapter 27. Funny Money, of God’s of Eden. Thanks for that link again by the way. A fascinating book!
http://www.whale.to/c/Gods_of_Eden_Bramley.pdf
But yes, the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is indeed key to keeping the current state of affairs alive.
Well Jim as your eyes roll this prediction of a short term presidency will be another one of yours that won’t come to fruition. As a long time follower going back to last century you should get out of the prediction game as you well know were in uncharted historic waters. Both of us peak oilers never saw fracking coming just as no one saw Trump coming. In my apolitical beliefs was glad and rooted Trump on. We both know the swamp needed to be drained and the general public as ignorant as it is many working stiffs got an education. Many Americans eyes were opened to how corrupt our American news, politicians up to the outgoing President and yes Virginia there is a deep state. Me I don’t brag I own a Prius I only owned a bicycle for the past 20 years and would like to see not electric cars (except golf cart size) but mass light and heavy rail and busses. I’d love to see more local farmers markets and Mom & Pop Business. Would love to see America be re-landscaped into walkable neighborhoods with interurban light rail connecting suburbs that are connected to semi rural and rural by light rail.
“Would love to see America be re-landscaped into walkable neighborhoods with interurban light rail connecting suburbs that are connected to semi rural and rural by light rail.”
Bill,
Yeah, and don’t forget “no more wars…peace on Earth”. Sadly, we are going to see none of that…unless, in our fading memory, we can remember the ’50’s.
The German principalities of Hannover and, especially, Hesse, had a long standing lucrative business of renting German mercenaries (“Hessians”) to England to fight in England’s wars, including the American War for Independence. I wonder if Lincoln was basically hiring Hessian mercenaries to put down the Confederate rebellion?
Why bother? He basically had forced conscription by any other name for all new arrivals to the US and a rapidly emerging industrial economy that had already reduced the working classes to slave labor. The “choice” involved in the civil war was not between slavery or no slavery, but rather, who was going to own the slaves and would they be limited to blacks only. Of course now we see the answer to that question played out before our eyes every day.
The question is not being axed, so how can you answer it?
Btw: you are absolutely right.
Even today one can find lost Hessians in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
“So keep listening to the propaganda that we need more money flowing into the Pentagon to fight more endless wars. And keep that religious belief that all government spending is evil and social programs are communist, because you haven’t learned yet what works and what doesn’t work and this corrupt system has to crash.”
Marcus1, I’m not going to defend myself against positions I haven’t taken. Having said that, my comments aren’t required reading. Or maybe you’re mistaking me for someone else.
As for who’s to blame, this is how I see it, while k-dog’s comment has some validity, that enough was never enough and that the arc that we were on was unsustainable, that comment applies especially to the monied interests in the country.
In any case, for the elite, enough was never enough. Millions weren’t enough, neither billions. And so monied interests well and truly boned America and American workers by relocating America’s industries to China and Mexico simply because Oligarchs weren’t rich enough.
Nosiree, paying living wages to workers was an intolerable imposition. In the Oligarch world-view there’s no such thing as a minimum wage, as you can see by the prevalence of unpaid internships, people ought to be willing to work for nothing. But if we’re going to have a legally required minimum wage, the thinking in the Oligarch set is to not pay one cent per hour more than that, and if they can swing it, to get the minimum wagers to work off the clock ie a half hour per shift and if they pull it off, more than that.
So you might ask yourself how you sustain a consumer market where year by year more and more people have to scratch just to pay the rent. The answer is simple, it can’t happen. The cracking and shaking of the financial systems that overlays an unworkable economy is testament to that.
As far as propaganda goes, the Pravda-esque mis-information du jour is that the country is bursting with unfilled jobs requiring highly skilled workers. Um, no it ain’t. The other laughable assertion is that automation is to blame for the disappearance of industrial jobs. Again, no it ain’t. Between us girls, automation has been going on for 200 years, I saw a fair bit of it when I was getting my hands dirty on the production floor.
The real screamer is that some people FEEL left behind. Or they actually were left behind as if it were a terrible accident, a misunderstanding of some sort. That one truly cracks me up. No, a huge swathe of the American populace was thrown overboard.
But you know what the Nazis said, if you’re going to lie, lie big, and if you repeat the lie enough, people will accept it as the truth.
But you know what the Nazis said, if you’re going to lie, lie big, and if you repeat the lie enough, people will accept it as the truth.
Indeed! The Big Lie (TM) might have been the greatest weapon developed during the 20th century. Of course it existed prior to that, but Bernays and his many acolytes clearly took it to another level.
Empty lives full of motion living like today is the only day knowing nothing except the ways of their business and the doings of their private tribe. White rectangles in the night. Bright and glowing at their sides they scurry across the street those still able to run. They carry their tribe with them and feed it through their USBs.
How will they eat, when their crops and food cannot move. When their screens become blank who will know what belongs to whom? There will be no need for propaganda then. Fear, will suffice and truth will become scarce and pointless. Ignorance will blossom on its own.
Yes, automation has been going on a while, but it has picked up steam with robotics and automated banking and phone trees instead of customer service and so on. Arguably, the early automation actually produced jobs.
That in itself is a lie: Hitler was talking about the Jews when he wrote that.
Lies certainly have legs to run. That’s ones been sprinting for decades. Lazy Americans can’t be bother to check it.
Look: The Left is too invested in its political gains attained through its growth industry of victomhood and its identity politics to acknowledge that the gangs operating in our cities are our domestic equivalent to ISIS, and is worse upon the inhabitants than would be a martial law action of scale enough to end the gangs’ reign of terror. in those affected areas the ‘blue line’ is now more a rear guard action, and the corrosive effect upon society generally is lowering the standard of civility and safety. Vanishing from institutional memory are days when locking car doors and those of homes was not common practice.
Our “leaders” can get stuff done when THEY want to.
http://www.goldismoney2.com/threads/they-can-get-stuff-done-when-they-want-to.151374/
Trump can do it up nice and pretty if he wants, you know, hiring Gary Cohn, former COO of Goldman, and Steve Mnuchin a Goldman banker of no small repute. And Dina Habib Powell another of the Goldman set.
But these are the perfumed, the bankster elite. There’s other sides to this. Trump the Queens developer showed he can roll around in the dirt because now we have Tony the Mooch stinkin’ up the joint. Who’s next, Gaspipe Casso? Actually, he’s in the clink. Ok, maybe Trump can spring him. He’d come in handy especially in dealing with Congress, you know, if somebody doesn’t listen to reason, leave his corpse as a message.
But who are we kidding, the guarantor of the Deep State is and always has been the military. Trump can hire some good fellas for tough guy appearances but these White House comedies and dramas are allowed to unfold only at the sufferance of the Generals. Guess who the official delegation calls first after telling Trump it’s time for a permanent vacation?
ah, volodya, you wisdom extend well beyond you years!!
Deep State historically enjoy patsy figurehead in you one oval office, since successful elimination of JFK, all under globalist operation.
in unlikely event Trump rebel against Deep State, you one John Kelly prepare to assume reign of control when permanent Trump vacation tendered.
globalist successful hedge bet with fully capable north korea and ICBM message.
globalist not mind when U.S. and north korea bombed into oblivion…..
they existence extend far beyond difficulties on planet earth….
that ok.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
-onehunglo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2yIkDVs0cA&index=87&list=PLl55Zh3U2VW7YD-JKHT0vYIk1ZCrK7c4-
ON TRUMP’S WATCH AMERICA IS NOT SAFE
“We have demonstrated our ability to fire our intercontinental ballistic rocket at any time and place and that the entire U.S. territory is within our shooting range,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday, citing Kim. It said the test was part of the “final verification” of the Hwasong-14 missile’s technical capabilities, including its maximum range.
All the tests developing ICBMs capable of reaching the heartland of the USA have happened as President Trump helplessly watched, and uttered words unaccompanied by deeds.
Kim does not need to reach the heartland. Close to America and eighty miles up he can spray our heavens with an ionized fireball sparking overhead transmissions lines with EMP. Any screen that is on will go blank, some dark, others an empty white while their batteries drain.
Were we not spiteful Kim could then sit back like a komodo dragon who has bitten a goats leg and wait for it to die. That won’t happen. In America their will be no radiation and little life but Korea will have much radiation and only death.
On Trumps watch nobody is safe.
And this is Trump’s fault how? Obama was in office when Hollywood made a movie about assassinating him. Think they liked that? Hollywood is so rich and so “establishment” that’s it pretty much an official statement – or at least you can’t reasonable expect countries like North Korea to see the difference. I pretty much agree with him on this point.
It is not his fault that he is an idiot but he is smart enough to know that a buffoon like himself should know his proper place. His being in the Hamptons. His pridefullness in overstepping the limits of what an ego should be allowed to do makes him culpable to answer your question.
Trump takes effective measure to restore the combat capability of American Army
Trump Says That Transgender People Will Not Be Allowed in the Military
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-value-of-everything/#comment-312139
The US team lost to rivals from Honduras and Colombia and managed to take only the third place at the annual regional competitions of the special forces of the armed forces.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1259720/special-ops-competition-brings-teams-together-southcom-commander-says/
As I said, Honduras has been bothering me lately.
Alex Jones’s threats at Representative Schiff violate federal law, U.S. Code Title 18, Section 115, which makes it illegal to threaten to assault a U.S. official and provides a penalty of up to six years in prison.
After Newsweek published a legal analysis, Jones publicly pulled back, and posted a video attempting to clarify his remarks as “clearly tongue-in-cheek and basically art performance.”
Yep, Limbaugh, Savage, Jones, etc. calling for “civil war” against “liberals” is just entertainment, comedy, performance art. There will be no civil war.
Russia and Islam
Many observers have commented in awe at the miracle Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov pulled-off in Chechnya: after the region was absolutely devastated by two vicious and brutal wars and after being a “black hole” for assorted terrorists and common thugs, Chechnya turned into one of the most peaceful and safe parts of Russia (even while neighboring Dagestan is still suffering from violence and corruption). I won’t revisit it all and describe all the dramatic changes in Chechnya, but I will focus on a often ignored aspect of the “Chechen model”: Chechnya has become an extremely strict and traditional Sunni Muslim region. Not only that, but it is also one which has basically comprehensively defeated not only the Wahabis themselves but also their Wahabi ideology. In other words, Chechnya today is unique in that this is a Sunni Muslim culture which is strictly Islamic but with no risk whatsoever of being re-infected by the Wahabi virus. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this unique feature.
Go clean up the kitchen, you stupid, stupid, woman
Ann Barnhardt on the feast of St Martha
(I was reminded at Mass today on this the feast of St. Martha of domestic happiness, and this piece which I wrote for The Remnant Newspaper a while back. It was wildly popular when it was first published, with only a handful of women griping about it. Most women loved it, and for many it brought back happy memories of their own mothers and/or grandmothers, busily and lovingly taking care of the business of the household. We know St. Martha must have been a stupendous hostess, as today’s Gospel specifically states that Our Lord availed Himself of her (and her siblings’) hospitality FREQUENTLY. It also reminded me that I should watch one of my favorite movies tonight – “Marty”.)
I have had this piece in the back of my mind for some time, and have even run the title and general gist of it past a few people, all of whose eyes sparkled like the transporter beam of the Enterprise-A upon hearing it.
Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I lived in a large, shared house built in the 1920s with a male friend. I had the master bedroom suite, and thus my own private bathroom, and everything was completely on the up-and-up. Fear not, gentle readers. I shall not be scandalizing you with tales of ribaldry – no “accompanying body-to-body” going on, to use one of FrancisChurch’s creepier turns of phrase. It was an excellent use of the property, and very frugal and affordable. And, yes, I certainly preferred to live with males, from both the security as well as a domestic tranquility standpoint.
In this particular case, I did, in fact, greatly admire and count as a treasured friend the male housemate, and no matter what great adventure I had been on in those heady days of my youth, when my learning curve was near-vertical, and every day seemed an adventure, it was always a pleasure to simply go home.
I have always been a bit of a “foodie”, and would often eat out, arriving home after the “rush hour” in the relatively large and well-equipped house kitchen was over for the evening. In fact, four out of five dentists surveyed would have guessed that my shelf in the refrigerator, packed with condiments, pickles, recycled glass jars of bacon drippings, and as many bottles of Corona Extra as would fit in the remaining void, was the “man shelf”. And they would have been wrong. But I digress.
My evening ritual before turning in for the night was, in order, to go into the kitchen, wash and dry any and all dishes and cookware used that day, including the coffee pot, lift the grates off of the gas stovetop and thoroughly clean and polish the stainless steel stovetop, clean the countertops, kitchen table, and stainless steel double basin sink, and finally replace the stove grates and then set upon the perfectly clean stove the small saucepan for my friend to heat his milk for the next morning’s coffee.
Bear in mind, rarely were any of the dishes dirtied by me, as I ate out more often than not. Further, I was almost never the first in the kitchen in the morning, and was not a ritual morning coffee drinker. I cleaned the kitchen and set out the next morning’s accouterment not for myself, but for my friend and housemate. I wanted him to start his day off not with a dirty kitchen, dishes stacked in the sink, and a grease-covered stove, the thought in the back of his mind, “Oh, I’m going to have to clean this kitchen after I get home from work today….”
No. I wanted to give him the smallest of gifts – a little help around the house. And God forgive me, that twenty minutes of quiet, nightly kitchen clean-up, in particular the polishing of the stove and setting out of the saucepan, was the best part of my day. If I were dishonest I would say that something liturgical or some formal prayer was the best part of my day, but it wasn’t. The silent, spontaneous prayer of thanksgiving that flowed out of my soul as I recalled that day’s events, and how happy I was to be where I was, surrounded by friends, recalling past adventures and making plans for future adventures, and praying for my friend and housemate and his intentions, as I scrubbed grease splatter off of the stove with Ajax grease cutting spray and paper towels – that was the best part of my day.
To this day, if asked to pinpoint my zenith of personal happiness, it has nothing to do with my personal accomplishments in business – my first cattle marketing school, the opening of my brokerage firm, or even my first six-figure month. Nor does it have to do with my reception into the Church, which was more a feeling of relief than anything else. If you ask me when I felt happy – truly, truly happy – it was when I was cleaning up for a man. So roll that up real tight in your Virginia Slim cigarette and smoke it, Betty Friedan. It’s almost as if there is some sort of hard-wiring given to us by God – factory-loaded software if you will – nudging us toward our gender-specific vocations that will make us truly happy.
One evening as I was doing the evening tidy-up, my friend and housemate, having eaten his dinner in his room, brought his dishes into the kitchen after I had started cleaning up. I happily reached out to take his dishes to wash, as I was already standing at the sink washing dishes. He said, “No, I’ll do it.” And I happily replied, “No, I’m happy to do it.” Which, as we just covered above, was the understatement of the evening. At this, he angrily handed me the dishes, growled contemptuously, “You’re SO annoying,” and walked out.
Being human, I was certainly wounded at the revelation that the best part of my day, this small yet concrete act of charity, was a source of annoyance for my friend. But, I also remembered a book I had read about the life of St. Joseph by the mystic Maria Cecilia Baij.
Baij claimed that the events of the life of St. Joseph were told to her by Our Lord Himself, and I found the book to be most informative and credible. In it, the Blessed Virgin is described as a meticulous housekeeper, not out of the slightest hint of personal pride, obviously, but out of pure love for Our Lord and St. Joseph.
Further, I was struck by the realization that Our Lord, who could have miraculously “cleaned” the house for His mother, or summoned angels to do it, let her do it. Why? Because He wanted her to be happy, and we can only be truly happy when what we do is motivated by love, and what we are doing is proper to our state in life. She loved St. Joseph because he was one of the finest and most admirable men who has ever lived, and he was her most chaste husband, and she was his wife ever virgin, and she loved Our Lord because He is God, and also her Son. She who was full of grace, and thus capable of such tremendous love, was, in keeping with her state in life of woman, wife and mother, made truly happy in taking care of and cleaning up after her “Boys”.
After thinking on this, I resolved that I would not stop doing my evening clean-up, and I did until the very end. I still remember the last night in that house, crying and crying as I polished the stove and set out the saucepan one last time.
Flash forward to today, wherein one of the main focuses of my writing and lecturing is Diabolical Narcissism. Diabolical Narcissism is the psycho-spiritual driver behind most of the cultural pathologies we see around us today. Diabolical Narcissism is broadly defined as when a human being, like the fallen angels, freely chooses to purge themselves of all charity, leaving them incapable of love or empathy, and capable of only the demonic emotional palate of anger, hatred, jealousy and fear. These people are incredibly dangerous to souls as they, like the demons, literally hunt other human beings, attempting to murder not their bodies, but their souls, out of pure spite.
One of the points of nexus I made early on in researching Diabolical Narcissism was that the subset of Marxism commonly called “feminism” is nothing less than the explicit attempt to turn women en masse into Diabolical Narcissists – whereas women have historically comprised less than 20% of the total of Diabolical Narcissists in western populations. Feminism demands that a woman be totally selfish, and beyond that hate men qua men, hate marriage, and even hate their own children to the point of demanding the state-protected, state-financed ability to premeditatedly murder them.
But where it all began was with the notion that any sort of work performed by a woman around the house was drudgery, a waste of time, an act of patriarchal oppression, even legalized slavery. Many women today in the post-Christian west are shockingly bad housekeepers, and not just because they are working outside the home. Many stay-at-home wives and mothers are content to live in squalor, even proud of the fact that they are “sticking it to the man”, boasting of their refusal to clean or inability to cook.
Are we surprised? As true charity is purged from every corner of our culture, replaced with a self-worshiping narcissistic humanism, is it any wonder that today’s women are simply incapable of understanding how it could possibly be that cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, or even that most primordial of caring acts, FEEDING another human being, could possibly make them happy, much less fulfill them as women on this mortal coil?
One of my favorite movies is 1954’s “Marty” starring Ernest Borgnine. A side plot in the film revolves around two widowed sisters, immigrants from Italy, living in the Bronx. One widowed sister has just moved in with her son, his new wife and their infant child. The mother is angry and frustrated with her daughter-in-law because the mother can no longer be the sole housekeeper. While her behavior toward her daughter-in-law is selfish and wrong, she gives a moving speech to her sister, also a widow but still living in her large family home and taking care of her remaining bachelor son, Marty, about the horror of growing old and not having anyone to take care of, not having anything to do.
To today’s women and girls, this sentiment is incomprehensible. How could a woman complain, much less fall into a depression, because she doesn’t have to clean up after anyone, doesn’t have to do anyone’s laundry, doesn’t have to cook? In other words, how can a woman not be overjoyed at having no one to love?
Goodness me, how I do hate feminism with a perfect hatred.
The lesson in all of this is to learn to be animated in our work by the love of God, because then all of our tasks and chores that we perform for others which the world considers menial drudgery at best and horrifically unpleasant at worst, including for perfect strangers, will yield that same happiness that comes from doing something for someone we love personally, be it a spouse, child, family member or friend. This is called, “sanctity”, and is what drove the centuries of religious who took care of the sick and dying, the destitute poor, and orphans. They saw Christ in every face. Even those chores that those of us who are single and live alone do for ourselves can be done for the love of God. And yes, to this day when I clean my own stove I still pray. But what I wouldn’t give for just one more night to clean up for my friend, because looking back at my life, that was the closest I ever came to being a normal woman, which is why I was, in retrospect, so happy.
And so, when I hear a woman, especially a woman with a family, complaining about housework using the standard diabolical narcissist feminist boilerplate that we can all recite, all I can think is, “Go clean up the kitchen, you stupid, stupid woman.”
Ann denies Chemtrails and mocks us who see reality.
What do you think they’re up to? Lowering fertility? Or this:
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-07-12-climate-change-scientists-launch-geoengineering-experiment-that-may-accidentally-cause-global-famine.html
Has anyone ever gotten up there in a plane and somehow taken a sample of a contrail?
This is so unbelievable that I am not sure I can believe it. But this is the second time I’ve heard of it. The other article named some spots on the globe where they thought the droughts would occur, and none of them were in the U.S.!
Why would one nation, openly, take unilateral action that will harm the food production of other regions of the world and not get a huge outcry? Why would this not be discussed in the UN?
I realize America thinks it owns the place, but I would think something like this would get attention. And how does it help global warming to make droughts, one of the supposed affects of global warming?
I suspect there is some other true agenda here, perhaps just learning to monkey with rainfall. The true elite obviously know that global warming is nonsense. What are they up to?
Malthuss,
How can you differentiate chemtrails from contrails?
My Dear Janos,
You’ve no doubt noted that some people cannot ever be moved to alter their opinions one iota and you always get the same out of them. But you have not struck me that way. So there is hope that you are a real person.
While you have indeed made comments to the effect men are superior, I have never said anything to indicate that I dislike men or disrespect them, yet you accused me of it.
As for this piece you just posted, it has some real merit, especially regarding the glorification of narcissism, but I do note that she apparently loved that man but didn’t get him, nor any other. She may have been too saccharine and cloying. He said she was annoying and she missed the boat. She speaks of love but did not think to find out why he felt the way he did. She retreated into her little Catholic sainthood world instead of finding out why he was reacting negatively to her niceness. Her behavior may have been inappropriate and made him uncomfortable. She played the wife but was not his wife. Sometimes when you give too much, and especially if there is an obvious forlorn hope of returned affections, it can do nothing so much as make the recipient feel awkward.
So the piece has merit, but the author methinks has a lowish emotional intelligence. A man may want a good housewife and good cook, but he also wants a companion and to be understood.
Yes, she’s an extreme character: she burned pages of the Koran on youtube after reading them. She kept her places with bacon strip bookmarks. She used to give her address publicly and invited people to come see her if they had an issue with it – apparently she is a crack shot with both the revolver and AK 47.
Tragically perhaps, she is far too self willed and outspoken to ever get a man or accept any that approached her – and she know that about herself. She is a perfect example of a woman who cannot or will not surrender at this level. But she is able to surrender to God. So she is something of an anchoress – all the more so now that she has gone into hiding because of her tax resistance.
You didn’t believe that she just enjoyed serving Life? You automatically assume that she had designs on the man? I don’t, but of course I don’t know in this case. I simply say it’s possible that a young woman could find comfort and satisfaction in taking care of a friend with no ulterior motive.
Yes, of course that is possible, but I note at the end she states she would give anything for another chance to clean for her friend, and that is was the closest she ever came to being a real woman, so that means she never did get a man.
I know nothing of her. But if she has gone into hiding for tax resistance, she sounds like fun.
Great movie.
Like some of the scenes in Marty, I remember hanging out on the streets of NYC, wondering what to do, trying to calm that adolescent restlessness, to fulfill some vague expectation.
The guys in Marty are older and somewhat lost and desperate. Marty recognizes the butcher’s reality, life’s reality, and finally has the courage to end his loneliness.
Here’s a link to some good clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktXm7CRXbsE
I watched it once. I remember him saying to the girl, Losers like us aren’t as big a losers as we think we are. It’s really a bit much, but yes, very sweet.
I prefer him with horns in The Devil’s Reign.
You clean the kitchen, janos.
A woman’s place is in the house… and the senate!
“This is a melodrama of a type the world has seen before in a hundred royal palaces and other centers of mis-rule. The need to get rid of the head of state becomes so painfully self-evident that idle chatter about it ceases and all intention is signaled in mere eye-rolls, sighs, portentous glances, and other fraught devices of body language. That’s what’s going on now in the senate, the agency executive suites, the terraces of Martha’s Vineyard, and surely the hallowed corridors of the White House itself. One way or another, the knives are coming out.”
Words and deeds indeed.
The knives come out and may not be easily sheathed. This timeless ‘melodrama’ often takes a life of its own.
AD 69 – The Year of the Four Emperors. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian followed each other as ruler in a brief civil war following the death of Nero.
AD 193 – The year of the Five Emperors. Commodus was assassinated Pertinax followed and was assasinated Didius Julianus who was very Trumplike then purchased the throne. Septimius Severus executed Julianus but Pescennius Niger vied for him for the title and Clodius Albinus also became a co-emporor.
AD 238 – The year of the Six Emperors. Maximinus Thrax was the first and people revolted against his arbitrary and cruel tyranny. Gordian I and Gordian II who were father and son were selected to replace him. Capelianus opposed this and killed the son. The father upon hearing of his sons death killed himself. Maximinus tried to seize power back but Pupienus and Balbinus opposed him. Maximinus and his son were killed but Pupienus and Balbinus, not popular, were then dragged naked through the streets tortured and killed. Gordian III the grandson then became emperor but was the puppet of advisors.
Be careful what you wish for.
We don’t hear of assassinations of national leaders anymore. None in the 21st century. There is less violence now. Human nature has changed.
Human nature has not changed.
Pupienus and Balbinus, not popular, were then dragged naked through the streets tortured and killed.
“In 1950, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected with 65% of the vote, and Chiquita perceived his agrarian land reforms as a threat to their corporate interests. Chiquita, with the help of the father of modern public relations, Edward L. Bernays, waged a propaganda war and managed to convince the American public and politicians that Arbenz was secretly a dangerous communist who could not be allowed to remain in power. With McCarthy-era hysteria in full swing, President Eisenhower secretly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow the democratically elected Arbenz in a 1954 covert operation. The CIA armed and trained an ad-hoc “Liberation Army” under the command of an exiled Guatemalan army officer, and used them in conjunction with a diplomatic, economic, and propaganda campaign. At the time, the American public was told that Guatemala was undergoing a “revolution;” the CIA’s involvement was long suspected and fully revealed when the agency released thousands of documents in 1997. The overthrow precipitated a 40-year civil war that killed over 200,000 people, and “disappeared” another 100,000.”
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was only flown naked out of the country and not killed. The 200,00 tally makes that point moot. Che Guevara was on a hit list but survived. The CIA will kill without compunction if they must but it is always better to have someone else do the dirty work. Like with Saddam, who was killed in the twenty-first century.
But what really makes your comment full of shit janet is that Obama was a drone dropping fool who was dropping death on national leaders assassinating them anytime he could and Trump does the same thing whenever the generals say they want to do it. All that is needed is to call them terrorists instead. But that is only a word and to navy seals the only word they need is target.
The word is if anything, more brutal. The difference is only that todays brutality is sanitary and distant till it is not.
world
So I did not get the number of zeros right in 200,000 and I meant to write. The world is if anything, more brutal.
That is not why I came back.
Less brutal. I give the prize to Secretary Clinton on the way she had Col. Gaddafi killed. that was in the 21st century and once collapse gets going, heads not good times will be rolling.
Human nature has only changed in your dreams or the dreams you want the rest of us to have.
Points for remembering Arbenz!
We don’t hear of assassinations of national leaders anymore.
You’re right, we no longer hear about them at all. Thanks MSM! Human nature, among a select few mostly Americans at least, is worse than it’s ever been.
Trump tweets to get transgender out of the armed services. The military commanders refuse to act on Trump’s tweets against transgender soldiers. Trump’s attack, his discrimination, against transgender sodiers fails. Another failure. The military is not with Trump.
They didn’t refuse to act, they just clarified that everyone should stay on their mission.
Former Navy Seal Team 6 member Kristen Beck, who is transgender, spoke out against Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from the military on Wednesday, just a fraction of the tidal wave of opposition that rolled in after Trump’s snap decision on the matter.
“Let’s meet face to face and you tell me I’m not worthy,” Beck said in an interview with Business Insider. “Transgender doesn’t matter. Do your service.”
Trump’s claim that the decision to ban transgender service members came because of the cost of medical services was laughable, Beck added.
“The money is negligible,” said Beck. “You’re talking about .000001 percent of the military budget. They care more about the airplane or the tank than they care about people. They don’t care about people. They don’t care about human beings.” In fact, the cost is so miniscule, The Washington Post reported, that the military actually spends about five times more on Viagra than it does on medical care for transgender troops.
Why do people in the military need viagra? That seems like a contradiction. Are you speaking of the VA?
Where are trans males (feel like women) supposed to sleep and shower if they are attracted to females? And will they get to perform at the lower standards which are allowed to women?
There’s a trans high schooler (male) who joined the female track team and guess what? He beat all the real girls. How is that fair to the real girls? To have to compete with a MALE on their team?
Men think they need viagra, the same way they think they need firearms. They don’t think well with their big head or little head.
Gee, if I was with a guy who reached for viagra, it would probably end the relationship, unless he’s pretty old.
Sophia,
Point taken and understood…but what are the chances you will be with anyone when you, too, are old…when beauty fades and the body succumbs to gravity?
Perspective.
Seems like two generalizations for the price of one. Where is your thinking done?
Business man with no political experience and no ability to work with congress bring in a marine general with no political experience and no ability to work with congress. Result: legislative agenda is dead in the water. Leaks will continue. Mueller’s ivestigation of Trump continues. American people are the losers until Trump is ousted.
In every joke there is some humor!
Earlier on the same day, US Secretary of State Tillerson published a message explaining that the introduction of new anti-Russian sanctions meant the US desire to see from Russia steps to improve bilateral relations.
Lavrov told him that the response proposals to confiscate the American part of the International Space Station and place there Russian nuclear missiles is the reciprocal offer of friendship to the US, which name is on the order that was handed to the Secretary of State of this most peace-loving Nation that ever existed on the planet.
And if this state will have to go underground, the tunnel under the Bering Strait will not allow this friendship to die out not only in Alaska, but it will reach the sewers of Washington, which President Trump recently blazed so vividly to the new generation of the US, one can say to its future.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/inappropriate-moments-trump-boy-scout-speech.html
But best of all jokes was on Senator McCain. And I do not mean a rather gloomy joke in the Russian Internet, according to which he flew to the second voting on health insurance in the US Congress, sitting in a coffin, and the vice president of the United States had to raise his eyelids before casting decisive vote. I mean that on that important vote in the Senate, he confirmed his reputation as a man capable alone, you can say with his bare hands, even with one finger to sink an aircraft carrier.
Senator McCain votes on the so-called scaled-down repeal of ObamaCare. The most interesting thing is that he thus sunk the aircraft carrier of Clintonoids in the Republican Party, the very ones who recently voted in the law on anti-Russian sanctions limiting the ability of the US president to abolish these sanctions.
I am curious – did Senator McCain use the same finger to cast that vote with which he launched a missile from his plane into the deck of the aircraft carrier Forrestal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUVYYiRIuE4
No, of course Lavrov didn’t offer to confiscate the American part of the International Space Station, less deploying Russian nukes there, but one of the Russian MPs jokingly offered to boot the American Astronaut from the ship, which will depart from the Baikonur cosmodrome to the International Space Station.
In every joke there is some humor!
Your comment just inspired a brilliant thought. I can see a financial crisis arising and Washington has no maneuvering room to handle it.
Only ONE SOLUTION will be accepted and Russia is holding the winning cards. The U.S. will have to surrender its ownership in the ISS in order to receive restructuring of its finances.
Russia shall act as a front for TPTB to buy out our part of the ISS.
Russia receives the U.S part of the ISS. TPTB create new financial paper to buy us out for pennies on the dollar. Then they levy HUGE new user fees from NASA for the privilege of going to it.
“I am curious – did Senator McCain use the same finger to cast that vote with which he launched a missile from his plane into the deck of the aircraft carrier Forrestal?”
Finc,
You Russkies simply do not understand navel warfare…sometimes you have to destroy the carrier to save it….
Jeff Sessions is not backing down. Trump’s mistreatment of Sessions is not going over well in the conservative world. But Trump won’t fire Sessions, because if he did that there would be holy hell to pay.
The Left loves Sessions now because ostensibly Trump doesn’t. So childish and predicable. Rush thinks you’re being played.
The White House all seems a little silly right now but is Trump actually harming the United States? Does he deserve to lose his job? It sets a dangerous precedent.
100 Ways Trump Is Hurting America
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2017/04/26/431299/100-ways-100-days-trump-hurt-americans/
After months of campaign promises to help ordinary Americans, President Donald Trump’s first 100 days have revealed that his true policy priorities are benefitting corporations and the wealthiest few at the expense of everyone else. His actions and those of his administration have been characterized by broken promises, gross conflicts of interest, and a stark erosion of transparency, ethics, and other democratic norms. As a candidate, Trump promised the American people that we were going to “… win so much, [we’ll] be sick and tired of winning.” But it is not the American people who have been winning—it is Wall Street, private prisons, the oil industry, and Trump’s own family. A recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans now believe that President Trump does not keep his promises and is unable to effectively manage the government.
Of course it sets a dangerous precedent but we are sliding into banana republicdom at an ever increasing pace! The lefties don’t care about democracy and surely the deep state doesn’t. See how they supported a coup in Ukraine even though the president had agreed to hold early elections.
Except… there won’t be an America “decades from now.” Not one that speaks English, anyway…..
And where is it in the Constitution that freedom speaks English?
” freedom speaks English”
Janet,
An example;
How is a Mexican like a cue ball? The harder you hit it, the more English it develops”.
It is an old joke, and in poor taste.
I apologize.
What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks one language? American.
Do not apologize elysianfield. The joke is still amusing and relevant.
Janet is a hopelessly brainwashed New Leftist. She wants nothing less than the complete elimination of White Males.
Finc,
You Russkies simply do not understand navel warfare…sometimes you have to destroy the carrier to save it…. elysianfield
The way I understand the problem around the health care is that Clintonoids in both parties are using it not to do people’s business, but to settle political scores.
They want to repeal the better parts of ObamaCare, while keeping the worst.
So it is for the best that the repeal failed, now Trump could work with Republicans and Democrats who are not Clinton–zombies.
Still blaming the clinton zombies, finc? Clinton lost. All blame now goes to those who hold power in the House, in the Senate, in the White House. You are beating a dead horse. It is not Clinton… The ones to blame are Trump’s Goldman Sachs guys and Wall Street guys, and generals, and rich friends, and family members … the ones who are now making the decisions to destroy America.
Hate to do this, but I’m dredging up an old Cold War term: the United States is a paper tiger. Look, we badly want to take out NK, but without the literal and figurative fallout.
Really, shit or get off the pot, America. We only have two current solutions – take them out or ignore them. Personally, I think the latter would be better because we could still pursue a third option, continuing sanctions and nagging the hell out of China. We have to find ways to convince the Chinese we just want to remove the current regime and leave, while China
It’s funny, because Americans always look at such questions in terms of what will we do, presuming that we always have the last word on such things. What will we do as the world passes us by, as it’s rapidly doing as we speak, and the question of what will we do becomes totally irrelevant? A mighty big fall is in store for American supremacists of all stripes as the empire continues to disintegrate. Can’t possibly happen soon enough!
In brandishing nuclear weapons the DPRK is just following the US’s lead, where we’ve been doing the same thing the world over for 72 years now.
Janet saith, “Carter loved his enemies … as Jesus Christ taught Carter to do … by Christ’s own example.”
Yes, Christ loved His enemies, but He did not hire them to do the work of His friends, or to do His own work.
Good point. In what sense are you a druid?
dru = oak id = knowledge druid = oak knowledge. The druids considered the oak tree the most useful of all, for [ attracting ] food, shelter, heat. They sought and taught knowledge that was most important to man.
messianic = pertaining to the messiah [ one anointed by Creator God via a calling ]. Specifically – one who studies the teachings of Jesus who claimed to be the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Hebrews.
http://messianicdruid.blogspot.com/2005/12/druids-r-us.html
Thanks. That’s an unusual take.
Two points that do not seem Christian at all to me, although true: first that God created the universe out of himself, and second that nature is God in disguise. These strike me as the kind of thought one might find in Hinduism, perhaps also animism, but most Christians would recoil from it. Unfortunately.
You say this is Hebraic thought? Hmm. You certainly don’t find much of interest in the Old Testament scriptures, but perhaps the thoughts and discussion went further.
Oh Contaire, there is much to be found that is “interesting” and yes, “the thoughts and discussion went further”. The problem is in allowing those who do not really believe in the Creator God to do all the interpreting of the scriptures. Big problem that.
Consider:
http://www.whatabeginning.com
Oops…. while China installs their own government there. And we guarantee the South won’t cross into NK. The Chinese are very afraid we would take over the North, the Sokos cross the border line and the Chinese have a very dangerous foe right at their own border.
But one thing for sure, we got to end this schoolyard game of push and shove, because without real action on our part, the world sees us as just a big bully who is just a coward; they laugh at us and weaken our standing as a real power. Let us just shut up and get on with our own business, or take out Kim, no matter the cost.
China installs their own government HERE?
“…the ones who are now making the decisions to destroy America.”
Are you talking about the H.R. that a super majority of the representatives and senators passed in one day limiting the ability of the executive branch to do its job, which I might add they have NO authority to do.
They can get shit done when THEY want to.
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/opinion-editorial/hal-turner-commentary/906-with-russia-sanctions-bill-congress-has-just-begun-world-war-3-the-missiles-will-fly-within-months
JimInFla says, “Only ONE SOLUTION will be accepted and Russia is holding the winning cards.”
No, they will turn over the table, and start a fight.
If we can give up the Panama Canal for the restructuring of our national debt, then giving up our share of the ISS is nothing.
The Mighty Wurlitzer of ZOG propaganda can prepare We Teh Serfs to not only accept, but demand, our abandonment of the ISS.
The New York Times, WashPo, Faux Nooz, MSNBC, CNN, etc. can easily inculcate the idea that the ISS is unsafe, unprofitable, or some other problem that makes it a liability to us. It is too easy to agitate We Teh Serfs into demanding, “Let The Fucker Fall!” or, “Children Are Starving Because of the ISS!” or, “The ISS is Racist,” or, “Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.” We’ll see a national epidemic of snowflakes seeking counseling because the ISS might fall on them.
However, behind the curtain, Washington is engineering the transfer of our stake in the ISS to Russia while TPTB give the Fed a desperately needed transfusion of credit to keep billions of kites flying.
The national debt is odious debt. It should be repudiated. Iceland is an excellent example of how to fix things.
Elysian,
“Sophia,
Point taken and understood…but what are the chances you will be with anyone when you, too, are old…when beauty fades and the body succumbs to gravity?
Perspective.”
I’m pretty old and I am married. Husband in good health. But my point was why is the military spending tons of money on viagra? Even most men in their 60s, if I am not wrong, work pretty well. I know the health of this country is in steep decline, but are young guys needing viagra?
Janos,
I checked out Ann Barnhardt. She certainly isn’t ugly. Not sure what to make of her essay but I think she likes the work world more than she admits.
Well there is that. The “monk” Thomas Merton was very, very social and concerned about social justice. I like him or at least I did – but he wasn’t really a monk as he was always seeing important people and writing about the Cause. If he was around today, he’d be for open borders and I would loathe him. But he was a very learned man and a fine essayist. Don’t care for his poetry but some do. Towards the end he wrote about wanting to covert to Tibetan Buddhism and get a girlfriend (which one school allows to its religious).
Ann is very passionate about the Fight against decadence, both within the Church and society at large.
https://www.dailystormer.com/tranny-penis-mutilation-would-cost-the-pentagon-1-3-billion/
This is a projection over the next ten years. Probably conservative as more and more of these people are appearing and would be signing on. Thank God for President Trump. He needs to declare Martial Law forthwith.
I suspect some of the current estimates of costs are low ball numbers. Actually, I had the thought, when pondering why the military might welcome transgenders, that they would be an incredibly loyal force that could be used for a lot of tasks that other soldiers might recoil from due to that strong loyalty.
Vlad Putin just directed that 755 U.S. diplomats leave Russia by 1 September. That is how rapprochement is done.
Best Korea just launched another ICBM and the U.S. and allies have been flying B-1 bombers with fighter escort around the peninsula for practice. Then some American general says, under the guise of an anonymous Pentagon official, that U.S. forces are prepared to use “overwhelming force” against Best Korea. That is how to ratchet tensions down a bit in N.E. Asia.
ISIS forces are close to losing control of their capital, Raqqa, to the coalition of nations fighting against them. WHen the city falls expect the J.V. team to celebrate by renewed asymetrical Yzlamik over-exuberance and celebrations from N. America to Europe and of course all over the SHitholistan countries. Angela Merkel, E. Macron and Sweden will offer all surrendering ISIS members save haven, first class tickets for transit; 4000 Euro a month stipend; and a BMW along with other “ahem” incentives to de-radicalize. That’s how to get rid of the threat from those scumbags.
Any of the aforementioned actions could cause the balloon to go up and give Donald Trump the perfect excuse to settle all family business and declare martial law.
The head of the Sakya lineage [according to some web news] is or was a womanizer.
See June Campbell’s book, ‘Traveler in Space’ –her accusations about one Kalu Rinpoche.
Then go to you tube and listen to Kalu 2, talking about his being raped.
“Even most men in their 60s, if I am not wrong, work pretty well.”
Sophia,
…Ehh, not so much…. The young probably don’t need any help…the vast majority of use, no doubt, involve the retired personnel.
There is a time in a man’s life in which the semi-annual hard-on becomes the annual semi-hard-on….
Glad I can read you and have a filter between me and all the nonsense, Jim! I’ve been away from your ¡twice weekly! blog for too long. Carry on!
In New York on the Tompkins Square is a small but still crowd and it is going to go to the 911 monument for a demonstration in defense of President Trump at 2 pm.
One of the demands is the immediate arrest of a former CIA director who several days ago called for the overthrow of the legitimately elected US President.
The pushback will be good because most of the libs live in echo chambers of their own devise.
Well, news here is a 5 year old was gunned down in a drive by shooting, just a few hours after another ‘nonviolence rally’ (really, these ‘peace vigils’ and ‘nonviolence rallies’ have to stop, somebody invariably ends up shot soon after) the surprise here it was in East Hartford, not Hartford or New Haven This noteworthy event occurred in East Hartford, until the 1940s a little rural village of tobacco and truck farms; then Pratt & Whitney built their giant aircraft engine factory in the fields and that changed everything. Vast tracts of housing were developed to domicile thousands of workers needed to build the wasp piston engines that won WW2, housing that sensitive writers like JHK and the late John Cheever deplore. They weren’t too bad when new, about 1200 sq ft,, a grassy yard and a driveway for the chevy. 50 years on things have changed. I remember diving thru these neighborhoods in the 70, the homes neatly kept, the grass cut, the men in the plant working. Now there is no grass, but 4 or 5 Toyotas with opaque tinted windows parked in the bare patch of earth where the lawn used to be. The houses themselves are in bad repair. You see idle young men hanging around the streets in the middle of the day, pants hanging down below their asses, sometimes walking pit bulls, holding them back on a heavy leash. (get the picture?) The prosperous industrial age in East Hartford has ended; it didn’t last long, merely 6 decades. Oh, they still build jet engines there, but the highly paid union employees have bought larger homes further out, way in the country, miles and miles from the plant. In East Hartford it is no longer the age of industry but the age of welfare and govt dependence, where no one works, drug abuse is endemic, 80% of kids have no father, and little 5 year olds get gunned down playing on their front porch.
brh
brh
UBI would solve these problems and be cheaper than welfare, food stamps, section 8, etc.
UBI, check it out. Eliminate all the means testing and government bureaucracies dealing with poverty and unemployment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
At least since Thomas Paine, some supporters have argued that basic income is needed to protect the power to say no, which these supporters argue is essential to an individual’s status as a free person.
If some other group of people controls resources necessary to an individual’s survival, that individual has no reasonable choice other than to do whatever the resource-controlling group demands. Before the establishment of governments and landlords, individuals had direct access to the resources they needed to survive.
But today, resources necessary to the production of food, shelter, and clothing have been privatized in such a way that some have gotten a share and others have not. Therefore, this argument goes, the owners of those resources owe compensation back to non-owners, sufficient at least for them to purchase the resources or goods necessary to sustain their basic needs.
This redistribution must be unconditional because people can consider themselves free only if they are not forced to spend all their time doing the bidding of others simply to provide basic necessities to themselves and their families.
Little Jane, where’s all this free swag coming from?
One thing UBI will do … down in the ghetto, it would save recipients from the trouble of having to convert EBT payments, section 8 vouchers and food stamps to the cold hard cash required to buy Kool cigarettes, 40 ozers, and various illegal narcotics.
Also it would provide plenty of $$$ for semi auto handguns stolen out in the suburbs.
brh
“Little Jane, where’s all this free swag coming from?” –brh
brh, why can’t we get it from the same place we get trillions for “defense” and oil subsidies and farm subsidies, and all the others who get free swag? We’ve never had trouble finding money for the military and the 1%.
Why not give free swag to everyone, instead of just to people like Trump? Trump has reaped at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants and other subsidies for luxury apartments, hotels and office buildings in New York, according to city tax, housing and finance records.
The government subsidies helped him lower his own costs and sell apartments at higher prices because of their reduced taxes. It’s kind of lopsided. Time to even it out and give everyone a basic income instead of heaping millions of dollars on the 1%.
The land [ the source of wealth production] should be divided and never sold. The goober-mint “owns” [ controls ] half the land west of the Mississippi.
Lease your land for basic income, work it yourself for your Liberty.
Mr Druid, in Venezuela Chavez tried dividing up the land amongst ‘The People’ and 15 years later its not working out to good. In fact its a disaster and Venezuela is disintegrating.
Funny thing, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, Robert Kennedy Jr., Sean Penn, Bill Ayers and scores of other Lear jet liberals and prominent grandstanding leftists used to make frequent trips to Caracas to ‘celebrate the revolution’. Where are they now?
brh
Chavez (aka Nicolas Maduro) won with record participation. Why should they go… Chavez’s revolution is going strong.
Two days after Republicans in the Senate failed to roll back Obamacare, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said there should be a government-funded health insurance option “in every state in this country.”
“If people don’t like the private insurance that they’re getting, they should have a Medicare-type public option available in every state in this country,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
there was government funded health insurance in Vermont just recently. It was cancelled because it was unaffordable.
brh
Vermont was not offering an optional public option. Vermont’s mistake was insisting on platinum-plated insurance coverage for everyone. Sanders is saying let those who want their private junk insurance keep their private junk insurance, but offer an option for those who want public option.
If you wanna rule the world, buy yourself a decent size globus == Finca
Just like his one:
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/pavel_shipilin/51193823/613050/613050_original.jpg
“Mr Druid, in Venezuela Chavez tried dividing up the land amongst ‘The People’ and 15 years later its not working out to good.”
Mr BRH, do you believe the people the land was divided to still own it? I would like to learn more about how it was accomplished and what went wrong.
“The following year, in a July 2016 decree, President Maduro used his executive power to declare a state of economic emergency. The decree could force citizens to work in agricultural fields and farms for 60-day (or longer) periods to supply food to the country.”
This is only Wikipedia, doesn’t say anything about them working in their own fields, selling their own produce.
“Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[8][9] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas, which is also the largest city. About 93% of the population lives in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the coastline.[237] According to a study by sociologists of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, or about 4% to 6% of the country’s population, left Venezuela following the Bolivarian Revolution.[238][239] Though almost half of Venezuela’s land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there.”
Maybe Wikipedia hasn’t been updated. No mention of a ” back to the land” situation.