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Clusterfuck Nation – Blog June 3, 2019
The Zeitgeist Knows
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Who said the global economy was a permanent installation in the human condition? The head cheerleader was The New York Times's Tom Friedman, with his 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the trumpet blast for the new order of things. Since then, we partied like it was 1999, with a few grand mal seizures of the banking system along the way, some experiments in creating failed states abroad, and the descent of America's middle-class into a Disney version of Hieronymus Bosch's Last Judgment — which is kind of what you see on the streets of Los Angeles these days.
Guess what: the global economy is winding down, and pretty rapidly. Trade wars are the most obvious symptom. The tensions underlying that spring from human population overshoot with its punishing externalities, resource depletion, and the perversities of money in accelerated motion, generating friction and heat. They also come from the fact that techno-industrialism was a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end — and we're closer to the end than we are to the middle. There will be no going back to the prior party, whatever way we pretend to negotiate our way around or through these quandaries.
The USA-China romance was bound to end in divorce, which Mr. Trump is surreptitiously suing for now under the guise of a negotiated trade rebalancing. The US has got a chronic financial disease known as Triffin's Dilemma, a set of disorders endemic to any world reserve currency. The disease initially expressed itself in President Nixon's ditching the US dollar's gold backing in 1971. By then, the world had noticed the dollar's declining value trend-line, and threatened to drain Fort Knox to counter the effects of holding those dollars. Since then, all world currencies have been based on nothing but the idea that national economies would forever and always pump out more wealth.
It turns out that they pump out more debt in the pursuit of that chimerical wealth until the economic viziers and banking poohbahs begin to declare that debt itself is wealth — and now all the major players around the world are choking to death on that debt, especially the USA and China, but also Japan and the dolorous commune known as the EU. Everybody's broke, one way or another, even though they are up to their eyeballs in products designed to fall apart in a few years. Better learn how to fix stuff, especially machines, because a lot of it won't be replaced going forward.
Notice that Mr. Nixon's escape from the dollar gold standard coincided with America's first oil production peak. It was actually more than a coincidence, though it is unclear that anyone but James Schlesinger (then head of the Atomic Energy Commission, and later Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, and CIA Director) understood what that signified. Now America is back at a second and even higher production peak thanks to the illusory boom of shale oil. The difference now is that only 10 percent of the companies producing it make a red cent. For the rest, the main result is just more and more debt, contributing to the larger global debt fiasco. It's now down to a race between the sensational depletion rate of the shale oil wells and the country's flagging capacity to generate more debt with a dim prospect of it ever being paid back.
Who knows whether the Golden Golem of Greatness and the people advising him in the White House get where all this is taking us in the history of the future. One might suppose it's behind Mr. Trump's wish to Make America Great Again, the vision of a return to the economy of 1955, of men toting lunchboxes through the factory gates, and seventy million boomer schoolchildren dreaming of trips to the moon, and the hard-fought, transient blessings of Pax Americana. All that is a comfort to simpletons, no doubt, but not wholly consistent with what can be observed actually going on — which is a culture and a political system seemingly bent on suicide.
The zeitgeist knows something that we don't. The arc of this story follows the breakup of old arrangements, including trade relations, alliances, nation-states, and widespread expectations about what ought to be. Some observers claim the US will be the "last man standing" in this journey to the post global economy. (We surely would want to avoid a situation where nobody is left standing.) But all the participants in the orgy now ending will be left at least cross-eyed and flummoxed in the new cold dawn of a world without the old mojo. If the center is not holding, better look for a place on the margins as far from the emerging economic black hole as possible.
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977 Responses to "The Zeitgeist Knows" Subscribe
venuspluto67 June 3, 2019 at 10:11 am #
It occurred to me recently that there's a weird parallelism between the Republicans and the Democrats: The Republicans seem to care a lot more about ever-increasing sovereign debt when they're out of power than when they're in power. Correspondingly, Democrats seem to care a lot more about worsening global warming when they're out of power than when they're in power. But both increasing amounts of unpayable debt and increasing amounts of fossil-fuel burning are indispensably necessary to keep industrial society in its current form chugging along.
Ol' Scratch June 3, 2019 at 10:23 am #
Twixt a rock and a hard place, they are. There simply are no answers if they are to continue to serve their globalist masters (and serve them they must!), therefore they make up nonsense answers and hope the rubes won't notice their fibbing. Mostly, we don't, but we're gradually catching on now.
fugeguy June 3, 2019 at 10:59 am #
The gap between the 2 parties is so narrow that light can barely wiggle through.
I'm basing that on actions, yea sure the rhetoric sounds vastly different but the actions, meh not so much…
Janos Skorenzy June 3, 2019 at 12:45 pm #
Yes, different historical origins and different marketing to their differing bases. But the Deep State is the Deep State. And many of them are friends back in the locker room regardless of their performances on stage, as in professional wrestling.
cbeard June 3, 2019 at 2:56 pm #
The professional wrestling comparison is apt.
libertysghost June 4, 2019 at 1:36 pm #
The similarities between the D and R governments in the modern era are much more important (and effectual) that any supposed differences "partisans' want to highlight.
More government…more debt…more war…less individual freedom (not always in that order).
Their ends culminate much the same, but they use the "ways of getting" there to fuel rhetorical differences they conflate into a "important choices" you and I are simply "blessed as Americans with the right to make".
Walter B June 3, 2019 at 11:00 am #
That is correct venus, the jackasses and the Dumbo's simply spew lines of crap to distract the masses and get re-elected. Once they are in all they do is line their pockets with payoffs and bribes. Neither the spiraling debt nor the planetary degradation can be repaired by any means that we here possess. Those in power serve only their masters and themselves, we are what's for dinner.
sauerkraut June 3, 2019 at 11:23 am #
I see that we share a taste in literature.
messianicdruid June 3, 2019 at 11:23 am #
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/04/after-a-354-billion-u-s-bailout-germanys-deutsche-bank-still-has-49-trillion-in-derivatives/
After a $350 billion U.S. bailout, Germany's Deutsche Bank still has $49 Trillion in derivatives
"On July 21, 2011, when the GAO released its audit of the Federal Reserve's secret $16.1 trillion in bank loans during the financial crisis, a foreign bank ranked number 9 on the list of the largest borrowers. The loans went not just to the largest banks on Wall Street but to foreign derivative counterparties to the Wall Street banks. The foreign bank that ranked 9 on the list of the largest borrowers was Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank, which took $354 billion in revolving loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve….
In 2011 when the GAO released the list of the banks that had received the $16.1 trillion in secret loans from the Fed during the financial crisis, two other foreign banks ranked in the top ten of those receiving this strange largesse from the U.S. central bank: the U.K. mega bank, Barclays, ranked number 5 with $868 billion in cumulative borrowings and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, also of the U.K., ranked number 8 with $541 billion in revolving loans from the Fed."
Notice that this $16.1 trillion loan was "secret." Of course, some of us read about it back then, so it was not a secret. At the time, this figure was more than the US federal debt. What did all that money do? Supposedly it was to keep the European banks solvent, especially Deutsche Bank. How successful was that? Was $350 billion just a stop-gap measure?
CancelMyCard June 3, 2019 at 11:08 am #
". . . better look for a place on the margins as far from the emerging economic black hole as possible."
And where do you suggest that place would be, Jim?
Upstate New York, maybe?
James Howard Kunstler June 3, 2019 at 11:17 am #
That'd be a good start… — JHK
Mountain gal June 6, 2019 at 3:15 am #
What do you think about the mountains of Western North Carolina? I hate snow and cold!
Jeremy June 3, 2019 at 11:55 am #
A quiet corner of Devon is even better ;-))
Majella June 3, 2019 at 6:59 pm #
Deepest, darkest New Zealand…and you don't HAVE to be a billionaire…the whole country is a 'bunker' against the future shitstorm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand
TraffickingInDivinity June 3, 2019 at 11:46 am #
Venuspluto76,
Excellent point! Both sides complain when they are out of power.
Epicur June 4, 2019 at 7:52 am #
"It occurred to me recently that there's a weird parallelism between the Republicans and the Democrats:…"
Most of the difference is in who's nest gets feathered.
The Dems want to lavish money on urban doo-dads like public transport and white elephantine school systems while the Repubs want vast exurban "growth" that flows to a wide range of contractors and developers.
"Everybody" knows we "need" infrastructure spending, the fight is about who gets to dip into the sluice while the money flows by.
Le Chatelier's law is for me Holy Writ: "A system under stress reacts in a direction to relieve the stress." Eventually the only way for the system to react will be by lowering the population – and it's obvious that we don't have the ability to do that voluntarily.
"who's" – gee whiz
Elrond Hubbard June 3, 2019 at 10:12 am #
Hillary Clinton Testing Hollywood Waters With Planned Production Company & Studio Deal
https://deadline.com/2019/05/hillary-clinton-hollywood-production-deal-chelsea-1202624556/
"Former senator, U.S. Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump, has now turned her ambitions toward Hollywood.
"Clinton is taking a page out of both ex-Celebrity Apprentice host Trump and her old boss Barack Obama's respective books and attempting to partner up with Tinseltown, Deadline has confirmed. She and her daughter Chelsea Clinton are looking to put together a production company and a deal similar to what Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions inked with Netflix last year.
"'Hillary is still very popular out here and there's been conversations with several studios and streamers about working on projects together,' a top-tier executive said Thursday of the situation, emphasizing that nothing had been cast in stone at this point.
"As interest on the other side of the table has already shown, it shouldn't be that hard for Murphy Brown and Madam Secretary cameo-ing Hillary Clinton to pull this off. With strong connections to CEOs and executives through decades on the Hollywood fundraising circuit, the two-time Oval Office seeker is said to be thinking big picture in a financed slate that would spotlight female-centric stories and projects."
Anyone for advance tickets?
I am so fucking glad I don't live in sunny California!
I'm told it never rains there… but it pours, man, it pours.
debt June 4, 2019 at 2:29 am #
It's a big place. Best to stay away from big metro areas.
malthuss June 3, 2019 at 10:21 am #
She is very ill.
The coughing, the spasms, falling down indicate this fact.
Yes, she looks like death warmed over of late.
No worries. Her reservation in Hell's Half Acres is paid in full. She'll make a fine addition to the neighborhood. Probably even a stellar ward chief.
Yes, she'll be inducted into the Hell's Angels – the real ones.
Tickets hell!!! I wanna write the freakin' scripts!!!
Q. Shtik June 3, 2019 at 11:46 am #
nothing had been cast in stone – Elrond
This reminds me of a mixed metaphor I love, namely, rocket surgery. Metals, like iron, are cast. Stone is carved.
Ol' Scratch June 3, 2019 at 1:01 pm #
LOL! I catch myself almost using that one A LOT!
nkonyaman June 3, 2019 at 4:07 pm #
Hmm, rocket science — OK; brain surgery — OK; brain science — OK; rocket surgery — mixed metaphor
..or 'set in stone' is more common…
ZrCrypDiK June 5, 2019 at 10:57 am #
I believe even the dumb @$$ retards can figure that 1 out – iron – forged, stone – carved. COME ON MAN!!!
lbs June 3, 2019 at 12:50 pm #
I'd advise Hillary not to quit her day job, but I don't believe she has one.
zetatai June 3, 2019 at 5:28 pm #
Job? Early, late, eternal retirement … aka, The Clinton Foundation!
Exceptional entertainment: https://www.clintonfoundation.org
Exscotticus June 3, 2019 at 3:37 pm #
Hey Hillary: cankles.com is yours for the taking…
Neon Vincent June 3, 2019 at 10:13 am #
The trade wars are having economic effects on all levels. On the macro level, experts on CNBC say tariffs on Chinese goods will reduce GDP and cause inflation. That didn't animate my readers much. Instead, they were more concerned that
tariffs on Chinese imports will prompt Dollar Tree to raise prices. That hit them directly in their wallets and they were upset!
KarlDehrmann June 3, 2019 at 10:15 am #
The signs are all starting to point to recession. With the current debt levels and ongoing trade wars, I'm not sure the Fed's hot money is going to keep the party going this time. I doubt it all comes down at once, but I expect the next economic downturn to be the first significant "step down" in living standards on our way to collapse. Long Emergency, indeed.
Hot $
fake $
Yet another great summation of the current state of affairs, Jim. Not sure "last man standing" is a title anyone will want to hold this time around, since it will also equate to the moniker "last greatest fool."
thenuttyneutron June 3, 2019 at 10:22 am #
The debt is only part of the problem. I am looking at Deutsche Bank's price right now at $6.66 USD per share. Their derivative exposure is larger than the German economy! Will this be the spark that triggers a series of events that lead to bail-ins?
I am debt free with a lot of cash after selling my house last March. I am scared that my money may become worthless as the next rounds of QE begin. I sure as hell can't afford a house outright so I only have the choice of loosing it all if I can't make the payment on a new house or losing it all to inflation. I might be better off betting it all at a roulette table!
As you correctly noted, better to be long in hard assets right now. Realizing that even those can certainly be stolen easily enough as well. But carrying a mortgage might not be all that risky either, as if the dollar collapses altogether repossession will be pointless, especially if the bank holding the note is out of business as well. Certainly won't have to worry about your phony "credit rating" either way.
lateStarter June 3, 2019 at 10:46 am #
Have you considered moving and buying a cheaper house with property that would still leave you with some cash on hand for day to day needs? Consider yourself lucky that you sold your current house before the next crash. Rather than sit and wait for upcoming bargains in your current area, try to move to someplace simpler with a possible future.
Granted, I don't know where you are now. Don't wait too long though. I suspect people with money in the bank are going to be in for a surprise soon. As Scratch suggested, hard -assets. But good to have 6 months of expenses covered if possible. I try to keep 1 or 2 months worth of cash at home just to avoid any short-term panic.
coincidence?
cohen cidence?
Like the price of the first 'apple'
elysianfield June 3, 2019 at 12:18 pm #
"I am debt free with a lot of cash after selling my house last March. I am scared that my money may become worthless as the next rounds of QE begin. "
TNN,
You are correct in your concern.
I would suggest rural property…New York State perhaps.
The Pacific Northwest is a virtual hell hole…avoid it…
Just kidding…but don't tell your friends.
thenuttyneutron June 3, 2019 at 2:19 pm #
I interviewed for Nuscale in 2011. I liked western Oregon.
The sad part about selling my house is how much I liked it and the area it was in. It was 200 yards from Lake Erie in NW Ohio. I had to jump from my old job at a nuke power plant that was losing money. Ironically the State of Ohio pushed a bill through the house giving the two nukes in Ogio a lifeline to the tune of about $200 million a year. The $200 million will be split between the only two nuke plants in Ohio. I may have been spooked to easily!
I am glad that I left when I did because my current employer has had a hiring freeze in place since 2015. I made it in with only weeks to spare.
The nuke industry is in a contraction in part because of the "cheap gas" being sold by the frackers. In a way it is not such a bad thing. I never liked LWR technology. The Gen 4 designs are almost complete. I just hope we have enough capital to actually build them because we are going to need them.
I am not in a position to relocate to a better place now because I currently have a job that I like and pays a decent wage. The money is not as good as it used to be in Ohio but I no longer work a god awful rotating shift work schedule.
Sam Stone June 3, 2019 at 12:45 pm #
Get yourself a good RV, a 12 gauge, and safe stuffed with gold.
And bury the Safe, getting the Treasure Map tatooed on your chest. Buy a parrot and give it clues as well.
Urinthe Village June 4, 2019 at 1:49 pm #
The RV, the shotgun and the safe are all toast when the local warlords (likely the remnant of the local constabulary) decide they need them more than you do. They will still have stores of full auto carbines, shotguns, pistols, flash-bangs, tear gas, tire strips and unlimited ammo as well as APC's. Preparing as an individual is a pipe dream.
SpeedyBB June 3, 2019 at 10:55 pm #
Nuttsy:
If any of my Indonesian students ask me I suggest holding cash assets in Norwegian krona. Extremely stable nation / society of under 10 million, nearly a trillion dollars in the bank. I don't see any downside.
Except one would have to deal with the morose Norwegians and maybe spend time in that dank, gloomy environment.
(I kid, Sid.)
elysianfield June 5, 2019 at 10:51 am #
"If any of my Indonesian students ask me I suggest holding cash assets in Norwegian krona"
Speedy,
I got ya covered…I am currently waiting for a BIG check from a Nigerian I have been corresponding with….
Robert White June 3, 2019 at 10:33 am #
I watched Nixon close the gold window with my Chartered Accountant father in 1971. After questioning the logic of moving from a gold backed dollar to an oil-backed dollar my CA father assured me that when the oil ran out the USA imprimatur and sovereign assets would guarantee the soundness of money in the future. I remember looking at my CA father and wondering how he and Nixon could be so sure of themselves on the calculus over my lifetime of existence?
I knew that Nixon was not thinking of my future and I knew that my father was just going along with the industry recommendation at the time. In brief, at the age of 11 in 1971 August I realized that finance experts like my father had no real understanding of engineering proper or assets if they backstopped fiat with a commodity that would most assuredly run out of peak supply somewhere along the timeline of my life but certainly not their lives.
Suffice to say that at the ripe old age of 11 I, for one, realized that Tricky Dick was sure selling a global boondoggle that would have to be addressed somewhere along the timeline of my life.
And at the ripe young age of just under 60 I can now assert with certainty that the problems with the world reserve currency is that it is not backed by the age old standard of precious metal backing that made money universally trusted. Today money is merely a short-term vehicle for asset accumulation other than fiat USD as it is worthless as a savings tool given bank rates of interest on savings accounts.
Today, short-termism reigns supreme and long term planning has been replaced by new deals that are really just the same as the old deals but with a different label & date affixed.
It's like the end game on Monopoly where the utilities are collecting all the rentier income for the private investor class that the utilities were not built for as they were all built for public use at not-for-profit prices. Only after Nixon commoditized fiat by backing USD with oil did we evidence a full commoditization of the public utilities industries.
ENRON & Jeffrey Skilling were essentially the canaries in the coal mine. And Skilling was just released from prison a number of months back.
robert magill June 3, 2019 at 11:09 am #
AS I recall Nixon promised that the dollar would be backed by "the full faith and confidence of the United States Government". So much for that.
This is a good observation about why the current culture is so short term. Hard to find anything well made now. If one of my tools made in 50's or before finally breaks, lucky if the replacement makes if a year or 2 and my usage is down now and way down from father or grandfather. Yea, the technology is better and much more flashy but the craftsmanship is very lacking. Also the thinking and reasoning today is, well, best to not point out to the nit wits than there wits are lacking.
CTD (cheaper than china) might be behind the current scuffle.
CTC (cheaper than china) darn typos
Robert White June 3, 2019 at 12:13 pm #
I'm a Tool & Die Maker [Mechanical Engineering Technician] and can assure you that high speed precision machining and System International Measurement Standards are providing top notch engineering for the current tool making industry all over the world.
China produces some very fine craftsmanship these days and American made Snap-On tools are every bit as good or better than they were in the 50s.
The best tools out of the 50s were German. Second best was the USA made stuff but even that was excellent. The mythology that China produces garbage mass production is factually wrong today. China's mass production capability & quality control is world class today.
When people advocate for repatriation of America's manufacturing base & sector it is mostly for infrastructure purposes and employment purposes as that relates to middle class standards of living. Since Wall Street micromanaged America's manufacturing sector to the netherworld of China we have seen wages stagnate & decline YoY.
Repatriation of the whole manufacturing employment sector is necessary for all of us and our supporting infrastructure of government.
A government without a strong unified manufacturing sector is a government in decline that is headed for obscurity.
China will blow the doors off of the USA if the War Measures Act is ever redeployed in society following incidents that might lead to hot war. At this juncture in time it is now obvious to most that America must bring back a healthy & prosperous manufacturing industry unless the powers that be want to buy all of their manufactured goods from China amidst a cold war environment or a hot war environment.
Trump spells hot war with his precursor trade wars which is really nothing qualitatively different from Smoot-Hawley Act of the dirty thirties.
P.S. If you want vintage well made tools just start hitting the Flea Markets on weekends as they are jam packed with the vintage tools of the 50s & 60s now that the boomer generation is hitting retirement phase and their parents have mostly all taken dirt naps collectively.
After I graduated from Tool & Die Making in college I realized that North American manufacturing was defunct given Wall Street's wholesale slaughter of US manufacturing during the Reagan Revolution of Neoliberalism & Greenspan Put era of asset inflation along with debt accumulation. I then enrolled in university and eventually graduated with a B.A. Honours in Experimental Psychology only to find that without a PhD I would always be indentured into servitude of intractable debt.
Not is all bad though. I make wooden Mason's hammers on my wood lathe in spare time and the odd jigs & fixtures too. Working with metal was pretty dangerous anyways so at least I saved my hands & fingers from high production manufacturing environment.
You're missing the point(s). America should strive to be independent as much as possible, making all of our essentials. Beyond self sufficiency, it helps with the Unemployment problem. And if you believe in the Long Emergency, then you should consider the distances involved. We don't want to be caught with a lessened capacity if all this was to collapse quickly.
Robert White June 3, 2019 at 1:03 pm #
I'm suggesting that it would be best if America repatriated the whole manufacturing industry that they allowed Wall Street to offshore in the 80s under Reagan's Trickledown Economic devolution.
Thermodynamic efficiency is the only way to make a buck with the least inefficiency being the bang for the buck that gets us from point A to point B.
Additionally, we have already collapsed outright and we are only running on fumes now.
Trump does not produce enough gas to propel the Western Empire of Banking or enough to even fire up the global engines of business that run economies.
Janos Skorenzy June 3, 2019 at 3:26 pm #
Thanks. Marxism is against Nation though. That's why they hate the tariff. But good on you if you kick that shit to the curb.
I am a Grump Marxist for life, Janos. I will only kick Capitalism to the curb and not Marxism or Communism.
As resident pinko Commie bastard I reserve the right to advocate for the pinkos in China & Russian Federation.
Thank you, thank you very much.
Janos Skorenzy June 4, 2019 at 12:10 am #
You're a Globalist then – and the Enemy of the People of any and all Nations.
GreenAlba June 5, 2019 at 8:14 am #
Janos
"And if you believe in the Long Emergency, then you should consider the distances involved. "
Ah, at last, someone who understands that the UK cultivating trading arrangements with the US and countries even further away, rather than trading with countries on its doorstep is a foolish, regrettable and entirely predictable consequence of Brexit. Thank you.
Q. Shtik June 3, 2019 at 4:26 pm #
graduated with a B.A. Honours in Experimental Psychology – R. White
No offence but, you don't often see signs in store windows along Main Street that say Wanted: Experimental Psychologist. It's just like my daughter's degree: You never see an ad for an expert in Women's Studies.
I was asked to attend graduate school by the director of Clinical Studies at the University of Hawaii but I had to decline due to the $200,000.00 USD attending costs associated with specialization for a very marketable PhD in Clinical Studies plus a Counselling designation in Clinical Psychology.
If I had approached a bank for a $200k loan to attend UofH I might have made it to the wealth transferring class of .01%.
My degree is utilitarian and can be farmed out in various areas of real use to government & business/finance.
I'm just not a successful individual, yet.
I figure I still have 25 years to succeed in life and then it's pretty much dirt nap time because Rock & Roll would not want me to live much past that age, methinks.
You try and find Obama's academic records. That would be a true service to humanity. No one remembers him. The Conspiracy was so deep that he hardly ever had to even show up for classes.
https://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/obamas-sealed-records/
I got nothing against your daughter, but a worthless degree that cost $XX,XXX++ is just that – a worthless degree (accredited?). Let me also state I know someone who got a sociology degree that is basically no different than doing volunteer work. No money in worthless degrees *UNLESS* you get tenured. Otherwise, well – minimum wage as an adjunct (If'n yer lucky)!!!
fugeguy June 5, 2019 at 1:14 pm #
So I would agree that China has some areas that are as a good as anyone. No doubt.
But they still manufacture a lot of junk and even dangerous products.
There still are cultural issues that result in large quality variances.
And this is not an opinion. I have seen the empirical and statistical evidence/ data.
"my CA father assured me that when the oil ran out the USA imprimatur and sovereign assets would guarantee the soundness of money in the future."
RW,
And damned if he wasn't right. Intelligent man.
Dear old dad was intelligent but not in terms of engineering or Empiricism proper. Sovereign nations cannot utilize their own imprimatur to print money like the drunken sailors at the Federal Reserve do so that deficits don't matter and everyone is supposed to be a religious Unitarian when it comes to America and reserve currency status. When America was gold-backed currency it was nothing special compared to other sovereign nations that were gold-backed but when America stole world reserve currency status with the petro-dollar USD it because hegemonic totalitarianism and pitted America against every other country in the entire world for scarce resources & diminishing returns on investment that were not protected by USD supremacy as the world reserve currency.
My father failed to see that good engineers don't build structures upon shifting substrates of financial sand. I never failed to notice that good engineering was never part of the Western Banking Empire as it can be fully characterized as a fraud & money-pump charade of little men that hide behind curtains.
Mr. White: "My father failed to see that good engineers don't build structures upon shifting substrates of financial sand."
Now how about that Millennium Tower in San Fran, with its multi-million-dollar view condos? They didn't bother to go down to bedrock. Now she leans.
Mr. Nixon's escape from the dollar gold standard
That was a DEFAULT on US debt. Nothing else. To everyone but the Murkin public.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
My prize! My prize! I want my prize!
Go ahead and get you a couple of them fine plump German brats off the grill and plop a big pile of sauerkraut, mustard, and mayo on 'em. Brötchen's and light beer optional of course, but keep an eye on them carbs so they don't get ya!
K-Dog June 3, 2019 at 11:05 am #
Yes Yes!
Autocannibalism? For shame, O'Scratch.
Sam Stone June 3, 2019 at 1:03 pm #
I'll take a curry wurst and an ice cold Bischoff Bier bitte. I'd give my left nut for a decent brochen. NYC or other large metro areas may have specialty bakeries that serve fresh brotchen but here in the hinterlands "Wonder Bread" is all there is.
Damn forgot who I was talking to. Forget that bit about trading my left nut. Just a joke. Besides the dangling pair aren't what they were 40 years ago so just one wouldn't be worth anything to anyone. Guess I'm stuck with Wonder Bread.
Bischoff Bier? Sounds like you've been down Rheinland-Pfalz way sometime in your travels. Good stuff! True to my Deutsche heritage, I tried my best to drink them dry a few decades back. Couldn't quite git 'er done, though.
Nightowl June 4, 2019 at 4:38 am #
There is no good beer in Rheinland-Pfalz and the Brötchen here are largely pumped out by Backwerk and other chains these days.
If you want good beer and bread, you need to be south of Franken at the least. IMO of course 🙂
Given that the world economy is a bit dicky at present, what with peak oil and global warming and all, I wonder how smart it is to start trade and tariff wars?
As a governor pointed out, Trump has a history of playing with fire, but this is diddling a live hand grenade.
It depends on how long negotiations go on and how many diplomats stay overnight on Trump properties. By low sell high or own the store.
Thank you, K-dog. Not used to thinking that way. I'll try to correct that.
If you own hotels you make money by renting rooms to people who attend conferences and such things. Promotion of such events is part of your business. The Trumpster was never sure he would win the election despite all his bluster; so in no way was he prepared to be national top dog. He thinks he is running a hotel so he promotes spectacle to bring in business and he will rent a room to anybody.
sauerkraut June 3, 2019 at 12:07 pm #
Duly noted.
"Thou shalt not steal." Too simple.
Nor covet as coveting leads to stealing. And tempt not thy brother by keeping your goods in plain sight. Lock them up in barns and warehouses. And keep your Maidservant hidden and if she must go out, make sure she covers herself well.
FincaInTheMountains June 3, 2019 at 10:52 am #
Why nobody is asking a simple question: which companies in the United States are benefiting most from the huge trade deficit with China and what is their political and ideological affiliation?
That's when you need to start to understand the question of "Trade War with China".
Like the former NAFTA agreement, the most of the money flow from trade with China is currently diverted to the businesses, associated with the Deep State of Hillary Clinton, bypassing the budget of the American Official State (in form of tariffs, for example)
Trump can't tolerate supplying his worst enemies with resources, necessary to wage war against him and the American people.
War with China = War with Bastinada + Vanguard.
volodya June 3, 2019 at 11:06 am #
The difference now is that only 10 percent of the companies producing it make a red cent. For the rest, the main result is just more and more debt, contributing to the larger global debt fiasco. – JHK
This is an example of more calories expended in the planting than calories collected in the harvesting. The calories are denominated in dollars, dollars just a book-keeping device for tracking effort spent in sucking oil out of rock.
Any peasant farmer would know the concept in his bones because for him the consequence is starvation. But high finance types on Wall Street have no real clue.
"Learn to code" is the sneer delivered by the – cough – creative class to America's Deplorables. But this comes from people practiced in defying reality and you can defy reality for only so long.
Thrift is no longer a behavior practiced by the post-modern hedonist and pretty much gets laughed at as something only for grannies in thread-bare sweaters that bore anyone within earshot with recollections of the the drone of the Heinkels and that nice young uniformed man that promised to marry her on his return. If I was a betting man I would bet that laughter will become the attitude to the idea of promptness in paying interest on government or corporate bonds. Like the nice young man that never came back, promptness will go missing in action.
And why not? Defiance of reality is what Wall Street does. But not only Wall Street. It's a mental illness that's wide-spread. How many times have we heard that debt doesn't matter, and that deficits are irrelevant?
Learn to code? Learn to code my ass. When the wheels come off because of these excursions into stark lunacy it'll be the self-admiring "creative class" learning to farm, at which 90% of them will fail. Miserably.
Asceticism used to be the finance rule only to be replaced by a zeitgeist of Hedonism which tends to follow the free market hypothesis of Cocaine & Hookers on Wall Street.
There is more to life than Cocaine & Hookers, methinks.
I agree again but with another caveat.
Everybody should snort the stuff off a hookers behind at least once. One must live a little, especially while young.
Please forgive me 😉
It's illustrative that for all or at least most of the major auto makers now, financing is far and away their major profit center. Honest "work" no longer pays the bills in almost any field of endeavor.
JohnAZ June 3, 2019 at 11:51 am #
Wealth no longer represents man hours of labor.
Only faith in the system.
Faith in the societal ability to pay debt is what keeps it going.
Oil specifically is a good example. We are willing to write off the oil debt to keep getting our gas tanks filled. Faith is derived from necessity. What will change this? Supply shocks as supply sources get hit with diminishing returns.
Oil has already risen fro less than $10 a barrel to $50-70 in the last forty years. It will continue. Is there a breaking point or does the frog slowly boil to death?
Ol' Scratch June 3, 2019 at 12:58 pm #
As Gail Tverberg harps on constantly over on her blog Our Finite World, oil can only be produced within a fairly narrow price range, as it has to be both cheap enough to be affordable for consumers and industry alike, while still being priced high enough to to be profitable to discover and produce, keeping in mind that accumulating debt overhangs from previous production efforts, absent additional government subsidies, bailouts, or debt reorganization through bankruptcy, must be accounted for as well. The pattern in which this plays out over the long term is as a periodic whipsawing between the two price/demand/production extremes, with the frequency of those intervals generally indicating the current stress levels on the system. We've been in a rather long period of relative stability for the past ten years or so, but of course we also know that government interventions in oil price markets are now the rule of the day. Such seeming stability is usually bought at a heavy price in later instability – often marked by wars! (Iran anyone?) – so we'll have to see how that turns out.
sauerkraut June 3, 2019 at 1:33 pm #
Nice summary. Where Gail and I differ is that she seems to believe in markets, while I believe in government interference.
Yep, governments like to have it both ways: preach free markets, while practicing intervention at every turn. Gail bends over backwards – often at the expense of credibility – to be strictly academic and neutral. But I think her intended audience is largely academic, although I doubt she's reaching many of them either.
"anyone within earshot with recollections of the the drone of the Heinkels …"
Volodya,
volodya June 3, 2019 at 12:43 pm #
Half the nit-wits that finish high school think that the WW2 dust-up was the US allied with Germany against Russia.
On college campuses they say "fascist" and "nazi" having no clue what either actually was.
Yes, but that's no more crazy than what actually did happen. You folks are running into the negative side or Law of Diminishing Returns now on your program to dumb down America. It obviously worked, but how can you work with people this dumb?
Since everyone's a Nazi, no one is a Nazi or the sheeple even have the temerity to call Bibi and the Gang, Nazis since they fit the all encompassing criterion, the dragon's teeth that you sowed with such gleeful abandon.
Actually, that's not all that far from the truth. There were significant elements in the US – certainly Dulles and all of his minions – and GB camps who viewed the USSR and Stalin as the far greater threat. Unfortunately young Master Adolph went completely off the reservation and had to be spanked hard, especially after he committed the massive PR faux pas of getting caught with all those nasty extermination camps, which completely upset their immediate plans for implementing the Western New World Order in the wake of WWI. To their great surprise, debt peonage – of countries, of institutions, and of people – didn't work any better then than it's working out now. I wonder how much carnage we'll have to endure this time to relearn that lesson once more?
That's what I'm wondering too. How much worse will World War Three be in comparison with WW2 when it comes to wrecking everything in sight and destroying much beloved historically significant architecture all over Europe where most of the historically significant buildings are?
We have already evidenced what America did with the twin towers so we know all that NYC stuff must be expendable in the eyes of the US MIC, eh.
Martial Law will be declared before any war breaks out.
Twin Towers = aluminum siding joint. No one seems to remember all the hatred generated toward those monstrous monuments to the New Brutalism around 1969, particularly the citizens of lower Manhattan who would lose hours of sunlight every winter morning.
Not to mention the fact they were ucking fugly.
(Curious as well that when a B-25 ran into the 1930s-built Empire State Building it barely rattled the windows, while the WTC did what Dan Rather blurted out was "…almost like a controlled demolition…" when those [admittedly heavier and quicker] jetliners ran into them.)
More than a few serious writers have contended that we've been fighting WWIII since the end of WWII, and at the very least since 9-11. The US GWoT is basically an open-ended US Declaration of War on anything and everything, so there's no doubt whatsoever who the primary antagonist is this time, official DC's feeble protestations of "we was attacked" notwithstanding.
Personally, I'd date the beginning of hostilities to the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the US became completely mentally unhinged with the fall of its sole "mortal enemy" in which it had invested so much blood, treasure, and mental and psychological energy in vilifying during the post-war period. There's good historical evidence that nation states who aspire to become global hegemonic empires simply go mad from the effort, and the US is currently providing a text book example of that theory.
abbybwood June 3, 2019 at 2:45 pm #
Saw this film recently about a young city couple buying a farm near Moorpark, California. "The Biggest Little Farm":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8
Farmer McGregor June 3, 2019 at 4:29 pm #
Gotta comment here, Abby. Also saw the movie; it is a fun, heartwarming visual spectacle (the dude was a wildlife photographer, you know) with a lot of simplistic explanations of the roles of biodiversity and natural systems harmonized with agricultural productivity. It is also a contrived story that required some millions of dollars to put together — building a pond, large irrigation infrastructure, thousands of fruit trees, massive labor inputs not possible with just a handful of volunteers or interns…
It's a nice feel-good story with some honest portrayals of hardships like livestock losses due to predators, though it was obvious to me that some of those losses were as much a product of bad management as they were to the presence of coyotes. Very enjoyable flick, just not realistic for anyone actually doing this stuff.
wm5135 June 3, 2019 at 11:07 am #
"The USA-China romance was bound to end in divorce,……." JHK
" Everybody's broke, one way or another, even though they are up to their eyeballs in products designed to fall apart in a few years." JHK
1. China is busy filing their papers with the court of international opinion and compromise is not on the table. China has also noticed that a carrier group is a target and not a threat. There will be no shared custody either, Taiwan is Chinese and that is the end of the discussion.
2. The project on my desk at the moment is the modification of a building- Business General- into a self-storage facility. The owner has no hopes of another tenant and is expanding into a growth market.
"All that is a comfort to simpletons" JHK – those paying rent to store possesions that have no value and no use.
Pucker June 3, 2019 at 11:07 am #
What is this about?: "…while growing numbers of Christians compare our times to that of the late Roman Empire and ponder a fundamental withdrawal from wider American society into updated forms of Benedictine monastic communities. "
"Today, some 70 percent of Americans believe that their country is moving in the wrong direction, and half the country thinks its best days are behind it. Most believe that their children will be less prosperous and have fewer opportunities than previous generations. Every institution of government shows declining levels of public trust by the citizenry, and deep cynicism toward politics is reflected in an uprising on all sides of the political spectrum against political and economic elites. Elections, once regarded as well-orchestrated performances meant to convey legitimacy to liberal democracy, are increasingly regarded as evidence of an impregnably rigged and corrupt system. It is evident to all that the political system is broken and social fabric is fraying, particularly as a growing gap increases between wealthy haves and left-behind have-nots, a hostile divide widens between faithful and secular peoples, and deep disagreement persists over America's role in the world. Wealthy Americans continue to gravitate to gated enclaves in and around select cities, while growing numbers of Christians compare our times to that of the late Roman Empire and ponder a fundamental withdrawal from wider American society into updated forms of Benedictine monastic communities. The signs of the times suggest that much is wrong with America. A growing chorus of voices even warn that we may be witnessing the end of the Republic unfolding before our eyes, with some yet-unnamed regime in the midst of taking its place. Nearly every one of the promises that were made by the architects and creators of liberalism has been shattered. The liberal state expands to control nearly every aspect of life while citizens regard government as a distant and uncontrollable power, one that only extends their sense of powerlessness by relentlessly advancing the project of "globalization." The only rights that seem secure today belong to those with sufficient wealth and position to protect them, and their autonomy—including rights of property, the franchise and its concomitant control over representative institutions, religious liberty, free speech, and security in one's papers and abode—is increasingly compromised by legal intent or technological fait accompli. The economy favors a new "meritocracy" that perpetuates its advantages through generational succession, shored up by an educational system that relentlessly sifts winners from losers. A growing distance between liberalism's claims and its actuality increasingly spurs doubts about those claims rather than engendering trust that the gap will be narrowed. Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded. As liberalism has "become more fully itself," as its inner logic has become more evident and its self-contradictions manifest, it has generated pathologies that are at once deformations of its claims yet realizations of liberal ideology. A political philosophy that was launched to foster greater equity, defend a pluralist tapestry of different cultures and beliefs, protect human dignity, and, of course, expand liberty, in practice generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation, and undermines freedom. Its success can be measured by its achievement of the opposite of what we have believed it would achieve. Rather than seeing the accumulating catastrophe as evidence of our failure to live up to liberalism's ideals, we need rather to see clearly that the ruins it has produced are the signs of its very success. To call for the cures of liberalism's ills by applying more liberal measures is tantamount to throwing gas on a raging fire. It will only deepen our political, social, economic, and moral crisis."
Patrick J. Deneen
Why Liberalism Failed
Which Roman Empire are you talking about?
State called Byzantium never existed, from the word at all.
The Eastern Roman Empire was called Byzantium by a German monk in the 17th century, so that everything connected with the Eastern Roman Empire, and this was a huge territory all the way to the Dniester plus Crimea, would not be connected with Rome.
"Byzantium (/b??zænti?m, -??m/ or Byzantion; Ancient Greek: ?????????, Byzántion) was an ancient Greek colony in early antiquity that later became Constantinople, and then Istanbul. The Greek term Byzantium (or Byzantion) continued to be used as a name of Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire, even though it only referred to the empire's capital.[1][2] Byzantium was colonized by the Greeks from Megara in 657 BC, and remained primarily Greek-speaking until its fall in 1453 AD.[3]"
Looks like a great book. The first two Amazon reviews were even better.
"Libralism has become laser focused on ending oppression. But how was this to be achieved? Classical liberalism envisioned a world run by markets where our only limitations were of our own making. Progressive liberals saw a powerful benevolent state ready to cripple the enslavers and deliver everybody to themselves. Family, propriety, dignity, anatomy, environment, faith – all these were simply tools of oppression to be overcome by the means of market or state; at least that is Deenan's contention.
This book could be called "In Defense of Culture". That might even be better – a full throated clamoring for us all to remember that we are not place-less, sex-less, past-less, future-less entities. We did not arrive to planet earth, grown in a plastic bag by scientists for use of the elites, as is so often portrayed in the new post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies; our brains empty though our bodies are fully formed."
"By "liberalism," Deneen means the philosophy of the Enlightenment, built on the core idea of maximizing human liberty, with its ultimate philosophical roots in Francis Bacon, adapted by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and mediated through John Stuart Mill. Deneen begins with his central claim—that liberalism is reaching its end, because it was a beautiful-seeming thing, built on lies. Liberalism is like the Queen in Snow White, a mortal who over time has become ugly, but who retains the outward form of beauty through a blend of careful management and acts of evil. But as with other ideologies, such as communism, it must fail, because it denies human nature, and it loses legitimacy as the resulting gaps between its claims and the reality of lived human experience become ever more visible. In the end, the Queen, and all ideologies, are exposed for what they are, and die.
The failure of this liberalism is not the failure of today's political liberals, or what might generally be called progressives. Deneen ascribes blame for the rise and fall of liberalism equally to both progressives and to most American conservatives, what are sometimes called classical liberals. Both liberals and such conservatives pursue autonomic individualism while ignoring the deeper reality that such overemphasis on individualism is anti-human and doomed to failure. The failures of liberalism are failures of the state and the market, which are intertwined, not opposed, and the resulting plant is watered equally by conservatives and liberals. There is no Jack cutting at the base of this beanstalk; when it falls, it will be because it has rotted from within."
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Liberalism-Failed-Politics-Culture/dp/0300223447
Yes, important. Even "conservatives" are Liberals. Only the very earliest ones like Burke were anything different. And only a powerful morality and a deep knowledge of human nature can protect the good aspects of Liberalism against itself. All the more needed in a post Christian society – and all the less likely to occur. Basically a Culture needs a religion. Profound soul searching apart from any Tradition is only for the very, very few.
Agreed. A culture must believe in something larger than itself and that thing must be unifying, not atomizing, as modern Liberalism aspires to be. Individual wealth accumulation and personal glorification are leading to the downfall of the west. Decadence is our highest aspiration these days. Even the dirt poor aspire to it now.
If is not a no-fault divorce 'constructive abandonment' or a failure to perform marital relations should fill in the blank.
SoftStarLight, regarding your reply to me last week, that's just it, what we've got isn't education but rather its opposite. People who have a high school diploma have gone to school for thirteen years including kindergarten and yet are considered uneducated. How can that possibly be? It's largely true given rampant underachievement, but given the vast expenditure of time and money, how is such a result possible? What we have here is a colossal failure by not only the educational establishment but also parents. How can so many people have failed so miserably? Given the gigantic sums pissed away on college, how can it be that grads are such knowledge-less, clueless, witless ninnies, especially in the arts and humanities? And you ask, what good is it to write a great essay and have no idea as to live in the real world? The answer is none whatsoever.
College has morphed into a rather expensive, extended baby sitting service, as the kids are no longer grown up by the end of high school, assuming they even make it that far. On the bright side, they've got social media to fall back on these days, so why worry about anything else? With any luck, they'll either fall victim to or be an active participant in a mass shooting, thus giving their short, pitiful lives some semblance of meaning.
malthuss June 3, 2019 at 1:26 pm #
196—college in USA.
Mostly white males.
IQ–averaged 110, from what I read.
then the 60s-70s and'studies' and 'remedial' [as in cant keep up].
Quick! Insure you kids while they're still cheap!
Americans love the "light" state of mind with a passion. The realization was forced on me again watching people go a Sports even dressed in the jerseys of "their" team. This uniformity or participation mystique takes the place of real civil society and getting along with others when it comes to serious business.
No serious thoughts can be retained by people who loves distraction and silliness this much. Such things are downers and are deleted from consciousness or only retained long enough to get a "grade" or a promotion or whatever.
sports and watching them are about ADRENALINE.
The rush of it. winning. fighting.
modern day gladiators.
That I could get into. I'd much rather watch people kill each other, then feel guilty and sordid, and then reject the whole thing. These people are lukewarm and will be spewed out (Christ). Since it's so "harmless" they never get that precious psychic correction. So they go to perdition skipping, painting their faces, and wearing the names and numbers of other men on their bloated bodies.
"….a culture and a political system seemingly bent on suicide."
During my recent flight to Chicago, I flew first class. In the first class cabin was a gay black male steward who had a curious name that sounded like "Cleetus" which was bizarre because I had always thought that only white rednecks had names like "Cleetus" and "Cooter" or "Billy Bob".
In any case, the gay black steward evinced an obvious antipathy towards serving the white passengers. After eating some salty almonds, I asked Clietus to make me some hot English breakfast tea to quench my first. Begrudgingly, Clietus went to prepare my cup of tea during which I saw him sneeze into his hands and then without washing his hands he put his hands all over the tea bag and the cup. Clietus placed the cup of tea on my tray, but I didn't touch the cup. Lots of angst in the society.
https://nypost.com/2019/06/02/dewayne-craddock-had-been-getting-violent-with-co-workers-before-virginia-beach-shooting-report/
Pucker June 3, 2019 at 12:00 pm #
In one of the "Harold Head" 1970's hippie comic book series, Harold got a service job as a bartender. Harold resented having to serve the customers. One customer who Harold particularly resented came to the bar one day, and Harold mixed the bloke's drink using Harold's penis as a "Swizzle Stick". One frame of the comic strip showed Harold's cock in the high ball glass being shaken vigorously. Too bad that Hollywood can't make Harold Head movies rather than those crappy super Hero movies.
Puck,
When eating a meal on duty and in Uniform, especially in a "diverse" setting, we would not eat where we could not view the meal being prepared.
Majella June 3, 2019 at 11:35 pm #
Ah, "Harold Head"..!
I also just recently found a solitary "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" in the dark recesses of the basement. What a blast.
Does anyone recall the one-page gag about the drunk with the false teeth and one false eye, bumming drinks from a pretty thick barman? (And if you do, was it HH or FFFB?)
Tate June 3, 2019 at 12:41 pm #
If you flew 1st class & received that level of service, you should lodge a complaint against Cleatus. Even though this comment section is all about the end of the world, nevertheless, standards must be preserved.
Gay Sex Guru Dan Savage told of going to the Republican Convention with a bad cold and licking as many door knobs as he could so as to spread it. His fans adore such anecdotes. Normies, Straights, Red Necks, Republicans, Whites – they deserve no mercy. They even think people who lick doorknobs are low lifes!
maybe it made them stronger?
funny aside..I was on youtube last night.
there was a talk from his? 'it gets better' channel or theme.
the guy in talk…mulatto with a coal burner mama.
Pucker
It reads as if you didn't make a complaint, either about his egregiously non-professional behavior, not the more subjective sense of 'begrudging' service.
It also implies that there were lots of 'non-white' passengers with you in first class. Were there?
Bad example, because dollars are bad faith device for tracking effort spent in oil pumping, since they are subject to political manipulation, calories are hardly that way.
Right, and it is quite simple to measure the actual calories (energy expended) to get that oil from the reluctant rock. ROEI.
The Elite are deserting the US. And taking their capital with them. Problem is there is no place to put their "wealth". Wealth is faith. Faith in the financial sector. Faith in the goodness of corporations, faith in the goodness of the value of precious metals, faith in the durability of oil production.
We are losing faith in all the above. The derivatives market rides the stock market, rides the bond market, rides the money market, rides industry and oil, that rides hard currency that rides gold and silver.
One very difficult thing to "stomach" is that you cannot eat gold and silver. Faith in all the above CAN collapse. The slow erosion of the wealth vs. debt ratio is a measure of the deterioration of faith. Debt itself needs faith that it does not matter. Faith keeps creditors holding off on calling in their debt. Destroy faith and the house of cards instantaneously falls down.
Try to visualize society without money. Without a way to reserve wealth. If enough income inequality occurs, around the world, the collapse may occur as bond holders, pension holders, 401k holders, foreign countries start to call in the cards try to to keep up their life styles.
As far as trade wars go, moot. The world is so intertwined that is one country goes, they all go. Trump is using tariffs as the only tool that exists to sway other country's attitudes on issues critical to US interests. Cowardly presidents of the past fifty years have created the trade imbalances that exist today. Trade imbalances equals debt. Who creates trade imbalances, we do. The Elite just benefit from our insistence in buying overseas products.
It will cease, and there will be no where to hide as the world economic pyramid goes down.
Like many other things, individual rights among them, wealth only has meaning inside the context of a nation state that has got functioning institutions like legislatures, regulatory agencies, impartial law courts, etc.
So, the wealthy are leaving the US. Where they gonna go? China? Wealthy Chinese are abandoning China to avoid a capricious government that doesn't hesitate to deprive people of life and liberty and property without even the fig-leaf of due process.
The EU? Makes me laugh, an organization founded in the ashes of two wars to give shape to the neo-liberal project and to recognize the pre-emptive surrender of France to Germany. Given that neo-liberalism in its essence is to make the world safe for people with money, I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering how that's possible when national leaders go out of their way to deride their own working class.
The Cayman Islands?
Cowardly presidents? And how. And idiotic too.
Trade imbalances equal debt. A cigar to you sir.
It took me a long time to see that fiat currencies, all financial instruments, and even gold/silver are not truly "wealth" at all. All are merely calls on future wealth. And that future wealth doesn't exist without fossil energy. The only real wealth in this world are land, the constantly decaying stock of tangible stuff in the built environment, and food stores.
The trouble is, titles to land only exist if governments exist to enforce title, and/or don't tax away your title. Most of the current built environment is non functional/useless without fossil fuels, and the food stores are going to be consumed pretty quickly once the trucks stop rolling. There really is no way to carry wealth through the collapse/bottleneck. Your wealth will be composed of those physical possessions you can keep hold of, your health, and your social connections. That their 401k, social security, and dollar denominated savings just "vanished" is going to be as incomprehensible to the average american as "land ownership" was to the native americans.
They should have killed the first person that planted a seed in the ground. The move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists has led us to this place…….
And such Societies are weak and will be conquered by the Agriculturalists. Just as Liberal Societies are weak and will be conquered by the Muslims.
The Indians Tribes had territories which the defended against other Tribes. They were too weak to hold them against Us – just as we are too weak to hold America against the incomers now. The moral? Strength is Virtue (from the Latin root, "vir" meaning strength) and Weakness is Vice.
KarlDehrmann June 3, 2019 at 3:30 pm #
Oh, I don't know, the Khan did okay for a while.
Jeremy June 3, 2019 at 1:35 pm #
"All are calls on future wealth".
And that, my friend, is precisely where you are wrong.
They are all calls on wealth – except Gold and silver, which are infact wealth precisely because they are NOT calls on future wealth. The energy and effort has ALREADY been expended in extracting and purifying them. Any idea how many tons of ore and KJoules of energy are needed to refine a 100 oz. bar of .999 Silver?
Hold one and you'll get to appreciate it.
I made the mistake of dumping a years salary (pre-tax) into them on Chris Martenson's recommendation back when gold was over $1500/oz and silver over $30.00/oz. They are still just tokens w/o any practical use. Houses are wealth because you can live in them, tools are wealth because you can use them in productive activities, food is wealth because you can eat it. All gold and silver can do is be exchanged for real wealth, just like the fiats. They are still just tokens, shiny rocks. In a world of starvation, who would trade food for gold? No one.
Perhaps gold and silver will have some value on the other side of the bottleneck, but during collapse, I expect them to be worth little. Food, liquor, tools and women….those will be wealth!
Gold and silver coins are markers. They represent commodities. With a pocket full of gold and silver you can shop. You can easily store your wealth with gold and silver coins. It's kinda hard to go shopping if your wealth is all liquor bottles, a Craftsmen tool kit and corn on the cob.
Yes you did buy at a bad time but hopefully you kept that gold and silver. When shtf that $1500 oz of gold could be worth a year of food or a horse and cart or a case of single malt.
We will see. I think all of you gold bugs are going to be sorely disappointed once collapse really gets rolling. I'm expecting it to be worse than most people though. Once the natural decline rates of the conventional fields (approx. 4-7% per annum) overtake the shale producers, the world economy is going to crash hard.
Much agreed, Karl.
When things go south, I simply cannot see me taking gold or silver in exchange for my food products. Gasoline or diesel fuel, firewood, hay, etc., totally yes. Good work boots, HELL yes!
Pieces of useless metal, not so much.
Farmer M, Of course you will take gold and silver for your goods. You'd be a fool not too. How do I know this? Cause right now you are accepting green colored pieces paper for your goods. You also went to town recently and bought supplies using green pieces of paper. Yes you may have used plastic as a substitute for those green pieces of paper but the bottom line is you used the currently accepted mode of transacting business.
Maybe not. Maybe you went to the fast food drive in and tossed a bale of hay up on the counter for your burgers? No you used green paper. Gold and silver is just a convenient way to transact business. At least it has been for most of history and will be again if the lights go out. You might get lucky and have someone come in willing to trade his boots for your food but most will probably have small handfuls of silver.
I don't deal in precious metals but owning some is just as smart as having a stockpile of food, fuel, ammo, etc. Read up on the history of money. Know how and why precious metals are so important now and in times past.
It's more likely that the precious metals will be of little use in the 'bottleneck' for sure, when people's priorities will be quite different to now.
However, afterward, assuming there IS a viable 'afterward', these will have retained their value.
Consider this:
In ancient Rome, an ounce of gold could buy a person a high-quality toga, undergarment, belt & sandals.
In 2019, an ounce of gold (around $1200 to $1300) will buy you a very nice suit, a few shirts, a belt and classy shoes.
The 'value' is the same as 2,000 years ago.
messianicdruid June 4, 2019 at 12:54 pm #
GreenAlba said, "I don't have absolute faith in anything. That would be foolish."
I'm satisfied with a growing faith. This indicates life – things that are alive are growing. Any time stasis is achieved, death begins. When Christ reveals himself He imparts life [ knowledge leading to growth ] aided by simple instructions.
"The world is so intertwined that is one country goes, they all go."
Do you really think so, John? What about Greece? Ukraine? Venezuela? They've gone. Didn't take anything with them at all.
"Trump is using tariffs as the only tool that exists to sway other country's attitudes … "
Really? What about bargaining in good faith? That's been known to work.
As for gold and silver – true – but they've got a lot better history than paper. Oil is not a matter of faith, it's today's real currency. As for permanence, sic transit gloria mundi.
As for cowardly presidents, you also state, "The Elite just benefit from our insistence in buying overseas products." I think you've just identified the problem with the cowardly president hypothesis.
JohnAZ June 3, 2019 at 12:14 pm #
Do you not think that the collapsing economies are dragging down the world's global situation, and that more countries will approach the abyss which will start the snowball rolling?
Bargaining in good faith is what has gotten us to this point. Where has it worked? The only times where societal conversion has worked, is Japan and Germany following WW2. That is because we shoved it down their Throat!
Are you saying that President's are owned by the Elite? Uh, yeah!
1. Yes, I think that MANY collapsing economies will matter. You said ONE.
2. Bargaining in good faith got us NATO, NORAD, SEATO, victory in WW2, NAFTA, an American Century that lasted at least until Nixon defaulted on the national debt. For starters.
3. You seem to think that 'President's are owned by the Elite". I simply note that this sentence constitutes an hypothesis which is quite different from the 'cowardly presidents' hypothesis.
The Global Empire of Evil, also known as Globo-Homo. Any War America fights is for Globo-Homo – as was World War Two. The Elite loved Weimar, with its child prostitutes and starving German masses. The Internationalists invited their kinsmen in to feast, revel, rape, and buy up Germany while the natives froze to death on the streets. But a Man arose….
"Any War America fights is for Globo-Homo – as was World War Two."
I'm not so sure, Janos. The USA had been isolationist for a very long time (WW1 was an aberration, which was duly paid for). Remember that it was Germany that declared war on the USA, not vice versa. Perhaps Hitler's greatest mistake.
It was after WW2 that the benefits of empire beckoned. Power vacuum, and all.
"As for gold and silver – true – but they've got a lot better history than paper."
Sauerkraut,
Yes, but be prepared not to, as generals are said to do, fight the last war…. Historical accounts always provided for safe havens…somewhere. This may not be the case in a truly global conflagration.
Think outside the box…the jewelry box, in this case.
Agreed. Benr says it succinctly. And don't forget, gold makes such wonderful bullets.
benr June 3, 2019 at 12:15 pm #
@JohnAZ
When the crap hits the fan true wealth is measured in Lead, water, fire and shelter.
JohnAZ June 3, 2019 at 2:38 pm #
And food. You cannot eat gold.
benr June 3, 2019 at 2:51 pm #
With the lead comes the food one way or another.
Indian squatters taking over land is a big problem now in the Southern Cone region of South America. The owner rides in on horseback or takes a 4-wheeler in for several rugged hours over washed-out roads & hands them a piece of paper telling them to move off. But they are illiterate peasants so the paper doesn't mean anything to them.
Emergency! Guardian reports that Trump arrives in the UK and complains that he can't get Fox News!
Wouldn't you like to have a friendly voice in a sea of antagonistic BS?
I couldn't make that up.
GreenAlba June 3, 2019 at 1:30 pm #
I looked. It was buried among a whole lot of other stuff, in a live news column full of tweets, which I wouldn't normally even bother to read.
Much more important was the discussion about opening up the NHS to corporate America as part of a trade deal. Much, much more important.
I don't care where Trump goes or who entertains him. I don't care if people clap him enthusiastically until his ego has an orgasm in full public view. It's all theatre and those who make a fuss give him, as a personality rather than as the President, far too much attention. He thrives on this stuff. Feed him Fox News intravenously if he wants it – who cares?
I'm far more concerned that the UK is going to 'take back control' and hand it straight to the US corporatocracy who are going to dictate our food safety, animal welfare and environmental laws as part of a trade deal and a race to the bottom.
I've said this multiple times and not a single person on this site has explained to me how it comes under the rubrik of 'taking back control'. At least the EU rules benefit our food quality, our health, our farmers AND their animals. America's rules will just benefit burger sellers and chicken joints (not the ones belonging to the chickens, which will have a heck of a lot more work to do once they're pumped full of US-approved growth hormones).
Why aren't we going to see US standards pulled up by the bootlaces to match ours instead? Stupid question… Big boy, small boy. Big boys' rules.
In essence, agreed. I simply noted an amusing anecdote.
While the Deep State has spent generations trying to convince the world that the USA does not consist solely of bozos, along comes a president who undermines them at every turn. Some, I suppose, think that this is a fair price to pay to damage the Deep State, but I'm not so sure.
Well, thank you, sauerkraut. That's the first time someone has bothered to consider that there's a difference between opposing Brexit as a concept, and opposing the (planned) consequences, which will to a large extent be just a different kind of stitch up by a different set of people. But with fries.
Freedom fries?
kind of stitch up = GA
Second time for stitch up in a matter of days.
It's extremely common idiom, Q.
Re freedom fries (sort of), I have for some time viewed with wry amusement how keen British governments seem to be to suck up to their former colony, hang onto its coat tails, fight its wars and now invite it to meddle with our domestic legislation. It must be some kind of unacknowledged guilt complex or another phenomenon I can't quite put my finger on. I'm not aware of any other ex-colonial power that has this sort of psychological relationship with its any of its erstwhile colonies. 🙂
Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2019 at 1:34 pm #
GreenAlba, Canada is a former colony too! Can we get in on this?
We've recently been dealing with complaints coming from the Philippines, about a barge full of stinking garbage shipped there from Canada. This came as news to most Canadians, even though, well, it's been there for six years at least. It's hard to think well of yourself when you have to concede that Rodrigo Duterte of all people has a point. Anyway, it seems now we'll have to take it back. But now I'm thinking, hey… maybe mom can help us out? What do you think, wanna do us a solid? A solid waste, that is.
Sorry to pile on… I just couldn't resist. 🙂
It's extremely common idiom, Q. – GA
Where you live perhaps but not by me.
wanna do us a solid? – Elrond
An expression that really grates on my language nerve. It was made fun of in a Seinfeld episode.
Another expression in the same mold is "have a good one." I was with my wife at Costco today. After each customer a particular clerk checked out he directed them to have a good one. After I'd heard this perfunctory pleasantry a half dozen times in succession I had to bite my lip from asking a good WHAT?
Q-Shtik
I was merely explaining why my using it more than once was not strange.
Hmmm…sending your rubbish back to Mama…
I think your back yard is bigger, so we'll have to leave you to deal with your own detritus, like a big boy 🙂 .
I read, rather more than seven years ago, that the UK had only seven more years of landfill capacity left. I periodically wonder how that's going. I suppose I should google it.
I believe China started refusing our rubbish and recycling some time ago too. There's something really tawdry about sending your crap to someone else to deal with anyway, don't you think? If it's not OK to send your excess populations to other countries to accommodate, I'm not sure why it's OK to send other countries the detritus you can't be bothered to deal with at home. That includes us, obviously.
Yeah alba definitely soker.
GreenAlba June 5, 2019 at 12:25 pm #
ZrCrypDiK
I have tried to find out what 'soker' means, but you'll have to help me out.
Q. Shtik June 5, 2019 at 12:51 pm #
I have tried to find out what 'soker' means, but you'll have to help me out. – GA
Back in the day there was a poster who, for many years, went by the handle Asoka (who, interestingly, claimed to be black). Asoka got banned and reappeared as Carol, Janet and recently as pkrugman. There were probably several other handles but I have forgotten them all and the order in which they appeared. Soker became shorthand for Asoka. Anyway, ZrCrypDiK is obviously wrong about you being "soker." There is nothing in your belief system or writing style that resembles Asoka/soker.
Ah, thank you, Q. I know about the Asoka entity, but didn't realise 'soker' related to it.]
Now I'm doubly confused, because it seems suggesting responsible adult countries should sort out their own detritus – rather than sending it somewhere else, like an irresponsible teenage country might, makes me a government troll.
But it's definitely not worth losing sleep over.
ZrCrypDiK June 5, 2019 at 2:43 pm #
"I know about the Asoka"
Well, at least not every word out that mouth is a lie…
And, do you (GA apparently) really think I attacked? you because you pointed out the obvious for 2 decades – that we outsource our garbage, just like we offshore/outsource our jobs? Why do you think there's nothing left but min wage service.
Quote me a lie I've told you, CripDick.
Interesting input, GA.
Consider these:
What you call the US Corporatocracy is actually international globalism. The big supposed US Corporations have just about destroyed the US economy in favor of globalism. Your comment on
NHS is huge, I have heard financial problems are affecting NHS, but letting anyone from outside in to regulate or change it can only be negative.
I think I hear you asking for nationalism and localization of regulation to solve the local problems. The E.U. is certainly not going to do that as they are part of the global bureaucracy.
"I have heard financial problems are affecting NHS, but letting anyone from outside in to regulate or change it can only be negative."
Letting anyone outside in to regulate it? Americans 'regulating' our health service? What? I thought we were taking back control. I'm talking about American companies looking at a pile of fresh assets they haven't previously been able to get their mitts on. That will be followed by your medical insurance companies moving in to make a killing.
One of the reasons the NHS is failing is the amount of money paid to PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contractors who provide the equity for building new hospitals and are fleecing the NHS to the tune of seven times the initial investment over a period of 30 years, after which the hospital and facilities still don't even belong to the NHS. It is a predatory transfer of massive amounts of public wealth to the private sector. There are other reasons, but that's a biggie. You can't pay a sufficient number of doctors and nurses if an equity fund are screwing you.
https://www.european-services-strategy.org.uk/news/2017/new-evidence-of-the-scale-of-uk-pfippp-equity-offshoring-and-tax-avoidance
"New evidence of the scale of UK PFI/PPP equity offshoring and tax avoidance"
" I think I hear you asking for nationalism and localization of regulation to solve the local problems. The E.U. is certainly not going to do that as they are part of the global bureaucracy."
It's not up to the EU to solve the problem of the NHS – nobody asked them to. It was useful having doctors and nurses able to work here, though – we now have a staffing crisis which will be mitigated by using doctors from India. How sensible is that? It takes 10 years to train a doctor and there will now be less money to do it.
Anyway, that's enough of Brexit and the NHS for one week 🙂 .
I forgot to mention (again) that the UK Tory governments and UK financial lobbyists have fought tooth and nail for decades against the EU's attempts at financial regulation. This is one of the main reasons why people like Rees-Mogg (investment banker) and John Redwood (investment banker) have pushed to leave the EU.
>>> I've said this multiple times and not a single person on this site has explained to me how it comes under the rubrik of 'taking back control'.
Do the burgers and chickens come with immigration quotas?
If the UK didn't want all these food dependencies, then it should have kept its population growth under control. Once it's free of the EU, it will have the means to do so.
I only looked briefly at your article, Exscotticus, but it seems to be referring to refugees. The UK is not in Schengen (so they can't just arrive here and get in) and it has an exemption, like many of the other exemptions it has, from the obligation to take refugees from outside the EU under EU regulations. I have explained this before. It is why we have a very small number of Syrian refugees and the government has mostly aided their compatriots in situ. We have of course contributed, along with the other EU members, to the funds being paid for several years now to Turkey to host millions of Syrian refugees who would otherwise be trying to get into the EU. Which I also mentioned already. A good use of funds, I'd have thought.
The UK makes its own decisions about external refugees. You seem to be confusing the matter with the internal migration of EU workers, who are citizens of the EU. And the UK government didn't even make use of the limits it was entitled to put on the presence of EU workers in the UK. And, much more importantly, the number of non-EU immigrants hugely outnumbers those coming from the EU. As I have also explained before. It would have made more sense to start there.
The UK didn't even produce all its own food at the time of either world war, so current issues with the EU have no connection.
My mother's parents had 8 children – 7 of their own and one adopted before that following a miscarriage or two. There was no real contraception – and a significant amount of social approval to have big families.
"Once it's free of the EU, it will have the means to do so."
Not necessarily. Some of the countries it wants (needs) a trade deal with, e.g. India, insist on extra work visas in exchange for a trade deal, just as the US insists on getting its teeth into the NHS and on influencing our domestic legislation.
BTW, I've just watched the Dispatches documentary (filming done by an undercover reporter working there) on a massive chicken processing plant in Texas owned by an outfit called 'Titan' which apparently produces a fifth of the chickens, pork and I forget what else in the US.
It was an utter disgrace. I don't know how you allow that to happen – I doubt they'd get away with that level of lack of hygiene in Thailand. I guess it's good enough for your 'deplorables' and is considered to be good enough for ours too.
>>> You seem to be confusing the matter with the internal migration of EU workers, who are citizens of the EU
You miss the point. If Germany lets in millions of Syrians and declares them German citizens, then they're eligible to live and work in the UK. That will end with Brexit.
In 2015, Angela Merkel UNILATERALLY decided to let in one million Syrian refugees. According to German law, these refugees can be eligible for German citizenship in as little as 6 years (so, 2 years to go). At that point, they can travel and work freely in the EU.
You can play semantic games, but at the end of the day, it's Germany deciding the future of the EU's demographics.
You specifically asked if the trade deals came with immigration quotas. I have confirmed that in some cases they will, certainly in the case of India, as the Prime Minister told the PM when she first visited to discuss such a deal. One can assume it won't only be India.
U.K.'s Self-Sufficiency in Food Is at Lowest in Decades
The U.K. is leaving the European Union at a time when it needs foreign food more than anytime in the past five decades. Self-sufficiency has been in decline since the 1980s, with the country producing 60 percent of its own food in 2016, according to data from the National Farmers' Union.
So… population up, self-sufficiency down.
"If Germany lets in millions of Syrians and declares them German citizens, then they're eligible to live and work in the UK."
It was you who mentioned immigration quotas, which are irrelevant to the context you now describe. We had this discussion before. You seem to be suggesting that Syrians who have taken the time and considerable effort to become German citizens and learn reasonably fluent German, presumably by that time with jobs, are then going to decide, in considerable numbers…to take themselves off to the less favourable UK. I don't buy it.
I'm not disagreeing with that. It doesn't change the fact that having the US dictate UK domestic legislation isn't 'taking back control'.
Do you have links that suggest the USA's trade deal (food imports) are tied to UK refugee and/or immigration quotas? I would find that hard to believe under Trump.
Do you have links that suggest the USA's trade deal goes beyond matters of commerce?
So would I. I don't recall ever suggesting such an arrangement. You are aware of the conditions of a trade deal with the US to which I object. They relate to sovereignty in terms of domestic legislation, and American insistence on the lowering of standards to match America's. And their insistence on the doors of the NHS being opened to them.
Currently Michael Gove maintains that 'no British Prime Minister' will allow food safety, environmental etc. regulations to be dumbed down to get a trade deal. And both he and Jeremy Hunt insist that the NHS will not be up for grabs as part of such a deal.
And yet, Trump's ambassador insisted on the Andrew Marr show just a couple of nights ago that the health sector had to be part of the deal. I didn't hear the whole thing, so I don't know what he said about the agricultural sector, but it has long been the American position that our standards have to fall in line with yours.
Do I trust the likely candidate, Boris Johnson, not to be the PM who will give the US what it wants? Not for five seconds.
It is also Trump's way of making it difficult or impossible for us to have a trade deal with the EU. Our regulations are obviously already aligned with theirs, so a trade deal with them would be infinitely easier without the interference of the US in our domestic legislation. It would also be infinitely more sane, as I've said before, because they are on our doorstep and not across an ocean, a fact that will increasingly matter for the reasons around which this blog is based.
Of course I don't have links. You think such discussions are published? But maybe consider the matter again when we know whether Julian Assange is going to be extradited to the US or not. And the closer we get to the US generally, the more likely we are again to be drawn into your wars.
Any trade deal with be secret. I have no right to see what is signed up to on my behalf just because I'm a British citizen. It may not even be the case that Parliament will have any say, despite current efforts to make sure that we are not sold down the river and our sovereignty infringed, without parliamentary scrutiny.
And the trade deal will not just concern 'food imports'.
Your ambassador said to Andrew Marr that it would necessarily include 'everything that can normally be traded', hence also health services.
>>>> and American insistence on the lowering of standards to match America's
Ah OK. Hard to follow you since you mentioned deals with India involving immigration quotas. Perhaps India is a special case as a former colony? But then America was a former colony as well. Heck half the world was a former colony…
So your concern is primarily a lowering of food quality standards. I think your concerns are justified. Like I said, reduce your need to import necessities. Imports should be limited to luxury goods like scotch. Although in my case, scotch is also necessity…
It's not just about the lowering of food standards – it's about the implications for national sovereignty of having US standards imposed on us and domestic legislation interfered with.
Sovereignty being the reason for Brexit an' all. Not to mention the effect on farmers (although I will mention it, obviously) who cannot compete without lowering the standards in which they justly take pride.
And I haven't even mentioned that our producers – and not just agricultural – incur fuel costs that are more than twice those of your producers, but that's a by the by.
No one is imposing anything. The UK can decline American trade overtures. I don't have to tell you your own history with regard to food shortages; you've weathered hard times before. Question is: can you do it now? With so many new people and new cultures inhabiting your isles, do you have enough cohesion to keep it together under adversity? Or have you all become fat and lazy and ready to cut a deal just like many wanted to with Hitler (before Churchill consolidated his power and put an end to appeasement).
"No one is imposing anything. The UK can decline American trade overtures."
Yes, that's like saying if you're hanging off a cliff edge by your fingernails you can decline to accept the help of the guys with the ropes who intend to pick your pockets once they've hauled you up.
You are forgetting the most important points:
(1) This was planned from years ago by Tory Atlanticists, like John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Daniel Hannan.
(2) Trade deals will be negotiated in secret. The average British punter can quite simply f*** off, mind his own, and leave the negotiations to his elders and betters.
While at least some information is getting into the public arena, finally, with e.g. programmes like the one I described, and Parliament is finally becoming more informed, thanks to TTIP, about the dangers of secret deals negotiated with the US, the UK will be vulnerable and desperate and will not remotely be able to replace the trade it currently does with EU (60% of it's trade I think) with trade deals with other countries even if it gets the holy grail of a deal with the US.
'The UK', to all intents and purposes, in these matters, is a Tory elite who don't need to give a flying one about Joe Public and the effects of anything they negotiate.
And it's not the US making the overtures – it's a desperate UK. You've forgotten Theresa May's desperate attempt to be the first head of government to visit Trump after his election to suck up to him, knowing how we'd put ourselves in a ridiculously vulnerable situation. What the US is doing is saying 'my way or the highway'. America First.
Re: Trade Deals with the USA
So right, GA.
The TTP, from which Trump withdrew (because he thought China was in it – it wasn't), was EXACTLY what you describe – a lay-down misere to US Corporate Interests, including
> allowing international corporations to sue Sovereign Governments if their local regulations hurt US corporate profits in ANY WAY
> extending copyright on all entertainment assets (drugs and movies, in the main, plus books & music) to infinity though renewal rights prior to what had always been the traditional expiry
> shutting off the ability of sovereign governments to negotiate drug prices with the Big Pharma cartel
and so on…it got so byzantine it was almost impossible to understand.
The irony of Trump pulling out was that the TTP was actually most advantageous to the US, which could STILL impose quotas & tariffs on imports from 'Partner" countries.
The protests in places like New Zealand & Australia were virulent and extremely vocal.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/controversial-tpp-pact-signed-zealand-protests-160204031601547.html
Exactly, Majella.
My massive concerns about Brexit grew straight out of my earlier discovery of what was in the proposed TTIP deal between the US and the EU. I followed the anti-TTIP campaign closely, wrote to my MP, signed every possible public petition and supported the campaign financially. It is and was the absolute antithesis to the sovereignty we were told we were reclaiming.
It was negotiated in secret and classified so that we wouldn't know what was in it. And the uproar among the EU population was enormous when details were leaked.
I knew perfectly well that (a) this was exactly what was in store for us post-Brexit and (b) that we would have no clout whatsoever compared to our combined clout as part of the EU.
We are now going to be over a barrel, stuck with WTO tariffs, if we don't agree an exit deal now with the EU.
Apart from the utter idiocy of cultivating trading arrangements with countries across oceans and on the other side of the world at this particular juncture, I would be more than happy to trade with the US if it raises its game and meets OUR standards. But hands off the NHS. We need to sort that out one way or another without US corporate interference.
And you're right about the drugs too – it's already been mentioned that a deal with the US will result in higher prices to the NHS, as if it didn't have enough problems.
As I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the NHS is a cornerstone of the post-war Social Contract, is it not?
Along with social housing and benefits/pensions, that Social Contract has been responsible for elevating millions out of the direct & nastiest effects of poverty, as seen as recently as 1945.
Interestingly, the finer of the British ex-colonies – Canada, Australia & New Zealand – all have similar social contracts and a general level of social equity and harmony that should be the envy of the US.
That these places were willing to give up so much of the elements of that social cohesion for a f&%$#ing 'trade deal' (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) was disgraceful.
The revamped Treaty – excluding USA – is a lot less toxic by all accounts, simply because the 'drunken gorilla' is no longer in the room, throwing its weight about and trashing the furniture.
I think that's fair. I'll come back to that but the only thing I'll say about housing, which is a whole other topic, is that there's something very wrong in a situation where someone (Maggie Thatcher) could force Councils and Housing Associations to sell off properties at a ridiculous discount (60% off the market value of your house as a reward for…paying a subsidised rent for decades!!) and all to manufacture Tory voters.
And now you can find a whole lot of ex-council flats in London that were bought for a pittance from the taxpayer, basically, and resold after the stipulated five years or whatever, so that they can now be rented out privately for insane rents by a new breed of greedy landlords to the same kind of young families who needed the public housing in the first place. That is obscene, whatever one thinks about public housing.
Anyway, back to the NHS. I think the NHS, for decades, has been a wonder, given how little of GDP it has been allowed. But I'm not a blind believer and I do think that free services have innate problems because demand is literally unlimited.
Previously, with people of my generation, we were automatically careful and not over demanding, because we valued what we had. But I think later generations are more entitlement oriented and will waste doctors' time (or miss appointments) because they have no clue or interest in how much a quality medical service costs to run. And as a society we've created problems for ourselves because treatments are available that cost tens of thousands of pounds just to add another two or three months to the life of a terminal cancer patient and people will demand it even if it means you haven't got enough money for e.g. maternity services or something with a lower profile, like mental health services.
I think it is inevitable that the system will transform itself gradually to at least a partially private system in due course. Private companies are offering services to the young and fit but a system like the NHS relies on the young and fit subsidising the old and ill, which is about as fair a social contract as you can get because the young and fit will one day be old and at least frail.
GP practices get on average a mere £140/patient on their list per year from the Department of Health.. That's about the cost of a single consultation in the private sector. Many of those people will never go the doctor for years on end (I used to go about once every five years, once I wasn't going for my children) which helps subsidise the older and sicker 'frequent fliers'.
If the young and fit are cherry picked by the private services, or even by some of the newer, sexier NHS set-ups where you can Skype a doctor at any time but only see one if they then think you need one (the current Health Secretary, Matt Hancock is known by doctors, who think he's clueless, as Matt the App!), then they take their £140 allocation with them and the established practices have to do more with less for the remaining more challenging patients, and many are going under and being taken over by the local health trusts.
So we will probably, very gradually, end up with a two-tier system, similar to your own but hopefully without the insane levels of insurance, with the easy and sexy stuff (sports physio, for example) cherry picked by the private sector while the NHS is left with the intractable stuff – geriatric medicine, chronic care, and mental healthcare, as an underfunded Cinderella service.
There are no easy answers, but you can't trust Tory pols with the health service, as far as I'm concerned. Or anyone else who can afford private healthcare themselves!
Books have been written on it. Professor Allyson Pollock is an expert on public health policy and the NHS and a contributor to this film, made by doctors themselves, about how the NHS has been gradually softened up over a long period for privatisation, including, critically, by being bled dry through PFI/PPP contracts feeding private equity funds. It has been set up to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ultKvnw2h3Q
It's an hour of your life, so I know most people wouldn't give it the time if they're not British, but you might find it informative, since you are interested. And it's an insight into a system you're not familiar with.
I'd be interested to know what you think if you do watch it.
Green Alba
(Third attempt at answering – I keep accidentally deleting the post…grrr.)
Wow – what a nasty, sneaky process to steal (yet another) p[ublic asset. I see that was made om 2014, so, given I've just seen His Trumpetness on the box today stating in no uncertain terms that the NHS is 'on the table', it seems the plotters may prevail. I was interested in the comment towards the end that the Health Select Committee was roundly critical of all these shenanigans, yet it proceeds?
As I've said several times, I'm not a Brit. I'm actually a Kiwi living in the eastern 'burbs of San Francisco Bay (Walnut Creek). I married a 'Yank' and have lived here for nearly 20 years, so I have my own experience of life in the US. (Being an immigrant – even a legal one – can be dangerous around here, within posting-shot of the likes of SSL. We'll see…could be some fun.)
However, I keep a keen interest in NZ affairs and our public health system and how it's also been degraded over the last 35 years by successive governments with particular ideological agendas.
It was started in 1938 by the First Labour Government under a feisty Irish immigrant, Michael Joseph Savage (a revered figure to this day. It has always been funded from general taxation rather than o a specific levy, such as your National Insurance.
Things were awesome til the 80s & Thatcher, Reagan & The Chicago School (under Milton Friedman) arrived. Our neo-con stealth revolution was delivered by a faux Labour government in 1984. All public institutions were suddenly pilloried as inefficient & wasteful.
Granted, the previous National govt had not weathered the inflation spikes & the second oil crises of the late 70s very well, and then the 23% interest rates on a first mortgage were killing the working family, so something had to give.
But the Health sector, specifically, was deliberately underfunded in a drive to create 'efficiencies'. The 'philosophy' of the time was that everything had to run on a 'business model' and so the management component of cost rose from around 5% to 15% of the budget in a matter of just a few years. It was appalling, and at one stage got to the point of imposing a 'user pays' charge for going to the hospital – regardless that we'd already paid for it through taxes. (This was abandoned pretty quickly when no-one would pay the posted invoices and they were deemed to be unenforceable by wiser heads – a court would likely have decided that anyway, but it never got that far).
So, it's been through the wringer of constant 'reform'. My family lives in the southern part of the South Island (Dunedin, och, aye…my own mothers family is all Burgesses, Flemings & Brockies arriving here in 1848 on the first settlement ships – they were steerage though, come to break in the land and chop the firewood for their new 'lairds' ).
This is a large area – greater than Scotland – with a spread population of only 330,000. It has to maintain & run 3 major hospitals, 5 secondary level facilities and around 20 part-time staff clinics.
The most recent insult, from a right-wing government, ousted in 2017, is 'population-based funding'. The result is that the Southern District Health Board has run at a deficit of around $30 million over the last couple of years.
The result is that services suffer. Non-acute treatment needs have to meet a points-based system for priority, so a hip or knee replacement could mean a wait of a year or more unless it's work-disabling or excruciatingly painful.
It also means that, currently, the SDHB has NO BUDGET for non-urgent hernias, at all. It's either write a cheque/claim on a private insurance policy or so whistle.
But at least medical insurance in NZ is affordable. My brother, his wife, their children in their 20s and the first granddaughter (aged 1) are all covered on a top-of-the-line policy that provides the following:
> Cover for any condition
> Up to $600,000 for any single claim (which is actually a TRUCKLOAD of cover there, even though it sounds like a joke to most Americans)
> It covers all major diagnostic tests
> The cover resets each year, so there's no lifetime exhaustion of the fund
> The deductible (called 'excess) is only $250 per claim year)
> It will also cover any recommended treatment not covered by the NZ government drug-buying agency, Pharmac. For example, those expensive breakthrough chemo drugs that cost $20,000 per month but only 3 people in the whole country need it – Pharmac won't fund it, so tough cheese if you can't write the cheque.
There's a heap of other benefits included and it costs my brother the outrageous sum of $NZD 7,200 per year yes $600 per month), which is about STG 4,000 and $USD 4,820. Our plan here is supposedly a 'very good' one (with Kaiser Permanente) but all the same, it's got a very convoluted policy wording, to the point we really don't know whether something is covered until we try to use it. It costs the TWO of us almost $USD 28,800.
Anyway…God Forbid that the US corporate monster gets its teeth REALLY into the NHS. I lived in the UK between 1989 & 1992. Working at a pub in a small village in Devon (Chardstock) I got to know the TWO local GPs and so got an understanding of how the primary care under the NHS worked, and how it differed from NZ's system. In NZ, a GP is self-employed and not an employee of the government. The practices (which might be owned by a partnership of doctors) charge a fee for consultation(currently around $40) which is subsidized per consultation by the Health budget currently around $140), rather than a per capita "cash bag" attached to each patient.
But all is not lost! The recent election of a Labour-led Coalition (of Greens & an outfit of grumpy old men called NZ First) actually give a shite, under 'Jacinderella' Ardern's leadership.
The recent 'Wellbeing" Budget has just increased funding for basic health services by $1 billion including a doubling of mental health initiative funding (about fecking time too).
Still, this is only keeping the GDP send at around 9% (about where the UK is, I think.)
I guess the one possible advantage of being so small is that large US corporate rape-n-pillagers wouldn't find anything very attractive here so we'll be left alone.
In the divorce China is going to get the house.
If the past is any indicator, the house, the cars, the kids and the bank accounts.
And if the divorce is truly acrimonious, they will send the family dog to the pound for destruction….
K-Dog June 3, 2019 at 3:28 pm #
I never thought being taken to a State Park and being kicked out of the car would be a good thing, but given the choice I'll take it over the trip to the pound. No destruction please, I want to hang around and see what happens.
elysianfield June 3, 2019 at 7:28 pm #
Dog,
I once rented some commercial property to a guy who's business was machining contact lenses to prescription. Had dozens of little jewelry lathes that did the trick.
His wife…began giving nude massages to neighbors, etc. and he, of course, protested. They fought. She grabbed a lamp and began swinging…he had a hammer and defended himself. He apparently didn't hit her hard or often enough, however. She had him arrested. She then absconded with all his wealth, and before she left, she took his beloved dog, a black lab, to the pound and had it immediately put down.
He was later convicted and served a bit over a year in the pen. If he would have killed her, at least the dog would have lived…maybe a happier ending?
His side of the story, of course….
Please don't ever let me find out who this bitch really is.
In the Cold War with the Soviet Union, said Kiron Skinner, the State Department's director of policy planning, Washington at least faced fellow Caucasians, whereas with Beijing, Washington faces a nonwhite culture.
"In China we have an economic competitor, we have an ideological competitor, one that really does seek a kind of global reach, that many of us didn't expect a couple of decades ago," Skinner said. "And I think it's also striking that this is the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian."
The Chinese have been paralleling Europe forever. Treating them as a developing country is a mistake, they are developed. Right now, thanks to American cowardice, they are tougher than we are. And we are feeling the competition.
Tougher hell no.
Their children are more spoiled and entitled then even our own.
Been hosting Chinese kids for over a decade and they have all been helpless almost incapable of the simplest things.
Granted they are the new rich Chinese but as a matter of who will do what in the next twenty years I am not worried at all about the next crop of Chinese kids taking over.
The worst of the bunch was a liar, cheat, and plagiarist who's father was a big executive at some Chinese oil company.
I honestly thought it impossible for a culture to be more obsessed with the inane until the but it's true they are even more tied to their un-smart phone than American kids.
Thanks for the insight.
That is only the Elite. One assumes that there are still plenty of normal Chinese. They haven't been "leavened" and hollowed out yet like us. Of course they would in time. Capitalism is simply a torrent of destruction after all.
Non-elite may not matter much. The incompetent elite will direct the competent masses to do incompetent things. There as here.
Pucker June 3, 2019 at 4:04 pm #
Rock 'N Roll!!!!!
benr:
Sheesh! These sound like EXACTLY the reasons one should be worried…
Another good one Mr.Kunstler. Is it really time? I simply don't know how we have made it this far. Everytime I think the economy and the world as we have come to know it is over, another rabbit is pulled from the hat and the can gets kicked another mile down the road. Being incredibly naive as I am on today's economics the fact that we are trillions in debt and still functioning as the world's priemer super power simply doesn't compute in my tiny brain. Time and Time again I thought the can had finally gone over the cliff only to see it miraculously levitate in midair and land back on the road ready for another go.
Maybe we have finally reached the end of the line. Could be time to tighten ones seat belt and hope for a soft landing. Though how that is possible is beyond my reckoning. My own opinion is that war is in our very near future. If the "can" can no longer be kicked what other options do our "leaders" have?
Go long rice and beans and keep a low profile. Hope to see y'all on the other side. Ciao for now!
Because we have a legacy of centuries of real Christianity behind us, that's how. Even after people stopped really believing, the legacy lingered, keeping people honest and neighborly for a long time. Now that the state religion is Liberalism and Minority worship one can't expect the same benefits.
Oh, please, Janos.
That's quite a stretch, even for you.
The self-aggrandizing, self-proclaimed 'Christian' is the person LEAST likely to behave towards his fellow 'honestly', viz The Big Buck tele-evangelists over the decades…Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, Cryin' Jimmy Swaggert, Ted Haggard et al…
And even on a personal level, I've met many lying fraudsters wearing a cross on their lapel. If this faux-Christianity could be eliminated, we'd all be the better for it.
DrGonzo June 3, 2019 at 10:56 pm #
And let's not forget about white 'Christianity's' unforgivable original sin in the Americas: rationalizing slavery, excusing it, and growing rich off of practicing it, for several hundred years.
Not a good basis upon which to claim the historic moral high ground.
The corruption or misuse of something says nothing about the thing itself.
Little known factoid: there were more abolitionists and abolitionist societies in the South until the 1840s when it had grown into a "sectional" issue.
Humans are curious animals.
Without religion, a Culture dies just like Europe is dying and being taken over by new Peoples, very religious Peoples….
davidreese2 June 3, 2019 at 12:37 pm #
As for Nixon going off the gold standard. For those of us old enough to remember Nixon's statement at the time of this decision, Nixon stated unequivocally the measure was temporary.
It was anything but.
I watched him close the window and he was not talking temporary when he did it so I don't understand how you can say Nixon was saying the measure was temporary?
Show me the statement that he made with regard to the switch being temporary?
RocketDoc June 3, 2019 at 3:25 pm #
I was hitch-hiking in Italy and the youth hostel wouldn't let me pay in traveler's checks denominated in dollars. For 2 days no one would cash dollars…. I happened to have marks but it is an instructive experience to check in to a place and not be able to pay the bill to check out. ….. Made the Eagles Hotel California have a slightly different meaning….
RDoc,
When was this?
RB June 3, 2019 at 12:43 pm #
What do we do? What?
A. Join hands for a round of kumbaya?
B. Work on our yoga so we can reach our asses for a goodbye kiss?
C. Vote for Bernie so everyone gets free shit?
D. Go to war and declare debt null and void?
E. Vote for Trump and rate his tweets?
I'm leaning toward B.
…"….declare debt null and void"
A debt jubilee would be a useful first move in restoring some level of equanimity.
Steve Keen is an insightful Australian economist –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Keen
and he has a few interesting youtube presentations too.
Beryl of Oyl June 3, 2019 at 12:58 pm #
Speaking of simpletons, it should be obvious to anyone, even them, by now, that the Mexican government is under orders not to do anything about the situation at the US border.
If you take out a map, and look at Mexico's southern border, and understand that they have strict laws dealing with people from the other side of that border, and have had those laws for quite some time, well before Donald Trump even thought of being president, the idea that hundreds upon hundreds of Guatemalans, etc. just up and decided, at the same time, to take a trip through Mexico, unimpeded, is hysterically ridiculous.
Yes that's a terrible run-on sentence, but this is a run-on manufactured crisis, isn't it?
Do Mexican citizens really want all these people passing through, and congregating in their communities?
Mexico does have citizens. Mexico has jobs and resources and isn't even a Third World country anymore, but for some reason Americans who could not give a damn for the situation of strangers in their own communities, believe that crying for grown men trying to get around our immigration laws makes them better people, holy even.
Another thing that should be obvious, Chuck and Nancy, who certainly have enough to worry about in their own hometowns, but instead neglect Californians and New Yorkers in favor of the inhabitants of countries far, far from their districts, are under orders to keep the Racket we call the border going just like it is.
Why should this be?
Even Cher, who hasn't even a high school education, noticed it wasn't smart to keep bringing hordes of men into the so-called sanctuary cities, when there are already so many desperate Americans living on the sidewalk.
That's why Chuck and Nancy look so sick in their speeches lately.
They are between a rock and a hard place.
People wonder why New Yorkers and Californians keep electing people like Chuck and Nancy.
The short answer is, we don't.
At least from my perspective, my state is always losing population. We try to get away from the Cuomos and the Schumers.
They keep importing replacement citizens faster than we can vote with our feet.
There's more, I could go on and on, but I think you can get the picture.
When you look at the support for that really cute little Cortez girl, because she can push the agenda without the baggage that Chuck and Nancy carry, there is another reason Chuck and Nancy are freaking out.
They can't run their own party, their own districts, but they want to be in charge of the entire US of A and more.
Nancy was sticking her nose in Northern Ireland's business recently.
You can read about how well that turned out.
Quite a ramble on my part, sorry, I'm getting ready to go out and select flowers for a young man's funeral service. He's another suicide, the last one (within my circle) was a few months ago. I saw Nancy banging her gavel and declaring the mental health situation fixed, but the reality is that since Obamacare, it has gotten much, much worse, and it was already deplorable.
There won't be any dipshit fading actresses, excuse me, female actors, tweeting about these casualties.
Border= corruption, racket(s), money for the 1%, aided and abetted by many, but not in the least, the drug cartels. They are real, they didn't go away.
Yes, American elected officials are on the same side as the cartels. Your guess why is as good as mine.
Yes, the Mexican government could have stopped all this if it wanted to, before it started. Except they don't want to, and even if they did, they won't, because they are afraid to.
The more President Trump puts the squeeze on them, the more they will pretend that yup, they are fixing to do something about it, any minute now. They may even appear to do something about it, for a period of time.
There are videos from Tijuana where the local populace supports Trump on IMMIGRATION and is out protesting the immigration problems.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/protesters-tijuana-mexico-want-migrant-caravan-leave-n937761
That was actually on NBC for petes sake!
Columbia has a million Venezuelan refugees now. The Colombian attitude to the refugees has been welcoming and hospitable. Colombians are putting up Venezuelans up in their homes for free.
Jesus Christ, what is up with that?
https://youtu.be/NU0RqwweuWY
Because Venezuelans really are starving as a result of supporting and voting in terrible people.
Now they reap the whirlwind.
Venezuela is a veritable gold mine on how to destroy a country.
James Hansen June 3, 2019 at 4:58 pm #
You discount years of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that has had a huge impact on their economy.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50072.htm
If we had treated Venezuela the same as we have been treating Israel they would be living the good life.
>>> You discount years of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela
You discount that the USA has had decades of sanctions on some nations—and none ended up like Venezuela.
Exscotticus
the US STILL has crippling sanctions on Venezuela.
The only point of such treatment is to CRUSH the economy (ipso facto, impoverish the populace, so maybe they'll rise up against the Government. So far, no joy!).
The current list of countries under US economic sanctions is:
Belarus, Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine/Russia, (Venezuela), Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
You say NONE of the others have turned out like Venezuela? maybe not yet, but you could hardly call them raging economic success stories either, could you. Nothing very attractive in terms of generating inward immigration!
K-Dog June 3, 2019 at 10:13 pm #
Nothing very attractive in terms of generating inward immigration!
A good barometer. That a country can lose an average of 11 kilos per person in three years is another. That tidbit also helps separate propaganda from facts. No 'ism' works that fast. Pushing oil prices down so brown oil can't be refined profitably has had more than a little to do with the situation.
American fracking got Venezuela all fracked up.
Exscotticus June 4, 2019 at 12:20 pm #
>>> the US STILL has crippling sanctions on Venezuela.
@Majella, if you want a comparable case, a fair comparison, then use either Iran or Iraq. Both are oil-producing nations. Both were under USA sanctions for decades. Iran is STILL under USA sanctions, with a brief respite during the Obama "let's-fly-a-secret-cargo-plane-full-of-cash-to-Iran" administration.
Are people eating zoo animals in Iran? No they are not. So for you to claim that sanctions and not socialism are destroying Venezuela ignores the fact that Iran is not imploding.
No one told Venezuela to nationalize (steal) corporate assets and break contracts and agreements. They did that all on their own. Now no one trusts them. If it wasn't for their oil wealth, it would be anarchy already. It's what happens when governments steal wealth and don't adhere to rule of law.
@james Hansen
As someone else pointed out other countries are doing fine it really is a function of piss poor management.
@kdog
American fracking has little to do with the fact Venezuela nationalized the oil industry and kicked all the talent out.
Once done the oil industry imploded when the maintenance was all differed and no one knew how to fix anything properly or even get the parts to do so if they knew how.
Venezuela is imploding because they supported people that promised everything and delivered nothing but misery.
K-Dog June 5, 2019 at 2:59 am #
On Nov. 27, as the OPEC oil cartel gathered in Vienna to discuss falling oil prices, the front page of Venezuela's anti-government Tal Cual newspaper ran a cartoon showing President Nicolás Maduro and his former oil and economic tzar Rafael Ramírez praying before a barrel of oil. With the oil and gas sector accounting for a quarter of the Venezuelan economy and oil sales the source for around 95% of export earnings, the country has been hammered by the recent drop in prices. OPEC's decision last week to hold off on production cuts to arrest the decline promises to sharpen the pain for oil-dependent nations like Venezuela. It is also a political challenge for Maduro who has grown increasingly unpopular since being elected after the death of his political mentor Hugo Chávez last year
Falling prices fracked Venezuela in the ass.
ah! Christians…you know, people who GIVE a fuck.
Perfect song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk
Altruism, which at some point becomes pathological. Since (probably) we are already in overshoot, it is already so to some degree.
Nationalism is not very strong in Latin America (except when it comes to soccer teams), the Mestizo populations feel a fair amount of kinship to each other and not so much to their more European derived rulers.
Mary Robinson, while PM of Ireland (or shortly thereafter), chastised the people of the American Southwest for their racism for wanting the border enforced. What a cunt.
I once worked in a Catholic Center, in the bookstore/reception area. They forced themselves to have a ministry to the Poor even though there hearts weren't in it at all. One time one of the nuns broke an appointment she had with a homeless guy so she could go to a meeting of refugees from El Salvador (back when all the Liberals were competing on who could say it the best). They mattered more, were cooler and more glamorous than our street people, you see. And she wanted to associate with that glam and get some for herself.
Good to know, if I ever want some Catholic Nun pillow talk I know who to ask.
In other words, you would have done the same thing if you were the Nun. Or even if you were still just a Dog. And you used to try to sound all native and genuine when he said "El Salvador". And compete with other liberals as to who could roll their r's better when you said Nicaragua.
Every time you say 'in other words', which is rather a lot, I get 'Fly me to the moon' as an earworm. It's really annoying.
Joined-up thinking is always good.
https://news.wjct.org/post/guatemalan-climate-change-refugees-pouring-over-us-border-and-south-florida
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-climate-change-is-fuelling-the-us-border-crisis
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-02-06/climate-change-overlooked-driver-central-american-migration
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/drought-climate-change-force-guatemalans-migrate-to-us/
It's obviously best not to postpone the joined-up thinking for too many decades, though, as unfortunately appears to have happened.
Beryl of Oyl June 3, 2019 at 1:06 pm #
Is see my man, President Trump has even managed to fix Climate Change or Global Warming or whatever it's called.
Even without sending billions of dollars (would it have been on pallets?) to "Africa".
Does Africa have a P.O. box?
It is downright chilly in my house this morning.
Oh wait, I must be confused. Temperature isn't climate isn't weather, or something.
I'm not as confused as those who think we're all gonna die, because this country's taxpayers (the "marks") didn't fork over cash we don't even have.
New York isn't under water.
Mostly you're just confused about the difference between local and global, Beryl. Don't worry, you're not alone.
My friends in Queensland are confused too.
Wait, no they aren't.
Queensland is local too.
If everyone would just open their fridges for an hour a day we could get a handle on this Lobal Warming.
But people are selfish and want to keep all the Cool for themselves. Like the Nun? Like the nuN. Now Nuns are all getting into running Marathons. Praying isn't cool anymore. Nor are habits. I liked the big floppy ones with wings. Remember Sally Field, the flying Nun? She didn't have to run cuz she could fly and she was so fly too. Then she left and became Norma Rae. No more flying just working and romance with Burt Reynolds.
So you rang her chimes and she didn't let you finish. It can happen. Used you up and threw you away like a crumpled paper bag. An object to quell her burning desire is all you were to her, You wanted more, you wanted to feel special but turnabout is fair play, you know it is. But you also know it hurts. You rang her bell and she did not get your jam. Isn't that special.
Air conditioning, which is basically what you're suggesting, drives climate change too. Your fridge doesn't run on fairy dust.
No fairy would ever share its dust with you. Cast not thy dust before fairyphobes.
I've mentioned the fairies at the bottom of my garden before. They keep all their dust for me, since visitors tend to be too sceptical and will not just have faith.
He was free associating.
Is that (free associating) what is now called riffing? I liked the old meaning of riffing better. A melodic phrase like the guitar in "Satisfaction", "Louie Louie", or "Smoke on The Water."
Sometimes he riffs, sometimes he just associates freely. But always he's provocative.
SW June 3, 2019 at 1:13 pm #
"the last man standing…." holding the bag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiM9KW6bcfU
The plagues will come, but they won't be like Ebola. Ebola is too easy to contain with simple sanitation. You've got to be in a real s#!thole for Ebola to spread.
The big one (or "big ones") will be easily spread, deadly, and have a long period without symptoms when it can be transmitted. I would bet on a Superpox or Super-influenza for the naturally evolved ones. For the man-made possibilities the sky is the limit.
Epicur,
Thank God we have no shitholes in the USA….
>>> Ebola is too easy to contain with simple sanitation.
Yes in theory all you need is lots of bleach. But if we go by American medical standards, a mere hundred cases of Ebola could overwhelm and bankrupt our system.
West Africa's Ebola outbreak cost $53 billion – study
Slugoon June 3, 2019 at 1:34 pm #
I'll plumb for D.
Animals generally avoid unnecessary conflict since it requires a large expenditure of energy and carries the risk of injury or death but when competition for a resource becomes an existential matter then surely the choice is between fighting or watching someone else take it?
I cannot see how cooperation and self-restraint will win the day. I'm not aware of many such precedents. It's easier to demonise an opponent and rile up your constituents. Russia being a prime example.
BuckP June 3, 2019 at 4:26 pm #
The fiat dollar's hegemony is maintained by the ominous presence of the world's largest military tirelessly on guard for any nation that steps out of line, such as Iraq, Libya, etc. Since no one knows how much of the world's reserve currency has actually been created, extortion works much better than explanation.
Unfortunately, some alaming news has popped up from the Rand Corporation. Specifically, RAND Senior Defense Analyst David Ochmanek discussed the simulations at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington D.C. last week. "In our games, where we fight China or Russia … blue gets its a** handed to it, not to put too fine a point on it," he said, during a panel discussion. Blue denotes U.S. forces in the simulations. Pompeo and Bolton better rethink those Iran invasion plans.
Last week, an unneeded, overpriced, unreliable, defective F-35 was able to escape the repair hanger and using contrails, draw the facsimile of a penis in the Arizona skies. Our hard earned tax dollars at work. With these hijinks going on, I wonder if the kiddies will be allowed to attend the next Nellis Air Show here in Vegas in November. The Thunderbirds never disappoint, however.
What the hell! It's summer! We need to eat, drink be merry, dance, swim, enjoy the sunshine, go to or play in a ball game, the future be damned!
tucsonspur June 3, 2019 at 7:08 pm #
Remember, the future will damn you. It's a good attitude though, enjoy before we're engulfed. Those naughty fly boys! We could use the moxie at the right time.
But yes, saw them at the "Thunder and Lightning Over Arizona" air show a few months ago. Saw it close up, right off the runways.
Hueys that were in Nam, Avengers, Warthogs, transports, the Gau 30mm cannon, drones, and bombers, including the B-52 Stratofortress. It's a wonder that thing can even fly.
A lot to see and it was great!
tucsonspur
You describe a terrific air show down south there in Arizona. The Nellis Air Show is really impressive also. For as much grief and criticism as the F35 gets, it is pretty cool to see it in action flying in a demonstration. Always impressed by our young men and women in uniform serving our country. They are always patient, polite, and very willing to answer our questions about their aircraft and equipmnet. Can't wait.
" …it was great!"
It was great to see the flying harbingers of death to (mostly) defenseless women & children?
Is this the US Federal Government's 2nd Amendment Rights being displayed?
BackRowHeckler June 3, 2019 at 10:17 pm #
Sure, the US is the only country with an air force.
Of course not, but most of those other air forces fly US equipment, don't they.
DEFCON1 June 3, 2019 at 4:28 pm #
Great fun whenever they let trump out of his rabbit warren. This time of course he could not help but embarrass both himself, that idiot family of his and the entire US of God-fearing A with his moronic blustering about the Mayor of London. Haven't heard someone poke fun at a fellow's height since kindergarten.
However, that is the Leader of the Free World. Soon not to be so free anymore as the price for installing this load will quickly come to bear. God knows who is running the show now – probably a Magic 8-Ball deep in the caverns of 1600 Penn.
What a fucking disaster.
As if it would have been any better with she who should not be named we shall call her miss bleachbit and phone smasher.
The obstructionestiester of all hildabeast.
Queen of the bovine and chief architect of river rapids negotiating.
I tend to agree. At least we have avoided WW3. So far.
But that bar is a little low, isn't it? Perhaps, next time, one of the alternatives vomited forth by the oligarchs could be an almond tree?
Talk about the Age of Diminished Expectations.
Please don't be embarrassed. Trump's popularity in the UK likely mirrors that of Nigel Farage whose party just won a national election (again).
Sure, the usual banner-waving hair-dyed mob gathered outside Bucky Palace are running around shouting the only two words they know ("fascist" and "racist")* but I for one welcome him more than the last shill you sent over here.
*When the Russian hysteria was in full swing the "meddling" trope was on repeat without anyone ever actually saying what the meddling constituted. Perhaps someone can educate me here, what "racist" or "fascist" behaviour has DJT actually engaged in?
He has tried to stem the flow of illegal aliens most of who are brown.
Other then that most of the hysteria is just that idiots being idiots because someone is telling them to be idiots.
BackRowHeckler June 3, 2019 at 7:47 pm #
Im curious about that too.
Apparently anybody who isn't 'down with the struggle', didn't march at Selma, wasn't at the 'Stonewall Rebellion', or wasn't in the Weathermen trying to blow up the Pentagon back in the day, is a fascist, a racist, a Nazi.
That seems to be about the size of it.
Occidental Observer.com
the articles there about weathermen, sds,, check it outtttt.
FincaInTheMountains June 3, 2019 at 7:08 pm #
During his 2016 visit to London, Obama managed to make so many mistakes and protocol violations as if he had specially picked them up so as not to do anything bad, but to offend the British as much as possible with their love of tradition.
When I personally learned (and saw) the details, I just rolled on the floor laughing – one attempt to get into the car next to the Queen's husband was worth something! And what was she to do – ride next to the driver?!
And how did he beat it later in a welcoming speech? And the punishment for leaving the EU? And how did he embrace the old lady? But she declared that she would not meet with the US President if he comes! As if she anticipated it!
Apparently in Obama the Kennedy Irish genes are playing the wicked games!
I would even say dominant Irish genes!
Worse for the Queens gift the pompous fool gave the queen and Ipod loaded with his ridiculous speeches.
Slugoon
"Nigel Farage whose party just won a national election (again)."
Except that it wasn't a national election and they got 31.6% of the vote – in a national election they'd have had to form a coalition 🙂 .
No party of Nigel Farage's has ever won a national election and Nigel hasn't even managed to get a seat in Parliament once after trying several times while with his first party.
UKIP have managed to get one seat in Parliament ever. They have two members in the Welsh Assembly, including brown-envelope man, Neil Hamilton.
We'll have to see how his new party do – hopefully we'll be out of the EU before an election so there won't be any point in voting for them, as they're currently a one-trick pony. They don't have any policies at the moment so it would be odd to bet on how many seats they might get in an actual national election. They also had PR on their side – under FPTP they'll have much less clout.
Slugoon – you already knew this, but to further clarify for the rest of the cohort here, Farage's Brexit Party's win was in an election for the EU Parliament, not the British one.
As well, the Brexit Party's (or UKIPs) only policy is to get out of Europe and they don't give a flying fart about anything else.
Slugoon June 4, 2019 at 1:58 am #
Sorry, yes, it wasn't a national election in that sense and I didn't mean to mislead, I meant that it was an election conducted nationally.
My point is that people such as Sadiq Khan shout "ist" and "ism" at everything they disagree with and I was merely curious whether DJT actually deserved the moniker.
If the 'left' wants a hope in hell of countering antagonists such as DJT they need to starts forming some coherent counter-arguments instead of carelessly throwing around emotionally-charged insults that seem to have lost all meaning.
Flying a blimp across London seems to epitomise the infantile level of discourse. No wonder the 'populists' are just silently moving on.
"Flying a blimp across London seems to epitomise the infantile level of discourse. "
I totally agree and said so the first time. DJT is one of those personalities for whom, in many ways, there's no such thing as bad publicity. If the Labour party wasn't stuck in a sclerotic time warp because of Jeremy Corbyn they should have been able to wipe out the Tories when May stupidly (for her and her party) called an unnecessary election.
By my reckoning Corbyn is a not-especially-bright narcissist who's more interested in being 'head boy' after decades of basically student-union-level politics than in what is genuinely good for the country.
It isn't that Trump just thrives on controversy, it is that he understands human nature.
Trump never attacks first, he knows his enemies and he waits for them to make a silly statement (fueled by emotion), then he responds. Then the masks drop and we have big-name celebs and politicians publicly proclaiming his "kids should be thrown in cages with pedophiles."
Trump is effective because he knows that, particularly in politics and business, which tend to draw certain types of personalities, civility is just window dressing.
I think between us, GA, we've got it covered. What shall we call the new Party?
But seriously, I think it matters not who leads the Labour Party because the old left or right labels no longer seem to hold. Brexit has exposed a new paradigm of nationalism versus globalism and the old parties haven't got a clue what to do about it.
A group of them thought they were down with the kids and formed the hilarious Change UK until it turned out to be Change Nothing UK and they had merely self-selected themselves into irrelevancy. Delicious. I understand resignations are due later today.
Nigel Farage may be a one-trick pony but boy, what a trick! He nails his colours to the mast and speaks his mind without fear of offence. Imagine that! Such novelty seems to be a common trait amongst Trump, Salvini, Orban, Le Pen etc. It's why I like John McDonnell. At least you know what he stands for.
A bloody civil war would be the time-honoured way to sort things out. Until then I think we're set for an ideological tug-o'-war. A third of Brits at one end of the rope behind Nige, another third at the other (I nominate Emily Thornberry as Team Captain) and the remainder stood dazed somewhere in the middle struggling to understand the aim of the game.
"Trump never attacks first, he knows his enemies and he waits for them to make a silly statement (fueled by emotion), then he responds. "
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Re the ongoing spat with Sadiq Khan, from what I recall that started with Trump trying to besmirch him by taking what he said after the terrorist attack entirely out of context. And I think he did that because Khan is Muslim – no other reason.
Having said that the way to deal with him after that was to meet him and show him up by being totally civil but with a totally impenetrable facial expression. Show him you're better.
He also forwarded a tweet by Britain First without bothering to check that the incident they were tweeting about was accurate, when it was actually a lie. Theresa May upbraided him about it and he basically told her to f*** off, but not in so many words. Not OK.
That's funny, Slugoon – I quite like John McDonnell too, even though I'm not a fan of his policies. I think he's straight and very reasonable – and miles better than Corbyn.
But as you say the Labour Party are now 'ungovernable', as are the Tories.
Nightowl June 4, 2019 at 4:45 pm #
GA,
The context of the Khan tweet didn't matter much, IMO. There was clearly still reason to be alarmed despite police being deployed, and Trumpi's tweet wasn't offensive.
Compare to Khan claiming Britain should refuse to host a US president on a diplomatic visit (among other comments) and regurgitating the "fine people" lie is about as sad as it gets, but par for the course these days.
"There was clearly still reason to be alarmed despite police being deployed, and Trumpi's tweet wasn't offensive."
Trump's tweet was utterly offensive. He quoted Khan out of context to claim that he said Londoners shouldn't be alarmed about the continued risk of terrorism.
Khan said they shouldn't be alarmed by the sight of extra police officers, including armed police officers on the street, not because of the continued risk of terrorism.
The man is a manipulative liar, whatever other virtues you see in him.
I saw seriously armed police officers in Paris when I got off the train from one of the towns from which one of the terrorists hailed, after the Bataclan attack. They were alarming, on the platform, their massive weapons trained at my feet an' all as I got off the train.
I'm not defending Khan in that he should have risen about it, but Trump is the president of the United States and he should be above behaving like a lying pr!ck to score a point against the mayor of London because he doesn't like Muslims.
Trump has a higher office to live up to. It would be nice if he didn't disgrace it out of petty vindictiveness.
And I say very, very little on here about your president, compared to what I have to listen to about UK and European affairs, but some things are not acceptable.
No, his point was clear, particularly when contextutalized with some of his past statements on the crime in London. Despite what Khan might want us to think, there was cause for alarm.
I recall Khan also stating that in a metro area one just has to get used to that sort of thing, as terror attacks are "part and parcel of life in a big city."
Quite happy I don't live in London, to be honest.
Merkel tried that approach after the Cologne sex attacks, and many here were shocked.
Khan did not say there was no cause for alarm about terrorism. I repeat, he said the presence of armed police officers on the street should be no cause for alarm (as in it should be reassuring, which is is, as I can personally confirm – from experience in both Paris and Brussels – even if it is initially alarming) I just don't get how you don't see the difference.
He said the fear of terrorism is part and parcel of life in a big city. And so it is. It was cities that the IRA attacked. It is in cities that many or most of the non-Muslim terrorist attacks in the US occur. The fear of terrorist attacks is part and parcel of living in a big city, including in the US, but the main threat isn't from Muslims in the US.
If Tory ministers who were his political opponents (and who'd rather have had Boris again) could see the difference I don't understand why you can't, but we'll just have to agree to disagree.
He did not say fear. He said it is "part and parcel of living in a big city and that "you have to be prepared." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03IKr2TWDM
And he is clearly referring to terrorist attacks.
As mentioned, the piece he authored for the Guardian adds some further context regarding his mindset, and the piece was inexcusable, IMO. He openly lies about the Charlottesville quote, and stokes the flames of fear about the "far right," and trots out the usual talking points about being on the right side of history.
A person in his position so openly lying tells me, for the most part, all I need to know about his character. It's so easy to check, yet he still lies.
He's a globalist and is pushing every policy the corporate MSM and their financiers are pushing.
I have no particular interest in Sadiq Khan one way or the other. I'm not from London and he's not my buddy. But I know that most people on here – and Donald Trump – specifically don't like him because he's a (British) Muslim. That's why he's referred to as the Muzzie Mayor of Londonistan.
You could say those exact words about Trump but you don't care, which is odd.
And a businessman who gets his products made in countries that include Mexico, China, Indonesia and Bangladesh (the cheapest: 30 cents/hour, so he took the contract away from one of the others) is a globalist, to my mind.
Sorry, I couldn't listen to your clip as I don't have sound.
And being prepared for terrorist attacks is part and parcel of living in a big city. As I mentioned regarding the IRA.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sadiq-khan-london-mayor-terrorism-attacks-part-and-parcel-major-cities-new-york-bombing-a7322846.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trump-sadiq-khan-uk-visit-london-mayor-twitter-protests-death-threats-us-president-racism-a8941581.html
Since SSL wouldn't tell me if the UK should have refused entry to all Irish people during the time we were being bombed by the IRA, perhaps you could tell me if you think they should have been.
And since we still have the Real IRA or whatever they call themselves now showing their fangs again, should we refuse them all entry now?
Slugoon:
Yes, Farage is at least entertaining, with an eloquent wit.. to the EU Parliament…" I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives…" and attributing van Rompuy with the "charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of low grade bank clerk"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF8Ab3kqprg)
but just like the rest of your list of right-wing arseholes and wannabe dictators, he'd end up letting you down, because eventually, it would become clear that the only person he cares about is himself and his cohort of fat rich bastards. He's globalist and an elitist and made his money not in 'work' but in 'trade' and the lowest of them all, in trade in money
You couldn't make it up, Majella. The people's saviours, Trump and Farage – a globalist businessman offshoring US jobs to every underdeveloped country he can think of, culminating in taking $1/hour contracts from Indonesians and giving them to the lowest common denominator in Bangladesh, for $0.30/hour – and a former commodities broker who's just been investigated about almost half million of personal slush money from Arron Banks that he 'forgot' to declare because he was about to leave politics. And then 'forgot' to declare again when he re-entered.
And that's before you start on the Brexit investment bankers whose motivation is to turn Britain into Singapore-on-Thames to benefit their own businesses.
Talk about Cloud Cuckoo Land… It's what you get from seeing life in black and white. They can't cope with the idea of two competing options with negatives and the difficult human dilemma of choosing between them. Black and white makes it easier to metaphorically shout at people and to virtue signal, to use their own term right back at them.
'being investigated', I should have said – they're not done yet.
I don't care about Khan's ethnicity, skin color, or religion.
RE Trump: Manufacturing some products overseas as a result of globalism is hardly the same as openly supporting globalism and pursuing neoliberal policies in line with globalism.
Trump's rhetoric and policies are almost entirely counter to globalism at every level. There is a reason he is attacked 24/7 by the corporate media and our very own Uniparty. Why doesn't he just join them if he is pro globalism? Why take the slings and arrows, the attempts to destroy him and his family, the attempts to destroy the movement?
Nor do I. But I care that Trump does.
Well I'll have to leave you with your opportunistic, duplicitous and hypocritical president. I don't normally bother talking about him, but I felt the other side of the childish spat deserved some air too.
He's not pro-globalism or pro-nationalism. He's pro-Trump. Just like Boris isn't for or against the EU (hence the two conflicting Telegraph articles), he's pro-Boris.
And Trump has destroyed his own family twice all by himself. That's why he's on to his third.
You've demonstrated neither that Trump is a hypocrite nor that he is concerned about the color of Khan's skin or what sky person he prays to.
Toys, pram … you know the drill.
"You've demonstrated neither that Trump is a hypocrite…"
Neither your analytical skills nor your Weltanschauung are my responsibility. Do what you like with your toys.
The Mayor of London had plenty to say about Trump long before Trump ever uttered a word.
Reap the whirlwind I guess.
James Schlesinger. About 10 years ago we stopped at a used book sale in Newfane, Vt being held in this converted little Baptist church. I spotted a book about the Cambridge 5, Brits who spied for Russia in the years during and after WW2. The inside cover was stamped 'Property of James Schlesinger', and then his signature. Looking around I found 4 other books that once belonged to Schlesinger, all having to do with Cold War espionage. I kept them around and still have them to this day.
Google is your friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Schlesinger
Amongst a lot of other things, Schlesinger was a prominent peak oil guy for awhile about 10 years ago.
Learned something new there. Probably influenced the Pentagon heavily then, as they certainly believe in it too.
Don't worry about LA, in Chicago this past weekend 52 wounded, 10 dead. Safe to say the 'warm glow' cast by the newly elected black, lesbian, one legged mayor has worn off already, and its only been a few weeks.
Speaking of Los Angeles, it seemed a little odd hearing the mayor, Eric Garcetti, speak a few words about the environment, when the environment he himself controls and actually has jurisdiction over, the city of Los Angeles, is a filthy disease ridden medieval sh#thole. He should try to do something about cleaning that up instead of worrying about the Pacific Ocean sea level rising up a few inches in the next 250 years. Bubonic Plague, Typhus, emerging Meningitis, Hep A, B, &C, Dysentery and so on is what Mayor Garcetti should be focused on, not long term weather patterns.
Ah come on the above is the new California normal.
I could take some pictures of areas in San Diego that look worse than some of the third world countries I visited while in the Navy.
If that's the case, it a tragedy, Ben.
It just that these big lefty pols are always talking about the environment, the environment, the environment, but the environment they have actual control over is foul, polluted, filthy and disease ridden.
Do you see the delicious irony in that?
Yeah, sure, but you can do the same exercise in cherry picking in any city in any country anywhere.
I have to say, when I was in San Deigo (La Jolla to be exact) in July 2014, the whole area and next door Ocean Beach were just deliciously lovely…nothing like a sunshin-y climate! No doubt, benr could head to some small, discrete areas in the likes of Chula Vista, for example, and get some pretty compelling evidence of shitholiness. But even then, a microscopic view is a distorted one.
While in Philadelphia & Chicago, way, WAY back in 1989/90, I found shithole suburbs that you felt unsafe driving through and were reluctant to stop at red lights, while in contrast, leafy idylls in the outer 'burbs were much greater in number & area.
So, I say, this is nothing new and is not a direct result of immigration, 'liberals', Hillary Clinton, or any other current political 'demon-of-the-day'. "It was ever thus."
Oh no you are just flat out wrong just outside the gas lamp has turned into a huge homeless camp.
The exit just before the Coronado bridge looks like a scene from escape from LA!
The sAN dIEGO pd chase them all around the city and OB is now sick of them as well.
This trend sky rocketed under Obamaniable and has not slowed down at all. A true travesty in the horrible Democrat pervert mayor kicked out of office and the equally obnoxious Republicant mayor in office now.
Have you ever noticed that there are no Negro illegal immigrants? There are African illegal immigrants, but there are no mixed blood 75% African blood, 25% European or Je…wi,,,ish blood people trying to sneak into the country to make money. The Negroes basically shout about their "Rights" and vilify poor white downtrodden crackers for their "White Privilege" while the politicians that the Negroes vote for flood the country with cheap labor that outcompetes black people for jobs. Right? Totally insane….
Given that sexual promiscuity ruins young girls, rather than looking for the "perfect soulmate" in a soulless sexual culture, shouldn't I be looking for the Perfect App? What I really need is a good "Sexbot"?
Seems to me that the failure of capitalism occurs when governmental lobbying, socialism, regulation, good ol' boys clubs, narrow the competitive field for goods and services down to 1 or 2 participants. Capitalism regulates prices by competition, the free market. Our system today destroys competition, when it should be encouraging it.
The low prices of oil through the years shows what a market with a lot of competitors in it can do. Rockefeller fixed the prices when it started out, but Standard Oil was busted up and the monopoly was gone.
Medicine is a perfect example, there is no competition. How can you run a free market with a monopolistic marketplace? Either the medical industry, including pharma, has to be de-monopolized and made competitive or like every other service that has to be a monopoly, such as public service, it must be regulated in a non-political manner to protect the public.
Capitalism regulates prices by competition, the free market
No shit?!
Not by cartels, monopolies, tariffs, taxes and political favors?
Noam Chomsky says that in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa that the Americans assumed that Hi Tyler would win and that the World would eventually be divided between the Germans and the Yanks. Weird….
Note my next sentence. Capitalism, the way it is supposed to work, is almost nonexistent.
America has turned socialist.
Not socialist, but crony-capitalist.
It's not just competition, it's control. Control over the CFPB, for example. Capitalism can, and often does, crush the average consumer.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/673222706/senate-confirms-kathy-kraninger-as-cfpb-director
Larry Kudlow, former chief economist at Bear Stearns, is now Trump's top economics adviser. One time alcoholic and cocaine addict. Loved the tax cuts. What was his benefit? Hundreds of thousands, millions?
Kudlow's curve, the Laffer curve, lower tax rates will grow the economy. Just what we need. Something to shorten the Long Emergency and take us more quickly to chaos.
Capitalism in anything near a pure form would fail, largely for one of the reasons you list: monopolies.
There is no competition left when one or two companies develop a quality product, become large enough to take over the market, and squelch the competition to maintain their status. Soon they may even venture into other areas and cóntinue to destroy the competitive landscape (see Amazon).
This is why we need a mixed economy with some regulation.
HowardBeale June 3, 2019 at 8:18 pm #
Google showing your sight as "unsafe." These organizations are SO BIG there is no way to monitor all the little wanna be Nazi's that are sitting in their 8×8 Kingdoms, deciding who shall and shall not be heard.
The idiots are worried about Russia and others influencing election.
Hey, social media's algorithms are the future decider of elections. Voters are going to be eliminated from the process, in effect.
Google calling a site unsafe is like putting up a yuge Las Vegas style neon sign saying GO HERE!
No, people don't react that way because there is too much they don't know. They think unsafe means unsafe. They don't know a browser can't change the internals of their computer so they really do stay away as big daddy intended.
All you have to do is host a You-Tube on a blog and you are 'unsafe'. That is all I do and I'm unsafe too. There is serious irony in that considering who owns You-Tube. But if Google says it is true, then it must be true. And after nobody questions it; the 'it' becomes true.
pkrugman June 3, 2019 at 9:43 pm #
Mexico is not playing along with the US zeitgeist. Mexican officials behind the scenes are warning Trump that they're prepared to announce targeted counter-tariffs if the United States carries out threats of new tariffs on Mexican imports. Mexico is the U.S.'s third-largest trading partner. As they say in Spanish, if Trump is not careful "le va a salir el tiro por la culata"
FincaInTheMountains June 3, 2019 at 10:12 pm #
Just watch it when American Deplorables with their genetic memory will finally recall that they are actually the descendents of the English Yeomen and how they under the command of Robin of Locksley burned down the castle of the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert and you get such a tiro por la culata that you'll be looking for your culata on other side of the border.
Rolling Thunder chief predicts biker descent on DC if Dems impeach Trump
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/rolling-thunder-chief-predicts-biker-descent-on-dc-if-dems-impeach-trump
Here's what I am talking about!
Will the Night Wolves be joining in?
LOL! I'm sure the DC national police state apparatus is just quaking in their boots!
100th Avatar June 3, 2019 at 10:09 pm #
"Mr. Trump's wish to Make America Great Again, the vision of a return to the economy of 1955, of men toting lunchboxes through the factory gates…"
This is a little rich coming from someone with visions of a return to river barges and canal bateaux cheerfully trading the produce and product from yeomen farmers and artisans in a post-energy/financial collapse America.
Wishful thinking both.
No factories and no merchant traders
Mobs and gangs don't play that way. Be it street thug or local government leaders in a civilization deprived future.
SoftStarLight June 4, 2019 at 1:12 am #
So you don't think there is any other option than an anarchic future controlled by gangs and thugs? I can understand the pessimism. But would it not be possible for some pockets of semblances of civilization to remain or even regroup?
100th Avatar June 4, 2019 at 7:16 am #
I don't believe in any of that fanciful BS.
Save for some planetary disastrous event like nuclear war, the future is one of more automation and AI.
Less need for people… everywhere.
Factories, farms, barges, taxis, long haul trucks, accountants and medical offices.
Besides, they use exponentially less energy and are better stewards of the planet.
It's not techno-narcissism. It's evolution.
Ah ok, that is very interesting. I hadn't picked up on that before that you were a transhumanist. It is a bit curious though that you suggest that machines use exponentially less energy than people. I get that we have made progress in using somewhat less energy/resources in some things compared to the past. Both man and machine require energy to work, but machines require much more resources including non-renewable ones (and rare minerals/metals) to operate. Don't you think? Modern humans clearly use massive amounts of energy, but Stone Age humans did not.
100th Avatar June 4, 2019 at 10:19 am #
The near future will not ask for less people. It will dictate.
As far as AI and robotics. Genie is pushing on the cork of the bottle. That, or the hand has begun its rub of the bottle. Choose your metaphor.
From then on, our fate is in Roko Basilisk's figurative hands.
". Choose your metaphor"
Uhh, Man proposes, Nature disposes?
More like devolution. The future is fewer people – possibly none at all – and MUCH less tech. Tech is what created our current mess in the first place. It damn sure ain't going to save us. Pure cornucopian thinking.
So much assumption on this site.
I'm not trans- anything.
Posthumanist?
Tech save humanity? Says who?
SoftStarLight June 4, 2019 at 12:22 pm #
You're right and I apologize for making that leap. I did assume you were referring to a mix of man and machine. But you are talking about the elimination of humanity altogether.
100th Avatar June 4, 2019 at 2:13 pm #
Not elimination.
Supplanting.
The Great and Infernal Truthiness of Lil Debbie Snack Packaging June 3, 2019 at 11:01 pm #
"The Moral Courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy"…
A moment of silence. For all of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRy8M2aiMIc
RIP, the Climate
Jim Kunstler wrote:
"By then, the world had noticed the dollar's declining value trend-line, and threatened to drain Fort Knox to counter the effects of holding those dollars. Since then, all world currencies have been based on nothing but the idea that national economies would forever and always pump out more wealth."
I eagerly follow any news along the gold trail as it has turned into quite a curious game of cat-and-mouse, with Fort Knox declining to be inventoried (as the US Congress has pressed them to do) and all the monkeying around with German gold bullion (I recall the Bank of New York not only refusing to return their ingots but not even wanting them to look at their own metal). I have not read that Berlin has had it all shipped back to them.
I sure bet the French were glad they never asked Uncle for his kind protection (the story of the French reserves stashed in Africa during the German invasion, then repatriated practically intact, is also fascinating).
The NATO bandits who stole the ~150 tons of Libya's gold (thereby torpedoing the not impractical plan for a pan-African bank) likely let it rest a few moments in Fort Knox… before seeing it spirited away to Beijing.
If the timid, corrupt Congress ever forces the issue all they might find in the bullion repository is Mother Hubbard with a shit-eating grin on her face.
President Trump is in London to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D Day landing, representing the United States, probably the final time this will happen (the last Gettysburg celebration was in 1938, 75 years after the battle) You'd think the little pissant Muslim mayor of London would show some respect, at least for the event, but apparently, Normandy had nothing to do with him or his people in Pakistan, why should he give a sh#t? He represents the new, Islamic, Africanized London, so he starts a pissing contest with the President of the United States, still Britain's best ally. The thing I like about Trump is that he just doesn't bend over and take it like Bush II did, but gives it right back. Apparently the British govt has banned carrying all sharp instruments but the knife attacks carried out by black gangs on the streets of London go on daily, along with the charming activity of throwing cups of sulfuric acid into unsuspecting pedestrians faces. Ponder that for a moment, CFners. Good thing guns are banned too! Quite a multi cultural utopia they built for themselves in merry old England. I'm looking forward to some of that here, 'specially the acid attacks which would be novel on the streets of NY and Chicago.
pkrugman June 3, 2019 at 11:48 pm #
brh: I'm looking forward to some of that here, 'specially the acid attacks which would be novel on the streets of NY and Chicago.
You are sick. As sick as the people who throw acid.
how rude.
Yes Trump should get down on his knees and beg forgiveness from Me Gain Markle for pointing out her nastiness. How dare he!
That is a great name. Did you ever see all the soft core porn she did that they had to pull down?
Have you never watched porn, Nightowl?
Oh, come on. It's hilarious. She's proper and respectable now!
I didn't say she wasn't. What's that got to do with anything?
If you use porn at all, why do you even think there's anything out of order about what she did? Surely you're not a…you know…hypocrite.
If you use porn at all, you're exactly as 'respectable' as the women you use. Or they're exactly as 'respectable' as you. Whichever way you want to look at it. It's the great leveller.
Why does she hide her past?
I know why.
I know why too. Same reason the er White House would prefer not to have these all over the place:
https://socialnewsdaily.com/71572/13-photos-of-the-first-lady-she-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
(What the heck happened to her eyes and mouth?).
My point wasn't about her hypocrisy, it was about yours, thinking it entitles you to smirk. If you've never used porn, then you are entitled to smirk at her 'soft porn'. If you have, you aren't. Simples.
all the soft core porn she did – Nightowl
It's amazing the lengths women will go to in the pursuit of beauty.
Thank God I'm a man. I would never be able to keep up with it all.
#notallwomen
But your logic is false. I have never done porn, nor would I. Nor would I ever marry a chick who had.
I have standards.
#notallwomen – GA
It is close enough to 'all women' that I am comfortable generalizing.
#inyourexperience 🙂
I'm beginning to think American women may be unusual.
"But your logic is false. I have never done porn, nor would I."
I said 'watched' porn. Are you being devious?
I don't know anyone who has 'done' porn, but I know that 70% of men watch it.
"nor would I ever marry a chick…"
I would never have married a man who called women 'chicks'.
It's sarcasm. I'm sure you will get past the outrage rather quickly.
Epicur June 4, 2019 at 3:11 pm #
There's some internet Law that says no matter how obvious one thinks his sarcasm may be, someone will take it literally, therefore the /sarc tag.
Poe's Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
SoftStarLight June 4, 2019 at 3:30 pm #
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing this as I didn't know there was an actual rule :-). I knew he was being sarcastic just based on history. But I can see what you mean. I'll try to be more careful in the future myself.
Two wars USA should have passed on.
even if it meant we would be sprechen Sie Deutsch…..
Two more
Black females aren't afraid of a confrontation or a fight.
Don't underestimate them.
Little Brittany squared off jut-jawed against that car and was ready to throw down even armed only with a toddler. Her mistake was to rely on her men to back her up.
I would be totally ok if we had to sprechen sie Deutsch. But instead we have Ebonics and Spanglish. Even though we are moving into the future it seems like we are devolving into a babbling mongrel horde.
"You'd think the little pissant Muslim mayor of London would show some respect, at least for the event, but apparently, Normandy had nothing to do with him or his people in Pakistan, why should he give a sh#t? He represents the new, Islamic, Africanized London, so he starts a pissing contest with the President of the United States,
Regarding who started the pissing contest:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brief-history-trump-khan-feud_uk_5cf4eb61e4b0e346ce811848
Regarding the contribution of Indian and future Pakistani combat units to the British war effort in WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Pakistan#The_World_Wars
During World War I the British Indian Army fought in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, and France and suffered very heavy casualties.
"The British Indian Army's strength was about 189,000 in 1939. There were about 3,000 British officers and 1,115 Indian officers. The army was expanded greatly to fight in World War II. By 1945, the strength of the Army had risen to about two-and-a-half million.
"There were about 34,500 British officers and 15,740 Indian officers. The Army took part in campaigns in France, East Africa, North Africa, Syria, Tunisia, Malaya, Burma, Greece, Sicily and Italy. It suffered 179,935 casualties in the war (including 24,338 killed, 64,354 wounded, 11,762 missing and 79,481 POW soldiers). Many future military officers and leaders of Pakistan fought in these wars.
Oh, GA… there go again, getting all smart & 'facty'.
You're just SPOILING the internet for the likes of BRH.
The thing is, Majella, that I've never supported mass immigration on here or anywhere else (I reserve the right to feel compassion for genuine refugees) but (a) I don't blame immigrants for being here or (b) think that it's morally OK for a small previously powerful nation to take over two thirds of the world, steal its stuff through the barrel of a gun (and murder a whole lot of innocent people in the process), then say, 'thanks, now fuck off' when the moral dilemmas of colonialism come home to roost.
You only need to look at the shoddy way the British Government behaved over a small number of Ghurkas living in the UK – and they're a group for whom the British people (of a certain age, like me!) have a historical respect and affection, given their unstinting service and loyalty to said British people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurkha#Treatment_of_Gurkhas_in_the_United_Kingdom
Q. Shtik June 6, 2019 at 9:55 am #
Ghurkas – GA
Do Ghurkas wear burqas?
The ones in question are disqualified, being male.
And I gather their religion is a hodge-podge of Hinduism, Buddhism, and some smatterings of incorporated animism and ancestor worship.
They're very good fighters – burquas would probably be unhelpful 🙂 .
Hey! I'm with you – I LIKE 'facty'…there's no other way! You have a particular skill and patience too, when delivering it. In the process, you 'spoil' the ignorant 'fun' of many here, who would prefer a Star Chamber & infinitely re-informing feedback loop.
(Seriously, you DID my sarcasm in that remark, right?)
Of course 🙂
SoftStarLight June 4, 2019 at 12:49 am #
Perhaps its not so much that our culture and political system are bent on committing suicide. But rather, an increasing lack of shared values and norms in the age of anything goes and nothing matters that has killed our culture and is now taking the political system with it. Whether or not it was intentionally brought on or is due to sheer negligence? Seems to be both. Either way, it doesn't seem like a society can go forward for very long without a consensus on identity and purpose. And unfortunately we don't have this now and as each day passes it seems even more distant.
In the UK it was intentionally brought on, starting in 1997 under Tony Blair. Tom Bower's Broken Vows provides details. Or check out Figure 2 in the following Office of National Statistics report: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/may2016
It was intentionally brought on here in the states as well Slugoon. Lower level politicians who may be somewhat opposed to this have been negligent to do much of anything about it. The Elite and corporations profit massively from it. It is also very difficult if not impossible to change anything when all major institutions, mainstream forms of media, churches, etc., advocate for population replacement incessantly while at least half of the population also supports and believes that population replacement is sacrosanct.
Slugoon June 4, 2019 at 12:10 pm #
When I campaigned with Vote Leave the majority of 'Leavers' just wanted a sensible immigration policy: what is his or her contribution to British society, what skills do they offer, what is their health like, can they support themselves or their families etc.
Migration is only natural but left unchecked it can (and has) led to rapid demographic change. In many places the UK has simply balkanised with little to no real integration. You might as well have taken 30 square miles of Karachi and dropped it straight into a Birmingham suburb.
I don't blame anyone for wanting to come to the UK to try and improve their lot. The tragedy for me is that it was done for all the wrong reasons:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html
Well migration is natural when their is easy access into the migrant destinations. Sure humans have been moving around since the beginning of time. However, society was ultimately built by settled peoples who had a deep connection to land/location. Certainly today, East Asian countries do not value immigration to any large extent. I can't say there have never been benefits from immigration but the negatives at this point far outweigh any benefits in Western countries. And like you shared here, it is clear that current Western immigration and migration policies are specifically oriented toward population replacement. I say this because the desire for "multiculturalism" is primarily a Western pathology.
"I say this because the desire for "multiculturalism" is primarily a Western pathology."
That's an excellent observation. I hadn't really thought about it in reverse. What a peculiar phenomenon.
The desire is not the West's, it is the desire of multinational corporations with no allegiance to any country who want cheap labor.
It is being sold to us with warm fuzzies; those who resist are called Nazis.
" …if left unchecked, can lead to rapid demographic change."
Too right! Just ask the North American natives, the Southern American natives, the Maori, the indigenous Dreamtime People of Australia and the Indians, among others!
FincaInTheMountains June 4, 2019 at 6:10 am #
A stunning photo of an eagle blew the internet away
Canadian photographer Steve Biro was in the right place at the right time. The result was a stunning image of a bald eagle, sliding on the surface of the pond at the Canadian Conservatory of Predators.
https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2019/05/steve_biro_eagle_mirro_image.jpg
Beautiful photo and eagle! Thanks for sharing.
I dunno. Looks photoshopped to me. What are the chances?
Nick O Demus,
If someone can photoshop the reflection of the eagle on the water with that degree of accuracy and realism, well, I'll believe in anything…Bigfoot, Area 51 Aliens, female orgasms….
…And the photographer is probably Canadian, and you KNOW that they don't lie….
Reverse the image top to bottom and add ripple effects. Not hard at all. Looks suspiciously artificially symmetrical to me.
Dead and alive: why it's time to rethink quantum physics
https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/4/2019/05/GettyImages-116641374-312ffb0.jpg
Quantum physics is strange and confusing. John Gribbin argues in his book Six Impossible Things that it doesn't have to be quite so bad.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/dead-and-alive-why-its-time-to-rethink-quantum-physics/?fbclid=IwAR0U4DjCF6u7pqQsVYSklFWLsTGF7uwPvge4C49kFfoYqagsjSb_W0_atIE
Some hope at revitalisation of fundamental science after half a century of stagnation?
I could never make more than a D in physics and that was with lots of hand holding and no doubt my physics teacher had lots of patience. My main question was always, "Why do we have to learn this?".
Agreed. Given pour current predicament, maybe it's just time to junk quantum physics altogether, and focus on something more close to the earth, like say, permaculture, or maybe even just plain old agriculture?
How about we junk all devils advocates?
No, just quantum physics for now. Maybe we'll get to old grouchy Russians later after they've fired up their first bong hit for the day.
LOL Grouchy Russians need bong hits to start the day off right? Hmmm I can think of some Americans who are the same way ;-).
I think that the Finc is a Russian-American, so he probably needs at least two. Probably better make that four, since he's also old and grouchy.
Yep Ol' Scratch. Good ole fashioned 4H, home economics and shop. Some of the public schools in my area still actually have these programs going and a lot of participation!
What's 'shop'?
Yesterday was a day of Our Lady of Vladimir
Perhaps none of the icons has played such a role in the history of Russia as Our Lady of Vladimir.
She saved Russia countless times, but on June 3 the sudden departure of the Crimean Khan Mehmet Giray in 1521 from the walls of Moscow was celebrated.
This year was not only the hardest year under Vasily III, but also one of the hardest years in Russian history, and it seemed that the just born Russian Empire was over.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Vladimirskaya.jpg
But the brainchild of the son of Sophia Palaiologina and Ivan III the Great – and Vasily III was the first of the Moscow princes, called the emperor of the Rus in the treaty of 1514 with the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Maximilian I – turned out to be quite viable.
And even the ripening rift, triggered by a dispute between Joseph Volotsky and Nil Sorsky because of his attitude to the "Judaizers", could not stop the growth of the newborn Empire, the heiress to a thousand-year-old Byzantium, first proclaimed in 1492 in the Easter of Metropolitan Zosimus.
Sophia Palaiologina brought the icon from her homeland – Byzantium.
Majella June 6, 2019 at 5:21 am #
Finca, didn't you recently assert that the name 'Byzantium' was coined by a German monk in the 17th century? Doesn't this more recent post contradict you?
Why nobody is asking a simple question: which companies in the United States are benefiting most from the huge trade deficit with China and what is their political and ideological affiliation? == Finca
More links emerge between China and Joe Biden's family
The Former vice president's son Hunter Biden is reportedly linked to surveillance system in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5F9a5dc-R0
BackRowHeckler June 4, 2019 at 8:38 am #
Finca you're not supposed to be talking about Biden's family and links to Chinese Intellligence or the Ukranian Army. On those subjects there is media silence, strictly enforced.
What you are permitted to talk about — encouraged to talk about — is the Trump family's links to Russia, involvement with Putin, Hotel in Moscow, Trumps are criminals and so on.
Piss on that.
Dems have already pissed all over themselves with the fake pissing dossier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moAZ3AsyhLU&t=55
I am wondering where the wall to wall coverage of Biden's deep China ties is? I bet you anything there never will be any wall to wall coverage of it. In the meantime I can tune in to any station to find out what the latest Trump story is. They really do elevate him more than anybody I have ever heard of. Some people just don't get that any coverage is good coverage for someone trying to live in everyone's head rent free.
At any rate Joe Biden is laying low. At age 80 there's not a lot of energy left for a major political campaign, it has to be conserved for the main event in 2020.
OT in Chicongo: The propaganda machine here is on high alert after someone in the CPD leaked the surveillance video of a black mother getting shot and killed while holding her 1-year old daughter and dealing drugs with her boyfriend (standing next to their black $50000 Mercedes Benz) on Chicago's west side. This overturns the narrative that Brittany Hill was an innocent bystander and she "shielded" her daughter from gunfire. Now whoever leaked that video is facing more severe criminal penalties and punitive damages than Jussie Smollett.
Are there other lessons learned from that video?
1.) Once blacks have decided to pull the trigger they will kill anyone and everyone. Females and children will not be spared. Don't underestimate the ruthlessness of your adversary.
2.) The driver's gun clearly malfunctioned but he quickly went into Tap-Rack-Bang mode. Don't underestimate the competency of your adversary…even ones of low I.Q.
3.) Tactical first aid really is a great asset. The second shot hit Brittany in her left femoral artery and she died within 70 seconds.
4.) Black females aren't afraid of a confrontation or a fight. Don't underestimate them. Little Brittany squared off jut-jawed against that car and was ready to throw down even armed only with a toddler. Her mistake was to rely on her men to back her up.
5.) A lot of shootouts in this city revolve around vehicles and multiple shooters. I'm guessing any urban combat in your area will too. The 9mm may not be enough. I like .40, .357 Sig and 10mm for the ability to punch through window glass and car metal. 9mm is a competent cartridge but I feel more comfortable carrying 9mm+P bonded rounds. Better yet, a quick-handling long gun is a must in the urban setting. 12-gauge slugs, 5.56mm 7.62mm and .30-30 are very effective against vehicles and are a force multiplier against the Savage.
6.) The Left installed surveillance cameras in a naive belief that it would prevent crime. They made the police wear body-cameras to handcuff them and prove that police are racist. This plan backfired. Black criminals don't really care that there are cameras around and frequently verbally and physically assault police with the cameras on. Now there are tons of videos showing black behavior and black racism in America and it's making the Left very very nervous. They will stop at nothing to make sure millions of hours of video (which are the property of the taxpayers) are NEVER shown to the public.
Brittany Hill May 28, 2019 video (probably has been deleted by now):
https://mtonews.com/chicago-woman-shot-while-carrying-baby-graphic-vide
Criminals in the drug trade want their violence broadcast to intimidate their base. Also, MS 13 is right in there duking it out with the black gangs.
What will fix Chicago? Not the Left with its false promises. Not the right with its concentration on big business.
Themselves, rejecting the politicians and creating their own future. And Hope that is possible. Refusal to allow the drug vampires to be in control. Al Capone's hold on Chicago was broken, or at least minimized, it can happen.
But not by electing black apologists as mayor.
Same in Baltimore.
Well, in Chicago, 52 shot, 7 dead last weekend alone. That's the casualties from a small war, say, the Philippines in 1900, or Afghanistan in 2004.
This might be a record setting summer. All the ingredients are there, and not only in Chicago either, the new history making black lesbian mayor not withstanding. Baltimore, St Louis (with its new chief prosecuter who won election on the platform he would not fight crime), Cory Bookers Newark, Cleveland, they could all be in the mix for record mayhem and stupidity.
Just wait til summer comes and the weather heats up.
Think about it. This is the best the Dems have to offer to counter Trump. Another Trump. But it is true, he is the best they have to offer.
Elrond Hubbard June 4, 2019 at 8:27 am #
Everyone's winning the US-China trade war except the US and China
https://qz.com/1629735/everyones-winning-the-us-china-trade-war-except-china-and-the-us/
"The tariffs imposed on goods traded between the United States and China are re-shaping the global economy, but not the way the chief antagonist in that battle, US president Donald Trump, has predicted.
"While trade with China has fallen slightly, the statistics also show that imports to the United States from other developing economies are fast increasing. In other words, the White House's nationalist trade policy is changing where the United States sources its imports, not growing production at home. …
"The overall trade deficit hasn't gone away, with US government data from 2018 showing a record high US trade deficit of $891 billion. The reason is simple—US businesses looking to import cheap goods abroad are simply turning to different markets. One obvious choice is Mexico, where the United States had a record high trade deficit in March 2019, and from other advanced economies—imports from Germany and Japan hit record-high levels in March as well.
"As the Council on Foreign Relations' Brad Setser pointed out, one of the biggest winners is Vietnam, which has seen its trade with the United States increase dramatically. While some at the US Treasury are examining the situation for signs that Vietnam is artificially devaluing its currency to be more competitive in global markets, Setser concluded that 'the recent jump in its surplus (and the surplus of many other East Asian economies) is almost certainly the consequence of Trump's tariffs on China.'"
So is Trump secretly an agent of Ho Chi Minh from beyond the grave?
Trump is just cutting off the income streams to the Flying Monkeys.
If Vietnamese are not shilling for Hillary and the Dems, they are OK to trade with and show China that US has a choice of suppliers!
By all means provide us with your insider info. on wall funding. Show us how funds from Mexico will or will not pay for a wall.
If all remittances were taxed heavily enough the Wall could be paid for very quickly. Despite all of the rhetoric and bloviating though there will be no real Wall. That has been made perfectly clear.
Hold on. Didn't I just hear that a federal judge just threw out the House's attempt to stop the funding of the wall with Defense dollars. The wall is being built! And will accelerate. The dictatorship of the Left through the courts is grinding to a halt.
You did hear that! John believe me. I want you to be right and I really want to be wrong in my pessimism.
And remember, Trump said he wanted "these people" here because the economy is so good. Just a version of Bush's make all the illegals legal and the problem is solved.
Legal immigration alone will destroy us, John.
Yes thank you for the reminder about the problem with legal immigration too! There is far too much of it. I personally don't want any at all but that is not very popular. So the most we could hope for it looks like is at least a big decrease in the number of legal immigrants allowed access to the country. Trump actually talked about reducing legal numbers a great deal. He floated the idea of a moratorium didn't he? So he backed away from this promise and did a total 180 because now he wants more people legally to enter the country than at any other time in the past. And they are not European.
Yep. There is also a private contractor who just completed a section.
yeah…half a mile for $20 million of "Go Fund Me" beggings.
The section was a showcase, to demonstrate their ability to contribute.
They raised 20+ million to date (quite impressive), and they are eyeing 10 additional sites for building in addition to what Trump is planning at the federal level with the ACoE.
SSL – as I understand it (and I stand to be corrected) a 'remittance' is funds funds earned (I.e. Savings) from labour in one jurisdiction and sent (remitted) back to family in another. Do we agree on that?
Therefore, if the remittance has been earned and tax paid on those earnings, it's now free Capital, right?
What I'm getting from you here is that you would tax it AGAIN (if you could effectively identify it), simply because you resent immigrants/want your frigging 'wall' and don't give a toss about the recipients who are probably relying on that remittance to keep body & soul together.
Where are you Christian values in all that?
American mass media propaganda. The queen shows the Trump the highest state honors she can give. I had to endure that nonsense on the car radio yesterday. I imagined Trump walking by a line of Beefeaters. One in three falls as he walks by.
This live-stream video now more than four hours long is closer to the truth.
https://youtu.be/lYO5goEJOmo
And congress could impeach his ass in five minutes if they wanted to.
"We don't despise trump the man. We despise what he stands for………………
That just came off the feed.
The all-America favourite Jew Alan Dershowitz says that Trump could take it up with the Supreme Court:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-intervene-trump-office-dershowitz
If that fails, than American people could take it all the way to the Rolling Thunder and may be even to Night Wolves!
Thomas Jefferson documented this route in the Declaration of Independence.
When a government becomes oppressive to the people, it is the responsibility of those people to rise up and change that government.
We have had enough of government loving idiots in this country.
You anti-Trumpers always act like the vast majority of this country just hates Trump. The MSM just feeds on this.
A reminder, the country elected this guy as a rebellion against the status quo that has evolved in DC over the past 30 years.
And the most popular media site by far is Fox News. CNN is being clobbered by its own hand, and MSNBC's cadre of "journalists" are a joke.
Neo- Liberals are far from in control in this country, thank God. And thank God, the political focus in DC and the federal system is finally moving right.
And by the way, if you would get out from behind your anti-Trump fog, you would see he has been a gracious guest through the last couple of days.
Well we were wrong. Trump is Deep State/Swamp, Zionist division.
Trump's win was a Hail Mary in the Fourth Quarter, 3rd down, twenty yards to go at the fifty yard line. The Receiver caught the ball and turned around and sprinted for his own end zonel way down field. The opposing team blocked for him against his own team mates who tried to bring him down.
He's the best you're gonna get.
Yes, thus TINVOWOOT: There is no voting our way out of this.
"There is no voting our way out of this."
Will there be a way of voting their way out of your system if der Volk don't like it and want their freedom back. You know, a sort of Article 50. Or is it just one big concentration camp?
We're hoping for impeachment proceedings too, KDog.
I can't wait to see distinguished NY Congressman Gerald Nadler in the role of Grand Inquisitor, your own Tomas Torquemada, with shrill Maxine Waters standing behind him on the prosecuters podium, pulling faces. (You yourself stated last week Waters had the goods on Trump, irrefutably.) Belly laughs all summer, dampened a little when the casualty figures start rolling in from Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit, and the stirrings of Bubonic Plague and Ebola Fever from the fetid streets of LA.
Its gonna be a great summer, made better by impeachment proceedings, which I'll listen to on my little portable radio, sitting in a shady spot by the river, drinking a cold beer and fishing for trout.
And after it is all over perhaps we can have a former TV evangelist and country movie star run the show. Perhaps 'Loving Marrow' would be an appropriate name. And a good bone too.
wwg1wga June 4, 2019 at 9:13 am #
Initial it with loving care.
http://www.got-truth.com/docs/Initial%20it%20with%20loving%20care.pdf
#oathkeepers
450.org June 4, 2019 at 9:35 am #
Majella and GreenAlba, thanks for providing a modicum of sanity & balance & intelligence to a place, this comment section, that is otherwise bereft of those virtues.
Sanity & balance & intelligence should be my middle names.
YOU KNOW THAT.
I finished watching HBO's Chernobyl. It's superb in every way.
I didn't realize Gorbachev considered Chernobyl as the catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think that's a bit simplistic. It's more like Chernobyl, and Afghanistan too, were two of several straws that broke the Soviet camel's back. Certainly, Chernobyl is excellent metaphor for the collapse of the Soviet Union while also, quite literally, serving as one of several catalysts that ultimately kicked out the last remaining supports that kept the Soviet system intact far past its expiration date.
Did Chernobyl Cause the Soviet Union To Explode?
Chernobyl, then, represented a fundamental shift in the relationship between the Soviet citizenry and the state. Before the explosion, most Soviets were not discontented dissidents; they believed in the Soviet system, forgave its flaws, and hoped for a better future within its confines. But after Chernobyl, the system seemed potentially unredeemable—and actively dangerous. In the early days of glasnost, stories of Stalin's mass murders decades earlier slowly bubbled to the fore, but those generally receded, so far removed were they from everyday life. After Chernobyl, though, every citizen's safety was at stake.
Or perhaps a system that had resulted in the slaughter of millions upon millions of people was just not that popular.
450.org June 4, 2019 at 10:01 am #
Read and learn, you ignoramus. Most of the citizenry still believed in & supported the Soviet system up until the point of the Chernobyl incident in 1986. The Chernobyl tragedy coupled with Gorbachev's Glasnost (openness & transparency) created the perfect storm, it conjured the zeitgeist, for the final collapse of a system perpetuated by lies.
What was never expected but has manifested nonetheless is that Red America, including & especially you as a shining example, would become the new & improved Soviets and embrace Vlad Putin as their leader.
Vlad Putin is a good leader in some instances and in others is a big failure. Your sweeping generalizations weaken your argument.
America and Russia have a common enemy, the global neo-Liberals. These folks are out to destroy both powers to achieve their power goals. My questions are, is China involved with these folks and two, what is the influence of Islam and the Middle East? Who is the ultimate leader?
From my understanding the Western Globalists are essentially in two camps. The Anti-God UN/Communists camp and the Zionists Hyper Capitalists camp. Organized political Islam is outside of these as is China for the most part. However I am sure they will all work with one another when it benefits their long term strategies and goals. It's a multipolar world in other words with competing factions. The idea that there is one superpower is misleading beyond the surface appearances. The problem is from my perspective that the average American is not represented by any.
SSL, you are no ignoramus.
On the contrary, your posts are well thought out and intelligently written.
Dow up 450!!!
Awww thanks Brh. That's a really nice thing for you to say and I appreciate it :-). Dow's up 459 right now!!!
Populations put up with just about anything from the idiots in their governments. It always take a major occurrence of some sort to shake things up enough to make change. A societal emotional barrier must be passed over to effect change.
Our Constitution is designed to take advantage of this fact.
Good post, 450.
In the West there are those two factions. But one theorist named Joel (I think) Skousen has a theory that both China and Russia each have their own versions of Globalism. And of course a Nation expanding beyond its borders is another name for EMPIRE. America went in this direction but took another tack and began to cannibalize itself. The Neo-Cons and Zionists still pretend to be like this, but their concept of a multi-cultural nation negates it at a cultural level. But even without the ideology, the same thing happened to old Rome – immigrants became the majority and very few Romans were left in the City towards the end.
And of course Islam is Globalist and Anti-Nation, seeking a Global Caliphate as its end goal. So that's five big players right there: the UN, the Zionists/Neo-Cons, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Muslims. There may be more or more may develop. Salvini of Italy just dedicated Italy to the Sacred Heart of Mary and/or Jesus. The Pope – a hardened UN Atheist Commie type, won't even meet with him.
I am beginning to wonder if Salvini is the one, or perhaps the precursor we thought Trump was?
Yes…the zeitgeist of the USSR was one of 'pretense'.
If you asked citizen how things worked, you'd likely get the reply "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
Putin is a kleptocrat and don't ever forget it.
I've noted the resident Russian expert, StinkaInTheLoo, is mute on this most important topic, which is odd considering how outspoken this AI bot is about everything else.
Surely he has an opinion like, say, it's Hillary's fault or the Clintons did it considering the Hillary Derangement Syndrome from which he suffers.
I sensed a generous helping of anti-Soviet propaganda in it, but given that this was a western production, it was overall pretty fair and balanced. For those a little smarter than that and willing to read between the lines, I sensed a thinly veiled commentary on current events in the west, vis-a-vis top down authoritarian management and control systems, who only hear what they want to hear, something the west now shares with it's Soviet predecessors in spades.
Chernobyl was a Gorbachev's sabotage, plain and simple.
Somebody high-up signed an order to disconnect ALL THREE LEVELS OF PROTECTION to conduct some experiment, necessary for someone's doctoral degree.
I saw an article in printed Russian publication about that, which since disappeared.
Crap. Not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy. Sometimes it's just the 'someone fucked up' rule. Occam' Razor.
No one – and certainly not someone as aware & empathic as Gorbachev – would have deliberately caused such an eternal catastrophe. Stop making shit up.
Here is just one small and simple example of how academic "Progressives" are destroying childhood and fun. Wouldn't such energy be better used for other things. Oh I don't know, maybe like to find a cure for cancer?
https://humanevents.com/2019/06/03/dodgeball-is-an-unethical-tool-of-oppression-say-academics/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fthelibertydaily.com%2F
I see its the thirty year anniversary of the Tiananmen square massacre and the freedom loving Chinese government has allowed the free flow of information about the event to blossom all over China!
Oh wait no it has not who am I kidding the technocrats jail anyone that tries to openly talk about it in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
What is the google doodle for the day nonsense?
Another distraction from the reality of oppression.
And Google supports the oppression and censorship of any non-mainstream right of center voice ya know.
I have a better example.
Oh there was a big blowup in the city of Lafayette here in Louisiana because they tried to do a drag queen story hour there but it got squashed due to so much opposition. The drag queen who was running this thing in Lafayette said that the whole point was to "groom" kids to be open to all LGBTQ people and lifestyles. Excuse me! WTF does a four year old need to know this for???????? They don't even know about the birds and the bees and have no business knowing that for heaven's sake!!!!
Last nite in Hartford, 5 fatal ODs. I did sense restless activity in the city overnight, lot of police activity and ambulance sirens headed toward St Francis hospital. Looks like a bad batch of fentanyl.
I just saw a well done video from Judicialwatch.org with a court order to investigate the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal again which also ties neatly into the Benghazi affair.
It could get real warm in the Clinton household soon.
Very interesting times how much more shrill will the political divide get in the next 18 months?
There is no good batch of fentanyl or even worse car-fentanyl a microgram of the stuff can be lethal.
Facebook post this morning said:
Make sure you wipe off the shopping carts at the store not just because of the germs, but for drug residue, especially fentanyl as a tiny residue can kill.
When I was a nurse, fentanyl was put into the hospital as a more potent pain reliever than morphine, I believe fifty times stronger. It had to be administered with a PCA, no IV injection. It was too powerful and lost favor quickly in the hospital environment.
Ya I worded that wrong Ben. Any batch of fentanyl is a bad batch, ha!
A man was just shot dead in the middle of the day in Back Bay in downtown Boston.
Boston's less liberal paper, The Herald, actually said the suspect who was taken into custody was a black man:
The suspect, described as a black male, was caught by police on Ring Road just minutes after the shooting.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/06/04/man-shot-killed-in-shooting-near-prudential-center/.
All the other media sites in Boston have omitted this tidbit, of course. It will be interesting to see how Boston's outspoken black DA, Rachel Rollins, who has previously been featured by PK when she said she would stop persecuting low level crimes due to "disparate impact" a few months back, will handle this case.
I would guess that this was just a dispute over drugs that happens all the time elsewhere in Boston without fanfare. Being that this took place in one of the nicest parts of the city, I expect to hear cries for "gun control" no matter who the victim and suspect turn out to be. Stay tuned.
450.org June 4, 2019 at 1:15 pm #
From the Washington Post about HBO's Chernobyl.
Depressing as it may be, "Chernobyl," created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, is a fine study in the uses of sanctioned obfuscation — and how much easier that becomes in a country where media and scientific leadership are tightly restricted. There was a time when that sort of thing might have seemed entirely foreign to an American audience; now, it's another resonant alarm sounding uncomfortably close.
America pretends it's an exception because it has not one party, but two parties. I contend it's one party pretending to be two. Despite what appears to be a ubiquity of expression in America unlike the Soviet Union before it collapsed, it's mostly, if not all, noise. Obfuscation. So much of it in fact, you can't effectively separate the wheat from the chaff — whatever little wheat there is if any. This comment section is a great example. It serves to offer propaganda as a viable substitute for propaganda.
Review of Lauren Southern's new documentary, Borderless, about illegal immigration and trafficking into Europe. See the actual movie on Amren. Review by John Jackson.
Independent journalist and documentary filmmaker Lauren Southern has released a new film with the help of director Caolan Robertson and producer George Llewelyn-John. Borderless shows convincingly that the migrant crisis in Europe is not at all as the mainstream media have presented it.
Miss Southern's team infiltrated Advocates Abroad, a major non-governmental organization based in Greece. It operates in 17 countries and in 2017 alone helped more than 15,000 migrants get into Europe. Thus we hear Ariel Ricker, the head of the organization, admitting that the group coaches migrants to lie in order to get into Europe as refugees. This includes teaching them how to pretend to be part of a persecuted Christian minority, and even advising them to manipulate a European interviewers' sympathy by claiming to need a break from telling their tales of woe. Advocates Abroad shut down its accounts on Facebook and Twitter after this recording was released.
In March, Miss Southern reported that members of her team had posed as sympathetic activists to get incriminating information on another Greece-based NGO, Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI). An executive, Panos Moraitis, described the scale of the group. He estimated that at least 600 or 700 volunteers had helped them rescue 55,000 migrants at sea. On video, Mr. Moraitis claimed that ECRI was interested only in saving lives, but Greek authorities explained that the organization takes €2,000 from each of the 70,000 illegal immigrants it has trafficked since 2015. Mr. Moraitis also admitted that his organization had been involved in laundering €500,000 and implied that other NGOs had handled much greater sums.
Miss Southern was evidently the first journalist to interview human traffickers. In order to do this, she and her team had to smuggle recording equipment through Morocco, where severe restrictions on journalism can lead to jail time for reporters. Miss Southern met with a Senegalese smuggler who explained that he charges between €2,000 and €4,000 per person for passage from Morocco into Spain. Miss Southern notes that many of the migrants were homeowners who sold their houses to raise the money to come to Europe.
Miss Southern concludes that the migrant crisis is "almost entirely a business." It is organized internationally by criminal syndicates including the Italian Mafia. Executives of some NGOs have been charged with human trafficking and Miss Southern found evidence that smugglers bribe the Moroccan Coast Guard to ignore their activities.
Migrants are a problem at either end of the Mediterranean. An olive farmer named Melvut Soner estimated that thousands of migrants pass through his village every day on the way to Europe. Some villagers are afraid to go outside because traffickers control of the area. "These people are dangerous," he explained, and says they have killed villagers as well as migrants.
Once they get to Europe, it is the migrants who are violent. Between 100 and 300 people a day arrive at a refugee camp called Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos. Moria was built for between 2,500 and 3,100 people, but now holds an estimated 10 to 11,000. Migrants complain that the camp does not have guards and that they fear for their lives. ISIS fanatics assault and even kill non-Muslims. One migrant pleads for surveillance cameras in the camp to record the attacks.
A doctor with Doctors Without Borders also talks about the violence, but seems deliberately to avoid mentioning that there are groups in the camp who despise each other and are bringing their tribal conflicts to Europe. Instead she focuses on overcrowding and the despair of people with no clear future. Violence does not stop at the camps. Miss Southern notes that 2015 brought a wave of terrorist attacks as well as increases in rape, stabbings, and murder throughout the EU.
One European Parliament member estimates that migrants cost Europe €150 to €200 billion a year, and notes that greater demand for housing and social services makes life harder for poor Europeans. MEP Steven Woolfe notes that a rapid and massive influx inevitably leads to segregated communities and hostility between newcomers and their hosts. Another independent MEP explains that the NGOs that smuggle migrants into Europe are opposed to all borders. An undercover recording shows that NGO workers see smugglers as heroes.
In Wicklow, Ireland, the town's hotel was turned into a center for migrants. Locals complain that they were never consulted or even told about the change. There has been a huge increase in homelessness in the area, with an estimated 4,000 people waiting for housing. A county councilor worries about the housing crisis but flatly refuses to consider whether migrants have anything to do with it.
There is an interesting interview with Gemma O'Doherty, an investigative journalist with the Irish Independent. She has a history of campaigning for the rights of asylum seekers, but sympathizes with locals. She concludes that "Ireland primarily should be for the Irish people," and is baffled that after 100 years of national independence, the Irish are giving away their sovereignty. "If you speak out in any way, shape or form against migration in this country you are immediately called a racist, a fascist, a neo-Nazi," she says. "It's disgusting."
Miss O'Doherty agrees with Miss Southern: "This is all being done because there's big money behind mass immigration into Ireland, as there is across Europe. This is all about money, because these people don't care about the migrants who come here and end up homeless."
Miss Southern is well known as a conservative activist, but this film avoids taking an ideological stance, thus making it palatable for many viewers. It never mentions conflict between right and left nor tensions between whites and the Third World. Miss Southern does not call the crisis an invasion, and shows concern about the migrants as well as about Europeans. She interviews several migrants who say that many are given false hopes for an easy life in Europe. After they arrive, many find themselves on the streets and unemployable. Traffickers encourage them to destroy their passports. This makes it hard to deport them, but without papers they can't get legitimate jobs. Some admit it was a mistake to come to Europe, but without a passport and no income, they are stranded.
Miss Southern's work has already influenced government action. In 2018, German members of parliament with the AfD party brought criminal charges against NGOs for facilitating illegal immigration, partly crediting her reporting with making them aware of the issue.
Borderless is an excellent documentary. Miss Southern's team finished filming in February, but chose to release the film "just in time for the European elections in May." Let us hope that Borderless will inspire further action to crack down on the exploitation of both migrants and Europeans.
JS: It's profitable so it's Capitalist? But why did the Socialist State make it profitable? The two work together as they always do and must – only this time in a horrible direction. They could work together as they did in the past to build Cathedrals, win Wars, or go to the moon. But the Public and Private will work together one way or the other. If you try to bolster one at the expense of the other, you then have just a one winged bird flopping around. To get rid of the Government or just radically minimize it is even more foolish because then the Banks and Corporations would just become the Government – as they already are secretly and indirectly via the funding of the political process.
No friends: the Public must dominate the Private for the good of all. And that good includes the economic elite themselves. We don't want them going Galt and leaving America. No, if they play ball with us they will be honored and be allowed to keep most of their profits. If they don't, they will be allowed to leave with their wealth or to stay and sell out to others who will work with us. But stay and work against us? You know, like they do now? What rubbish.
Very interesting post. The explanation of how the public and private must work together with the public dominating the private for the general welfare makes total sense. As does the fact that migration is largely a for profit industry. And this European story is closely mirrored right here in our own country.
if they play ball with us they will be honored – Janos
There's us and we. In either case Janos places himself in the group runnin' the show.
Yes, the Will to Power, fatuous if I was trying to do it on my own or expecting to be the Dictator Himself. But terrifying in that I am just one cell in the Body – one of the Brain Cells. You would honor us with your trembling. But again Q, don't worry. You know (add italians) me. Just mention my name I'll make sure you're assigned to an easy Camp and we'll make it fun at times. The carrot and the stick. What kind ice cream do you like?
I thought you were in or near Seattle, WA but somebody said Idaho. Which, if either, is correct.
BTW, given that we're all headed for oblivion ultimately, I find the Will to Power revolting.
I recall Idaho, with a business he runs and children.
His wisdom is that of a centenarian.
This is not popular in this country, but
Drugs are our number one problem in our society, period.
Mexico has stated many times that the cartels and the drugs are OUR problem as our demand is what is driving the market.
Why aren't Emergency orders and big government efforts being made to stem the tide?
Easy, because a big percentage of DC are users, plus huge usage in all the cities, plus Hollywood glorifying drug usage in the movies and music. The mess on the West Coast is drug caused. People lose jobs and cannot find another because they cannot pass drug tests. The number of people on drugs keeps getting bigger. Gang warfare is on the increase as more and more folks are making big bucks from drugs.
Why doesn't DC go to war against drugs legally like they did cigarettes? Why aren't the carcinogenic, COPD effects of marijuana being investigated? It has been shown that the CBD component of weed takes care of the medical effects, why is the recreational use tolerated. Why don't marijuana sales have warning labels about their health effects? Because DC is a user district!
The human spirit is destroyed by drugs. Mental sharpness is altered. That is why corporate America fights drugs with testing.
Fox News MD Marc Siegel states over and over that the cause of the opiate crisis is the doctors and nurses. I agree with him. Two things, patient controlled pain meds in the hospitals, post surgery, and a lack of a withdrawal therapy before or after discharge. People are sent home with pain prescriptions by MDs that have no clue about the effects. Collusion between the MDs and the pharma industry has hooked the US. Everyone thinks that a pill is the answer for all of life's problems. Why? Because their MD told them so.
I would ask, how much influence do the cartels have on the lawmakers in this country, especially the Left. Drives to legalize drugs is insane. Hooking more folks is certainly not the answer to this situation. I remember how addicted the Soviet Union was on alcohol and it destroying their society, the US is approaching the same level of intoxication. Just like socialism, we are approaching everything we considered evil fifty years ago.
Egged on by the Left.
People like you are our number one problem. Your misunderstanding of Reality lead to a political and economic Order that destroys humanity. The profiteers must serve the People not the other way around. The subsequent despair leads to massive drug abuse, homelessness, suicide, etc.
National socialism's "the People" is a tiny political elite—possibly only a psycho with a funny mustache.
Janos are there any limits to your desired polity? Should the government fix prices? Determine wages? Assign jobs? Arrange marriages? Are there any choices beyond their purview? Got anything like individual rights and personal responsibility?
Don't be ridiculous. We will have a robust private sector and even some free market activity. Obviously the higher one goes in key industries, the less of that there can be. But again, we need the people who know about such things and would have no desire to drive them out, humiliate, or impoverish them. Not for us putting them out to work in the fields or on stands with dunce hats and signs the way the Red Chinese did. Franco did not such thing, nor Mussolini, nor Hitler.
Baloney!
The people are the problem. Our gimme society are the problem. Your attempt to shift the blame to institutions is just a symptom of the problem. It is up to each of us to make our own way through life, not some groups of people in institutions you call profiteers.
You are right about one thing, generations of children not being given coping and life skills instructions by parents and the education system are giving up and turning into gimme people as a consequence. Stupidification at its best.
Financed by our friends in the Deep State.
But we already have a good deal of Socialism built into our system John and ExScott. If the institutions do not bear the full brunt of the blame do you feel that half of the blame should be foisted upon the institutions? Yes, culturally we have given up many of the good traits as individuals that helped us build this country. But I think blame can actually spread around pretty nicely. There is still room for individual choices and a level of control of those choices so that society does not become imbalanced. And the biggest problem with our education system is that it is not educating. It is in many instances now indoctrinating. As I said above there are still some good things the schools are doing but those things are getting to be fewer and farther between.
>>> But we already have a good deal of Socialism built into our system John and ExScott.
Agreed. And some of it is a failure, such as…
>>> the biggest problem with our education system is that it is not educating
The solution to our failed socialism is not more government and more socialism. It's to fix what's broken, or dump what can't be fixed.
Question: Why is the national minimum wage a single figure—$7.25 per hour—regardless of where one lives or the cost of living in that region? Yes states add to this but that's not my point. We have a simplistic national minimum wage—socialism—that doesn't address the economic realities of the area in which one resides. We could easily improve this by pegging it to regional COL. We have the computers. We have the stats. We have the technology.
This is what I mean by improving the socialism we have without adding more. But for progressives the answer is always more. More socialism. More government. More control over YOU.
Well I agree that there is always room for improvement. Government could be run efficiently but it would require a great deal of clean up in our current system. The level of corruption now makes a third rate country and no doubt this is also another reason why government has become inefficient and unresponsive.
Exscotticus June 5, 2019 at 11:49 am #
>>> but it would require a great deal of clean up in our current system.
Right. We can't even manage some rather obvious tweaks to existing law, let alone fundamentally alter every aspect of our nation to address all the things that socialists like AOC are demanding. It would require nothing less than some 1984-style totalitarian government. And believe me they're all down for that. There's no aspect of your life that the Left believes is beyond the purview of government.
" It would require nothing less than some 1984-style totalitarian government. "
Oh, the irony. That's precisely what SoftintheHead Starlight has been calling for endlessly! She SEEKS a 'big boss' who will 'make people do ' what she deems to be right and patriotic. Hah! 'Careful what you wish for' sure applies right her, SSL
I'm giving Janos the slight edge on this one. Yes, our people are certainly depraved, but they almost have to be to survive in this current shit show. But it's a tough call and there's certainly more than enough blame to go around.
The cart and the horse.
How do you resolve the situation of individual dependence?
The millennials are a well known microcosm of the problem with 70% of them still dependent to some degree on their parents.
For one thing, slow and stop the support, an anathema to our socialist country. Allow people to fail, then help. Do not help them fail.
Stop student loans at reduced rates and reduced credit requirements. Let young people and their parents consider alternatives to college. Stop overeducating people. Or at least stop doing to kids what they call higher education. Half of the last thirty years college grads are unnecessary in our society.
Stop socialized medicine, pay as you go. The insurance industry is such a scam. MDs et al need an attitude adjustment about their economic place in society. Availability of medical care is a right, but medicine must take a smaller bite on our society.
As the Long Emergency takes hold, the dependent folks are going to be the first to suffer as their ability to cope is compromised. So maybe the problem will resolve itself.
Ol' Scratch June 5, 2019 at 7:09 am #
Agreed on medicine, although it would take a long while for prices to come back down to where they should be.
Agree BIG TIME on "higher education." TOTAL waste of time and resources. We need trade schools in lieu of high schools for many if not most, with paid apprenticeships starting as early as age 13. Basic readin', writin', and 'rithmetic only for the masses. Time to roll up our sleeves, get back to work again, and take ownership back from the fucking globalists!
Sacklers
Vaping? I was listening to a guy saying, in the 18-20s its up 16x over [16x..thats like 10 goes to 160] recently.
Yankee at the Court of Queen Elizabeth
The most important thing to know about Trump's visit to UK is that this is the so-called State Visit to the United Kingdom, the highest in status, as it means joining the club of the rulers of the Western World and Trump's official recognition by the host.
And if this does not prove the existence of Color World Projects based on the theory of dividing people into two kinds, then I really do not know what can prove it.
Naturally, such a visit can be only one, since such a club cannot be entered twice, and Trump should have arrived in early 2018, but in November 2017 Theresa May behaved in such a fashion, that the press, not too crazy on antitrumpism, suggested that Trump's state visit, the president of the Britain's main ally, may not take place at all.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/donald-trump-tweets-britain-first-state-visit-theresa-may-queen-a8085296.html
And all because Theresa May in 2014-2016 was the main opponent of Brexit, which from the bird's-eye view of the so-called Anglo-Saxon world was inseparable from Trump's election as president of the United States and from the point of view of the theory of world projects these two phenomena were different manifestations of the same process that after the funeral of George H. W. Bush could be called the Big Bargain.
After this speech of Queen Elizabeth, there is no doubt that she is now heading the Big Bargain, and Trump arrived because the acting Gingema – Theresa May – resigned and silver shoes are already on the feet of Queen Elizabeth.
Of course, Bastinda is unlikely to make her wash the floors in these shoes, but I think she already has a bucket of water in addition to the silver shoes.
And no chairs!
Just a bucket of water, although I think that two milligrams of Holy water in the fang of the Skripal's cat, which recently received another title and the medal "For Merit", will suffice.
https://europediplomatic.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/skripal-black-cat.jpg?w=860&h=280&crop=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shuN6ESiolU
The optics were not good. Trump and Melania were like these towering monsters trying not to crush the diminutive Queen underfoot.
Trump's tailor managed to accentuate Trump's misadventurous waist with a jacket that looked like it was stolen from the set of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, like what you imagine might happen if you threw a tux into a commercial dryer and set it to max—possibly as some sort of sartorial conspiracy to denude, debase and dethrone.
Why do you think I titled the post in a way I did?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/49/e0/4249e0383e574a643e8fb7257a737736.jpg
Trump and Melania were like these towering monsters trying not to crush the diminutive Queen underfoot. – Exsc
hahaha. I got the same impression.
How good do you think Trump and Melania will look, respectively, when they're 93?
The Queen should not have been shown walking within the penumbra of the American goliaths. Not just in terms of the optics but also from a national security concern. What if Trump had tripped and fallen on her?!
Heck she shouldn't be shown walking at all! She should be conveyed from one location to the next via mysterious and royal means. One moment she's in the garden; the next moment she's seated at the grand dining table. Poof!
does she get injections of blood?
"What if Trump had tripped and fallen on her?!"
Well he didn't do too well the first time 🙂 .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlnlWgTfG-8
A wrong step and she could have been in A & E!
"Heck she shouldn't be shown walking at all! "
Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor trained and worked as a mechanic and military truck driver during WWII. She can do even more than walking!
And she still likes a bit of excitement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AS-dCdYZbo
Sometimes even over your way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbAW9xyWSTA
How about Melania's cocky hat(e?)! A beautiful, glamorous women well past her prime, not handling it well, and thus wearing huge amounts of make up – as she must I guess in her position. A strong Catholic, apparently.
It's not easy being married to President Donald J Kushner. And what if they had stepped on her? Remember her Nazi salute as a girl! And that she is in fact a giant carnivorous reptile as David Icke says. We used to have Ike, now we have Icke.
Malthuss
Yeah, Malthuss. No doubt, she & Hillary are on a healthcare plan that provides it (along with the fictional full-term abortions).
"A beautiful, glamorous women … A strong Catholic, apparently."
A strong Catholic woman who shagged Donald Trump while he was married to someone else?
Oh, it's that repentance thing, isn't it. You say sorry then shag him again the next day, then say sorry again, ad infinitum.
Or rather ad nauseam and until you get the gold ring and the public forgets. Which, since many of them have the attention span of a goldfish, gets you a posh hat and a seat beside the Queen in no time. R-e-s-p-e-c-t-a-b-l-i-t-y.
Or morality laundering to go with the money laundering.
According to Finca she's running the world – and the underworld – through her privy council. Even though she's 93 and looks like Donald Trump's next meal.
Still just making shit up!!!
Ha. Joe Biden has been in government for fifty years. He says that he is going to solve all of our problems. Maybe considering the mess in DC, we should consider him a part of the problem, not the solution.
Biden is in dire need of a taxidermist, I say we start a Go Fund Me account to help him pay for the treatment he needs.
PeteAtomic June 4, 2019 at 3:26 pm #
State Media & the agitprop officers which were for it this morning was all about trashing Trump in the UK– Brexit all bad, Trump all bad, interview with London Mayor (not Nigel Farage or anybody of any consequence) about how "bad" Trump is. Anti-globalists bad, nationalism in any form bad..
.. and then diversity diversity diversity above all else..
Which means that Nationalism is becoming a major threat to the Elite's security and comfort IMHO.
yep it would appear so SSL.
All the kings horses and all the kings men can't put the EU back together again LOL
capt spaulding June 4, 2019 at 4:34 pm #
I see that Biden is once again being accused of plagiarism. Didn't he learn his lesson the first time?
>>> Didn't he learn his lesson the first time?
Or the second? Or the third? The guy's still hitting on little girls…
Creepy Joe Biden Tells 10-Year-Old Girl at Rally: "I'll Bet You're as Bright as You are Good Looking" Then Grabs Her Shoulders
And Biden's supposed to be the Dem's answer to Trump? How? By outcrassing him? Our guy's even more loutish than yours? Trump may grab them by the pussy, but at least they're legal…
Dow up 450!!! == brh
You could pretty much track the success of Trump by the pair DOW/Bitcoin: Dow for Trump, Bitcoin for the Deep State (Hillary Clinton)
Dow up +512.40
Bitcoin Down -434.55
Happy betting!
happy betting indeed
I picked up this book about motorcycle gangs in the US and Canada, goes into their earliest incarnations in San Bernadio, Cal., the Boozefighters, the Hells Angels, Mongols and so on., these dudes were definitely Hostis Humani Generis — enemies of the human race similar to pirates in the 17th century. But finca, the Night Wolves in Moscow ride with Putin, and the Collecteveros MC club in Caracas run flak for Mudaro (and beat prople up) MC clubs have come a long way since the days of Terry the Tramp stomping hippies at Altamont. Now they provide muscle for the man in charge whoo MiC!.
Teddy Roosevelt and his party saw a small bear. Someone asked Teddy if he was going to shoot it. Teddy said, I'd never kill a baby bear. Thus the "Teddy Bear" was born. Maduro is a Teddy Bear with Teeth and this time Uncle Samuel does want to shoot him. But luckily for Maduro, this time the Mother Russian Bear is around to protect him.
The DOW is meaningless.
I'm not sure why you never bother to talk about the exponential assault on our ecosystem – That's why we die. I just don't get why you *NEVER* talk about it.
Why is it that the Left can name call, write op-Ed's, riot, act like jerks and you do not hear any criticism. The mayor of London calls out Trump with a bunch of name calling BS.
Trump tweets a response utilizing the same technique and what happens? The press et al jumps all over him. What a double standard. And yes, the Left is guilty of this exclusively, the only Right person that has the cojones to counterpunch the Leftist jerks is Trump.
Look at the current state of affairs in Congress. The Leftists have spent two years waiting for the coup d'etat from Mueller. Nada! Not good enough, now Nancy Pelosi says he is covering things up with no substantiation, then Adam Schiff says they cannot impeach him but he is guilty of crimes that should impeach him. When is this debacle going to end?
For all you Trumpers out there, consider this possibility.
Every jerk in Washington, DC May be firing shots at Trump, lies, innuendo, exaggerations when the real story may be that he is doing a great job for us in spite of the jerks. His family may be a loving unit instead of all the names they have been called. His tweets may be the most transparent a president has been with his constituents instead of being a con man for the Deep State. His escapades as a rich young man parallel just about every other rich young man at the time.
Try an experiment, watch him in action and turn down the sound on the channel you are watching so you do not hear the Leftist BS. See what you think.
It's funny as hell though. Trump brings out the same childish responses from the alleged "adults in the room" that he himself elicits, proving that they're not nearly as "adult" as they like to pretend they are. No statesman remaining in the world these days, for sure.
Is it childishness?
Or is it the manifestation of the stupidification of the public.
One thing that amazes and appalls me is the man in the street interviews on the college campuses. The lack of education by these kids is unbelievable. Makes you wonder what exactly they had been doing during the past four years.
The man in the street interviews in England have been worse. These people are brainwashed by a corrupt media.
benr June 5, 2019 at 11:28 am #
Un-smart phones of course most everyone has their faces in them non-stop.
"His family may be a loving unit instead of all the names they have been called. "
Hardly a unit – he has three families.
KesaAnna June 4, 2019 at 9:24 pm #
@ Elysianfield
" Where is the "Sturm und Drang"? "
I should have thought , " Head Cheerleaders and Prom Kings don't want to marry Burger King floor – moppers . " was sufficiently emotive ?
Anyway —
Hmm …….maybe where the sturm and drang went was …… there never really was any sturm and drang ?
A value I have always prized , or tried to prize , is that you should strive to explain things , whether it is instructions on how to make a peanut butter sandwich , or trying to convey what you think the meaning of life is ,
as if you were talking to a rather dull ten year old.
And not because your audience is necessarily stupid , or because I think children should be talked down to .
( I believe , on the contrary , that you should talk to a ten year old the same way you would to a forty year old , because , among other considerations , the ten year old will soon be a forty year old. )
But because even the very brightest of people are not omniscient , and even obvious things ….. are not obvious.
As a rule of thumb then , I try to avoid abstract , dispassionate , neutral arguments.
Unfortunately , it seems to me , abstract , dispassionate , neutral arguments are primarily being used today to obfuscate.
But , then again , 5,000 years ago Lao Tze complained that the primary outcome of refined education was to turn out better liars.
so maybe that is nothing new.
As a rule of thumb then , I try to prefer arguments that are direct , personal , individual , and emotional.
Who does not understand the direct , personal , individual , and emotional ?
So much for theory , so much for the best laid plans of mice and men.
I'm afraid however that when addressing an audience which is , in fact , primarily partisan and emotive ,
such an approach actually appears emotional , rather , HYSTERICAL ?
After all , such things are not their second , third , forth or fifth , principle , but the very core , and wider world too , of their context.
oh well. *shrug*
Robert Penn Warren once wrote , " The friend of your youth is the only real friend you ever have. "
That's pretty fancy , and pretty oblique , so , yes , I'll try to simplify it a bit.
The love of a five , or ten year old , is unlike any love one ever knows , not least because it is uncritical and un – self-conscious , and not transiently either , but permanently . Forever.
Apparently though , in many ways good fortune can be a curse , and one of those ways might be in this ;
Many people who apparently know little but good fortune , apparently know nothing of what I just wrote above.
To cut to the point ; Generally , the people I looked up to , admired , liked , LOVED , AS A CHILD —
— BAM ! At eleven years old , and not softly , not gently , not with any sort of dumbing – down or sugar – coating ,
I'm told these people were not just a little lacking , or less than perfect , but evil incarnate.
And , well , true enough , we are talking about the love of a child , and nostalgia.
But that's also a God damned lie too , no less than any of the shit Pravda turned out.
And worse , told that my loving them is a FAULT.
So , there I am , and at Eleven years old too , confronted with questions like , " What is a friend or an enemy ? "
And , for that matter , " Do such words even have any meaning in this context ? "
So many things …….
Like ; " If you don't love this country ; Leave it. "
Uh …… my country doesn't exist anymore.
And , by the way , your country , at least incrementally , had something to do with why my country doesn't exist anymore.
By the way , while Erich Honecker was certainly something of a weasel , I don't doubt him at all when he claimed that the Russians didn't tell him a God damned thing.
So even our friends the Russians fucked us good.
I guess the "cuckoo " North Koreans were right all along about that ;
" Allies " doesn't mean shit. " ( paraphrasing of course. )
Westerners seem pretty damn hysterical TO ME.
Should we , or should we not , legalize cocaine?
Hmm , here's an idea ;
How about we de -stigmatize cigarettes ?
Nope ! = I'm a naive extremist for entertaining such an idea !
Actually , believe it or not , I don't really mind ….. that much …. that people make jokes about me , and don't give me any credit ,
because —
" A culture must believe in something larger than itself and that thing must be unifying, not atomizing, as modern Liberalism aspires to be. Individual wealth accumulation and personal glorification are leading to the downfall of the west. Decadence is our highest aspiration these days. Even the dirt poor aspire to it now. "
— people wind up adopting my ideas anyway more often than you might think.
Except , of course , they are not my ideas.
And since I don't really have a side anyway , it doesn't really bother me much that to a large extent many of these ideas come from a sheep – fucking lower class Jewish guy who was so stupid as to get his ass nailed to a cross for your sake.
KesAn sure seems liek a Soker alias – a lil' too long in teh tooth tho, catch my drift?!…
How about we de -stigmatize cigarettes ? "
Kesa,
The idea is to abandon the failed attempts to control drugs…recognize that "users gonna use", legalize drugs, make them cheap and available, and then stigmatize the living hell out of them…users, cigarettes, drugs.
It just may bring about the concept of "personal responsibility"…"You want to kill yourself? OK…."
If the war on drugs continues, I would recommend that part of the punishment be that the dealer must use every bit of the drugs he is found with, and within a respectable period, while in jail…administered by competent authority.
"You gotta be very cynical."
The Mexicans bring their fat women dragging 20 kids to the amusement park where Beto tells them that we should give them the "respect and dignity that they deserve."
Janos Skorenzy June 5, 2019 at 12:37 am