Nov 192024
 
 November 19, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Rembrandt van Rijn A woman bathing in a stream (Hendrickje) 1654

 

Biden Wants To Take World With Him – Russian State Duma Chair (RT)
Trump’s Security Chief Nominee Blasts Biden’s Ukraine Missile ‘Escalation’ (RT)
Has Biden Just Destroyed the World? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Biden Walks Off Into Jungle (RT)
‘Freezing’ Ukraine Conflict Unacceptable – Kremlin (RT)
The Great Trump Exhale (QTR)
Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy (John Kiriakou)
Ramaswamy Says Some Government Agencies Will Be ‘Deleted Outright’ (ET)
Trump Expands Search For Treasury Secretary (ZH)
CNN Mole People Can’t Deal With MAGA Posse At UFC (MN)
Beyond Consequence (James Howard Kunstler)
WSJ Issues Scathing Indictment Of How Democrats Blew It On Inflation (ZH)
Mad at the Election? Blame Obama (AmG)
Germany Has Become Europe’s Political Wasteland (Bordachev)
Gardening Against Evil Days (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Trump

Gaetz

Vivek

Tucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858320988867350576

Speaker

Skripal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858271372020990012

60 min

 

 

 

 

“..it appears that the elderly Biden, nearing the end of his life, is “dreaming of eternity” and wants to “pull America under with him, and maybe the entire world as well.”

Biden Wants To Take World With Him – Russian State Duma Chair (RT)

The outgoing President Joe Biden is taking the US and the rest of the world down with him by escalating the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, stated on Monday. Biden has reportedly removed US restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles, according to a New York Times report on Sunday, which described the move as “a significant escalation” that might “provoke a direct response from Moscow.” The White House has made no official statements on the matter. Volodin said it appears that the elderly Biden, nearing the end of his life, is “dreaming of eternity” and wants to “pull America under with him, and maybe the entire world as well.”

“If this happens, Russia will be forced to respond. The manner of the response will be up to the Ministry of Defense, but there will be one,” he said, adding that this might even include the use of “new weapons systems” that Russia has not previously deployed on Ukrainian territory. As for the Western weapons in question, they have already been used against Russia, Volodin noted. Their expanded use might cause some additional damage, but “it will not change the situation on the battlefield.” “It will only worsen the fate and future of Ukraine. And it will finally destroy Russian-American relations,” Volodin predicted. While Washington has made no official policy announcements, a number of European NATO members and public figures across the West hailed the Times report. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said on Monday that long-range strikes against Russia were part of his “victory plan” and that “missiles will speak” very soon.

The US and its allies have put in some restrictions on the use of the weapons they supplied to Kiev since 2022, in order to maintain plausible deniability of their involvement in the conflict with Russia. Ukraine has demanded the removal of these limitations since this spring. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in September that any use of Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia would “significantly change the nature of the conflict.” He noted that Ukraine does not have the capability to use such weapons itself, and would require foreign personnel to create targeting and firing solutions. This, Putin said, would mean that “NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict” with Russia.

Putin

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“..It was not a matter of the US “giving permission” to Ukraine, but crossing the threshold of direct involvement, Putin told reporters in September..”

Trump’s Security Chief Nominee Blasts Biden’s Ukraine Missile ‘Escalation’ (RT)

Allowing Kiev to use US-supplied long-range weapons against Russia will only escalate the conflict that President-elect Donald Trump is trying to end, the incoming White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has said. The New York Times reported on Sunday that US President Joe Biden had given Ukraine permission to use ATACMS missiles against Russian territory. Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the anonymously sourced claim. Waltz, a former Green Beret and Florida congressman tapped by Trump to serve as his top aide, told Fox News on Monday that he was not briefed on the move by the outgoing administration, as he normally would be by tradition. “It’s another step up the escalation ladder,” Waltz told Fox host Brian Kilmeade.

“And nobody knows where this is going. North Korea is unleashing ballistic missiles, artillery, now tens of thousands of soldiers. “The administration responds by lifting this restriction. North Korea sends more soldiers. South Korea is now saying it may get engaged…” Ukraine has accused the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea of sending weapons and thousands of troops to aid Russia. Washington has accepted this claim at face value. “So this is a development, but it’s a tactical one,” Waltz added. “President Trump is talking grand strategy here. How do we get both sides to the table to end this war? What’s the framework for a deal, and who’s sitting at that table?” Trump is putting together an “all-star team” that will consider the broader strategic issues and the ways to “we drive this war to an end,” Waltz said.

The Republican president-elect campaigned on ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying he would try to do so even before his January 20 inauguration. Many of his prominent backers have denounced Sunday’s rumored move by the outgoing President Joe Biden as an attempt to make any peace deal more difficult. Under Biden, the US has provided over $64 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine to support Vladimir Zelensky’s war effort against Russia. Washington placed certain restrictions on the use of such weapons, and Zelensky has spent months demanding the lifting of the limitations, as part of his “victory plan.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies that any such move would amount to their open involvement in the hostilities. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed out that Kiev lacks the capability to use long-range missiles without NATO satellites and military personnel to develop targeting and firing solutions. It was not a matter of the US “giving permission” to Ukraine, but crossing the threshold of direct involvement, Putin told reporters in September. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova acknowledged on Monday that reports of Biden’s decision were still unconfirmed, but added that if Kiev actually used US missiles in such a way, Moscow’s response would be “adequate and tangible.”

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“Trump cannot lose the war in Ukraine unless he can present peace as an accomplishment.”

Has Biden Just Destroyed the World? (Paul Craig Roberts)

To make it impossible for Trump to enter office with good relations with Russia, in addition to “Russiagate,” as Gilbert Doctorow reminds us, the corrupt Obama regime unlawfully seized Russian consular properties in San Francisco, and I think elsewhere, in order to bring Trump into office with poisoned relations with Moscow. This time in November, 2024, the totally corrupt Biden Regime, has blocked any peaceful settlement negotiated by Trump of the Russian/Ukrainian conflict by reversing Biden’s decision and giving go ahead for the US/NATO to launch missiles from Ukrainian territory into Russia. The senile idiot, manipulated by his warmonger advisors, has possibly started WWIII. Recently in an interview with Russian television I expressed my opinion that such a trap was desired by the neoconservatives for Trump, but that I thought the Pentagon would block the approval.

There are so many reports that the Biden regime has given a green light to NATO launching missiles from Ukraine into Russia that the information must be correct. We hear it from Russian state television “news of the week.” We hear it from The Washington Post. We hear it from AP News. And so on. Here we have a classic example of how an outgoing administration can commit an incoming one and thereby forestall its electoral agenda. It is now happening before our eyes, although the whore American media will do everything possible to hide the truth. The question is: What will Putin do now if the red line that Putin says is the fatal one is actually crossed and Western missiles begin hitting targets inside Russia? Will it prove to be, like all other red lines Putin has declared, not to be real?

In light of Putin’s non-confrontational behavior, if the missile attacks begin prior to Trump’s inauguration, possibly Putin will wait and see what Trump does to reverse the decision before Putin releases death and destruction on the Western World. The crazed neoconservatives and Deep State have pressured Biden into a decision that places the entire world in a situation where destruction of all life possibly awaits. Why did a single American vote for such a cruel, inhuman, morally vacant, anti-American political Democrat party that is willing to risk life on earth for Washington’s hegemony and the profits of the military/security complex? Why did the European Union regret Trump’s election? Why does the Western media support actions that result in the end of the world? The final question and the most important one is: What can President-elect Trump do about it?

He can, prior to his inauguration, call Putin and tell him to hold off, that once inaugurated as President, he will reverse the policy and permit no missile attacks on Russia. Will Putin believe that Trump can deliver? Considering the war cabinet Trump has appointed, can Trump make a decision independently of his government? The situation is complicated by the fact that Trump’s appointees are aligned against Iran and for Israel. Neither Russia nor China can stand aside from an US/Israeli attack on Iran. Putin probably wonders if “Making America Great Again” also implies military dominance. Trump’s supporters are tired of losing wars. They want to win one. Trump cannot lose the war in Ukraine unless he can present peace as an accomplishment.

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Before okaying long range missiles in Ukraine, they sent Biden deep into the Amazon.

Biden Walks Off Into Jungle (RT)

Outgoing US President Joe Biden appears to have once again aimlessly wandered off stage after delivering a speech on climate change in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil on Sunday. A clip of the 81-year-old’s latest gaffe has gone viral on social media. Speaking at a press conference near Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon, Biden wore a loose-fitting button-down shirt and his trademark aviator sunglasses. Throughout the address, the president talked about the dangers of climate change, the importance of rainforest conservation as well as the investments his administration has made into clean energy.

Biden stated that he is officially the first sitting US President to personally visit the Amazon rainforest and announced that his government would be launching a special financing coalition to mobilize at least $10 billion by 2030 in order to protect 20,000 square miles of land in the Amazon. However, after finishing his speech, Biden waved to the cameras, turned away from the podium and started walking away, heading straight into what appeared to be some dense greenery. The video of the aging president’s exit has since gone viral on social media, with one clip posted by the Pop Base account gaining over 26 million views by Monday morning. In the comments, many users expressed confusion over where Biden was going, with some claiming he had “wandered off into the Amazon.”

“Bruh did he just wave bye and disappear into the jungle?” one user wrote, with another asking why the president was in the Amazon at all. “He’s really doing all the side quests now that he can retire,” one person suggested. According to Newsweek, however, a full version of the video supposedly shows that Biden was not actually lost and had walked down a path that was not clearly visible in the clip. The outlet noted that several other members of the press later also walked out along the same path. While Biden’s team has not commented on the incident yet, if the US president was indeed lost, it wouldn’t be his first public mishap. The White House, however, had previously insisted that most of the videos of the aging leader getting confused or ‘frozen’ at public events had been manipulated, with Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissing them as “cheap fakes.”

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First: no nukes, no NATO, no nazis. Only then can we talk freeze.

‘Freezing’ Ukraine Conflict Unacceptable – Kremlin (RT)

Moscow vehemently rejects the possibility of freezing the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. He was responding to reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to suggest the move during the G20 summit in Brazil. Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with Erdogan’s plans, claimed that the Turkish leader would suggest freezing the conflict “on current lines” and encourage Kiev to delay discussions about joining NATO for at least ten years as a “concession” to Moscow. He also reportedly plans to propose the creation of a demilitarized zone in Donbass, where international troops would be deployed to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. Asked to comment on the report, Peskov stated that Moscow had no information about any proposals being prepared by Erdogan. However, he said “any kind of freezing along the line of military conflict is unacceptable for the Russian side.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously outlined conditions for ending the hostilities, and those steps are “what needs to be done to stop the fighting,” the spokesperson added. In June, Putin set out conditions for peace negotiations with Kiev, which involved the complete removal of Ukrainian troops from all Russian territories, including the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. They also involved Ukraine legally committing to never joining NATO or any other Western military blocs. Last week, during his first direct phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in two years, Putin also reiterated that Moscow remains open to finding a political and diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine conflict, and said it was Kiev that was refusing to negotiate.

According to the Kremlin, the Russian president also emphasized that the crisis was the “direct result of NATO’s long-standing aggressive policy aimed at creating an anti-Russian bridgehead on Ukrainian territory, while ignoring our country’s interests in the field of security and trampling on the rights of Russian-speaking residents.” During the call, Putin emphasized that any potential settlement between Moscow and Kiev would inevitably have to take into account Russia’s security interests, recognize the new territorial realities, and “eliminate the root cause of the conflict.”

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“…the man that the media told us was Hitler nonstop has morphed into the people’s president.”

The Great Trump Exhale (QTR)

I think this election cycle President Trump won so handily, not only because his competition was grossly incompetent, but because it was far less taboo this time around to be a Trump supporter. In 2016, before President Trump had a chance to establish a four-year record for himself in office, it wasn’t popular to openly support him. His “Make America Great Again” hats were ridiculed as a cheap branding trick and the mainstream media was unrelenting in its quest to crucify not only Trump, but those who supported him. Throughout the last four years of political lunacy, which included wide-open borders, rising inflation, squandering of taxpayer cash, and multiple geopolitical dust-ups, it became far less of a faux pas to support Trump publicly. This period culminated in an internal coup that subverted the primary process, further reinforcing this shift.

Today, there are still scores of Democrats who believe Trump is irredeemable and repugnant, just as there are still plenty of news organizations that spend 24 hours a day attempting to make him look bad. But this election go-round, there were just too many Americans on the center-left, center, and center-right who decided that the humiliation they would need to endure by supporting Trump publicly paled in comparison to how insulted they felt by the current administration’s assumption that they would buy an entire campaign based on flip-flopping, outright lies, race hustling, and identity politics. For every one person that still found it inconceivable to support Trump publicly, there were two more, myself included, who simply could no longer endure having their character and intelligence insulted strictly because they backed a set of political ideals that, at any other point in recent history, would’ve been considered center-left, moderate or barely right-leaning.

With that sea change among the most crucial part of the voter base, inclusive of independents and many around the center of the political aisle, Trump won this election in a landslide. And Democrats, who had been told many times over that their political strategies were wearing thin, were forced to face undeniable, quantitative proof of just how much of the American public agreed with this assessment. As such, it’s undeniable that the nation has issued a collective exhale in response to the election results. Many people who voted for Trump, and who may have still been wondering whether it’s OK to express their political beliefs publicly without being called “garbage,” now know that they can: they are in the company of more than 70 million other voters and form the majority of the country. For years, Trump campaigned on the saying that his voters were the “silent majority.” This election proved him right.

It was risky for many high-profile people to come out and publicly endorse Donald Trump prior to this election, and is a testament to just how much the left has lost its way. Had Trump not won, many of these people would have been lambasted as “far-right wingers,” “purveyors of misinformation,” and people whose moral and ethical integrity should be called into question heading into another Democratic administration. But instead, with a Trump mandate, millions of Americans can exhale publicly and, like Joe Rogan said last week, finally just admit that no matter what everybody says, they just like President Trump. Rogan said on his podcast a couple of days ago: “…you’re getting what you get. That’s who the guy is and I like him. I’ve gone I’ve grown to like him. I had a much more negative opinion of him back in the day because it was There’s only so much you can pay attention to and do deep dives on right before you lose your f*cking mind and with him I was like It’s probably not good for the country.”

And what we saw last night at the UFC fight, where Trump had a great interaction with fighter Jon Jones, who handed him his belt after winning his fight, is that whether people like it or not, the man that the media told us was Hitler nonstop has morphed into the people’s president. This will be like a snowball rolling down a hill: the more people that come out and embrace Trump publicly, the more who will follow. Put simply, Trump is just winning people over. I wrote last week about how this election doesn’t just feel like the beginning of four years of change; it feels like it could be spearheading a populist/libertarian renaissance in the country that could last multiple election cycles. You could tell from his entrance to the fights last night that the nation is starting to feel the excitement for this potential, too. Seeing Trump at the fights last night was like the flyover before an NFL game. It was one of many moments over the last year while he was campaigning that people muttered: “We’re back. America is back.”

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“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.”

Gabbard Could Help Change US Foreign Policy (John Kiriakou)

President-elect Donald Trump this week stirred up the intelligence community with his picks of former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence (DNI) and former DNI and Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe as C.I.A. director. Ratcliffe, a fierce partisan, is nonetheless the more traditional pick of the two. Gabbard spent her life as a Democrat, including eight years in the House before running for president in 2020, dropping out, changing her affiliation to “Independent,” and then changing it to Republican and endorsing Trump. She is the more controversial pick, not necessarily because of her politics, but because she is far more isolationist than most Democrats and she supports an immediate end to the war in Ukraine and engagement with North Korea, China and Syria.

Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard are likely to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, according to The Washington Post. Neither is as controversial as, say, attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who was investigated a year ago for sex trafficking, or defense secretary nominee Peter Hegseth, a former Army captain who is currently a Fox News host and who has literally no experience running anything larger than his own household. While Democrats will likely oppose both Ratcliffe and Gabbard, if only because the two are MAGA Republicans who want to end U.S. financial and military support for Ukraine, Republicans now control 53 Senate seats, more than enough for confirmation, with room to lose a few. Publicly, Democrats aren’t saying much about Ratcliffe. He’s mostly a known quantity in Washington, having been DNI for a few months at the end of the first Trump administration. He’s a former member of the House Armed Services Committee and was also a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team.

Ratcliffe was initially dismissed as unqualified for the DNI job in 2019. He withdrew from consideration, but Trump renamed him a year later and he was finally approved by a sharply-divided Senate. His tenure was short, and he didn’t do anything either controversial or innovative in his few months in the job. Gabbard’s nomination has drawn far more ire, especially from Democrats. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a former C.I.A. officer, said she was “appalled” by Gabbard’s nomination and added, “Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) called Gabbard’s nomination “incredibly reckless,” and added that “Putting someone with known sympathies for foreign adversaries (in the position) is not putting America’s interests first — it’s putting our security at risk.”

And Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) said, “Tulsi Gabbard’s deep ties to some of our nation’s most dangerous adversaries, including Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Vladimir Putin of Russia, make her an untrustworthy guardian of our nation’s most closely held secrets.” All of this is, in my own humble opinion, absurd. Democrats don’t like Gabbard because she never bought into the party’s anti-Russia hysteria, because she was never supportive of putting the U.S. and NATO on the brink of war with Russia in Ukraine, and because she doubted the Democratic Party’s assertion that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, an allegation refuted by United Nations whistleblowers. That’s exactly what we need in a healthy democracy — somebody in a position of authority who makes decisions based on facts, not on what happens to be politically expedient.

We need a person willing to rein in the neoconservative/neoliberal intelligence and foreign policy establishment when they urge the president to double down on military action based on phony or incomplete intelligence. Gabbard may face one substantive challenge when she finally becomes DNI. That challenge will be in dealing with Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio, currently a Republican senator from Florida. Rubio is a longtime mainstream neoconservative hawk, especially on China, although he has kowtowed to Trump successfully over the past eight years. Rubio and Gabbard have some clashing views, but Gabbard is as much a seasoned bureaucratic fighter as Rubio is. The question, then, will be who can more successfully get Trump’s ear.

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“Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability..”

Ramaswamy Says Some Government Agencies Will Be ‘Deleted Outright’ (ET)

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on Sunday that some federal agencies will be “deleted outright” and that contractors may see “massive cuts” in what they can charge when the incoming administration takes office next year. Last week, Trump named former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead the presidential advisory commission, DOGE. Their work must be completed no later than July 4, 2026, Trump said in his statement. Ramaswamy told Fox Business on Sunday that “there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse right now.” “Federal contractors are really exploiting the federal government,” he said. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked him whether entire government agencies will be closed, he responded in the affirmative.

“We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,“ Ramaswamy said. ”We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.” As a presidential candidate, Ramaswamy had called for totally eliminating or restructuring of several agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Elaborating on Fox, Ramaswamy said that “failures of the executive branch need to be addressed.” “Unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action” are running the government, he said, which needs to be fixed by the executive branch.

“This is about restoring self-governance and accountability in America as well. Elected leaders, if they make the wrong decisions, voters have a great choice. You can vote them out and remove them,” Ramaswamy said. “Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability. Historically, it’s been the view of many scholars to say that those people could not even be fired. Now, we take a different view with the environment the Supreme Court has given us in recent years, and we’re going to use that in a pretty extensive way to move quickly.” DOGE will not be an official government agency, meaning that both Ramaswamy and Musk are not considered Cabinet members in the incoming Trump administration and therefore not subject to the Senate confirmation.

Both Ramaswamy and Musk, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the president-elect at a UFC event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. Gabbard is Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, while Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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It looked like Bessent had it, but apparently there was too much opposition to him.

Trump Expands Search For Treasury Secretary (ZH)

The group of prospective Trump Treasury Secretary picks has expanded from two (Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent – as we detailed here) to four (now including former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and Apollo Globla chief Marc Rowan). While we noted earlier that Elon Musk and RFK Jr. are pushing for Howard Lutnick, with Musk praising the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO as a disruptor compared to Key Square Group (and George Soros protégé) Scott Bessent – the latter of whom met with Trump on Friday, and has the backing of many including noted investor Kyle Bass; The FT reports that people close to the process said Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global Management, and Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee senator, are also now in the running, along with Robert Lighthizer, the former US trade representative under Trump.

The FT continues to note that since Trump was elected, Bessent has been on the defensive about his commitment to enacting the president’s economic vision. In an opinion piece for Fox News last week, he described tariffs as “a means to finally stand up for Americans”. But his critics have seized on comments to the Financial Times that the president-elect’s agenda represented “maximalist” positions that were negotiating tools, as a sign he would be soft on the issue. Trump’s aides are reluctant to repeat the tensions over trade in Trump’s first administration, when Steven Mnuchin, then-Treasury secretary, frequently sought to moderate tariff plans for fear of disrupting markets. Several people familiar with the discussions inside Trump’s team said Lighthizer, who served as US trade representative in the first administration, had previously expressed interest in becoming Treasury secretary.

On Sunday the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a pro-tariff think-tank, backed Lighthizer publicly for Treasury secretary. “The next Treasury secretary must be 100 per cent aligned with President-elect Trump’s policy on tariffs,” it said in a post on X. “Former USTR Robert Lighthizer is a steadfast champion for the US economy and the best choice to carry out President Trump’s trade agenda.”

Marc Rowan
Rowan, 62, is a billionaire investor who leads Apollo Global Management, which he cofounded in the 1990s. It now has nearly $700 billion in assets under management. Apollo recently announced that it plans to double its assets under management to $1.5 trillion by 2029. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that while the billionaire’s aides are in touch with Trump, Rowan isn’t actively trying to secure the Treasury Secretary role and hasn’t spoken to Trump personally about such a position. But the Times also wrote that Trump has been telling his staff that he’s impressed with Rowan, who Bloomberg estimates to be worth $10.9 billion. Rowan has said that US economic concerns must be fixed by what he called “wholesale change,” which he said Trump and his new administration would bring.

Kevin Warsh
Warsh, 54, is a former Morgan Stanley banker and one of the newer contenders. He was an economic advisor to President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2006 and a governor of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2011. During the latter period, Warsh was a central figure in shaping the nation’s response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, working to rescue major ailing banks. Trump had been floating Warsh that year as a frontrunner for Fed chair. He eventually picked Jerome Powell for the role. More recently, he’s been working on Trump’s transition team, helping with economic policy and personnel, according to The Journal. Most recently, Warsh was outspoken in questioning The Fed’s independence with regard the 50bps rate-cut right before the election. “if that’s all true, maybe they’re not data-dependent.” “I do not want to be the person accusing them of politics … but when you don’t have a theory of the case and you don’t follow it, it is easy to get that accusation and it is harder … to defend them.”

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“They’re deathly afraid of ‘masculinity’ and strong personalities.”

CNN Mole People Can’t Deal With MAGA Posse At UFC (MN)

The MAGA crew took over UFC 309 in Madison Square Garden over the weekend, triggering demon energy woke seethery into action. Behold their media leaders, the CNN mole guys. Why do they all wear those thick heavy black rimmed glasses? Anyway, these guys, it doesn’t matter what their names are, lets call them Howard and Greg, couldn’t cope with president Trump leading out his transition team to uproariously loud cheering at the event. Howard said Trump was “giving supporter based permission structure,” by bringing his crew with him, while Greg said it was like ancient Rome with Caesar bringing his gladiators into the Colosseum. “It really looks like ancient Rome here. This is the conquering Republican Caesar who’s going into the Colosseum, and everyone’s cheering, and he’s got his political gladiators with him,” Howard excitedly whined, ignoring the fact that Julius Caesar was long dead when construction on the Colosseum began.

“That appearance isn’t just about him enjoying the applause. He’s sending a message to the Senate. For sure,” Greg continued blathering. “Not only are you entertained, but these are my people, and are you willing to fight?”Because here’s who I have,” Greg clamoured. It’s hilarious watching these people having a meltdown analysing Trump’s team and the UFC crowd having fun. They were having a well deserved day off, celebrating, watching the event and dancing to YMCA by the Village people, but the mole people want you to believe it’s some kind of scary authoritarian display of power. CBS News also couldn’t cope. The article states “Trump is a longtime UFC enthusiast and frequent attendee of major fights. He made promoting hypermasculine tones a signature of his campaign — as he looked to further widen the gap among male voters between himself and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.”

“Trump and his top supporters embraced alpha-male terms and often accentuated them with vulgar and demeaning language.” It gets even more hilarious… “While campaigning, Trump appeared frequently on podcasts, gaming platforms, and with key supporters who described a vote for Trump as a way to demonstrate true manliness. While Trump taped a podcast with Rogan, who himself has spoken about hypermasculinity, Harris failed to do a similar appearance, citing scheduling conflicts.” They’re deathly afraid of ‘masculinity’ and strong personalities.

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“I don’t know why the Democrats lost. I don’t understand … Prices have come down, the economy is good. I don’t know why they voted against her, against the party.” — William Shatner (Captain Kirk)”

Beyond Consequence (James Howard Kunstler)

If you boil down everything the woked-up, psychopathic Democratic Party did the past eight years as it drove the country into a ditch, it all amounted to a Great Pretending. Whatever the party said, they knew it was not so. Whatever they did, they pretended the other side was doing. They lied lavishly, knowingly, and incessantly and now they are pretending to soul-search in a great public display of pretend humility as they await the dreaded reckoning. Case in point: the interview on PBS between the Aspen Institute’s former chief Walter Isaacson and Harvard civics philosophy prof Michael Sandel, “to make sense of Donald Trump’s Presidency.” Listen to them prattle about “the dignity of work,” “credentialist condescension,” and “income disparities.”

You know it was way worse than that: censorship, witch hunts, the gestapo FBI, a stupid money-pit war, medical fascism, the wide-open border, race-and gender hustles, state-sponsored riots, lawfare programmatically destroying lives, careers, reputations, and misuse of the news media (including PBS) to lie about all of it. These two pusillanimous pricks, pretending to be genteel, are the poster boys for a diseased polity. And behind the scenes now, in the C-suites of the big agencies, the faculty lounges of Higher Ed, the Zoom meet-ups of so many crypto-government NGOs, and especially in the Big Media board-rooms, the cries of anxiety and desperation signal a momentous end of something: the punking of America by a gang of vicious, criminal snobs. The aggregate insult alone deserves a world-class beat-down. They know it, and they know they are going to get it, and it will be satisfying to watch them rat each other out as judgment nears.

But even as all that plays out, and justice returns to the scene, Mr. Trump and Company face the enormous task of getting our nation’s house in order. The balance sheet is a catastrophe, we are functionally bankrupt, and “Joe Biden” has been busy destroying the value of our money in the futile attempt to work around all that. All the economic statistics rolled out to benefit Ms. Harris in the election are false. Something is underway that is too big to stop and it will express itself as ruinous inflation and economic depression in some wicked combo of the two. It will surely lead to epic rearrangements in everyday life. I will suggest a few examples. The people of this land have been deprived of purpose and meaning in an economy organized among giant enterprises and vast distances from wherever you live. To call ourselves “consumers” degrades us. We are citizens who have duties, responsibilities, and obligations to each other.

We are economic actors who can make choices and take risks, not passive units to be exploited. The people need an economic role in their locality: employer of neighbors, producer of useful goods and services, all the way down to faithful servants of something and someone. Monopolies and chain stores killed American towns and all the complex relations in them that furnished purpose, meaning, and livelihoods for the people in a rich ecosystem of production and services. Now it’s the monopolies and chain store’s turn to decline and die off — and they will in the course of things, but it would be foolish to try to prop them up. Let them go and let the people rebuild their networks of making-and-doing locally. It’s already happening.

The giant shopping malls that came along in the 1970s have already died, and there was no official campaign to rescue them, nor any official funeral. It just happened quietly in the background. The malls were a pure product of the combo of Boomer household formation and Happy Motoring. That’s ending now. What replaced the malls, strangely, is the new model of Garage Sale Nation. That will continue to evolve and elaborate itself, and integrate into what happens next — which will not be the A-I robot nirvana of endless leisure, but rather an era of tribulation. You can see it coming on all around you. So many things don’t work anymore. Medicine. School. The task of reorganizing them is monumental. It will generate plenty of friction and hardship.

The people also need a social role in their community: head of household, mother, mentor, public servant, caretaker, local hero. You need a place in this world to enact those roles, a location in it, at the proper scale, and it must be a place that is worthy of your affection. Too many places in the USA do not meet these requirements. They are ugly, sprawling, chaotic, and grotesque. The suburban template for development is a long-running fiasco, the anti-community, and MAGA’s psychological investment in it is, sadly, a mistake — though it is consistent with the psychology of previous investment (sunk costs).

Read more …

“..they overcorrected, flooding an already fragile economy with cash and setting the stage for soaring inflation that has burdened millions of Americans ever since.”

WSJ Issues Scathing Indictment Of How Democrats Blew It On Inflation (ZH)

The Wall Street Journal has issued a scathing postmortem analysis of how the Biden administration completely botched the economy and supercharged inflation. President Biden hadn’t even been inaugurated when he and his senior advisers made a monumental gamble in January 2021 that would reverberate through his presidency. Fresh on the heels of a $900 billion Covid-relief bill that Congress had approved weeks earlier, Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. Biden and his team, many of whom had served in the Obama administration, claimed they were correcting their mistakes from 2009: spending too little to combat a major economic crisis. Instead, they overcorrected, flooding an already fragile economy with cash and setting the stage for soaring inflation that has burdened millions of Americans ever since.

Key among their policies was the American Rescue Plan (ARP) – a package which boosted the child tax credit, showered Americans with $1,400 per person, and directed $350 billion to state and local governments. The plan was passed against a backdrop of already unprecedented government spending. Americans were awash in federal aid from bipartisan measures under Trump, supply chains were breaking down, and businesses were struggling to rehire workers. The administration dismissed these concerns, prioritizing speed over prudence. The plan, of course, totally backfired. “If inflation had been less severe in that first year, if it had peaked at a lower level, could Vice President Harris have survived that? My intuition is yes,” said Michael Strain, head of economic-policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

On election day, approximately 40% of voters polled said the economy was their top issue – with those voters backing Donald Trump by a 22% margin. The White House is unrepentant, of course. “Any scenario that envisions less inflation from a reduced ARP also has to wrestle with slower growth, higher unemployment and more child poverty,” said White House Council of Economic Advisors chair, Jared Bernstein. “White House and Democratic officials have argued that overall U.S. economic outcomes were better than those achieved in nearly every other advanced economy. But politically, those arguments fell flat and gave Trump his opening. “It comes off as cold comfort to say that people have it worse in Germany, the U.K., France,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.). “People naturally compare their experiences today to what things were like prepandemic.” -WSJ”

Read more …

“When he failed, they decided to send their message in a language that no one could misunderstand. They sent Trump.”

Mad at the Election? Blame Obama (AmG)

Liberals who are in the throes of capitulation and despair after Donald Trump’s crushing electoral and popular vote win can lay blame for their disastrous loss at the feet of one man: Barack Hussein Obama. Obama built the Trump wave. His failure to live up to the promises of his populist 2008 run has cursed the Democratic Party, probably for a generation. The Washington DC establishment in just two short months is going to get “scholonged” by an angry and vengeful Trump, ready to rain executive hellfire on the bureaucrats and institutions that have spent the last nine years fighting him tooth and nail. All of this could have been prevented. In 2008, Obama swept into power with a crushing electoral college and popular vote majority. He won Iowa, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. He even won Indiana. Democrats swept into power in Congress with a 74-seat lead in the House, nearly 59% of seats, and were gifted with a magical 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

This was a generational victory, a sign that voters were fed up with politics as usual and the failures of the GOP and the Washington and Wall Street establishment as such. This victory wasn’t just about electing the first Black president, though that was important: The policies and platform at stake appealed deeply to voters. It is worth remembering what exactly those policies were. Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, end the Afghanistan war with honor, help the economy by reducing health care costs (prioritizing “Main Street” over Wall Street), and bring about a new era of racial harmony. Moreover, Obama explicitly eschewed radical leftist politics. He explicitly defended traditional marriage. In his DNC nomination speech, he condemned employers who “undercut American wages by hiring illegal workers.” Obama ran a campaign on bringing “change” to DC. He made much of his status as a newcomer who lacked the “typical pedigree” of a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

Put another way, Obama won a decisive victory in 2008 by campaigning as a Washington outsider bent on ending foreign wars, boosting the economy by helping ordinary people, and being a moderate on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Does this message sound familiar? It should. In broad measure, it is the same formula that brought Donald Trump to power in 2016 and has given him, like Obama, unified control over the executive and legislative branches after a crushing electoral and popular vote win. Obama’s hubris is the reason the Democratic Party stands here today—powerless in the face of “Orange Hitler.” Obama did not close Guantanamo Bay, he ended the Iraq War only to get sucked back in, killed Osama Bin Laden but kept troops in Afghanistan, started wars in Libya and Syria, and, most damningly, inflamed racial tensions when he had a chance to calm them.

Far from being a moderate on social issues, Obama was the president whose picks for the Supreme Court rammed gay marriage down Americans throats after it had suffered numerous state-level electoral setbacks, including in California of all places in the very election that brought Obama to power! Obama’s pledge to reduce health care costs in 2008 did not come with an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. The final bill that snaked its way through Congress and was signed into law did contain such a penalty. Instead of lowering health care costs, Americans watched as their premiums went up.

Instead of fewer foreign wars, we got more. Instead of declaring victory after the death of the mastermind behind 9/11, we got eight more years of war. On every front, Obama didn’t just fail to follow through on his mandate, he actively worked for the opposite outcome. Obama lacked the strength of character and will to follow through on his promises and to deliver the shake-up in Washington that he promised. He was more concerned with hanging out with celebrities and being cool than facing down his own Party’s bosses to deliver on the promises he made to the American people. Nancy Pelosi, 16 years later, still remains one of the most powerful figures in the Party. Americans sent a refined, urbane, grassroots college professor to do their bidding in DC. When he failed, they decided to send their message in a language that no one could misunderstand. They sent Trump.

Read more …

“..a natural product of the loss of any possibility of determining their own destiny.”

Germany Has Become Europe’s Political Wasteland (Bordachev)

Germany is a political void in the center of Europe, even though it contributes significantly to the global economy and is influential in trade. It’s also the Western country with which Russia has had the most historical, cultural and, until recently, economic contacts. A week ago the government in Berlin collapsed, and so far the leading German parties have agreed that early parliamentary elections will be in February 2025. It’s very likely that the next government will be led by the main opposition force, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). At the start of the election campaign, CDU leader Friedrich Merz publicly announced that – if he wins – he’ll issue an ultimatum to Moscow over Ukraine. He’s promised that if this ultimatum is not accepted within 24 hours, his government will provide the Kiev regime with cruise missiles to attack Russian territory.

The consequences of such a decision for Russian-Western relations are obvious. It is not surprising, therefore, that our main reaction was astonishment at the irresponsibility of such a high-ranking member of the German elite. There are even fears that Merz and those behind him intend to drag Germany into a destructive military conflict with Europe’s largest country. But all this German talk means nothing in practice. Without US authorisation, or direct orders from Washington, the leaders in Berlin are not only incapable of starting a major war in Europe, they are incapable even of adjusting their shoelaces. Any statements by German politicians, the fall and rise of governing coalitions there, should only be seen in the context of how the Berlin establishment is trying to find a role in the shadow of total American dominance.

It’s deeply symbolic that Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a decisive step towards the collapse of the governing coalition on 6 November, the day on which the domestic political balance of power in the United States changed radically. In the context of significant changes at the center, the peripheral political systems must react as sensitively as possible: at the level of how a branch of a large corporation reacts to a change in its general management. Berlin’s international position is defined by its crushing defeat in the Second World War, which ended any hope of determining its own future. Germany, like Japan and South Korea, is a country with a foreign occupying force on its territory, albeit under the NATO flag. The German elite, both political and economic, is, with few exceptions, even more integrated with the US than the British elite. To say nothing of those running France, Italy or other European countries.

Germany has no autonomy in determining its foreign policy, nor does it aspire to have any. It’s no coincidence that over the past two and a half years of the Ukraine crisis, it’s been Berlin that has provided the largest amount of military and financial aid to the Kiev regime. Almost ten times more than, say, France, whose president likes to make bellicose speeches. Naturally, the representatives of the German establishment look like pale copies of what we used to consider real politicians. And this is a natural product of the loss of any possibility of determining their own destiny. Of course, Berlin can still set the parameters of economic policy for the weak countries of the European Mediterranean. States such as Greece, Italy or Spain are given to Germany to ‘feed’ within the framework of the European Union and its single currency.

But even Poland, which has a special relationship with the US, has managed to avoid tying itself to Germany’s industrial grip. France is resisting slightly. But it is gradually sinking to the level of southern Europe. The UK has left the EU, but retains its position as the main representative of the US in Europe. It should be noted that such a state of affairs for Germany did not come about overnight. Even during the Cold War, the Federal Republic (FRG) was led by bright personalities. Under chancellors such as Willy Brandt (1969-1974), the Moscow Treaty was signed between the FRG and the USSR on the recognition of post-war borders in Europe. In the early 1970s, German politicians and business were able to persuade the US to allow Germany to establish energy cooperation with the Soviets. In our time, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (1998-2005) pushed for European energy security based on German-Russian cooperation.

But all this came to an end with the global economic crisis of 2008-2013, after which the US began to tighten the screws on its allies. In the spring of 2022, Olaf Scholz, who had previously been committed to dialogue with Russia, fully supported the military-political confrontation created by the Americans over Ukraine. Now German politicians are not free to choose their own future. For most of them, with the exception of the non-systemic opposition, this is quite obvious. Why appoint bright personalities to the highest positions if nothing depends on their decisions? Gradually, the entire political system and the mood of the electorate are adapting to these conditions. The differences in the parties’ platforms are becoming blurred. Observers are already talking about the likelihood that the government will be formed by the Social Democrats and their main opponents from the CDU. This means that disagreements on fundamental issues are a thing of the past.

Only the technical aspects of forming a government need to be agreed upon, and the main goal of all efforts is to hold on to power as such. The united and sovereign German state existed for 74 years (1871-1945). Its revival as such is not possible: even if Russia and China would look favourably on it, the Anglo-Saxon world will not allow it for several reasons at once. Firstly, both German attempts – in the First and Second World Wars – to play a leading role in the West came close to succeeding. So nobody will give them a third chance. Just to be on the safe side. It should be borne in mind that the West takes order within its own community even more seriously than it does the defence of its privileges against the rest of humanity. Second, Germany’s position at the center of Europe, its huge industrial base and its industrious population make it an ideal partner for the US and Britain, the maritime trading powers. Politically insignificant, Germany can economically control much of the rest of Europe, but cannot dictate the substance.

Third, the revival of visible German independence is in the interests of Moscow and Beijing because it would split the ranks of the consolidated West. A small front of countries like Hungary, Slovakia or even one a little larger cannot create such a split. And the unity of the West under the leadership of the US is a fundamental obstacle to the implementation of the plans for a multipolar world order promoted by Russia and China. Germany is now a political wasteland in the heart of Europe. Tiny shoots of reason are, of course, breaking through the decades-old system based on pandering to the interests of American patrons. With some very obvious exceptions, the representatives of the non-systemic German opposition are talented people. But their prospects are still very dim because of the way things are manage. In the future, we can expect to re-establish some economic ties with Germany but we must treat it as a political colony of the US, rather than thinking about try to establish full inter-state relations with Berlin.

Read more …

An unknown side of Stalin.

Gardening Against Evil Days (Helmer)

In politics — the Kremlin is no exception — politicians don’t mean what they say. In gardening, the plants always mean what they say. Gardeners, obliged to record what that is, are more likely than politicians to tell the truth. In the records of Russian politicians since the Bolshevik Revolution, only one leading figure stands out as having the eye, ear, and nose for what plants have to tell. Not the present nor the founding one. The only gardener among them was, and remains, Joseph Stalin. Nothing has been found that he wrote himself on his gardening except perhaps for marginal comments in books he read. There is no mention of books on gardens or gardening in the classification system Stalin’s personal library adopted from 1925. He kept no garden diary. Without a diary recording the cycle of time and seasons, the planting map, colour scheme, productivity of bloom and fruit, infestation, life and death, he must have committed his observations – “he possessed unbelievably acute powers of observation” (US Ambassador George Kennan) – to memory, as peasants do.

Unlike the tsars who employed English, Scots, and French architects and plantsmen to create gardens in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the royal fashions of Europe, defying the Russian winter to display their power and affluence without shovelling for themselves, Stalin dug his gardens himself in the warm weather of his dacha at Gagra, on the Black Sea. There he was photographed with his spade tending parallel, raised beds of lemon trees. There is no sign of him wielding trowel and fork in the garden at Kuntsevo, his dacha near Moscow, where the photographs show him strolling in a semi-wild young forest or seated on a terrace in front of a hedge of viburnum. No record of Stalin digging at Kuntsevo has been found.

There is just one reminiscence of Stalin speaking to a visitor about his gardening. “Stalin is very fond of fruit trees. We came to a lemon bush. Joseph Vissarionovich carefully adjusted the bamboo stick to make it easier for the branches to hold large yellow fruits. ‘But many people thought that lemons would not grow here!’ [He said] Stalin planted the first bushes himself, took care of them himself. And now he has convinced many gardeners by his example. He talks about it in an enthusiastic voice and often makes fun of would-be gardeners. We came to a large tree. I don’t know it at all. ‘What is the name of this tree?’ I asked Stalin. ‘Oh, this is a wonderful plant! It’s called eucalyptus,’ Joseph Vissarionovich said, plucking leaves from the tree. He rubs the leaves on his hand and gives everyone a sniff. ‘Do you feel how strong the smell is? This is the smell that the malaria mosquito does not tolerate.’ Joseph Vissarionovich tells how, with the help of eucalyptus, the Americans got rid of the mosquito during the construction of the Panama Canal, how the same eucalyptus helped with the work in swampy Australia. I felt very embarrassed that I did not know this wonderful tree.”

Stalin read a great deal of philosophy, Roman and Russian history, art, and agronomy, and so he is bound to have reflected on the way in which the ideas of the classics he read took physical form in the gardens of the time. Especially so on the ancient idea of the paradise garden. It is this transference between thinking and digging, between the idea of paradise and the cultivation of it, which a new book, just published in London, explores in a radical way. Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time, In Search of a Common Paradise, knows nothing whatever about Russia or its gardens or its politics – except for propaganda on the Ukraine war she has absorbed unquestioningly and briefly repeats from the London newspapers. That’s a personal fault; it’s not a dissuasion from the book of reflections she has written out from her garden diary to an end which Russians understand to aim at, not less than the English.

In this wartime it’s necessary to keep reflecting on this end, on the aesthetic and philosophical purpose of the paradise garden. Laing begins her book and her garden with John Milton’s lament for gardening in wartime – in his case, the English Civil War of 1642-46 and the counter-revolution of 1660. “More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang’d”, Milton observed at the beginning of Book 7 of his Paradise Lost, “to hoarce or mute, though fall’n on evil dayes/ On evil dayes though fall’n, and evil tongues;/in darkness and with dangers compast round,/And solitude.” At the same time, Laing records for herself and Stalin certainly knew, “what I loved, aside from the work of making [the paradise garden], was the self-forgetfulness of the labour, the immersion in a kind of trance of attention that was as unlike daily thinking as dream logic is to waking.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Grandma

 

 

Plane tech

 

 

Foal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1858438984684146947

 

 

Orangutan

 

 

Guilty

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle November 19 2024

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 83 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #174827
    John Day
    Participant

    New Attorney General Matt Gaetz says what everyone else is too afraid to say, The Ukraine War is “to launder money through”

    Matt Gaetz “I think that the reason we are as involved in Ukraine as we are is because Afghanistan wound down. If we still had Afghanistan to launder money through, there probably wouldn’t be the need for this type of excessive involvement in Ukraine. But I think we can look at Afghanistan and we can look at what’s going on here and say, what a lot of these defense contractors are pushing toward is how to have an extended kind of low yield war.

    Like if there’s a way to stretch this thing out, turn it into a 20, 30 year kind of thing where there’s a whole lot of money moving around and unaccountable pots and a lot of weapons getting bought and then all man the stockpiles well we got to spend more money to reload those”

    American Wars are looking for Longterm Unaccountable Money Laundering

    #174828
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Gotta Hand It to the “Gals”

    My Pronouns are He/Haw


    I identify as a Jackass

    .

    #174829
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Life Can Be a Bitch

    .

    #174830
    Oroboros
    Participant

    In Honor of DEI Day

    .

    #174831
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    That’s Aquaman sneaking up on Superman.

    Not gonna go down like you think.
    Musk couldn’t take either guy in real life

    #174832
    Oroboros
    Participant

    A thoughtful thought of the day inspired by Karl M bro

    .

    #174833
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Elections in the Empire of Lies, Lies, Lies

    Lessons from “Real Life”

    Truth is Stranger than Fiction

    .

    #174834
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Remember?

    .

    #174835
    zerosum
    Participant

    Lots of good comments today.
    My AI succeeded in deleting my comments once again.

    Nothing important.

    Trump and his team have got a major challenges to wrestle control from the establishment if the USA is to avoid the worst of what is coming,. Where to get the energy needed to address world
    wide food insecurity and poverty, and pain and chaos..

    #174836
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    The guy who brought us Medical Marshall plans to call out The Posse, old Lone Ranger, Bonanza and Gunsmoke style.

    “Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878”

    The People are gonna love the military riding rough domestically and Dtrump didn’t reference the Tulsi’s or Tim’s National Guard

    Trump

    Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

    As my soon to be 90yo Mom quipped yesterday, “Where are all those fancy businessmen going to find cheap labor once the immigrants are deported?”

    #174837
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    David A. Hughes
    Interview with Carlos Sanchez, September 30, 2024
    English starts at 5:00

    Truth to power;
    a century of psy-ops;
    Naomi Klein;
    the Left;
    Keir Starmer;
    lab leak;
    infantilisation;
    Boris Johnson;
    Hancock;
    Drosten;
    Ferguson;
    opinion polls;
    nudging;
    hospital propaganda;
    and more!

    https://dhughes.substack.com/p/interview-with-carlos-sanchez-september

    #174838
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    From my inBox this a.m.:

    Ukraine Uses U.S.-Provided Long-Range Missiles in Russia for First Time

    MKYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine fired long-range missiles provided by the U.S. into Russia for the first time Tuesday, posing a test for Russian President Vladimir Putin after Moscow’s threats to retaliate for such a move.

    Ukraine used the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, to strike an ammunition storage facility in Russia’s Bryansk region, a Ukrainian official said. The strike came just days after President Biden gave approval for their use.

    “This is a signal that they want escalation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday in response to the attack, describing it as a new phase in the war.

    Russia has warned for months that use of such long-range missiles against its territory would amount to an attack by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and lead to a clear response, but it hasn’t specified what that would be. On Tuesday, Putin signed amendments to Russia’s nuclear doctrine—a move that appeared to be timed to send an additional warning to the West.

    The Ukrainian Armed Forces said Tuesday that they had struck an arsenal near the town of Karachev at 2:30 a.m. local time, causing 12 secondary explosions and detonations. The official confirmed that the strike was carried out using ATACMS.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses had shot down five ATACMS missiles launched by Ukraine against a military target in the western border region of Bryansk. The fragments of a sixth missile struck by a Russian interceptor rocket hit the military target causing fires on its territory, it said, but didn’t result in any casualties.

    The Biden administration had long declined to authorize Ukraine’s use of ATACMS in Russia, citing concerns of escalation. ATACMS, a surface-to-surface missile system fired from a mobile launcher vehicle, can strike between 100 and 190 miles away, depending on the model of the system.

    But the White House authorized the use of the missiles after thousands of North Korean troops were deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow is seeking to oust Ukrainian forces that seized territory in a lightning offensive in August.

    Russia sought to head off the U.S. decision in recent months by warning about retaliation. Putin in September alleged that missiles as sophisticated as ATACMS can only be fired with the help of U.S. satellites and military instructors.

    “If this decision is made, then it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries—the U.S., European states—in the war in Ukraine,” Putin said. “And that will substantively change the very essence, the very nature, of the conflict. It will mean NATO countries are fighting against Russia.”

    Putin has hinted that using ATACMS against Russian territory could prompt Moscow to place more military assets in countries closer to the U.S. Russia recently sent a nuclear-powered submarine, capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles, and a navy frigate to Cuba’s Havana harbor, just 100 miles from Key West, Fla.

    Russia could also expand its sabotage campaign in Europe with clandestine attacks on Western infrastructure that give it plausible deniability, as part of a hybrid strategy. Such attacks send “a message that hostile actions on Russia’s internationally recognized territory will have a price tag,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

    Russia has recently stepped up cooperation with Iran and North Korea and with anti-Western military groups such as the Houthis in Yemen. Iran is supplying drones that Russia uses to strike Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and North Korea has sent some 11,000 troops to Russia in recent weeks, according to U.S. and Ukrainian estimates.

    On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia could ultimately deploy as many as 100,000 North Korean troops in Ukraine, where it is steadily gaining territory in the east.

    Russia’s strike campaign against Ukrainian cities has intensified in recent weeks, but it is constrained by the number of missiles it can produce for such barrages.

    The amendments to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that were unveiled on Tuesday are a largely symbolic move, analysts say. The new document expands the range of threats Russia can respond to using nuclear weapons, and says an attack against Russia using conventional weapons can be a pretext for a nuclear response—including against a nonnuclear state aligned with a nuclear power, an apparent reference to Ukraine.

    According to the doctrine, attacks that warrant a nuclear response are those that “pose a critical threat to the sovereignty and/or territorial integrity” of Russia or Belarus, a staunch ally where Russia also stores some of its nuclear missiles. They include use of ballistic missiles, such as ATACMS, and a “mass launch” of cruise missiles, jet fighters or drones, which Ukraine has actively used in recent months to target Russian military bases far from the border. Putin proposed the changes in a session of the Russian security council in September, warning the U.S. against continued support for Ukraine.

    “The idea was to try to find a way to limit or constrain the assistance that the West provides to Ukraine, and create some uncertainty about the possible scenarios,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the U.N.’s Institute for Disarmament Research.

    Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com

    Copyright 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

    #174839
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Medical Marshall Law

    #174840
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “Where are all those fancy businessmen going to find cheap labor once the immigrants are deported?”

    agreed

    and if we fire all the teachers who cannot pass a basic competency test, who will teach? (not the people who just failed the competency test both after AND prior to the test…)

    when will we find out what STUFF we actually had?

    When will we find out what DIDN’T run on quasi slavery? All those people for equity and justice, when will they discover whether the stuff they advocate is actually more or less equitable or just?

    When will we find out how much environmental damage “clean” energy, recycling, net zero, etc actually causes vs petrochemicals? Single best thing you can do for The Planet is stop putting plastic in the recycling bin and start putting it in the garbage bin… but why???

    True costs, true benefits? — don’t measure!!!! Can’t catch thieves or slavers if you hide it in a spreadsheet and don’t measure. But they’re usually inefficient (after all, they don’t measure) and we cannot bring all our costs down until we DO measure.

    Is there even someone at the top of the data heap with a bullshit-remover that is actually looking at real things?

    #174842
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Dr. Gilbert Doctorow :
    Kremlin Reaction to US Escalation.

    #174843
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    jb-hb said:

    Is there even someone at the top of the data heap with a bullshit-remover that is actually looking at real things?

    Answer: Yes, a Narcissist, Psychopath, Megalonaniac or Spellbinder that is certain he or she is worth $200 billion or entitled to exclusive access to the airwaves and intertubes ((Danny Haiphong et al excluded))

    #174844
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    #174845
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    #174846
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    #174847
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    #174848
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Dude speaks:

    .

    #174849
    Oroboros
    Participant

    An attempt at Ritual Humiliation and Disorientation

    Treading Water in the Lunatic Fringe

    They’ve captured the language and do violence to the meaning of words

    .

    #174850
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Time to Snuff the Freak Show kids…..

    .

    .
    .
    ..

    #174851
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #174852
    zerosum
    Participant

    Opinions, news from many sources to evaluate and determine who are the liars.
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/us-to-allow-atacms-use-on-russia-to-prolong-war-in-ukraine/comments/page/2/#comments

    Re: DPRK troops in Ukraine (or Russia), I saw a good comment at Naked Capitalism earlier today which I will repost here. I don’t have time to sort through and find the hyperlink; I only copied the text of the comment, so apologies to the person who made it, but I think it’s worth spreading.

    Leaving aside the fact that we have zero, none, nada, proof of any kind beyond the verbal say-so of anonymous Ukrainian officials and South Korean intelligence persons.
    1. Integrating a 10-thousand strong unit – or even battalion-sized components thereof – into a modern battlefield with constant vertical and horizontal communication from individual squads all the way up to brigade or division command, when members of said unit speak a completely different language, is borderline lunacy. I am not saying it cannot be done, if one tries really, really hard, and has enough interpreters or bilingual officers on hand, but please.

    2. No-one is yet to explain to me in a coherent fashion where the weapons and equipment, including vehicles, tanks, artillery, ambulances, et cetera, for these North Koreans are supposed to come from. A basic motor rifle battalion of 400 men needs 50 BMPs just to move around, not counting supply trucks, a tank platoon or two in support, anti-air, some artillery or heavy mortars, buggies-bikes for assault groups, reconnaissance and strike drones, and so on. Most of the North Korean stuff is either very, very old Soviet stuff that the Russians wouldn’t want to use on the frontline, or wholly incompatible with what the Russians do use on the frontline, or is available in extremely limited quantities, or does not exist altogether. We are basically suggesting that the Russians will take the gear meant for 10 thousand of their own volunteers and give it to the North Koreans. Because why, exactly.

    3. Said Russian volunteers routinely spend many months on the training grounds before going anywhere near the frontline, and then usually as reinforcements to existing veteran units rather than separate brand new formations. In fact, more than one English-language source has now noted that the Ukrainian practice of just creating new brigades instead of reinforcing existing veteran ones is, at best, highly inefficient, and at worst utterly wasteful. Furthermore, even veteran troops are rotated back to the training range every few weeks in order to either hone their general skills, or to practice against a copy of the specific defensive position they are about to face.

    Either the North Koreans have been practicing somewhere in Siberia for the past six months, or letting them anywhere near the frontline would violate pretty much every practice established by the Russian army to date.

    4. I await any evidence of this mythical manpower shortage that is forcing the Russians to accept an extra 10 thousand foreign troops. Aren’t the same Western sources squealing about the North Koreans also telling us about the 120 thousand Russian troops sitting around in the Zaporozh’e area doing pretty much nothing? Or that the total Russian troops deployed along the frontline now outnumber the Ukrainians?

    5. If the whole thing is a matter of the North Koreans gaining “experience”, then why not have military attaches at various HQ levels and small groups of 5-10 specially selected officers attached to combat companies here and there? Why constitute a 10 thousand strong block that no-one knows what to do with?

    6. North Korea will not do a bloody thing without getting a tacit approval from China. Why China would want North Koreans in direct combat with US proxies anywhere in the world in general, or especially now, when a new President is coming in, is clearly not something anyone is bothering to address.

    —–

    Look, I am as happy to continue discussing this, err, topic. While we’re on the subject, we might resurrect the old Russians-paying-bounties-to-Taliban pile of steaming male cow manure. But what is the point? Until any actual evidence is produced, this is just another Iraqi weapons of mass destruction type of psyop designed to justify the escalation on the US side, to wit, the mythical North Koreans are literally the stated reason for permitting the Ukrainians to use ATACMS against core Russian territory.

    And yes, in theory anything is possible.

    Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 18 2024 23:38 utc | 132

    #174853
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I’m ever so happy that Garland is finally being refered to in public with the proper term

    Musk Goes All In On ‘Judge Dredd’ Matt Gaetz, Notes ‘Douchebag’ Garland Never Brought Charges

    “If AG Garland (an unprincipled douchebag) could have secured a conviction against Gaetz, he would have, but he knew he could not.

    Case closed.”

    Dedicated to Garland:

    Negative Clank

    He’d sell
    a rats asshole
    to a blindman
    as a wedding ring

    ~Richard Brautigan

    #174854
    zerosum
    Participant

    Change is in the air
    https://www.rt.com/russia/607877-bryansk-long-range-strike/
    19 Nov, 2024 12:08

    Kiev fires ATACMS missiles at Russia’s Bryansk Region – MOD

    Air defenses have intercepted five US-made projectiles and damaged another, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said
    The Ukrainian military has launched multiple US-made ATACMS missiles at Russia’s Bryansk Region, some of which have been intercepted, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday.

    US President Joe Biden reportedly authorized the use of American-supplied weapons for strikes deep inside Russia last week. Moscow had previously said that long-range strikes with Western weapons would constitute a direct war between NATO and Russia.

    According to the statement, Kiev fired six long-range ballistic missiles identified as ATACMS early on Tuesday morning. Five of them were intercepted with S-400 and Pantsir air defense systems, while another was damaged and hit the ground at a Russian military site in Bryansk Region, causing a fire that was quickly dealt with. The Russian military claimed that no damage was caused by the incident.

    Ukrainian media earlier reported that Kiev had fired ATACMS missiles into internationally recognized Russian territory for the first time during the conflict, releasing purported footage of the launch. The attack reportedly targeted an ammunition depot in Bryansk Region, though military officials in Kiev have not confirmed the claims.

    Earlier on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the enactment of the country’s new nuclear doctrine. The document says that an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear power backed by a nuclear one should be considered a joint attack by both.

    In September, Putin warned that long-range attacks by Ukraine using Western weapons would be a serious escalation of the conflict. Kiev cannot launch such attacks without direct input from NATO member states, he noted.

    Bryansk Region is located in western Russia and borders Ukraine and Belarus, which is a Russian ally.

    #174855
    zerosum
    Participant

    Just take a look at the location of Bryansk Oblast. It’s the small red area in the far left of the country.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Map_of_Russia_%282014%E2%80%932022%29_-_Bryansk_Oblast_%28disputed_Crimea%29.svg/600px-Map_of_Russia_%282014%E2%80%932022%29_-_Bryansk_Oblast_%28disputed_Crimea%29.svg.png

    Posted by: Milton | Nov 19 2024 13:37 utc | 252

    #174856
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Garland

    Officially a Douche Baguette

    Demonrat

    .

    The fact he’s a Jewish Demonrat is just a coincidence

    #174857
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Fabulous Dor Brothers Strike Again

    You know the……………..

    The Drill

    #174858
    citizenx
    Participant

    fact he’s a Jewish Demonrat is just a coincidence

    Funny that. Always just a coinkydink until the joos need to play their race, religion, state, holocaust card….

    Anyone notice how the msm/liberal/democrats have blamed latinos, blacks, whites for voting Trump- but not a peep on how jooooos voted ? Shadow Jews, shadow govt- Alex Soros another scum fuck Jew trash murdering asshole.

    #174859
    citizenx
    Participant

    Psst, AOC- alexandria cortez – latino, liberal, feminist Democrat- just announced she/her/it is Jewish.

    Can’t make this shit up= only leftists can be so fucking retarded- waiting for her to announce a family member is a transfagtard-

    #174860
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Russians are gaining priceless experience in real combat conditions for their R&D drone research production.

    The Latest

    “The Russian Armed Forces have begun using the latest FPV UAVs “Molniya-2”

    .

    #174861
    Oroboros
    Participant
    #174862
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    The daily theatre has to be fantastic and engrossing. He said, she said, OMG did you hear about blah, blah, blah, missiles and drones, inditements and confessions. 1 gigantic jew soap opera. Mindfuck em till you steal their last dollar. kill them with poison, and send them off to war. Protocols of Zion, read it, cause you’re in it.

    #174863
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @Celticbiker

    You wrote:

    Anyone notice how the msm/liberal/democrats have blamed latinos, blacks, whites for voting Trump- but not a peep on how jooooos voted

    $$$$$$$$

    Me: So obvious as not to be noticed.
    Is it feigned ignorance?
    Maybe deliberate, willful blindness.
    Perhaps, the phenomenon is best described by operant conditioning.

    Invariably the most difficult thing to take measure of is the loss or disappearance of something….the loss of someone. They will disappear someone, the annoying voice the recalcitrant unrepentant critic. The phenomenon has been described by Eric Berne in Alcoholic Games where the Antithesis, he who won’t abide or play by the rules, is accorded the worst possible treatment ie. court, morgue, emergency surgery. Friends, family and colleagues gang up on the Outlier, Outcast, Antithesis. Most everyone is conditioned to kiss the boss’s or leader’s ass as a faux expression of higher moral development and dishonest brokering of favorable status.

    #174864
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @citizenx

    I had to see for myself.
    There it is…from 2018 no less.

    “Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York made a surprise revelation to a progressive Jewish group on the final night of Hannukah on Sunday: She traces her ancestry back to 15th-century Sephardic Jews.”

    “Speaking at an event organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice at the Jackson Heights Jewish Center in Queens, the rising Democratic star drew cheers with the revelation, which she told Haaretz was the first time she had spoken publicly about her family’s Jewish heritage.”

    #174865
    zerosum
    Participant

    What happened
    https://karlof1.substack.com/p/lavrovs-post-g-20-rio-presser
    Lavrov’s Post G-20 Rio Presser
    Karl Sanchez
    Nov 19, 2024

    #174866
    tboc
    Participant

    some days this place is more fun than an issue of Bijou Funnies
    on a more subtle note from Zap Comix
    “Where will it end?”
    “In the grave my boy, in the grave.” – Mr. Natural

    if the joos had told you who they were voting for would you have voted for Kackles?
    damned if you do, damned if you don’t – Eretz Yisrael

    Once being the Antithesis Outlier becomes normative one finds out what being in the catbird seat is really all about. The art of the game is to find someone on the inside and confide in them how deeply you wish you were part of the crowd. All one has to do then is watch and the crowd measures the pond for you. Add a little feigned angst and watch em go Spinal Tap and turn it up to eleven.
    True Cynicism is an acquired taste, mutch like Scotch, and can lead to Stoicism if properly managed.

    #174867
    zerosum
    Participant

    Peace.
    Look what I found!

    https://worldbeyondwar.org/canada/
    Organizing Against Canadian Militarism
    What’s Going On?
    Despite what many Canadians may think (or want!) Canada is no peacekeeper. Instead, Canada is taking on a growing role as colonizer, warmonger, global arms dealer, and weapons manufacturer.

    Here are some quick facts about the current state of Canadian militarism.

    Canada has become one of the world’s top arms dealers
    Militarized violence continues colonization across Canada
    The Canadian military is playing a major role in accelerating the climate crisis
    The Canadian Armed Forces are ramping up efforts at domestic surveillance and propaganda
    The military budget has increased 70% in just a few years, and we currently spend 20 times on the military as we do on the environment, federally
    Canadian peacekeeping is more myth than reality

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