The tightening screw – Part II.

Usually most of the focus in on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars. Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all. We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.

"Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History." By Michael Snyder, ZeroHedge, 5/27/18 (formatting removed).

The tightening screw.

Public services are stripmined to meet pension obligations . . . .^[1]

And as pension fund investments’ rates of return are adjusted to actual (not held at delusional) levels the call goes out, in California’s case, to local governments to make up the shortfall so payouts remain at Wizard of Oz levels. Don’t touch that dial!

Is it California’s constitution that prohibits reduction in pension benefits? What ever state got that provision approved must have some seriously stupid voters. Really? Retired state employees are precious jewels in our firmament who should not have to tighten their belts? Remus reported on the pension of the officer in the Florida school shooting who stayed outside while shots were being fired inside – almost $9,000 a month! Woodpile Report no. 530, 5/27/18.

Medicaid payments now take up to 25% of tax revenue in some states. Obamacare in its heyday “solved” the “healthcare crisis” by increasing premiums and inflating copays so that the ever-squeezed middle had “health insurance” in name only.

A slight rise in the interest rate increases government debt service costs but abnormally low interest rates favor the banksters, drive savers (esp. seniors) into riskier stock market investments and investors into ever more questionable investments thereby exacerbating the misallocation of capital. Higher interest rates also drain money from overseas markets as holders of cash seek higher returns here, which has the effect of raising the value of the dollar, which harms exports.

God knows what derivative exposure portends for the world financial system but a quart of scotch a day will help you keep from thinking about it. As your correspondent has frequently observed, many things can be ignored but not the iron laws of arithmetic. Someone can take hormones, shave his beard, wear a dress and call himself Daisy Mae but, Pilgrim, no amount of hormones or weed will boost pension fund discount rates into the comfort zone.

Well, that’s today’s dose of economic hysteria. No one seems to be in charge and everyone wants to temporize and pretend. Don’t miss the chart of total debt in Smith’s article referenced in the note below. Always one of my favorite as it suggests a, um, certain fragility to the whole dealybob. And while you’re at it, contemplate that Deutsche Bank is laying off 10% of its employees and that the USG thinks its a great idea to spend $32,000,000 per hour on our overseas bases and activities since 2001. Yessir. That is some seriously important [stuff] going on overseas and it’s good that we’re heavily involved in it. I know we’re safer and more prosperous for waging war on the Syrian nation for reasons that must be kept wery, wery secwet.

The only place in our national life where the iron laws of arithmetic do NOT apply appears to be in the area of immigration and job theft. Apparently, there is NO UPPER LIMIT to

• the number of foreigners who can be welcomed to our country and given welfare benefits or
• the number of jobs that can be stolen from American citizens so that foreigners can “make a contribution,” that is to say the contribution that Americans could have made had their jobs not been stolen from them by foreigners and the political filth who run this country.

Pedal to the metal on that one, good buddy. Bienvenido, Abdul, Kwame, and Fernando!

Notes
^[1] "America 2018: Dicier By The Day." By Charles Hugh Smith, ZeroHedge, 5/27/18 (formatting removed).

Floating around in the ether.

This is from a bunch of clever points that “someone” (not I) circulated on the web:

Just one more thing on Democrats and the Electoral College.

Why is it that Democrats think Super delegates are fine, but they have a problem with the Electoral College?

Pearls of expression.

Siegfried:

Itzig, you should go back to that Breitbart-g@rbage. THAT is the pigsty that fits your profile.

Smaug:

If you act like this to everyone you'll never get a girlfriend.^[1]

Notes
^[1] Comment on "US-Backed Forces Clear From ISIS 21Km Of Syrian- Iraqi Border (Video)." By South Front, 5/13/18.

Globalism crumbling?

Comment by Speak Truth To Power:

I agree with much of what this columnist wrote. However this entire globalist criminal enterprise is rapidly crumbling. This is shown in the rise of patriotic/loyalist and Marxist parties in Europe and the Far Right and Far Left in the U.S. The globalist elite 0.001% empire of the banksters, crapitalists and fingerciers and their lackeys, knaves and varlets, along with their political prostitute puppets, is built on sand. These worthless cretins have loaded down every nation on earth, and especially in the West, with massive, crushing debt. Ditto for individuals and businesses. It is not sustainable. In addition they have off shored much of Western industry into Third World nations and flooded Western nations with Third World proles to hold down wages and depress living conditions. Reaction among the native Whites is building stronger by the day. At some point this volcano is going to blow. When it does all bets are off as to how much destruction will happen.

At this point the super rich and their banks and trans-national corporations can either gradually give way to democratic change and re-industrialize the West, discount all these debts, and stop this Third World invasion and begin swift repatriation of these interlopers and save much of their wealth and power or they will soon face armed revolution and civil/class/racial war in the streets. These worthless elites have fouled their own nests since they have left virtually no Western nation untouched by these triple evils of debt, immigration and de-industrialization. They either never learned the lessons of the French and Russian revolutions or believe it could not happen in the 21st Century to them.

Either way it makes no difference. Globalism is crumbling and going the way of other evil isms: Fascism, Communism, Nazism, Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. Its days are numbered and the writing is on the wall. Meanwhile those nations not controlled by the Western White Collar Mafia, namely Russia and China, along with Iran and a few other Asian and Middle Eastern nations, are building up their economies and militaries and increasingly challenging the Western tyrants. We are definitely in for troubled times ahead. Always remember: Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.

Globalism has had its evil day and its black sun is setting. The only questions now are will it go peacefully and quietly or loudly and violently and what will replace it. I hope and pray something good and true. A new world order built that that is God and Christ and not man based with peace, prosperity, and justice for all in a natural order of things.^[1]

I think there’s much truth in this. For five decades the “logical” and “natural” option has involved (1) massive immigration of hostiles, unassimilables, and parasites, (2) crushing wage competition from foreign illegals, (3) enormous, unconstitutional centralization of power in the federal government, and (4) the near destruction of the industrial base with, in our case, a magnificent gift to communist China. Even now, it’s utterly impossible to get even anti-immigration activists to speak the words “stop,” “repel,” or “deport.” Even now, the “acceptable” boundaries of any debate on immigration involve mere modest downward adjustments and shinier holsters for the Border Patrol nerf ball guns. We have allowed our dirt bag, sellout elites to grab untold power and inflict their lunatic social and governmental ideas on us all.

Probably it will take real economic pain before Americans realize that there’s only so much of America that can be given away before it’s changed forever. That insight has yet to arrive even now. Someone observed that a liberal never recognizes danger, a conservative only when it's too late, and a reactionary recognizes danger instantly. Enoch Powell in Britain was a reactionary according to this and, while I can't presume to place myself in the same category of such an amazing intellect as Powell, I for damn sure don't need to see but one bleeping picture of invaders coming ashore in Lampedusa, Italy to see that an immense tragedy is unfolding. I don' nee' no steenkin' spreadsheet and 40 years of census and crime statistics to figure things out.

Notes
^[1]  Comment by Speak Truth To Power on "The Simulation of Democracy." By C.J. Hopkins, The Unz Review, 5/23/18 (emphasis added).

One-note ukulele.

President Trump has said he won't rule out military action against Maduro.

"Maduro Wins Vote Boycotted By Opposition As US Threatens Sanctions." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 5/21/18.

The anti-American left and us deplorables.

Trump has his eye on the contemporary Left’s extremism, but this is not so much the statist Left that the libertarians oppose, nor the values-and-autonomy Left resisted by the religious Right, but the anti-American Left. This Left plunged its knife into our politics in the 1960s and has been twisting it ever since.

The Old Left had opposed American capitalism, the Progressives had condemned American plutocracy, but not until the ’50s and ’60s did a significant faction of the Left begin to blame the American masses, not the elite, for the country’s sins. The people became the problem. They were racist, materialist, imperialist, sexist, and sexually inhibited, according to the original catalogue of sins; later the phobias were discovered—homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, and so forth. Together these comprise pretty much the irredeemable sins Hillary had in mind when she condemned Trump’s voters as deplorable.

I think part of Trump’s apparent lack of a strategic plan is due to the fact that he does not realize that there is such a thing as the anti-American left. He understands that bad decisions have been made on immigration and trade but that this was due to negligence, not pure malevolence and destructive, revolutionary purpose. It is hard for decent people to understand that they are up against pure evil. But that is what we face. What the left has in store for the world is nothing less than the destruction of Western civilization.^[1]

Notes
^[1] "Thinking about Trump." By Charles R. Kesler, Claremont Review of Books, 5/7/18 (emphasis added).

Origin of the “Indispensable Nation” lunacy.

More pointedly, the Indispensable Nation meme originates not in the universal condition of mankind and the nation-states into which it has been partioned, but in the one-time, flukish and historically aberrant circumstances of the 20th century that gave raise to giant totalitarian states in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, and the resulting mass murder and oppressions which resulted there from.

But as we will outline in greater detail in Part 2, Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany were not coded into the DNA of humanity—a horror always waiting to happen.

To the contrary, they were effectively born and bred in April 1917 when the US entered what was then called the Great War. And it did so for absolutely no reason of homeland security or any principle consistent with the legitimate foreign policy of the American Republic.

So you can put the blame for this monumental error squarely on Thomas Woodrow Wilson——-a megalomaniacal madman who was the very worst President in American history; and who took America into war for the worst possible reason—a vainglorious desire to have a big seat at the post-war peace table in order to remake the world as God had inspired him to redeem it.

* * * *

It [Wilson’s intervention] led to a peace of vengeful victors, triumphant nationalists and avaricious imperialists—-when the war would have otherwise ended in a bedraggled peace of mutually exhausted bankrupts and discredited war parties on both sides. ^[1]

This is one of Mr. Stockman’s best articles and there’s much more in it than the excerpt above.

Notes
^[1] "Why The Empire Never Sleeps: The Indispensable Nation Folly." By David Stockman, ZeroHedge, 5/15/18 (formatting removed).

Chechnya insights and new perspectives.

I can’t begin to interpret the gathering you see and the words you hear in this video. Russians fought a very hard war in Chechnya and it was not one that I followed. Commenter DSCdaP wrote an excellent comment on another video which sheds some light on the subject. It reads in part:

Chechniya used to be a haven for terrorists... after the US smuggled the usual brand of Wahhabi scum into it. A very disorganised Russia barely managed to defeat them for good once Putin came to power. With the help of the current leader Ramzan Kadyrov's father, who switched sides from being a rebel to joining forces with the Russian government to defeat the Wahhabi scum. Also, Chechniya is in fact part of the Russian state, it is an autonomous republic which enjoys a great deal of independence from Moscow, but it is still part of Russia, not its own country. Even though Moscow laid waste to Chechniya because they were so disorganised and ineffective back then, Putin these days enjoys enormous popularity not just with the leadership of Chechniya but with the people as well. Ramzan Kadyrov asked 10000 elite Chechen soldiers to volunteer as Putins personal guard, not to protect the president of Russia mind you, but Putin personally, even if he leaves office, that's how popular Putin is. Putin doesn't acknowledge them to this day, because a personal army would give him way too much power, but 10000 of some of the toughest soldiers of the entire planet, not just Russia, volunteered to be his personal army... let that sink in.^[1]

Here's the video:

Those 10,000 troops and police look like some well-trained, professional troops and President Kadyrov is unlike just about any other world leader. The Wikipedia entry for him is very interesting to say the least. Not your Jeffersonian democrat but a man who rose to the top in a rough environment indeed.

Consider all this a glimpse of very different kinds of men with a distinctly different idea of Islam, one with little tolerance for Salfists or adherents to ISIS. It’s a snapshot of a different kind of Muslim and draw your own conclusions. At a minimum, I suspect you will agree that the Muslim of Chechnya is a different breed of cat from those in the Middle East who seem more committed to savagery and stupidity. The interesting aspect of this video is that such loyalty to Russia, not a Muslim entity, is so firm. What was it that Vladimir Putin did to earn it is a question I’ll keep in mind when reading more about this.

The comments on the video are interesting too. The usual low life on YouTube are there but there expressions of affection and respect for the Chehens from Orthodox Christians and one statement by a Christian that they have lived peacefully with Chechens with no problems. I’ll reserve judgment on that latter point. Certainly it contrasts starkly with the general ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East (except in Syria).

As a coda to this, Solzhenitsyn’s discussion of the Chechens in the third volume of his The Gulag Archipelago was fascinating. Chechens in the Soviet GULAG were not messed with by the guards because the Chechens made it a point of exacting revenge for any slight or injury visited on one of their number. They stuck together ferociously which I see as a benefit of being part of a real culture. In defense of American culture I have to say I saw similar reaction on the part of American troops in Nam. In an instant they were ready to go to the rescue of other Americans who had been on board a chopper forced to crash land nearby. They would have done anything to get to those guys and help them, which fortunately proved unnecessary.

While writing this I ran across an earlier post of mine with a video of a Muslim who similarly challenges our perceptions of Muslim thought. Here’s the interview with that gent so no need to click on the link:

This is just extraordinary. If there is any major strength of Islam and Arab culture is most certainly is not self-awareness. He certainly nails the essential failings of Arab Muslim culture but the group think and clinging to useless concepts are just as much defects of our own. We seem possessed of an insufferable arrogance, obsessed as we are by our military strength, our “exceptionalism,” and our apparent divine right to determine how everyone else in the world is supposed to live. Our "Assad the Butcher" fixation is pathetic and a lie.

And this is not to mention our own flight from truth and reason. The propaganda that sluices through American society now is 50 feet deep so we are as deluded and prideful as any salafists. President Trump gets a few things right but neither he nor our political class exert themselves to examine basic principles or have the inclination. Our "sacred" Constitution is nothing more to our political class than a dirty rag. We are a sad, deluded culture where safe spaces, crying boxes, and absurd ideas about the relations between the sexes – and sexual “identity” – are embraced with great energy. We do not pay attention to Solshenitsyn’s injunction to “live not by lies.” "Health care" is right there in the Constitution and America can bypass the U.N. Charter when it's convenient.

I won’t tie a bow on any of this. Suffice it to say that there are some other realities, allegiances, perceptions, and thinking that are out there in the world and I think some of them are more hard-edged, realistic, and honest than what delusions we concern ourselves with. Sensible and formidable people are out there. Read Kadyrov’s Wikipedia entry and ask yourself if this gentleman is likely to tolerate some human foolish enough to step into Chechnya uninvited. We, however, are scared of our own shadow on the border and fold up and slink away if some mothertrucking foreigner or leftist troll screams that we “hate immigrants.” Quote unquote.

A long period of grace is coming to an end for the Western world, controlled as it is by midgets and traitors. The post-WWII paradigm of America as the guardian and lode star for the world is beginning to fade. What the Black Swan event(s) will be is unknown but some hard lessons are about to be taught by some hard people and some harsh realities.

Notes
^[1] "International Journalist Tells The Truth About Syria." The Jimmy Dore Show, 1/3/18. This is another one of Mr. Dore’s excellent commentaries/interviews on Syria and world affairs. This fellow is sharp as a tack and I recommend his videos to you. So is his guest, Rania Khalek.

Perspective.

[Tom Englehardt:] “Its [the U.S.’s] national security budget is larger than those of the next eight countries combined…”

[Welsh:] My favourite statistic is to compare the increase in the formal US “defence” budget ($80 billion) for this year with the total Russian defence budget ($46 billion).^[1]

The same kind of imbalance was on display this morning of Fox News. Something about the Iranians taking the money Obama returned to them (their money to begin with) and using it to (((increase))) spending on the military.

Again, a puny expenditure by Iran but cause for much contrived hysteria in the American press. I know Iran is THE single greatest threat to world peace in the solar system now that Hillary Clinton has been put out to pasture (pasteurized?) but, really? A relatively tiny expenditure by Iran on its military should be a source of concern?

It's the same with U.S. military bases, installations, and what not around the world. Said to be something on the order of 800 by some accounts. I'm never sure what's counted. Maybe PXs and USO libraries along with tank parks and air bases. Still, the U.S. is right there everywhere you turn around -- on Tierra del Fuego and in Zululand, everywhere except the U.S. border -- and deciding who's been naughty or nice to boot. But Iran, which hasn't invaded any country in, what, 500 years (according to stuff that floats over the internet transom), is ON THE MARCH. It's the Home Guard for me, neighbors!

Notes
^[1] Comment by Tom Welsh on "The Caliphate of Trump." By Tom Englehardt, The Unz Review, 5/8/18.

Political poison.

No politician will tell you this, except maybe Rand Paul, and no politician will act on this for damn sure.

It’s also the case that past deficit spending has now caught up with the U.S. The debt-to-GDP ratio is over 105%. Research shows that any debt-to-GDP ratio over 90% results in slower growth instead of faster growth when you pile on more debt. The U.S. is no longer getting any bang for the buck from deficit spending.

We’re just going broke faster.

To sum it up in a few words, what we have is decay, impotence, and dishonesty:

• Stimulus – useless.
• Public employees – aristocracy.
• Public pensions – exemplars of deception, privilege, manipulation, fleecing of the taxpayer.
• Wars – mysterious objectives, illegal, for the benefit of foreigners.
• Free speech – dying.
• Constitution – a joke.
• Sexual deviance – celebrated.
• Borders – a joke, porous.
• Citizenship – worthless.
• Ballot integrity – for chumps.
• Foreigners – gift from the gods.
• Traditional values – gone.
• Christianity – reviled.
• Islam – worshiped.
• Universities -- disgraced.
• Legacy press -- liars, propaganda whores.
• AntiFa street thugs – privileged, unmolested.
• Public security – meaningless.
• Minority politics -- seething with hatred of whites.
• Minority crime, destruction, parasitism, self-delusion, arrogance, sense of entitlement -- the stuff of legend.

What politicians are concerned about is giving the president a blank check for war and spineless submission to the money interests. And, or course, more spending.

So, yes, let’s keep spending that $32,000,000 an HOUR for the total cost of our wars since 2011.

That giant sucking sound you hear is America's great promise going down the drain. The lizards and skanks we voted in finally managed to git ‘er dunnnn.

""Going Broke Faster" - Economic Numbers Are Less Than Meets The Eye." By James Rickards, ZeroHedge, 5/12/18 (formatting removed).

St. Obongo.

How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie to politicians who cannot tell the truth?

~ Former NYC mayor, Micheal Bloomberg.^[1]

Notes
^[1] "Billionaire Bloomberg Blasts 'Epidemic Of Dishonesty Since Obama Left.'" By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 5/12/18.

The farce of border enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security released the Southwest Border Migration numbers for April, which reflect a 230 percent increase over the same month last year. That makes April the worst period since President Trump took office. The numbers induced DHS to issue a statement saying it will show "zero tolerance" for adults seeking to cross the border.^[1]

Whoa! Zero tolerance. Now we're cross. Absolutely not ONE ILLEGAL MORE than 50,000 per month. We're FED UP!

Even with the Border Patrol supposedly in friendly hands we have a massive increase. Never will the federal government utter the words “stop” or “repel” with respect to immigrants with their backpacks full of cheesy, dishonest claims of persecution or demands to be let in and tolerated because it suits them.

This never was a “nation of immigrants” or a “propositional nation.” And we don’t all swoon over the American “creed” or “dream.” Such notions are crap.

Ninety-eight percent of the populace couldn’t give a halfway decent explanation of the Constitution’s grant of enumerated powers to Congress let alone name three points of the supposed “creed” down before we all bow and over which we swoon and drool. There is no such “creed.” What we have is a Constitution made by, designed for a white, Christian nation of European people with a place for minorities. Nothing in our founding or laws since require whites to turn over our nation to foreigners or to meekly surrender as minorities and foreigners -- and their sellout white political allies -- vote, legislate, and breed themselves into a majority.

However, as a recent Cuban immigrant woman said to her son after escaping from Castro and observing life in America, “I never saw a people more anxious to give away their country.” That was over 50 years ago, long before illegal and legal immigration had reached the crisis proportions of today. She may yet prove those morons right, the ones who constantly mewl about how “exceptional” we are. Exceptionally stupid and exceptionally spinelss, that is.

Notes
^[1] "Illegal Immigration in April Increased 230% Over Last Year." NumbersUSA, 5/4/18.

Please consider joining NumbersUSA and supporting them financially for all the good work they do on immigration.

Can we get real for a moment?

Does anyone believe that President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, the "Iran deal") is based on an independent analysis of the interests of the United States? In his announcement of withdrawal, Trump even trotted out the rotting fish story about Iran’s being the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism, an allegation decisively debunked by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Complete presidential presentation now guaranteed to be a travesty of the truth.

Caitlin Johnstone provides needed clarity on this important point:

Do you know who the single biggest donor was to any candidate in the 2016 presidential race?

The largest donor to any campaign was oligarch Sheldon Adelson, who gave $25 million to the Trump campaign, and who in 2013 said that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

After his election win, Adelson gave another $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. Newt Gingrich, another of the billionaire’s hired politicians, has said that Adelson’s “central value” is Israel.^[1]

Adelson is also a veteran of the U.S. Army but has stated that he wishes he had served in the Israeli Defence Forces instead. Can anyone doubt this man’s focus on and allegiance to Israel or that he shares Israel’s obsession with Iran?

To really understand his influence on Republicans consider the phenomenon of the “Adelson primary,” involving the pilgrimage of Republican presidential hopefuls last time around to Las Vegas, there to kiss up to Adelson and try to prove their suitability as a possible American president, namely, to try to prove their willingness to put Israel’s interests above those of the United States.

It seems to be the hallmark of contemporary U.S. (and Western) thinking that the interests of the founding peoples in each place count for nothing. If some name or speech has one of the words “global,” “international,” “diversity,” “partners,” “democracy,” “equality,” "colonialism," "slavery," "capitalism," "climate," "alternative," "sustainable," "Christianity," or “human rights” in it, it’s a sure sign that said peoples are going to skewered and mocked. If some phenomenon involves Israel, you can for damn sure expect to see Israel’s interests advanced and dissenting voices instantly labeled as “anti-Semitic.”

A more disgusting example of the dominance of money in American politics can not be found than Sheldon Adelson, apparently the shadow president of the United States. These times are now like Japan under the shogunate. The emperor was the titular head of the nation but it was the shogun, the military power, who actually ruled. Can we even think about who actually runs our country? The financial power? Thank God for Trump whose failing are many but who has ripped off the scab to expose the rot underneath.

Is the Iran deal the best that could have been negotiated? Does Iran have the ability and opportunity to cheat? Is it just another instance of cowardly politicians kicking the can down the road on an important issue? All worthy questions. As would be the question, What is the status of Israel's nuclear program and why has no one raised any objection to Israel's not being a party to any non-proliferation agreement?

But such questions are irrelevant. Bibi Netanyahu wants us to believe the Iranian nuclear weapons program is alive and well so whatever bad things that can be made to happen to Iran must be made to happen.

Notes
^[1] "We Are Being Lied To About Yet Another Middle Eastern Country By Yet Another US President." By Caitlin Johnstone, 5/9/18 (formatting removed).

Sergey Lavorv.

Another attempt of mine to show actual people involved on the world stage just now. Here Mr. Lavrov, the Foreign minister of Russia, fields, in English, questions from an ill-mannered, arrogant twerp of a BBC reporter:

This is an impressive man.

More pretend war against ISIS.

The U.S. has never been serious about destroying ISIS. It allowed huge numbers of ISIS oil tankers to travel unimpeded to Turkey and back to ISIS-held territory in Syria until it was shamed into more aggressive bombing by the Russian air force.

“B” at Moon of Alabama has written an interesting article, below, that has two maps of the ISIS-controlled area along the Iraqi border north of the Euphrates. (That area being “our” area from which we allegedly helped eject some Russian mercernaries with casualties in the neighborhood of 200 by some accounts.)

One map is of the situation on November 30, 2017, and the other of the situation three days ago (April 24, 2018). The ISIS area is unchanged over the intervening seven months. The ISIS ares south of the Euphrates in the area controlled by the Syrian government and its allies shows about a 50% reduction in size.

“B” also shows the results of seven days of Coalition air strikes on ISIS in Syria: destruction of two vehicles and three “engagements” againsts “Daesh tactical unit[s].” There might have been five “engagements” by my count, but it’s not clear. Actual casualties not stated by the military source.

The takeaway point is:

The total number of ISIS fighters in the area is estimated between 5,000 and 12,000. The current U.S. strikes are not even pinpricks.

It is obvious that the U.S. wants to keep ISIS alive and well to again use it, if need be, against the Syrian and Iraqi government.^[1]

Obama and Kerry were on board with this sick use of ISIS against Syria AND Iraq.

Next time Pres. Trump or any U.S. official talks about our main purpose in Syria being to defeat ISIS keep all this in mind. As with every last thing about our illegal involvement there, it’s been murder, lies, and moral compromise.

Notes
^[1] "Syria-Iraq - U.S. Cuddles ISIS - Others Plan For The Final Fight." By b, Moon of Alabama, 4/24/18 (emphasis added).

A mere audience to our destruction.

This from the description of Gilad Atzmon’s book Being in Time – A Post Political Manifesto:

Being in Time is a courageous attempt to grasp the intellectual developments that led towards the current dystopia. The book delves into the bankruptcy of the ideological grand narratives. It explores the colossal failure of the media, academia and politics in detecting and addressing the events that led us towards destitution. It identifies the ideologies that planted ID politics and the tyranny of correctness in our midst. We, the people, have been demoted into mere audience in a Greek tragedy that happens to be the story of our own destruction. (Emphasis added).

This resonates with me for three reasons:

1. Irrational national and Western life.

Contemporary events are unfolding in a completely irrational way. There is no grand narrative unless it’s suicide.

Russia is no enemy. Assad is precisely the right man to lead Syria now. Our association with the Saudis and Qataris and our aid to the terrorists opposition in Syria are unclean. We were enraged by al-Qaida after 9/11; now we drink their bathwater.

The world is horrified by the “leadership” of the United States and wonders at the arrogance of American politicians and “thinkers” who speak of “American exceptionalism.” In fact, it's our choice of allies and our spending $32,000,000 per hour for overseas military adventure and occupation that are exceptional -- exceptionally insane.

Primitivism is being imported into the civilized world. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops patrol and garrison foreign lands but not one federal troop mans even a coffee machine on our own southern border. Tens of millions of illegals invaded our country and stole jobs from Americans and voted in our elections . . . and continue to do so. Subversives and foreigners twist immigration laws into knots. Place one foot inside the border and, shazaam!, you can live large in America and run for President.

Billions of dollars have been expended to implement a federal scheme of “health care” when the words “health care” do not appear anywhere in Article I, Sect. 8 of the Constitution. 40,000,000 lawyers and judges didn't notice. Again. Certainly not the Supreme Court. The Constitution has in a multitude of other ways been gutted and interpreted to serve a monstrosity of a federal government that is contrary to clear and unmistakable intent of the Framers and Ratifiers. Thank you, Saint Woodrow and Saint Franklin.

We mewl about our "democracy" and our "values" but don't give a flying fig about vote fraud and an enfranchised, entitled, parasitic underclass.

The United Nations Charter, binding on the United States by duly ratified treaty, is a vaporous nothing to Her Nikkiness and Trump. They blow past its requirements (not to mention those of the Constitution respecting war making) like a semi blasts past an abandoned gas station.

Blacks enjoy special legal privileges to force their presence on white businesses. Clear and undeniable black pathologies are subsidized. Feminism that is a cancer to society and normal family formation and functioning is celebrated. Anal intercourse is now a sacrament.

The poisonous and barbaric nature of Islam may not be pointed out or vigorously suppressed. Free speech has been redefined to mean “euphonious bullshit.” And only that. Beware!

Masked thugs roam any street or campus they choose where they can viciously attack sensible people. Ad libitum.

Politics are the playground of the super rich.

2. Institutional failure.

Formal and informal institutions have failed. Elites do nothing . . . except guarantee an endless supply of foreigners to change America forever. The Prime Directive.

Elites also appear to exist to celebrate the destruction of America’s great cities by a resentful, rejectionist black underclass. “Urbane” was once a word to describe measured, educated, cosmopolitan, observant, polite, witty people. Now “urban” signifies savagery, flash mobs, unbelievable killing, public defecation, hypodermic needles in the grass, bums in the park instead of statues, rampant crime, and general insecurity and filth.

Politicians, judges, state bar associations, lawyers and poodle journalists are indifferent to destruction of the constitutional order almost to a man. Ridiculous pronouncements are received soberly with judicious nods. Non-tax taxes. "Privacy" rights spilling from the emanations and penumbra of the Constitution. Why, yes. Of course, of course. Please ___ on my back and tell me it’s rain.

Masked AntiFa mobs operate in plain view of the authorities who appear helpless to shut down their criminal ways or even condone and facilitate them.

There are more tires on my car than politicians who go to the mat to oppose fiscal insanity.

The late William F. Buckley famously said "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” Well, I’m not sure he did much of that, being more interested in stopping truly original conservative thinkers as he was. At any rate, he and us amount to a distinctly minority voice in the scheme of things and all the nabobs and Your Honors of our public life are AWOL in the worst way. I get it that I’m just one guy with my own idiosyncratic views. We all fit that category, pardon me for saying. But, really, do our very bestest and smartest and wisest luminaries and guardians really intend for this Steven Kingian dystopia to be the lode star of all our efforts?

Like the man says, the media, academia and politicians offer nothing except passivity, indifference, or applause. Even citizen tax donkeys slumber as the flames rise all around them.

3. Participation in public affairs or debate is an exercise in futility.

Letters or phone calls to one’s representative in the House of Representatives have the effect on his or her behavior you expect from your being one of some 700,000 other people in the district. "I'm so impressed with your thoughts that I am sending you this letter in response about my views on drilling for kerosene in the Arctic National Moose Sanctuary."

Alternative media are an amazing new thing but hardly a match for the propaganda that spews from the six media monopolies. “Nationalism bad. What communist murders? Schools need more money. White racism lives. What vote fraud? The Crusades, the Inquisitions, slavery all examples of baked-in-the-cake white, Christian depravity unique only to it. What 80,000,000 Muslim murders in the conquest of the Indian subcontinent? All races and cultures are the same. What FGM? What summary execution for apostates from Islam in the Shariah?”

War, alliances with primitives, crushing military and welfare expense, and wide-open immigration inter bleeding alia continue with a vengeance without an iota of democratic consent. What one voter voted for 40,000,000 foreigners to be invited into or allowed into our country? Who voted for an eternal moratorium on deportation? Who voted for a vicious, greasy, dishonest, morally corrupt war on the sovereign state of Syria? Who decided that Hillary Clinton is above the law? Who decided that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the Southern Poverty Law Center are the arbiters of acceptable speech in the United States?

Who voted for the end of America?

Ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

Karl Denninger at Market Ticker has an informative piece on cell phone, microwave, CT scanner, and dental X-ray radiation and their effects on humans.

It’s particularly interesting on the radiation involved in those old tube TVs and computer monitors.

Mr. Denninger is invariably good on matters of technology, arithmetic, and risk that bewilder and terrify liberal twinks and bed wetters, which is to say 99% of politicians and most of your neighbors.

Word of caution.

Amazing women.

Carla Ortiz has been working to tell the truth about Syria. One of a number of women who are just killing the anti_Assad/pro-war propaganda. Pay attention to what she says about Syrian secularism and the treatment of women in Syria.

I gotta admit. The women are doing an amazing job in the alt media. Oritz, Caitlin Johnstone, Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Lauren Southern, Blond in the Belly of the Beast, The Swan of Tuonela, Pundita, Diana West, Sharyl Attkisson, Julia Gorin, Pam Geller, Ann Barnhardt, and others. Ann Coulter is a whole nother phenomenon and God bless her. Big salute to Laura Ingraham, too, who's been beating the anti-immigration drum for a long time.

Not so amazing woman.

Theresa May^[1] on some kind of a PR quest:

It’s stomach-churning to see female leaders of major Western nations don scarves and old blankets to grovel before Muslims and their tender sensibilities. Muslims who consider themselves defiled by mere contact with unrelated female flesh. Pelosi and Clinton have inspired Western women in similar fashion and who can forget Gen. Petraeus in full Afghan big kahuna rig meeting with that local guy. He's still shaking his head over the pandering and stupidity of the general.

Personally, I think showing up in the uniform of a general in the United States Army should be all that’s necessary to convey businesslike intent instead of decking oneself out like a circus magician.

The same goes for a prime minister of the United Kingdom, though the Prince of Wales can still act like a moron.

God bless Elizabeth for hanging on.

Notes
^[1] "Britain prepares for action against Syria as May wins cabinet approval." By Middle East Eye and agencies, 4/12/18 (Reuters photo).

Careful what you wish for.

And for all the liberals commenting on this page who hypocritically advocate the institution of the evil of abortion to somehow absolve Irish society of the evil of past Catholic abuses, please don’t get overly moralistic or pontifical with your traditionalist enemies. Be instead uncritically kind to them, as that is your relativistic gospel, is it not?

But do enjoy your temporary victories, liberals, and bask in them. They’ll be short-lived. I’m going to delight in seeing the Islamists return Europe to a Middle Ages theocracy where the mouths of sweet liberal humanists will be forever shut.

Our liberal friends childishly imagine that secular non-judgmental (though always curiously judgmental) humanism will be enough to transform the entire world into a “I’m OK, You’re OK” romper room filled with coloring books and a submissive respect for all behaviors no matter how insane or perverse or unnatural. Poor babies, once Islam sweeps the continent, you’ll all be pining for the return of Catholic Enlightenment.

"Catholic Ireland is Dead and Gone." By Crawford Gribben, The American Conservative, 5/3/18 (paragraphs and image added).

Trump 45.

I believe it. I do. It’s clear.

"You [Russians] shouldn't be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!" Trump tweeted, referring to Moscow's alliance with Assad.^[1]

“Animal” Assad is indeed a “Gas Killing Animal” who enjoys killing his own people. I voted for this kind of political sophistication and I got it. Good and hard.

Immediately below, from the same source:

The Russian Foreign Ministry quickly replied that US "smart missiles" should be aimed at terrorists and not at the Syrian government.

Truer words and all that, especially if the “gas attack” clown show was bogus. If we really are grr cross with ISIS you’d think that millions of dollars worth of our military hardware would be raining down on their heads over there on the Iraqi border just east of the Euphrates River. But you’d be wrong.

Notes
^[1] "Britain prepares for action against Syria as May wins cabinet approval." By Middle East Eya and agencies, 4/12/18 (Reuters photo).

Inspiration.

Jungle Jim:

I agree. It's obvious. He's [Trump] not running the show or calling the shots.

Jungle Jim:

Either way, I am starting a metal band called "Gas Killing Animal."

Comments on "The World's Two Superpower Countries Are Walking On The Edge Of The Abyss In Syria." By Elijah J. Magnier, ZeroHedge, 4/11/18.

Arming terrorists in Syria.

Whatever the hell we’re doing in Syria it most definitely involved the U.S. – that’s us – being in bed with the worst scum on the planet. 9/11 was supposed to have been about al-Qaida being our worstest enemy EVer, but . . . for the last seven years we’ve been ALLIED with them and feeding, paying, and supplying them in Syria. And what we didn’t directly provide, our precious “partners” in our greasy “coalition,” which is to say Saudi Arabia and Qatar, did with our blessing and cooperation. Ergo, “we” are and have been complicit.

The article from which the quote below is taken is an outstanding piece of work and is an excellent place for anyone to start to even begin to understand who we really intended to benefit in the jihadi/rebel ranks. A lot of sophisticated and deadly weapons found their way into the wrong hands accidental like, if you get my drift.

It disgusts me to see who we became joined at the hip with. And it was to oppose a decent government in Syria, both in absolute terms and relative to what else is in the general neighborhood.

And in 2013 the administration began to provide arms to what the CIA judged to be “relatively moderate” anti-Assad groups—meaning they incorporated various degrees of Islamic extremism.

That policy, ostensibly aimed at helping replace the Assad regime with a more democratic alternative, has actually helped build up al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, al Nusra Front, into the dominant threat to Assad.

The supporters of this arms-supply policy believe it is necessary as pushback against Iranian influence in Syria. But that argument skirts the real issue raised by the policy’s history. The Obama administration’s Syria policy effectively sold out the U.S. interest that was supposed to be the touchstone of the “Global War on Terrorism”—the eradication of al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates. The United States has instead subordinated that U.S. interest in counter-terrorism to the interests of its Sunni allies. In doing so it has helped create a new terrorist threat in the heart of the Middle East.

The policy of arming military groups committed to overthrowing the government of President Bashar al-Assad began in September 2011, when President Barack Obama was pressed by his Sunni allies—Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar—to supply heavy weapons to a military opposition to Assad they were determined to establish.^[1]

And this is what Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Stevens, and the CIA Annex in Benghazi were all about. They were all standing hip-deep in slime. Fortunately, events on the ground have completely reversed the fortunates of the jihadis and there won't be any new terrorists threat in the heart of the Middle East.

Last word to commenter Rossbach:

This all makes perfect sense to me. We light a fire, pour gasoline on, then claim that it is out of control and that billions more be appropriated to put it out.

If this doesn’t smell like a racket, I don’t what does.^[2]

Notes
^[1] "How America Armed Terrorists in Syria." By Gareth Porter, The American Conservative, 6/22/17.
^[2] Id.

Evidence-free diplomacy.

“I believe there was a chemical attack. We are looking for the actual evidence,” the secretary told lawmakers on Thursday.^[1]

~ James Mattis, U.S. Secretary of Defense.

That was Gen. Mattis’s statement on April 12, 2018. Two days later, France, Britain, and the U.S. bombed Syria because of its alleged responsibility for the highly-debatable chemical weapons attack in Douma. Some new YouTube videos must have been uploaded to put any USG doubts to rest.

To give Mattis his due, I am reasonably certain that his likely hesitancy (informed by personal combat experience) about charging off half cocked was overridden by the president’s eagerness to “do something.” Would that the old witticism were now in everyone’s mind: “Don’t just do something. Stand there!

Onward into the Deep Woods where there are many monsters.

Notes
^[1] "Mattis: Still no evidence on Syria chemical attack, but I believe there was one ." By RT, 4/12/18.

Skripals: Fentanyl not nerve agent.

The U.K. government is and has been acting strangely in this whole Skripals business. The source below^[1] has evidence of the use of fentanyl on the Skripals and also highlights strange and secretive behavior on the part of the government. Say it isn’t so!!!

This bit of humor in the source is choice:

The continued isolation (i.e., arrest and detention) of the supposedly recovering Skripals is not so funny and the apparent official silencing of the press are the usual greasy behavior one expects from that unfortunate excuse of a government known as the United Kingdom. I guess that habeas corpus as well as the prohibition against double jeopardy can be discarded in that Sceptic Isle like a used Kleenex.

Notes
^[1] "The Silence Of The Skripals - Government Blocks Press Reports - Media Change The Record." By b, Moon of Alabama, 4/28/18.

Say what?

The Skripals managed to walk around for four hours after the exposure, according to the version by the British authorities, yet the police officer who found them lost consciousness immediately.^[1]

~ Vasily Nebenzia, Russian U.N. envoy

Notes
^[1] "Russia demolishes UK poisoning hoax during emergency security council meeting (Video)." By Alex Christoforou, The Duran, 4/6/18.

Pearls of expression.

"Does Hillary Clinton Drink Too Much Alcohol?”

Is the pope a Catholic? Wait, that doesn't work any more.

Comment by DR.WTF? on "Oh My: National Review Finally Asks, 'Does Hillary Clinton Drink Too Much Alcohol? And Did the Media Cover This Up?'" By Ace of Spades, 5/1/18.

More pearls of expression.

Skip:

Well to be truthfull the few times I drank alcohol on aircraft it seems to triple the effect.

Grump928(C) :

Did that affect you landing the plane?

Comments on "Oh My: National Review Finally Asks, 'Does Hillary Clinton Drink Too Much Alcohol? And Did the Media Cover This Up?'" By Ace of Spades, 5/1/18.

Great Headlines Dept.

EU's Juncker Demands "Unconditional, Permanent" US Tariff Exemptions (And A Pony?)^[1]

I do love to see a little skepticism. It’s refreshing in these days of simpering pussies who swallow every dead toad served up to them by George “I Import Your Enemies” Soros, femiloons, Jorge “Mexico’s Shill” Ramos, Jeb "Act of Love" Bush, Barry "Stop the Oceans" Obongo, Micah Brezubrumsky, the Ladies’ Home Street Journal, the Council on Foreign Surrender, Jack “Russian Scum” Keane, Mike “Iranian Scum” Pompeo, Nikki “We Don’ Nee’ Your Steenkin’ Charter” Haley, Donald “War for Some Reason or Other” Trump, A(?)IPAC, the Southern Poverty Law Character Assassination Center, Black Lives Über Alles, Hillary “Just Wedding-Related Emails and What Foreign Bribes?” Clinton, Robert “I’m on a Quest” Mueller, Debbie “Oh, THOSE Pakistanis” Waspherman-Shoots, Jerry “Diversity Is Our Stength” Brown, John "It's a Non-Tax Tax" Roberts, Sonia "A Wise Latina" Sotomayor, James “Hillary’s Bitch” Comey, Donna “The Pony Express” Brazile, Cuckservative Review, and Boris “The Guy Told Me” Johnson.

Notes
^[1] By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 5/2/18.