“Trump has done so much damage to libtardery that the Democrats will need a decade of uninterrupted power to undo it, which they're not going to get.” —Matt Forney on X
Deep State defined: "...those who are refusing to support any type of political activities on the part of the Trump administration." That's the quiet part out loud but the part that is still not admitted that you allude to: those who happily supported any type of political activities on the part of the Biden administration
It's so weird. Obama was a complete no-show during the Biden administration. Show me one scrap of evidence that Obama was secretly or openly providing strategic direction to Biden.
Further...why are we still talking about Joe Biden?
Biden (and/or his body doubles) undermined tbe United States, with your apparent hero, the pot-stirring Choom King pulling the strings, with the WEF crowd pulling his strings. That's why.
I'm an independent that thought Biden did a decent job. I didn't agree with him pulling out of Afghanistan or his pulling the plug on the keystone pipeline.
I do remember that he had a pandemic and 1/6 to deal with upon entering office.
Isn't it funny how the Jackassery loved the NG after 1/6 and kept them occupying D.C. with up to 30,000 troops for three months, even camped in parking garages, even though there was no credible threat or danger? And then when Trump deployed them for bona fide threats to communities and federal agents/facilities, the Jackassery hated them to the point of siccing their useful idiots on them?
I always find that “Independents” are just Liberals and Democrats who use the term to hid their true “cult”. Biden did a decent job? He was moved by others and wound up for the day. He was always a nasty creepy guy. How old are you anyway? He deserves his outcome just for the child trans ideology which has destroyed a child in my family. I could add several other descriptors after the word Original in your moniker.
You call Biden a nasty creepy guy when Trump’s name shows up in the Epstein file 38,000 times?
I always find that Trump supporters glom onto disparaging comments about Dems like they came from God himself and skip over anything negative about Trump calling it fake news or TDS.
The guy was suffering from dementia. A talking dummy that just flubbed his lines repeatedly. One of his doubles was six foot five. One one of Trump's dopples is about five eleven.
What about her? Is this about the tarmac meeting? Do you have a transcript of what they discussed? Do you have any evidence that he influenced her?
Personally...I thought it was completely disgusting and inappropriate that he did that, but the fact is that we don't know what was talked about or whether it influenced Susan Rice in any way.
Yep. I guess that's what happens when your post is a single name without context or a point. You do realize that it's not really easy to see which response your replying to when there are this many, right?
Pretty clear that Lynch told Clinton that she would not empanel a grand jury and that Comey would drop the case against Hillary. Rice had nothing to do with it. She was Obama's national security advisor and served as the go between Obama and Biden as Biden's domestic policy advisor.
I read the entire transcript of Comey's testimony before Congress. It was clear that the reason that he didn't pursue charges is that you could NEVER prove her intent to mismanage classified material.
I've worked in TS environments and understand very well the differences between classified and not. What Hillary did was done on an UNCLASSIFIED network. In other words...it was basically the State Department's normal e-mail system. The reason I bring this up is that we're not talking her spilling TS information from a CLASSIFIED system.
I've been deployed overseas and have had access to a SIPRnet machine for TS level info. That's a whole different level of information that will get you sent to prison for mismanagement.
To let you know that I'm not just a Hillary fan or something...I thought Obama should have fired her for sure, but it never met the level of felony or something. There's never been any evidence that she was selling secrets or was benefitting from this in any way. The other thing was that the FBI said that the State Department had a checkered culture with regard to information security.
Finally...why is it that she was the only one that seemed to "guilty" of this when every single e-mail has a To: and From: recipient? This was a highly politically motivated attack against Hillary.
So, putting a tampon dispenser in a boys' bathroom is normal for you?
What are you, a lunatic that does not understand the simple fact that boys are not girls, and no matter how much surgery or hormones you pump into someone, the biological facts can't be changed?
One reason is the same one that Republicans who have been in control for a year and a half have for blaming the state of the country on Joe Biden--do you really want to say that this shit-show is due to your own side's actions and inability to tell the President... "No"? It is easier arguing that this ACCELERATING inflation is due to Biden rather than tariffs, uncertainty around policy, or the War with Iran. Some folks will believe this story. And that is a comfort.
100% agree. Thanks for the thumbs up...even if it's only a couple on this newsletter, it does feel good. I don't do post on sites like these for likes...but nevertheless it's nice to know other people see the exact same things and are here on the site working in support of the truth as well.
What I find most frustrating is that most of the people on this site cannot admit as well that if any Dem said or did most of the outrageous stuff he does...that they would have a completely opposite view of it.
Yep, Jeff the Original, it is frustrating. But here is the key issue--when you make it clear that there is a double standard as to what counts as evidence or how one should react to it, given one's political affiliations, the answer is invariably the same--ignore the observation, because no one wants to be put on the spot that way, because it is so obviously the case. It is poor manners to point out such things to a host concerning what they believe about their own position; we all want to believe that we are reasonable, even if we are not. That is the purpose of home field advantage--to let such inconvenient truths go unmolested on their way...
I would hope not. A good leader, surrounds himself with experts that know more about the subjects than them, and also people who know how to get legislation done. Not an easy task.
Where's Trump's legislation? All he seems to be doing is threatening countries, starting wars and getting the DOJ to open investigations against his political enemies.
Do you remember that time in 2016 when Attorney General Loretta Lynch decided she would take a private meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane as it was parked on the tarmac in Phoenix – while Bill’s wife, Hillary Clinton (when she was Obama’s Secretary of State), was under federal investigation for using a secret and unlawful private email server at her New York home, to receive top secret and classified government emails?
Now don’t forget that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 messages and destroyed cell phones and servers to cover up her illegal private email message history. And while Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said she and her team were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”—but Comey “exonerated” Hillary Clinton by declining to press charges against her, because Comey did not believe she “intended to violate laws and no prosecutor would bring charges.”
Then of course, there’s the much bigger case of the Clinton Campaign funded Steele dossier, where Obama orchestrated the intelligence agencies on behalf of Hillary and worked with Comey to corrupt the DOJ/FBI and the FISA Court. While Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to concoct and then investigate false accusations of Russian collusion, to try to oust a duly-elected 45th sitting president; after Hillary lost to Trump in 2016.
With the 2016 Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting in mind: It is my humble opinion that our Constitutional Republic permanently fell during the 2016 presidential election; on July 5 when FBI Director James Comey “exonerated” Hillary Clinton for the illegal server and the thousands of her top-secret classified emails. At that point in American history, the “rule of law” in the USA began its demise and because the constitutional provisions for remedy to the ensuing felonious acts and omissions (think FISA Court-RussiaGate and “Crossfire Hurricane”) of James Comey, Peter Strock, Lisa Page (et al) were never pursued while Bill Barr was Attorney General; our Constitutional Republic has fallen and is irreparable…... And the 2022 FBI “midnight judge” raid on Mar-a-Lago along with the four unconstitutional indictments of Donald J. Trump, the Bragg show trial in New York, and the Deep State’s/PTB’s attempt to kill DJT is my proof - We the People now live in a banana republic.
Wake up everyone, the United States is under siege by Marxists and therefore our homeland has devolved into a life or death struggle of facts vs fraud. Why would any sane person believe anything coming from any government, MSM, institution or institutional figure, when they have been shown time and again to be malevolent frauds?
Deep state defined by me is the term given by MAGAs to explain anything governmental that doesn’t go the way you think it should…regardless of any related facts, norms or extenuating circumstances.
You're over here screeching like a maniac demanding an American citizen be thrown in prison for expressing his belief that trump is a disaster and should be removed from office.
And you're saying there's a deep state conspiracy?
Sit down boy. Your hatred of America, her constitution, and her peoples' freedom, is disgusting to me.
An apt response to yours. The Deep State and the GOVERNMENT are comprised of people just like you and me...except they work in government paid position. Yes...toward the top there are those politically motivated and this occurs on both sides of the political fence.
Rather than speak generally, feel free to bring up a specific action that you deem was a "Deep State" move only fueled by a desire to thwart Trump and let's see how it goes.
Operation Crossfire Hurricane was built on the premise of Russia Collusion originated by the Hillary Clinton campaign. All accusations were bogus. Comey ran with it.
Former Obama CIA chief, John Brennan, just this week said there are “legions” of intelligence and justice officials working to obstruct and cancel anything Trump proposes. No CIA official has ever publicly voiced this type of threat before.
"Arctic Frost" for another. J6 Committee which also destroyed all their records from that Soviet Show Trial. The "phone call" impeachment. New revelation that the FBI hid the fact the phony charges made against Trump have been hidden away "without prejudice" meaning they intended to refile them 1/21/29 assuming they can elect another vegetable or fellow traveller. Who can forget the Mueller Investigation? The Mar a Lago raid which also featured jackbooters in boats with loaded belt feed machine-guns? One could go on and on.
"These people" is pretty fuzzy. In fact...all of the accusations are fuzzy...yet you want to put them in prison.
Who actually lied during the campaign about Russian involvement? It was the Trump campaign team! They claimed zero interactions with Russians and it was a complete lie.
Those are some very loose tidbits of information woven into your facts there. The actual truth is that the GOP funded the start of oppo research on Donald Trump and the Clinton campaign continued it. Funny how the Clinton campaign never used it isn't it? Turns out that not all of the allegations of the Steele Dossier were bogus and many remain unproven either way.
You mind providing a link to your statement attributed to Brennan this past week? You do remember that Durham did a couple of years of investigating the investigators with very little to show for it don't you?
Finally Crossfire Hurricane was started due to a drunk George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had stolen DNC emails and that they were going to be released very soon. Then it happened and the diplomat alerted the US to this incident.
After 10 years and thousands of hours of investigation, not one thing in the Steele Dossier was ever corroborated. The FBI acknowledged this years ago. The Clinton campaign didn’t have to use because the FBI did the work for them.
You obviously have been under a rock for a while. Even CNN was forced to report on Brennan’s blunder on MSNOW. I’m on the road so you’ll have to Google it. Not that hard to find. Maybe someone can post the link.
Papadopoulos was told of “Russian dirt” on the Clinton campaign by a shadowy Russian/MI6/CIA operative who has not been seen since. Both Downer and Mifsud were both known CIA paid informants. Your trust in the CIA is somewhat naive.
IMO, the Deep State is the group of ne’er do wells in DC that deeply believe the Federal government is the basis for power, the only base for the USA. The are socialists at heart, believing that the people are too dumb to be able to run themselves and they need really smart people, like the Deep Staters, to run things for them. MAGA is the domestic enemy of the Deep State.
Ironically, we are at 1790, with the Deep State being the Federalists of the day. Hamilton believed in socialism, because he believed the people did not have the ability to govern themselves. Jefferson led the Democratic-Republicans, who took over in 1800, and believed in the people taking care of themselves. A part of this is that Hamilton believed power resided in the cities, and Jefferson believed in the rural folks. Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it.
Bottom line, ever since the U.S. has existed, there has been this battle, who should be in charge. The idea that the cities should be running things, with their mismanagement, makes my blood run cold.
Hamilton was a nascent Globalist, a supporter of the International Bankers as they began to go big. If you need to call that "Socialist", ok. But they are the power behind Capitalism first and foremost. The final system will be the Few (who own everything) leading the Many (who own nothing and had better like it too). In other words, having elements of both systems but with Capitalism as the heads and Communism the tails.
Little people can often manage their own lives, but simply try to make bigger things all about themselves. Voting their own strictly personal interests. That cannot be. You can't run a society on personal profit. When are you going to learn that?
Sorry, the days of the "rank and file" being removed from the chicanery are long gone. And I am a lifetime government employee(US Army NCO and Firefighter(vol).
Yah...right. I'm thinking that perhaps you're confusing the fact that since Trump and his ilk came around...the GOP was a far different party.
That's why I left in 2017. Today's GOP is nothing like the group I supported starting in 1984 when I voted for Reagan via absentee ballot in Boot Camp.
Hi Dennis - While I make every effort to be congenial and polite to all posters and actually provide reasonable and hopefully, thoughtful, responses...I can see that this isn't going to be worth it.
You have every right to express your opinion and vote. Go for it, but I'm done conversing with you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I would define the Deep State as the coordinated attempt by the DOJ/FBI/CIA to remove an elected President. This conspiracy involved government intelligence agencies acting above, around and below the legal system without any oversight from any other branch of government.
As Comey explained to Congress in 2020, he didn't follow legal precedent and inform Congress that he was investigating a Presidential candidate because it was a "sensitive" matter.
Additionally, what would you call an agency, namely the National Security Division of the DOJ, that states as policy that it is not subject to oversight by the Inspector General as outlined by Sally Yates in July 2015:
It is, number one, an attempt by the imbedded Deep State to remove the populist Trump from power. An elected president! Overwhelmingly elected by the people. Trump is leading the rebellion against the Deep State’s war against the people.
BTW...in 2016...I was a GOP guy ready to vote for any GOP candidate but Trump.
This guy Comey is also the same one who reopened an investigation regarding Hillary weeks before the election. Now that's strange behavior for someone rooting for Trump to lose.
You do realize that the DOJ/FBI/CIA have traditionally been predominantly filled with a politically conservative workforce?
I'm going to flip this around on you. If you were the Director of the FBI and you had a candidate who had a background of visiting Russia, hired a pro-Putin campaign manager (for free), a NSA who was secretly contacting the Russians and denying it...etc, etc, etc... wouldn't you want to launch a covert investigation to see how nefarious this all was? Would it NOT be a breach of their duties to protect our county NOT to do it?
I'm guessing if Hillary said "Russia...if you're listening...please find all the dirt on Donald Trump you can and send it to me" that you wouldn't probably find the response of "She was only joking" to be adequate would you?
If Trump was secretly colluding with Russia through back door channels, why would he need to ask for Russian help at a campaign event in front of thousands of people and the national media?
As incoming NSA, Flynn had every right to have discussions with the Russian Foreign Minister. The agents who interviewed him said in their notes on the meeting that in their opinion Flynn didn’t lie.
Think about your point here. We have a presidential candidate asking for a foreign power to help him and your response is that this must prove his innocence. What if there original conversation left it up to Trump on whether he actually needed Putin's help and if he decided he did...to bring it up in a speech. The Mueller report said that after that speech...the Russian assets started attacking the Dem campaign.
LOL! Talk about conspiracy theories. Maybe Trump and Putin had Dick Tracey watches and they could conspire all kinds of evil….And Putin could fly in to Mara Lago in a black helicopter and disguise himself as Tiger Woods and they could play golf and plan all kinds of secret agent stuff……
"I was a GOP guy ready to vote for any GOP candidate but Trump." Finally, the truth comes out--another ex-RINO "Never-Trumper". It doesn't matter what he does--just that he exists. TDS is real...
How about a little more context for you: When Trump announced his entry into the GOP candidate field in 2016...I hardly cared other than I thought it was healthy to have a businessman in the mix. So....he was just like any other GOP candidate for me. He lost my vote when he attacked McCain. I'll spare you details that should be obvious to everyone why that bothered me so much.
I'll just jump to this truth about the current people who support Trump still...is that if Hillary Clinton said exactly the same thing about McCain...you would not provide any excuses for her and it would be part of the HRC lore that she's a traitor to the country.
Just like she should be in jail for her e-mail server but somehow Hegseth gets an unbelievable pass for passing TS info over a non-secure line to people who definitely did NOT have a "need to know".
It's this hypocrisy that drove me completely away from this version of the GOP.
Correct--Trump's verbal attack on McCain was heartless and unnecessary. Does that rude comment then translate into a policy of "hating or defunding the military" since a soldier could be captured in war?
What policies do Trump promote that give rise to him being anti-military? Does a rude comment about a political opponent disqualify a person from leadership? If so, there are none in Congress qualified.
It has nothing to do with MAGA except that "MAGA" is the excuse. Members of the executive branch that chose whether or not to perform their duty irrespective of the political leanings of their superiors is wrong. The fact that you don't get it is more of an indication of your tawdry concept of governance than its facial depiction of your ignorance.
That was a pretty broad indictment of my post. Sorry...I use the term MAGA because it sort of captures those that support Trump no matter what and criticize the Dems no matter what.
I was GOP for 30 years until you guys went all in with Trump. I left the party in 2017 and became independent. I've never regretted that move and since then...the actions of Trump, the GOP and MAGA have only reinforced this as the correct decision.
I'll discuss any topic with specifics. I know the details of these claims...so please go for it. Let's see who is the ignorant one...or will you just call me a name and run away like 99% of you do?
1. First you say I made a broad indictment then you defend your broad indictment. OK.
2. I was independent for 30 years until I moved to a state that has closed primaries. I'm not sure why "you guys" are always assuming I'm all in for Trump. I didn't cast a vote the first time Trump ran because I feared he was too liberal. I'm still not too impressed with many of his policies but the alternative has proven him worthy of my support.
3. FWIW I did not 'call you a name'. I simply suggested your comment indicated that your lack of understanding of hierarchical, republican governments overshadowed what appears, on the surface, to be terminal TDS. But since you proclaim 2017 as your year of self awareness I may have given you too much credit.
I really don't know you and you really don't know me...so forgive me if on this particular substack newsletter...I made the assumption that you are a Trump supporter. Interesting that I have to apologize about that to a guy who actually appears to have voted for Trump in 2024.
I didn't say you called me a name...I was just putting it out there that most of the time I get called a name by the posters on sites like these and they run away.
You voted for a guy in 2024 that ran on a platform of the "President of Peace", claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in a single day and that prices would go down on Day 1 of his Presidency. To portray this as "not to impressed with many of his policies" is a pretty big understatement.
We would have been so much better off with anyone but him...so your comment of not voting for the "alternative" doesn't give you much credit as being an independent....in my book.
Why the heck does an intellectual person like you hang out on this particular site? I've already been called names, one guy is a very obnoxious and outspoken racist and we have yet still another someone bringing up a debunked theory about the 2020 election.
I believe learning to be the essence of life and I learn a lot on this stack - including the comments. I "hang out" on many different sites that have many different perspectives. Having flown around the world, held many job titles and been immersed in many different cultures I still enjoy reading all opinions as a means better understand them.
I find it interesting that you seem to assume anyone reading and/or commenting on this blog is some sort of inferior intellect. One of my jobs was leading a bunch of PhD's doing DoD analytics. A very fascinating bunch....with some very fascinating [aka stupid] perspectives. Some of the debates I got into with them could have been taken straight out of Monty Python! Not to say Jim's commenters are a bunch of PhDs, but their perspective is worth my time because ignoring it would be ignorant.
As for the vocal minority of Jim's fans that are "very obnoxious and outspoken racists" it's certainly not a miasma limited to this stack. Those of us that read all sides know this.
And finally, I find it particularly appalling that you present yourself as prescient and sincere yet emote histrionic absolutes such as, "We would have been so much better off with anyone but him." If the 4-year hiatus from minimal sanity didn't sway you from that universal proclamation then it's probably not worth any more of either of our time to continue this thread.
It's really funny how MAGA simply take it for granted there's no such thing as legitimate disagreement with their agenda. And you wonder why people call you fascists.
I remember a post of yours from a bit ago where you wrote meaningly that you expected good things to come out of a judicial process, because rules of evidence would come into play. Indeed they do in a court of law, which are capable of dispelling vast quantities of political fog. Just think how the Trump campaign went to court 62 times to contest the outcome of the 2020 election and lost 61 times.
The solitary win was a narrow technical result in Pennsylvania that did not affect the outcome. That's an unimpressive .016 batting average. But you continue to swallow and promote the debunked loser's narrative, spewing the fog back out to the credulous and the blind.
I don't understand how you can think Biden legitimately won by 81 million votes. And how those winning vote margins were all in even numbers for each state. It must have been magic!
Strike the "by 81 million votes" part, please. I have no idea what the actual margin was because such minutiae don't interest me. But yes, Biden won legitimately. The Trump campaign challenged the election results in 62 court cases and lost 61 of them. The 62nd case was a narrow decision in Pennsylvania that didn't affect the actual outcome.
In court, you actually have to prove your case by stringent standards of evidence, and the evidence (i.e. reality) favoured Biden. Trump openly undermined democracy by declaring that if the Democrats won, that would be proof that they cheated. And his MAGA followers swallowed that line, because in their heads there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to their golden calf. But when faced with an actual reality test with real stakes in courts of law, their batting average was 0.016. Not impressive.
They didn’t ”lose in court,” they weren’t allowed in court due to all the dem appointed judges that claimed the legitimate citizens bringing the cases had no standing, thanks to Marc Elias.
Yes ,The Demented One , Sniffer Of Lil Girl Hair ,hath surpassed The Magic And All Powerful receder of oceans , planet healing ," O" -bama in voter enthusiasm obviously ?!? Just listen to our betters here , they have a monopoly in the discernment of all that is true and good dontcha know ?" C'mon ,Man "( er I mean woman ) ?!
Let's flip that around on you. Every state...including yours...has election systems, managers, auditors, workers, overseers and volunteers. They have systems in place to prevent fraudulent votes from being counted. They audit, they recount, they cross-check, they get signatures, there's chain of custody, there are layers of review and approval.
3 wall-to-wall audits were taken at the key swing states and they found that the elections were free and fair and represented the votes accurately.
You are way too conspiratorial because you'd rather believe broad accusations than the actual facts on the ground.
Wrongedy-wrong-wrong. Here in Georgia we all saw video where they "closed" the polling station, sent home the designated bi-partisan observers, then pulled out boxes of ballots from under tables, ran ballots through the counting machines multiple times, had trucks pull up and unload boxes of ballots for counting, etc. Many mail-in ballots were never folded, apparently a modern-day miracle that they were able to go through the mail in their virginal unfolded state. Up until the Midnight Miracle, Trump was winning; after this point the votes were almost 100% (d).
You sound like the busted pantless party on an episode of 'Cheaters.' "Nothing happened! We're just friends! Ignore the video evidence!"
So why are the investigators having success peeling the various swing stat onions and finding fraud everywhere? Arizona is one of them and the Democrats here are sweating bullets trying to stop the investigations.
You have just demonstrated the extreme hold the Deep State has on the country and what Trump has to fight against. The Left wing judiciary did a number on the election investigations that further work have been shown to be real.
That is why the DNC is spending much political capital fighting the SAVE acts and are incensed by the decision of the Supreme Court that race is not a consideration setting political boundaries. They are scared shitless.
Like I started with on my original post....If things don't go your way...just blame the Deep State.
It's great for nefarious people to keep MAGAs stirred up on baseless allegations that are designed to attract you to believe them, but it sucks for the rest of us.
Your'e observation might carry some weight were it not for SCOTUS dismissing the Texas v Pennsylvania case as having " no standing " when it should be clear to any one capable of a modicum of objective thought that when a state breaks its own constitutional laws on several levels in a federal election that an outcome aided by the disregard of its own laws does indeed effect the well being of other states . And boy did that turn out to be the case for Texas , being the state with the largest southern land border in the union it definitely took the brunt of the democrats 5th gen warfare invasion forces as a result of that outcome . " No standing " means" we're not even going to look at the merits of the case " . Dude the fix was in ,just ask Molly Ball of the New Yawk Slimes, who wrote :The Secret History Of "The Shadow Campaign That Saved The 2020 Election " or is that also something I/ we just delusionally cooked up in our inferior to libtard ,intellects as well .
1. Opening the southern border to criminals and welfare people. Destroying the working class and much of the restaurant and retail economy with minimum wage “fixes” to the increasing inflation that these programs cause.
2. Acceptance of Chinese nationals into sensitive areas of USA, one of them under indictment now is a mayor in California.
3. The weaponization of the FBI and CIA and judiciary against one American citizen, who happened to be running for president. The bullshit they pulled off is amazing.
OMG...here we go. The border wasn't "opened up" and any government programs that provide a process to have foreigners come onto US soil has vetting applied to it. Maybe we can improve the vetting...I'm all for that.
Accepting Chinese nationals into sensitive areas sounds like a hole in a policy NOT a policy per se. Do you see Democrats fighting to allow Chinese into these areas? I don't. I worked for a National Lab and we tracked foreign nationals very closely.
Trump and his campaign team were interacting with the Russians on many levels prior to the election and include providing polling data to them. why the HELL would you consider it weaponization if our government is concerned about that and investigating it? Do you ever really stop and consider what your reaction would be if the Clinton campaign was doing the same thing.
I was GOP for 30 years and I don't give a single rip about which side of the political aisle someone is on if they're interacting suspiciously with our enemy while running for POTUS.
You've completely lost the horizon, dude. Yah...and you have a lot of company with you on this particular substack column.
Legitimately explain your disagreement with closing the borders to any and all illegal entry. And why you're at it, explain legitimately why taxpayers should fund the NGOs and their exorbitant salaried employees that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to encourage and facilitate a de facto invasion of the US during the Biden Administration. You don't have any idea what fascist is do you?
First of all, make sure you know what my position is before you criticize it. What makes you think I'm against the USA closing its borders if it wants to? That's not what I would do, which means I disagree with the policy, but they're your borders so whatever. On the other hand, if people within the USA who don't want its borders closed happen to win an election and enact their policy instead of yours, that's legitimate also. Elections have consequences.
Which is the point, of course. Elections have consequences, and to fascists that means they can't be allowed. Kunstler has literally declared in clear English that democracy in the USA needs to end, and as far as I can tell most people here either vehemently agree or have no objection. Hence, my observation: in the MAGA mind, there's no such thing as legitimate disagreement, only force. That's fascism, and your agenda doesn't justify the unjustifiable; it's the motive for the crime.
Next of all make sure you know my position before you call me a fascist. I disagree with the idea that a sovereign nation can't close its borders to unlimited illegal invasion. I disagree with your position so you call me a fascist. You state that fascists, meaning Trump supporters, don't want to allow elections. Let's see your documented proof where anyone says we shouldn't have elections.
Elections have consequences. Donald Trump won the 2024 election. You've got to live that. Better luck next time.
You Leftists live in another reality in your own minds. Explain how open borders benefit the US. Just documented facts please. You've worn out the fascist thing so try so other hyperbole.
Well, let's see. Let's start with this very web blog, What evidence is there that this is a fascist space for fascist opinions?
Here's Kunstler on April 27: "When [Obama] repeats the shibboleth 'our democracy' he means simply the Lefty-left’s malevolent will to power". Translation: there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to MAGA. https://www.kunstler.com/p/a-feral-and-savage-party
Kunstler on April 3: "Norm Eisen founded or is associated with several swamp NGOs active in Trump-hunting operations ... all posing as anti-autocracy operations." Can't have that... says the autocrat. The principle again: no such thing as legitimate opposition. https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-red-line
Or how about this post, where Kunstler expends (yes, I counted) 936 words pouring derision on American democracy by his pet tactic of putting it in scare quotes over and over: https://www.kunstler.com/p/when-they-say-democracy-they-dont Once again, the message: There is no such thing as legitimate opposition to MAGA's agenda, or to Donald Trump. No such thing.
If you deserve being spared the label "fascist", you can simply say you agree that opposition to Trump can be legitimate, and that this applies to the actual opposition he has experienced (such as it is). But if you're only going to double down on the slanted, partisan narrative that Kunstler peddles, save your breath -- the shoe fits.
Blah, blah, blah. Like Elon Musk recently said, "Not all democrats are criminals, but almost all criminals are democrats". The party is aligned with Medicare and Medicaid fraud, autism and childcare fraud, open borders that facilitate criminal drug and human trafficking from China, Venezuela, and other dictatorial regimes.
They're aligned with NGO's like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that raise money to fight NAZI's while funding them. They support and fund Antifa, and honor and fund judges that let criminals off for serious felonies and use lawfare against conservatives.
The party committed treason in stealing the 2020 election from Trump. The evidence is overwhelming and obvious in data analytics. The mail-in ballot election system is ripe with fraud. Blue states routinely hide their voter rolls from authorities and destroy fake ballots. But ongoing forensics will soon shed indisputable evidence of the Big Steal.
What appears to you as fascism is the heavy lifting required to dismantle the nearly unbelievable level of criminal activities the democrat party and deep state actors have committed against the American people. This heavy lifting will continue until the job is done. The MAGA folks have had enough of this game, and we will take back our country from you immoral, dishonest rascals.
So you really think there was no mischief in the 2020 election? I guess you didn't see the video of Ruby Freeman and her mom running boxes of ballots hidden under the table through the machines again and again at 3AM. This was one of many, many pieces of evidence. It doesn't matter that very few cases are won, the judiciary is corrupt as hell and the machine has many ways to protect itself. The biggest problem in this country is that the elections aren't legitimate. If we get rid of the voting machines, and require voter id (real id obtained via proof of citizenship, not driver's licenses handed out to illegal aliens like in California and other states), get rid of mail-in ballots, and mandate same-day election results, MAYBE we will have a somewhat straight election and the people in charge will represent the people at large. Right now we are mostly unrepresented. So you can stuff that elections have consequences crap until the above is fixed.
I don't spend precious brain cells on whatever this Ruby Freeman business is. That's not my job. There are persecution narratives, which is what you're peddling, and then there are courts of law.
Courts of law, which have serious rules of evidence and serious penalties for fakery, tested the persecution narrative in 62 cases. They 61 times out of 62 that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. The 62nd case was a narrow ruling in Pennsylvania that didn't reverse enough votes to affect the outcome.
If you have a real belief that 61 courts made incorrect or false rulings, then you have serious work of your own to do: demonstrate 61 times over, by equally serious standards of evidence, that Trump won as you say he did. That's your task. Come back to me after you've met it, or don't come back.
I'll make it simpler for you. Do you think these measures make sense:
"get rid of the voting machines, and require voter id (real id obtained via proof of citizenship, not driver's licenses handed out to illegal aliens like in California and other states), get rid of mail-in ballots, and mandate same-day election results"
But it does mean I can take exception when you make a cartoonishly exaggerated claim like "quasi-Marxist dictatorship". Especially when it's Donald Trump who has loudly and repeatedly proclaimed he can do anything he wants and made a big point of sending people to an extrajudicial torture gulag in El Salvador. Because Trump is an actual, real and living dictator wannabe.
Why is it cartoonishly exaggerated? Didn't Obama say he had a pen and a phone? Didn't he drone an American citizen, without that sacred due process? Didn't Biden tell federal employees and the military to get the covid vax or lose their jobs? Mandate EVs by 2035, no more gas appliances by 2030, make DEI the primary mission of every federal agency, designated half the country as white supremacists. But no, he wasn't cartoonishly quasi-Marxist.
It is clear the deep state runs its own agenda unchecked. Whatever agenda CIA has is not a legitimate form of government and surely not reflective of a Republic of states. Their only task is to enforce the laws passed by Congress.
MAGA represents the anti-socialist agenda that the USA spent most of the 20th century fighting against. Anyone that accepts the socialistic globalist agenda of the Left rejects the self-reliance independent agenda that I believe America stands for. The idea that a Kamala or a Newsom represents American Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity.
“War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.”
Joseph Sobran
Then there’s these questions:
Has Trump done anything about crony capitalism?
Anything to create stable currency?
Anything to deal with national debt?
It would seem these areas would qualify as “anti-socialism agenda” qualified.
Defense against foreign powers is the primary responsibility of the federal government. It is the Union of states against a common enemy. So by nature, it is federal led, or socialistic. Cannot be any other way. Imagine Texas declaring war against Mexico.
No, he is a product of crony capitalism, of NYC the home of crony capitalism.
Stable currency, totally out of his hands. He tried to get the Fed to change rates in lieu of phony employment data to no avail. Who stabilizes currency? The money markets, not an individual.
You bring up a joke, the debt. You know as well as I do that the debt is a non-issue and will never be re-paid. Even the debt hawks do not say much any more. Think what would happen if the IMF just reset the debt to zero, what would happen. Trump has no control of the budget, deficit or debt, Congress does, primarily the House, where all spending originates.
“Defense against foreign powers is the primary responsibility of the federal government. It is the Union of states against a common enemy. So by nature, it is federal led, or socialistic. Cannot be any other way. Imagine Texas declaring war against Mexico.”
The key word…”defense”. Like all else in the Constitution, once we were able to turn “preemptive war” into “defense” all is possible. And as a conservative you surely are aware that defending any and all wars and rumors of war creates as Bourne said, “the health of the state”. So long as conservatives approve the national security state, there will be no conservatism.
Crony capitalism: looks like we agree.
Currency: money markets do not stabilize currency, they are a measurement of inflation. Trump could easily use the “bully pulpit” at minimum.
Debt: Again, you know it, I know it, anyone with a brain knows it. A president has the obligation to acknowledge it and at least demand Congress do something about it. Where's the veto pen?
Okay, would you rather we fight the “savages” where they are or here in your back yard? Simple question, what is defense? James Monroe was wise when he said we should not allow foreign powers to interfere with this hemisphere, aimed at Europe mostly. Now, thanks to the open border policies of the Left over the years, those foreigners have invaded this country. Iran declared war on us in 1979, and we are just now, thanks to waffling Deep Staters, we are finally going to win that war. Imagine for a second what would be happening right now if the Shah and his son had maintained control of Iran. Then figure out a way to reset the clock. When we win, it will be reset.
Money markets control the relative value of currencies. All of them are in competition with each other. BTW, if the dollar collapses, so does every currency on the planet. We are still the biggest and strongest economy.
Exactly who do you want to clobber by taking away funds from? Welfare? defense? Social Security? Maintenance of infrastructure? The worst part of the Great Depression was the deflation of money caused by the contraction of the money supply. Arbitrarily pulling money out of circulation will start the process of deflation.
For an exercise, what agencies of the Fed would you suggest we cut out to balance the budget? As Trump’s function is to carry out what the Congress tells him to do, what would you suggest Congress cut from the budget? Remember Musk? He did not make much difference because in the budget cake, the ingredients are baked in. Discretionary spending, non obligated dollars, are a very small amount of the budget. His veto would not mean anything.
The idea that Donald Trump represents Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity. He has spent 16 months mocking separation of powers and making every effort to jawbone people into ceding his demand that he runs everything, permanently.
He's had so much success at this that he and a few of his lickspittles were able to start a stupid war with Iran that has cost the U.S. its control of the Middle East. Yes, I said cost in the past tense -- it's a done deal. The USA might still have a military presence there, but that's just reality taking time to sink in. The bases are destroyed and the host countries now see the USA as a liability.
If the constitution were still in force -- if, that is, Congress were not utter cowards and the Supreme Court was not captured via a five-decade master plan to appoint partisan justices driven by the Federalist Society -- someone would have been able to hold Trump back before he lit the fuse. Too late now. The barrel of TNT has exploded, and Trump is standing there blinking, his face comically covered in soot. Any second now he'll look down and see the abyss beneath him.
Not worth a reply, you are well indoctrinated by the Deep State and the Left. If Trump was a dictator, he would just tell the entire Deep State to eff off. He doesn’t, and probably feels totally frustrated by that group of ignorant people. IMO, he backs down too much.
The idea that Obama represented Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity. He spent 16 years mocking separation of powers and making every effort to jawbone people into ceding his demand that he runs everything, permanently.
He's had so much success at this that he and a few of his lickspittles were able to pass the (un)Afforable Care Act that has cost the middle class millions - if not billions - of dollars. Yes, I said cost in the past tense -- it's a done deal as the rates keep going up buy design. The USA might still have a health insurance market, but the bloat the ACA created cannot be refunded. Individual choice is destroyed, deductibles are at catastrophic levels, and the insured's liability to pay for the uninsured has increase 10-fold.
If the constitution were still in force -- if, that is, Congress were not utter cowards and the Supreme Court was not captured via a five-decade master plan to appoint partisan justices driven by the Socialist Party -- someone would have been able to hold Obama back before he lit the fuse. Too late now. The barrel of TNT has exploded, and Obama is sitting there grinning, his face [redacted]. Any second now he'll look down from his "Library" and piss into the abyss behind him.
I'd ask where they think they have the right to do what they want in any job. So just because you don't agree with your boss, that gives you the right to disobey rules and orders?
Alberta has oil sands, not tar sands. Alberta is keen to explore for more & export a ton of its oil & gas but the stupid Liberal government of Clown-car Carney has shut down all pipelines.
The easiest way for Alberta oil to reach the Pacific markets (and even California) would be a pipeline directly west.
Unfortunately the Stuck-on-Stupid BC voters keep electing NDP governments that vehemently oppose this. Alberta’s only relief will come when they declare independence. A new pipeline directly south will make them rich.
Eastern Canada is a European country, split between France and England. Quebec has gotten very close to exiting stage Left. The source of wealth, Western Canada is just plain sick of sending their wealth east to support Carney’s edition of Canada. Is Ottawa going to be the Canadian NYC? This fall should show Alberta’s opinion.
However, I'd like to share that pipelines do leak. That's a known fact. Some leak small. Others leak biggly. =)
The West Coast is (or was at least) a virgin spectacle of nature. Jaw dropping natural wonders. If you've never been out West, do go! And, an oil leak would be devastating. Especially a large accident.
Why cannot Alberta do their own pipeline south? Or, they need Federal approval for that?
Note that the pipelines from Alberta already exist, that the west through the Rockies already have pipelines, as does California, and that gas pipelines are everywhere, much leakier than oil.
As JHK has pointed out many times, the oil companies know what is coming, the tapered down decline of oil supply. So why would they throw billions of dollars at projects that make no sense. Wildcatting is bad enough. No new refineries in quite awhile and California refineries are shutting down.
Compared to sticking a straw in the sand drilling, oil or tar sands are expensive. It shows how far down the learning curve we are with the oil supply. What bothers me is that with the very obvious onset of the Long Emergency, the latest being the Straits, not a whole lot is being done about it.
"The easiest way for Alberta oil to reach the Pacific markets (and even California) would be a pipeline directly west, administered by the United States Marine Corps."
Going through Leftist territory, "we" would have to conquer SK to insure the oil kept flowing to reach our Chinese allies. Now wait, why shouldn't we keep it all? Fuck them and their poisoned dog food.
pipeline directly south from "North Montana" down into Montana; very few leftards to deal with, and unlike elsewhere, we know where ours are and monitor them...
But yes, keep the oil. Fuck China. And Marines are welcome here... moreso than Californios...
If I were the head of the FBI, I would want to know exactly who in the FBI was talking with Comey, and what was being said, likewise with Brennen / CIA. Benedict Arnold is alive and well. This isn’t a typical ex-coworker situation - this is collusion.
I think you can pretty much bet the FBI know who both of them and everybody else they suspect are talking to, with and about. Funny how we make that assumption without thinking twice. A forked-tongue enemy is only revealed when they get cocky and let slip the secret part out loud - which the DEMs seem to do obsessively. As we've seen throughout history (which we will try NOT to repeat~!), hatred is a losing paradigm.
I have grave doubts about the hateful culture that has arisen. Maybe it was always there, but now we see it, thanks to another version of CNN - Cyber News Network. The only one I depend on since 2020 (once I realized we were under biological attack). Now, I don't even own a tv!
Who doesn’t maintain relationships with those you used to work with? As long as they aren’t sharing classified info…there’s nothing against the law or morally wrong with this.
Do you think that perhaps they talked about how many times Trump’s name showed up in the Epstein files?
An excellent summary of the situation. As an aside, I'm surprised there is no mention of the absolute knee slapper of Mr. Obama decrying the "politicization of the DOJ."
"...that Covid was a trip laid on the nation by its own Deep State (mainly the CIA), in concert with the rogue Democratic Party, for the express purpose of queering the 2020 election."
Let me fix that for ya:
"...that covid was a trip laid on NATIONS..."
Plural.
Several.
WW.
Deep States in every one of them.
"Liberal parties" in every one of them.
Seems more like an international cabal issue to yes, apply serious fuckery to the 2020 election, because [they] could NOT have the reckoning ball, aka Trump administration, coming into Power, however, the insidious destination of this world wide 'event' had far more sinister schemes afoot than the stolen election alone.
Just thought I'd clarify that with the loud HONK HONK of the mighty cobra chicken!
Covid certainly was a political maneuver, not a serious disease. It was nothing but a nasty strain of the Flu. I knew it was a fraud at the very beginning for the following reasons:
1. The PCR test was proven an inaccurate and unreliable test.
2. The virus magically behaved itself at Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon warehouses but it was naughty and infected people at churches, gyms and restaurants.
3. Cloth masks unable to filter water vapor in one's breath was expected to filter air laden in miniscule tinier than air viruses?
4. Elites not abiding the virus related mandates (see Pelosi and Gavin Newsom).
5. The push to use an untested, unproven vaccine that, for some reason, was exempt from the "side effects" disclaimers you hear on all the big pharma medical ads permeating streaming television services these days.
6. The practical disappearance of the annual flu virus.
I will admit that during the first few weeks of the covid fraud I was a little worried but once the "6 foot separation" mandate came out from all the health "experts" I was done with all of it.
The media is currently trying to hump up the Hantavirus and make it the next big pandemic. Not going to happen. Only one strain of Hantavirus can pass from human to human and that isn't an easy transmission. You literally need to be swapping spit with an infected and symptomatic person to do that.
I knew it was BS from the beginning because a 'virus' cannot, CANNOT, live, thrive and survive in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, period...never mind at the same exact damn time!
Also, by the time [they] announced the situation, the horse had already left the barn, impregnated all the surrounding pastures, and was back chompin' on hay already!
Great response and thank you for it. Always appreciated.
"Peak Oil", and all the numbers that don't pencil out, is coming back home to roost with a vengeance. The game of musical chairs is now getting serious, and somebody (or everyone) has to take a significant cut to their standard of living.
We may have the politicians aligning this way or that, but the mad scramble for lifeboats and "every man for himself" doesn't look too far off. We're about to have our priorities reassigned regardless of our plans.
If by "lifeboats" you mean different and completely realistic new sources of energy, your previous administration was funding wind and solar and your current one has cut that off. The self-own, it burns!
Europe is having problems precisely in proportion to how much it's following the Trump agenda.
The USA's problem is that it's completely captured by the entrenched oil interests who won't stand for any competition even as their business model careens head-on into its unavoidable endpoint.
Europe's problem is that it either can't or won't separate from the US and pursue an independent path. They could be buying cheap gas from Russia to keep the lights on while they go full-bore on building wind, solar and nuclear. (Germany in particular made the ill-advised decision to close all their nuclear capacity, which they're going to have to reverse.) Instead they suck up to Big Daddy, buying Texas LNG for eight times as much. Don't expect me to defend foolishness.
Germany closed their nuclear facilities as part of their "Green Agenda". Their legally binding target is for net carbon neutrality by 2045. Germany's energy problems are the result of going all in on "sustainable" energy. Germany is the model for the new green energy agenda.
Are you admitting that they're having energy problems? If so, you're admitting that the "green" energy agenda sucks.
Never gets mentioned on here when Germany's energy problems are brought up. True about the green disaster, nevertheless, but one should be wary of blind spots.
Is this another dimension comment? You'd have to be blind to not see what is going on in Europe. With your frame of mind, we should go back to the caves maybe?
"What's going on in Europe" -- referring to what, exactly? Not a useful comment if you can't be specific.
I'll take a guess, though, that you're promoting the white-replacement horseshit. If that's the case, allow me to opine that white replacement is horseshit. Fresh and fragrant horseshit, right from the south end of a northbound mare.
Do you live in a stable or some barn somewhere? But if you are referring to cleaning the Augean Stables, by all means, I would agree with that, but it's not white versus whatever!
The "lifeboats" reference is just a metaphor of the scramble that's now on for maintaining and/or expanding (thank you AI) energy supplies. Think deck on the Titanic when the groaning of the hull and bow down attitude became obvious to the crew and passengers. Basic physics and a couple of napkins can help demonstrate that currently deployed "green" energy sources like wind and solar are woefully inadequate to keep things rolling along. But it won't be long before even oil and gas costs and supplies are limiting factors for "modern" standards of living.
No administration can address predicaments like problems and expect to solve anything.
This is self-defeating loser thinking. When your energy supply is in jeopardy, the thing to do is to (A) secure that supply, (B) secure a separate supply, and/or (C) both.
At this very minute, we're witnessing Donald Trump in the midst of spectacularly doing the *opposite* of plan A by an ill-advised war on Iran that he has very clearly lost and cannot possibly recover the status quo ante. The USA is *maybe* 350 million people on a planet of 8 billion, and thanks to Trump all 8 billion of us have now received a kick in the pants to get serious about plan B instead.
Given how Trump has actually cancelled plan-A programs instituted by his predecessor in office and gone all-in for the fossil fuel industry, whose end is rapidly approaching, what he is actually doing isn't any of plans A, B or C. He's enacting plan D: do nothing while you continue to collect your winnings, and "plan" (if that's the word) to be out of office or dead by the time the USA hits the wall, and gets left behind by the world and by history.
Ugh, there's a difference between being realistic and delusional. Until you bring an energy source that can scale and be affordable that comes close to oil and gas, you're just blowing smoke.
History demonstrates that Empires fall from resource depletion. This time it will crash as fossil fuels run low. The fallout will be catastrophic as the political class across the globe does the headless chicken.
This is not a problem to be solved. It's a predicament with limited mitigation. All time, capital and resources expended trying to address energy as a "problem" only makes things worse. In this case, it won't be limited to catching that cheap flight to Vegas for the weekend that disappears. The real bite will be 8.4B people scrambling for enough food and fresh water to stay alive, as yields drop without fertilizers and aquifers run dry.
This kind of thinking was always the problem with the ‘long emergency’ narrative, and it has only become more glaringly wrong as the actual build-out of non-fossil energy has taken place in the real world.
It seems Kunstler fixated on one idea and has perseverated on it ever since, failing or refusing to learn from continuing developments that in the case of energy at least have shown it up for the alarmism that it is. He reached his conclusions a quarter century ago, before anyone got real about building an actual, robust and functioning renewable energy structure and before any serious work had been done to reduce cost, improve efficiency and address issues like dispatchability, baseload power/energy storage, and so on.
Here’s what the International Energy Agency says about the reality of renewable energy. (I skipped emissions, which are important but I’m sticking with the viability of renewables.)
On an levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) basis, renewables remained the most cost-competitive option for new electricity generation in 2024.
Onshore wind remained the most affordable source of new generation globally in 2024, with a weighted average LCOE of USD 0.034/kWh, followed by solar PV (USD 0.043/kWh) and hydropower (USD 0.057/kWh).
Rising generation from renewables and nuclear power made up over 80% of global growth in electricity generation in 2024 – a step up from 2023, when they accounted for two-thirds of total growth.
Global renewable power capacity is expected to reach 2.6 times its 2022 level by 2030, falling short of the COP 28 pledge of tripling renewable energy capacity [my comment: but still representing a 12.7% annual growth rate. Wouldn’t you love to own a stock that grew like that?]
The thing to do isn’t simply to roll over and allow failure to wash over us. It’s to see it coming, which we do, and to deploy resources NOW to mitigating and preventing the disaster, which I’m arguing for. This means conservation, even radical conservation if necessary, alongside aggressive development of new energy sources and reconfiguring our usage of the resources we do have. You have to feed a cow ten pounds of grain for every pound of meat you get from it. How badly do you really need a steak, when others are starving? We need to be getting our shit together, not betting on failure.
You're process of "thinking" around energy reads like a marketing brochure. You're certainly entitled to believe in the Religion of Progress, but that doesn't mean Santa Claus is showing up on Christmas Day with a sleigh full of presents. If you review any graph on sources of energy in use today, "renewables"/clean/green energies are still just a fraction of what oil, gas and coal provide to the overall input. These renewables have also been rolled out with corruption and resource control and racketeering as major side effects, and of course rely upon fossil fuels for their production and maintenance.
And while I agree that conservation is going to be a major factor in the future, it's not going to be readily accepted by either the masses or the sociopaths posing as political and business leaders. Humans being what they are, planning and foresight are ignored for greed and selfishness. Change through necessity and lack of options is what's coming. It's far more likely we'll see widespread violence, economic collapse and famine as part of the path through to the future, as opposed to standing around the campfire, holding hands and signing songs while waiting for a drone to drop off some hot pizza.
Our evil overloads know forced contraction of the economy is coming. Lifeboat Earth has hit maximum carrying capacity, and either we in Western Civilization adjust to a much lower standard of living (reduced energy footprint) or we adjust to a much smaller population. I think it's clear which way our overlords are steering the lifeboat. It won't be a smooth transition to a planet resembling the Flintstones more than the Jetsons. We're well past the point of a smooth descent.
" When your energy supply is in jeopardy, the thing to do is to (A) secure that supply, (B) secure a separate supply, and/or (C) both."
May I suggest a plan (D)?
Stop depending on ever-more complicated, expensive, and ultimately desperate means of oil extraction. Stop depending on metastasizing wind farms, solar panels, and other politically correct but inadequate forms of energy generation. Don't rely on very costly nuclear plants that take decades to build and test.
Instead of worshiping population growth as some kind of economic benefit (more people to sell things to!), support population reduction.
Not only will fewer people be able to enjoy a better quality of life, but it will relieve the madcap scramble for endlessly squeezing more energy resources from a static supply. The Earth isn't creating more fossil fuels, more wind, or more sunshine. We shouldn't be overdrawing our account.
This is a weird argument. Whatever else I have to say about this and that, I'm very much on board with limits to growth and living within planetary limits generally.
What I'm not on board with is, well, what you seem to be advocating, namely a world where we simply don't make use of energy sources that are there for the taking and go back to living off the land. I don't *want* to live in a world made by hand. I like energy. I like the things energy does for me. I certainly will never voluntarily choose to live in a world where those things aren't available, and the simplest things we take for granted would go away. Antibiotics? Modern medicine generally? Weather forecasting? You know, the kind of forecasting that saves crops and prevents famine? I'm extremely nearsighted, and something as simple as a pair of eyeglasses depends on having some kind of manufacturing base.
I think we ought to be able to identify products of modernity and high-energy civilization that are worthy of preserving, while also having a plan to live within our means as a species. What you advocate simply seems to me like planning to fail.
How do you surmise from my comment that I'm against using energy-production tech for all it's worth?
I'm the last person to advocate back-to-the-soil primitivism. I enjoy having a car, a personal computer, an internet connection, a DVD player, a CD player with a thousand compact discs, light bulbs in lieu of candles. I'm grateful for modern medicine, including surgery which has saved my life twice. And so on.
But we can't resolve our energy dilemma only by increasing supply without reducing demand. The former is what everybody obsesses over while ignoring the contribution the latter could make.
Stupidity, lies, and hubris have a way of getting sorted out, gravitationally, like idiot rogues flinging themselves from an airplane -- without parachutes.
No mention of nuclear, which should have been (and still could be) the energy for fixed (and battery viable) applications. Oil becomes too valuable to be a fuel long before it runs out.
True, but before that can happen battery technology has to be refined. Current battery tech doesn't bode well when damaged, and, our world will be full of landfills with spent, toxic batteries.
Anyone else notice that one side of James Comey’s entire face is droopy. Bell’s Palsy? I’d be shocked if he took the jab, but maybe he did. Good. I hope he shambles quickly to a slow, painful death.
I would have to take exception to your Masthead comment by Mr. Forney. The Golden Golem and his Dead Elephant Party are going to get their asses handed to them this coming November. And as soon as the "New Congress" is sworn in in 2027, the Impeachment Clown Show will begin.
This draft-dodging blowhard has betrayed his base. Americans are broke, due to his Israeli-mandated fiasco with Iran. He and his ilk will go down just as Churchill did to that socialist Atlee in 1945. The yammering MIGA BOTS think they still have a majority audience. But the reality is the rest of us Serfs trying to figure out how to stretch the paycheck even further due to gasoline and the transportation costs of groceries. Plan accordingly, my friends. Bleib ubrig.
I don't know if it is intellectually/psychologically possible to unpack the damage inflicted on everyone of us by Covid. I personally can relate dozens of impacts, all serious, all deeply disturbing, some of them fatal. I am in no way unique. The damage is so great I don't think I go too far to say that there are some equivalencies to the Holocaust. Like many others, there are so many consequences and ripple effects and it changed my life forever. And ironically, perhaps, I've been fully aware of the dangerous actions of the CIA all of my adult life simply because in college I studied 20th century foreign policy and my curiosity lead me down that dark road and I read book after book on the subject. When Covid began to unroll, it felt wrong and I was not worried--but I should have feared more the consequences on everyone I loved and all those who died early and in isolation.
Leftist dorks and many neo-cons fail to understand that, ideological differences aside, Russia and the U.S. have aligned national interests. Both are resource-rich countries that control vast natural resources within their borders. Both the U.S. and Russia are strategically threatened by Communist China, but for different reasons. The U.S. is economically threatened by Communist China because the U.S. has become so reliant on Communist China for manufactured goods of almost every type. Russia is physically threatened by Communist China because the Chi-Comms have a gazillion-soldier military and endless military hardware production capability sitting right next to Russia's least-populated and resource-rich regions. Russia is now walking down the same stupid international relations line with China that the old Soviet Union did when it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. China is playing Russia for chumps, just like Nazi Germany played the old Soviet Union for chumps. Trump understands this, and was trying to drive a wedge between China and Russia during his first term. But then, Biden, the Deep State, and the Democrat evil morons signed on to the Chi-Comm payroll and pushed Russia right into China's arms. And the Democrats, neo-cons, and other traitors in the U.S. are continuing to destroy any chance for Russia and the U.S. to work together to advance their mutual interests--namely corralling China's world dominance ambitions. The simple fact is that the biggest ally that the Communist Chinese have in their goal to destroy America is the American Democrat Party and the treasonous anti-freedom minions now dominating it.
Now, about JHK's comments about Russian oil reserves and production. Nearly 10 years ago, a family friend's son--an oilfield geologist--spent a year under contract to an American company trying to help Russia advance its oil industry technologically. He returned to the U.S. after just a year, in total frustration. Here is how he described it: the Russian oil industry is only about as technically advanced as America's was 50-75 years ago. He said their oil industry was so "backwards" that he believed that they didn't even have a way to understand just how large their actual petroleum reserves really are. He said that the Russian workforce--steeped in generations of Communist/Socialism--had nearly zero work ethic at all (and he added that leftist Americans seem eager to emulate that failed Socialist model!), and still labored under the old "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" mantra. The workers were also ill-trained and poorly supervised--he said that 10 of his U.S. workers did easily as much productive work as 100 of the Russian workers. His back-of-the-envelope estimate was that, were American oil companies and workers managing and operating the Russian oil industry from top-to-bottom, Russian oil production would likely rise by 2-5 times higher than current production and that recoverable oil reserves in Russia would probably triple.
In the long game, the FBI and CIA are STILL staffed with tens of thousands of the SAME PEOPLE being exposed as seditious. All of the expose' currently happening AFTER the statute of limitations runs out just screams political theatre and promises of accountability ..... someday.
It must be another day ending in Y, because today's post is yet another tissue of wrongheadedness and delusion. There's some fun to be had picking it apart, but the RVO part of DARVO (Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender) has to come first.
Kunstler: "There’s Canada, of course, and its tar sands, but the Great White North these days leans rather hostilely towards its neighbor to the south (us)." Yes, that tends to happen when your chief executive brings two centuries of peace and mutual respect to a crashing halt by declaring you the 51st state and referring to your prime minister as "governor". The USA has bombed countries flat for showing not even a tenth as much disrespect.
Then there's Kunstler's complete failure to understand the moment, caused by his boomer-brained attachment to the dying fossil fuel narrative. The "scramble for what's left" is yesterday's news and only the backward-looking are much bothered with it. Forward-looking countries, like China, are building solar and wind infrastructure that will ensure they still have energy to work with. The USA, meanwhile, is completely captive to an industry that is petering out because they lack both the political will and the basic common sense to prepare for a future that might actually work. At this point in history, to make fossil fuels the end-all and be-all of your policy outlook even as you admit that its failure is inevitable is to willingly hang a millstone around your neck as you wade into the deep water. It's a fate I hope Canada can still avoid.
Hate to pop your bubble, pal, but in the not too distant future the sun is going to lose a third of its power. And those solar panels with which everyone loves to cover productive farmland will be smashed by the 100-lb hailstones that will come.
That might happen, but I doubt that is going to happen in our lifetimes. The sun still has millions of years of fuel left to burn. At least that is what I have read.
It's going to happen in our lifetime, Cankerpuss. That's why we're warned. All those who aren't right with God will suffer through the piecemeal destruction of the world. Most will not survive.
The Sun shines on the righteous and unrighteous alike. Kathy thinks that the Sun won't shine on bad people. It will boycott them somehow.
Huge gay festival planned for the Dead Sea area in Israel, near to the old cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. What say you? Thumbs up or down? Sun or no Sun?
That's truly alarming news, Kathy. Truly. Which astrophysicist warned you that the sun's output is going to drop by a third? Is habitable zone in solar orbit going to move away from the Earth, or is the Earth going to move farther from the sun? Or are we talking about a nuclear winter scenario? I love science, please share with me how you know this is going to happen and what's going to cause it.
The Bible warned me, Northrup. No amount of wind and solar will stop it. I agree with you that oil is running out. After all, it's made of the bodies of millions of people and animals that died in the flood. So there is a finite supply. But the present earth has come to the end of its shelf life.
Hydrocarbons have been detected on nearly all other planets in our solar system. Those extraterrestrial hydrocarbons arose through some process other than the conversion of dead life forms into the various compounds, such as methane and ethane. Assuming the constancy of chemistry and physics, why would it not be possible for the earth to generate hydrocarbons through a process we have yet to identify, but a process that is independent of the need for dead carbon-based life forms?
Well, can't question the Bible, which is God's word, every syllable, punctuation mark, and chapter number. After all, no human being ever had a hand in writing and editing it. So convenient how it answers definitively all possible questions and relieves us of the tiresome need for thinking.
"After all, it's made of the bodies of millions of people and animals that died in the flood."
Sorry, but I laughed out loud at this comment.
Oil isn't made from a bunch of rotten, decomposing bodies. Sorry. Not buying that one.
There are theories out there that the Earth produces the stuff. Deep down in the mantle where the pressure and heat are sufficient to cause chemical reactions resulting in raw petroleum. Don't know if they are true or not but I don't buy the claim that all oil deposits were once mass graves of people and dinosaurs.
How do you explain oil deposits miles under the deep ocean floors?
Yes, it is. We're all carbon units, Cankerpuss. Just like in the Star Trek movie. And if oil was continuously made in the earth as a result of natural processes, we wouldn't be running out, would we?
I'll admit that what you state is a possibility. I do not have evidence to state for certain that you are wrong.
What happens to a body when it decomposes? Bacteria consume it and some methane gasses among others are produced but for the most part the body returns to the soils. It doesn't turn into a small pool of petroleum. There are many body farms throughout the world that study decomposition. Oil is not a typical bi-product of physical decomposition.
If bodies did turn into oil, then perhaps we should be recycling all of our dead and maintaining our oil supplies?
Take water for example. There is a finite amount of water on the Earth but the same amount of water is always here. Water can be in multiple forms such as a liquid, gas or solid ice. Water may become scarce in one place but plentiful in new places.
Could not the same thing apply to oil?
The Earth is massive. Huge. Enormous. Not only on the surface but on the inside. The crust alone is 40+ miles thick. Our deepest mines don't even come close to piercing the boundaries of the Earth's crust. Then there is the mantle. We don't know what is happening down there.
Plate tectonics cause the Earth's constant recycling of old minerals into new minerals due to heat and pressure.
I don't believe God would create an Earth that cannot sustain his creations. That would be a mistake or a failure on God's part. We should be good stewards of the Earth and not abuse it but I believe the Earth is full with plenty to spare and is a dynamic force constantly creating and recycling itself.
Corruption and human greed impede much of our technological advances and cause many of our problems that result in suffering. If humanity could get past their lust for power and their insatiable need to acquire more "stuff" we would have plenty for what we need. I really believe that.
So you say these words, and what I hear is: "It's easier for me to imagine the end of the world than the end of fossil fuels." This has been my problem with the peak-oil narrative all along, even as I've nodded in vigorous agreement where that narrative was accurate.
If you want to shrug your shoulders and embrace failure, feel free. I can think of 8 billion people who might want a wee bit more out of that for their future, and their children's.
"Died" is past tense, Kathy, but we are all going to be spending what life we have in the future. Since I can see, hear, feel, smell and taste that the world is very much alive and kicking right now, your narrative is manifestly false.
You make it abundantly clear that you feel the only science is the “Science” you bend over for. At least pretend you are interested in some true scientific -objective- questioning and inquiry. I hope you are still wearing the multiple masks and 16 foot “safe zone” your messiah of true science mandated. 2 weeks, no mask, one mask, many - just don’t breath and I promise I will keep you safe. Have dinner at that CA Michelin fraud restaurant with your fellow scientist oily newsome. He is immune to any virus as well as any semblance of intelligence or morality.
Then allow me to eliminate confusion and restate it: "Boomer-brained". Backward-looking. Out of step with the times. Everything is changing, except Kunstler's expectations. His analysis is terrible because he can't change his mind or change the subject, nevermind the facts.
Yes, and the one thing I kept thinking the whole time is, "Okay, what about other energy sources then?" The book was at best half-useful. The other half was simply an exercise in solipsistic doomerism: the end of petroleum is the end of the world, full stop. That was simply and always just a symptom of Kunstler's lack of imagination...
... That, and his nihilistic hatred of modernity. Kunstler hates happy motoring and he hates consumerism. Well and good, lots of people hate both. But what's more, he hates the very kind of society that makes those things possible, and he's increasingly made no bones about the fact that his "world made by hand" is simply an expression of his desire to roll back history to a simpler time. A time when there were no happy motorists, when men were in charge, when there was no clamour of politics, and everything was settled in a way that warms his particular heart in his particular way.
That's the seed that fascism always grows from, and Kunstler is a fascist if I ever heard of one. Yes, I mean it. No, I'm not simply using the word as a club. The charge has substance and I make it in good faith and a full heart.
The Long Emergency was and remains an important book, written back when Jim and his subject were a solid match. Recognizing that our accustomed lifestyle is nearly at an end is not a "nihilistic hatred of modernity." It's simply facing facts. Facts which have been postponed in subsequent years but are now upon us as the result of an idiotic and pointless war.
It sounds like you still harbor fantasies about some sort of magical substitute(s) for petroleum. There are none. If you'd like to catch up with that harsh reality read Bright Green Lies, by Derrick Jensen.
Another good book is 'Green Illusions' by Ozzie Zehner. When people finally understand that none of the "magical substitutes" can be manufactured without petroleum then the reality of our dilemma becomes increasing clear.
Those substitutes are essentially shake-down scams and wishful thinking. Tesla was probably on the right track with his experimental projects but there was a reason why the government confiscated all his research paper when he passed.
I reject the framing that placing a high value on energy and the things it makes possible constitutes a belief in ‘magic’. And I do indeed believe that Kunstler hates modernity. Specifically, in my opinion he hates the freedom and scope it affords so many people to define their own lives.
Kunstler doesn’t want anyone defining their own lives. He wants a conformist society that defines a place for everybody, and puts everybody in their place. That’s his comfort zone, and it goes hand-in-hand with the motives behind his urbanism. To Kunstler, the built environment should be didactic: it should instruct people (“nourish” them he says, rather nauseatingly) that there is an order to things and that they are to find their place in that order. And should anyone find there is no place for them, again he makes no bones: “The place for the marginal is on the margins”, he says. He’s too mealy-mouthed to say who he means by that, but one can guess. And don’t get me started about the closeted gay character. proof positive that Kunstler simply does not understand gay people.
I struggled through the first two ‘World Made by Hand’ books, then finally gave up in the midst of book three (just when the main character’s son returns from his sojourn and describes the world outside Union Grove, almost the first piece of interesting world-building in the whole thing up to that point). I was left with the impression that Kunstler’s motive for writing them was to say no, we should be grateful for collapse actually. Grateful why? Precisely because it will narrow people’s horizons, eliminate all their choices, and place them in a box of scarcity where they will all keep one another in line and any aspiration to recover the lost freedom and scope for life is extinguished.
Untrue. High tech nations are possible - as long as they put their people before Companies, Banks, and Billionaires. Fascism IS real Nationalism, one that doesn't surrender itself to these.
The Financial Capitalists ( The Moneychangers ) they have no religious affiliation, they only worship money and to them greed is a virtue, they demonize any one and any system that they cannot plunder with debt and their financial scams.
You sound pissed off and petulant in your posts. If you don't like the comments posted or the editorial written, maybe you should go to a site with which you agree.
This what he does, Kathy, he is a regular on Jonathan Turleys site, ragging on him daily. Now he's here. another participation trophy winner who loves boomer insults . His tell
I can do both, as can you. If you want a site where you never, ever have to hear from someone who disagrees with you, there's always Fox News. Muting or blocking me is also an option. I won't be offended.
All Canada had to do was lower tariffs to match the US's, but instead, because it was an election year, they decided to go elbows up and show how strong they are in standing up to big bad Trump.
Carney and Poilievre puffed up like tom turkeys and strutted around with the usual bluster, yelling "orange man bad" and the echolalia of the leftist narrative controllers.
That was about as bad a losing strategy as anyone could dream up. Now, you have a globalist slimeball giving away all your money, importing the third world at an incredible rate, and destroying any chance of a positive economic future for native Canadians.
You blithering nitwit, there were no tariffs between Canada and the USA. We had a trade agreement called the USMCA, negotiated in good faith by all three parties, that enabled tariff-free trade across our borders. It was signed in 2018. BY DONALD FUCKING TRUMP.
You blithering nitwit, you have the memory of a canary. It's one thing for Trump to change his mind, rip up an agreement he himself signed, and impose tariffs unilaterally. It's a shitty way to behave, but it's within his rights.
But it's quite something else for Trump to rewrite history and proclaim that the USA has been cheated in a heavily negotiated agreement with a neighbour one tenth its size *that he signed himself*. He's a bullying shitheel who will piss on our leg and tell us it's raining. And he has MAGA clamoring to take a drink.
Heh. If facts contradict the MAGA narrative, choose the narrative every time. After all, ignorance is strength. And MAGA is nothing if not invincible ignorance.
When I go to considerable effort to buttress what I say with facts, people roll their eyes and say I'm writing long boring screeds.
When I say something succinct while understanding I have everything I need to back it up should I be challenged, people burble something like "facts not in evidence".
It's almost like facts are beside the point for some people.
From China’s perspective, the US is on a similar circling-the-drain trajectory as Europe. China can live without US soybeans, but not without the flow of oil which Iran will likely continue to control.
Even setting oil aside, China has invested a great deal in constructing the beginnings of a North-South commercial corridor connected with Iran, including rail lines which the US has been assiduously destroying in its bombing missions over Iran.
China has always played the long game, and humoring Mr. Trump into believing that we may be getting on the same team makes sense. Actually doing so makes little sense for the future of China, some form of BRICS alliance, and the Global South, where the future actually lies.
"Iran has allowed some Chinese vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz following diplomatic overtures from China’s government, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported on Thursday. ...
"The Trump administration has been pressing China to use its leverage with Iran to help reopen the strait, which is a main shipping route for oil from the Persian Gulf.
"Fars and Tasnim, two semiofficial Iranian news agencies, said Iran had approved the passage of some Chinese vessels under rules set by Tehran for managing traffic in the waterway.
"Fars reported that the crossings had begun on Wednesday night, following a diplomatic outreach by China’s foreign minister and its ambassador to Iran. It said the move was rooted in the two countries’ strategic partnership."
Trump's big plan was to try to jawbone the Chinese into putting pressure on Iran. Instead, Iran and China worked things out between themselves. The Chinese have clean sailing ahead after Trump's disastrous blunder that has queered things for most every country on earth, and most every country on earth understands that.
It is not suggested that dissenting opinions be not expressed, but rather that they be considered opinions. The war provides ample opportunity for propaganda in excess, from both sides, in an unrelenting flow. Trump says something? Iran says something completely different? It is the Internets...who knows what is true or false? An immediacy of a reported outrage brings emotion to the lips of many...48 hours or so? Not so much, but maybe the event becomes clearer. A week or month as you aside, might not be out of line.
I agree entirely with your assessment of the (dis)information ecosystem online, but suggesting that we each wait a couple of days before responding to Jim's assertions is not a solution. Who will check back through all of the chaff of this forum to do that?
I base my posts here on what I believe to be verifiable facts and sound sources. I parted company with Jim in a post on March 2nd and, if permitted here, will resubmit that same post after three months and after six.
So far, my original contentions are holding up very well, and Jim's "five-day war" has been disproven. If you can propose a better way to make this a meaningful forum, please do.
I invite disagreement, Kathy, but all that those who disagree with Jim on this forum get is splenetic invective. Why don't you prove yourself capable of meaningful disagreement by presenting some actual argumentation, preferably backed up by some evidence? None of you seem capable of doing that. Jim used to be, but now just says "Fuck you."
Ah, lost cause. “The Bible tells her so…” Not sure which translation, likely the Scofield 19th century version though it’s of little matter.
The message of Jesus, has been fractured, distorted and reinvented by humans due to the need for various eschatological explanations necessary to amend the original plan.
Anyway, debating the Religious Right in particular is a waste of bandwidth.
Of course I can. What I can't do, and would not if I could, is ban people for voicing opinions that annoy me. Kunstler has and does do that, notably to yours truly before this site was on Substack.
MAGA people have all kinds of loud opinions about censorship when they think Twitter/X is doing it to them. Their opinions about censorship are equally loud when someone like me arrives to disagree with them, only now they're loudly in favour of it.
Deep State defined: "...those who are refusing to support any type of political activities on the part of the Trump administration." That's the quiet part out loud but the part that is still not admitted that you allude to: those who happily supported any type of political activities on the part of the Biden administration
Don't you mean the Obiden Autopen administration?
It's so weird. Obama was a complete no-show during the Biden administration. Show me one scrap of evidence that Obama was secretly or openly providing strategic direction to Biden.
Further...why are we still talking about Joe Biden?
Biden (and/or his body doubles) undermined tbe United States, with your apparent hero, the pot-stirring Choom King pulling the strings, with the WEF crowd pulling his strings. That's why.
I'm an independent that thought Biden did a decent job. I didn't agree with him pulling out of Afghanistan or his pulling the plug on the keystone pipeline.
I do remember that he had a pandemic and 1/6 to deal with upon entering office.
Komrade Biden, was a worthless effn Communist bum who used his
political position to increase his and his families wealth, similar to
the worthless effn Clintons and the effn Obamas.
Why are you so naive?
I have to surmise that you were never a veteran.
You're not an independent. You're in the same vein as that kid from North Carolina who recited talking points to Congresswoman Foxx.
If you are a live human being and not a troll, your prose is tiresome.
The Afghanistan withdrawal was a murderous debacle.
That you praise it tells us all we need know about your BS prose.
Agree but he didn't praise the withdrawal. It seems he thinks we should have stayed in and kept guarding the opium fields and supporting bachabazi.
Isn't it funny how the Jackassery loved the NG after 1/6 and kept them occupying D.C. with up to 30,000 troops for three months, even camped in parking garages, even though there was no credible threat or danger? And then when Trump deployed them for bona fide threats to communities and federal agents/facilities, the Jackassery hated them to the point of siccing their useful idiots on them?
I always find that “Independents” are just Liberals and Democrats who use the term to hid their true “cult”. Biden did a decent job? He was moved by others and wound up for the day. He was always a nasty creepy guy. How old are you anyway? He deserves his outcome just for the child trans ideology which has destroyed a child in my family. I could add several other descriptors after the word Original in your moniker.
You call Biden a nasty creepy guy when Trump’s name shows up in the Epstein file 38,000 times?
I always find that Trump supporters glom onto disparaging comments about Dems like they came from God himself and skip over anything negative about Trump calling it fake news or TDS.
Biden did nothing; he was ruled by committee.
He didn't know what planet he was on half the time.
The plandemic? Oh dude.....
The guy was suffering from dementia. A talking dummy that just flubbed his lines repeatedly. One of his doubles was six foot five. One one of Trump's dopples is about five eleven.
Susan Rice.
…is a deep state player who needs to be investigated and held responsible for her part in Russia gate.
What about her? Is this about the tarmac meeting? Do you have a transcript of what they discussed? Do you have any evidence that he influenced her?
Personally...I thought it was completely disgusting and inappropriate that he did that, but the fact is that we don't know what was talked about or whether it influenced Susan Rice in any way.
If that's what you were alluding to.
You're thinking of Loretta Lynch. Susan Rice was Obama's domestic policy advisor in Biden's term.
Yep. I guess that's what happens when your post is a single name without context or a point. You do realize that it's not really easy to see which response your replying to when there are this many, right?
Pretty clear that Lynch told Clinton that she would not empanel a grand jury and that Comey would drop the case against Hillary. Rice had nothing to do with it. She was Obama's national security advisor and served as the go between Obama and Biden as Biden's domestic policy advisor.
I read the entire transcript of Comey's testimony before Congress. It was clear that the reason that he didn't pursue charges is that you could NEVER prove her intent to mismanage classified material.
I've worked in TS environments and understand very well the differences between classified and not. What Hillary did was done on an UNCLASSIFIED network. In other words...it was basically the State Department's normal e-mail system. The reason I bring this up is that we're not talking her spilling TS information from a CLASSIFIED system.
I've been deployed overseas and have had access to a SIPRnet machine for TS level info. That's a whole different level of information that will get you sent to prison for mismanagement.
To let you know that I'm not just a Hillary fan or something...I thought Obama should have fired her for sure, but it never met the level of felony or something. There's never been any evidence that she was selling secrets or was benefitting from this in any way. The other thing was that the FBI said that the State Department had a checkered culture with regard to information security.
Finally...why is it that she was the only one that seemed to "guilty" of this when every single e-mail has a To: and From: recipient? This was a highly politically motivated attack against Hillary.
What Hegseth did on a Signal chat was FAR WORSE!
Do you know the answer to this question: == WHY IS THERE A TAMPON DISPENSER IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL BOYS LOCKER ROOM? == https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-red-line/comment/237858402
Ok...you're done. If that's what triggers you...then it's your problem not ours.
"Show me one scrap of evidence that Obama was secretly or openly providing strategic direction to Biden." ~ Jeff the Original
The answer to the posted question is the evidence.
Nothing isn’t evidence…at least not in a normal world.
So, putting a tampon dispenser in a boys' bathroom is normal for you?
What are you, a lunatic that does not understand the simple fact that boys are not girls, and no matter how much surgery or hormones you pump into someone, the biological facts can't be changed?
Hi Jeff the Original,
One reason is the same one that Republicans who have been in control for a year and a half have for blaming the state of the country on Joe Biden--do you really want to say that this shit-show is due to your own side's actions and inability to tell the President... "No"? It is easier arguing that this ACCELERATING inflation is due to Biden rather than tariffs, uncertainty around policy, or the War with Iran. Some folks will believe this story. And that is a comfort.
HE
100% agree. Thanks for the thumbs up...even if it's only a couple on this newsletter, it does feel good. I don't do post on sites like these for likes...but nevertheless it's nice to know other people see the exact same things and are here on the site working in support of the truth as well.
What I find most frustrating is that most of the people on this site cannot admit as well that if any Dem said or did most of the outrageous stuff he does...that they would have a completely opposite view of it.
Yep, Jeff the Original, it is frustrating. But here is the key issue--when you make it clear that there is a double standard as to what counts as evidence or how one should react to it, given one's political affiliations, the answer is invariably the same--ignore the observation, because no one wants to be put on the spot that way, because it is so obviously the case. It is poor manners to point out such things to a host concerning what they believe about their own position; we all want to believe that we are reasonable, even if we are not. That is the purpose of home field advantage--to let such inconvenient truths go unmolested on their way...
Do you think Biden put out all that legislation on his own?
I would hope not. A good leader, surrounds himself with experts that know more about the subjects than them, and also people who know how to get legislation done. Not an easy task.
Where's Trump's legislation? All he seems to be doing is threatening countries, starting wars and getting the DOJ to open investigations against his political enemies.
Haven't heard about the BBB, eh?
Did Trump write that? I thought it was the billionaires.
If it was secret, how would we know?
Do you remember that time in 2016 when Attorney General Loretta Lynch decided she would take a private meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane as it was parked on the tarmac in Phoenix – while Bill’s wife, Hillary Clinton (when she was Obama’s Secretary of State), was under federal investigation for using a secret and unlawful private email server at her New York home, to receive top secret and classified government emails?
Now don’t forget that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 messages and destroyed cell phones and servers to cover up her illegal private email message history. And while Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said she and her team were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”—but Comey “exonerated” Hillary Clinton by declining to press charges against her, because Comey did not believe she “intended to violate laws and no prosecutor would bring charges.”
Then of course, there’s the much bigger case of the Clinton Campaign funded Steele dossier, where Obama orchestrated the intelligence agencies on behalf of Hillary and worked with Comey to corrupt the DOJ/FBI and the FISA Court. While Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to concoct and then investigate false accusations of Russian collusion, to try to oust a duly-elected 45th sitting president; after Hillary lost to Trump in 2016.
With the 2016 Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting in mind: It is my humble opinion that our Constitutional Republic permanently fell during the 2016 presidential election; on July 5 when FBI Director James Comey “exonerated” Hillary Clinton for the illegal server and the thousands of her top-secret classified emails. At that point in American history, the “rule of law” in the USA began its demise and because the constitutional provisions for remedy to the ensuing felonious acts and omissions (think FISA Court-RussiaGate and “Crossfire Hurricane”) of James Comey, Peter Strock, Lisa Page (et al) were never pursued while Bill Barr was Attorney General; our Constitutional Republic has fallen and is irreparable…... And the 2022 FBI “midnight judge” raid on Mar-a-Lago along with the four unconstitutional indictments of Donald J. Trump, the Bragg show trial in New York, and the Deep State’s/PTB’s attempt to kill DJT is my proof - We the People now live in a banana republic.
Wake up everyone, the United States is under siege by Marxists and therefore our homeland has devolved into a life or death struggle of facts vs fraud. Why would any sane person believe anything coming from any government, MSM, institution or institutional figure, when they have been shown time and again to be malevolent frauds?
Deep state defined by me is the term given by MAGAs to explain anything governmental that doesn’t go the way you think it should…regardless of any related facts, norms or extenuating circumstances.
That's a pretty lame-ass definition.
It's pretty dead on, son
You're over here screeching like a maniac demanding an American citizen be thrown in prison for expressing his belief that trump is a disaster and should be removed from office.
And you're saying there's a deep state conspiracy?
Sit down boy. Your hatred of America, her constitution, and her peoples' freedom, is disgusting to me.
An apt response to yours. The Deep State and the GOVERNMENT are comprised of people just like you and me...except they work in government paid position. Yes...toward the top there are those politically motivated and this occurs on both sides of the political fence.
Rather than speak generally, feel free to bring up a specific action that you deem was a "Deep State" move only fueled by a desire to thwart Trump and let's see how it goes.
Operation Crossfire Hurricane was built on the premise of Russia Collusion originated by the Hillary Clinton campaign. All accusations were bogus. Comey ran with it.
Former Obama CIA chief, John Brennan, just this week said there are “legions” of intelligence and justice officials working to obstruct and cancel anything Trump proposes. No CIA official has ever publicly voiced this type of threat before.
"Arctic Frost" for another. J6 Committee which also destroyed all their records from that Soviet Show Trial. The "phone call" impeachment. New revelation that the FBI hid the fact the phony charges made against Trump have been hidden away "without prejudice" meaning they intended to refile them 1/21/29 assuming they can elect another vegetable or fellow traveller. Who can forget the Mueller Investigation? The Mar a Lago raid which also featured jackbooters in boats with loaded belt feed machine-guns? One could go on and on.
These people are Deep State criminals. Until MAGA destroys their base of power, they will raise hell.
"These people" is pretty fuzzy. In fact...all of the accusations are fuzzy...yet you want to put them in prison.
Who actually lied during the campaign about Russian involvement? It was the Trump campaign team! They claimed zero interactions with Russians and it was a complete lie.
Those are some very loose tidbits of information woven into your facts there. The actual truth is that the GOP funded the start of oppo research on Donald Trump and the Clinton campaign continued it. Funny how the Clinton campaign never used it isn't it? Turns out that not all of the allegations of the Steele Dossier were bogus and many remain unproven either way.
You mind providing a link to your statement attributed to Brennan this past week? You do remember that Durham did a couple of years of investigating the investigators with very little to show for it don't you?
Finally Crossfire Hurricane was started due to a drunk George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat that the Russians had stolen DNC emails and that they were going to be released very soon. Then it happened and the diplomat alerted the US to this incident.
After 10 years and thousands of hours of investigation, not one thing in the Steele Dossier was ever corroborated. The FBI acknowledged this years ago. The Clinton campaign didn’t have to use because the FBI did the work for them.
You obviously have been under a rock for a while. Even CNN was forced to report on Brennan’s blunder on MSNOW. I’m on the road so you’ll have to Google it. Not that hard to find. Maybe someone can post the link.
Papadopoulos was told of “Russian dirt” on the Clinton campaign by a shadowy Russian/MI6/CIA operative who has not been seen since. Both Downer and Mifsud were both known CIA paid informants. Your trust in the CIA is somewhat naive.
IMO, the Deep State is the group of ne’er do wells in DC that deeply believe the Federal government is the basis for power, the only base for the USA. The are socialists at heart, believing that the people are too dumb to be able to run themselves and they need really smart people, like the Deep Staters, to run things for them. MAGA is the domestic enemy of the Deep State.
Ironically, we are at 1790, with the Deep State being the Federalists of the day. Hamilton believed in socialism, because he believed the people did not have the ability to govern themselves. Jefferson led the Democratic-Republicans, who took over in 1800, and believed in the people taking care of themselves. A part of this is that Hamilton believed power resided in the cities, and Jefferson believed in the rural folks. Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it.
Bottom line, ever since the U.S. has existed, there has been this battle, who should be in charge. The idea that the cities should be running things, with their mismanagement, makes my blood run cold.
Hamilton was a nascent Globalist, a supporter of the International Bankers as they began to go big. If you need to call that "Socialist", ok. But they are the power behind Capitalism first and foremost. The final system will be the Few (who own everything) leading the Many (who own nothing and had better like it too). In other words, having elements of both systems but with Capitalism as the heads and Communism the tails.
Little people can often manage their own lives, but simply try to make bigger things all about themselves. Voting their own strictly personal interests. That cannot be. You can't run a society on personal profit. When are you going to learn that?
Sorry, the days of the "rank and file" being removed from the chicanery are long gone. And I am a lifetime government employee(US Army NCO and Firefighter(vol).
Yah...right. I'm thinking that perhaps you're confusing the fact that since Trump and his ilk came around...the GOP was a far different party.
That's why I left in 2017. Today's GOP is nothing like the group I supported starting in 1984 when I voted for Reagan via absentee ballot in Boot Camp.
Hey moron, did you ever graduate from an effn American high school?
Hi Dennis - While I make every effort to be congenial and polite to all posters and actually provide reasonable and hopefully, thoughtful, responses...I can see that this isn't going to be worth it.
You have every right to express your opinion and vote. Go for it, but I'm done conversing with you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I would define the Deep State as the coordinated attempt by the DOJ/FBI/CIA to remove an elected President. This conspiracy involved government intelligence agencies acting above, around and below the legal system without any oversight from any other branch of government.
As Comey explained to Congress in 2020, he didn't follow legal precedent and inform Congress that he was investigating a Presidential candidate because it was a "sensitive" matter.
Additionally, what would you call an agency, namely the National Security Division of the DOJ, that states as policy that it is not subject to oversight by the Inspector General as outlined by Sally Yates in July 2015:
It is, number one, an attempt by the imbedded Deep State to remove the populist Trump from power. An elected president! Overwhelmingly elected by the people. Trump is leading the rebellion against the Deep State’s war against the people.
Maybe he will succeed in giving the American people their self-respect back after decades of gimme conversion by the Deep State.
BTW...in 2016...I was a GOP guy ready to vote for any GOP candidate but Trump.
This guy Comey is also the same one who reopened an investigation regarding Hillary weeks before the election. Now that's strange behavior for someone rooting for Trump to lose.
You do realize that the DOJ/FBI/CIA have traditionally been predominantly filled with a politically conservative workforce?
I'm going to flip this around on you. If you were the Director of the FBI and you had a candidate who had a background of visiting Russia, hired a pro-Putin campaign manager (for free), a NSA who was secretly contacting the Russians and denying it...etc, etc, etc... wouldn't you want to launch a covert investigation to see how nefarious this all was? Would it NOT be a breach of their duties to protect our county NOT to do it?
I'm guessing if Hillary said "Russia...if you're listening...please find all the dirt on Donald Trump you can and send it to me" that you wouldn't probably find the response of "She was only joking" to be adequate would you?
If Trump was secretly colluding with Russia through back door channels, why would he need to ask for Russian help at a campaign event in front of thousands of people and the national media?
As incoming NSA, Flynn had every right to have discussions with the Russian Foreign Minister. The agents who interviewed him said in their notes on the meeting that in their opinion Flynn didn’t lie.
Think about your point here. We have a presidential candidate asking for a foreign power to help him and your response is that this must prove his innocence. What if there original conversation left it up to Trump on whether he actually needed Putin's help and if he decided he did...to bring it up in a speech. The Mueller report said that after that speech...the Russian assets started attacking the Dem campaign.
Regarding Flynn...why did Trump fire him?
LOL! Talk about conspiracy theories. Maybe Trump and Putin had Dick Tracey watches and they could conspire all kinds of evil….And Putin could fly in to Mara Lago in a black helicopter and disguise himself as Tiger Woods and they could play golf and plan all kinds of secret agent stuff……
"I was a GOP guy ready to vote for any GOP candidate but Trump." Finally, the truth comes out--another ex-RINO "Never-Trumper". It doesn't matter what he does--just that he exists. TDS is real...
How about a little more context for you: When Trump announced his entry into the GOP candidate field in 2016...I hardly cared other than I thought it was healthy to have a businessman in the mix. So....he was just like any other GOP candidate for me. He lost my vote when he attacked McCain. I'll spare you details that should be obvious to everyone why that bothered me so much.
I'll just jump to this truth about the current people who support Trump still...is that if Hillary Clinton said exactly the same thing about McCain...you would not provide any excuses for her and it would be part of the HRC lore that she's a traitor to the country.
Just like she should be in jail for her e-mail server but somehow Hegseth gets an unbelievable pass for passing TS info over a non-secure line to people who definitely did NOT have a "need to know".
It's this hypocrisy that drove me completely away from this version of the GOP.
Correct--Trump's verbal attack on McCain was heartless and unnecessary. Does that rude comment then translate into a policy of "hating or defunding the military" since a soldier could be captured in war?
What policies do Trump promote that give rise to him being anti-military? Does a rude comment about a political opponent disqualify a person from leadership? If so, there are none in Congress qualified.
Comey's definitely not going to want to discuss some "sensitive matters" that happen to him in prison.
It has nothing to do with MAGA except that "MAGA" is the excuse. Members of the executive branch that chose whether or not to perform their duty irrespective of the political leanings of their superiors is wrong. The fact that you don't get it is more of an indication of your tawdry concept of governance than its facial depiction of your ignorance.
That was a pretty broad indictment of my post. Sorry...I use the term MAGA because it sort of captures those that support Trump no matter what and criticize the Dems no matter what.
I was GOP for 30 years until you guys went all in with Trump. I left the party in 2017 and became independent. I've never regretted that move and since then...the actions of Trump, the GOP and MAGA have only reinforced this as the correct decision.
I'll discuss any topic with specifics. I know the details of these claims...so please go for it. Let's see who is the ignorant one...or will you just call me a name and run away like 99% of you do?
1. First you say I made a broad indictment then you defend your broad indictment. OK.
2. I was independent for 30 years until I moved to a state that has closed primaries. I'm not sure why "you guys" are always assuming I'm all in for Trump. I didn't cast a vote the first time Trump ran because I feared he was too liberal. I'm still not too impressed with many of his policies but the alternative has proven him worthy of my support.
3. FWIW I did not 'call you a name'. I simply suggested your comment indicated that your lack of understanding of hierarchical, republican governments overshadowed what appears, on the surface, to be terminal TDS. But since you proclaim 2017 as your year of self awareness I may have given you too much credit.
I really don't know you and you really don't know me...so forgive me if on this particular substack newsletter...I made the assumption that you are a Trump supporter. Interesting that I have to apologize about that to a guy who actually appears to have voted for Trump in 2024.
I didn't say you called me a name...I was just putting it out there that most of the time I get called a name by the posters on sites like these and they run away.
You voted for a guy in 2024 that ran on a platform of the "President of Peace", claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in a single day and that prices would go down on Day 1 of his Presidency. To portray this as "not to impressed with many of his policies" is a pretty big understatement.
We would have been so much better off with anyone but him...so your comment of not voting for the "alternative" doesn't give you much credit as being an independent....in my book.
Why the heck does an intellectual person like you hang out on this particular site? I've already been called names, one guy is a very obnoxious and outspoken racist and we have yet still another someone bringing up a debunked theory about the 2020 election.
You're better than this, JC.
I believe learning to be the essence of life and I learn a lot on this stack - including the comments. I "hang out" on many different sites that have many different perspectives. Having flown around the world, held many job titles and been immersed in many different cultures I still enjoy reading all opinions as a means better understand them.
I find it interesting that you seem to assume anyone reading and/or commenting on this blog is some sort of inferior intellect. One of my jobs was leading a bunch of PhD's doing DoD analytics. A very fascinating bunch....with some very fascinating [aka stupid] perspectives. Some of the debates I got into with them could have been taken straight out of Monty Python! Not to say Jim's commenters are a bunch of PhDs, but their perspective is worth my time because ignoring it would be ignorant.
As for the vocal minority of Jim's fans that are "very obnoxious and outspoken racists" it's certainly not a miasma limited to this stack. Those of us that read all sides know this.
And finally, I find it particularly appalling that you present yourself as prescient and sincere yet emote histrionic absolutes such as, "We would have been so much better off with anyone but him." If the 4-year hiatus from minimal sanity didn't sway you from that universal proclamation then it's probably not worth any more of either of our time to continue this thread.
Cheers!
The words Deep State, is synonymous with the word Communist.
You should read Shadowland.
Isn't that fiction? Written to sell books?
Where did he come from? Mars?
Sure buddy
It's really funny how MAGA simply take it for granted there's no such thing as legitimate disagreement with their agenda. And you wonder why people call you fascists.
Disagreement is one thing; sedition is quite another.
I remember a post of yours from a bit ago where you wrote meaningly that you expected good things to come out of a judicial process, because rules of evidence would come into play. Indeed they do in a court of law, which are capable of dispelling vast quantities of political fog. Just think how the Trump campaign went to court 62 times to contest the outcome of the 2020 election and lost 61 times.
https://www.justsecurity.org/95313/trump-trials-court-jury/
The solitary win was a narrow technical result in Pennsylvania that did not affect the outcome. That's an unimpressive .016 batting average. But you continue to swallow and promote the debunked loser's narrative, spewing the fog back out to the credulous and the blind.
I don't understand how you can think Biden legitimately won by 81 million votes. And how those winning vote margins were all in even numbers for each state. It must have been magic!
Strike the "by 81 million votes" part, please. I have no idea what the actual margin was because such minutiae don't interest me. But yes, Biden won legitimately. The Trump campaign challenged the election results in 62 court cases and lost 61 of them. The 62nd case was a narrow decision in Pennsylvania that didn't affect the actual outcome.
In court, you actually have to prove your case by stringent standards of evidence, and the evidence (i.e. reality) favoured Biden. Trump openly undermined democracy by declaring that if the Democrats won, that would be proof that they cheated. And his MAGA followers swallowed that line, because in their heads there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to their golden calf. But when faced with an actual reality test with real stakes in courts of law, their batting average was 0.016. Not impressive.
They didn’t ”lose in court,” they weren’t allowed in court due to all the dem appointed judges that claimed the legitimate citizens bringing the cases had no standing, thanks to Marc Elias.
Yes ,The Demented One , Sniffer Of Lil Girl Hair ,hath surpassed The Magic And All Powerful receder of oceans , planet healing ," O" -bama in voter enthusiasm obviously ?!? Just listen to our betters here , they have a monopoly in the discernment of all that is true and good dontcha know ?" C'mon ,Man "( er I mean woman ) ?!
Can you try a little harder, Kathy?
Let's flip that around on you. Every state...including yours...has election systems, managers, auditors, workers, overseers and volunteers. They have systems in place to prevent fraudulent votes from being counted. They audit, they recount, they cross-check, they get signatures, there's chain of custody, there are layers of review and approval.
3 wall-to-wall audits were taken at the key swing states and they found that the elections were free and fair and represented the votes accurately.
You are way too conspiratorial because you'd rather believe broad accusations than the actual facts on the ground.
Wrongedy-wrong-wrong. Here in Georgia we all saw video where they "closed" the polling station, sent home the designated bi-partisan observers, then pulled out boxes of ballots from under tables, ran ballots through the counting machines multiple times, had trucks pull up and unload boxes of ballots for counting, etc. Many mail-in ballots were never folded, apparently a modern-day miracle that they were able to go through the mail in their virginal unfolded state. Up until the Midnight Miracle, Trump was winning; after this point the votes were almost 100% (d).
You sound like the busted pantless party on an episode of 'Cheaters.' "Nothing happened! We're just friends! Ignore the video evidence!"
So why are the investigators having success peeling the various swing stat onions and finding fraud everywhere? Arizona is one of them and the Democrats here are sweating bullets trying to stop the investigations.
You have just demonstrated the extreme hold the Deep State has on the country and what Trump has to fight against. The Left wing judiciary did a number on the election investigations that further work have been shown to be real.
That is why the DNC is spending much political capital fighting the SAVE acts and are incensed by the decision of the Supreme Court that race is not a consideration setting political boundaries. They are scared shitless.
Like I started with on my original post....If things don't go your way...just blame the Deep State.
It's great for nefarious people to keep MAGAs stirred up on baseless allegations that are designed to attract you to believe them, but it sucks for the rest of us.
Northrop, old bean, did you run out of Midol?
Your'e observation might carry some weight were it not for SCOTUS dismissing the Texas v Pennsylvania case as having " no standing " when it should be clear to any one capable of a modicum of objective thought that when a state breaks its own constitutional laws on several levels in a federal election that an outcome aided by the disregard of its own laws does indeed effect the well being of other states . And boy did that turn out to be the case for Texas , being the state with the largest southern land border in the union it definitely took the brunt of the democrats 5th gen warfare invasion forces as a result of that outcome . " No standing " means" we're not even going to look at the merits of the case " . Dude the fix was in ,just ask Molly Ball of the New Yawk Slimes, who wrote :The Secret History Of "The Shadow Campaign That Saved The 2020 Election " or is that also something I/ we just delusionally cooked up in our inferior to libtard ,intellects as well .
You're seriously arguing the merits of a .016 batting average over a .000 average?
62 cases, with either no wins or one win. That's what you're bloviating about. Talk about wasted effort.
I agree with that statement...I disagree with your application of it in this situation.
Instead of generalities...how about some specifics? Again...give me one action of the "Deep State" you consider to be sedition.
1. Opening the southern border to criminals and welfare people. Destroying the working class and much of the restaurant and retail economy with minimum wage “fixes” to the increasing inflation that these programs cause.
2. Acceptance of Chinese nationals into sensitive areas of USA, one of them under indictment now is a mayor in California.
3. The weaponization of the FBI and CIA and judiciary against one American citizen, who happened to be running for president. The bullshit they pulled off is amazing.
That is three to start.
OMG...here we go. The border wasn't "opened up" and any government programs that provide a process to have foreigners come onto US soil has vetting applied to it. Maybe we can improve the vetting...I'm all for that.
Accepting Chinese nationals into sensitive areas sounds like a hole in a policy NOT a policy per se. Do you see Democrats fighting to allow Chinese into these areas? I don't. I worked for a National Lab and we tracked foreign nationals very closely.
Trump and his campaign team were interacting with the Russians on many levels prior to the election and include providing polling data to them. why the HELL would you consider it weaponization if our government is concerned about that and investigating it? Do you ever really stop and consider what your reaction would be if the Clinton campaign was doing the same thing.
I was GOP for 30 years and I don't give a single rip about which side of the political aisle someone is on if they're interacting suspiciously with our enemy while running for POTUS.
You've completely lost the horizon, dude. Yah...and you have a lot of company with you on this particular substack column.
Jeff, it is your opinion that I have lost the horizon. I disagree with everything you say, and the universe does not even care that we disagree.
If the border was never opened up, now that it's closed, what was it then?
Borders are bad, right Jeff? Just imagine no countries. It isn't hard to do.....
Legitimately explain your disagreement with closing the borders to any and all illegal entry. And why you're at it, explain legitimately why taxpayers should fund the NGOs and their exorbitant salaried employees that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to encourage and facilitate a de facto invasion of the US during the Biden Administration. You don't have any idea what fascist is do you?
The SPLC people told him it's anyone who disagrees with whatever their grift of the day happens to be.
First of all, make sure you know what my position is before you criticize it. What makes you think I'm against the USA closing its borders if it wants to? That's not what I would do, which means I disagree with the policy, but they're your borders so whatever. On the other hand, if people within the USA who don't want its borders closed happen to win an election and enact their policy instead of yours, that's legitimate also. Elections have consequences.
Which is the point, of course. Elections have consequences, and to fascists that means they can't be allowed. Kunstler has literally declared in clear English that democracy in the USA needs to end, and as far as I can tell most people here either vehemently agree or have no objection. Hence, my observation: in the MAGA mind, there's no such thing as legitimate disagreement, only force. That's fascism, and your agenda doesn't justify the unjustifiable; it's the motive for the crime.
Next of all make sure you know my position before you call me a fascist. I disagree with the idea that a sovereign nation can't close its borders to unlimited illegal invasion. I disagree with your position so you call me a fascist. You state that fascists, meaning Trump supporters, don't want to allow elections. Let's see your documented proof where anyone says we shouldn't have elections.
Elections have consequences. Donald Trump won the 2024 election. You've got to live that. Better luck next time.
You Leftists live in another reality in your own minds. Explain how open borders benefit the US. Just documented facts please. You've worn out the fascist thing so try so other hyperbole.
Well, let's see. Let's start with this very web blog, What evidence is there that this is a fascist space for fascist opinions?
Here's Kunstler on April 27: "When [Obama] repeats the shibboleth 'our democracy' he means simply the Lefty-left’s malevolent will to power". Translation: there is no such thing as legitimate opposition to MAGA. https://www.kunstler.com/p/a-feral-and-savage-party
Kunstler on April 3: "Norm Eisen founded or is associated with several swamp NGOs active in Trump-hunting operations ... all posing as anti-autocracy operations." Can't have that... says the autocrat. The principle again: no such thing as legitimate opposition. https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-red-line
Or how about this post, where Kunstler expends (yes, I counted) 936 words pouring derision on American democracy by his pet tactic of putting it in scare quotes over and over: https://www.kunstler.com/p/when-they-say-democracy-they-dont Once again, the message: There is no such thing as legitimate opposition to MAGA's agenda, or to Donald Trump. No such thing.
If you deserve being spared the label "fascist", you can simply say you agree that opposition to Trump can be legitimate, and that this applies to the actual opposition he has experienced (such as it is). But if you're only going to double down on the slanted, partisan narrative that Kunstler peddles, save your breath -- the shoe fits.
Blah, blah, blah. Like Elon Musk recently said, "Not all democrats are criminals, but almost all criminals are democrats". The party is aligned with Medicare and Medicaid fraud, autism and childcare fraud, open borders that facilitate criminal drug and human trafficking from China, Venezuela, and other dictatorial regimes.
They're aligned with NGO's like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that raise money to fight NAZI's while funding them. They support and fund Antifa, and honor and fund judges that let criminals off for serious felonies and use lawfare against conservatives.
The party committed treason in stealing the 2020 election from Trump. The evidence is overwhelming and obvious in data analytics. The mail-in ballot election system is ripe with fraud. Blue states routinely hide their voter rolls from authorities and destroy fake ballots. But ongoing forensics will soon shed indisputable evidence of the Big Steal.
What appears to you as fascism is the heavy lifting required to dismantle the nearly unbelievable level of criminal activities the democrat party and deep state actors have committed against the American people. This heavy lifting will continue until the job is done. The MAGA folks have had enough of this game, and we will take back our country from you immoral, dishonest rascals.
I don't think Northrop Frye Cook is your real name, Mister Dunning-Kruger!
So you really think there was no mischief in the 2020 election? I guess you didn't see the video of Ruby Freeman and her mom running boxes of ballots hidden under the table through the machines again and again at 3AM. This was one of many, many pieces of evidence. It doesn't matter that very few cases are won, the judiciary is corrupt as hell and the machine has many ways to protect itself. The biggest problem in this country is that the elections aren't legitimate. If we get rid of the voting machines, and require voter id (real id obtained via proof of citizenship, not driver's licenses handed out to illegal aliens like in California and other states), get rid of mail-in ballots, and mandate same-day election results, MAYBE we will have a somewhat straight election and the people in charge will represent the people at large. Right now we are mostly unrepresented. So you can stuff that elections have consequences crap until the above is fixed.
I don't spend precious brain cells on whatever this Ruby Freeman business is. That's not my job. There are persecution narratives, which is what you're peddling, and then there are courts of law.
Courts of law, which have serious rules of evidence and serious penalties for fakery, tested the persecution narrative in 62 cases. They 61 times out of 62 that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. The 62nd case was a narrow ruling in Pennsylvania that didn't reverse enough votes to affect the outcome.
If you have a real belief that 61 courts made incorrect or false rulings, then you have serious work of your own to do: demonstrate 61 times over, by equally serious standards of evidence, that Trump won as you say he did. That's your task. Come back to me after you've met it, or don't come back.
I'll make it simpler for you. Do you think these measures make sense:
"get rid of the voting machines, and require voter id (real id obtained via proof of citizenship, not driver's licenses handed out to illegal aliens like in California and other states), get rid of mail-in ballots, and mandate same-day election results"
Legitimate disagreement doesn't mean turning the country into a quasi-Marxist dictatorship.
But it does mean I can take exception when you make a cartoonishly exaggerated claim like "quasi-Marxist dictatorship". Especially when it's Donald Trump who has loudly and repeatedly proclaimed he can do anything he wants and made a big point of sending people to an extrajudicial torture gulag in El Salvador. Because Trump is an actual, real and living dictator wannabe.
Why is it cartoonishly exaggerated? Didn't Obama say he had a pen and a phone? Didn't he drone an American citizen, without that sacred due process? Didn't Biden tell federal employees and the military to get the covid vax or lose their jobs? Mandate EVs by 2035, no more gas appliances by 2030, make DEI the primary mission of every federal agency, designated half the country as white supremacists. But no, he wasn't cartoonishly quasi-Marxist.
It is clear the deep state runs its own agenda unchecked. Whatever agenda CIA has is not a legitimate form of government and surely not reflective of a Republic of states. Their only task is to enforce the laws passed by Congress.
That is correct. It does so because it considers itself the origin of power in the country.
Actually I think you are talking about yourself
MAGA represents the anti-socialist agenda that the USA spent most of the 20th century fighting against. Anyone that accepts the socialistic globalist agenda of the Left rejects the self-reliance independent agenda that I believe America stands for. The idea that a Kamala or a Newsom represents American Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity.
“War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.”
Joseph Sobran
Then there’s these questions:
Has Trump done anything about crony capitalism?
Anything to create stable currency?
Anything to deal with national debt?
It would seem these areas would qualify as “anti-socialism agenda” qualified.
Comment on war.
Defense against foreign powers is the primary responsibility of the federal government. It is the Union of states against a common enemy. So by nature, it is federal led, or socialistic. Cannot be any other way. Imagine Texas declaring war against Mexico.
No, he is a product of crony capitalism, of NYC the home of crony capitalism.
Stable currency, totally out of his hands. He tried to get the Fed to change rates in lieu of phony employment data to no avail. Who stabilizes currency? The money markets, not an individual.
You bring up a joke, the debt. You know as well as I do that the debt is a non-issue and will never be re-paid. Even the debt hawks do not say much any more. Think what would happen if the IMF just reset the debt to zero, what would happen. Trump has no control of the budget, deficit or debt, Congress does, primarily the House, where all spending originates.
“Defense against foreign powers is the primary responsibility of the federal government. It is the Union of states against a common enemy. So by nature, it is federal led, or socialistic. Cannot be any other way. Imagine Texas declaring war against Mexico.”
The key word…”defense”. Like all else in the Constitution, once we were able to turn “preemptive war” into “defense” all is possible. And as a conservative you surely are aware that defending any and all wars and rumors of war creates as Bourne said, “the health of the state”. So long as conservatives approve the national security state, there will be no conservatism.
Crony capitalism: looks like we agree.
Currency: money markets do not stabilize currency, they are a measurement of inflation. Trump could easily use the “bully pulpit” at minimum.
Debt: Again, you know it, I know it, anyone with a brain knows it. A president has the obligation to acknowledge it and at least demand Congress do something about it. Where's the veto pen?
Okay, would you rather we fight the “savages” where they are or here in your back yard? Simple question, what is defense? James Monroe was wise when he said we should not allow foreign powers to interfere with this hemisphere, aimed at Europe mostly. Now, thanks to the open border policies of the Left over the years, those foreigners have invaded this country. Iran declared war on us in 1979, and we are just now, thanks to waffling Deep Staters, we are finally going to win that war. Imagine for a second what would be happening right now if the Shah and his son had maintained control of Iran. Then figure out a way to reset the clock. When we win, it will be reset.
Money markets control the relative value of currencies. All of them are in competition with each other. BTW, if the dollar collapses, so does every currency on the planet. We are still the biggest and strongest economy.
Exactly who do you want to clobber by taking away funds from? Welfare? defense? Social Security? Maintenance of infrastructure? The worst part of the Great Depression was the deflation of money caused by the contraction of the money supply. Arbitrarily pulling money out of circulation will start the process of deflation.
For an exercise, what agencies of the Fed would you suggest we cut out to balance the budget? As Trump’s function is to carry out what the Congress tells him to do, what would you suggest Congress cut from the budget? Remember Musk? He did not make much difference because in the budget cake, the ingredients are baked in. Discretionary spending, non obligated dollars, are a very small amount of the budget. His veto would not mean anything.
The idea that Donald Trump represents Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity. He has spent 16 months mocking separation of powers and making every effort to jawbone people into ceding his demand that he runs everything, permanently.
He's had so much success at this that he and a few of his lickspittles were able to start a stupid war with Iran that has cost the U.S. its control of the Middle East. Yes, I said cost in the past tense -- it's a done deal. The USA might still have a military presence there, but that's just reality taking time to sink in. The bases are destroyed and the host countries now see the USA as a liability.
If the constitution were still in force -- if, that is, Congress were not utter cowards and the Supreme Court was not captured via a five-decade master plan to appoint partisan justices driven by the Federalist Society -- someone would have been able to hold Trump back before he lit the fuse. Too late now. The barrel of TNT has exploded, and Trump is standing there blinking, his face comically covered in soot. Any second now he'll look down and see the abyss beneath him.
Not worth a reply, you are well indoctrinated by the Deep State and the Left. If Trump was a dictator, he would just tell the entire Deep State to eff off. He doesn’t, and probably feels totally frustrated by that group of ignorant people. IMO, he backs down too much.
Here ya go, JAZ:
The idea that Obama represented Constitutional ideals is just plain insanity. He spent 16 years mocking separation of powers and making every effort to jawbone people into ceding his demand that he runs everything, permanently.
He's had so much success at this that he and a few of his lickspittles were able to pass the (un)Afforable Care Act that has cost the middle class millions - if not billions - of dollars. Yes, I said cost in the past tense -- it's a done deal as the rates keep going up buy design. The USA might still have a health insurance market, but the bloat the ACA created cannot be refunded. Individual choice is destroyed, deductibles are at catastrophic levels, and the insured's liability to pay for the uninsured has increase 10-fold.
If the constitution were still in force -- if, that is, Congress were not utter cowards and the Supreme Court was not captured via a five-decade master plan to appoint partisan justices driven by the Socialist Party -- someone would have been able to hold Obama back before he lit the fuse. Too late now. The barrel of TNT has exploded, and Obama is sitting there grinning, his face [redacted]. Any second now he'll look down from his "Library" and piss into the abyss behind him.
Half-assed attempt. Try harder.
Who’s Agenda Norty?
I'd ask where they think they have the right to do what they want in any job. So just because you don't agree with your boss, that gives you the right to disobey rules and orders?
What if your boss says to commit a war crime? One Israeli solider left a suicide note saying, I can never be forgive for the things I have done.
Alberta has oil sands, not tar sands. Alberta is keen to explore for more & export a ton of its oil & gas but the stupid Liberal government of Clown-car Carney has shut down all pipelines.
The easiest way for Alberta oil to reach the Pacific markets (and even California) would be a pipeline directly west.
Unfortunately the Stuck-on-Stupid BC voters keep electing NDP governments that vehemently oppose this. Alberta’s only relief will come when they declare independence. A new pipeline directly south will make them rich.
Alberta: America’s 51st state? You never know. Trump is way ahead of all of us and he always sticks the landing.
They don't need to be the 51st state; the Republic of Alberta will work just fine.
Venezuela as the 52nd. And then all of Black Africa. Why wait? Let's get it over with.
Canadians appear to be even more stupid than American Democrats.
Eastern Canada is a European country, split between France and England. Quebec has gotten very close to exiting stage Left. The source of wealth, Western Canada is just plain sick of sending their wealth east to support Carney’s edition of Canada. Is Ottawa going to be the Canadian NYC? This fall should show Alberta’s opinion.
Toronto is the 4th largest city in North America, I've heard. So Mexico City, NYC, LA, and then Toronto?
Not referring to size, referring to character. Socialism is going to kill both places.
this really needs to be studied, but I tend to agree.
Great points!
However, I'd like to share that pipelines do leak. That's a known fact. Some leak small. Others leak biggly. =)
The West Coast is (or was at least) a virgin spectacle of nature. Jaw dropping natural wonders. If you've never been out West, do go! And, an oil leak would be devastating. Especially a large accident.
Why cannot Alberta do their own pipeline south? Or, they need Federal approval for that?
yeah, I imagine with earthquakes and stuff out west an underground pipeline would be bad. .... and then you have to think about the vandals
Google map of oil pipelines in the USA
Note that the pipelines from Alberta already exist, that the west through the Rockies already have pipelines, as does California, and that gas pipelines are everywhere, much leakier than oil.
As JHK has pointed out many times, the oil companies know what is coming, the tapered down decline of oil supply. So why would they throw billions of dollars at projects that make no sense. Wildcatting is bad enough. No new refineries in quite awhile and California refineries are shutting down.
Compared to sticking a straw in the sand drilling, oil or tar sands are expensive. It shows how far down the learning curve we are with the oil supply. What bothers me is that with the very obvious onset of the Long Emergency, the latest being the Straits, not a whole lot is being done about it.
"The easiest way for Alberta oil to reach the Pacific markets (and even California) would be a pipeline directly west, administered by the United States Marine Corps."
Finish your thought.
And with Carney exiled to the island of St. Helena, to join a legion of other malefactors, like Brennan, Comey and Obama.
Going through Leftist territory, "we" would have to conquer SK to insure the oil kept flowing to reach our Chinese allies. Now wait, why shouldn't we keep it all? Fuck them and their poisoned dog food.
pipeline directly south from "North Montana" down into Montana; very few leftards to deal with, and unlike elsewhere, we know where ours are and monitor them...
But yes, keep the oil. Fuck China. And Marines are welcome here... moreso than Californios...
As a kid growing up in Alberta back in the last century, I can confirm the oil sands were commonly referred to as the tar sands then.
If I were the head of the FBI, I would want to know exactly who in the FBI was talking with Comey, and what was being said, likewise with Brennen / CIA. Benedict Arnold is alive and well. This isn’t a typical ex-coworker situation - this is collusion.
I think you can pretty much bet the FBI know who both of them and everybody else they suspect are talking to, with and about. Funny how we make that assumption without thinking twice. A forked-tongue enemy is only revealed when they get cocky and let slip the secret part out loud - which the DEMs seem to do obsessively. As we've seen throughout history (which we will try NOT to repeat~!), hatred is a losing paradigm.
At one time, I supported a site in an FBI building, and all the G/S and higher that rated a teevee always had CNN on.
Very telling as to which way the FBI as an agency leans.
I have grave doubts about the hateful culture that has arisen. Maybe it was always there, but now we see it, thanks to another version of CNN - Cyber News Network. The only one I depend on since 2020 (once I realized we were under biological attack). Now, I don't even own a tv!
Who doesn’t maintain relationships with those you used to work with? As long as they aren’t sharing classified info…there’s nothing against the law or morally wrong with this.
Do you think that perhaps they talked about how many times Trump’s name showed up in the Epstein files?
That's absurd. . . nobody at the agency should be taking his calls. Not while he is subject to a criminal federal indictment.
Not only absurd, but direct contact with a known felon is grounds for losing one's security clearance.
Boy, you guys are really hung up on Trump's name in the Epstein files. But no one else.
TDS is a terrible condition rendering one incapable of seeing anything else.
Your Kagan has said that "we" have lost the war. You will lose in Ukraine as well. But you still have Patagonia!
Holy shit Batman!
You have lost your mind.
I think Patagonia crawled up your ass and died.
Yeah, notice how Iran has dropped out of the news. That means we won, right genius?
No one else? Millions of ex-Trump supporters are.
Yep, Mars
An excellent summary of the situation. As an aside, I'm surprised there is no mention of the absolute knee slapper of Mr. Obama decrying the "politicization of the DOJ."
"...that Covid was a trip laid on the nation by its own Deep State (mainly the CIA), in concert with the rogue Democratic Party, for the express purpose of queering the 2020 election."
Let me fix that for ya:
"...that covid was a trip laid on NATIONS..."
Plural.
Several.
WW.
Deep States in every one of them.
"Liberal parties" in every one of them.
Seems more like an international cabal issue to yes, apply serious fuckery to the 2020 election, because [they] could NOT have the reckoning ball, aka Trump administration, coming into Power, however, the insidious destination of this world wide 'event' had far more sinister schemes afoot than the stolen election alone.
Just thought I'd clarify that with the loud HONK HONK of the mighty cobra chicken!
Covid certainly was a political maneuver, not a serious disease. It was nothing but a nasty strain of the Flu. I knew it was a fraud at the very beginning for the following reasons:
1. The PCR test was proven an inaccurate and unreliable test.
2. The virus magically behaved itself at Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon warehouses but it was naughty and infected people at churches, gyms and restaurants.
3. Cloth masks unable to filter water vapor in one's breath was expected to filter air laden in miniscule tinier than air viruses?
4. Elites not abiding the virus related mandates (see Pelosi and Gavin Newsom).
5. The push to use an untested, unproven vaccine that, for some reason, was exempt from the "side effects" disclaimers you hear on all the big pharma medical ads permeating streaming television services these days.
6. The practical disappearance of the annual flu virus.
I will admit that during the first few weeks of the covid fraud I was a little worried but once the "6 foot separation" mandate came out from all the health "experts" I was done with all of it.
The media is currently trying to hump up the Hantavirus and make it the next big pandemic. Not going to happen. Only one strain of Hantavirus can pass from human to human and that isn't an easy transmission. You literally need to be swapping spit with an infected and symptomatic person to do that.
I won't be duped again.
I can't love this comment enough.
I knew it was BS from the beginning because a 'virus' cannot, CANNOT, live, thrive and survive in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, period...never mind at the same exact damn time!
Also, by the time [they] announced the situation, the horse had already left the barn, impregnated all the surrounding pastures, and was back chompin' on hay already!
Great response and thank you for it. Always appreciated.
Influenza lives, thrives, and survives in the Northern and Southern hemispheres every year. https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/5beb5b51-d4d5-476d-bc29-0b205bbce9f6/aihw-phe-236_influenza_2025.pdf
"Peak Oil", and all the numbers that don't pencil out, is coming back home to roost with a vengeance. The game of musical chairs is now getting serious, and somebody (or everyone) has to take a significant cut to their standard of living.
We may have the politicians aligning this way or that, but the mad scramble for lifeboats and "every man for himself" doesn't look too far off. We're about to have our priorities reassigned regardless of our plans.
If by "lifeboats" you mean different and completely realistic new sources of energy, your previous administration was funding wind and solar and your current one has cut that off. The self-own, it burns!
How is that working out for Europe?
Europe is having problems precisely in proportion to how much it's following the Trump agenda.
The USA's problem is that it's completely captured by the entrenched oil interests who won't stand for any competition even as their business model careens head-on into its unavoidable endpoint.
Europe's problem is that it either can't or won't separate from the US and pursue an independent path. They could be buying cheap gas from Russia to keep the lights on while they go full-bore on building wind, solar and nuclear. (Germany in particular made the ill-advised decision to close all their nuclear capacity, which they're going to have to reverse.) Instead they suck up to Big Daddy, buying Texas LNG for eight times as much. Don't expect me to defend foolishness.
Northrup Frye Cook — better get back to your flat-top and flip some flapjacks. . . you know jack-shit about global politics.
Methinks Mr. Fry Cook is a bot... nobody can be that stupid.
You'd be surprised.
I'll pit my knowledge against yours anytime, anywhere, Mister Social Critic.
I think Jim's been at it longer than you have, buddy.
Yes, you'd pit your so-called knowledge against anyone.
And humiliate yourself in the process.
Germany closed their nuclear facilities as part of their "Green Agenda". Their legally binding target is for net carbon neutrality by 2045. Germany's energy problems are the result of going all in on "sustainable" energy. Germany is the model for the new green energy agenda.
Are you admitting that they're having energy problems? If so, you're admitting that the "green" energy agenda sucks.
"Are you admitting that they're having energy problems? "
Unfortunately the US blew up Nordstream specifically to prevent Germany from benefiting from Russian gas, so there's that.
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/22973-us-and-norway-blew-up-the-nord-stream-pipelines-seymour-hersh.html
Never gets mentioned on here when Germany's energy problems are brought up. True about the green disaster, nevertheless, but one should be wary of blind spots.
Never let a good conspiracy theory stop even when the real story has been told.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-real-story-da24839c
They may forage in the Black forest for fallen biomass (sticks) to burn. No cutting down live trees. Those are for the lumber industry.
Hey L. I thought the Biomass sticks were excreted much like most politicians.
Is this another dimension comment? You'd have to be blind to not see what is going on in Europe. With your frame of mind, we should go back to the caves maybe?
"What's going on in Europe" -- referring to what, exactly? Not a useful comment if you can't be specific.
I'll take a guess, though, that you're promoting the white-replacement horseshit. If that's the case, allow me to opine that white replacement is horseshit. Fresh and fragrant horseshit, right from the south end of a northbound mare.
Do you live in a stable or some barn somewhere? But if you are referring to cleaning the Augean Stables, by all means, I would agree with that, but it's not white versus whatever!
The "lifeboats" reference is just a metaphor of the scramble that's now on for maintaining and/or expanding (thank you AI) energy supplies. Think deck on the Titanic when the groaning of the hull and bow down attitude became obvious to the crew and passengers. Basic physics and a couple of napkins can help demonstrate that currently deployed "green" energy sources like wind and solar are woefully inadequate to keep things rolling along. But it won't be long before even oil and gas costs and supplies are limiting factors for "modern" standards of living.
No administration can address predicaments like problems and expect to solve anything.
This is self-defeating loser thinking. When your energy supply is in jeopardy, the thing to do is to (A) secure that supply, (B) secure a separate supply, and/or (C) both.
At this very minute, we're witnessing Donald Trump in the midst of spectacularly doing the *opposite* of plan A by an ill-advised war on Iran that he has very clearly lost and cannot possibly recover the status quo ante. The USA is *maybe* 350 million people on a planet of 8 billion, and thanks to Trump all 8 billion of us have now received a kick in the pants to get serious about plan B instead.
Given how Trump has actually cancelled plan-A programs instituted by his predecessor in office and gone all-in for the fossil fuel industry, whose end is rapidly approaching, what he is actually doing isn't any of plans A, B or C. He's enacting plan D: do nothing while you continue to collect your winnings, and "plan" (if that's the word) to be out of office or dead by the time the USA hits the wall, and gets left behind by the world and by history.
Ugh, there's a difference between being realistic and delusional. Until you bring an energy source that can scale and be affordable that comes close to oil and gas, you're just blowing smoke.
History demonstrates that Empires fall from resource depletion. This time it will crash as fossil fuels run low. The fallout will be catastrophic as the political class across the globe does the headless chicken.
This is not a problem to be solved. It's a predicament with limited mitigation. All time, capital and resources expended trying to address energy as a "problem" only makes things worse. In this case, it won't be limited to catching that cheap flight to Vegas for the weekend that disappears. The real bite will be 8.4B people scrambling for enough food and fresh water to stay alive, as yields drop without fertilizers and aquifers run dry.
Buckle up, Zippy.
This kind of thinking was always the problem with the ‘long emergency’ narrative, and it has only become more glaringly wrong as the actual build-out of non-fossil energy has taken place in the real world.
It seems Kunstler fixated on one idea and has perseverated on it ever since, failing or refusing to learn from continuing developments that in the case of energy at least have shown it up for the alarmism that it is. He reached his conclusions a quarter century ago, before anyone got real about building an actual, robust and functioning renewable energy structure and before any serious work had been done to reduce cost, improve efficiency and address issues like dispatchability, baseload power/energy storage, and so on.
Here’s what the International Energy Agency says about the reality of renewable energy. (I skipped emissions, which are important but I’m sticking with the viability of renewables.)
On an levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) basis, renewables remained the most cost-competitive option for new electricity generation in 2024.
Onshore wind remained the most affordable source of new generation globally in 2024, with a weighted average LCOE of USD 0.034/kWh, followed by solar PV (USD 0.043/kWh) and hydropower (USD 0.057/kWh).
Rising generation from renewables and nuclear power made up over 80% of global growth in electricity generation in 2024 – a step up from 2023, when they accounted for two-thirds of total growth.
Global renewable power capacity is expected to reach 2.6 times its 2022 level by 2030, falling short of the COP 28 pledge of tripling renewable energy capacity [my comment: but still representing a 12.7% annual growth rate. Wouldn’t you love to own a stock that grew like that?]
https://www.iea.org/reports/breakthrough-agenda-report-2025/power
The thing to do isn’t simply to roll over and allow failure to wash over us. It’s to see it coming, which we do, and to deploy resources NOW to mitigating and preventing the disaster, which I’m arguing for. This means conservation, even radical conservation if necessary, alongside aggressive development of new energy sources and reconfiguring our usage of the resources we do have. You have to feed a cow ten pounds of grain for every pound of meat you get from it. How badly do you really need a steak, when others are starving? We need to be getting our shit together, not betting on failure.
You're process of "thinking" around energy reads like a marketing brochure. You're certainly entitled to believe in the Religion of Progress, but that doesn't mean Santa Claus is showing up on Christmas Day with a sleigh full of presents. If you review any graph on sources of energy in use today, "renewables"/clean/green energies are still just a fraction of what oil, gas and coal provide to the overall input. These renewables have also been rolled out with corruption and resource control and racketeering as major side effects, and of course rely upon fossil fuels for their production and maintenance.
And while I agree that conservation is going to be a major factor in the future, it's not going to be readily accepted by either the masses or the sociopaths posing as political and business leaders. Humans being what they are, planning and foresight are ignored for greed and selfishness. Change through necessity and lack of options is what's coming. It's far more likely we'll see widespread violence, economic collapse and famine as part of the path through to the future, as opposed to standing around the campfire, holding hands and signing songs while waiting for a drone to drop off some hot pizza.
Our evil overloads know forced contraction of the economy is coming. Lifeboat Earth has hit maximum carrying capacity, and either we in Western Civilization adjust to a much lower standard of living (reduced energy footprint) or we adjust to a much smaller population. I think it's clear which way our overlords are steering the lifeboat. It won't be a smooth transition to a planet resembling the Flintstones more than the Jetsons. We're well past the point of a smooth descent.
" When your energy supply is in jeopardy, the thing to do is to (A) secure that supply, (B) secure a separate supply, and/or (C) both."
May I suggest a plan (D)?
Stop depending on ever-more complicated, expensive, and ultimately desperate means of oil extraction. Stop depending on metastasizing wind farms, solar panels, and other politically correct but inadequate forms of energy generation. Don't rely on very costly nuclear plants that take decades to build and test.
Instead of worshiping population growth as some kind of economic benefit (more people to sell things to!), support population reduction.
Not only will fewer people be able to enjoy a better quality of life, but it will relieve the madcap scramble for endlessly squeezing more energy resources from a static supply. The Earth isn't creating more fossil fuels, more wind, or more sunshine. We shouldn't be overdrawing our account.
Think on it.
This is a weird argument. Whatever else I have to say about this and that, I'm very much on board with limits to growth and living within planetary limits generally.
What I'm not on board with is, well, what you seem to be advocating, namely a world where we simply don't make use of energy sources that are there for the taking and go back to living off the land. I don't *want* to live in a world made by hand. I like energy. I like the things energy does for me. I certainly will never voluntarily choose to live in a world where those things aren't available, and the simplest things we take for granted would go away. Antibiotics? Modern medicine generally? Weather forecasting? You know, the kind of forecasting that saves crops and prevents famine? I'm extremely nearsighted, and something as simple as a pair of eyeglasses depends on having some kind of manufacturing base.
I think we ought to be able to identify products of modernity and high-energy civilization that are worthy of preserving, while also having a plan to live within our means as a species. What you advocate simply seems to me like planning to fail.
As Blake said, Energy is eternal delight.
How do you surmise from my comment that I'm against using energy-production tech for all it's worth?
I'm the last person to advocate back-to-the-soil primitivism. I enjoy having a car, a personal computer, an internet connection, a DVD player, a CD player with a thousand compact discs, light bulbs in lieu of candles. I'm grateful for modern medicine, including surgery which has saved my life twice. And so on.
But we can't resolve our energy dilemma only by increasing supply without reducing demand. The former is what everybody obsesses over while ignoring the contribution the latter could make.
So, the left is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions around the world in order to keep Trump out of the White House.
Graham Platner and his beloved artist/hero would be so proud.
Stupidity, lies, and hubris have a way of getting sorted out, gravitationally, like idiot rogues flinging themselves from an airplane -- without parachutes.
Splat goes the weasel.
No mention of nuclear, which should have been (and still could be) the energy for fixed (and battery viable) applications. Oil becomes too valuable to be a fuel long before it runs out.
True, but before that can happen battery technology has to be refined. Current battery tech doesn't bode well when damaged, and, our world will be full of landfills with spent, toxic batteries.
The pushers for electric haven't figured that out yet. Incidentally, the old term for a drug dealer used to be “pusher.” Now they're just dealers.
They are now recycling lithium batteries, the same as lead-acid ones.
Well that's a start. With all these Tesla's coming of age, there's going to be a lot of them.
Things can develop on more than one track.
If everyone goes nuclear, then there's no more leverage for nations to use against each other. And that's no fun. So no one will go nuclear.
Anyone else notice that one side of James Comey’s entire face is droopy. Bell’s Palsy? I’d be shocked if he took the jab, but maybe he did. Good. I hope he shambles quickly to a slow, painful death.
I would have to take exception to your Masthead comment by Mr. Forney. The Golden Golem and his Dead Elephant Party are going to get their asses handed to them this coming November. And as soon as the "New Congress" is sworn in in 2027, the Impeachment Clown Show will begin.
This draft-dodging blowhard has betrayed his base. Americans are broke, due to his Israeli-mandated fiasco with Iran. He and his ilk will go down just as Churchill did to that socialist Atlee in 1945. The yammering MIGA BOTS think they still have a majority audience. But the reality is the rest of us Serfs trying to figure out how to stretch the paycheck even further due to gasoline and the transportation costs of groceries. Plan accordingly, my friends. Bleib ubrig.
As long as you insist on being a serf, you will be a serf. Otherwise, you're boring as hell.
Yeah. I'll just try and vote harder. That will fix everything, right?
Right over your head.
Poor stupid idiot
I don't know if it is intellectually/psychologically possible to unpack the damage inflicted on everyone of us by Covid. I personally can relate dozens of impacts, all serious, all deeply disturbing, some of them fatal. I am in no way unique. The damage is so great I don't think I go too far to say that there are some equivalencies to the Holocaust. Like many others, there are so many consequences and ripple effects and it changed my life forever. And ironically, perhaps, I've been fully aware of the dangerous actions of the CIA all of my adult life simply because in college I studied 20th century foreign policy and my curiosity lead me down that dark road and I read book after book on the subject. When Covid began to unroll, it felt wrong and I was not worried--but I should have feared more the consequences on everyone I loved and all those who died early and in isolation.
Leftist dorks and many neo-cons fail to understand that, ideological differences aside, Russia and the U.S. have aligned national interests. Both are resource-rich countries that control vast natural resources within their borders. Both the U.S. and Russia are strategically threatened by Communist China, but for different reasons. The U.S. is economically threatened by Communist China because the U.S. has become so reliant on Communist China for manufactured goods of almost every type. Russia is physically threatened by Communist China because the Chi-Comms have a gazillion-soldier military and endless military hardware production capability sitting right next to Russia's least-populated and resource-rich regions. Russia is now walking down the same stupid international relations line with China that the old Soviet Union did when it signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. China is playing Russia for chumps, just like Nazi Germany played the old Soviet Union for chumps. Trump understands this, and was trying to drive a wedge between China and Russia during his first term. But then, Biden, the Deep State, and the Democrat evil morons signed on to the Chi-Comm payroll and pushed Russia right into China's arms. And the Democrats, neo-cons, and other traitors in the U.S. are continuing to destroy any chance for Russia and the U.S. to work together to advance their mutual interests--namely corralling China's world dominance ambitions. The simple fact is that the biggest ally that the Communist Chinese have in their goal to destroy America is the American Democrat Party and the treasonous anti-freedom minions now dominating it.
Now, about JHK's comments about Russian oil reserves and production. Nearly 10 years ago, a family friend's son--an oilfield geologist--spent a year under contract to an American company trying to help Russia advance its oil industry technologically. He returned to the U.S. after just a year, in total frustration. Here is how he described it: the Russian oil industry is only about as technically advanced as America's was 50-75 years ago. He said their oil industry was so "backwards" that he believed that they didn't even have a way to understand just how large their actual petroleum reserves really are. He said that the Russian workforce--steeped in generations of Communist/Socialism--had nearly zero work ethic at all (and he added that leftist Americans seem eager to emulate that failed Socialist model!), and still labored under the old "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" mantra. The workers were also ill-trained and poorly supervised--he said that 10 of his U.S. workers did easily as much productive work as 100 of the Russian workers. His back-of-the-envelope estimate was that, were American oil companies and workers managing and operating the Russian oil industry from top-to-bottom, Russian oil production would likely rise by 2-5 times higher than current production and that recoverable oil reserves in Russia would probably triple.
In the long game, the FBI and CIA are STILL staffed with tens of thousands of the SAME PEOPLE being exposed as seditious. All of the expose' currently happening AFTER the statute of limitations runs out just screams political theatre and promises of accountability ..... someday.
It must be another day ending in Y, because today's post is yet another tissue of wrongheadedness and delusion. There's some fun to be had picking it apart, but the RVO part of DARVO (Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender) has to come first.
Kunstler: "There’s Canada, of course, and its tar sands, but the Great White North these days leans rather hostilely towards its neighbor to the south (us)." Yes, that tends to happen when your chief executive brings two centuries of peace and mutual respect to a crashing halt by declaring you the 51st state and referring to your prime minister as "governor". The USA has bombed countries flat for showing not even a tenth as much disrespect.
Then there's Kunstler's complete failure to understand the moment, caused by his boomer-brained attachment to the dying fossil fuel narrative. The "scramble for what's left" is yesterday's news and only the backward-looking are much bothered with it. Forward-looking countries, like China, are building solar and wind infrastructure that will ensure they still have energy to work with. The USA, meanwhile, is completely captive to an industry that is petering out because they lack both the political will and the basic common sense to prepare for a future that might actually work. At this point in history, to make fossil fuels the end-all and be-all of your policy outlook even as you admit that its failure is inevitable is to willingly hang a millstone around your neck as you wade into the deep water. It's a fate I hope Canada can still avoid.
Northrup Frye Cook — You're seriously misinformed.
Norty has both his feet planted firmly in the air!
This is a worthless comment unless and until you explain how.
Hate to pop your bubble, pal, but in the not too distant future the sun is going to lose a third of its power. And those solar panels with which everyone loves to cover productive farmland will be smashed by the 100-lb hailstones that will come.
That might happen, but I doubt that is going to happen in our lifetimes. The sun still has millions of years of fuel left to burn. At least that is what I have read.
It's going to happen in our lifetime, Cankerpuss. That's why we're warned. All those who aren't right with God will suffer through the piecemeal destruction of the world. Most will not survive.
The Sun shines on the righteous and unrighteous alike. Kathy thinks that the Sun won't shine on bad people. It will boycott them somehow.
Huge gay festival planned for the Dead Sea area in Israel, near to the old cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. What say you? Thumbs up or down? Sun or no Sun?
I think it more likely that the sun has a massive solar flare that burns the Earth to a crisp than the sun actually burning out.
Then you haven't read the Bible
Source: trust me bro
Who or what is going to pull the Sun's plug?
That's truly alarming news, Kathy. Truly. Which astrophysicist warned you that the sun's output is going to drop by a third? Is habitable zone in solar orbit going to move away from the Earth, or is the Earth going to move farther from the sun? Or are we talking about a nuclear winter scenario? I love science, please share with me how you know this is going to happen and what's going to cause it.
The Bible warned me, Northrup. No amount of wind and solar will stop it. I agree with you that oil is running out. After all, it's made of the bodies of millions of people and animals that died in the flood. So there is a finite supply. But the present earth has come to the end of its shelf life.
Oil is not made of what they have told us, nor is it running out.
Chapter and verse, peas.
Hydrocarbons have been detected on nearly all other planets in our solar system. Those extraterrestrial hydrocarbons arose through some process other than the conversion of dead life forms into the various compounds, such as methane and ethane. Assuming the constancy of chemistry and physics, why would it not be possible for the earth to generate hydrocarbons through a process we have yet to identify, but a process that is independent of the need for dead carbon-based life forms?
Well, can't question the Bible, which is God's word, every syllable, punctuation mark, and chapter number. After all, no human being ever had a hand in writing and editing it. So convenient how it answers definitively all possible questions and relieves us of the tiresome need for thinking.
"After all, it's made of the bodies of millions of people and animals that died in the flood."
Sorry, but I laughed out loud at this comment.
Oil isn't made from a bunch of rotten, decomposing bodies. Sorry. Not buying that one.
There are theories out there that the Earth produces the stuff. Deep down in the mantle where the pressure and heat are sufficient to cause chemical reactions resulting in raw petroleum. Don't know if they are true or not but I don't buy the claim that all oil deposits were once mass graves of people and dinosaurs.
How do you explain oil deposits miles under the deep ocean floors?
Yes, it is. We're all carbon units, Cankerpuss. Just like in the Star Trek movie. And if oil was continuously made in the earth as a result of natural processes, we wouldn't be running out, would we?
I'll admit that what you state is a possibility. I do not have evidence to state for certain that you are wrong.
What happens to a body when it decomposes? Bacteria consume it and some methane gasses among others are produced but for the most part the body returns to the soils. It doesn't turn into a small pool of petroleum. There are many body farms throughout the world that study decomposition. Oil is not a typical bi-product of physical decomposition.
If bodies did turn into oil, then perhaps we should be recycling all of our dead and maintaining our oil supplies?
Take water for example. There is a finite amount of water on the Earth but the same amount of water is always here. Water can be in multiple forms such as a liquid, gas or solid ice. Water may become scarce in one place but plentiful in new places.
Could not the same thing apply to oil?
The Earth is massive. Huge. Enormous. Not only on the surface but on the inside. The crust alone is 40+ miles thick. Our deepest mines don't even come close to piercing the boundaries of the Earth's crust. Then there is the mantle. We don't know what is happening down there.
Plate tectonics cause the Earth's constant recycling of old minerals into new minerals due to heat and pressure.
I don't believe God would create an Earth that cannot sustain his creations. That would be a mistake or a failure on God's part. We should be good stewards of the Earth and not abuse it but I believe the Earth is full with plenty to spare and is a dynamic force constantly creating and recycling itself.
Corruption and human greed impede much of our technological advances and cause many of our problems that result in suffering. If humanity could get past their lust for power and their insatiable need to acquire more "stuff" we would have plenty for what we need. I really believe that.
So you say these words, and what I hear is: "It's easier for me to imagine the end of the world than the end of fossil fuels." This has been my problem with the peak-oil narrative all along, even as I've nodded in vigorous agreement where that narrative was accurate.
If you want to shrug your shoulders and embrace failure, feel free. I can think of 8 billion people who might want a wee bit more out of that for their future, and their children's.
The end of the world is coming, Northrup. God told us it's going to end. This world died at the fall.
All things have an end. Period. Humanity will end. The Earth will end. The sun will burn out.
The only question to be asked, Kathy Christian, is when?
"Died" is past tense, Kathy, but we are all going to be spending what life we have in the future. Since I can see, hear, feel, smell and taste that the world is very much alive and kicking right now, your narrative is manifestly false.
There's some vegetation in there, too.
If you like, I can get more graphic.
You make it abundantly clear that you feel the only science is the “Science” you bend over for. At least pretend you are interested in some true scientific -objective- questioning and inquiry. I hope you are still wearing the multiple masks and 16 foot “safe zone” your messiah of true science mandated. 2 weeks, no mask, one mask, many - just don’t breath and I promise I will keep you safe. Have dinner at that CA Michelin fraud restaurant with your fellow scientist oily newsome. He is immune to any virus as well as any semblance of intelligence or morality.
Doth projecteth too much, guido!
That’s a very cute straw man you plonked down so you could beat the stuffing back out of it. Have you considered merchandising?
Super cute, Frye man
Ya just couldn’t help yourself. Ya had to name call with “ boomer brained”. Ruined your whole comment.
Then allow me to eliminate confusion and restate it: "Boomer-brained". Backward-looking. Out of step with the times. Everything is changing, except Kunstler's expectations. His analysis is terrible because he can't change his mind or change the subject, nevermind the facts.
Thanks for amplifying that you cannot make your point without name calling.
You’re welcome, dumbo.
Good one.
Now do Jonathan Turley, your regular stomping grounds, annony
"The Long Emergency" (2005) by James Howard Kunstler.
Read it. Paid for it. Got the T-shirt. Your point?
In 2005 it was a forward-thinking book because the whole concept of "peak oil" hadn't been popularized yet.
Yes, and the one thing I kept thinking the whole time is, "Okay, what about other energy sources then?" The book was at best half-useful. The other half was simply an exercise in solipsistic doomerism: the end of petroleum is the end of the world, full stop. That was simply and always just a symptom of Kunstler's lack of imagination...
... That, and his nihilistic hatred of modernity. Kunstler hates happy motoring and he hates consumerism. Well and good, lots of people hate both. But what's more, he hates the very kind of society that makes those things possible, and he's increasingly made no bones about the fact that his "world made by hand" is simply an expression of his desire to roll back history to a simpler time. A time when there were no happy motorists, when men were in charge, when there was no clamour of politics, and everything was settled in a way that warms his particular heart in his particular way.
That's the seed that fascism always grows from, and Kunstler is a fascist if I ever heard of one. Yes, I mean it. No, I'm not simply using the word as a club. The charge has substance and I make it in good faith and a full heart.
The Long Emergency was and remains an important book, written back when Jim and his subject were a solid match. Recognizing that our accustomed lifestyle is nearly at an end is not a "nihilistic hatred of modernity." It's simply facing facts. Facts which have been postponed in subsequent years but are now upon us as the result of an idiotic and pointless war.
It sounds like you still harbor fantasies about some sort of magical substitute(s) for petroleum. There are none. If you'd like to catch up with that harsh reality read Bright Green Lies, by Derrick Jensen.
Another good book is 'Green Illusions' by Ozzie Zehner. When people finally understand that none of the "magical substitutes" can be manufactured without petroleum then the reality of our dilemma becomes increasing clear.
Those substitutes are essentially shake-down scams and wishful thinking. Tesla was probably on the right track with his experimental projects but there was a reason why the government confiscated all his research paper when he passed.
I reject the framing that placing a high value on energy and the things it makes possible constitutes a belief in ‘magic’. And I do indeed believe that Kunstler hates modernity. Specifically, in my opinion he hates the freedom and scope it affords so many people to define their own lives.
Kunstler doesn’t want anyone defining their own lives. He wants a conformist society that defines a place for everybody, and puts everybody in their place. That’s his comfort zone, and it goes hand-in-hand with the motives behind his urbanism. To Kunstler, the built environment should be didactic: it should instruct people (“nourish” them he says, rather nauseatingly) that there is an order to things and that they are to find their place in that order. And should anyone find there is no place for them, again he makes no bones: “The place for the marginal is on the margins”, he says. He’s too mealy-mouthed to say who he means by that, but one can guess. And don’t get me started about the closeted gay character. proof positive that Kunstler simply does not understand gay people.
I struggled through the first two ‘World Made by Hand’ books, then finally gave up in the midst of book three (just when the main character’s son returns from his sojourn and describes the world outside Union Grove, almost the first piece of interesting world-building in the whole thing up to that point). I was left with the impression that Kunstler’s motive for writing them was to say no, we should be grateful for collapse actually. Grateful why? Precisely because it will narrow people’s horizons, eliminate all their choices, and place them in a box of scarcity where they will all keep one another in line and any aspiration to recover the lost freedom and scope for life is extinguished.
Untrue. High tech nations are possible - as long as they put their people before Companies, Banks, and Billionaires. Fascism IS real Nationalism, one that doesn't surrender itself to these.
The Financial Capitalists ( The Moneychangers ) they have no religious affiliation, they only worship money and to them greed is a virtue, they demonize any one and any system that they cannot plunder with debt and their financial scams.
You sound pissed off and petulant in your posts. If you don't like the comments posted or the editorial written, maybe you should go to a site with which you agree.
This what he does, Kathy, he is a regular on Jonathan Turleys site, ragging on him daily. Now he's here. another participation trophy winner who loves boomer insults . His tell
I can do both, as can you. If you want a site where you never, ever have to hear from someone who disagrees with you, there's always Fox News. Muting or blocking me is also an option. I won't be offended.
You really are an intellectual coward, aren't you, Kathy? You would like to purge any dissenting thought and just inhabit a Kunstler echo chamber.
And when you do encounter opinions that you don't like, you don't possess any resources with which to counter them, so you just whine about it,.
Classic feminism. The hatred of debate.
He sounds as if his girdle is pinching him.
All Canada had to do was lower tariffs to match the US's, but instead, because it was an election year, they decided to go elbows up and show how strong they are in standing up to big bad Trump.
Carney and Poilievre puffed up like tom turkeys and strutted around with the usual bluster, yelling "orange man bad" and the echolalia of the leftist narrative controllers.
That was about as bad a losing strategy as anyone could dream up. Now, you have a globalist slimeball giving away all your money, importing the third world at an incredible rate, and destroying any chance of a positive economic future for native Canadians.
Get back in the kitchen, bitch.
You blithering nitwit, there were no tariffs between Canada and the USA. We had a trade agreement called the USMCA, negotiated in good faith by all three parties, that enabled tariff-free trade across our borders. It was signed in 2018. BY DONALD FUCKING TRUMP.
You blithering nitwit, you have the memory of a canary. It's one thing for Trump to change his mind, rip up an agreement he himself signed, and impose tariffs unilaterally. It's a shitty way to behave, but it's within his rights.
But it's quite something else for Trump to rewrite history and proclaim that the USA has been cheated in a heavily negotiated agreement with a neighbour one tenth its size *that he signed himself*. He's a bullying shitheel who will piss on our leg and tell us it's raining. And he has MAGA clamoring to take a drink.
You blithering nitwit.
Holy crap. You really don't know jack shit, do you?
Quick, go back to the CBC and get your daily injection of propaganda.
Heh. If facts contradict the MAGA narrative, choose the narrative every time. After all, ignorance is strength. And MAGA is nothing if not invincible ignorance.
Facts not in evidence.
The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Ronald Reagan
When I go to considerable effort to buttress what I say with facts, people roll their eyes and say I'm writing long boring screeds.
When I say something succinct while understanding I have everything I need to back it up should I be challenged, people burble something like "facts not in evidence".
It's almost like facts are beside the point for some people.
From China’s perspective, the US is on a similar circling-the-drain trajectory as Europe. China can live without US soybeans, but not without the flow of oil which Iran will likely continue to control.
Even setting oil aside, China has invested a great deal in constructing the beginnings of a North-South commercial corridor connected with Iran, including rail lines which the US has been assiduously destroying in its bombing missions over Iran.
China has always played the long game, and humoring Mr. Trump into believing that we may be getting on the same team makes sense. Actually doing so makes little sense for the future of China, some form of BRICS alliance, and the Global South, where the future actually lies.
As Trump Meets Xi, Iran Lets Chinese Ships Through Strait of Hormuz
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/14/us/trump-news#iran-strait-hormuz-china-ships
"Iran has allowed some Chinese vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz following diplomatic overtures from China’s government, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported on Thursday. ...
"The Trump administration has been pressing China to use its leverage with Iran to help reopen the strait, which is a main shipping route for oil from the Persian Gulf.
"Fars and Tasnim, two semiofficial Iranian news agencies, said Iran had approved the passage of some Chinese vessels under rules set by Tehran for managing traffic in the waterway.
"Fars reported that the crossings had begun on Wednesday night, following a diplomatic outreach by China’s foreign minister and its ambassador to Iran. It said the move was rooted in the two countries’ strategic partnership."
Trump's big plan was to try to jawbone the Chinese into putting pressure on Iran. Instead, Iran and China worked things out between themselves. The Chinese have clean sailing ahead after Trump's disastrous blunder that has queered things for most every country on earth, and most every country on earth understands that.
Northrup— You have no idea how this will work out. I'd advise you to wait forty-eight hours before opening your cloacal vent to opine.
"I'd advise you to wait forty-eight hours before opening your cloacal vent to opine."
Excellent! Advice we should all accept.
So: you are advocating that no dissenting opinions be expressed on this forum. Why?
Howard,
It is not suggested that dissenting opinions be not expressed, but rather that they be considered opinions. The war provides ample opportunity for propaganda in excess, from both sides, in an unrelenting flow. Trump says something? Iran says something completely different? It is the Internets...who knows what is true or false? An immediacy of a reported outrage brings emotion to the lips of many...48 hours or so? Not so much, but maybe the event becomes clearer. A week or month as you aside, might not be out of line.
We know Iran lies non-stop, and the truth and Trump tend to run away from each other as well.
I agree entirely with your assessment of the (dis)information ecosystem online, but suggesting that we each wait a couple of days before responding to Jim's assertions is not a solution. Who will check back through all of the chaff of this forum to do that?
I base my posts here on what I believe to be verifiable facts and sound sources. I parted company with Jim in a post on March 2nd and, if permitted here, will resubmit that same post after three months and after six.
So far, my original contentions are holding up very well, and Jim's "five-day war" has been disproven. If you can propose a better way to make this a meaningful forum, please do.
Oh, and Howard..."splenetic invective" is excellent turn of phrase.
Waiting is easy. Let's see what happens and note it in a week, or a month, or six months...
That sounds like a threat. You really, really just can't take being disagreed with, can you? What a delicate doily.
Well, neither can you.
I invite disagreement, Kathy, but all that those who disagree with Jim on this forum get is splenetic invective. Why don't you prove yourself capable of meaningful disagreement by presenting some actual argumentation, preferably backed up by some evidence? None of you seem capable of doing that. Jim used to be, but now just says "Fuck you."
Ah, lost cause. “The Bible tells her so…” Not sure which translation, likely the Scofield 19th century version though it’s of little matter.
The message of Jesus, has been fractured, distorted and reinvented by humans due to the need for various eschatological explanations necessary to amend the original plan.
Anyway, debating the Religious Right in particular is a waste of bandwidth.
Tit for tat. Shame on you.
Of course I can. What I can't do, and would not if I could, is ban people for voicing opinions that annoy me. Kunstler has and does do that, notably to yours truly before this site was on Substack.
MAGA people have all kinds of loud opinions about censorship when they think Twitter/X is doing it to them. Their opinions about censorship are equally loud when someone like me arrives to disagree with them, only now they're loudly in favour of it.
Yeah, as if China was ever going to accept not doing business with Iran. Trump is ridiculous.