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Author Topic: The American Dream  (Read 1788 times)

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Surly1

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The American Dream
« on: August 19, 2019, 09:47:34 am »

That-Was-The-Week-That-W-That-Was-The-Week-473964gc2smFrom the keyboard of Surly1
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“We're facing mass starvation in the next 10 years,  social collapse and the possible extinction of the human race. It couldn't be worse. So that situation has come about over 30 years of failure-- failure by the elites, failure by the governments, and failure by campaigners....The public Is now aware that the elites are taking them to their death!”  

--Roger Hallam


Long before there was a Doomstead Diner, long before 9-11, there was Milton William Cooper. Cooper was the greatest conspiracist of this generation and a man you may not have heard of. His book Behold A Pale Horse  was an underground sensation and the ur-source for many later conspiracy theorists. Cooper's "Hour of the Time" radio program was also broadcast on short wave, circulated and downloaded long before podcasts existed. Cooper was right about many things, wrong about others, Yet he predicted future events and trends accurately, and knew that by telling the truth, TPTB would come for him. Which they did.

Behold A Pale Horse is what's called a "prison book" because it's one of the most read books in prison, passed from hand to hand until the spines break. This book is kept behind shelves in bookstores because it is also one of the most stolen books in history. More than any other single influence, encountering this book led me to distrust the so-called "official story," and which eventually put me on a path to the Diner.

I'm currently reading Cooper's biography, Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America,  by Mark Jacobson. Cooper was a complicated man with a mercurial temper; he was also a black-helicopter paranoid who provided some of the ideology for the right-wing militia movement and mother's milk for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and many others like him. From thre flyleaf:

"We are living in a time of unprecedented distrust in America: Faith in the government is at an all-time low, and political groups on both sides of the aisle are able to tout preposterous conspiracy theories as gospel, without much opposition. "Fake news" is the order of the day...  A former U.S. naval intelligence worker, Milton William Cooper published his manifesto Behold a Pale Horse in 1991. Since then it has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming the number-one bestseller in the American prison system.

Decades before QAnon, false flags, “crisis actors” and Alex Jones, there was William Cooper. Some call Cooper the father of the so-called Patriot movement and the spiritual godfather to the Alex Joneses and QAnons of the world. My politics could not be farther frm those people, but Cooper had some deep insight into the sickness of our times. Every story we treat on this week has running through it the pervasive and overwhelming lack of trust that afflicts our times, which Cooper, however great his flaws, pointed out early and repeatedly.

An unpleasant alcoholic and perhaps bi-polar to boot, Cooper died in a shootout with Apache County, AZ police in 2001, one month after September 11, the same year in which he had predicted the coming catastrophe. He leaves a complicated legacy, but the distrust of "official stories" he advanced permeates the following stories. Here's this week in doom.


Autopsy finds broken bones in Jeffrey Epstein’s neck, deepening questions around his death

On August 15, an autopsy found that financier Jeffrey Epstein suffered multiple breaks in his neck bones, according to two people familiar with the findings. This raised questions regarding the mystery about the circumstances around his death. Specifically, his hyoid bone was broken,

"...which in men is near the Adam’s apple. Such breaks can occur in those who hang themselves, particularly if they are older, according to forensics experts and studies on the subject. But they are more common in victims of homicide by strangulation, the experts said.

The office of New York City’s chief medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, completed an autopsy of Epstein’s body Sunday... Asked about the neck injuries, Sampson said in a statement that no single factor in an autopsy can alone provide a conclusive answer about what happened."

Nevertheless, the ME presented findings that Epstein's death was a suicide. Fair enough, except that according to some anecdotal sources, Epstein couldn't empty a bag of garbage without staff help, so one can consider how he was able to "hang himself" from the top bunk on a room with seven foot ceilings, yet somehow sustain injuries consistent with strangulation. His cellmate, a former state trooper, was supposedly excused from his cell. Epstein's brother has supposedly ID'd the body, an identification as relaibler as the location of JFK's brain.

And Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy concluded with there medical examiner declaring his death was a suicide by hanging. So see, written evidence. Conclusions. Case closed. No need for a messy and troublesome murder investigation, the results of which might outrage the proles before the entire matter disappears down the memory hole.

Medical examiner rules Epstein death a suicide by hanging

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a statement that she made the suicide determination “after careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings.”

Sampson’s announcement came as a Justice Department official told The Associated Press that some prison staffers believed to have relevant information aren’t cooperating with investigators.

Epstein’s lawyers said they were “not satisfied” with Sampson’s conclusions and that they would conduct their own investigation, including seeking to obtain any video of the area around Epstein’s cell from the time leading to his death.

Uh-huh. Nothing to see here citizen: move along.

Cover Up? Epstein Shipped $100K Cement Mixer To 'Pedo Island' Weeks Before Crushing Exposé

Approximately three weeks before a series of damning articles hit in the Miami Herald, Jeffrey Epstein paid up front to have a $100,000 cement mixer express-shipped to his infamous Little St. James 'pedo island' at great expense, according to the Daily Mail

The ****, who was found dead by apparent suicide on Saturday while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, got the Carmix 5.5 XL self loading concrete mixer delivered to Little St. James on November 7 last year.

Epstein was in such a hurry that he paid for the machine up front so it would arrive sooner - even though it meant being responsible if it got damaged in transit.

Three weeks later the Miami Herald published a series of articles called 'Perversion of Justice' on November 28, which eventually led to Epstein being arrested in July.

Shipping experts told DailyMailTV that the possibility that it was 'used to literally cover up evidence cannot be discounted'. 

Zero Hedge notes that 

On Monday, the FBI and NYPD raided Little St. James island last week, packing up evidence, although videos reveal some of it had already been moved prior to the raid. Perhaps they should have raided the island the same day he was arrested?

Who Protected Epstein for Decades, and Why?

One might well ask the above question, as did the redoubtable Charles Hugh Smith. Smith notes, " 'Epstein was an intelligence asset' is just a tissue-thin cover for a much more destructive reality: those at the top of the American state have no moral compass at all."

The rot goes much deeper. As Smith poses the question, he gestures at an answer:

There are several explanations floating around for the why: those in power enjoyed their diabolically exploitive visits to Lolita Island and wanted to continue their criminal gratifications.

The second explanation is that Epstein was a spy for a "friendly" foreign intelligence agency and therefore off-limits. ("Friendly" is in quotes because when it comes to intelligence, one's "friends" can do more damage than one's worst enemies.) 

Let's say this turns out to be true. Wouldn't the NSA, CIA and FBI know of Epstein's activities and connections to a foreign intelligence service? Of course they would. So at a minimum, we can infer the NSA, CIA and FBI enabled Epstein's operation to continue for some benefit, perhaps relating to "honeypot" blackmail and control of "assets," unwilling or willing.

Explaining the wrist-slap sentence of a decade ago and the subsequent promotions, praise and honors for the enablers. The entire Epstein affair, roping in as it did royals, presidents and high rollers of every sort, feeds the narrative that you can't believe anything the government says.

...corruption and debauchery undermine the legitimacy of the state, and so doing nothing while Epstein et al. gratified the desires of the rich and powerful for degenerate debauchery was treasonous: the American state will collapse not from military conflict but from moral decay, and every individual who enabled (or made use of) that moral decay is guilty of treason.

The Epstein affair and the "official stories" that will emerge therefrom will arrive pre-disbelieved. No one will trust the word of any official source. We've already seen speculation that Epstein was switched out in the wee small hours and a dead body was left behind. And even if the cadaver is Epstein's, no part of the official story accounts for the shrieking reportedly heard from his cell. Such widespread cynicism fits like a hand in glove the agenda of those with a 50-year plan to make people despise government so that they will no longer see it as the guarantor of last resort for their rights. It serves the agenda of those who wish to shrink the size of government so that they can drown it in a bathtub. And of Tangerine Twitler, who wants to blame Bill Clinton or Obama for his own sins of commission..

If you want to be fully read in on all matters Epstein, I strongly recommend following Mint Press' Whitney Webb. She connects the dots. Which is difficult, because if you read this, the roots of Epstein's touch a Mossad blackmail op reaching back decades...

Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal


 The picture painted by the evidence is not that of a direct Epstein tie to a single intelligence agency, but a of a web linking key members of the Mega Group, politicians, and officials in both the U.S. and Israel, and an organized-crime network with deep business and intelligence ties in both nations.


Cooking the Arctic

We know everything we need to know about the climate crises and the causes, but, in the face of all the warning signs, are pressing the accelerator to the floor. It's almost as if the one percent who possess bunkers, hired security and all the money siphoned from working people over the last 40 years (ever since Dutch declared "Morning in America") were intent on exterminating the proles while waiting out the maelstrom in air conditioned bunkers. It is abundantly self-evident that we we know what is happening and know what needs to be done, but refuse to do it because to do might cost some oil company profits. Here are some stories that moved this week.

Governments are failing to understand global catastrophic risks and need to take urgent action

A report published this week by Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) today release a new report on what governments can do to understand and inform policy around these risks, which could threaten the global population. It is straightforward and decidedly unpretty, unless your take is that "threaten(ing) the global population" is the point of current policy. Nothing else makes sense.

The likelihood that a global catastrophe will occur in the next 20 years is uncertain, say the researchers, but the potential severity means that national governments have a responsibility to their citizens to manage these types of risks.

Des Browne, former UK Secretary of State for Defence, said: “National governments struggle with understanding and developing policy for the elimination or mitigation of extreme risks, including global catastrophic risks. Effective policies may compel fundamental structural reform of political systems, but we do not need, nor do we have the time, to wait for such change.

Governments must sufficiently understand the risks to design mitigation, preparation and response measures. But political systems often do not provide sufficient incentives for policy-makers to think about emerging or long-term issues, especially where vested interests and tough trade-offs are at play.

Hat tip to knarf for this Letter to the Future:

Scientists bid farewell to the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change...

Scientists say they are bidding farewell to Okjökull, the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change, in a funeral of sorts.
 Researchers will gather Sunday in Borgarfjörður, Iceland, to memorialize Okjökull, known as Ok for short, after it lost its status as a glacier in 2014. The inscription, titled "A letter to the future," on the monument paints a bleak picture.
 "Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and know what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it," the plaque reads in English and Icelandic.

Greenland's ice sheet just lost 11 billion tons of ice -- in one day

After months of record temperatures, scientists say Greenland's ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean -- equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools. 

Greenland's ice sheet usually melts during the summer, but the melt season typically begins around the end of May; this year it began at the start. It has been melting "persistently" over the past four months, which have recorded all time temperature highs...

Greenland's ice sheet is the second biggest in the world and this season's ice melt has already contributed around half a millimeter to global sea levels. It comes in a summer where the Arctic has experienced "unprecedented" wildfires, which scientists say have been facilitated by high temperatures.

A Weather Station Above the Arctic Circle Hit 94.6 Degrees Fahrenheit

 Amid the hottest month in recorded history, some records still stand out as absolutely jaw dropping. That’s definitely true of a measurement made in the Arctic this July.

According to data released in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) monthly climate analysis, a weather station in Sweden north of the Arctic Circle hit a stunning 94.6 Fahrenheit (34.8 degrees Celsius) last month. As an isolated data point, it would be shocking. But coupled with a host of other maladies, from no sea ice within 125 miles of Alaska to the unruly fires ravaging Siberia, it’s an exclamation point on the climate crisis.

The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing

A stubborn blue spot of cool ocean temperatures stands out like the proverbial sore thumb in a recent NASA image of the warming world – a circle of cool blue on a planet increasingly shaded in hot red.

A region of the North Atlantic south of Greenland has experienced some of its coldest temperatures on record in recent years, a cooling unprecedented in the past thousand years. What explains that anomaly?

Climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, in this month’s “This is Not Cool” video, explains that this phenomenon may be an indication that the North Atlantic current, part of a larger global ocean circulation, is slowing down.


After reading the above cluster of related climate change articles, a reasonable person has little option. other than to conclude what one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion ,Roger Hallam, has concluded:


 Roger Hallam's BBC interview

This interview would have never seen the light of day in the US. They'd have  quicker than you could say Rutger Bregman, and would have had Hallam's children murdered before letting this see the light of day. The interviewer for BBC HardTalk is Stephen Sackur, a choice Asshat Elite prostitute who does his Ken Dilanian best to discredit his guest and marginalize his POV. His guest Roger Hallam, one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, is simply not having any of Sackur's marginalizations, and insists on telling the truth as it is, rather than the way the elites want it massaged.

Excerpt:

Stephen Sackur: So on the science there's no disagreement but are you saying that groups like Greenpeace and many many others have fundamentally failed in their mission to convince the world that things need to change?

Roger Hallam: Yes.  We fundamentally failed. I mean I failed, other activists have failed, campaigners have failed, we've all failed. The fact of
 the matter is were facing mass starvation in the next 10 years,  social collapse and the possible extinction of the human race. It couldn't be worse. So that situation has come about over 30 years of failure failure by the elites, failure by the governments, and failure by 
 campaigners. 

Stephen Sackur: Your message is entirely about failure, it's about negativity. It is in a way I suppose a howl of rage and despair.

Roger Hallam: That's right it is and you think that is a message that the people of the world and the political leaders of the world are going to respond to ,yes and the reason why is because when people go through depression and rage they come out and decide to do things- Extinction Rebellion is the most successful climate change movement in the UK...

  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HyaxctatdA


5 questions about Donald Trump's interest in buying Greenland, answered

Amid the speculation and disbelief about Trump's trial balloon about buying Greenland, one might wonder why a US President would want to purchase an island that is 80% covered by an ice sheet, and where fewer than 60,000 people live?

The first is because Greenland is widely believed to be hugely rich in natural resources -- including iron ore, lead, zinc, diamonds, gold, rare earth elements, uranium and oil. And much of it is currently untapped, due to the fact that, well, 80% of the country is covered by an ice sheet. But due to global warming, that ice sheet is melting rapidly -- this summer NASA scientists observed two of the largest melts in the history of Greenland -- and that erosion of the ice sheet is expected to make the mining of Greenland's natural resources more doable.

The second is for geopolitical reasons. The United States already has a foothold in the country -- Thule Air Base- and, as The Wall Street Journal, which broke the Greenland purchase story, notes:

"Located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it includes a radar station that is part of a U.S. ballistic missile early-warning system. The base is also used by the U.S. Air Force Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command."

In actuality the idea is not as insane as the ravings of an unhinged lunatic might make it seem. In 1946, Truman's Secretary of State broached the idea with the Danish foreign minister at a United Nations meeting in New York to no avail. And almost 100 years before that, Secretary of State William Seward -- he of the "Seward's Folly" purchase of Alaska -- apparently looked into buying Greenland from the Danes. Likewise, no sale.


China Readies 'Giant Forks' To Subdue Hong Kong Protesters

Hong Kong protesters may be in for an electrifying experience after Chinese riot police were pictured training with 'terrifying giant fork devices' designed to subdue humans and pin them to the ground, according to the Mirror

While unconfirmed, the 8-foot poles with U-shaped prongs are believed to be able to deliver an electric shock.

The protests, now in their 11th week, have been alternating between the streets, subways, and airports of Hong Kong. While largely peaceful, there is a growing contingent of activists using violence and property destruction to protest the government, resulting in police tear gassings and beatings. 

On Thursday, AFP published photos showing more military buildup unfolding in Shenzen. The photos revealed what Reuters reports are hundreds of members of the People's Armed Police, a pro-regime paramilitary organization, carrying out military exercises in a stadium in Shenzen. They could be preparing to carry out demonstrations of its own in Hong Kong.

On Saturday, businesses shuttered their doors and windows in anticipation of more mayhem, however cloudy skies put an early damper on the demonstrations. 

 


 Short Takes

Since we're already over 3000 words, I'll just leave you with the assorted stories and links I collected over the week for you to follow for your amusement.

Trump officials worry warming could hurt the grid

Power Grid Chaos Jolts Texas On Friday, Energy Costs Triple Amid Heat Wave

What could possibly go wrong?

Trump to Endangered Species: Drop Dead

Every now and then in the hellacious 24-hour news cycle that is the Trump presidency, there comes a story that is so absurd and yet utterly predictable it stops me in my tracks. This is one of those stories.

Dangerous Lake Erie Algal Bloom Is Now Eight Times the Size of Cleveland

Arctic sea ice loaded with microplastics

At first glance, it looks like hard candy laced with flecks of fake fruit, or a third grader's art project confected from recycled debris. In reality, it's a sliver of Arctic Ocean sea ice riddled with microplastics, extracted by scientists from deep inside an ice block that likely drifted southward past Greenland into Canada's increasingly navigable Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...

NC Town Rejects Solar Farm Amid Worries It Would "Suck Up All The Energy From The Sun"

You can't make this stuff up.

Exposed: State Department Official Posted in Nazi Charlottesville Chats

‘Fattest president since Taft’: Anthony Scaramucci’s Twitter account suspended after he calls out Trump

A Newsweek journalist discovered that "MAGA" means "sucker" in Nigerian

Study Finds Rise In 'Doomsday Prepping' Due To Mainstream American 'Culture Of Fear'

Climate crisis reducing land’s ability to sustain humanity, says IPCC


banksy 07-flower-thrower-wallpaperSurly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone.

« Last Edit: March 28, 2022, 03:25:38 pm by AGelbert »

AGelbert

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👍 EXCELLENT summary of the dismal situation we find ourselves saddled with. Although you covered that quite well in discussing the reality of how untrustworthy our government crooks and liars, and the news media lackeys that carry BULLSHIT water for them, are, the article on the questions about Greenland and Trump's 🦀 interest displays this disingenuous BULLSHIT media technique.

Among those five questions about Trump's 🦀 interest in Greenland, the glaringly obvious GIGANTIC ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (NOT INCLUDED) QUESTION IS: If Global Warming, AS TRUMP HAS CLAIMED, is a "hoax cooked up by the Chinese or Climate Scientists looking for funding", WhyTF is Trump 🦀 interested in CASHING IN ON THE MELTING OF THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET FROM 🦕🦖 HYDROCARBON BURNING CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE ⁉️

ANSWER: Because 😈 Trump KNOWS that BURNING HYDROCARBONS IS CAUSING THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET TO MELT.


And furthermore, the news media DOES NOT want we-the-people to CALL TRUMP ON HIS BULLSHIT, so they cook up a clever five question DISTRACTION from the FACT that Trump and his 🦕🦖 HYDROCARBON HELLSPAWN OWNERS are doing EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER to accelerate Catastrophic Climate Change through global warming, PERIOD.
 



A world of trouble is no longer at our doorstep; it's in what has been transformed from the living room to the dying room.   

 The 🦕🦖 Hydrocarbon 👹 Hellspawn Fossil Fuelers DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME, but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or   PAYING THE FINE! Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 05:07:34 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: This Week In Doom 8/18/19
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2019, 09:03:06 am »
For AG:


AGelbert

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Trump's 🦀 Greenland 🐉🦕🦖 PLAN
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2019, 03:32:44 pm »
For AG:

[/center]

;D

I read in the Palmer Report that Trumplethinskin tried to make a joke about his interest in Greenland by claiming he was not planning on building a Trump Tower there. Well, for one of those few times in Mr. Trump's life, he was actually telling the truth. He 🦀 and his 🦕🦖 hydrocarbon industry & 🐉 minerals mining polluters 'R' US OWNERS were never planning to build a Trump tower there. Below, please find, what his plans, which have not changed, regardless of his baloney rhetoric about "no longer being interested in Greenland", ARE:


Denmark may have a plan to deal with Trump's 🐉🦕🦖 plan (see below).

Tue, 08/20/2019 - 15:20

Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank

SNIPPET: 

If you already saw that one coming too then kick back and relax with this short article suggesting that Denmark buy the US: ‘If Denmark’s bid for the United States is accepted, the Scandinavian nation has ambitious plans for its new acquisition. “We believe that, by giving the U.S. an educational system and national health care, it could be transformed from a vast land mass into a great nation,” the spokesperson said.’

read more:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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The Lyin' King
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2019, 09:10:22 am »


That-Was-The-Week-That-W-That-Was-The-Week-473964gc2smFrom the keyboard of Surly1
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Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on August 26, 2019

“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.” 
 ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


Madness occasionally asserts itself on the world stage.

"The Madness of King George" is a stage and film production about Britain's George III, known through history as "the mad king who lost America." George III was king of Great Britain during some of the nation’s most challenging and tumultuous years, including those of the American Revolution. By accounts he was a dutiful, steady monarch who guided Britain through the French revolution and later Napoleon's rise and fall. In 1788, illness brought on his mental breakdown, but he briefly recovered for a time. His later escalating bouts of insanity led Parliament to pass a Regency Act, by which the fate of the empire devolved to his oldest son, Prince George. This young man was faced with the unenviable position of having to govern according to the increasingly erratic whims of his batty father. It is thought by some that George's erraric behavior had its roots in disease, but this assessment is by no means unanimous.

Do a search for, "the Madness of King Donald" and you'll find a number of articles speculating that the so-called Leader of the Free World appears to be batshit crazy, a speculation not necessarily recent, but brought into sharp relief by statements that the Burnt-umber Buffoon made this week. The record is filled with what appears to be Trumpian signs of cognitive disorder, pre-dementia or even sheer delirium, whether it is the series of incoherent tweets, the ranting and unhinged raving at media briefings, or taking off on rabbit-hole tangents at public rallies to the applause and adoration of his bobblehead followers.

Some might think that such speculation is baldly partisan, and as a nearly-bald partisan I might agree. But the level of barking-mad, batshit-crazy reached a fever pitch this week...

King Lear is one of our most popular exemplars of power and madness. Like Trump, Lear is susceptible to the flattery of daughters, who fawningly profess their love, and Lear rewards them in kind. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, does not play that game, and is disinherited by her erratic and petulant father. They are eventually reconciled, but the peace comes too late in the arc of the story for it to end in anything but tragedy. It is too soon to know whether Lear and Trump equate, but the tragedy that unfolds is more for the American people than a mad king.

The madness of King Donald: is Trump really losing his mind?

So people are actively asking this question. The problem is that those people are not among his ironclad supporters, who still believe every word he says. The fact that Trump's penchant for pathological lying is now under being examined in the context of his sanity is explained away as, "fake news." 

If Rick Reilly’s new book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump is anything to go by, Trump “cheats like a mafia accountant”.

Among many eye-catching anecdotes, he cites caddies at a New York golf club nicknaming Trump “Pelé”, after the Brazilian soccer legend, because of the president’s habit of kicking his ball out of the rough and up the fairway to win at all costs.

Increasingly, mental health experts have been getting increasingly vocal in crossing that Rubicon known as the "Goldwater Rule," enacted by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to avoid armchair diagnoses by mental health pros expressing their own political biases in psychiatric terms. This was enacted in the wake of the 1964 presidential campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, in reaction to a magazine survey of psychiatrists which attempted to question Barry Goldwater’s mental fitness.

[I]t is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement”

Yet for all that, some are calling for an examination to assess whether Trump is actually losing his mind.


TRUMP DECLARES HIMSELF “KING OF ISRAEL,” THE “SECOND COMING OF GOD

The president is sick of “disloyal” American Jews, who apparently don’t know what’s good for them or how to properly vote. But “Jewish people in Israel love him,” according to the crazed conspiracy theorist Trump quoted on Twitter.

It all started with a classic Trump humblebrag. “Thank you to Wayne Allyn Root for the very nice words,” Trump said before quoting something the evangelical Christian Root had said.

“President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world … and the Jewish people in Israel love him … like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God,” the quote said.

Root, who lives in Las Vegas, says he founded the Republican Jewish Coalition chapter in Nevada. He had also previously been hired by Sheldon Adelson (the casino magnate and a major funder of the RJC and Republican candidates along with Jewish causes,)to write a column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal after buying the newspaper in 2015. Root is also the author of the book “Angry White Male: How the Donald Trump Phenomenon is Changing America,” also published in that year.

Wayne Allyn Root—a self-described “Jew turned evangelical Christian”—is an unhinged conspiracy theorist who believes the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was a “coordinated Muslim terror attack” by ISIS and that George Soros paid actors to stage the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville that included Nazi chants like “Jews will not replace us.”

Quoting Wayne Allyn Root is quite a feat. For the non-initiate, Root has been snout-to-rear end with trump for years. Root, the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, announced a devoted (and some moight say slavish) support for the failed businessman nearly as soon as Trump announced he was running in June 2015.

As Charlie Pierce observed,

(The last time "King of the Jews" trended, things did not end well.) 

Trump, incredibly, seems to believe that he’s going to win over Jewish voters by telling them they don’t know what’s good for them. Perhaps he's been influenced by the fact that Jews went for Hillary Clinton. in 2016. 

Biographer Tony Schwartz, who ghost-wrote Trump’s The Art of the Deal puts it, the fact that most of us are “constrained by the truth” gives Trump a “strange advantage” through his complete disregard for it. It certainly works with his supporters, as he polls at a consistent 90 per cent approval among republicans...

Many news organizations have attempted to document the number of trump lies, which by now number over 12,000 such misstatementsDonald Trump has lied an average of 13 times a day since becoming president, one analysis finds. This body of vile work has become a fact-checking chore for journalists and an alternative reality for his supporters. According to a Slate article, one in six Americans believe what he says no matter what he says.

Between the day of his inauguration (Jan. 20, 2017) and Aug. 5, 2019, Trump has made 12,019 statements that were either false or misleading, according to the Washington Post. While that averages out to 13 such statements a day since Trump assumed office, the number has increased recently. Since April 26, when Trump made his 10,000th false or misleading statement, he has averaged 20 such statements every day, or one every 72 minutes.

One example breaking this week was this Pied Piper fantasy: 

Trump said doctors left operating rooms to greet him after mass shootings. Hospitals in Dayton and El Paso say that’s not true.

Speaking to reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Wednesday, President Trump claimed he was warmly welcomed at hospitals in the wake of recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and intimated that surgeons had even deserted their patients to meet him.

“The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms,” Trump said. “There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it.”

But the hospitals he visited say that isn’t what happened — and that doctors would never pause surgery to greet the president.


The "Chosen One" says he wanted to give himself the medal of honor but his staff talked him out of it.

“That was a big day, Medal of Honor. Nothing like the Medal of Honor,” he continued. “I wanted one, but they told me I don't qualify, Woody. I said, 'Can I give it to myself anyway?' They said, 'I don't think that's a good idea.'” 💡 

Amid scattered chuckles, Trump concluded: “Great, great people. These are great, great men and women that get congressional Medal of Honor. Thank you, Woody.”

The president’s assessment that he should receive the nation’s highest award for acts of military valor followed his statement earlier Wednesday afternoon that he is “the chosen one” in relation to his administration’s trade conflict with China — a proclamation he turned to the sky to deliver. 

Trump never served in the military and was granted five draft deferments — four for college and one for bone spurs in his heel.


Why does Trump continue to lie, with the lies becoming more baroque and more frequent? Salon offers one theory:

One possible explanation for the increase in the number of Trump's lies is that as the president has continued to lie with relative political impunity, he has grown desensitized to the instinctive reluctance most people feel about saying that which they know to be severely exaggerated or flat-out untrue.

People become inured to lies in the same way they do to perfume or medications. Whatever you may think of him, Trump has been a shatterer of norms, an upender of precedent, a flouter of both law and established procedure. Our collective purchase on reality may just be another norm shattered, There are true believers, those who think his continual gaffes, lies and blunders are part of a grand plan, like the Q-Anon people who believe that Trump and Robert Mueller are collaborating on a plan to take down the "deep state" and the pedo ring being run out of the non-existent basement of Comet Pizza by Hillary Clinton.

Trump's real effect is to exact a massive toll on us all, in terms of time, attention and energy stolen from decent souls obliged to pay attention to rage tweets, helicopter-wash press gaggles, and on-again, off-again policy pronouncements. "Trump fatigue syndrome" is a real thing, and perhaps the point; while most of us find ourselves mentally and spiritually exhausted by the serial idiocy of the Tweeter-in-Chief, and turn away from the news in disgust, the better for his appointed foxes to loot every henhouse.


banksy 07-flower-thrower-wallpaperSurly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.


AGelbert

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"Trump's real effect is to exact a massive toll on us all, in terms of time, attention and energy stolen from decent souls ..."


True, that. :(

Considering the nature of his mission on behalf of the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn that OWN him, it is a wonder he hasn't gone totally bonkers already. Remember that Trump's main task is to front for the polluters in the USA, particularly those Big oil and gas BASTARDS in Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma that are doing their damnest to melt all that ice in the Arctic and Greenland because it is in the way of gettin' MORE oil and gas.

His handlers know that Catastrophic Climate Change is now in our faces almost daily, so their bought and paid for POTUS has to engage in daily pretzel logic to "justify" the incredibly stupid and obviously destructive nature of his mission.


Yeah, he is the epitome of Ugly Americanism. However, that, unfortunately, is not really that uncommon in this country. Anyone that reads Zero Hedge, a web site supposedly about financial matters, not NAZI racist crap, learns quickly how completely divorced from any sense of moral responsibility to fellow humans, and the other life forms in our biosphere, MOST of the posters there are. Instead of showing concern for the CLIMATE 💣 ShitSTORM 💥 that burning 🔥hydrocarbons is causing, too many Americans CELEBRATE this EMPATHY DEFICIT DISORDERED BEHAVIOR as "individualism" and "freedom". Trump is part of that group of unethical arrogant pissants who do not care who they hurt or what they trash as long as they can grab some money along the way. They really ARE a dime a dozen in the USA.

Trump's racism and serial mendacity are abhorrent and dangerous, but that isn't the worst of it.

The most destructive aspect of Trump's Planetary Predation Policy is his goosing of the giveaways to oil and gas corporations. The 🦕🦖 Oil and Gas Corporations in those four states I mentioned above are quite literally KILLING us. Trump has to go and all this Hydrocarbon Hellspawn Welfare Queenery flipped to strong punitve action or we are ☠️ TOAST.


 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: The Lyin' King
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2019, 08:33:09 pm »
Quote

Isaac Peres 👍
One of the most despicable and insensitive things I have witnessed in 60 years of watching the American political scene was when that colossal orange POS was throwing rolls of glorified napkins at Puerto Rican citizens fighting biblical level floods from Hurricane Maria. It was Trumpo's "let them eat cake" moment.

It would ironic indeed if this weekend's hurricane mowed down that gaudy, overpriced, golden toilet in Palm Beach that he calls "Mar-a-Lago".

James Sullivan | 12:01 pm EDT August 29, 2019
Palmer Report » Analysis


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: The Lyin' King
« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2019, 08:56:28 pm »
The long awaited DESPERATELY NEEDED sigh of relief

Ron Leshnower | 4:30 pm EDT August 29, 2019
Palmer Report » Analysis

You don’t need to be an expert on Donald Trump’s speech patterns to know that when this raving egotist claims superiority in a subject, it almost certainly means the opposite—that he’s at the other extreme of whatever it is he is claiming to be. Trump sometimes follows up such ludicrous assertions with an offer of “proof” that is laughably inapplicable and only helps further expose Trump’s fraud.

This tired linguistic exercise happened Monday on the world stage concerning a topic of no less importance than the wellbeing of our physical world.

In a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, Trump declared his alleged commitment to our planet, boasting, “I’m an environmentalist . I lot of people don’t understand that.”


Next, Trump offered the basis for his claim: “I have done more environmental impact statements probably than anybody, that’s, I guess—I can say, definitely—because I’ve done many, many, many of them—more than anybody that’s ever been President, or Vice President, or anything even close to President.” Although that sentence was garbled, even for Trump, he was no doubt referring to the environmental impact statements that are required by law to show a real estate project’s potential effects on the environment. The thing is, Trump would not have been personally involved in crafting any environmental impact statement in connection with any of his deals. More importantly, the presence of environmental impact statements in Trump’s deals is merely a sign of legal compliance, not some act of love for our planet.

Before ending the press conference with Macron, Trump added, “I think I know more about the environment than most people.” If Trump really knows and cares so much, then why did he skip the G7 working session on climate, oceans, and biodiversity on Monday, lie about it, then dismiss the whole topic as a “niche issue”? Of course, it’s for the same reason that Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which is that he cares nothing about the environment. Trump just loves pretending while watching others cringe as he takes 🦕🦖 steps to cause additional harm. No one knows when Trump’s last day in office will be, but when that day comes , Earth will breathe a long-awaited sigh of relief.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-long-awaited-sigh-of-relief/20441/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: The Lyin' King
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2019, 06:43:32 am »
Quote

Isaac Peres 👍
One of the most despicable and insensitive things I have witnessed in 60 years of watching the American political scene was when that colossal orange POS was throwing rolls of glorified napkins at Puerto Rican citizens fighting biblical level floods from Hurricane Maria. It was Trumpo's "let them eat cake" moment.

It would ironic indeed if this weekend's hurricane mowed down that gaudy, overpriced, golden toilet in Palm Beach that he calls "Mar-a-Lago".


Hurricane Dorian Totally Misses Puerto Rico and is Heading Straight for Mar-a-Lago

Quote
Mar-a-Lago remains in the “cone of uncertainty” — the range of potential paths the hurricane could take as it strengthens in the Caribbean.
Previous hurricane models suggested Dorian could pass right through the so-called Winter White House, a frequent destination for Trump’s working vacations.

AGelbert

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Karma never forgets an address. 😀
« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2019, 01:41:15 pm »
Quote

Isaac Peres 👍
One of the most despicable and insensitive things I have witnessed in 60 years of watching the American political scene was when that colossal orange POS was throwing rolls of glorified napkins at Puerto Rican citizens fighting biblical level floods from Hurricane Maria. It was Trumpo's "let them eat cake" moment.

It would ironic indeed if this weekend's hurricane mowed down that gaudy, overpriced, golden toilet in Palm Beach that he calls "Mar-a-Lago".

Hurricane Dorian Totally Misses Puerto Rico and is Heading Straight for Mar-a-Lago

Quote
Mar-a-Lago remains in the “cone of uncertainty” — the range of potential paths the hurricane could take as it strengthens in the Caribbean.

Previous hurricane models suggested Dorian could pass right through the so-called Winter White House, a frequent destination for Trump’s working vacations.



« Last Edit: August 30, 2019, 02:42:03 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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This Week in Doom 9/1: Rat Bastards
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2019, 01:47:48 pm »


That-Was-The-Week-That-W-That-Was-The-Week-473964gc2smFrom the keyboard of Surly1
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                                                            Anthony Freda

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on September 1, 2019

“This country was born on violenceViolence is as American as cherry pie."  --H. Rap Brown


I awoke this morning to see what news had broken and found this:

10 injured in shooting after high school football game in Alabama

At least 10 teenagers were injured when a shooting broke out after a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday night, authorities said. Nine of the victims suffered gunshot wounds.

Well, it's Alabama, and it's FOOTBAW, so thus perhaps reason enough. But ';m old enough to remember going to high school football games without fearing for my life.

"Why are the young people bringing this type of violence to public events?" Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste asked in a news conference Friday. "They're bringing their beefs that they have with each other in their neighborhoods and they're putting other people in harm's way."

Let's not forget the exortations by Trump to do that very thing.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump encouraged a crowd of supporters Monday to "knock the hell" out of anyone who looked like they might throw fruits and vegetables at him, and promised to pay the legal fees for anyone who took him up on his suggestion.

Even though Trump bade his supporters to practice rough justice, some will find it hard to lay the pervasive strain of American violence at his feet. Aside from giving aid and succor to violent white nationalists, and voice to the prion disease that afflicts his most rabid supporters, that is. Back to the news:

At least 5 dead after more than 20 shot as gunman targets random victims in Odessa area

At least five people died after more than 20 people were shot Saturday when a gunman hijacked a postal truck and began shooting randomly in the Odessa area of West Texas, authorities say.

At least three law enforcement officers — a state trooper, an Odessa police officer and a Midland police officer — were among those shot. They were in stable condition Saturday night, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Another weekend, another shooting. Or two. Sandy Hook, Charleston, Orlando, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Dayton, Virginia Beach, and now in Texas. Again.

American history is written in blood. American violence has its roots in the wars of extermination fought against native peoples, chattel  slavery that built the wealth of a planter class (the enforcement for which was enshrined in the Second Amendment), wars against one another expanding the "frontier" (who doesn't love a good western?) and now the endless economic competition of all against all. We have normalized the mass slaughter of our fellow citizens to the extent that weekend mass shootings barely raise an eyebrow. Even though 90 per cent of our fellow citizens (and gun owners) welcome mandatory background checks for gun purchases, the NRA and its hireling legislators (aslosh in laundered rubles) won't allow such a bill to come to a vote.  

Meanwhile, out here in flyover country, where tariffs bite, where soybeans molder in silos, where Joe Sixpack and his wife both work two jobs to make ends meet, where minimum wage doesn't cover the rent anywhere in the country, the stresses mount.


“No small part of this ugly barbarization has been due to sheer physical congestion: a diagnosis now partly confirmed with scientific experiments with rats – for when they are placed in equally congested quarters, they exhibit the same symptoms of stress, alienation, hostility, sexual perversion, parental incompetence, and rabid violence that we now find in the Megalopolis.”

 ― Lewis Mumford,  The City in History


Rats in a box. We all know that under enough stress, rodents turn on one another. We know this because scientists tested and measured this phenomenon, back in the day when the earth was still a sphere and science counted for something. Ethologist John B. Calhoun studied population density and its effects on behavior, and coined the term "behavioral sink" to describe the collapse in behavior which resulted from overcrowding. Over a number of years, Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on Norway rats and mice.

In his 1962 study, Calhoun described the behavior of the rodents:

Many [female rats] were unable to carry pregnancy to full term or to survive delivery of their litters if they did... Among the males the behavior disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic overactivity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. The social organization of the animals showed equal disruption. ...

The common source of these disturbances became most dramatically apparent in the populations of our first series of three experiments, in which we observed the development of what we called a behavioral sink. The animals would crowd together in greatest number in one of the four interconnecting pens in which the colony was maintained...as a result extreme population densities developed in the pen adopted for eating, leaving the others with sparse populations.

... In the experiments in which the behavioral sink developed, infant mortality ran as high as 96 percent among the most disoriented groups in the population.

As the rat population grew to 2200 rodents in what was described as a "rat utopia," they subsequently exhibited abnormal, often destructive behaviors. By the 600th day, the population was on its way to extinction. Calhoun himself saw the fate of the rodent population as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. Now rats aren't people, although as we will see, some people are rats. 


Greta Thunberg, Climate Activist, Arrives in N.Y. With a Message for Trump

Greta Thunberg’s Slow Boat to New York

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, arrived in New York City via an emission-free sailboat trip to dramatize her message for the urgency for state actors to take climate change seriously. She gives a speech next month at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. This at a time when

the Amazon rain forest was on fire; glaciers were calving into the sea; Tropical Storm Dorian was gathering strength in the Caribbean; scientists were trying to artificially inseminate the last two northern white rhinos on earth; there was lead in the water in Newark. The Endangered Species Act had been gutted, and the E.P.A. had announced new protections not for air or water but for marine diesel engines.

Thunberg arrived without the benefit of any official delegation or ceremony. She stepped off her boat and onto a floating dock, climbed a ramp to a stage, and faced rows of news cameras and handheld phones transmitting the arrival of the symbol of global climate resistance. She has been cheered by supporters, fellow climate activists, and mocked by critics. I promised you rats.


Misogyny, meet hypocrisy: Climate deniers go after AOC, Greta Thunberg with sexist attacks

Even though officialdom may have greeted Thunberg with a yawn, the alt-right was certainly paying attention. Climate change does not seem to present as a gendered issue, but leave it to conservatives to inject sexism into their generalized contempt for anything not "blood and soil." This week the right-wing Media Research Center tweeted out a video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., addressing the need for rapid decarbonization to prevent catastrophic environmental changes. The video, labeled "Shallow Thoughts" and backed by treacly music, is supposed to be read as an indictment of Ocasio-Cortez's intelligence.

Fail. It's clear the Media Research Center doesn't expect its conservative audience to actually listen to what AOC is saying (which is actually cogent, despite the treacle), and instead write her off as an airhead. But AOC is a social media adept, and in a bit of social media jujitsu, tweeted out the video herself, stealing a march on the MRC. And in a nice bit of trolling, thanked MRC for helping spread her message. 

Slate had it thus:

Earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out a warm welcome to Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, who arrived in New York Wednesday for a speech at the United Nations.

Unfortunately, Thunberg was also greeted by a wave of misogynist nastiness, largely coming from allegedly grown men in both Europe and the United States. The attacks on Thunberg were in the same vein as those on Ocasio-Cortez, accusing her of being too stupid to know what she's talking about and denying that her voice is one worth honoring. A writer for the conservative Washington Examiner claimed that Thunberg is a victim of "child abuse" and that her mother "pimps their kid out," explicitly drawing a line between forced sex work and climate activism. 

As usual with the alt-right gaggle of Goebbels cosplayers, it's all about "owning the libs." Uh-huh. AOC and Thunberg both appear to be energized by opposition. But the main reason that climate-change deniers so readily turn to misogyny is that otherwise, they got nuthin'. The scientific evidence is in, and it's black and white: the climate crisis is real, and mostly caused by human activity. Their moral position is even more tenuous, since their options--doing nothing, or increasing greenhouse gas output — will harm not just future generations, but innocents around the world currently enduring extreme weather events like Hurricane Dorian or a burning Amazon.

So right wing trollboys have to rely on personal attacks aimed at environmental activists, dragging the debate away from evidence and into a rat's nest of culture war resentments.


Yet for all of the above, the article that spurred the direction of this week's rats-under-stress rant was this one, just in time for back-to-school.

Instead of school supplies, this year I’m shopping for a bulletproof backpack 

Judi Zirin speaks for an entire generation of American parents, who have to deal with issues that frankly never occurred to previous generations of parents planning back-to-school:

I have always loved the end of summer’s lazy promise of infinite possibility, the late August back to school buzz of limitless potential. Instead of shopping for school supplies and first day of school outfits, though, I’m online looking at Kevlar hoodies and bulletproof backpacks. This year, I’m not worried my kid won’t fit in – I’m praying he won’t be carried out.

After so many school shootings, I’m scared. Scared of what happens when that student who seems a little off or angry or cruel, whose parents don’t notice or take it seriously, whose issues the school is “dealing with”, finds access to a gun. Terrified because I know I can’t protect my child – and the government won’t. Confused because these students need help and not stigma, and it’s oddly the guns who have the stronger lobby.

Perhaps the greatest indictment future generations will level at our own is our unwillingness to protect our own children in the face of an intransigent NRA and its Russian money-trough. Nearly every American industry and product is subject to civil liability as a check on the irresponsibility of manufacturers and sellers—but not the gun industry. Congress made sure of that: when it passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005, they exempted the gun industry from nearly all lawsuits, leaving families of gun violence victims without recourse.

Thus do the NRA and their hirelings insure a steady supply of child human sacrifices to Moloch each year. And Moloch remains hungry.

And we have the nerve to call the human sacrifice of the Mayans and Aztecs barbaric.

 


Short takes:

Here's a summary of doom-related news that moved this week.

Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day.

Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.

The world in flames

Plants are going extinct up to 350 times faster than the historical norm

Who they Are; they have names, faces, addresses, families...

Steve Schwarzman, a Top Financier of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, Is a Driving Force Behind Amazon Deforestation

TWO BRAZILIAN FIRMS owned by a top donor to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, carnage that has developed into raging fires that have captivated global attention. 

Brazil Says It Will Reject $22 Million in Amazon Aid Pledged at G7

Because Boisonaro.

2019 to be ‘worst-ever year’ for wildfires in Siberia and ‘only rain can now extinguish flames’

The New Trail of Tears: How climate change is forcing the relocation of species, including our own

In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, designed to appropriate to the United States lands occupied by aboriginal Americans... the result of this land grab and ethnic cleansing was the Trail of Tears, a highway of the dispossessed, en route from their homelands to less favorable situations away from the population centers of the European-Americans and their recently created nation. Those with the means self-deported; those who moved late moved in large numbers and suffered terrible losses.

Nearly two centuries later, we face the prospect of forced relocations on a scale that is difficult to fathom. This New Trail of Tears will involve humans on every inhabited continent, and it will impact countless other species as well. This time, the driving force is all humanity, agents of climate change through our greenhouse gas emissions.

Author Brian Stewart notes that sea level rise, coupled with more violent storms powered by the warmer atmosphere, will have a profound impact on coastal areas. The dispossessed will place great stress on the remaining livable space, competition for such livable space will be fierce, and may become extinction traps for some. Note this with certainty:

Barriers to movement, both inadvertent and intentional, can be death sentences to those migrating.

It will be a piquant irony if those who are among the most ardent warriors against the dispossessed today find themselves on the other side of a razor wire fence tomorrow.

World’s largest permafrost river dries to a record low

Indonesia picks site for new capital as Jakarta sinks

Purdue Pharma in talks over multibillion-dollar deal to settle more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits

What sounds equitable at first blush may prove to be a multi-billion dollar dodge on the part of the Sacklers:

The Sackler family, which grew into one of the nation’s wealthiest dynasties through sales of the widely abused painkiller OxyContin, could emerge from a legal settlement under negotiation with its personal fortunes largely intact, according to an analysis reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the discussions.

All the Sacklers want is what any of us would want: to be left alone in our Fortress of Insolence counting our billions.


banksy 07-flower-thrower-wallpaperSurly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.


AGelbert

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The Sackler family, which grew into one of the nation’s wealthiest dynasties through sales of the widely abused painkiller OxyContin, could emerge from a legal settlement under negotiation with its personal fortunes largely intact, according to an analysis reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the discussions.

All the Sacklers want is what any of us would want: to be left alone in our Fortress of Insolence counting our billions.


The oligarchs that run this travesty called human civilization can be best described as sentient termites. They, like the Sacklers and the millions of Sackler wannabes who are slaves to both greed and ambition, lack even the most rudimentary concept of ethics.

Even though they are methodical, calculating and quite devoted to metabolizing all that metaphorical "wood" out there, they are cognitively unable to see the inevitably destructive result of their termite activity.

You see, these sentient termites have never, in their wildest imaginations, considered the downside of their penchant for eating "wood" (i.e. finite amount of "wood" means limiting "wood" eating). Eat wood, now and forever, is their mission in life.  Eating more wood equals "good". Eating less wood equals "bad".

The cohesiveness in the societal framework that is undermined/corrupted by sentient termite activity, to the point that guarantees catastrophic failure to provide some equity and stability to human society, is not a "cause and effect" issue for these termites.

That said, it is important to make a distinction between sentient and non-sentient termites. The non-sentient termites are governed by instinct. The sentient ("greed is good" Oligarchs) termites are governed by irrational hubris.

What do I mean by that? Aren't the sentient termites "hard boiled real world business people"? NOT REALLY.

Yes, it is true that the sentient termites, while quite skilled at seeking material goods and services to feed their boundless Narcissism for their own pleasure, are very much aware of threats to their physical well being. That is fairly typical rational (predator) behavior.

YET, they have well paid teams of lying lawyers and (s)think tank propagandist mouth pieces continuously pushing irrational memes like "Creative Destruction", "The rich are job creators", "Those who work owe their living to the rich who hired them", etc.

A cursory analysis of this amazing inability to feel any empathy whatsoever for the workers that made these sentient termites rich, to the point of demonizing the workers as "parasites", while glorifying sentient termite, obviously parasitic behavior, is simply irrational, as well as Orwellian.

It seems that the "sentience" of these Oligarchic Termites, at some level, involves carefully thought out malice aforethought "blame the victim" strategy for the purpose of keeping the exploited workers in the dark about who is REALLY eating all that metaphorical wood out there.

On further analysis of the modus operandi of these 'too clever by a half' sentient termites, we find something quite surprising; they really, honestly believe that the long term effect of their profit over people and planet "business model" is every bit as wealth and power enhancing as the short term effect continues to be.

At this point, a rational person would question the sanity of these sentient termites, it being that, in science, 4 minus 5 always equals a negative number.

Let me explain what their problem is. Sentient termites have been eating their own Orwellian propaganda BULLSHIT. They have swallowed it whole. They have demonized ethical behavior and glorified unethical destructive behavior.

Their sentience has been corrupted by their serially mendacious happy talk. These true believers in a positive result from negative numbers are now firmly committed to their civilzation destroying trajectory (i.e. economic growth through profit over people and planet).

The sentient termites are, and always have been, their own worst enemy. Do not expect any solutions designed to mitigate, and then reverse, Catastrophic Climate Change from them. They don't just ignore ethics; they DEFINE "successful behavior" as UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR.

NO ETHICS = NO SOLUTION, period.





« Last Edit: September 03, 2019, 03:48:38 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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This screenshot is quite good. We have known everything we needed to know for some years, and have just not cared. Somewhere in my reading today I came across the assertion that in order to make a difference, people in the developed world will have to live on one sixth of their current income/standard of living.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the collective "fat chance" from the wealthy, and
"You first" from the rest of us.
« Last Edit: September 03, 2019, 01:30:56 pm by AGelbert »

AGelbert

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Re: This Week in Doom 9/1: Rat Bastards
« Reply #13 on: September 03, 2019, 01:46:29 pm »


This screenshot is quite good. We have known everything we needed to know for some years, and have just not cared. Somewhere in my reading today I came across the assertion that in order to make a difference, people in the developed world will have to live on one sixth of their current income/standard of living.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the collective "fat chance" from the wealthy, and
"You first" from the rest of us.


True that about the sentient termites (i.e. the ethically bankrupt = wealthy).

Please do not include me in the rest of us. I have publicly advocated for living with the power cut off from my house for 12 hours a day (not "you first", but all of us, including businesses, at once) in summer (AND winter) for well over a decade, for the purpose of reducing polluting energy use. Yeah, I have not actually hit the main power panel switch 12 hours a day (see: ALL of us together). I haven't turned it off at all. Still, my use is WAY BELOW what the average American wastrel considers "necessary". On top of that. Green Mountain Power is moving fast to 100% renewable energy. 

I have been frugal to a fault for at least 20 years. Though my "life style" may be considered too far above that of a slave in Africa to be "sustainable" by the hairsplitters (and hydrocarbon hellspawn out there, of course), I am 100% certain that if everyone on this planet had not bought any clothing, including shoes, for the last 12 years, gone without a water heater for the last four years (4 gallon "showers" - once a week or less frequent, period ;D), gone without a microwave oven for the last two years, driven less than 2000 miles a year for the last 13 years, despite saving 30% of my small pension a year, stayed OUT of the stock market in general (and hydrocarbon corporation stocks in particular), the biosphere would have a fighting chance AND the mammon worshippers would be a lot less popular and planet killing "prosperous" than they are now. I am not part of the Age of Stupid.

I learned of a bit of good news today. We take what we can. Reality is slowly (perhaps too slowly, but it's better than nothing), overcoming 🐵 Wall Street Hydrocarbon Hellspawn worship.



The article has some "supply and demand" BULLSHIT happy talk about "the abundance of fossil fuels out there now," as if this was a temporary thing. It's NOT. For proof of that, just look at a hydrocarbon stock I warned the fossil fueler MKing to drop about four years ago. I told him it was going to tank and WHY it was going to tank.

He laughed it off. I hope he kept lots of SLB (Schlumberger) stock in his portfolio.

SLB was around $86 a share when I issued the warning. It's been all downhill since then. This year the hill turned into a cliff.

 

« Last Edit: September 03, 2019, 03:47:09 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: The Lyin' King
« Reply #14 on: September 27, 2019, 05:27:39 pm »
Anyone who believes what a liar says is a fool. Trump is an INVETERATE, CONFIRMED, CHRONIC LIAR.


Quote
INVETERATE, CONFIRMED, CHRONIC mean firmly established.

INVETERATE applies to a habit, attitude, or feeling of such long existence as to be practically ineradicable or unalterable. - an inveterate smoker

CONFIRMED implies a growing stronger and firmer with time so as to resist change or reform.  a confirmed bachelor

CHRONIC suggests something that is persistent or endlessly recurrent and troublesome.  a chronic complainer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inveterate



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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