Lots more wind is forecasted for Southern California on Tuesday and part of Wednesday.
Probably not as bad as last Tuesday, but still …
What’s your prediction?
Comments are closed.
Subscribe to All Steve Sailer Comments via RSS
Follow Us
iSteve: Perhaps on the Wrong Side of History, but on the right side of reality.
Intersectionality
Steve Sailer
Email me at SteveSlr *at* aol*dot*com (make the obvious substitutions between the asterisks; you don’t have to capitalize an email address, I just included the capitals to make clear the logic — it’s my name without a space and without the vowels in “Sailer” that give so many people, especially irate commenters, trouble.)
Steve Sailer
I always appreciate my readers’ help, especially monetary. Here’s how you can help:
First: You can use PayPal (non-tax deductible) by going to the page on my old blog here. PayPal accepts most credit cards. Contributions can be either one-time only, monthly, or annual.
Second: You can mail a non-tax deductible donation to:Steve Sailer
P.O Box 4142
Valley Village, CA 91617-0142
Third: You can make a tax deductible contribution via VDARE by clicking here. (Paypal and credit cards accepted, including recurring “subscription” donations.) Please make sure to click the box for:
Make contribution to author
Note: the VDARE site goes up and down on its own schedule, so if this link stops working, please let me know.
College Bowl, 12/1/1979
Fourth: You can use Bitcoin:
I’m using Coinbase as a sort of PayPal for Bitcoins.
The IRS has issued instructions regarding Bitcoins. I’m having Coinbase immediately turn all Bitcoins I receive into U.S. dollars and deposit them in my bank account. At the end of the year, Coinbase will presumably send me a 1099 form for filing my taxes.
Payments are not tax deductible.
Below are links to two Coinbase pages of mine. This first is if you want to enter a U.S. dollar-denominated amount to pay me.
Pay With Bitcoin (denominated in U.S. Dollars)
This second is if you want to enter a Bitcoin-denominated amount. (Remember one Bitcoin is currently worth many U.S. dollars.)
Pay With Bitcoin (denominated in Bitcoins)
Fifth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrAT aol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.
Sixth: if you have a Chase bank account (or even other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it’s StevenSailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.
Steve Sailer
Seventh: send money via the Paypal-like Google Wallet to my Gmail address(that’s isteveslrATgmail .com — replace the AT with a @). (Non-tax deductible.)
Here’s the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: “You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps.” You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.
You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.
Or you can send money via credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discover) with the industry-standard 2.9% fee. (You don’t need to put money into your Google Wallet Balance to do this.)
Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone
app (Android and iPhone — the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).
Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google’s free Gmail email service. Here’s how to do it.
(Non-tax deductible.)
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
I predict that now that it’s a national issue some form of competence will emerge (from where I’m not sure) and the fires will be kept away from built-up areas in spite of the wind.
dunno – disturbing is all this talk about state funded insurance policies for building in areas which are risky because of either rich man’s climate change or simply for building in areas without a thousand years of history (I’m from Europe).
Is the US simply going to transfer hundreds of billions to people who already own homes with an average value of $3mn.
Frankly I’d rather they just give it to black survivors of slavery – far more deserving
(relatively)
Any aid to California should be contingent on all the political players giving a full, public apology for their anti-Whitism. Self-criticism essays are a good start.
They should undergo a public psychological interrogation of their anti-White beliefs followed by confessions. This may result in breakdowns. All part of achieving social justice.
If they aren’t willing to dismantle anti-Whitism, in their policies and in their hearts, they aren’t ready for aid.
The prediction is that the conspiracy theorists musing about the origins of the fire – whether right or wrong – do have a point regarding the ultimate outcome: absent insurance, the property will be grabbed up by financiers for pennies on the dollar and turned over to ruthless developers. As in Maui, that land is way too valuable to be left to the mere citizenry.
It would be madness to think that elite real estate developers, insurance companies and arsonists collaborated in the maelstrom, but we’re currently living in an era of madness, eh?
Your valley will, one would hope, remain an island of safety surrounded by fires on three sides.
More properties will burn, but the real question is how will the rebuilding go after that? People are saying the permit process in your world is insane.
And real estate? That could be an interesting market. Insurance too.
When I inherited my family home in the Rockies, my insurance company would not cover it! The area is too dry. One bad fire and our whole community could have looked like your Palisades. Eventually I sold the place. On visits back, I looked at the ground and realized I had come of age on top of a tinder box. There have been fires there, but so far only one got close, right on the mountainside in front of us. They put it out with airplanes and helicopters dumping on it.
Well, why don’t some of those Climate Calamity™ modelers, who deign to tell us, usually after the fact unfortunately, exactly what’s going to happen, weigh in on this one?
My prediction? You really want to know my prediction? My prediction is that, due to D.I.E., demographics, and destiny, things in this country will get shoddier by the day, leading to a 3rd World lifestyle for many of us, to be interrupted by the financial SHTF situation when the dollar dies. That will be a point of bifurcation – the country could go Communist or it could go the other way – THIS is up to US.
That financial SHTF, baked into the arithmetic, will be a surprise to many in the same way that a trend into another Ice Age would be a surprise to the Climate Calamity™ modelers. “Ice Age?! Crap, we left that out of the model. I told that intern …”
It’s not like I don’t feel for those innocents who have lost the homes, most of their money (the economy forces us to use our houses as our main savings “vehicles”), and all their stuff. (Believe it or not, after 2 – 5 years, you don’t even miss the latter.)
However, I agree with Oilcan Floyd who commented under your previous post that likely most of these people wouldn’t give a dang about the Acts of God that happen in other States. We try not to be drama queens about it.
Good luck, Steve, with your neighborhood.
Leafblower volcano flare-ups
Video Link
A fourth lesbian named Kirsten will come riding on a unicorn-drawn fire wagon to save the day!
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/01/how-lafd-came-to-be-run-by-three.html
Some more houses will burn up but just in other places. It will not be as bad as last week due to lower winds. And a lot of people will find a way to justify their political priors with whatever happens.
California can build and manage so that fires are much less damaging but that would probably increase the risks from earthquakes and would make much of those expensive houses look like the projects with no green anywhere near the house.
What’s gonna happen is that the leftist local governments will require that high rise apartment buildings and low cost housing is built where nice single family homes used to be. Some kind of diversity index will be involved, so as to prevent the area from becoming excessively white and asian.
I agree. Trump and the Republicans hold the whip hand, and they need to use it instead of being pathetic squishes which Republicans often are. As a condition of aid: immediate abolition of all DEI and AA laws; repeal of stupid environment regulations; termination of employment and blacklisting of every “DEI” officer in the state and local governments and agencies. Take this once in a lifetime opportunity to clean the stables.
At this point, it looks like they are going to burn until they basically burn themselves out, or the winds blow them back upon themselves, and the government declares “victory”.
After all these years, it appears that California’s attempt to commit suicide, have finally yielded some results. The supposed leadership there seems completely incapable of doing anything but watch it burn.
So basically, until mother nature gives them a break, and changes their fortunes, they are powerless to do anything about their circumstances.
They’re doomed!!
Bearing in mind the nature of those whose houses were burned, the US Gov’t will give them great handfuls of taxpayer’s maoney like the didn’t do when this kind of thing happened to poor Whites.
Disgraceful, reminiscent of when Thatcher bailed out the ‘Lloyd’s Names’.
I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but what SHOULD happen is more fires, followed by an earthquake, followed by a tsunami. Or just give the whole damned thing back to Mexico. California is a curse.
Bu what’s probably gonna happen is that rich (((people))) will get billions from the government to “rebuild”, on top of what they already got from insurance. Poor and middle class people (whose insurances were curiously cancelled just before the fires) will be moved away to less scenic neighbourhoods.
“Frankly I’d rather they just give it to black survivors of slavery – far more deserving”
Since you’re from europe you would be wise to defer to those who have been here. American negroes have already been more than adequately compensated for their ancestors’ (since we’re talking relatively) country club version of slavery.
disturbing is all this talk about state funded insurance policies for building in areas which are risky
I never understood this infatuation with “We will rebuild again. In the same place” mentality after repeated natural disasters in places like Florida, Texas, Louisiana, California. How deaf one must be not to hear the megaphone nature is shouting from saying “don’t build here, this is my land“. All the more stupid when we have a vast country.
Sure, that’d probably be the cheapest arrangement by far. Let me do the math real quick-like…
0
Yes, because there ARE NO black survivors of slavery, at least in America.
“Now casting! Seeking blond white frat boys to play the firestarters in the upcoming Hollywood movie.”
use our houses as our main savings “vehicles”
That’s certainly a problem in Britain too – and I expect also in Canada, Australia, NZ and much of the EU. Still, reflect on wise Mr Twain’s famous remark. It’s often really the land you’re buying, the hovel on it is often a small part of the value.
I wonder whether people who live in a place at risk of both wildfire and earthquake might be better advised to rent rather than buy. Especially if their state government deliberately buggers up the house insurance biz.
This is worth a watch.
Video Link
Interesting. Your anti-White nemesis Reg Cæsar has often asked you for an example of practical pro-White, or at minimum anti-anti-White measures. Certainly Trump or other prominent figures could bring up at least part of what you above suggest, as a test of “propositional America”.
Also, inquisitions were a famous part of Catholic Church operandi(?) over the centuries—and since Reg clams to be an ultramontane traditionalist, I don’t see why he would object to a pro-White (or anti-anti-White) inquisition. For similar reasons (serving God, tradition, practicality) for dealing with anti-Whites (of any race) the directive:
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”
… could a pro-White watchword, applied as necessary, that both you and Reg can agree on at least in spirit (after Reg repents).
Video Link
They should be made to stand on buckets and get pigs’ blood poured on theme, al la Carrie White, and then big-character posters hung around their necks saying “I’m a Communist Roader!”
That was Middle Kingdom-inspired sarcasm – let’s do it the American way and just kick the ever-lovin’ shit out of these people to where they are in no shape to run for office ever again. Or, turn them upside down like turtles on the street – lots of them couldn’t even get up.
There are zero survivors of slavery in the US.
You could just force them to watch this over and over again until they go blind:
We are the only wealthy country in the world without a totally modern “smart city” full of gi-normous,futuristic super-skyscrapers full of billion dollar condos and offices that are highly sought after by the worlds billionaires. Yeah N.Y. and Chicago have SOME super modern edifices, but are located inappropriately in 19th century, obsolete metropolises. Check out China, Hong Kong , the UAE, Burj Khalifa and even Brazil. The cities there are completely high tech. Our biggest cities are located in all the right places, but are built out. If only NY, Chicago, and LA had large empty areas to start over with high tech construction we could become the safest, most desirable destination for the worlds super rich as a safe haven. Hmmm.
The bad decisions that led to the out of control wildfires were made by incompetent city and state government officials who were put in office there by the voters in California. So the costs should be mostly paid by the people there. Shifting the costs up to the federal level means they would be paid by people who had no role in voting in leftist idiots like Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom.
So I certainly hope the federal government does not become heavily involved in bailing out California and Los Angeles here. You do not want to create a moral hazard situation where people are protected from the results of their bad judgement by shifting the costs over to others. The 19th century English philosopher Herbert Spencer said “the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools”.
They should build a near-continuous high rise condo on the edge of the hills to block future wind-driven fire from torching the flatland. This will also stop rich people from rebuilding on the hills since it will block the view, so it won’t happen.
I predict that the wind will continue to blow.
Better topic would be, once the fires stop, is “what next?”
Some on a prior thread mentioned goats that are used around the Reagan Library further south. Sounds like an idea.
You can have fire breaks and clean up/out crews to remove brush, trees, but that is expensive. Who pays?
Obviously keeping water reservoirs full is needed.
Mostly too vertical for golf courses, though maybe if you had now burned strips of homes, say every other street, turned into links, etc. that might stop fire from leaping up/down occupied streets.
The land will be reused but insurance won’t be affordable unless fire risk is lowered. Grassing over every other street would remove a huge amount of taxable land value, but might be offset by increased value of remaining now safer land which could be rebuilt.
Maybe “Goats ‘n Golf” is a slogan that makes sense. Though those million dollar burned lots will have to be greatly downsized or removed (every other street). Maybe too much golf for the hills also.
Of course in 10 years this event will largely be forgotten by most. Homes can be rebuilt, ocean views always desirable.
Maybe, for an election or two, Woke Democrats will be booted out of local political office.
In other news, Chicago teachers demand MORE dough!
Fire them ALL, invest in YOUR wallet, not theirs!
“Kristin” really needs to become an epithet like “Karen.”
“I was out playing softball with the bros when some Kristin insisted upon playing. She went 0 for 4 and dropped two fly balls before leaving in her Subaru which trailed plumes of cat hair down the road as she drove with the windows down.”
Won’t predict the course of the fire. Only hoping it won’t burn down my niece’s neighborhood. If I understood what her father said correctly, she’s living in a segment of town about four miles from the warning zone around the Palisades fire.
==
I tend to doubt either the state or federal government will do sensible things which might prove meliorative. Too many vested interests and public misconceptions.
I heard that the local and state government will be re-zoning for multi-unit apartments so Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, et al., will become a lot more diverse. This region was nicknamed as “Weimar by the Sea” because a lot of Jewish artists, writers and musicians fleeing Nazi Germany relocated there.
But great news, I heard people there will be getting $770 each from the U.S. government to rebuild.
Meanwhile a half a trillion dollars from the U.S. was sent to another (((project)))…
What will happen to the people in charge of this disaster – Newsom, Bass, the 3 Lesbos in the FD, and the DEI babe in the Water Department?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
On January 20th Our President, after praising MLK 214 times and bragging viz everything he’s done and will do for America’s female black Mexicans, promises a blank check to California signed by Uncle Samantha, no limit, no conditions, no strings attached, all paid for by 50% inflation of the US dollar whilst boomers get a hefty 3.2% bump in their sacred Social Security.
Our President will wrest no concessions from Newsome et al because that would be playing politics with people’s lives 😭😭😭 Art of the deal, baby.
If Valley Village CA looks like post
nukes!napalm Nagasaki next week, Our President gonna look Pfi$er $teve square in the eye and beam:You name it, no limit!
Thanks for this one, G.A. (Thanks, Joe Stalin, for the video too.) We were using just a small battery powered electric one to burn the stump, but it was enough. Even more fun was using it to make our own twister with a full wheelbarrow of fireplace ashes. The neighbors apparently had no problem with this …
Oh, and for your next comment, what’s with all the Latin? Hablo Englishe, por favor! I’m not a Latino.
Yikes! I was trying to at least be civil and Constitution-abiding.
For those curious about the specious ‘Global Warming’ arguments:
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/why-la-wildfires-have-little-to-with.html?m=1
I live in an area that was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Sandy. That’s over 10 years ago. A few are still fighting their insurance companies and many didn’t get paid until 5 or 6 years after. And LA looks much worse. Soon we’ll probably see those tin shacks we get south of the border. The president of Mexico recently threatened Trump with an old map showing California as still being part of Mexico.
I think we have quite enough of the world’s super rich here, but maybe that’s just me.
It’s being claimed that the path of these and recent, previous fires closely parallels the projected mass rail project. Be interesting to see if they “find lithium in Asheville” so to speak.
Larry Elder had a very important detail last night: in over-regulated California, not only are house values massively overinflated (notable even at a time of national housing inflation), but apparently California requires you to get certain kinds of homeowners’ insurance, you could find yourself required to get one policy for the inside of your home from one company and one for your yard from another company, all the vagaries and crimes of private insurance are permitted while the government mandates it, so you can be dropped, denied coverage, subjected to severe price increases, and if the state finds out that for whatever reason you don’t have coverage (which might not be your fault at all) they retaliate by attacking the terms of your mortgage and eventually your ownership.
To save the day? Or as a herald of doom?
The Four Lesbians of the Apocalypse!
The mean income/wealth in the affected areas will become even higher. The truly wealthy can afford to rebuild and will. The owners who were old and bought before prices became crazy-high (rather than just high) or who inherited the houses from their parents will be forced out, and new, richer owners will move in. It’s a gentrification event.
I predict that one or more of the airborne fire-fighter assets will crash.
Mind, we had a major forest fire event here in Norway a couple years back — it seemed like half the chopper fleet in the country was engaged at some point, but nothing happened.
Was a monumentally expensive effort, but since the forest owners pay taxes too… our taxpayer money well spent! /s
i’ll tell you what’s not going to happen.
LA is not going to replace $750,000 a year fire hydrant water lady, who couldn’t do her job, with a $50,000 a year H1-B Indian guy, who could do just about as well.
but any productive white collar pale person in private industry who adds value to their company and to America, could get replaced by foreigners by time any new houses are built in LA.
notice which jobs are being replaced and which jobs are not. for core Americans who deliver value, it’s “America is like sports, best athlete available, from anywhere, it’s a global talent pool these days” as they swap you out for a foreigner who does a worse job for half the money. for Fire Hydrant Person, it’s $750,000 a year, and lol, duh, of course we’re going to hire one of our own people. that’s a BS job for Democrat flunkies. the point of capturing the organization it is to way, way overpay some useless person as a reward.
couldn’t every city greatly reduce their annual problem of meeting their yearly budgets by replacing most of the patronage people? of course they COULD. but those jobs are protected. the do nothing government people protected, the value adders in private industry replaced. weird how nobody even in the now extensive online right-wing o verse is talking about this. not even the Tech people who want to replace us with Indians or Mexicans predicated on the Efficiency of cog units concept. Elon, Vivek, couldn’t DOGE just replace all Fire Hydrant Ladies and the stupid woman Chief Of Police people in every town with Indians for half the price? not that i advise this. only to note they never suggest this particular use of replacement. taken to it’s logical conclusion, how does the US Military have any shortage of people? just staff the entire thing with Indians and Mexicans. replace all cops with indians. how does LA have a shortage of firefighters? just bring in Indians and Mexicans and give them a hose. then replace all the lawyers with H1-B India…er wait a minute, those jobs are protected.
“In other news, Chicago teachers demand MORE dough!”
People are leaving high tax Illinois and moving over here to lower tax Indiana. The Indianapolis metro area is one of the 20 fastest growing metro areas in the country. Indianapolis itself is losing people but there is a ring of what used to be small towns but are now thriving cities around it where most of the middle class lives.
We just elected a conservative Republican governor, Mike Braun, who I voted for. Indiana almost always votes Republican in presidential elections unless they pick a bellicose Arizona senator who looks like he might start a war as their candidate. See 1964 and 2008. There is still a Midwestern isolationist streak here.
Blind from masturbating?
Unrelated. Kind of sad, but still funny.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14282399/French-theatre-bankruptcy-250-African-migrants-refused-leave-remain-building.html
Oh God.
A good deal of the problem is building in those dry, inaccessible canyons.
This sort of rant leads one to suspect you don’t actually have much of a case.
“In 2024, Ukrainians registered more NEW sports cars than in 2021.”
Her source for this is apparently a still-shot of a game of Tetris and also what she claims is “the public domain”, but despite repeated requests, no further elaboration is given, though an image search revealed that one of the pictures she posts is actually from Feb of 2020, i.e. 2 years before the war.
As noted earlier, Pachenko was one of the rebroadcasters of yesterday’s episode of “how will the Putin trolls try to deflect from Russia’s continued slide into irrelevance, which has now become so obvious that even Unz-dot-com is publishing articles to complain about it?” (See below.)
Look, I get that Ron Unz relies on Moscow-subsidized “journalists” that he can hire on the cheap in order to pad his back pages, and more generally, and for similar reasons, a dwindling influx of rubles is indeed a worrisome affair for much of the alt-right, but I’m not sure how re-broadcasting fake stories about Ukraine is gonna help with any of that. But hey, I’m not a 4d-chessmaster who brought about that dismal slide, so it’s no wonder I find it confusing.
So yeah, let’s ignore Syria, and Russia’s “assist” in Trump’s Greenland gambit and let’s forget about H-1B’s. The real threat is all those Ferraris in Odessa. Way to prioritize, fanboys!
OT — POINT AT THEM! POINT AT THEM AND LAUGH!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14282399/French-theatre-bankruptcy-250-African-migrants-refused-leave-remain-building.html
Nothing. Nothing will happen.
Once the fire has burnet through an area, that’s usually a pretty darn good fire break. And the winds will die down over the next few weeks. And they’ll probably be some winter precipitation–Mediterranean climate.
Nothing will get fixed. Dollars will get sloshed around to rebuild. Including “it’s going to be great!” from Trump. They’ll be “investigative commissions” that will employ lots of ass sitters and issue gianormous reports. Maybe building codes will be tweaked a bit. But nothing awesome to really improve the situation like my “Ring of Golf” will happen.
No one will be held to account. They’ll be criticisms but you must understand this was an “Act of God”, neither Newsome, nor black, mexican and/or lesbian women could possibly have done anything better. None, of course, would do something as honorable as resign. Let’s face it no one in our governing elite is ever responsible, is ever held to account anymore. Not for the “Amnesty” disaster. Not for the China trade disaster, squeezing American industry and building up China. Not for our anti-nuclear energy folly. Not for the post-Cold War Russia debacle. Not for Iraq and Afghanistan folly. Not for the housing bubble and Great Recession and massive bailout of finance “industry”. Not for the fentanyl disaster. Not for the Russia hacked the election lying and endless “get Trump” investigation. Not for engineering the Covid virus or the confused and ridiculous policy set, lockdowns and endless lying or the covering up the vaccine’s heart/circulatory system side effects. Not for lying about George Floyd’s OD and ginning up a summer of riot–and tens of thousands of extra America homicides and traffic fatalities. Not for covering up for the Biden family’s Ukraine bribery scam–and impeaching Trump for it! (Still amazes me.) Not for lying about Hunter’s laptop. Not for the Jan 6 scam and over-the-top political prosecutions and holding people without bail. Not for blowing up Trump’s remain in Mexico policy. Not for Afghanistan withdraw debacle. Not for the open border and absolutely flooding America with foreign riff-raff, nuking communities like Springfield Ohio and jamming another knife into job opportunities and housing affordability for America’s young people.
Nothing will happen. No one was responsible. Nothing will be fixed.
On Tuesday, the wind died down to almost nothing that night…as usual…The Media is lying about it to cover up the fact that it was all deliberate, so Newsom and company could buy up the land cheap..
Caitlin Clark arrived at the right time for the renaissance.
They will have to rebuild. World Cup ’26 and Summer Olympics ’28.
Those are irritating. Conceivably, global warming could increase the odds of such a fire, but it’s unknowable.
We had the same thing up here when there was a freak 115 degree day. ‘It’s global warming!’ No, as some meteorologist patiently explained, it was a product of two weather events happening at the same time.
It’s like…I dunno. Deciding that the fact that you were driving a red Corvette led to you getting pulled over? Well, arguably the red and the Corvette may not have helped, but perhaps the fact that you were doing 85 mph fed into it as well.
Or — also bad — it will all get ‘fixed.’ Like Hitler fixed Germany.
It’ll get fixed real good. Well, I still have hope for J.D. Vance. Gotta have hope.
For those who really have lost everything, and who need help paying their debtors?
There is help on the way: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-01-14/catering-desperate
Yes, the times are Schwartz.
Todd Schwartz, Loan Shark
OT
“The NHS would collapse without foreign staff”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14283661/NHS-hospital-Romanian-doctor-rectal-drugs.html
His defence was that in Romania doctors will insert things into your nether regions at the slightest sign of illness. It’s their culture, don’tcha know.
So, SMPD managed to put assemble pic of 16 arrestees and not one has a face tattoo? Something’s fishy.
Could you please get a hold of ‘there’ll’?
Thatcher bailed out the ‘Lloyd’s Names’.
Are you sure? My memory is that many of the ‘names’ (i.e. underwriters) were ruined.
whose insurances were curiously cancelled just before the fires
Nothing curious about it: the politicians decided to limit prices so, as usual, that suppressed supply. Schoolboys should know that much economics.
Nightmare fuel:
Video Link
Video Link
Pardon my query : but why rebuild at all ? Why cannot these places become a state park for all Americans and pre -Americans to enjoy ? Or hills for special forces to practice ?
This is a good time to start talking about “drill baby drill” off the coast of CA. The communists in CA need money and to learn a lesson.
Gee, Steve. What’s on your mind?
Muggles, quit throwing shade on my Ring of Golf.
No one’s talking about building golf courses in the Hollywood Hills, much less the San Gabriel. There would be no point to that anyway. LA is essentially like a bathtub–or two, or three or four or more bathtubs, depending on how you count. You don’t build on the sides of the tub, you build the Ring of Golf courses where the bottom is starts really turning up. You know a few blocks south of Steve’s house.
Pain
If this were the first time this had happened, I’d hold out hope that California would learn and take steps. However, watch this fine video on the Bel Air fire of the early 1960’s:
Video Link
The LA fires seem to be inspired by the recent Francis Ford Coppola movie. I wonder where Newson will build his palace?
You clearly haven’t been reading Vdare over the years. Or Steve, for that matter. The last two are his:
• The Immigrants Who Bring Their Slaves To America, And The Press That Doesn’t Want You To Know
• Slavery, Immigration, And The Press
• Modern Day Slavery
• Immigrants Committing Slavery: Hindu Temple Using Untouchable Workers As Slaves In New Jersey
• The New America: Immigrant Slavery At Hindu Temple In NJ
• America’s Rapidly Growing Slavery Crisis Quadrupled Between 2012 and 2018
The Pacific Palisades is a mountainous forested area up against the ocean. The mountainous areas allowed the wind to speed up but once the wind hit the ocean there was little drag air resistance leading to very high winds. Inland, like Altadena, the wind has to travel entirely across rugged land which slows it down.
The LAFD also has probably done some on the job learning, so their response will be better rehearsed. It was bad luck that the fire started off in Pacific Palisades forcing an unpracticed FD to deal with high winds and a rugged area.
The properties in most danger were at the edge of LA, up against natural areas. Those properties have either burned or are better prepared.
So I say the fires are now being controlled.
Republicans interesting fact. The 1964 civil rights for all but Whites act. More Republicans voted for it than democrats. Martin Luther King and all his southern Christian leadership preacher membership
were republicans too. From the end of the civil war right up to about 1970 southern blacks registered to vote as Republicans.
There were a couple times in the 1880s later in the 1920s when congressional Republicans tried a civil rights similar to the 1864 Civil Rights for all but Whites act. Eisenhower and Nixon Republicans were very aggressive about forcing vicious black thugs into White schools.
All republicans care about is cheap labor Israel and anti abortion
I kind of like the terrain, the scenery of the West and would pick somewhere out West. (Being next to the beach here in Florida is AnotherMom’s happy spot. But I’m ok with it and the tax situation is good.)
But if I were a young person starting out and oriented more toward the Eastern US, I think I’d go with Tennessee. Yes, a somewhat larger black population (17%ish) than the midwestern industrial states or the northeast. But still 75% white-white, nice terrain with good recreational opportunities (mountains, rivers, lakes), milder winters–though you are in the belt where you can get ice storms which are nasty–still reasonably affordable housing–though Nashville’s boom has made it more expensive–and no income tax.
Of course, you want to live in the prettier and whiter Eastern 2/3 of the state. You definitely don’t want to live Memphis.
“ but I’m not sure how re-broadcasting fake stories about Ukraine is gonna help with any of that.”
Before the Ukraine invasion, you could tell which American right-wingers and leftist third worldists were on Putin’s Payroll because they’d harp on Ukraine back when nobody in America cared.
It was highly ineffective because Americans had too little background to make sense of of the propaganda. They had no idea where it was for example.
100% with you on things getting “shoddier by the day.”
However–say it again–do not expect there to be some great financial SHTF situation.
I’m not in the mood to throw all in in depth. But the key point is the US is a very big, very rich, very capable nation. Our one critical problem is our declining demographics–which is why things will get shoddier. Our chief economic issue is that we are consuming about 5% more than we produce–year after year. And more like 15% if real goods. And then we have the federal government running big deficits and cranking out debt.
But what’s going to happen is unlikely to be dramatic. The way out of all that is rather obvious. Americans are going to have to produce more and consume less–or rather our consumption will have to grow less than our production. Expect cuts in government benefits–like social security and medicare–and higher taxes. And expect that the Fed will have to monetize a lot more of the debt, which means … inflation. Inflation is how a lot of this “produce more, while consuming less” unpleasantness will have to be imposed.
If foreigners stop wanting dollars, that doesn’t mean our world collapses, rather it means foreign goods get much more expensive and we have to produce more of our own stuff–which we are quite capable of doing.
What we will not be is China–though the Chinese have a bunch of challenges and can easily screw it up as well.
And what we certainly not be is what we could have been if we had stayed American–not been colonized by a parasitic overclass that has no loyalty to America or Americans, but think of our nation as just a big marketplace for maxima looting and yelps endlessly “must have immigration!”
~~~
I’m responding here, because I think it is really important that people on the right–traditionalists, conservatives, nationalists, patriots–not expect some SHTF moment to create a crisis that will save us.
That is not going to happen. Rather our decline will likely not be a “pop!” but a “pufffffff” of air going out of a balloom.
No if we patriots are to save America, we can not depend on a financial crisis to discredit and destroy our parasitic elite. If we want to see their heads on pikes–and we do!–or simply separate from them and let them enjoy their “Rainbow” nation, while we recover America, then we have to organize and step up and do it. No one and no thing is going to do it for us.
And if it emerged that her source for this was 100% correct and authoritative, you’d still hasbara us to death with more cope and filibustering because you belong in a lunatic asylum. The OP made a perfectly reasonable point about taxpayer money going to a corrupt foreign shithole that’s not a member of NATO and you spit the dummy.
I don’t see Russia sliding into irrelevance. And certainly do not think Russia abandoning the Assad dictatorship means irrelevance. If the US dumped the House of Saud during a challenge to their rule and some new dictatorship took over, would I feel the US was losing relevance? (Ok, maybe some deep state apparatchiks would cry … but not me.)
What is clear is that Putin’s War has been a debacle–a huge own goal–for Russia.
Russia had all its traditional Russian problems–Russians are … Russian! But Russia was ideally positioned to develop itself, trading and making deals with both the West and China/Asia and being the transport conduit between them (or at least China and Europe).
Of course, Russia had its issues–very similar to those in the West–millions of muslim immigrants from the ‘stans, ideally cutting loose its own muslim provinces (ex. Chechnya) and cracking the fertility issue with Russian women. But overall, it was well positioned to take a good a run at fixing those issues and having a bright national future as anyone.
But Western nations are quite rightly disgusted at the return of Russia’s old–we’re going to smash you up and make you give us territory–style imperialism that had made that had made the 20th century–notably from Austria, Russia, Germany, Germany, Soviet Union, Japan–such a picnic, and everyone had hoped we’d seen the end of in Europe after 1945 and the end of the Cold War. No one decent wants to see that shit slithering back or associate with it.
So Putin effectively whacked away the western half of his natural trading partners, rendering Russia pretty much dependent on doing business with China–effectively making Russia a big resource colony for China. Though a nuclear armed one, not one that can be swallowed up.
Putin’s War is a big loser for the world as a whole. The big loser is obviously Ukraine. But it’s been a debacle–and embarrassment for Russia as well. The only real winner in the deal is China. Realistically, until Putin dies and there’s some Russian rapprochement with the West, they are Russia’s only serious option with scale and get to set the terms of trade.
But this hardly makes Russia “irrelevant”. It’s a huge country, with immense resources, a big economy and population and 5000 nukes. It’s not 1970, but Russia is still one of the 5 or so most consequential nations on the planet. Just very stupidly led.
“I don’t see Russia sliding into irrelevance.”
The knock against America used to be our nagging audacity to complain when supposed allies turned into dictatorial maniacs. Not Russia, oh no! Russia wouldn’t let a little like smearing your prisons with the corpses of political prisoners get in their way of doing business — they stood by you. Here’s a story from 2019
That was the narrative back then — Moscow will stand by you! The fact that Russia was able to save Assad back then was also evidence to all — especially the evil neo-cons — that color revolutions were finito. So now, that has taken a seismic shift, and people will have to be reminded just what it is about Russia that makes them so much better than the West if they, too, seem to fizzle out whenever it suits them.
Which means that long time allies like India and even Serbia and Armenia have decided to be less beholden to Moscow when it comes to defense, and more to, say, France. As I said, even the fanboys are willing to admit this openly. No less an authority than Dugin have called the loss in Syria “a painful blow”.
Speaking of blow, Syria is not only the fulcrum of Russia’s move into Africa and all the blood diamonds and other shenanigans the Wagner Group got into, it has also in recent years become the drug capital of the Middle East, thanks to Assad’s brother. And keeping a thumb on the drug trade is something plenty of secret police services back in Soviet days considered essential in getting hooked up with revolutions and mayhem the world over.Losing all that (or expending effort in order to recover it with the right bribes and threats) may not be enough to make Russia irrelevant in and of itself, but it’s a significant step in that direction.
“But it’s been a debacle–and embarrassment for Russia as well.”
As a geopolitical anal ist you are dumber than a box of rocks. Next stop Odessa, with love Vlad.
“It was highly ineffective because Americans had too little background to make sense of of the propaganda.”
That’s a valid point, though I would add that it doesn’t mean the propaganda doesn’t eventually bubble up into current affairs. Some corollary of Dunning-Kruger assures us that American provincialism about the world beyond isn’t going to be an impediment for getting duped into stepping out on a limb. It’s actually an essential prerequisite.
Russia has since upped that with suggestions that they could maybe each take a chunk
Again, I think Greenland is more useful to Trump in that it helped wipe all those H-1B stories from the headlines (“Look, a squirrel!”), but given how effective that was, he’ll keep doing that.
Indeed. I think our society-wide lack of accountability is a major reason people weren’t exactly horrified by the murder of the United Healthcare exec. Once people reach a certain level, it seems no degree of incompetence or greed or criminality results in serious professional or personal consequences.
Nahh. McMansions. Always McMansions.
I would look at the climate when picking where to live but I would also look at levels of economic freedom because states with more economic freedom have lower taxes and better job opportunities. The Cato Institute puts out a yearly ranking of states by economic freedom. California is always near the bottom in recent years so, despite its pleasant climate, I would avoid living there now. I did live in San Diego in 1963 when my father was taking astronomy classes and working on his masters degree at the university there and it was wonderful back then.
It is up to the voters in places like California to get rid of incompetent leftist politicians by voting them out and Trump should not be distracted by what is happening in them from focusing on national issues like foreign policy, immigration policy, and trade policy. He needs to move us away from what Steve Sailer once called “invade the world, invite the world, in hock to the world”.
In Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book, “The Right Stuff,” there was an expression attributed by Wolfe to the NASA Project Mercury astronauts/test pilots in the mid-1960s: “Maintain an even strain.” Don’t put the system under surprise or excessive loads. Keep it together. Don’t show weakness. Don’t get too excited.
The above describes what will happen. And not only in L.A. – – also to Trump’s MAGA aspirations. (Disclosure: Also, at my age, to my workouts.)
American right-wingers and leftist third worldists were on Putin’s Payroll
I think that is a nonsensical statement. Putin has enough headache making payroll for Russians instead of dishing out scarce hard currency to an assortment of international wingnuts.
I predict more illegal immigrants sporting multiple felonies, who are protected by the Wee Psychotic Dyke Mayor of Los Angeles from ICE intervention, unleashing more havoc upon her loyal voters and their homes, if they still have one or two…
https://www.themainewire.com/2025/01/illegal-immigrant-arrested-near-la-fire-with-blowtorch-is-a-convicted-felon-with-history-of-violence/
It’s pointless arguing with commenter “HA”. He’s a bloody minded creep who is motivated by an agenda he does not openly state. The deceitful bastard won’t say who he is – what nationality – or where his real allegiances lie. Instead, he hides everything in a cloud of cynical snark. I view him as nothing more than a yammering piece of crap.
Well, if they use directed energy weapons again, you’ll see a lot of metal burning, but not wood.
“absent insurance, the property will be grabbed up by financiers for pennies on the dollar”-basically scum bags seeing an opportunity in a natural calamity nothing really new but of course if someone didn’t buy fire insurance in an area known for wild fires he has only himself to blame.
If these celebrities and rich businessmen lost all due to their uninsured homes burning down they were not exactly rich to begin with, with them only living a simulacra lifestyle of the rich and famous to show off with nothing underneath-basically the story of the modern US writ small.
Whoa! That guy is going deep into Carbon Credit debt! Even using a gas-powered leaf blower! Sick.
Monsieur Raspail, would that you were alive at this hour! The Theater of the Saints…
Fighting wildfire with aircraft is mostly for show. It appears on the TV news that they’re doing something. Maybe the helicopter-every-thirty-seconds that Steve mentions is an effective tactic, but those ancient hulking fixed-wing craft that drop buckets of piss on the flames one at a time are at best a waste of resources, and indeed a catastrophe waiting to happen.
What on Earth are ‘Xerox boxes’?
“That was Middle Kingdom-inspired sarcasm”
Well in that vein, howzabout some down-home old-fashioned Middle-Kingdom-inspired wisdom?
> Kill the chickens to scare the monkeys.
And accept that it won’t work unless and until you kill really a LOT of chickens, enough that you make sure that you scare the ever-lovin’ living SHIT out of the monkeys.
Madame Mao, you’re wanted on line two.
Or, the Smart City option
A giant Marshall Plan for Trump to goose the GDP rather than overseeing doom and gloom austerity like Jimmy Carter is very much up his alley
And, of course, it is also very fitting for our new Tech Oligarchs
As usual, we learn from our mistakes–as usual at a price. And in this case it is difficult to wrap one’s head around what that will be, but it will surely include cardiopulmonary issues resulting from all
the toxins filling the air. In terms of catastrophic impact these fires are verging upon 9/11-type significance.
Putin has been caught financing “influencers.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/09/05/tenet-media-russia-rt-tim-pool/
Archived copy: https://archive.is/QuwlR
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7314976
“This sort of rant leads one to suspect you don’t actually have much of a case.”
It’s in the public domain! I’ll even put together a graph with lots of colored dots. What more proof do you need?
Weird how the Unz-dot-crowd can spot a Jew getting rich from a mile away, and they can predict that kind of thing correctly 15 out of 7 times, but when it comes to connecting the dots on anything else, they’re flummoxed.
“And if it emerged that her source for this was 100% correct and authoritative…”
And yet, the fact that it definitely ISN’T remotely authoritative or based on anything but bogus wishful thinking and colored dots on a timeline makes absolutely no difference to you. If you’re too dumb to see the hypocrisy there, well then, you might just be a fanboy.
Hello Dearieme. Yes, China too, could be put on that list. (Unfortunately, the Chinese Gov’t owns your house after 70 years, so not so much incentive toward that deadline.)
Land value aside, the reason people put the work into their granite-countered kitchens and all the rest is that it IS a way to put the value of their labor (whether labor done in another job and the hiring of guys to do the work or their own “sweat equity”) into something that holds it. Interest rates in low-risk things like CD’s have been negative in REAL money terms.
True, if you’re gonna lose your stuff anyway if the house got burned down, but not any equity in it, renting seems better. However, I guess the landlord has to cover his risk somehow… like in rent.
My 2nd paragraph makes me wonder if part of the push for the immigration invasion by elites is an effort to avoid an ’07 – ’08 housing crash. Now, there’s always someone who needs housing. And… the fires helped!
LOL. Was that chicken/monkey advice a Chairwoman Maoism? (Or Gang-of-4ism?)
With all this talk of the incompetent Commie management of California and these disastrous fires, I will go back to the real deal, Mr. Confucius, a man greatly revered by the folks at Peak Stupidity:
UPDATE: Whoops, Peak Stupidity staff regrets the misattribution of the above writings (stuff in italics) to Mr. Confucius of the People’s Republic of China. These writings were posted by an intern working for the blog, who had understandably lifted them from the works of a different Confucius, Mr. Bill Confucius of Paducah, Kentucky. We sincerely regret the error. It
won’tmight not happen again.Hilarious, thanks J. Ross.
The striking thing about modern “lefitism”–i.e. minoritarianism–is that it seemingly has no understanding of anything:
— peoples, cultures, nations, borders
— sex, marriage, children, family
— law, order, crime and punishment
Minoritarians are hostile to every pillar required for civilization. They are people with no idea, no concept of how civilization works at all.
If their idea was just to fight fires without water, that would be an ideological upgrade!
The only perplexing thing is how such a cancerous vapid ideology has been able to colonize the West at all?
I think we know who you are
My step-father’s cousin bought a bungalow in Santa Monica back in the early 70’s for around 30k. He was a bus mechanic for the (then known as) RTD.
IIRC he sold it in the mid oughts for just over a million. It was tiny house with a tiny yard
Some of us see Russia as bad, the Ukraine as somewhat worse, and the war as something the Biden administration chose to ignite just so that they would have a defensible cause. ‘Green America and open borders aren’t grabbing them — start a war against Russia?’
Worth a try. Now three years later, we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. The only plausible peace treaty is exactly what was on offer in April of 2022.
Hey, that’s a line from the main character in a Charlie Chan movie.
It would be cool to revive the old Charlie Chan movie franchise; just don’t use a Black LGBQ for Mr. Chan.
What really pissed my off is that we promised our children that once the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted everything would be alright, be OK, life would go back to the normal they knew.
Then that motherfucker invaded Ukraine.
Thanks — I would have thought this was common knowledge by now, but there it is:
To the extent there’s anything suspicious about that story, it’s their claim that it was only 300 million. (Then again, there’s probably a strategic reason for wanting the Russians to think that we only know a small portion of what it is they’re up to). Moreover, Westerners sure are easy to corrupt, and Putin has plenty of willing drudges who will do his bidding for free
I’m not saying Mike Whitney or Pepe Escobar or any of Unz’s many other so-called Russia experts get envelopes of cash with Москва printed in big red letters. I also don’t expect Ron Unz to willingly ask some hard questions as to why so many of his journalists want to talk about Russia (I mean, when they’re not talking about Jews) and little else. But there’s a reason why whenever we have a prisoner swap with Russians, there’s generally a sleeper agent or two that we fork over (but curiously, the Russians are never able to find all the people we sent over there–I guess it’s because our spies are so much more competent that they never get uncovered; yeah, that must be it).
Those sleepers have been here for decades. It’s almost as if that prattle about prerestroika and turning over a new leaf was never anything but another con.
After the white man has flown in and saved the bacon, so to say, will the Lesbian Three twerk in triumph from the top of some suitable building? Looking forward to this display of female leadership.
“It’s almost as if that prattle about prerestroika and turning over a new leaf was never anything but another con”
I can see there’s obviously some deep-seated ethnic animus that I’m not picking up on – after all, Yeltsin’s Russia was a creation of the United States.
and the economy of Yeltsin’s Russia, complete with babushkas selling their possessions on the street and ptitsas selling their bodies in the clubs, was a creation of US academic economists.**
** but with Russian characteristics, as the oligarchs fought nastily for control of the vast estate previously owned by the Soviet Union.
Thanks. I was just out of them yesterday. But I’ve ordered a pack on Amazon, should have ’em in a couple days.
Apologize to any of y’all who have soldiered on through my poorly edited prose. I keep meaning to do better.
They’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
It’s not all bad news then.
Good catch. It (i.e. “boks -zerokse“) seems to be an accurate transcription of what was said, but speaking for myself, I prefer to transport my slop in receptacles that are not nearly so high-tech. Whereas Russians have evidently contrived something more sophisticated and up-to-date, once again outmaneuvering the lazy, dumb and decadent West.
But don’t anyone worry — I understand Elmo and Vivek have come up with a way to make the citizens of this great nation more pleasing to the likes of them.
“Pardon my query : but why rebuild at all ? Why cannot these places become a state park for all Americans and pre -Americans to enjoy ? Or hills for special forces to practice ?”
The land is largely privately owned and will be rebuilt in the natural course of events. To turn it into a park or something you would have to seize it all by eminent domain which would be expensive and unpopular.
Santa Monica has a lot of tiny lots. It wasn’t a rich place c. 1900. Rich people wanted to live in Pasadena. They feared ocean fogs in Santa Monica would give them tuberculosis.
I just got a call a recording from congress critter Brad Sherman 818 number San Fernando Valley where Steve lives.
On and on about resources and help. Good news from FEMA.
Instead of $750.00 like the N Carolina people got, the Los Angeles people will get more, $770.00 for immediate needs.
Yeltsin’s Russia was a creation of the United States.”
Ah yes, Yeltsin — how dare the Yanks attempt to rescue him!. The very same man who told Clinton:
Good thing Clinton demurred — I mean, think of how hard it would be ta swipe Greenland (I mean, except for the part we allow the Russians to keep) for ourselves if he had given Yeltsin everything he insisted the Russians deserved!
This is the “creation of the United States” you speak of? I therefore take it you would much prefer Russia in the decades prior to Yeltsin, is that what you’re saying? Any particular favorites come to mind? Are you on team Stalin or are you more of a Lenin guy? And in which of these regimes of halcyon days were the sleeper agents that I mentioned absent? If you have no answer to that, then what’s the point of yet again blaming someone else for the troubles that poor little Russia (the original dindu nuffin) endured while all that territory it now holds just somehow sorta fell into its lap or something?
As George Kennan observed, upon reading (what was by then a century-old travelogue by) Custine, the more things change over there, the more they persist:
What are the odds that Kennan would find Custine’s relevance to Putin’s regime any different?
“Some of us see Russia as bad, the Ukraine as somewhat worse, and the war as something the Biden administration chose to ignite…”
Right. Because Russia would totally be happy with swiping Ukraine, and wouldn’t then move on to resurrecting the rest of the USSR? Just like we were assured that Putin would be totally happy with swiping Crimea about 8 years earlier, and that wouldn’t lead to any more problems for anyone, which meant that we should have just bended over and accept it.
And I don’t buy for a minute that the people I ridicule around here for their manifest stupidity see Russia as “bad” in any way, given the loopy acrobatics they engage in when trying to convince me or anyone else that choosing to invade Ukraine was Biden’s fault. Moreover, I’ve seen in the last two days some of the evidence you lot lay out when trying to convince us that Ukraine is “somewhat worse”, colored dots and all. That tells me all I need to know about how you see the world.
And whom are the ‘influencers’ ‘influencing’? Western governments are still sending hundreds of billions of dollars aid to Ukraine to finance a war which might have killed a million Russians. What did ‘Putin’ achieve? I think Putin is smarter than this and this Russian perfidy story is BS, like the election interference etc., allegations.
Let me tell you that I’m NOT looking forward to this. I don’t claim it will “save America”. That’s not why I point it out. To me, it’ll be more of an opportunity for the Communists types to tell everyone that “Capitalism” is just not working out, and we’ve got a better way. (History rhyming there.)
You are right, AnotherDad, that America COULD take and HAS taken care of itself very well.
However, when you go on the Socialist Welfare State path the way back is not simple. (That’s a feature, not a bug, for these people.) You don’t just built back up manufacturing either with the snap of your fingers. Human capital has been squandered. Things will not go “pfffft” slowly. The dollar will be seen as the trash that it unfortunately is, and Americans will not be ready to live at a significantly lower financial level. As it is, they are borrowing to keep living that Middle Class life. Then, politics will take advantage of the shock to Americans’ finances.
This is not the America of the Great Depression 1.0. Americans were hardier and harder-working people then. We don’t think of America as a prosperous country during the 1930’s, but compare the numbers to today. To think, until Roosevelt made it much worse, wouldn’t you say that the economic situation in 1929 and the early ’30s was much more solid than it is today?
If you write back, I’ll link you to that great Lionel Shriver novel.
It would be interesting to know what percentage are rented out at any given time.
Historians ignore how much FDR’s election and the Dem takeover of Congress made the Depression worse before they even took office, just as Lincoln’s election precipitated secession and war. They blame Hoover’s tariff increases but leave out his doubling of the top income tax rate from 25 to 50%.
Totally OT, but I finally got to see “Nosferatu” the other day. Very stylish, and very scary — but the problem is, the scariness is almost entirely due to the style, not to implicit scariness itself. Hmm, it would appear that vampires are spooky-looking, and dwell in spooky old places. Thanks for the insight, I’ll be sure to pass it along.
Viewed as a sort of David-Lynchian fever dream, something you just fall into and let yourself drift around in, it’s great and very spooky. But judged as a movie or as an actual story, it makes no sense at all, and it falls apart at the slightest puff of a sneeze. They spent a gazillion bucks on costume design and set design and lighting design, but they sent the story guy home early, before he even had a chance to get respectably drunk.
The one great thing it does have in spades, is Grotowski. It’s wall-to-wall Grotowski, I haven’t seen this much of the auld devil in a dog’s age. And it works: they really studied, it’s really quite good. Nice to see Willem Dafoe up to his old tricks: man, I still remember that cat as a promising young nobody in “L.S.D.” having sixteen different flavors of freakout back in the Performing Garage days. Good to know he’s still got it in him.
“What is this…….. dancing?”
I’ve been noticing these “China in trouble” stories for nearly as long as I’ve been reading “Japan lost decades” stories, yet both countries seem not only to be doing OK, but in Japan’s case maintaining both their high-end producer goods manufacturing and their more basic stuff like steel and shipbuilding.
Ever heard of this lot? I hadn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabuchi_Motor
While China is storming ahead in all kinds of stuff. In the UK they tried and failed with motorcycles, but are succeeding with cars. They tried selling cheap commuter bikes, but they were poor quality and hard to maintain, plus far fewer Brits use bikes to get to work than they did 40 years ago, when Japan destroyed the UK bike industry. Instead they bought a well known Brit brand, MG (everything in modern UK is for sale to foreigners) and sold China-made electric cars with MG badges.
BYD, the world’s biggest electric car maker, is selling their new models in the UK at half the price of (Chinese-made) Teslas, while imbecile Brit governments fine UK manufacturers who don’t sell enough electric cars!
https://www.byd.com/uk
What I do enjoy is reading the people who blithely assert both that
a) Russia is a basket case of incompetent drunks, who can’t maintain their equipment, send untrained conscripts in meat assaults to be slaughtered en masse, steal washing machines for their computer chips etc
b) if by some meat assault miracle this basket case wins in Ukraine, next thing their armour will be pouring into the Baltics, Poland and across the North German plain. Ivan will put his muddy boots on white Parisian tablecloths and ask for more vodka in his champagne and more chambermaids in his room.
Surely Xerox-boxes are empty copier-paper boxes? Used to use them a lot for document storage.
Didn’t Grotwoski use to play tight end for the Patriots?
“Americans were hardier and harder working people then.”
Not only that but in the nineteen thirties we had a smaller national debt, our industrial base had not been offshored, we did not have a large expensive military, and we were still almost ninety percent White.
Things do not look good. Rather than try to print money to maintain current levels of government spending, resulting in high inflation, it will be better to just accept big cuts in government spending.
If we do that, the future will be better because of continued technological advances. We did not have things like computers in the nineteen thirties. The first workable computer was built by John Atanasoff in 1939 at Iowa State College. The reason I know that is because Atanasoff was hired as a math professor there by the chairman of the math department, Edwin R. Smith, who was my great grandfather.
Historians ignore how much FDR’s election and the Dem takeover of Congress made the Depression worse before they even took office,
==
There was anxiety over a possible devaluation of the currency, for which neither Roosevelt nor the congressional Democratic caucus can be blamed.
Also, newsflash, citizens: Billie Eilish remains a goddess. What did we do to deserve her? Not only is she a national treasure, she’s a celestial one as well.
You’re watching a legend in real time, pipples. Even Ignatz Mouse lowers his brick in genuflection.
Huh??? FDR shortly after gaining power issued his notorious executive order confiscating gold and then devalued the dollar, from 1 oz. gold = $20 to 1 oz. gold = $35.
And furthermore, the USG got away with defaulting on the gold clauses in bond/loan contracts from the WW I era at around the same time as the devaluation of the dollar. So explain why FDR is not responsible for investors correctly predicting what he would do?
Indeed. After two years, Russia still hasn’t managed to get to Kiev. If there’s anything that’s been demonstrated, it’s that modern Russia is a decidedly limited threat.
Also, as both the Ukraine and Georgia demonstrate, her bellicosity is a matter of ‘thus far, but no farther.’ Her empire has been stripped from her, but she seems to have accepted the status quo that emerged by 2ooo. There have been no clear attempts to recover the Baltics, etc. But as for the states on the ‘inner ring,’ she won’t permit them to become actively aligned against her. Belarus, the Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan — they’re to remain as they are.
That may or may not be pleasing to the eye, but the implication is that there’s no global threat here. Don’t bait the bear, and it’ll stay in its valley.
The people who want conflict are us, not them.
Well, he may be influencing the comment threads on ISteve, and that’s what really counts. It’s sort of like “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” ….
Is it something you would keep ‘slop’ in? It seems like a strange usage.
Then there are bankers boxes, much the same size, for document storage. Some of my finest work is stored in those, deep inside a salt mine. Thousands of years from now, a Chinese archaeologist is going to dig them up and wonder who I was.
Just in case you are not joking, it was Rob Gronkowski who played tight end for the Patriots.
It occurs to me that the partisans of the Ukraine like to compare Putin’s Russia to the Big Bad Bear of 1945, or even to Nazi Germany.
If we are going to draw analogies with long-gone mid-Twentieth century dictatorships, then Putin’s Russia might reasonably be compared to Mussolini’s Italy: perhaps open to criticism, and decidedly a problem if you’re a Libyan or an Ethiopian, but not exactly a global threat. Indeed, Russia’s progress in the Ukraine suggests a power more akin to Italy in Greece than Germany in Poland.
…and I’ll point out that while Mussolini’s Italy was decidedly expansionist, Putin’s Russia is merely trying to keep what remains to it.
Really. Just don’t try to add the Ukraine to NATO, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Gronkowski#2018_season
How Gronk Dented the Super Bowl 53 Trophy | Patriots
Appreciate the sentiment, mi hermano blanco, pero it’s no longer realistic.
Spanish is likely to be a co-equal or dominant language in even more of the USA in the near future. Better to learn some, at least.
Certainly children and grandchildren would be unwise not to become proficient in Spanish. Whatever the motivation for not learning it (laziness, closemindedness, or wishful thinking), it will cost them. People who refuse to learn Spanish will limit their future economic and social opportunities, and enjoyment of life, in the emerging Latino-majority USA.
I never would have let in most of the nonEuropeans who settled here, legally and illegally, over the immivasion waves of the past sixty years. But they and their many descendants are here and will not be going away without a physical fight. That’s a fight that nonHispanics cannot expect to win in many cities, counties, and states.
Time for us to deal with the USA and its people the way they actually are, not the way we wish they used to be. That means being at least bilingual to be fully part of the USA’s social, economic, and political life, and to be competitive with the many multi-lingual people outside the USA. Best would be English and Spanish from Kindergarten onward. And for those who are able, add another, more difficult, major world language like Chinese, Russian, Japanese, or Arabic.
Feliz año 😉
Yes, and that anxiety was well-founded as Roosevelt DID devalue the currency from 20 bucks and change per gold tr-oz to 35. That’s about a 40% devaluation of their money.
How would you like it, Art, if overnight your $200,000 in the bank was changed to $120,000?
But more importantly he is known as “Gronk”
You’re thinking of Bruce Koskioski, San Fransisco University:
The devaluation was tonic. Even with some bad policy initiatives that might have been avoided (the NIRA), improvements in real income during the years running from 1933 to 1936 were extraordinarily rapid.
“What I do enjoy is reading the people who blithely assert both that Russia is a basket case of incompetent drunks…”
Weren’t you the one who just implied that Yeltsin (who we can all agree was as drunk as anyone can be) incompetently allowed the Yanks to subvert the country he ruled? So maybe you and the other fanboys should chuckle about your own inconsistencies before hectoring me on mine.
Moreover, in the words of your favorite pre-Yeltsin Russian autocrat (or so I’m guessing — you didn’t really come clean on that) , “quantity has a quality all its own”. That means that even a basket-case-ful of drunkards can cause a lot of problems down the road if they set their minds to it and if the basket is big enough. Especially if enough fools and traitors closer to home persist in helping them along. Some guy aimlessly waving a machete back and forth like a drunk zombie may need several swipes to actually behead someone, but unless something is done to contain him, at some point he’s going to connect.
And it’s the ones sent out to die in meatgrinders who tend to be drunken basket cases — though, in fairness, wouldn’t you be tempted to drown your sorrows too if you were given a similar sentence? Whereas the one who sent them out to die in the first place did so behind long, long conference table and doesn’t drink at all (or at least not nearly to the extent that his aforementioned mentor did).
Gentlemen, have you asked your physicians about low T ? Help is available.
In other Billy news:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14232243/Billie-Eilish-sultry-photo-sex-life.html
To her credit, some bracingly astute self-awareness:
OK Art, then you can send me $60,000 from your bank account, with Ron Unz acting as the middle man – I trust that guy. It’ll be tonic for you, but I’ll take the gin. ;-}
Could it be that HA and JJ are actually a brilliant Russian psy-op, designed to force people by their sheer abandonment of logic towards a pro-Russian viewpoint?
I find it hard to credit, no one could be that sneaky.
I’ll keep an eye out for a “rock star attacked, eaten by her own dogs” story.
One simply becomes aware.
A significant portion of those whose houses burned down are likely to be illegal immigrants. US taxpayers owe them nothing, especially since they were taking jobs and housing from whites. If they apply for anything their citizenship should be investigated.
The biggest cheap labor scheme the GOP ever pulled off was the American Civil War. Northerners wanted to buy those cheap Southern crops without paying a tariff for them. The North prospered on cheap black labor as much as the South did, so wasn’t willing to let the South leave.
Your objection is to economic recovery, which is stupid.
In Pacific Palisades? Even in Altadena?
Granite counters are out . Quartz and soapstone is in.
What recovery? The economy was at its worst in ’37, 5 years into Roosevelt’s Welfare State (plus a little before from Hoover). Whatever you say, Maynard.
It’s the drunken illegal from Atladena (go Jose, go Jose, go Jose, go!) 🎵 🎶
When it comes to the Ukraine, the comparison I think of is Jim Jones talking nine hundred of his followers into committing collective suicide in Guyana. The United States, using its puppet Zelinsky, had the Ukrainians fight a war they could not possibly win because the opponent had three times the population and a bigger industrial base.
Now, after three years of the Russians grinding the Ukrainians down, they are losing and America is demanding their 18 to 25 year olds be thrown in the meat grinder, even though it will not change the outcome of the war. American political leaders do not care about Ukrainians. They just want to use them as a stick to beat Russia with.
Jim Jones was a minister at a church here in Indianapolis in the fifties. My father told me one time my grandmother belonged to his church but quit and told my dad to stay away from Jones because she could sense he was evil. Zelensky is the Jim Jones of the Ukraine.
Even in California learning Spanish is dumb. For one thing most of the Hispanic immigrants don’t really speak Spanish. They speak pre literate Indian languages and maybe 100 words of Spanish. And since California has had for about 30 years only English public schools all the children of Hispanic immigrants learn good English at school.
San Francisco hardly anyone speaks Spanish. And none speak “ Chinese” as there’s no such thing as a Chinese language any more than there is a European language. Recent immigrants all speak mandarin now the official language. But at home they speak Fukienese or other Chinese languages
All Hispanic government workers nurses medics store clerks receptionists call center workers speak English. Some have Spanish accents but their children won’t All the Hispanic politicians and their staffs speak English. English and Spanish like the other Latin languages are very similar and easy to learn . Main difference English is slow and Spanish is fast.
In the part of Los Angeles I live in about 4 months of the year 80 year old immigrants still speak Farsi and accented English . But their middle aged children and teen and young adult grandchildren speak perfect English.
Arabic Armenian Farsi Russian Polish Uzbek Hebrew Cambodian Vietnamese Korean Thai Hindi and Pushtan and Urdu Ethiopian Hebrew African language Portuguese Eastern European languages a big Serbian community in Los Angeles county I forget the name of the town they settled
Since Ron unz heroic English only in public schools referendum. about 30 years ago every public school kids was completely immersed in English from age 5.
Viewing on the Spanish and other foreign language TV stations is going down.
And despite the political and idiot intellectual posturing, Spanish is still considered the language if the welfare and very low paid working class. Although it’s not really Spanish
Claiming the American natives and non Hispanic immigrants should learn Spanish is like claiming wealthy 19 th century rich ladies should learn Gaelic so they could be friends with their FOB Irish maids. Or Armour Ford Carnegie and other captains of industry should learn polish German Slovakian Bulgarian Serbian Siciliano and other foreign languages to speak with their immigrant workers.
You’re just an ignorant ancient old progressive parroting all the crap from the 1980s Atlantic New Republic The Nation New York Times and the rest of the anti White Jew commies.
There were kids whose parents spoke about 160 different many very obscure foreign languages back when the woke faggot progressives imposed not just bi lingual English Spanish but bi lingual English whatever including Ethiopian 4 varieties of Nigerian versions of Aztec and a couple alleged pre Columbian languages it was ridiculous.
I was told about an immigrant couple from Senegal who went to enroll their kids in the local Los Angeles public school. Back when it was bilingual They spoke English but with accents. The clerk asked what was their native language so the kids would be sent to a bi lingual English Senegalese school.
Big shock when they explained the language of Senegal is French. But what’s your indigenous tribal language? French. We don’t know any indigenous Senegalese language We lived in Ohio when we came to America. Kids went to school in Ohio And the kids speak better English than we do.
It’s 2o25 old anti White woke progressive liberal. The Hispanics along with the Americans voted for that English only referendum
Why they want to do that is what escapes me.
Back in the day, when the USSR was a genuine threat and rival and a force for general badness around the world, the consensus on how to deal with her was generally to be firm but restrained — with the debate usually revolving around what the precise ratio of ‘firm’ to ‘restrained’ should be.
Now — when Russia is at best a regional power and by no sane calculus a serious threat to us or our interests — it’s bait it, provoke it, abuse it. It’s impossible to come up with a defensible explanation for the change.
Based on “If they apply for anything their citizenship should be investigated“, he is probably conflating illegals with immigrants. Any illegal would have to have a lot of hutzpah filling forms needing 28 forms of identifying information before doling out $1. How does 3 past year’s 1040 sound like?
It’s impossible to come up with a defensible explanation for the change.
Many of them grew up on the appeasing side before 1991. Maybe they hope to cause a counter-revolution back to Communism.
Can’t. The black survivors of US slavery are all dead.
“[A]bsent insurance, the property will be grabbed up by financiers for pennies on the dolla…”
Absent insurance, the property is only worth pennies on the dollar of its former value. In contradiction to your subtext, without government intervention, interference and favoritism there is no reason to think the financiers would find buying places in the area unduly profitable.
Of course there WILL be government intervention, interference and favoritism.
It’s not the economy that does that. It’s fiat currency and the Fed that decides that savers can’t get a decent return on their savings.
“Main difference English is slow and Spanish is fast.”
Well really, it’s just different flavors of types of slow and fast. Spot quiz — who is faster or slower: Su Tung-p’o or Catullus?
Spanish is fast but slow in one way, English is slow but fast in a different way. Common sticker on LA subway trains 20 years ago… SPANISH: EL DIA DE VIAJER AL TRABAJO CON SU BICYCLETA. ENGLISH VERSION: BIKE TO WORK DAY.
Or alternately, in the downtown LA movie theater I used to sleep at, during a screening of Run-DMC’s failed hip-hop hero-pic “Tougher Than Leather”…
ONSCREEN: Motherfucker! Let’s get the motherfucking fuck the fuck outta here!
SPANISH SUBTITLE: !Vamonos!
Sure, Spanish is faster because they speak so fast, to account for too many goddam syllables in the same space as English. I’ve never seen a Mexican/Espanol translation of Samuel Beckett, but something tells me it would be a hoot.
The terrible thing is the sunk costs.
“So many of our people have died, it would be a betrayal of them not to continue and send more to die!”
If Russia feel the same way, it becomes a numbers game. And who has the numbers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
There was certainly a feeling in the UK between the wars that the best and the bravest of Britain’s young men had gone, killed on the Western Front – and that was probably correct. Lord Alanbrooke in WW2 said there was a shortage of good officers as so many had gone. But Britain in 1940 still had a lot more young men than Ukraine has.
The anxiety was not among ‘investors’ but bank depositors. And, guess what, you’re culpable for what you do, not what someone fancies you’ll do.
==
The monetary policy of the period running from 1929 to 1933 was an absolute disaster and you had an almost instantaneous turn around when it was abandoned. See the late Sir Alan Walters on this subject, comparing the British experience to the American experience.
What recovery? The economy was at its worst in ’37, 5 years into Roosevelt’s Welfare State (plus a little before from Hoover). Whatever you say, Maynard
==
Real gross domestic product in 1933 was 26% lower than it had been in 1929 and it declined every year. Real gross domestic product in 1941 exceeded that in 1933 by 91% and that in 1929 by 41%. That in 1938 was 4% lower than in 1937, and that was the only year-over-year decline.
==
Note, if you compare the mean year-over-year growth in domestic product per capita from it’s nadir (in 1932 in most places, 1933 in the U.S.) to 1939, you discover that growth rates in the United States were higher than the norm in the occidental world. Germany and Austria grew more rapidly, as did Chile. Not to many other places.
They speak pre literate Indian languages
==
About 2% of Mexico’s population speaks Indian dialects at home. The use of Indian dialects is fairly common in Guatemala, but even there its preferred by a minority. Not so common elsewhere in Central America. The use of Indian dialects is modal in Bolivia and common in Paraguay, but these aren’t producing many migrants. Even there, educational policy has worked to make facility in Spanish the mode among those preferring Indian dialects.
Right. (Goes to another comment of mine here.) I wasn’t up for explaining it all in that 1st comment. Thanks.
That was a mishmash of stats that meant exactly squat. I thought the library was more organized.
Interesting and helpful comments – yours and RC’s, but, no, there are plenty of places (allegedly) in the US where you aren’t getting a job if you don’t know Spanish. There are enclaves in my State, far from Cali, where people only speak Spanish. It’s gonna get worse.
As for California, I told Ron Unz that his 1990s successful effort was great and well appreciated, but since he doesn’t care about the massive waves of immigration, no, he won’t need to work against bi-lingual ed anymore. In some places, everyone speaks Spanish. Yes, I’ve been everywhere, Alden.
In response to RadicalCenter, I plead all 3, “laziness, closemindedness, AND wishful thinking”. The laziness is my boy’s – took 45 minutes of it once a week, doesn’t remember much because I told him long ago something along the lines of “Spanish is for losers”, but, man, when he speaks, his accent is perfecto!
Hello, RadicalCenter. See my post above in reply to Alden, but let me add a couple of things.
It’s been over 30 years since I took just one 6-week class in Spanish, probably 1 1/2 hr each weekday or something. The lady teacher was great! She got into the mindset of the language, the background behind some words, etc. I mean, now, years later, in South America, I could still make out half of what I read (not literature, mind you) and come up with some words to help explain things to those who know ZERO English. Yet, all that said, I KNOW my accent sucks, badly.
Now, regarding Chinese. Alden is wrong in calling the dialects “languages”, but I’m sure you know that. Also, even the old people in China all know (at least can hear) Mandarin now, from TV. Chinese people in America, unless they are some of the millions of illegal Fujian people who work at the buffet restaurants, all speak to each other in Mandarin. I think it’s a hell of a thing to learn, but well worth it.
Reading and writing Chinese is yet another level of stupid, IMO, but also a great skill to have. I’m hoping that the Chinese finally chuck it someday. It can be like Olde English.
Happy New Years to you and yours too, R.C. It’s 5% behind us already!
It was a direct response to your contention. Your contention was wrong. Sorry it sailed over your head, but it is not an obscure point.
You can get a satisfactory return if you balance your account between equities, bonds, and CDs.
I think that’s part of it.
One of the really strange things about it is that the Ukraine brigade seems to be at least disproportionately Jewish.
Now, Russians haven’t exactly been friends of the Jewish people, but pre-1917, there weren’t many Jews in Russia proper; you can’t persecute Jews who aren’t there. What Russian hostility there was towards Jews, it’s generally stopped short of actually killing them.
The Ukraine, on the other hand, had a lot of Jews, and whoever you want to blame, they’ve killed a whole lot of Jews. Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the pogroms associated with the Russian Civil War, the Trawniki Men — Ukrainians definitely aren’t friends of the Jews.
So why the hell would Jews be so enthusiastic about supporting the Ukraine? As I say, I can’t see a defensible explanation.
That ‘Cali’ thing has got to go. I first heard it from some sort of East Coast creature thirty years or so ago.
Nobody from California calls it ‘Cali.’ Cali is a city in Columbia — and not a very nice one, apparently.
I’m fairly sure that’s a wild exaggeration. I have once (once) noticed some Guatemalans speaking something that definitely wasn’t Spanish among themselves, but that was it — and I’ve been around Hispanics a lot.
Some speak it more better than others. Some are even all fluent.
“Could it be that HA and JJ are actually a brilliant Russian psy-op, designed to force people by their sheer abandonment of logic towards a pro-Russian viewpoint?”
That would make about as much sense as your other fits of “logic”, but for what it’s worth, right about now, the Russians need all the help they can get.
Don’t worry, Putin — your fanbase here at Unz-dot-com is unshakable and despite all the other things that are on their plate, your psy-ops divisions have managed to hook me and JJ up to swing support in your favor. It’s all about priorities. And already, I can sense that the tide is turning!. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the. new government in Syria strings Moscow along for a while with enticements of future cooperation (for the right price). It may make more sense than locking them out altogether. But that may all be irrelevant because, at any moment now, we can expect a lowland pincer movement, or something, to crush those silly rebels back to the stone age. Scott Ritter told us so!
From December 3:
So I’m guessing that any day now, the gloves will come off and in another two weeks, it’ll all be over. And this time the fanboys really, really mean it!
“the consensus on how to deal with her was generally to be firm but restrained”
The word, as Kennan advocated, is CONTAINED. That’s still very much on the agenda, and while I know the fanboys like to pretend they’re at war with NATO, but NATO hasn’t even shown up yet. And I’m pretty sure the consensus would be happy to return to allowing Russians to brutalize whatever is WITHIN its borders — say, like, Grozny. Alas, Putin chose to invade a neighboring country whose borders the Russians had promised to leave alone — in an agreement we ourselves twisted arms in order to get signed, all in exchange for “security guarantees”. Clearly, given what happened in Syria and Armenia, Russias security guarantees account for little and I’m not saying the West is much better, but that is what we’re talking about.
You want to pretend that Russia is a poor little victim in all this, getting abused and prodded even as they’re raining bombs on their neighbor. Fine — it makes about as much sense as the rest of the fanboy bullet points — but then don’t try to tell me you think Russia bad in any way.
Indeed. However, I’ll point out that Spanish is (1) fairly useful, and (2) fairly easy to pick up. When we were down in Argentina two winters ago, I was starting to acquire it. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t happen with Chinese.
Also, it’ll simply save you money. If you can communicate with the monolingual guy in the Home Depot parking lot, you’ll pay less than you’ll have to if you want a genuine English speaker. And while I’ll grant the moral arguments against employing them, in my experience F.O.B. Hispanics are pretty good and competent workers.
So if I was going to acquire a foreign language, Spanish would be one of my top picks.
Thanks for that. Oddly enough, nothing in the national media about it.
Always important to remember: these are just the crimes they know about.
Note the F.O.B. thing. The new ones will work hard (competent is arguable) but after a decade here they are as lazy and entitled as anyone else. And they keep pouring in so we can leverage the cheap, desperate newcomers.
Meanwhile the country now has 350 million people, and is roughly half as pleasant as when it had half as many people.
But sure: extreme poverty is a good motivator, at least when we’re talking about people who aren’t used to living in a welfare state.
Equities are risky. People that want to save their money without risk, as one COULD DO before the FED held rates in the basement, would want bonds and CDs, and those haven’t paid squat till a couple of years back (4%, well less than real inflation, and the point of interest is not to just equal inflation).
You know nothing about it. You can’t just go searching for “economics” in the Wikipedia search box and think you know something. You are wrong about Roosevelt, and you are wrong about the Great Depression. Now, you didn’t understand what Gandydancer (and I in a different comment, about housing) were saying.
Trying to save a little typing time was all. (I know – never heard that either – just “northern Cal” or “southern Cal”.)
That is such bullshit. The Crimea was never part of the Ukraine in any substantial sense: not historically, not culturally, not demographically.
By 1991, it had a population that was overwhelmingly Russian. It had merely been lumped in with the Ukraine as a matter of bureaucratic convenience when ‘the Ukraine’ was no more than an administrative division.
Nu? So come an independent Ukraine — and one that has just elected an anti-Russian government — it wants to go with Russia, and Russia wants it to go with Russia. You might as well claim the US has a right to Okinawa; the Ukraine has no right to the Crimea. The Donetz is a fraught question; the Crimea is silly.
Now, should you want to take up the cause of the Crimean Tatars, that’s a different matter, but ‘stolen’
from the Ukraine?
Nahh.
California — or there goes your Colin Grant.
Several things have been accomplished in this war and one is clearly revenge.
I get it. Your powers of observation and analysis are — how to put this? — “limited” and consist of trying to explain everything in the world by way of your THE JEWS ARE BEHIND IT magic decoder ring. But given that they leave you confused and unable to defensibly explain anything in this instance — for reasons you yourself laid out — maybe that means it’s time for a different approach?
Because lo and behold, once you take off those 3d-X-ray-Jewfinder goggles and finally admit that Putin invaded and is attempting to dismember a neighboring country whose borders he promised to uphold, thereby consigning hundreds of thousands to death, maybe you’ll easily understand why so much of the world (barring those paragons of virtue and wisdom like North Korea and Burkina Faso) believe he deserves all the pushback he’s getting and then some.
If you get it, why is nothing you said a response to anything I actually said?
You know nothing about it.
==
I’m afraid I do. It’s upsetting to you, but I cannot help that.
==
Equities are risky.
==
Don’t buy on margin and balance your account between equities of different types. Try exchange traded funds.
By 1991, it had a population that was overwhelmingly Russian
==
About 60% Great Russian. The referendum on sovereignty held in the fall of 1991 passed in all 25 regions of the Ukraine. The vote was closer in the Crimea than in other regions, but it still cadged a majority there.
Only one woman, why don’t the feminazis protest?
“Many of them grew up on the appeasing side before 1991. Maybe they hope to cause a counter-revolution back to Communism.”
If that were anything other than a desperate (and failing) attempt to grapple with reality, which like the fall of Syria seem to repeatedly trip up the fanboy community, than why are so many old-school leftists who DO hanker for a resurgence of Communism very much in Putin’s camp? We’re talking Katrina van der Heuvel, Jill Stein and the Greens (whose ultimate prime directive was never about peace or disarmament as much as it was about bowing to Moscow), African People’s Socialists, Clare Daly, etc., etc. I mean, look at Stephen F Cohen, Katrina’s partner and old-school hard-left analyst for The Nation, who was a Putin stooge until his last breath. The guy has been dead for four years, but his fellow Putin stooge Ron Unz still keeps him on the masthead of his website. Now that is obviously a loyalty that is able to rise above mere right-left discrepancies and other such picayune trivialities.
And by the way, what do names like van der Heuvel, Stein, and Cohen (not to mention other pro-Putin stooges like David Sacks, Jeffrey Sachs, and Mearshimer) say about Colin Wright’s idiotic assumption that Jews are disproportionately anti-Putin? I guess when it’s always and everywhere all about the Jews, people like Colin are bound to wind up confused.
I wonder about that. The explanation is obvious — but the motive isn’t admitted.
Are Jews really that irrational, tribal, and duplicitous? Maybe some are…but that doesn’t fit the Jews I’ve known.
It is one of those cases where none of the explanations I can see are really satisfying. Sometimes, one can see what is going on, and the explanation clearly accounts for the phenomenon. Jewish support for Israel, for example: it’s wrong, but I can see how it came about. It makes sense.
In the case of the Ukraine War, I still haven’t found anything that really makes sense.
The job requirement might say must speak Spanish. But in reality the job requirement is must be illegal alien from the same village and or extended family member of the person who does the hiring.
Another reason to boycott Tyson chicken. It’s inedible anyway.
“If you get it, why is nothing you said a response to anything I actually said?”
Even if that were true, which it isn’t, consider purely in arguendo that maybe that’s because there was nothing remotely of substance in anything you actually said. That tends to happen when you start with something as ridiculously false as claiming the Jews are primarily anti-Putin, for reasons I made clear in my last post. Moreover, the very fact that those oh-so-antisemitic Ukrainians were able to overwhelmingly elect a Russian-speaking Jew to be their president means that (unlike you) some people — we’re talking tens of millions — are able to get beyond seeing everything in terms of what the Jews are doing so that they can then find some opposing side to support. Maybe it’s time for you too to give that a shot.
Now, as is the case with all conspiracy theorists when they encounter a hole that their dumb conspiracy theories have dug them into, there’s always a flex that amounts to digging the hole even deeper. In this case, that would be the claim that the Jews (we’re talking Jew Zelensky and son-of-a-Jewish-mother Putin) are secretly teaming up to work both sides in order to get gentiles to kill each other. Which totally explains why Finland and Sweden and Turkey and the UK and Argentina and Italy look down on your boy in Moscow. Oh wait, it explains nothing of the sort….I guess it’s time for another flex.
It wasn’t an assumption, it was an impression — and why is it idiotic? I know that predominately Jewish audiences in New York City were singing the Ukrainian anthem.
Let’s list some prominent Jews. Say Max Boot, Alan Dershowitz, Chuck Schumer, Bill Kristol, and Adam Schiff.
Okay…I know Max Boot is a big Ukraine buff. Why don’t you check on the others?
Or do you know damned well what the answer will be? Labelling something ‘idiotic’ doesn’t make it go away.
I didn’t make that claim.
But this doesn’t bother you; you just imply I did anyway. Why don’t you just write my posts for me? My participation is obviously superfluous.
But what does it say about the validity of your cause that you have to resort to slander, verbal abuse, and misattribution to defend it? Or is that just you?
“The Crimea was never part of the Ukraine in any substantial sense: not historically, not culturally, not demographically.”
Ho-hum. Shall we do Alsace-Lorraine next? What about Sudetenland? Or Texas? And why are Russians still in Königsberg — or that laughable neologism Kaliningrad, if you prefer, and if you want to completely disregard history? For that matter, what about all those Italian influences in nearby Odessa? What’s that all about? Hmm, maybe they need to get a chunk of Ukraine, too. And for millennia before Crimea was Russian, it was a whole of other things that — due to treaties and agreements and bills-of-sale and whatnot — everyone (including Russia) agreed to relegate to the past where they belong. And with regard to “demographics”, are we referring to before or after Stalin evacuated that Tatars who had lived there for a millennium or so in order to “replenish” the area with less obstreporous ethnicities?
Finally, get it through your thick fanboy head that it wasn’t just a whim that spurred Kruschev to give Crimea to the Ukrainians, or whatever other stupid distortion of history the fanboys dredge up in order to prop up their crumbling facade of reality. The water supply for Crimea is in Ukraine. The “big city” of note for that entire region is not Savastopol or Yalta or Simferopol, but Odessa, which even though the Russians now claim is also theirs, they’ve been unable to conquer. And as for geography, which you curiously omitted to mention, if Crimea were so intrinsically Russian, then they wouldn’t have needed to erect a long (and increasingly rickety and precarious) bridge in order to access it.
Face it, it was a swipe. Don’t believe me? Here, let’s listen to what Donbass “freedom fighter” Girkin has to say about that:
How is Girkin doing these days, by the way? Any better than the hot dog salesman?
But yeah, those poor Russians! It’s always outside forces (probably Jews) that are poking and prodding them into meatgrinders and into prisons and off of high-rise windows. Why can’t the outside world just leave them in peace?
In that case, why wasn’t that your response?
Conspicuously, in all these cases there are ethnological and historical grounds for dispute.
That’s exactly what’s missing in the Crimea. The Crimean Tatars would certainly have grounds for putting in a claim — not the Ukraine. Your argument is pure sophism.
Sorry, I forgot to include a link to Girkin’s inside look of how the swipe of Crimea came to be. Unlike the tweets the fanboys love to bedeck with “Thanks” and “Agree”, and which consist colored dots on a timeline supposedly gathered from “the public domain”, I do my best to provide actual data.
I didn’t ask for it, but thanks for your financial advice, Art.
However, because I’m looking at, and have been writing about, the BIG picture, I myself have no equities, bonds, ETFs, none of it. Nunavit – there’re some great opportunities there! I’d take the financial advice from an Eskimo (“2 words for your future, Benjamin, #10-canned seal blubber futures!”) before I take it from anyone who still thinks the US $ is long for this world.
Also I’d better see the J6 pardons within 2 days, or I’ll be even more doomsaying!
“Also I’d better see the J6 pardons within 2 days”
F— off. The Capitol Police officers who were viciously attacked, along with the property demanded inflicted, deserve better.
“The Ukraine, on the other hand, had a lot of Jews”
In 2023, Ukraine is home to 45,000 Jews
, and whoever you want to blame”
Putin
“they’ve killed a whole lot of Jews.”
Yes, Putin has.
“So why the hell would Jews be so enthusiastic about supporting the Ukraine? As I say, I can’t see a defensible explanation.”
Why say something so demonstrably false? What’s the point?
Of course there is a defensible explanation. Jews there are defending their homes and property from an outside invader.
“If Russia feel the same way, it becomes a numbers game. And who has the numbers?”
With, using your own logic, is demonstrably more tragic that Putin is willing to send more Russian men to their death.
And for what?
I thought Russia has this all wrapped up by now.
Yes, they do.
But I take it you are from an older generation before the term came into use.
I finished high school in Cali and did my undergraduate and graduate degrees there. We all said Cali.
I said had, you fucking idiot. How can anybody so brain-dead master typing?
Are you some sort of evil chat program? Do please give the number. Two million? Five thousand? Four?
That’s pretty whacked out. You’re the one who just pointed out that the modern Ukraine no longer has many Jews.
I like this. We could all agree that the Ukraine is the Jews’ ancestral homeland and they must have it back.
Hey. It gets them off the Palestinians’ ass. Change of pace, anyway.
They weren’t attacked until they threw flashbangs into the crowd.
“They weren’t attacked until they threw flashbangs into the crowd.”
JFC, there was an unruly crowd. They were told to disperse. They didn’t. Capitol Police officers were ordered during the riot to using flash bang grenades rather than use tear gas that might have allowing police to re-take areas.
The fact of the matter is law enforcement was attacked. I thought white purple respect law and order.
Jews don’t, or so I’ve been told by numerous posters here.
“If Russia feel the same way, it becomes a numbers game.”
Given their escapades in Afghanistan, and now, Syria, how Russia feels evidently changes with the season. The US learned that, too, in Vietnam (and also Afghanistan). If those tanks were as replaceable as the Russians want us to believe, they wouldn’t suddenly decide that “hey, you know what’s even better than a steel-walled tank? — it’s MOTORCYCLES!”
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, and however “logical” all that may seem to you, the rest of us are not that surprised that allies like India and Serbia have decided it’s time to go against decades of tradition and rely less on Russian armaments. And I thought those “turtle tanks” (aka “blind, loud and stupid”) were about as ridiculous as it gets, but oh, how wrong I was! Though, given that international orders for similarly “enhanced” tanks seem to be somewhat sparse, I take comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone. Hey, maybe those attack-cycles will fill the void that that gaping suck in Russia’s tank industry left behind. Who knows? Let’s just call it a “numbers game” — so many motorcycles can be made for the cost of one tank! — and agree not to look too closely or think too much.
Americans need to listen to Ron Paul, abolish the Fed, and return to the gold standard. We started to have problems when we exited the Bretton Woods agreement, thus severing the last link between gold and the dollar, in 1971:
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Americans need to listen to Ron Paul, abolish the Fed, and return to the gold standard. We started to have problems when we exited the Bretton Woods agreement, thus severing the last link between gold and the dollar, in 1971:
==
The original gold standard proved a disaster in 1929–33 and Bretton Woods generated its own set of policy dilemmas. And, no, we did not “start to have problems” when Bretton Woods was dismantled. Bretton Woods did not prevent excess inflation, which was an issue during the period running from 1945 to 1952 and from 1966 to 1973. We had problems because Arthur Burns and other clots were in charger of the Federal Reserve. We stopped having problems when someone sensible took over in 1979.
==
There’s a reason neither Milton Friedman nor Alan Walters were advocates of gold (Walters referred to goldbugs as ‘crackers’) and Friedman was an advocate of floating rates. We don’t need gold. We need Congress to do what state legislatures and local councils do routinely: align revenues with expenditures, quit hoovering up money from the bond market, and collect more of our public revenue from consumption taxes. We also need the Fed to set to calibrate the discount rate and their open market operations such that major price indices do not decline and do not increase at a rate exceeding about 2% per year.
==
I think its a reasonable wager that Ron Paul’s family knows how to listen to papa selectivelry.
Me, you, and Ron Paul got this thing a long time ago, back when it would have been more easily turned around. Now, as a bug of Welfare State Socialism, excuse me, a feature (for some), it’s not easily backed out of. See my recent quick post Budget Cutting v Austerity.
At this point any serious budget cutting IS austerity, because such a big share of the budget goes to SS and Medicaid. People WILL feel financial pain.
If we could start over, yes, indeed, the gold standard kept a lid on money printing. And no, I’m not up for one of Art Deco’s 14 point plans.
The Soviets were midway through establishing a Jewish homeland in the Crimea when Workd War II intervened. A Jewish homeland that was financed by wealthy US Jews through a program called Komzet and another called OZET. Wiki has articles on each.
Native Crimeans were kicked off their land to make way for these settlements. When the Germans arrived in 1941, the erstwhile landowners were not very sympathetic to the plight of their new neighbors.
There was another Soviet effort to establish a Jewish oblast in the Soviet Far East, one that had widespread support from the Jewish community in the US. It exists to this day.
Strangely, the Soviets seemed hell-bent on destroying every trace of Christianity. One wonders why the same wasn’t true of their Jewish subjects.
“…there are ethnological and historical grounds for dispute.That’s exactly what’s missing in the Crimea.”
Oh, so now it’s only ethnological and (very selective and cherry-picked) historical grounds that are valid in this dispute? If the other drivel doesn’t matter, why did you even bring it up? The fact that Russia itself agreed to Ukraine’s boundaries is just something you’ve decided doesn’t make the cut? The part about how Ukrainian deputies were marshalled into a hall and told how to vote at gunpoint just kinda drops out of history? No sophistry there, no sir. Why? Because Russia says so and the fanboys agree and they’re always so very exact in what’s missing and isn’t.
No wonder reality confuses you so.
“It wasn’t an assumption, it was an impression — and why is it idiotic?”
For reasons I clearly stated — what, is basic reading comprehension another reason why you’re so confused? See Stein, Sachs, Sacks, Cohen, Katrina what’s her name, and Moscow’s favorite son-of-a-Jewish-mother. You see no common thread in any of them, but yeah, let’s single out Schumer and Boot, and ignore any Romney and Christie and Meloni and Boris Johnson and Slash and Axl and David Lynch, while we’re at it, and Schwarzenegger and Madonna (whatever her jew/Kabbala quotient is these days) and don’t even get me started on the Poles and Latvians and othersuch who are renowned the world over for their love of Jews, amirite? All that cherry-picking and overlooking in order to tendentiously claim that it is the Jews are somehow disproportionately behind all this. That’s your so-called impression? Nah, don’t kid yourself — idiotic pretty much nails it.
“In that case, why wasn’t that your response?”
Because there’s just way too much idiocy there that can be unpacked in just one comment, but rest assured, I can keep going.
“I didn’t make that claim.”
I didn’t claim you did. But this isn’t my first rodeo with you clowns, and I’m not leaving myself wide open to what I know someone will try to counter with (that linked thread is just one example of what gets endlessly repeated whenever hard-core fanboys like Girkin get confused as to why Putin isn’t murdering Ukrainians even harder).
The irony here is that while the issue itself is debatable, it is your posts that are treasure-troves of idiocy. There may be someone here it’s with discussing the merits of the various positions with — but it’s not you.
Sigh. Well, that just goes to show you’ve been successfully colonized (IGNORE the pun). Either that, or you’re one of the invaders yourself.
As a teenager, I was told I had a very strong California accent. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard it? I’ve lost it myself, apparently.
Playland-at-the-Beach, Fleischhacker Pool, the Pine Cone, the Valley of the Bees, William Knowland? The Sacramento River flooding? Any of this ring a bell?
I remember when I was thirteen arguing with another kid about whether Mexicans spoke Spanish. I held out for Spanish — but the point is that they were exotic enough (this was Northern California) that such a question could even come up.
It’s amazing the way you can continually deflect.
I asked a question about what will happen if both sides consider that the deaths of their young men make it a sacred cause to send yet more young men to die. Who will run out of young men first?
You and I both know the answer.
Your response ?
“Hey, what about these Russians on motorcycles?”
“I still haven’t found anything that really makes sense.”
But what about the Black Hundreds? What about the drunken Cossacks who broke up and looted great-great-great-grandpappy’s general goods store in Minsk in 1873?
Some people hold grudges for a LONG time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379008/A-deep-rooted-hatred-British-How-Israelis-armed-junta-Falklands-conflict.html
“it is your posts that are treasure-troves of idiocy.”
That you have yet to counter, or even really specify, aside from labelling them “sophistry”, a word whose actual meaning I suspect eludes you. And as for “misattribution”, start with the one where you imply you’re someone who thinks “Russia is bad”. Still gonna pretend that’s an accurate take after all these pathetic defenses? If so, then your accuracy is at least consistent, I’ll give you that. Or was that another one of your so-called impressions whose lack of any substance can therefore be shrugged away?
“There may be someone here it’s with discussing the merits of the various positions with — but it’s not you.”
Yeah, so next time, stick to arguing with someone inside your echo chamber whose proclivity for brushing off facts and bending reality to suit some blinkered the-Jews-are-behind-it conspiracy theory matches your own. That way, your arguments won’t seem like mush in comparison.
This gets to be like trying to argue with a barking dog.
“It exists to this day.”
So does that possibly mean that trying to shoehorn this issue into some reductionist gotta-be-the-Jews paradigm is indeed….how to put it…idiotic? Is this the beginning of some greater awakening to a more advanced way of seeing the world?
Nah, of course not! Who are we kidding? We’re talking about fanboys. Those guys never change. Even their efforts to get beyond their blinkers is hopeless mush. To wit,
Whereas in the case of “still exists today”, we have this:
Note that Russia’s overall Jewish population is about 0.84%, which is therefore actually higher than it is in their supposed Russian haven.
But hey, none of that matters, right? It’s all just a bunch of fanboy “impressions”. Or else, let me guess, the abject failure of the JAO is precisely what explains why Jews are so very much against Putin (I mean, except for the Jews very much in his camp, the founder of this website included). Convenient!
Finally, as for neutering Christianity, it’s worth nothing that the persecution eased up a bit during and after WWII, when Stalin decided appealing to Russia’s traditions would help rally the troops. Whether that makes up to any significant degree for the other persecution (including making abortion and divorce a way of life), is as debatable as asking whether some pointless Jewish oblasts makes up for Stalin’s purge of Jews and all the Jews sent to gulags and reeducation camps. After all, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Father Rolex, is still acting very much like the KGB stooge he previously was.
But again, when you cherry-pick whatever suits you and conspicuously ignore all the rest, you can argue just about anything, and thanks for making my point.
Hello, Colin,
Well, yes, my ancestors invaded California. And conquered it. My first ancestor in Cali that I know of was William Wolfskill who came to Los Angeles in 1831 (yes, it existed then) and tried hunting fur seals, but the Russians had pretty much cleaned them out, then married a Spanish señorita and settle down to develop vineyards and citrus orchards, then got into cattle ranching, doing quite well in all his endeavors. Years later, another one of my ancestors, part Northern Cheyenne, scouting for the Bartleson emigrant wagon train, made it to Cali in 1841. Yet years later, one of his sons participated in the second Pitt River expedition of 1857 against the hostiles under Gen. George Crook. When the Civil War broke out, he tried to go east to join Crook’s boys in the Army of West Virginia but ended up joining a cavalry unit in Nebraska that ended up fighting the Cheyenne and Sioux in the war that erupted after the Chivington Massacre. So he was probably fighting some of his own distant relatives, a kind of civil war of its own, if you will.
I could go on. Oh, boy, could I go on.
Another of my ancestors, who made his fortune in ranching and mining in Montana, came to southern Cali around the turn of the 20th century and invested in real estate, oil, the early movie industry and the rising aviation industry. He hired the architect Horatio Cogswell to design houses on his real estate projects. Cogswell designed the quintessentially classic Los Angeles bungalow as well as such houses as Pickfair for Mary Pickford, who was a good friend of my great-grandmother. I have a photo of her (my great-grandmother) with Pickford and Anne Morrow before she became Mrs. Lindbergh at some social function at Pickfair. He invested in the Keystone Film Co. of Mack Sennett and sprung for $100,000 in 1915 to build Mabel Normand a studio at Fountain and Brae.
And… Well, I could keep going. And going. And going.
Oh, my great-grandfather became friends with Donald Hall when he worked at Douglas before he moved to Ryan and designed that airplane. He (my great-grandfather) met and became friends with Charles Lindbergh at Panama in 1929 when he (Lindbergh) visited the Saratoga after the completion of Fleet Problem IX, probably in part because great grandpa knew Hall, so a mutual acquaintance to spark the friendship. I have a photo of him and his wife dining with Lindbergh at Musso and Franks on Hollywood Blvd. I have dined at that very same table.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
But, um, no…I, me, myself, personally, wasn’t born in Cali. In fact, I wasn’t even born in CONUS.
Oh, dear. I’m a foreigner! An invader!
Or not.
I like what ‘Komzet’ stood for. the Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land’
That’ll happen. One can just see the Jews rushing to sign up.
Anyway, thanks.
Does it bother you that in the context of this conversation, this paradigm exists largely inside your own head?
I mean, I’m happy to agree that I’m antisemitic — but that has nothing to do with the issues under discussion. I never said the Jews had much to do with anything here. I was (and still am) mildly perplexed by their predominance among the partisans of the Ukrainian cause, that’s all.
You’re the internet equivalent of the black dude screaming at passersby. You realize that, don’t you?
You’ll note that 1952 is after World War II. The Crimeans were displaced prior to the war, thus developing a certain dislike for their replacements.
The Jewish oblast still exists, as I said. It is, of course, much diminished by the development of Israel and Beverly Hills as new Jewish homelands.
Both of these programs were funded by wealthy American Jews, including the president of Sears and Roebuck. Again, just as I said.
It’s curious that Jewish resettlement in the Soviet Far East was enthusiastically supported when the Bolsheviks did it, but strenuously excoriated when the Nazis suggested it.
One of us is certainly cherry-picking his facts: It’s not me.
If I remember correctly, I told HA almost three years ago that the Ukraine would run out of men first since Russia had three times the population. His response then was that Russia was already running out of men since they were pulling men out of Russian prisons and putting them in the army. There must be a lot of men in those Russian prisons, since they are still fighting!
Sarcasm aside, Marco Rubio said in his confirmation hearings the Ukraine was running out of Ukrainians so a settlement to the war needed to be pursued. Trump just said he can understand Russia not wanting a Ukraine in Nato on its doorstep so the settlement will likely include no Ukraine in Nato.
The Russians always knew if they kept it close to a one to one casualty ratio they would eventually win when the Ukrainians ran out of soldiers first. That was the goal, not taking large amounts of territory while having higher Russian casualty rates. They just slowly have been grinding the Ukrainians down for the last three years.
“Does it bother you that in the context of this conversation, this paradigm exists largely inside your own head”
No, you brought it up, with your so-called “impression” that “the Ukraine brigade” seems to be “at least disproportionately Jewish”, only to follow that up with your self-professed confusion as to why those jew-hating countries should be at war, or something. To any sane person, that confusion is a sign that the premises on which you base your confusion need to be revised.
But that’s beyond you, and so every couple of weeks or thereabouts, you come in muttering about how disproportionately Jewish the pro-Ukrainians are. In fact “disporportionately Jewish” is kind of an obsession with you if we’re going to be honest, (and given how hard it is for fanboys to think for themselves instead of relying on their troll feeds, it’s no surprise that you’re not the only fanboy who has made the same pathetically lame argument).
The fact that son-of-a-Jewish-mother Putin considers Bibi a dear friend, and fawns over him a golden retriever puppy, and the fact that Prigozhin and Solovyev and any number of current or former members of his inner circle are Jewish, and then there’s all the the David Sack’s and Jeffrey Sachs’ and Stephen Cohens, Katrinas, Shamirs, and Unz’s — none of that matters in the least. The uncountable number of people, celebrities and non-celebrities alike who have no particular Jewishness to speak of and still find Putin’s war something to be condemned likewise just brushes past you. And now you want to gasllight me into pretending it’s all in my head. No, that’s not going to work any more than the rest of your idiocy. Black guys screaming at passer-by are not able to cite and link to those they’re confronting. I do.
“If I remember correctly, I told HA almost three years ago that the Ukraine would run out of men first since Russia had three times the population.”
Yeah, just like the Afghanis were bound to run out of men before the Russians did. And when you’re sending men out into offensive battles on motorcycles, maintaining a “one to one casualty ratio” is a piece of cake.
And IF you remember correctly? The fact that you’ve been predicting Ukraine’s imminent demise for 3 years should tell you something about the holes in your analysis. But that would take the kind of original thought that a bloodsucking government drone, who whiles away his work hours by foregoing productive work and instead making stupid comments on internet forums, is incapable of. You think after three years of that I should be impressed with that?
“You’ll note that 1952 is after World War II. The Crimeans were displaced prior to the war, thus developing a certain dislike for their replacements.”
So if they had been displaced after the war, it would have somehow been OK? If not, then what does it matter whether it was before or after the war? I suspect that getting kicked out of your homeland is kind of a drag either way. Weird how the fanboys only seem to notice things like that when Palestinians are involved. Very curious, I’d go so far to say.
“The Jewish oblast still exists, as I said.”
It exists with a per capita population of Jews that is even lower than the rest of Russia. You “curiously” somehow forgot to mention that last part, but you want me to believe you’re not cherry-picking? You curiously want to point out how the Soviets persecuted the Christians without pointing out the Jews getting denounced by Stalin and winding up in gulags instead of Jewish oblasts? That’s not cherry-picking? Or are you trying to say the Jews are opposed to Russia because the Soviets were mean to their good buddies the Christians? That would make about as much sense as the rest of what you’re saying.
And given the fact that the per-capita number of Russian Jews outside the oblast is higher than the number within, a rational person might conclude the Soviets gave Jews a free choice as to whether or not to go into that oblast. Do you honestly think Hitler would have allowed Jews the same leeway in whatever homeland he was suggesting for them? You think that might have played a part in whatever “excoriation” poor little Hitler encountered? These subtle omissions in your analysis — so very curious!
The Jewish oblast still exists, as I said. It is, of course, much diminished by the development of Israel and Beverly Hills as new Jewish homelands.
==
It was located in a frozen swamp. I don’t think the Jewish share of the local population ever exceeded 5%. of the total.
“a bloodsucking government drone, who whiles away his work hours by foregoing productive work and instead making stupid comments on internet forums”
I am 68 years old. If I wanted to forego productive work, I could just retire and start collecting my pension. Correct? When it comes to making stupid comments here, you win first prize.
The Afghans received American assistance in fighting the Russians as are the Ukrainians. The American public is tiring of these foreign interventions, though. A just done New York Times-Ipsos poll found 60% of Americans agree with the statement the U.S. “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home”.
HA, did you make a New Year’s resolution? If you did not, I suggest it be to go over to the Ukraine and fight for your hero against the evil Putin. When you go, you can take your fellow Zelensky fanboys Corvinus, John Johnson and Twinkie with you. If you all run out of food while you are over there, Twinkie is Korean and can show you guys how to catch a stray dog and cook it up for dinner.
I’m sure that’s correct, Art. I recently read a scholarly account of the Second World War in the Crimea, and was surprised to learn of the OZET. I’ve been reading history for most of my life, and had never heard of it before.
It was funded with tens of millions of dollars from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, another organization with which I was completely unfamiliar.
During the time that the Bolsheviks were starving the Ukrainians, they were also allowing American plutocrats to finance Jewish settlements in the Crimea and yes; in the Soviet Far East.
With the success of the Zionist project, I’m sure a frozen swamp lost much of its appeal.
Still, a chapter of history that’s pretty interesting.
“If I wanted to forego productive work, I could just retire and start collecting my pension. Correct?”
Or you could waste your time at work posting to internet comments, thereby sucking up even more blood. What a surprise you chose to suck up the maximum amount you could.
We’ve been through this, and alas, I don’t have the free time you do. The ditzy-housewife schtick that you stole from some tired sitcom rerun — in which the husband is told that since the shoes were 20% off, she actually saved him money by spending $1200 on them — convinces no one who isn’t a fellow bloodsucker. And gullibly pretending some cherry-picked poll just-so-happens to prove you right about Ukraine finally being done in? The number of times that tactic was tried and amounted to nothing has also been addressed. It may impress some of your fellow fanboys, but their memories seem to be as Swiss-cheesed as yours.
And given the recent made-up “public domain” tweets from the troll farms — telling us that Ukrainian generals are consoling themselves for the loss of their California properties to wildfires by buying up an increased number of sports cars, or something — it seems to be that tanks are not the only thing Moscow is struggling to finance these days. That crimp in the propaganda budget is likely to hit Ron Unz, too — ouch. I’ve noticed the output of some of his most fervent Putin trolls seems to have somewhat dried up recently. Coincidence? I guess we’ll see.
“20% off”
No, 80% off. If you subtract the pension I am not collecting from my salary, I make one fifth as much as my coworkers. You have a problem with math?
“Or you could waste your time at work posting to internet comments”
Believe it or not, federal workers get work breaks and lunches. I can easily post 3 or 4 comments during that time. Also, believe it or not, federal workers do not work 24 hours a day so I can post comments then, like the comment you just responded to and this comment.
It does not surprise me you think it takes 8 hours to post 3 comments. I imagine, as slow-witted as you are, it often takes you two and a half hours to type out one of your comments. In spite of all that time spent, they still end up being just dimwitted drivel. Keep it up, though. I always enjoy laughing at you.
Anyway, Zelensky supposedly asked three times for an invitation to Trump’s inauguration — and didn’t get one.
I imagine Putin read the tea leaves on that one. Whatever deal the Ukraine could have made six months ago is probably no longer on the table.
It’s actually kind of a pity. HA’s fantasies about my views notwithstanding, I’m perfectly happy to see the Ukraine remain largely independent and largely intact. It’s just that no, Russia shouldn’t have to tolerate it joining NATO, and no, the Crimea isn’t in the Ukraine.
But now the Ukraine is at least going to lose more of the east than she would have otherwise — and if Putin feels aggressive about it, more than that.
“You have a problem with math?”
I have a problem with anyone paying you a dime of anything people like me actually earned, be it in wages or pensions. To the extent Musk or anyone else responsible for government efficiency leaves you with either, I’ll know for sure he’s the fraud I already suspect him to be.
Luckily for the rest of the country, your bastion-of-midwest conservatism guru and pharma-grifter, Ramaswamy, has decided to focus on pulling the wool over the eyes of people like you instead of remaining on the national stage, so he’s already out. Boy, that endorsement/prediction aged like an open can of tuna — in other words, right in line with rest of your visionary mutterings.
“Whatever deal the Ukraine could have made six months ago is probably no longer on the table.”
Putin’s supposed willingness to offer any deal which allows Ukraine to survive in any shape or form is as lacking in substance as your other link-free and data-free “impressions”. You evidently can’t even keep track of what you say, to the extent that I have to remind you — and now you want to tell me you’ve got some bead on what Putin is willing to offer? If Putin thinks he has a stronger hand now, after the loss of Syria — not to mention the fact that over 4 months after the October 1 “deadline” he declared by which the Ukrainians were supposed to be out of Kursk, they’re still around — then Moscow is really in trouble.
“I have a problem with anyone paying you a dime of anything”
Only because I don’t support an American proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine like you do. My branch chief seems to like me. Two weeks ago she sent me an email saying I was receiving a Special Act Award for my “efforts, dedication, and teamwork”. She then added in her email it is a pleasure to work with me.
I work most of the day but let’s say I only worked four hours a day and typed out internet comments the other four hours instead. After you subtract the pension I am not collecting from my salary, I make $48 per day versus $240 per day my coworkers make. So they would pay me $48 for four hours work versus $120 for four hours of their work. Sounds like I am a better deal for the taxpayers than them, even working less than I do. I did the math for you here because I know it is hard for you. It is a good thing the army hired me, rather than you, to do accounting work for them.
Of course, you do not care about the taxpayers. If you did, you would want to stop sending their money over to the corrupt Zelensky regime to fight a war they can’t win since their opponent has three times the population. We have already wasted $150 billion of American taxpayer money on this war and need to wind down the war and reach a settlement with Russia.
“Only because…”
ONLY? I don’t care if it’s about Ukraine or about your creepy Billie Eilish fixations — or even against government waste, which I would actually agree with were it not for the realization that even when you comment about that, as opposed to actually working, you are committing the very thing you pretend to condemn. All of it is theft from the taxpayers. And shall I mention again your handclapping for Vivek? No wonder you turned out to be a fan of a grifter like him — birds of a feather. Toss that on the stack, too.
So, no — you are wrong yet again. And if you think I’m the one coming out of this a laughingstock, well, the Dunning-Kruger, or something closely related, is strong with you.
“All of it is theft from the taxpayers”
Let me get this clear here. Is your position here that me working for the army is theft from the taxpayers but taking money from them and sending it to Zelensky is not theft from the taxpayers? If that is your position, that’s pretty hilarious.
If someone was an anarchist who thought there should be no military, then they might have a coherent, if wrong, complaint about me working for the military. I know you aren’t an anarchist. The only anarchist who ever commented here regularly, PhysicistDave, was someone you were extremely hostile to.
I am not an anarchist. I think the basic function of government is to prevent the use of force between people. This means, at a minimum, having a military to prevent foreign invasions and police to catch criminals. The military should be limited to defensive purposes, something I have always supported. You are the one wanting a war against a country that never attacked us, Russia, not me.
“Is your position here that me working…”
I stopped there. You gotta learn to read better. The problem is with you NOT working, not to mention repeatedly laughing about your free ride. How many times does that need to be stated? It really shouldn’t be that hard, but then I think, oh yeah — a slow-on-the-take bloodsucking government drone. It kinda all fits.
And go ahead and keep on not mentioning Vivek in the hopes that no one notices that. What, is he like your kryptonite now? You were all chummy about him once. You don’t think the fact that the guy you repeatedly endorsed turned out to be not just a pharma-grifter — but someone whose mission in life is to replace the likes of people like you — tells you nothing about yourself? Of all the corrupt and venal pols in the world you just happened to fixate on someone like that. You really think that’s a coincidence?
“The problem is with you not working”
But I am working. I already pointed out to you in this comment thread I just got a Special Act Award for my work performance. I pointed out to you that even if I goofed off half the day, which I don’t, because I am still working past my retirement age and not collecting my pension, I would get paid less than my co-workers for the same number of hours of work. I pointed out to you the majority of my comments are posted on work breaks and lunch or when off work.
I understand here you are just being a troll, trying to get me to waste time responding to things I have already responded to. Either that, or you are senile and can’t remember anything someone tells you more than ten minutes. Which one is it, HA? I look forward to your future comments, so I can continue to laugh at you.
You might leave it to parsing his actual statements here and not slicing him up over his work situation, about which no one here has granular knowledge.
“I just got a Special Act Award for my work performance.”
You mean the bloodsucking drone who you work for gave some bloodsucking drone underling a gold star? So impressive!
“things I have already responded to”
You mean Vivek? Don’t see much of a response there. Telling.
“slicing him up over his work situation”
Work situation? You mean what he himself refers to as one of his “hobbies” in between talking up let’s-get-rid-of-government types like Rand Paul (or else Vivek) and other people who regard the likes of him as bottom-feeding scum? Sometimes the worst thing IS the hypocrisy.
But even though he may mention something about Paul at some point, it seems he’s got some sort of mental block about Vivek now, which makes for a striking contrast to his earlier praises. He’s good with his blinkers like that, I’ll give him that much. Anything that doesn’t suit his narrative — and that includes his narrative — he just shuts out, regardless of the Streisand effect comedy that ensues, so he can continue to cherry-pick the rest.
I understand you desperately want to change the subject to Vivek since you are just floundering around here and looking like an idiot. You always try to change the subject when you are losing an argument, it is always obvious you are doing that, and you are so dimwitted you think it is not obvious.
I see someone else noticed you are floundering around here and gently suggested you drop the subject of my work performance or my value as an employee since no one here has any actual knowledge of that. Only a buffoon would offer opinions about something he can not know about and, since you are a buffoon, this is exactly what you do. You need to take the advice he offered to you.
You didn’t answer my question. Do you try to waste my time asking me to respond to what I already responded to because you are a troll or are you just senile? Come on Bozo, answer the question.
“I understand you desperately want to change the subject to Vivek since you are just floundering…”
You mean after you tried to change the subject after seeing all the fanboy floundering that results whenever you insist on bringing up Ukraine around here yet again? Weird how that just slipped down the memory hole — kinda like Vivek. Man, when are you gonna confront that elephant in the room?
…”no one here has any actual knowledge of that.”
You mean of one of your so-called “hobbies”? Who was it that used that term (or slip-of-the-tongue) to describe what it is you do? As for actual knowledge, they have your comment record timeline in the comments along with your insistence that you only comment on break times and lunchtimes. To the extent they can do simple math, there’s plenty to pick apart. So go ahead and try and pull my other leg. I’ve answered plenty over what I think of your so-called work or lack thereof. You ignoring that and pretending I haven’t or am just floundering is just more gaslighting.
What remains unanswered, and your weird inability to address your erstwhile fondness for Vivek very much goes to that, is where this intense self-loathing of yours and need for annihilation arises, insofar as you go to great effort to seek out and look up to the very people who despise you and ridicule you and want to extinguish you (not to mention the other botched life choices that landed you in a hospital in a time and a state where avoiding that predicament was ridiculously easy — as you yourself implicitly admitted when you told us the hospital you landed in was largely empty). Not just Rand Paul, or pharma-grifter Vivek. Do you really think Billie or Charlie-brat have any genuine fondness for their cohort of single/childless 68-year-old males who slobber over their ouvre like one of the former’s pit bulls? You really have a bug up your backside for those like Twinkie who live their normie existence by daring to believe in God and raising children and all that other stuff you were way too cool for (then again, maybe your beef with Twinkie is envy over the fact that he doesn’t just work for the military in some capacity, he actually IS — or at least was — military).
Who knows? So much to unravel in your own mess of hypocrisy and confusion, but that being the case, are you really the expert on the direction of where this society has gone wrong, or are you just looking at the mirror and projecting/riffing off of everything you don’t like in that reflection? Or are you going to continue to fail to confront any of that kind of like you’re trying to drop Vivek from your paper trail.
Speaking of paper trail, go ahead and check it. If you think I’m wasting your time, feel free to stop engaging me in the first place. Or don’t — it’s up to you. No one is forcing you except perhaps that imp in your own head who keeps goading you in your self-destruction. But if you are going to engage, don’t think you’re the only one that gets to ask questions.
That’s the thing: the sheer futility of all this.
Once Putin’s attempt to repeat Czechoslovakia ’68 ended in fiasco, this war’s outcome was certain. On the one hand, Putin was not going to be able to overrun the Ukraine and install a pro-Russian puppet. On the other hand, Russia could never tolerate a Ukraine that was in NATO — so as long as that was the alternative, Russia was going to have to keep fighting.
Which she has. Two months after this started, Turkey attempted to broker a peace. The probable terms then would be about what will wind up being agreed upon now.
The intervening years have just been waste.
Three o’clock. Time to quit work. That’s quite a long unhinged rant there, HA. Pretty funny stuff. I do not need to work, since I can just retire and collect my pension. I work because I love my work. A lot of people would consider someone who is doing something just because they love it to be engaging in a hobby. Did it ever occur to your tiny parrot brain someone who loves their job might do it better than someone who hates it and that is why he gets awards?
Do you have any hobbies other than sitting around thinking about how much you hate Russians? You bring up normies. Most Americans would consider a extreme Russophobe like you to be pretty abnormal.
It is quite appalling you want to sacrifice more Ukrainian young men in a lost cause just so a few more Russians can die too. If you want dead Russians, stop being such a coward and go kill them yourself.
As for you and your pal Twinkie, I believe in freedom of religion so you guys can practice whatever religion you want. I normally do not attack the religious beliefs of others unless they attack my lack of religion first. Twinkie declared himself a Francoist and Franco banned all public Protestant religious services in Spain. Do you want to ban religions you don’t like too, HA, like the way your hero Zelensky banned the Russian Orthodox Church?
Two hundred words of squid ink, when all you had to say was “I admit I am too embarrassed and cowardly to talk about Vivek and how I was so easily fooled, and I will therefore resolve to start focusing more about my own issues instead of projecting them onto the rest of society.”
But that’s not gonna happen is it? That takes actual effort and attention to detail of a kind that I’m guessing you gave up on a long time ago.
“The probable terms then would be about what will wind up being agreed upon now.”
Not if there’s a joint pullback or buffer zone, since buried in the Istanbul backpage “appendices”, it was specified that only Ukraine had to withdraw whereas Russia could stay poised and ready for the next time Putin invented some excuse to invade.
Not if the Ukrainians are allowed to maintain a functioning army. In Istanbul, the Russians demanded that the Ukrainians had to gut theirs.
Not if the “security guarantees” are as nebulously vague as what they were in the Budapest Memorandum (we’ve seen how well those work), or as pointless as in Istanbul (given that the gutting of Ukraine’s own army would have meant that any outside powers stupid enough to provide such guarantees — not that there’s any chance that they ever would — would be signing on to having to fight to free Ukraine all by themselves — and also against a fait accompli, since that gutting of the army also means that any future invasion by Russia WOULD require only 3 days to crush everything in its way and make any hope of outside help null and void. Convenient!)
I can see why the fanboys keep yammering about how Istanbul was a missed opportunity. It certainly was from Russia’s perspective.
And yeah — except for the tiny little differences I laid out, the next one will probably be “about” the same. Kind of like night and day are both just time segments of roughly equal duration and are therefore more or less indistinguishable, eh?
Nope, not going to let you change to another subject like Vivek when you are losing an argument. I think you should acknowledge you are being a buffoon when you make claims about my work performance when, as Art Deco pointed out to you, you have no way of knowing about that since you are not there. I bet if I was working on the military program sending weapons to the Ukraine you would not be talking about what a useless government drone I am. Right, dumbo?
“Nope, not going to let you change to another subject like Vivek when you are losing an argument.”
You’re the one who repeatedly brought up Vivek. Repeatedly. To me, specifically, like you thought I should be impressed with someone you regarded as a pillar of midwest conservatism (along with eagle-eye Gym Jordan). And NOW you suddenly all cagey about him? Who’s the one who changed the subject there?
As for your dismal work record and your laughable claims that all your comments were written during lunch hour and break times (I mean, aside from the fact that any time you choose to goof off is ipso facto a “break time”) you seem to forget that every one of those messages you’ve been spewing is time stamped. Again, I can understand why you don’t want to do the math, but I can. How many times does that need to be repeated? (And I realize you’ve made an effort to reduce your work-hours commenting since I’ve started to egg you about it, but your comment record goes back even before then, so if you think was going to fool me, wrong again. Hey, is that where that gold star you mentioned came from? If so, you’re welcome — glad I played a role in getting you to shape up, at least a little.)
Say, is that antipathy towards government work another indicator of that same self-loathing from which the hankering for queer musicians (who I’m 100% sure just love their white 68-year-old alt-right fans), and also politicians who hate you and want to replace you — is that where all that comes from?
Speaking of which, how’s Vivek doing these days? Any more pharma-grifting? Did your somber takedown on the US economy extend to pump-and-dump pharma scams like the one Vivek put over on the SEC? How did that escape your attention of someone who “fancies” himself an eagle-eyed observer of all kinds of pharma corruption? (Did you catch the shoutout to that other queer icon you have a thing for? Seriously, what’s up with that?)
Like I said, there’s a lot to unravel there.
And with regard to my “hatred” of Russians, I’m confident I like them much better than you. Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, all the way up to Erast Fandorin — not to mention not-quite-Russians like Bulgakov. I’ve kept up with that far better than the average fanboy and I know better than most that there is a Russia beyond the thuggery and barbarism of hucksters like Putin that’s actually worth admiring.
Speaking of which, I know the fanboys were confident that Russia was going to be able to maintain their bases in Syria, but that looks increasingly unlikely. Womp womp.
Looks like those Ukrainians are doing a much better job of containing Russian ambitions than anyone bargained for. I can see why Trump’s people have decided that maybe it’s not the right time to pull the plug on that. And you’re telling me the Ukrainians have managed to do all that without conscripting the 18-25 cohorts into battle? Sounds as if they’re not nearly as desperate as we’ve been told. So much for fighting to the last Ukrainian.
“hankering for queer musicians”
Rather than listen to multiple Grammy award winner bisexual Billie Eilish, HA here would prefer to listen to his hero Zelensky playing the piano with his penis.
I am 68 years old. If you subtract the pension I am not collecting from my salary, what I make is one fifth of my coworkers. Even if I were to goof off half the day, which I do not, I am a better deal for the taxpayers than they are. I have pointed this out to you multiple times. For the third time in this comment thread, are you getting me to waste my time repeating myself because you are a troll or are you just senile and can’t remember what I say?
Our computer system at work records the inputs of all the employees and then a weekly production report is sent to management. Anyone not making production is terminated. Those exceeding production, like me, get exceptional ratings and periodic awards.
I think you should keep going here, HA, so I can keep demonstrating you are a buffoon who does not know what my work performance is and couldn’t possibly know what it is since you do not work here, as both me and Art Deco have pointed out to you here.
“I am a better deal for the taxpayers than they are.”
“Honey, I actually SAVED you money. The shoes were 20% off!”
Sorry, not sorry — I am not buying it. Less of a sorry waste of time and money may be fine for cherry-picking contortionists desperately trying to deflect from the obvious, but it’s not fooling me. Because unlike you, I avoid getting taken in by grifters trying to pretend they have my best interests at heart.
Speaking of which, how is Vivek doing these days? In that entire desperate spew of deflections, you somehow never got around to answering that. So who’s floundering now? You think that all that squirming is going to make us forget about him and you?
Related:
Maybe Vivek, aka Mr. “India First” (but according to you, also a pillar of midwestern conservative thinking — hmm, how’d that happen?), will be able to use his hucksterism and grift to help Russia and India get around that.
“20% off”
No, if I make one fifth of my coworkers, that is 80% off, you dolt. You already said that and I already replied to it earlier in this comment thread. For the fourth time in this comment thread, are you just repeating the same things over and over in order to get me to waste my time responding to them over and over because you are a troll or are you just senile and can’t remember what I say?
Oh, I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but when I wrote “honey”, I wasn’t referring to you. Awww. To be clear, I was referring to the ditzy housewife in the lame sitcoms trying to run the very same lame scam on me that you are. Wasn’t that obvious? And the absurdity of that doesn’t change if the shoes were 80% off.
Speaking of scammers, I hear Vivek is running for governor of Ohio, having been booted out of DOGE by little Elmo, who doesn’t want to share the limelight . I’m sure Vivek appreciates all the hard work you did in raising his profile earlier in his career. Look how well that’s paid off for the rest of us — thanks so much! In particular, if the rest of the midwest is as gullible as you, he should do well in his governor’s run.
What say you, is the rest of the midwest as gullible as you? The midwesterners I’ve worked with have been a good deal sharper — we’re talking scary smart — but they also weren’t ever Vivek chumps. Maybe there’s a correlation there.
Speaking of tweakers unwilling to share the lights, there’s also this:
https://bsky.app/profile/ioponomarenko.bsky.social/post/3lgaqimpiq22t
I.e. you’re not the only one confused by math. I’m guessing whoever is dosing Elmo’s ketamine meds likewise needs some remedial courses in numbers.
“HA Comments •”
Fools! You have no idea what you’re up against. Why, the techniques instilled in me by my trainers back at the hasbara bootcamp are such that in the time it takes you to peck out 2 words, I can churn out 10 — while simultaneously juggling a black-flag op and coordinating a couple of DDoS attacks (though I typically go by Adrian Dittman when I’m doing the latter — maybe you’ve heard of me.)
“And the absurdity of that doesn’t change if the shoes were 80% off.”
Inappropriate comparison, nitwit. After you subtract the pension I am not collecting from my salary, I make $48 per day which is $6 per hour. My coworkers make $240 per day which is $30 per hour. If I only worked 4 hours for my $48 that would be $12 per hour. My coworkers making $30 per hour are getting two and a half times as much. If I only worked 2 hours for my $48, that would be $24 per hour, still less than the $30 per hour my coworkers get.
If I only worked an hour a day for my $48, then that would be $48 per hour, higher than my coworkers. However, I work more than that so I am a better deal for the taxpayers than them. You can claim I work only one hour or zero hours, but you can’t prove that. You are just a troll on the internet, an unimportant nothing, just someone to be laughed at.
Are you and Carney the same person? Maybe A123?
I won’t say meamjoojoo because at least he’s funny once in a while.
Haven’t exactly heard of you, but dude! Your photo is all over the net.
“You are just a troll on the internet…”
Oh, you’re way too late to be playing that card. If I were just a troll then why do you obsessively keep feeding me? It’s easy to get me to stop commenting, but for the life of you, you just can’t bring yourself to do it. I’d give it another Awww, were it not so sad.
And get this through your head — if you’re going to be shoving Rand Paul into people’s faces like one more clay idol next to you-know-who, take the final step, shake off the hypocrisy, and see things the way he does: the fact that your bloodsucking boss thinks you’re better this week than the other bloodsuckers, doesn’t mean you’re not a bloodsucker. How do you not get that? Oh yeah! Because not only are you a bloodsucker, you’re a cherry-picking memory-holing twit whose vision cannot process anything that doesn’t fit your twisted narrative. You’re like something out of one of those Oliver Sacks books.
Maybe it’s time to take a break and think of other things and then maybe the weird mind-block will lift. Say, how’s Vivek doing these days? You still keeping tabs?
You and Mark G. need to get a room. This is as tiresome as some of the worst between Physicist Dave and Twinkie.
“If I were just a troll then why do you keep feeding me?”
So I can laugh at you. That you are not aware of that makes it even funnier, you pompous little moron.
According to you, people who work for the army who want it used for its proper function of defending the country are “bloodsuckers”. However, sending 150 billion dollars over to the corrupt Zelensky regime to fight a war down to the Ukrainian, and then lose, is a great use of American taxpayers money.
Trump said in his inaugural address he plans to be a peacemaker. I hope he ends our proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine rather than listen to Russophobic loons like you and continues it. He needs to adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy so he can focus on domestic problems like out of control immigration, reduce government spending, and improve the economy in order to make life better for the average American. That is why he was elected.
“So I can laugh at you.”
Bring it on, then. You think your sudden phobia about Viveldemort isn’t garnering chuckles? You think it’s winning you fans? Or how about the one where the cult member insists that he’s totally well-adjusted because the cult leader gave him a gold star, and said he was as well-adjusted as anyone else on the compound? Do you see any flaw in that kind of reasoning? You don’t think people are laughing when they see you trying a line like that?
As for Trump, I’m happy as anyone to see a peace deal, though given the joke of a deal passed around in Istanbul, whose flaws I already enumerated, I’ll qualify that by saying it needs to be an actual peace deal, so as with most things related to Trump, I’m gonna wait and see — kind of like, say, his choice of Vivek. Given how well that worked out, are you gonna try and rub that in my nose?
Speaking of Vivek, how’s he doing? He still your BFF?
Yes HA, that’s very brave, sitting there at your computer keyboard saying “bring it on”. It’s not going to help defeat the evil Putin, though. You need to be saying “bring it on” as Russian soldiers with guns advance across a field in your direction. When will you be heading over there?
Oh, it looks like the Russian army is only 3km from Pokrovsk. Another Ukrainian city about to fall. The Ukrainians should have taken that Istanbul deal when they had the chance. Now that they are losing, they won’t get a deal that good. By the way, I am still chuckling over you calling army accountants “bloodsuckers”. Who ever heard of such a ridiculous idea as having accountants and an accounting system to track how taxpayer money is being spent by the government? We need to get rid of them. Right, HA?
“When will you be heading over there?”
And leave America to the bloodsuckers? You mean like the Donbass Cowboy and this guy?
That’s more a fanboy move — as you can see from looking at the beaming face of poor Teddyboy. Such wholesome people, these fanboys! As for me, I’m not that gullible. Neither are Ukraine and its allies which is why they passed on that idiotic Istanbul deal. And boy, you do seem pretty obsessed with Pokrovsk these days. How’s that working out for you? Are you as hot and bothered about some city in Ukraine as you were for Vivek? Maybe you need to go over there — oh wait, you got that bloodsucking gig going.
And how’s old Vivek doing these days — you two still keep in touch?
Yes, I know you want to change the subject over to Vivek because I keep pointing out you are a buffoon because you claimed to know what my work performance is when you have no way of knowing that. Everything you do is obvious, HA, because you are too stupid to be subtle.
As long as we are on the subject of you being obvious, I’ll point out you keep harping about Trump and Vivek and letting in Indians with H-1B visas but we did not see this same fixation when it was Biden letting in Indians with H-1B visas. It’s fine letting in lots of Indians as long as we are sending Zelensky lots of money at the same time, like Biden did. Right, HA? So you need to ditch the sudden obviously phony concern about immigration.
I was just looking at a William Badwhite comment concerning female commenters here in Steve’s comment section and saw this sentence: “HA is a broad as well. The hysterics are a give-away”. LOL!
“but we did not see this same fixation when it was Biden letting in Indians with H-1B visas.”
Asked and answered. There’s nothing particularly notable about yet another commenter on iSteve being against immigration, and while I made my views perfectly clear, there’s not much value-added in running with herd like you. What is far more headline-worthy is how someone like you managed to fixate on a pharma-grifter like Vivek. “Yes, Vivek, even though people around here hate people like you with a passion whiter than the proverbial skin color of our people, we’ll actually praise you and support you if only you can help us put an end to some white people in Ukraine who, now that I think of it, we want to stick it to even more than you.” Or something to that effect. And slobbering over queer and queer-icon singers younger than your non-existent granddaughter — like they appreciate the support of someone like you — is from the same pathological playbook.
Seriously, what’s up with that?
Of all the sleazy politicians in this country you had to pick one who is not only a pharma-grifter (because we already know how poor your life choices are when it comes to pharmaceutical matters), but also despises people like you and wants to replace you. Like I said, there’s some kind of weird death-wish. Or, as others have suggested something more easily treated.
“HA is a broad as well.”
Laughable indeed that you think I’d care whether you dirt-poor record of any other guesses about me or my motivations or anything else extends to your guesses about my gender. Then again, I can see why imagining me as a woman would intrigue someone like you. That is to say, Yeeech.
Speaking of maters emetic, just how is Vivek doing now that he’s aiming for a run for Ohio governor? You think he’s grateful to the gullible fools who helped him earlier in his rise or does he still sneer at you, and which of those alternatives would make you like him even more? I’m going with B.