When I was in my 20s and 30s, I read a great deal of the West’s classic fiction, along with many technical books. By my mid 30s, I realized reading the fiction was a waste of life. It’s better to go out into the world and create your own story. At the same time, I ditched my television set, not watching it for 10+ years. The experience was quite transformative.

If white men don’t write, then it’s likely they don’t have anything to write about. For me, I certainly didn’t have anything to write about until I took positive steps to change that.

Wielgus is right. Most written communication in that late 1500s world was in Latin. Our English alphabet is Greek/Latin. English is not at all aligned with our inherited 26 letters/sounds. That’s why English writers have such a hard time spelling, whereas in Latin speaking countries, they don’t need spelling bees. Also, in the late 1500s, oral communication dominated their world. In our modern world, we’ve coalesced around proper spelling, because much of our world is written, and assume wrongly that has always been the rule.

I recommend a very good book “1559 A year in the Life of Shakespeare” by James Shapiro. He reconstructs Shakespeare life during 1599, the climax of his career, through historically written records. This included his partnership, construction, and opening of the Globe Theatre, while also showing his activity in nearby theaters. He was able to reconstruct Shakespeare’s activity in complying with Royal censures, and private plays staged for the Queen. Wielgus also discussed his access to books. Wielgus showed we actually do know quite a bit about Shakespeare’s life.

Almost all of Shakespeare’s play were improvements to others’ plays, because as a working playwright and partner, he had much responsibility to keeping production in the Globe steady.

If someone’s biggest life’s moments are “where I was when JFK was shot”, “seeing FDR’s nomination convention,” or “seeing the Beatles perform in concert” then that person is living passively as a sheep without a life of their own, mistakenly believing someone else’s accomplishments are their shared experiences. Why would any young person show interest in a dull couch potato who sits on a sofa, watching pro-sports, Netflix, or talks about national politics and events they saw on tv or heard on the radio or read in a newspaper? Younger people are naturally inquisitive, so if they have no interest in your past, it’s likely because you had no interesting past.

Very true Anon. All heavy drinkers and smokers should visit a hospital to see how people die from them. Nearly everyone in my father’s family died that way. When you see it, you’ll never joke about it again.

Writing needs a purpose. Preaching a philosophy to a few hundred of the the converted is pointless. If your audience is small and not growing, you need to change.

Federal law requires that Health Insurance companies pay out 80-85% of the premiums that they collect. In its statutory language, this is called the Medical Loss Ratio. UnitedHealth Care, whose CEO was murdered due to this poor understanding, only makes a 3.63% profit on the premiums and pays out between 80-85% of its premiums. The rest is overhead. The reason they engage in delay, deny, and defend is that health care providers play a game with them, trying to charge the insurance company for unnecessary procedures, and unreasonable costs. Last Spring, I was charged by a rural hospital $9500 for an endoscopic exam that took 15 minutes. That’s outrageous. $9500 for a 15 minute procedure! Worse yet, it was charged to me, instead of to Medicare, because Federal Law allows rural hospitals (which struggle financially) to charge patients the difference between the actual charge and the negotiated charge. She said Health Providers such as her hospital always try to charge as much as possible before negotiating the charge down with the insurance company. The culprit is usually these health providers trying to maximize pay for their doctors, staff, and overhead, not the insurance companies. At 3.63% profit, UnitedHealth Care is not making huge profits like people are claiming. The public doesn’t apparently did not understand this, and neither did the killer.

I’m a gun owner, having hunted and trapped much long ago. The gun culture in America developed from military principles to treat your firearms with ultra respect, as well as those around you. That culture vanished first in Hollywood, and then in our criminal culture. Today, many people should not own guns. They are simply too immature and violent. I’ve walked into two robberies, where a gun was held on me. I could have easily been killed in both.

Yet, the nation cannot control guns. Americans own 400 million of them. They outnumber the population. Like drugs, there is no feasible way of controlling them. Almost all problems in this nation arise from our poor, criminal, and violent underclass, and our effeminate way of dealing with them. It’s time to start deporting those that don’t belong in a first-world country to Africa, or Central/South America. That solves all problems, not just the problem of dealing with violent criminals using guns. Hunter Biden should be deported, rather than charged ineffectively with violating gun laws.

At least 1/2 of voters vote based on emotions or impressions. The people they elect reflects themselves. Arguing that their thoughts are incorrect only leads to damaging polarization. It certainly doesn’t fix the problems. The correct solution is to test voters for competence and the ability to reason.

When I first visited the U.K. and Britain 40 years ago, I was enthralled with it. Back then, it had a interesting culture and sites that were uniquely British, Irish, and Scottish, and people who were quite different from Americans. After visiting more than 40 years later, I was shocked by the changes. It is now a multi-cultural cosmopolitan nation without any culture nor unique people. The cities are ugly, poor and disorderly. Britain, Ireland, and Scottland now exist only in it museums. Tourists flood these museums to see the old U.K., not the hideous modern U.K.

I think most people now see Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, and many more as corrupt sites peddling far-left nonsense. Wikipedia’s scientific content is good, but the site will gradually lose its audience, because of its far-left ideological tilt, as Google is now experiencing. Like modern Britain, Wikipedia is ugly, poor, and promotes disorder.

The National Academy of Sciences Study found many wild-mammal species are approaching extinction. Humans and their pets/livestock account for 96% of the Earth’s mammal biomass. Wild animals only account for 4%. We’ve destroyed 83% of the wild-mammal biomass and 50% of the wild-plant biomass across the world.

The NAS has found we are in the midst of a 6th mass extinction event. The Ordovician/Silurian Mass extinction event seems to be the template we are following. Like today, the era started out with warm temperatures. It was hot. The average ocean temperature shot up to 113 degrees F. The air temperatures were much hotter. This caused a thermal stratification of the oceans which lead to disruption of the ocean circulation. That’s what we are seeing today in the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) . That loss of circulation in the Ordovician led to glaciation. 85% of marine species died off in the low oxygen marine environments. Our 6th extinction event will cause a similar plunge in oxygen in marine environments, but the dangerous risk is if the atmospheric oxygen will fall. We can only survive in a narrow band 19.5%+ total oxygen composition of the atmosphere. If it goes to 16%, with the increase in CO2, humans will be toast.

When I was a low-income landlord, I once smiled in disbelief as one of my tenants talked in maniac way about getting a payday loan at high interest rates to get him to the next pay day. He kept doing that, without a thought to how he was going to pay off all that deepening debt. Walking away, the thought struck me that only low income people without a shred of common sense do that, .. and our U.S. Government. Hmm, .. we should add Venezuela and Ted Rall to that list.

So true: every four years, we keep hoping for a miracle. When our Republican candidate is elected, we’re jubilant, but our hopes are always dashed with four years of nothing.

It’s like being a Vikings football fan in the 1970s. They fought their way to four Superbowls in the 1970s, only to dash their fans’ hopes with each one. I turned off the TV, in 1977 after the last loss, never to watch them again. I guess I had more sense when I was young, than now.

As a parent of two fairly recent K-12 graduates, I’ve seen 13 years of public schools, not from afar, but up close. Almost every child starts out innocent, in K-3. After grade 3, I saw toxic traits develop in the children in lower-to-mid income families. They were not there to learn, but to socialize and play, in quite toxic ways. By, grade 7, their influence was purely and hideously toxic: drugs, promiscuity, vulgar language, violence, and so much more. It’s a joyful playground for low to mid income children, but for high-end kids, it’s mostly stress. It’s an ugly toxic petri dish experiment that that you do not want to immerse your children into.

People are strange creatures. To fit in, they willingly ignore reality and believe falsehoods like “we are all equal.” That’s what teachers do. To fit in, they embrace the falsehoods that this ugly toxic petri dish is normal and desirable, and we are all equal. Public school teachers are just as degenerate as the toxic middle schoolers playing with drugs, promiscuity, and vulgar language. As a parent who has seen this up close, I advise new parents to keep your children away from it.

The problem isn’t not enough income. The problem is the Federal Government’s spending. It simply makes no sense:

About 1/2 of the Federal Governments’ expenditures is Social Security and Medicare. Yet, over a lifetime, the Federal Government collects $177,000 in constant dollars from the average taxpayer, but spends $712,000 in constant dollars on this average taxpayer, throughout their latter years. This simply is not sustainable.

What’s especially shocking is all that Medicare spending only extends the average recipients’ life by 2-5 years, according to some studies. 2-5 years of life isn’t much, if you consider that living in a memory-care unit, or tcu, or assisted living facility is not really living.

The U.S. spends trillions of dollars on Defense, defending every border in the world, except its own border. Again, it makes no sense. Why spend any money on Defense if the nation is unwilling to defend its borders against an invasion?

The DOJ and FBI spend $50 billion every year, but the U.S. Courts are hopeless broken and dysfunctional. At $200 to $800 per hour in attorney fees, who can afford justice? Legal Theory is impressive, but in practice, there is no Justice. Worse yet, the Dems use it as a political weapon against their opponents, causing conservatives to lose all faith in the Government. Again, this spending creates chaos, .. nothing beneficial.

The list goes on and on. Spending can be beneficial, but today, the Federal Government spending just creates chaos. Without that ability to spend the Government would have collapsed long ago. It’s a parasite. Maybe, with Trump in charge, we will see a turnaround.

The existence of a Holocaust needs to be proved in a Court of Law with proper legal procedures and evidence. Of the 485 tons of confiscated German documents sitting in our National Archives, not a single document describes a Holocaust plan, even though the Germans meticulously documented every detail of their military campaigns. The prosecution sought and obtained very relaxed rules of evidence and criminal procedures to win their convictions, because they couldn’t win the cases with proper legal procedures and the existing evidence. The German prisoners suffered severe physical symptoms of torture, but many of them said the psychological torture was worse– mock executions and threats to deport their families to the Soviet Union, where they would have met certain death. A legal team that has a winning case doesn’t need to resort to loosening criminal procedures, eliminating rules of evidence, and threatening and torturing witnesses. It rightly impugns their case. The U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Stone, said of the Nuremberg Trials: “Chief Prosecutor Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.” The hypotheses that the Germans conducted a Holocaust was never proven with proper legal arguments. It should be considered war propaganda, not much different that the fake news rampant in this country.

Hmmm, .. does the U.S. really need another crime-prone parasitic underclass that contributes almost nothing to the economy, other than unskilled labor that has little value? Is “parasitic” harsh? Hardly. They are a drain on the economy. These illegals cost this nation $151.7 billion per year in welfare. Each of their children costs property tax payers $15,000 per year in educational costs. The disorder they create is eve worse.

The brunt of the economy, over 60% is sustained by the top 10% of the population. Almost all innovation in done by the top 10%. Essentially, the bottom 1/2 are parasites.

We have a U.S. Congress at war with itself. We have a commander in Chief who has mid-stage dementia. We have a DOJ and FBI that treats traditional Americans as domestic terrorists. The DOJ engages in political prosecutions that would make a third-world banana republic blush. Traditional Americans are discouraging their children from serving in its armed forces, because the military engages in sanctioned hatred of its white soldiers. American schools are dumbed down to teach to the lowest common denominator. We have a Federal Government that encourages every third-world reject in the world to come to the U.S., giving them cash, housing, welfare and education to their children. We have a National Security Council that full of zeal in defending Ukraine’s and Israel’s borders while pushing the world towards nuclear war, but has no interest in defending it’s own borders. We have a Federal Government that can’t control its debt. Wow, .. the U.S. Government is in a realm far beyond idiocy.

Jokem/Mazdyasnua:

In an ideal government, the property taxes that I pay for schools should be refunded if I choose to homeschool my children OR if I have no children. But, the government is far from ideal and “fair.” The 170 million voters in America determine what is “fair.” Experience has taught me that the old adage that “you can’t fight city hall” is quite true.

I homeschooled my oldest child for a year, in advanced mathematics, science, and English. Upon returning to public school, she jumped three grades. I believe all average and above students can easily excel like this. But, it wasn’t easy. Home schooling is hard. Planning lessons and teaching requires much time. I was surprised to learn that you must learn child psychology to teach effectively. Even then, I knew my methods were poor, even though my child was progressing.

But, if you want properly educated children, there are no other alternatives. Dr. Paul is quite right about that. When schools stopped teaching grammar, children lost the language training to perceive essential distinctions between what they sense, think, and express. Now, they just think of everything in terms of emotions and the dominant social mores. We’ve descended into a poverty of the mind that is far worse than economic poverty. In the late 1970s- early 1980s, the National Council of Teachers of English decided to remove grammar instruction from American schools, because the “harmful effects” it has on “non-standard dialect speakers.” This was one of the earliest events in the woke revolution. It’s barely taught now.

You nailed it Gutta Percha.

Being a low-income landlord is like being a fish swimming in a blender — your life is never relaxing. Because the government is increasingly making our decisions, by telling us to whom we must lease, our problems become nearly intractable. We must deal with two fundamentally different, but equally stressful problems: maintaining decrepit property that is too expensive to change and handling or fixing the tenants’ life problems – a duty increasingly imposed by the government. With a decrepit structure, you can expect to struggle with plumbing problems constantly. Like a fish in a blender, every phone call triggers apprehension and pure dread of the hours we must devote to struggle with the problem, often while drenched cold with water and muddied with sewage. Sometimes those plumbing problems are dangerous like when the sink drain is jammed with residue from cooking drugs. Flooded apartments mean not hours, but weeks spent dealing with the problem. We had a foreign tenant whose culture taught her to be subservient to her husband. When a high-pressure supply line into her toilet burst, she didn’t turn off the valve and call us. Rather, while the supply line sprayed water everywhere for over 6+ hours, flooding the apartment, she said she spent the whole day sitting on the bed, crying, waiting for her husband to come home, so he could handle it. When we arrived, it was too late. We faced about two solid weeks of unrelenting work, trying to restore and fix the destruction, while finding a place for the tenants. Plumbing isn’t the only problem. While working full-time engineering jobs, both my wife and I spent every spare minute down at the apartment building repairing things, handling issues, and trying to collect rent, usually dragging our small children with us. Collecting rent is always a problem, because very few low-income tenants plan for the future. Most will spend all of their money, such as a trip to Disneyland, without thinking about the need to pay for food, diapers, and rent. Sometimes, they spend rent money on new cars, drugs, tvs, gambling, booze, and anything other than rent. Even if you assess late fees, it doesn’t solve this uncorrectable lack of planning. They merely accumulate late payments and rent balances, until they can no longer pay. If they move out, we were almost always confronted with weeks of labor to clean and repair the unit. The damage was unrelenting, even when you screen problematic tenants. One of our tenants was very responsible with a good job, but she was persuaded by her brother to let him move into the unit. He was a member of a gang. Soon, car prowls and other crime soared in the neighborhood. One day, he lost his key. Instead of calling his sister or us, he and his gang chose to break down the door and the surrounding frame. I could never get it fixed right – the whole wall was severely damaged. Of course, they demanded we quickly fix it, because the door was destroyed and open. Another tenant had a crazy compulsion to keep key scratching the other tenants’ cars. Many people just seem to have no respect for their neighbors’ rights. They will play loud music, fight with them, party till late, etc. Their lack of respect for others and poor communication creates havoc for them, us, and their victims. This lack of situational awareness extends not just to neighbors, but to their friends and partners. Often, they often resolve the ensuing problems by assaulting them. Some of them try to solve their problems with drugs and alcohol. Their life choices often made us just cringe. One of our young tenants had a baby while a high-school student. At first it was enjoyable for her. The Government paid for her rent and expenses. Her school friends said they envied her. But, they stopped coming and so did her boyfriend. Soon, she had to deal with a crying baby, alone, with no support network, while cooped up in an apartment. She cried about missing school and normalcy. As landlords, their problems become your problems. They all had credit and criminal issues. Perspective tenants are often desperate, pleading and pleading with us to give them a chance. But, you can’t. It doesn’t take landlords long to discover the best tenants are older tenants and people with good credit scores (which correlates very well with good behaviors). The laws forbid discrimination based on age, race, families with children, etc.. Now, they are also forcing landlords to ignore criminal history. We ran a lower-income complex for decades, but eventually we started to let the units sit vacant, often for months, until we attracted tenants with good jobs and good credit scores. This patience was rewarded, as we became a mid-income apartment complex. But, this choice of ours was increasingly at odds with the laws that force landlords to accept any tenant. The Government thinks it is correcting an unfair situation with landlords discriminating against people. The reality is that landlords can’t handle the expense and lack the time and skills to solve these peoples’ life problems. We landlords must not only take care of our families and solve our problems, while working full-time jobs, but also spend our meager free time dealing with our rentals and the tenants’ problems. Voters have a long history of thinking landlords are greedy and harsh, so they stack the laws against us. In reality, we landlords are usually just ordinary people facing these unfair laws. Because of them, we can’t even evict the tenants who are a pure nightmare. Eviction is expensive and time consuming. One of my “occupants” was able to live rent free for 8+ months, because she was able to use free city-provided legal services to prolong her occupation of our unit. Her government provided lawyer saw us as evil. We were in court often during that period. The tenant (she actually wasn’t a tenant) didn’t have a job, because she felt her time was best spent on political protests, rather than solving her own problems. So, she could afford the time to engage in this war with us. We couldn’t afford it. We had full time jobs that required much overtime, with two small children, and the constant work on our apartment complex. In my experience, landlording is just pure stress with very little financial gain. The capitalization rate for us was about 6%, but if we included the labor hours we spent on it, it was negative. So, why do landlords engage in this crazy business? For my wife and I, we wanted the depreciation and write offs, to offset our taxes. We also hoped for property appreciation which never came. But, after we sold the building, we discovered the tax laws recoup those depreciations. Hopefully, I’ve conveyed to you the experiences of being a low-income landlord, but I’ll never convey to you the sense of gloom. You are dealing with tenants whom you often befriend, whose lives are gloomy, dead end, and confined to that small dismal neighborhood. There is nothing noble in that little corner of the world. It felt like the inscription Dante saw when entering the gates of Hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Selling that apartment building was one of the happiest days of my life. The lives we left behind aren’t helped by the do-gooders and government bestowing the landlords’ money, choice, and time on them. They need the tough life lessons to force them to plan their way out the gloomy path they are on. The do-gooders will likely howl at the harshness of that thought, but hey, .. I earned it that perspective serving in the trenches, .. did they?

Debt? That’s too abstract. Everyone knows you just look at your checking account, to see if you can afford the monthly payment. What’s with all the theory too? Voting is not complicated. You just vote for the person who smiles the best and has the best personality. Everyone on this board thinks too much.

When you become a victim of a crime, you begin to realize that in a lawless society, you have no rights. I walked into two robberies, where a gun was held to my head. In both cases, I was lucky to have walked away with my life. In both cases, they could have easily killed me, with no consequence to themselves. I was at the mercy of thugs whose thinking is too immature to interact in a civil manner. Do those thugs have a right to own a gun that is used to threaten the lives of their victims? If you give them the rights to own a gun and use it to further crimes, you’re taking away civil order and thus all rights from everyone. A drug abuser like Hunter Biden is psychologically immature and degrades civil behavior. He lost all rights, whether or not stated in the Constitution, because he is not mature nor civil.

With attorney fees at $300 to $600 per hour, no one can afford it, even the rich. The costs are an extreme hardship, but even more devastating is the time spent. Court cases drag on for years, consuming every moment of your life. I’ve been through three large civil lawsuits. Each one lasted longer than three years. It is devastating, even when you win.

Typical Leftist response: blame the bank. Have you, Ted Rall, ever thought the blame should be assigned to the thief? Maybe, .. the thieves should be sentenced to serve time, to take them out of circulation, so they can’t commit crimes ?????, IN MANHATTAN WHERE LEFTY VOTERS LIKE TED RALL VOTE FOR JUDGES AND DA’S THAT LET ALL CRIMINALS WALK FREE. Ted Rall, like most Leftists, see things emotionally instead of using logic, so everything he says comes out confused and bizarre. It’s not rocket science, Ted Rall. Think !!!!

The right on this UNZ site and other sites has been opposing corruption of American by the powerful Israeli/Jewish AIPAC and its umbrella organizations (providing more than 50% of all campaign money to both parties for years), and the Jewish-communist domination of our media for decades. We’ve always tended to look on all Mideasterns, whether Jewish or Arabic as not good for this country. By contrast, the Leftist swing towards Palestine has occurred only in the past few months. Leftist brains are scattershot, they vary daily. The rest of the right, the gullible public, are all easily swayed by the media.

Democracy doesn’t work. There is too much ignorance and corruption.

What about the plight of Gerbils and Hamsters? Not only do we deny them the opportunity to study K-12 and then college and deny them their right to healthcare, we treat them like slaves and put them in cages for no reason at all. With proper health care and an end to their slavery, we could greatly increase their appalling lifespans of 2-3 years. It’s about time we end this plantation mindset that justifies slavery, liberate them, pay them reparations for all the damage we’ve done to their ancestors, and finally change admissions and school standards to “equitably” level the playing field. By offering math and science courses, we humiliate the Gerbils and Hamsters. To support any education for all animals and people other than how to properly use a treadmill and drinking tube is fascist and racist, and shows no compassion for the humiliation these poor creatures suffer.

Ted Rall writes:

Homelessness is the single most powerful indictment of capitalism, the embodiment of human disposability …..

Now, no one disagrees that the U.S is a FAILED STATE.
Record numbers of Americans are living in:

1) Those ever expanding tent cities
2) Sleeping under freeway overpasses
3) Not even lucky enough to be in the former two categories, but are instead wandering around on the streets without shelter, in an opioid induced stupor.

And of course the USSA today is a Socialist Shit-hole. There is NO Capitalism of substance occurring in the big end of town in America.
The U.S today is all about Crony Corporatism, whereby Bloated Big Government schmoozes up to a select few ZOG/ZOG affiliated oligarchs and enacts legislation/regulatory impediments etc, to ensure their monopolies are protected and that consumers PAY MORE and in return GET LESS (hence the reason they can’t make ends meet).

SUMMARY: America has some real problems that need to be addressed.
But you’re not helping Ted Rall by not being able to finger the actual culprit that is behind the malfeasance.

Yet the millions of ‘migrants’ or invaders are provided with free lifetime housing after they’re processed by ZWOG in the USA. Too many people in the US & on the planet. In 1931 the world’s population was 1.5 billion, now there’s 7-8 billion with over 90% being nonwhite. Mindless humanitarianism/egalitarianism vis a vis Judaism/Christianity importing western medicine/aid into Africa/Asia/Latin America over the past 100+ years has created this demographic disaster. Of course the clandestine rationale behind their intentional augmentation of the colored masses was always to weaponize them to inundate the West & diminish/deracinate the white race. Now you know.

“Only the Left can fix it.”

What a load of BS, Ted Rall. As an ardent leftist, how many homeless people did you invite into your home? None. You ran an article in the past admitting you saw an homeless woman on the street, but couldn’t summon the courage to invite her into your home. Typical leftist. The National Institute of Health has found “from 31 empirical studies, that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals.” Many other studies show the same.

As leftist, why don’t you walk your talk, move to Africa, to work as an an aid worker, to help the 430 million Africans living in extreme poverty?

Leticia James, Fani Willis, Marilyn Mosby, Kim Gardner, Rachel Rollins, Kamala Harris.

What traits do all of the aforementioned have in common?

If you are actually interested in a functioning justice system then the inescapable conclusion is that Black women should never have political power. There is no group of Americans more corrupt, tyrannical, vindictive, nasty or possessed of an entirely unearned sense of superiority than Black women.

Only tools and useful idiots would want a justice system run by the rude, arrogant and incompetent bitches who make even the most minor interaction with a government agency a living nightmare.

First and foremost, we must stop using their terminology. There is no ‘justice system’. Frame it how you will but make it an accurate characterization.

Republican Rome was like this. Rival politicians suing and counter suing. Then came Mark Anthony, Octavian and Agrippa and the eventual military dictatorship of Tiberius.

It’s sad to hear of anyone going through a civil lawsuit in this country. I’ve been through three large ones, each of which lasted 3+ years, with attorney costs running at $300 to $600/hr. It takes up all of your time, leaving you drained, physically and mentally and monetarily.

These Democrats think they are winning by engaging in this lawfare, but without trust in laws, property rights, and in other people, the economy will simply stop functioning as it does in third-world countries.

Yep. Zero is the minimum. Can’t argue with that.

And “minimum wage” used to be what you paid teenagers to work.

It wasn’t meant for adults.

Now, if they want to have TWO minimum wages… one for, say up to 20 years old, and the other for older people, no problem.

$60 minimum wage, great idea Ted.
That way the gangsters in DC can step in and deliver the coup de grace to small businesses all across the country and we can finally cement total rule by Amazon and Walmart.
With so few options to participate in commerce, they’ll have a much easier time locking dissenters out of the economy.
One thing about Ted, you can always count on him for brilliant ideas that will definitely improve all of our lives.

Who is this “we” in “We need a minimum wage? Does he mean “I need a minimum wage” because journalism jobs are disappearing fast? Or, is he still trying to keep that communist dream alive of a Borg-like leftist collective of useless parasites? Does “we” mean a nation torn apart into a Civil War by the leftist intolerance and cancel culture that cancels those of us on the right, under any pretense? Perhaps he can enlighten us by explaining who this “we” is.

The safest course of action for those cheering Italians would have been to stay at home, not show support to the invaders, to avoid retribution from their own government. Your explanation is possible, but the facts suggest another reason. Most but not all Italians were unhappy during WW1, about both their economic situation and the decision to enter a war. Based on this, I suspect they cheered on those German troops, because they felt the Government was hostile to their views. That’s similar to those of us on the right, today. It feels like lefties in the government, schools, media, and corporations are at war with us, freely engaged in cancelling us with any pretense.

…government ought to intercede on behalf of those who are having trouble making ends meet,…

This is a classic description of the idiocy which says that laws must be passed and policies must be implemented to correct or overcome the disastrous consequences of previous laws and policies.

Government edicts produced the current state of affairs. Why should we expect anything to be better if more are imposed?

BTW, if minimum wage arguments had any foothold in reality, then no one should be deprived of the goal of attaining wealth. Why stop at $15/hr. or $60/hr.? Why not eliminate poverty everywhere by guaranteeing that everyone receive $75/hr. or $5 million/hr.?

Where does the lunacy end?

Seriously limiting low-skill and no-skill immigration would have very much the same effect as an increase in the minimum wage, only without all of the pernicious knock-on effects which inevitably attend ham-fisted government interference in the free market.

Ted Rall says a lot of idiotic things. This article is another example.

You forgot, why there is no money, were the money went. In the 1950ies a Californian blue collar worker earned enough to pay house, car, school, etc.

Half a century of Leftist policies! The US have become a Leftist European style state with huge expenses like
bloated government,
inefficient expensive welfare, especially for the non productive people
red tape for senseless green dreams

DIE, mandatory hiring of useless “workers”
costs of ghetto lottery
costs of crime, losses, prisons, courts,

When a young Erwin Rommel in WW1, as a lieutenant in the Germany Army, led his invading soldiers through Italy, he was puzzled beyond belief in seeing Italian citizens lining city and town streets cheering and celebrating the invading German soldiers. When I read that decades ago, I was similarly puzzled. Today, .. I understand.

I can hear it now..

What the fuck you lookin at nigga? I’m lookin atchoo nigga! Yo bitch ass nigga, immabout to fuck yo nigga ass up.. Fuck you nigga!! BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!! Bitch ass nigga I toad you what was gonna happen, bitch ass punk!!

Probably missed every one of the assholes they were shooting at, yet killed an innocent woman and mother. Cops all standing around not knowing what the hell to do as they don’t want to chance being charged for taking out these retarded monkeys.

People who live in NYC view the city differently than those of us who live in fly-over country. I can see why they choose to live there.

Manhattan has always been an enjoyable city. No matter where you walk in Midtown, you’ll be within several blocks of outstanding shops/restaurants. New Yorkers, always quite vocal, at least in the past, were never afraid of telling restaurant owners what’s wrong with their food, so the quality kept improving to the point where much of it is simply heavenly. You can’t get that in the Midwest, where people tolerate bad food. The “energy” of the crowds in Times Square is quite memorable, although it is far from a civilized energy. If you can afford it, or are able to schedule it, the nearby Broadway shows used to offer world-class entertainment, but good luck in trying to book something, or seeing anything not tainted by wokey morality. The museums in Uptown, bordering Central Park are among the best that I’ve seen. Downtown Manhattan is drab, except Chinatown and other clusters where street vendors have taken over the sidewalks. You can buy a high quality Versace knockoff for practically nothing. There’s an energy to the City that makes it an enjoyable visit.

For many decades, New Yorkers enjoyed all of this. There is no city like NYC. Their focus wasn’t on the disasters overtaking the City, just immersion in city life. But, that has been changing, as it did in California — paradises attract people until the overcrowding and ensuing problems no longer make it a paradise. I doubt New Yorkers will ever see their voting as a problem. They will simply get fed up with the parasitic masses infecting the City, move somewhere else, and vote the same way.

I have an even better idea. Instead of spending those trillions on government programs of any kind; how about not collecting that money as taxes in the first place?????

Pay their gas and electric bills out of their take home salaries instead of government subsidies Buy their food with their take home wages instead of EBT cards. Go to a licensed dentist instead of the students at the dental school. Maybe even private school instead of government school for the kids. Pay rent from their take home wages instead of applying for section 8 and other government programs. Hire a real nanny instead of sending the little ones to some day care staffed by retarded sheboons

You bet! I’m THRILLED that the MSM is going down the tubes. I have my fingers crossed that giants like the limping LA Times will be bought by Sinclair or other right-wing corporation.

Here’s another uppity nugget from gretchen: I’m afraid that we might be going into a new dark age where you go backward because you’re not enlightened by the media.
Oh, we need to be ENLIGHTENED by them.

I think its absolutely wonderful that print media is disappearing and all those anti White propagandists are out of work. Most of the major newspapers in the big cities are in the old once very grand parts of downtown. Surrounded by skid row. Harassed by mostly black deranged derelicts arriving at and leaving work.

News papers have been racist enemies of Whites since at least 1960 and probably earlier.

Lamenting the demise of Establishment media seems, at best, clueless. And pretty typical of Mr. Hedges, a left jamb of the Overton window.

Pearl clutching like this

Chris Hedges: To what extent does this essentially allow so-called fake news, and conspiracy theories, free of reign within the media landscape?

Gretchen Morgenson: It opens the door to a tremendous increase in those kinds of stories. But also, it’s part of that is this derision for the real media, which is very damaging and very dangerous, where you have the president of the US saying that the media are the enemy of the people. That is hair-raising and frightening.

will resonate well with the NPRogressives. But probably not here …

The media have been unmasked as instruments of misinformation and in general they are being tolerated for lack of something better because the crisis is total in them, nothing is useful.

But not only the media are suffering the consequences of the errors committed, the political system is in the same condition and even religious organizations are being harshly questioned.

And why does the system survive? Well, thanks to the printing of money that maintains the appearances that the economy works and with the help of drugs that nullify the will of tens of millions of people.
​

Who is “we” in “What if we had $4.5 trillion / year”? There is no longer a “we” in this nation. If anyone who steps foot in this nation is an American and all 7.9 billion people in the world have a right to be classified as American citizens, according to Lefties like Ted Rall, then there is no longer a “we.”

Ted Rall doesn’t walk his talk. He wants the rich to pay for nation’s poor, but doesn’t want to lift a finger himself, as evidenced in a previous article where he described thoughts about opening his apartment (?) to a homeless person, but decided against it. So, Ted Rall, .. instead of ranting about the rich who aren’t paying their fair share, why don’t you show us how you’ve walked your own socialist talk, by volunteering your time and most of your money to your Leftist ideals, at the same proportional rates of the rich?

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent. So, how exactly are the rich not paying their “fair” share? As someone who is in the upper 1% of all taxpayers, I’m forced to support an alien and dysfunctional nation with which I have nothing in common.

A study done over a decade ago, which was confirmed in the NY Times, showed conservatives are far more charitable and volunteer far more time than Lefties. Lefties are all phony talk, .. never walking their own talk. These studies show the Lefties are not interested in helping people, .. they are only interested in advancing their virtuous self image, while destroying the rich, to bring them down. They’ve weaponized the U.S. and State governments to engage in an all out war with their “deplorable” enemy. They subject us to cancellation in jobs and opportunities and who attempt to replace us with an alien population. The Left is engaged in a civil war with “we” on the right. There is no “we” in this nation anymore.

We aren’t rich. We’re 33 trillion dollars in debt and growing fast.
We have a hollowed-out industrial sector and our “””GDP””” is largely based on financialization schemes, the outlook of which is not bright in the face of a global de-dollarization trend.
We aren’t rich. We’re a sinking ship. Once again Ted reveals himself as an out of touch moron who hasn’t evolved his political outlook since the 90s.

The Military does need a purpose, .. it’s obviously not defending our borders.

Our modern economy was created mostly from military spending. It brought you: gps, drones, radar, microwave ovens, jet airplanes, synthetic fabrics, satellites and their technology, spread spectrum technology (used in our cellular networks), smartphone technology (an Italian economist found 98% of the technology in smart phones comes from the U.S. DOD), undershirts, instant coffee, tampons, bug sprays, duct tape, microprocessors, micro hard drives, lcd displays, many types of signal compression, Li batteries, DRAM cache, touch screens, internet, .. the list goes on and on.

Our modern economy owes its existence to this defense spending that most people think is wasteful. When the DOD develops new systems, it infuses military discipline into engineering. It first schedules 5-10-15 years “roadmaps” of R&D studies, before it develops a technology. These studies are done by Defense companies that then use the results to respond to proposals. In our National Missile Defense programs where I worked on studies and proposals, the results were used in 45-60 day proposal efforts to compete against other defense companies. Those proposal effort are simply amazing. In short 45-60 days periods, you see the world’s most advanced engineering revolutionizing technology that has never existed. It takes much discipline and rigor to produce these technologies and systems, something that is lacking in commercial companies. The Commercial engineering typically follows no standards, few procedures, and lack rigor and discipline — they are hobby shops. The marriage of a soldiers’ discipline with engineering and research produced our modern economy.

Since the Cold War ended, revolutionary technological change has stopped. Worse yet, this country’s morals no longer flow up from the disciplined military world. Instead, they flow up from effeminate teachers who teach children to think and behave like them. I think the key to evolutionary and revolutionary advancement is a military culture. This country should replace all public schools with military schools. Military service should be mandatory for all people.

As you mentioned, the Gallup poll didn’t try to determine the “whys.”

To be clear, that’s not what I’d mentioned; what I’d mentioned is that the Gallup article didn’t mention the “whys”. Since I haven’t read the Gallup report on the poll, I have no idea whether or not the Gallup poll also inquired about the “whys”.

The “whys” are often hard to figure out. An example is a very old 1990’s survey that showed 80% of software engineer graduates leave the field by the time they reach 40 years of age. For other engineering fields it was similar, but lower. Those figures are shocking. Everyone wondered “why” they were leaving the field. […] By the time that I retired, 10 years ago, I found the biggest issue on almost all programs/projects was the labor problems, especially workers not getting along with other workers. The technical problems are sometime very challenging, but not nearly as challenging as labor issues.

In my own case, being a software developer who is well past 40, what I’ve experienced is not that I’ve left the field, but that the field has left me. For some time now, the typical response that I receive to job applications—should a potential employer deign to respond—is in essence the equivalent of being patted on the head and told, “OK, Boomer”. Maybe I’ve been fortunate in that I haven’t had conflicts with managers who have been younger than me, but if such conflict is a common occurrence, then perhaps younger employers are exercising their own form of risk management by excluding the remnants of the not-yet-retired Baby Boom cohort from consideration for non-management rôles, to avoid the potential for younger manager vs. older worker conflicts.

If you can solve those “whys,” you’d be worth your weight in gold in today’s businesses.

I doubt if there’s a silver bullet to solve all of those “whys” simultaneously; each employee is going to have an individually specific “why”, so the only real solution is communication between employer and employee to discover each employee’s “why”, and if feasible, provide a mutually acceptable resolution to satisfy it.

What’s left? I looked up the World Socialist Web Site over the weekend.

As even Anglin points out, and I’ve long known, some of the writing they post is worth reading.

However, you have to know where they come from if the article has anything to do with Trotskyite dogma.

In this case, the most amusing parts were to do with the hundredth anniversary of the death of Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin.

Many omissions and distortions.

For a few examples, they completely distorted the roles of Mensheviki, both in terms of Lev Bronstein (Trotsky) having been a Menshevik until his conversion to opportunistically become a Bolshie boss in 1917 and in misrepesenting the Georgian situation. As in parts of Russia (including the Ukraine), Georgia’s government for a time was Menshevik.

Mention of Lenin’s serial strokes but no mention that they were almost certainly a result of his having been shot by a Jewish Social-Revolutionary, Fanny Kaplan.

Mocking Djurgashvili (Stalin) for not having had a background of wide travel outside the Russian empire. Really, he resented those types because while they lived in comfort as emigres, he was on the ground being a gangster to raise funds and organise for the SDLP (B).

So, of course, as a loyal member, he felt bitter towards those who came back from swanning around in cafes in Zurich, Vienna, London, and (in the case of people like Bronstein, a.k.a. Trotsky and his contingent of a few hundred Jews, not even party members) from N.Y.

Having seen one convincing still photo, I believe that porn acting was among Trotsky’s games (other than raising funds from Jews) in N.Y.

Really, as far as history, the W.S.W.S. articles on the centenary of Lenin’s death were exactly like the photos with erased figures and books with erased events from the former C.P.U.S.S.R.

Recommended as comedy to discerning readers.

Trotsky, Trotskyites, and Trotskyists were harmful everywhere.

In Vietnam, the C.P.V. got rid of them.

Everywhere from the U.S.A. (where they became neocons or other types of lunatic ‘wokeists’) to most U.S. vassal states, where Trots were the worst and most divisive influence on the ‘left’ in Japan and Europe in the sixties and early seventies, Trots were oblique servants of the ruling order.

That includes then Warsaw Pact countries and Yugoslavia, Trots presented themselves as the true opposition.

In all listed cases except perhaps Vietnam it is very clear that the Trots had C.I.A. support.

I once found a great chart of the ‘Fourth (Trot) International’ (recommend to others, but can’t offer a link now), it was bizarre, a giant labyrinth, and those were only the ones which still claimed allegiance to Trotsky (Bronstein), they have so many parties that are all nonsense. Also, I recommend not going to any of their social parties unless wanting to irritate them, say nothing of what you think if one is in your management and you want to keep your job.

Rallopinsky had a feud with Art Spiegelman many years ago, Spiegelman had some control over what were considered ‘art’ comics in N.Y. at the time, and excluded Tedstein. Tedstein wrote some attack articles that were entertaining at the time, but just pleas from a dumped member of the same tribe as I now realise!

Socialism isn’t just Leninism, of course. Many Buddhist and Christian movements in the past, they at times secured territory only to be defeated, only to be crushed.

The British Labour movement was a good alternative to the sov. model, but ex-Trots like Anthony Bliar (and most of his cabinet, most also former Trots) put an end to that. Even now, Brit. Labour is so full of trotskies that one must wonder how they ever leave the toilet bowl.

NSocialistDAP also did well by their people, however the declaration of war by Jewry of the world in 1933 did have an effect by 1936 or 7. So, their very effective economic model was lost in war economy.

Excellent response. As you mentioned, the Gallup poll didn’t try to determine the “whys.”

The “whys” are often hard to figure out. An example is a very old 1990’s survey that showed 80% of software engineer graduates leave the field by the time they reach 40 years of age. For other engineering fields it was similar, but lower. Those figures are shocking. Everyone wondered “why” they were leaving the field. The common guess was that older engineers were not keeping up with the technology. But, I found based on almost 40 years in engineering that the best engineers were the older workers — their productivity rates were “statistically” much higher and their quality of work was much higher (I actually measured this). Another guess was that the older engineers’ salaries were generally higher, so they were priced out of the field. Labor is a huge component of non-recurring costs (developmental costs), but most companies try to reduce developmental costs through better methods and their main focus is trying to reduce the recurring costs of the product. The small difference in pay between an older worker and a younger worker is more than offset by the value of their experience. In my own experience, I found huge conflicts between younger managers and older workers. The older workers resented younger and inexperienced engineers directing them, while the younger managers did not feel comfortable directing older people. As an engineer ages, their chances of working under a younger manager goes up, unless they go into management.

By the time that I retired, 10 years ago, I found the biggest issue on almost all programs/projects was the labor problems, especially workers not getting along with other workers. The technical problems are sometime very challenging, but not nearly as challenging as labor issues.

If you can solve those “whys,” you’d be worth your weight in gold in today’s businesses.

Hard work surely brought me success. There are many opportunities for young people today, but few are taking them.

When I built my pole barn several years ago, I contracted the concrete slab work out to a company. On the day the concrete was to pour, five older guys, all above 60, showed up to do the work. I couldn’t help but ask them: “You got to be kidding!, concrete work is a young person’s job. Why don’t you have any young people doing this work?!” I asked this because I was over 60, so I knew the physical effects it would have on them. The foreman responded “We pay high rates, but few young people will take the work. The ones that do take the job will last only a few weeks. Many of them simply don’t show up on time, or wake up and decide they want that day off. They are worthless. ” I was so impressed with these older workers’ work ethic, I jumped in and helped them.

I hired an electrical company to wire the barn. Same problem. The owner said he visited every high school in the County, pleading with young people to take the job. He would start them at $80,000, with no experience, but promised to pay them over $100,000 when they became licensed. He also promised them he would pay for all schooling. He got no tackers. All of his crew were older workers, above 40.

When I worked at a large corporation, I got huge stacks of resumes from Americans for engineering jobs. I estimated 70% or more of them were fake resumes or overstated their work. We learned the hard way, that when we hired one of these fake applicants, we were usually stuck with a poor performing or worthless worker that was hard to fire (too much cost and risk). But, we found the Asian countries were very good at weeding out the bad apples, so we contracted out much work to them. American engineering wrap rates were five times higher, but even with these rates we would have greatly preferred American workers to the foreign, because of communication and time zone issues. We preferred the Asian workers, because their employers had the uncanny knack for weeding out bad workers.

As for equity stakes, that is not the norm at least in my experience. I did work for a startup that gave me a very generous equity stake. That startup failed. But, I have a relative who recently did extremely well at a startup.

So, in my view, what has changed over the decades is the work ethic which is almost non-existent today. More Americans are also dishonest, making hiring them a risk.

My view is evidenced by a recent Gallop survey. It found that Millennials, those born between 1980 and 1996, jump jobs frequently. 21% of them have changed their job in the past year. But, it gets worse. Only 30% of them are engaged at work, “emotionally and behaviorally” (quotes supplied by Gallup). 55% are disengaged, which is alarming. But, the real shocker is the remaining 16% are actively disengaged, which means they are working to harm their company.

Why would a company want to risk hiring these workers, when they have a 16% chance of hiring a young person who actively tries to harm their company? Or the even more likely 70% who are not engaged in the work?

I think you are trying too hard to fit reality to your socialist perspective. The harsh reality in America is that we now have a generation of workers that are worse than worthless. In general, they are spoiled brats, with almost no work ethic.

It was never hip or “cool” to be a Trotskyite or any other variant of Marxist, even on college campuses in 1950-1970s America. Those of us who studied hard in college in rigorous professional majors looked down on Liberal Arts students who thought they were seen as hip, when parroting Marxism. We in professional degrees were burden with extreme workloads in college, but almost all of us shared a belief that success comes from hard work, as evidenced by the years of hard work to earn those degrees. Those in Liberal Arts majors too often took the easy indolent path, endlessly partying, working towards easy but worthless majors, while trying to convince themselves that we are all equal, except the achievers, who are evil and should be punished.

Socialism’s appeal is based on the feeling that it’s unfair if some people are smarter, superior, plan better, and behave better than others. The notion that someone is superior to others drives socialists bat crazy.

The antidote to socialism is to grow up. If one of your siblings or friends or acquaintances is much more successful than you, or smarter, or plans better, or is richer than you, accept it, admire them, and be happy that they’ve succeeded. Life’s not fair. Cancer, illness, accidents strike people randomly. Accept it. Socialism appeals to people who refuse to grow up.

“Next week, I’ll take a look at the tax code…”

THAT’S comedy!

On the low side the tax code is 5,000 pages. 75,000 if you include the appendices.

We’ll see you in a few months.

Be well.

Oh boy another “real socialism has never been tried” article straight out of 2008. Dazzling stuff.
You’re in big trouble as a writer when your rhetoric is almost 20 years dated, Ted.
Anyways, you’ll never achieve your socialist utopia in the US. Such things are reserved for ethnically homogenous, intrinsically high-trust societies. The future of the US racial jungle is anarcho-tyranny and total bankster control.

I agree with Dr. Paul, about much of what he wrote, excepting the rant about the Fed.

The Federal Reserve System executes monetary policy – the control of the money supply through interest rate adjustments via the federal funds rate, and the balance between future and present money through quantitative easing or tightening. It has no control over the U.S. Government issue of debt to finance spending. Saying the Fed “enables” U.S. Government spending is far from true, because the Fed is required to conduct auctions of U.S. debt on behalf of the Treasury Department.

The U.S. Government spending leads to massive debt and thus imbalances in the Fed control of the money supply. The culprit is the U.S. Government, not the Fed.

Very true, Anarchyst. The best engineers and scientists that I saw over a 40 year career, worked in research and developmental labs that required debugging low-level hands-on problems. The Trades solve similar tough problems nearly every day. I saw that after building two homes.

A few years ago, I built a pole barn. The four concrete workers were my age — over 60. I jumped in to help them. I asked why were they doing backbreaking work at their age. They said the pay was high and their company couldn’t find many young people to do the work. The ones that did take the job, wouldn’t show up at the required times or would quit after a few weeks. When I put in the electrical, the electrical company owner said he visited all area high schools pleading with students to join as apprentices, with on-the job training, help with course expense, and well over $100,000 salaries immediately upon earning their license. He couldn’t get any takers. I honestly do not get it. What is wrong with young people today? I’ve always got a sense of accomplishment from working hard, regardless of the type of work. It really is their loss.

Very few college students are interested in their subjects/majors. Most go to college, because the friends in their network of friends all go to college. They will turn down $100,000 jobs in the trades, because they and their friends look down on menial work. Social Media has made this worse.

Once in college, the focus of non-STEM students quickly becomes socializing and partying. Most non-STEM students enjoy their college years, but gain little from it. Surprisingly, they do develop better work skills, like showing up on time and working with others, than non-college students. STEM and professional degrees require too much work load to maintain friends. Most are unhappy during their college years because of the immense work load and lack of friends. 40% of college students are washed out, before graduating, leaving the government with their debt. So, these students incur huge debts, with a high risk (40%) of not graduating. Realistically, they will never pay the debt.

If students and parents had to pay for this nonsense, Colleges would not be sinking billions of dollars into expensive buildings, huge college bureaucracies, rec facilities, etc. It’s much like socialized medicine. When the patient no longer has to pay for it, they don’t mind medical bills that are ten times the true costs, because its paid for by someone else. Welcome top socialism 101.

Why would Ukrainians sacrifice their young men for a government that is among the most corrupt on the planet? It was barely a nation — more like a criminal enterprise. Beside losing their brothers, sons, and husbands, they also lost almost all of their eastern cities, stores, infrastructure, jobs, etc. They should have just let the Russians take over Eastern Ukraine.

The 13th and 14th Amendment were never ratified, because they were passed in 1865-68 when the South was under military rule. One of the conditions on their rejoining the Union, was to ratify the highly-partisan 14th amendment. The South voted against it, so the North passed a Reconstruction Act that forced them, under military force, to rebalance their legislatures with freed illiterate slaves (white men were not fully given the right to vote and hold office). But, even in the north, the states still refused to ratify it, with only 26 of 28 needed states ratifying it. It was never properly ratified, but implemented by the lefties (Republicans then) who aggressively ruled Congress during the Civil War. They were the same bunch that pushed the U.S. into a Civil War. To this day, the Supreme Court has shied away from examining its passage, because it was not legitimate and has become a key part of case law. Many academic papers on law have openly talk about this lack of legitimacy.

It’s sad to see 20,000 to 100,000 Palestinians, mainly children, massacred. At least, many Americans are awakening to the realization that AIPAC controls our government, and Jewish individuals and groups, working against most American’s interests, thoroughly control our media, schools, and so much more.

Something just as ugly as the Palestinian genocide has been happening in America, but only a few brave souls, mostly on Unz and conservative sites, were willing to write the truth. But, now, more Americans are opening their eyes.

Few Americans know that Emma Lazarus wrote those infamous words on the Statute of Liberty: “give me your poor, your poor, huddled masses ..” She was a Jewish woman who was advocating for the mass immigration of Russia and Eastern Europe’s Jewish population into America. Like all extremist political propaganda, these resounding words masks a deeply ugly intent. She was a self serving radical whose words helped lead to mass migration of hordes who’ve destroyed our culture, glorified perverted morals, and preyed on our easily influenced population. The left and Zionism has been pulling down our statutes and history. It’s time to pull down theirs.

Disney’s most important customers are actually Millennials, not children. In their Parks, 46% of guests are Millennials. Only 36.7% of guests have a child attending with them. Millennials, of course, are the most woke and they are the age group most coveted by advertisers: 18-34. That’s why we see so many obnoxious woke tv commercials. Disney and Corporate America focuses on them. The Disney films key viewers for Disney film streaming are Gen-Z who also make up 8 years of this 18-34 key advertising audience. Gen-Z is also woke.

So, Disney’s wokeness might be based on money, not political principles.

Normally, a jury trial would acquit these innocent Jan 6th defendants, but all of these political show trials take place in Washington DC, where 92% of the population votes Democratic. These Democratic and largely Black and anti-white liberal women Grand Juries and juries pools are ONLY targeting those on the right. Federal prosecutors know they can not obtain any convictions that result in prison for Democrats engaged in crimes such as Hunter Biden and the Democrats who subverted the Trump administration with the sham Russia-collusion persecution, because Democratic juries will always acquit Democrats. Yet, based on no probable cause, they will conduct early morning SWAT raids against any Republican accused of low-level charges such as lying to prosecutors. That’s true in all American large cities — federal and state courts vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Derek Chauvin was a classic case. In highly socialist Minneapolis, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, the socialists in charge stacked the Jury pool against him.

There is no justice in America anymore, if you are on the right. It’s no different than a 3rd world country that imprisons its political opposition.

Is there no remedy for this? Are our property and our very liberty held only at the whim of powerful state officials?

You almost want to feel sorry for the Vdare types, wandering about perplexed, wondering about the constitution and cheering for the law. I guess they missed the announcement that both of those already left the building. At least you could feel a little pity for them if they weren’t the first to smugly tell you how smart they are. At this late stage in the American game you can only laugh at them.

It’s over, Derb. The law is not here to help you, or to help Brimelow get his castle back. It’s certainly not going to help Orange Man stay out of jail. Are you seriously asking about a remedy? A sincere answer is that there might be one. But hiring a real-estate lawyer and voting harder isn’t going to be part of the plan.

Let’s break this film down. Right now the most popular Republican candidate is being groomed for jail, on ridiculous Third World charges. And what are his loyal Party-Mates doing? Arguing about ways to send more arms to, and stop people from criticizing Israel. Next, attempting to figure out how to abandon their ‘as long as it takes’ support for the Ukraine, but at the same time working out an exciting dream for a ‘pivot’ to China.

And you’re worried about Brimelow’s castle?

Good point about the appellate court is primarily focused on the civil procedure problems during the trial. But, they also do review constitutional issues, such as the 8th amendment which proscribes excess fines ($250 million fine sought by the prosecution even though no party suffered any damages in Trump’s loans), and consistency issues such as whether or not this NY statute is being applied uniformly (which it isn’t), and whether this civil action can proceed without an injured party. How exactly was New York State injured and how can it justify taking a quarter of a billion dollars from the defendant when there was no injured party?

In Trump’s business deals, he buys property that is undervalued, then develops the property to increase its value. So, a property’s value really depends on the business plan, not on the marketable value of the property at the time it was bought.

In ordinary life, bankruptcy laws make bankruptcy of an individual a mild event. The individual’s debt is easily dispose through one of the 6 bankruptcy chapters of the federal statutes. That is not the case with a nation, especially the U.S., which is a critical node in the global trade network. In this case, bankruptcy is a systematic failure of the economy. Congress sees seignorage, the gain from the Fed issue of base money, is free. But, if you crunch the numbers, the increased money growth actually decreases the “real” seignorage, because it decreases real-money holdings. In economic terms, using the excess seignorage to balance the Intertemporal budget constraint is the equivalent of a heart attack. It’s a key indicator the Government is broke and systematic failure is in progress.

Agreed until the last sentence, Realist. Not all of them – not all of US. J6 was an example of citizens trying to do something, and relatively peacefully at that. (In an ACTUAL insurrection, Americans will surely bring their guns.) The J6 protestors/rioters have become Political Prisoners, well over 1,000 of them, many held without trial.

So, since then, along with from the railroaded Brunswick 3, James Fields in Charlottesville, Derik Chauvin of this post, etc., patriotic Americans have learned, well, pretty much what JFK has predicted.

Corrupt Hennepin County had stacked the jury pool. In January of 2021, 80% of all Hennepin County trial jurors were white with only 3.6% black. .. You’re likely guessing that wasn’t what Chauvin got. Yup, our corrupt socialists running the County reversed that for Derek Chauvin: 4/12 were black, 2/12 were multiracial, leaving 6/12 white or 50%. If you noticed during the Saint George Floyd riots, most of the rioters were black or were young white females. So, the County, noticing this, stacked the pool even further by ensuring of the whites almost all were white women. That left only 2 of 12 jurors were white men — ensuring Derek Chauvin did not receive a trial among his peers.

You likely noticed that our rotten-to-the-core government in Minnesota, Hennepin County and Minneapolis cheered on the riots that destroyed 1500 buildings in Mpls and St. Paul. They actually set up refreshment stands to serve them and then voted to abolish the Mpls police department afterwards. That’s the new normalcy. It’s at war with the old normalcy. Don’t count on the Supreme Court hearing the case. Like the Chauvin jurors, they would be insane to challenge a murderous mob of hundreds of millions that are cheering on anarchy and the new normal.

The Government has already collapsed, but will remain around until it can no longer spend $6.27 trillion per year, while collecting $3.5 trillion in taxes and spending $3 trillion in Monopoly money.

Our nation has slowly slipped into the throes of old-age death. It’s institutions and laws were built by European Americans who increasingly are fading out of the picture. Those laws and views don’t make sense for the newer generation of people taking over from them. The 160 million immigrants and their children, since 1964, admire but despise whites, as evidenced in the fact that nearly all minority groups vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Several have confided in me that they vote this way, because they are voting against whites. The fading population of young whites are nearly all directionless, with no ambition nor drive, unable to show up to work on time and preferring not to work. The nation is dying.

It’s funny that a nation thinks spending $800 billion on weapons, per year, will defend the country against all threats. The main threat has always been internal.

If you cannot comprehend what people say, you really shouldn’t be commenting, guy. Seriously. Think. It’s not really that hard. I’m pro-Palestinian, based on an unbiased view of civil law and evidence. But, practically, Israel has a huge lobby in the U.S., giving it $3.3 billion in miliary assistance. Palestinians will not win any war with Israel, because of this. If they were to join other Palestinians living under an Israeli government, the Jews and Arabs would have to live apart. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “separation.” But, even Apartheid will not work. Almost every one of the 18 Arab governments and Israel are corrupt and failing. Polls of Arabs show their biggest fear is failed governments. Both Israel and Arab nations are unable to govern themselves. Murder and anarchy have been dominating many Arab nations, as evidenced by over 500,000 deaths in the Syrian uprising, 160,000 in Iraq, 400,000 in Yemen, over 1,000,000 in the Iraq-Iran wars, etc. I see all Arabs and Israelis as parasites.

I see Ted Rall’s article posted regularly on Unz and the Wall Street Journal, even though he is a Marxist. Both sites regularly publish all views. When the NY Times published Tom Cotton’s views (Republican from Arkansas), the rage in the NY Times was so furious, the Editorial Page Editor was forced to resign (effectively fired).

Yes, there is intolerance on the Right, but doesn’t come close to the cancelation and murder of people you see on the Left.

As Yogi Berra once said, “it’s deja vu, all over again.” In South Africa, the whites implemented Apartheid, to keep the nation civilized, but that infuriated the largely Leftist world which isolated and boycott the nation, into submission to Black rule. Black rule of course largely turned out to be anarchy and murder.

In Israel, the Palestinians do have a legitimate claim that should be settled in an international court, rather than through war and terror. But, that legitimate claim would likely lead to integration of Palestinians into Israel, then Palestinian rule, then anarchy and murder.

Like South Africa, the best solution would be Apartheid. Even Blacks admit, life was much better then.

Katherine Johnson was a “tech aide,” far from serving the role propagandized by the movie “Hidden Figures.” I know her role, having worked in the aerospace industry most of my career. The aerospace industry used “tech aides” to do menial tasks. Orbital Mechanical equations were derived by Phds, or those with MS degrees. She had a B.S. degree from a black college, lacking the years of study to do that task. As a “Computer” her tech aide job was to manually calculate an orbit, step by step, using procedures derived by the Phds. In text books, Orbital Mechanical models are often expressed in Hamiltonian or Lagrangian Equations, thus obits can be determined by global convergence. But, in the industry, everything is very non-linear, because of non-linear gravity models, radiation pressure from reflected light, etc. So, they must be calculated step by step, Newtonian fashion, as this gal and other tech aides were required to do. To do this, she just followed numerical procedures laid out by the Phds. She was the equivalent of an adding machine, multiplying and adding results from an equation. Today, computers do this, but back then they did not have them. When computers came along, they used large teams of tech aides to punch computer cards, with both data and programs, and then read and execute them using card readers. When I first went to work, that was how data and programs were entered. My first manager was in charge of the Gemini or Mercury development of embedded communication and other processors. But, back then they did not call them processors or computers. They called them “programmables.” He told me all computer technology was horribly primitive. They had to develop the burgeoning field through their suppliers.

Yes, Katherine Johnson wrote a technical paper on what she was doing, including the orbital mechanical equations she was using. That was common. Everyone was encouraged to do that, even tech aides. It help develop skills in those employees.

The reference looks like an interesting read. Sanitation likely was mostly responsible for the improvement in the 3rd leading cause of death, enteritis, in 1900. But, not so much in pneumonia and influenza. A moderate view always accounts for all facts and views. As Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

I’ve read in several of your columns that you’ve moved from rural Wisconsin (somewhere between Madison and the Mississippi?), to Morocco? It sounds intriguing. I’ve been to 29 nations, but it seems like I’ve only visited the same type of nation 29 times. Has daily life in Morocco escaped the global encroachment of our new mono-global culture?

Disease kills. In the year 1900 alone, the 3 leading causes of death were pneumonia, influenza, and enteritis. Children under 5 accounted for 40% of these deaths. In 1841, disease shortened the mean life span to age 41. Life expectancy in England was just 31 in the Middle Ages. During the Roman ages it was just 25.

Here is the real shocker. The Civil War is renown for the carnage of fighting. But, only 19% of the Union soldiers were killed on the battle field. 63% of them died from disease, mostly typhoid. The South had similar statistics. The Civil War had three warring parties. The diseases won.

By the time you are 18, you will have received 16 different immunizations. They saved hundreds of millions of lives, since they were introduced. Covid 19 is just one of many. It’s not a big deal.

We are at war with these viruses. They are our deadliest enemy by far. Our immunizations have reduced the threat, lulling many of you into complacency and with little understanding of what the world was like prior to vaccinations. The diseases left you dead, disabled, or paralyzed. It wasn’t a pretty world.

For another thing, outside of the large metro areas within the interior West, likely that fewer of the blacks you encounter there are going to be marginal types. There was a black kid in my fourth grade class in Chicago who was an obvious striver. He had a distinctive name so one day not too long ago I put the name into the search engine and up he came.

He was living in Idaho and apparently was retired from some kind of public job. How did he get there? He could have been in the military. The Navy has some training facilities there. Or maybe he worked for the federal government and was transferred there. In any case, I seriously doubt this guy goofed his way through his career, whatever it was.

Perhaps about 1.5 million blacks live in this region. About one-third of those reside in three metro areas, Las Vegas, Denver and Phoenix. More reside in smaller metro areas like El Paso, Albuquerque and Tuscon. Another question is how many of those 1.5 million reside in Texas west of the 100th meridian. West Texas has about seven congressional districts, or more than 5,000,000 people. Five percent black for the entire region might be a decent estimate, so add another 300,000. That leaves about 600,000 blacks dispersed through the rest of the area. Boise, for example, had about 5ooo black residents. Salt Lake City has about 4000 black residents. Almost half the black population of Idaho lives within the city limits of Boise.

There’s another little story behind these demographics. Very simply, it is the black vote that makes Arizona, Nevada and even Colorado blue states in the presidential and other elections. It’s another forbidden topic. Just because middle class suburban moms are the only demographic in play in many elections doesn’t mean that they are reason why the elections go the way they go. Without the black block vote, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are Red States along with Arizona and Nevada.

I’m not saying that blacks shouldn’t vote, mind you, but when whites divide up politically for the sloppy old reasons of personal and family tradition, they will always lose. Pluralism can’t work when you don’t have organized interests strong enough to push back. When white was the only demographic, maybe the fact that people divided up for other than wholly ideological reasons helped the political system function. Not anymore. We’re in a cold new territory and people need to act accordingly.

“Nazi” is a word used to pummel conservatives, by Leftist who slaughtered or condoned the slaughter of over 100 million people in their quest for communism. From 1920 to 1926, Germany was wrecked by Communist insurrections breaking out all across the nation. Wealthy German industrialists funded the Nazis to stop it. If they hadn’t, the world would have likely seen far more than 100 million slaughtered by the Left.

When you examine the “purported” Holocaust, from the proper perspective of a legal case, with its rules of evidence and criminal procedure, you’ll see that the Allies never proved their case in Nuremberg and the other Soviet/British trials. Until they prove their case, legally, the commonly accepted conviction that the Germans committed a Holocaust is just propaganda. Of the 485 tons of confiscated German documents sitting in our National Archives, not a single document describes a Holocaust plan, even though the Germans meticulously documented every detail of their military campaigns. The prosecution sought and obtained very relaxed rules of evidence and criminal procedures to win their convictions, because they couldn’t win the cases with proper legal procedures. The German prisoners suffered severe physical symptoms of torture, but many of them said the psychological torture was worse– mock executions and threats to deport their families to the Soviet Union, where they would have met certain death. A legal team that has a winning case doesn’t need to resort to loosening criminal procedures, eliminating rules of evidence, and threatening and torturing witnesses. It rightly impugns their case. The U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Stone, said of the Nuremberg Trials: “Chief Prosecutor Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.” The hypotheses that the Germans conducted a Holocaust was never proven with proper legal arguments. It should be considered war propaganda, not much different that the fake news rampant in this country

I shut down my computer each night or when it’s not being used for awhile, because unstable power can cause failures in electronics, whether due to lightning, voltage or currents spikes due to inductive loads on the electric grid’s circuit, under voltages on the circuit, recloser or circuit breaker trips on the electric grid, etc. I’ve worked on many circuit boards under development that were fried due to these effects.

When you fly, your electronics are also at risk, because the cosmic radiation streaming into the exo-atmosphere will cause cascading nuclear reactions until the energy in these ~10 MeV particles dies down to less than 1 MeV around 100,000 feet. Cross sectional probabilities allows a very small number of those particles to reach high-altitude flights. Single event upsets are a huge problem with space electronics.

I use surge protectors, on all my computers. In Morocco, you might want to use uninterruptible power supplies.

The digital world is addictive, even without screens. In 1971, in Junior High, my friends and I spent every late afternoon, after school, coding games and playing endless sessions of “Civil War” on a Model 33 Teletype connected to a University’s mainframe. We were as addicted to it, as teenagers are addicted to social media and cell phones.

Today, I live in a wild and scenic nature area, where I constantly hear the thump thump thump of music blasting from speakers, .. in a wild and scenic nature area .. ! Who would have predicted the world of solid-state semiconductors would turn us all into digital addicts, unable to align with the real world?

We chose our focus. It can be a Kafkaesque focus on the soul-crushing machinations taking place in our national political theater. It can be an uplifting focus on an extraordinary vision. Or, it can be a modest and carefree focus on our own small corner of the world. On the Unz site, its seems you can experience a little of all.

Interesting read. When people hear the term CIA, as evidenced in the comments, they think of a mysterious spook agency, often engaged in immoral work. As Dr. Giraldi noted, the ranks of the CIA are just filled with people doing rather mundane jobs, without the James Bond girls, guns, and attitude. Like most work environments, its cohesive environment is easily destroyed by politicians and social climbers who really aren’t interested in the work itself.

That’s true in nearly all work environments. My daughter spent a year working at Starbucks, as a barista, while in high school. She just loved the work, often volunteering to do others’ work when they decided not to show up, without notice (their lack of a work ethic is why so many retail stores close early, or offer limited service). Many of her coworkers were not focused on their work, instead focused on petty quarrels with each other or with management, or even worse on conflicts with themselves.

That’s the biggest change in work, over the past decades. The work ethic has changed significantly. As a result, public and non-public organizations lose their focus and cohesion.

A famous landscape architect, in his era, Frederick Olmsted, toured the South in the 1850s, before the Civil War. His first-hand account was a very interesting glimpse into the South. It became widely published during that antebellum era.

The vast majority of the Southern white population were not slave holders, but rural and small-town residents. Olmsted toured many plantations and small white farms. They differed significantly. The plantations were big business operations, usually well run (not always though) with much income, so he observed that the food and clothing provided to the slaves were far superior to the struggling white farmers. He found many of the small white farmers were barely surviving. Their poverty was beyond awful. The slaves depressed the wages of those poor rural southern whites. So these poor whites were not happy with the slavery institution and the 8000 or so slaveowners running them, but they were far more deeply opposed to recognizing the blacks as their equals.

Given this, you might wonder why the whites would not work on the plantations where the black slaves were materially far better off than them. Olmsted said it was because the whites refused to work side by side with the slaves, believing it was too demeaning. Olmsted believed, based on his observations, that the South could have easily supplied all need labor on those plantations by employing those poor white farmers. instead of slaves. The southern economy would have lifted huge numbers of whites out of poverty by abolishing slavery and sending the blacks back to Africa.

Our schools don’t teach from first-hand accounts that are based on factual observations. Instead, they teach based on narratives unconnected to factual observations. They fail to recognize that the slaves were usually better off materially, by far, than the poor white rural southern farmers. They also fail to recognize that plantations use of cost-free slave labor kept the southern economy mired in poverty.

Mathematics dominates the sciences, engineering, and many other fields, because it forces its users to think clearly. What was life like, before this advancement of math and the sciences? The median life expectancy in 1860, in the United States, was 39.4 years of age. In non-western nations, where superstition and poor thinking dominated, it was worse — often very violent.

The median reading comprehension of an adult in the U.S. is at the 7th grade level. The voters that run our nation are have no more comprehension than a 13 year old child.

I agree with Ron Paul, with a proviso. As a parent of K-12 children who both recently graduated, I could see from my children’s tests and homework that public-school education was almost worthless, even though they are guided by standards. Today’s schools rely on memorization, to “equalize” students, rather than critical-thinking skills. All children can memorize equally well, so schools have dumbed down critical thinking, to achieve their “equality” and “equity” goals. Even mathematics relies on this. The mathematics taught in public schools today is not modern mathematics. The history, economics, English and other instruction has mostly focused on civil rights, but in recent years, it has gone beyond this to propagandize.

I homeschooled my oldest child for a year, in advanced mathematics, science, and English. Upon returning to public school, she jumped three grades. I believe all average and above students can easily excel like this. But, it wasn’t easy. Home schooling is hard. Planning lessons and teaching requires much time. I was surprised to learn that you must learn child psychology to teach effectively. Even then, I knew my methods were poor, even though my child was progressing. But, if you want properly educated children, there really are no other alternatives.

Good point Ilana. Oceangate apparently hired interns, in their late teens and early 20’s as engineers. Mechanical engineering is a science that requires years of study at the college level, and then more importantly, years of industry experience to properly learning the rigor of Engineering development standards and Failure analysis. But, Oceangate’s innovations also required Phd level engineering and research to proceed this engineering.

Oceangate was warned by its director of operations, Lockridge, who did have industry experience, that the submersible was a huge risk, based on failure analysis that he applied. Rather than addressing his concerns, the company fired him. The details can be seen in his lawsuit against Oceangate and in an excellent New Yorker article.

Maybe, we should turn over the governance of the nation to AI. There is no reasoning in our Federal government anymore. The nation was founded on the notion that a group of educated, mature, and reasonable men could create laws and policies that would serve the nation well. They fully understood that democracies did not work well, so they chose a representative democracy, guided by reasonable and educated men. Today, it’s ruled by unreasonable people who only think with jumbled emotions. Perhaps AI can solve this.

The corporate world isn’t much different. In forty years of working, (I retired ten years ago), I found in corporations with uneducated leaders, you need to believe in the groupthink that dominates. Or minimally acknowledge it, but stay silent. Many can’t do this, thinking it is humiliating to think thoughts that conflict with reality or to believe in nonsense. Often you can’t trust what people say and think. They can appear friendly and trustable, but often it can be just show. That’s why its best to adopt a very professional image. Many take these environments too seriously, getting quite stressed. For me, it was just necessary biasness skills that you had to learn quickly. In corporations with educated workers, such as research environments, you can express your own thoughts and others will attempt to understand them. In those environments, others are more cooperative and trustable. I’ve never been involved in politics, but it sounds much like a corporate environment.