Category: Current Events

Zero Hedge: Empty Supreme Court Seat “Resets the Race” for President

Yesterday evening Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. This event will change the Presidential race and perhaps further fan the flames of division around the country. Expect to see and hear much commentary/propaganda in the months ahead. Here is a collection of commentary over at Zero Hedge – “This Resets The Race” – SCOTUS Opening Creates Opportunity For Trump To ‘Change The Subject’ Before Nov. 3

We’re still waiting for the ‘October Surprise’ that Democrats are hoping will derail Trump’s quest for a second term (although it didn’t exactly work out that way back in 2016), but the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last night has certainly shaken things up, with only 45 days left until the election.

 

VP Joe Biden sounded dejected last night as he delivered his statement on Ginsburg’s passing.

Biden, and his former boss, Barack Obama, have urged the GOP to wait until after the election to move ahead with the next SCOTUS nominee. As Biden said in the clip above: “There is no doubt – let me be clear – that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden told reporters late Friday. “This was the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016” and “that’s the position the United States Senate must take today and the election’s only 46 days off.”

According to Bloomberg, GOP strategists are already chattering about how the SCOTUS situation will give Trump the opportunity to change the subject away from the coronavirus outbreak that’s hobbled his economy, and toward what has been on of the GOP’s biggest accomplishments over the past 10 years: packing the federal courts with conservative justices.

It’s an area where Dems have ceded far too much ground, allowing the Federalist Society to work in concert with successive Republican administrations to ensure a steady supply of ideologically-tested conservative justices.

Ironically, Bloomberg quoted a top aide to former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid saying that Dems need to “wake up” to the importance of the judicial branch. Of course, as we reported earlier, it was Reid who opened the door to the “nuclear option” by changing the Senate rules to allow President Obama to confirm cabinet appointments with a simple majority.

For Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate, the vacancy lets him change the subject away from the coronavirus pandemic that has imperiled his odds for winning a second term. Now, they can offer their base a chance to tighten the conservative majority on the high court for years to come.

Yet Biden and Democrats can seize on the moment, too, invoking Ginsburg’s legacy to spur turnout on Nov. 3 and give liberals a fresh reason to vote out Trump. Democrats had contributed more than $20 million to ActBlue in four hours after Ginsburg’s death was announced.

Jim Manley, a former top aide to ex-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said he hopes Democrats “wake up” to the importance of the Supreme Court.

“The reality is that Republicans have always taken judicial nominations more seriously than Democrats,” he said. “My hope is that that actually changes with this shocking news. Whether it does or not remains to be seen.”

Mitch McConnell didn’t waste any time Friday night. Mere hours after RBG’s death, McConnell released a statement promising a vote on the Senate floor and calling on GOP Senators to back whoever is appointed by Trump to fill the vacancy. Right now, the smart money is on 7th Circuit judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative Catholic and a runner-up during Trump’s last two nominations.

GOP strategists are heralding this as an opportunity for Trump to flip the script, and put Democrats on the defensive.

“This resets the race,” said Republican donor Dan Eberhart. “We are not running solely on the Covid response and the economy anymore.”

Biden has rarely spoken about the Supreme Court except to commit to nominating a Black woman to the bench if he gets the opportunity.

Now he has to seize on the issue as well, and Democrats were already showing signs they were willing to join him.

Trump was widely expected to move ahead with a nomination, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly vowed that the Senate would vote on it.

To be sure, there’s also a strong possibility that RBG’s death motivates more Democratic voters to turn out to the polls. Few things can cut through the noise like the creation of another ‘martyr’.

Early reports suggest RBG’s death triggered a flood of donations to Democratic groups like ActBlue and “Demand Justice”, with tens of millions of dollars flowing into their coffers overnight. GOP pollster and Trump critic Ed Rollins told Bloomberg that the gravity of the issue could drive voters to the polls in massive numbers. Typically, higher turnout is seen as a negative for Republicans.

It could also motivate more GOP voters to come vote in critical swing-state races down-ticket, including for the Senate.

“This will be the overarching issue in not just the 2020 presidential election, but also in several Senate races that may decide who controls the Senate in the future,” said Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who heads the pro-Trump Great America PAC.

“This will drive voters to the polls in massive numbers on both sides,” Rollins said. “It will also dominate the airways and certainly will be a major factor for the rest of this campaign.”

Still, the vacancy may not necessarily be a boon for Trump because it is likely to galvanize voters on both sides of the aisle, said Brendan Buck, a Republican strategist.

“It will help shore up constituencies he needs. Battle lines are going to be drawn. But it will fire up folks on both sides, and my guess is it’s a wash at best for the president,” he said.

The Hill was slightly more pessimistic, pointing out that several influential Republican Senators were conspicuously silent last night, while others promised to back Trump’s nominee without delay.

McConnell can’t afford to lose three GOP votes in what could be remembered as one of the most important votes in that chamber in history. Two GOP senators – Alasaka’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins – released statements mourning Ginsburg…

…but saying nothing about whether they intend to back McConnell and Trump. Both Collins and Murkowski were among a group of moderate senators who initially expressed doubts about Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and later enabled Democrats to move ahead with a formal inquiry into allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior by Kavanaugh when he was in high school and an undergraduate student at Yale. Both have said previously that they wouldn’t support a SCOTUS vote so close to an election. Collins is facing tough reelection odds, as her vote in favor of Kavanaugh has been wielded effectively against her by her Democratic opponent, who is reportedly ahead in the polls. Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon currently holds 49% to the senator’s 44%, according to the Hill.

Murkowski has a long history of speaking out against a “double standard” of SCOTUS confirmation votes during an election year.

Murkowski told The Hill over the summer that attempting to fill a Supreme Court vacancy right before the November election or during a lame-duck session in December would create “a double standard” and she “would not support it.”

Murkowski pointed to Senate Republicans’ decision in 2016 to keep vacant the seat of late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia until a new president was elected in that year’s election. Then-President Obama nominated D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s vacant seat in March of 2016 but he never received a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing or a vote.

“When Republicans held off Merrick Garland it was because nine months prior to the election was too close, we needed to let people decide. And I agreed to do that. If we now say that months prior to the election is OK when nine months was not, that is a double standard and I don’t believe we should do it,” Murkowski said. “So I would not support it.”

Another key vote is Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the only Senate Republican to vote to convict Trump on an article of impeachment.

Though he declined to speculate about what he might do if a vacancy emerged on the court in the months before the Nov. 3 vote, Sen. Mitt Romney could provide a third vote against Trump’s nominee (though a tie would of course be broken by VP Mike Pence).

A 4th GOP defection would sink the vote, assuming no swing-vote Dems step up and defect to the other side. However, that’s not exactly guaranteed. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin backed Kavanaugh, a vote that has proven tremendously popular in his home state of West Virginia.

Several reliably GOP senators will likely have their past statements used against them. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Lindsey Graham.

However, Graham has said he’s open to backing Trump’s nominee after getting some input from his constituents, of course. Chuck Grassley, who led the Judiciary Committee when it sunk Garland’s nomination, said at the time that he would do the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot. However, he too is expected to back Trump’s nominee.

After all, Trump has a powerful argument for filling the seat. A deadlocked Supreme Court ahead of what could be a contested election could risk a constitutional crisis that could have ramifications for societal cohesion.

Time is also an issue: It has taken an average of 74 days to confirm the last 10 justices appointed to the Supreme Court, ranging from 99 days for Clarence Thomas in 1991 (a process that was elongated by the Anita Hill scandal) to 50 days for Ginsburg in 1993.

Election Day is 45 days away, and the next Congress isn’t scheduled to take its seats for another 106 days. And given the general state of things in America right now, a lot could change in that time.

International Man: Six Reasons Why the Wrong Party Will Win the Most Important US Election Since 1860

Doug Casey at International Man writes his thoughts on the 2020 election in Six Reasons Why the Wrong Party Will Win the Most Important US Election Since 1860

The upcoming election may be the most important in US history. At least as important as that of 1860, which led directly to the War Between the States. In 2016 I believed Trump would win and placed a money bet on him. This time I’m not so sure, despite Trump’s “incumbent advantage” and the fact the Democrats could hardly have picked two worse candidates.

I see at least six reasons why this is true, namely:

  • The Virus
  • The economy
  • Demographics
  • Moral collapse of the old order
  • The Deep State
  • Cheating

The consequences of a Democrat victory will be momentous. Let’s look at why it’s likely.

1. The Virus

Despite the fact COVID is only marginally more deadly than the annual flu, and the fact it’s only a danger to the very old (median death age 80), the hysteria around it is changing the nature of life itself. It’s proven much less serious than the Asian flu of the late ’60s or the Hong Kong flu of the late ’50s. And not even remotely comparable to the Spanish flu of 1918-19. None of those had any discernable effect on the economy or politics. COVID is a trivial medical event but has created a gigantic psychological hysteria.

The virus hysteria is, however, a disaster from Trump’s point of view for several reasons. None of them have anything to do with his “handling” of the virus—apart from the fact that medical issues should be a matter between a patient and his doctor, not bureaucrats and politicians.

First, the virus hysteria is severely limiting the number and size of Trump’s rallies, which he relies on to keep enthusiasm up.

Second, more people are staying at home and watching television than ever before. However, unless they glue their dial to Fox, they’ll gravitate towards the mainstream media, which is stridently anti-Trump. People who are on the fence (and most voters are always in the wishy-washy middle) will mostly hear authoritative-sounding anti-Trump talking heads on television, and they’ll be influenced away from Trump.

Third, older people have by far the heaviest voter turnout, but roughly 80% of the casualties of the virus are elderly. And over 90% of those deaths are related to some other condition. Be that as it may, fear will make older people less likely to vote in this election. The COVID hysteria will still be with us in November. Older people tend to be culturally conservative and are most likely Trumpers.

Fourth, in today’s highly politicized world, the government is supposed to be in charge of everything. Despite the fact there are thousands of viruses, and they’ve been with us thousands of years, this one is blamed on the current government. Boobus americanus will tend to vote accordingly.

2. The Economy

Keeping his voters at home is one thing. But the effects the hysteria is having on the economy are even more important. The effect of COVID on the economy should be trivial since only a small fraction of the relatively few Covid deaths are among people who are economically active.

Presidents always take credit when the economy is good and are berated when it’s bad on their watch, regardless of whether they had anything to do with it. If the economy is still bad in November—and I’ll wager it’s going to be much worse, despite the Fed creating trillions of new dollars, and the government handouts—many people will reflexively vote against Trump.

In February, before the lockdown, there were about 3.2 million people collecting unemployment. Now, there are about 30 million. So it seems we have over 30 million working-age people who are . . . displaced. That doesn’t count part-time workers, who aren’t eligible for unemployment but are no longer working.

The supplementary benefits have ended. If they return, it will be at lower levels. The artificial good times brought on by free money will end too. It will be blamed on the Republicans.

Worse, the public has come to the conclusion that a guaranteed annual income works. This virus hysteria has provided a kind of test for both Universal Basic Income and Modern Monetary Theory—helicopter money. So far, anyway, it seems you really can get something for nothing.

An important note here: Trump—whatever his virtues—is an economic ignoramus. He’s supported both helicopter money and artificially low-interest rates since he’s been in office. But especially now, because he knows it’s all over if today’s financial house of cards collapses on his watch.

I’ll wager that, out of the 160 million work-force Americans, 30 million will still be out of work by voting day. The recognition that the country is in a depression will sink in. The virus hysteria was just the pin—or sledgehammer, perhaps—that broke the bubble. But that’s another story. What’s for sure is that the average American will look for somebody to blame. As things get seriously bad, people will want to change the system itself, as was true in the 1930s.

The only economic bright spot for Trump is the stock market. But it’s at bubble levels. Not because the economy is doing well, but because of the avalanche of money being printed. Where it is in November is a question of how much more money the Fed will print, and how much of it flows into the stock market. Even then, there’s an excellent chance it could collapse between now and the election.

For reasons I’ve detailed in the past, the economy is now entering the trailing edge of a gigantic financial and economic hurricane. The Greater Depression will be much different, longer-lasting, and nastier than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946. And people vote their pocketbook. Bill Clinton was right when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” If stocks fall, it will compound this effect. A high stock market just gives the illusion of prosperity. And, at least while stocks are up, contributes to the atmosphere of class warfare. Poor people don’t own stocks.

3. Demographics

Since the gigantic political, economic, and social crisis we’re in will be even more obvious come November, people will want a radical change. Since that—plus lots of free stuff—is what the Democrats are promising, they’re likely to win. But there are other factors.

The last election was close enough, but now, four years later, there are four more cohorts of kids that have gone through high school and college and have been indoctrinated by their uniformly left-wing teachers. They’re going to vote Democrat overwhelmingly.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and people like her, are both the current reality and the future of the Democratic Party—and of the US itself. She knows how to capitalize on envy and resentment. The Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements have added the flavor of a race war to the mix. Racial antagonism will become more pronounced as whites lose their majority status over the next 30 years.

Nobody, except for a few libertarians and conservatives, is countering the purposefully destructive ideas AOC represents. But they have a very limited audience and not much of a platform. Arguing for sound money and limited government makes them seem like Old Testament prophets to Millenials. Collectivism and statism are overwhelming the values of individualism and liberty.

It’s exactly the type of thing the Founders tried to guard against by restricting the vote to property owners over 21, going through the Electoral College. Now, welfare recipients who are only 18 can vote, and the Electoral College is toothless.

For the last couple of generations, everybody who’s gone to college has been indoctrinated with leftist ideas. Almost all of the professors hold these ideas—as well as high school and grade school instructors. They place an intellectual patina on top of emotional, fantasy-driven leftist ideas.

When the economy collapses in earnest, everybody will blame capitalism. Because Trump is rich, he’s incorrectly associated with capitalism. The country—especially the young, the poor, and the non-white—will look to the government to “do something.” They see the government as a cornucopia.

A majority of Millennials are in favor of socialism, as are so-called People of Color. By 2050, whites will be a minority in the US. A straw in the wind is that a large majority of the people who commit suicide each year are middle-class white males—essentially, Trump supporters. The demographic handwriting is on the wall. Trump’s election in 2016 was an anomaly. No more than a Last Hurrah.

4. Moral Collapse

There’s now a lot of antagonism toward both free minds and free markets. A majority of Americans appear to actually support BLM, an openly Marxist movement. Forget about free minds—someone might be offended, and you’ll be pilloried by the mob. Forget about free markets—they’re blamed for all the economic problems, even though it’s the lack of them that caused the problem. The idea of capitalism is now considered undefendable.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the system is obviously bad for the Republicans and good for the Democrats, who promote themselves as the party of change.

It used to be pretty simple—the Republicans and the Democrats were just two sides of the same coin, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Traditionally, one promoted the warfare state more, the other the welfare state. But it was mostly rhetoric; they were pretty collegial. Now, both the welfare and the warfare state have been accepted as part of the cosmic firmament by both parties. The difference between them is now about cultural issues. Except that polite disagreement has turned into visceral hatred.

The Dems at least stand for some ideas—although they’re all bad ideas. The Republicans have never stood for any principles; they just said the Dems wanted too much socialism, too fast, which is why they were always perceived—correctly—as hypocrites. Antagonism between the right and the left is no longer political or economic—it’s cultural. That’s much more serious…(continues)

Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen: Civil War Comes to USA – BLM Riots, Trump Biden Election, Coronavirus and Covid-19

Norwegian novelist and bushcrafter Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen sees a civil war happening in the US and gives his reasons why, going through a list of factors that he feels are necessary as a foundation to civil war. It’s interesting to see a take from the other side of the ocean; he can see the media/big tech propaganda in the US and laughs about the unreliability of CNN.

The Organic Prepper: Eye-Witness Account Kenosha Riots

The Organic Prepper has posted an Eye-Witness Account of the Kenosha Riots which was originally posted to Facebook by the witness. People knew that no one would be there to help them. “Everyone in the city was getting ready for a war.”

…And now, a woman has shared on Facebook what her family recently experienced in the Kenosha, Wisconsin riots. In her post, the thing that stands out in my mind the most is that help was not on the way. The residents of Kenosha who stood their ground were completely on their own against the mobs rampaging through their neighborhoods. I’ve redacted some identifying information from her post – otherwise, the public post is exactly as she shared it on the social media outlet. All emphasis is mine.

The day of the worst destruction, fires, looting, assaults… all of us in Kenosha were able to watch live -via independent media. The entire start to finish. The worst of it happened on 22nd & 60th, and I live on [redacted], so to tell you I was terrified is an understatement. The majority of Kenosha was watching our two [redacted] live footage well until 3am… police scanners on… bracing for the worst. It was apparent from the beginning there was no help. No police, no fire trucks no ambulances. None. Structures burned to the ground, people hurt and attacked were loaded into cars and raced to any hospital they could get to, rioters just broke into businesses and took what they wanted.

And we all watched it happen. There was nothing we could do.

A sleepless night, we faced the next day with more fear. A massive clean up effort, we helped as many homes and buisnesses as we could, brace for the night, we started to get inundated with messages from individuals and groups … targeting violence to specific neighborhoods, schools, libraries.. with fires and destruction… lots of messages. Most specifically targeting LOCAL NEIGHBORHOODS… families!!!

Cars and buses were coming in to the city with no plates… caravans of groups. Again, no extra police or national guard.

But the rioters came to Kenosha that night again.

Our PD and any help it had was standing ground at the PD building and courthouse… and many rioters did not know… our PD was trying to keep them from burning these down, not only because it was our infrastructure but because right between those buildings were A LOT of local inmates that were currently there due to Covid closing our jail (HUBER).

Again live, we watched hundreds of rioters throwing Molotov cocktails at these buildings and burning our city garbage trucks and dump trucks to the ground that we were using to protect these buildings.

I was afraid for the small line of policemen there that night.

Everyone was urging me and Jim to take all of my animals and to leave the city… and let my house burn. To run far away from Kenosha. I love my home. Those who know me, know the pride we have taken in buying an (as-is) house and turning it into a home. And my business! Could I let it be destroyed?? Absolutely NOT!

We have dear friends with a popular business just 4 houses away… we spend at least once a week there… they packed up boarded up and closed.. terrified … it’s on the main road.

All of us were now under now a state of emergency curfew. Get home and off the streets! gas stations ordered to close and turn OFF all gas pumps..
the sirens and alerts on all of our phones coming in non- stop.

So we pulled out every firearm we owned. Loaded them up. And started to get ready… We were not leaving… Jim’s job told him to stay home and protect his family and home. Everyone in the city was getting ready for a war.

Are you starting to feel anxiety reading this?

Getting a grasp of how desperate we all were?

Knowing no law enforcement was helping? And I’m telling you… NO ONE was there.

I have a dear friend who lives in Gurnee. Has a home and a buisness there, and if she called me and Jim and told me her city was under attack, she was afraid for her LIFE and her store … I would help her. We would go to Gurnee and help her. Armed.

And that’s simply what happened. The residents started to realize this was on us. And we organized. Groups and individuals-On rooftop businesses -in the neighborhoods. I felt a little safer that night knowing we had some help.

So we watched again that night …live. Beginning to end.

At the lakefront… there was a small police presence again, where our courthouse and Pd is…. but the PD was nowhere else in the city. It was just us left to fend for ourselves, watching live feed again, Listening to the scanners … lights off, house alarm armed. Curtains drawn – guns ready as we listened to where the rioters were, which way they were headed. Despite the state of emergency curfew the city was flooded with cars driving around with no plates on, groups of people destroying our city. Not enough police to arrest or stop not ONE SINGLE PERSON.

Until the guard came to help… the entire city was left to its own defenses.

Hell… we ran out of plywood to board up!!!

I had the crates ready to throw the animals in and run… guns at every window and door. Constantly texting neighbors and friends around the city for updates.

When we say, if you don’t live here, you could not possibly know what was going on.. do you now understand? How afraid the whole city was?

The national guard FINALLY was called out – and did not mess around. The people who terrorized and destroyed Kenosha were not from Kenosha. Of all the arrests… most were from 44 other city’s. After our IDIOT governor finally asked, we got the help we should have had from DAY ONE. We had FBI and all the surrounding PD’s come to our aid.

If…you don’t live here… you could not possibly understand what we went thru. People should wait before they jump to conclusions. I just am disgusted beyond words at the judgement that’s happening. DISGUSTED

For those of you with children to protect, a business you put your heart and soul in… a home you struggled to own and pay for.. you have got to understand what we all went thru. The fear and the instinct to protect what you love, and what you worked so hard for is strong. I hope no one ever has to go thru anything like this. (source)

The damage in Kenosha is astounding.

Kenosha isn’t a huge city. It has a population of about 100,000 people. Until these riots, it was not considered a dangerous city. But things changed fast.

Here are some photos of the aftermath of the riots. Minus the damage from shells and sniper rifles, looks like a warzone to rival things I saw in Bosnia when I met with Selco and took one of his survival courses.

PHOTO CREDIT: By Lightburst – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93638834

PHOTO CREDIT: By Lightburst – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93638841

PHOTO CREDIT: By Lightburst – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93638827

Is this the new America? If it’s this bad now, what’s going to happen after the election, particularly if the results are contested?

This is spreading across the country.

So many people are convinced this can never happen where they live. I see the denial all the time in the comments on my articles about this subject. And while it’s true that some parts of the country are more resistant to the riots and arson than others, it needs to be clearly understood that these are not locals perpetrating the damage. These are people being bussed in from other places. Time and time again, we see articles with local authorities claiming most of the arrests made were people from out of town.

This isn’t something you see coming a week ahead, like a hurricane on the horizon. One injustice, perceived or real, is all it takes to throw gasoline on a fire that is blazing across the country. It CAN happen to you, too.

A number of people in Minneapolis armed themselves to protect their families, businesses, and properties because they knew they were on their own. The story above only underlines that point. Literal battle zones are erupting across the nation. Armed conflict is already occurring and the writing is on the wall.

Be prepared for civil unrest and riots because you won’t have much warning should violence mobs deploy near you. Have a plan to leave if possible. And if that’s not possible, it cannot be more clear that you must be personally prepared to defend your home, your family, and your business because the police won’t be able to do it for you.

Of Two Minds: Isn’t It Obvious We Need a New System?

From Charles Hugh Smith at Of Two Minds, Isn’t It Obvious We Need a New System?

Why do we tolerate such a corrupt, undemocratic, exploitive, elite-dominated system? Because we have no other choice? No, we do have a choice.

Isn’t it obvious that we need an alternative economic system that isn’t controlled by corporations, the government and the central bank for the exclusive benefit of insiders and elites? Isn’t it obvious that the current system has failed the majority of participants, and hence the ubiquitous sensations of:

1) being ignored by the insiders / elites who run the current system to their own benefit

2) being trapped in an economy that’s been stripped of social / upward mobility

3) being stripmined / exploited by domestic and globalized elites

4) disgust / frustration with the self-enriching political class that serves corporate/elite/insider interests above all else.

My 50 years of work have given me a ringside seat in how the economy has changed from inclusive to extractive. My jobs have ranged from agricultural field worker to running my own yard service to hospitality to construction to print media (free-lancer) to financial services (quant shop) to non-profit education to political rabble-rousing (unpaid) and my current profession as marginalized, misfit author-blogger (my specialty appears to be getting shadow-banned by Big Tech monopolist extractors).

My colleague Mark Jeftovic explains how systems can be inclusive or extractive. Systems that automatically bail out the greediest, wealthiest socially-useless speculators via the Federal Reserve are not just extractive, they’re exploitive and predatory. The Reversion Will be Mean.

Extractive systems are also intrinsically fragile in crises as the trapped / exploited behind the oars tend to abandon ship at the first chance, and the real-world sinews of the economy have been weakened by the bailouts and financial engineering. In effect, the fragile, brittle shell doesn’t need much of a shock to implode. (If you want to see this process in real time, look around you.)

Yes, finance was extractive in 1970, but it was a much smaller part of the economy. Back then, finance was less than 5% of the economy. Now, by some measures, it’s a third of the economy.

Yes, corporations bought political influence and exploited everything within reach but their reach wasn’t as global and their rapacity not quite as refined. Sociopathic exploitation such as stock buybacks and Big Pharma advertising directly to consumers were illegal.

The economy was not dependent on endless asset bubbles and bailouts of the most venal speculators. The Federal Reserve whines that it has to bail out the greediest scum of the nation again and again and inflate one asset bubble after another because otherwise this sucker’s going down.

Over the past 50 years, the ladders of upward mobility have splintered. Now making all the sacrifices to follow the conventional script (get a college diploma, etc.) don’t lead to secure employment. The fundamental backdrop of the economy is that labor’s share of the economy is in permanent decline: the value of labor has been in a freefall, a freefall masked by bogus “low inflation” and other trickery. (See chart below)

In 1970, costs for essentials were low and regulatory burdens on small business were modest. You could rent an apartment for a week’s pay or less. (Even in expensive Honolulu I could rent a studio apartment for half a week’s pay.)

Even in the mid-1980s, I could get a building permit for an entire house in one day; now the process takes weeks or even months.

Now costs and regulatory burdens have soared to crushing levels. This plays perfectly to government bureaucracies, which have monopolies on the power to raise junk fees, penalties, etc. at will, and Corporate America, whose core drive is eliminate any and all competition so profits can soar on the basis of monopoly, not on superior products or services.

People feel ignored because they are ignored. People feel trapped because they are trapped. People feel stripmined because they are being stripmined. People feel angry at the political Establishment because they no longer live in a democracy.

Can we be honest for a change and admit that ours is an extractive system in which anything goes for the wealthy and powerful and winners take most?

The few pockets of the economy not under the thumb of corporations, government or the central bank– for example, the cash / informal economy–are still dependent on corporations, government and the Fed for their currency, government subsidies and products/services.

Isn’t it obvious that we need an alternative system that isn’t run for the benefit of elites and insiders? What would such a system look like?

One, it would be voluntary / opt-in. Nobody would be forced to participate. All anyone would need to bring is a willingness to be useful and belong to something doing good work on behalf of the community rather than a bunch of parasitic, predatory billionaires.

Two, it would be self-organizing, meaning there is no ruling body that can be corrupted. Bitcoin is a real-world example of a self-organizing system. There is no cabal at the top who can be corrupted; bitcoin is distributed and decentralized. It is self-organizing, as is Nature.

Three, the operations of the system would be automated so human bias would have few opportunities to carve out unearned privileges. Note that most of the systems you interact with are fully automated. (Try reaching a human being in customer service.) The only difference is these systems are secret “black boxes” designed to maximize the profits of cartel-monopoly corporations, not serve the nation or its communities. They only serve the owners, 2/3rds of whom just so happen to be the top 0.1%.

Open-source software runs a great many enterprises and systems and does so without secret “black box” algorithms known only to the exploiters.

Four, it would have its own money, a cryptocurrency that comes into being in only one way: as payment for useful, purposeful labor that benefits the community in some way. All the technology for such a labor-backed cryptocurrency is already in hand.

My 50 years of work in a variety of sectors and jobs has made such a system “obvious” to me, and so I’ve written a book ( A Hacker’s Teleology) to explain how such a system would work and why it’s “obvious.” You can read excerpts of the book in this free PDF and read the story behind the book and the Introduction.

Why do we tolerate such a corrupt, undemocratic, exploitive, elite-dominated system? Because we have no other choice? No, we do have a choice. The first step to outline the values, processes and goals of an alternative system that actually works for everyone and our planet.

I’ve taken a stab at outlining such a system, so why not check it out? If you can come up with a better one, then get it out there for the rest of us to study.

We do have a choice. But we have to take it. If we’re unwilling to make any systemic changes, then we truly are trapped–not by them (whomever they might be) but by our own unwillingness to accept that systemic change is now necessary if we’re to have a future that’s beneficial to all.

 

Gatestone Institute: How to Steal an Election – Part 2

Here is the second part of Chris Farrell’s How to Steal an Election at the Gatestone Insitute. Click here for part one.

…Having established the Left’s documented plan to disrupt the 2020 presidential election, let’s examine further some of the information operations techniques now being deployed against the American public to persuade and influence the election “season” ahead.

The very publication of the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) report and the subsequent news media reporting about it are components of psychological warfare within the broader information warfare campaign aimed at spreading demoralizing rumors to Trump supporters. The goal is to break down and weaken support before, during and after election day. Demoralized and unmotivated supporters do not make their support for their candidate public. They do not campaign in neighborhoods or post yard signs. They do not vote. They do not volunteer at polling places. They become convinced their hopes are a lost, and highly controversial cause. They do not wish to be called a racist, or a hater, or identified with other fringe elements. They stay at home and watch TV.

Having been psychologically conditioned (through the COVID-19 pandemic) to withdraw, isolate, and lock-down — on largely fiat orders of various government officials — many Americans will react to the “irregular” and extra-legal tactics of the Left. The Left relies on this reaction to suppress voter turnout and use varying forms of terror, such as reprisals and the threats of reprisals, against those who do not cooperate or who challenge the projected accusations detailed in the TIP report.

The TIP report is careful not to engage in sedition. They are a whisper away from advocating violence — but these are very sharp political operatives that are all lawyered-up, so they speak in code. Here are some examples for you to read between the lines:

  • “If there is a crisis, events will unfold quickly, and sleep-deprived leaders will be asked to make consequential decisions quickly. Thinking through options now will help to ensure better decisions”
  • “Planners need to take seriously the notion that this may well be a street fight, not a legal battle; technocratic solutions, courts, and a reliance on elites observing norms are not the answer here.”
  • “Groups, coalitions, and networks should be preparing now to establish the necessary communications and organizing infrastructure to support mass mobilization.”
  • “Military and law enforcement leaders need to be particularly attuned to the possibility that partisan actors will seek to manipulate or misuse their coercive powers for inappropriate political ends.”

No single statement or particular recommendation is completely outrageous, except that, in the context of the report, they support and amplify dubious premises: Leftist protestors are non-violent while Trump supporters are agents provocateurs; Trump will misuse the military and law enforcement to hold on to power; universal mail-in voting poses no risk of fraud; finding new ballots weeks after the election is completely normal; news critical of Biden is misinformation; a Trump victory will be evidence of foreign interference, etc.

The voter psychological conditioning campaign, wherein suppression and reprisal become a self-fulfilling prophesy, will not receive news media or social media scrutiny. Those who raise the threats of violence and reprisals will be termed conspiracy theorists, marginalized and dismissed. Once again, who wants to be called a racist, a hater, or identified with some other fringe elements?

Through the release of the TIP report, the American Left has established itself and its dishonest storyline as the official narrative of the 2020 presidential election. They have alerted the militant wing of their movement to seize control of the lead-up to election day, to election day itself, and all the way out past inauguration day. This is a campaign unto itself — not an event. Now you understand how the Left intends to disrupt and steal the 2020 presidential election. You understand the psychological warfare techniques being used right now to convince you (wrongly) of being demoralized and weakened. You have been warned. The question for you and others in opposition to the TIP plan is: What are you going to do?

The Organic Prepper: Our System Is Crumbling Right In Front of Our Eyes

Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper talks about how Our System Is Crumbling Right In Front of Our Eyes.

Back in January, when the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to catch globe attention, Selco wrote an article stating, “It’s not the virus you need to worry about. It’s the system.”

Virus or illness on itself might not be a problem in its essence, but the impact that it brings to the system and people might be so huge through the media that it causes the system to stop working in the normal way. So you could find yourself in a collapse not necessarily because of a huge pandemic, but because of the reaction to it.

Another case might be the simple unwillingness from the system to admit how bad the situation is in order to stop the panic when folks realized the truth.

So, what might bring the system to collapse might be a real pandemic or a reaction to the pandemic (which might or might not be controllable) or simply the government’s poor or late response to the pandemic. (source)

As things were just beginning to unfold, the article took a lot of heat on social media, with people saying Selco didn’t understand how things would go because he is not American and doesn’t know how things work here. Whoops. I guess that’s rather embarrassing in retrospect.

Because here we are, seven months after Selco wrote his warning, and our system is indeed falling apart.

Our system is failing in many ways.

It’s indisputable that our system is now failing in numerous ways. Some of these things directly relate to the virus and the subsequent lockdown, while others are tied to the nonstop riots that have been going on in some areas for more than 100 days. The riots began after the death of George Floyd when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck until he suffocated.

From the economy to the justice system to the infrastructure, our system is grinding to a halt in a variety of manners that stand to completely change the American way of life. Let’s take a look.

The economy

As predicted, our economy took a massive hit when government-mandated lockdowns closed the doors to many businesses. Despite billions of dollars in relief (much of which went to large businesses in an act of crony capitalism), the new economy has been nothing short of disastrous.

Millions of jobs are gone and are never coming back. Millions of small businesses have fallen. Corporate landlords aren’t getting paid rent and mom and pop landlords are being forced by the CDC (that’s right – the Center for Disease Control) to house people who can’t pay their rent, while still maintaining their mortgages.

Obviously, this trickles down to the average American who just wants to go to work and pay his or her bills. If you’ve lost your job, you are now in a heated competition for the few jobs remaining. The effect on the economy was “swift and severe” according to a paper published by the Brookings Institute. Now that the CARES Act financial assistance has run out, more and more families are being pushed into desperate levels of poverty. (If this is happening to you, please check out this article for essential advice on surviving this situation.)

But it goes even further than that – in a puzzling turn of events, our country is running out of coins. Many stores no longer give out change that is less than a dollar. You can choose to donate your change digitally to the charity of the store’s choice or get it back on a store loyalty card. Many people are concerned that this is a push toward a cashless society, something that would cause even more day to day financial problems for people who are already struggling. (And this is not as far-fetched as it might seem – it’s happened in Venezuela, too.)

Consumer inventory

And what about the folks who do have money? Well, spending it might be harder than it used to be.

Remember when the first hints of a looming lockdown occurred and store shelves across the country were emptied? And remember when all the shortages were blamed on those selfish hoarder preppers? And remember when they said if you would just buy for the next few days or for the week all the inventory would quickly be replenished because the supply chain was A-OK?

Yeah. I remember that too. And guess what?

Store shelves are still pretty spotty in many parts of the country. Some places still have limits on how much meat or toilet paper you can buy. If you go to your local Target, it’s difficult to find things like bedding and certain cleaning supplies.

Food plants continue to close due to outbreaks. Canned goods are still in high demand. (source) And what is affecting us even more is that we still aren’t getting the shipments from China that we used to receive.  When all of this began, I posted a list of essentials that we were getting from China which might affect our supplies, and unsurprisingly, many of these items remain difficult to find.

When you can find supplies in your local stores, you may find that the selection of options is far more limited than before. This is pretty startling, but something that I noticed when I spent several months abroad was that most other countries don’t have chicken cut in 12 different ways or 47 different brands of laundry detergent. What feels like a “shortage” to us is somewhat normal elsewhere and this is something you can adapt to fairly well.

At the same time, limits on purchases make it incredibly difficult to stock up for the future, and you can also expect to see fewer and fewer choices in the months ahead unless something happens to change the situation dramatically.

Education

One of the first casualties of the lockdown was the education system. Most schools simply gave up and didn’t continue the school year after the March lockdown. Colleges and universities turned to distance learning. Graduations were held virtually, if at all.

The new school year looks a lot different too. The schools that have reopened for in-person learning have stringent – and somewhat unsettling – social distancing policies. Many schools are only open for distance learning via Zoom or other online portals. (And don’t even get my started on the privacy issues this has unlocked – not to mention the overreaction of at least one school so shocked at the sight of a Nerf gun in a boy’s room that they called the cops and suspended him.)

Some schools reopened only to close again within a week when a new outbreak erupted. Huge outbreaks are occurring at universities as (big surprise) students party without a lot of regard for social distancing. Many colleges are fighting this by offering as many classes as possible in an online format. This is causing many families to question why they’re still paying the same exceptionally high prices for the education as they did when everyone spent time in the classroom, used campus facilities, and had the benefit of an active social life.

The postal service

The US Postal Service has been losing money hand over fist for years. After the COVID pandemic, it lost a whopping 2.2 billion dollars in the second quarter. In a recent Senate hearing, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified that they could not guarantee the ability to deliver mail-in ballots for the November election in a timely manner.

And it isn’t just the mail-in ballots that are a problem. There have recently been massive delays with the mail. These delays have led to mailed prescription drugs arriving late to patients who depend on them, thousands of dead baby chicks, and shipping delays that are causing unprecedented issues for small businesses that mail products to customers – and 70% of small businesses use the USPS regularly.

Many have blamed changes made by Postmaster General DeJoy, who donated to President Trump’s campaign, for the crisis.

The new leadership of the U.S. postal service has come under fire from lawmakers and advocates who worry that a slower mail system will affect the presidential election in November. But the impacts could disrupt everyday life for Americans in many other ways.

The U.S. postal service, which has suffered from financial troubles for years, has lost billions of dollars amid the coronavirus pandemic. But last month, new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a number of orders aimed at cutting costs within the agency. Those changes include eliminating employees’ ability to log overtime and barring workers from making extra trips to deliver late-arriving mail. DeJoy’s changes have been blamed for reported widespread mail delays.

“Let me be clear about the reasons behind our restructuring and the need for our plan. Our financial condition is dire,” DeJoy said in a memo sent to USPS staff on Thursday, NBC reported. “Our critics are quick to point to our finances, yet they offer no solution.” (source)

Regardless of the specific cause, it appears a reliable postal service has been yet another systemic casualty. One recent video even came to light of massive bags of mail simply being dumped in a parking lot.

The legal and criminal justice system

After the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, the country erupted. Protests were widespread. The organization Black Lives Matter reached peak popularity. The movement was quickly co-opted and groups like Antifa and the Occupy movement took over. Protests soon turned into violent riots that saw cities across the country turn into battle zones.

The unrest has lasted for more than three months and shows no signs of slowing down soon. Armed conflict has broken out in numerous cities. In fact, a demonstration promising to “lay siege” to the White House is planned for later this month through the election.

This goes hand in hand with calls to defund the police in many of the cities where the protests/riots are taking place. Massive budget cuts have already occurred in Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, Portland, Philadelphia, Hartford, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, just to name a few cities. (source) It’s important to note that some of these cities have been the sites of extreme upticks in violence, looting, destruction, and arson.

And it isn’t just the criminal justice system breaking down. The court system in general has been on hiatus. Family court closures have halted divorce and custody hearings. Civil suits are at a standstill. Once the courts reopen, the massive backlog will mean even further delays.

The wheels have simply stopped turning.

The election

The upcoming election is the next broken element of the system. This year hardly feels like an election year in the first place.

Many people are hesitant to vote in person due to the virus. The postal service has said they may not be able to get ballots to people on time. Big rallies are a thing of elections past. We have yet to see a presidential debate between the candidates. We probably won’t know who won on election night. In fact, it could be weeks before a winner is announced, and even then, it looks as though Biden and Trump are both intent on questioning the outcome if it isn’t in their favor.

In short, it’s going to be a huge bone of contention that is likely to escalate the violence discussed above for weeks, if not months. We could have the fifth contested presidential election in American history. (And I’d say that isn’t just a possibility, but a likelihood.)

If an already divided country can’t agree on who won the election, would that be the final nail in the coffin of our system?

What can we do?

A lot of these are “big circle” things that are out of our personal realm of control. We can’t do anything about imports from China, we can’t stop the riots in Seattle, we can’t fix the postal service.

But we can focus our energy on getting as prepared as possible for what promises to be a bumpy road ahead. And we must also stop focusing on a system that is broken to solve our problems. Selco wrote:

Do not forget one basic fact: you as a prepper/survivalist, at your core, most probably do not trust the system.

I am not saying you hate it, but you just do not trust it completely.

So, watch the news and announcements. Help if possible, obey if possible (and if it makes sense) but always keep in mind that the system at its core has a very basic obligation: to keep that system running. If that means the system has to lie to you or let’s say, bend the truth, it will do it, because to the system you are an individual, and the system is machinery that needs to run.

So, keep some common sense, and trust your gut instinct. (source)

Pieces of the system are tumbling over like one domino after another. Every stressor added is knocking out more of the system as time goes on.

Do you think the system is fixable or do you believe it is broken beyond repair? What do you foresee for the rest of the year?

Sovereign Man: The New Puritans Are on the Prowl

Simon Black of Sovereign Man has a few words to say about Woke-ists in The New Puritans Are on the Prowl.

In the spring of 1692, Giles Corey was 80 years old when his wife was accused of witchcraft.

The entire town was in such a frenzy that even Giles started to believe that his wife might be a witch.

Soon after, another person in the town was accused of witchcraft. Then another. And another. And another.

It wasn’t until Giles Corey himself was accused of being a wizard that he realized the whole thing was a scam.

But it didn’t matter. The Puritan preachers in this small New England town (Salem, Massachusetts) took every accusation seriously.

They felt it was their duty to protect the townsfolk from the systemic witchcraft that was so pervasive in Salem. So everyone who was accused of witchcraft was quickly punished.

That included Giles Gorey, who, at the age of 81, was tortured for three days in September of 1692, in an attempt to extract a plea.

He had been accused, therefore he must be guilty. And Corey was laid in a field with boards placed on top of him, and large rocks piled on top of the boards to slowly crush him to death.

Rumour has it the only words he spoke during the torture were, “More weight.”

These days we have a new breed of Puritans. Their religion is wokeness, and they too see witches everywhere.

What’s really incredible is that these Puritan witch hunters are really just a small percentage of the population.

Most people are completely sane and normal. But this tiny group happens to be the loudest.

And because of that,  they’ve completely upended everything– culture, business, politics, and even science.

They tell us what words we can/cannot use. Some of the largest corporations in the world have already bent the knee, cancelling movies, music, and even food, because it offends the mob.

Disney cancelled the song “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” because it’s offensive. Yet they graciously thanked the Chinese Communist Party in their recent release of Mulan!

And the same doctors and public health officials who tell us that we have to wear masks tell us that it’s OK to not wear a mask when rioting, because hate is a much bigger public health crisis.

Wokeness is such bizarre logic. But it never stops.

Just this morning I saw articles lamenting the lack of diversity in the wine industry; and another claiming that National Parks aren’t welcoming enough to certain minorities.

Even 2+2=4 is now a controversial statement to some mathematics educators, who find the expression grounded in imperialistic, heteronormative toxic masculinity.

But it’s not enough to simply bow out and avoid their intolerance. That makes YOU a target.

You have to denounce family members, grovel to the Twitter mob, raise a fist in solidarity, participate in the chants and rituals… otherwise you put yourself and your family at risk.

They’ll come for your job, your business, and your dignity.

I have no idea how far this will go, or how much more ridiculous it will become.

This is clearly not the first time in history that a small number of crazy people end up causing havoc and devastation to an entire society.

Now, I still believe that, even in the midst of such mindless chaos, the world is still abundant with opportunity.

I’ve just always felt that it’s best to tackle those opportunities… and face obvious risks… from a position of strength.

This is the core idea behind having a ‘Plan B’– to put yourself in a position of strength, regardless of whatever happens (or doesn’t happen) next.

This includes things like expanding your network and meeting like-minded people– which is more important than ever.

It means taking care of your finances– protecting your assets, avoiding roller coaster rides in markets and currency devaluations, legally cutting your taxes, and expanding your income.

It also means having a place to go, just in case you might ever need to hit the eject button.

This doesn’t mean having a doom-and-gloom mentality. It’s a sensible, rational precaution in light of such clear risk.

And it’s not a decision you’ll be in the mental state to think through when the mob is at your doorstep.

This is really the most important part of a Plan B: thinking through what’s important to you, and what you *might* need to do… now– while you’re in a rational state.

Waiting until panic sets in means making emotional decisions later… and emotional decisions tend to be very bad decisions.

So take advantage of the relative calm, and make some key decisions now….

American Partisan: Armed Citizens Must Defend Their Communities

Former Navy Seal Matt Bracken at American Partisan writes Armed Citizens Must Defend Their Communities from Rioting Mobs If the Politicized Police Will Not.

In societies living under the Rule of Law, sworn Law Enforcement (LE) officers have always been considered fully justified in applying lethal force against violent mobs during arson riots, such as those which have been occurring with regularity in American cities during the terrible summer of 2020. This was the intent and meaning of police officials publicly “Reading the Riot Act,” announcing over a loudspeaker that a violent mob had been declared to be an unlawful assembly, that is to say, a riot. Rioters who lingered on the street after that final warning could be engaged by LE at any level up to and including the use of deadly force, with no further announcement.

This was, in prior more civilized times, a basic understanding of all citizens living under the Rule of Law. This is why a police officer’s standard-issue pump shotgun was traditionally referred to as a “riot gun” long before the development of modern less-than-lethal munitions. This is also why arson riots were uncommon and short-lived. Everyone understood the ground rules. There was no right to burn, loot or murder.

Thomas Sowell put it this way: “If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” Note that he did not say “the government” or “the police department.” He said YOU.

ABR, my own acronym for the current working coalition of Antifa, BLM and the Revolutionary Communist Party of the U.S.,  are now routinely using Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs) and other incendiary/explosive devices as offensive weapons in both an anti-personnel and anti-property (arson) role. As far as the BATFE is concerned, a Molotov cocktail is an illegal explosive device, and so are powerful high-altitude fireworks, when they are deployed at ground level as anti-personnel and anti-property explosive/incendiary grenades.

ABR deliberately uses the anonymity of their black-clad and face-masked mobs to conceal the identity of their individual bomb throwers, in exactly the same way that 19th Century Ku Klux Klan night riders carrying torches on arson missions concealed their identities with white robes and hoods. There is no moral or ethical requirement for either police or ordinary citizens protecting their communities from violent mobs to identify and ferret out the individual bomb throwers, when the rest of the mob is intentionally surrounding them in order to shield them from that identification. Because of the deliberately created synergy of bomb throwers utilizing the anonymity of the mob, the entire ABR mob becomes a legitimate target for police arrest or armed community self-defense.

Furthermore, at this writing in September of 2020, there is no moral or ethical requirement for a law-abiding American citizen to wait for a lit Molotov cocktail or any other incendiary or explosive device to crash through the window of their home or business, while ABR mobs are rampaging through the streets conducting arson attacks. Once the fires begin, morally and ethically, the same Rules for the Use of Force (RUF) should apply that would attach to a lynch mob, or to Ku Klux Klan night riders on their way to burn homes or businesses. Both KKK night riders bearing torches in olden times, and violent mobs of ABR terrorists with Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices today, can and should be engaged by armed citizens with any necessary level of force required to halt their terroristic depredations.

In numerous recent cases, law enforcement under Leftist political control has repeatedly abdicated its traditional and expected role in breaking up violent riots and preventing arson and other terror attacks. Week by week, the level of ABR violence has been steadily escalating, and it’s logical to assume that it will only worsen as the hotly-contested presidential election draws near.

So let me be very clear: if Democrat Party governors, mayors and DAs have hamstrung their police for political reasons, and won’t allow them to protect the lives and property of their local citizens using all required force, abandoning their primary mission in order to bow to the ABR mob, then it is time for their undefended citizens to apply the clear intent of the Second Amendment. There should be deep regret about the abandonment of the Rule of Law by the Democrat Party political ruling class, but there should be no moral quibbles or hesitation by American citizens concerning the legitimacy of armed community self defense, in the absence of expected law enforcement protection.

Therefore, it is my carefully considered opinion that black-clad and masked ABR mobs, rampaging and terrorizing innocent citizens under the cover of darkness in the style of the KKK of old, may morally and ethically be taken under preemptive fire by armed citizens at any level necessary to drive them out of their peaceful neighborhoods and away from their businesses, before the terrorists can reach their targets and throw their Molotov cocktails and other explosive and incendiary devices.

As an historical note, it should be understood that the National Rifle Association was founded after the last American Civil War by former Union Army officers, (and Republicans at that), in order to empower freed African-American former slaves to defend themselves with firearms against KKK night raids. In the 19th Century, the Democrat Party, then allied with the Klan, (as the Democrats of today are aligned with Antifa and BLM), had favored strict gun control, in the form of narrowly written laws restricting the legal ownership of firearms by free black citizens.

The more things change…the more they stay the same.

The Captain’s Journal has a few comments on Matt’s article.

…You cannot entrust your safety to an assumption.  You do not know the intent of the invaders, and maybe they don’t even know their intent.

Third, even if the rioters don’t intend to douse you with gasoline and set you on fire, there can be unintended consequences and collateral damage.  It’s extremely dangerous to have rioters and looters rampaging through neighborhoods.

Regardless of intent (which can’t be known anyway), women and children can perish.  Men cannot allow that to happen.  Men cannot allow increased danger to come to their loved ones if they can stop it.

Having said all of that, be careful.  Your enemy isn’t just Antifa/BLM.  Your enemy is the state as well, who will prosecute you for self defense.  They did with Kyle Rittenhouse, and they did with the McCloskeys.  They’ll do it to you too.

Grey Man at American Partisan adds his comments on the above two posts.

…NEVER go anywhere alone. Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself masterfully for his situation, but to my knowledge, he started out with a group of people. He found himself alone at some point. Do not find yourself alone. Don’t leave your group. AntiFa isn’t going to, so you don’t either.

Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise: Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States

Two minutes to midnight…

From John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States is his latest update to his Civil War 2.0 series.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Open War.

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – What Is A Civil War? – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 56 Days Until The Last Election – Links

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern.

What Is A Civil War?

Multiple comments that I’ve had, both in the comment section at the blog, as well as in email and even text message asked the question – what happens to the index this month.  The answer is that we’re still at a 9 out of 10.  The only thing remaining to take us to a 10 is a body count.  That’s because I’m using this (admittedly academic definition by Doyle and Sambanis in 2000) as my definition for the existence of a civil war:

  1. The war has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. This war hasn’t yet done so.  Is 1,000 an aribitrary number?    This is the only criteria not yet met.
  2. The war represents a challenge to the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state. I think it’s clear that Antifa® and BLM™ want nothing less than the dismantling of the existing state and construction of a Marxist Utopia©.  The fact that they are aided and abetted by fellow travelers in district attorney offices, mayoral offices, and congressional offices doesn’t mean that they aren’t communist revolutionaries fighting against freedom from the inside.
  3. The war occurs within the recognized boundary of that state. This is an easy one.
  4. The war involves the state as one of the principal combatants. One of.  Not the only one.  Ask a policeman in Portland if they feel that they’re in control.
  5. The rebels are able to mount an organized military opposition to the state and to inflict significant casualties on the state. It states casualties, not deaths.  And that also makes this an easy one to check off.  Organization discussion is directly below in the Violence And Censorship Update.

 

I list all of the five criteria for a simple reason – to show that the only thing between us right now and a full blown, internationally recognized definition of civil war is the number of body bags we have yet to fill.  When I started this update last year, I was expecting things to move faster than you expected.  I did not expect things to move faster than I expected.

They have.

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence this month is obvious.  The killings have started.  Outside of the increasing violence tied directly to police standing down because they have no support which I talked about last month, bullets are now flying in the “mostly peaceful” protests.

Outside of the CHAZ murders, where two teenagers were killed, much of the violence has been peripheral.  I moved the index up to nine out of ten when killings became commonplace.  As near as I can tell, the killings directly associated with the Antifa™ and BLM® action is probably somewhere short of 100.

But two of those deaths are deaths that Antifa© cannot abide.  In Kenosha, I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse’s clear self-defense shooting against both a pedophile and a wife beater, and alleged self-defense shooting against a person who was (by the film I saw) drawing down on him.  You can read it here – reviews say it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d suggest my signature on my divorce papers from my first wife was better (Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?).

From my vantage point, Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.  But Antifa™ cannot let that stand.  At all.  It’s my estimate that out of rage, the killing in Portland as well as the attempted murder by car in Portland were “revenge” hits on people wearing paraphernalia of the Right.  If you read reports that break down the killing (HERE) and other experiences (HERE) in Portland, it becomes clear that Antifa® is using military discipline, and is broken up into a military command structure.  (H/T to Vox Day (LINK) and Mike at Cold Fury (LINK))

Antifa™ is a dedicated group.  They have undergone a brainwashing and are a religious cult – no Jim Jones Kool-Aid® drinking cultist could compete.  I wrote about that here (Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?), and stand by it.  Antifa® and BLM© stand against everything that has made America wonderful, rich, and prosperous.  And they are fanatics.

I’m not sure if you know what they have in mind for people that don’t agree with them.  It isn’t pleasant.  The idea is that there is a pure society coming, and the way to get to that new society is to eliminate everything that doesn’t fit.  Which almost certainly includes you.  But don’t worry – they want to torture people to death to show the remaining people how wonderful the future communist utopia will be.  See?  You serve a purpose in their minds.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  In general, I’ve used bikini graphs in the past.  Given where we are, I’m a bit more somber.  Here are the graphs, without bikinis.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower again this month despite clear assassinations by the Left.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down, slightly.  I expect September and October to be down more, since voting generally has a calming effect and all emotions are focused there.  After that?  All bets are off.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, are down slightly.  Again, we’re nowhere near the bottom.  I expect that to drop off in October.  Maybe to historic levels.  But I could be wrong?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Oops!  This metric is now nearly at the highest it’s been in years.  As the Wuflu® hits Mexico, the Mexicans are deciding to head north again.

56 Days Until The Last Election

I firmly believe the United States has had stolen elections in the past.  But the nice thing about the Electoral College is?  It makes it really, really hard to steal an election.  Impossible?  No.  Hard?  Yes.

Every single person in every graveyard in Chicago, California, and Queens can vote for a Democrat, and it doesn’t matter.  The Electoral College adds legitimacy to an election by breaking corruption at the state lines.  That’s one reason the Left hates it.  It makes elections hard to steal.  In my state, my vote doesn’t really matter – my state will go for Trump even if every person in every grave, ever, votes Democrat.

Mail-in voting changes all of that.

Yes, this was one of my favorite original memes that I created, but a new version.  Still valid.

Stalin has been quoted as saying, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

It’s hard to cheat in a Red State.  You have to steal zillions of counties.  It’s easy to cheat in a Blue State – you just have to cheat in the big cities.  If everyone in Chicago voted Trump, Illinois would still go 60% for whatever Democrat was opposing him.  But with mail-in voting?

Examples I have seen show the party on the outside of the envelope.  How hard would it be to casually “lose” a few thousand votes from envelopes that had a big, fat, R on the outside?  Or a few thousand from precincts that consistently vote Right?  Not hard at all.  This is on top of demonstrated voter fraud in Left cities where poll workers were caught on camera dumping ballot after ballot into the box on election day.

If mail-in voting passes?  We’ve had our last election day.  From now on?  It’s selection day – selection of the candidate that the Left wants.

Thanks to the innovation of mail-in voting, you don’t even have to bring the corpses to the polls!  What else will modern technology come up with?

In a further, ominous sign, the Media® has been setting up the idea that Trump will win on election night in a convincing manner, but will lose as the mail-in ballots are counted.  This is particularly horrific.

If you knew which six counties you needed in close states, could you game the Electoral College?  Absolutely.  You could have boxes of ballots pre-staged in Philadelphia, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland to flip the results.  Simple.  Want Florida to turn blue?  Just found a box with 25,475 Biden votes in Miami.

Don’t think the Left wouldn’t try it.  They would do anything to win the election, since they’re contemplating electing a person who couldn’t navigate a corn maze with more than two stalks standing.

If mail-in voting is made the law of the land?  Expect that this is the final election, ever, that won’t be a simple selection of the candidate that best fits the desire of the Left.  Sure, there will be some token people on the Right elected, but they’ll mainly be people who believe in real conservative values, like only allowing 1,000,000 illegals in a year, and only allowing 7,000,000 people a year in on H1B visas, and restricting anything but a muzzle loading black powder rifle, like our founders intended.

Oh, wait, conservatives have conserved nothing!  They just pick the values from the Left from ten or twenty years ago, and defend those until the death.

LINKS

That’s a bad ending to a video game . . .

All are from Ricky:

MSM message: alt-Right continues the march to civil war….

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1316052/proud-boys-group-brawl-antifa-protests-kalamazoo-michigan/

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1354432/portland-brawl-breaks-out-proud-boys-antifa-fight/

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/09/03/schmidt-trump-supporters-want-to-see-a-second-civil-war-in-this-country/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-incite-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-sense-something-is-wrong-gun-sales-up-72_08272020

…a challenge that must be met with force…

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/18/berkeley-columnist-calls-for-violent-resistance/

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/12/this-war-cant-be-civil/

http://thesaker.is/will-hillary-and-the-dems-get-the-civil-war-they-are-trying-to-provoke/

…for abstract justice…

https://theweek.com/articles/931090/are-bread-riots-coming-america

https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/black-lives-matter-organizer-calls-chicago-looting-reparation/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

…and with concrete action…

https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/battle-zones-america/

This revolution WILL be televised, as documentaries…

https://theduran.com/steven-turley-new-civil-war-being-fought-on-three-fronts-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-is-here-part-i-the-combatants-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-part-ii-strategy-of-the-blues-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-civil-war-part-iii-update-dr-steve-turley-largely-confirms-video/

https://theduran.com/the-utopia-of-democrat-activism-video/

…an unending stream of gripping short-attention-span clips from the front lines…

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1300955946521432064

(Scroll here for more video gems:) https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/

….and an explosion of editorials…

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/09/02/rowland-civil-war-real-possibility/5690696002/

https://themichiganstar.com/2020/08/28/commentary-in-kenosha-the-seeds-of-civil-war/

https://greensboro.com/rockingham_now/opinion/ending-the-civil-war/article_a2f83f72-eaef-11ea-88b4-e7bcbc8a60ec.html

https://signalscv.com/2020/09/jonathan-kraut-an-undeclared-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/singer-promoting-a-new-civil-war-in-america/article_399450b1-7aee-5a47-abd1-8555b616d0cf.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/portland-killing-trump-caravan-civil-war-20200830.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/kenosha-trump-kyle-rittenhouse-portland-antifa-20200901.html

https://www.newspressnow.com/opinion/editorials/stop-a-civil-war-before-it-starts/article_57576526-e7d3-11ea-a6c0-f31f4893dc90.html

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/08/20/thursdays-headlines-armed-for-the-civil-war-edition/

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-kenosha-wisconsin-unrest-violence-shooting-20200826-m3e7zcqg7faxxou2xhqywmsobe-story.html

And as one (now-dead) Antifa guard claims to have fired the latest shot heard ’round the world…

https://www.insider.com/portland-shooting-suspect-said-saw-civil-war-coming-2020-9

…a newspaper founded during the last Civil War won’t be around to cover any new one…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/

Gatestone Institute: How to Steal an Election

The political power generated from a document like the “Transition Integrity Project” report introduces the threat of terror and street violence as a “normal” or “expected” outcome of the upcoming presidential election. Here is what you will see, hear and read in the next few weeks: “Yes, expect violence in the aftermath of the election, because now that is the new ‘normal.’ Trump made us do it….” Pictured: Police officers in Washington DC come under attack by rioters launching fireworks at them, on May 30, 2020. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

From Chris Farrell at The Gatestone Institute, How to Steal an Election on a recently published plan, wargaming election crisis scenarios, to spread/continue violence in the event Trump wins the November election.

How does one ensure their political allies are ideologically synchronized, and know exactly how to disrupt a presidential election? What about the “journalists” in the news media and the babblers on social media — how does one get them onboard with the planned nationwide revolutionary disruption? Easy! Publish a report titled: “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election.”

In one of the greatest public disinformation campaigns in American history — the Left and their NeverTrumper allies (under the nom de guerre: “Transition Integrity Project”) released a 22-page report in August 2020 “war gaming” (their term) four election crisis scenarios: 1. A decisive Trump win; 2. A decisive Biden win; 3. A narrow Biden win; and, 4. A period of extended uncertainty after the election. The outcome of each TIP scenario results in street violence and political impasse.

TIP organizers and leaders include Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks, Nils Gilman of the “independent” Berggruen Institute in California, and John Podesta, the longtime fixer and handler of the Clinton political dynasty. The nominally Republican members of group include former Republican National Chair Michael Steele, journalist David Frum, and former magazine editor Bill Kristol.

Publication of the TIP report is an information warfare strategy employed for revolutionary political purposes. The strategy is sophisticated and multifaceted. The TIP document:

  • Lays the groundwork for “consensus” news media and social media narratives;
  • Rationalizes “unconventional strategies” for generating maximum confusion and turmoil over “unfavorable” election outcomes;
  • Projects accusations of unlawful/criminal conduct on President Trump and those voting for him;
  • Co-opts the (already politically sympathetic) Washington DC federal bureaucracy to support their strategy from the headquarters of every department and agency of the Executive;
  • Relies (correctly) on a low-awareness/low-energy response from the political Right to counter the TIP program.

Is it possible that the leadership of the American Left, along with their NeverTrumper allies, are busy talking themselves into advocating and promoting street violence as a response to a presidential election?

The answer is: Yes.

In the opening paragraph of their “bipartisan” report, TIP states: “We assess with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape.” Especially if they have their way.

An alternative to one of the war-gamed scenarios resulted in the TIPsters advocating for the secession of Washington, Oregon and California. Is there no sense of historical irony in the Democrat party? Secession over an election? Again?

The single greatest irony of the TIP report is the overwhelming use of “projection” in framing and characterizing various claims against President Trump (and his supporters) as a means to justify the Left’s “irregular” plans to disrupt the election process.

Projection, as a political technique, is not a secret. The American Left has never bothered to hide or disguise it, nor have they even found it desirable to do so.

The covert portion of the projection technique is the funding and organizational involvement behind the projection itself. Who is paying the bills for TIP and its affiliates? This is a highly organized, sophisticated operation with career political operatives calling the shots. No one does this for free, and someone (or some entity) is paying the bill. Who?

The TIP report is itself an exercise of power. Political intelligence information and public policy strategies are being fused through the actions of TIP. That synthesis is a demonstration of real political power, and it is being implemented in a written plan that contemplates street violence to affect the outcome of the US presidential election. The political power resourced and generated from a document like the TIP report can be used for persuasion (through news and social media), indoctrination (of activists and other “true believers”), and introduces the threat of terror and street violence (to the general population) as a “normal” or “expected” outcome.

Here is how the news and social media narrative is coming together and what you will see, hear and read in the next few weeks: “Yes, expect violence in the aftermath of the election, because now that is the new ‘normal.’ Trump made us do it. He made us take the election, because the old, regular system just cannot be relied upon. That’s why we had to publish our report, so we could organize ‘around’ all of the regular processes. Obama promised ‘fundamental transformation,’ and now, years later – we’re finally going to deliver.”

What evidence is there of awareness and preparedness on the political Right to confront and counter the TIP (and other Leftists) and their plans to disrupt the election? Not much. Time is short. The Left’s threat of violence and subversion of the election is real. How we respond is critical.

Stars and Stripes: Hunger Is Threatening to Kill More People than COVID this Year

Volunteers distribute food packets people in need after a week-long restrictions were imposed by district officials to contain the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, in Kathmandu on August 31, 2020. PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/TNS

Via Stars and Stripes, Hunger is threatening to kill more people than COVID this year details global hunger concerns because of supply chain problems and lockdowns.

The world is hurtling toward an unprecedented hunger crisis.

As many as 132 million more people than previously projected could go hungry in 2020, and this year’s gain may be more than triple any increase this century. The pandemic is upending food supply chains, crippling economies and eroding consumer purchasing power. Some projections show that by the end of the year, COVID-19 will cause more people to die each day from hunger than from virus infections.

What makes the situation unmatched: The massive spike is happening at a time of enormous global food surpluses. And it’s happening in every part of the world, with new levels of food insecurity forecast for countries that used to have relative stability.

In Queens, New York, the lines snaking around a food bank are eight hours long as people wait for a box of supplies that might last them a week, while farmers in California are plowing over lettuce and fruit is rotting on trees in Washington. In Uganda, bananas and tomatoes are piling up in open-air markets, and even nearly give-away prices aren’t low enough for out-of-work buyers. Supplies of rice and meat were left floating at ports earlier this year after logistical jams in the Philippines, China and Nigeria. And in South America, Venezuela is teetering on the brink of famine.

“We’ll see the scars of this crisis for generations,” said Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University. “In 2120, we’ll still be talking about this crisis.”

COVID-19 has exposed some of the world’s deepest inequalities. It’s also a determining force in who gets to eat and who doesn’t, underscoring global social divides as the richest keep enjoying a breakneck pace of wealth accumulation. Millions of people have been thrown out of work and don’t have enough money to feed their families, despite the trillions in government stimulus that’s helped send global equities to all-time highs.

On top of the economic malaise, lockdowns and broken supply chains have also created a serious problem for food distribution. The sudden shift away from restaurant eating, which in places like the U.S. used to account for more than half of dining, means farmers have been dumping milk and smashing eggs, with no easy means to redirect their production to either grocery stores or those in need.

Don Cameron of Terranova Ranch in California took a hit of about $55,000 this year on his cabbage crop. Almost half the loss – $24,000 – came because Cameron decided to donate to local food banks after demand from his usual customers dried up. He had to pay for the labor needed to do the harvesting and truck loading. He even needed to cover the cost of some bins and pallets to get supplies moved. It would’ve been a lot cheaper to just let the crops rot in the field.

“We know other parts of the country need what we have here. But the infrastructure has not been set up, as far as I’m aware, to allow that. There are times when there is food available and it’s because of logistics that it doesn’t find a home,” said Cameron, who still ended up destroying about 50,000 tons of the crop since nearby food banks “can only take so much cabbage.”

Initial United Nations forecasts show that in a worst-case scenario, about a tenth of the world’s population won’t have enough to eat this year. The impact will go beyond just hunger as millions more are also likely to experience other forms of food insecurity, including not being able to afford healthy diets, which can lead to malnutrition and obesity.

The effects will be long lasting. Even in its best-case projections, the UN predicts that hunger will be greater over the next decade than forecast before the pandemic. By 2030, the number of undernourished people could reach as high as 909 million, compared with a pre-COVID scenario of about 841 million.

The current crisis is one of the “rarest of times” with both physical and economic limitations to access food, said Arif Husain, chief economist with the UN’s World Food Programme.

By the end of the year, as many as 12,000 people could die a day from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than those perishing from the virus itself, charity Oxfam International estimates. That’s calculated based on a more than 80% jump for those facing crisis-level hunger.

Projections for increased malnutrition also have a profound human toll. It can weaken the immune system, limit mobility and even impair brain functioning. Children who experience malnutrition early in life can see its impact well into adulthood.

“Even the mildest forms of food insecurity have lifelong consequences,” said Chilton of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities. Problems with physical and cognitive development in children and adolescents can hamper the chances of staying in school or getting a job, continuing a cycle of poverty.

Government programs, food charities and aid organizations have mobilized across the globe, but the need far outstrips their reach. The UN’s WFP aid group alone needs a record $13 billion for the year to deliver food in 83 countries, and at the start of the second half faced a shortfall of $4.9 billion to meet the goal.

Hunger can spark seismic shifts in the political landscape. Going back to the days of the French Revolution, food insecurity has sent people into the streets demanding better conditions. Surging food prices were part of the economic crisis that helped fuel recent protests in Lebanon and demonstrations over shortages erupted in Chile earlier this year.

Deep-seated inequalities along gender and racial lines also correspond to disproportionate impacts from hunger. In the U.S., for example, Black Americans are two-and-a half times as likely as their White counterparts to have low or very low access to enough food for an active and healthy life. Globally, women are 10% more likely to be food insecure than men.

“We have to make sure that we’re addressing gender inequality – if the international community is not doing that, we will fail to avoid the worst of the hunger crisis,” said Tonya Rawe, a director at hunger relief and advocacy group Care.

Data from the UN show that throughout the world, there are more than enough calories available to meet every individual’s needs. But even in the U.S., the richest country in the world, almost 2% of the population, or more than 5 million people, can’t afford a healthy diet (one that protects against all forms of malnutrition). More than 3 million Americans can’t afford to even meet basic energy needs. In India, 78% of people can’t afford healthy diets – that’s more than 1 billion people. Those figures don’t even take into account the pandemic and its lasting effects.

Costs and logistics prevent food surpluses from being easily shifted to areas without. That’s the dilemma faced by potato farmers in Belgium. When freezers filled during the pandemic, most of their spuds weren’t fit for food banks or grocers. The main variety that’s grown to meet demand from places like the country’s famous fry shops get black and blue spots after just a few days, said Romain Cools of industry group Belgapom. Sales to supermarkets quickly stopped after complaints, and a bulk of the region’s 750,000-ton surplus was instead used for animal feed or biogas.

“It’s hard to take surplus milk in Wisconsin and get it to people in Malawi – it’s just not realistic or practical,” said William Moseley, a geography professor at Macalester College who serves on a global food-security panel.

Despite the abundant supplies, food is growing more expensive because of bungled supply chains and currency devaluations. Costs are up in parts of Africa and the Middle East and they’re also rising in developed countries, with Europeans and Americans paying extra to stock their fridges.

Even within major food-producing countries, being able to afford groceries is never a given.

Latin America, an agriculturally rich region that exports food to the world, is leading this year’s surge in hunger, according to the UN’s WFP.

In Brazil, a huge cash-distribution program has helped millions and driven poverty rates to historic lows. But that hasn’t met all the need. In the country’s northeast, Eder Saulo de Melo worked as a guard at parties until the virus arrived. With events suspended, he hasn’t been paid in months. He’s been locked out of the emergency cash program and the 130 reais ($25) he gets in regular monthly aid goes to energy, water and gas bills, leaving little to feed his three children. Baskets of non-perishables, vegetables, bread and eggs from a non-governmental organization are the family’s main sustenance.

“I needed to stop buying fruit and meat,” he said. “Instead of a slice of chicken, I buy offal to make a soup.”

The hunger estimates for this year have a “high degree of uncertainty,” and the disease’s devastation is largely unknown, the UN cautioned about its figures.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization began tracking global hunger in the mid-1970s. Current data can’t be compared past 2000 given revisions in methodology, said Carlo Cafiero, team leader for food security statistics. But general trends can be observed, and they show that hunger moved lower over the past several decades until a recent reversal started in 2015, spurred by by climate change and conflicts.

The increases in the last few years are nothing like what is forecast now – even the best-case of the UN’s tentative scenarios would see hunger surge in 2020 more than the past five years combined. And when looking at other notable periods of need in the world, such as the Great Depression, the level of food surplus that exists today is without comparison thanks to the advent of modern agriculture, which has seen crop yields explode.

“It’s impossible to look at the situation and not think we have a problem,” said Nate Mook, chief executive officer of food-relief group World Central Kitchen. “This pandemic has really exposed the cracks in the system and where it starts to break down.”

American Partisan: Antifa Reality Check

This report comes from folk who accidentally got caught up in a riot in Portland. They were beaten with rocks and bats after being hit with strobe lights and pepper spray. Antifa Reality Check

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zX3wZowxMs&feature=emb_logo

“Very basic background. My friend is a prior service 1st LAR 0311, 0351. (from Wiki: 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion is a fast and mobilized armored terrestrial reconnaissance battalion of the United States Marine Corps.) Multiple tours in the early to late 2000s, then DoE, then was put through selection and went to work for Colonel G____ as a team member. Since leaving, he has been doing contract work.

He is an experienced and capable meat eater and the furthest thing from a pussy or coward. Try to learn from his experiences.

“Me and three of my buddies were in Portland this weekend, got attacked by Antifa. There’s a Twitter video with millions of views on it. They ended up on Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro etc., of us getting beaten with bats and rocks the size of cantaloupes thrown at us, getting spit on etc. We were all carrying pistols as well. Opportunity, ability and jeopardy, we were in a deadly force situation and we could easily articulate the use of deadly force, but they had pepper sprayed us. They were using industrial strobe lights on us, etc. We couldn’t PID our target and what lied beyond it, They did a great job of taking our situational awareness away, it was fucking incredible.
Bro my perspective on this changed so much.

The reason we were there wasn’t to counter protest or some shit, **** and *****, two of the guys with me, one of which is a bronze star and Purple Heart recipient. They’re both in the hiring process for the Portland Police Department. One is from Ohio and one is from Virginia. They both flew in that day just so they could come check out the city before they move their families across the nation.

Something else that I should make perfectly clear. We went to the Federal Courthouse first. There wasn’t a whole lot going on down there. We walked around and took some pictures. Bumped into a Sheriff at one point. Talked to him for a while. We asked him if the riots were over? He said fuck no, they’re trying to fuck a police station up right now on 47th and Burnside, We asked him if we could go, and he said yeah, it’s still a peaceful assembly, it hasn’t been declared a riot yet…. So, legit, we walked into this thing blind, in hindsight it was stupid on our part, I had no idea that they were like that. If it had been a full-blown riot we would not have gone. Bottom line, man, if you had ever given me a scenario like this and said hey, you’re sober, and you have a gun, and somebody is hitting you with a bat and throwing rocks at you that could kill you or put you in a coma, you try to get away but they cut you off with a convoy of vehicles and the assault starts again. They impede your movement and beat you with bats…
Would you shoot?

I’d be like, yeah what fucking planet are you from?

But in all the training that I’ve been through my life, I’ve never been in one where in the first five seconds of the scenario you’re blinded with a strobe light and sprayed with pepper spray…. That changes everything. They were throwing these rocks from 15 feet back in the crowd, you couldn’t see who the fuck through it, etc. things like that…. It’s just a good talking point for guys that carry concealed, but you need to think through all these different scenarios.

It got way worse after that video ended, they chased us for 11 city blocks. They had a convoy of about 25 vehicles that cut us off at the next intersection, They had scouts on the corner with radios, they had a drone following us, they had a bull horn calling us Nazis, and the crowd was following a red strobe light that was up in the air on a stick, so they would announce Nazis and then people would follow the red strobe light, That video is just the beginning, I’ve got a fucking fractured hand from a baton, everyone of us has black and blue bruises up and down their legs and back, I had a guy spit in my face from 6 inches away, call me a pussy and a coward for not doing anything about it, and then tell me that he was going to find where I live, rape my mother, rape my children in front of me and then kill me.

I’ve never been more angry about something in my fucking life, the level of restraint that it took for us to not fight back in any capacity whether that was with a gun or fists is incredible. All of us have kids at home. The only thing going through all of our minds was we have to be able to justify deadly force if we’re going to go that route, there’s also hundreds of these people, we can’t see straight because of all the pepper spray, and it’s hard to PID exactly who is throwing these rocks and hitting us with batons, because they would hit you and fucking run and their buddy would run up and hit you. It was an incredibly stressful situation, they did a very good job tactically of taking away your situational awareness, and in my opinion complicating your legal defense when you split one of their faces open with a hollow point.

As we were running from the crowd after about the third block or so, we’re sprinting because the mob head caught back up to us and vehicles were trying to cut us off, I put my hand on the back strap on my appendix, And I heard somebody yell “Hey bro, whatever you’re reaching for, don’t reach, just keep running, they’re still 30 feet behind you. Keep running straight.”

We get 11 blocks down the road and this black Chevy Impala is ghosting us down the street, he’s kind of been in our shadow since block two or three He rolls his window down and starts asking us a bunch of questions. Why are we here, what are we doing, telling us we need to get the fuck out of here, asking us where our car is etc., we pretty much told him to get the fuck away from us because we didn’t know who he was. I finally asked him at one point, Who the fuck are you, man, you need to leave us alone, and he was like I’m the fucking police, bro, who are you? So he pulled his car over and he and his partner talked to us. He was one of the special programs guys, either with SWAT or SRT or whatever. He was the one that yelled at me not to reach, and tried to help us out. He said he knew that we’ve been pepper sprayed and we’re having trouble seeing, I kind of snapped at him, Like hey motherfucker, You’ve been watching this whole thing fucking unfold and you didn’t intervene at all or light the crowd up or something? He started laughing and he was like, Man, if I got out and tried to help you guys, my fucking car would be on fire right now, and I’d be running next to you.

Bottom line: don’t go to an Antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, expect them to employ tactics that take away your situational awareness, and complicate the use of force continuum.”

The American Mind: The Coming Coup?

The Coming Coup? is an article from The American Mind, which is a publication of the Claremont Institute whose mission is to restore the principles of the American founding.

Democrats are laying the groundwork for revolution right in front of our eyes.

As if 2020 were not insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening.

It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what the brass would only hint at. Then, as nationwide riots really got rolling in early June, the sitting Secretary of Defense himself all but publicly told the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. His implicit message was: “Mr. President, don’t tell us to do that, because we won’t, and you know what happens after that.”

All this enthused Joe Biden, who threw subtlety to the winds. The former United States Senator (for 26 years) and Vice President (for eight) has not once, not twice, but thrice confidently asserted that the military will “escort [Trump] from the White House with great dispatch” should the president refuse to leave. Another former Vice President, Al Gore, publicly agreed.

One might dismiss such comments as the ravings of a dementia patient and a has-been who never got over his own electoral loss. But before you do, consider also this. Over the summer a story was deliberately leaked to the press of a meeting at which 100 Democratic grandees, anti-Trump former Republicans, and other ruling class apparatchiks got together (on George Soros’s dime) to “game out” various outcomes of the 2020 election. One such outcome was a clear Trump win. In that eventuality, former Bill Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, playing Biden, refused to concede, pressured states that Trump won to send Democrats to the formal Electoral College vote, and trusted that the military would take care of the rest.

The leaked report from the exercise darkly concluded that “technocratic solutions, courts, and reliance on elites observing norms are not the answer here,” promising that what would follow the November election would be “a street fight, not a legal battle.”

Two more data points (among several that could be provided). Over the summer, two former Army officers, both prominent in the Democrat-aligned “national security” think tank world, wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in which they urged him to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division to drag President Trump from the Oval Office at precisely 12:01 PM, January 20, 2021.

About a month later, Hillary Clinton declared publicly that Joe Biden should not concede the election “under any circumstances.” The old English major in me interprets the word “any” to mean “no,” “none,” “nada,” “niente,” “zero,” “zilch” “bupkis”…you get the idea.

This doesn’t sound like the rhetoric of a political party confident it will win an upcoming election.

The Cover-Up in Plain Sight

These items are, to repeat, merely a short but representative list of what Byron York recently labeled “coup porn.” York seems to think this is just harmless fantasizing on the part of the ruling class and its Democratic servants. For some of them, no doubt that’s true. But for all of them? I’m not so sure.

In his famously exhaustive discussion of conspiracies, Machiavelli goes out of his way to emphasize the indispensability of “operational security”—i.e., silence—to success. The first rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy. The second rule of conspiracy is, you do not talk about the conspiracy.

So why are the Democrats—publicly—talking about the conspiracy?

Because they know that, for it to succeed, it must not look like a conspiracy. They need to plant the idea in the public mind, now, that their unlawful and illegitimate removal of President Trump from office will somehow be his fault.

Never mind the pesky detail that the president would refuse to leave only if he were convinced he legitimately won. Remember: Biden should not concede under any circumstances.

The second part of the plan is either to produce enough harvested ballots—lawfully or not—to tip close states, or else dispute the results in close states and insist, no matter what the tally says, that Biden won them. The worst-case scenario (for the country, but not for the ruling class) would be results in a handful of states that are so ambiguous and hotly disputed that no one can rightly say who won. Of course, that will not stop the Democrats from insisting that they won.

The public preparation for that has also already begun: streams of stories and social media posts “explaining” how, while on election night it might look as if Trump won, close states will tip to Biden as all the mail-in ballots are “counted.”

The third piece is to get the vast and loud Dem-Left propaganda machine ready for war. That leaked report exhorted Democrats to identify “key influencers in the media and among local activists who can affect political perceptions and mobilize political action…[who could] establish pre-commitments to playing a constructive role in event of a contested election.” I.e., in blaring from every rooftop that “Trump lost.”

At this point, it’s safe to assume that unless Trump wins in a blowout that can’t be overcome by cheating and/or denied via the ruling class’s massive propaganda operation, that’s exactly what every Democratic politician and media organ will shout.

Stop the Presses

What then? The Podesta assumption is that the military will side with the Dems. There are reasons to fear they might. The Obama administration spent a great deal of political capital purging the officer corps of anyone not down with the program and promoting only those who are.

Still and all, determining the outcome of an election would be the most open political interference possible from our allegedly apolitical military, and it’s plausible that the brass won’t want to make its quiet support of the ruling class agenda that overt. The aforementioned Chairman has already stated that the military will play “no role” in the outcome of the election. That’s probably not a feint, but one wonders if it will hold given the obvious attempt to influence military thinking by people like Jeffrey Goldberg in his recent Atlantic essay…(continues)