I agree with you Greek.I remain anonymous not because what I say is incorrect.But because what I say IS correct, albeit socially taboo in clownworld.

It’s no just jobs and livelihood. There were bloggers I used toread who had to quit because kids – nieces and nephews- were attacked. The wives will be verbally confronted in the grocery store, and banned from the public school grounds (where her kids ought not to be anyhow). It affects every family member. Heck, look at Tucker Carlson, whose DC/MD home was attacked when his wife and kids were there. He had the money and family roots torelocate to Maine. That state is politically a disaster, but in the more rural areas ‘down east,’ it’s still a traditional White community.

The comment section is only anonymous to the extent that we are unimportant enough to not waste the resources on de-anonymizing us.One of the stupidest ideas that oldsters are bringing forward into the present is that anything on the internet can be truly anonymous if someone with sufficient resources wants to make it un-anonymous. Feel free to believe that your handle or your VPN are protecting you, but it’s only true to the extent that it’s not worth leaning on the VPNs owner to find out the identity of Joe Schmoe for saying bad thoughts in some small corner of the net.

If anonymous posting was good enough for Ben Franklin, it’s certainly good enough for us. Or is that another privilege reserved only for the elite?I don’t see what the problem is on these comment pages. I don’t see any problem with the comments here, but then again, I don’t know what has to be black-holed.I warn normies when I post links to articles here (that is when I am allowed to) that they may find some of the comments edgier than they like, but the author is pretty solid.I think everybody should show all their cards. Lay it all out there and may the best ideas win.

The country would be better off if they worked for a lawn service cutting the grass.

The vibrant youth who will stab your son to death over a trivial issue and the illegal immigrant who will assault your daughter are nourished with fast food purchased by the EBT card that you pay for.USA! USA!

I have a smattering of economic background, primarily from “free market” school. The gist of these readings might be summed up as “Government intervention in economies tends to favor special interests and in general fucks things up worse than had they done nothing.” I “know” little of tariff history save that I read about the major disasters (Smoot-Hawley is blamed for exacerbating tbe Depression.) I concede that, having read only one side of the issues; I don’t know the other sides’ viewpoints.I’m also reminded of the quotes you’ll often see that, distilled to their essence, generally say that economics rapidly deteriorates into fortune-telling once you leave the most basic stuff like supply and demand or calculating simple interest. Indeed, it’s one of the softest of the soft “sciences.”Now, back to those tariffs. One “new to me” revelation was how arbitrary they are. In this context “arbitrary” means they are largely at the President’s discretion. This is in stark contrast to most other taxes. Usually those are set by the legislature. The President can’t increase the top income tax bracket by 5% at a whim. Nor can your State Governor adjust the State sales or property tax before the legislature has weighed in. But, apparently, not so with tariffs. Of course, the legislature delineates those powers to Executive, but apparently those powers are very broad. The important lesson here is that a tariff is a very flexible tool for the Executive.One purpose of a tariff is revenue collection. Unless I’m mistaken, they were the main source of Federal income prior to the Income Tax. But they’re also a political tool, to the degree the Executive has power to manipulate them. Since politics at bottom is favoring your friends and screwing your enemies, the two non-revenue uses of tariffs are, then:(1)  To favor domestic producers. This is why sugar costs much more here than just south of the border. Domestic corporations (and their workers) in effect, enjoy a monopoly on production and sales, depending upon how punitive the tariff is. Who pays for this favoritism? The consumer, of course? While the average household probably isn’t greatly hurt by having to pay $1/Lb. for sugar instead of $0.20, what has happened is a de-facto subsidy to favored interests and a tax on those who consume the good.(2)  To favor or punish foreign nations. This probably is the main intent of the current Trump efforts. You might want to keep out the cheap goods to protect special interests, but you might also do it simply out of spite. For example, we don’t trade much with Cuba (granted, that may be due to laws other than tariffs, but a very high tariff would stringently inhibit trade) China may get higher tariffs slapped on, say, its Flat Screen TVs than would more friendly nations like Taiwan or Korea.To wrap this up, it seems likely to me that the public, and perhaps even economists, are in confusion or disagreement about the benefits of tariffs simply because as I’ve shown, they are an extremely flexible, arbitrary policy tool. As with any tool, the effect of wielding that tool depends upon the artisan’s skills, but also his intents. Any tool can be used for good or ill. A flat, rational system of tariffs probably serves as a reliable revenue source. It’d certainly make business planning easier. At the other extreme, constantly shifting arbitrary policies, as we’re seeing now, have the opposite effect. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that this is exactly what’s needed, to persuade other nations into terms more favorable to us. That’s particularly true if they’ve been getting a “free ride” for too long.In essence, a tariff probably doesn’t actually generate much revenue for a nation. It’s primarily a policy tool And all too easily forgotten is the consumer who “pays” in many ways. Most commonly, by paying the higher cost due to the tariff. But he also “pays” when a good becomes unaffordable or not available at any price.

Exactly. The primary fear is the tariffs will work. “Work” is doing lots of, well, work there since reindustrialization would be a long process and might fail, but the possibility of success is what rattled the sub-Clouds. I can see them working, actually, beyond forcing markets open.

“If you think about it, life right now in the US is still the best in history, even as upside down as it is.”Astute observation. Despite all the lunacy of the culture, our civilization continues to function exceptionally well. I think we have far too much media. Wackiness and tumult sell better in a media environment than do factors of stability. Thus, the more media one consumes, the more one tends to buy into the illusion that things are especially screwed up today, like they never have been before. The reality is that the human race has always been a massive shit show. But during, say, the 1800s, people weren’t using phones to record the insanity and then broadcast it to the masses. With that in mind, I salute Zman for quitting Twitter. The things we avoid are often more important than the things we consume.

“If you think about it, life right now in the US is still the best in history, even as upside down as it is.” Depends where you live and how old you are. Also, not sure it’s better than living in other parts of the West or Japan,South korea etc.

“If you think about it, life right now in the US is still the best in history”This is probably true for upper middle-class and above, but for all below that line this is not the case. In the 90s, as a recent college grad, I had no trouble buying a tolerable fixer-upper starter home on pay that was pretty pathetic. At the same time I also paid off my college debt in short order, because it was vastly cheaper to go to a state school than it is now. Getting in as a patient in a white male doctor’s medical practice was easy. Used cars were plentiful and functional and no longer rusted out like when I was a kid. Food – amazingly cheap in hindsight. Bacon and hamburger meat used to be junk meat for poors, thus affordable. Admittedly, women were already terrible, but slightly less unsightly/unhealthy than now.Add in the spiritual wasteland this place has become, with its constant assault on every form of decency, and for ‘average’ people (and below) this country is worse than some of the third world. No wonder the ‘soma’ of the electronic world is so effective. No wonder birth rates are in the toilet and dropping. Many young people today will never experience the optimism I enjoyed starting adult life in the 90s. You need money to buy your way out of ‘normal’ life.

life right now in the US is still the best in historyTrue in part, but it comes down to who/whom and to some extent where, doesn’t it? Someone under forty who has no prospect ever of owning a home, young white males are targeted for discrimination and have no good future job prospects, you get the picture. But, yes, most still have unprecedented financial comfort. This allows for all manners of fuckery and madness without pushback. That is going away, though, and once gone all bets are off. I actually suspect long run the tariff business will push off a day of economic reckoning, but it is still not going away. And as Ostei pointed out, the aesthetics are worse now than ever. Granted, you cannot eat aesthetics but you don’t have much appetite amid the ugliness.

Broadly on the same topic is what Prof. Betz speaks of. He thinks the UK is sliding to civil war or similar societal crisis as reported on Derb’s show last week. I was a bit started to see his name mentioned in this opinion article in 4/3Telegraph(a major UK “paper”). The US isn’t the UK of course, But many of the topics you discuss in your post are found in Betz’s interviews. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/03/civil-war-is-coming-to-britain/

Looking around at the current state of things, I completely understand why lots of old men prefer the company of dogs to people…

“So much for the ideathat voting is a fundamental freedom, or that it protects freedom.’True, but an argument to that conclusion is a fundamental sophistry of “our democracy”. If you accept the argument and its conclusion, you are much less likely to ask potentially confusing questions about how democrats could have established democracy democratically.“The more democratic,…the larger and more rapacious it has become.”According to an old cliché, usu. attributed to JQ Adams, I think, every democracy wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. A better cliché would hold that every democracy wastes, exhausts, and murders the people in whose name it’s imposed. A corollary is that the antisemites are right to notice that the remnants of ancient Israel are very fond of being disproportionately influential upon every Western democracy, and that those remants promote feminism to our females and, to our men and boys, porn and sportsballs and pop music and movies and…

Even if voting functioned as promised, it is completely useless. The managerial class simply is not interested on our opinion on any subject. “Democracy” simply means rule by the managerial class. No matter what we vote for or tell pollsters or letters we write to the editor, we get “more of the same” Some study came out a couple years ago which found that the more public wanted something, the less likely the elite were to implement it, but that the elite always got what it wants. Voting is to government what commercials are to products. It’s nothing more than public relations. “Do you want change? Vote harder!!!”

The only thing that matters in voting is influencing masses of voters using propaganda. If you can move 10,100,1000,… voters using persuasion based on costly means like ads, emails, but mostly manipulating a news source that people follow you can take the voting day off and go to the beach.At the end the election is won by the machine with more persuasive power. InfoWars is a great word for what our political environment is.The white pill is progressives/warmongers have the most expensive and sophisticated machine and they still need to cheat. The real war is the war for the minds if cheating is limited. Immunizing people’s minds with good morals so their vote is less easy to buy or morally robbed with sob stories is important.Black pill is Left Coast states squandering wealth in creating a parasite underclass to undermine conservative citizens.So at the end I agree demoncrazy is fake and gay. But under the rules of the existing game the play is to try to influence a many as possible and hopefully vaccinate enough people with good morals. But the rules need to be changed. Back to 1788 electoral process (Washington/Adams ’88 with the same rules to qualify as a voter, imagine it, is easy if you try!!!).

Modern democracy is really a mobocracy. It is the problem Plato talked about when it comes do democracies, “as soon as people realize they can vote themselves a raise…they will and the gig is up”. The idea of good honest men running a government is a valid idea. If only a financial supporter of the government was allowed to vote it would hopefully encourage a more honest and sane system. That seemed to be the intention of the Jefferson and the rest of the mob at the time. What we have now is shit. IMHO.

The Jewish professor leaving continued the leftist white and Jewish streak of leaving to go to a historically white country to flee white racism.

That post was a real shot in the arm, miforest. Thanks a million!

Yes, the panopticon is a dismal prospect, but there are always counter-currents:(1) Passive or active resistance. There are always ways to game systems. London’s ULEZ cameras are constantly being vandalized, for instance. Will CBDC record every transaction? Maybe. But how will they know that the dozen eggs “I” bought were actually traded to my neighbor as payment for some off-the-books good or service? Is all cash outlawed? Perhaps. But no government anywhere has ever stamped out black (free) markets. The underground may trade in gold or silver coins, packs of cigarettes, or what-have-you, but freedom doesn’t die easily.(2) The inherent weaknesses of any centralized system. The more automated, the more the risk of a failure somewhere. Sloppy design, maintenance and operation take their toll, whether in equipment breakdowns or hundreds of people dying when two aircraft collide due to someone’s screw-up. A single (admittedly large) unit fails at a London power substation leading to a spectacular fire and forcing Europe’s busiest airport out of service for nearly a full day. Note that such incidents could be “helped along” by deliberate intent but tat falls under (1). Unless we’ve gone to total repression, when major systems screw up, they will inevitably cause disruption or even serious harms to the populace, who will complain and, with modern media, widely publicize the failings.For every measure, there is a counter-measure.

best of luck , enjoy the farm.

For a while I was following the war in Ukraine very closely, watching the Military Summary youtube channel. Every day the Russians would seize a few more blocks of rubble in some bombed-out village and the narrator would promise that a major breakthrough was about to happen. But it never did, only the same creeping grind. Eventually I stopped watching the daily video updates and checked in only once a week or so to find that nothing much had changed. Now I don’t even bother with the videos, instead I take a quick look at the maps once a month or so and it’s enough to tell me where things stand there.I’m gradually pulling back from politics and “the news” in much the same way.As for the stock market, for many years now I’ve preferred to go to stockcharts.com or similar site and use weekly bars and relative strength indicators to tell me when the long term trends are looking toppy or bottoming out. Again, not worth stressing out on a daily basis.The weather’s warming up and it’s time to start thinking about getting the tomato starts out into the garden. I find the pace of that sort of thing much more congenial.

mephitic drek; excellent work my friend.

the perfect genetic and environmental storm of “liberalism” is coming to a head.

And that’s to say nothing of mental health, which, I suspect, has never been worse.

Ha. May have to slap that one on the bumper of my Malibu…

I would refer you to “Belling the Cat.”

Best guess in 1979 was 13 billionaires. In 2024 Forbes listed, 813 billionaires. This is in line with the “great divergence” in American wealth. Middle class income remained flat, arguably losing to inflation. Wealth in the hands of the upper quintile—really upper 10%—soared exponentially.Aside. Tucker had the new Sec of Treasury on his show. When asked about tariffs and stock market decline said this (paraphrase): ‘The stock market reflects the very wealthy’s interests. 88% of the stock market is owned by the top 10% of the population. The next 40% own the remaining 12%. It’s the bottom half of the country that suffers the worse in the current economic condition. They can only sell their labor to survive. Trump aims to correct this situation.’Truer words never were spoken.

They are kakistocrats, i.e. the worst possible rulers. More generically, they are vermin, filth, intestinal parasites, that sort of thing.

Mayorkas First!!!!

“Hang the right people”:Sadly, that is precisely why in unstable societies it is the custom to kidnap, ransom, sometimes torture and murder not only wealthy businessmen and politicians but also (alas) their relatively innocent family members. For extra anarchy, add assassinations of influentials to the mix, be he a local politician, judge, or even reporter that was writing something that pissed somebody off.As with a great many things, we in “The West” take it for granted that we can (with nearly if not 100% assurance of security) travel from one city to another without being waylaid, or even walk around our city without being assaulted or robbed. I assure you that such are exceptional whether by the standards of history or even what is the norm in most parts of the world!A society is healthy to the extent that such stuff happens rarely, if at all. But even here, we’re not immune, as Luigi showed just a few months ago.Sadly, if Betz and others are correct, such anarchy is what we are inevitably heading for.

No one here thinks a 70s liberal puke is admirable. This doesn’t mean he didn’t say apt things sometimes. Heck, check out his piece of public education.

Like everyone else, I get suggestions from Spotify of what music I might like. Some of it I do end up liking, and save to my playlists. Much of it by artists I never heard of before. If this music was AI generated, and I liked it enough, I’d save it to my playlists just the same. So I guess the question is how much money is in that for the creator, and if it’s worth the trouble.

Why wait for Heaven to move when the Interdragnet is waiting for you search for the string ‘video transcription’?

I foresee just one of what would likely be sundry problems with AI generated entertainment, audio or video.Consider that a large fraction of the normal “text” on today’s Internet is AI generated to varying degrees. Some is easily detected by errors of grammar, context, etc. But some is skillful and even deceptive, as anyone who’ used Grok or a similar AI could attest.Problem: many of the current so-called large language models are “trained” on stuff scraped from the Internet. There’s probably little or no quality control, thus the ancient rule of computer science rears its ugly head: “Garbage in, garbage out.”Certainly steps could be taken to preen the training data, but only at great costs and expense.I fall to see why the same problems won’t happen with AI generated “music”.

AI can mimic that

Are you making “the conservative case for having typos”?