Government is now becoming business hostile [FB]

Everywhere I look I now see the government stepping in to make up charges against their corporate buddies and they are not playing around.  Someone has to pander to the withering public.  Facebook is now in the sights of the bureaucrats.  Also, suddenly legal drug dealing now seems to matter.  Pharma giants are having to pay tens of billions in fines for having profited from hundreds of billions in completely unnecessary opioid sales and their paid pushers are getting huge jail time.  Of course the fines are hand slaps and those going to jail are scapegoats but it does mean the activity will have the legs cut out of it going forward.   That's real corporate revenue that will collapse.  How will they buy back their shares if their revenue collapses?

None of this news is new, but now it's plastered across the headlines of the popular financial sites.  You can say its being done on purpose or you can say that the media is simply reflecting the mood of the herd.  But when take in conjunction with so many peaking charts it does suggest that the doors to the elevator shaft have opened for the stock markets. 

By the way, why would anyone want to crash the markets on purpose?  Well let's say the opposition is in power and he's slowly dismantling your power structure.  The one area where everyone says Trump is weak is in owning the stock market bubble as a core metric of the efficacy of his administration.  If there were a big market downturn going into Nov of next year, many say Trump would be 1 and done.
 
But I'm not so sure about that.  They tried to throw the kitchen sink at him 4-5 times but somehow this Teflon Don seems to absorb the impact and the counter punch is severe.  After all the leftist noise about Trump collusion with Russia, it all ended up looking like it was run by hillary as a smear job.  Even moderate dems can see that, as much as they wish it were not true.    And after all the noise about Ukraine, creepy uncle joe was caught on camera clearly admitting to withholding a loan guarantee of $1bn if Ukraine didn't fire the prosecutor going after the company who had put Biden's son on the board so that they could invoke Biden as protection.  Nothing happened to Trump but Biden's son had to step down.  There is a repeating pattern here.  History will refer to him as Teflon Trump, the Teflon "Don" president.  The one who had a ton of shit flung at him but none of it would stick.

Without the status quo there to prop things up, the big money could easily become afraid just like it did in 2008 and pull out quickly.  What guarantees and promises can the deep state pile on this time in order to restore confidence to the con?  Each time they need something, Trump will make them pay for it even if he needs it as well because they stand to lose more.  Also, the global response in 2009 is not going to happen this time.  Not with everyone in trade wars.  It's lack of global "coherency" (elite key word) that is the real risk of these trade wars, not the tariffs themselves.  The trade wars simply give Trump the political cover he would need to be very selective about what responses he takes.

Bottom line is that the mood of the herd continues to look very peaky and I suspect we will see rough waters ahead in the age of turbulence.

Crazy hillary is losing it.

hillary clinton (the witch whose name shall remain uncapitalized) is out saying in plain terms that two of the contenders for the democratic nomination for president are "Russian assets".    According to hillary, Tulsi Gabbard and Jill  Stein are both Russian "assets" which means American traitors.  Of course, anything that comes out of the mouth of a leftist like hillary is guaranteed to be the opposite of the truth for in truth hillary is the traitor and by the way she keeps trying to link everyone else to the Russians, I would wager that hillary is actually the Russian agent.

Well here we go, liberals are eating their own again.  Centrist dems like Gabbord are breaking away from leftist treachery in order to try to save their party and hillary is out in full leftist regalia trying to convince her weakening flock of sheeple that Gabbord is some kind of a sleeper agent.  This used to be the stuff one would expect from a "crazy" conspiracy theorist but now that it's hillary doing the talking I guess its somehow supposed to suddenly be credible.

Unfortunately for crooked hillary, fellow dems are not buying it.  Liberal Van Jones correctly recites history in that Gabbord used to follow clinton until she realized just how corrupt hillary is, at which time she broke free and supported Bernie Sanders.  You know, this video shows just what a has-been clinton now is.  In the past when someone would go up against the clintons, the commentary "they are playing a dangerous game" would apply to anti-clinton factions.  Now, however, Jones said something important - it's hillary, not Gabbord, who is now overplaying her hand.  Also importantly, Jones goes on to tell hillary she has nothing to prove, she was once "great" and accomplished many things.  But the message is clear now: shut up old lady, you are sounding crazy.  What's next, hoarding and collecting cats?

hillary clinton is a bitter old has-been witch who is now staring her own mortality in the face and struggling to remain relevant.  Nobody of any intellect is listening to her anymore.  I often wonder if the real reason the G_d made humans mortal is so that infections like hillary clinton cannot last forever.  The worst they can do is screw things up for a while before they eventually wither and die.  Unfortunately, all of us are subject to the same fate.  But if I think about it honestly, it's probably a very fair trade off because if people like her would be allowed to rule forever then everyone else would eventually be enslaved because while you and I are working to add value, parasites don't have to.  They survive by enslaving the rest of us and stealing from our productivity.

Prager.u is producing killer youtube ads

I think everyone has a pretty good sense for the truth found in the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The question is, how do some people end up getting absolute power?  How can the herd fall for the BS of megalomaniacs over and over again?  As an engineer I have thought about this quite a bit, and I think the answer lies in adaptation.

I think most people are born inherently good but that life experience teaches them that they can sometimes get ahead by standing on the shoulders, or faces if needed, of others.  If you walk up to most young people and say, hey, let's go do some heinous shit, 95% will tell you to get away from them and call you an a-hole.

Megalomaniacs know this.  So they never lead with evil.  Instead, they lead with something that sounds good and then over time they change it by degree.  The frogs who have been following them slowly heat up in the pot, never really noticing that the fundamental good thing they once believed in is all but gone from what they are currently doing.  But momentum is a powerful thing in a herding species and it's really, really hard to stand back and evaluate everything from scratch once the herd is moving in a given direction.

Once the herd is moving, collectivism, which I believe is a form of energy conservation similar to compression in software engineering, takes over.   Nobody stops to re-evaluate the series of events that have taken place that got them from start to present because that takes not only a lot of time but also a lot of deep thinking.  Instead, everything going forward is relative to the present.  So if someone can slowly establish a status quo without being called out as having co-opted herd think, that status quo becomes the norm by which all future actions are measured instead of going back to the original intention of a thing.  In this way, con men from either the extreme left OR the extreme right to use our own humanity, our own human nature against us like a blunt weapon.

Campaign  promises made by parasitic con men (and women) are a good example of this.  Andrew Yang and Pocahontas Warren sell themselves by promising forgiveness of past debts (like student debt), universal basic income and free health care (i.e. forgiveness of future debts).  Of course these are ridiculous ideas from an economic standpoint which anyone except a child can see will not work.  All of this crap hinges on using the power of the state to steal from someone in order to bribe votes from someone else because programs must be paid for somehow and government has no wealth of its own.  Anything it spends must be taken from the herd via one of three means:

- borrowing from others (with the eventual goal of defaulting)

- overt taxation (confiscatory taxation of the rich)
- covert taxation (inflation)

None of these ever work out well for morons who fall for their allure. 

- If you borrow today then you either have to pay back tomorrow or you default.  If you pay back then all you are doing is pulling in tomorrow's consumption into today.  When tomorrow comes you will simply have that much less.  If you default then that revenue stream goes away.  So this tactic is not sustainable over the long term and it always devolves into debt monetization which is the sneaky tax.

- If you institute overt, confiscatory taxation of the rich, all you do is send the message to them to move elsewhere.  Peter Schiff, who is said to have a net worth of about $70 million, said goodbye to affluent Connecticut a couple years ago and moved to Puerto Rico where taxation is more favorable.  While not uber-rich, Schiff got out while the getting was good.   Mike Mish Shedlock has indicated he is moving out of Illinois next year in order to avoid upward spiraling taxes of the upper middle class in order to pay public pensions.  Shedlock isn't rich.  He's upper middle class.  He's proof that leftist schemes to tax the rich in order to pad the pockets of their supporters cannot and do not stop with the rich because the rich just leave.  They have the wherewithal to relocate very easily.  It's called capital flight.  Shedlock is not rich so it is taking him longer to get out and he has been threatening to do so for the last 4 years.  But now he's finally ready and so he will leave as well.

- if you institute covert taxation via the printing press, anyone who uses the currency experiences loss of buying power over time.  This always hits the poor the first and the worst.  The reason is that rich have assets and poor do not.  Asset prices rise in the presence of inflation, thus offsetting the loss of purchasing power of the currency.  The left says they are doing all this to help the weak and impoverished and minorities, etc. but those are the people who are really getting screwed in this deal. 

Even people who are just middle to upper middle class like myself are maneuvering to avoid what we know is coming.  All my retirement wealth is in precious metals and within 2 years I will be leaving Texas (and high property taxes) for the Bahamas (zero property taxes) where I will live on an ocean canal with direct access to some of the most pristine and beautiful and productive waters on the planet.  No matter what happens, I will never go hungry because the ocean will provide.  Even if there is no gasoline to run my 42' fishing yacht I can walk to the beach in 10 minutes with my fishing pole and catch food anytime.  Or I can go snorkeling off the beach with a spear.  Or I can kayak out into deeper water and drop a line.

I think Andrew and Pocahontas know all of this as well.  If either gets elected they will make some token effort at implementing their stupid "ideas" (con games) but will then branch off into something else.  Over time they will be doing things that are completely unrelated to what they promised in their campaigns and their only goal will be to remain in power.

Prager.u is a conservative group which has formed, according to their website) in order to re-ignite Judeo-Christian values.  They have been buying a ton of Youtube ad space of late and putting out some really good 5 minute videos that teach real conservative values about money, politics, society, etc.  In this recent release they point out how liberalism and progressive-ism used to mean one thing but now the actions of those who call themselves progressive liberals fly in the face of their stated core beliefs.  It often manifests as the leftist tactic of "do as I say, not as I do, rules aren't for me 'cause we made them for you".

Prager.u is just another example, and quite a good one IMO, of how the conservative wave is re-establishing itself here in the USA.  In the link to the recent video release you will note that the speaker (Dave Ruben) identifies himself as a "married gay man".  While I think he is misguided in that, I fully support is right to make that decision.  In fact, he seems like a very likeable and intelligent guy.  Importantly, he does not think that being gay should afford him special privilege in directing the lives of other people.  He states the obvious, if someone doesn't want to serve him because he's gay, go elsewhere.  Duh.

Ruben is a good example of what I mean when I refer to "centrist gays" and there are similar examples of "centrist dems" who do not happen to be gay. There are a ton of them who are breaking away from the leftist movement, "walking away" from the left as it were.  Rubin's video is even titled, "why I left the left".  One day, he suddenly saw or heard something which was a deal breaker.  Crazy leftists crossed some line of sanity with him and they could not convince him to cross that Rubicon with them. 

I think millions are in the same boat and I think that is why the political left is now in all out war with anyone who opposes them over control of government.  They sense that they are losing control.  They feel like they are drowning as in fact they are.  But with each new conspiracy theory they look more and more desperate and more insane.  This, when combined with new communications like those from Prager.u which tell people to step out and look at the big picture instead of herding with the herd is another huge nail in the coffin of radical leftism in the US and in the world.  The herd is simply tired of stuff that doesn't work.  Too many leftist promises are now being exposed for what they always were: lies of a con man.

Will the email server be hillary's Waterloo?

NBC reports that the internal investigation hillary's use of an illegal email server targets 38 people for security violations related to the use of that server.  The individuals are known but so far not outed.  They will be.  And several if not all of them will be subject to criminal punishment. The laws governing unauthorized handling of classified materials clearly provide for jail time regardless of rank.  So it is only common sense to believe that some if not all of those 38 are now at risk of being sent to jail.  And if there is one thing I know for sure, liberals will eat their own when faced with jail time.  This is a real threat to hillary.  38 people is just too many to have accidents or to go missing.  At least 10-20% of them are likely to know things that could be very damaging to her but which they could leverage into a get out of jail free card.

It will be very interesting to see where this takes us but keep in mind that hillary committed these crimes years ago.  So we are really not talking about new evidence here, simply the new will to process and prosecute the old, existing evidence. This is, in itself, evidence that the liberal powers within government that have been protecting hillary from prosecution.

Brace for impact

Once liberal policies catch up to a society the result is most generally rising prices without rising wages.  Call it inflation if you like.  Its proof that the root cause of all these issues really is that we have accepted fake Mammon Money as if it were real money.  The latest to see problems is Santiago Chile.  The same liberals who pushed for "progressive" policies are now angry that costs are rising on items that are not optional but are rather required consumption items in their lives.

I fear that once rising prices are felt in the US and many people who used to be middle class are out of work and desperate that we will see something similar if not worse in the US. You see, liberals think they are owed a living.  That's why so many people listen to the likes of Andrew Yang and Pocahontas Warren - they keep promising to give people free money as if it were manna from above.  Conservatives who have worked hard, saved food and money for the eventual hard times, and of course are armed and proficient are not going to want to be the punching bag when the liberals finally get the wake up call about the collapse of the Global Debt Ponzi.

I don't know when it will come but I've always said it will come sooner than most people think.  But now we have Ray Dalio out saying that we have already begun the great sag which he compares in many ways to the 1930s.  I hope people are taking the time to prepare.  It's coming.

Mexico's "El Chapo" proves might makes right.

Mexico government forces skirmished today with fighters from the ranks of the "El Chapo" drug cartel, which is essentially a parallel government operating in Mexico.  You can read the details here but I want to focus on this as a proof point of my long standing assertion that the ability to defend oneself is 9/10th of the law.  In this particular case, government forces identified and arrested the son of jailed Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.  They thought they were pretty slick until forces working for El Chapo staged an armed response in which several men were left dead.

What did the government do?  In a word, it caved.  After seeing just how stupid it was of them to put that stick in the hornet's nest they actually released the son of El Chapo ("shorty"), unharmed.  And so there you have it.  Governments don't like to mess with those who can defend themselves.  They like to send 15 armed men in the dead of to capture or kill 1 or 2 sleeping targets.  You want to know why Jong Kim Un routinely gives US authorities the middle finger while laughing?  The reason is that they have the credible threat of self defense in two forms:

1) if US attacks N Korea under any guise, China will help defend it.  It N. Korea starts the conflict China says it will not be able to help (future thought: be on the look out for some kind of assault on the US ostensibly done by N Korea but actually paid for by US oligarchs... the US loves its false flag operations as prelude to war).
2) nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.

So all you have to do is prove you are a bad enough threat and you can essentially declare yourself a sovereign nation.  And as long as you are not bluffing it will be true.  Since there is no way to match the machinery and manpower of a traditional sovereign, the next group to accomplish independence will have to approach the issue of freedom through force deterrence in a new and novel way.

With that said, be it known that technology is a force multiplier.  Guns are a technology which is why they are a force multiplier.  But other technologies can be even more effective at multiplying force.

The Bible tells us that the meek will inherit the Earth.

My observation is that the geeks will inherit the Earth.

All of a sudden the airlines want to be less dickish...

As mentioned before, my airlines indicator has tripped.  Normally dickish airlines who put in all kinds of shitty rules that require constant consumption in order to maintain status and to keep frequent flier miles are all changing their tune.  Somehow it used to be OK to have your miles expire unless you spent money on flights each year, but now that business is slowing way down, all of a sudden they want to act like keeping frequent flier points is a human right or something.

Yup, we the airlines now suddenly have concluded that the points you earned by sitting in our ridiculously small punishment seats and waiting in our abusive lines really should be yours to keep forever.  At least we think that should be the case beginning Oct 17th.  Before that we think that business was so good that we didn't give a flying fuck what you thought.  We took your miles like it was nothing and unless you had double-uber-platinum-globetrotter status it meant pretty much nothing in practical reality.  Award travel was a joke, never available for you who only have gold status or less.  We're sorry, really.  No, really, we are sorry!!  Please fly more often because, really, really this time, we have learned the error of our ways.

Right up until the next time business picks up again...