WesternInfidels

My door. Your butt. Don’t allow two objects to occupy the same space at the same time.

If there were no suckers, there would be no money, no winnings to motivate the insiders. It requires exploitation in order to “function.”

The next step will be stratifying the insiders. Big bettors, people who hear things and think they know things, suckered by a tiny cadre of the innermost circle. Maybe that’s happened already.

Eventually, of course, there will be motivation to spread falsehoods to change the odds in the insider’s favor. Or to outright direct history to take advantage of long odds.

Edit: Oops, my prediction may be behind the curve here. That was fast.

As early as 2016, some observers suggested that the president was a Russian pawn, an instrument to end American hegemony, to ruin America’s ability to project its influence into the world.

It’s funny how absolutely nothing that’s happened since then contradicts the idea.

Let us also recall his remarks concerning the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi :

“You’re mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” he said. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Like so many criticisms of others he offers, it would be perfectly applicable to himself.

“Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people.”

When we say every accusation is a confession, by golly, we mean every accusation.

I think a post like this would be more useful with some kind of geographic hint in the title:

[Hawaii, USA] Wahiawa dam failure expected! Haleiwa, Wahiawa: Get to higher ground now!

Of course, best of all would be to post it to a Hawaii community, but I don’t know if there is one.

I don’t think it’s strictly about “moral high ground.” If you’re willing to do anything to win, then if you do win, the winner will be a person who is willing to do anything.

“This technology” is, as used here, industrial scale lying which was made possible through industrial scale theft.

We can re-phrase the question: “Why is the right jumping headlong into industrial scale lies and crime, while the left loses ground on this front?”

An answer suggests itself to me.

She went to the place she wanted to go, with her guests and her security detail, and she got the food she wanted to eat. She had the chance to eat it.

Somehow even this write-up. which is not particularly sympathetic to her, is framing this as a kind of affront, a consequence, a humiliation. But she pretty much got what she came for, didn’t she? She’s facing no practical consequences at all. She lost a little face, maybe. This was a public declaration that people don’t like her, don’t like what priorities she’s chosen to serve.

Maybe we wouldn’t be in this pickle we’re in, if this kind of getting-through-to-the-isolated-elites happened more often. If we didn’t have isolated elites in the first place.

If you don’t like it, I’m sorry

…as Jesus himself so famously said, of course.

“So you’re saying that the agency will buy Americans’ location data,” Wyden said. “…doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the fourth amendment. It’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information.

“This is exhibit A for why Congress needs to pass our bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Government Surveillance Reform act,” Wyden said, referring to legislation he is working to pass to rein in surveillance.

While law enforcement must get a judge-authorized search warrant to obtain location data directly from telecom companies, government agencies have instead been able to buy such information from private data brokers.

I think Wyden is right, it does sound like an end run around the fourth amendment.

If the FBI (and probably other TLAs, domestic and foreign) are willing to do this now, why would a statute addressing the practice stop them?

I’m certainly not going to argue that things aren’t bad. I’m not going to tell anyone that they’ve got it better than they think they do.

But I believe I’ve seen the “Most Americans have less than $1,000 saved” factoid bandied about a lot in the headlines. It calls forth such a dismal picture, I’ve been a little skeptical.

The NIRS report (PDF) clarifies that this “less than $1,000 saved” figure is based on some pretty narrow definitions of “saved.” It’s about “working-age Americans (ages 21-64),” so it includes a lot of young people with (no surprise) little or no retirement savings yet. And it’s specifically about savings in employer-organized “defined contribution” (“DC”) savings plans, chief among which is the 401(k) plan.

If you’re a 22 year old college student with a part-time job and $5,000 in the bank, you’re likely to score $0 on this metric anyway, because you probably don’t have a 401(k) yet.

And if you’re a 50-year-old self-employed person who owns a home and a fat Roth IRA, you can still score $0 on this metric. The wealth you’ve stashed in owning a home or a business doesn’t show up here.

So this “less than $1,000 saved” figure isn’t really about how much wealth Americans have saved, it’s more about access to and participation in employer-organized “DC” savings plans, which have long been touted as a private-sector alternative to (and which have almost entirely replaced) pensions.

It would absolutely be better if that figure were higher. But it gets spread around (IMHO) because of it’s emotional impact, not because it’s a particularly clear way of understanding the real-world situation.

Sure sure, but as a fossil fuel executive, answer me this: What if we burned the wind turbines for warmth instead?