Loading ...Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him. (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good…) A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Mr. Copper – I don’t entirely agree
‘Comment: Nobody need job skills in the USA to raise a wife and 5 kids in the 1950s’
Many in that era were only one generation off the farm , if that . They had logic ( from fixing things that had stopped working , but were repairable ), a work ethic ( from having assigned tasks at home or on the farm , and maybe a job delivering newspapers either before school , or after , or had to milk the cows both morning and evening ) , etc. Those are employable job skills which do not require a degree . It was also an era just a decade after the devastation of the great depression . Virtually everyone had witnessed the ravages of joblessness and hunger , and CEOs often had a virtue called compassion or empathy . Many of them had come up through the ranks , not from the Harvard School of Business , and human values were as important as profits to many of them .
goldielocks @ 17:02
No offence to you goldilocks, I like you. But I can’t believe I read that whole stupid thing, looking for a one piece of valuable info. The author knows nothing about what happened how or when. Just a whole list of symptoms or results of what already happened. For example.
Part: “Our country is a powder keg waiting for a spark, the immigration solutions are sparks. So is our debt. Spending for entitlements is creating financial disaster for our future, just try fixing it.”
Comment: Old news this already happened in 2008.
Part: “They dont have job skills and if they were employable we have no jobs to teach them. Our workforce cannot absorb them.”
Comment: Nobody need job skills in the USA to raise a wife and 5 kids in the 1950s
“Can you honestly tell yourself we can drastically reduce entitlements,”
Comment: Most of the entitlements I see are foreign aid, space and defense, big pharma, retail foreign autos and real estate sales with low rates. etc
Part: “If we are to avoid cultural and financial disaster the solutions must come quickly or we pass a point of no return we could not recover from.”
Comment: Geez, we already have cultural and financial disaster. The person that wrote that is an idiot. No mention of globalization, currency manipulation, trade and budget deficits.
Obviously the author thinks the USA in an independent nation.
Maya @ 15:07
Good on you for persisting to find a place to view the eclipse!
The weather will truly be a problem for viewing here as geo-engineering has caused us to have ten days to two weeks of rain and T-storms, then a two or three day break of gorgeous weather, as we’ve had the past few days, and now the ten day forecast is for T-storms every day. I sure hope we don’t miss viewing this event. Our little town is expecting 10,000 folks to show up, you won’t catch me anywhere near town for a few days before and a few days after.
Buygold 17:54
Your not alone with your opinion on that. No one wants to take the lead on behalf of the US unless there is something in it for them. Trump is acting on behalf of the citizens and GOP proving itself as useless as ever. Time for all the fake GOP to go.
The best, truest article I’ve ever seen on ZH – Probably my internet time needs to be examined
What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.
The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet.
…
More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills.
Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.
Goldie
There is no saving America in the current corrupt system. Trump’s election proved that there is only one party – the globalist party.
If we want to save America we need to burn down D.C. – there’s is no other solution IMHO
Saving America has become a dangerous job.
Everyone says they want America to be fixed. Who knows what that means and has the guts to see it through?
Very few voters comprehend the mess we are really in or how it came to be, you can tell that just by listening to them. How can they hire the next leader to fix problems they themselves cannot see? I have a small nucleus of friends who understand where we are as a nation but they are vastly outnumbered by citizens who are fooled by politicians and their media cronies.
The misled majority believe we can elect a new President and fix everything if we make the right choice. They believe their candidate can fix their party, the system and the world.
No new President can unite America for solutions and the thinkers know it. Back in 2008 when everyone was saying it was our last chance for peaceful solutions they were right, then we blew it. The clowns in Team GOP blew it by nominating McCain and Democrats blew it by electing Obama. Our fate was sealed when the GOP proved they did not have the patriotic guts to force Obama out of office. Over the past 8 years we have finished our journey to the land of No Good Way Back. There are too many severely divided and angry factions to unite us behind effective solutions.
Consider our major problems and who the solutions affect and you will see what I mean. Start with illegal immigration, a current hot-button issue. Both sides caused it, both let it ferment and now we have so many here the problem is saturating every corner of our country. They have been dispersed into many of our smallest rural towns and now control enclaves of all major cities. They will not quietly accept forced removal and the border wall it would take to keep them from coming back. They will react with violence to the solutions. Our government is not qualified to respond to the upheaval that would result. From the top down the guts and leadership skills are not there. If and when the illegals did resort to violence it would become so widespread all the other opportunists would join in taking advantage of the mess.
Our country is a powder keg waiting for a spark, the immigration solutions are sparks. So is our debt. Spending for entitlements is creating financial disaster for our future, just try fixing it. We have entire families who have lived off government benefits for 3 generations. We have tens of millions of citizens coast to coast with no ambition or useful skills living off what is taken from our workers and borrowed from our future. From free government health care to utility subsidies, free or reduced housing and free food these systems are suffering from widespread abuse neither party has the political courage to repair. The dependency is so entrenched that if we try to fix it now to save the future for our kids the recipients depending on the benefits will react violently from sea to sea. What is their option? They dont have job skills and if they were employable we have no jobs to teach them. Our workforce cannot absorb them.
Drug related crimes and violence are costing us lives and money but what happens if we fix it? This would require getting serious about street gangs along with border controls. Go after street gangs and you are a racist and we know where that leads. Google Baltimore or Ferguson if you forgot. Those gangs are heavily armed and embedded in our cities; tell me how you fix that peacefully, especially while ending the entitlement abuses all their babymamas rely on. The drug gang bangers in our cities are mostly housed and fed through our entitlement systems living among the young women in projects or housing funded by taxpayers. Remove drugs imports and they will have to turn to other crimes. Force them out of government food and housing and they will react. The cops charged with enforcing laws based on real solutions become targets in ground wars throughout every metro area. We do not have the resources to put down the unrest that would result from any of these problems getting fixed.
Can you honestly tell yourself we can drastically reduce entitlements, drug gang crime or saturation by illegals and do it without violent response? How about fixing all 3? This is why the Park Service tells us not to feed the bears, they get upset when you stop.
If we are to avoid cultural and financial disaster the solutions must come quickly or we pass a point of no return we could not recover from. How do we fare while implementing solutions? We need drastic cuts and enforcement of sensible laws but those who actively resist are a larger force than the civil authorities who would be sent to contain them. We dont even know how far the bad guys would go to make their point but we know they would have help.
Every state now has multiple FBI investigations going on as they try to unravel the web of Islamic sleeper cells no one has a good inventory of. What will these nuts do as unrest develops opportunities for them to strike? What would unfriendly nations do to assist resident bad guys if multiple zones of conflict emerged in America? Foreign hackers have proven they can disrupt everything from our power grids to our communication and banking systems. When American law enforcement has their hands full with internal problems the time is ripe for the hackers to get busy.
If the Democrats and socialists win in November we are pretty much finished as America the Republic. We know this because we have already learned conservatives will quietly sit by whining and making excuses for their lack of activism. What the socialists want, they get and conservatives sit around doing nothing but waiting on distant magical elections that never come from them.
If the GOP produces a winner beware. We get Trump, who may or may not follow through on solutions he understands, but would require immense fortitude to achieve. Or maybe we get a Cruz, Ryan or some other establishment hack from within our political gestation chamber that has no record of accomplishment or tested leadership skills. Only a fool would think such a person could or would bring real solutions then successfully preside over the ensuing melee. Guys like Cruz and Ryan are already paid for by donors who like things just the way they are.
Like we said in 2008, that was our last chance to save America peacefully, maybe then it was already too late. Today definitely is. So now we see the Dem/socialist players demanding more from a nation that cannot afford what was already given. On the other hand we have the GOP whose fans believe we have all the time in the world and if we get it wrong in November we just spend more decades trying to save the GOP so they can produce miracles eventually. Then we have Trump, the guy who does know how to fix things but whose solutions will not be well received.
All of this assumes we get past this summer and conduct a normal election in the fall followed by a peaceful transition of leadership.
I do not believe a Democrat loss will be accepted by them. Obama as President has created opportunities for bad actors and they all know time is running out. The division and vitriol now consuming the political discourse in America is already showing signs of becoming uncontrollable. The GOP has been backstabbing and eating their own for decades and now they are too divided to unite. If Trump wins the GOP will not force his agenda in Congress. No matter who is nominated many will refuse to vote for the party pick.
Democrats are suffering from the same internal collapse. The divisions are producing anger and unity will not be possible. The angry factions Democrats nurtured to take advantage of are growing into unmanageable Frankensteins turning on their creators. These mobs will be raising hell in both conventions.
Now what solutions do you want? I can be wrong, add a comment and explain how it will all go well. When you go too far down the wrong path turning back can mean climbing uphill. Yes, there are solutions for the mess voters allowed to develop. How many Americans are prepared to see it through? America first became great after being forced to rise up and do the right thing when it was their time to do so. The cycle repeats and our nation is once again at risk. We will find out if Americans can still do it. Time will tell, people will have to be forced to take care of business just as other great generations were. We cannot endure forever on the acts of others and soon we will decide if we will selflessly commit to our nation as others did when it was their turn. Someone will win and someone must lose but the division we have now is too volatile to persist. The cycle has come to our turn. The bad guys will never sit quietly if a win brings an outsider with a chance to start fixing America. I hope we are ready for what will surely follow.
Moggy
It’s always easy fun when the eclipse ‘comes to you’. I hope you have good weather… that’s always the spoiler. In 1991 we had near solid overcast over Hawaii island… almost threatened to engulf the observatories at 14,000 ft. We camped overnight on the south desert areas of the island, betting on the clearest probabilities. It rained all night. Before dawn we decided to move on to the west side of the island and miraculously found a small clear spot in the lee side of Mauna Loa. The mountain was scraping a hole in the clouds as they passed by, and that is where we saw the eclipse.
Friends in the northern states are planning a road trip to Missouri to see totality again… he was with us in Hawaii in 1991. Eclipse addicts. Unfortunately, travel to the mainland is not in the budget for me.
so don’t buy VXx–there will never be another crash
These two idiots Paul and Bridgen need to do a little research on what happened August 24, 2015…
Thats the day the unaudited Federal Reserve’s covert Plunge Protection Team outed themselves and reversed a -500 point drop in the DOW in just 15 minutes. It was absolutely insane. That’s how powerful the PPT are. I will never forget that day. It proved to me the markets have all been nationalized by the Fed.
When you are unaudited, unregulated, and can create electronic money to buy stocks with, you are basically God of these financial markets. That’s why there will never be another major crash. Even Yellen said so. She knows how powerful the PPT are. The stock and bond markets are too precious for the Fed. It’s their babies and they will defend them no matter what. The free market essentially died in 2008.
*Take notes Peter Schiff and Andy Hoffman. We know you two perma-doomers are lurking here..
MADDOG=fyi
Remember back in 2007 when everybody said, “There’s no way the Fed will start buying assets willy-nilly! That’s outside the scope of their charter! UNPOSSIBLE!”
Then over the next decade the Fed balance sheet proceeded to swell by $4 Trillion.
Fast-forward to 2017. “There’s no way the Fed can maintain this balance sheet! They HAVE to start unloading these assets! It’s just a matter of time! The alternative is UNPOSSIBLE!”
In fact there will be no unwind. Instead we will see another massive step-function increase in the Fed balance sheet. They will buy whatever they have to buy– bonds, stocks, hell…maybe even gold, if they absolutely have to. We know this because history tells us so:
2009: Massive spike up
2009 to 2011: Plateau
2011: 60-degree-slope ramp up
mid-2011 to 2013: Plateau
2013 to 2015: 60-degree slope ramp-up
2015 to 2017: Plateau
2017: Which will it be, a massive spike up, or another 60-degree-slope ramp-up into 2019?
Why not buy VXX one of these days? I am…
Visions Of Cataclysms”: Why Eric Peters Is Starting A Long-Vol Fund
Is the recent streak of record low volatility about to end?
As volatility declined, investors have had to sell even more of it to sustain sufficient profits. This selling reinforces the trend lower, which produces an illusion that legacy volatility shorts are less risky today than yesterday. Lower volatility thus begets lower volatility. And this also ensures that quantitative models reduce overall portfolio risk estimates, which allows (and in many cases forces) investors to buy more assets at prevailing prices. This in turn reduces volatility, reflexively. Naturally, the reverse is also true. Rising volatility begets rising volatility. And given the unprecedented volatility-selling in this cycle, I can imagine a historic reversal.
But the catalyst doesn’t really matter. What matters is recognizing that at this late stage, with implied volatility where it is, and asset valuations where they are, if you can imagine a tomorrow even modestly different from today, you must begin finding thoughtful ways to get long volatility
.While countless analysts, pundits and traders have previously talked their book (if not staked their reputation) on claims VIX is set for an imminent mean-reverting spike, so far that has not happened and in fact net spec positioning in the VIX just hit a record short print as of the latest CFTC week.
Buygold
Clif said silver will reach $600 eventually but never said when. He is not right 100% of the time but he is right often enough that I pay attention. He has been saying for a long time now that silver will be more valuable than gold and their rise will begin in August. I pegged mid-August in my post because that is when my horoscope indicates activity in the money department for me with transits.
Buygold @10:36
Clif High early on predicted a stunning rise in Bitcoin culminating around $4,000. Of course, the cynic in me recalls an old saying: “even a blind squirrel will find a nut, now and then”.
Swamp creature McMaster – must go
Moggy – OK then. Never heard him recommend Bitcoin because I don’t follow him other than when you post – I’ll take your word for it though. 🙂
Didn’t he say silver $200 or $600 or something by the end of 17′ or early 18′? Maybe it wasn’t him, didn’t he say silver double or so in July? Whatever, nobody gets pm’s right anyway.
Buygold…….Maya
@ Buygold: “Moggy – Clif High? I mean he’s a fun guy to listen to, sort of like Jim Willie and all the rest, but seriously as a forecaster? Not to be taken seriously.”
Tell that to the folks who heard him forecast about Bitcoin and bought it when it cost pennies.
@ Maya: The little town where I collect my mail will be graced with the eclipse path @ 2:36 p.m. EDT, so I’ll have a ringside seat…already have my eclipse goggles, already worked up a horoscope of the event in my area so I know where problems will arise and what I can do to offset them. Woo hoo!
Aug. 21 eclipse – Moggy
http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/states/GA.htm
Looks like Moggy will be on the edge of darkness for a brief time. If you want longer totality, go out east to the centerline at the northeastern tip of Georgia.
This will be an awesome eclipse for people across the whole country.
http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/path_through_the_US.htm
I witnessed the long duration totality that crossed Hawaii in 1991, and the memory still gives me shivers. The most awesome ‘special effect’ the local universe has to offer. 16 days and counting. Plan to see it if at all possible for you.