Prelude to the Apocalypse

[quash]

Amazon didn't turn a profit until 2013, the same year they won the bid on the contract for the CIA's cloud computing. Which has since expanded to all of the IC and is creeping its way into DOD. The same guy who owns the Washington Post is now the gatekeeper of national secrets.

Oh yeah, let's not forget how the FBI, which has more oversight than the CIA, recently admitted to leaking to the press to obtain FISA warrants.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08 ... rants.html

Better not leave your Prime house after Prime hours have ended, Prime citizen.

[quash]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... -companies

Remember, Russia is the biggest threat.

[Zen]

Of course, how and why people like Bezos are in the position they're in is where I differ not only with you, but the majority of the conservative circus, as well. I've gotta hand it to the CIA: they've gambled so much on people just not knowing or caring about anything they do that you'd think by now they would've been ousted. Clearly, the game is being rigged in their favor, and in the age where the instruments and methods of control are more obvious than ever, you'd have to be willingly blind to not see them.

Yeah no, I've spent my whole adult life/legal career being severely underwhelmed by the individuals in seats of power who are purported to be the grey eminences of our nation, especially those educated at the ivy league schools that staff the CIA. And for that reason (as well as Occam's Razor) I'm more inclined to believe the account of Legacy of Ashes.

Besides, it's not like monopolistic trusts based on private control of vital infrastructure haven't made individuals obscenely wealthy before the founding of the CIA.

And how the hell can anyone believe that a supergenius world-controlling cabal decided it's in the best interests of anyone to put pharaoh-like wealth in the hands of this guy?

I'm not convinced, that you're not convinced, re quash's point.
Perhaps you are disagreeing more with the notion that it is the CIA in specific, than the idea of orchestrated control, in general?

re. the Koch;
The poor fellow does not seem to be the full shilling.
What is truly hilarious about this vid, is the comment section, wherein scores of old socialists are all of a sudden embracing the concept of "Survival of the Fittest"

Hypocrisy, thy name is Socialism.


And now, gentlemen, to serious business. We have arrived at the Disco - "tekka"!

[Durandal]

Doesn't seem like convicted sex predator Kavanaugh is going to get ritually sacrificed in order to cast divine protection on all sexual assault victims anymore. Here's rolling the dice to see whether he'll pull off a Bill Clinton while he's at it...

[Mischief Maker]

Doesn't seem like convicted sex predator Kavanaugh is going to get ritually sacrificed in order to cast divine protection on all sexual assault victims anymore.

I thought for sure they were going to ritually sacrifice an innocent middle school teacher in order to cast divine protection on Kavanaugh by pinning his sexual assault on another classmate:



(technically they never really abandoned this "doppelganger theory" what with their final talking point being, "I believe she was sexually assaulted, just not by our guy.")

Hopefully when this Garrett guy sues the shit out of Ed Whelan for libel, his case doesn't go before a Trump appointee.

Here's rolling the dice to see whether he'll pull off a Bill Clinton while he's at it...

Considering Kavanaugh was the guy on the Starr commission who chose to ask Monika Lewinsky such legally relevant questions as, "how many times did the president ejaculate in your mouth? Where else did he ejaculate? When?" I'd wager Kavanaugh has already done a great deal of pulling off related to Bill Clinton.

[quash]

Convicted? By whom?

[Rob]

Saturday fun day.

[Durandal]

Convicted?

Convicted sex predator and human trafficker Kavanaugh, whose illicit dealings in his basement speakeasy have been public knowledge for quite some time.

[quash]

Again, I ask, by whom? A cursory search on the subject shows no such thing.

[gameoverDude]

Son of a bitch! That worthless trash Kavanaugh has just been confirmed. The vote was 50-48.
Susan Collins is a fucking traitor. Lisa Murkowski didn't help at all with her "present" vote.

Sure looks like someone can rape & get away with it... & even be a Supreme Court justice nevertheless. How messed up is that?
Well, does anyone else think a SC confirmation should require 2/3 supermajority? (I really think it should be the people's vote, but anyway...)

[trap15]

It used to be 60 votes until that slime McConnell got it changed to simple majority for Gorsuch. I would agree with 2/3 as well, anything's better than this.

[Zerst]

It used to be 60 votes until that slime McConnell got it changed to simple majority for Gorsuch. I would agree with 2/3 as well, anything's better than this.

That's the Republican way; get yours, then change the rules in your favor to keep the dividends rolling in.

[BryanM]

It used to be 60 votes until that slime McConnell got it changed to simple majority for Gorsuch. I would agree with 2/3 as well, anything's better than this.

A point that you guys need to remember is that the "60 votes" thing has always been an absolute load of bullshit. A complete lie. It has never been 60 votes, it will never be 60 votes. It has always been a simple majority to get something done, that's in the constitution. Until we change the number of states or the constitution, that's 50% and the vice president.

It was self imposed by the senate's rules. The rules are determined by a simple majority. Thus, a complete farce from beginning to end.

When democrats are in power, they voluntarily put this yoke on themselves so they don't have to do anything that helps normal people. Trust me, I am not kidding: if the democrats somehow won 70% of the senate despite all their intentional efforts to lose and keep the GOP viable, they'd pass a rule that required a supermajority that required 80%. "Uh uh, I want to help people but the rules (that I arbitrarily created) won't let me."

This is why they hate Sanders's guts: he puts them on point and forces them to to show where their true selves lie.

Don't get distracted by decorum and lies wrapped in lanyard procedural technobabble. They really could have done anything they wanted to in Obama's first two years. They bailed out the upper ownership of the banks, expanded the insurance industry (yay just what poor people always needed - more rents), moderately expanded Medicaid, and passed a modest stimulus bill that could have been more efficient. And the "military" (Lockheed Martin, Boeing) got their annual massive forever raises too. And no increase, not even a dollar, of the minimum wage. Democrats in congress got exactly what they wanted.

The last time the minimum wage was increased was in 2007 under Bush. You could say it was... the minimum democrats could offer to prevent a full blown revolution. If this year is a repeat of 2004, it's possible you'll get close to Hillary's $10.10 or whatever she was stumping for.

Which would be the most we could hope for from this democratic party, but don't be satisfied with 2020 being a repeat of 2008. It's impossible with the establishment bench they'll be offering. Only more Al Gores and John Kerrys.

The sooner we repeat 1932 the better.

Susan Collins is a fucking traitor.

How is she a traitor? She's not a warrior of justice out to slay vampires, nor does she pretend to be one. She's a part of the Bush sockpuppet faction, as opposed to the Clinton one. It's her employer.

Why does Joe Manchin, a pretend member of the pretend opposition party, get a pass while the vampire lady is somehow worth singling out? Why does Chuck Schumer, alleged leader of the democratic party get a pass?

These guys love that this is happening. You can't be a horrible turd and win elections without reactionary outrage.

It's impossible with the establishment bench they'll be offering.

Obama's masterful rhetoric is much more eloquent than Trump's. While they're both frauds, Trump goes the scattered shotgun approach: say everything and people will believe what they want to believe. Obama though, hoo boy. Every speech, paragraph one is full of vague lofty platitudes and buzzwords that make it sound like he agrees with the base. Then paragraph two, without fail, goes "but everything I just said is bullshit". So that the guys stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars into his pockets for "speeches" right now knew he wasn't being serious.

This one weird trick works so well because:

a) People believe what they want to believe. If there really was no opposition party to literal vampire squids, how dark and hopeless must things be? Who wants to live in a world without hope?

b) Nobody listens to anything past the first paragraph. Just like how nobody will read this part of this post, no one has ever heard the part of the speech where Obama quietly whispers we should give all our money to banks so they can get free cocaine and handjobs. They check out and change the channel long before then.

[quash]

Nice post, actually. Upboat.

For the record, I'm not that big a fan of Kavanaugh: he's a typical neocon and helped draft the Patriot Act. At the same time, I don't see any better viable alternatives, and the absolute shitshow that was thrown against him has to have given him a unique perspective on the Journalist Question, so maybe he won't be so bad after all?

[Domino]

I'm glad that the Kavanaugh circus is over for now. I listened to Sen Collins live while she stated she will confirm him. Her points were detailed, even if at times I don't 100% believe/agree with her. I swear with the rise of social media people will get even more partisan. Once Collins is gone, there goes the last of the Northern Republican Moderates. I would be shock if she runs again in 2020. Maine has shifted more left over the last few years due to Boston is exporting their liberals into South Maine (thanks to Boston's crazy housing cost), and the state stated to used the Best Choice Ballots (so multiple Democrats can run the same seat, and voters can pick multiple Democrats for the seat at once).

I have a perfect way for Democrats to rule the country: Export liberals from New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago to the rural states. Open up all the usual liberal places so the hipsters are willing to move. Uber easy to change these states in no time. Soros should pay these hipsters tons of money to do the jump.

[BryanM]

I swear to god the other day Kamala Harris said her strategy to beat Trump in 2020 was to "tell him to stop being so mean". The Jeb! plan.

What is the word for laughing heartily and crying in despair at the same time?

Once Collins is gone, there goes the last of the Northern Republican Moderates.

That's another hilarious farce in the system. Republican "Moderates" vote the republican line around 85% of the time. Democrat "Moderates" vote the republican line around 60% of the time. Of course on the big things that really matter, it's as close to 100% as possible.

It's ridiculous. Their opinion is whatever their donors' opinions are. If they seem to ever ultimately express a single independent, unique action, it's because their donors don't care or their vote won't matter.

The most I was hoping for from Bush 3.0 was we somehow wouldn't annihilate Iran. Stupid retarded me - "hope". Ha.

I have a perfect way for Democrats to rule the country: Export liberals from New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago to the rural states. Open up all the usual liberal places so the hipsters are willing to move. Uber easy to change these states in no time. Soros should pay these hipsters tons of money to do the jump.

The plan the Democrats have is to wait for people to age and die. They'll just became literal nazis though to suppress the base and keep the vote as close to 50/50 as possible. Unless we change them back to New Deal Democrats.

Though Colorado is extremely popular with young people in the computer field. It's ridiculous how many people I know that have settled down there. And it actually makes some sense, too! The field's always been dominated by the west - Texas and California. Large populations that can support a big talent pool. Colorado is kinda sort of in the middle and draws from both.

While the programmers in the east are mostly living in New York writing socially useless stock market bots. Not a lot of those kinds of jobs in Appalachia.

[Zen]

This one weird trick works so well because:

a) People believe what they want to believe. If there really was no opposition party to literal vampire squids, how dark and hopeless must things be?

Now you're talking sense.
There is no Democratic Party.There is no Republican Party.
There are just people. People at different emotional levels of development. People of different levels of cognitive ability.
And then there are the Predators, setting the herd against itself, while they feed.

Who wants to live in a world without hope?

ME!
Hope is for Poets and fools. Hope is the shit that is sold to those who are incapable of accepting reality. Hope feeds and perpetuates the misery of the world.
Dragging those of us who are hope-free, along with it.

The most I was hoping for from Bush 3.0 was we somehow wouldn't annihilate Iran.

Not going to happen.
Unlike, for example, the pretend Punch and Judy show between North Korea and South Korea /The Empire, it's quite possible that Iran is actually resisting.



P.S. Anyone affected by the lack of hope contained in this post, can call the in no way freephone number; "9001-takemymoney"
and for a strictly limited time, sale price offer, can be thoroughly serviced by the experts at: HopeDaddy@takemymoney.com.

[Rob]

I have a perfect way for Democrats to rule the country: Export liberals from New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago to the rural states.

Sounds like a hostile invasion, but don't they already do this when they turn their places to garbage and then instinctively vacate to a more conservative location? For instance, California to Idaho.

-California has eight of 10 most polluted U.S. cities
-TRUE: California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
-California Today: State’s Homeless Population Drives National Increase
-California ranks last in quality of life in new report

Anyone who could come out of that situation a proselytizing liberal needs to be sterilized and stripped of voting rights.

The plans I've seen from Twitter people so far: undo the purpose of the Senate by making it population based, create multiple new states for more liberal senators, abolish the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court. Basically, when their ideology is a loser with current population or current system just import infinite foreigners + mob rule until bark-eating fantasy land is achieved.

These people are dangerously stupid.

[Domino]

I have a perfect way for Democrats to rule the country: Export liberals from New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago to the rural states.

Sounds like a hostile invasion, but don't they already do this when they turn their places to garbage and then instinctively vacate to a more conservative location? For instance, California to Idaho.

-California has eight of 10 most polluted U.S. cities
-TRUE: California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
-California Today: State’s Homeless Population Drives National Increase
-California ranks last in quality of life in new report

Anyone who could come out of that situation a proselytizing liberal needs to be sterilized and stripped of voting rights.

The plans I've seen from Twitter people so far: undo the purpose of the Senate by making it population based, create multiple new states for more liberal senators, abolish the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court. Basically, when their ideology is a loser with current population or current system just import infinite foreigners + mob rule until bark-eating fantasy land is achieved.

These people are dangerously stupid.

Yes yes yes yes. Maybe they should act like New England Liberals, keep it up with the taxes but the area looks nice.

[Zen]

These people are dangerously stupid.

Or, perhaps, sociopathically destructive.

[Mischief Maker]

California has eight of 10 most polluted U.S. cities

California has this thing called the Rocky Mountain chain directly to the east of all its biggest cities that holds the smog in, preventing it from diffusing east.
One might even say these mountains are the REASON Californians are more progressive on the issue of air pollution than most.

-TRUE: California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living

Hence the need for a minimum wage hike.
Also the cost of living is really high in New York and California and other liberal centers in the US because so many people want to live there.

-California Today: State’s Homeless Population Drives National Increase

Homeless people can buy these things called "bus tickets" and travel from states with cold climates to warm ones, where it's safer to sleep without shelter.

-California ranks last in quality of life in new report

Based mostly on pollution. See: Rocky Mountains.

[BryanM]

Could you please ignore his posts. You've triggered me into repeating the same thing I've said here a million times.

We've talked about California a million times. The place is the agricultural center of the country, a desert transformed into a greenhouse through geo engineering. The reason it has a high amount of poverty is because it is a subservient region to the rest of the country. aka, the wealthy have a permanent underclass of illegal immigrants being paid less than minimum wage living there. Picking olives is comparable in damage to your body as coal mining is, and would need to be close to a $20 an hour job to get anyone who has a better alternative to actually do it.

Here's the satellite view of the area around Corcoran, the place where Charles Manson spent his later years in retirement. The green areas around the size of Rhode Island are grape vineyards. Grapes have to come from somewhere, things just don't come out of the sky. That somewhere is probably Corcoran.

As I've said a trillion million times and everyone already knows, the county I grew up in is the poorest county in the country. Poorer than the shit holes in Alabama. Poorer than the obliterated countrysides in West Virginia. That obviously doesn't mean the people in those regions are living excellent wonderful lives. It just means they can afford to go to Denny's once a month if they scrape and save and don't have anyone sick to take care of.

It's gross to see someone personally profiting from another region's exploitation to gloat about it. Might as well crow about how "funny" it is Haitian's get to eat literally dirt so you get a couple bucks off your jeans. (Or more realistically because we're not dumb enough to believe the savings gets passed on to the consumer: a dozen more cents in the owner's pockets per unit sold.) Go all the way to the bottom.

Hence the need for a minimum wage hike.

Hand harvesting is done by units picked, and is exempt from the minimum wage. Similar to how the slave labor on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and other gig work works. Additionally it's seasonal work - Olives at the end of summer, Oranges in the middle of winter. Only around 4 months of work available a year, that's just the nature of the job. (And a gigantic reason why white people and third generation on Mexican-USAians don't want to do it. What do you do in the off season? Go live in a shack in the mountains? Co-inhabit a one room apartment with 3 other dudes? Being homeless in LA is starting to sound like a better deal, isn't it?) Only foremen like my father have steady year round employment in the crop business.

There are no simplistic solutions to this issue. Subsidies are given out as a kind of welfare to mid western states where the entire job is done from start to finish by a guy in a tractor driving over a field a few times a year. Crops like wheat and corn. An easy political win for something that favors capital over labor. Not exactly a lot of senators out there excited to help out poor people. Especially in a state that's so on lock down they've got republican Dianne Feinstein winning as a "democrat".

Here's the 2016 election map for California btw:



And the Democrat's primary:



To pretend an enormous state like this is a monoculture is ridiculous. As dumb as pretending that California cities are any different from the hippy cities in Texas.

[Rob]

California has this thing called the Rocky Mountain chain directly to the east of all its biggest cities that holds the smog in, preventing it from diffusing east.

And God bless those mountains, says states to the east. Who could've ever foreseen that there was a large mountain range to the east before they let population explode out of control there? You'd think that they would now realize that they have enough people already and that we as a country maybe don't need an additional Los Angeles-sized dollop of new ones every few years. Or do you think pretend environmentalism is going to clean the air and filter the rivers of prescription medications, agrichemicals and human and animal waste flowing from these fungal urban centers as population doubles and doubles again? Chronic unthinking is how we (humans in general) get favelas, air unfit to breath and water unfit to drink. California's environmental movement (like the Sierra Club) used to understand the importance of population control as a critical component of environmental protection. They were paid to not understand.

Homeless people can buy these things called "bus tickets" and travel from states with cold climates to warm ones, where it's safer to sleep without shelter.

Next time I'm in Anchorage I'll go around to the homeless hubs and pass out flyers with the question "did you know California is warmer?" and a how-to on saving booze and heroin money for a bus ticket so we can finally be rid of them and their endless thieving. Stepping over frozen bodies gets to be a chore... Or more seriously:

A Los Angeles Times report on Yu’s findings offered further evidence that assumptions about good weather attracting the homeless to California were questionable. It noted that homeless authorities had found that three-quarters of the unsheltered homeless in Los Angeles County had homes before losing them and that nearly two-thirds had lived in the county for more than 20 years.

[Mischief Maker]

You've been busy hip-hooraying for Kavanaugh to get onto the Supreme Court, knowing full well his mission is to (effectively) end Roe vs. Wade, but now you're finger-wagging about population control?

And as someone who virtue-signals that they care about the environment, why are you giving California shit right now? Their state government is the best chance we have in this political climate of cutting any significant amount of carbon emissions with their statewide CAFE standards. You sure as hell ain't gonna see the Trump administration cutting carbon emissions.

And even after Trump's out, there's the very real risk that Kavanaugh will cast the deciding SCOTUS vote to declare emissions standards unconstitutional.

We got 12 years, tick-tock tick-tock.

[Domino]

And as someone who virtue-signals that they care about the environment, why are you giving California shit right now? Their state government is the best chance we have in this political climate of cutting any significant amount of carbon emissions with their statewide CAFE standards. You sure as hell ain't gonna see the Trump administration cutting carbon emissions. .

California deserves a lot of shit thou. Traffic madness in South Cal, crazy liberal cities controlling state government (while giving the rural areas the middle finger, sounds just like NY state where NYC controls the state government), smog is a bitch, and f those rent prices.

Next time I'm in Anchorage I'll go around to the homeless hubs and pass out flyers with the question "did you know California is warmer?" and a how-to on saving booze and heroin money for a bus ticket so we can finally be rid of them and their endless thieving. Stepping over frozen bodies gets to be a chore... Or more seriously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjf0ovM_1JU

[BryanM]

We got 12 years, tick-tock tick-tock.

Man, Liz was tweetering the other day about her awesome plan to let giant corporations know how much carbon they're pooping out, which is supposed to shame them into feeling an emotion, or something?

Christ imagine if that's how we dealt with CFC emissions in re: the scar in the ozone, or the issue we were having with acid rain. 2nd "leftist" senator can't even bring herself to whisper "DARPA project". On an issue we needed to start work on 20 years ago to accomplish anything.

smog is a bitch, and f those rent prices.

Like I just said, the entire state is not L.A. The air pollution to be actually be concerned about in the majority of the place is dust. (And it's really bad.) You've seen the opening of Full House and how clean the oxygen is those bay area bastards get to breathe.

Rent is 700 to 1000 buckeroos a month. Which is, yeah, a monstrous ripoff for a box that just sits there and many many orders of magnitude above what normies pay in Income Tax.. but isn't it like that everywhere? Are we talking about nationalizing housing or giving everyone their own cabin here, or something?

[Mischief Maker]

We got 12 years, tick-tock tick-tock.

Man, Liz was tweetering the other day about her awesome plan to let giant corporation know how much carbon they're pooping out, which is supposed to shame them into feeling an emotion, or something?

No...

Warren's bill would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue rules to require each company to detail its greenhouse gas emissions; its total amount of "fossil fuel-related assets;" how its valuation would be affected by certain climate change forecasts; and its risk management strategies related to climate change.

...she's using this information to damage companies' stock value relative to their carbon impact. Literally going after the mechanism that incentivizes these companies to pollute. Wall Street is Warren's area of expertise.

Was this Jimmy Dore with the unresearched hot take, fresh off shitting on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for making a platitude? I hope Kyle Kulinski isn't slipping into the dum-dum left. It's suspiciously profitable these days to tear down our best progressives "from the left" while ignoring Trump's neoliberalism-on-coke happening right before our eyes.

[BryanM]

Thanks for pointing out the typo.

The stuff about stock prices being rational, that they'd change based on projections decades in the future, that they'd change with zero threat of any regulation or actual change being imposed upon them... you were telling a joke, right?

[quash]

Let me get this straight. This:

One might even say these mountains are the REASON Californians are more progressive on the issue of air pollution than most.

Plus this:

Also the cost of living is really high in New York and California and other liberal centers in the US because so many people want to live there.

Equals: let's invite the entire world to live here, so everyone can stare in awe at the line on the GDP per capita chart, while simultaneously squealing in horror at the line on the emissions chart?

I'm actually visiting home, sweet home right now. Google has all but colonized the city I spent most of my life in, bringing in untold numbers of workers and their families from India, China, etc., and is looking south to sink their teeth into San Jose, a move that residents of the city are rightfully protesting. The cost of basic necessities is higher than virtually anywhere else, traffic congestion is awful, and to top it off, California is actually experiencing net emigration, leaving the hallowed shell of what was once the American middle class behind to rot.

At least the weather is still nice. Oh, and $1 tacos on Tuesday. It's the little things.

[BryanM]

$1 tacos on Tuesday.

One of the most horrific things I saw when I first got to San Antonio was that their Burger Kings charged $2 for a whopper.

For a place with so many churches, God sure seemed absent where it counted.
__

The internet tells me they're selling them for $4 now. ... Which is the price of a couple home-cooked full course meals. I can only imagine the feedback loop this must have - less people are buying their overpriced bottom tier basement food, so they have to charge more for it to make up for the lost margins.

The day will come soon that it'll be a luxury food item for the upper class.