Submitted by Alain P
May he Rest In Peace
Remus finally knows how many lives he touched for God showed him.
Forever grateful for you Remus
Alain…
See here the 23 comment
https://americandigest.org/mia-remus-and-the-woodpile-report/
Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
Where did all the kitchen table Democrats go—the Democrats as they were understood by past generations. You remember, they fought for the common man, championed the working family, gave unto Caesar but overturned the counting tables.
These were the Depression-era Democrats who assisted destitute families who migrated from harvest to harvest and lived in tents. The Democrats who sponsored mega-projects to employ the jobless and who sided with unions to give wage earners leverage against exploitation. Then, during the world war, they protected us with rationing and price caps and home visit nurses, and after the war, they sponsored government-backed loans to finance homes for returning GIs. It’s a great story.
These were the Democrats who advertised themselves as the party of the little guy, from mill worker to cab driver to store clerk. They fought the “special interests”. We didn’t know what “special interests” were but we knew it wasn’t us. We were the homey demographic where Mom was wise and resourceful and wore sensible shoes, where Dad always found time to mentor the kids so they would grow up right and become the best Democratic voters ever.
Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
The trajectories of history’s bits and pieces seem commonly governed by war, the Great Attractor, converging again and again as if no velocity is escape velocity. It’s said peace is the time between wars when nations rearm and rewrite their battle plans. True that. Just now there’s a “last warning” feel to it all, as if the ref just came on the field and said time’s up, it’s meat-grinder time.
We needn’t waste time looking for the cause of the next war. Like complexity, causes of war don’t exist outside the human mind. If you believe otherwise, get some complexity, put it in a paper bag and show it to me. Same with “causes of war”, a quarter pound will convince me. If war causes peace, we can rightly say peace causes war and let it go at that.
Explaining war by citing those who gain from it is like explaining football by citing cheerleaders and venders of hot dogs. The case to be made smells like what it is, a debate device to fortify rhetoric for other ends.
Causes are preferentially imputed to fit an imagined reality, and don’t often meet even that low standard. Example: Germany and Russia invaded Poland in 1939. France and Britain declared war on Germany. Germany went to war with Russia. When the war ended, Poland was given to Russia. Um, what was the cause again?
Nothing beats war for waste and injustice. We should deflect or delay war where possible, and limit it when it’s not. Survivalists should also prepare as if war were inevitable, if unpredictable. Because it is. Poets and utopians say it isn’t. Thousands of years of war say it is.
So, no more philosophizing for you. Let’s get to the “news you can use” part.
What it comes down to is this: with all sides escalating, look to your resources and make good on deficiencies. Should a military event trigger mobilization, actual shortages combined with DC’s plans for “emergency redistribution” will make life difficult even for the prepared. Should there be military strikes on the US itself, look for draconian martial law
reminiscent of Leningrad seventy-five years ago. History may not repeat itself but—oh wait, yes it does.
Guest Post by Ol Remus
It’s encouraging to see the collapse of the collaborator class, namely, the Republican Party, where honest opinion was not merely unacceptable but a sure sign of some deeper defect. Integrity, perhaps. They warned us if we didn’t support them the other party would win. We did, but whether they won or didn’t, it was the same track, different pace. Odd, that. In time we came to understand them as just another DC club, just as obedient, just as annoyed by the peasants and just as dismissive. Just in the nicest possible way.
The liberals have a rule, “no enemies to the left”, meaning when they can’t speak well of the hard left they won’t speak of it at all. The Republican “conservative movement” has fallen all over itself to disown its equivalent, largely with acerbic purges by the likes of those at the National Review, sometimes career-ending, always about fringe issues or outright trivia. Over these many years that’s a lot of bath water and a lot of babies.
The Republican Party has conducted itself as a reliable franchise of its alleged opposition, betraying the trust and support of a generation. Events have confirmed those they expelled for being “too right” had the better claim to legitimacy, and in doing so, it has unwittingly run a bulletproof selection process for their own replacement. It’s gotten to where credibility and rejection by the Republican Party are pretty much the same thing. Cuckservatism is what some call it, in a fit of politeness. Next item please.
Let’s look at White Privilege, the activist plague ship now on sea trials, sailing as yet untroubled through the placid remains of analytical rigor. Stripped of its cloying, nasty-sweet marketing jargon, the particulars of White Privilege track the otherwise inchoate whines of their pet client, the overfed, limitlessly entitled and perpetually offended Struggling Single Parent Woman of Colour in the ‘Hood.
You’ve seen ’em. When they stand it’s like watching creation itself. From a formless puddley heap, lumps of varying heft and shapes emerge and align toward verticality. When up and walking they tip rhythmically from side to side, their flipper-arms rowing in cadence as if pantomiming penguins. It’s not an affliction, nor is it forced on them in any way, or a consequence of limited options, or carelessness, no, it’s a high-value, even erotic ‘look’ in their universe, intentionally acquired, maintained and displayed to full effect.
Guest Post by ‘Ol Remus
The Maryland Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision ordering the lower court to apply strict scrutiny to an “assault weapons” ban has heartened Second Amendment defenders. They see it as the first light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I see it differently.
It’s generally accepted that people care less about how things are than whether things are getting better or worse. Politicians also know the appearance of improvement and actual improvement need not be the same thing. Successful gun control relies on appearances, facts do not support it. Looked at unencumbered by particulars, this court decision reveals itself for what it is, an appearance of improvement and nothing more.
The right to keep and bear arms isn’t reviewable by any authority or subject to any decision by any court. This decision, welcome as it appears to be, is merely part of a continuing transgression on that right. The right to be armed is not a legitimate concern of the judiciary, or the legislature or the executive. There are no valid arguments for or against it, it’s neither diminished by opposition nor improved by support. Like all natural rights, the right to be armed is free-standing, there’s no second party. Nor is it pendant to any other right or purpose. Natural rights are not subject to popular approval or exceptions or statistical analysis or notions of a greater good or veto or repeal, nor do they incurr any unique obligations or consequences. A natural right just “is”.
Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
If you want to know what collapse looks like, look around. We’re living in an ongoing collapse—civil, economic, military and moral. Everything’s political, acquiescence is mandatory, dissent is a crime . We have fallen far. We shall fall much further. Emergencies and disasters follow each other ever more closely, each more astonishing than the last. Sociopaths and madmen—the mainstream, the real lunatic fringe—have neither the capability nor the will to fix them. And so we fall. The collapse will end when we can fall no further.
The “Ferguson Effect” is everywhere now. It’s rank extortion , and violence is an accepted part of the process. When an unruly mob (wink wink) invaded the library at Yale, threatened and criminally assaulted students at their study, Yale apologize for being Yale and humbly caved to their demands, a lesson fundamentally different from what had been taught since 1701. What was unbelievable is unbelievable no more. In turn, the unbelievable will give way to the unthinkable, the unthinkable to the unimaginable. Violence works. It works because we are in collapse.
Violence is misunderstood. There’s no such thing as senseless violence. All violence makes sense to someone. Nor is violence ever entirely random. The perp chose to be where he was, when he was. Not random. We say the victim was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” meaning where and when the perp was. Bad luck, but not a random event. We can’t know the “when” until it’s too late, but we can recognize the “where” with some reliability. There are places it’s wrong to be, at any time. The principle is simple: when violence occurs, be somewhere else.
My personal rules assume a continent-size penal colony with armed inmates, to wit: no public place is safe, but I especially avoid cities, airports, sports venues, malls, bad neighborhoods and bars. I’m not in public places much past dark. I avoid minorities. If there are two or more of them and one of me, I’m the minority in the only way that matters. I avoid mass transit and heavy traffic, rallies and demonstrations. In short, I stay away from crowds. I’ll not be missed. When a crowd is unavoidable, I part company as soon as I can. The declared purpose for a crowd is nonbinding, its conduct volatile and its fate my fate. There are no good crowds.
As the collapse deepens my rules will be amended until they can be amended no more. Everything, including universal entropy, argues for doing this. I would happily be wrong, but I see no compelling argument for doing otherwise.
Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
From time to time I’ve said on these pages you’d know collapse was at hand when emergencies come close enough together DC couldn’t get ahead of them. Then couldn’t keep up with them. Now they won’t even admit to them. ISIS is not defeated or contained. Duh. The ones over here aren’t even particularly inconvenienced. They’ve invaded us, and they continue to invade all but unimpeded. DC is not taking this seriously. Most Moslems pray for global sharia and for everyone else to be converted or enslaved. They confess their militancy this way, irreversibly and irretrievably. I’ll believe DC is serious when I see them lock down the borders and rid us of them.
Larry Kudlow via Breitbart – ISIS and related Islamic terrorists are already here. More are coming. We must stop them. My shift in thinking comes from a deep desire to strengthen homeland security. Hopefully an immigration freeze will not be in place for very long. But for now I believe we must do it. And let me add, as I have in the past, if the U.S. has the will, the urgency, and the energy to destroy ISIS, then we will destroy ISIS.
Okay, so they won’t do this. It stinks of justice. How about a Plan B. The jihadists-in-waiting know who they are, DC knows who they are, only we, their intended victims, don’t know who they are. Why not give us a heads up? Consider a neighborhood alert system similar to the sex offender registry. Body counts are no way to let us in on their secret. And planning to save the day at the last minute is nice in theory, but look who’s taking all the risk without the career benefits.
Notice also how thoroughly the perps are researched after they’ve slaughtered their personal quota of infidels. Not before. After. Then DC has all the resources it needs to investigate their movements and associates and history, with spare personnel to stage news conferences reminiscent of an NFL half time. Why not the same level of scrutiny before they were allowed in? As it is, Moslem psychos know they’re invisible until they pull the trigger, and they’ll continue to be invisible for as long as we think DC is fighting them by drawing chalk lines around our bodies.
Mucks’ Note: The Woodpilereport can be found at: http://www.woodpilereport.com/.
‘Ol Remus is spastic with his post filings and you never know when one will show up and what it’s going to be about (kind a’like TBP) Since he allows unrestricted reposting of his newsletter with credit, I will be taking advantage of that and bring his “reports” over to TBP whenever a fresh one shows up. You might check the website directly now and again because ‘Ol Remus tends to stuff in baskets of interesting blurbs, quotes and such along with the main posts.
How you all enjoy.. Please let me know if it’s worth the trouble..
Old MuckAbout
Curtesy of The Woodpile Report 8/12/14
This train wreck isn’t simply going to hit a wall out of the blue. Actually, it has been forming and accumulating and expanding for many years now, and yet it has simply been ignored, particularly by the financial markets which have ridden this bubble to these extreme and historic heights. The only issue is, when does it hit the wall? The answer to that question is it’s not very far down the road, and I can promise you that is when all hell is going to break loose.
David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com
There’s good evidence our current inflation is artificially induced to stave off an underlying deflation. Deflation is a slowing of the “velocity of money”—a measure of how often a dollar passes from one hand to another. Deflation theorists say the velocity of money became near-catatonic in 2007-2008. The ongoing “money printing” is intended to compensate for the lack of real circulation. It’s this “money printing” that accounts for such inflation as exists, and even at that it’s not been effective. More technically, in the last twenty five years the M2 money stock has gone up 700% while prices have gone up 200%. It’s the dormant 500% we should worry about.
In a classic deflation like the Great Depression of the 1930s, currency becomes all but unobtainable, everyone sits on it, in part because they believed “everything will be cheaper tomorrow.” They weren’t wrong. Faith in the currency was justified by real events so it became more valuable over time. The question is, if we revisit real deflation, what happens to the price of gold and silver? The only honest answer is, nobody knows. History says the price for precious metals—including coins—will drop just like prices for everything else. And that’s the key, just like everything else. At minimum their relative value will be maintained and they’ll probably do better in terms of purchasing power.
Paper traders and promise holders will take inescapable losses because debt doesn’t fall with everything else, it becomes unpayable. Deflation incurs a relentless repudiation of debt—touchingly called “restructured debt” in its final phase—and the stair-step crumbling of everything connected to debt, including prices. Yes, gold and silver prices too.
1930s-style deflation is an economy’s rigor mortis, proof it’s well and truly dead and good evidence the regime may be next. Government will do anything to counteract deflation—or even talk of deflation. Which is about where we are now. The policy has been aggressive inflation—they call it stimulus or bailouts or quantitative easing—and it’s done in the sorriest strongman’s pest-hole and name brand empires. Political flavorings aside, there comes a time when inflation devolves into a frantic torrent of nearly worthless paper. It’s here the purchasing power of gold and silver go to escape velocity while that of currency soars twenty feet into the ground and disappears. Long before that, gold and silver won’t be on offer for any amount of currency.
By the time the handwriting is on the teleprompter it’s already too late. Holders of precious metals are ahead of this curve. They know it can take mere weeks for ordinary inflation to metamorphosize into an outright repudiation of the currency, meaning hyper inflation.
Hyperinflation arises as a result of money printing leading to a currency collapse and not from demand pull. The slight deflation that we are experiencing currently is a prerequisite for hyperinflation. The fear of a deflationary implosion forces governments to print money, leading to a collapsing currency which historically has always been the cause of hyperinflation.
Egon Greyerz, Matterhorn Asset Managament AG
In passing, there are other dimensions to all this. Given our lawless police state, our institutional corruption and the collapse of official ethics and personal values , we’re closing fast on third world status. Already the lives of much of the population are indistinguishable from the bottom reaches of the Third World. This protected subset of society, these professional voters, are paid to consume, know only consuming and despise all else. The coming debacle will be much less orderly than the one of the 1930s.
Don’t imagine DC‘s ‘public servants’ would perform acts of selfless heroism in a currency collapse. They’ll lack motivation, credibility and legitimacy, perceived or otherwise. One last note. It was rebellions and secessions that finally dissolved the Soviet Union, long in the making, short in the doing. They succeeded because police and armed forces are fractional like bank reserves—not enough by orders of magnitude. It’s said the United States is nearly ungovernable even in times of stability and prosperity. Some states may save themselves in whole or in part. It’s the least happy of unhappy endings for our former republic, but the most likely.
Deflation is historically more relentless than it is swift, typically it takes a year or two for the last holdouts to topple into the abyss. Inflation is historically as patient as rust, festering as a low-grade infection for decades. But hyper inflation goes from hint to full stride like a drag racer, typically blindsiding layman and professional alike. If deflation is a return to honest bookkeeping, hyper inflation is a book burning. And when the confetti blows away and takes its imaginary wealth with it, what remains are those things of enduring value: land, food, houses, clothing, tools, medicine—and gold and silver. History tells us this is so. All of history. In all places.
There’s no predicting these things, but be aware socialist regimes consider any asset subject to eminent domain, including life itself. Government doesn’t give, it takes. It’s foolhardy to rely on government, ever, especially when things get sketchy. Whatever dire events lie ahead and however they unfold, precious metals will have their place, and bullion in the form of recognized coins is likely to have the widest acceptance. It may be wise to make them a part of your discreet holdings before government makes itself a party to every transaction.
Only a complete and irredeemable fool will store coins in a bank or any other off-premise location not under his direct control and personal access. Even the minimally prudent will keep them in a location unknown to anybody whose interest is not identical to his own. Nor will he generate avoidable documentation. We are deeper into the storm than most admit and many can imagine. While our well being is not assured by taking such measures, it’s imperiled if we do not.
Mucks’ Note: You might try a visit the website directly every now and then. ‘Ol Remus tends to throw in bushel baskets of nifty thoughts, comments, quotes and other verbiage (all good) along the edges of his main post. It’s a fun site to just browse.
Please let me know if you enjoy it enough for me to take the time to pick up new posts and bring them over to TBP
MA
