Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
Tag: safety
The Surrender of Liberty in the Name of Security
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Unfortunately, the trend first materializes when people need the government to protect them usually from an external force. The British used this tactic against both the French and the American colonists. That prompted Ben Franklin to comment on this trend.
After the 3rd Century Monetary Crisis bottomed in the Roman Empire in 268 AD, there was a surge to build a wall around Rome by Emperor Aurelian following the same pattern. Aurelian saw the corruption that led to the debasement of the currency because those minting the coins were robbing the treasury. Aurelian moved to DRAIN THE SWAMP in Rome.
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Three sensible places to keep your money amid so much insanity
Guest Post by Simon Black
One of my many business activities is being the Chairman of the Board of a company that’s traded on a major stock exchange.
The company is in the real estate business; we own a number of residential properties.
And at the annual shareholder meeting a few weeks ago, one of the obvious topics that came up was the fact that real estate prices are near their all-time highs in many places around the world.
In the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, for example, property prices are near record highs.
It’s the same in the US, where the median home sold for a record high price at the end of 2017.
In fact US home prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation, according to Bloomberg.
But it’s not just real estate prices that have gone through the roof.
Continue reading “Three sensible places to keep your money amid so much insanity”
Obama Administration Put Diversity Over Safety in Hiring Air Traffic Controllers
Subjective Safety
Guest Post by Eric Peters
If they were at least consistent, you might be persuaded that Our Controllers were truly concerned about our safety. As opposed to using “safety” as the pretext for controlling us.
Not infrequently, to the detriment of our safety.
There are many examples to prove the point but the latest is the push for congressional approval of an exemption for automated cars from the federal safety requirements that apply to not-automated cars. Specifically, an exemption from the regs which forbid the sale of automated cars that lack back-up controls which a human driver can use to prevent the car from doing something manifestly unsafe because its automated systems have experienced a technical hiccup.
Having some way to intervene when an automated car runs amok doesn’t seem like a bad idea – assuming Our Safety is the criteria – especially given that automated cars have run amok and given that the more of them there are in circulation, the more often this will happen – for the same reason you get more flat tires when there are 10 million cars out there driving around vs. 10 cars driving around.
The Other Side of “Safety”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Technology never makes mistakes – unlike the humans who design it. Who never fail to anticipate the unanticipated.
Perfection issuing from imperfection, reversing the usual order of things.
Sarcasm, in case you didn’t pick up on it.
This 190 proof moonshine – distilled by arrogant technocrats like Elon Musk – is going to get people hurt as automated-driving technology comes online.
I recently test drove a 2018 VW Atlas (review here) which has what several other new cars also have: The ability to partially steer itself, without you doing a thing.
The only Gun Safety Guide you’ll ever need
OF COURSE PUBLIC TRANSIT IS SAFE
FOURTH TURNING – OUR RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I focused on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis. In Part 4 I assessed the social and cultural channels of distress dividing the nation. In Part 5 I examined the technological, ecological, political, military channels of distress likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and finally in this final part, our rendezvous with destiny, with potential climaxes to this Winter of our discontent.
We are now in the seventh year of this Fourth Turning. A famous quote from the seventh year of the last Fourth Turning portended the desperate, bloody and ultimately heroic trials and tribulations which awaited generations of our ancestors. What will be our rendezvous with destiny?
“There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – June 27, 1936 – Philadelphia, PA
Our Rendezvous With Destiny
“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The people have been permitting a small cadre of elitists, billionaire financiers, corporate chiefs, propagandist media moguls, and crooked politicians to make the choices dictating the path of our country since the 2008 dawn of this Fourth Turning. The choices they have made and continue to make have imperiled the world and guaranteed a far more calamitous outcome as we attempt to navigate through the trials and tribulations ahead. Their strategy to “save the country” by saving bankers, while selling the plan to the public as beneficial to all and essential to saving our economic system, has proven to be nothing more than the greatest wealth transfer scheme in human history. The ruling class is deliberately blind to their own venality and capacity for evil.
Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING – OUR RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY”
If It Saves Even One Life…
Guest Post by Eric Peters
We hear that cloying bleat from the advocates of “safety” (at gunpoint) befehls all the time. If it saves even one life, it’s worth it! They use it to justify helmet laws for motorcyclists and seatbelt laws for drivers. Air bags, etc. 
But how come their logic is never applied to the source of all Safety itself?
I mean, of course, the government.
Defective Takata air bags have injured and killed at least 130 people so far that we know about – and the potential mayhem could involve literally millions of people. Because millions of “defective” air bags (34 million, to be precise) have been installed – per befehl – in cars made by a number of major car brands since the 2004 model year. These cars are in circulation – and probably many more people will be injured and killed before 34 million of these steering wheel Claymores can be defused.
Many thousands of them probably never will be – their owners blissfully unaware of the ticking time bombs positioned just inches away from their faces and the faces of their loved ones. Not everyone gets their mail. Or watches the evening news. People move, records get lost. Thirty four million cars – built over a period of more than ten years.
To France from a Post-9/11 America: Lessons We Learned Too Late
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor
For those who remember when the first towers fell on 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Paris attacks.
Once again, there is that same sense of shock. The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.
Now the drums of war are sounding. French fighter jets have carried out a series of “symbolic” air strikes on Syrian targets. France’s borders have been closed, Paris has been locked down and military personnel are patrolling its streets.
What remains to be seen is whether France, standing where the United States did 14 years ago, will follow in America’s footsteps as she grapples with the best way to shore up her defenses, where to draw the delicate line in balancing security with liberty, and what it means to secure justice for those whose lives were taken.
Here are some of the lessons we in the United States learned too late about allowing our freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.
Continue reading “To France from a Post-9/11 America: Lessons We Learned Too Late”
Another Car We’re Not Allowed to Buy
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Would you be interested in a brand-new, fully warranted, five-door crossover SUV built by a major, name-brand automaker that gave you 50-plus MPG with a gas (not diesel or hybrid) engine, that has a top speed around 125 mph, is capable of getting to 60 in 12 seconds (about the same as a Prius hybrid) that stickered for less than $5,000?
Yeah, me too.
It’s called the Renault Kwid (see here) and it looks kinda-sorta like a Nissan Juke or Kia Soul and is about the same size as those units.
It isn’t a latter-day Yugo either.
The Kwid comes standard with AC, power windows and a digital dashboard, a seven-inch LCD display in the center stack and most of the apps you’d find in a new Soul or Juke.
It also has a modern, fuel-injected engine and a five-speed overdrive transmission.
The difference is the Kwid costs about a third what a new Juke or Soul would cost you to buy: Its base price is just $4,700 (not counting taxes and tags).
Too bad we can’t buy one.
Not because such a vehicle isn’t available.
It’s just not available here.
Neither are other such cars, like the Suzuki Alto 800 (53 MPG and a base price of $3,870; $5,755 loaded) and the Hyundai Eon (50 MPG and $4,856 to start; $6,636 loaded).
PAPAL LOCKDOWN
The total lock down of Philadelphia began yesterday. The socialist, left wing, rockstar pope arrives in the U.S. today, causing mass gridlock, lost economic productivity, and another opportunity for our Orwellian police surveillance state to flex its muscles and treat its citizens like cattle and sheep. It started with the lock down of Boston a couple years ago as the all-powerful State took a giant shit on the Fourth Amendment as they hunted down two teenage utensil bomb terrorists. The DHS thugs have continued to militarize Barney Fife police forces around the country. Every man, woman and child is treated like a terrorist when going to a god damn baseball or football game. As reported by Marketwatch, the pope will inconvenience millions in three large US cities over the next six days.
Pope Francis’ historical six-day visit to the U.S. will bring some of the tightest security in Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia this week. Pope Francis, 78, will arrive from Cuba at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Tuesday, Sept. 22. He’ll then meet with President Barack Obama, be honored in a parade on the National Mall in Washington that’s expected to draw more than 200,000 people, hold mass and address a joint session of Congress. The pope will then travel to New York by plane,where he’ll address the United Nations, parade through Central Park and hold mass at Madison Square Garden. He will then fly from JFK airport to Philadelphia. On Sunday morning, he’ll visit a prison and later that afternoon will lead a mass that is expected to draw as many as one million people. He’ll head back to Rome on Sunday. Sept. 27.
The Secret Service, who can’t keep idiots from jumping the White House fence and getting in to see Obama, are in charge of keeping the pope safe from the thousands of terrorists roaming the streets of the US who want to kill him. This is really an inconvenience for the top notch secret service agents because it cuts into their time banging whores and allowing planes to land on the White House lawn. Of course, we’ve already had the “terrorist plot foiled” bullshit story released to the media to prove they are keeping us safe. They are now scrapping the the bottom of the barrel with 15 year olds posting on facebook.
Imagine
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Imagine if you actually owned your car once you paid the seller for it in full.
Did not have to put little stickers and metal plates on it owned by other people (the people who – collectively – are the reality of this construct styled “government”) who have empowered themselves to simply take “your” car in the event you decline to put their little stickers and metal plates on “your” car.
Imagine being able to just go wherever you wanted to go, whenever you felt like going – without having to obtain permission or explain yourself to random armed strangers. Without having to carry “ID.”
Cattle are fenced in and have ear tags.
Most people seem unable to draw a parallel.
Imagine your adulthood being respected. That it’s up to you to eat a balanced diet – or wear a seat belt.
How about being free to buy a car without air bags? Or a back-up camera? Or a tire pressure monitoring system? It’s probably a good idea to have a fire extinguisher in the house. But no one forces you to have one – much less have three in every room in the house, for “safety.”
BRING SOME MARSHMALLOWS
This is video of the latest in a series of explosive train derailments over the last few years. A 109 car CSX train derailed earlier this week in West Virginia. It was carrying some of that good old North Dakota fracked oil. Well, at least we know it burns just as well as regular oil.
And these oil cars were the new super safe railcars that are supposed to resist rupture. I think CSX may have been sold a load of shit, because these railcars didn’t resist too much.
I wonder if the costs of these unfortunate accidents are factored into the shale oil miracle storyline. Obama and his environmental nazi minions do everything they can to block the Keystone pipeline and other rational pipeline extensions. With oil at $50 per barrel, these pipelines probably no longer make much sense economically. But from a safety and environmental standpoint how can they possibly argue that sending oil by rail across our horrible rail infrastructure is a safer and more environmentally friendly method.
THE NSA IS PROTECTING YOU – BELIEVE – CONSUME – DON’T THINK
Almost four times as many sheep in America trust the NSA than the citizens of Russia. Sacrificing liberty and freedom for safety, security, iGadgets, 24/7 reality TV, entitlement goodies, subprime loans, and $20,000 credit card limits at 19% interest never felt so good.
You will find more statistics at Statista