The Burning Platform

The Duce Disappoints

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The “debate” earlier this week disabused me of hope that Trump might be something other than yet another authoritarian collectivist.

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He basically agreed with would-be (and probably will be) Chairman Hillary on every substantive point – from not disputing “climate change” to amen’ing her calls for government direction of the economy.

They bickered over details.

He did not denounce Obamacare – or take issue at any level with either the police state at home or the warfare state abroad. If anything, he has become even more belligerent on the latter score. For example, his blood-curdling call for the death penalty for any person who shoots an armed government worker (i.e., a cop).

Trump – like all authoritarian collectivists – views the lives of those who enforce authoritarian collectivism as particularly valuable.

Ours less so.

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POST-DEBATE BOUNCE

Via Townhall

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“To an important degree the financial world isn’t populated by people willfully doing evil, but by conformists who have simply stopped asking questions about right and wrong.”

Joris Luyendijk, Among Bankers: A Journey Into the Heart of Finance

“My heart was light and joyful in my work, because the decisions were not mine.”

Adolf Eichmann

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Hannah Arendt

A Conspiracy Theory About Conspiracy Theories

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

One of the funny things about conspiracy theories, including false flag attacks, is how often they are proven to be true. You have to wonder how long the shame-inducing slam, “That’s a conspiracy theory,” will keep working.

But that’s not my point for today. Today, I want to introduce a conspiracy theory of my own, a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Here it is:

The powers that be – the elite, the deep state, whomever – want wild conspiracy theories to spread. Because after these wild theories set the “outrage meter” very high, they can get away with almost anything below that line.

In other words, wild theories ensure that the “I’ll act if I see that” trigger is never reached and Joe Average remains docile, even as he is progressively abused.

I hope I haven’t given any nefarious people ideas, but I think this is already happening. And in any event, I’m fairly certain it’s worth pointing out.

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Sucker Punch On Main Street—–Disturbing Facts About The Fed’s Phony Housing “Recovery”

Guest Post by Lee Adler

Whether you think there has been a housing “recovery” or not is a matter of perspective. Sales are indeed up 117% since the 2010 low, but that low was literally the worst level in the history of this data (since 1963) as a percentage of population growth. It was the Great Depression of Housing, the only possible result of the greatest housing bubble since the 1920s, if not in history. While sales have rebounded since that low, the current sales rate has barely recovered to the levels seen at the recession lows of 1991 and 1982. This rebound is little more than a dead cat bounce after 6 years of recovery, and now it may be faltering.

Mainstream economists give the Fed credit for stimulating this “recovery.” But, in fact the Fed has created a Catch 22 with no way out. The only thing the Fed has stimulated is house price inflation while destroying interest income on savings for millions of ordinary Americans, especially former middle class retirees. With mortgage rates pushed down to all time lows, house prices have consequently inflated at a rate that offsets the buyer’s savings in the interest component of the mortgage. Meanwhile American savers have lost not only massive purchasing power, but also have been forced to consume principal. The Fed has not stimulated sales but it has succeeded in transferring wealth away from those who can least afford it to those who least deserve it.

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Post-Debate Election Odds Update

Guest Post by Duane Norman

The first Presidential debate of the 2016 election is in the books, and I imagine most of the approximately 100 million viewers came away as underwhelmed as I did. Facebook posts were made, Twitter tweets were tweeted, both candidates were called liars and idiots, “fact-checkers” were working overtime or not at all, and still, the vast majority of the electorate will go to the polls in November and vote for the same candidate they were going to before the debate.

But, most importantly… the odds moved. And moved again. They were on the move the whole night, just like they were before the debate. And now, with over 24 hours for the money to process the events of the election, we will revisit the odds on Betfair’s exchange, and see how those with money on the line have repriced the odds.

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Question of the Day, Sep 28

Something to ponder. In the LA times poll, Hilarious leads by 15 points among college grads but trails by 6 points among those that make over 75k a year. In fact, the only income level she leads in is under $35k. What does that say about the job our colleges are doing?

Side note, her lead among blacks has gone from 80 something to 2, to 74-18. Serious inroads for Mr. Trump where we’re told he can’t make any.

Real Estate Bubbles: The Six Cities at Risk of Bursting

Via Visual Capitalist

What do Vancouver, London, Stockholm, Sydney, Munich, and Hong Kong all have in common?

According to economists at UBS Wealth Management, these six cities all have the notorious designation of being the real estate markets furthest into “bubble” territory:

The major Swiss bank recently published the results of their 2016 Real Estate Bubble Index. The report found that since 2011, the six cities in “bubble” territory have seen housing prices soar at least 50% on average. Meanwhile, in other comparable markets, the average increase in prices was less than 15% over the same timeframe.

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TRUMP vs HILLARY & HILLARY

Via Ben Garrison

Are “Invisible Americans” The Key Players In This Election?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Memo to the D.C. Beltway/mainstream media apologists and propagandists: the 25 million Invisible Americans are no longer buying your shuck-and-jive con job.

For the bottom 90% of American households, the “prosperity” of the “recovery” since 2009 is a bright shining lie. The phrase is from a history of the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.

Just as the Vietnam War was built on lies, propaganda, PR and rigged statistics (the infamous body counts–civilians killed as “collateral damage” counted as “enemy combatants”), so too is the “recovery” nothing but a pathetic tissue of PR, propaganda and lies. I have demolished the bogus 5.3% “increase” in median household income, the equally bogus “official inflation” body counts, oops I mean statistics, and the bogus unemployment rate:

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Election Reset

Guest Post by The Zman

We had the great debate and my guess is nothing much changed from 24 hours ago. This election has always been about finding a reasonable alternative to Hillary Clinton, someone a large majority of Americans don’t like very much. One of the oldest rules of politics is that a well known, well established candidate polling below 50% is in trouble. Often, an incumbent that is in such a spot gets a primary challenger as his own party smells weakness, so a young gun is sent in to finish him off in the primary.

The one thing the sissy boys of Official Conservatism™ probably got right about this election thus far is that the other choices in the GOP primary would have probably started with a huge lead over Clinton. The collection of dwarfs assembled by the party had all been vetted to make sure they were the emptiest of empty suits, thus ensuring the Left could not say anything mean about them that anyone would believe. Guys like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio would start out with the Cloud People seal of approval, thus beginning as an acceptable alternative to Clinton.

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Beria’s Technique… As Applied to VW

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The trick is keeping your victim alive… so that the beatings can continue.

That was Lavrenti Beria’s dictum.

Beria was Stalin’s secret police chief, the Soviet version of Nazi Germany’s SS chief, Heinrich Himmler. (Stalin actually referred to Beria this way when he introduced him to Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, during the latter’s visit to Moscow to sign the NonAggression Pact that led to the dismemberment of Poland and WW II.)

Anyhow, the principle.

Make them suffer.

This is the policy of the U.S. Justice Department, which is “assessing how big a criminal fine it can extract from Volskwagen AG over emissions-cheating without putting the German carmaker out of business.”

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Quote of the Day 9/28/2016

“The sands of time will eventually scrub all evidence of humanity from the Universe.”

original quote by Muck About

QUOTE OF THE DAY

FAIR DEBATE

Via Townhall

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Guest post by Uncola

In times such as these, I often wonder if the dividing lines separating truth and falsehood, light versus dark and clarity from obscurity are more defined by gray areas as opposed to any reciprocating forces of polarity. In other words, a war zone usually requires a clear line of demarcation between the embedded, and embattled, military legions. But what if the lines in the sand really are drawn in sand? Then, as the forces collide, like a desert windstorm, an amalgamation takes place bringing blindness to the soldiers and causing confusion within the ranks. After all, how can one defeat an enemy unseen?

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