Doug Casey: With Some Luck, Trump Will Destroy the Republican Party

Via Casey Research

Nick Giambruno: There is a popular conception that only the “best and brightest” go into government. I think this is a sacred cow that needs to be slaughtered. What’s your take, Doug?

Doug Casey: It’s a real problem when a pernicious myth subverts reality. Everybody believes that the institution of government is like Camelot—a wise ruler assisted by noble paladins. Maybe that meme gained traction in recent times with John Kennedy and his good-looking wife, Jackie. They looked like an ideal couple. They weren’t. But they were a lot better than what followed for the next 50 years…

The fact is that the high levels of government do get people with high IQs. They can pass tests. They’re skilled at manipulating both laws and people. But they tend to be of low moral character, number one. Number two, despite their high IQs, they’re actually quite stupid. Let me explain these things.

From a moral point of view, there are two types of people in the world. People who believe in coercion when dealing with their fellow humans. And people who believe in dealing voluntarily with their fellow humans.

Government is force. The essence of government is coercion. So, people attracted to it are necessarily the wrong kind of people, coercion-oriented people. Government draws much more than its share of criminal personalities.

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Who Buys Legal Weed?

We’re in legal weed country. We passed dozens of dispensaries on our trip from Denver to Loveland. Allowing dispensaries is up to each local community. As soon as the locality realizes the tax revenue from the dispensaries can pay for all the new shit they want to do, they allow them. This will gradually spread across the entire US as states, municipalities, and localities are bankrupt.

Via Priceonomics.com,

Marijuana pop culture has traditionally centered around the young male smoker and his high times. But the legalization movement has made marijuana more accessible than ever been before, and cannabis’s application as a painkiller is particularly appealing to senior citizens. 

So what does the typical, recreational marijuana user look like today? And how do the preferences and spending habits of groups like young men and senior citizens differ? 

We explored these questions by drawing on the data of Headset, a Priceonomics customer with a large dataset of cannabis retailer transaction data. Since many of these cannabis dispensaries have customer loyalty programs, the data includes information about customers’ age and gender. We decided to use to this data to learn more about who buys weed and what they smoke or consume.

The data suggests that smokers in the customer loyalty program are overwhelmingly male, accounting for about 70% of all members. And, while customers range from ages 21 to 95, over 50% of loyalty members are under 40.  

We also found that while Flower (your typical marijuana bud) accounts for about half of the purchases made by each demographic, each group has its own quirks. Compared to the opposite sex, men prefer concentrates and women prefer pre-rolls and edibles. Older consumers prefer edibles to pre-rolled joints.

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WAL-MART FREAKS OF THE WEEK

We’ve got butt crack and a pants shitter in one post. Enjoy!!!

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When you don’t want your friends to know you shop at Walmart…

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Just because you’re old and in a wheelchair doesn’t mean you get the day off. Now use those core muscles to keep steady Grandma!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying – lying to others and to yourself.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky


These 3 Animated Charts Capture the Economic Rise of Asia

The economic rise of Asia has been swift, but it has also been a little reckless at times.

China’s rapid spending and investment has come at a price. The country is now saddled with a massive debt bomb that could detonate at any moment. Further, economic interests have helped to create a precarious situation in the South China Sea, which many experts see as having escalating potential for armed conflict. Such actions would disrupt trade along one of the most important sea routes in the world.

To be fair, no one ever said that executing on five-year plans would be easy.

The Economic Rise of Asia

Despite the possible economic landmines that could be waiting for China, it is still impressive how fast this all happened.

China now has the second-largest economy by a wide margin, but before the 1990s the country did not even crack the top 10.

The following three animated charts from data visualization whiz-kid Aron Strandberg help to tell the story of the rise of China – and how India is projected to follow in those same footsteps.

Top 10 Economies by Real GDP

By the year 2030, it is projected that China and India will both be in the top three economies by real GDP. Even with growth continuing to stagnate, Japan remains in fourth place.

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The Car Bubble … and Cash for Clunkers II?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

A guy who smokes meth can pull a week of 15 hour days. But come next week… .meth head

That’s how artifical “incentives” work on the economy. On the macro level, it is the Boom – and Bust – business cycle, whose unnatural peaks and valleys are caused by manipulation of money and credit, which causes excessive and unwarranted “investment” that – inevitably – leads to a downturn (or even a crash) when the artificially induced supply is disproportionate to demand. The housing bubble of the early 2000s is an obvious example of this.

Cash for Clunkers (same era) is another – and its unfortunate effects are just now beginning to become obvious.

As with housing in the early 2000s, the federal government decided it would be a good idea to “stimulate” new car sales by enacting a program that paid people to throw away perfectly good used cars. The idea being that they would then buy new cars to replace the ones thrown away.

Many (but not all, bear with) did so. This created a boom in new cars sales. Not only because there were fewer good used cars available, but also because the ones that remained had gone up considerably in price due to (wait for it) limited supply. This artificial scarcity in turn became the artificial incentive to buy a new car.

Continue reading “The Car Bubble … and Cash for Clunkers II?”

Exposing Hillbama’s Big Lie: The Central Issue In The U.S. Presidential Campaign

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Saker,

The central issue in the U.S. Presidential campaign can’t even be discussed in U.S. newsmedia, because America’s media have been almost uniformly complicit all along in hiding from the American public the crucial factual information that’s necessary in order for the public to vote in an intelligent and truthfully informed way about it. No news medium wants to report its own having been complicit in anything; so, the cover-up here just continues; it has a life of its own, even though it’s a life that brings the world closer and closer to a situation which would kill billions of people, as things get increasingly out-of-control the longer this coverup continues. The cycle of virtually uniform lying thus persists, despite the growing danger it produces. This article will need to be lengthy, because the American public have been almost consistently lied-to about so many very important things — things associated with the nation’s central issue — an issue even bigger than terrorism, and than global warming, and than rising economic inequality and corruption, but which is still virtually ignored. This article is thus intended to be ‘Drano’ for a political system that has become clogged by lies just jammed down into it, now backing up and pouring out onto America’s political floor. The overflowing sludge has got to be cleaned up, and discarded. Or else — and very suddenly — it will kill us all.

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Full List of Hillary’s Planned Tax Hikes

Via Americans for Tax Reform

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, an “Exit Tax” and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign’s own figures.

Hillary has endorsed several tax increases on middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000. She has said she would be fine with a payroll tax hike on all Americans, she has endorsed a steep soda tax, endorsed a 25% national gun tax, and most recently, her campaign manager John Podesta said she would be open to a carbon tax. It’s no wonder that when asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if her pledge was a “rock-solid” promise, she slipped and said the pledge was merely a “goal.” In other words, she’s going to raise taxes on middle income Americans.

Hillary’s formally proposed $1 trillion net tax increase consists of the following:

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GDP Shocker: US Economy Grew Only 1.2% In Second Quarter; Q1 Revised To 0.8%

In a shocking development, the government admits we’ve been in a recession for a long while. Isn’t it amazing how every time they adjust their previous lies, it’s always downward. So, they report GDP at 1.2% in the 2nd quarter using an entirely false inflation deflator. They reduced the 1st quarter to 0.8%. If they were using a true measure of inflation, both numbers would be negative – RECESSION. Since we know they will reduce both of these numbers next year, they will admit we were in a recession one year after telling us we weren’t. Government at its finest. But Obama and Clinton tell you all is well.
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Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Jul 29, 2016 8:39 AM

With Wall Street expecting the US economy to grow 2.6% in the second quarter, there were many shocked faces moments ago when the Census Bureau reported that not only did the US economy grow a paltry 1.2% in the quarter, but Q1 GDP was slased from an already poor 1.1% to just 0.8%.

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Philadelphia Vs. Cleveland: Divided We Stand

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Wednesday was the best night of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Joe Biden, Tim Kaine and Barack Obama testified to her greatness and goodness and readiness to be president. And all saw in the Republican Convention in Cleveland a festival of darkness and dystopia.

Nor is this unusual. For, as the saying goes, the ins “point with pride,” while the outs “view with alarm.”

Yet the clash of visions between Cleveland and Philadelphia is stark. We appear to be two separate and hostile peoples, living apart in two separate Americas.

Obama’s America is a country of all races, creeds, colors, lifestyles, a kumbayah country to be made more wonderful still when Clinton takes the helm.

The message from Cleveland: Cry the beloved country. America has lost her way. She is in peril. A new captain is needed. A new course must be set if America is to find her way home again.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. Everything here but the soul of man is a passing shadow. The only enduring substance is within.”

William Ellery Channing

“This was a night dominated by the hollow men of the Democratic Party: Panetta, Kaine, Biden and Obama. Men who knew better, but did worse. Barack Obama possesses so many scintillating skills, perhaps more skills than any other political figure of the modern era. Yet he put those magical gifts to such meagre, timid and often brutal uses. What a waste. His is the tragedy of a squandered presidency.”

Jeffrey St Clair, Notes From the Democratic Convention 2016