Collapse

[Chris]

Sleepwalkers Awoke!

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nati...walkers-awoke/

Andrew Sullivan called it “the Great Awokening” in a shrewd New York Magazine column this week. He refers, off course, to earlier episodes of American religious hysteria, namely the Great Awakening of the 1730s that featured the Rev. Jonathan Edwards raining sulfur and brimstone down on guilt-wracked New Englanders, and then the Second Awakening of the the early 1800s that spun off innumerable Protestant sects, cults, and utopian experiments. I like the term “Wokesterism” because the “ism” part acknowledges that the current hysteria makes a religion out of politics.

Sullivan’s theory is that Wokesterism is an improvised replacement for sclerotic American Christianity, to fill the vacuum of entropic meaninglessness that pervades life in the republic these days. He says:

And so we’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults. Like almost all new cultish impulses, they see no boundary between politics and their religion.

Wokesterism eerily mirrors many of the harsher practices of the most severe American Protestantism. It offers its own original sin, “white privilege,” from which there is neither redemption nor hope of redemption — like the old Presbyterian hell for babies who have come into this world drenched in sin. No amount of abject apology will avail for heretics to Wokesterism. The principal aims of Wokesterism are coercion of others, persecution, and punishment of the guilty (the un-Woke). Most importantly, it requires the suspension of individual conscience in order to promote unthinking, robotic obedience and mob justice. That helps explain the disgraceful blindness of the Wokester Left, especially the educated elites who work in the news media, the computer tech sector, and other “creative class” vocations.

One thing that Sullivan leaves out is the necessity for the Devil. That role is filled by Mr. Trump. His sinister cargo of belief, countering the Wokefullness of unicorns and rainbows, is the dark theology of MAGA, and Mr. Trump’s followers are the imps, demons, incubi and succubi of deplorable fly-over land. Wokesters will spare no effort to vanquish all this wickedness, and even lying and cheating in the service of that end is considered fair play. Hence the arrant and epic dishonesty of The New York Times.

Interesting case in point: Yesterday’s developments in the General Flynn court case are not even present in this morning’s Times. I speak of the action on the bench of Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan. It’s been brought to his attention that the scurrilous entrapment of Gen. Flynn by Woke FBI managers entailed departures from normal, lawful procedure. Gen. Flynn was interrogated in January of 2017, and the FBI account of the interview was not written (supposedly) until August of that year. Reports and memoranda must be written ASAP after an interview for the obvious reason that much important fact may be forgotten or misremembered if not documented right away. There is actually reason to believe that earlier versions of the report exist (or did exist), and they were trashed or buried when the main interrogator-of-Flynn, Peter Strzok, was cashiered from Robert Mueller’s team in July 2017. Judge Sullivan has demanded that the FBI produce those earlier docs by today (Friday) at 3:00 pm. It will be interesting to see if the FBI complies… or not. There is also a fair chance that Judge Sullivan will throw out Gen. Flynn’s conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct.

In the event, we could see the awesome downfall of the Archangel Mueller, and the unravelling of Wokester dreams of defeating the Devil via the Mueller inquisition. It will certainly be an embarrassment to the ardent Wokesters of the news media, who have shilled for this campaign for over two years. The General Flynn business is not the only thread unwinding in the giant tapestry of Wokester narrative. As in other epic persecutions, like the Jacobin Reign of Terror in 1790s France, and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the tables are turning. The inquisitors, prosecutors, and executioners are going to face charges themselves, and harsh punishment is not out of the question.

The defeat of Wokesterism would be a very salutary outcome for a nation that has so badly lost its bearings to the worst of human instincts: religious persecution. It could be a fatal blow to the Democratic Party, which will have to find an alternative reason for its existence than Devil-and-Demon hunting. The Devil hunters themselves could be in the dock in 2019, answering for their actual crimes against American citizens and the public interest. Even the sainted Holy Mother of Wokesterism, the Archangel Hillary, may find herself wingless in a witness chair, answering how all that schwag from Russian banksters happened to end up in her foundation’s cookie jar.

[Emil El Zapato]

Religion should be nothing more than a reference for morality...in politics. That is the perspective for those that aren't hamstrung by their authoritarian natures. White privilege...my perspective as one who wasn't born with that 'original sin' is this.

White privilege isn't a sin, it is merely a fact of life for those that benefit from it and for those that don't. It shouldn't be equated with the social concept that being an 'other' renders one by birthright 'less than' the white privileged. In my view when confronted by the reality of white privilege it is only another factor to be considered and generally the last one. It is last in the line of rationalizations that I use to justify failure. I personally think that most people don't purposefully lead with their privilege...only the jacked up do that. Unfortunately, there are many jackoffs. This 'thing' that suggests in a sophistic fashion that 'white privilege' is BAD is just another disenguous way of denying it. I ain't buying it.

In a tangential way this is the nature of the arguments that the 'Canadian' dude uses to propagandize 'social justice warriors' and 'personal responsibility'. Honestly, this is just my opinion, of course, but it is all bullsh*t.

[Emil El Zapato]

On a political note, one thing about the Flynn situation is that the news I heard said this regarding his lying about Russian contacts, paraphrasing "It has been verified that he lied to several Trump insiders about his dealings with the Russians". It wasn't reported in bombshell way but it hit me like a bombshell. That statement gives Trump all the plausible deniability he needs to eliminate Flynn as a threat to him. "He lied to several Trump insiders!"

[Chris]

Religion should be nothing more than a reference for morality...in politics. That is the perspective for those that aren't hamstrung by their authoritarian natures. White privilege...my perspective as one who wasn't born with that 'original sin' is this.

White privilege isn't a sin, it is merely a fact of life for those that benefit from it and for those that don't. It shouldn't be equated with the social concept that being an 'other' renders one by birthright 'less than' the white privileged. In my view when confronted by the reality of white privilege it is only another factor to be considered and generally the last one. It is last in the line of rationalizations that I use to justify failure. I personally think that most people don't purposefully lead with their privilege...only the jacked up do that. Unfortunately, there are many jackoffs. This 'thing' that suggests in a sophistic fashion that 'white privilege' is BAD is just another disenguous way of denying it. I ain't buying it.

In a tangential way this is the nature of the arguments that the 'Canadian' dude uses to propagandize 'social justice warriors' and 'personal responsibility'. Honestly, this is just my opinion, of course, but it is all bullsh*t.

I've been thinking about white privilege a lot lately. Of course it is difficult to appreciate its nuances living in a country that's almost entirely "white". We do have a large South Asian population (the Romani people or Gypsies as they're better known) and they are heavily discriminated against. It is hard to say whether they actually constitute a separate race or the difference between them and white Hungarians is merely a question of culture. I suspect it is a bit of both.

But, I did spend quite a lot of time in countries where I was the minority race. In fact, we once lived in a neighbourhood of Singapore, where me and my flatmate were the only white people for miles. We never saw any other Europeans apart from ourselves. Did that make us uncomfortable? Would we have been better off and safer living in a neighbourhood where there were more people like us? And does a Hungarian (and a Pole, in case of my flatmate) have more in common with say, a white Briton, than with a Singaporean Chinese, Malay or Indian person? Those are fascinating questions to ponder and my conclusion is that it all depends on the individual.

I personally feel very comfortable living among Asians. I feel that we are very similar and that they are my people in that I, as an individual, have probably more in common with them than with Europeans. Or is that just conceit on my part? I honestly don't know.

Which brings me to white privilege. The only time I have really experienced White Privilege in an overt way, was travelling in Asia. There really is a sort of deference and special treatment afforded to white people, in some places at least, that people with a different racial background don't get (and that includes other Asians). I remember an Asian-American friend complaining to me that it was almost impossible for him to get a teaching position in Thailand. Even though he was a trained teacher and a Native English speaker, teaching jobs were often given to Europeans who could barely speak English and had no formal training, because they looked the part. That is a very clear example of white privilege, which is, ironically perpetuated and maintained by non-whites.

Does a similar sort of discrimination exist in North America and Europe? Probably, but I think it is more subtle and covert.

[Emil El Zapato]

All true...which is why in the end as I always say, "We are our own worst enemies" ... I think that in the arena of longstanding social extants (meaning things that just are what they are) most 'reasoning' occurs at the meta-cognitive level. Which in other words says that there is no reasoning occurring. Behaviors are driven by not the subconscious of necessity but certainly by the dictates of our personal autopilots. It isn't 'bad' just easy and has a great deal of inertia attached to it. But, on the other hand, all the uproar about immigration is driven by autopilot. For the white cultures, it is white privilege and the very strong human instinct to retain it.

There are so many contradictions inherent in the immigration argument that in a moment of thoughtful clarity it would hopefully occur that it shouldn't be 'fought' it should be dealt with in a realistic, honest, and moral way. At the forefront of awareness, it should be acknowledged that 'perfection' is not goal because it simply cannot happen, we are, after all, hopelessly human and for the most part obviously not 'higher beings'.

[Dreamtimer]

White-ness in people is valued in many ways across the world. In the castes of India the whitest are on the top.

I worked with many arabs over a few years and many of the elite were very light-skinned, and paleness was admired.

I heard a hypothesis once about how paleness and blondness are instinctively favored by humans because they're associated with youth. Children are often more fair and darken as they age.


This video has nothing to do with whiteness, and lots to do with Collapse. In fact the term is used.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EXFpnjXNc

[Emil El Zapato]

Hi DT,

Time for a little crudity, not to mention impolitical correctness. Sigmund Freud speculated that 'blacks' are subject to mistreatment because they are the color of poopoo. So we have two ends of the 'coolness' spectrum. I'm going with socio-cultural indoctrination.

[Emil El Zapato]

White-ness in people is valued in many ways across the world. In the castes of India the whitest are on the top.

I worked with many arabs over a few years and many of the elite were very light-skinned, and paleness was admired.

I heard a hypothesis once about how paleness and blondness are instinctively favored by humans because they're associated with youth. Children are often more fair and darken as they age.


This video has nothing to do with whiteness, and lots to do with Collapse. In fact the term is used.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EXFpnjXNc

what a downer...I think homo sapiens is reaching the point where they can fight back. As this is the anti-thread, let me add that AI will never reach consciousness beyond that which metals are capable of. AI can certainly cipher better than Jethro Bodine but consciousness...Human like consciousness is endowed by way of animate matter. Rather consciousness is 'focused' within animate matter.

Compliments of Giovonni's 'The End of Upside Down Thinking' -

oops, this is 'Collapse' ... well, Since Singularity is considered to hold the potential for the downfall of Man which could be construed as a pretty serious collapse...I posit a counterview.

[Chris]

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nati...al-over-reach/

CLUSTERFUCK NATION – BLOG December 17, 2018

Fatal Over-reach

Last Friday morning, we adjourned the blog in anticipation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller handing over certain FBI documents in the General Flynn matter demanded by DC District Federal Judge Emmett G. Sullivan no later than 3:00 p.m. that day. Guess what. Mr. Mueller’s errand boys did not hand over the required documents — original FBI 302 interrogation reports. Instead, they proffered a half-assed “interview” with one of the two agents who conducted the Flynn interrogation, Peter Strzok, attempting to recollect the 302 half a year after it was written. Of course, Mr. Strzok was notoriously fired from the Bureau in August for bouts of wild political fury on-the-job as FBI counter-intel chief during and after the 2016 election. (This was the second time he was fired; the first was when Robert Mueller discarded him from the SC team in 2017 as a legal liability.)

So, 3:00 p.m. Friday has come and gone. It appears that the FBI 302 docs have come and gone, too. Actually, we have reason to believe that nothing ever created on a computer connected to the internet can actually disappear entirely. Rather, the data gets sucked into the bottomless well of the NSA server-farm out in Utah. Most likely, the original 302s exist and Mr. Mueller is pretending he can’t find them. In effect, it appears that Mr. Mueller has responded by gently whispering “fuck you” to Judge Sullivan.

Interestingly, The New York Times didn’t even report the story (nor The WashPo, nor CNN, nor MSNBC). Since their “Russia Collusion” narrative is foundering, they can’t tolerate any suggestion that their Avenging Angel of Impeachment, Mr. Mueller, is less than the sanctified plain dealer he affects to be. Judge Sullivan kept his own counsel all weekend. The next scheduled chapter in the story is Gen. Flynn’s sentencing this Tuesday. It would be a surprise if the Judge does not observe that Mr. Mueller has acted in contempt of court. Ditto if the charge against Gen. Flynn is not thrown out. After all, the main articles of evidence against him apparently don’t exist.

And if it turns out that Mr. Mueller and his team are disgraced by their apparent bad faith behavior in the Flynn case, what then of all the other cases connected to Mueller one way or another: Manafort, Cohen, Papadopoulos? And the other matters still in question, such as the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian “Magnitsky” lawyer and Golden Golem Junior, the porn star payoffs… really everything he has touched. What if it all falls apart?

In theory, this punch-drunk country could take a turn back to the genuine rule-of-law instead of the medieval-cum-Bolshevik practices of Deep State style justice. This would entail the prosecution of the prosecutors themselves. Far from an historical aberration, this is often the outcome when authorities overstep the boundaries of common decency. Which is what has happened in the setting-up of General Flynn.

Readers may wonder: why am I so concerned with these shenanigans among the FBI, the DOJ and Intel Community when there is that other elephant in the room, viz: Mr. Trump, the Golden Golem of Greatness, the awkward, embarrassing, childish fellow dishonoring the Oval Office? Because the actions of his antagonists are much more dangerous to the public interest than the oafish president. Elected officials come and go, but when America chucks the rule of law on the old garbage barge, this will cease to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. It will be a land of cringing cravens waiting in terror for the iron fist to smack them down like bugs.

Tomorrow, Tuesday Dec 18, some of the questions raised here will be answered, and I’ll add an addendum afterward. But there are many other forces in play right now on a world scene that is each day becoming more fraught with intimations of upsetting the current order of things. The West is enduring paroxysms of political uproar and disenchantment. China is more opaque politically, but its financial disorder is plain to see. And finally, there is the question of markets and banking, with their entwined fates heading in a bad direction. Of his many blunders, the worst for his own political survival was Mr. Trump taking ownership of the “greatest economy ever.” Stocks, bonds, and commodities are all wobbling at once, and approaching the event horizon where there is no floor under the price of anything. That will not make America great in the Trumpian sense, but it will be another opening for the long-awaited return of reality to a society where, for a long time, now, anything goes and nothing matters.

[Chris]

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2018/1...rt-i.html#more

MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2018

By Dmitry Orlov

The Future of Energy is Bright, Part I

There are numerous disagreements on the topic of energy with substantial, and well substantiated differences of opinion between knowledgeable people. People tend to be blindsided by these, because this topic is at once visceral (you very well know when you are too cold or too hot, and in the dark), political (you very well know when utility bills leave you broke) and technical (you don’t necessary know the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour, or that a terawatt is a million megawatts). But it is very important not to be blindsided by these disagreements, because if you end up on the wrong side of this argument, your lack of access to affordable energy is guaranteed to seriously crimp your style.

But there does seem to be one point of near-universal agreement: concentrated forms of energy, and especially electricity, are an essential ingredient of modern civilization. Fuel shortages and price increases are a major cause of social upheaval and mayhem. Power cuts are disruptive, especially to industrial production facilities that require steady state conditions. In hospitals and medical centers they can be lethal. Extended power outages often result in riots and looting. Without refrigeration food stockpiles go to waste; without heat or air conditioning urban centers become unlivable. Commerce, increasingly reliant on distributed information networks for payment processing and inventory control, grinds to a halt. Without elevators high-rise buildings become inaccessible.

If frequent though temporary power cuts are a major nuisance, stable, stable but high electricity prices are even worse because they make entire economic sectors—any that involve running electrically powered industrial machinery—globally noncompetitive. Sometimes all it takes is one bad decision. A case in point: some time ago Lithuania decided to shut down its only nuclear reactor, because it was an old Soviet design—RBMK, the same type as had blown up in Chernobyl, although with numerous safety upgrades, and so dumb politics rather than safety were the real issue. Now the Lithuanians have some of the highest electricity rates in Europe, there is no more industry in Lithuania, and instead they have to look for work in Germany.

A lot of people seem to think that energy is all about fossil fuels, which are bad because burning fossil fuels causes global warming. True, much of our energy, and virtually all transportation energy, comes from fossil fuels. But they are also not as plentiful as we would like, and the world as a whole is depleting the resource base of fossil fuels much faster than it is finding new resources. It is also generally conceded that there are enough of these resources left in the ground to completely wreck the climate—if they are ever going to be produced. Thus, fossil fuel resource depletion, and the fact that most of the remaining resources may turn out to be too difficult and expensive to produce, is actually a sort of blessing in disguise.

Furthermore, most of the fossil fuel resources, as far as quantities of usable products, are past their peaks. China has powered its transformation into an industrial powerhouse using cheap and abundant coal (causing much environmental devastation) but now China’s coal production is declining. Gasoline production, worldwide, peaked around 2006. Heavy oil, and diesel production with it, appears to have peaked in 2018. Natural gas production is still growing, but mostly thanks to new Russian liquefied natural gas production, and to shale gas production in the US, but the latter suffers from very high depletion rates and an overall lack profitability. Though everyone involved in the fossil fuel industry is compelled to paint a rosy picture (lest the investment money dry up) and we are being constantly barraged with optimistic projections, these often turn out to be exaggerated when reexamined in the rear view mirror. In short, we may be more blessed than we know.

But the blessing is also a curse, since a lack of stable, reliable, affordable energy pretty much spells the end of the world as we know it. Perhaps it will make you feel better knowing that you are no longer destroying our home planet as you wander up and down a stretch of abandoned highway collecting dry tree branches for your campfire, on which to cook some rodents you caught with a forked stick, but wouldn’t it make you feel even better if there were a way to keep the lights on without destroying the planet?

It is at this point that many people go off the rails, shoot off into the green energy weeds, and get stuck there. The most heavily hyped forms of green energy are wind, solar and biomass, followed by tidal energy, run-of-the-river micro-hydro and other exotics. I am certainly no enemy to any of these, having spent months living off-grid using various such devices. I have installed and maintained wind generators and solar panels, and will probably do so again if the situation calls for them. I am particularly fond of biomass and have an entire woodshed stacked with seasoned split alder logs to prove it. Stoking a wood fire is pure joy. I am less fond of the chores of going through battery banks, topping off electrolyte and looking for shorted cells to bypass, climbing masts to service wind generators or going over solar panels with a spray bottle and a squeegee.

But I have also looked at the economics of it, and have discovered that there is only one situation where wind generators and solar panels make sense: where the need for power is very modest and there is no electric grid to connect to. They are also pointless as far as replacing fossil fuel energy, because they cannot be manufactured, transported and maintained using anything other than energy and materials from petrochemical sources. Add up all the numbers, and what you end up is this: wind and solar provide reasonably good ways of storing and transporting small amounts of fossil fuel energy using wind and sunlight as an assist.

Wind and solar alone cannot be used to power the electric grid because the power they produce is intermittent and is either too much or too little. And since the electric grid has no way of storing energy (supply and demand must remain in balance at all times) both surpluses and shortfalls are bad. Therefore, other, stable generating capacity (based on fossil fuels, of course) must also be provided. How much additional generating capacity is needed? Rather unsurprisingly, pretty much all of it. That is, you have to build and maintain the same generating capacity as you would have to otherwise, except that you will now also have to pay for wind generators and solar panels. You will save some on fossil fuels, but then you will squander most of these savings on efficiency losses because, you see, rapidly throttling down your generating capacity to compensate for wind storms and sunny spells will waste a lot of energy (in the form of precious compressed steam loudly, stupidly vented to the atmosphere).

As a side note, one point about wind and solar that seems to confuse everyone is the difference between rated power and actual power. I installed a 400W wind generator on two separate boats. It generated, on average, around 30W. A large part of the time it generated 0W and a smaller part of the time it was too windy for it and it screamed like a banshee, then went into self-braking mode and also generated 0W. I also installed 200W of solar panels. These generated somewhere near 150W around mid-day when the sky was cloudless and their angle to the sun was close to perfect and much less—again, averaging out to around 30W—the rest of the time. If there was tree pollen in the air and I hadn’t bothered to squeegee off the dust and the pollen, they produced significantly less.

Now let’s do the math. A 1.5kW (that’s 1500 Watts) gasoline-powered generator on Alibaba is $250 US (and you know you’ll need one for those windless, sunless days). A 200W solar panel kit is also around $250. And a 400W wind generator is $300. Suppose you need to be able to count on having 1kW of power, generated “renewably” to the greatest extent possible, if you please. Well then, based on my numbers, you will need 33 wind generators and 33 solar panels, for a total outlay of $15,000 US. Batteries, cables, masts, solar panel frames, battery racks, charge controllers, inverters, etc., are not included, but they will add up to almost as much. Labor for installation and maintenance is also not included, and it is likely to be again as much. You are then looking at an outlay of $45,000 for 1kW. If you are in California, with its outrageous electricity rates ($0.1523/kWh), this will pay for itself in about 300000 hours, or 33 years.

Or you could just spend $250 on a 1.5kW gasoline-powered generator and be done with it. The $45,000 you save would buy you more than 10,000 gallons of gasoline (in California, which has the highest gas prices in the US). The generator consumes somewhere around gallon every 4 hours, giving you around 45,000 hours (or 5 years) of continuous operation at full power. You will need to replace the generator sooner than that, cutting into your savings somewhat, but on the other hand you are unlikely to have to run the generator flat out 24/7.

I am quite sure that you could scale up this calculation to any size and the results would be similar, and the economic results bear this out: nobody has ever managed to keep electricity rates internationally competitive by going this route. And if you make yourself noncompetitive, then you will no longer have to solve this problem because your companies and your workers will either relocate to a place that has competitive electricity rates, or they will just sit around and get drunk all the time like many of the Lithuanians are currently doing, consuming very little electricity in the process. All of this seems rather straightforward to me, but I am sure that I will fail to convince certain people, probably because they think that wind generators and solar panels are ecological and can save the planet, generators are noisy and redneck, and doing the math is for nerds.

Be that as it may. If you are not convinced, then please do some research on your own and convince yourself. I understand that for many people “green tech” is a matter of faith, and I do not wish to hurt the feelings of the faithful. I submit to you that there are major problems with fossil fuels in terms of their above-ground availability and affordability, rosy pictures drawn by certain petroleum geologists and energy information agencies notwithstanding (they have to feign optimism in order to continue to get paid). I also submit to you that wind, solar, biomass and other such “green” technologies do not offer a solution (but do offer a way to squander even more natural resources and to waste people’s money while making them feel green and virtuous). Add to this the fact that the burning of fossil fuels is causing major environmental problems. To top it off, take on board the fact that affordable, reliable electricity is the sine qua non of civilized existence.

Does this problem have a solution. Well, yes it does, which is why I believe that the future of energy is in fact so bright that you’ll need specialized protective gear just to look at it. It is also very complicated, full of scientific, technical and political challenges, and fraught with great dangers. I will explain how that can be next.

[Emil El Zapato]

bwaaahaaahaaaaa....Impressive credentials but a not very robust sense of reality. What one would expect from an 'artiste'. Very fanciful, unfortunately negative, though. Trump is applying the venom coming out of his arse to weaken the foundations of America. What this Kunstler says flies in the face of every bit of info floating around in the humanasphere. Flynn, is not a threat...


Article dated 12/14/2018:

"Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Friday released key documents relating to the FBI’s questioning of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, confirming agents did not believe at the time Flynn intentionally lied to them -- though he was later charged with making false statements in that interview.

The documents also reveal that the decision to interview Flynn in early 2017 about contacts with the Russian ambassador was controversial within the Justice Department. One FBI document said then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates “was not happy” when then-FBI Director James Comey informed her that the FBI planned to talk to Flynn. The report also said several unnamed people back at FBI headquarters “later argued about the FBI’s decision to interview Flynn.”


The documents – some of which are heavily redacted – were released in response to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordering prosecutors to hand over the government's files related to the FBI’s questioning of Flynn by Friday afternoon. The order came after Flynn's legal team said in a filing that the FBI discouraged Flynn from bringing a lawyer to the interview and agents never advised him false statements in that setting could constitute a crime. The newly released documents confirm those claims."

I should add the caveat that Flynn is no threat unless the 'lying to insiders' doesn't extend to Trump himself.

Here's another factoid of interest:

Sally Caroline Yates is an American lawyer. She served as a United States Attorney and later United States Deputy Attorney General, having been appointed to both positions by President Barack Obama.

Bottom line if anybody is questionable in this entire scenario it is Comey...He won the election for Trump.

Another thought: Comey compromised his principles to stop Clinton (Democrat) from becoming President. Comey, a dedicated Republican, to great surpise had pangs of guilt after he recognized what he had wrought and tried to undo it by undoing the Trump election. He failed and has lived to regret it.

[Chris]

An excellent article about the collapse of Venezuela. There are many lessons to be learnt from studying the collapse of advanced societies into something barely above stone age subsistence.

http://https://www.theguardian.com/c...-latin-america

[Emil El Zapato]

My next door neighbor is Venezuelan...his sister is an M.D. making 10 dollars a month. He blames the Cubanos more than anybody. He says they control by political infiltration the social line of dominance.

[Chris]

My next door neighbor is Venezuelan...his sister is an M.D. making 10 dollars a month. He blames the Cubanos more than anybody. He says they control by political infiltration the social line of dominance.

It's rather interesting how Venezuela and Colombia went in radically different directions in the last decade or so. Colombia used to be a bloody mess. Now it's booming and the standard of living is improving every year. Venezuela was much richer even 5 years ago. Look at it now.

I personally think that Venezuela's main problem is resource curse. Russia suffers from the same affliction, though it is managed much better there. Once oil goes out of fashion, the likes of Saudi Arabia will follow Venezuela down the drain.

It is still a very complex situation in Venezuela, I doubt that many outsiders can truly understand it. I personally think their big mistake was turning their back on the US and trying to ally themselves with Russia and Cuba instead. Russia has just moved Heavy Nuclear Bombers there, in a replay of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Say what you want about Americans, but if you want to make money and keep your population prosperous, it pays to remain on their good side.

The revolutionary fervour coming out of Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador is economically suicidal, given that they ARE on the American continent and their biggest and most obvious business partner is always going to be the USA. Russia is far away with an economy significantly smaller than California. Cuba and Ecuador don't even register as significant economies. This whole idiocy of making an enemy out of your biggest potential customer and ally reminds me of Brexit actually.

[Emil El Zapato]

yeah, I think so...