[ZMan] Spengler famously described a civilization as having a birth, life and then a decline into death, much like the life of man. One of the features of decline is the elite stops being elite in term of talent and ability. They may sit atop society and hold power over the people, but they are no longer a genuine elite. They simply hold positions in a system created by those who came before them. They are the inheritors of status that they did not earn and they lack the ability to earn.
This reality is becoming increasingly obvious as we see highly credentialed morons stagger from one blunder to the next. Europe is about to go into a modern version of the turnip winter because European leaders picked a fight with Russia, the primary energy supplier to the continent. The people leading Europe do not decorate themselves like African potentates, but they are every bit as ridiculous. They are like children wearing their parents clothes, pretending to be adults.
The decline of the elites has become so obvious that even some former neocons are starting to notice the problem. Victor David Hanson has a piece in American Greatness bemoaning the decline of the elites. He clings to his old civic nationalists beliefs, so that has left him in a no man’s land of sorts. He cannot take the trip over the great divide, but he cannot sign onto the latest thing. He is left to argue that better people at the top would somehow fix the system.
What civic nationalist critics fail to see is the elite incompetnace is a product of the system, rather than a plague upon it. The crisis in the West is not caused by failed leadership but rather the elites are a product of the same forces behind the general crisis in the West. A bourgeoise culture evolved in the 20th century that naturally leads to a flattening of talent. The elites seem mediocre because bourgeoise society, taken to its logical end, is the celebration of mediocrity.
--- SNIP ---
The modern intelligent, with her pronouns in her profile, is simply hoping to create barriers in the gray nothingness. On the one hand, it signals moral status within the gray nothingness of bourgeois life. On the other hand, it creates the sense that there is a moral barrier to entry. The gross people at Target do not use the proper pronouns, while the cool people using Instacart never deadname anyone. The meaningless gestures are supposed to give meaning in an otherwise meaningless culture.
The crisis in the West is not due to faulty elites. The elites are the product of a long decline into a bourgeois-ocracy. The replacement of the vertical relations with horizonal ones was always unnatural and unnatural things cannot last. The mediocre elites are just the natural result of mediocre people spawned by the socio-political culture that values mediocrity over greatness. Nature selects against the mediocre and therefore the bourgeois-ocracy is trundling to its natural end.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/30/2022 00:00 ||
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#1
The more they centralize, the more they push controls, the more ineffective and disastrous their handling becomes. Understand that nature is chaos. Learn to deal with it rather than seek ultimate control.
Detroit, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Chicago and L.A., either no evacuation plan or keep it under wraps, study says
Honolulu, Colorado Springs, El Paso, San Antonio, Memphis, and Indianapolis all have weak exit strategies
Residents should hatch their own plans to flee during wildfires, storms or floods ...and should anyway. The best government efforts can at best only take into account the needs of the majority, not the special cases.
Motorists can usually get out, the real worry is the 25 percent without transport See?
No time to charge an EV before escaping. It's not like filling a tank with gas.
They include the poor, elderly, unaccompanied children, homeless, tourists, and those with certain conditions, like blindness ...diabetes, heart disease —the list can be extended infinitely...
This year's Atlantic hurricane season has been quiet so far, but that could change soon ...or it continue to be a quiet year, hurricane-wise. The models are so poor at predicting that we’ll have to wait until afterward if we want accurate predictions.
The Red Cross says climate change means ‘more frequent and intense weather events' The Red Cross joins the rest of the Global Warming true believers in believing what is unproven, and ever more likely to be shown to be untrue. But toothpaste and toilet paper will be needed regardless the emergency, so there’s that.
#6
I wonder if electric suppliers to EVs will be accused of price gauging like the airlines and oil companies whenever there's an "emergency" declared by the [federal] government (whether the emergency actually occurs or not).
#7
#6 I wonder if electric suppliers to EVs will be accused of price gauging like the airlines and oil companies whenever there's an "emergency" declared by the [federal] government (whether the emergency actually occurs or not).
Posted by: DooDahMan 2022-08-30 04:27
...And along the same lines, can you imagine the uproar when we have hundreds dead because they couldn't get their EVs charged in the first place to get out of town?
#10
You really want to evacuate these people. Alot of what we are dealing with here in Atlanta and I'm sure other southern cities is what was evacuated out of New Orleans after Katrina. Those people and their offspring.
Posted by: Chris ||
08/30/2022 10:16 Comments ||
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#11
Honolulu really should have a plan for dealing with a tsunami.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/30/2022 13:30 Comments ||
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#12
That's called the SOL plan.
Posted by: Chris ||
08/30/2022 13:40 Comments ||
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#15
Its Democrat policy to just have the poor Die In Place. They get more martyrs to display that way, and somehow have the press paint it as the non-Dems fault.
[Unlimited Hangout] The World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, Klaus Schwab’s supposed brainchild, is actually an almost exact replica of Henry Kissinger’s International Seminar that was originally run out of Harvard and was funded by the CIA. In this article, Johnny Vedmore investigates the people behind Kissinger’s International Seminar, the CIA conduits which funded the program, and Kissinger’s key role in the creation of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders program itself.
The World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders (YGL) initiative has been responsible for seeding many of the ruling elite into positions of power and influence within the worlds of business, civil society and, most importantly, politics. The fall of the Soviet Union soon became the apparent catalyst for the creation of the Global Leaders for Tomorrow program, which was the precursor to the Young Global Leaders initiative over a decade later.
However, the supposed mastermind of the project, the WEF’s lifetime leader Klaus Schwab, had himself already been helped into his own influential position by a very similar program run out of Harvard University that was heavily funded by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Harvard initiative in question, often referred to as Henry Kissinger’s International Seminar, was one of several programs set up by senior members of organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the newly created CIA. In fact, during the post-World War II era, the United States was proactively creating many such programs with the intention of grooming potential young foreign leaders and installing them into positions of power. The main motive behind the establishment of these programs was ostensibly to combat and prevent communist infiltration of foreign states while also assuring that future global leaders would be amenable to US interests.
Originally, the United States created these secretive youth organizations with the aim of targetting potential future European leadership candidates. Yet, soon, no country in the world would be safe from possible CIA-sponsored political infiltration. In this article, we will examine one of the front organizations which used vast amounts of CIA money to fund various Harvard projects including Kissinger’s International Seminar. We will learn who the people were who created these funding platforms, and we’ll also look at other such educational initiatives, some still in existence today, which have helped American intelligence infiltrate governments worldwide.
You are left to draw your own conclusions regarding the validity of our own election process, both current and past.
#1
US President Barack Obama's elder daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in 2017, after taking a year off following her high school graduation, the White House says.
"Malia will take a gap year before beginning school," a White House statement said.
The 17-year-old will be following in the footsteps of her parents, both of whom went to Harvard Law School.
Her choice of university has been a subject of much speculation.
Malia is the elder of the Obamas' two daughters. She and her sister Sasha, 15, attend the Sidwell Friends, a prestigious local private school.
The Obamas have said they will keep living in Washington after the president leaves office in January, so that Sasha can finish her high school studies there.
[RealProperty] Census Bureau: 3.8 million renters likely to be evicted in next two months — why rental crisis is getting worse
For the first time ever, the median rent in the US surpassed $2,000 a month in June — and the increases don’t seem to be stopping.
Those rising rents mean households totaling 8.5 million people were in arrears on their rents at the end of August, according to Census Bureau figures. And 3.8 million of those tenants say they are fairly or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.
The combination of rising inflation, the end of most eviction moratoriums and rent subsidy payments, and an extremely low vacancy rate has pushed rents up — and many tenants are leaving.
Also read: Rents in Toronto are likely to rise another 15% over the next six months, experts say And per MSM this week, utility bills in arrears are soaring
#2
The combination of rising inflation, the end of most eviction moratoriums and rent subsidy payments, and an extremely low vacancy rate has pushed rents up — and many tenants are leaving.
Inflation, moratoriums and subsidies - three factors created by government. Screw with the market and then feign surprise at the consequences.
#8
Yeah, but who's going to pay rent for those illegal aliens. Oh, that's right. We will.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/30/2022 13:38 Comments ||
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#9
The unspoken aspect of this is tha tthe debt for past dues rent will remain once the moratorium is removed. So in addition to eviction, the rent constitutes a personal debt, inducing 4 million bankruptcy filings unless the Democrats create a way to erase that debt as well. Think about the rough numbers, 4 million times 2000/month times 24 months = $192 billion potentially, and perhaps twice that or more overall.
#11
#9, the landlords are affected too. Unlike the universities, which should be - but are not - getting claw back pressure over the debt cancelations.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/30/2022 18:35 Comments ||
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[Unherd] Italy’s first-ever summer election does not take place for another month, but the outcome already appears certain: the country’s centre-Right coalition — comprising Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia — is leading the polls by a wide margin. Victory seems guaranteed.
Brothers of Italy, in particular, continues its surge ahead of all the other parties, establishing Meloni as the de facto leader of the centre-Right coalition and as a likely candidate to become the first female prime minister in Italian history. Her party is now polling at around 25%, with Salvini’s Lega at 15% and Forza Italia at 7% — close to potentially giving the coalition more than 60% of the seats due to the current electoral system.
On the opposite front, the centrist Democratic Party (PD), the party of the establishment, has severed all ties with Giuseppe Conte’s Five Star Movement, which they hold responsible for the fall of the Draghi government — an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the Italian elites. However, by foregoing an electoral alliance with Conte’s party, which until a few months ago seemed all but certain, the PD has effectively given up its only chance of coming anywhere close to a majority. On its own, the PD is currently polling at 23%, making it the second party in the country. But with its centre-Left coalition made up of small parties, they are unlikely to gain more than 30% of the votes.
For its part, the Five Star Movement has experienced the most spectacular fall from grace of any party in modern European history: at the last elections, in 2018, on the back of a strongly anti-establishment rhetoric, it gained an astonishing 32.7% of the votes, 11 million in total, making it by far the most-voted party in parliament. Today it is polling at around 10%.
This is the result of what many view as a betrayal of the party’s ideals. Failing to achieve much during its short-lived "populist" government alliance with the Lega, it subsequently underwent nothing less than a full-blown transformation, first allying itself with the pro-establishment PD and then offering its unwavering support for the technocratic government of Mario Draghi, the embodiment itself of post-democratic technocratic management. Needless to say, voters weren’t impressed — hence the party’s free-fall in the polls.
Indeed, for the many millions of Italians who placed their hopes in Five Star, the lesson is a bleak one: voting is pointless. Unsurprisingly, most polls forecast the turnout at the upcoming elections to be the lowest ever — with potentially more than 40% of voters not bothering to head to the polls....
[Minepressnews - 13 Dec 2019 story] MONTREAL — In recent weeks, renewed attention has been brought to the allegations that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking and sexual blackmail operation was run on behalf of Israeli military intelligence. Those claims revolve around statements made by a former Israeli military intelligence official turned public relations consultant Ari Ben-Menashe, whose allegations regarding the Epstein scandal were reported by MintPress this past October.
Ben-Menashe’s claims related to Epstein first surfaced in an interview between Ben-Menashe and Zev Shalev of the independent news outlet, Narativ. As detailed in a MintPress summary and commentary of that interview, Ben-Menashe claimed to have seen Jeffrey Epstein in the office of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, several times in the 1980s.
At the time, Ben-Menashe was in close contact with Robert Maxwell regarding their work mutual work with Israeli military intelligence. Maxwell, in addition to heading a media empire and being a one-time member of U.K. parliament, was a longtime operative for Israeli intelligence, so much so that his 1991 funeral was attended by no less than six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence as well as several high-ranking Israeli politicians and prime ministers.
Maxwell is alleged to have recruited Jeffrey Epstein for Israeli intelligence and later introduced Epstein to Ben-Menashe and another operative, Nicholas Davies. Epstein was introduced to Ben-Menashe as having been pre-approved by leading figures in Israel’s military intelligence directorate, known as Aman.
MintPress recently conducted its own interview with Mr. Ben-Menashe as part of an ongoing investigation on the life and connections of the now-infamous Jeffrey Epstein.
#1
2019 Article, is there any reason this is resurfacing perhaps as the Iran Deal is percolating over Israels' strident (and well justified) objections?
#2
Ari Ben Menashe is author of a few true but many false tales. He is also a representative of nutzoid generals in the Sudan and Myanmarr.
Probably impossible to sift any nuggets of truth from the epic mishmash of fantasy that he emits.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/30/2022 16:37 Comments ||
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#3
Described as a conspiratorial website,[10][11] MintPress News publishes disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, according to researchers at Rutgers University and others.[12][13] - Wikipedia [I know, that ain't no book of Mark either, but even so]
#4
The gentleman has appeared in our archives before — since y’all brought it up, I checked and added the result to the bottom of the article. He does not have a good reputation around here.
BLUF:
[American Thinker] Every single one of those highlighted words is completely wrong. Those classifications (which should not have been leaked, of course) come from pencil pushers; that is, hired bureaucrats assigned those classifications to the documents. There is only one person in the land who can officially classify and declassify documents, and that is the President of the United States. He gets that plenary power through the Constitution and the will of We the People, who elected him.
To the extent bureaucrats assign classifications to documents, they do so only through delegated power. No matter how many little red rubber stamps they use to mark up documents, it is the president who has the final say. Not the Department of Justice, not the FBI, and certainly not some soggy little bureaucrats in the National Archives.
The Justice Department notified a federal judge Monday that authorities had identified a "limited set of materials" seized in this month's search of former President Donald Trump's Florida estate that may contain information protected by attorney-client privilege.
In a brief court filing, Justice officials said they had completed the review of those materials and are addressing any privilege "disputes."
The Justice Department filing comes after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signaled her intent to appoint a special master to serve as a third-party screener of documents seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago property.
But the new Justice filing indicates that federal authorities had already assigned a so-called "privilege review team" to do much the same thing that the Trump lawyers had requested: sorting and excluding material that may not be relevant or information that may be designated as privileged.
Human source information in Mar-a-Lago documents:Trump search affidavit reveals confidential source documents found at Mar-a-Lago, raising new alarms
#6
It is an attempt to remove documents that make many powerful bozos look bad from the control of Trump. The raid ignores the law and The Constitution because they are desperate. They didn't need access to these documents, which are only copies. They hold the master copies already. Their need is for us to never have access to these classified documents.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/30/2022 15:46 Comments ||
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[JPost] These past few months show that the West Bank is headed back to the days when wanted gunmen used to roam the streets of Palestinian communities.
Since the end of the Second Intifada, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has stated his public support for a nonviolent "popular resistance" against Israel as opposed to suicide bombings and shooting attacks. It now appears that the Palestinians in the West Bank have also endorsed another type of "resistance" — the "armed struggle."
Abbas has, on numerous occasions, stated his opposition to violence and terrorism as a means of fulfilling Palestinian aspirations.
But he has never clarified what exactly he means when he talks about the "popular resistance," although some of his advisers and senior officials refer to peaceful and nonviolent protests by Palestinian civilians against Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Yet many Palestinians consider the hurling of stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers and settlers as an essential part of the "popular resistance."
It feels good to hurl and shout slogans, but is demonstrably ineffective. Truly God must love the Jews, to give them Arabs as their enemies.
Until recently, most Palestinians appeared to heed the call by Abbas (and the Palestinian leadership) to engage in "popular resistance" activities.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PALESTINIAN STANCE?
In recent months, however, these activities have been accompanied by what many Palestinians describe as "armed resistance."
They do love their armed resisting.
The "popular resistance" Abbas talked about is quickly turning into an armed confrontation between Palestinian gunmen and soldiers, especially in the northern West Bank.
Dozens of gunmen stay awake all night to watch out for soldiers entering their areas.
In some instances, when the soldiers don’t show up, the gunmen go out searching for them at the entrances to the cities, villages and refugee camps.
The gunmen have replaced the Palestinian security forces, who often disappear from the streets just before the arrival of the soldiers.
In keeping with the spirit of the "popular resistance," soldiers who carry our nightly incursions into Palestinian villages and refugee camps were until recently met with barrages of stones and Molotov cocktails.
Nowadays, nonetheless, the soldiers are almost always met with heavy gunfire from Palestinian gunmen.
WHY ARE PALESTINIAN GUNMEN TURNING MORE VIOLENT?
For some Palestinians, the armed clashes mark the beginning of a new-old era, one that is reminiscent of the violence and terrorism that took place during the first years of the Second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000.
"Obviously, the reality on the ground is changing," said a senior Palestinian official in Ramallah. "We have a popular resistance during the day and an armed resistance during the night. The number of young men carrying weapons is increasing every day."
A number of reasons are given for the growing use of firearms in Palestinian clashes with the IDF.
First, the Palestinian Authority does not seem to be capable of — or willing — to confront the gunmen, who enjoy the support of the Palestinian public.
Second, the gunmen, especially those in the Jenin and Nablus regions, are being armed and funded by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The leaders of the two Iranian-backed groups have made no secret of their desire to push Palestinians in the West Bank toward an armed confrontation with Israel. Several Fatah gunmen affiliated with the ruling Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas have no problem cooperating with Islamic Jihad and Hamas as long as the two groups are willing to offer them money and weapons.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are hoping that the increase in shooting attacks and armed clashes against settlers and IDF soldiers will also contribute to the undermining of the Palestinian Authority’s control of the West Bank.
It's all political
They are also hoping that the semi-daily shooting attacks will ultimately encourage some members of the Palestinian security forces to join the fight against Israel, a move that they believe could expedite the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/30/2022 00:00 ||
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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] America would have to install 30 million electronic vehicle charging ports by 2030 if half of drivers switch to EVs by the time California's ban on gas cars takes effect.
If half of all vehicles sold are zero-emission by 2030, the country would need 1.2 million public chargers and 28 million private chargers by that year - which a McKinsey report claims would cost more than $35 billion over eight years.
Electric vehicle sales have been climbing by double digits each year since 2016, but over half of US consumers cite battery or charging issues as their main concerns - and it's fair to say the limited network of public charging stations is a roadblock for many buyers.
The country has over 128,000 public EV charging outlets and at least 4,500 private charging stations - in comparison with about 150,000 gas stations - and faces a daunting task in trying to build out for its needs.
#4
The wire to connect to the grid infrastructure including power generation and/or diesel generators including additional diesel refinery.
Although I appreciate one of the largest pro-green propaganda sites pointing out a taste of the real issue at hand, I do not think 'daunting' is a strong enough word.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Unlimited Hangout] The 
US President Barack Obama's elder daughter Malia will attend Harvard University in 2017, after taking a year off following her high school graduation, the White House says.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] America would have to install 30 million electronic vehicle charging ports by 2030 if half of drivers switch to EVs by the time California's ban on gas cars takes effect. 
