Why AMLO is ignored by both "sides"
Mexico is starting construction of a new oil refinery. This is part of AMLO's project to bring all refining in country, so Mexico won't have to depend on USA for refining its crude. Keep the jobs and skills in country, keep the profit in country.

US "right" wingers can't stand it because the refinery is government-owned.

US "left" wingers can't stand it because oil is sin.

FDR would understand exactly what AMLO is doing. And in fact FDR did understand what AMLO is doing. As always, I don't have to ask what FDR would do, because FDR faced all the same problems we have now, and solved them. Since 1946 we have been thoroughly and painstakingly DEsolving all the problems FDR solved. In most cases we have overshot the DEsolving, making the problem massively worse than it was in 1932.

Labels: #desistance, se-lu

  ¶ 4:37 AM

  Monitoring isn't the problem.
Survey linked by ZH finds that a strong majority of Americans UNDERSTAND what Deepstate is doing, though most don't use the term Deepstate.

Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not). Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group, although Republicans (31%) and independents (33%) are somewhat more likely than Democrats (19%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists.

Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%) who say this activity is widespread and another 29% who say such monitoring happens but is not widespread. Just 14% say this monitoring does not happen at all. There are no substantial partisan differences in these results.

Missing the big point as usual. Monitoring AS SUCH is a good thing. In fact an ideally responsive government would be monitoring everybody all the time.

The relevant variable is what government DOES with the info.

The ideal representative government would pick up areas of discontent and ADJUST ITS OWN BEHAVIOR to minimize the discontent. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

We had an ideal representative government just once, from 3/4/33 until 4/12/45. Twelve good years. FDR monitored public discontent and ADJUSTED THE GOVERNMENT to minimize discontent. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

All administrations before and since have practiced either positive feedback or no feedback at all.

Most of the regimes before Wilson had no feedback at all. The Federal government simply didn't do much, so it didn't need to know much.

Wilson brought in POSITIVE FEEDBACK, intense lethal monitoring and cultivating of "subversives" so the government would have an exponentially increasing supply of "problems" that must be "solved" by cultivating more "subversives".

Harding abandoned the positive feedback for unknown reasons (which would still be worth understanding!) Coolidge and Hoover continued in pre-Wilson mode while real problems multiplied.

FDR solved the problems.

After FDR, the Wilson mode SMASHED back into control. Since 1946 it's all about cultivating "problems" which are "solved" by cultivating more "problems."

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 9:45 AM

  Ike's ognons
Pondering constants and variables as usual. It's clear that FDR and Ike were the sanest presidents in recent memory. Both focused on infrastructure, both avoided foreign adventures. (Until FDR was forced by an actual foreign attack, which is exactly as it should be.)

Trying to peel the ognon a bit more, why are those two points important? The deeper question, I think, is "What makes a country defensible?" It's the same as "What makes a house defensible?" Or any object.

Three things:

1. Tools for defense. For all objects, it's WALLS and FENCES and BORDERS. For a country, you want to back up the WALLS with a strong army. For a house you want mousetraps, insect poison, or a gun under your pillow, depending on the dominant threat.

2. Tools for withstanding a siege. A well-connected infrastructure with lots of storage. For a country, banks, dams, grain silos, food warehouses. Same for house, on a different scale. Batteries, freeze-dried food, patient things.

3. Tools to rebuild damage. Army Corps of Engineers; hammers, drills, shovels.

4. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: People who feel like defending the object.

The last is the real heart of the ognon. If the people don't want the object to survive, no point having tools.

FDR started office with a population that was HAIRTRIGGER revolutionary. Steps 1,2,3 had been neglected for decades. Mass movements were building. FDR had to restore trust and faith. He did it by implementing steps 1,2,3. Dams, windbreaks, trustworthy banks.

Ike had a less powerful problem, and he solved it less successfully. Yoonyuns (not to be confused with unyons) were striking all over the place, blocking 1,2,3. Soviet agents were taking over the courts and media. (ie Brown vs Board and Army vs McCarthy.) Ike got the yoonyuns under control, but completely failed on the Soviets. We're still dying from his failure. Nevertheless, he mobilized a major improvement of dams and highways, which provided jobs and electricity, stopped floods, and helped industry run better. He didn't allow Free Trade or Open Borders. He STOPPED the counterproductive Korean War and DIDN'T START any new wars. Result: Prosperity that ACTUALLY LIFTED ALL BOATS. People felt like defending the country. Despite the Commie failure, still a better record than any other president except FDR.

Labels: defensible spaces, Patient things

  ¶ 5:12 PM

  Aptroboulevard alert
Via ZH:

The Yellow Vests have burned a bank on Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt, along with several other stores serving the aristocracy.

First thought: A beautiful salute to the only REAL bankburner we ever had.

Better thought: There's one crucial difference. FDR didn't actually burn the banks. FDR saw that people were ready to burn the banks along with everything else. He CONTROLLED the banks and the monopolists to STOP the burning.

Best thought: Macron's agents provocateurs are busy. This bank is associated with the Rothschild family, thus completing Macron's goal of Nazifying the protestors.

FDR solved the problem of inequality by INCREASING the comparative power of ordinary people.

Macron and Merkel and Trump and May are making the problem worse by INCREASING the power of Juncker and Soros. Juncker is reproducing the Third Reich, and Soros is the only ACTUAL PEDIGREED ORIGINAL NAZI in the world. Now that the protestors are "officially" defined as "Nazis", the ACTUAL Nazis can resume their genocide without obstacles.

= = = = =

Stupid linguistic sidenote: When contrasting problem-solvers vs problem-make-worsers, the lack of a true antonym for solve is dramatically obvious.

Solve is derived from Indo-european se-lu, self-loosen. You solve a problem by loosening the ropes that bind your mind, or by untangling the component parts of the problem.

Online dictionaries list plenty of supposed antonyms, most of which are completely offbase.

Confuse, pose, question, wonder, bewilder, complicate, aggregate, bamboozle, baste, dumbfound, encode, encrypt, mystify, obscure, perplex, aggravate, tangle, twist...

Tangle and twist are literal antonyms of the original loosen, but they haven't gone through the same long history of metaphor, so they don't feel like proper antonyms.

Aggravate is probably the best of this weak list, but still misses the target.

Labels: se-lu, Sorosia

  ¶ 6:13 AM

  Constants and Variables 134, practical edition
Repeating and broadening a very old point, just because I feel like it.

We know the problems in politics, science and academia. The problems have been thoroughly exposed. We don't need to spend ANY MORE TIME on exposing the problems. And we can't afford to waste time on 'innovative disruptive' solutions, because ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL 'innovative disruptive' solutions are GUARANTEED to make the problem infinitely worse. Instead, we should be thinking of PRACTICAL ways to solve the problems.

PRACTICAL: Was this problem solved before? If so, how? And how can we re-apply the OLD solution to re-solve the problem?

Most of our political and economic problems were solved hundreds of times. Some of them were solved by Natural Law setups like Sharia, some by the Soviet system, MANY of them by FDR.

= = = = =

One exception to the FDR pattern is the first breakup of Deepstate. Deepstate was formalized in the 1890s by Sherburne Hopkins and brought into government by Wilson. After 1920, Wilson's bureaucracy went away quickly except for Lady Edgar's Bureau of Inquisition. I've been trying to figure this out, and came up with one pretty good answer. Harding tried to break up Deepstate, tried to turn away from imperialism. He was discredited by "scandal", an everyday bit of corruption involving some of his friends. Then he died of "natural causes". We remember him ONLY for Teapot Dome.

The facts are right out in the open. I don't have the history skills or access to connect the facts in a more rigorous way. I wish somebody who has skills and access would pick up the ball and run with it, to find out HOW Harding broke up Wilson's Deepstate.

= = = = =

The problems of Academia, theorigenic blindness and rigid orthodoxy, have been extremely well documented. As with Harding, we already have an example of the solution, and it's not even outside the structures of Academia. Some disciplines have succeeded in breaking the Kuhn deadlock, and still manage to get grants for research. Microbiology and invertebrate biology have taken off the theory goggles and started to LOOK ABOUT THEM AND TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.

What's the difference? How did those researchers open their minds without leaving the system?

Labels: Carver, Constants and Variables, se-lu

  ¶ 7:12 AM

  Nice coincidence
Just after writing the previous rant about science that obliterates vs science that preserves, with a specific focus on a museum in Brazil, I checked the daily additions in American Radio History, hoping for something to brighten my spirits.

This booklet is titled Best Radio Broadcasts of 1940. I wanted to see if my choice of best was there. Nope, it's written by New York demons, so their judgment of best is my worst. The top of their list is a special demonic presentation by the monstrous NYC globalist demon Norman Corwin, and the others are similar.

BUT: the booklet also includes an FDR speech on science. He was talking to the Pan-American Conference, part of his effort to gather Central and South America to our side. The effort didn't work, which was good for South America. Those sane countries have miraculously managed to stay OUT of the Northern Hemisphere's crazy wars, from 1918 to 2018.

The speech hits exactly the same points I was making in the previous item. In 1940 American scientists were still doing Carverian science, still examining the real world to solve real problems. FDR (or his speechwriters) didn't know what would happen just after WW2, didn't know that the globalist resurgence, helped by the abovementioned demon Corwin, would switch the poles entirely. He didn't know that USA STRONG would become the world-conquering monster.

As always, FDR's speeches look clumsy on paper, with lots of poor word choices. He was an awful writer and a great orator.

What has come about has been caused solely by those who would use, and are using, your inventions, the progress that you have been making along the lines of peace, but are using them in a wholly different cause — those who seek to dominate hundreds of millions of people in vast continental areas — those who, if successful in that aim will, we know down in our hearts, enlarge their wild dream to encompass every human being and every mile of the earth’s surface.

The great achievements of science, yes and of art, can be used to destroy as well as to create; they are only instruments by which men try to do the things that they most want to do.

If death is desired, science can do that. If a full, rich, a useful life is sought, science can do that also. Happily for us, that question has been solved — for in the New World we live for each other and in the service of a Christian faith.

Intrusion: Would any modern politician, especially a D politician, include that last line?

Is this solution — our solution — is it permanent or safe if it is solved just for us alone? That seems to me to be the most immediate issue that the Americas face. Can we continue our peaceful construction if all the other continents in all the world embrace by preference or by compulsion a wholly different principle of life?

No, I think not. Surely it is time for our republics to spread that problem before us in the cold light of day, to analyze it, to ask questions, to call for answers, to use every knowledge, every science that we possess, to apply common sense, and above all to act with unanimity and singleness of purpose. I am a pacifist. You, my fellow-citizens of 21 American republics, you are pacifists, too.

Intrusion: Would any modern politician, especially a D politician, include that last line?

But I believe that by overwhelming majorities in all the Americas you and I, in the long run and if it be necessary, you and I will act together to protect, to defend by every means, to protect and defend our science, our culture, our American freedom and our civilization.

His theme is obvious. We're pacifists and non-interventionists, but we need to be ready when attacked.

Labels: Carver, defensible times

  ¶ 2:48 AM

  WWFDRD?
FDR solved all relevant problems. We CAN'T invent new methods. Everything we do, everything we "know", is incalculably wicked and incomprehensibly stupid.

How do we reopen an economy that was intentionally murdered by Wall Street?

First, of course, FDR stopped the murder by closing banks and punishing the stock demons.

For the rest, read the Fireside Chat on re-employment, then apply it.
  ¶ 3:29 PM

  Suicidal point-missing
Idiot DiMaio continues to serve his party instead of the nation, even though he's nominally in charge of the nation.

He's complaining that people with unfashionable beliefs are supporting Salvini's Lega.

This is a good sign, not a bad sign.

Look back at the '30s. FDR knew that the inequality spawned in the '20s and expanded by the crash had left large parts of the population vulnerable to radicalism. He faced major movements with "left" and "right" flavors, both tending toward revolution.

FDR solved the radical problem by solving the REAL problem.

He relieved the inequality and provided USEFUL WORK for ordinary men. The movements of both flavors faded away. Americans, INCLUDING UNFASHIONABLE PEOPLE, were loyal enough to voluntarily fight a hard war to defend the country.

Salvini is taking the same approach. Italy has problems with inequality, plus Sorosian invasions of migrants explicitly intended to spawn radicalism so Juncker can slaughter the Deplorables. Many people were NATURALLY turning radical and acquiring revolutionary beliefs, because THIS WAS JUNCKER'S PURPOSE.

Salvini is solving the REAL problems of Soros invasion and Soros inequality. He has already halted the invasion, and is expanding Italy's trade connections away from EU to break Juncker's monopoly.

Result: Radicals are starting to support the government instead of preaching revolution.

Shouldn't be surprising. A leader who SERVES HIS OWN PEOPLE AND GETS SHIT DONE inspires loyalty. When 2/3 of the people are with you, there's much less room for revolution.

= = = = =

The best way to GUARANTEE a revolution is to mock and suppress unfashionable beliefs.

The best way to AVOID a revolution is to give unfashionable people a REASON for loyalty.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, 2/3

  ¶ 7:16 AM

  How did Expert Mode start?
Thinking again about the 20th century dark age, following up on previous item about politicians being forced to accept Expert Consensus instead of facts. Conclusion of that item was somewhat complicated.... the Experts are usually wrong and occasionally right. Observed facts are always right. If you want to be right, simply ignore the Experts and follow facts. On the rare occasions when the Experts agree with you, congratulate them for accidentally approaching the truth.

"Listen to the experts" is blessedly starting to recede from popular attitudes, at the same time when Satan, the ultimate and absolute Expert, has taken over all the mechanisms of government and culture in US/UK/EU. (Thanks, Ralph.)

When and how did Expert Worship start?

The when is clear and precise. My grandparents (born 1900) trusted their own observations and souls, and they were mostly right. My parents (born 1925) trusted the experts, and they were mostly wrong. My hippieshit generation (born 1950) continued trusting experts until very recently.

How did the GG see it? My parents began with the "superstitions" of previous generations. They rebelled against those "superstitions" by following the Educated Experts, and by becoming Educated Experts themselves. Most likely they were fooled by the Experts into seeing this change as a rebellion, just as we hippieshits were fooled into seeing our rigidly orthodox and robotically obedient behavior as a rebellion.

My father often talked along those lines. Everything that had been settled or designed by "superstition" (ie experiment), from diet to exercise to childbirth to breast-feeding to spanking to teaching to morality to front porches for Christ's sake, must be ruthlessly discarded and replaced by New Scientific Methods. Fortunately these beliefs were superficial and verbal, and he ran his actual life in the old experimental way without noticing that he was "superstitious".

So the breakpoint was just after WW2, but it's not clear that the war itself caused the break.

FDR solved problems without experts. He had his 'Brains Trust' but didn't use them. He listened more closely to farmers and businessmen and just plain people. He experimented constantly, revising his approach until it worked. Result: Everything worked.

[Sidenote: If you keep trying until it works, it will work. This is so fucking tautologically obvious that it should be the ONLY way we ever do things. Why isn't it?
///////
Later answer: Oh. I get it. We ARE doing it that way, but the official definition of it works is different from the sane one. For government, it works means Goldman receives more trillions. Thus every government action works perfectly, because every government action increases Goldman's cash flow. When an action fails to increase Goldman's cash flow by at least a trillion, government tries something else.]

Truman switched to Expert Mode in government, but I don't think that was the springboard for the broader change. I don't have an answer yet, so I'll just leave this question and come back later.

= = = = =

Seen on a broader time scale, the above sequence is itself an experiment by the people in general. We tried Fact Mode, then decided in 1945 (but WHY?) that reality didn't work. So we tried Expert Mode, and we're currently in the middle of deciding that Expert Mode doesn't work. Sliding back along the timeline, WW1 was equally destructive, and it led us to QUESTION the official certainties of that time. Why didn't we retain that attitude vector, which was only 25 years old in 1945? Why did we suddenly decide to follow one specific set of available experts, instead of questioning even more certainties?

Can't blame TV for this. TV wasn't common until 1955, and didn't master the art of injecting toxic sludge until 1970.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 2:56 AM

  Not even wrong
I'm always irritated by wildly overused cliches.

Two of them are wrong in so many ways you can hardly count them.

I've already noted the first one: The fake "Ben Franklin" quote about security and freedom. Franklin didn't say it; his print shop merely published it in a book by another author. Franklin did say something on a related subject, but his meaning was the opposite of the cliche. And the cliche is just bad advice in a broad way. Very few people actually want freedom; most want security and stability.

The second one is the fake "Einstein" quote about insanity and repetition. Albert didn't say it; Wiki thinks it was first written in a novel by Rita Mae Brown in the '80s, which would explain why Clinton liked to use it.

= = = = =

What strikes me now is that both sayings are intentionally misapplied in modern Western governments and institutions.

(1) Our problem is way beyond freedom vs security. Agencies like FBI, DHS, TSA claim to be "giving us security in exchange for freedom". Well, they're stealing something that seems like freedom, but what they're really stealing is stability and normalcy, and giving us nothing but confusion and despair in return.

Society always has rules. Some societies have stricter rules than others, but people don't feel less free in those cases. Human brains adapt to constants. When you know the rules firmly, you don't feel the rules. Thus you feel free no matter how strict the rules. But when the rules are unknowable and continually changing, you have neither security nor freedom. You're forever trying to adapt, forever running into new obstacles that your mind is unprepared for. That's real tyranny, that's the single sole solitary purpose of those agencies, and that's modern America.

(2) And our problem is way beyond sanity vs insanity. Governments, schools, universities, corporations, and cultural institutions are failing, but not because they are repeating evil actions and expecting good things to happen. They're not that dumb, for fuck's sake. THEY DO EVIL THINGS BECAUSE THEY EXPECT AND DESIRE EVIL RESULTS. That's the problem. They're not crazy at all, they're Satanic.

The constant repetition of the saying about constant repetition is a constant misdirection, forcing us to believe that all of our institutions are merely crazy.

= = = = =

Later: The Santayana quote about repeating history is also misused, but in a more complex way.

The usual short quote is not fake, but it's misleading. In context it appears that Santayana was thinking of the full reality, but didn't quite say it.

The full reality: Repeating isn't always wrong or always right. If you truly learn from personal experience or from written history, you will repeat what works and avoid what fails.

Our problem is not that we keep repeating.

It's that we do the wrong fucking thing EVERY FUCKING TIME..

When history tells us to repeat, we do the opposite. FDR fixed the 1929 bubble by clamping down hard on speculators. That solved the problem completely. We then deleted the solution in 1999, guaranteeing a repeat of the problem. When the problem repeated in 2008, we did the opposite of FDR. We gave the speculators an infinite gift, so the problem has gotten worse.

And when history tells us to avoid an action, we repeat. Vietnam told us to avoid engaging in pointless unwinnable wars. So we engaged in pointless unwinnable wars THREE TIMES, and we're ginning up for the fourth right now.

Perfectly wrong every time. Perfectly evil every time. Perfectly Satanic every time.
  ¶ 7:48 PM

  What would Bryan do?
The essence of Sorosian government is a two-step process:

1. Locate a "problem" that cannot be solved because it's an inherent fact of nature; or create a "problem" from scratch in such a way that it's logically and physically unsolvable.

2. Eternally pretend to "solve" the physically unsolvable "problem", using techniques that infinitely expand government power and budget. Since the "problem" will never be solved, infinite increase is GUARANTEED.

= = = = =

What happens when a politician breaks out of the process?

Headline in this morning's newspapers:

Beware of the politician with simple answers. Trump still divides, and there's still a lot at stake.

In other words, BEWARE OF PROBLEM-SOLVERS.

Don't let the plumber replace your faucet. Don't fix a flat tire. Don't let the doctor give you a vaccine. Don't let the city use



on the streets. Don't let the school DIVIDE kids according to their talents and vocations. Don't let policemen DIVIDE criminals from non-criminals by arresting criminals. Don't execute the worst criminals. Don't let the government build walls or tariffs or anti-missile systems to DIVIDE us from military or economic invaders. Don't let parents DIVIDE people by providing comfort and discipline to their own kids.

Everyone must be TOTALLY VULNERABLE, all real problems must get WORSE, all normal situations must be turned into unsolvable "problems".

This is Soros.

= = = = =

We still can't predict that Trump will do what he says, but his inauguration speech is a clarion call to BREAK the Sorosian two-step. No compromise, no "reverting to mean".

What would Bryan do?

I went back and read some Jennings Bryan and some Graybill. Trump's diagnosis is the same because our conditions are the same as 1890. Trump's prescription is entirely different because the correct solution has been determined EXPERIMENTALLY.

Bryan and Graybill were prescribing changes in the monetary system, which must have seemed like a solution at the time. They were wrong. Paper and silver and gold are all equally good, and none of them help to cure globalism. The cure for globalism is to DIVIDE the nation from all the evils of globalism.

FDR had the right cure even though he didn't talk like Bryan. Banks are the core vector of globalism. You have to decrease their power and increase the power of REAL VALUE PRODUCTIVE BUSINESS. You have to MAKE PEOPLE USEFUL again, which means eliminating the type of business that makes people useless. You have to can salmon with workers instead of ledgers.

Now that the correct cure has been EXPERIMENTALLY PROVEN, Trump is proposing to use it. Yes, it does require DIVIDING because solving always requires DIVIDING.

Labels: Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 3:39 AM

  Tantalizing title
Advertised in another Gernsback publication:



I can't find any text from 'Technocracy Review'. It's not in the American Radio History website, and Google mentions it but doesn't find any actual texts. Apparently it didn't last long.

David Lasser was probably the key player. He was one of Gernsback's main partners and editors in the science and radio magazines, and was a solid Socialist and union activist who finally got disgusted with CPUSA.

Foster and Browder were CPUSA, which means FBI. Browder's grandson is still playing on Deepstate's team.

From the blurb:

Should we have more machines or less? is the price system played out? Should we have electric dollars or gold? Do we need a New Deal or a revolution?

This was Feb 1933, just before FDR started work. Some of the questions were answered or solved by FDR. He restarted the price system by breaking the bankers, and he switched gold from a part-time currency to a full-time ground point, which is gold's best function.

The reference to 'electric dollars versus gold' is still an open question. In 1933, computers (IBM punch card sorters with arithmetic ability) were already doing much of the calculating for major companies and government, but the stored value was purely on paper. Banking didn't switch to full digital representation of value until the '70s. Digital representation still fails more often than paper, and Bitcoin, the latest 'electric dollar', is just a fraud.

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 3:49 PM

  Briggs is on the case
Aha! Statistician Briggs, the only valid statistician, is on the case. I've been repeatedly citing his uniquely accurate insight into the consequences of the 2008 TARP coup. Now he applies the same uniquely accurate views to the Branded Flu coup.

It won't matter, of course. There will never be any "accountability", never any "lessons learned", never any "justice", never any New Nuremberg Trials. The holocausters will get quintillions of dollars and perpetual infinite power and millions of Nobel Prizes.

Still, it's nice to have the ONLY VALID USER OF STATISTICS writing the ONLY VALID BOOK on this holocaust.

As I've been saying forever, the only lesson is NO THEORIES, NO MODELS, NO STATISTICS.

All problems have already been solved by EXPERIENCE.

We don't need to do anything new, because everything we do will be incomprehensibly WICKED and incalculably STUPID. Just follow EXPERIENCE. In USA terms, just copy FDR. He faced all the relevant economic and scientific problems and found the correct solutions by PAINFUL TRIAL AND ERROR. Since 1946 we've been intentionally REVERSING all of FDR's solutions, and we're predictably paying the horrible price.

THEORY KILLS. EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.

Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carver

  ¶ 3:33 PM

  WWRD?


We have two modern examples of presidents who won major wars. Is the current president following those examples? I've compared him to FDR before, but haven't tried to ask what Reagan would do. In fact this is a better question, because the war Reagan won is more like our current war. Chronic, not acute, and based more on ideas than territory.

Reagan hated the stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction because it forced both sides to remain essentially Sovietized. His strategy was twofold: (1) Use uniquely American strengths to show the Russians that victory was impossible; (2) Concentrate on actual protection for American territory in the form of Star Wars. Both of these lines would help us win this war, and would also improve our self-sufficiency in the future.

Back to FDR for a moment: In 1939, several major American auto companies were on the ropes. Even Ford was running on vapors. Thanks to stupid Hoover-Roosevelt economic policies, unemployment was still near 20%. Fighting World War 2 solved those problems by converting auto companies to defense contracts. By 1946, most companies were in good shape and had developed new engineering and production techniques by building unfamiliar products.

Now to the present: In 2005, we are suffering from a different (admittedly milder) brand of economic idiocy. Bubble Boy Greenspan protected us against inflation by shoveling trillions of excess dollars into the Wall Street Casino, and then used zero interest rates to give us the same effects as inflation: reward borrowers, punish savers. We have "free-market" health care which is for all practical purposes run by the government, and which takes 60% of total government expenditures. In that realm we have hyperinflation while the gov't assures us that "core inflation" is low. (You can make any measurement low by picking the right things to measure, for heaven's sake!)

Thanks to this combination of tendencies, major American industries are on the ropes again. GM is nearly bankrupt. Airlines and aircraft makers are in trouble. Actual unemployment is not high nationally, but industrial workers are out of work in many places and wasting their skills in others.

WW4 is not a war of disposables. We don't need billions of bullets, millions of guns, and thousands of aircraft. But we do need some heavy industrial action for protection, which can only be triggered by the government. Three major programs are needed: all will help in the long run, and in the context of the current war, they are both urgent and strategic. (1) If we're going to turn away from dependence on Arab and Communist oil, we need much more nuclear power and more hydropower. (2) If we want to keep transportation running, we need to rejuvenate the railroads. (3) We need to protect our electric grid and communications systems against Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and hackers.

None of those solutions will happen spontaneously; at the very least, all need to be 'seeded' by government action and research, and encouraged by huge changes in laws and regulations. Taken together, they meet the Reagan criteria: using our advantages and protecting our people.

One more thing: I think Reagan would have understood that we are fighting a war between religions. He would not have turned apologetic when captured enemy combatants accused us of desecrating their Manual of Military Doctrine; in fact he wouldn't have let the combatants have their Manual in the first place. I can't imagine Reagan whimpering that we can only find a few instances where our interrogators desecrated the enemy's source of inspiration. I can imagine him saying: "The war has started. In five minutes we air-drop the missionaries and bibles."

-----

Footnote: I've smooshed together three symbolic icons in the picture. Two are painfully obvious, but the third might not be. The vacuum tube symbolizes protection against EMP, which is now a more likely danger than a huge nuclear strike. A small fission bomb, carried by a primitive missile, can explode in midair, disrupting all electrical activity for a large region of the country; something like a widespread lightning strike. Our power grids have already been taken down by sunspots, which are a vastly weaker version of the same effect. EMP has been understood and researched since the '70s. Tube-type equipment is disrupted but can be restarted; modern solid-state equipment is simply destroyed. The Russians kept tube-type electronics in their aircraft and military for this reason. This applies to cars as well; pre-1980 cars with strictly mechanical ignition systems will be OK, while newer cars with computer controls will be useless pieces of crap. (Think we can replace the computers in 300 million cars at once?)

A similar analysis applies to railroads. They're not perfect ... obviously a terrorist can explode a train. But he can't hijack it, and he can't put it where he wants it to be at the time of the explosion. More importantly, locomotives are 'hybrid' machines, with their wheels turned by electric motors, and diesel-powered generators on board. This means they can be easily converted to run partly or entirely from nuke-generated electricity instead of oil; many have always been purely electric.

-----

UPDATE 6/21: Bush has finally come out loud and clear for expanding nuclear power, after tippy-toeing around the question for too long. Yay!!! Now he needs to do something about it, by executive order if necessary. New plants don't need twenty years to come on line; most of that delay is caused by federal regulations and local NIMBY disputes, which could be eliminated by the well-known "stroke of the pen". This is what executive orders are meant for: cutting through red tape in time of emergency. Yes, Clinton misused them, but that doesn't require Bush to shy away from using them properly!

  ¶ 10:43 PM

  Nonsensical saying
ZH features a dispute, or fake dispute, about Trump's intentions to appoint Vulture Romney as SecState.

Some of the unskeptical Trump fans are praising this move, quoting the tired old "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Nonsense. When your enemies are close they can shiv you, or pull internal strings to ruin your plans.

If you are important enough to have serious enemies, the only correct rule is "Keep your friends close and your enemies in the graveyard."

Clintons have been following this rule for 40 years and it has worked well. Successful leaders always keep their enemies under tight control if not dead.

HIGHLY RELEVANT example: Obama made the mistake of keeping Hillary close, appointing her as SecState. (Sounds familiar.) Hillary ruined Obama's intentions of slowing down Permawar. She continued Bush's wars and added four new wars. Finally in 2012, perhaps using Hillary's stroke as a justification, Obama was able to get rid of Hillary and appoint the more compliant Kerry. After that, decreased tension with Persia and Cuba, and no new wars.

A more sophisticated solution: Identify possible enemies. Make them useful and secure, not cornered and desperate. FDR was the ultimate expert in this approach. He saw revolutionaries growing strong on Left and Right, so he solved the problems that the revolutionaries were pointing out. (This process is also called Sanity or Responding To Negative Feedback or Life.)
  ¶ 9:44 AM

  Parallel failed fixes
Noticed a little parallel. In both US and UK, all "parties" have been conspiring and colluding for many decades to slaughter the poor and enrich the Tribe. In both countries the nominally Leftist "party" is farthest from its nominal purpose. Labour began as a party for labouring men. Democrats didn't begin that way but made their bones in the 1930s when FDR actually solved problems and actually helped the poor.

In theory you'd expect the traditionally pro-worker party to be the first one to break the fix, the first to realize that it had completely ruined its original mission. The rubber band that stretches the most will break first.

No. In both countries it was the traditionally anti-worker party that broke the fix this year.

In UK the break was accidental and stupid. Cameron was so overconfident, so totally delusional, that he knew Brexit would fail, knew he would get a strong mandate to surrender even more power to the Fourth Reich.

I still haven't figured out the US equivalent. Both "parties" had been perfectly rigged for 40 years, always picking a criminal acceptable to the Tribe. In some elections there were two or three equally acceptable criminals, so the fix didn't require much work.

Not this time. Trump and Sanders were absolute heretics, absolutely unacceptable.

In D the fix proceeded smoothly. When Sanders got more votes, the totals were revised. When a caucus came out too close, loaded dice fixed the problem. And the superdelegates finished the job.

In R the fix failed. Overconfidence and wild bizarre delusion, just like UK, but here the exact mechanism of the failed fix is still unclear. Why did the party allow Trump votes to be counted?
  ¶ 1:56 AM

  Down to basics
Today's all-words-all-the-time political discussion centers on Comrade Obama's "controversial comment" made in a closed meeting... about how the blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania see their jobs disappearing for decades, become justifiably bitter, and take out their bitterness against The Other. Leaving aside the academic Leninist terminology, the "controversial comment" is mainly true.

Unfortunately, the Republican brand has the wrong answer. Rush, Beck, Ingraham, Doyle, etc, are all continuing the Pouty Pangloss routine: "Everything is absolutely perfect in this most perfect of all possible countries, except that I DON'T WANNA PAY TAXES! WAAAAAA! DON'T MAKE ME PAY TAXES, MOMMY! WAAAAAAA! But aside from that, everything is peachy keen in this most peachy of all possible countries. Don't ask the government to solve your problems, solve them yourself! WAAAAA!! I WANT MY MONEY, MOMMY!!!!!"

This doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense, but even if it did make sense it wouldn't begin to answer the question.

Fact is, those ex-auto workers in Detroit, ex-steelmen in Aliquippa and Wheeling, ex-loggers in Bend and Yakima, ex-programmers in San Jose, all know the truth. They know that their problems were CAUSED by government action or by deliberate and wrong-headed government inaction. The government has failed to protect American workers against foreign companies. The government has chosen to protect the interests of the United Nations and the WTO and Mexico and Arabia and India and China and the spotted fucking owl and Al Gore's bulging wallet, instead of protecting the interests of human beings in this country.

THESE PROBLEMS WERE CAUSED - or at least not mitigated - BY THE GOVERNMENT.

Older workers remember a time when our government did impose tariffs on foreign companies, remember a time when our government conserved the wilderness without tearing down human work, remember a time when our government supported technology through defense contracts.

Since we know from FDR and Eisenhower that the gov't can in fact do these things right, and since we know from the Bush and Clinton dynasties how to do them wrong, plain old logic and justice tells us that the problem created by gov't must be solved by gov't.

When the brand-R talking pointheads insist that the problem doesn't exist, the workers stop listening.

= = = = =

Addendum: Hillary's response to Obama is just right. She acknowledges the existence of the problem, gives the workers a dose of respect to counter the Leninist crap about The Other, and appears to understand that government must fix the problem it caused. I might even believe her.

= = = = =

Addendum 2, Sat morning: Fox News is interviewing some actual small-town Pennsylvanians in a diner. Though they aren't Obama voters, they all say that Obama's Controversial Comment is basically true. They've seen the wreckage caused by "free trade", and they're bitter.

Told ya so.

= = = = =

Addendum 3: One of the Fox hosts gave away the game in an interesting way. While introducing a pointless "debate" between R and D talking-point-heads, she said "Obama implies that instead of voting on economic issues, voters are more worried about God, guns and gays." Voting on economic issues? Voting on economic issues??? BOTH PARTIES ARE FERVENTLY LOYAL TO "FREE TRADE", IN OTHER WORDS FERVENTLY LOYAL TO CHINA. Both parties are totally in favor of Open Borders, in other words fervently loyal to Mexico. Neither party has ever done anything meaningful for energy independence: nothing to expand offshore drilling, nothing to encourage nuclear power. In other words, both parties are fervently loyal to Arabia. So voting on economic issues is simply FORBIDDEN. We have never been given a choice in this matter, which means that destroying America is a vitally important goal of both "parties". (See Polistra's discussions of Manweller's Rule for more on this principle.)
  ¶ 7:32 PM

  Prestige first
A random thought about the need for a new Trinity House, a private PROFIT-MAKING institution that would fund REAL science and combat FAKE science.

Current vaccine development is all government funded.

This was NOT true of the most successful vaccines in previous eras. Smallpox inoculation was developed by healers in the region around Turkey about 500 years ago. "Science" wasn't even a concept. Inoculation was brought to England and formally "sciencized" by Jenner, again without government help.

The polio vaccine was strictly crowdfunded in the modern sense. FDR strongly endorsed and encouraged the March of Dimes but didn't fund it.

New thought: A major obstacle to reconversion is that researchers simply can't conceive and don't want funding outside government and academic channels.

About 8 years ago, the holocaustally hyperinsane "city" of Spokane was preparing to waste $200 million building miasmal swamps and flood generators in order to reduce phosphorus pollution in the river from .0000000000000000000000000002 percent to .0000000000000000000000000001 percent.

I heard about a researcher who was working on a much simpler way of controlling algae, a method that wouldn't require creating miasmal swamps and floods. He wasn't able to get government funding. I corresponded with him, offering to run a crowdfund with a large ante. He seemed blindsided and quickly backed away from the idea. I concluded that he didn't really want to solve the problem, he just wanted to get the GOVERNMENT grant.

Prestige, or rather RELIGIOUS PURITY, counts far more than money, and you don't get prestige from crowdfunding. Some of the money might be contaminated with Deplorable cooties.

Jenner and Salk didn't work that way. They got the money, solved the problem, and THEN got the prestige.

Labels: Trinity House

  ¶ 11:56 AM

  Long-overdue Language Update for 2020
In an attempt to regain normalcy and equipoise, Professor Polistra returns with a small mix of new and old word oddities.



= = = = =

Normalcy (emphatically old)

Prof P got curious whether Harding made any references to the Spanish Flu pandemic. A quick google for '1920 campaign speeches' found it without even trying.

From the transcript:

My countrymen, there isn't anything the matter with the world's civilization except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational.

Sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity. Men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction. Here in the United States we feel the reflex, rather than the hurting wound itself but we still think straight; and we mean to act straight; we mean to hold firmly to all that was ours when war involved us and seek the higher attainments which are the only compensations that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind.

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It's one thing to battle successfully against the world's domination by a military autocracy because the infinite God never intended such a program; but it's quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life's requirements.

The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactments and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.

The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government and no eminent page in history was ever drafted to the standards of mediocrity. Nor, no government worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand or moved by intimidation on the other. My best judgement of America's need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let's get out of the fevered delirium of war with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. We want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance, and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.

We never heard this speech in school. We were INSTRUCTED that the only notable thing about his Normalcy campaign was the "fact" that Normalcy was not a word.

Well, it wasn't a word until Harding made it a word.



Normal was strictly math jargon until 1900 when Freudians brought it into common usage. Normality started a bit later, and it's pretty clear that Harding coined Normalcy. Harding was a powerful writer and speaker with slightly offbeat grammar. (See cataclysmal.) Unsurprisingly, FDR had the same tendencies.

So Normalcy wasn't a word until Harding said it, but it was a word AFTER he said it. A word in common usage is a word, no matter how many grammarrhoids claim it isn't.

= = = = =

Marshall Law (new)

Now that Martial Law is grim reality in most places, people have forgotten how to spell it.

Even Strategic Culture, generally well edited, has this headline:

Standing on the Precipice of Marshall Law

[Later: They edited the headline.]

We're not on the precipice, dummies. We already jumped. It's time to get rid of partisan nonsense about what could happen if we "elect" the wrong candidate. No matter which candidate we "elected", all the "conspiracy" "theories" have turned out to be wildly understated as usual.

= = = = =

The Couch Precinct and Judge Deady (old)

From a humorous account of the dictaphone:

It will pronounce a long sentence with as much feeling as Judge Deady. It never makes a mistake in repeating. Its ability in that direction has stood every test, except that of voting in the Couch precinct.

The Couch Precinct was in Sacramento, as seen in this directory.

It was usually called the Couch Tavern Precinct, which gives a clue to its tendencies but doesn't explain the voting.

Judge Deady shaped the laws of Oregon when it became a state. His rhetorical abilities aren't mentioned in online sources.

= = = = =

Trick and Professional (new)

From DW coverage of the Thuringia coup by Merkel:

...Politicians must be professionals. When you see that AfD by a kind of trick is gaining power in the coalition, you must hinder it.

Trick = voting.

Professional = no voting allowed.

= = = = =

Health epidemics (new)

From a Tesla 'disclosure'....

Furthermore, unexpected changes in business conditions, materials pricing, labor issues, wars, governmental changes, tariffs, natural disasters, health epidemics...

Come to think of it, the phrase isn't redundant. We are forced to believe that we're in a health epidemic when we're actually in a Marshall Law epidemic.

= = = = =

Disway (new)

Ultimately, the #Russiagate tactic did not disway voters from electing Trump.

Pretty good portmanteau word.

= = = = =

Extablishment (new)

Excape and excetera have always been common, but extablishment is a new and viral extension of the same principle.

= = = = =

Vibrate (old)

In the 1800s vibrate simply meant move, not oscillate.

From the Sholes and Schwalbach typewriter patent:

First, in combining a series of connecting wires or ligaments with a series of type-bars of a type-writing machine, pivoted and set so they may vibrate and all strike at the same place,

... with a pivot at one end and a key on the other, with a vibratory frame composed of a vibratory bar or arm attached to each end of a connecting-bar pivoted in line across over the key-levers so they may vibrate in vertical planes ...

Labels: Equipoise, Language update

  ¶ 12:56 AM

  MacDream
Weird dream this morning, definitely not 'my kind of dream'.

I was involved in a palace coup that installed Robert MacNamara as president, to restore order after decades of chaos.

Thoughts after waking:

Terrible idea, because Mac's purpose for order was always aimed at magnifying Mac's personal power, not helping the corporation or the country. He was similar to Trump in ultimate goals, but different in the effect on the govenment. Mac created real order and structure for his own purposes. Trump creates massive chaos for his own purposes.

But Mac's way of achieving order would be appropriate and necessary. Like Trump, he was a master of backbiting, sneaky tactics and internal blackmail.

What we really need is a Putin, a master of spycraft and sneaky tactics who has a burning need to improve the country, not to serve himself.

Of course we were blessed with a Putin from 1932 to 1945. FDR's goal was the same, and he accomplished it. He restored order to the economy and solved all the problems that government was able to solve. He didn't create any new problems at all.

His sneaky tactics weren't visible or known, but he couldn't have accomplished anything without suppressing and out-extorting Lady Edgar. There might have been a deal: Lady Edgar was given new authority and budget to go after bank robbers and kidnappers, and in return she had to keep her filthy hands off everything else.

Labels: Equipoise

  ¶ 4:50 AM