Jacobin Textline: 830-JACOBIN  //  Text anytime and we'll respond during a show!

Marc's Musings

Thirty-two years ago, people were upset when Reaganomics (also known as Trickle-up Economics) drove the national debt above $2T.

2020 will conclude with a record-high deficit of $3.3T – money borrowed during a single year.

When the apocalypse comes, it won't be a perfect storm of misfortune no one could have predicted, it will be the evaporation of an illusion created by a debt-based economy exploited by speculation and profiteering.

In addition to buying (creating) the national debt, the Fed buys debt from private institutions.

The Fed now owns 30% of derivatives backed by home mortgages (remember those words: derivatives and mortgages, there will be a test later).

The Fed is buying derivatives at eight times the pace it was during the official "Quantitative Easing" programs (Big Bank Welfare).

(At the rate the Fed is printing money, I should think everyone owes Robert Mugabe an apology.)

In addition to the $17T created and lent to the U.S. government since '08, the Fed has created $6T to finance the private sector – that's $24T pumped into the economy in twelve years. Has the economy grown that much? How much of that $24T are you holding on to?

The global economy is government for the rich by the rich. Everything else is a distraction.

“EMP attacks are part of the emerging threats against our nation and demand a response,” – DoHS-flavored Government Stooge

Fission EMP weapons have never been anything more than a chalkboard exercise, but they are dragged out every so often as fear-mongering figments. Maybe we should stop putting the paranoid psychopaths in charge of defense (and everything else).

Yes, I know. They are basing it on top secret squirrel information that I am not allowed to know. Isn't that what is called a self-reinforcing delusion? 

DoubleSpeak: Mistakes

Deflection of Mistakes

If a corporation or politician makes a mistake, the mistake is never admitted; it is always framed as an intentional act that yielded unintentional consequences (i.e. they got caught) and is rationalized ad nauseum or minimized through gaslighting (it’s not as bad as you think it is).

Admission of Mistakes

If a corporation or politician admits to a mistake, they are deflecting from an intentional act that yielded unintentional consequences and are seeking to minimize negative perception by feigning natural fallibility and appealing to the public’s forgiving nature.

 

Thus, mistakes are ‘intentional acts’ and intentional acts are ‘mistakes’. One could be forgiven for confusing corporations and politicians with sociopaths.

Conspiracy Theorists are the world’s optimists.

If the world is run by intelligent, organized – albeit selfish and perhaps diabolical – entities who move all of the pieces on the board toward an end of their own design, then the world is really not run by Forrest Gump doppelgangers.

Occasionally, bureaucracies will surprise you with their innovation.

Instead of 'ignoring the problem hoping it will go away' with regard to the problem of police self-expanding their mandates (read: self-justification of excessive force, stormtrooping, and abuse of qualified immunity), the bureaucrats are de-funding the police, making the problem go away so they can ignore it.

Kudos, government stooges.

In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis provided empirical evidence that washing hands and disinfecting equipment between patients reduced infections and mortality.

Because the 'consensus' did not accept Semmelweis' findings, germ theory languished until being undertaken again by Joseph Lister in 1865, the year Semmelweis died.

Consensus = Groupthink?

Deductive Logic Primer


Major Premise: The average lifespan in the U.S. is 78 years.

Minor Premise: >60% of CoV fatalities were people aged more than 78 years.

Conclusion: Catching CoV increases your chances of living longer than average.

Researchers from sixty-one countries have contributed to multiple studies that all draw the same conclusions: Individuals who comply with governments' response to CoV are 'good people' possessing 'empathy' and individuals who disagree with dictates are 'anti-social' and exhibit traits of the Dark Triad.

If one participates in a million-person protest – such as the one in Berlin – then one is guilty of 'collective narcissism'.

Aren't you glad we killed religion and replaced it with science?

Three weeks ago, one million people marched in Berlin to protest the government's Draconian CoV response.

Berlin has since banned protests because they would violate social distancing mandated by the CoV edicts.

How convenient.

Here's a tip: No matter how much you run away from a virus, it doesn't go away (In fact, the opposite is true).

Much ado is being made of Nancy Pelosi’s (astronomically remote) potential to ascend to the presidency given Joe’s declining mental status and assuming he unseats Donald in November.

The only way for Nancy to get behind the Resolute Desk is for Joe to abdicate and for Kamala to become incapacitated during the twenty minutes between her swearing-in and the swearing-in of her appointed vice president, as provided by the 25th Amendment.

But more pointedly, why would Nancy want to be president? She controls one half of Congress, the federal budget, is arguably the most influential woman in the country, and needs to capture only a simple majority of 764,000 people (of which she routinely wins 80%) and not 270 electoral votes from fifty states.

If Nancy wanted to be president, she would be. Until then, she will be Speaker of the House for as long as she wants.

According to a DoA report (in more ways than one), North Korea has 60 nuclear weapons and a 5,000 ton stockpile of chemical weapons.

Given the DoD's history of erroneous estimations, from Iraq's (non-existent) 100,000 tanks and million-man army in 1990 to their (non-existent) WMD program of 2002, it's probably safe to say that North Korea's arsenal consists of chlorine bleach and a number of VHS recordings of Dubya saying "nucular".

Who needs religion when you have pharmacology?

“Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral”

“… make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.”

Satire or commentary? It's getting difficult to discern the difference.

A study conducted by the Federal Reserve Board concludes that “disturbing trends” in the U.S. economy, including income inequality and financial instability, are the results of monopoly power: fewer companies controlling ever larger market shares.

A predictable but vexingly ironic conclusion from the largest monopoly in the history of civilization.

In 1869, Wyoming was the first state or territory to grant women's suffrage. It preserved women's suffrage in its Constitution and became the first state to do so when it was admitted to the Union in 1890.

Women could vote in only ( 20 ) states when the 19th Amendment was ratified on this date in 1920 after ( 72 ) years of grass-roots efforts, coalitions, referenda, and court cases.

It would be another ( 64 ) years before all of the states ratified the amendment, with Mississippi being the last in 1984.

Remember the hubbub about Russia paying the Taliban to kill Americans? (As if they needed more incentive.)

The same "US Intelligence" sources now claim that Tehran has been funding Taliban attacks against U.S. forces. By dramatic coincidence, this information arrived three days after the U.S. lost a UN vote to extend sanctions against Iran.

(Pause for a moment and consider the source of all the 'bad' things you have heard about Iran.)