Click here and read what William B. Taylor said today. Mr. Taylor is the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.

If you rely on news media, your ignorance will be preyed upon, because the corporate media is bought by the uber-wealthy in order to suppress the will of the people and create internecine controversy, distracting us from the more important issues.

Malcolm has been a true patriot.

Trump was purposefully recruited by Putin's thugs. The Republican party has been infiltrated with intrusions of money from foreign sources and entire floors of Trump hotel rooms are being paid for at thousands of dollars per room by foreign agents. Much like the condominiums on his various properties got bought for millions of dollars over the market value by dubious characters with foreign connections.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao has had links to Chinese elites through her father.

In China, the Chaos are no ordinary family. They run an American shipping company with deep ties to the economic and political elite in China, where most of the company’s business is centered.

The smart Republicans jumped ship once they sniffed the treason. Only a few have actually spoken out. The vast majority of Republicans are cowering in fear because they have never governed based on conviction but upon what pablum they could speak to those who voted for them that their wealthy corporate donors would support. Mike Pence is a perfect example of this ilk.

We are all bullshitted by propaganda provided for us by the wealthy who buy the communication systems (newspapers, media outlets, magazines, social apps) for the sole purpose of brainwashing the rest of us on their paradigm.

If you are getting manipulated, the manipulators need to make you feel that your manipulation is somehow a natural state of the "real" world. They hire charlatans and snakes who willingly use nuanced language or stir up primordial prejudices in order to bullshit the vast majority of persons who are getting fucked over by the morbid stupid paradigms used by those who are in positions of wealth to justify this dysfunctional system.

Markets destroy communities when they are not properly regulated. There is nothing inherently "free" about markets. Market systems exist independent of the overall political system. Dictatorships and Democracies alike rely upon markets for the distribution of goods and services.

This is what I advised a lady friend of mine recently who was concerned about some other people that she referred to as "enemies"

If indeed you feel these folks are purposely trying to “get under your skin” … why would you give them that satisfaction?

My mom always told me that 90% of what you react to is based on your own personal history, the other 10% is what is actually in the moment. So perceiving other people as “enemies” is kind of silly. People do what they do. If they are so weak and pathetic that they need to play mind games then that is on them. Which is very sad. Once you encounter such persons, put them in the regressive child category, because this is how children behave. And then treat them accordingly. The phrase “Love thy enemies” means to develop a big picture understanding. If people are playing mind games and are petty, they are telling you that they cannot overcome their unresolved issues. If you take that personally, it is because of your own unresolved issues.

I say this because this is true of me as well. But if you see others as enemies, you will be carrying a burden of disdain and negativity that is not good for your soul. Instead perceive these overgrown children as fools, silly people who need help, and you should just be you and don’t even give them a microcosm of space in your brain. However ... always leave room in your heart. Because that is how you end the cycle of pain and suffering.

My mantra when life gets real and stress is up

You have to go through this. There is no other way. Live by example. Be honest with yourself. There is no other way.

Repeat.

This actor has stepped up.

This is a clip from Sam Seder's daily show called "The Majority Report". The show is the relic of what it was during the Dubya year's (see the previous post) on what was called "Air America"

@6:30 timestamp: this moron starts talking about zero, and then watch what he does --- belittles Sam, but insists he's not making fun of him. Behold the massive projection of this fucking moron.

Equating the potential of human beings to a number is pathetic on the merits, because all numerical assessment is inherently biased by the humans who are determining the rubric through which such merits are assessed. But morons want to start equating workers with numbers, and then start elaborating about some pseudo-profound delusion about the number zero.

Or as was stated at the end of the above video : "There is nothing worse than undeserved pedantry".

Math question. Why has productivity increased exponentially, and yet wages have remained relatively constant?

Mike Malloy has been a hero of mine since I started listening to him back in the Dubya Bush days, circa 2002. Lately he has been doing a daily podcast with video on youtube from Georgia. He uses all the pejorative and profane language necessary to express himself, so fair warning.

The Aristocracy uses racism and xenophobia to keep the lower classes in line. As Beau explains so well in this video.

The fundamental flaw in all Libertarian philosophy consists of the following truth: no one individual exists or can exist without assistance from his or her community or fellow human beings. We have to talk to one another and have community discussions about what to do and how to proceed. There is also no automatic calibration that can be created which attaches individuals to their community or society that is independent of the social conditions and relations.

We are not primitive tribes, hunting and wandering off the land, living in temporary easily constructed and deconstructed abodes. Our nation is a heavily capital invested social order. Every person, every single day lives their life in the modern world (especially the United States) thanks to the infrastructure created by a heritage of fellow human beings and their community. Every where you go, everything you do, everything you eat in the modern world would not be possible were it not for unseen persons who provided these conveniences like indoor plumbing, septic systems, traffic lights, interstate highways, coffee shops, truck drivers, wharf attendants, train stations, restaurants, grocery stores, etc… Even in the ages before airports, every harbor or river port town needed a maned lighthouse and a reservoir of knowledgeable local professionals to navigate the waterways. A single ship (or plane) represents a plethora of different persons, both in the creation of the ship, and in the usage after the ship was created. The mere act of walking into a building is possible only because a large number of persons designed, organized, and physically constructed that building.

Libertarianism ignores this context when viewing capital creation from a historical perspective. When you purchase an item in a market (retail or internet) a whole infrastructure was or has been created that is being regulated by numerous unseen persons in order to maximize the efficiency of such markets. Libertarianism views these concerns as more easily addressed by the minimization or elimination of government because unclean humans are biased, and human governments tend towards authoritarianism. Libertarianism strips the people out of the background environment and portrays events based upon individual singularities, individual responsibilities, while ignoring the alternate reality of aristocracy evolving to authoritarianism. Libertarianism hides human reality behind the facade of money and mathematics — where only prices, formulas, mathematical algorithms and spending habits determine the development of society and community. However every advance was enabled by an environment. You can’t have automobiles without roads. You can’t have a free exchange of ideas (or an efficient market for goods and services) without a cheap postal service. You cannot have basic human services (police, fire, legal) effectively and efficiently administered without taxes paid for proportional to the level of income. Having a standing military or a state department gathering data and global relationships is also better done than when not influenced by the various potential agendas of private interests and the natural profit motives thereof.

Libertarianism is a belief that government is anathema to the natural order of human society. Intrusion of government into human affairs is thus viewed with an immoral character. Taxes in particular is the poster child for why the Libertarian Party exists — which is why Libertarianism is hijacked by large wealthy elite individuals who don’t want to pay taxes and need a justification. In the past, this was the difference between “Liberty” and “Freedom”. Liberty means you are not held accountable for your social or economic practices. Freedom means that the court of law or civil jurisprudence has no reason to limit your actions. In this sense, individuals have the Liberty to be Free, but not the Freedom to have Liberty. Either way you still have to pay taxes. In the Libertarian view, taxes are a theft from the productive uses of individuals because of the fundamental Libertarian premise that individual uses are always better than collective uses, ie. not having freedom to have Liberty.

This idea that the individual will always make better choices and can better use investment funds is the crux of the Libertarian philosophy, the conflict between Freedom and Liberty. The dynamic is often couched in a further belief that relying on individual choices is the best protection against authoritarianism. Human beings are irrational, often driven by needs that are dysfunctional to the larger society. Short term desires override long term needs, especially when such long term needs can be outsourced or externalized to other responsible agents and then ignored. Individuals are hard pressed to wait 20 or 30 years to make a marginal return on invested funds while taking large losses up front. Humans are more easily persuaded to make tons of money on the front end of the cycle, then getting out on the back end of the cycle when the losses accumulate. This has been the dynamic of the mass consumer economic system. Look at all the consumer items that were developed since World War Two. These events occurred because of short term profit motives, not from long term stability concerns. Making money was always the priority.

Hence, currently we are all dealing with the external costs of plastic refuse destroying ocean eco-systems and carbon pollution tipping the climate system equilibrium. We have infrastructure needs all over the 50 states that are not being addressed by the invisible hand of the free market because Libertarianism is a stillborn idea. Human beings are not solitary isolated individual units of economic production. All human progress is a collective effort, even in a capitalist society.

Which is what the word "capitalist" means btw, an economic system that relies upon the development of "capital" goods. The word is quite often twisted and construed by Libertarians, who confuse economic feudalism with the development and nurturing of capital goods. How these capital goods are created and distributed is more related to the social and cultural norms of the community and society, not to some abstract equilibrium models that balance market & wage prices, even when capital goods and markets are largely controlled by non-government entities.