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2024-03-10 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Podcasts , 226 references
[Comments enabled]  
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Come and get it folks....

BTW: A note on the repeated diabetes references; this is Type II, of course, in that your pancreas still works. Type I is autoimmune - yes, you must use insulin in that case, but even so the same advice applies because you cannot possibly inject, whether by pump or manually, insulin as accurately as your pancreas formerly produced it so the less you need the smaller the errors.

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2024-03-09 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 452 references
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Ok, having had a day to think about the rather-visceral reaction I had to it my view..... hasn't really changed much.

It was something rather appropriate as a campaign speech, which would be fine on the campaign trail.  But it was wholly-inappropriate in a joint session of Congress as it was full of attacks that would be ruled out-of-order were they to be committed by one side of the aisle against the other in an ordinary session.

I'm sure plenty of Democrats loved it anyway but there's a very serious problem with doing this: It is an election year, doing this shuts down any possibility of cooperation with the minority party for the rest of the year and more-importantly it is a bet that you will not only win you will hold the Senate and flip the House.

That's foolish folks.  It might happen, but banking on it is idiotic and that's exactly what happened.

It is doubly stupid in this case because in this cycle, unlike the last one, the math favors the Republicans in November for the Senate and the margin the Democrats hold now is exceedingly thin.  Even if Biden wins over Trump there is a very high probability he loses the Senate, and if that happens there may be no cooperation with him at all within Congress.

Never mind the outright lies (such as that the mRNA vaccines are now the cure for cancer) and several economic claims that are just plain false.  Everyone lies on the campaign trail, especially when you're an incumbent and stretching the truth if not lying outright is just part of the game.  That much I expected, but the outright attacks on the GOP were IMHO extraordinarily unwise.

Never mind the much-expressed fear that if Trump does win he will take all of Biden's precedents in weaponization of parts of the government and use them against Democrats.  He very well might, and whether its wise to poke that sort of potential response is something I doubt anyone gave much thought to.

The repeated pokes of "this is how it is, damn you, and you had better agree" on various issues, most-notably climate and immigration, were especially galling.  As I've pointed out repeatedly the President has near-plenary authority to shut the border down to any particular class of immigrants -- or even all of them.  He not only doesn't need any new authority its very clear he has it already and has simply refused to use because he wants something very different, including a permanent level of immigration in the millions, that is actually protected under law and thus very hard to get rid of.  This is especially galling given the now-known problem with not only Laken's murderer but his brother who, it is alleged, has Venezuelan gang ties and yet was released into the US anyway.

Never mind Speaker Johnson who committed a very serious error in passing that "minibus" bill before the speech.  While nobody wanted to play brinksmanship with a potential shutdown I'll bet that would not have passed had he waited and by passing it first given that he knew the SOTU speech was going to come Thursday Speaker Johnson gave Biden a green light to do this, which was politically stupid -- and that bill includes provisions that are likely intolerable to a majority of Americans including the new car "kill switch" requirement.

I'm sure the 25% "most left" part of the US thought this was a "great speech."

But it was wildly intemperate, even angry to the point of near threats of violence via various government agencies to anyone who disagreed, and certainly did a hell of a lot of damage -- perhaps irreparable damage -- to any degree of comity across the aisle which is now inseparable from Biden and/or Harris being in the Oval Office.

Maybe that works out for Biden and in November the Democrats win literally everything -- they flip the House, they keep the Senate and keep the White House.

Maybe.

But if not this speech may prove to be the political equivalent of swallowing a grenade after pulling the pin.

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2024-03-05 06:56 by Karl Denninger
in Corruption , 405 references
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Go back and read through this again.

Pay particular attention to 8 USC 1324 and its prohibitions.

Why?

Because every single businessperson who hires ten or more illegals over a 12 month period is supposed to be serving a five felony prison term.

Every person who harbors or enables an illegal alien, including anyone who rents to one, feeds one or transports one is supposed to serve ten years in prison, 20 if said alien harms a US Citizen and life if they kill a US Citizen.

Did the farmer who employed the illegal alien that killed Mollie Tibbetts go to prison for life?  The law says that he had a potential life-sentence liability for Mollie's death because he both employed and harbored, directly, said illegal alien.

Have the landlords who rented to the accused in Laken Riley's death been arrested and charged?  Assuming the illegal alien is convicted they too should be spending life in prison along with anyone else who assisted or harbored him in any way.

Exactly how many of the apologists who actively do exactly that sort of thing have been charged?  The law is clear and so is the duty to enforce it.

Let me be clear: Laken Riley is dead because we did not throw the farmer in prison despite the clear legal requirement to do so when Mollie Tibbetts was killed.  If we had thrown him in prison for life as the law requires you can bet the next guy would not allow illegal aliens to rent from him, employ them or otherwise harbor them because they will get 10 years in prison for doing it and if said illegal alien kills someone they go to prison for life as well.

We all, as citizens, are directly responsible for Laken's death because we have refused to demand those laws be enforced and hold the successive administrations personally and criminally responsible when they do not.

Now look at the MTS.  Through January (four months) the MTS claims the US Deficit is $532 billion.

Then look at "Debt To the Penny", the Treasury's actual debt statement.  Go to January 31st, subtract off the amount owed (in total) and the end of September, which is the start of the new Fiscal Year in the MTS, and you will notice that the total is $1,023,816,357,670.50 or roughly double the stated federal deficit.

How can this be?

Its quite simple, really: As with all the Administrations since Clinton, who claimed to run a surplus but was lying about it, Treasury stole the Medicare and Social Security tax receipts in order to make the deficit look smaller.

That is, they committed accounting fraud and ripped off over $400 billion, they do this sort of thing every year in order to lie about the deficit and if you did this in a public company or anywhere else you'd be arrested and thrown in prison.  Or would you?  May I remind you that SarBox includes felony prison time for materially-false financial statements?  How many people have actually gone to prison for it?

Stealing $400 billion should get anyone arrested, tried, convicted and then dragged out into the middle of the Washington Mall and publicly executed.

Over the years of writing this column -- now a decade and a half, I remind you, I have repeatedly pointed out this fraud and how they're doing it no matter who happens to be in office at the time.  Not one person has lifted a single finger to do anything about it.

You see nobody who is "important" ever goes to prison, say much less faces the death penalty.

We do not need new laws and in fact all the handwaving by Congress should get them executed too because the law is already clear as to what is and is not illegal and basically everything that is wrong with the United States is already illegal -- but neither Democrats or Republicans, when in power, will arrest and prosecute those who do it, whether they be employers of illegals, those renting to and assisting illegals, companies cooking their own books with various "self-dealing" financing schemes that are less than honestly disclosed, knowingly giving bogus loans to people who have no money to buy five houses and who they know can't pay, conning starry-eyed 18 year olds into taking out $100,000+ in loans for worthless gender-bending degrees and similar.

Yet we're about to pass another 1,000+ page "bill" that contains all sorts of things that will screw you as a citizen while at the same time all the existing felony criminal laws go unpunished, everprovided the person breaking them works for the government, a hospital, doctor's office, or is directly and indirectly involved in facilitating illegal immigration even though all of it is, as defined in said law, a felony crime.

Again all of this is illegal but at the same it is ignored and even applauded Treasury steals $400 billion of your tax receipts and produces a bogus financial statement, which is a crime anywhere and always at grand scale, while literally thousands of people including the entire Treasury Department and its current head (Yellen), just like all the rest for the last 25 years, lie about it repeatedly including in sworn testimony before Congress (which is a separate felony called "perjury", I remind you.)

So cry me a river, folks, because each and every one of us sit on our ass and let this continue, and we will right up until we get screwed up the ass, which is going to happen as the magnitude of these thefts has gone exponential in order to cover up the offense and thus the collapse will be particularly violent and ruin both asset prices and your daily life.

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2024-03-04 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Musings , 409 references
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I'm rather tired of this and am going to go down a short litany of facts which not even Musk, with his so-called "commitment" to free speech, will permit.

But first, receipts on the claim that Elon was and is lying in that he now admits his platform will censor FACTS:

 

Note that there are claims this "only applies to Brazil" due to some court case, but as you can see there is no distinction made in the cited post.  Therefore, if this is the case then let's see it in the formal TOS so it is in fact a tort IF IT IS A LIE.

Let me be clear:  Your sex/gender is determined at the moment of fusion of the two gametes no matter your species among sexually-reproducing organisms -- including but certainly not limited to human beings.  It cannot be changed from that instant in time forward, ever, no matter what you do because every single cell in that organism carries forward that determination as every single cell comes from that first cell's division into two.

Said organism is either male or female in every single case.  Yes, there are cases in which an error occurs and you get more than one or two "X" chromosomes, or for that matter only one X and no others at all, for example; the scientific name for that is "intersex."  This is quite rare but does happen -- its a genetic accident and properly characterized as an error, but it does occur.

This is not a "disease" but it is a genetic mutation and while a few of those people can in fact either sire or carry a child, its rare.  Most of the time if you're in that category you're sterile.  XXY, for example, is called Klinefelter's syndrome and typically results in a micropenis; most men with this produce little or no sperm as they also produce little testosterone.  But these people are male, despite having two "X" chromosomes (because they also have a "Y".)  Unfortunately most boys with this also have serious intellectual challenges.

Likewise someone who is born with "XXX" is female.  Many women with this have no outward symptoms but some have learning problems, seizures, and sometimes serious kidney abnormalities and premature menopause (ovarian failure at an uncharacteristic age.)  However, such a person is female.

There is nothing, however, anyone can do to change any of this from the first cellular division at conception forward.  A male, whether ordinarily XY or some combination that includes a "Y", can never become female.  A female, that is a person without a "Y" chromosome, can never become male.

From the moment of conception your neural, circulatory and other body systems develop differently depending on that chromosomal arrangement. This cannot be altered beyond that point no matter what you do; it is what it is.  A woman's body develops from conception with the blood supply capacity for a uterus and the child that may develop in same which no man ever has as just one example.  There is no way to create a female sexual response in a person conceived as a man because the neural connections are simply not there and never will be, and vice-versa, so even if we could fashion functional physical components and we can't even successfully do that.  As a result if you are conceived male you can never have a female sexual response, and if conceived female you can never have a man's sexual response.  It is not possible as from your first cellular division forward the neural connections for the other sex never develop and thus are not present.

As such sex is not "assigned at birth" and anyone saying that should be immediately and permanently committed to a rubber room; your sex is observed at birth (if Mom never had an ultrasound) but in most cases since women do it is observed while said child is still in-utero because the penis, if said child is male, is visible.  No penis?  It's a girl.  Penis?  It's a boy.  Period.

This doesn't mean you can't be unhappy you are male or female, or that your particular chromosomal assortment is unpleasant in your mind -- of course you can be unhappy with that just as you can be unhappy that your skin is white, black, brown or for that matter, if we discover little green men at some point, green.

But that you are unhappy with a fact does not make it untrue -- it just means you're unhappy.  As an adult you are free to undertake whatever actions you wish in an attempt to be happy (thus "pursuit of happiness") but you have no capacity or right to compel any other person to assist you in any way whatsoever, including "recognizing" what you desire but is physically impossible.  To demand otherwise or to enforce otherwise is to enslave someone else and worse, force them to lie which is never acceptable nor may it be compelled under any circumstance.

In fact someone who tries to compel you to speak a factual lie is violating both the Constitution and your rights which predate said Constitution and thus, by any reasonable standard has forfeited all their rights.  Yes, all of them.

Further, if you refuse to accept physical facts you are mentally defective and society must assume you will refuse to accept other physical facts which renders you manifestly dangerous when it comes to any task where the evaluation of physical facts is necessary for anyone else's safety.

No problem can ever be resolved without stating things that are facts.  We can debate that which is not a fact, but putting those opinions on the table in the open is how we find and reinforce facts and demote and ultimately destroy lies.  This is an essential part of any civil society.

Elon seems to think he has the right to abrogate that.  He does not, particularly after claiming that he stands for "free speech."  Neither does any other government official or private party.  A private party may tell you that your statement of facts is inconsistent with their private property rights and free association and thus demand you leave provided they did not make a former representation that you had the right to speak freely or they became, due to their position in society, an effective public square where such right of control of association has been lost as a consequence of their for-profit operation of what amounts to said public square.

Exactly where is that line?  That's a good debate but large social media sites are clearly under this purview in that they form an effective oligopoly and further give their membership the means to block communication with those who disagree.

Once you reach that critical threshold and provide the means to block said interaction you no longer can make a reasonable claim to "freedom to not associate in gross" because each person can choose on their own.

On a societal level this gets even more-serious when facts are concealed on purpose, as they are here.

For example, here: https://www.kctv5.com/2024/03/03/hundreds-fighting-six-flags-turns-into-firefight-with-officers-1-hospitalized/

It is incredibly disappointing that our community is disrupted at public events throughout the region by groups of underaged youth. Just like other venues in the area, we are committed to keeping this type of trouble outside our park and off our property. There was police activity involving gunshots; we want to confirm there was no shooting at our property or parking lot. This took place on South Service Road that is not owned or operated by Six Flags. However, we join our community and the Atlanta region in our commitment to safety and security. We won’t put up with that type of activity here.”

We all know what the probable distribution of the races of the people involved were.  Oh, and while the press won't say it there is video evidence from people who were there.  Where did the guns come from among underaged persons?  It is specifically that we refuse to call out the wild over-representation in this behavior among one specific group, that being young blacksand making clear that we will not tolerate it and will throw those who commit felonies in prison irrespective of their underage status that leads to this happening.  If you say this on "X" -- or virtually any other social media -- you will get banned.  Well, I'm saying it and I don't give a shit if anyone likes it or not because it has been true for the last several decades, still is, and it won't stop until we call out the facts and demand that the government enforce the goddamned law against said persons without regard to their skin color or age and we make clear that is not a request -- either they do their job OR WE WILL on a summary basis.

Or how about this: https://rumble.com/v4glv96-senators-watch-in-disbelief-as-democrat-defends-child-sex-dolls-for-pedophi.html

Here's a Kentucky State Senator defending giving child sex dolls to pedophiles.

Remember that there are a whole bunch of people who defend this particular perversion saying that "well, you might be a minor-attracted person but you can choose to act on it."  True perhaps, but now have we decided that "acting on it" doesn't include fucking a doll that is in the shape and size of a child?  What happens when the doll pops or is simply unavailable and the urge to act on it is still there?  Oh gee that's really hard to figure out -- right?

Or how about the fact that illegal immigrants are not "newcomers" they are criminalsNever mind that 8 USC 1324 defines as a criminal, 10 year in prison felony the following offenses related to any US and foreign persons and entities assisting said illegal aliens:

  • Attempting to bring an alien into the United States at any place other than a designated port of entry irrespective of whether said person has received authorization to enter or remain in the US or not.  Any entity or person doing so has violated said law and every person involved in promoting or enabling such illegal crossings is a felon.  
  • Transportation or movement of an alien knowing or recklessly disregarding that said person illegally entered into the United States is a criminal felony.
  • Concealing an alien knowing or with reckless disregard for their illegal entry anywhere in the United States, whether by transportation, housing (e.g. in a building) or otherwise.
  • Encouraging or inducing an alien to enter or remain in the United States, knowing or with reckless disregard for the fact that such entry is illegal, or engages in any conspiracy (e.g. combination of people or entities or planning) such acts.

For each person a party does this with where the intent is for financial gain or commercial advantage (e.g. employment, rental to such a person, etc.) the penalty is 10 years in prison.

If the violation is not for commercial or private financial gain (e.g. trafficking) the penalty is five years in prison.

If the alien commits an offense of bodily injury every person who was involved in the above gets 20 years in prison.

If the alien commits homicide the term for every person so-involved in any of the above is of any number of years up to and including life.

There is an exception for missionaries, believe it or not.  None of these people are of course.

There's more: If you merely attempt to bring an alien into the US without authorization (but fail, obviously, since the above covers if you succeed) you get one year in prison unless you do not bring said person immediately to a port of entry, in which case you get 10 (which is what the above carries, so that makes sense.)

If you knowingly hire ten or more illegal aliens within a 12 month period you get five years in prison.

Oh by the way, any conveyance used for any of this is subject to seizure and forfeiture!

So tell me, everyone, why do we tolerate the government intentionally violating this law and refusing to arrest anyone who harbors, transports, rents to, provides services to, treats medically, transports or otherwise harbors or assists anyone who is here illegally, all of which aids and abets said behavior and all of which is, under that actual law, already illegal.

These so-called "sanctuary cities" and states are in fact committing felonies and no, the elements of the State Government, private actors, NGOs, apartment and hotel owners, food vendors, transportation operators including airlines and others are not exempt from said law.  And yes this includes all the so-called "DREAMers" and every school, food vendor, lunchroom or employer who in any way assists them in being or remaining here.  It is all a serious crime.

Where was Donald Douchenozzle Trump on this?  This is not new law.  Why didn't he use it?  You know goddamn well the reason he didn't use it -- he didn't want to use it because his cocksucking voters love the illegal labor that destroys your wages, any more than Biden refuses because he wants them to be given the capacity to vote for more handouts, yet you still SUCK TRUMP'S DICK even after he refused to put in prison each and every single entity that broke the above law, including every landlord and other entity who so much as gives such a person a fucking sandwich.  Like, for example, all the farmers and other businesses who are using illegal labor.

Spare me the bullshit about "harassing" people who are, under this law, clearly felons, many of them US citizens or US corporations and government employees who are breaking the law by giving aid and comfort to said persons and harboring them, despite whatever excuse you wish to make when exactly none of them who entered here illegally have a right to be here.  Period.  Throw them all out and fry anyone in this nation who in any way assists or supports their entry or remaining here.  I don't give a shit who they are; they're criminals under the law -- and not "minor" criminals either.  End of conversation, full stop, that is the law and if the government will not enforce it then for each of those crimes not one person who is here illegally nor anyone who assists them in any way, no matter if government affiliated or not, has cause to complain if a felony is committed against THEM.

Let's continue because while this bullshit is a huge thing today its by no means the only bullshit that is ruining us and in fact in some cases killing us.

It is a fact that virtually everything in our modern civilization exists only because only competent people were hired to build and maintain same, most of which were White men, and as soon as we allowed anything other than competence to determine this process it all went to shit.

An example is Flint Michigan and their water system.  The lead feeder pipes for their water system were and are perfectly safe provided someone competent is running the system.  Why?  Because the lead pipe with proper water chemistry protects itself with a microscopic layer of oxide exactly as does aluminum when exposed to air and thus none of the lead goes into the water and poisons you.  Proof of this is that nobody got poisoned for decades until the water system shifted its source without people who knew what the fuck they were doing running it keeping said chemical balance intact.  THEN kids (and adults) started getting poisoned.

The people who built the system and operated it were mostly WHITE MEN.  Flint was an industrial town FULL OF WHITE MEN who ran the city services and did so competently.  Guess who this benefited tremendously?  All the black people who lived there, roughly half the population at the time, and who were not competent to build and run all of this on their own.  This was all well and fine until incompetent people were hired to replace the competent ones who either retired, quit because they were passed over for incompetent others or were literally forced out in the name of "diversity."

Who was the mayor when the water crisis hit?  Karen Weaver, who proudly claimed to be the 5th Black Mayor of Flint and first woman to hold the office, and by the way as noted she was only the person who was there when the decades-long degeneration of competence, which most-certainly did not happen in a year or two, finally got to the point of poisoning people.  Nonetheless rather than take responsibility for it and fixing it by restoring competence in the water department she blamed others and so did Obama, who I remind you is also Black.  Either of them could have demanded competence be restored to the water department and immediately resolved the problem instead of ripping up and replacing pipes while forcing the distribution of bottled water  (at great profit to the bottlers, I'm sure, and I'll bet that was a crony set of agreements too) that wasn't poisonous.

And who was most-likely to be poisoned?  Why black kids, of course, because when the color of your skin, sex and whatever gender you think you might be this afternoon is more important than your mental firepower you tend to wind up fucking your own people.  This was, of course, blamed on white people even though Flint first elected a Black Mayor in 1966.

Incidentally the 1950s were one of Flint's most-prosperous decades, centered in its middle-class manufacturing base and also incidentally in 1964, just before McCree's election, a massive scandal erupted over... you guessed it.... a plan to bring Lake Huron water into the city!  It was in the wake of that scandal that the city's water connection with Detroit was established.

Mayor McCree and all of his successors up until the crisis clearly did not believe having competent people run the water plant with full understanding of the supply's chemistry and any changes well in advance of them happening was the first and foremost job in order to insure the stability and safety of the water supply system in the city.  Whether that was due to lack of understanding that actual technical competence was required or willfully and intentionally hiring incompetent assholes I do not know -- but what I do know is that a bunch of black kids got poisoned as a direct result of not taking due care to make certain said chemistry requirements were met when the water source was changed.

Why is there no discussion of this?  Why don't we discuss how and why this actually happened?

Oh, that's an isolated incident eh?

Fani Willis anyone?  Yes, my first and foremost indication that Fani is incompetent at best might be her selection of "Gorilla Grip Pussy Pal" as her bluetooth device name.  That is clearly a clean indication that said person is extremely serious as a litigator and thinks with her head instead of her cunt.  Never mind the apparent presentation of evidence that she was both skimming public funds indirectly for her little indiscretions with a man she hired to participate in prosecuting Trump and was fucking him besides so one has to question whether the actual intent was to hire the best and finest to prosecute or to both get laid and have lavish vacations on the taxpayer dime while attacking a political enemy.  Of course her defense was "oh I'm Black and that's why people are after me" when it all blew up in her face.  Uh huh.

Any white person would already be under indictment for this sort of crap so sit down and shut the fuck up Fani, never mind your vapid County government which, I note, the Governor has utterly failed to stomp on.  He damn well should have years ago so there goes Georgia in the "DIEEEEEVERSITY" lottery as well.  Disqualified?  Where's the rather-obviously justified indictment from the STATE Attorney General and which party do people claim has actual competent and reasonable persons running under their banner?  Looks and smells like bullshit to me.

Good thing there weren't any black kids downstream of a water plant where she was controlling the chemical balance of the water, eh?  There might have been literal shit in that supply.

Oh, doesn't this sound a lot like the Smollett case?  Why, I think it might be sort of the same crap eh?

Just these couple of examples?

Oh, maybe not.  Let's talk about New York!  Lettia James (gee, what an odd coincidence that all of these people are black?) infamously went after Trump.  Oh, and by the way, James campaigned on "getting Trump" which incidentally is about as crooked as it gets and you'd think that standing alone would disqualify her from holding office never mind Howard University revoking her JD.  Nope.  But then of course Governor ("I think with my pussy, hear it ROAR!") Hochul tries to claim "oh this was a one off", only to have James almost-immediately go after one of the largest meat-processing firms in the United States under that very same law claiming that they're "climate abusers" and by God, she's going to single-handedly save the fucking planet!

Is this all just simple corruption or do we add in rank incompetence driven by sub-80 IQs across the board with an obvious outcome sort of like this:

Oh, that's offensive you say?  Well it might be but here's my reply:

Offended you I have, a shit I do not give.

Let's ask the question a different way:

Where is this sort of degeneration not in evidence?

You'll have a hard time with that.

We replace reliable carbon-fueled base load power plants with wind and solar which are not reliable as the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine.  We haven't hanged a single person who did this shit anywhere even when it was proved to not work because you can't guarantee wind or sun in a given place and if that doesn't coincide with when you want power you don't get power at all.  ERCOT had its infamous freeze and they're not alone -- everyone is pulling this crap and the power companies and entities (some government run, some private sector) either have nobody in charge who is saying "heh ASSHOLES, our first job is to make goddamn sure we can generate the power when the customers require it and only when that is assured can we choose other priorities" or some diversity and/or green douchebag is telling those people to sit down and shut up or be fired -- and they're running the show.

Go watch that video up a bit again as many times as it takes because that's exactly what this sort of stupid shit constitutes when it comes to intelligence and this is going to be the repeated result if we don't cut it out right fucking now.

Oh, its just power?  Uh, no, it isn't.  We know based on simple facts that one cannot determine the long term effects of a medication without the time passing.  Its not possible, duh.  So we mandate, coerce and lie that we know something is safe when we know damn well that you can't figure out what will happen in five years until five years goes by.  If that's not deranged enough we gave the people who make this crap legal immunity and nobody hanged the politicians, the physicians, the pharmaceutical executives or all of the above even without waiting the required period of years because it is obvious that the claims are frauds as you can't figure out what will happen in a given time until the time passes.  That we now have discovered that indeed they're not "safe as promised" isn't really material in that the claim was a fraud right up front and now, given the passage of time, it is ADMITTED that the shots have killed and severely maimed people.  The only debate today is how many people got killed or maimed!

There are a couple hundred people who are alive today only due to dumb luck because someone at Boeing, Spirit (one of their contractors), both of which trumpet their "diversity initiatives" (see Boeing's and Spirit's bullshit for yourself), or someone doing work on the plane under either or both of their alleged supervision, did not install all four bolts on a hatch in one of their 737 aircraft.  Any ONE of the four bolts, nuts and cotter (or safety wire) would have held the door in place on the frame.  The NTSB has now shown (which was obvious by the way within minutes of landing when photos were posted publicly by passengers and which I commented on in a separate posting at the time) that none of the four bolts, nuts and keepers were installed.  Only dumb luck kept that door from hitting the stabilizer after it detached as it tumbled free.  Since that door masses somewhere around 70lbs if it had hit the stabilizer at a hundred knots or more of relative velocity (consider a car battery being shot at the tail of the plane at 100mph for an idea of the level of impact involved here) odds are extremely high that the stabilizer would have been severely damaged or destroyed and the entire aircraft and everyone on board would have been lost.

There have been several recent incidents between aircraft where near collisions have occurred during landing and takeoff -- and one actual impact.  The rate of these incidents recently has been stunningly high and may I remind you that a plane impacting another while landing or taking off is quite-likely to kill everyone in both aircraft.  A landing 737 comes in at about 120kts just before touchdown so how would you like to get hit if you're about to take off at 130mph because that is roughly the speed at which the collision will take place!  Is this apparent increase because we hire for diversity in the control tower and cockpit instead of for competence?  How long will it before one of those near-misses isn't a miss and a airliner full of passengers, or even two airliners, are destroyed along with everyone on board?  May I remind you that at least one of the planes usually has plenty of fuel on board to be turned into a mist and ignite on impact too.  If the impact doesn't get you the fireball probably will.

We hear of "cyber incidents" all the time.  One of the latest is a health care portal company that interconnects various providers and insurance firms.  Why is it happening in the first place and by the way why aren't the firms involved, when it is a cryptojack thing or similar, equipped with competent people who can roll back to the few hours or day before the cryptojacking got them?  Yes, you lose the couple of hours of work -- that beats being offline for days or weeks doesn't it?  Modern systems can do this if they're set up properly and if compartmentalized properly then the impact is localized to one small area anyway.  Oh, but that takes actual skill instead of a bunch of idiots over in India writing garbage code and by the way who's doing system administration and how come they're not competent enough to compartmentalize and limit this sort of damage?  Again we get to the base question: How do you expect things that require a group of people who have roughly a 115 IQ or better to operate them competently to continue working as expected when you hire people on their skin color or pronouns and don't give a crap that they have an 80 IQ or can't discern the fact that being born with a penis makes them male?

How many more examples would you like?

How about just one more?

What makes you believe that your physician actually understands anything about health?  Before you say "but mine is good even if many suck" I give you one RICHARD LEVINE who can't even discern that he is a man by the fact that he had a penis when born and further, he also can't manage his own body mass yet we are told that this person is an "expert" on human health AND WE MUST OBEY that which issues from his mouth!  What sort of mentally-defective IDIOT (that's all of us, by the way) allow anyone who can't figure out basic biological facts related to whether you're a man or a woman along with the inability to maintain reasonable body mass to make recommendations and even DICTATE POLICY MANDATES for the rest of America's people?  Has your doctor told you point-blank that Levine is both ridiculously obese and mentally deranged?  If he or she hasn't then that person is deranged too and you're insane to listen to a single thing that comes from their mouth.

How much of our civilization will survive if we keep putting people in positions of both authority and responsibility for things that we all count on working when they simply don't have the chops to do the job but are hired because they're either cheaper, their skin or sex is "correct" or they use the right pronouns?  If someone cannot tell from the presence of a penis or vagina on their body at the time of their birth if they're a man or a woman why would you believe they can accurately process anything else in their head?  Exactly how many examples of obvious failure to accurately process information do you need to see before you realize that if fantasy is permitted to intrude anywhere that matters in job performance you will have serious problems -- up to and including people becoming dead as a consequence.

Guess what?  People like me won't put up with that sort of shit and you can't make people like me, who are competent in our fields, work for you.  As those who are both competent and intelligent retire or simply say "fuck you" and quit rather than coddle another's mental derangement, never mind the probability of them screwing the pooch then blaming the competent guy because he "misgendered" them, leaving you with the green-haired, pronoun-spouting person who you don't dare call "sir" or "ma'm" lest you get a complaint filed against you through HR running the water plant or the data interchange for your local hospital the odds of you getting fucked up the ass rise precipitously.

We either stop all of this, right now, by whatever means we must, or what we currently claim to enjoy as "civilization" will collapse incrementally and each of us will get doled out our personal "find out" to go with the "fuck around" the hard way.  Perhaps it will come in different ways for each of us -- we'll be hit at 130mph while waiting for take-off in a plane, drink poisoned water out of our tap at home, get an injection of shit at the doctors office that paralyzes us, gives us cancer or a heart attack, we'll freeze to death because we let the power company replace reliable carbon-based generators with wind and solar and then it will be -20F at night and calm, resulting in our power going off, our furnace will not fire and we will freeze to death and similar sorts of means of going to meet God.

Oh by the way what do you think the S&P will trade at when all this happens and for how long do you think the average 80IQ person will sit back quietly when it does before they come looking for whatever food you might have, which just might include an intent to eat you personally?

I hear Venezuelans sometimes demand the right to rape young women and, if said women refuses, they just kill her and crush their skulls.  THAT is what we have degenerated to already on the illegal alien issue alone.  The next dead woman could very well be you, your wife or young daughter and yet nobody will get off their ass, demand it ALL stop NOW and enforce that demand even when the clear consequence of not doing so is possible DEATH and is on full display in your FACE.

It isn't like we had a prior display of this exact same insanity in Iowa not all that long ago with another illegal alien, is it?

Oh wait -- WE DID AND THE VICTIM'S NAME WAS MOLLIE.

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2024-03-03 09:10 by Karl Denninger
in Market Musings , 859 references
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If you've read this column for any length of time you know I'm not in any way bullish on the intermediate and longer-term path our government and fiscal policy are on.  In fact the problems go back for at least 20 years and arguably 40 in that every challenge has been met with more and more government credit emission.

Now a certain amount of this might be tolerable -- roughly that which is covered by the improvement in productivity.  In my book Leverage I argued (and still do) that even at this level its theft, because productivity doesn't improve because government improves (that is, it would be "theirs" to dole out) it improves because people improve things.

Since we cause it we should get the benefit, not some glad-handed decision coming from a state or federal legislature or, as is currently the case, not even through legislative process such as NY deciding to hand out EBT cards with huge amounts of money on them to persons who are neither citizens or who entered the US lawfully.

As you also may recall back well before I started penning this column I have pointed out that the medical system specifically, which was about 3% of GDP when Medicare was passed and about 4% when Medicaid became common, now consists of 20% of the economy and about one third of federal spending yet the tax remains right near 3% -- meaning that as the expense as grown as a piece of the whole the tax revenue has not.  The entire problem with our budget, on a simple fiscal analysis, lies here -- not in Social Security or anywhere else.  Politicians and other analysts always conflate these and its intentional; anyone can read the MTS, effectively the Federal Government's "by category" transaction summation (commonly called a "cash flow statement") and see these facts.

It is also a fact that as "medical employment" has grown virtually none of it, on a per-capita basis, has been in doctors and nurses.  In other words none of it has anything to do with actually providing medical care to human beings; the entire expansion is elsewhere.  We should not have permitted this but we have and once again nobody on either side of the aisle will do anything about this as evidenced by the last 20+ years of it.

The over-extension of asset prices of all sorts has followed from these policies.  This is not sustainable and it will break.  It has broken many times before, and it will again.  We can argue over timing, but not outcome.

Here's the important point I want to impress with this article:

When it does, and I believe it is imminent (meaning weeks or months, perhaps a year or so but I will take the under on that) it will be very tempting to try to call bottoms in the belief that the same cycle that has played out since 2000 will occur again and thus you should use the financial leverage you can obtain because you'll get wealthy if you do.

It is my considered opinion that you're foolish to take that risk because if you're wrong you will be bankrupted or worse.

Further you don't need to do that to make out ok.  That is, if you buy a house once prices collapse you don't need to take on leverage, buy five, and try to be a landlord and make a ton of money on the "appreciation" you expect to come.  Buying one where you want to live, and living in it, treating it as a consumer durable good, leaves you way ahead of the game than if you buy one now and wind up sitting on a 50% or more loss hoping prices come back up.

If you can buy business equipment for a nickel on the dollar even a modest amount of money purchases something that makes a profit because your cost of operations is cheaper than the other guy's cost.  If you take leverage and the asset does not go back up in value the other guy who doesn't do that will destroy you because the leverage costs money and he doesn't have to spend it.

Living beyond your cash earnings power is dangerous.  It has paid off for the last 20 years with the only requirement being that you be able to withstand short-term, usually less than a year or two, drawdowns.

This time the drawdown and flat-line is likely to be a decade or more -- similar to the Long Depression of the late 1800s.  If it is, and you have leverage on, you will be ruined because your earnings power will decrease but the leverage costs money and that expense is fixed for the term when you take it.

During both the Long Depression and Great Depression those who had not taken on such leverage were ultimately able to buy assets for a nickel on the dollar but that strategy only works if you do not take on leverage.  If you do and either miss the bottom or the exit from the condition does not come quickly enough you lose everything because leverage multiples the losses exactly as it does the gains and worse, if you lose half you now need a double to get back to even.

In the 1990s I was able to take advantage of a relatively minor economic downturn with cash and obtain both high-quality office space on lease and other assets.  This was a tremendous advantage.  Had I employed leverage I could have, of course, gotten much more but the risk in that was a complete wipe-out if I timed the exit wrong or had to hold through the 2000 wreck and was too far out over my skis.  I had seen that movie before as a customer of mine before MCSNet was an Internet firm who had leverage on with a quite-profitable small business out in the suburbs had his operating line get called by the bank.  He could not replace it on terms that he could meet and was immediately and entirely destroyed.

I'll point out that we had roughly 100 competitors in our local market and I knew many others in the business in other regions and areas.  Of the local competitors I know a couple of who sold out as I did at various valuations and one who stayed in, navigated the 2000 crash and now has a lot more money than I do.  Most of the rest were literally destroyed.  In 2008 I knew several people who had put on a bunch of leverage and were entirely ruined including losing their primary residence.

Do not make this mistake by believing that asset prices, when they dive, will come back in a reasonable period of time.  They might not come back in your remaining lifespan but even if they do you need to assume that the timeline will be over one to three decades, not years and your income over that period of time may decline to a material degree so even fixed-rate debt is likely to destroy you if you use it to purchase them.

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